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JohnLynch
Learned Scribe
Australia
243 Posts |
 Posted - 06 Feb 2013 : 09:22:18
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So once our current 4th ed campaigns finish (if they ever finish) I'm planning on running a 5th edition Forgotten Realms campaign. This will be set in 1357 DR and will have the gods be distant and at arm's length with Toril. This is mostly in response to 3.5e and 4th ed shenenigans but I'm also using it to remove the Time of Troubles. In this version of Toril the churches play a significantly more important role in global events. If canon says "Bane did X" then in my version it was "the Church of Bane did X". This doesn't mean the gods didn't fight each other (or that Gruumsh didn't lose his eye to Corellon). That did happen. It just happened in "times of antiquity" or "at the dawn of time" when such fantastical events occur. In modern times the gods are much more stand-offish.
So for me that brings up the question of "What to do with the Chosen?" Do I remove them? Do I keep them around and just ignore them? I've been thinking about it for a bit and I've now finally come up with an approach to the Chosen that I'm happy with. So here it is.
The Chosen in a God-Lite Campaign
Throughout time there have been a rare few mortals who have been given divine power beyond that of a mere cleric. Such people are referred to as Chosen. The details of how someone becomes a Chosen or what powers they gain have eluded sages for eons. However included below are the few facts that have been gleaned about these powerful few.
How one becomes a Chosen is something of a mystery. The most common method, if any method could be called common, involves powerful clergy of a church gathering and performing a ritual on a person. If the person is worthy then the deity gifts them with powers far beyond those that ordinary clergy gain. Some sages claim that others have become a Chosen through other methods. The methods these sages posit involve summoning angels, meditating at sites that are holy to that deity or finding powerful artifacts. This is hotly debated amongst sages who take an interest in the Chosen.
What powers the Chosen are granted vary wildly. It is agreed by all, however, that they are granted apparent immortality. What powers beyond this vary wildly and it becomes difficult to sift through the accounts to find the probable amongst the fantastical.
Individuals who have become Chosen are quite rarely members of a deity's clergy. Instead they are individuals who have embodied the teachings of the deity to an extraordinary degree. Or they might be individuals who a high priest has received a vision of and been marked in some way as someone who is to become a Chosen. There are many accounts from priests who claim to have received a vision that someone should become a Chosen. However some of these accounts are written quite clearly decades after the individual had already gained their status as a Chosen and so are likely to be fabrications by the priest in an effort to boost the importance of his church.
The Chosen tend to exist independent of the usual church's structure. As such churches seem reluctant to elevate people to the status of Chosen as they can become rogue agents who work against the Church's interest. Also a limiting factor in the number of Chosen is that most people, even priests, don't know how someone becomes a Chosen in the first place.
Most likely as a result of their uncertain status within the church, Chosen do have something of a reputation of being meddlers in the affairs of others. As such followers of a deity, and even priests, may not see a particular Chosen as someone to be revered and respected but instead as someone to be wary of. There are rumours of people who were once Chosen but lost their divine abilities. However whether or not these people were actually Chosen or simply CLAIMED to be Chosen is hotly disputed. If they were Chosen, there are no reliable details on how they lost their status and powers.
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So that's it. It might seem like a rather simple solution. But it's been tumbling away in my head as I thought about it and only now am I finally happy with the solution.
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DM of the Realms: A blog for my Forgotten Realms adventures. |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7969 Posts |
Posted - 06 Feb 2013 : 10:02:53
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You plan to remove the Time of Troubles. Do you also plan to remove the Spellplague? The Fall of Netheril? I'm not challenging your decision at all, just commenting that all three of these events basically boil down to the world being nuked and warped because the Goddess of Magic was slain. Smaller scale events like the Cyrinishad debacle and Shar's Shadowstorm could conceivably be explained as the ambitions of powerful priesthoods.
Many pantheons (though not the Faerūnian one) forbid deities from acting directly or walking the world among mortals. If this is something like what you're trying to emulate then consider that Chosen would essentially be the only "proxies" a deity could use to directly exert divine power in the world, and deities with multiple Chosen (like, say, Mystra) would consequently be able to manifest their will far more effectively than those with only one (if any) Chosen agents. What I'm saying is that it seems your goal might be best served if Chosen were absent or their currently godlike powers were somewhat curtailed.
I don't personally see the need for Chosen to even exist when deities grant spells and powers to their priests, especially if Quest-level spells are available. To my mind an avatar, Chosen, Exarch, proxy, or other godly agent would only be deployed during times of great importance, urgency, or emergency ... and they (or their special status) would be removed/demoted to "restore the balance" once their divinely critical task was complete.
