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Are there any accounts of other deities doing what Torm did during the ToT? It seems like if gods could gain power by absorbing the souls of their followers, it would be a lot more popular.

Or perhaps the amount of people needed too large to justify it in all but the most dire of cases? I imagine if the deity has a small group of worshipers, they'd run the risk of killing themselves because there wouldn't be enough mortals left alive to worship and sustain them.

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Or perhaps the amount of people needed too large to justify it in all but the most dire of cases? I imagine if the deity has a small group of worshipers, they'd run the risk of killing themselves because there wouldn't be enough mortals left alive to worship and sustain them.

Bingo. Torm genocided every single adult follower he had in the entire Forgotten Realms. That's not an act to be done lightly, nor one that would make you very popular to worship in the first place. Not to mention it's probably a short lived power boost and suddenly you got no followers left. Not much of a god anymore. Dropping deific ranks strips you of power fast. The toT was probably an EXTREME exception due to the circumstances.

There is one other situation in the Forgotten Realms where a deity causes the wholesale death of their followers. The lore seems to show AO having a bit of aa soft spot for Shaundakul: He was given the portfolio of portals and allowed to remai na god after he got sucked thorugh by the same rift that bright Calim and Memnon to the Forgotten Realms. He was always a smaller deity but eventually accrued a base of followers and became an Intermediate Deity.

Shaundakul became enamored with the Elven city of Myth Drannor, and had his largest temple in Faerun based there, called Shaundakul's Throne. It was also a well known fact that he liked to manifest personally there to lounge about on his throne and speak to people, one of the very few deities who did so. When Myth Drannor fell, he was so distraught at the idea of this happening to 'his' city that he sent out a distressed call to every single worshipper he had, asking them to come to Myth Drannor ASAP, even Wind Walking most of them so they could get there on time.

They came.

It was disastrous. They were slain almost to the man. Exactly 6 clerics escaped, and that was everyone left on Faerun who worshipped Shaundakul. AO took pity on hi trying to defend someone he loved so much, including his worshippers, and let him remain a quasi-power.

He spent the entire Time of Troubles after that worshipper debacle wandering the ruins of Myth Drannor, killing demons, slaying a few Orc gods, and generally trying to keep the place safe. Indirectly he helps Gruumsh take over the Orc pantheon by killing some others.

After the ToT, Shaundakul slowly builds up a base of followers again. There's some stuff I don't recall atm, but basically he wrestles with Waukeen and one other for worshippers and Waukeen's release from prison causes him to take a dip for awhile. Eventually he becomes a lesser power again and never rises above that. He remains in Myth Drannor unitl he's rescued and his avatar personally wanders the ruins, leading his Knights of the Shadowy Sword via his avatar, and using Shaundakul's Throne as a base to organize from. There's nothing for him after Myth Drannor is rescued/restored (and remember, in our timeline it isn't yet!), but I see no reason why he wouldn't remain there and do his thing until the Spellplague. He's not listed in 4e deities to my knowledge, so I assume he dies.

Source: A bunch of 2e stuff that I only have saved in a notepad.

TormakSaber wrote:

Bingo. Torm genocided every single adult follower he had in the entire Forgotten Realms. That's not an act to be done lightly, nor one that would make you very popular to worship in the first place. Not to mention it's probably a short lived power boost and suddenly you got no followers left. Not much of a god anymore. Dropping deific ranks strips you of power fast. The toT was probably an EXTREME exception due to the circumstances.

Every single adult in the forgotten realms universe?

In faiths and pantheons it says "in Tantras", granted this could be just the way i've read this.

I'm understanding at the time Tantras was the centre of the church of Torm, but if it was every adult in the FR universe wouldn't all the children be of the Martyrs’ Progeny?

EDIT:- Also the sacrifice was volountary by his worshipers

I haven't read those books in... well, a long, long time. But, didn't either Myrkul or Bhaal do the same thing, in that same book series? Suck all the juice out of a bunch of his own followers, in order to awesome himself up a bunch?

What books are those?

The Avatar Trilogy, the books that TSR put out in conjunction with the update from 1st Edition to 2nd.

Edit: to mention that they were pretty crap books, too, btw. I read them on a recommendation from a friend, whose subsequent recommendations went wholly ignored by me.

CelestialDante wrote:

TormakSaber wrote:

Bingo. Torm genocided every single adult follower he had in the entire Forgotten Realms. That's not an act to be done lightly, nor one that would make you very popular to worship in the first place. Not to mention it's probably a short lived power boost and suddenly you got no followers left. Not much of a god anymore. Dropping deific ranks strips you of power fast. The toT was probably an EXTREME exception due to the circumstances.

Every single adult in the forgotten realms universe?

In faiths and pantheons it says "in Tantras", granted this could be just the way i've read this.

I'm understanding at the time Tantras was the centre of the church of Torm, but if it was every adult in the FR universe wouldn't all the children be of the Martyrs’ Progeny?

EDIT:- Also the sacrifice was volountary by his worshipers

Adult follower of torm. Was it just Tantras? I was under the impression he basically had every follower he had GO to Tantras so it's a minor detail. I might be wrong; I haven't read the books. There are quite a few Martyr's Progeny though.

