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

[Xvartslayer]

Why would it be terrible? What if your perfect version of 'Heaven' is oblivion or true, complete, unquestioned rest? It's terrible to our modern sense where individuality is dominant over group identity, but for most of the real life societies that the Realms is based on, there are several positive interpretations one could put on it. One, if someone had a crappy life or felt really guilty about their life choices, chances are they aren't looking forward to an eternal afterlife of any kind, so the Wall with it's loss of identity and/or oblivion probably wouldn't bother them. Two, depending on what they were taught the Wall was for and how strong their sense of community was, many might accept that fate, surrendering their own comfort and identity for the good of the world as a whole. Just because an afterlife is far more likely in the Realms doesn't mean that more people will want it over oblivion and/or the end of their individual consciousness. Real world religions usually offer rather enticing afterlifes as a carrot to get followers, and it's still usually the stick of a bad afterlife that gets people to behave; even that stick isn't enough to get a lot of people's attention. I would imagine life in the Realms wouldn't be terribly different. There would be a lot that would be absolutely drawn to the promise of the afterlife, even more that would prefer a nice afterlife to a bad one, but not enough to change their behavior here and now, and a still notable minority that would prefer oblivion over anything else. I touched upon this earlier before in a limited context, but there are a lot of people that would absolutely not be bothered by the concept of the Wall. Even people who spent their lives doing good and supporting the gods may well appreciate the idea of true rest or oblivion over going to live in the realms of this or that god or that outer plane.

This thread has delved quite deep into how people react to the gods, but very little about how people might react to the thought of an afterlife, and the two issues are not the same. One might reject the gods but want an afterlife, one might reject the gods and want nothing more than oblivion, one might be an active cleric (or even paladin) that wants oblivion/rest when their time on this world is over, or one might be an active cleric that wants to eternally support their god.

In general, it was not the promise of an afterlife or the threat of eternal punishment that compelled people to participate in religious life. It was social pressure on the practical level and the supernatural threat to the community that enforced compliance. An Amerindian woman did not refrain from eating beaver flesh while menstruating because she would go to hell. It was because The Beaver would stop feeding the tribe.

Why won't it rain? Where are the fish? Why is that big scary mountain smoking and grumbling? These were more important considerations than a theoretical afterlife. I think a lot of modern folks subconsciously think that those old-timey people couldn't really believe that the River God is hungry and needs to be fed. Not really. They did. That is why a person who rejects the civil religion was so transgressive and dangerous. In the modern world a Catholic and a Zoroastrian can get along just fine, assuming that it will all shake out after the end. What if the consequence of your partner skipping church to watch football was potential famine, plague, angry spirits or the community's abandonment and rejection at the hands of an angry god? Even if you were willing to take the risk, your neighbors were not.

In the Realms the gods can, in fact, stop the rain, scare away the fish or make the volcano erupt. They might even conceivably come by personally and make it happen. The gods might send a famine to remind the village of the importance of reverence, and in the Realms an actual person or sentient entity might physically come and explain "All we ask of you people is a little humility. But Dave over there read some Nietzche and Sartre in community college and thinks he is oh so smart! Well, no rain for you! Here, have and Insect Plague. I'm outta here."

 

[Neonchameleon]

In the Realms the gods can, in fact, stop the rain, scare away the fish or make the volcano erupt. They might even conceivably come by personally and make it happen.

Control Weather, Fear, Polymorph Any Object. (OK, the third one's only a "Near enough"). In the Realms, wizards can stop the rain, scare away the fish, or turn the top of the mountain into lava. They might even conceivably come by personally and make it happen.

The gods might send a famine to remind the village of the importance of reverence,

Or wizards might to remind the village of the importance of tribute.

and in the Realms an actual person or sentient entity might physically come and explain "All we ask of you people is a little humility. But Dave over there read some Nietzche and Sartre in community college and thinks he is oh so smart! Well, no rain for you! Here, have and Insect Plague. I'm outta here."

Again, all this can be done by a wizard. What's so special about the Gods that makes them different from really big wizards?

 

[Xvartslayer]

Again, all this can be done by a wizard. What's so special about the Gods that makes them different from really big wizards?

A wizard isn't a god? They are different in kind, not just degree, and people know it.

