Hussar
Legend
I'm a Banana said:
Fair enough for D&D in general. But, it's established that FR doesn't do that. You never, in FR, just go to a plane matching your alignment. Your soul, in FR, is always claimed by a god before it can get out of the Fugue plane. If it isn't claimed by a god, you can't pass Go and you cannot collect an afterlife. You're applying a standard - that souls simply shuffle off to whatever alignment plane applies - to a setting that doesn't use that standard. And it's not like this is buried somewhere in the back of some Dragon magazine. This is core lore for FR and has been for a very long time. What you're suggesting is a pretty major rewrite of the FR cosmology setup.
Two things. First, the Dragonborn in FR are wrong. There's no real question of this. Those are the gods there and that's a fact of the setting. So, yes, their belief is wrong in that setting. You mentioned earlier about believing a Beholder was a god. There's a problem with that. That is factually wrong. That beholder isn't a god. That beholder cannot grant you any sort of afterlife. That beholder cannot grant clerics any sort of magic. That beholder cannot send Divine Favours to his 10th level clerics on a pretty darn consistent basis. Compared to Joe the Farmer, sure, that beholder is incredibly powerful, but, the gods are that much, at least, above that beholder in terms of power. That beholder cannot stop the sun from rising, but, some gods can.
And that's my point here. Being faithless in FR is to be factually wrong.
Secondly, how are the good gods punishing the faithless? Are they stuffing people in the Wall? Are they sentencing people to the Wall? From what I'm seeing, the Good gods do everything in their power to prevent people from going to the Wall - arguing on their behalf personally in some cases. I'd argue that alignment is generally irrelevant when discussing FR gods actually. They aren't gods of Good, they're gods of ((Insert abstract concept here)). Why would Mielikki, goddess of nature, possibly care what happens to some individual that never acknowledged that there is anything divine about nature? Torm, god of goodness and justice, is concerned with righteousness, honestly and loyalty ((from the FR Wiki)). Why on earth would he lift a finger to protect someone who showed zero loyalty to ANY god, and outright went out of their way to deny that the gods were even gods?
I'm really not seeing why the Good gods would have a major issue with this. You don't go to Torm's heaven because you're LG. You go to Torm's heaven because you acted with righteousness, honestly and loyalty throughout your life. Granted, that will likely make you Lawful Good, although, certainly LN or NG could work here too. But, there are other ways to be LG without going this particular route. Yet, in FR, those that didn't call Torm their patron diety could still go to Torm's afterlife, if they upheld Torm's values despite not giving a fig about Torm personally.
FR dead are not judged according to alignment. I think this might be the basic disconnect that we're having here. In general D&D, the dead are judged by alignment. A NG person who showed honestly and loyalty all his life could never go to Torm's realm. That person would got to whatever NG plane in the Great Wheel. But, FR doesn't work like that. Your afterlife is judged based on things other than alignment. Simply having an alignment does not guarantee you a good afterlife, or a bad one either. Evil dead do not go to the Hells because they are evil. They go to the Hells because their actions fall under the purview of Evil gods. A mass murderer is going to Bhaal, regardless of his alignment. However, if that mass murderer ALSO refused to acknowledge the pantheon, to the point of actively denying it, then that mass murderer goes to the Wall. Not because of his alignment, but because he actively denies the pantheon.
