Orphaned Churches (Religion in the Forgotten Realms from 3.5e to 4e)

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I think everyone here can agree that the Spellplague was not merely an upheaval in how magic was used, but a time of divine upheaval as well. Many gods, most prominently Helm, Mystra and Tyr are dead. Other deities, like Sehanine Moonbow and Talos were revealed to be other gods in disguise (Selune and Gruumsh respectively). And of course there was the uproar in the church of Lathander when the Risen Sun Heresy was finally vindicated, with Lathander becoming Amaunator again.

My question is, how have the mortals of Faerun handled all this divine turmoil. A number of church's deities have died, several have changed dramatically, and the vibe given by the FRPG and FRCG seems to be that somehow the churches have already settled down within the century that followed this turmoil. What happens to an FR church when their deity dies is killed? How does a church handle their deity changing alignment, like Hoar's change from Lawful Neutral to Evil when he started serving Bane, or when their deity is revealed to be someone else, like Talos when he revealed he was really Gruumsh. I can't imagine that the fallout from events like these only took a century to sort themselves out!

[vegetalss4]

experience?

no seriously they got a lot of very old creatures, and it is not like this is the first time this has happened, so basicly they dealt with it like they did last time.

[Vortling]

The answer to all your questions is "Poorly, with much nerd rage."

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'm talking about how a church would recover from a blow like that. I like the new deities, don't get me wrong, but I can't help but wonder what happened to some of the churches following that whole cataclysm. Mystra's church in particular, since no one was able to step up to the plate and take her place. Azuth was cast down into the Nine Hells and Asmodeus ate him, Velsharoon fell from the sky and crash-landed in Rashemen I believe, and Savras likely was killed in the collapse of Dweomerheart. That's four deities permanently dead, with all four of their churches patronless. That's a pretty big problem. How would they deal with something like that?!

[RTGoodman]

Well, for the most part, most common worshipers would simply gravitate to a new deity with a similar portfolio or outlook. Azuth and Mystra's followers (the ones that survive, since most were casters that probably bit the spellplagued bullet) probably moved on to other caster- or knowledge-type deities (Corellon, maybe Oghma), Tyr and Helm's followers probably switched worship to another Lawful martial deity (Torm or maybe Kelemvor for the more cynical ones?), and stuff like that.

Clerics and Paladins might have a harder time, but for at least a while they might still be able to draw on the left-over divine energy from the dead gods. I know there's a 3.x feat out there somewhere about that, but I can't seem to find it.

The followers of gods that just revealed themselves under a new name just need to convert, and shouldn't have that hard of a time. For gods that changed alignment, though, followers would either have to have an about-face and start listening to the god's new ideas, or find a new god. In 4E, mind you, you don't have to match your deities alignment, so problems like Hoar's (LN -> Evil) wouldn't be a problem since the followers would still probably just be Unaligned.


EDIT: Aha! I found the feat for worshiping a dead god. It's called Servant of the Fallen, from Lost Empires of Faerun.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Couldn't they have just brought Mystra back to life with their belief though? I mean, look at Bane, the comeback king of Faerun! He was killed, and not only did he come back, but his faithful were right there waiting for him when he got back. I find it hard to believe that the faithful worshipers of Mystra, arcane caster or no, would just shrug their shoulders at the murder of the being they have devoted their entire life to serving and say "Meh, I'll join the other club!"

[Starbuck_II]

Couldn't they have just brought Mystra back to life with their belief though? I mean, look at Bane, the comeback king of Faerun! He was killed, and not only did he come back, but his faithful were right there waiting for him when he got back. I find it hard to believe that the faithful worshipers of Mystra, arcane caster or no, would just shrug their shoulders at the murder of the being they have devoted their entire life to serving and say "Meh, I'll join the other club!"

But Bane wasn't killed the way Mystras was.

After all, third times the charm (she has died three times or more). This time she is dead. Not just mostly dead.
All you can can do this time to quote Miracle Max is "search her for loose change."

[RTGoodman]

And either way, it wasn't just that she died, the ENTIRE WEAVE was destroyed too. Arcane magic was TOTALLY ripped apart and changed (at least, from how it had been practiced). If any Mystra worshipers survived all of that, there's not much they really COULD do to bring her back. I mean, the goddess and all she stood for were wiped away.

[Talya]

But Bane wasn't killed the way Mystras was.

After all, third times the charm (she has died three times or more). This time she is dead. Not just mostly dead.
All you can can do this time to quote Miracle Max is "search her for loose change."

