Kelemvor info? 2ed.

[Lady Fiana]

Can someone please give me some more info on Kelemvor?

Such as allowed worshipper align., dogma, adventuring dress, day to day activities, and the Wall of the Faithless.

 

My faiths and avatars book vanished.

Thanks alot.

[Twani]

I am sure by the time I am done typing, someone will have typed up everything I wanted to say in a much more sane and loverly manner and I will feel very foolish. But, here.

 

(May I just, for the sake of being bratty, say I don't like Kelemvor? I miss Myrkul. =/)

 

Kelemevor is a LN Greater Power of the Grey Waste, and his portfolio is Death and the dead. His symbol is 'an upright, bone colored skeletal arm holding the golden scales of justice balanced evenly in its fist against a steel-gray field'. His worshipers are of any alignment.

 

His actual clerics are LG, NG, LN, N, LE, and NE (LE and NE are only allowed provisionally in the case of converted Myrkulytes, and they must change to another allowed alignment within three years in the church or else leave for a different faith).

 

The charge Kelemvor gives to his novitiates is this: "Death is but part of life: fear it not, evade it not, and view it not as evil. To fear death delivers you into the hands of those who can bring death upon you. Die with dignity, neither raging nor seeking to embrace undeath. Do honor to the dead, for their strivings in life brought Faerun to where it is now, and to forget them is to forget also where we are now -- and why." He also has a lot of "fight the undead, and do your best to make sure that no human (and if possible, no sentient being) dies a death without a priest of Kelemvor at their side."

 

Day-to-day activities? Comfort the dying, and provide burials to those who die alone. Administrate last rights to the dying, and help the living left behind understand that death is a natural process. They fight plagues, hordes, or great monsters running amok- it is not right for so many to die before their due time. In cases where great pain, ravaging disease, or mutilation where death would be a mercy, it is the office of a priest of Kelemvor to bring death, as painlessly as possible. It is Kelemvor's orders that they make the undead... well, die- this includes good aligned undead, yes.

 

Priestly vestments are smoky gray robes and cowled cloaks (specialty priests wear silver headbands which they never remove, and the symbol of Kelemvor displayed on the chest of their robes). Adventuring garb, often clergy members are given an enchanted gray domino masks that enable them to detect undead (1st level Wizard spell) and see with infravision up to 60 feet in darkness. They dress functionally, and wear whatever armor is practical- but they are required to display the symbol of their deity prominently.

 

Specialty priests of Kelemvor are Doomguides, and are LN with at least 12 Con and 14 Wis. There are also a few NE, old Myrkulytes- they must change to LN within three years in the church, or must leave for another faith.

 

The Wall of the Faithless is complicated, but- to explain, most people in Faerun who are not clergy, paladins, rangers or druids follow various deities. A young wizard/farmer, for instance, might say her prayers to Chauntea, Lathander, Sune, Mystra, and Azuth, plus a few prayers to Talos to keep his rain away from her crops or whatever. There is nothing considered wrong with this, and despite not following only one deity, she's definitely going to end up in the care of someone- the one she holds highest in her heart despite not realizing it, or else the one that suits her alignment and views best. In another case, we have Valygar- who despite not worshiping any diety, as a FR ranger, he's getting his spells from *some* diety. He lives his life in such a way that it's likely that come his death, he will end up in the care of Our Lady of the Forest or the Helping Hand, even if he doesn't realize that he's living according to their dictates and needs (IE, Drizzt, was basically claimed by Mielikki despite barely knowing anything about the goddess due to him following the way she would support living- whether you think that's even crueler then the Wall of the Faithless is something that gets debated a lot).

 

To end up in the Wall of the Faithless, someone needs to basically be a Planescape Athar- "Deities suck! They ruin all our lives! Remember the Time of Troubles, people? They don't deserve any of our worship!". And then they will end up in the Wall of the Faithless (assuming they turn down the offer of the Baatezu to go be baatezuy, at any rate)- mostly, I think, as an example. Deities in the Realms cannot survive without worship, and honestly, it's likely the Realms couldn't survive without Deities (as annoying as they can be). There is no release from this- it doesn't matter if the person was wicked and awful, or the nicest guy alive.

