Wall of the Faithless(FR)

[Blackhawk748]

No one said you have to talk to them, you just have to live in the same neighborhood.

For all of eternity. Guess im gonna grow a REALLY obnoxious tree that will drop its seeds all over THAT guys lawn

[Gildedragon]

Get together all the epic petitioners in the neighborhood association to protest the eyesore that the wailing wall of despair is and demand it be taken down (it blocks the view of Celestia, it makes too much noise at night, it was put there without consulting the onetime mortal members of the association)

[Coidzor]

The Wall was primarily intended as a way to say "players must pick a deity in this setting" and answer the obvious follow-up question of "well, what happens to the people that don't?" I would wager that in modern Faerun relatively few people get saddled with that fate. I doubt Greenwood et al. really thought through the implications of such a construct when paired with such obviously petty or foolish deities.

Well, obviously. No writer wants to intentionally create that sort of problem in their body of work. Or so we'd hope.

Be fair. Kelemvor's first act as the God of the Dead was to tear down the wall and re-judge the dead within it, and he abolished the Wall of the Faithless for a time. Then Ao forced him to re-make it at gunpoint and has enforced its existence since. Kelemvor despises that wall.

Which says something about Greenwood, et al., I suppose. What it says, I don't know.

[Blackhawk748]

Get together all the epic petitioners in the neighborhood association to protest the eyesore that the wailing wall of despair is and demand it be taken down (it blocks the view of Celestia, it makes too much noise at night, it was put there without consulting the onetime mortal members of the association)

Make sure you get that Mr Kelemvor's signature, i hear hes a bit of a big shot

[AuraTwilight]

It seems to me that the main problem most of the people posting in this thread have against the afterlife in a fantasy world is that it doesn't line up with their "modern" view on religion. In a world created and controlled by gods, telling them to go take a hike has tangible consequences. Not so much in the world we live in. We don't have contact with dead souls to give us answers about the afterlife. For us it is purely faith that gets us through. Religious types have faith that they have chosen the "true path" and will be rewarded for it with whatever their god deems is a worthy afterlife. Atheists have faith that their science proves that they don't have to worry about eternal consequences of their actions in this life. They think they will just be dead and gone. In Faerun, you know who runs the show and what the stakes are. Ignore the rules of the game and you will lose your soul.

The "R" in rpg stands for role, so play the role in that game. You really aren't committing yourself to a certain religious ideology by having your character tithe to a fantasy religion, no more than all of the theft and murder you all enjoy so much in these games will condemn you to a real prison.

Okay, first of all this is baiting a bad conversation and is very close to insinuating that anyone who dislikes the wall is just unable to reconcile it with their real-life beliefs or something.

Secondly, atheists don't have 'faith' in 'science'. Just...don't go there. Just do not.

In Faerun, none of the gods are worthy of worship because they all explicitly put their personal power over the wellbeing of the countless mortals in their care. They literally had to be scolded by Big Daddy Ao over it. Why SHOULD you worship them? Belief in a deity does not automatically justify worshipping them, that's why misotheism exists.

Finally, your last paragraph ignores the complaint raised that the Wall of the Faithless LIMITS roleplaying. No one can be a sort of Buddhist/Taoist-y sort of "philosophical" cleric. Literally everyone in the setting has to pick a god or suffer horribly for it. It explicitly tells all of these characters that they might as well play because they're not going to matter.

The Wall of the Faithless also basically means there's no truly Good gods. What do the saints and the truly pure hearted do, then? Who should they worship? What about the people who, like Kelemvor, want justice in death? The world of possible characters is smaller. The roleplaying options are smaller. The range of meaningful choices for character ideology are smaller. And it paints Ao, a True Neutral entity, as basically taking the side of Evil, because the 'Good' gods are the only ones who really lose out in this set up.

[Anlashok]

I could have sworn reading somewhere that there was a patron god of atheists somewhere in faerun's portfolio (Which would make the wall worthless).

The Wall of the Faithless also basically means there's no truly Good gods.

Or it means the good gods can't do anything about it. D&D has always justified "How can Good stand for this?" By making the evil stronger.

Finally, your last paragraph ignores the complaint raised that the Wall of the Faithless LIMITS roleplaying. No one can be a sort of Buddhist/Taoist-y sort of "philosophical" cleric.

Except nothing stops you from doing exactly that.

It explicitly tells all of these characters that they might as well play because they're not going to matter.

Really? Because that stance requires you to take the position that the only thing that matters about a character is what happens after they die (which is usually the end of a character's career as an adventurer).

[Blackhawk748]

Really? Because that stance requires you to take the position that the only thing that matters about a character is what happens after they die (which is usually the end of a character's career as an adventurer).

Would YOU want a character you've played for months to be turned into torture plaster when he dies? I certainly dont, i want my character to have a nice afterlife (or a horrible one if i was evil)

Personally im with Kelemvor on this, lets get our god-tier sledge hammers and get our Berlin on!!

[ryu]

I could have sworn reading somewhere that there was a patron god of atheists somewhere in faerun's portfolio (Which would make the wall worthless).


