Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“…and that was what happened, Goddess. In your name, I swear it.”
Luna was silent for a long moment as she mulled over what Silhouette had told her. She had no doubt that he was telling the truth; his devotion to her was far too great for him to ever be anything less than totally honest with her. Rather, her hesitation came from how she knew that he filtered everything through the lens of that devotion, to the point of potentially coloring his perceptions.
Even now he’d returned to his prostrate position, his eyes closed as he touched his nose to the ground. Luna knew from experience that he’d stay like that all night if she let him, patiently waiting for her to declare whether he’d been right or wrong. Or rather, whether his actions had pleased or displeased her.
“Silhouette,” she said gently, letting only the barest hint of reproach creep into her voice. “When I accepted your offer to bring Lex Legis before my sister and me, I did so with the understanding that you wouldn’t bring harm to anypony.”
He flinched at the words, as though she’d delivered them in an angry shout rather than a soft rebuke. “Goddess, I beg your forgiveness! I thought that if I used the least amount of force possible to accomplish my task, it would still please you!”
“And yet you were told that if Lex Legis’s spell was interrupted, it could cause disaster.”
He let out a shuddering breath then. “…yes, I was.”
Luna arched a brow at his answer. “And you didn’t see fit to alter your course of action once you knew that?”
She half-expected him to try and come up with some excuse, to say that he’d thought Sonata had been lying or that he’d be able to use the magic she’d given him to fend off whatever catastrophe Lex’s disrupted spell would have caused. But his answer surprised her. “Goddess, I made certain to move everypony away from Lex Legis before I attempted to interfere with his spellcasting.”
“That is not what I asked you, Silhouette.” Again the admonition in her voice was softer than a feather, but still made him tense up. “Why did you not stop what you were doing once you learned the consequences of interrupting Lex’s spell?” She paused, and when several seconds of silence went by, she gently reached down with one wing, placing it under his chin and lifting his eyes to hers. She heard him gasp softly at the contact, his face rapturous as he looked up at her. “Was it because you couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to fulfill your pledge to bring him to me?”
A stricken expression passed across Silhouette’s face then, only to be replaced with a look of shame a moment later. “No…” he whispered, his eyes falling from hers. But before she could say anything else, he swallowed and resumed eye contact with her, resolve – or perhaps resignation – filling his voice. “Forgive me, Goddess. I did wish to please you, but that was not why I persisted with my efforts to ruin Lex Legis’s spell.”
“Then why?” Luna prodded softly.
Silhouette closed his eyes then, and through her wing under his chin she felt him clench his jaw, his features darkening. “Because I wanted him to pay.”
Luna pulled her wing back then, frowning. “Pay? For what?”
“For treating you with such disrespect!” His entire body quivered with repressed rage then, his teeth grinding so heavily that it was almost audible. “That so few ponies pay homage to you for all that you do is outrageous, but for him to dare to blaspheme your name…to stand in your own throne room and say that you’re unfit to rule…!” He had to stop then, trembling with fury, and it took several seconds before he was able to continue. “I wanted his spell to fail at my hooves, so that it would be your righteousness laying him low.” He let out a slow breath then, returning his nose to the ground. “Knowing what would happen didn’t dissuade me from interrupting his spell, Goddess. It encouraged me.”
Luna knew she should have been angry at what he said. Furious even; he’d deliberately sought out a confrontation where none needed to occur, and he’d done it in her name. But the emotion refused to come.
Instead, all she could do was stand there and revel in the feeling of just how deeply Silhouette worshiped her.
His faith in her, his belief in her divinity, radiated off of him like heat from a fire, flaring higher in reaction to the perceived slight against her. The feeling of knowing that he thought so much of her, that she was the most important thing in his world and that any insult to her was unbearable for him, was a pleasure that defied description. It was more delectable than the finest cuisine, more potent than the most skilled lover. It pierced straight through a lifetime of knowing that, compared to her sister, she was always second among equals, affirming her in a way she’d never felt before.
