AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Cleric (and Paladin) Backgrounds: The Call

Now, there's definitly a difference between being a devoted/pious lay follower of a god and being a cleric of a god. As I see it, a lay follower might be devoted or pious, but has not committed their entire being to serving said god - while clerics have. Likewise, a fighter might be a LG crusader but that doesn't make him/her a paladin. It's often mentioned that the difference between both cases is that the specific character answered a "call".

So the question for cleric and paladin players is this: when or how did your character feel "the call" to serve their respective deities? What influence has this on the character? Or alternatively, why does your cleric/paladin serve their particular god, exactly?

Does this also apply to Druids?

*Holds cynical evil comments*

Druids not so much. As I understand it, they tend to "follow" a nature deity but don't directly serve this deity - as they are focused on the living world around them, rather than the spiritual meaning of a particular dogma.

Call? What call!? I only took the Paladin class to PvP evil players like the true bastard I really am for playing a powerbuilt Paladin.

How exactly are we defining a "call"?

1) "Oh, I think I'll be a Cleric"

or

2) "Moses! Write this down and don't worry about not knowing how to swim."

In any case, wouldn't any diety capable of affecting its worshipers be capable of calling? Thus, Druids can absolutely be called to the service of even the most aloof power.

Elorathall wrote:

So the question for cleric and paladin players is this: when or how did your character feel "the call" to serve their respective deities? What influence has this on the character? Or alternatively, why does your cleric/paladin serve their particular god, exactly?

Zammikyra's history and relationship with her divine service pre-Amia is kinda extensive. I wrote the whole saga down as a final project for a fiction class I took a few years ago, which was mainly just sprucing the request for her I made back like in high school.

TL;DR: Angel-blooded teen loses parents, contritely decides to become priestess, has falling out with misogynist clergy, has falling out with deity, goes on awesome Batman adventures, settles down, regains faith, regains powers, and decides Westward Ho! because Torm is all she knows in an otherwise terrifying existence as a natural-born killer of evil.

She was one of the Martyr's Progeny, so she probably started feeling "the call" soon after the Time of Troubles in her early teens, or maybe a few years earlier when she sang in a childrens' choir in Procampur. Her father's blood and mother's history with the Tormite clergy also had a significant part in it. While she was kind of rebellious in the year after losing her mother to Torm, she eventually came to understand why such had to happen and began to accept that it was part of her destiny. Or at least something that her mother thought was in her destiny, with her parentage. So until age 16, she was quite set on becoming a priestess and pursued religious studies, well, religiously. In doing so she discovered very rudimentary divine powers something like a Favored Soul and her divine gift of oracle; these only spurred her on in her calling. In the aftermath of her first Investiture and Holy Vigil, she was actually chased away from the chapel in Raven's Bluff, because the head monk disproved of a priest being so young--especially as a female. She had passed the Holy Vigil, but the monk convinced others that she had somehow used her abilities to trick them into merely thinking she passed.

She kept her faith in the calling until maybe a few months after when she was severely injured while aiding a family out of a burning house. Her wings, only vestigial at the time, were horribly broken and burned off. She felt like Torm, through perhaps not protecting her, had allowed the only trace she had left of her father--or either parent--to be erased. She felt like it was also a sign that He had disowned her, just like her chapel in Raven's Bluff did. She lost her Faith, and swore it off for some time and had several adventures as a "normal" person. One day I'll get around to collecting them from various thumb drives and old laptops and transfer them to PC stories.

Anyway, she continued on this way until she eventually came to Daggerdale at age 23. After a series of events that reminded her that innocents deserved to be protected--no matter the personal cost--she began to minister to laypeople in Daggerdale. This continued for a year or so until the True Resurrection of the following year, the Tormite holy day in which faithful are given visions and sometimes gifted with a single spell casting. For her, it was a vision of Torm riding on a golden wyrm, overhead, and westward across the Trackless Sea. She interpreted this as Torm calling her to go Westward, though why, she did not know. She was gifted with a casting of Regeneration which restored her wings and her gift of oracular sight returned. Over the next few months she traveled westward, eventually coming to Amia when she could go no further west, which is where her journey began on this server.

