[Discussion Only]FR: The Wall of the Faithless

[russdm]

So this may fit better in another area, so if it gets moved thats fine.

Something that has always bugged me about FR is the Wall of the Faithless. It constantly tugs at my mind about how much It completely wrecks the gods of Faerun. It turns every good god evil and makes Ao into some enormous douche-bag.

The Wall was made by Myrkul, an evil god. The Wall takes souls of people that didn't worship any gods, which is understandable. It then slowly destroys those souls though, which I don't get. Those who don't worship include: Those choosing not to worship, those dying unable to pick any god to worship, and those who lived places where knowledge of the gods were suppressed or are only based around allowed ones, like places where Bane or Cyric rule. So, it punishes pretty much everybody, both the guilty and innocent alike.

The problem though: The Wall is essentially an injustice which strikes completely agaisnt Tyr, the so-called god of Justice (or the other one that Ao appointed as justice god). There is no way based on how it works that can fit with any kind of justice. Its essentially divine disporportiate retribution. The other good gods apparently accept it because Ao does, but how can Ao really accept this thing, with the whole "gods need worshippers, and gods have to earn that worship" that Ao set up? One can see the Wall as being essentially producing Tyranny, since despite what is supposedly how things happen, people need to worship to avoid any kind of suffering.

Children who die from plagues without picking a deity end up in the wall. Slaves in thay or elsewhere that chose not to worship the deity of their overseers end up in the wall if they die without a god to worship. Literally, anybody that is still trying to decide who to worship when they die gets a free trip to the Wall.

The most glaring bit of it at all: The Wall never releases any souls in it, so if you pick a deity to worship, you still stay in the wall. Also, not even the gods or demons/devils can remove souls from the Wall. So its a permanent prison and one that never has any escaping. Despite what it does, it appears that only Kelemvor, god of the dead, has any issues with it and yet he can't change things.

So based on all this, then Ao must be evil, he is allowing the injustice to continue and the good gods are completely stupid and Tyr, god of justice?, is allowing injustice in violation of his divine charge.

A side note: did they keep the Wall for post 3.5 editions?

[One Step Two]

First up, Ao is an Over-diety in the Divine Rank 21+ range, meaning he literally gives not a single care thought or otherwise in the affairs of mortals, alive or dead, I don't think he ever came with stats in any edition, but I am prepared to be wrong on this account.

Just so we're clear on the process, here's what happens to the dead.
To paraphrase the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting, the following occurs:

The dead Wait in the Fugue Plane, where they await for the representatives of their respective Deties to guide them to serve their gods in their Realm. Baatezu have a deal with Kelemvor to tempt souls into the service of hell.

The Faithless and the False remain. The Faithless go in the wall.
The False, though fit into the categories those who betray their respective god, and are judged by Kelemvor and are forced to work for him as punishment.
Occasionally Demons will attack to steal the punished souls or from the Wall of the Faithless to re-enforce the armies of the Abyss.

There's plot holes, but one would think, for childrens who don't have gods, the prayers of their parents would suffice. For the Slave who rails against their master, they should pick their own. But at the end of the day, none of that matters.

Death is harsh, but it's (mostly) neutral, it happens. Once the body is dead, the soul is the soul, regardless of it's past. For the good gods, like Tyr, such things would weigh heavy on his heart, but because of the Laws of Troils Pantheon, he is unable to intercede.

I'm not saying it isn't fair, but to most mortals, alive or not, the affairs of gods often arent.

[The Oni]

Sounds like the Wall is a stab at Abrahamic religion TBH. Discussing that any further on these boards is probably asking for trouble, though.

If Myrkul built the wall and Myrkul's station passed to Kelemvor, then logically isn't Kelemvor the one god who's MOST likely to be able to do something about it?

[Alleran]

If Myrkul built the wall and Myrkul's station passed to Kelemvor, then logically isn't Kelemvor the one god who's MOST likely to be able to do something about it?