Regardless, the rest of my post is spot on IMO. Voluntary sacrifice or not, you don't make a habit of destroying a MASSIVE portion of your worshipping base for a power surge. That's BAD.

In order to gain the power necessary to destroy Bane’s avatar during the time of troubles, Torm absorbed the souls of all his worshipers in Tantras. The voluntary soul-transference killed the mortals, ending thousands of lives in a matter of moments. As the city had been for centuries the center of his religion, with members of the faithful flocking to it since word spread of his arrival early in the Avatar Crisis, entire neighborhoods were left barren of life. Even though Torm required every ounce of devotional power to destroy his enemy, he could not bring himself to ask children to sacrifice themselves, especially as he knew many of them couldn’t understand the importance of what was happening. He assured their faithful parents that the children would be cared for, and to this day those children, ranging in age from 14 to 28, are known as the Martyrs’ Progeny. Many have gone on to enter Torm’s clergy, and some have even exhibited strange powers related to bravery and strength in the years since their parents heeded Torm’s desperate call. -Faiths and Pantheons, WoTC, 3.5e, 1st Printing, May 2002

I don't think it was meant as an argumentative post only a clarification of what happened, but the above is the excerpt taken from the F&P 3.5e. There's also another part that gives the impression it supposedly left on the populace of Faerun:

Torm battled Bane in the harbor of the city of Tantras during the Time of Troubles, destroying the Black Lord in personal combat (he too died in the conflict, but was later returned to life by Ao). As such, he became a hero to good-hearted people throughout the continent, a savior, who in slaying Bane, delivered Faerün from the machinations of the deity of strife and tyranny. Torm’s destruction of Bane broke the back of Zhentil Keep by eradicating that nation’s divine support, allowing the Dalesfolk, for a short while, to breathe a sigh of relief. In nations across the continent, Torm became a symbol of heroism and bravery, the ideal knight serving his followers with a transforming act of self-sacrifice appreciated even by the Great Ao himself. This adoration extended to Torm’s church, which experienced a renaissance and philosophical blooming as its numbers swelled and new thinkers and adherents joined the congregation. In the fourteen years following that time clerics of Torm have enjoyed popularity unparalleled in Faerün.

Given this part is not accurate to Amia: In the fourteen years following that time clerics of Torm have enjoyed popularity unparalleled in Faerün. But that I think is due to Amia's uniqueness in the world of Toril, being part of, but created by the community that plays the Games, in essence a "homebrew" with Faerunian Lore.

I never said it wasn't true. you're misconstruing my word. If Torm started making a habit of once a year offing all the adults on a city, I bet people abandon him pretty quick .That's why it's not done.

From what I understand during the Time of Troubles the strength of a deity wasn't related directly to the number of followers as it was one of the consequences of the period to institute that.

Oh yeah and I think it was Bane who choose to absorb all of Bhaal's followers and killed off all his assassins to boost his strength ahead of fighting Torm. Ps I heard some story as to that being the reason the base assassin class vanished in 3'd edition.

Edit: I actually liked one of the later Avatar books, mostly because Cyric was just so awesome.

Maias227 wrote:

mostly because Cyric was just so awesome.

If Cyric is so awesome, why doesn't he give Karleron that rapier he so desires? Zenith's irrefutable case from their last discussion still stands!

Because just giving it would be too easy and straight forward.. Karleron expects Zenith will give up the rapier of her own accord rather than face the full cruel might of Cyric, or perhaps even convert to the pious cyricist path!

@ response: Thanks, that pretty much confirmed my hypothesis. It's easy to understand why gods don't do it now, especially given that they are reliant on mortal worshipers to survive in the wake of the ToT. But the unpopularity of it explains why they may not have done it much before as well.

Sidenote: I just had a brain blast. "Ao." A and O. In Greek, Alpha and Omega. A reference to the Biblical "I am the Alpha and the Omega"? Sorry if that was obvious to anyone else, it just dawned on me when I saw Tormak capitalize the name.

Possibly. I've also sen tenuous connections drawn between the fact that there's two letters in AO, and "Ed" (as in Ed Greenwood) and 2 letters in AO and "DM".

Yours is probably the better (and more thematic) guess though. Apparently in a novel there's some entity that even AO answers to above him.

I'm pretty sure AO answers to the supreme being known as WoTC. That's how crappy lore changes in the Gods can happen as fast as it did and the spellplague he allowed in the 3.5 to 4.0 switch of things.

This is your only warning about spamming the Lore forums...

It's been pretty commonly speculated that the entity Ao discusses with (in the novel Waterdeep?) is "the DM" and probably anyway just the author's (Troy Denning is not an FR regular, if that's who wrote it) own idea, a clumsy literary device. I wouldn't make too much of it, besides a vague "who knows what's out there" suggestion. Could've been an Overgod of another cosmos, who knows. (I haven't read the book in question, only some excerpt years ago, so I don't know if the phrasing allows for that interpretation.)

Not that it's very relevant to this topic, I guess. Tormak and Maias pretty much answered everything already.

Torm and the ToT

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