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Originally posted by bloodtide_the_red


Also little is said about the Post Neither Apocalypse, but I would guess that after the Fall, I lot of people lost Faith. "Our gods have forsaken us" and all. This makes the wall some nice negative reinforcement.

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

The Wall of the Faithless would serve as a very nice repository of soul energy that could be used to provide power to a wizard if they knew incarnum style magic, or to a god).


Then we have the Imaskari angle. In Magic of Incarnum it mentions the Soulforge, which was located in Imaskar (as a suggestion, but the approach of various designers these days is to use those suggestions to enrich the realms anyway).


Linking everything together i wonder if Myrkul spent his mortal life studying Incarnum and finding ways to gather and harvest souls. He likely encountered the Soulforge or a piece of it in Imaskar. He almost certainly visited the underground dwarven city and either exploited or created whatever it is that draws souls to it in that city (which is what the Soulforge does).

After becoming god of the dead, i dont think it would be too difficult for him to build a gigantic soul magnet that draws souls through the Ethereal to his divine domain (thus cementing his status as lord of the dead). The other gods then have to send their servants to his divine domain to collect the souls of their worshippers. Those that dont get collected in time get judged by Myrkul, and if he can find any reason to declare them false, he shoves them in the wall and they become a part of the greatest soul battery in the planes.

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

The Wall of the Faithless would serve as a very nice repository of soul energy that could be used to provide power to a wizard if they knew incarnum style magic, or to a god).


Then we have the Imaskari angle. In Magic of Incarnum it mentions the Soulforge, which was located in Imaskar (as a suggestion, but the approach of various designers these days is to use those suggestions to enrich the realms anyway).


Linking everything together i wonder if Myrkul spent his mortal life studying Incarnum and finding ways to gather and harvest souls. He likely encountered the Soulforge or a piece of it in Imaskar. He almost certainly visited the underground dwarven city and either exploited or created whatever it is that draws souls to it in that city (which is what the Soulforge does).

After becoming god of the dead, i dont think it would be too difficult for him to build a gigantic soul magnet that draws souls through the Ethereal to his divine domain (thus cementing his status as lord of the dead). The other gods then have to send their servants to his divine domain to collect the souls of their worshippers. Those that dont get collected in time get judged by Myrkul, and if he can find any reason to declare them false, he shoves them in the wall and they become a part of the greatest soul battery in the planes.

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-I like this theory. And it would also explain why "after being killed", he still lingered on.

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Originally posted by bloodtide_the_red

It is a sound theory.

It does seem like the Faithless were just around the City of the Dead before Myrkul got there, right? Maybe imprisoned? Maybe chained to rocks.

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

(although I've no idea what a primordial would want with them, maybe they just wanted the land that was theirs first).

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

Yet, the war with the Primordials is not exclusive to the Forgotten Realms. The world of the Nentir Vale also has a pantheon of gods who fought in that war, and had a lot problems with the primordials and even gods using souls as sources of power, yet you don't see in that world any kind of prejudice against faithless people.

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Originally posted by Scots Dragon

Honestly I don't think the whole 'faithless' concept makes much sense within a polytheistic setting where most people would not consider worshipping a particular god over the others to be an especially important thing to do. The idea of 'faith' in that sense is very strongly tied into the Christian mindset, while the Forgotten Realms comes off far more pagan, especially in materials released before the Wall of the Faithless was introduced.

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Originally posted by sleyvas
But the faithless weren't people that didn't choose a particular god, they were effectively people who "disrespected all gods and gave none of them worship". So, effectively people who thumbed their noses at all gods. Which is why my question that started this thread was aimed more at "did Myrkul find a lot of Imaskari souls, and he had a bias against them from his mortal life.... and the gods were nonplussed with the Imaskari as well .... and so it became decided that yeah, maybe we SHOULD build this wall so that people get the idea that you can't disrespect all gods entirely.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

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Originally posted by sleyvas
But the faithless weren't people that didn't choose a particular god, they were effectively people who "disrespected all gods and gave none of them worship". So, effectively people who thumbed their noses at all gods. Which is why my question that started this thread was aimed more at "did Myrkul find a lot of Imaskari souls, and he had a bias against them from his mortal life.... and the gods were nonplussed with the Imaskari as well .... and so it became decided that yeah, maybe we SHOULD build this wall so that people get the idea that you can't disrespect all gods entirely.

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The word is "atheist".

