Heresy in D&D

[Starfox]

Part of the backdrop IMC is that wizards are intellectually dominant in a culture that used to be dominated by religion. In the clash of cultures that has appeared in the modern trade cities, pantheons collide and clerics no longer provide the only or even the most popular world-view. This also means that clerics have to face new roles and are called on to serve the spiritual needs of strangers who name their gods different things but who have needs of spiritual support focused on the same portfolio. The exact identities of the gods are becoming less important than their roles.

Some in the wizardly faction have come to call clerics "Astral Magicians" rather than clerics, a move the clerics despise. These radicals claim that clerics are wizards who primarily access the astral realms whereas normal wizards access the elemental and ethereal realms.

How is this relevant to the thread? I just wanted to show that heresy has many variants, that the dominant world view which the heretic breaks away from need not necessarily be religious.

 

[wrecan]

Heresy is usually held as distinct from either Apostasy and Blasphemy. Blasphemy and encouraging Apostasy is probably the most app description of religious conflict in Ancient World polytheism.

Polytheists still persecuted one another for heresy. In the 2d century BCE, the Hindu king Pusyamitra Sunga, a Hindu, persecuted other Hindus who were also Buddhists for unorthodox beliefs. Nobody thought Buddhists had rejected Hinduism; they were not apostates. They only expressed the heretical belief that the Buddha had uncovered a method of escaping the eternal cycle of life, death, and reincarnation.

Because heresy usually involves expressing a heretical belief, it can also be deemed blasphemous. But it's still heresy.

Blasphemy is the purposeful insult to the reputation of a cult (like pooping on their altar or some such and challenging their deity to do something about it).

That is not blasphemy. Blasphemy specifically refers to speech. (It literally means "harmful speech". For instance, in traditional Judaism, speaking the name of God is considered blasphemy, even if the person doing it did not intend to violate religious tenets and was not trying to insult Judaism. (This is a rare example of blasphemy that is not heresy.) Blasphemy also includes making statements that the religion considers a violation of tenets. This usually, but does not always, includes the speaking of heresy.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

One idea I've toyed with is the concept of "aspects of heresy". This involves an aspect of a god somehow associating with a heretical cult and being transformed by the cult's beliefs. Eventually the aspect of heresy comes to believe that it should become the god it was created by and plots to take its place.

This concept assumes that the nature of gods is normally unchanging. While an individual mortal's beliefs about the world can vary radically over time, a god's cannot, as gods are the source of belief.

Aspects of heresy arise when the beliefs of a god's worshipers become sufficiently different (but still at least somewhat related) from the beliefs that the god embodies. An aspect of heresy is a "piece" of a god that embodies the new form of belief. If the beliefs it embodies become the new standard, the aspect of heresy fully becomes the god. It is no mere usurper; it is the same god, just one that has "changed its mind".

To illustrate what I am saying, think of a belief you hold now that you would have opposed in the past. Now imagine that you and the earlier version of yourself meet, and that only one of you can stay alive. Neither of you is a clone or an impostor, so whichever version of yourself survives is truly you. The earlier you could be likened to a god, and the current you could be likened to an aspect of heresy.

Not every heretical cult is sponsored by an aspect of heresy. Only the cults most likely to replace the current standards of belief can attract an aspect and change it into an aspect of heresy. Usually the formation of an aspect of heresy is unintentional by a cult, but some heresiarchs may be intentionally trying to alter a god's nature. Some gods may even encourage their followers to instigate heresies in the faiths of rival gods as a form of spiritual warfare.

 

[Quickleaf]

In my campaign, unless the heresy is completely incompatible with the basic nature of the deity, then chances are that the cleric is going to get an evasive answer. This is because deities don't like to lose followers, and so will tend to tolerate a bit of drift from their preferences. Stamping out a heresy is likely to result in the loss of influence, and that will simply encourage and strengthen their true rivals.

Does that mean "if you give a mouse a cookie" doesnt apply to heretics? I guess you could argue the deity is taking a gamble either way: quash and take a loss of followers now, or let it be and hope the heresy doesn't lead to a major loss of followers down the road.

Overall it seems like you treat heresy as primarily an institutional conflict, not one of a crisis in faith on a divine/cosmic level?

Some in the wizardly faction have come to call clerics "Astral Magicians" rather than clerics, a move the clerics despise. These radicals claim that clerics are wizards who primarily access the astral realms whereas normal wizards access the elemental and ethereal realms.

