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Originally posted by dazzlerdal
Both of the above are fine. But if the god then appears in your head and says 'it was me, worship me and slaughter all evil in my name' then thats just cheap.

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Originally posted by KanzenAU

The topic of the gods being more distant post-Sundering was also discussed, with gods being more likely to communicate with signs and omens (the altar glows and you hear the sound of twin axes scraping together) than talking directly to their clerics.

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Originally posted by KanzenAU

The only other potentially post-Sundering books that come to mind are in the Brimstone Angels series, which I haven't finished yet.

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Originally posted by Markustay

Now, we know in a meta-gaming fashion the reason for them becoming 'more active' (less subtle, actually) was TSR buying the Realms and having the ToT right away, which set a VERY bad precedent. Since then, gods have become more like Manshoons - you can't walk ten feet without tripping over one. Errr... I mean ruins. (LOL)

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Originally posted by KanzenAU

(...) Drizzt being a Chosen of Lolth.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X
And so, Forgotten Realms lost its one unique thing. How to recognize the Realms from another setting? There were gods meddling in mortal affairs even in the dishes (as they say in my country).

Now FR is just another Eberron or Nentir Vale. With the fact that those settings have logical explanations of why the gods cannot act in the world with freedom (in Eberron you don't know if they exist; in Nentir Vale there is the Primal Ban).

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Originally posted by dazzlerdal

Help us Ed Greenwood, you're our only hope.


Ps. If you could give us back the realms as it was originally before TSR and WoTC despoiled it that would be great.

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Originally posted by LordofBones

Pelor is Neutral Good and Amaunator is Lawful Neutral. They're sun gods, but Amaunator is a bureaucratic power, while Pelor is a deity of healing and strength. They're literally nothing alike.

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On the evil of Pelor

Pelor is commonly thought to be the near embodiment of Neutral Good. As a sun god, he is thought to be the enemy of the undead and the author of life through his gifts. He is also a god of Strength, for he advocates that the weak must be protected by those capable.

However, recent revelations have given rise to a sect of thought (some label it an outright heresy) that Pelor may not be what he claims to be. A passage in the Book of Exalted Deeds states that Pelor refused to send his paladin a sunfly swarm to destroy a vampire that had murdered his family, while the paladin was out doing Pelor’s work. In the same section, a CG god named Kord visited a plague upon his worshipper who was defeated on the battlefield. Speculations abound as to why Pelor refused his faithful paladin and range from defending the god (Pelor couldn’t allow himself to stoop to the mortal’s level of hate) to accusing the god (Pelor wanted to see his paladin suffer). No concrete answer could be found, but for those who thought it was a poor choice on Pelor’s part, it led to a path of horrific discovery after discovery.

Further investigation revealed (in the Epic Level Handbook) that the Lord High Priest of Pelor denounced her deity and the faith. It also said that the secret texts of a prominent religion, recently discovered, call into question the church’s real goal, its actual origin and the agenda of its god.

From there we turn to the Player's Handbook.

Jozan, the archetypical cleric of the Burning Hate is shown using symbol of pain, a 5th level cleric spell with the evil descriptor (PH 291). The SRD and PHB have two things to say about this:

First, a cleric can’t cast spells of an alignment opposed to his own or his deity’s (if he has one). Spells associated with particular alignments are indicated by the chaos, evil, good, and law descriptors in their spell descriptions.

Second, a cleric’s alignment must be within one step of his deity’s (that is, it may be one step away on either the lawful-chaotic axis or the good-evil axis, but not both). A cleric may not be neutral unless his deity’s alignment is also neutral.

This means that Jozan can not be good-aligned, since he can casts evil spells. Nor Pelor can be , because he can grant evil aligned spells, that can only come from a non-good deity. So, Pelor can not be good-aligned.

Also, Jozan has been seen stepping on the face of his allies to rise higher, rather than store his shield and mace (PH 68). That is not the act of a good-aligned being and shows quite a level of paranoia and mistrust against his allies.

Moving on from there to the Complete Scoundrel, we find the path of the malconvoker introduced. This path requires a non-evil alignment and deals in the summoning of demons. A quote from the iconic malconvoker: “Take him my slaves! Drag his soul back to your dark masters!” - Argyll Te’Shea, servant of Pelor and malconvoker. The summoning of demons has always been one of the most vile acts. Page 8 of the Book of Vile Darkness states that Consorting with Fiends is evil. The statement “Allowing a fiend to exist, let alone summoning one or helping one, is clearly evil”. More minor sections deal with ‘casting evil spells’ and ‘damning or harming souls’, both of which are clearly present within the Pelor-sponsored malconvoker. One could very well suspect this path to be nothing more than a thinly disguised trap for the unwary and their souls.

