We all know the forgotten Realms. The adventurers are endless in number, the geography is weird to say the least...

We all know the forgotten Realms. The adventurers are endless in number, the geography is weird to say the least, Greenwood is inevitably masturbating behind a curtain somewhere, and the gods are cunts.

But what is it actually like being a god in Faerun? Are you a dispersed intelligence capable of manifesting? Are you a powerful individual who can hear prayers and has amazing powers?

For that matter, what responsibilities do the gods have, how much do do their worshippers infuse on their consciousness, and how much influence does someone like, say, Vaprak, god of Ogres have on the physical world? How does Gruumsh's power compare with the temporal power of an Orc king like Obould Many Arrows?

What is it like BEING a god?

Sune, Hanali Celanil, and Loviatar go around slutting and get away with it. Corellon cheats on his wives all the time and gets away with it. Helm caused 4e and semi got away with it. Asmodeus ended the Blood War and achieved godhood by doing what he was going to do anyway. Selune does fuck-all and actively encourages her worshippers to never side with good or evil despite being a good goddess and got away with it. Kelemvor is still god of death and the Wall of the Faithless still stands, so he obviously got away with that.

I am tempted to say being a god is awesome, based on that information.

Didn't Kelemvor get rid of the Wall, and made the afterlife a paradise, then got told to cut that shit out by good AND evil gods because it made them look bad, which effected him so much he put it back and dropped from good to neutral?

...

>Helm caused 4e
No, he caused 2e (and got away with it). Cyric caused 4e, then we chained him to a chair and let him cosplay as Tharizdun for a while (hurr durr wasn't 4e soooo original, guise?), but then got rid of that in 5e so he got away with it.

Nah, first, they retconned The God Wall to being something the old Deathgods only did because they were total dicks. He then basically set up a really nice town in the realm of the dead for people who didn't specifically worship dieties (though apparently sufficiently evil non-believers still get stuck in the Wall). The idea of a pleasant afterlife without specifically worshipping a diety then caused problems with how mortals behaved, because Forgotten Realms authors can't into human behavior. So he made the city of the dead a semi-shitty place to live. That, combined with his waifu shunning him, dropped him to neutral, because honestly all of the Time of Troubles new gods were shit.

Bane?

Yep.

Basically, I'm doing a bit of writing, and I need to be able to accurately portray the experience of being a Forgotten Realms style god.

Side note: did the after effects of the time of troubles do anything other than tie a gods power to his worshippers?

Wasn't 4e a hypothetical dream tolf by Elminster based on a setting that was unintended to become the premise for 4e during playtesting, offsetting the natural progression vfeatured from AD&D-2e-3e-3.5 Via a series of in canon events in FR that also affected the rest of the multiverse?

It did in 3.0 and 3.5.

They were tied to the faith and fervor of their worshipers, so a group of 20 Clerics can generate more faith than a group of 40 normal people.

Some deities exploited it like Lolth during the War of the Spider Queen by resurrecting herself. Her and Eilistraee also increased their power for a few years by killing and absorbing other members of the Drow Pantheon during the Lady Penitent trilogy.

Never heard that one, but if you're talking about the original intentions of the realms read AD&D 2e FR Adventures then read D&D 3e FR Campaign Setting.

Most of the stuff that was set in motion for a natural progression was dropped to make the realms more generic.

4e just blew it up instead of getting even more generic.

Yes, I am aware, Khelben's fear of Lawyers to Diarmund's last Jest and why Jesters are not to be trifled with in D&D.

4e had it's moments, but altogether the spellplague shouldn't have happened, nor that coverage on the Far Realm to such a saturated degree to that matter.

I'm running a Pathfinder game set in 1368 DR.

Most of the events will happen, but the Spellplague will not. By the time the new PCs get used to the system, the Twlefth Seros War will happen.

If they survive the Year of Rogue Dragons, they might get to see Steampunk Mulhorand.

Were there any othe effects? I heard gods that had uncontested control over a portfolio had a powerboost somewhere.