The gods are who you implore for aid when a wizard (a Hun raiding party, a strange disease, etc.) comes stomping around. Or maybe the gods allow it to happen as punishment.

For most people in most places at most times religion is not an intellectual exercise or an afterthought. It plays a central role in how one organizes his life and relates to the community.

"God destroyed Sodom and Gommorah. The Turks conquered Constantinople. Therefore, the Turks must be Gods." No one really thought this way.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A wizard isn't a god? They are different in kind, not just degree, and people know it.

The gods are who you implore for aid when a wizard (a Hun raiding party, a strange disease, etc.) comes stomping around. Or maybe the gods allow it to happen as punishment.

Why wouldn't you implore your local Elminster for aid when something comes stomping around? Or believe that your local Elminster allowed it to happen as punishment?

For most people in most places at most times religion is not an intellectual exercise or an afterthought. It plays a central role in how one organizes his life and relates to the community.

This is true of religion, but it doesn't speak to what gods are. I mean, Confucianism plays a central role in how certain Chinese societies organized their life and related to their community, but it doesn't need gods. Various stripes of Buddhism and animism do likewise. Not to mention stripes of "Nationalism as Religion" or "Politics as Religion" that are out there.

Gods and religion are two separate (though related) concepts.

"God destroyed Sodom and Gommorah. The Turks conquered Constantinople. Therefore, the Turks must be Gods." No one really thought this way.

Sodom, Gommorah, Constitinople, and Istanbul are all events in monotheistic world views, though, so no one thought anyone was a god. Even there, though, you have certain lines of divinity being drawn - Moses lead the Jews out of Egypt / God lead the Jews out of Egypt; Gabriel, acting on God's behalf, revealed the Quran to Mohammad, Mohammad revealed it to the umma, so lets not depict Mohammad's face; the way Jesus became equivalent to God in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Suffice it to say that in the Real World, the difference between "metaphysical being" and "important person" can be blurry.

I mean, John Frum, anybody?

A wizard sets up shop in your neighborhood and if you pledge your loyalty to him he does magic for you is largely different from a god setting up shop in your neighborhood and if you worship him he will aid you semantically, not functionally.

The gods of FR are not transcendent beings on whom the multiverse depends. If they were, we wouldn't have interloper gods from other worlds or gods being reduced to mortals for a time or gods dying and being reborn or whatnot. This is entirely appropriate for a polytheistic society - makes sense. My gods, your gods, everybody's gods, dozens and dozens of gods. What doesn't then make sense is instilling a punishment for not worshiping them. Not when all they are, is powerful beings. When the local wizard kills you and animates your dead corpse to rub his feet because you didn't pay him enough homage, that's a villain. When the gods torment your soul for eternity because you didn't pay them enough homage, that's...somehow compatible with a Good alignment and concepts like Justice and Mercy?

...I think maybe the first few levels of that "Escape from Toril" campaign are going to be a group of wizards demanding tribute on pain of punishment that the party is set up against. The wizards argue that they're being entirely fair - they kill ogres, they keep dragons away, and they ask just to be praised and loved for it, honored for what they do, and anyone who does is given a magical blessing (maybe a potion or something), and those who don't are obliterated or re-animated as servants. Some of the evil wizards even torture these beings - mostly for fun. The wizards don't agree on anything and are of varying alignments. Maybe there's even one Very Powerful Wizard that controls all them. The party can't go up against all the wizards alone, but they can maybe get the Good and Neutral wizards to agree to take down the Evil ones....the only problem being making the Good and Neutral wizards care about the suffering that their system is causing.

"But we're responsible for the functioning of this society!" they'll cry. "Ogres might kill everyone if we're not here! All you need to do is plead for forgiveness for not honoring us, and we'll generally accept you! Destruction is only for those who truly defy us!"

 

[MG.0]

But that's not the case in Spelljammer. Clerics cast spells in space and religions, especially Ptah (from the egypt pantheon) and Celestion (from the Greyhawk pantheon), is as popular as withing the crystal spheres. Manifesting an avatar in the phlogiston is not much different to a deity to manifesting an avatar in a crystal sphere. It even has less restrictions as other deities care less. Celestion is even said to often wander the phlogiston

I'm curious where you got that information. Casting spells in Wildspace is different from casting in the Phlogiston.


