How would you play an atheist character?

[The Rambling Midget]

While I enjoy this take on it, I have problems with the logic. A character that espouses the above is evidently a learned one, so wouldn't they know about the Wall of Faithless? The very real and tangible purgatory where you dissolve into nothingness?

It seems hard to reconcile a belief that the gods aren't gods because of their occasional mortality with the absolute and unequivocal power has on the direction of your "afterlife."

Willful atheism sounds like willful idiocy. I don't want to bash on the concept, because I find FR theology a convoluted and intricate mess of cool questions and debates (and the epicentre of basically every conflict). However, the omnipresence of divinity is really hard to dispute or question.

There once was a character played as faithless, and he did it very well. His opposition to them was out of spite for their control over mortals and the consistent, blatant misuse of their influence. His answer to the wall was to attempt to find a way to have his soul annihilated when he died, so he wouldn't have to suffer that fate.

It was clearly a difficult concept to play properly, though, and should be extremely rare.

[Baron Saturday]

An interesting way to do this would be to deny the divinity of the so-called gods, rather than denying their existence. You could accept that these immensely powerful beings exist without acknowledging their godhood. There's quite a few arguments to be made for this - they can die, after all, and mortals can ascend to their level of power. There are even non-god beings out there with power to challenge them, which could be argued to make the idea of "gods" a rather arbitrary thing.

[Rwby]

I wouldn't want to go to the wall for arguing a technicality...

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

While I enjoy this take on it, I have problems with the logic. A character that espouses the above is evidently a learned one, so wouldn't they know about the Wall of Faithless? The very real and tangible purgatory where you dissolve into nothingness?

It seems hard to reconcile a belief that the gods aren't gods because of their occasional mortality with the absolute and unequivocal power has on the direction of your "afterlife."

Willful atheism sounds like willful idiocy. I don't want to bash on the concept, because I find FR theology a convoluted and intricate mess of cool questions and debates (and the epicentre of basically every conflict). However, the omnipresence of divinity is really hard to dispute or question.

A wild TRM appears, and uses Swift Attack.

There once was a character played as faithless, and he did it very well. His opposition to them was out of spite for their control over mortals and the consistent, blatant misuse of their influence. His answer to the wall was to attempt to find a way to have his soul annihilated when he died, so he wouldn't have to suffer that fate.

It was clearly a difficult concept to play properly, though, and should be extremely rare.

This is very similar to what I had in mind- to me, the ultimate goal of the character (whether achievable or not) is some RP-dependent variation of-

1: Become the 'god' of death in order to destroy the wall. <--- Not very likely. Even event plot shenanigans probably won't go this far.

2: Rob the god of death of his power somehow, destroy the wall while he's weakened using the stolen power. <--- Mildly more achievable, as it's able to be 'reacted to' and 'fixed.'

3: Screw all the gods, convince others of your train of thought, then launch a crusade to destroy the wall. (So far there have actually been three, already). <--- Like two, fixable, and can be reacted to.

The main idea here is that the Wall itself is a point of righteous fury for said character concept. It is basically a tool the gods use to punish people who don't give them power, as either being absorbed into a wall, or taken by a demon. And demons don't launch constant attacks on godly domains because of that. They keep their shenanigans to the Prime instead.

Now, as for willful atheism in this case being willful idiocy- I will certainly agree it is swimming upstream rather than downstream.

[The GrumpyCat]

Question: Where do devil/demon/fey worshipers come into this?

Could you, for an example play a warlock (or many other classes really, but Warlock is the one that springs to mind fastest) who spurns the gods, and instead gives themselves heart and soul to say, Asmoedues? Can you be faithless in that way and yet avoid the wall?

(Granted you arn't getting anything much better, but still...)

[Scraps]

The Wall of the Faithless itself is a bit strange in places. 'The Way' practiced in the southern reaches of Kara-Tur venerates no deities, and acts more as a philosophy. So the second most popular religion in Kara-Tur should have all of its practitioners go to the Wall of the Faithless, but they don't (presumably).

[Rwby]

Well Deamon worshippers, etc, presumably still ~believe~ in the gods, which is the point of contention. They might not worship or venerate them, but even Warlocks often have a patron deity as well as a pact. When you're waiting for judgement you have the option to make a pact with a Devil and vanish, presumably any infernalist worth their salt would do that rather end up in the wall.

There are certainly paths to wall-less afterlives, they're just not what we might consider 'Better' options, but you can become a successful devil/deamon, for a while, and then I believe if you're destroyed on the relevent plane you simply cease to be? That would avoid the wall. It's a long shot though.