If you were to actually ask her about "the call," she would probably tell you something about a mixture of fate and being born to do something, rather than a choice. She serves Torm essentially because he called her to do so and because every fiber in her being seems predisposed to follow, even in the midst of some of her latent second thoughts. Her abilities and her gifts steer her heavily towards focusing on the destruction of evil, rather than the creation of good, and this troubles her some of the time. She has respect for the Triad and Selune, but knows at the end of the day, Torm is the one she answers to and who has guided her since she lost everyone else. Her calling is kind of a dour acceptance; even though she outright delights in destroying evil when in the moment, she realizes that she was almost certainly predetermined to be what she is through a combination of genetics, raising, and divine guidance. She would give her life for her cause and accepts that she is a single piece in a huge chess match against evil. She knows that the sacrifice of a normal life--and her actual life--is for the greater good... but sometimes she still wonders whatever happened to the girl who used to sing in the chapel choir, just to see her mother smile.

I don't think clerics and paladins are categorically "called" to do anything. Many might explain it like that, but the original reasons may have been quite banal.

For Joon, it was natural. There was no divine call, no existential experience that shook his core. As a child, he was interested in stories and songs. His father was an accountant (I think - I may have forgotten), so the value of literacy was recognized in the house and at 7 he was sent to apprentice at a scriptorium. He had a knack for reading and copying texts, but not for the maths required of an accountant. It seemed natural, after concluding his apprenticeship somewhere around 14, to apply as a convert in the church of Oghma. A promising, comfortable career doing what he loved.

I don't think Joon has ever had a transforming conversion experience. His faith is not based on epiphany, on some encounter of the human and the divine, not on a sudden urge to abandon his past and embrace a new life. He is a traditionalist who grew into his religion. For a real-world comparison, American-styled born-again Protestantism would be foreign to him. I would rather compare him to someone born in a Catholic country to a Catholic family, where religion was a no-brainer, and then guided by personal interests and life events to choose the religious order most suited for him. (Picking between the revered gods of a local pantheon is, to me, much like choosing which monastic or mendicant order a Catholic might want to join.)

That's not to say he does not feel a calling for his work; he believes he's doing what he is supposed to, and by now would continue to do it even if it was difficult and thankless. But that's part of his personal growth; if he was told at 14 that he'd have to go into exile, struggle for his church in strange lands, suffer losses and loneliness, and never make a single convert, he probably would have passed. The call, if there must be one, was his process of growing into his faith and role.

IronAngel wrote:

For Joon, it was natural.

That would sum it up for Daegan as well.

I do not think you can "express the Call" by words, no matter how fancy they are or how long text you produce.

If you take an example from the real world - you have many "so called" believers who claim themselves to be pious and devouted and only abusing everything in the name of their God.

And there are some who just live by the code, or the dogma, because it's natural for them. Unfortunately, the real believers are often unnoticed and overlooked and the crywhores are reaping the undeserved attention.

I don't think it's an issue of sincerity so much as it is a difference of experience. I mean, I know what you're talking about, but it does not necessarily overlap with the distinction between those who naturally grow into their faith and those who experience a drastic conversion. They are perhaps the two primary models of a religious life. There are people, in the real world as well as the Realms, who could answer a question like "when did you become an Oghmanyte/Christian/Atheist/Helmite" with an exact date and a juicy anecdote with arguments to back it up. And there are those who would not really even understand the question; they've always been what they are, you don't just "become" something like that. It's not as if one is more genuine or outspoken than the other (though you could trace certain typical characteristics), it's just that the people have different psychological experiences and cultural frameworks to articulate them. In some old Eastern Orthodox village, no one would think to ask "have you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior", whereas in some American Protestant circles the discourse is taken for granted. The same with Realms religions, surely. In the latter paradigm, it is easier to define when and what kind of a "Call" your character experienced. Both can make for great characters, of course.

