I have decided due to my personal curiosity to compile the information from 'The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" on the life of the average commoner, this will include the information on their lives, function in society, their level of education, what wages their might be expected to have, their views on adventurers, mages and religion as well as how they may go about travel. This came of personal interest to me as I was wondering "What may my adventurer know as a commoner" and a lot of the information Ed Greenwood provide are inspired by real life historical accounts, obviously with a fantasy flare.
Now I will note that this is not necessarily the way TDN does it due to their custom setting, nor is it meant to counter-argue what they say is how society work in their setting, but just to note what the book says to give others who like me may have wondered their chars average knowledge, with a focus on the commoner, a noble-born will know more.
So hopefully this will give a good idea of the life of the commoner, and remember, if this knowledge is different than what's on the TDN wiki, the TDN wiki is right.
In the Heartlands, a very basic division separates people into two distinct groups: townsfolk and rural folk. The dividing line is blurry at times—a large village or small town blends many of the characteristics of rural and urban life. The division is not exclusive. Even in Faerûn's largest cities, farmers and herders till crops and tend livestock within the shadow of the city walls.
In most lands, nine people live in the countryside for every city dweller. Large cities are hard to sustain, and in Faerûn's Heartlands, most people are compelled to work the land in order to feed themselves. Large towns and cities can only flourish in places that enjoy easy access to farmlands and resources producing a surplus of food.
Rural Life:
In painting a picture of the average Faerûnian, an observer discovers that the most ordinary, unremarkable, and widespread representative of Faerûn's incredible diversity is a simple human farmer. She lives in a small house of wood, sod, or thatch-roofed fieldstone, and she raises staple crops such as wheat, barley, corn, or potatoes on a few dozen acres of her own land.
In some lands, the common farmer is a peasant or a serf, denied the protection of law and considered the property of whichever lord holds the land she lives on. In a few harsh lands, she is a slave whose backbreaking work is rewarded only by the threat of the lash and swift death should she ever defend herself from the overseers and lords who live off her endless toil. But in the Heartlands, the farmer is somewhat poor, protected from rapacious local lords by the law of the land, and allowed to choose whatever trade or vocation she has a talent for in order to feed her family and raise her children.
The common farmer’s home is within a mile or so of a small village, where she can trade grain, vegetables, fruit, meat, milk, and leather for locally manufactured items such as spun cloth, tools, and bricks and pots. Some years are lean, but Faerûn's Heartlanders work and harvest, rarely facing famine or droughts.
The local lord is the common farmer's front against brigands and monsters. She hires minor nobles who keep or fortified manors and towers as a buffer zone between her and the perils of the wild lands. In exchange for keeping a tight house, a few of the lord’s soldiers are raised from among the people who watch the lord's lands in their day's ride. A more powerful lord whose lands include two or three dozen villages in the upper heartlands has a castle manned with several dozen soldiers. In dangerous areas, defenses are much stronger.
City Life:
Typical townsfolk or city-dwellers are skilled crafters of some kind. Large cities are home to numbers of unskilled laborers and small merchants or storeowners, but the most city-dwellers work with their hands to make finished goods from raw materials. Smiths, leatherworkers, potters, weavers, wainwrights, coopers, and all the kinds of artisan and tradesfolk working in their homes make up the industry of Faerûn.
The city-dweller lives in a wood or stone house, shingled with shakes or sheet slate, that sits shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbors in great sprawling blocks through which myriad narrow streets twist and turn. Small or prosperous towns may be organized around a small plot of land suitable for gardens. More often, city borders, or whole families of strangers share his crowded home. If he isn’t personally making the best living with his hands, he’s likely in the employ of those who have attained such a position, either working in similar roles, or as replacement. In other, agents of the city's powerful rulers might recruit him to broaden the ranks, sometimes free to pack up and leave or change trades whenever he likes.
He purchases food from the city’s markets, which sometimes means that he sticks with whatever fits within his budget. A prosperous man can work hard and comfortably feed his family, but in lean times the poorer laborers must make do with little food and stop work for weeks on end. Every city depends on a ring of outlying villages and farmlands to supply it with food on a daily basis. Most places see great surpluses in growing seasons, enabling stores of goods against lean times; a crisis occurs at times of the year when fresh food is not available in the city’s markets.