[Opustus]

I think it's important for the discussion to establish what exactly entails a link between the deity and the mortal. After all, there are some examples of people worshipping specific deities without realising who they are. Deities like Uthgar are present in the FR as aspects; different Uthgardt tribes worship great spirits who are very different from each other, and as I've understood it, the rival tribes don't necessarily realise they venerate the exact same deity.

What is required for a link between the deity and the mortal to occur? Is wilful worshipping of some godly entity always required? Can a character be empowering a deity's divine power level unbeknownst to herself?

[Rwby]

You can definately empower the wrong deity, there's lots of incidents where deities slay another deity and then pretend to be them for the power points. Prayers arn't name sensative, they just require you to direct your thoughts somewhere and whatever you think you're praying to eats them, even if they're a lie or dead.

I'm pretty sure will doesn't enter it either. Bane's followers are after all, pretty much all afraid or coerced into something, but a prayers, a prayer. As long as you mean it, no matter the reason it's good enough to snack on.

[Old Kentucky Shark]

I played a fairly well known character a couple years back who was 'faithless'. It was a fun but difficult concept; my character essentially refused to worship any of the gods, and was willing to go to the wall, out of pure spite. He'd seen a great many terrible things done in the name of the gods, both good and evil, and watched innocents starve while crying out to deities to save them.

To him, the gods were like spiteful children playing at war on a cosmic playground. Whether or not their toys/worshippers got broken didn't matter so long as the game continued, and on this playground, there were no shortage of new toys to replace the old. He simply refused to be counted amongst them, and instead chose to place all of his value on his mortal life.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The Wall of the Faithless itself is a bit strange in places. 'The Way' practiced in the southern reaches of Kara-Tur venerates no deities, and acts more as a philosophy. So the second most popular religion in Kara-Tur should have all of its practitioners go to the Wall of the Faithless, but they don't (presumably).

I was thinking a lot about that as well. Abeir-Toril is very problematic when you realize how Zakhara and Kara-Tur were imported campaign settings well after the creation of Faerun. On the cosmic thing, they don't really mesh well together.

[Kuma]

Could you, for an example play a warlock (or many other classes really, but Warlock is the one that springs to mind fastest) who spurns the gods, and instead gives themselves heart and soul to say, Asmoedues? Can you be faithless in that way and yet avoid the wall?

(Granted you arn't getting anything much better, but still...)

Honestly this is really badly explained since FR has the whole Wall, City of the Dead and so on going on, but the generally accepted idea is that someone whose soul belongs to an arch-fiend, on true death, goes to their relevant Lower Plane as some sort of soul shell ready to be harvested for fiend fuel, or, if especially "lucky", become some lesser fiend in their respective hierarchy and can potentially work their way up (unlikely). This latter one, however, generally strips the deceased of their mortal identity entirely. "Soul shells" (as seen in Avernus) retain their memories to prolong their torment until they're consumed by the Lower Planes for fuel.

[ArcanaFTW]

http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/organ ... thar.shtml

Take inspiration from Planescape. Play someone who's from Sigil and is an ex-Athar member, or just go and steal the philosophy.

Or, better yet, go completely insane with parts of the philosophy. Planescape is technically canon in FR I believe, and even if it isn't, these beliefs still 'work' in a FR vacuum.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Planescape is acknowledged in FR lore, but Sigil is outside the Crystal Sphere that contains the Realms (iirc. They've changed the cosmological model two or three times in the last couple of decades). There are ways to get there, because Sigil has Doors to Everywhere, but it isn't all that common.

In terms of fiends/fey, while when a mortal normally dies their "allegiance" to a deity calls an envoy of said deity to collect them, the soul is something that the mortal can use/bargain with during their lifetime- see spells that consume parts/all of the user's/victim's soul, amongst other examples.

Any answer as to how the soul and the walls of the faithless would interact in such cases would depend on the terms of said bargaining and the individual being dealt with in question.

Some fiends have also figured out how to gather cultist worship and are attempting to attain godhood through that method. While our world isn't set in a time period where any of them have succeeded yet, it does eventually happen. So it isn't completely out of the realm of possibility that some 'Locks' souls might indeed go to their pact's Patron after death...

Depending on the patron, I might actually prefer the wall in that situation, myself.

[whoisthisis]

hmm spheres. Memories of the old spelljammer setting. I like it.

Yup, D&D in space, that was a thing! (It is full of Mindflayers, Beholders, neogi, walking hippos, and all sorts of weird stuff)


Planescape and Spelljammer were an atempt by TSR to bring the various settings together. Ether via flying thru space from sphere to sphere or via portals to Sigil.

Just wait until someone reads this and makes a Dragonlance PC here LOL. It is Canonically possible for that to happen!