More so than in any other setting, even Dragonlance, the gods have this sort of agreement between them to mostly get along because life is so hard for them and they're afraid their mean dad Ao will come back and inflict some new torment on them as punishment for poorly-defined transgressions.

So you see a lot of religious tolerance in FR, even for the evil religions. In Waterdeep you may see priests of Asmodeus openly selling indulgences and priests of Loviatar openly selling stays in their cool fuckdungeon.

That's surprisingly interesting. Makes sense from a mortal stance as well- it's a bad idea to mess with a priest if the good guys aren't willing to escalate with you. Probably why Talos has temples, despite being a huge cunt.

'course, that only applies to powerful gods. Folks like Vaprak or Mask are far less tolerated.

What happened was basically that Kelemvor took down the Wall and treated people who died heroically to awesome afterlives, and the ones who died cowardly to bad ones. This meant that people would basically act like morons because they were guaranteed a good afterlife if they died doing something cool (e.g. Jumping into a dragon's mouth to attack it, rather than retreating with friends to protect them). They started not giving a dhit about gods at all, which was causing disruptions with the entire pantheon.

So he changed it again, and now it doesnt matter how you died, only whether yu were faithless or false or not. You simply live among those ethically similar to you in his city.

Then some idiot writer or editor put the Wall back for no reason, nobody else or any other book paid attention to it being inexplicably back, and they made a big deal out of it being gone again in 4E, when it was already gone if they could keep their shit in order.

The Mask of the Betrayer story arc about it being put back was purely made up by the game, theres no reference to it or implication of it anywhere else.

What IS the difference between a FR God and a king? I mean, Bane might be able to paste him with a glance, but he arguably has LESS temporal power than Szass Tam- a crusty lich, or hell, any other temporal ruler in their lands. His biggest base of worshippers is the Zhentarim and Zhentil Keep, which while a powerful group isn't actually that mighty. Bane's will has less effect on a nation than a Duke's. And lesser gods? Malar's followers consist of a subject of barbarians and werefolk- short of emoting them himself, he couldn't beat a single city.

...

*subset of barbarians
**smiting then himself

Fuck my anus

Kings are mortal. The FR gods are concepts.

The gods also act through their clergy, champions, and other mortals. Bane may have his largest base in Zhentil Keep, but any aspiring tyrant, any commoner who embraces their hatred, and any ruler who rules through fear most likely worships him. If necessary, Bane could send his clergy to help any one of them kill that Duke, erase his name from history, and become a Duke themselves. That Duke could then rule as a tyrant in Bane's name.

Gods in FR are a fucked-up protection racket. They really all should be evil-aligned considering how their afterlife works.

Really funny how Helm's holy symbol was an open hand with a blue eye even before he slapped Mystra down that flight of stairs.

4E as an edition had this odd idea that everything in every book should be usable in any game. So they had to invent some sort of massive shakeup to shove player options from PoLand (4e's default non-setting, rather awesome in its own ways) into FR

Somehow, they managed to do it with less general fuckery when they released Dark Sun for 4E

Talk shit about FR gods all you want, but Helm did nothing wrong.

Mystra was an entitled bitch addicted to power to the point of madness. Read the books- despite being near powerless, she climbed the stairs to Helm, who clearly told her that he, the god of duty, could not let her pass. She told him to fuck right off.

Mystra got what she deserved, and the only shame in that situation is that Midnight started doing the same dumb shit once she ascended.

Oh, I'm not saying that Helm did anything wrong (more than the other deities, that is). It's just funny that his symbol is literally an open gauntlet and a bruised eye and he bitch slapped Mystra so hard down a flight of stairs he killed her.

Yeah, that is funny.

I think a lot of it is that FR has a history of this stuff. Every time an edition changes, Forgotten Realms gets fucked sideways by a big event. So they didn't have to work as hard to get something to cause it for the 4e change...but at the same time, so many people were not used to FR changes and they were a bit less thought out than they were for Dark Sun. As a result, the changeover felt unsatisfying to people (The timeskip was a poor idea imo. They should have published some books during the event to make it feel more like a natural change).