It soothed the bittersweet knowledge of how everypony had always appreciated the bright warmth of Celestia's daytime more than the gentle darkness of her own night. Although she’d put those feelings aside since Twilight Sparkle and her friends had redeemed her, Luna still couldn’t deny how the balm of another pony’s reverence eased the pain of those memories. If I’d been worshiped like this a millennium ago, she’d thought to herself repeatedly over the last few months, I never would have become Nightmare Moon.
Nor, she knew, was the effect of Silhouette’s worship limited to her own psychic satisfaction. There was a genuine energy to it, a power that bolstered and uplifted her, filling her with a sense of strength and vitality as soothing as it was exhilarating. She’d never felt anything like it before in her life; even becoming an alicorn hadn’t prepared her for how it felt to be empowered by genuine religious veneration. It was that power that she called upon when she returned some of that strength to her small stable of worshipers, granting them spells that they otherwise never would have been able to attain. And when she used that new power for her own benefit, flexing it for her own sake rather than granting it to others, she could-
“I beg your indulgence, Goddess,” came Silhouette’s voice, snapping Luna out of her unintended reverie. “I did not mean to raise my voice in your presence.”
Pushing away a feeling of mild embarrassment that she’d gotten so caught up in her servant’s adulation, Luna forced herself to return to the matter at hoof. No matter how wonderful it felt to be worshiped, she needed to deal with what had almost happened. “Lex Legis would not have been the only pony who suffered if you had confounded his spell. The mare he was casting it on, Sonata’s sister, would have been affected as well. As would that colt who defied you.”
“…yes.”
“And that was acceptable to you? Or rather, you felt that such a thing would be acceptable to me?”
Now the excuses came. “Goddess, that boy chose to be there of his own will, after I’d repeatedly told him to stand clear!”
Luna sighed. “Silhouette…”
“Worse, he denied your status as Mother of the Night, according that honor to some other goddess he called ‘the Night Mare’!”
Luna frowned. When Silhouette had mentioned that during his report, she’d presumed that the colt had said “Nightmare Moon” in order to be provocative; now she wasn’t so sure. But it was something she’d need to deal with later. “Even so…”
“And he alluded to having an entire troupe that held such blasphemous beliefs! Such heresy needed to be struck down before-”
He had just gone too far. “I have no wish to strike down another pony, least of all a foal!”
Flaring her wings, Luna smacked one hoof against the ground, the impact heavy despite the soft grass under her hoof, the last vestiges of the euphoria she’d felt from his worship falling away as she focused on what needed to be done now. “Silhouette, while your actions might have been borne of righteous intent, they were not in accordance with my wishes!” She let that sink in, watching the blood drain from his face before she spoke next. “For this, you will need to be punished.”
To anypony else, the way Silhouette was shaking would have looked like fear. But Luna knew better. His tremors were the result of recrimination rather than terror, no doubt already castigating himself far more harshly than she ever would have. “Stand, Silhouette, and face me directly.”
“Yes, Goddess.”
Trembling, he rose to his hooves, almost collapsing as his shuddering almost caused his bad leg to go out from under him. The sight took the edge off of Luna’s disapproval, remembering that she was the one who had inadvertently withered his limb. It had been her first experiment with transferring some of her worship-gained power to another pony, and she had passed too much to Silhouette, the power overflowing and causing his leg to atrophy. Despite the fact that he’d worn the wound with pride, claiming that it was a gift to wear “the mark of the Mother of the Night’s touch” openly, Luna had nevertheless felt guilty about it.
She’d been planning on demoting him, but as he rose onto all fours, she quickly changed her mind. Instead, she decided to go with a different idea, one that she’d been considering for some time now. “Hold still,” she commanded.
He didn’t answer verbally, instead stiffening into near-total immobility at her command. Luna’s horn glowed a moment later, wrapping around his purple armor and slowly removing it, until a moment later it was piled on the ground at his side. “As of this moment, you are no longer a member of the Canterlot Royal Guard.”
