Evil Shrines Baldurs Gate

[7threalm]

so if a good city was added like Elturel, there wouldn't be a need to impose "a lore breaking - Rule"

waterdeep

In addition to the temples, shrines to Chauntea, Lliira, Sharess, and Siamorphe (the last two were local divinities) could be found here. Additionally, there were secret temples and hidden shrines to most of the dark gods, often hidden away beneath the streets of the city. These included churches of Cyric, Talona, Umberlee, Shar, Auril, and a wide variety of the Beast Cults, including the Cult of the Dragon. In the years immediately following the Time of Troubles, Waterdeep had an active Cult of Ao; however, this later diminished almost to nonexistence.[citation needed]

amn

Religion
There was no state religion in Amn. Any religious practice was tolerated provided it did not interfere with the Council of Six (the government). All religions were represented in Amn, and religious freedom was important to its inhabitants.[18] Some deities were more favoured than others due to their portfolios in relation to the day-to-day affairs of the people.

[Ariella]

Hey if Elturel was added 90% of my characters would move out of BG, Have it as neutral as you like. Now i would still rp in BG and still try and do good, Because conflict rp is good fun, But like all types of rp it can't be 100% of the time. There still has to be that place where you have the majority influence that you can retreat to and revolve around, When your tired of the constant conflict. Or to lick your wounds after a loss.

In addition to the temples, shrines to Chauntea, Lliira, Sharess, and Siamorphe (the last two were local divinities) could be found here. Additionally, there were secret temples and hidden shrines to most of the dark gods, often hidden away beneath the streets of the city. These included churches of Cyric, Talona, Umberlee, Shar, Auril, and a wide variety of the Beast Cults, including the Cult of the Dragon. In the years immediately following the Time of Troubles, Waterdeep had an active Cult of Ao; however, this later diminished almost to nonexistence.[citation needed]

BG does have hidden evil shrines.

amn

Religion
There was no state religion in Amn. Any religious practice was tolerated provided it did not interfere with the Council of Six (the government). All religions were represented in Amn, and religious freedom was important to its inhabitants.[18] Some deities were more favoured than others due to their portfolios in relation to the day-to-day affairs of the people.

Amn is already in game perfect place to set up an evil temple.

[thids]

Not all evil deities are banned, there is a list of those which are: "Bane, Bhaal, Loviatar, Malar, Myrkul, Shar and Talos."

Now, from what I heard (and take this with a pinch of salt, because it's just a hearsay from a time long past), it was introduced waaaaaaaaaaaay back because some evil characters, worshipers of those specific evil deities, ran around and murdered defenseless "afk" NPC's and guards in the name of X god. Apparently that was possible back then. So to curb that behavior, the DM team at the time introduced a whole set of religious bans to the cities laws, instead of finding a different solution.

[Blackman D]

Umberlee is the major temple of the city.

not exactly a good argument for the point, BG is a port city and they know better than to -not- have a temple to the goddess that controls the sea

it is there to help ensure safe(r) travel on the seas

[NeonAvenger]

I'll be honest... I wasn't looking for an answer to the original question I just could have sworn that I had read somewhere that the Temple of Gond was the largest church in Baldur's Gate so I went to check.

The only thing I could find in my books was in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (revised, 1993) which I think is the current source book since it covers up to 1368 has the following in the section on Baldur's Gate:

The city of Baldur’s Gate has three major temples. The High House of Wonders is dedicated to Gond and presided over by High Artificer Thalamond Albaier (N hm P17) and 21 subordinate priests. The Lady’s Hall is the local temple of Tymora and is controlled by Chanthalas Ulbright (CG hm P15) and 24 serving priests. The Water-Queen’s House, one of the few true temples to Umberlee, is presided over by Storm-Priestess Janatha Mistmyr(NE hf P16) and eight rabid clerical followers. Only the tolerance and open spirit of Baldur’s Gate allows its existence. The city also contains shrines to Helm, Ilmater, Lathander, Oghma and Lliira (formerly Waukeen).

[Kiran]

As with anything, don't worry about the OOC of it, try and make something occur ic. gather a group and go around demanding your temple, create some RP from it.

Can't remember what god it was recently but we had a bunch of fanatics looking for some master guy not so long back, started with one guy and his banner and people mostly mocking him... in the end it was one guy, with his banner, and 10 or so followers.. it got a bit more scary to mock him then.

[Rhifox]

Yes, everyone knows that it's not the case in lore. Just like the Zhentarim being banned wasn't, Beregost being owned by Amn isn't, and a million other custom changes to the setting on this server to take into effect the local RP. The canon is all completely and utterly irrelevant to the actual state of affairs on this server. There is no such thing as a 100% canon-faithful server or pnp group because DMs will ALWAYS alter the setting to fit the stories they are telling in it. These laws are one of the alterations. The laws exist in-character, and if you don't like them, work to get them removed in-character. An OOC forum thread isn't the place to do it.

And this is coming from someone who plays a character that has regularly complained about those laws and even taken occasional action to try and change them. Walks around in the city with tokens honoring a few of those banned gods anyway, even. It is something to build RP off of.

[Moltrazahn]

Yes, everyone knows that it's not the case in lore. Just like the Zhentarim being banned wasn't, Beregost being owned by Amn isn't, and a million other custom changes to the setting on this server to take into effect the local RP. The canon is all completely and utterly irrelevant to the actual state of affairs on this server. There is no such thing as a 100% canon-faithful server or pnp group because DMs will ALWAYS alter the setting to fit the stories they are telling in it. These laws are one of the alterations. The laws exist in-character, and if you don't like them, work to get them removed in-character. An OOC forum thread isn't the place to do it.