He did. At the conclusion of the Avatar cycle, he rewrote his realm and made it so that Faithless and False simply exist alongside one another in his city (prior to this he almost broke reality because he wasn't doing his job properly, and the change to fix this shifted him from LG to LN). They don't know pain or fear or sorrow, but neither do they know joy or happiness.

The Wall reappeared in the 3rd edition FRCS with no explanation for where it had been or why it was back. Other sourcebooks and novels ignored it, as far as I know offhand. Then it went away again in the Sellplague and hasn't come back. Now if a soul dies and has no deity to claim it, they waste away on the Fugue Plain until they cease to exist. The only difference is that they're mobile rather than stuck in the Wall.

It's also pretty hard to be declared Faithless or False:

"Almost all beings in Faerun worship many gods; as a rule, only zealots and clergy venerate just one deity. In other words, a farmer could mainly revere Chauntea, but also pray to appease Talos to keep crop-damaging storms away, Malar to keep beasts from attacking him or his folk in the fields and to send vermin elsewhere, Talona to keep disease and blight at bay, and so on."

"The average Faerunian lives long enough to worship (or serve through one's actions) one deity above all others - though in many cases, which deity a given person has served most might not be clear to a dying mortal or anyone else. If a mortal dies before finishing a mission or a task for a particular deity and it's a matter he felt strongly about in life, he could be sent back by that deity, reborn as another mortal, to try to complete that task. Otherwise, he ends up in the afterlife serving the deity most appropriate to his moral and ethical outlook. Only those who repudiate the gods (or who as a result of their actions are renounced by their gods), despoil altars and frustrate the clerical aims of any deity, or never pray or engage in any form of deliberate worship will qualify as either Faithless or False."

Do note the "serve through actions" bit. You might not even be sure just which god you're serving until you're actually on the Fugue Plain or in the City being judged by Kelemvor (and if he rules that you died in service to a particular god, even if it wasn't clear to you personally at the time, then that god will by and large be happy to take you).

[russdm]

The Wall reappeared in the 3rd edition FRCS with no explanation for where it had been or why it was back. Other sourcebooks and novels ignored it, as far as I know offhand. Then it went away again in the Sellplague and hasn't come back. Now if a soul dies and has no deity to claim it, they waste away on the Fugue Plain until they cease to exist. The only difference is that they're mobile rather than stuck in the Wall.

It was not ignored from my understanding in 3.5 and it was used in the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, Mask of the Betrayer.

I also would point out that it should not have come back for 3rd edition or 3.5 as it makes no sense being there after being removed by Kelemvor.

Also, AO has shown himself being involved in mortals affairs. He usually punishes people for trying to worship him.

Its good the Wall is gone, because it seemed to me a major weapon to be used by the evil gods to get worshippers since they could spread knowledge around and claim to be the only ones who could free people from the wall.

[hamishspence]

Deities and Demigods (3.0) paints it as only those that "actively oppose the worship of the gods" in Faerun, that are counted among the Faithless.

[Scots Dragon]

I completely ignore its existence. It was a retconned-in part of 2nd edition, and something that was introduced whole-cloth in the novel Prince of Lies, I think.

No source prior to that even mentions the Wall of the Faithless. It also has the unfortunate side-effect that any several characters in those previous sources were decent and moral individuals who just so happened to not worship gods. Zaknafein Do'Urden, for instance. Are we to really believe that Zaknafein is part of the Wall of the Faithless, especially when his spirit is actually called back to the mortal plane several times after his death?

As an atheist myself, I feel the best solution would be to simply use the idea that souls wind up on whatever plane is most suited to their alignment. The chaotic neutral and good leaning Zaknafein would probably therefore wind up on the plane of Ysgard.

There is no need for the Wall of the Faithless in Forgotten Realms.