The horrified look on his face told her exactly what he thought she meant, and she held up a hoof to forestall any outbursts on his part. “You are not being expelled from my service, nor do I plan on sending you away,” she stated, knowing from how he almost collapsed in relief that she’d been right. “Instead, you will assist me in founding a new organization, one which will be the formal body devoted to my worship. It will establish guidelines and protocols for how I wish the ponies dedicated to me to conduct themselves, so that a situation like this will never happen again.”
Surprise passed across Silhouette’s face, then understanding, and finally awe. “Yes, I understand, Goddess! I’m honored that my foolishness could be the root of such a grand design!” His eyes were wide, and Luna could see him already imagining what her new religious institution would be like. “I will devote myself wholeheartedly to this effort, so that every aspect of it will properly reflect your glory throughout Equestria-, no, throughout the world!”
Luna nodded, pleased that he seemed to have forgotten that this was technically a punishment. This will be a school like my sister’s, except instead of teaching gifted unicorns it will teach ponies the proper way to honor me. Of course, it wouldn’t be a literal school; the Equestria Education Association would never approve of that. But it could borrow at least a few of the structural elements without stepping on any hooves.
All of that would come later, though. Right now, there were more immediate things to attend to.
“I’m glad for your enthusiasm,” smiled Luna. “But in the meantime, I’d like you to do something for me. Think of it as a demonstration to prove that you’ve learned your lesson.”
“Yes, Goddess! Anything!”
Luna pointed back toward the other side of the train station. “I want you to bring that mare, Nosey, to me. And I want you to do it in a manner that I would approve of.”
Luna takes Silhouette to task, but chooses to prioritize devotion or a demotion! Is she making the right decision?
Also, what are Celestia and Sonata talking about?
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You have a talent for drawing out the dramatic in an endless cascade of words.
I'm not sure if putting Silhouette in that position is such a wise decision but I suppose with some proper oversight, his devotion to Luna could be used constructively. Hopefully he won't botch up his second chance though I doubt he'll be all starshine and moonglow(Luna's equivalent of sunshine and rainbow though I wonder if that's a thing already) with Nosey after just a few words from Luna.
Especially since Luna just gave him an order that is open to interpretation, a rather foolish thing to do after the stunt he pulled but getting drunk on the adulation from him might have influenced her decision. Looks like Lex might have another obstacle in bringing Night Mare's religion to Vanhoover soon. Well, as long as Silhouette doesn't go 'Smite the heathens!' again,
In the outer planes of the D&D Forgotten Realms campaign setting (as of 3.5 ed anyway), surrounding the city of the dead, is the Wall of the Faithless. It's a wall not made of stone or any conventional material, instead it's made of souls. Specifically the souls of those who didn't pay worship to a god in life. Bad or good, if they didn't bend knee to a god they would be sentenced to become a part of the wall, where, if they were lucky, they might get captured by a demon or devil raiding party seeking to grab souls from the wall. If not, their soul eventually is dissolved into nothingness. Oh, and did I mention said souls are totally aware the entire time?
When a new god of death, Kelemvor, ascended, being a decent guy who thought the wall was as horrible as it sounded, he tried to have it dismantled. However the rest of the gods, even the supposedly good ones, stopped him and made him continue the practice. You see, similar to Ponyfinder, the gods of that setting gained power according to how many worshippers they had, and they needed the wall around to make sure people would worship them.
And that's why I no longer play religious classes in FR. Because my interpretation of this is that ultimately, even the gods on the 'good' side of the alignment spectrum, care about their power most of all, and not having the wall as a threat over mortals to worship them was a threat to that power.