A city of any size is probably protected by a city wall, patrolled by the city watch, and garrisoned by a small army of the soldiers of the land. Rampaging monsters or bloodthirsty bandits don't trouble the average city-dweller, but he rubs elbows every day with rogues, thieves, and cutthroats. Even the most thoroughly policed cities have neighborhoods where anybody with a whiff of common sense doesn’t set foot.
Just as nine out of ten Faerûnians live in small villages and freeholds in the countryside, roughly nineteen out of twenty people are of common birth and ordinary means. They rarely accumulate any measure of wealth—a prosperous innkeeper or skilled artisan can pass on some measure of means to their children, but most common farmers and tradesfolk are lucky if they have more than forty or fifty coins saved up.
Most people find themselves bound by law to defer to their betters, the lords and ladies of the nobility. Even if the law does not require such deference, their poverty usually makes them property of the nobles, with no right to seize property or property rights. The noble class, a smirking manner and a consequence usually associated with the outright master of a commoner's fate, typically controls the land outright. The most powerful noble in a realm, the ruler, typically takes a portion of everything his people produce, in order to supply his manor and his house soldiers with coin for weapons, supplies, and food. Peasants are not allowed to own or bear arms of any kind.
Those rare people of noble or near-noble status typically do not mix with common folk, and even the smallest townsfolk may perceive it as a breach of order for any of their betters to speak with a commoner. Faerûn’s nobility is usually more secure in their comfort than the people in their charge are of their safety, even though most rulers accept their ultimate responsibility to clear out troublesome monsters and hunt down dangerous outlaws.
The Peasantry:
As previously noted, common farmers and simple laborers make up most of the human population of Faerûn’s kingdoms and cities. The lowest class across all of the Heartlands, the peasantry forms the solid base upon which the power structures of nobles, merchants, temples, and kingdoms all rest.
Most Heartlands peasants are not bound to the lands they work and owe no special allegiance to the lord who rules over them, other than obeying his laws and paying his taxes. They do not own their farmlands but instead rent croplands and pastures from the local lord, another form of taxation normally accounted at harvest time.
In frontier regions such as the Western Heartlands, many common farmers own and work their own lands. These people are sometimes known as freeholders if no lord claims their lands, or yeomen if they are common landowners subject to a lord’s authority.
Tradesfolk and Merchants:
A step above the common peasantry, skilled tradesfolk and merchants generate wealth and prosperity for any city or town. The so-called middle class is weak and disorganized in most feudal states, but in the great trade cities of the Inner Sea, strong guilds of traders and companies of tradesfolk are strong enough to defy any lord and protect themselves from the monarch’s authority by the power of their coffers.
The wealthiest merchants are virtually indistinguishable from mighty lords. Even if born from peasant stock, a merchant whose enterprises span a kingdom might style himself “lord” and get away with it.
Clergy:
Existing alongside the feudal relationship of a rural province or guild organization of a trading city, the powerful temples of Faerûn’s deities parallel the king’s authority. The lowest-ranking acolytes and attendants are rarely reckoned better than the servant of a well-off merchant, and any cleric or priest in charge of a temple holds power comparable to that of a baron or landed knight.
In many of Faerûn’s regions, rival temples of long-time bitter rivals—usually patron deities, gods of war, commerce, or thieves—vie for power. In most rural regions, folk tend to follow one or two deities who are trusted by a region’s wealthy lords. However, in cities with widely varied populations, even the smallest temple of Tempus usually means there is a patron cleric among the city townspeople ready to lead a congregation. But if farmers are generally more inclined to the teachings of Chauntea and merchants to Waukeen, most who follow Waelenk.
Learning:
Formal schooling is the exception rather than the rule in the Heartlands. Only the children of wealthy or highborn parents receive any real education. Even so, most Facrúnians of civilized lands are literate and understand the value and the potential power of the written word.