Elorathall wrote:

Druids not so much. As I understand it, they tend to "follow" a nature deity but don't directly serve this deity - as they are focused on the living world around them, rather than the spiritual meaning of a particular dogma.

The Urban Druid I played, Diane Arbor, most definitely felt a call and was dedicated to a specific deity. I think she made other druids I roleplayed with a little uncomfortable (or confused) when she referred to Janneth as a dear friend, a mother, her savior in a dark time. Janneth being a very archaic name for Chauntea. She actually referred to her as Mother Janneth often. I always wondered if someone would ask, "Why do you call her that?" or "Where did you learn that name?" My OOC intent was to suggest that a modern day woman who is ignorant and uneducated (and mostly illiterate) could not possibly know that name unless she had had some kind of divine influence directly from Chauntea.

Which is true. This urban druid's calling came when she lost her two sons. While her husband fought in the Horde War as a young soldier, she was tasked with taking care of the boys. They each became very ill (they lived in the slums of South Cordor) and both of them died. Upon returning home, the husband was distraught as she was; he tried to hide it for a long time, but eventually blamed her for being an incompetent caretaker and a horrible homemaker and that it was something about her poor South Cordor girl upbringing that caused her to have no idea how to keep a clean and sanitary household, so he abandoned her. It was in her grief over the loss of her sons that she threw herself into her old hobby of gardening. During this time I fancied that she probably received some attention from an older priestess of Chauntea, a real mother of the earth type, and between that meeting and her troubled dreams afterwards over the loss of her children, a kind of grief-madness had her develop the notion that she had spoken to "Mother Janneth" or Chauntea herself. Trick is that no one could confirm or deny who it was that introduced her to the faith, but she believes it was Chauntea herself in a Mother Earth form. Even before the tragedy, Diane suffered tragic low self-esteem and a terribly short temper; the belief that something great happened in her life like being visited by the Goddess helps her to deal with the crushing weight of maybe having been a horrible caretaker for her own young children and to be inspired to being a better caretaker for all living creatures.

For Richard, Kelemvorism, and the EO especially, was a lifestyle he opted for that quenched many of his humane thirsts; his insecurities were rearticulated with poise, his everyday life was granted a point-blank direction. He had gravitas and felt capable, he believed in the fairness of Kelemvor and he felt like a part of something complete and meaningful. Only later on did his fall from grace (read: rebuild) solidify his faith. He doubted his origin, he felt like he needed to rewind to the reasons of his faith, and he arrived at a simple conclusion he had never doubted in the first place; he has grown tired of sentimentality, grasping at straws trying to make sense of emotion and nuance, always feeling powerless before his own humanity. Kelemvor offers him an objective outlook on life, a life of simplicity without abstinence from power and the desire towards the amendment of life, or death at the very least. He doesn't think Kelemvor would ever actually give a shit about why he does or doesn't have faith in Kelemvor, Kelemvor is only interested in his unquestioning loyalty in order to extend his divine will in mortal life, rendering Richard's love towards the Judge of the Damned unrequited and fundamentally bilaterally self-important. His spiritual feedback is his own faith and philosophy behind his worship; Kelemvor granting him spells in order to help him pursue his godly work a validation thereof.