How this relates to this story is I'm concerned about Luna potentially heading down this path, and may explain why she and Celestia didn't take on direct followers until contact with Everglow. While she has apparently laid down the law with Silhouette, she still let her high off his worship color her judgement with his punishment. She kicked him out of the guard, true...by shunting him sideways and effectively making him the head of her church. Now this could work, assuming she keeps him supervised, but putting a guy who was willing to misinterptret a simple order into an excuse to attack foals and kill people in charge of her religion isn't exactly a move that inspires confidence.
nodding my head yes.
this is the best posable punishment to befall Silhouette.
he is striped of his guard states and forced to teach others how he wronged Princess Luna, the true Princess of the night.
A good example of why Gods hate Mortals. They need them to form a power base, and Mortals can level up to God like abilites without needing such followers.
Luna had such a rush, but she has already been in such a position and been punished for it. Which way she goes next, only The Author knows.
Promoted sideways? Enjoy it while you can Silloette. All it takes is one small beureucratic reassignment and youll eventually end up but a shade of your origional self.
9331873
There's been a spate of threads on various messageboards and forums over the last few years about how the Wall of the Faithless is, to put it politely, in contradiction to the idea of "goodness" as an alignment, at least insofar as the gods of the Forgotten Realms go. I've read more than a few of them, and even if we restrict the discussion to remain about the in-character aspects of D&D in general and the Forgotten Realms in particular (avoiding things like referencing real-world faiths that maintain some state of damnation as being automatic for those who don't subscribe to them), a lot of the arguments that get made against the Wall simply don't resonate with me. In many cases, they represent either a rather dogmatic approach to alignment that simply isn't supported by the game unto itself and/or a misunderstanding of how things work within the Forgotten Realms cosmology.
Can you cite a source for Kelemvor wanting to remove the Wall and being overridden by the other deities? Because I have a fairly good collection of Forgotten Realms novels and game products (from across the editions of D&D) and I don't recall that incident happening. I don't have my books with me at the moment to check, but some cursory examinations of the Forgotten Realms wiki (which is an imperfect resource, to be sure, but it's better than nothing) don't support that idea that I can find. My best guess is that it comes from one of the video games (Neverwinter Nights 2, I suspect), but those aren't canon.
The entire problem with this idea, of course, is that on closer examination it contradicts what we know about the Realms. For example, in the setting the gods weren't reliant upon worshipers to sustain their power until the end of the Time of Troubles, when Ao declared that to be the case from then on (see the end of the novel Waterdeep). However, we know that the Wall of the Faithless predates that, as several chapters prior to the end of that book Midnight goes to Myrkul's realm to retrieve one of the Tablets of Fate and sees the Wall itself. Hence, we can state with conviction that the Wall was not erected as some sort of threat to mortals in order for the gods to sustain their power; that wouldn't make sense, since the Wall was built during a time before the gods relied on worship for power.
Moreover, this idea that the other gods are complicit in the suffering of the Faithless (and the False) ignores a very salient point: the gods only have dominion over those souls who faithfully worshiped them in life. Those whose worship wasn't true (the False) and who didn't elect to worship a deity at all (the Faithless) are automatically placed under the jurisdiction of the God of the Dead (first Jergal, then Myrkul, then Cyric, and now Kelemvor). Jergal, insofar as I can recall, didn't bother with the Wall of the Faithless; the first reference to it that I can find is under the reign of Myrkul. So in other words, this wasn't some sort of divine compact, but is simply because the God of the Dead automatically gets the souls that no other god is allowed to claim, and one of them decided to use them as living legos.
As for why the good gods allow this, well...what other choice do they have? According to the rules as laid down by Ao, they don't get a say in souls who haven't faithfully worshiped them in life. We actually see this in action in one of the early chapters of Prince of Lies, where Cyric has tricked a man named Gwydion the Quick into losing his life before he (Gwydion) could prove himself a devout worshiper of Torm the True. When Gwydion died and went to the City of Strife (Cyric's realm), he protested being labeled one of the False, calling for Torm. Torm showed up, put Gwydion to the test, and found him lacking, sorrowfully acknowledging that he had no divine jurisdiction over his soul. With no other choice, he had to leave Gwydion to Cyric (who stuck Gwydion in the Wall of the Faithless despite his being False, just to spite Torm for his interference; he was pulled out later though).