 

(As a whole, I think there are very few people from the Realms who would really blink too much on that- the gods are obviously real and alive, and if you don't worship them... well, you got what you asked for, right? On the other hand, I imagine Spelljammers and Planewalkers gaping in horror at this. Hm.)

[Lady Fiana]

Thanks Twani .

I have a atrong hatred for Undead. You get that way after one of your characters ends up a vampire's plaything for a while. Also the crawling claws that crawled into bed with my first char.

[Twani]

No problem. The gods are perhaps my favorite part of the Forgotten Realms, and I love talking about them.

 

And, hee, I know that feeling. I once played a Ravenloft game where my poor bard got dominated by some overly powerful jerky vampire and ended up causing a lot of problems before her poor companions could rescue her. Undead are evil. Even the good aligned ones.

[Drew]

I thought that Kelemvor re-judged everyone on the wall of faithless and Kelemvor had like-minded people spend their afterlives together as a punishment/reward (depending on your perspective/alignment).

[Twani]

You know, I've heard that stated a few places, but the Wall is there in second edition, and it's there in third (and I've actually kept up with the third edition novels (ACKKK), so I'm pretty sure it didn't happen after the last mention of it in third edition). The only thing I can think is Kelemvor, being much closer to LG then LE, thought the Wall of the Faithless was cruel and shipped everyone off to the planes... and then realized the neccessary of the wall, and built it back up again after Jergal smacked him repeatedly or whatever. I don't know. Perhaps it happened in the last Avatar book, which I didn't read because I was sick of Psycho Cyric.

[berelinde]

Didn't I read somewhere that Kelevmor started out as LG, but became LN, and completely impartial to good and evil, when he realized that, as an immortal judge, he had to let go of the last of his humanity?

 

I'm pretty sure that the faithless were either rewarded or punished based on their faiths, but then, too many people were not claiming patrons, so there was some concern about diminishing worshipers. Kelevmor rejudged all the faithless, comdemning both the righteous and the vile alike to spend eternity in some nether plane.

[CoM_Solaufein]

He's always been LN. In the 1989 AD&D Hall of Heroes book, it list him as LN for alignment.

[berelinde]

Sorry, I probably should have been more clear. As a god, he has always been LN. As a human man, he was LG.

[CoM_Solaufein]

Correct. When he was still a human he was LN.

[Twani]

And Cyric was LE. Hee! (Ignoring that in the first part of the first book, I probably would have called him CG. If I didn't know what happened later, anyway. Stupid Cyric.)

 

Kelemvor, when human, had some sort of curse that made him turn in to a... what was it, a panther?... whenever he did a good deed. So he basically crossed his arms and did a "I'm never going to do anything nice again" whinefit (okay, my bias is showing). Honestly, though, if not for that curse, he probably would have been LG. I do think he was kinder as man, though- both him and Midnight/Mystra let go of a lot of their humanity when becoming gods, as they realized that they were causing problems clinging to it.

[Drew]

After the curse was lifted, Kelemvor was Lawful Good. He was forced by Cyric and the other Gods to become Lawful Neutral as a god for leaving the "evil" souls on the wall of souls and giving the "good" souls a near-utopian afterlife. When he became Lawful Neutral, he took everyone off the wall and gave them the same afterlife....except that the "good" types spent eternity with other "good" types and the evil types spent eternity with each other. Needless to say, the "good" types still enjoyed a better fate than the "evil" types since they weren't going to be killing/murdering/betraying each other. In the end, he did take down the wall of Faithless.

 

If you can't tell, I double checked the third book.

[berelinde]

Now I feel better. I thought I was halucinating that he had been LG at some point.

[Twani]

Hm, then I think the question is, what RY was that book set in?

 

As of the Forgotten Realm's third edition Player's Guide (which is written during the Lloth's silence period), the wall of the Faithless is still up and working. So did he take it down, and put it back up? Did his taking it down come after that? Did it get retconned in to him never taking the wall down? Did some Forgotten Realms Canon Police Guru make a mistake somewhere when doing editing? Am I just confused? Oh dear.

[BigRob]

Bear in mind that divine information may not trickle down to the mortal populace as soon as it happens. The Wall of the Faithless is a pretty good tool to aid peity (and moreso since the power of deities was linked ot their worshippers) so most churches probably still preach it, up or down and maybe even Kelemvor's own.