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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6766368" data-attributes="member: 2067">Because "faithless" has no meaning until you have a modern concept of "faith," which ancient polytheisms really didn't, because it's an invention of monotheism, which is part of why the Wall is CRAZY out of place in FR. There's no such historical thing as a "devout follower of Ra;" devoutness is an anachronistic concept when applied to ancient Egypt. This disappears down the scholarly rabbit-hole real fast, and I ain't a paid and properly trained educator, so it'll be up to you to build on this (try <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong" target="_blank">her books</a> as a starting point, especially <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563" target="_blank">A History of God</a> and its chapters on how Judaism's concept of monotheism likely arises out of a more ancient polytheism including how Abraham and Ezekiel refined that concept; also interesting for different reasons: Alice K Turner's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-History-Hell-Alice-Turner/dp/0156001373?tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-20" target="_blank">History of Hell</a>). For our purposes here you might use this as a starting point: like in FR, a god or an afterlife in most ancient polytheism wasn't something you believed in, it's just something that exists.Like a king or a spice vendor or a temple or a rock or a squirrel or a lamp.It doesn't make sense to love Ra any more than it makes sense to <a href="http://www.quickmeme.com/img/ce/ce95bef30f0fe1b77135991cac5dfb3c402688c5d18f0cfa90d467ab901ca9c2.jpg" target="_blank">love lamp</a>. The priests of Ancient Egypt didn't sacrifice animals because they were showing their innermost conviction, they sacrificed animals like you pay taxes or like you give gifts - because you have to, or because you want to cement a social bond. You kill a cow not because of your inner beliefs, but because of what you think it will function as - a way to make the sun hear you when you ask it to allow rain to fall. So someone not sacrificing a cow isn't about their orthodoxy, it's about their othopraxy. What they do, not what they have faith in.The lamp doesn't care what you believe in, it cares what you do - your ritual of plugging it in and flipping a switch makes light. Don't do that ritual, and there won't be light. Do that ritual, and call that lamp ugly and stupid-looking and say that the world would be much better off without it, and still, there is light. FR follows this pretty nicely most of the time - you sacrifice to Umberlee to avoid her wrath, you sacrifice to Chauntea to assure a good harvest. All reasonable things to do when your goddesses can control whether you live or die. In the Real World, it was possible to not sacrifice to Ra and still have a good rain. Those who had a Ra-model of the cosmos didn't think this was a contradiction, they just imagined Ra must be pretty generous and that, of course, since back home they had priests of Ra making sacrifices, that Ra of course preferred their hometown to this place. That's why their society was probably beter than this barbaric hinterland! Presumably in FR, it's also possible to not sacrifice to Chauntea and have a good harvest - she's Good, she provides for folks, and of course she likes those who sacrifice to her better. Presumably, dragonborn farmers still can grow food.The afterlife followed this model. It wasn't something you believed in, it was just something that simply was. So, of course, it couldn't judge you based on what you prayed to or believed in - there were atheist philosophers and foreigners who said it was really Helios up there and all those people still died. That's why the feather of Ma'at weighed order and chaos, not faith. You were a merchant who lived in Memphis and sacrificed to Helios? You were a farmer who never really bothered with the gods? You were a priest who thought Ra was a massive jerk for that drought a few years ago? You were one of those atheist philosophers, or maybe a remnant of a monotheistic sect? You were that hinterland barbarian? Doesn't matter. Did you support the social order? You're in. It doesn't matter if you know the truth of the world or not, as long as you are a "good person" (you support the social order), you're fine. Or at least as fine as anyone else (a lot of ancient polytheism had the afterlife as uniformly unpleasant unless you were some sort of special mythic character - or a warrior bound for Valhalla in the case of the Norse)D&D in general follows this model pretty well - souls go to the plane matching your alignment if you didn't worship a deity. You're judged on order and chaos and on selfishness and altruism (by no particular entity, but by the multiverse itself) and you shuffle off to a place filled with souls who entirely agree with you about those things. But then there's this Wall...</blockquote>

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