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

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

1) The multiverse "Great Wheel/Planescape" universal D&D cosmology predates the Forgotten Realms.

We know that the Realms as a place to tell stories is older than D&D, I just can't recall if the "Down to Earth Divinity" article I mentioned upthread talks about what sort of Cosmology, if any, Greenwood created for the Realms prior to his work adapting his world to the D&D Cosmology as presented way back in the day.

There is. Canonically.

Enough with the trying to win the conversation, hey?

The Realms is its own setting--always has been--and while it's Cosmology has been presented a few different ways over the last 30+years, off the top of my head I don't recall any Realms sourcebook that says, "If you're not sure what to do with leftover souls, check Planescape."

Can you?

I do know of several Realms sourcebooks that have the subject of the souls of the dead covered, however.

It's worth remembering the Realms original design had it as a nexus between many worlds and realities. That's as Ed Greenwood intended it. Easier to jump a party of adventurers between worlds for a change of pace every now and again, and to introduce things from other realities (including from Earth, and just about any other place you can think of beyond what's in the Great Wheel), all for use in the Realms.

It was also Greenwood's intention that the extraplanar realities and worlds beyond the Realms remain uncertain at best, unknowable at worst. The accounts of adventurers, the writings of planar travelers (of which the Realms has had plenty), the musings of sages...these were the best that could be had. (Note: this is how Greenwood "turned the page" on the Great Tree in one of his recent Realms novels; he's a big fan of the Great Wheel).

Why? So DMs had leeway to do their thing, without having to worry so much about players shoving a rulebook in their face and saying, "If you want to deal with FR as it is actually presented, you have to include the entire rest of the multiverse, because FR is a subset of the rest of that multiverse, according to FR itself."

There's the rest of the multiverse.

It's not so cut and dried as this.

There exists a few decades of gaming material that presents the Cosmology of the Realms in different ways, so there are different generations of gamers who view and think of the Realms differently.

So gamers should ignore the multiverse, if it so pleases them, because the return of the Great Wheel does not mean all the old pre-3E information has returned to a place of primacy, just as some of us in this discussion prefer to ignore it.

Planescape material is an option and not a requirement for participation in this discussion.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I found this old quote from a reply by Ed Greenwood back in 2007. I hope it's of some use to the discussion.

Secondly: please remember there's no "God's guidance" in the Realms in a singular sense; the Realms has many gods, not One. Nor does the Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, etc. "burn in hell" coda to be expected or necessarily follows.

Thirdly: No soul is doomed through an inability to make choices, only by the choices that soul has made.

In other words, innocents do not have a single predetermined fate (despite the propaganda of some Faerûnian sages and churches; i.e. what you may have read in various published adventures or sourcebooks).

There are (obviously) many gaps in the knowledge folk of Faerûn have of their own cosmology, and even more in what we gamers and readers know of it; there are errors and omissions in the published canon (and NOTHING is eternal, as the changing divine roster and multiverse views prove).

I cannot (NDAs again) close all those gaps, clean up all the fuzzy bits, and Reveal All, here or in print anywhere soon. So you'll just have to trust me when I say that all souls have fates, mortals cannot yet know all of those fates nor reliably know what fate a specific innocent soul will end up experiencing. So whatever a DM decides, holds true for that campaign and that soul - - but any wise DM will discuss religious beliefs with all of his/her players beforehand, and establish the "comfortable for all" ground rules. This is definitely a place where the game should be tailored to each group of gamers. I have never been a fan of either predestiny or absolutes - - and if you examine the D&D rules carefully and dispassionately, throughout all their editions, neither is the game system. It embraces concepts of good and evil, of achievement and teamwork, of ethical and religious belief and system, but it is posited on player characters having freedom in their actions (hence, "beating" predestination), and having to make life choices continually (arguing against absolutes).

This "wiggle room" or "elbow room" is the space we all need to tell stories and have adventures.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Sounds like I failed to explain myself.

My fault for speed reading your posts. I should have slowed down and taken my time. I apologize.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The Realms is its own setting--always has been--and while it's Cosmology has been presented a few different ways over the last 30+years, off the top of my head I don't recall any Realms sourcebook that says, "If you're not sure what to do with leftover souls, check Planescape."

I haven't mentioned Planescape. There's nothing about Planescape here. It's pure uncut 5e.

"When a creature dies, its soul departs its body, leaves the Material Plane, travels through the Astral Plane, and goes to abide on the plane where the creature's deity resides. If the creature didn't worship a deity, the soul departs to the plane corresponding to its alignment. Bringing a soul back from the dead means retrieving the soul from that plane and returning it to its body."

