When a Faerun deity is no more

Since the Chosen of Eilistraee is a religious oriented player group, naturally there is a place to have theological discussions. That is in-game religions; please leave real-world religion out of it. Debate the fine points of a certain dogma, how a church can enforce worship while staying true to its tenets or simply why one deity is better than another one is. All are free to talk about it here.

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mek42
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When a Faerun deity is no more

Post by mek42 »

When a deity in Faerun no longer exchanges communion with followers, the situation seems similar to when the gods left Krynn. Faith communities still existed, but a major focus of the communities became trying to learn how to restore divine communion. So, wouldn't this same situation be expected to happen in Faerun? Divine casters of an out of communion deity may well be granted lower level spells by the deities they offer minor devotion to or even from their primary deities allies, who ,ay be doing a soft sell of their own portfolio.

Related, in Faerun we all know that the overwhelming vast majority of deaths are not necessarily permanent. If a deity was slain, what is to prevent a ressurrection or reincarnation of that deity being performed by a powerful devoted follower or group thereof?
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Irennan
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Re: When a Faerun deity is no more

Post by Irennan »

Nothing, really. There are even rules for that to happen.

1. You must find a Priest of the Dead God in question.

2. The Dead God Priest must be powerful enough to Cast True Ressurection, you can use a Scroll or Artifact if you don't have that power.

3. You must have a powerful artifact of the Dead Deity, containing some fragment of his essence

4. You need as many worshippers as you can get of the Dead God

5. You must go to the Astral Plane and Find the Dead God inside it

6. You must perform the ceremony with the worshippers intensely focusing their will on getting their deity back.

Of course enemies of the deity would try to stop such a thing, if they came to know about it.
Furthermore, basically all gods have backup plans or contingencies in place that allow them to come back/survive in some form and start anew, even without their followers' aid (Bhaal, Mystra, Bane, Helm for example).

If you are referring to Eilistraee, her end is far from being certain. Qilue was slain while being inhabited by Eilistraee, but that was just one of her avatars, not the Dark Maiden herself. A deity can only be slain in her own dimension and this is not what was done to Eilistraee (also her realm is still intact), so it may very well be that she is still around, recovering or planning -maybe even among her followers- or w/e: nothing actually clarified what happened, so it could be that we don't know the truth yet (the author who penned those events left things muddy on purpose, so that the goddess could easily be reintroduced -even tho WotC ignored her up to now-. The Sundering, however, may change this).

Nonetheless, as far as your personal campaing is concerned, you could easily ignore/alter canon and let the deity stay alive, if you don't want to focus your quest on bringing it/him/her back.
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
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