Someone who rejects the existence of any god(s) and/or who refuses to worship any god(s). In a setting filled with gods and priests with divine magics this is an intentional choice by the atheist to withhold worship from any god(s), a choice to exist independently of whatever religions the god(s) may try to impose.

Apparently, in Realmslore, an atheist is such a vile creature that its soul deserves a fate which worse than the Infinite Abyss, worse than the Grey Wastes, and worse than the Nine Hells. An absolute abuse of power by arrogant god(s) who place all the blame and all the punishment for such a choice squarely onto those souls who dare to reject them - in short, a one-sided, involuntary, inescapable, and abusive relationship which owns every unfortunate soul who happens to be born in the Realms.

This might be expected from overpowered gods of Death and Tyranny and Evil. But the Wall has been around and unchallenged for so long (and even served Cyric the Godslayer, lol) that it's evident the rest of the pantheon (including the so-called Good deities) tacitly tolerate and passively accept the Wall as well.

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Originally posted by Delnyn

Let's piggyback on Ayrik's atheist thread. I don't pretend this is remotely canon but let it spark your imagination.

Outside the Realms, the souls of atheists go to the Serpent's Coil at the bottom of Nessus where Ahriman/Asmodeus slowly devours them. Suppose the same once applied to the Realms, even though Toril's pantheons don't know this detail. All the gods knew if these particular souls were unaccounted for. Who knows what these souls would be up to? The pantheons just knew the missing souls could pose a threat.

Myrkul built the Wall and sold it to the pantheon as a failsafe to keep the atheist souls harmless. The Wall - unbeknownst to all - also denies Ahriman the souls he needs to heal the wounds he suffered from his fall. Any god - even the most kind and moral - who discovered the truth would more likely support the Wall as a far lesser evil than a healed Ahriman.

My two copper pieces.

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Originally posted by Ayrik


So I think gods-vs-primordials and the Wall are completely unrelated things.

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Originally posted by Scots Dragon

Honestly I don't think the whole 'faithless' concept makes much sense within a polytheistic setting where most people would not consider worshipping a particular god over the others to be an especially important thing to do. The idea of 'faith' in that sense is very strongly tied into the Christian mindset, while the Forgotten Realms comes off far more pagan, especially in materials released before the Wall of the Faithless was introduced.

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Originally posted by Delnyn

Let's piggyback on Ayrik's atheist thread. I don't pretend this is remotely canon but let it spark your imagination.

Outside the Realms, the souls of atheists go to the Serpent's Coil at the bottom of Nessus where Ahriman/Asmodeus slowly devours them. Suppose the same once applied to the Realms, even though Toril's pantheons don't know this detail. All the gods knew if these particular souls were unaccounted for. Who knows what these souls would be up to? The pantheons just knew the missing souls could pose a threat.

Myrkul built the Wall and sold it to the pantheon as a failsafe to keep the atheist souls harmless. The Wall - unbeknownst to all - also denies Ahriman the souls he needs to heal the wounds he suffered from his fall. Any god - even the most kind and moral - who discovered the truth would more likely support the Wall as a far lesser evil than a healed Ahriman.

My two copper pieces.

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Originally posted by sleyvas


By that I mean... picture it like a government where the "supreme court" is a council of greater powers. At one point, this council of greater powers convened, were asked by Myrkul if he could take the souls of the faithless and make a wall of punishment. Maybe he paraded a bunch of Imaskari souls in front of these greater powers, and they judged "yeah, that seems a good deterrent and justified for what those guys have done to us" (which again, not saying that's good). So, time passes and that council of greater powers changes to new people. The rulings of their predecessors are now precedent and Ao "has them recorded" as such. If the current lord of the dead wants to maintain the wall, would Ao even allow the council of greater powers to convene and override the prior ruling? At some point, it may become that they can't "undo" the ruling, and making it occur without becoming the lord of the dead themselves won't allow it to be taken down.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X
The worst thing about the Wall of the Faithless is seeing people trying to give it some sort of "noble goal" like this one to try to make it seem like a good thing. No, you don't need to justify cruelty, evil can be its own justification

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The worst thing about the Wall of the Faithless is seeing people trying to give it some sort of "noble goal" like this one to try to make it seem like a good thing. No, you don't need to justify cruelty, evil can be its own justification if you are an evil god trying to do evil deeds. And a god that prefers the eternal damnation of even a single soul just because they are afraid of someone else is not good by any standard.

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