Also introduced into the Complete Scoundrel is the grey guard, which some may note “hey, that’s just a slightly lighter version of the blackguard!” Indeed. Another step into the Lower Planes, this one is aimed at paladins rather than wizards and clerics. While I have not been able to tie the grey guard directly to Pelor as of yet, it seems that the taint caused by his masquerade is growing to touch even the sincere good aligned gods.

Looking at the relics that Pelor sponsors shows another side of this dark story. The dawnstar, if sundered or broken, deals massive damage to all other creatures (aside from the wielder) within a 30 foot radius. Clearly, this power was inserted with no thought given to the cost for the wielder’s allies. The original dawnstars were given to 4 solars who rescued one of Pelor’s paladins from Baator (known as Perdition in some texts). A question arises then: what exactly was the paladin doing in Hell? If he had died and gone to Hell, that suggests some oddity concerning his faith and alignment. If he ended in Hell due to his own dealings with the devils (which are endorsed by the Church of Pelor, don’t forget), then it seems that Pelor was flouting the Pact Primeval, an ancient law enacted before Pelor’s time. It seems that there are only a few possible answers. One, Pelor is truly of Hell, and his worshipper ended there because of his faith. Two, the paladin ended up in Hell of his own actions and Pelor gave no thought to the stability of the cosmos in order to bring him back. (Probably out of fear for what information torture would bring to the paladin’s tongue.) Three, Pelor sponsors LE paladins, known as paladins of tyranny (in a complete twisting of the term paladin) because he is a vile god of evil.

The Inquisitor Bracers are another magic item sponsored by Pelor. These bracers justify the use of force on innocent people in order to sort them out from undead. You can’t use the power of the bracers with a touch attack (to see if the positive energy perhaps burns the undead). You must swing your weapon with all force at the target, and hope that the positive energy undoes any mistake you might make. What a sick idea. A paladin on a different world once had a similar idea for dealing with undead. His name was Prince Arthas. Of Warcraft III fame.

Pelor’s final relic is a sun shard, which is fairly simple, it fires searing light at two targets. This isn’t damning in and of itself, but consider that while other good gods (Elonna and Yondalla for example) offered relics that aided mortals, Pelor’s are all intended to destroy. This is of course, not a huge point against Pelor, but when added onto the mountain of evidence, seems to be just one more confirmation.

One adventuring group, headed by a tough talking thug named Dyson, followed the path against Pelor when they discovered something amiss within his church. Connections were drawn between Pelor and Baal. That story can be told by Dyson himself or his dungeon master Feanor. It should be noted however, that they began following this path of discovery prior to the release of the Book of Exalted Deeds. They were the first to see the truth and were shunned for it at the time. Those of us who have had our eyes opened to the light of the Burning Hate owe them a debt of gratitude.

Another adventuring group, this one composed of angels, were betrayed by their god into the hands of Lixer, a Prince of Hell. They were broken, one by one. One was twisted into a demon, one lost faith in the path of the Celestial Compact, one was blasted from existence and the last was petrified and stands still in the Court of a Lord of Hell. The god was not named, but he was a god of the sun. Again, this story predates the release of the Book of Exalted Deeds.

One final member of Dicefreaks has added information. Alratan was the first Freak to bring up evil uses for positive energy and good uses for negative energy. While his study does not accuse Pelor of anything (or indeed, deal with Pelor at all), it does point to an alternate path of positive energy, with which Pelor is definitely associated. (Positive energy, not the alternate path.) This is important because many dubious (and some slack-jawed) people have pointed towards Pelor’s association with the sun and positive energy as proof of his inherent goodness.

It must be noted that nothing is proven. Pelor still sits in Elysium. No good-aligned gods have moved against him, nor have they chilled alliances with the Sun God. It may be this is a smear campaign engineered by fiends, or simply the overactive imaginations of mortals. However, the above presented are facts, not fiction. Draw your own conclusions, but think twice before you choose the True Believer feat in Pelor’s name. Below are my own conclusions drawn from the evidence.