Neat! I think you and I have similar campaign styles (I remember tinkering on a martial controller project with you way back). Though I didn't have a term for it, and I might yoink "Astral Magicians", the magocractic realm IMC conceives of clerics in the same way, basically as sanctimonious mages attached to a temple.

One idea I've toyed with is the concept of "aspects of heresy". This involves an aspect of a god somehow associating with a heretical cult and being transformed by the cult's beliefs. Eventually the aspect of heresy comes to believe that it should become the god it was created by and plots to take its place.

Whoa. This reminds me a bit of Sepulchrave's Tales of Wyre storyhour! The idea is fascinating. Did you ever do this in play and if so how'd it go?

Not every heretical cult is sponsored by an aspect of heresy. Only the cults most likely to replace the current standards of belief can attract an aspect and change it into an aspect of heresy. Usually the formation of an aspect of heresy is unintentional by a cult, but some heresiarchs may be intentionally trying to alter a god's nature. Some gods may even encourage their followers to instigate heresies in the faiths of rival gods as a form of spiritual warfare.

My only hesitancy is this hardwires into the game world that gods are sustained by faith/belief. I know it's a common trope of D&D at least since Planescape in 2e, but I like leaving it vague whether the gods exist independently of mortals or not. To me it adds to the mystique and power of deities, they can still be creator entities rather than ideological teams with names and jerseys.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

My only hesitancy is this hardwires into the game world that gods are sustained by faith/belief. I know it's a common trope of D&D at least since Planescape in 2e, but I like leaving it vague whether the gods exist independently of mortals or not. To me it adds to the mystique and power of deities, they can still be creator entities rather than ideological teams with names and jerseys.

Actually, my "aspects of heresy" concept is intended to avoid this problem. The gods aren't sustained by belief, and only lesser aspects of a god can be altered by belief. Furthermore, for the aspect of heresy to become the new version of the god, it will have to defeat the god, which is no easy feat. In fact, it might be that no aspect of heresy has ever succeeded in becoming a god.

My primary intention in developing "aspects of heresy" is to create versions of good gods that can be used as villains. PCs may never have a reason to fight Pelor, the Sun Father; instead, set them up against his heretical aspect, the merciless Light of Judgement, who would use the souls of evil people as fuel for the Sun.

 

[Celebrim]

Does that mean "if you give a mouse a cookie" doesnt apply to heretics? I guess you could argue the deity is taking a gamble either way: quash and take a loss of followers now, or let it be and hope the heresy doesn't lead to a major loss of followers down the road.

Overall it seems like you treat heresy as primarily an institutional conflict, not one of a crisis in faith on a divine/cosmic level?

So, we need to talk about 'Faith'. Faith is not a preeminent virtue in most religions, and even in modern religions that people may be familiar with - Faith doesn't mean what people think it means. Faith only really matters if works the deity approves of are not sufficient, or if Faith is seen as the necessary precondition to achieving good works. That's not always held to be true. Even where it is held to be true, we modern post-materialism types tend to think of religious faith as 'believing in the existance of the deity', which is generally actually considered to be irrelevant in most theology. 'Faith' in religious terms is generally, 'believing in the goodness, virtue and power of the deity'. Obviously, believing that the deity exists is a necessary pre-condition of the above, but merely believing that the deity exists is not Faith.

Anyway, IMC, there is virtually no one who believes deities don't exist, but alot of people argue about their basic nature - are they good, is there really any difference between the 'good' ones and the 'bad' ones, are they powerful, do they deserve worship, are they actually independent beings or are they merely the spiritual manifestation of peoples collective virtue or vice, and so forth.

For a particular deity desiring worshipers, the goal is to steer as many people as possible into accepting the deities authority over some aspect of their lives. This requires convincing people of the deities basic righteousness concerning that area as well as demonstrating he has effectual power over it. Now the problem is that there probably is only a relatively small number of people whose views about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' conform entirely to his nature. Now, the deity could reject the worship of anyone that didn't agree with him, and make it perfectly clear in frank and probably threatening terms that such beliefs won't be tolerated, but such actions are likely to convince most potential followers that probably this deity is not for them. (Besides, such actions might be out of character for a God whose basic nature is mercy, tolerance, indulgence, or even laziness.)

