D&D 5E [Forgotten Realms] The Wall of the Faithless

[JohnLynch]

if I was using this, I'd make the Far Realms outside that wall. Break the wall, and the Far Realms comes to call. The only reason everything is featureless is that you can't actually perceive the Far Realms, even though it's there, just beyond sight. Waiting. Waiting to break in and devour all the souls of the world. And the only thing that protects the city is this Wall of the Faithless that has to be constantly mortared with faithless souls to keep the Far Realms out.

I really like this. Here's an alternative Wall of the Faithless:

The Last Wall
Whenever someone dies they go to Kelemvor's domain and are confused and disoriented about what they are seeing when they get there. A servant of their patron deity (or the servant of a deity most closely aligned to how they lived their life) can snap them out of their confusion by offering them solace and comfort. They help the soul come to terms with their current state and offer them to go to their deity's domain and live the remainder of their days with that deity. Before the soul can accept the servant first warns them of the terrible danger that the Far Realm poses and the fact the barrier between the material universe and the Far Realm dimension weakens every day. The soul can choose to either live the remainder of their days with their deity or they can choose to sacrifice their eternal lives and instead willingly become one with the Last Wall.

Not everyone who dies is visited by the deity they worshiped. Some are instead visited by the servant of a different deity. This happens when someone failed to even try to live their lives by the creed of the deity they claimed to worship and so are instead visited by the deity whose creed they most closely followed in reality. Such servants are not as comforting to the individual as those of the deity they thought they worshiped, but they can still give the deceased soul some momentary clarity. If the soul doesn't reject the reality of their situation then the servant can provide the person with the same comfort that any deific servant can provide and the soul is provided with the same options (eternity in that god's domain or a willing sacrifice to the Wall). It is not uncommon for someone who is visited by the servants of Bhaal or the servant of the God of Lies to reject the servant and deny the reality of the situation. In this case the servant is no more able to reach them or provide them with any clarity and so the soul is abandoned.

Devils have learned the art of providing momentary clarity to people, especially since Asmodeus ascended to godhood. They can also provide souls who have denied the servants of gods momentary clarity and offer to enter into a bargain with the soul in question. If the soul refuses to accept the devil's terms then the devil also abandons them to their fate.

Those who have rejected both devils and the servant of a god are left for Kelemvor's judgement. He himself must speak directly with the soul in order to provide that soul with enough clarity to understand the situation they're in. He offers them one more chance to go to the domain of the god who tried to claim them and warns them of the fate that remains for them if they reject it again. If the person still cannot accept their situation or refuses to enter the god's domain then Kelemvor is left with no choice but to place them into the Last Wall.

Those who become part of the Last Wall slowly have their sanity eroded and destroyed. When Kelemvor first learned of the Last Wall he was horrified about what was happening to those souls and destroyed it. However what happened then was an onslaught of aberrations invaded his domain and threatened to overrun the entire Astral Plane. The other gods came to Kelemvor's aid and were able to beat back the aberrations long enough to rebuild the Last Wall. Many of the gods hate this wall but they also realise that there is naught they can do to stop it.

Those who willingly chose to not enter their god's domain but instead voluntarily become part of the wall are remembered throughout all the lands where that deity is worshiped as heroes. Those clerics of the deity have the person's name that embedded into their mind as they sleep and feel compelled to add the person's name to the Wall of Honour each temple maintains. Failure to add the name of the person onto the Wall can result in the loss of clerical spells for that priest. The priests do not know why these names are so important, only that the names represent heroes of the faith who have died somewhere in the world of Toril. Those churches devoted to the gods of self sacrifice have the most ornate walls while the temples devoted to more selfish gods may not even have a Wall of the Honoured.

-----
This can now pop up in gameplay a bit more easily. Any time a character enters a temple they will see that faith's Wall of Honour and no matter how far or wide they travel, they will see the exact same names on those walls. If they come upon an abandoned temple they will be able to use the names on the Wall of Honour to determine when that temple was abandoned and if they work to restore the temple they will feel compelled to add the names of the people who have subsequently sacrificed their lives.

This could eventually pique the interest of the players. As a DM you can also ask each player the enigmatic question "Would your character sacrifice themselves for the greater good?" when their character dies and the players decide not to raise that character from the dead. If any player answers the question with a yes they will eventually see that dead character's name added to the Wall of Honour with future characters.

This also (hopefully) helps remove some of the distaste people have for the concept of the Wall of the Faithless. A dead soul is confused when they die and if they continue to reject the gods they cannot be saved by those gods because only in accepting their fate can they lose that confusion on a permanent basis (Kelemvor can permanently remove the confusion on a single soul so long as he concentrates on that soul, angels and devils can only momentarily remove that confusion). It also explains why Kelemvor suffers the wall's existence. Think of the Dreams May Come movie with Robin Williams in it as to the state of souls who have died.