Pelor is a Neutral (lawful tendencies) Evil god of Sun and Strength.
Pelor is a god of skin cancer, sun burns, thirst, and burning agony.
Pelor hates undead as they cannot properly suffer in the same way as mortals.
Pelor’s divine realm is on Elysium.
Pelor has deceived the good gods and mortals for so long that he has grown complacent in his position. The recent revelations are not purposeful, they are accidents caused by the god being sloppy.
Pelor has many connections with Hell through both Bel and Belial and previously through Zariel.
Pelor may have engineered the Great Fall of Eblis, Triel, and the others.
It is unknown if the devils, yugoloths, or demons are aware that Pelor is evil. Presumably they are ignorant.


The above is intended to make clear the position of those people who claim Pelor is evil. It is not intended as a slur on those who seek to worship Pelor as a benign deity nor as concrete proof of his evil. The investigation into his misconduct is currently ongoing and no final judgement should be passed at this juncture.

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Originally posted by Baltas

Many also noted that the symbol of Zarus, is also very similar to Pelor's (and Amaunator's old symbol). Pelor was stated to be the among most popular god among humanity, arguably the clost to a patron deity of humanity, Zarus outright

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the patron deity of humanity. The oly thing is, Zarus is Lawful Evil.

To be clear, I don't claim Pelor is Evil, just that he, Amaunator and Zarus, might be different manifestations of the same Power.

(Also hi, I dissapeared for a long while)

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Originally posted by Cyrinishad

I think that a confirmation that Amaunator and Lathander are separate deities and that Lathander is clearly a liar even to his so-called "Chosen" and that Amaunator=Pelor is actually great! It validates the premises I've been operating in my home campaigns... I am starting to think that Lathander, Tyr, and Sune may have been "infected" by Cyric when they imprisoned him. I'm also thinking that the divine heresies that have arisen are ways for Cyric to siphon divine power from "infected" faiths.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

And so, Forgotten Realms lost its one unique thing. How to recognize the Realms from another setting? There were gods meddling in mortal affairs even in the dishes (as they say in my country).

Now FR is just another Eberron or Nentir Vale. With the fact that those settings have logical explanations of why the gods cannot act in the world with freedom (in Eberron you don't know if they exist; in Nentir Vale there is the Primal Ban).

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Originally posted by Markustay

I find the fact that we - a community that used to be die-hard grognrard 'FR fanbois' - have now taken to discussing all these other settings, in a greater D&D/FR context, right down to which gods may be 'ours', etc, very amusing. The fanboi in my is turning over in his grave (he got very ill around 2007, and passed on sometime around 2013, or so), but the meta-gaming, multi-setting D&D gamer is rejoicing.

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Originally posted by Markustay

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

And so, Forgotten Realms lost its one unique thing. How to recognize the Realms from another setting? There were gods meddling in mortal affairs even in the dishes (as they say in my country).

Now FR is just another Eberron or Nentir Vale. With the fact that those settings have logical explanations of why the gods cannot act in the world with freedom (in Eberron you don't know if they exist; in Nentir Vale there is the Primal Ban).

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There are MANY things that make FR unique among the worlds, but they've been down-playing most of them for quite awhile now (the massive number of portals/gates to just about everywhere, the Moonwells/Pools of Power, The Weave {although I think its not as setting-unique as we once thought, now with all this cross-setting stuff going on}, etc). FR doesn't have 'Earth-like cultures' in the same way every other settings do - it has them because of its interaction with Earth, and hundreds of other worlds/planes.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X
logical changes because of it.

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for nostalgia reasons and to maintain a few sales, the guys of WotC would not allow it.

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Originally posted by Wrigley

I am taking the meddling of the gods from perspective of RW management. Why doesn't a corporation president run around and meddle into every clerk's work beyond "general orders from above"? Because they have their own business they have to attend and if they spend too much time dealing with small tasks they will get behind on their main goals. There are many gods in FR that would like to thwart plans or even take place of other gods (rivalry is even between good gods) so they are limited in that they have to sit in their chair and guard it. Only in very important moments can they risk going down themselves and deal with the situation directly.
The same goes for gods - they task their churches with important work and have their divine servants oversee special tasks that needs to be done.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

A deity has to serve their worshipers, and if they lose a bunch of followers, that directly impacts their power.

Yes, a deity will delegate stuff, but even without directly appearing or openly speaking to their followers, they still have ways to make their desires known and get their people to act on them. Sending a manifestation of some sort or affecting a cleric's spellcasting pushes people in the desired direction without the deity issuing a direct "Thou shalt not!"

Deities in the Realms have a lot of indirect options for making their will known. Unfortunately, some of the novels have created the false impression that only direct options are used or even possible, and that's a damn shame.