Dark Sun they went in with 'Dark Sun is Dark Sun, it doesn't utterly shake every time an edition changes' so they needed to slot stuff in. I liked how they implemented the Feywild, as the last fragments of what the world used to be, most connections to it lost. It won't turn up in 99% of Dark Sun games but it fits.

That and I REALLY liked the rules they did for Defiling/Preserving. Making it more of a temptation rather than 'At chargen I pick if I want to shit on people or be shat on' with distinct classes.

Kings dont add their divine rating to everything , exceede 40th level or have true immortality.

They are like the stupid shit in that one angelic book with Cr 1000 monsters except that their stats say they can not be truely removed without a dm removing them.

Wait what lol.

This isn't dicefreaks you're talking about, right?

so is the wall still around in current stuff?

Is that epic level handbook?
Is that even 'canon'

Bane is kind of a shit god, most of his power lies in his followers. The best evil gods are the ones who have something to offer beyond that, even if that something is just "I'm probably not going to sink your ship". Besides, Faerûn is a polytheistic world, even if different regions prefer different gods. A hunter who's just trying to feed his family might whisper a small prayer to Malar, even if he'd never make it as a cleric. Most sailors, regardless of morality, make prayers to Umberlee.

Actually, Umberlee is my favourite example of an Evil deity, because she never actually demands that her followers do anything truly immoral. No human sacrifices, no summoning undead, no despoiling the land. The worst you get is a bit of animal sacrifice in the spring. She herself is a massive cunt who'll probably drown your ass, but unlike certain other deities (cough Auril cough) she doesn't expect you to LIKE it.

3.5 Forgotten Realms jumped the kraken and made book to stat gods, same with 3.5 "core".

The other book with the monsters was 3rd party.

Bane is incredibly good at playing dumb. He's actually a very cunning deity who's played multiple other gods for fools multiple times. He's like an evil version of Jack O'Neill from Stargate SG-1.

I'm talking bout the one that has shit like 'The spawn of gods of dreams' as enemies and the weird ass dragons and such.

This all said- what is a day in the life of Bane like?


Do you think he chills on a spiked couch between schemes, or is he just an amorphous cloud of oppression in between manifestations?

Epic Level Handbook

Well sure, but that doesn't necessarily make him a good deity, only a good villain.

He has a physical form but his consciousness is relatively transcendent because he can perceive anywhere there is "strife" in Faerun at least and possibly the multiverse at large.

Thats the official one?
I have to ask, how does the stuff in faerun factor into the other crystal spheres like dragonlance and greyhawk?
Like is there 2 lolths?
And the elemental chaos as well.

Bhaal is worse. God of DEATH ITSELF and he literally cannot think of a better thing to focus on than assassins.

Also he fucked at least one chicken.

>I have to ask, how does the stuff in faerun factor into the other crystal spheres like dragonlance and greyhawk?

Poorly. It works best if you assume that the Planescape/Greyhawk cosmology is how it actually is and what's presented in the FR books is just the gods lying to you, man.

Yeah dnd multiverse is a clusterfuck.
Like we have things like the faerun/other setting divide.
Than we have places like ravenloft which are able to abduct people from nearly anywhere.
Gothic earth which is connected to the greater dnd though some darklords.
D20 modern....
Than there was that guy remarking on how impossible it is trying to compile all the elder evils in dnd.
Hell isn't lovecraft dieites actually canon in dnd?

If you REALLY want to hurt your brain, try figuring out the histories of Tiamat and Bahamut. They are simultanously primordal dragon deities, AND foreign gods brought to Faerûn as part of the Untheric pantheon.

The Points of Light Bane is a similar but different fellow to the FR Bane so I'm not sure if it's the same dude but he's more chill there or if it's just the same name. I'd lean towards similar names, or at least, concepts forming similar psychopomps without them being literally the same god.