From the original Spelljammer Boxed Set, Concordance of Arcane Space (page 17):

Clerics In Space: Clerical magic
operates normally within the crystal
shell that surrounds a cleric's native
world, but is severly hampered once
that cleric enters the phlogiston. A
cleric receives his spells through the
office of his deity, and his deity's ef-
fectiveness ends at the crystal shell.
The phlogiston is impenetrable to
extra-dimensional magics, and as a
result the "gods" and other powers
have no sway there.

A cleric entering the Flow may use
those spells he brought with him (with
normal restrictions for the physical
nature of the phlogiston). However, a
cleric may not regain spells above
2nd level while in the phlogiston. This
is because he remains out of direct
contact with his deity. Loss of such
spell abilities does not affect a priest's
spelljamming ability.
​

and from page 18:

Planar Travel: Travel between the
planes of existence functions nor-
mally within the various crystal
shells. A character in wildspace may
go ethereal, enter the astral plane, or
open a gate into one of the outer
planes.

In the Phlogiston, however, the di-
mensions cannot be accessed.
Therefore, devices and spells, in-
cluding armor of etherealness and
portable holes, will not function in the
Flow. A device or spell that holds ob-
jects in external dimensions will still
hold them, but the items cannot be
accessed with anything short of a lim-
ited wish spell.
​

 

[Hussar]

Ok, just one thing first. NeonC, please don't go line by line. If you have a point, make it and move on. Trying to do this line by line thing is very hard to read and I can't do it.

On the other hand you seem to be saying that bringing someone who considers The Force to be a hokey religion in a Star Wars game would be a problem.

Funny you should bring that up. It's not like Han holds onto this belief by the end of even the first movie. He sees the reality of the Force and accepts it by the end of the first movie. But we're talking about a character who, despite all the overwhelming evidence and the fact that he's actually WRONG, continues to hold onto a belief in the face of the other characters in the group and has goals to destroy those other character's beliefs. Do you think a mad-scientist type that's researching a way to destroy mitichlorians would be welcome in a Star Wars game with Jedi in the group?

Bwuh? Are you seriously telling me that Dark Sun characters shouldn't want to destroy the Sorcerer Kings? And even try and restore Athas so far as possible, turning the setting into a nice place?

You missed my point a bit. One of the major conceits of a Dark Sun game is that you will oppose the Sorcerer Kings. That's pretty much a given in the setting. So, any character that is trying to restore Athas and make it as nice a place as possible is certainly fitting into the setting. OTOH, a gnome cleric of Garl Glittergold very much doesn't fit with the setting, regardless of how the character feels about the Sorcerer Kings.

If I play a wizard in Dark Sun and keep casting arcane spells in public all the time, should I expect the DM to gloss over the fact that the populace should be getting out the torches and pitchforks? If I'm defiling, should I expect that the rest of the group will just look the other way and help me whenever I ask for it? (presuming a good(ish) aligned group that actually cares about defiling )

The funny thing here is, people are getting surprised that a theistic character might feel pretty strongly about a heretical character. Sure, we might gloss over it and just lampshade the whole thing. Fair enough. It's not like we don't do that all the time anyway. But, OTOH, I wouldn't be terribly shocked to see someone playing a theistic character get pretty pissed about a Faithless (someone so horrid in the eyes of the faith that they are denied ANY afterlife) character in the group. You or I might not think it's a big deal. To be honest, from my personal point of view, I completely agree with [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6799436]MG.0[/MENTION] that the Wall is a pretty nasty bit of Realmslore.

But, it IS part of the Realms. To me, it's more interesting to try to accept this as true and play out the repercussions of that, rather than make a character whose primary goal is to tear down the Wall, a major element of the Faerunian faith in the afterlife.

I do see it as somewhat unrealistic that a theistic group would accept this character into the group. If the atheist character was an NPC, he'd get kicked to the curb just like the CE thief. The only reason we have to bring him into the group is because he has a PC halo around his head and I HATE that sort of group building.

 

[Hussar]

Depends on the knight, the samurai, and the cleric. Clerics don't normally have performance-codes-of-honour.



So having deities insulted isn't the unworkable thing in the Realms that Hussar is claiming. It happens quite a bit - just not normally all at once.