[The Oni]

Similarly in Pathfinder, atheists just hang out in the Boneyard and don't progress to an afterlife. It's actually not that bad, except for Groetus, who's some kind of malevolent, sentient moon looming over it, and the resident death goddess feeds it atheist souls to get it go away. Really, you'd think she could just find three or four giants to get rid of it...

[Alleran]

It was not ignored from my understanding in 3.5 and it was used in the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, Mask of the Betrayer.

No video game (or events in it) is considered canon to the setting, to the extent of my knowledge. Some games have tie-in novels which are (e.g. Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment), but the novels are what's canon, not the games. Unfortunate, given how the BG novel turned out (I have a bucket of brain bleach handy if anybody would like to erase their memories of it), but that's the way it is.

Also, AO has shown himself being involved in mortals affairs. He usually punishes people for trying to worship him.

He does not grant spells to anybody who worships him, but he doesn't smite them from the world to my knowledge. No person professing to worship Ao has ever received spells. On the other hand, supposedly none of them have died either.

Ao has interfered directly with mortals on one occasion, when he answered a prayer during the Time of Troubles. It was made to a deity who couldn't hear it (owing to the ToT), and in that deity's absence he decided, because the mortal impressed him, that he would step in.

[mucat]

I always liked the Wall as a campaign element, precisely because it is monstrously unfair, and implies that even the good deities have a huge moral blind spot. In a fictional context -- the only context we can discuss it in here -- this is great story fuel, and leaves one final challenge for even the most epic of characters to strive for (and likely never achieve): set right something that is canonically impossible to fix.

Reminds me of a line from a Terry Pratchett novel:

[Evil] is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

EDIT: But then, to leave it at that would leave the deities looking like moral lightweights, and all those mortals who aren't involved in that final epic rebellion as patsies...so if I were GM of such a campaign, I would shake things up one last time. Give the players a hint of a whisper of a chance at success, let them run with it for all they're worth...and then uncover some Horrible Truth that explains (but may not quite excuse) why the gods let such a dismal situation exist in the first place. The well-meaning PCs have just set in motion a Lovecraftian multidimensional apocalypse even worse than the Wall.

So one last choice: do they rejoin forces with the former patrons they rebelled against, and struggle to put things back like they were...or bet all of Reality on their ability to improvise a third way that avoids both injustice and Squishy Non-Euclidian Tentacled Oblivion?

Like I said, great story fuel.


EDIT AGAIN: I would also be sorely tempted, if I could find a way to do it without turning the whole thing into a farce, to eventually have a (possibly Gnomish, and possibly insane) tinker/engineer type deity say of the souls that had dissolved into the Wall over the eons: "What? You actually thought I had neglected to make backup copies?"

[hamishspence]

Ao has interfered directly with mortals on one occasion, when he answered a prayer during the Time of Troubles. It was made to a deity who couldn't hear it (owing to the ToT), and in that deity's absence he decided, because the mortal impressed him, that he would step in.

If you're thinking of his answering the prayer of the orog paladin Shield of Innocence, in the novel War in Tethyr, that was in 1367 DR, whereas the Time of Troubles took place in 1358 DR, nearly 10 years earlier.

Part of what provoked him to intervene was that the bad guys were a group claiming to be Ao cultists.

Ao does talk to at least one mortal a lot during the Time of Troubles, even moving him from one end of Faerun to the other to keep him busy and stop him interfering with Ao's plans for Midnight, the mortal who's to replace Mystra. That was Elminster, in the Shadow of the Avatar trilogy (book 2).

[JoshuaZ]

Yes, it is monstrously immoral and disgusting. Authors frequently have massive moral blindspots to the universes they create.

[hamishspence]

I completely ignore its existence. It was a retconned-in part of 2nd edition, and something that was introduced whole-cloth in the novel Prince of Lies, I think.

Not book 3 in the Avatar Crisis trilogy (Waterdeep)?

[AuraTwilight]

The biggest disappointment with Mask of the Betrayer was that you couldn't atleast try to tear down the wall after the final conversation with Kelemvor.