Or it means the good gods can't do anything about it. D&D has always justified "How can Good stand for this?" By making the evil stronger.


Except nothing stops you from doing exactly that.


Really? Because that stance requires you to take the position that the only thing that matters about a character is what happens after they die (which is usually the end of a character's career as an adventurer).

Okay I'm curious. Do you actually believe that last bit?

[Gildedragon]

Would YOU want a character you've played for months to be turned into torture plaster when he dies? I certainly dont, i want my character to have a nice afterlife (or a horrible one if i was evil)

Personally im with Kelemvor on this, lets get our god-tier sledge hammers and get our Berlin on!!

"Mr. Aochev, tear down this wall!" Ro'n Ad-Ri'Gan, Bard

[Anlashok]

Okay I'm curious. Do you actually believe that last bit?

In hindsight I phrased it wrong.

By the time a character is going to the afterlife for realsies, their adventure is (probably) over.

Would YOU want a character you've played for months to be turned into torture plaster when he dies? I certainly dont, i want my character to have a nice afterlife (or a horrible one if i was evil)

Of course I wouldn't like it, but that doesn't mean I disagree with the idea that my character doesn't matter at all if he does end up that way somehow.


But again, coulda sworn Oghma was the patron god of atheists.

[Gildedragon]

The wall is actually evidence warblades don't exist in the realms, or at least no faithless warblades. Moment one found themself in the wall they'd IHS it away

[Blackhawk748]

"Mr. Aochev, tear down this wall!" Ro'n Ad-Ri'Gan, Bard

Im totally sig quoting this

The wall is actually evidence warblades don't exist in the realms, or at least no faithless warblades. Moment one found themself in the wall they'd IHS it away

I thought they'd just Ancient Mountain Hammer it for a few hours, much more satisfying.

[Kalmageddon]

Because it's basically evil? It requires a huge pretzel of logic to get the good-aligned gods to go along with it and it's not really justifiable. It exists to scare mortals into picking any faith, which the gods of Faerun only care about because they need faith to survive, which is only true because Ao had to punish them for abusing mortals and neglecting their followers.

Essentially, the Wall of the Faithless is a cosmic testament to the irresponsible and terrible passing the buck of their punishment to the helpless, powerless masses. It's the greatest Injustice conceivable.

Pretty much this, yes. It basically strips most of the FR gods of any sympathy one might have had for them.

[Gildedragon]

Im totally sig quoting this

Please do! :D Don't think I've been sig-quoted yet so it is a ticklesome delight.

I thought they'd just Ancient Mountain Hammer it for a few hours, much more satisfying.

Well yes, but you'd hurt the other souls in the process. Best to just go "mmm nope!" and make the grout and mold vanish.

though perhaps the reason is that maybe souls of dead warblades IHS their dead condition away.

[Blackhawk748]

Please do! :D Don't think I've been sig-quoted yet so it is a ticklesome delight.


Well yes, but you'd hurt the other souls in the process. Best to just go "mmm nope!" and make the grout and mold vanish.

though perhaps the reason is that maybe souls of dead warblades IHS their dead condition away.

I remember the first time i got sig quoted, it actually happened two different times on the same day.


and have we just got a case for immortal warblades?

[Zaq]

Well, being Dead doesn't bar you from taking actions, so . . .

[Psyren]

No one said you have to talk to them, you just have to live in the same neighborhood.

Given that the vast majority of those neighborhoods tend to be divinely morphic, not to mention surrounding you with the pro-deity folks, eternity could get awkward after awhile

Which is another thing I dislike about FR's afterlife. In Greyhawk, the gods and other major players merely inhabit this or that corner of {insert Outer Plane here.} It's possible (and likely preferable, if you are one of the "worship a philosophy" types) to find a patch of plane that is between jurisdictions and spend eternity mostly unmeddled with. Pelor, for instance, does not hold sway over the length and breadth of Elysium - rather, he lives in one particular part of it known as the Fortress of the Sun.

In FR, the afterlife destinations are literally named for the deities in charge of them - if you are sent to the House of the Triad, you are subject to those three deities at every turn. If you are assigned to the Demonweb Pits, you are under the sole jurisdiction of one.

Except nothing stops you from doing exactly that.

Nothing except undermining your choice by forcibly giving you a deity anyway, or nailing you to the Wall if their eHarmony service is on the fritz.

Well, being Dead doesn't bar you from taking actions, so . . .

Off-topic but I've seen this meme a lot; what people forget is that by RAW you can't be dead without being unconscious, which does block the majority of them.

[AuraTwilight]

Or it means the good gods can't do anything about it. D&D has always justified "How can Good stand for this?" By making the evil stronger.

This would be a valid point if the Good Gods weren't JUST as guilty in Ao's original decree that started this whole mess, and if the Good Gods werent' JUST as angry as everyone else at Kelemvor for trying to take down the Wall once.