Points of Light Bane is more or less LAWFUL evil. He's the god of War and Conquest rather than Tyranny. His philosophy is that morals don't win wars and he's the god of winning wars. He's not evil because he's malevolent, he's evil because once he's started a fight he will go to any length to win that fight no matter how cruel. Pointless cruelty doesn't win wars but neither does softness.

But then, the 4e gods tend to have opponents but they don't quite have the 'I hate you and seek to constantly end you' outside a few cases (Vecna vs Raven Queen and Ioun, Bahaumut vs Tiamat, Correlleon and Lolth). They are more 'I philosophically disagree with you and thus our followers will conflict'.

I had fun with my 4e Avenger of Ioun and Pelor visiting a Bane temple recently. She debated philosophy, sparred with some people and took part in some strategic wargames.

They were honestly surprised that her solution to the provided scenario was 'Put the village the nearby army is supposed to protect to the torch, then run them down when they have to take the low, bad for defence ground in order to help the civilians'. After all, this is a theoretical scenario, not reality. Pelor only minds if you hurt real people, not cheapshot Bane worshippers in a wargame.

And then there's Io, their father. Who is simultaneously an Intermediate deity and a powerful overgod.

He drew the short straw.

What would you have done in his place?

Well I think Ao and Io are 2 different entities.

Oh they are. In Greyhawk cosmology is more what I'm talking about.

Io is a overdiety?
I sorta have the idea that each crystalsphere is like a schrodingers cat kinda thing, its in the multiverse but it has a complete different things at the same time

The overgod of the Forgotten Realms is solely responsible for that. Ao, the overgod of Abeir-Toril instituted this whole fucked up system to force the gods into doing their jobs, and to force mortals into worshipping gods to supply them with power (the wall of the faithless).

All of the blame for the entire bullshit regarding everything about the setting's afterlife falls squarely, unambiguously and uniquely at his feet because he did it all on purpose.

Can one blame Ao's boss who was seen like once as far as I know.
Also I need to know what happens to souls in good afterlives, Like is there some old guy who's been there since the first god of faerun?
IIRC they get absorbed into the plane (Which kinda justifies immortality in the normal planes or becoming a outsider)

>people bitching about the Wall without knowing the purpose of the wall
Your ignorance and half-knowledge is so staggering I am actually legit surprised that you didnt start writing for WoTSC.

The first mention of the Wall of Faithless was in a nearly ancient adventure, don't remember if it was 2E or AD&D, then it was mentioned in one of the old-ass Planescape supplements, then it is mentioned in one of the FR-Novels how Myrkul made if for the lulz because he was angry, angry about atheists. The last one however was never canon as far as I can until they tried to recycle some of the old shit for 3E or 3.5 or 4E, fired all the people who actually were involved and new about the setting and replaced them ''new blood'' which didn't know shit about the Setting.

The Wall of the Faithless was a necessary evil since the beginning, its what keeps the higher AND the lower planes outside of the Material Plane. Its main purpose was ALWAYS to keep the Blood War from spilling out of the Abyss. This is why demons as well as angels cant just waltz in willy-nilly into Toril and other Material Planes but have to be summoned.

Removing the wall repeatedly and making it canon or not just shows me that none of the writers in WOTSC has been around for long and that they don't even know their shit.

Which kind of good?

I would have taken dominion over all those that killed- soldiers, executioners, hunters, murderers, even assassins.

I wouldn't pigeonhole myself as a god of serial killers and psychotic assassins. Even if he'd survived the Time of Troubles he'd have been fucked anyway, since he's got so few worshipers, and those he does have tend to die like mayflies.

any of the 3 is fine as 'forcing your worshippers to eventually be consumed by your place' doesn't strike me as good.

Tempus still had dominion over soldiers, executioners under Helm and Tyr, and hunters under Malar and Mielikki.

There might have been even more gods during the time the Dead Three rose to divinity.

It's not good or evil. It's the nature of the place.

No, those are individuals who can worship anyone that appeals to them. I would seek to appeal to a greater crowd than just rooftop killers and madmen. I'd push Death as a godly choice to all those that inflict it, not just those that fetishize it. If Tyr can get Paladins with no actual judicial power under his banner, I can damn well seduce soldiers and killers of all stripes into mine!