So what typically happens is that the deity tries to mollify as many worshipers as possible without creating a schism, or letting the congregants drift so far in their ideology that some rivals ideology might start looking attractive. So deities may have followers who have concieved the deity as having some nature which they find admirable, when in fact he might be uncomfortable with that conception. But what are you going to do, work on altering the conception slowly over time or declare the belief an anathema and start smiting people? Unless you really are the god of vengeful smiting, you probably go for the former most of the time.

Many prominent deities recieve at least casual worship and lip service from followers with radically different views than thier own. Jord (the God of Leisure, Atheletic Pursuits, and basically Fun) for example is probably worshipped by some followers of virtually every alignment. Some have actual congregations and Priesthoods covering a rather wide range of outlooks. It's just not in Jord's nature to come down to hard on people, unless well, they are getting in the way of the fun. Now his wife Sesstra on the other hand...

Extend that to the fact that Sesstra and Jord are often worshipped jointly as husband and wife, and that their priests and priests are often married and sometimes work out of the same temple. Occassional tension in the household is more or less expected. If you don't like that, you end up worshipping Aratos and Aynwen as your idealization of martial bliss.

My only hesitancy is this hardwires into the game world that gods are sustained by faith/belief. I know it's a common trope of D&D at least since Planescape in 2e, but I like leaving it vague whether the gods exist independently of mortals or not. To me it adds to the mystique and power of deities, they can still be creator entities rather than ideological teams with names and jerseys.

I also like leaving the nature of the divine vague. I consider it a campaign level secret whether Zhan was right. And really, even though Kelternists are one of the usual bad guys in my campaign - if you want over the top baby killing crazies they are there for you - I can't say I'm completely unsympathetic with the Kelternists. The 1000 deities of Sartha and how they relate to mortals are patterned largely after the greek gods, and honestly I don't feel that such dieties are terribly worthy of worship either. This is part of the built in tension of the campaign. But you know, you go to Heaven with the deity you have, not the deity you want.

 

[pemerton]

What would heresy look like in the world of D&D where gods grant followers divine spells, angels and devils visit mortal realms, and powerful adventurers can planewalk through various afterlives?

One thought - once the PCs are planewalking through the afterlife, and therefore in a position to ask the gods, angels etc for their advice on the heresy, it might be easiest if the heresy doesn't matter anymore - that is, if it's become a minor concern relative to the real business of the PCs. Otherwise there is the real danger of this conflict in the campaign being settled by the GM - playing the relevant god or angel as an NPC - rather than by the players, which in my experience can tend to be a fizzer.

Or contraposing that thought - if you want even epic PCs to be dealing with heresy as a serious campaign element, then you don't want it to be the case that the gods have the answers as to right or wrong (so as to avoid anticlimax). When I ran a game like this, the gods justified their actions by appeal to the laws of karma, but the players (playing their PCs) expressed a different view and went off and did things their way - including getting the help of a banished god who had himself been banished for interfering with the laws of karma.

This may not work if your players are inclined to accept the gods as an authoritative source of valuation. In the game I GMed, they didn't and so it did work. And the PC "paladin" and "cleric" were Buddhist (pure land, for the paladin; something a bit more esoteric and tantric, for the cleric) they were able to display a critical attitude towards the gods without this getting in the way of their own religious devotion.

I'm running a 4e game and that's pretty much the built-in assumption: once you're a cleric, you're a cleric for life.

This can probably work for heretics. Or you can have the heretics not be divine casters (a fantasy variant of Quakerism might work like that).

There's an anti-clerical populist (the Heresy of St. Ilia) sect which opposes the practice of selling the raise dead ritual (called 'resurgences' in their rhetoric), decrying it as a tool of the elite to stay entrenched in power, a sacred power pawned off to the highest bidder, a denial of judgment for crimes committed in life, carrying even greater weight than beseeching a king to pardon a victim sentenced to die.

My gut instinct would be to treat these people as having either no divine casters (like my posited fantasy Quakers) or as having a new god.

During younger stages of a heresy that makes sense, but what happens when it directly opposes/is opposed by the heterodoxy? Is there a tipping point at which the deity needs to pick a side to minimize bloodshed/bring the faithful in line? Or would the deity be better off letting them go at it, rather than wholly disenfranchising one side, expecting the conflict to work itself out in time?

