Dragonlance [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defenders?

[Ath-kethin]

I like the Taladas take that the Cataclysm was a comet striking the planet. The extraordinarily juvenile notion that powerful outsiders directly interfere with mortal events is far more appealing to me when approached and handled like native beliefs rather than literal happenings.

 

[Umbran]

I don't recall reading that, and I hope not, cos it's bonkers.

You just said it was a plan of the evil gods. "Evil gods maneuver the good ones to submit to a plan that will allow evil to triumph"... sounds pretty spot on.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

We played Dragonlance back in the day. Players especially loved defending the High Clerist Tower from dragon army attack, and a climactic aerial mass dragon battle over city of Sanction.

Btw, Dragonlances were lances that did double damage to dragons. That was double damage for a lance charge, doubled again against dragons. You would one-shot a 2E dragon - or be one-shotted yourself!

Anyway, yeah, I recall one friend harping on about how the Cataclysm squared with itself: some uber capital-G Good guy getting thwacked by a mountain flung by the gods. I didn't give it much thought, I just said 'your character doesn't know.'

If I were to explain it in a game now, I'd have this Cleric 20+ have tried bending the cosmic order either by directing worship to themselves, or placing the gods under their power.

Would have either of these been evil acts? Debatable. But regardless the 21 gods could reasonably be expected to act as they had.

Frankly, if this cleric had become so powerful to challenge the gods, it's not unrealistic that a flaming mountain was the least destructive way to slay them - and their core supporters.

Now, were these gods a bunch of angels? Well no. In fact 7 of them are avowed evil-doers. Could the good gods have done better? Perhaps so, but their rivals would delight in thwarting them.

Anyway, that's my take.

 

[Mirtek]

Note that the D&D multiverse is not build around the idea of justice or reward/punishment.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos are the fundamental forces and neither is right or wrong.

Evil souls going to the Abyss might feel like a punishment but cosmically it's not intended as such.

It's just souls who promted one form of CE in live now being stacked together to continue to promote that form of CE in the afterlive.

And if they were to win and overthrow all other cosmic alignment forces, that would prove that there CE was the only right and legitimate cosmic idea all along

 

[Mirtek]

One artists depiction.

And for all we know Ao has something else in store for those souls.

I don't recall all sources from top of my head but i read about it being painfull in both novels and supplements

 

[Mercurius]

I tend to see D&D gods in a similar vein as the MCU Asgardians: they are more akin to an evolved and/or powerful immortal race than actually divine beings. Or one could say "divine beings" are just further along the evolutionary path. An overgod would be different, more akin to the Hindu Brahman of which all other gods exist within and/or as particular aspects.

I have no issue with either as intra-setting ideas. They have their own logic, and provide interesting stories as back-drops for the setting. Both seem kind of harsh in different ways, but I don't feel that judging the morality of fantasy gods is necessary or particularly fruitful. Speculative fiction is a game of "What If," not "let's make a world of dragons and elves that is dictated by my personal ideology." Unless that is the What If game you want to play.

I would also point out that our own world has myths of cataclysms and resulting stories of the gods punishing humanity. Ancient peoples, by and large, saw natural catastrophes as generated by the gods. Nothing was random or "just nature doing its thing." Assuming that the people of Krynn have a worldview closer to those of the ancients than modern humans, it makes sense that they would believe that the Cataclysm was caused by the gods. And of course the lore of Dragonlance says this is actually the case. Fantasy worlds are generally explorations of What If scenarios in which myths and legends are literally true.

That said, one could run a Dragonlance campaign in which the "actual truth" is unknown, and there are differing opinions. Individual DMs can make of the lore what they want. Perhaps the gods are actually "ascended" Irda. Or maybe Fizban/Paladine isn't actually a god, but the quasi-immortal high priest of the abstract principle "Paladine." Etc.

 

[wingsandsword]

Note that the D&D multiverse is not build around the idea of justice or reward/punishment.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos are the fundamental forces and neither is right or wrong.

Evil souls going to the Abyss might feel like a punishment but cosmically it's not intended as such.

It's just souls who promted one form of CE in live now being stacked together to continue to promote that form of CE in the afterlive.

