Quote Originally Posted by Theoboldi
All I was really concerned with was the canonicity of that "Wall of Mirrors" thing, which seems to have only been in one novel and no setting material beyond that.
Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
I’ve never heard of the Wall of Mirrors outside of this thread, so I don’t think it’s in any of the 3.X setting material.
The canonicity of either Wall is kind of indeterminate. All FR novels are canon and share equal canonicity with the sourcebooks, so Kelemvor replacing the Wall of the Faithless is canon...except when a later novel or sourcebook overrides an earlier one with an update or retcon, so Kelemvor replacing the Wall of the Faithless is not canon...except that the 3e material didn't update it with "Uh, actually, he put the Wall of the Faithless back" or similar and all other lore from the same novel is treated as canon in 3e material up to and including the Grand History of the Realms, so Kelemvor replacing the Wall of the Faithless is canon...except that the entire move from the Great Wheel to the Great Tree in 3e is one big retcon which could have included an implicit retcon for the Wall as well, so Kelemvor replacing the Wall of the Faithless isn't canon...except that the cosmology changes explicitly didn't impact the deities' divine realms at all except changing the planes on which they were located and the Wall is technically a feature of the current death god's divine realm, so Kelemvor replacing the Wall of the Faithless is canon...and so on and so forth.

At the end of the day, retaining the Wall of the Faithless causes more conflicts with canon than using the Wall of Mirrors does--Kelemvor's canon personality in 3e came about as part of the same events that led him to create the Wall of Mirrors; Kelemvor lives in the Crystal Spire instead of the Bone Castle, and he transformed the Castle into the Spire at the same time he transformed the Wall of the Faithless into the Wall of Mirrors; neither Wall is mentioned in any 3e material after the FRCS, with Kelemvor's F&P entry not mentioning anything about his realm and GHotR not mentioning Kelemvor's and Mystra's trials when describing Cyric's trial; and so on--so treating the Wall of Mirrors as canon is the more consistent option, and that goes double with WotC now acknowledging their prior mistake with errata.

I’m quoting the distinction between the punishments received by the False and the Faithless. According to the text on p. 259 of the FRCS, the wall by definition isn’t eternal punishment, while residence within the City of Judgment is.
Ah, I thought you were drawing attention to the fact that being put in the Wall wasn't described as a punishment or as being particularly tormentous for the Faithless while the False are explicitly "punished" and "serve their sentence."

Yeah, the fact that the Faithless don't spend literal eternity being dissolved while watching everyone else getting to go off of to a real afterlife or at least have a "life" while toiling in the City, merely spending an indefinite and unbounded period of time there, is somewhat of a mitigating factor on its terribleness. Not that it makes much of a practical difference to the Faithless involved.