I suppose the gods could still act to overturn this particular mandate (which, I suspect, is laid down by Ao the Overgod), but that would lead to all-out divine war that would most likely come precipitously close to the end of the world (which in the Realms is called The Year of Carnage). That's something we've seen them come close to before (such as in Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad), and it's not something any of them want. Especially not for souls who were never theirs to begin with.
Moreover, the Realms have gone out of their way to suggest that having the gods reward or punish people for their actions, rather than their faith, would actually make things worse for mortals. Here's a passage from the aforementioned Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad, wherein Kelemvor confronts a recently-deceased soul of a brave, but Faithless, man:
So it's not that Kelemvor was overruled about punishing the Faithless and the False; it's that he realized that overturning the system was a bad idea.
It's worth noting that this won't change what happens to your character within the context of the setting. Refusing to play a divine spellcaster might be a method of showing that you're not on board with how souls are judged in the setting, but you're still subject to them. Your best bet, if you want out of that, is to go outside of that area of jurisdiction (though that changes depending on what edition of D&D you're playing; even in 3.5 though, that's a journey through the Shadow Plane to another cosmology (as per the Player's Guide to Faerun, or using a gate spell to cross cosmologies directly (as per Lords of Madness, in the section on the grell on pages 8-9)).
As for whether or not that's "good" of the gods, that's a subjective question, especially given what I pointed out above. The problem with objective alignments in the D&D game is that while the state of being good, evil, lawful, chaotic, or neutral is an absolute, that's the only part that is. The various actions, attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions that go along with them aren't quantified in any terms; exactly what establishes, reinforces, or repudiates a particular state-of-alignment isn't determined with regards to their severity, frequency, or circumstances. Hence, all you have is an absolute "end point" of being in a particular alignment while what gets you there, keeps you there, or takes you away from there remain near-totally subjective. As such, it's fairly meaningless to say "the good gods aren't really good, because they countenance the existence of the Wall."
The real problem with the Wall of the Faithless, insofar as I'm concerned, is that it represents a metric for judging souls that breaks with (most of) the rest of the D&D tradition, where souls who don't worship a deity simply go to the plane of their alignment after they die (barring a different fate, such as undeath or them having embraced nihilism when they die, or alternate rules of another local cosmology, such as the Gray surrounding Athas). That's an issue that the Realms has always side-stepped, and I suspect is one reason why it was made into its own cosmology in 3E rather than merely a crystal sphere in the extant "Great Wheel" cosmology the way it was in 2E. The disparity has never been properly acknowledged in the context of the game that I'm aware of, and probably never will be. Hence, it straddles the line between being an in-character issue and a meta-game one.
One thing that I wasn't able to fit into this chapter, but now I'm wondering if I should have, is that Luna can't afford to be too harsh with Silhouette. Even overlooking that ponies exemplify a soft touch where justice and punishment are concerned, Luna doesn't have too many worshipers, and so can't afford to alienate them. She doesn't have the luxury of telling Silhouette "you're excommunicated, never appear before me again" unless he does something so utterly offensive to her values that it's absolutely unforgivable. Given that he didn't actually attack Fruit Crunch (the worst he was going to do was summon a celestial hound to restrain him) and wasn't trying to kill people (it's ambiguous if Sonata got the point across that Lex and Aria's lives would have been in danger if his ritual was disrupted), she interpreted - not incorrectly - that Silhouette needed some tempering in how he served her, and that an object lesson was in order. That is sort of the pony way, after all; instruction is valued far more than intentional infliction of distress.
Which isn't to say she doesn't exalt in how it feels to be worshiped, of course. But she's trying not to let that color her judgment.
9331530 Thanks!
Though I hope it's not too endless.
