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

[Hussar]

So, did a bit of wandering about the wikis seeing what exactly this wall is. As I understand it, you have the Fugue plane where the dead souls go, which is largely featureless save for this one city where souls are judged. Is that correct?

So, yeah, 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.

Not canon, by any stretch, but, that's how I'd do it. The Fugue plane sounds a lot like the Outside plane in Terry Pratchett. Which, is essentially the Far Realms. Read Sourcery for a good example.

 

[ki11erDM]

Well. I liked the Wall of the Faithless and the not picking a deity so much I hardwired it in to my own home world.


I have augmented death saves with this in mind, if a player can tell me one thing that they have done to honer their god they automatically succeed at a death save... and I keep a list of things the players do that are directly opposed to their god... and that can be used to automatically fail a death save (though I have never needed to use this).

If you want to increase role playing... this is a fun way to do it : )


So I guess you could say I could not be farther from your point of view.

 

[Jester David]

It certainly wouldn't be out of character in a setting where religion worked like it did in Rome to play a heroic character who eschewed the dominant state religion, and even one who might change the very nature of that religion. And it's not like the Romans cared about what the Gauls were doing, religion-wise - they weren't Romans, so it didn't matter. Like most polytheism, religion in ancient Rome was about your practices, not about your beliefs.

The religion section does emphasis common folk worship many gods for many things though. That is the common practice to light a candle to one god or say a prayer to another. Going against that is really working against the common culture across a continent far larger than North America.

Also, did you read the section on Dragonborn? There's a group of characters who already think the dominant religious melieu isn't worth much.

No, tapped out before I got that far. Too much else to read.

So we've established that it's not a setting requirement to have a god in the same way that it's a setting requirement in Dark Sun that arcane casters are trouble - it's not an inherent law of the setting or its conceits. It is possible for it to be otherwise and retain its essential character.

See above. I disagree and view religion and worship of the gods as a large part of the Realms.
Religion and faith in the active gods one of the very few ways the Realms differs from Greyhawk or Mystara or the other generic Fantasy worlds (less so Dragonlance, where the gods are also pretty active, but there are far fewer).

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.

Wow... you really don't want your characters to worship gods. You really want the gods to be bad guys. I'm not sure I can argue against this.

So I'll end with advising you to do whatever works and feels right in your personal Realms. The book even tells you to do so. If the wall doesn't exist, then it doesn't exist.

 

[Mercule]

So, did a bit of wandering about the wikis seeing what exactly this wall is. As I understand it, you have the Fugue plane where the dead souls go, which is largely featureless save for this one city where souls are judged. Is that correct?

So, yeah, 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.

Not canon, by any stretch, but, that's how I'd do it. The Fugue plane sounds a lot like the Outside plane in Terry Pratchett. Which, is essentially the Far Realms. Read Sourcery for a good example.

That's very cool. It's the first time I've seen an explanation for the Far Realms that I like and could use. I'm generally not a fan of them, at all.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Two questions for folks involved in the discussion here....

First, do we know that becoming part of the wall is a form of suffering? I forget how it's described and I don't have my SCAG on hand...but does it imply or implicitly state that this fate is painful? Or is it just a form of oblivion? Like it happens but the soul is no longer even aware of it?

Second, is this common knowledge to folks in the Realms? I vaguely recall it being a surprise to Kelemvor when he took over. Do we have reason to believe that this factors into a character's thinking in any way? Perhaps clerics or other divinely focused characters would know a piece of esoteric info like this...but then for such a character, it would seem not to matter since they're pretty mcu guaranteed to have a patron, or to at least venerate the gods and not face this possibility.

 

[bganon]

Well, the word is "patron". In-character, a patron isn't something you get to choose, any more than I get to walk up to some rich dude and "pick" them to sponsor my career. You might try to appeal to someone specific, but the patron picks you. If you're a good farmer, the farm god wants your soul and chooses you. If you're a murderous thug, the god of murder wants your soul and chooses you.

So to be without a patron and "faithless" means that you're somehow so undesirable that no god even wants your soul. You're a dedicated farmer who nonetheless burns their crops. A murderer that refuses to land the killing blow. You're not just faithless to the gods, you're faithless to yourself, and the gods want nothing to do with your messed-up soul. So into the Wall you go.

