ually worships Denier would give thanks to Sune after a
successful coming-out party for her son. Even priests of
particular gods acknowledge the roles that other deities
play in the world and in their lives.
In general, worshipers view their relationships with
the gods as practical and reciprocal: they pray and make
offerings because that is how one invites the blessings
of the gods and turns away their wrath. These prayers
and other acts of devotion are generally performed qui-
etly at the shrine in one's household or community, or
occasionally in a temple dedicated to one's deity, when
a worshiper feels the need to "come knocking upon a
god's door" to ask for attention.
Forms of worship are often acts of veneration: giving
thanks for favor shown, making requests for future
blessings, and offering praise for the deity's interces-
sions, large and small. Because most folk in FaerO.n
don't want to attract the ire of the cruel or savage gods,
beseeching them to keep the peace is also an act of
worship. A hunter or a farmer might make offerings to
Malar in hopes of keeping predators at bay, and a sailor
might pray to Umberlee that she withhold her wrath for
the duration of a voyage.
NEW AND FOREIGN Goos
The FaerO.nian pantheon isn't the only one known on
Tori!. Nonhuman races honor their own gods, for exam-
ple, and people in faraway lands are known to worship
altogether different gods. Occasionally, foreigners bring
the wors hip of these gods to FaerO.n. In addition, on
rare occasions a new god comes into being, perhaps a
mortal elevated to godhood or a deity whose arrival was
foretold by prophets and leaders of new religions. In
cosmopolita n places such as Waterdeep and Calimshan,
small shrines and temples to strange gods spring up
from time to time.
The burgeoning worship of a new deity is rarely a con-
cern to th e other gods of the FaerO.nian pantheon, and
the people who revere those deities, except when the
newcomer 's a rea of concern directly competes with that
of an established deity. The methods of resolving such
conflicts range from friendly dueling festivals or rites
meant to emphasize the glory of one god over another, to
campaigns of outright religious bloodshed.
Over generations, a new god might become a set-
tled-in membe r of the pantheon. Indeed, some scholars
pos it that FaerO.n has many "immigrant" gods, who
joined the pantheon's ranks so long ago that their for-
e ign origins are lost in antiquity.
DEAD AND RESURRECTED Goos
Over and over, mourning bells have tolled for some
of the deities of the Realms. Gods were struck down
during the Time of Troubles, when the Spellplague
wrought its destruction, and most recently when Neth-
eril fell. Some deities have even been s lain by mortals
wielding impossibly powerful magic.
\ hen a god withdraws from a pantheon, divine magic
to ps flowing to the faithful, and miracles and omens
a ociated with that god cease, that deity's priesthood
lo es faith, and holy sites are abandoned or taken over
by other faiths. To the deity's worshipers in the world,
CHAPTER l I WELCOME TO THE REALMSit is immaterial whether the god is truly dead or merely
dormant-the consequences for them are the same
e ither way. Yet, as recent events have borne out, a god
who is gone might not remain absent forever. More than
a few supposedly dead gods have returned and amassed
a new body of worshipers. Indeed, the legends of some
gods speak of a cycle of death and resurrection.
As the Sage of Shadowdale once noted, "If the gods
can grant the power to raise mortals from death, why do
ye assume they should be laid low by it forever?"THE AFTERLIFE
Most humans believe the souls of the recently deceased
are spirited away to the Fugue Plane, where they wan-
der the great City of Judgment, often unaware they are
dead. The servants of the gods come to collect such
souls and, if they are worthy, they are taken to their
awaited afterlife in the deity's domain. Occasionally, the
faithful are sent back to be reborn into the world to fin-
ish work that was left undone.
Souls that are unclaimed by the servants of the gods
are judged by Kelemvor, who decides the fate of each
one. Some are charged with serving as guides for other
lost souls, while others are transformed into squirming
larvae and cast into the dust. The truly false and faith-
less are mortared into the Wall of the Faithless, the
great barrier that bounds the City of the Dead, where
their souls s lowly dissolve and begin to become part of
the stuff of the Wall itself.RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
Those who serve as priests of a god aren't necessarily
clerics. Indeed, the power invested in clerics and other
divine spellcasters by the gods is given out only rarely
(see "Divine Magic" below). The work of a priest is to
serve one's deity and that deity's faithful, a task that
doesn't necessarily require the use of magic.
The kind of person attracted to a deity's priesthood
depends on the tenets of that god: the cunning rogues
who venerate Mask have little in common with the up-
right law-keepers of Tyr, and the delightful revelers who
revere Lliira are different from both.TEMPLES AND SHRINES
The core religious institutions of FaerO.n are temples
and shrines. Whether a small, out-of-the-way building,
or a complex made up of multiple structures and tracts
of land, each temple operates according to the traditions
of its faith, although powerful or charismatic figures
who rise to prominence within the temple hierarchy
might motivate or inspire changes to those traditions.
Temples in FaerO.n don't have regular services as
such. Group observances in a temple occur only at spe-
cific festival times, and priests a lso go out into the com-
munity to perform rites such as marriages and funerals.
Temples are places where worshipers go either to spend
personal or family time in a space consecrated to a deity
or to seek the aid of the priests for some reason.
Small shrines and private chapels , as distinct from
full-fledged temples, are common throughout FaerO.n,
particularly in areas where a temple doesn't exist.