Making a play like that seems like a good way to get Tempus knocking on your door to have words with you.

No more than Bane doing it. That asshole has an entire network of thieves, soldiers, mercenaries, and other individuals so tenuously tied to "tyranny" that they qualify solely by virtue of serving Bane.

At least my servants would actually be killing people and causing death. That's perfectly valid right there. They worship the god of Death/Murder because they kill people.

The Zhentarim and the Church of Bane kill as a way of rising above others. Murder is a tool to them, not the goal.

The Problem with what the Afterlife is like is that you have multiple sources actively contradicting each other which have still have been declared canon.
It is a mixture of both incompetence on the side of the writers and Wotsc literally not giving a fuck about the Setting as long as they can shit out more Setting-Books to sell.

Now you could say that it was the same thing under TSR but at least TSRs shit in AD&D didnt contradict itself as much on the Setting.

Moving on, the way death worked according to the first Manual of the Planes was, you died your soul went to one of the planes corresponding with your alignment or one of your Deities minions would show up and carry you off to the plane of your Deity where you would just chill with your god or whatever your god had in store for you. Except if you were chaotic evil, then you did not pass GO, did not get collected by a god and were just sent straight to the abyss to suffer eternity as lower level demon. This was also meant to show that evil deities simply didn't give a shit about their random evil mooks after they die.

>>CONT

Then you had the Planescape stuff which took the Cycle from early D&D and kinda elaborated on the above a bit: When you died and you were the follower of a god the above thing still happened as usual. If you were faithless or atheist or not religious enough however you landed in one of the cities on the lower planes where you waited until your soul was judged. During this time you are considered a Petitioner, you could petition a deity to take your soul to their realm.
For example say you were Townguard and you died protecting people but didn't pray and not go to church but apart from that were a good guy Torm or Helm could show up when you were judged and just tell the Judge that you are one of his homies and he is taking you to his crib. Same thing with evil deities. Or you could make a deal with one of the demons or higher beings which could take you to the lower/higher planes in exchange for something they wanted. In the demon's case it usually meant being cannon-fodder in the Blood War.
Anyway if no Deity spoke up you were judged on your deeds, sins etc and usually ended up in the Wall of the Faithless or other punishments fitting your crime.

In 3.X they then changed the cosmology if the planes to streamline it, took both ideas from Planescape AND early 2E and made up this whole Plane of Fugue thing with the City of Judgement were Kelemvor and Jergal sit and judge souls all day who were not claimed by deities.

I kinda lost interest in the cosmology once 4E hit the Forgotten Realms which ruined literally everything about FR and I couldn't even be arsed to look up the Lore of 5E FR so I cant tell you anything about those or how shit changed.

but what happens to souls after they reach the plane? do they just chill? i've heard from people they get absorbed by the plane/god eventually.

The average Zhent isn't really a Tyrant though. Tools of Tyrants, sure. But Tyrants? Nah, most Zhents are crooks, soldiers, and mercenaries, not just by career but by outlook. The genuinely ambitious and powerful are pretty rare. Most come no closer to Tyranny than occasionally lording it over others.

Plus, the killing thing is solely about Bhaal worshipers- anyone who kills would be applicable to worship him, but he decided to be a serial killer fetishist instead.

I dunno. What what you do after you reach Paradise?

> i've heard from people they get absorbed by the plane/god eventually.
I remember vaguely that at least in Planescape the good gods could use you in the same way the lower planes did. For example if you were a great hero instead of chilling for all eternity your deity could turn you into a higher celestial being for his cause.
But other than that the higher planes just seem like different flavours of heaven/paradise/nirvana.
I think you also got an option to just get reincarnated from your god but as said, some of the stuff I read nearly 2 decades ago, I might be wrong on some parts.

I think the Companions of Mithral Hall got reincarnated in the latest Salvatore novels.

In Crucible, petitioners spent their afterlives as aides to their gods.