Dunno, but (i) the whole "sitting it out" thing probablhy isn't going to work once the PCs are epic planewalkers, and (ii) if your St Ilia sect can be right only on condition that the other sects are radically wrong, it is hard to imagine an active deity, with angels etc to serve her/him, sitting that dispute out for too long.

In my "PCs as enemies of heaven" campaign, I resolved both (i) and (ii) by having the PC divine casters - who are, in play, the ones whose situation really matters - worship very non-active, transcendent beings. (This was further helped in the case of the paladin by his relatively poor skill levels in scholarship and doctrine - he was just a simple fellow, doing what he knew to be right on the basis of his Buddhist instincts!)

 

[Hussar]

Just to add my 2 cents.

I played a priest of St. Cuthbert in a 3e campaign. He took the "punish the unjust" rather extremely and was basically a sort of wandering "hanging judge". This isn't really heretical to St Cuthbert, although it's certainly a fringe interpretation.

However, he had also decided (rightly or wrongly, I actually don't know) that he was "chosen" by St. Cuthbert to bring about a new order in the church and began to gather followers to his teaching.

That, right there, is pretty heretical. But, since I actually hadn't acted against the core tenets of St. Cuthbert, there was no reason to strip me of spells or impose any mechanical effects. I was just taking an aspect of the doctrine to an extreme.

Isn't that heretical?

 

[Celebrim]

Isn't that heretical?

Potentially, to be sure.

One of my characters is playing a Champion of Aravar. Aravar is a Psychopomp diety in charge of escorting souls in the afterlife, bringing them to be judged or taking them to their respective patrons. His clergy tends to the take this job very seriously. But the clergy is somewhat divided over their role and their Gods true nature. Some way that the fact that Aravar is a protector of all the dead, the souls of good men and evil men alike, shows that Aravar really has little interest in such things. Duty comes first, because without Aravar's strict adherence to duty, the orderly nature of the universe would begin to break down to everyone's detriment. On the other hand some of the clergy believe that Aravar is primarily motivated not by a sense of duty, but out of compassion for the dead. They see Aravar not as the dispassionate Heavenly bureacrat, but rather as a caring and vigilent protector.

Neither side is entirely wrong, but both sides could potentially drag the church into a place Aravar wouldn't really agree with by promoting a doctrine that ends up being more appealing than the one Aravar would promote himself. Nonetheless, it broadens Aravar's appeal to have both fringe branches of the church be active. The 'good' wing of the church spends a lot of time taking care of travellers, building hospises and what are effectively homeless shelters, potecting religious pilgrims on the road, battling necromancers, and working to exorcise restless spirits who fear to begin their journey. The 'lawful' wing of the church spends a lot of time officiating funeral services, preparing the dead for burial, assisting with the execution of criminals, and performing the all important duty (in a fantasy world) of maintaining graveyards and catacombs in a way that minimize the release of necromatic pollution and corruption in to the larger environment. The center of the church tries to keep the two wings grounded in the importance of the work the other wing is doing, even though often they find each other distasteful in various ways.

Now, a true heritical cult of Aravar might suggest that Necromancy is a tool that can and should be put to use to mitigate the potential damage that the dead can do, and indeed harness them instead for the good of society. Or one might suggest that all the resources of the the church ought to be devoted toward those souls which are good, and that those souls which are evil deserve to be abandoned to their well deserved fates. I mean, really whats the sense in helping a soul become the tool of some evil soul sucking nihilistic deity any way? What's the justice or fairness or purpose in that?

 

[Agemegos]

Exactly. And if that doesn't fit within your definition of 'heresy', then I'm at a loss as to what would. Socrates was condemned to death for promulgating novel religious beliefs that were believed to corrupt the young, and you are trying to tell me that that doesn't fit the definition of 'heresy'?

Indeed. Disbelief in the established gods is either a new religion or it is atheism, neither of which is heresy. You might consider Christianity to be a heresy of Judaism, but it is certainly not a heresy of the Ancient Greek religion, even though it taught a disbelief in the gods who supported the State.

Teaching young people to disrespect their elders and ask awkward questions that expose their elders' ignorance hasn't anything to do with religion at all.

Regardless of whether atheism and other religions count as heresy, in a D&D Socrates' enemies would have had to trump up different charges against him. The existence of the state gods would be demonstrable, so a man who claimed they did not would not be believed and would thus present no threat. He would be a harmless lunatic.