I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I figured this could use its own thread.
One of the things that has always got under my skin about FR was that if you didn't pick a patron deity for your character, your afterlife was to get stuck in a wall, regardless of your actions in life. The earliest mention I can find of this is the 2e-era Faiths & Avatars:
3e confirms that this is still a thing:
4e, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn't seem to mention it. 4e liked to buck tradition.
In 5e, it's still a thing, though I guess Kelemvor has a bit more flexibility:
My main issue here is that this is basically a punishment in the lore for any character whose player doesn't want to bother wading through the massive list of deities and picking one that they like. No matter how noble their deeds, no matter how many lives they save, no matter how much good they do, no matter how many evil plots they stop, a character can't get a good afterlife without checking a box on a form that says "Prayed to a god sometimes." The BEST a character can hope for is to be a guide, which basically means escorting others to paradises that they'll never actually be a part of.
Am I alone in thinking this bit of lore is kind of hard to swallow? This reads, in-fiction, like a divine protection racket, where Kelemvor determines if you get to suffer for eternity based on how much his buddies like you. At the table, this is basically an assured Bad Ending for your character, unless you do the homework required to pick one god out of FR's vast and unwieldy menagerie of them.
I mean, the first thing I want to do when hearing about this wall is to have an adventure all about destroying it and slapping the collective pantheon in its face for thinking this was a good idea. Even supposedly "good" deities like Mystara and Ilmater are totally on board with punishing everyone who doesn't massage their egos on a regular basis.
It's possible I'm out in left field on this (my background as a student of religions might make it particularly glaring), but what do you think?
One of the things that has always got under my skin about FR was that if you didn't pick a patron deity for your character, your afterlife was to get stuck in a wall, regardless of your actions in life. The earliest mention I can find of this is the 2e-era Faiths & Avatars:
Those who firmly deny any faith or have only given lip service most of their lives and never truly believed are known as the Faithless after death. They are formed into a living wall around the City of Strife — Kelemvor, the new lord of the dead, may soon rename it — in the realm of the dead in Oinos in the Gray Waste and left thete until they dissolve. The unearthly greenish mold that holds the wall together eventually destroys them. The False, those who intentionally betrayed a faith they believed in and to which they made a personal commitment, are relegated to eternal punishment in the City of Strife after their case is ruled upon by Kelemvor in the Crystal Spire (Kelemvor's abode in the City of Strife).
3e confirms that this is still a thing:
Everyone in Faerun knows that those who die without having a patron deity to send a servant to collect them from the Fugue Plane at their death spend eternity writhing in the Wall of the Faithless or disappear into the hells of the the devils or the infernos of the demons
4e, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn't seem to mention it. 4e liked to buck tradition.
In 5e, it's still a thing, though I guess Kelemvor has a bit more flexibility:
Souls that are unclaimed by the servants of the gods are judged by Kelemvor, who decides the fate of each one. Some are charged with serving as guides for other lost souls, while others are transformed into squirming larvae and cast into the dust. The truly false and faithless are mortared into the Wall of the Faithless, the great barrier that bounds the City of the Dead, where their souls slowly dissolve and begin to become part of the stuff of the Wall itself.
My main issue here is that this is basically a punishment in the lore for any character whose player doesn't want to bother wading through the massive list of deities and picking one that they like. No matter how noble their deeds, no matter how many lives they save, no matter how much good they do, no matter how many evil plots they stop, a character can't get a good afterlife without checking a box on a form that says "Prayed to a god sometimes." The BEST a character can hope for is to be a guide, which basically means escorting others to paradises that they'll never actually be a part of.
Am I alone in thinking this bit of lore is kind of hard to swallow? This reads, in-fiction, like a divine protection racket, where Kelemvor determines if you get to suffer for eternity based on how much his buddies like you. At the table, this is basically an assured Bad Ending for your character, unless you do the homework required to pick one god out of FR's vast and unwieldy menagerie of them.
I mean, the first thing I want to do when hearing about this wall is to have an adventure all about destroying it and slapping the collective pantheon in its face for thinking this was a good idea. Even supposedly "good" deities like Mystara and Ilmater are totally on board with punishing everyone who doesn't massage their egos on a regular basis.
It's possible I'm out in left field on this (my background as a student of religions might make it particularly glaring), but what do you think?
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