It also removes the whole "you must have a patron deity" idea but also puts a new spin on it. If you fail to even try to live by a god's values than that god will reject you. The bogeyman isn't the Wall of the Faithless but instead by being "damned" to an eternity in the god's dominion whose values you most closely lived your life by. This provides people with an incentive to follow a god's decrees.

Kudos to Hussar for this really cool idea I may have to revisit my rejection of the concept of the Wall of the Faithless.

As it is, I can understand not liking something because it doesn't mesh with your personal feelings about how something "should" be, but I consider one of the main points of role-playing to be stepping outside of that for a little while.

99% of the time I've seen someone be uncomfortable it's when they first started playing the game and they eventually become comfortable enough to even play clerics or paladins. That said I don't know if they're Christian or athiest (I never bothered asking). I personally was not comfortable DMing priests as evil when I first started playing D&D and didn't really want to focus on priests or churches for much the same reason that I don't want to portray certain demographics that correspond with real life demographics in a negative light. I eventually got over it.

 

[Jester David]

Right, but Roman polytheism doesn't say that others (the Gauls or the Huns or the Celts or the Jews or whatever) are condemned to an eternity of suffering because they don't do that. The point I'm making is that "This is like Rome!" or "This is like Greece!" doesn't really apply - Roman and Greek polytheism aren't very concerned with orthodoxy. They don't punish you for believing the wrong things. FR does.

It doesn't matter what Pantheon you worship, so long as you worship someone. Different regions have different pantheons. In this case it would be like the Romans not caring about the Gauls or Celts having their own gods. But some devotion is required to earn a place in the afterlife.
The Roman example is really just an example of the simplicity of saying a prayer at a small shrine and asking for a blessing or making an offering to multiple gods when the need arises.

Suffice it to say that the Realms source material doesn't seem to see itself the way you see it. There are canonical characters who question the rights of the deities to demand worship right in the most recent presentation of the books. They're a minority, and they're weird, and they're not even from Faerun, but they exist, and that they exist indicates that having a patron deity isn't a foundational design principle of FR, but something required by a weird bit of world-canon - a bit that I think the setting would be better off without.

And that's fine. Again, it's okay to play the outsider who questions things. But that has some impact. In this case someone who rejects that gods doesn't do well after they die.

That's kind of how it feels to know about the Wall of the Faithless and then see Ilmater described as "he who offers succor and calming words to those who are in pain, victimized, or in great need." I guess he won't do that unless you scratch his back with some devoted worship, first.

It's not like a few honest prayers and maybe sacrificing a few coins or a stick of incense is a huge burden.
The price asked isn't steep. The return on investment (an eternal afterlife for some honest and true devotion) is huge.

It just casts this pall over the whole setting when you realize that, by and large, everyone accepts this monstrous injustice. Saving the world from the Dragon Queen just seems kind of empty now. Okay, well, Tiamat is obviously bad, but so are the gods we currently have, even the ones who say they're good, so what am I fighting for? Hell, maybe she can have this blasted world, maybe I can escape to somewhere where, if I die, my soul won't be cosigned to a bleedin' wall just because I didn't kiss enough divine bottoms. Maybe at least on Athas, a family of halflings will be fed by my corpse.

If you do some fantastic heroism in the world, you'd imagine benevolent gods lining up to be your patron. Powers great and small working their divine bottoms off to save your soul.

Checking FR wiki, the Wall was created by Myrkul (god of the dead) to punish souls. Okay, dick move but he was captial-E Evil. And that doesn't mean all other deities approve of this or can do anything about it. It's his dominion, and following that Cyric, and now Kelemovor. Who was pretty easy on noble faithless, but changed that when he became more neutral.
Does every accept this? Nope, and it seems like the good gods might oppose this (Mystra apparently ended her friendship with Kelemovor over treatment of the Faithless). But it's his call. A god stepping on the toes of another god strikes me as a bad idea.

 

[pemerton]

This is D&D. FR is just one world among many. On any other world, you die and you go to the plane corresponding to your alignment. Why did AO and his little minions decide otherwise? It seems like its purpose was basically to force people to pay homage to a deity OR ELSE, which means the entire pantheon is guilty of a deep and abiding cruelty for the purposes of enhancing their own power. This is the kind of thing that should lead to heroic novels about overthrowing the unjust tyranny of the corrupt gods, not blasé acceptance.

<snip>

You could get away with leaving it background material, but if you take your characters' beliefs seriously, you encounter the problem right away. In this way, it actively discourages you to think about what your character thinks about. Not a great result.

At first I thought the concern was that this setting element forces players to engage with an annoyingly long list of uninspiring deities. If that's the concern, then I think leaving it as background is fine.