Na. One thing is very clear in FR...the death of a deity is rarely permanent...and even a dead god weilds great power.

Lost Empires of Faerun was a great book for that type of thing.



Anyway, 4e-Realms is NOT the forgotten realms. It bears only a passing resemblance to anything that ever was the realms, and requires retconning and ignoring most of what has ever been written for FR. In short, it's only useful to you if you hate the forgotten realms. If you like the realms, you're better off not using it.

[evil-frosty]

May ask where all of this is coming from? I knew mystra bit the dust but everything else i had no clue cept the thing with lathander. I just would like to know because Zousha does make a good point those changes are pretty big and peoples minds arent exactly all that strong in some cases. But the people of Faerun have dealt with turmoil before so they should be used to it.

[RTGoodman]

May ask where all of this is coming from?

Most of it is in the Grand History of the Realms that Wizards put out about a year ago.

Off the top of my head (and I'm no Faerun scholar), the only one I can remember is that Cyric basically tricked Helm and Tyr into fighting over a goddess (Tymora, maybe?), and their Lawfulness prevented either from backing down, so one had to die. It ended up being Helm.

[Asbestos]

Most of it is in the Grand History of the Realms that Wizards put out about a year ago.

Off the top of my head (and I'm no Faerun scholar), the only one I can remember is that Cyric basically tricked Helm and Tyr into fighting over a goddess (Tymora, maybe?), and their Lawfulness prevented either from backing down, so one had to die. It ended up being Helm.

Apparently even the gods are lawful stupid. Though that whole 'I took an oath, I have to keep it' thing fits for a lot of Norse and Greek gods too.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Most of it is in the Grand History of the Realms that Wizards put out about a year ago.

Off the top of my head (and I'm no Faerun scholar), the only one I can remember is that Cyric basically tricked Helm and Tyr into fighting over a goddess (Tymora, maybe?), and their Lawfulness prevented either from backing down, so one had to die. It ended up being Helm.

More concisely, Siamorphe and Tyr broke up, and so Sune proposed Tyr and Tymora start dating. Helm acted as Tymora's chaperone and a go-between for the two. For some reason, Tyr started suspecting that Helm and Tymora were seeing each other behind his back (rumor has it that Cyric was responsible for this suspicion). Tyr challenged Helm to a duel of honor and Helm had no choice but to accept. Tyr killed Helm, Tymora broke up with him, and Ilmater left the Triad.

Some time later, Tyr defended the northern reaches of Faerun from a demonic and incursion and was killed in battle. His longsword, Justicebringer, is stuck into a stone on Mount Celestia, the words "Justice never sleeps" or something like that carved into the stone. Since then, Torm has been promoted to a greater god to fill the position.

Why is it that Cyric always seems to be around or involved when crap like this happens!?

[Nightson]

Anyway, 4e-Realms is NOT the forgotten realms. It bears only a passing resemblance to anything that ever was the realms, and requires retconning and ignoring most of what has ever been written for FR. In short, it's only useful to you if you hate the forgotten realms. If you like the realms, you're better off not using it.

Nerd Rage ITT

[Dacia Brabant]

Couldn't they have just brought Mystra back to life with their belief though? I mean, look at Bane, the comeback king of Faerun! He was killed, and not only did he come back, but his faithful were right there waiting for him when he got back. I find it hard to believe that the faithful worshipers of Mystra, arcane caster or no, would just shrug their shoulders at the murder of the being they have devoted their entire life to serving and say "Meh, I'll join the other club!"

You hit on the major plot hole in perma-killing Mystra just by mentioning Bane--he came back because he'd prepared for it by spawning a son, Iyachtu Xvim, long before he died and then reincarnating through Xvim after he'd reclaimed much of daddy's portfolio. Mystra...has seven children! All of whom, plus Elminster and Khelben the big wizzies of the Realms, possess a portion of her divinity that could then be used as a contingency to restore her after death. It wouldn't be the first time.

In order to destroy her for good, you have to destroy the Weave, the very basis of magic--this is what would have happened due to Karsus' Folly but she sacrificed herself to keep the Weave stable, and was reborn through this act. This isn't what happened in the new Realms: she just died.

And in answer to your question, no I don't think people would have recovered after the perma-death of the most powerful deity in the Realms and the two most powerful Good-aligned deities. It would've been an epic disaster, which is pretty much what the new setting is going for: just how many ruined kingdoms are there now?