Most people learn to read and write from their parents or from clerics of Oghma or Deneir. Very few schools exist. Those that do are expensive, exclusive, private schools or academies that spend as much time teaching riding, courtly manners, and swordplay as they do on true academic matters. Most young nobles or merchant scions acquire their education from personal tutors, bards, heralds, and noble counselors retained specifically for that purpose by their parents.
True scholarly learning is the preserve of sages, scribes, clerics, and wizards. The nonhuman races of Faerun, particularly the elves, are a notable exception to that statement, as are human cities or nations that encourage citizens to study with the clergy of deities who promote knowledge and learning.
Labor:
Hard work is a way of life throughout the Heartlands. The standard wage for a day laborer is a single silver piece. In agricultural regions, most people work from sunrise to sundown, with breaks for meals and naps.
Common folk working for the daily silver piece might resent adventurers, whose economy functions at an entirely different level as detailed. But common folk seldom risk death and dismemberment on a daily or hourly basis: Given the number of adventurers who wind up dead long before their day-laboring relatives, the adventuring lifestyle is viewed as an occupation for those who like to gamble with their lives for potentially great rewards.
Travel
Although many folk are tied to the land and seldom travel far from home, a surprising number of others crisscross the continent for years at a time for business and trade. The paramount travellers are merchants, peddlers, mercenaries, and drovers, all of them moving goods or services (their own) from one place to another.
Travel by barge on an inland waterway is easiest and cheapest- either drifting downstream steered by oar and pole, or working upstream, sometimes aided by beasts towing from shore. Sea travel is faster and less costly in terms of manpower when hauling bulk goods- hence the string of seaport cities up and down the coasts of Faerûn.
Most travel on the surface of Faerún is by foot. The walking traveller often leads a pack mule or train of pack mules, tows a travois, or drags or pushes a small cart. She might ride in a wagon or cart, go alone by horseback, or travel afoot with whip or staff, guiding an oxcart. In some southern lands she might travel by palanquin, carried by sturdy bearers.
Most of the roads of Faerún are dusty tracks between cities and outposts, wide enough for one wagon and a horse passing in the opposite direction. Major trade routes such as the Trade Way running from Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate can fit three or even four wagons across at the same time. Paved roads are nearly unknown, but the largest trade routes consist of hard-packed dirt and grass over sunken cobblestones so that caravans escape the dust and mud plaguing smaller tracks.
ADVENTURERS IN SOCIETY:
Most residents of the Dales, Cormyr, the Western Heartlands, and the North are well disposed toward adventurers of good heart. They know that adventurers live daily with risks they would never be will- ing to face themselves. The common folk eagerly seek news of travelers regarding great deeds and distant happenings, hoping to glean a hint of what the future might hold for them as well.
An adventurer willing to ally himself with a lord whose attitudes and views coincide with his own gains a powerful patron and a place in society commensurate with the influence and station of his patron. Adventurers inclined to threaten or intimidate the local ruler simply invite trouble. Those who abuse their power are thought of as nothing but powerful bandits, while adventurers who use their power to help others are blessed as heroes. Adventurers are exceptional people, but they live within societies of everyday people living commonplace lives.
COMMON FOLK AND MAGES:
Mages are regarded with suspicion, fear, and respect wherever they go. In any land, the affairs of wizards and sorcerers are the topic of endless gossip and speculation. Over tankards of ales, locals compare stories of the deeds of this mage or that, and wonder aloud which might win in a duel of magic.
Any mage not well known by the local people is regarded as a dangerous unknown quantity until he shows by action, word, and manner that he means no harm. The local people are careful not to give offense, and the local authorities quietly observe any such person with as much discretion as possible.
A mage who settles downs somewhere, or who visits an area often enough to become well known, almost always becomes an important and respected member of the community. If trouble breaks out, especially magical trouble, the nearest good-hearted spellcaster is one of the first sources of help for the locals. Even a reclusive or downright malevolent mage might be approached for help in extreme cases, if the locals placate their dangerous neighbor with gifts and shows of respect.
Common folk and Religion:
Across all of Toril, people respect and fear the divine powers. The deities of Faerûn take an active role in the world, promoting the causes they favor, watching over the domains for which they are responsible, and constantly seeking to increase (or at least defend) their temporal power by protecting their worshipers and encouraging the active expansion of their faiths.