FR uses the same planes that the rest of 5e uses. This is explicitly the case in SCAG: Evermeet spends some time in Arvandor, which is defined in the SCAG as part of the plane of Arborea, which is one of the planes of the standard 5e cosmology.

This isn't particularly unprecedented. FR has a habit of using the same cosmology as the standard game.

So in D&D in general, when a CG person who doesn't worship a deity dies, they wind up on Arborea (or sometimes Ysgard or the Beastlands). Arborea exists in the general D&D cosmology, and also explicitly in the FR cosmology (Evermeet goes there). In FR, though, all the dead get routed through Kelemvor, and those who don't worship a deity don't go to the plane of their alignment, they just stay there and maybe get wall'd.

In fact, given that a dead soul would go to its deity's realm even if Kelemvor wasn't involved, his only real role as judge of the dead seems to be to stop the faithless from going to the plane of their alignment.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In fact, given that a dead soul would go to its deity's realm even if Kelemvor wasn't involved, his only real role as judge of the dead seems to be to stop the faithless from going to the plane of their alignment.

Disturbingly well put.

I personally like the idea of the good gods rising up against Ao, because he's always seemed like a jerk to me. Maybe there is a campaign idea in that...

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

In the Realms, the souls of the departed arrive at the Fugue.

The souls are routed to the Fugue, not directly to Kelemvor.

Absent Kelemvor, a soul not destined to be claimed by a Realms deity would linger there until another deity assumed the role of judge of the dead.

 

[Irennan]

My fault for speed reading your posts. I should have slowed down and taken my time. I apologize.

No problem at all, it can happen

And thanks for posting that info from Ed. It seems that people aren't judged only according whether they worshiped a patron deity, but by all the choices that they made in life.

 

[Lucas Yew]

(OP)

(...) It was wholly created by the gods to ensure that they got worshippers and remained gods, which is an AMAZING reason not to worship a single one of them. I absolutely can't stand it. (...)

Worse, people are punished to the Wall for only giving lip-service to their gods, so not only do you have to "check a box" but you have to earnestly follow their rules, which is absolute BS in my book.

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP and those with similar ideas. That hair-pulling wall, and that other god who claims to be one of "invention and creativity" yet messed up laws of chemistry that have to do with proper gunpowder are two of the major offenders in FR for me (of course, if I ever get to play in the Realms, they're fired). Egoistic tyrants and offenders of techno-social advancement I do not tolerate, ever...

I don't think that the lore is implying that, unless you specifically serve a god, you cannot go to a "proper" afterlife. I remember a passage from one of the Drizzt books, where he pondered about his way of life, and his beliefs, and he realized that he'd been a "follower" of Mielikki all his life, though he didn't even know that Mielikki existed.

I think the Wall is for those that completely deny the gods, or their existence (which is foolishness in a place where the gods walked the very earth)

what i'm saying is, if you lived your life being an hero, helping the downtrotten, and defeating evil, I'm pretty sure that Kelemvor will look at your soul and say "you belong to Mount Celestia, son". Maybe not in Tyr's hall, but probably as a petitioner in some nice village by the sea.

Ideally, the canon Realms might actually be running like this. But I'll just assume the worst just in case...

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Ideally, the canon Realms might actually be running like this. But I'll just assume the worst just in case...

It does. If a person was living their life following or fairly closing following what a Deities tenets are. Then that god claims them in the Fugue Plane. Even if they never actually worshiped that god as long as they did not go out of their way to reject that one. You also don't need to pick a patron god. If a normal farmer in the realms normally pays respect to multiple gods, but follows the tenets of one more then the others or holds more respect for a certain one. Then they would be claimed by that one in the end.

Faithless are those who reject the deities, while False are those who who picked a patron god then intentionally betrayed them. (The false are not bound to the wall but are punished depending on the severity of their crime.)

 

[MG.0]

Ignoring the Realms for the moment, I just wanted to point out that even way back in 1st edition, there have always been plenty of examples of souls not going to the plane of their alignment upon death. Worshipers of certain deities will go to the deity's realm after death, which is not always the same as the deity's alignment. Souls can also be trapped by various magical, natural, or other means.

That said, looking at the Fugue plane of the Realms can be interpreted in a couple ways - Either it is the result of Kelemvor's divine influence, presumably with the tacit approval of the rest of the pantheon, or it is a natural destination of the Realms' souls due perhaps to planar connections and influence, similar to how souls of Athas are sent to the Gray. I've not read a lot of the FR material to know if either of these interpretations is actually specified. Either way it doesn't seem entirely mutually exclusive with the general Great Wheel cosmology - even if I don't like it (The Fugue plane and the Wall) at all.