And if they were to win and overthrow all other cosmic alignment forces, that would prove that there CE was the only right and legitimate cosmic idea all along

If anything, it's "like attracts like." It's not that evil souls are thrown into the Nine Hells of Baator as some kind of punishment, it's that souls that are evil and lawful naturally gravitate there, where other evil and chaotic energies flow. Deities live there because the outer planes are the places of metaphysics and belief, where Gods can live far more easily, and where souls naturally go. It's more like a law of nature than a system of punishment.

"Hell is other people" as I've heard it called, or a cut scene from the movie Dogma, with the demon Azrael explaining that originally Hell was simply the absence of God, which to an angel (or a demon, being a fallen angel in that setting) would be torment enough, but human souls started arriving there, and a place where all the angry, tormented, guilty, generally awful human souls arrived turned an unpleasant tormenting place into something far worse just by being full of tormented souls, with no need for the demons themselves to do anything else on top of that.

The Fugue Plane is simply a demiplane set up by Ao in Realmspace for the orderly processing of souls, so that they get handed off to the right pantheon (or to other planes or pantheons as appropriate), and they only end up Faithless if no deity will take them because they completely forsook all deities in life and there isn't one in Realmspace that would take them (and not one apparent outside Realmspace they could be handed to either). . .and only end up False if they completely betrayed the tenets of their faith in life. . .not simply making errors or shortcomings any mortal could make, but serious and total hypocrisy.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

You just said it was a plan of the evil gods. "Evil gods maneuver the good ones to submit to a plan that will allow evil to triumph"... sounds pretty spot on.

Eh? I was saying it seemed bonkers for Fizban to say the Cataclysm was to help the world prepare for Takhisis' coming. Why would Paladine think killing civilization would help prepare people to fight Takhisis? Unless you mean that it was Takhisis plan, which the other gods unknowingly helped achieve, which actually makes a lot of sense, now that I think of it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Except it's not written as punishment. You go to the wall, and you eventually dissolve and cease existing.

That's not punishment when compared to most of the other afterlives. In fact that would likely actually draw people to atheism.

And people that have never heard of a God can still be accepted as being faithful to the ideals of a God and be accepted as a petitioner.

As for children, they go to where their parents are. Which sucks if your parents were Bhaalists or Cyricists.

I'd prefer it if they went to Chauntea instead. In my head-canon thats where they go.

You seem to keep missing the "after potentially centuries of bone-cracking torture that drives them mad from endless agony" part of the wall.

Your logic just seems to assume that "getting what you expect" is somehow justice, and that permanent soul death is somehow less heinous that murder.

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The Fugue Plane is simply a demiplane set up by Ao in Realmspace for the orderly processing of souls, so that they get handed off to the right pantheon (or to other planes or pantheons as appropriate), and they only end up Faithless if no deity will take them because they completely forsook all deities in life and there isn't one in Realmspace that would take them (and not one apparent outside Realmspace they could be handed to either). . .and only end up False if they completely betrayed the tenets of their faith in life. . .not simply making errors or shortcomings any mortal could make, but serious and total hypocrisy.

The problem with that is Ilmater. Ilmater is the god of slaves, the oppressed and martyrdom and one of his schticks is to "take their burdens or take their place"

So, if Realmspace has a God who is legitimately willing to suffer for others.... why wouldn't he take the Faithless and protect them from the wall?

Or, why not the Goddess of Mercy, Tamara and Sharindlar? Why would they not take the Faithless? Tamara's portfolio includes forgiveness as well as Mercy.

Or, why not an evil god like Cyric, who would enjoy tormenting the souls and endlessly tricking and making them suffer. Or a deity like Oghma who would desire to teach them and spread knowledge.

This concept that none of these entities who could very easily have a reason to gather souls, when souls equal power, and instead consign them to torment followed by Oblivion... makes no sense.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I haven't actually commented on the Wall of the Faithless, since I don't know anything about it outside of Neverwinter Nights 2, where the concept seemed breathtakingly unfair.

Note that say what you want about the Cataclysm and the gods' hissy fit on Krynn - they never stopped anyone from having an afterlife!