The noble hero who does great things for justice while loudly proclaiming what jerks all the gods are? They might wind up with a patron whether they acknowledge it or not. Given the kind of things such a character might face, I don't think it'd be weird for Ilmater to take them in. And it's Ilmater, he's probably fine with being hated even by his most favored PC.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The religion section does emphasis common folk worship many gods for many things though. That is the common practice to light a candle to one god or say a prayer to another. Going against that is really working against the common culture across a continent far larger than North America.

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.

See above. I disagree and view religion and worship of the gods as a large part of the Realms.
Religion and faith in the active gods one of the very few ways the Realms differs from Greyhawk or Mystara or the other generic Fantasy worlds (less so Dragonlance, where the gods are also pretty active, but there are far fewer).

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.

Wow... you really don't want your characters to worship gods. You really want the gods to be bad guys. I'm not sure I can argue against this.

I'm playing a cleric in one of the HotDQ campaigns I'm in right now - it's not my characters worshiping that I have a major problem with.

Maybe an analogy would help illustrate one of the issues.

Imagine that you sat down to play a new character in the storied and legendary world of Bairoon. Because this is a game of fantasy adventure, you whip up a wizard, name him Belmincer. You pick your spells, assign your stats, and go on your first adventure, saved a town from goblins. You're enjoying yourself, so you read up a bit about wizards in Bairoon, so that you've got a better idea of where your wizard fits.

You're reading the new Spear Coast Quester's Handbook and in a blurb about Wizards, it casually mentions that all wizards are initiated in a ceremony where they bathe in the blood of a freshly sacrificed orphan child dedicated to the goddess of magic, Bystari. This is the only way wizards in Bairoon get magical powers. The book even says that there's a group of people who once attempted to get magical powers without murdering orphans, but they failed. The gods told them to put it back. It's just the way the world works. Has worked this way since the mid-80's.

Oh, Bystari is Neutral Good. She doesn't kill orphans because she likes it, it's just how magic works.

So Belmincer has been bathed in the blood of an orphan sacrificed to a Good deity of magic.

And you realize that this makes Belmincer kind of a monster. In fact, every heroic wizard is kind of a monster, someone who is only able to be heroic because of the sacrifice of an orphan child. You're even told of a novel where once, one of the wizards even tried to fix it, but all the gods got together and said no, it has to be this way - we have to sacrifice orphan children to make new wizards. For some reason.

Bystari is still Neutral Good, and Belmincer is still lauded as a hero for slaying the goblins, and now you're just thinking....this isn't how people should be treating wizards in this setting. Wizards kill orphans! They have to! It's part of their DNA! Why would anyone call anybody like this a hero ever? How can that goddess be Neutral Good when people have to sacrifice orphans to get to her? What is this place?

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 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.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That's a good point, [MENTION=60886]bganon[/MENTION].

I think that's how I've kind of viewed it as well, and others in the thread have touched upon it...I think someone mentioned Driz'zt and Meilikki as an example.

If a person lives their life according to the tenets that the god personifies, then they're kind of a default worshipper of that deity.

 

[psychophipps]

It certainly wouldn't be out of character in a setting where religion worked like it did in Rome to play a heroic character who eschewed the dominant state religion, and even one who might change the very nature of that religion. And it's not like the Romans cared about what the Gauls were doing, religion-wise - they weren't Romans, so it didn't matter. Like most polytheism, religion in ancient Rome was about your practices, not about your beliefs.

But the stories of the deniers are almost entirely filled with the heroes getting beat like redheaded stepchildren.

As for Rome not caring about what not non-Romans believed, there's a whole mess of dead Jews and Christians that history points to respectful disagreement.

 

[Mirtek]

Nah, the idea is that I might want to follow a god who understands the concept of Justice, and isn't cool with good people who accomplish noble deeds in life being given awful, eternal afterlives.

What is he supposed to do? These are not bis souls, he might as well try to snatch souls from Cyric or Band.

Good deities may even be the ones to most zealously argue for any unclaimed soul why they should actually claim it after all.

But at the end of the day, those souls are none of their business.

When the evil and neutral deities insist on the wall, they can do nothing short if Armageddon by starting an all out divine brawl