That's why his priests are all Ur-Priests...

You honestly need "performance codes of honour" specifically written into the class so that insulting the cleric's deity might be problematic? Seriously?

Let me ask you this: What's the difference, to a cleric of, say, Heironeous, to having a priest of Hextor and a Faithless join the group? Is neither a problem? If one is a problem, why isn't the other?

 

[Hussar]

The simplest answer for what separates a god from a powerful wizard is that gods get to determine what happens to your soul after you die. Wizards can't do that. Wizards cannot set up realms that attract dead souls. And even Elminister cannot grant spells to the person asking him for help. That would be another significant difference. Wizards can manipulate reality, true, but, they cannot create reality, which gods actually can do.

The 3e Deities and Demigods grants gods a variety of powers that no wizard could replicate - things like virtually unlimited actions per round that auto succeed. So there is that as well.

 

[Phantarch]

The gods of FR are not transcendent beings on whom the multiverse depends. If they were, we wouldn't have interloper gods from other worlds or gods being reduced to mortals for a time or gods dying and being reborn or whatnot.

Minor nitpick. I don't think that anyone is saying the multiverse depends on the gods, but rather the physical world (Faerun specifically, perhaps all of Toril).

There seems to be quite a bit of proof that things can and do get pretty heavily disrupted when bad things happen to the gods. Specific examples have been mentioned multiple times previously in this thread. Sure, gods come and go, die, are reborn, whatever. But there portfolio has continued to have a divine representative. What hasn't been given is examples of where a portfolio is no longer upheld by a god for an extended period of time. To my knowledge, it hasn't happened. To say that the gods are not necessary is a fine hypothesis, but it lacks any tangible evidence, and there is evidence to the contrary.

Also of note, I find it interesting that Ao has (I believe) made rulings specifying that there can only be one god associated with a specific portfolio at a time, which has some interesting potential implications. It is quite possible that two conflicting embodiments of the same portfolio would have devastating effects upon the world, and this is a necessary component for existence.

 

[Hussar]

Earlier in this thread, the analogy of football (American football of course) was mentioned and I'd like to expand on that analogy a bit if I may.

I'm a huge Seattle Seahawks fan. Have been since the Warren Moon days of yore. Now, say I happen to wander down to the local sports bar to watch a game. Sitting beside me, also watching the game is a Dallas Cowboys fan. Now, of course, the Cowboys fan is wrong, that's axiomatic. He's self deluded and rather sad. So, words are exchanged, possibly getting quite heated, but, before I can land my most telling point upon the end of his nose, in walks a stranger.

The stranger loudly proclaims that American football is all a load of hooey and not even a real sport. It's full of testosterone filled morons who are only pretended to play a real sport and we'd all be better off watching test matches from India.

Lowering my glass to the bar, I look into the eyes of the Cowboys fan, noting the hint of shame, because, after all, of course there is shame in those eyes, and we both proceed to chuck out this interloper on his cricket playing arse.



Which brings me to the point. A cleric of Corellon and a cleric of Lolth are enemies. They will gleefully kill each other. But, even then, there is still a recognition of the pantheon. We're enemies because our respective deities are enemies. Our faiths want opposite things and we're pretty much at war with each other. But, when faced with someone who is basically saying that our faith is false, and our respective deities are not worthy of the name, how would you expect those two clerics to react? Would you honestly expect either one to willingly adventure, putting their lives in the hands of, some madman who is denying reality? Would either one go out of their way to help that individual? Would either one honestly ally with that person, who they would both agree is entirely mad?

Would you willingly hang out with someone, call them a friend, who tells you that playing D&D is for children and it's a stupid past time and your time would be better spent playing real games? Sure, you'd take them to a hospital if they broke their leg, but, would you spend more time with this person than you absolutely had to? A co-worker might belittle your hobby, but, you have no real choice about going to work alongside them day in and day out. But, would you regularly go for a drink with them?

I have non-gaming friends. Of course I do and I'm sure we all do. We just don't talk about gaming. But, that's a different thing altogether than what we're talking about. I'm talking about willingly and deliberately spending extended amounts of time with someone who will tell you, numerous times, that your hobby is stupid and a complete waste of time.

How is this unreasonable that a theist character would want to have little or nothing to do with an atheist character?