And Tyr and Helm fighting over Tymora is totally out of character. She'd never let it get that far, Tyr's an old fart, Helm is a cold fish, and... Tymora are you kidding me? At least make it Beshaba, she's way hot yo.

[Talya]

You hit on the major plot hole in perma-killing Mystra just by mentioning Bane--he came back because he'd prepared for it by spawning a son, Iyachtu Xvim, long before he died and then reincarnating through Xvim after he'd reclaimed much of daddy's portfolio. Mystra...has seven children! All of whom, plus Elminster and Khelben the big wizzies of the Realms, possess a portion of her divinity that could then be used as a contingency to restore her after death. It wouldn't be the first time.

If you're speaking of the seven sisters, I think only Storm has been confirmed to still be alive in 4E. Sylune died many decades earlier, and Qilue was killed in the Lady Penitent series. Dove, Alustriel, Laeral, and The Simbul are unaccounted for.

Khelben also died some time earlier, although Elminster is still there with his peice of Mystra's divinity.

[Asbestos]

You hit on the major plot hole in perma-killing Mystra just by mentioning Bane--he came back because he'd prepared for it by spawning a son, Iyachtu Xvim, long before he died and then reincarnating through Xvim after he'd reclaimed much of daddy's portfolio. Mystra...has seven children! All of whom, plus Elminster and Khelben the big wizzies of the Realms, possess a portion of her divinity that could then be used as a contingency to restore her after death. It wouldn't be the first time.

In order to destroy her for good, you have to destroy the Weave, the very basis of magic--this is what would have happened due to Karsus' Folly but she sacrificed herself to keep the Weave stable, and was reborn through this act. This isn't what happened in the new Realms: she just died.

And in answer to your question, no I don't think people would have recovered after the perma-death of the most powerful deity in the Realms and the two most powerful Good-aligned deities. It would've been an epic disaster, which is pretty much what the new setting is going for: just how many ruined kingdoms are there now?

And Tyr and Helm fighting over Tymora is totally out of character. She'd never let it get that far, Tyr's an old fart, Helm is a cold fish, and... Tymora are you kidding me? At least make it Beshaba, she's way hot yo.

Didn't all of her Mary Sue kids die too?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

If you're speaking of the seven sisters, I think only Storm has been confirmed to still be alive in 4E. Sylune died many decades earlier, and Qilue was killed in the Lady Penitent series. Dove, Alustriel, Laeral, and The Simbul are unaccounted for.

Khelben also died some time earlier, although Elminster is still there with his peice of Mystra's divinity.

I thought the Simbul was hiding out with Elminster who is now afraid to use magic at all because he might go totally bonkers or something.

What about her church though? Surely they'd all be there still immediately after her death. Wouldn't their collective belief at least keep her alive? Then the Spellplague wouldn't have happened, right?

[Dacia Brabant]

If you're speaking of the seven sisters, I think only Storm has been confirmed to still be alive in 4E. Sylune died many decades earlier, and Qilue was killed in the Lady Penitent series. Dove, Alustriel, Laeral, and The Simbul are unaccounted for.

Khelben also died some time earlier, although Elminster is still there with his peice of Mystra's divinity.

Right, I forgot about Qilue's death, though I thought Sylune was still active despite being a ghost? And even though Khelben died--bah, the one Chosen I liked, the only one who actually had his head on straight and he had to go and die--I'm pretty sure he's still around through the Blackstaff.

My point though was that's an awful lot of powerful folks you'd have to go through before Mystra would be gone forever.

(Heh, this is amusing to me that I'd be saying this since my old 2e group many years ago tried to do exactly this. We didn't get far.)

[Archpaladin Zousha]

It's been suggested that like-minded churches would take in the newly-orphaned worshipers. How would they reconcile the different dogmas?

[RTGoodman]

It's been suggested that like-minded churches would take in the newly-orphaned worshipers. How would they reconcile the different dogmas?

The same way real-world religions do - syncretism. I don't want to get into real-world examples since they violate forum rules, but you can always say stuff like, "Hey, your holiday happens around this time? We have one of those, too! They must be the same thing, but with different names!"

That takes care of the day-to-day type stuff. As for the big stuff, the dead god's followers are going to KNOW their god's dead, probably, so if they want to follow a god (and in the Realms, they almost certainly do because of the problems not following a god causes) they're probably willing to make some changes to fit in elsewhere. And the new churches might be willing to make changes, too, in order to bring more sheep into the flock, so to speak. Things might not be EXACT, but they'll be good enough for most people.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

But, in theory, couldn't all the faithful of a dead deity pray really, really hard to try and bring their deity back? Deities are given life and power because of belief, so it stands to reason that enough people pray to them, they'll come back to life.