Mortals who deny the deities who made the world and govern its basic forces are rare indeed, although a few powerful beings such as the enigmatic sharns and phaerimms acknowledge no entity as their superior. Human (and humanoid) souls who refuse the gods come to a bad end after death, lacking a deity to speak for them upon the Fugue Plane. What befalls primal creatures such as the sharns, no one can say. Some Faerúnians zealously follow one deity. Others make sacrifices to many deities, while upholding one as their personal patron. Still others sacrifice to as many deities as possible, shifting allegiances as their circumstances and needs warrant. It's a rare Faerun- ian who hasn't occasionally hoped to avert the baleful influence of an evil deity with a propitious gift, or thanked a good power for an unexpected blessing. The belief system of most Facrúnians general- ly centers on a particular deity whose interests and influences are most likely to affect them, but acknowledges other gods as signifi- cant and important, too.
Temples and shrines to some number of deities stand in virtually every thorp and hamlet of Faerún. Most of these are under the supervision of a low- to mid-level cleric of the appropriate deity. Frequently, these parish priests and shrine-keepers possess healing abilities unavailable to low-level adventurers.
The degree to which a local cleric may make her healing spells available to adventurers in the town varies greatly with the tenets of her faith, the demands of the town, and her own best judgment. Clerics obviously prefer to aid fellow followers of their patron deity, and if healing resources are limited, the faithful will be aided before people devoted to other gods. Naturally, the followers of deities antithetical to the clerics' own deity are extremely unlikely to be helped in any circumstance.
Now I will note that this is not necessarily the way TDN does it due to their custom setting, nor is it meant to counter-argue what they say is how society work in their setting, but just to note what the book says to give others who like me may have wondered their chars average knowledge, with a focus on the commoner, a noble-born will know more.
So hopefully this will give a good idea of the life of the commoner, and remember, if this knowledge is different than what's on the TDN wiki, the TDN wiki is right.
___________________________________________________________
City and Countryside
City and Countryside
In the Heartlands, a very basic division separates people into two distinct groups: townsfolk and rural folk. The dividing line is blurry at times—a large village or small town blends many of the characteristics of rural and urban life. The division is not exclusive. Even in Faerûn's largest cities, farmers and herders till crops and tend livestock within the shadow of the city walls.
In most lands, nine people live in the countryside for every city dweller. Large cities are hard to sustain, and in Faerûn's Heartlands, most people are compelled to work the land in order to feed themselves. Large towns and cities can only flourish in places that enjoy easy access to farmlands and resources producing a surplus of food.
Rural Life:
In painting a picture of the average Faerûnian, an observer discovers that the most ordinary, unremarkable, and widespread representative of Faerûn's incredible diversity is a simple human farmer. She lives in a small house of wood, sod, or thatch-roofed fieldstone, and she raises staple crops such as wheat, barley, corn, or potatoes on a few dozen acres of her own land.
In some lands, the common farmer is a peasant or a serf, denied the protection of law and considered the property of whichever lord holds the land she lives on. In a few harsh lands, she is a slave whose backbreaking work is rewarded only by the threat of the lash and swift death should she ever defend herself from the overseers and lords who live off her endless toil. But in the Heartlands, the farmer is somewhat poor, protected from rapacious local lords by the law of the land, and allowed to choose whatever trade or vocation she has a talent for in order to feed her family and raise her children.
The common farmer’s home is within a mile or so of a small village, where she can trade grain, vegetables, fruit, meat, milk, and leather for locally manufactured items such as spun cloth, tools, and bricks and pots. Some years are lean, but Faerûn's Heartlanders work and harvest, rarely facing famine or droughts.
The local lord is the common farmer's front against brigands and monsters. She hires minor nobles who keep or fortified manors and towers as a buffer zone between her and the perils of the wild lands. In exchange for keeping a tight house, a few of the lord’s soldiers are raised from among the people who watch the lord's lands in their day's ride. A more powerful lord whose lands include two or three dozen villages in the upper heartlands has a castle manned with several dozen soldiers. In dangerous areas, defenses are much stronger.