This is an issue the gods, good and evil, are more or less agreed upon. The Good gods try to morally justify this unambiguously evil thing because to actually take Good to its logical conclusion means the Good Gods have to inconvenience themselves, and that's something none of them are willing to do.

Yes, if they actually did that, they'd weaken and Evil would become stronger, but that's ALL THE MORE REASON they, and the neutral gods, should be petitioning Ao about this. He's truly neutral, and his decisions are giving evil an unfair advantage in the FR universe. That's bull.

[Doc_Maynot]

Off-topic but I've seen this meme a lot; what people forget is that by RAW you can't be dead without being unconscious, which does block the majority of them.

Though in this case, couldn't the spirit trapped on the wall just use the surge regardless of their (now dead) mortal body's state?

[Psyren]

Though in this case, couldn't the spirit trapped on the wall just use the surge regardless of their (now dead) mortal body's state?

Nope - you become a petitioner during the judging process, which strips your class features away and leaves you as a 1 HD outsider.

[Doc_Maynot]

Nope - you become a petitioner during the judging process, which strips your class features away and leaves you as a 1 HD outsider.

Well, ain't that is a fate worse than death... Oh wait.

[ryu]

Nope - you become a petitioner during the judging process, which strips your class features away and leaves you as a 1 HD outsider.

Just iron heart surge the judging process then.

[Sith_Happens]

Nope - you become a petitioner during the judging process, which strips your class features away and leaves you as a 1 HD outsider.

Meh, nothing a good Iron Heart Surge or two can't solve. Also, they have 2 HD.

[Svata]

(which is usually the end of a character's career as an adventurer).

Well, that would be almost ok, if it didn't require a Miracle or Wish to bring you back, and have you indebted to a deity for interceding onyour behalf.

[Anlashok]

Nothing except undermining your choice by forcibly giving you a deity anyway, or nailing you to the Wall if their eHarmony service is on the fritz.

Which, again, aren't really relevant to your state as an adventurer. Yeah, having a ****ty afterlife sucks. Yeah, I think it's stupid fluff and doesn't make any sense (especially given that Ao enforces it even though it should undermine Ao's position on worship)... I just don't think it "wrecks" atheistic adventurers.

[AuraTwilight]

Which, again, aren't really relevant to your state as an adventurer. Yeah, having a ****ty afterlife sucks. Yeah, I think it's stupid fluff and doesn't make any sense (especially given that Ao enforces it even though it should undermine Ao's position on worship)... I just don't think it "wrecks" atheistic adventurers.

You're forgetting that FR, as a setting, is basically a stage for the myths of this cosmology. For gods to take actions and have conflicts and for mortals to be their representatives. In such a setting, not only do atheist adventurers have nothing to show for their accomplishments, but they'll never really be acknowledged for them, and they will either be overridden by the next group of theistic representatives or taken credit for.

The afterlife for atheists and faithless in FR is basically a symptom of the problem that really, only the gods and high-level NPCs in Faerun matter. Everyone else has to either suck up and/or cooperate with them or basically get erased from the history books.

Also, from an in-character perspective, why should I adventure and risk my one lifetime if I'm utterly boned if something happens to me? Only people who believe in a god would have the courage to risk their lives, surely, else the adventurer is a foolhardy idiot. Again, limiting roleplaying options.

[ryu]

You're forgetting that FR, as a setting, is basically a stage for the myths of this cosmology. For gods to take actions and have conflicts and for mortals to be their representatives. In such a setting, not only do atheist adventurers have nothing to show for their accomplishments, but they'll never really be acknowledged for them, and they will either be overridden by the next group of theistic representatives or taken credit for.

The afterlife for atheists and faithless in FR is basically a symptom of the problem that really, only the gods and high-level NPCs in Faerun matter. Everyone else has to either suck up and/or cooperate with them or basically get erased from the history books.

Also, from an in-character perspective, why should I adventure and risk my one lifetime if I'm utterly boned if something happens to me? Only people who believe in a god would have the courage to risk their lives, surely, else the adventurer is a foolhardy idiot. Again, limiting roleplaying options.

Obtain enough resources for the eternal life method of you're choice? Otherwise you get to enjoy a rather fatalistic and miserable waiting game for the rest of your life.

[Andezzar]

Well, that would be almost ok, if it didn't require a Miracle or Wish to bring you back, and have you indebted to a deity for interceding onyour behalf.

How does the casting of an arcane spell (wish) cause the faithless to be indebted to a god?

Did I imagine it, or does the wall of the faithless also serve the purpose of keeping the horrors of the far realm out?

[Gildedragon]

How does the casting of an arcane spell (wish) cause the faithless to be indebted to a god?

Did I imagine it, or does the wall of the faithless also serve the purpose of keeping the horrors of the far realm out?

Imagine it. Though nice fluff. a lesser of two evils sorta deal

[AuraTwilight]

How does the casting of an arcane spell (wish) cause the faithless to be indebted to a god?

Because even the Wish version of "Get this dude out of the Wall" require's divine intervention.

And all Arcane magic comes from atleast one god anyway. Gods do EVERYTHING in Faerun.