My other character, Reuben, is a sad, mean old drunk. He was raised and fostered in the rat race of the City, living a life without scruples to survive and provide for his family. His blindness and ineptitude to narrate his own life eventually led to the death of his family, for which he can ultimately blame solely himself. The core of his faith is being privy to this. He doesn't understand why he had to be born into a life of poverty and misfortune, where humanity reveals its most hideous nature, when the empty belly aches for substance at the cost of the substance of moral strength and rationale. Where help doesn't reach the people who reach out. His relationship with Beshaba is, at its core, begging the question; a way to shift the guilt of his own actions with fatalistic surrender. Bad things happen because life is shit and then you die, because ultimately our fates are dictated by the spinning wheel of everything we cannot even begin to fathom, because Beshaba is a whore and wants bad things to happen to people for no logical reason; to him, Beshaba embodies the grievance of the world in which he finds a loophole to shirk his responsibility and to escape the reality of the causation of deliberate action. Worse still, he has succumbed to an uncurable delirium; his mind has rotten from alcohol and drug abuse to the point he can't discern reality, living in constant fear that Beshaba will punish him for his disobedience in reinforcing the sporadic injustice of life. Unlike in the fairytales, his struggles have failed to ennoble him by the passage of time, instead stymieing all he ever aspired to. Beshaba is the channel for grappling with his disappointment and existential nihilism in the most unhealthy, self-absorbed way possible. This expands his alcoholism into an allegory of his faith, both of which explicate a great deal of his personality.

Maral was the first cleric I'd ever played, and she is drow. I think you could consider her manifestation as "a call"; since she was raised by parents that tried to keep her out of the underdark but eventually had to send her back. When her parents were killed she was so angry, and she was staunchly entrenched within lolthite society; that is when her powers truly manifested. The details are something I rather gloss over since this happened pre-Amia, but I think it is completely plausible that a deity like Lolth would relish the opportunity to ensnare a drow that had conceitedly considered itself (or been considered) "beyond her reach". Also, that said cleric could suddenly manifest this power to shackle her into service, whereas most clerics study for years in order to do so.

Her transition to Eilistraee can also be considered "a call". At the time she had turned her back on Lolth and "fallen". She despised Eilistraee, and everything those of the Shrine tried to teach her. Then another PC killed Maral's infant daughter, and with the help of two other priestesses Eilistraee answered her plea to resurrect the child. While the DM may not have intended it as such, Maral always saw that as Eilistraee's claiming of her, and her service; as well as feeling she owes the service in exchange for her daughter's life. The situation created a holy warrior with a fervor much akin to any paladin.

Araelin was definitely divinely called to be a paladin. Her faith and spirituality, backed by her religious upbringing, helped her come to realize that she had a vocation to become a paladin and so she sought out her training as an adolescent. She was determined to follow her call to wherever it led her, and it led her to die as a slave of a Drow house.

One thing I don't often see players of religious characters do in RP-enforced games is play their character with any sense of a vocation driving their careers. At least as far as LG religious go (since 100% of paladins in good standing are LG in FR), it's highly unlikely and unrealistic that some character would look through the list of LG gods like a phone book, find one with a portfolio that suited him or her, and then start praying away, counting on that god to provide divine power just because the character prayed.

That's actually possible. Recall, the gods are a real part of FR, with palpable interactions and a verifiable presence, even if the total scope of that presence is often beyond full understanding for mortals. While it might not be as leisurely as looking through a phone book as you say, it wouldn't be beyond a character to go to a local shrine or library or what have you and plainly just ask about specific gods. And get fairly accurate information back, mind you.

If someone felt a calling, an urge to do something bigger and be part of an effort greater than themselves, being a divine servant might be a very viable avenue. And as most people in FR are by and large polytheistic, researching a few key gods before you dedicate yourself to service through and to a particular one would be expected. Maybe spend some time with the clergy and see which one felt right. So yeah, while it certainly isn't a choice to be taken too lightly, it isn't something completely mystical and removed from rational lines of thought. I imagine it could be much like the process of joining a monastery in real life. You feel some inkling of a calling, some need to devote your life to a cause, and you research it. Most monasteries have a time where would-be brothers kinda have a trial run and see if that sort of life is for them. No commitments, just a trial. If it doesn't work out for them, they go back to their regular life in the secular world. Or they try again at another monastery and see if their particular flavor of worship works for them. And if it does, they make the commitment.

If all of this can go on in both Western and Eastern religions, where divine feedback is limited to the subjective, I have no doubt that the same could happen in FR, where you can figuratively--heck, maybe even literally--have a god tap you on the shoulder and go "I think you've got what it takes; let's do this thing."

Cleric (and Paladin) Backgrounds: The Call

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