I can't think of any novel or supplement where a soul kept their identity and was transformed into a higher level outsider.

Not entirely powerless, she was charged up on her Avatar power at the time. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to fight a god who was still a full on divinity.

But yes, she was being stupid. She DID have a reason for wanting to get past him, specifically that she wanted to trade the identity of the thieves to Ao in exchange for lightened sentences on the innocent gods and hopefully not as much of a crapshoot as the world was for mortals at the time, but Helm said no, he'd take the information to Ao if she absolutely had to provide it, but she still wasn't going to get past. So Mystra thought she'd fight her way past and talk to Ao that way.

Little did Mystra know that Ao ALREADY knew who the thieves were, and she'd have been missing part of the point.

Bane is described as an inherently stronger and more powerful divine force than Cyric.

>to force mortals into worshipping gods to supply them with power (the wall of the faithless)
Please read and Souls in good afterlives become petitioners upon that plane.

Literally every plane does that to its petitioners. It's neither good nor bad, it is simply a function of the multiverse that over time, you will be absorbed into the plane and perhaps at some point be spat back out again as an outsider, but by then you'll have no memory of anything.

>I can't think of any novel or supplement where a soul kept their identity and was transformed into a higher level outsider.
I think it was mentioned in the first Manual of the Planes but I might be wrong, but yeah you are absolutely correct about the ''keeping your identity''-stuff. You never get to do that whether good or evil outsider.

>I think the Companions of Mithral Hall got reincarnated in the latest Salvatore novels.
I wish he would just let go and come up with new characters. You did the time-skip Rob, now stick with it instead of thinking of ways to bring the old shit back.

>For example if you were a great hero instead of chilling for all eternity your deity could turn you into a higher celestial being for his cause.
Can happen, yes. The deity has to personally expend power to do it, normally you'd just end up a petitioner once you're transformed.

Then of course there's stuff like what happens to you as you ascend Celestia or whatever.

Companions getting reincarnated was a special thing, they accepted a deliberate offer by Mielikki. It's not the norm.

user, the entire point of the reincarnating was because he hated 4E FR and was plotting to fix it as much as possible by bringing back the stuff WotC was in the middle of nuking from the very start. That's why he killed off his characters in such a way that he could then bring them back himself (Drizzt didn't count because he's an elf, so he'd just be able to live through it all). Didn't you notice that all Drizzt's companions during the 4E era were kind of shitty people, everything was darker and more miserable, and when 5E rolled around and his old friends returned it became better and brighter all of a sudden?

So petitioners just hang out in there plane as of current canon?
I know petitioners are basically powerless so they cant really do much even if there is like 30000 years plus hanging out.
I mean like is the absorb thing canon as of 5e?

Yes, they just hang around depending on the plane, and eventually get absorbed into it if they're on one of those planes/in one of those realms. Nothing in 5E did anything to change the cosmology in that respect, as far as I am aware.

what are the planes that tend to absorb? evil aligned ones I guess if you don't become a outsider.
But than again Nothing in dnd is permenent unless its immune to wish.

He says in an interview that Wizards staffers pulled him and Ed Greenwood into a room and told them what was going to be happening with the 4th edition Spellplague, and after they left Greenwood looked miserable because they were basically destroying or otherwise hacking out giant chunks of his setting in the name of profit, so Salvatore decided to start plotting to fix it.

Baator has some special rules surrounding its petitioners.

>Didn't you notice that all Drizzt's companions during the 4E era were kind of shitty people, everything was darker and more miserable, and when 5E rolled around and his old friends returned it became better and brighter all of a sudden?

I have to admit I didn't read any of 4E or 5E novels because I just couldn't be arsed to get into it after how much of a disappointment the 4E FR Lore was.

Last thing I heard of Salvatore was that he was on the writing team of 5E and how they wanted to fix stuff but then they decided on the time-skip and I just gave having any expectations from 5E FR.

I vaguely remember the Grey Waste slowly kills you there as a mortal and then even dissolves your soul outside of some safe places.
I think Stygia also had some special rules.