[Scow2]

He did. At the conclusion of the Avatar cycle, he rewrote his realm and made it so that Faithless and False simply exist alongside one another in his city (prior to this he almost broke reality because he wasn't doing his job properly, and the change to fix this shifted him from LG to LN). They don't know pain or fear or sorrow, but neither do they know joy or happiness.

From what I understand of Kelemvor, he first destroyed the wall, and made his city a place where the Good faithless/false end up in paradise, and the Evil end up in torment. Then he realized that was messing up the balance of the world... so he toned things down but effectively kept his way anyway: People go to 'neutral' communities filled with people of similar morals and values.

Kelemvor's the coolest God of Death ever.

[Deaxsa]

Kelemvor's the coolest God of Death ever.

Agreed. fillertext

[Alleran]

If you're thinking of his answering the prayer of the orog paladin Shield of Innocence, in the novel War in Tethyr, that was in 1367 DR, whereas the Time of Troubles took place in 1358 DR, nearly 10 years earlier.

I was just going off memory, so thanks for the reminder/correction.

From what I understand of Kelemvor, he first destroyed the wall, and made his city a place where the Good faithless/false end up in paradise, and the Evil end up in torment. Then he realized that was messing up the balance of the world... so he toned things down but effectively kept his way anyway: People go to 'neutral' communities filled with people of similar morals and values.

Essentially. A big chunk of it can probably be boiled down to: what happens when mortals lose their fear of death?

He rewarded the brave and punished the cowardly. That isn't his job. His job is to judge if they were Faithless or if they were False, nothing more.

[Omegonthesane]

Essentially. A big chunk of it can probably be boiled down to: what happens when mortals lose their fear of death?

This misses a more profound point, and a point which was missed by the novels from what I know of them - why would a provable afterlife make mortals lose their inborn, biologically motivated fear of death? Would you not want to cling to life as long as possible, terrified that you might not have built up enough kilosaints* to appease Kelemvor and avoid eternal torment?

* A speculated unit of Good in the line of the kilonazi.

[Alleran]

Would you not want to cling to life as long as possible, terrified that you might not have built up enough kilosaints to appease Kelemvor and avoid eternal torment?

I did say it was only a chunk. After all, what you say here is what the cowardly were doing. Hiding out, avoiding any dangers, scared of doing anything and clinging to life because if they were killed (even just accidentally) Kelemvor might judge them harshly.

[Omegonthesane]

I did say it was only a chunk. After all, what you say here is what the cowardly were doing. Hiding out, avoiding any dangers, scared of doing anything and clinging to life because if they were killed (even just accidentally) Kelemvor might judge them harshly.

While the brave... what, got rewarded just for that? It's entirely possible to be wicked and brave, just ask the SS. Or the Spartans by any present-day standard.

'Course, in Kelemvor's position I'd have decided that destroying existence is a small price to pay to prevent even the most horrible being being eternally punished, so I may be a little biased.

[Scots Dragon]

Not book 3 in the Avatar Crisis trilogy (Waterdeep)?

My mistake on that front. It's still a retconned in part of the Time of Troubles that should never have happened, and the Realms would greatly benefit if it were removed.

[Brookshw]

No video game (or events in it) is considered canon to the setting, to the extent of my knowledge. Some games have tie-in novels which are (e.g. Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment), but the novels are what's canon, not the games. Unfortunate, given how the BG novel turned out (I have a bucket of brain bleach handy if anybody would like to erase their memories of it), but that's the way it is.

Do you mean canon to the setting (FR) or canon in general? Just thinking about Die Vecna Die and a crop of Dragonlance.....

[Alleran]

While the brave... what, got rewarded just for that?

I'll quote some chunks of it:

"Zale Protelyus!"

The flame spun on Kelemvor's sword, then stopped wailing and kneeled on the steaming blade.

"Lord Death."

"Zale Protelyus, why did you allow your foe to drag you into this fissure? Why did you cling to your sword when you could have let go and saved yourself?"

