Religion

The Triad in Impiltur

Impiltur's main religion is that of the Triad (Tyr, Torm and Ilmater). While their temples are not strictly part of the government, nearly all important government figures were trained by these temples, often as paladin, and place great value on the opinions of its leaders. This has led to a series of laws which make life harder on other religions. The most notable laws are the one forbidding divine orders from gathering and operating in public, with the exception of their Most Holy Order of the Sacred Shrike, and the one forbidding divine servants of non-Triadic religions access to Impiltur without government approval.

Non-Triadic Religions in Impiltur

Servants of good and neutral deities are almost always welcome, particularly if they focus their efforts on converting non-Triadic Impilturans rather than tempting folk away from the state religion. Servants of evil deities are more often denied a visum, particularly if there is already a representative of their religion in the area or if the deity's portfolio is irrelevant to the common people.

There may be restrictions on displaying holy order symbols outside your temple's grounds, particularly if you travel with a fellow member of your order, but if you ignore them there's a decent chance nothing bad will happen until someone has cause to complain about it.

Religion and Factions

This section is from Copper Dragon's thread related to the divine. This is to serve as inspiration more so than source/guide.

Factions Within Churches

The FR setting offers an overwhelming amount of deities to worship, but it does not stop there. Indeed, while the gods are active and responsive, mortals still can and do make various interpretations about their deities, leading to friction within a church. Within several churches an interested scholar would find sub-factions, heresies and cults.

Split Churches

The Oghmanyte church is divided into the Orthodox Church and the new factions. Outsiders likely don't notice and don't care for the reason of friction, as all factions serve Oghma in much the same way and with the same everyday goals. The splintering of Oghma's church occured shortly after the Time of Troubles and is still on-going: the reason behind this is the disappearance of the Grand Patriarch, the leader of the Oghmanyte faith, during the Time of Troubles itself. The Orthodox Church claims that he will return and does not wish to appoint a new Patriarch; the new factions claim he is dead, or at Oghma's side, and believe a new leader should be nominated... no doubt from the new factions.

The Waukeenar church currently suffers from a lack of information from their Goddess of Coin, as she has gone missing ever since the Time of Troubles. Though sources do not mention outright fracturing within the church, the irresponsiveness of Waukeen may cause for many theories, which in turn may lead to friction.

The Chauntean faith is split into two groups: the druids and the clerics. One must mention that the groups are not hostile to each other, nor have they different goals in general; they simply view the other group as less-fitting to serve Chauntea than themselves. The druids have "always venerated Chauntea", and consider the more recent city disciples to be upstarts. The more civilized priests, in turn, feel that the druids' day is done, and while druids are still useful in wild lands, the rising nations need and organized, professional faith controlled by a more reasonable and rational clergy.

The Silvanite church of druids and priests is similarly divided.

Cults

One might not suspect the Ilmatari having cultists in their midst, but it is the case shortly after the Time of Troubles; the region in which the cultists are active is unknown or undefined (you might find that convenient!). The neutral cult of Ilmater believes in passing suffering around to others, especially nonbelievers. They are noted for self-flagellation, kidnappings, and inciting riots.

The Realms are home to many more cults, but most of them are not in such opposition to the ideas of the faith they claim to belong to. Some are focused on non-existing or dead deities.

Furthermore, cults can form around heresies. The topic is discussed below, though only a few named cults dedicated to these heresies are mentioned in the sourcebooks that I possess.

Heresies

The majority of practitioners of a faith and the greatest part of clergymembers adhere to the established dogma and concepts of their church, but there are always those few who think differently, whether they proclaim it openly or promote their view subtly.

Chaotic churches are by their very nature focused more on small-scale congregations. As such one chaotic faith might have many interpretations of what constitutes as "appropriate" service of the chosen god. These interpretations do not count as heresies; the spirit and overall tenets of the faith remain the same.

Heresies are seen as false (and possibly as something dangerous) by the churches that they branched out from; below you'll find a few that your characters don't necessarily need to know about, but may be interesting to you as a player.

As always, DMs' and TER Team's discretion on these apply.

Selune & Shar: The Dark Moon Heresy

In this concept Selune and Shar, the supposedly original twin goddesses of light and dark and alleged creators of the world, are considered as one and the same entity. Moonlight and darkness belong together as different facets of the same, and are only separated in mortal comprehension.

Selune: Heresy of the New Moon

Technically no longer considered a heresy after Selune's direct order to one of her priestesses, the Pact of the New Moon was or is a group of lycanthropes in service of the Moonmaiden. They are given special abilities while in their animal and hybrid forms. The church considered this a heresy and anathema to the Moonmaiden's beliefs.

Tyr, Torm and Helm: The Heresy of the Three-Fold God

Although this is a heresy that the sourcebooks only mention from 1384DR on, it might be worth a mention. In this belief the three deities are considered to be aspects of one god. This heresy is spread and supported by a group dubbed the Eye of Justice, whose base of operations was in Westgate.

Lathander: The Risen Sun Heresy

The Morninglord's church tolerates a sect that believes that Lathander is the reborn aspect of the Netherese sun-god Amaunator.

Lathander: The Three-Faced Sun Heresy

Related to the heresy above but not being quite the same, the Three-Faced Sun Heresy claims that in once-flourishing Netheril, the sun was worshiped in three aspects: its highsun (noon) aspect; its dawn aspect; and dusk aspect. These three positions would be taken in by Amaunator, Lathander and Myrkul respectively. Each would have their appropriate time to reign and follow each other in a cycle.

After the Time of Troubles, with Myrkul's death, the heretics of this belief claimed that the time for Lathander's rise arrived, and that after him (or from within him) Amaunator would rise next.

Other Possible Heresies

The goddess of lies, Leira, was slain and consumed by Cyric during the Time of Troubles, but some of her worshipers claim that she is still alive and her death was but an elaborate lie.

The god of tyranny, Bane, was similarly slain during the Time of Troubles. Some might believe that he lives on through his fiendish son Iyachtu Xvim.

The goddess Angharradh is not considered by sun elves to be an actual deity; it is mainly moon elves who believe in and pray to her.

Some contemplate that Sune and Hanali Celanil are the same entity, though clergies of both faiths would go against this.