The idea that deities have to directly show up to influence things makes me cringe, because it's a major misconception, and because even some of the novels that have influenced that view have also shown deities acting thru indirect means -- but the latter is always ignored in favor of the former.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

I'm going to be sincere, and maybe that is going to gain me a lot of bashing, but so be it. At first, when I started to play D&D, I cannot tell the Realms from Greyhawk. <snip>

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Originally posted by Markustay

Gods/Outsiders in their natural state are pure energy, thus, "a million angels can fit on the head of a pin".

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

When the Spellplague happened, something (still working on this part) weakened Lathander enough for Shar to temporarily sideline him, allowing Amaunator to reclaim some of his lost power, which appeared to prove the heresy -- one face had faded and another had risen.

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When the Spellplague struck, it didn’t just affect Toril (and Abeir); its ripples tore through the multiverse, wreaking havoc large and small. Dragon Eyrie disintegrated, and although the plane of the great “Dragon Mountain” was linked to Avernus (and other planes), in the tumult of destruction a stunned and half-crushed Azharul (“physically torn open like a fowl spatchcocked or butterflied for the grill,” as described by one who saw his violent arrival in the Barrens) was hurled violently into Gehenna (Banehold), where an opportunistic Bane pounced on the dazed and physically ruined draconic deity to enslave it—and discovered Tiamat’s presence.

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Originally posted by KanzenAU

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

When the Spellplague happened, something (still working on this part) weakened Lathander enough for Shar to temporarily sideline him, allowing Amaunator to reclaim some of his lost power, which appeared to prove the heresy -- one face had faded and another had risen.

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This is the really interesting question that has never really been answered fully as far as I can tell - what happened to all the gods when the Spellplague struck? What were its wider-ranging effects? Still have to get to the Empyrean Odyssey trilogy - does that have any clues?

My own searches yield this gem from Ed, in his thread from the 12th of Feb, 2015, talking about Tiamat:

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When the Spellplague struck, it didn’t just affect Toril (and Abeir); its ripples tore through the multiverse, wreaking havoc large and small. Dragon Eyrie disintegrated, and although the plane of the great “Dragon Mountain” was linked to Avernus (and other planes), in the tumult of destruction a stunned and half-crushed Azharul (“physically torn open like a fowl spatchcocked or butterflied for the grill,” as described by one who saw his violent arrival in the Barrens) was hurled violently into Gehenna (Banehold), where an opportunistic Bane pounced on the dazed and physically ruined draconic deity to enslave it—and discovered Tiamat’s presence.

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We know that Lathander's home base for Toril was the House of Nature (different from Elysium, his "home" by 1e/2e standards). In 4e, the gods of the House of Nature either ended up in the Deep Wilds, or the Green Fields, or they were just unheard of. The House of Nature itself may well have been destroyed, much like Dragon Eyrie was.

It's my theory that in the chaos of a destroyed plane, gods are flung across the multiverse just as Tiamat was. However, Greater Gods are able to reform new planes. The greater gods of the House of Nature had been Lathander, Silvanus, and Chauntea. It's my theory that Silvanus reshaped the House of Nature into the Deep Wilds, where he was became the sole 4e greater power (an alternate theory would have him reshaping Fury's Heart into the Deep Wilds), and Chauntea forged a part of Mount Celestia into a new Green Fields (where she became the sole 4e greater power). That gets us to their 4e situation.

One theory to help explain what happened to Lathander could be that he reached for the power of the sun to create his own new plane, but in doing so he inadvertently awoke the power of Amaunator. Lathander's actions do indeed create a new plane - The Eternal Sun - but it also results in a huge power-flux into Amaunator. The drain of Lathander's power needed to create the new plane allows Amaunator to bind him away and usurp his role as the primary god of the sun on Toril. Amaunator thus becomes the sole greater power of The Eternal Sun, and he is soon joined there by Siamorphe and Waukeen. That's the post-Spellplague 4e situation for these gods.

Then in the Sundering, the 4e planes of the gods are undone by Ao, and we are returned to either the World Tree or the Great Wheel setup for Faerun, or a combination of the two. If the former, the House of Nature is reforged and Lathander returns there, and maybe Amaunator goes to the House of the Triad where there's a bunch of LG and LN deities, and his buddy Siamorphe. If the Great Wheel is the way to go, Lathander would end up back in Elysium, whereas Amaunator might end up back in his 2e plane of Mechanus (he's back to LN in the SCAG).

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Originally posted by Mirtek

Which directly contradicts what was stated in "The Reaver" by Lathander himself to his chosen

Did they even talk to their authors? Did anyone proofread the last novels?

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