If you are a player who takes your PC's beliefs seriously, and you are playing in FR, then I don't think you've got any grounds to complain about engaging with the list of gods. That's the setting you chose to go with, after all.

But it's now seeming like the concern is that this is an ugly piece of metaphysics which the setting, and the settings authors and fans, don't concede is ugly. I've got no horse in that race, but I would say if you don't like a setting's conceits (for moral, or aesthetic, or whatever other, reasons) then change it. Or don't use it.

 

[Ketser]

The Last Wall
-And the rest of the long text-

I like your version a lot more than the official wall of faithless, it also makes a lot more sense than "Myrkul's BS that the gods kept around because they needed prayer badly." If i would ever run a high level FR campaign, i would use this version and have the PCs finding a way to remove the threat of aberrations that Kelemvor could finally destroy the wall.

 

[Saeviomagy]

People keep throwing the phrase "political correctness for atheists", but that's not what this is about.

This isn't me being worried that my fictional character is worshiping a deity - generally I'm fine with that, even with the gods that FR is stuck with.

This is about a torture device that was created by a mortal ascended to godhood for the explicit purpose of terrifying mortals into giving worship being a part of a system that "Good" gods are gaining power from.

There was some point where Kelemvor did away with the wall and started judging and treating people who ended up with him (ie - false and faithless) according to their goodness in life. Enough of Faerun knew about this change to the afterlife that good people stopped going off with good gods (so they could relax in Kelemvor's paradise) and evil people followed evil gods scrupulously (so that they wouldn't be judged by Kelemvor). The change was enough that it affected the balance between good and evil deities.

So apparently the process of the afterlife is plastered on billboards in Waterdeep or something.

Also note that ceasing to use the wall didn't cause any problems in itself. The problems were caused by Faerunians gaming Kelemvor's flawed rules for the afterlife. *

So, yeah, the afterlife is apparently transparent enough that PCs are likely to know how it works, including the existence and use of the wall. That should heavily affect the morals of every good, neutral or chaotic character that follows a god, and weigh heavily on anyone who understands that following a god "or else" isn't really being faithful so much as fearful.

(*) My understanding of the novels where this occurs also include Kelemvor ceasing use of the wall, determined that noone in his realm will be either punished OR rewarded... but apparently in 5e, he's started the wall up again?

 

[MoonSong]

Are there (m)any Olympians we would identify with as neutral good or lawful good though? Zeus had a habit of transforming into animals, kidnapping women and then having sex with them (dunno if he made sure he got consent though). He isn't exactly what I'd call good aligned and he led the whole lot of the gods.

Ironically Hades is the Greek god that comes closer to LG. And maybe Eros comes close to CG. All the others LN, CN, LE, or CE.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Also note that ceasing to use the wall didn't cause any problems in itself. The problems were caused by Faerunians gaming Kelemvor's flawed rules for the afterlife. *

Rules-lawyers! So the people of the Realms really are a population of role-playing gamers, then?

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I would say if you don't like a setting's conceits (for moral, or aesthetic, or whatever other, reasons) then change it. Or don't use it.

How dare you introduce common sense into this discussion!

Good advice, by the way.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I kind of like the idea of saying that in truth Kelemvor judges them and can send them wherever he wants. If they were NG but none of the FR deities floated their boat, he can just send their souls to Elysium and let them wanderer around figuring out what they want to do with their afterlife.

But it might be interesting to say that the way the books present it is how FR natives believe that it works. Just because Kelemvor isn't a jerk doesn't mean he wants to increase his workload by telling people they don't have to get their stuff figured out before they show up.

 

[Sunseeker]

It's not like a few honest prayers and maybe sacrificing a few coins or a stick of incense is a huge burden.
The price asked isn't steep. The return on investment (an eternal afterlife for some honest and true devotion) is huge.

People keep repeating this and it's so obnoxiously false. Earnestly worshipping something is not simply making a few prayers and sacrificing a few coins. Doing just those things is not earnest worship. I can't see how anyone would consider that earnest worship. "Oh yeah I tossed some coins in the well and said a couple Hail Mary's, I'm good for the next month." That is the definition of lip service. More than that, every god has different requirements, there are codes, whole systems of beliefs and rules that their worshippers need to follow.

The return isn't that great either. "Eternal paradise"....well every god offers that. It's not exactly like its hard to come by. There are so many FR gods each with their own private paradise, and I hate to tangent into real life, but the Wall and FR gods in general is a very judeo-christian conceptualization of polytheism, you ignore the costs in the now in favor of the rewards in the then. In classic polytheism, worship was less important than being a respectable person. Gods recognized and rewarded heroic, honorable, noble deeds for worthy causes regardless of if you prayed to them.