2E presented a priest spell (of the highest level) which allowed a group of high priests to directly summon their deity's avatar ... or more specifically, to merge their own bodies and essences into a vessel for the avatar. The deity could use this vessel as it saw fit (or simply punish/destroy the impudent priests and depart) but its continued presence would be extremely strenuous and harmed or killed the vessel (the priests) over time if it did not voluntarily relinquish control - the vessel would be utterly consumed after some maximum time (which could only be increased by more priests casting the spell to offer themselves for this purpose) and a deity could only continue to manifest over long periods by steadily burning out its supplies of highest-level priests. I only mention all this because the approach might be a way (perhaps the only way?) for your priests to invoke a Chosen/avatar/etc of their deity to the world (for a limited time) - a way which wouldn't be used (or abused) casually because of the high requirements and the steep costs/risks involved.
I'm not sure any truly universal qualities could apply to Chosen. Not even immortality. At least not for Chosen serving gods governing things like nature, entropy, death, war, and destruction.
I do laud your initiative. Sometimes it seems like you can hardly punt a kobold in the Realms without it landing on somebody's god, while the constant Divinely-inspired-Realms-makeover nonsense has reached tiresome and ridiculous extremes. All this while, paradoxically, we never seem to see any priests and followers. |
[/Ayrik] |
Edited by - Ayrik on 06 Feb 2013 10:37:23 |
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JohnLynch
Learned Scribe
Australia
243 Posts |
Posted - 06 Feb 2013 : 10:54:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
Do you also plan to remove the Spellplague?
Considering it happens in 1385 DR it would be many years of playing so I don't expect it to pop up. But yes.
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
The Fall of Netheril?
No. I've got plans on how to incorporate the Fall of Netheril without killing a god (essentially Karsus came upon an artifact that he misused in an attempt to gain control of the Weave and failed horribly).
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
What I'm saying is that it seems your goal might be best served if Chosen were absent or their currently godlike powers were somewhat curtailed.
At no point have I really defined the powers of the Chosen. Largely because they're not important for me to do so at this stage. The only Chosen I'm planning on incorporating as a possible villain is Fzoul Chembryl. As far as I know he's the only Chosen of Bane around, so how much power Bane grants his Chosen is left up in the air.
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
I don't personally see the need for Chosen to even exist when deities grant spells and powers to their priests, especially if Quest-level spells are available.
It's established canon that Chosen exist so I've decided to incorporate them in my version of the Forgotten Realms. Initially the plan was to simply ignore them. Now that I've managed to think about where their place in society is I feel much more comfortable exploring them. Take Elminster for example. I see him as a definite meddler. But only against powers that are stable and behaving in a way that HE doesn't approve of. And even then he has to be careful because (1) he's busy with extra-planar disasters on a regular basis (2) the possibility of him becoming a tyrant is just so easy. He's essentially a good person, so he's wary of getting too involved (also everything is cyclical and he's probably seen it all before and knows how it's going to play out).
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
2E presented a priest spell (of the highest level) which allowed a group of high priests to directly summon their deity's avatar ... or more specifically, to merge their own bodies and essences into a vessel for the avatar. The deity could use this vessel as it saw fit (or simply punish/destroy the impudent priests and depart) but its continued presence would be extremely strenuous and harmed or killed the vessel (the priests) over time if it did not voluntarily relinquish control - the vessel would be utterly consumed after some maximum time (which could only be increased by more priests casting the spell to offer themselves for this purpose) and a deity could only continue to manifest over long periods by steadily burning out its supplies of highest-level priests. I only mention all this because the approach might be a way (perhaps the only way?) for your priests to invoke a Chosen/avatar/etc of their deity to the world (for a limited time) - a way which wouldn't be used (or abused) casually because of the high requirements and the steep costs/risks involved.
While an interesting thought I'm probably not going to apply it. I will be looking to incorporate the "divine vessels" of mulhorand in a manner that fits my goals but keeps the flavour of that pantheon.
For me things get interesting when mortals disagree as to the will of their deity. Look at Christianity as an example. We've got so many different sects of Christianity and they largely all agree on much the same thing. The Bane situation in the Moonsea (pre-ToT where Fzoul was trying to create his own Church of Bane and supersede the one in Mulmaster) is extremely interesting to me and is undone by having Bane rock up and say "Yo. This is my will. Follow it or lose your spells." If there's a "summon god" spell then the most powerful church can cast it and stamp out any dissent. I'd rather let it foster :D
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
I do laud your initiative. Sometimes it seems like you can hardly punt a kobold in the Realms without it landing on somebody's god, while the constant Divinely-inspired-Realms-makeover nonsense has reached tiresome and ridiculous extremes.
Funnily enough it seems 5th edition Forgotten Realms is recognizing this and will be making the deities much more distant. It was almost enough to make me not rewind time. But I decided to head back to the start anyway because this way I can incorporate all the 2nd ed books into my Forgotten Realms (plus it gives me goals to design adventures towards and helps me come up with ideas on how the Realms will change over the in game years). |
DM of the Realms: A blog for my Forgotten Realms adventures. |
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The Chosen in a God-Lite Campaign