And this is coming from someone who plays a character that has regularly complained about those laws and even taken occasional action to try and change them. Walks around in the city with tokens honoring a few of those banned gods anyway, even. It is something to build RP off of.

Amen to the truth!

Custom setting based on the lore. But our timeline is our own dimension all together. And that is alright ^^.

Praise raptor Jesus

[kleomenes]

I'll be honest... I wasn't looking for an answer to the original question I just could have sworn that I had read somewhere that the Temple of Gond was the largest church in Baldur's Gate so I went to check.

The only thing I could find in my books was in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (revised, 1993) which I think is the current source book since it covers up to 1368 has the following in the section on Baldur's Gate:

The city of Baldur’s Gate has three major temples. The High House of Wonders is dedicated to Gond and presided over by High Artificer Thalamond Albaier (N hm P17) and 21 subordinate priests. The Lady’s Hall is the local temple of Tymora and is controlled by Chanthalas Ulbright (CG hm P15) and 24 serving priests. The Water-Queen’s House, one of the few true temples to Umberlee, is presided over by Storm-Priestess Janatha Mistmyr(NE hf P16) and eight rabid clerical followers. Only the tolerance and open spirit of Baldur’s Gate allows its existence. The city also contains shrines to Helm, Ilmater, Lathander, Oghma and Lliira (formerly Waukeen).

Forgotten Realms Adventures is probably a bit closer as its covering the transition between First and Second edition through the time of troubles. It pretty much echoes this as Umberlee's temple as the smallest of the big temples, and I believe points out that attendance by the populace is uncommon.

What it is, of course, is one of Umberlee's largest temples.

Server wise Carski did a lot of religious RP and I think that was rewarded by working Umberlee more into city life.

[kleomenes]

Yes, everyone knows that it's not the case in lore. Just like the Zhentarim being banned wasn't, Beregost being owned by Amn isn't, and a million other custom changes to the setting on this server to take into effect the local RP. The canon is all completely and utterly irrelevant to the actual state of affairs on this server. There is no such thing as a 100% canon-faithful server or pnp group because DMs will ALWAYS alter the setting to fit the stories they are telling in it. These laws are one of the alterations. The laws exist in-character, and if you don't like them, work to get them removed in-character. An OOC forum thread isn't the place to do it.

And this is coming from someone who plays a character that has regularly complained about those laws and even taken occasional action to try and change them. Walks around in the city with tokens honoring a few of those banned gods anyway, even. It is something to build RP off of.

Amen to the truth!

Custom setting based on the lore. But our timeline is our own dimension all together. And that is alright ^^.

Praise raptor Jesus

Definitely!

I think the long standing prominence of Ilmatari worship on the server is an example of that, as its player driven.

If you look at the most active faiths in the city - Ilmater, Mystra, and Umberlee in the past couple of years, they are the ones that have had dedicated religious based RP.

And now we have the rise of Suneite/Selunite/other Halls of Inner light faiths (I don't do demihumans!) which is again a reaction to a strong player RP movement.

[Ithilan]

How do we brand something good or evil? Its a matter of personalised perceptions and opinions.

But would most worship of "evil" deities not be done secretly due to the taboo or judgemental eyes of others. There are places of open worship, but beyond the devout of such deities, most offer lip service or prayer out of fear for the reprecautions no?

There is obviously a great variety in evil deities, like with all the rest and their diverse following will do things differently and also dependant on regional heritage and traditions. So a northerner from the Silver Marches would likely be inherently secretive due to the consequences there of, if discovered, in most of the major cities of the region.

Where as in the Shaar there is a lot of diversity in the worshipping of deities and besides Tempus, Malar and Akadi, there is not a more dominant pressence throughout the city states and that leaves Mask and Shar unchecked to operate freely in the shadier parts of the cities.

I would love to see a shrine to every deity on the server, in one place or another. Secretive worship of evil deities is very common, where as open worship is not for the most parts of the heartlands and sword coast. To me its obvious that as soon as Selune begins accumulating more worshippers in a region, Shar naturally follows and Lunargent crusaders flock to places where the Nightdancer gains favor.

What defines evil or good? Eachother. So go on, build a demense somewhere and poke the DM team about your secret worship, or dare to do it openly and embrace the RP that follows

Bottom line is we need both and RP should flourish from the pressence of them. But RP of course dictates the lay of the lands as others have said, official lore is a good guideline, but there has to be deviations for the players to have an impact on our little corner of Faerun.

[Sharrans]

Who cares about laws.

[chad878262]

I find this thread interesting, as someone who hasn't owned any of the source books past 2nd edition and never seen any between then and 5th ed. So based on the quotes from some of these sources would it be accurate to say that most evil religions being banned are lore accurate, but that their inexistence is actually what is perhaps lore inaccurate? What I mean is the quote about Waterdeep mentioned evil religions/cults being found under the city. While Amn indicates that all religions are accepted. BG lore states many temples, but Umberlee is the only evil one. There is a 'hidden' shrine to Mask as well though (NE deity in our timeline, even though now he is CN). I feel if anything it would be somewhat more appropriate lore-wise for any new cults/religions, especially to evil deities to start out in the Sewers or even the Undercity until they have enough followers to essentially force the Dukes to recognize their religion or suffer an uprising. This could be great fun RP wise, but I don't think it would (or should) happen quickly, it takes time for these things. In the meanwhile, what fun would it be to have a small shrine, maybe even a repurposed temple in the Undercity as a short term guild!

[thids]

There is supposed to be a hidden temple of the swaglord under BG if I'm not mistaken.

[Storm Munin]

There are Umberlee as previously stated.
Mask as well do have a shrine within the city where faithful offer their votiv gifts.

Deep in the sewers there are a building worshippers of other evil deities could feasably consecrate and make a temple out of.

Make it happen, if you want it to happen.

/M