9331821 That Luna gave Silhouette a new order that has a subjective aspect to it is no coincidence; she flat-out said that she's doing it because she wants to see if he's learned his lesson. That, and she's removed his status as a member of the Royal Guard, so he technically has no pretense of temporal authority to force Nosey to do anything. He's going to have to actually try and be nice, or at least that's Luna's thinking.
Of course, you have to wonder just how much Nosey is going to want anything to do with him after what just happened, but maybe that's part of the lesson also? She didn't tell him to apologize, but presumably some sort of show of contrition should be in the cards to convince Nosey to trust him...?
9331951 Reform has always been the pony way, rather than trying to make a perpetrator feel bad. For them, justice is quite clearly rehabilitative (and restorative) rather than punitive. That's clearly what Luna wants for Silhouette...that, and that he keeps worshiping her, and even helps her expand her religion.
9332011
I really don't think that the gods hate mortals. Likewise, the idea that mortals can become "god-like, but without the restriction of needing worshipers" is a very iffy proposition, simply because most editions of D&D (and Pathfinder) hold that gods are necessarily stronger than mortals of any caliber (particularly where there is a finite number of levels that can be gained and/or the gods are held to be beyond stats).
Well, presumably there's a difference between what she's doing here and when she became Nightmare Moon, wouldn't you say?
Given that he's getting in on the ground floor of Luna's religion, he presumably will have major advancement opportunities if he doesn't make another mistake. He's gotten off light this time, since his screw-up wasn't really that bad; whether or not he can make the most of it remains to be seen.
Luna invents separation of Church and State, but is also getting addicted to worship. Quite intriguing, almost makes me wish the story was headed back to Canterlot to follow her and Silhouette.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! I'd wager the exact opposite would have happened. Worship appears to function like an addictive substance to Luna, and addicts always gotta have more. How long before ancient Luna decided Celestia had to go so Luna gets all the worship?
9331873
9332175 I believe Kelemvor did restructure the punishment of all the mortals (including those in the wall) temporarily, only to choose to put them back for the reasons you described. He feared that good people would commit suicide en masse until evil ruled the world.
AO makes the rules on the fate of the dead, but it's also true the gods of good are not exactly begging him to change this. I think they see it as a necessary evil, that evil gods would have the advantage without a wall around to scare the masses into worshipping them, and then Bane and Shar etc. would take over. Let's not forget how Torm, noblest of the gods of good, devoured the souls of his most loyal followers in order to defeat Bane.
Personally I always liked how gods were explicitly dependent on their followers for power in later years of the FR universe, it made them far more interesting. It's rather how I also find Abadarcorp from Starfinder interesting.
9332923
Well, don't forget that there's a bit of drama unfolding back in Canterlot right now, with Cadance speaking to Fencer and company, and probably Ticket Stub and Coal Hopper too. That said, I'm glad you liked what's here! The state that Luna is in, with attempting to grow her nascent clergy, is certainly interesting to witness.
Here's something to consider: is the euphoria Luna feels from being worshiped purely psychological on her part, or is there an actual physiological component to it, since we know it's actually generating an energy within her? Remember, she compares it to eating the best food or having the best sex, neither of which is just a state of mind. It might very well be that what she's feeling is nothing less than the sensation of what it's like to slip the bonds of mortality and become something much greater.
Of course, it might not be. After all, we know that the reason Luna originally fell was because she wanted more appreciation than she was getting. So how she feels now that she's an object of worship might be because of that. At this point, it remains ambiguous. However, I'm not sure I'd characterize her enjoyment of something as an addiction; that would mean that she's engaging in a pleasurable stimulus (which technically she isn't, since other ponies are worshiping her of their own accord) despite adverse consequences (which, at this point, there don't seem to be; there aren't any direct detrimental effects to her well-being as a result of her being worshiped, and even the indirect consequences seem to be limited to an argument of "she's not disciplining Silhouette hard enough," which overlooks that she is discipling him - and flat-out stating that he shouldn't have done what he did - and that ponies don't really go for harsh punishments anyway). So I think it's a bit much to say that she's got a problem that she can't control. So really, is she wrong to say that she wouldn't have become Nightmare Moon if she'd been worshiped before?