[RTGoodman]

I'm not sure - I don't know exactly how in the Realms godhood is developed (i.e. is worship by mortals the only thing needed to make something a god or to create a god or whatever).

I personally would say that worship by many can make a god STRONGER, but it's not the only factor; there still has to be some "spark of divinity" for the worship to "attach" itself to. A god could fade into obscurity, a mere vestige of its former glory, when it loses all of its followers since it still has that shard of the divine, but prayer isn't enough to bring back a god that loses that (like Mystra). That's why we see some gods come back multiple times - they "died," but they never COMPLETELY ceased to be (Mystra had the Weave that sorta granted her divinity, etc.) and worship made them strong again. On the other hand, some lost that and thus they DID cease to be entirely.

Of course, I could be wrong in regards to FR cosmology - I just don't know much about it.

[AslanCross]

But, in theory, couldn't all the faithful of a dead deity pray really, really hard to try and bring their deity back? Deities are given life and power because of belief, so it stands to reason that enough people pray to them, they'll come back to life.

I think it's still subject to Ao's approval. He did raise and promote Torm when he killed Bane during the Time of Troubles.

Then again, there are also a bunch of dead deities who never came back. Myrkul is gone for good; Bhaal tried to come back but failed (by canon, the hero of the BG series was Abdel, and he didn't take the portfolio as far as I can tell. It's somewhere in Grand History of the Realms). There's also Leira, but given her portfolio nobody knows if she's really dead or not. IIRC, her church still exists, and they claim she will come back, but she hasn't.
Vhaeraun was killed by Eilistraee, and Eilistraee was killed by the Lady Penitent along with Qilue.
There were also all the lesser deities whom Shar ate during the Time of Troubles, as well as Gilgeam, whom Tiamat sat on.

For the most part, I really don't think there's any reason why they couldn't come back story-wise, and the Spellplague was just a rather inelegant and heavy-handed approach to downsizing the bloated pantheon.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

No arguments there, AslanCross, but what I'm trying to figure out is how the mortals would respond to all of it. It's part of what frustrates me so much about 4e today. Religion is an integral part of almost every character I make, and virtually all 4e books have been irritatingly vague on that topic. They provide information about who the gods are and a general piece about what they're for, but that's it. No information about which gods are friends, which ones are servants and which ones are enemies. No information about their holy texts. No information about how their churches are structured, or where their centers of mortal worship are. No explanation as to what rites they have. How is an uncreative philistine like myself supposed to roleplay a religious character properly when 4e seems to be taking a decidedly secular direction?!

[Starbuck_II]

Didn't all of her Mary Sue kids die too?

No Dritzzt Do Urden survived (one of the few), but most did die.

[hamishspence]

The Simbal is confirmed in FRCS to be alive. Drizzt is Not one of the Children of Mystra (and is alive in the post-spellplague snippets in The Orc King novel)

[Archpaladin Zousha]

No arguments there, AslanCross, but what I'm trying to figure out is how the mortals would respond to all of it. It's part of what frustrates me so much about 4e today. Religion is an integral part of almost every character I make, and virtually all 4e books have been irritatingly vague on that topic. They provide information about who the gods are and a general piece about what they're for, but that's it. No information about which gods are friends, which ones are servants and which ones are enemies. No information about their holy texts. No information about how their churches are structured, or where their centers of mortal worship are. No explanation as to what rites they have. How is an uncreative philistine like myself supposed to roleplay a religious character properly when 4e seems to be taking a decidedly secular direction?!

I'm still looking for answers to these questions.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So NO-ONE has any definitive answers?!

[AslanCross]

Well, I'm pretty sure the deities and their churches had a lot of alliances even when they were all still around. The Spellplague and the chaos surrounding it did cause some upheavals, as has been mentioned, but I'm pretty sure they'd simply go to their friends or the closest-minded deity.

I'm not even really sure how they'd realize that their god is dead all of a sudden. "Oh no, my spells don't work?" Do they see omens? Or do they automatically see the death of their deity (see: Iyachtu Xvim)? Or do they just feel something's missing? Or maybe they have varying experiences.

I think the last one is the most sensible, and it depends on the person whether they seek an allied church or just give in to despair.