"To... stop... the... murderer!" Zale's words seemed to come with great effort and pain.

"But when you saw that you would die and fail anyway, still you held on. Why?"

"Nothing to fear... in death." Zale kept his blazing head bowed toward the sword. "Brave man in life... sure to receive reward in death."

"But you are Faithless! Who will reward you?"

For the first time, Zale raised his fiery head. "You... Lord Kelemvor! Trust your justice... before any god... who demands flattery... and offerings."

It was then that Kelemvor perceived the infinite cunning of the One and All. To win Faerun for himself, Cyric had only to step aside and do nothing. Lady Magic would do half his work, denying the Weave to any force that harmed her beloved mortals, and Talos the Destroyer and the Battle Lord Tempus and Shar the Nightbringer would grow weak and start losing worshipers. Kelemvor would do the rest, treating the spirits of the noble and compassionate with such kindness that many would turn from their gods and trust to his justice instead.

But most critical was this: the brave and courageous would lose their fear of death and sacrifice themselves in foolish causes, as Zale had done. Faerun would be left to the cowardly and the corrupt. And when this was so-when all the other gods had grown weak through the compassion of Kelemvor and Mystra-then would the One rouse himself from his "madness" and call the wicked to his worship, and then would he drive all the other gods from his world.

All this Kelemvor perceived, and he saw that it was happening just as Cyric had planned. Still, he refused to think he had been doing the One's work. In his folly, he believed that every man strove for bravery and nobility, and he failed to understand that shielding the helpless encouraged laziness and dependence, and that treating the dead with compassion only made life all the more unbearable.

It's given from the bias of a Cyricist (hence "the One"), but one who can only speak the unvarnished truth.

Do you mean canon to the setting (FR) or canon in general?

I mean that the Baldur's Gate games are not canon. Neither are the games Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, NWN2 and so on. If they have tie-in novels, then those novels are canon (e.g. there was a reference to the Baldur's Gate novel in the Grand History of the Realms book). The games are not.

[hamishspence]

Besides those, Planescape Torment got a novel as well- though I'm not sure if it counts as overlapping with the Realms-verse.

The "Pools of Radiance" game from way way back got tie-in novels as well.

[Omegonthesane]

I'll quote some chunks of it:

["All good people are motivated by the selfish desire for a good afterlife, and thus will become death seekers if guaranteed that, in obvious and deeply offensive contradiction to actual evidence!"]

It's given from the bias of a Cyricist (hence "the One"), but one who can only speak the unvarnished truth.

That proves one of two things - all sapient beings in FR are deeply disturbed, or the author is an utter hack. Neither of these implies the Wall is justified.

[hamishspence]

The author is Troy Denning - who is much disliked by a subset of Star Wars fans for his part in making the SW EU vastly "darker and edgier".

[Frozen_Feet]

Neither justifies the Wall, but they do justify why it's not Kelemvor's job to reward or punish the dead.

[Rhynn]

The author is Troy Denning - who is much disliked by a subset of Star Wars fans for his part in making the SW EU vastly "darker and edgier".

He also ruined Dark Sun.

Basically, anything from Troy Denning should be ignored.

[Brookshw]

He also ruined Dark Sun.

Basically, anything from Troy Denning should be ignored.

I could get behind that.

[Alleran]

...all sapient beings in FR are deeply disturbed, or the author is an utter hack.

Well, if you deliberately renounced all the other gods and became Faithless/False, because you died bravely Kelemvor will give you an eternity of happiness and reward in the afterlife regardless of you betraying your deity. Score!

(Note that Elminster's Forgotten Realms, which I copied an excerpt or two from further up, explicitly states that you can serve a god through your actions without ever realising it and still get the "good end" in the afterlife of a good god. I prefer that to what Denning wrote in the Avatar series, although of course the situation in said series came to an end anyway when Kelemvor started actually doing his job.)