He did briefly judge the False based on moral criteria, but I don't recall anything about him removing the Wall of the Faithless as part of that. To be fair, though, it's been a long time since I've read Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad, so it's possible that I'm forgetting something. What I mostly recall is that, in the process of undoing those changes, he made the Crystal Spire a somber topaz, and turned the gate to the city into a large mirror that reflected the personal flaws of anyone who looked in it. Even then, as noted, the changes he made weren't due to external pressures from the other gods (save for him being on trial for incompetence by way of humanity), but because he realized just how badly his good intentions were hurting the system.
Ao (the second letter isn't capitalized) probably wouldn't change them even if he was asked. The role of the gods is to carry out their part in the Balance that Ao maintains. which he does on behalf of the luminous entity/entities that he, in turn, answers to (fun fact: the description of that being as speaking in myriad voices all at once was meant to represent the multiplicity of Dungeon Masters running games in the Forgotten Realms). Hence, I suspect that the gods simply see it as, "this is the way it is, and it can't be changed." Especially since trying to change that (i.e. stealing the Tablets of Fate under the idea that it would let them undercut Ao) is what resulted in the Time of Troubles to begin with.
As for Torm, he asked his followers if he could use their souls as power, after telling them what would happen. Given that he's a god who lauds personal sacrifice for noble causes, that sort of informed consent is sort of part-and-parcel of how a good deity should conduct themselves. Calling it "devouring" with no other context doesn't really capture that.
I much prefer that interpretation myself, as it gives a good reason for why the gods are interested in the mortal world to begin with. Getting rid of that leaves that particular question dangling, and even if Planar Adventures did a decent job addressing that issue (and a few others), having the deities of the Pathfinder setting not rely on worshipers for power still leaves a bit of a hole in why they care, to my mind. Pharasma is going to dole out souls to various planes no matter what, buttressing those planes against the erosion from the Maelstrom, so the issue of using mortal worshipers to reinforce their local realms seems like it should be a minor issue for most deities.
9334072
Hmmm. Perhaps the results would be different if Celestia also had a church of her own. I always thought her underlying issues were about being too competitive with her sister more than anything. It wasn't that she was unappreciated, it was that she was appreciated less than Celestia, etc.
Right now Luna has these worshipers and Celestia chooses not to. But if Celestia ever changes her mind, a following much larger than Luna's would spring into being almost immediately. If that happened, would Luna still be content with Silhouette and a few others?
Was it just the False he changed the rules on? I thought he changed the rules for all the dead, which included the Faithless. I also remember little of it.
I never figured that out, good to know!
Fair point.
Yeah, that was kind of mean of me. I thought Torm sucking up the souls of his followers like a giant Kirby was just too funny not to picture.
There are a lot of ancillary roles Pathfinder has for deities, Pharasma being most famous. I referenced Abadarcorp because I'm intrigued by the idea of how a church with an active, present deity changes the nature of religion until it's a lot more like working for a company with a really powerful CEO. I mentioned to my friend that if you worship Abadar, when you die you probably get 1 week re-orientation and then a transfer to the petitioner branch of whatever department you worked in while you were alive.
On a related note, it always made me wonder how Mystra's strategy was supposed to work. She's the deity of magic, and her chosen spent a significant portion of the time warring against mages (Thayans and Zhentarim). A noble response to a bunch of evil wizards, but not the best plan to max out your wizard worshipers. I remember when the Chosen of Mystra found out that some Thayans were going around worshiping Shar and were all shocked about it, and I thought that was hilarious.
9331821 I forgot to mention this before, but Luna's equivalent of a rainbow would probably be a moonbow.