And everything that lands in Carceri stays in Carceri. Forever.

>Carceri
Now I have to know more.
Like can souls can never leave?
like not even if they become outsiders.
Like I dont even know what happens in good aligned planes to be honest.
Do most petitioners just do nothing forever, I mean space isnt a issue since most of them seem to be infinite in size.
It does give me idea's of like a barbarian meeting a ancient tens of thousand of year old fighter for advice.

Would it be possible to play a god? I mean, stating one out is shit, but you could always use Godbound for that- the big question is- are FR gods sufficiently comprehensible by mortals to be played as PCs?

I think Bane's got a thing of constantly punching you in the face with his gauntlet until you admit you're his bitch.

Actually, it's pretty useless, because of the following-

>Entire goal of the Abyss is to destroy everything so reality can return to it's ammoral pre-deity state
>Atheists contribute to this

>Ahriman/Asmodeus Eats Atheiest souls to heals his wounds when he was cast from heaven to the 8th layer, hitting it so hard he made the 9th layer of hell
>Ahriman/Asmodeus wants to destroy the universe and recreate it in his own image
>His stupid futanari sister downgrades HE PRE-DEITY ENTITY STATUS TO DEITY STATUS and can now be killed
>Ahriman is unstattable.
>Entire Ban on the unborn fiasco was his doing as to secure the souls of aborted atheiest babies

Ever notice how baptism isn't actually a thing in D&D? There's NO sanctity for souls in the setting, you wither pick a deity or get fucked by a number of forces out to eat or monetize your ass.

wait what?
Asmodeus eats the souls of unborn children?
Also I thought the whole 'his true form as a giant mile long serpent' thing ws retcon'd

Carceri is the prison plane. It is designed to keep things in, not let them out. This doesn't mean that it's impossible, but it won't happen by design.

And petitioners eventually dissolve into the plane. They have some of their memories of life, but no you could not meet 10000 year old warrior for advice, he'd have long since dissolved.

Manshoon claims this thread for the Zhentarim!

Which Manshoon?

Ao is almost the literally Divine Personification of Random Editorial Demands on the Setting.

It's been mentioned before even in the setting books; for all that he managed to hack and slash his way to godhood and get full Divine status out of Jergal with the other Dead Three, he basically remains that guy who wants to be the boss of the whole world so they can all do whatever he wants.

So is this thread basically an acknowledgement that trying to mix Forgotten Realms with Planescape and default D&D cosmology was a bad idea?

Probably one of the clones.

Or at least a clumsy one.
I rather like the idea that FR's cosmology is just sort of how Faerunian's see it (a lot of the planes are same anyway, just laid out in the World Tree fashion) but the issue is that pathetic mortal meat-brains can't really grasp the scope of a literally infinite place formed out of pure conceptual thought of a certain type.
But D&D mostly just makes the Outer Planes seem like just one more place you can go rather then truly "outside" physical reality and thus difficult for mortals to really grasp the full nature of.

Planescape made this even harder because Sigil is basically just a really big city filled with normal-ass people everywhere, so what you end up with the Outer Planes looking like is more exotic tourist destinations for high-level characters mostly.

Nah, Asmodeus is still by canon claimed to have made the 9th by hitting the 8th, and he does secure and eat fedora-souls, which heals his wounds.

Which is the the same M.O of Ahriman anyway, and Jazrian is still canon, and she and her brother are pre-deity entities so it makes sense that no one would have heard of her brother, seeing as anyone that does vanishes after 24 hours.

And if you note the whole ban on the Unborn thing as a part of the Ashradorn questline you'll note that everything that happened in the story that led up to the ban implied someone immediately changed the deities mind on a god claiming that soul font, and who else to benefit from that other than Asmodeus/Ahriman, also to note that said titan deities main servants were Lillends?

It was all a calculated move to ensure he didn't lose his faithless souls.

He's a nasty bugger.

>He's a nasty bugger.
But he did genuinely love his wife. And refuses to take another because of that.

>tfw Asmodeus married his waifu