City Life:
Typical townsfolk or city-dwellers are skilled crafters of some kind. Large cities are home to numbers of unskilled laborers and small merchants or storeowners, but the most city-dwellers work with their hands to make finished goods from raw materials. Smiths, leatherworkers, potters, weavers, wainwrights, coopers, and all the kinds of artisan and tradesfolk working in their homes make up the industry of Faerûn.
The city-dweller lives in a wood or stone house, shingled with shakes or sheet slate, that sits shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbors in great sprawling blocks through which myriad narrow streets twist and turn. Small or prosperous towns may be organized around a small plot of land suitable for gardens. More often, city borders, or whole families of strangers share his crowded home. If he isn’t personally making the best living with his hands, he’s likely in the employ of those who have attained such a position, either working in similar roles, or as replacement. In other, agents of the city's powerful rulers might recruit him to broaden the ranks, sometimes free to pack up and leave or change trades whenever he likes.
He purchases food from the city’s markets, which sometimes means that he sticks with whatever fits within his budget. A prosperous man can work hard and comfortably feed his family, but in lean times the poorer laborers must make do with little food and stop work for weeks on end. Every city depends on a ring of outlying villages and farmlands to supply it with food on a daily basis. Most places see great surpluses in growing seasons, enabling stores of goods against lean times; a crisis occurs at times of the year when fresh food is not available in the city’s markets.
A city of any size is probably protected by a city wall, patrolled by the city watch, and garrisoned by a small army of the soldiers of the land. Rampaging monsters or bloodthirsty bandits don't trouble the average city-dweller, but he rubs elbows every day with rogues, thieves, and cutthroats. Even the most thoroughly policed cities have neighborhoods where anybody with a whiff of common sense doesn’t set foot.
Wealth and Privilege
Just as nine out of ten Faerûnians live in small villages and freeholds in the countryside, roughly nineteen out of twenty people are of common birth and ordinary means. They rarely accumulate any measure of wealth—a prosperous innkeeper or skilled artisan can pass on some measure of means to their children, but most common farmers and tradesfolk are lucky if they have more than forty or fifty coins saved up.
Most people find themselves bound by law to defer to their betters, the lords and ladies of the nobility. Even if the law does not require such deference, their poverty usually makes them property of the nobles, with no right to seize property or property rights. The noble class, a smirking manner and a consequence usually associated with the outright master of a commoner's fate, typically controls the land outright. The most powerful noble in a realm, the ruler, typically takes a portion of everything his people produce, in order to supply his manor and his house soldiers with coin for weapons, supplies, and food. Peasants are not allowed to own or bear arms of any kind.
Those rare people of noble or near-noble status typically do not mix with common folk, and even the smallest townsfolk may perceive it as a breach of order for any of their betters to speak with a commoner. Faerûn’s nobility is usually more secure in their comfort than the people in their charge are of their safety, even though most rulers accept their ultimate responsibility to clear out troublesome monsters and hunt down dangerous outlaws.
The Peasantry:
As previously noted, common farmers and simple laborers make up most of the human population of Faerûn’s kingdoms and cities. The lowest class across all of the Heartlands, the peasantry forms the solid base upon which the power structures of nobles, merchants, temples, and kingdoms all rest.
Most Heartlands peasants are not bound to the lands they work and owe no special allegiance to the lord who rules over them, other than obeying his laws and paying his taxes. They do not own their farmlands but instead rent croplands and pastures from the local lord, another form of taxation normally accounted at harvest time.
In frontier regions such as the Western Heartlands, many common farmers own and work their own lands. These people are sometimes known as freeholders if no lord claims their lands, or yeomen if they are common landowners subject to a lord’s authority.
Tradesfolk and Merchants:
A step above the common peasantry, skilled tradesfolk and merchants generate wealth and prosperity for any city or town. The so-called middle class is weak and disorganized in most feudal states, but in the great trade cities of the Inner Sea, strong guilds of traders and companies of tradesfolk are strong enough to defy any lord and protect themselves from the monarch’s authority by the power of their coffers.
The wealthiest merchants are virtually indistinguishable from mighty lords. Even if born from peasant stock, a merchant whose enterprises span a kingdom might style himself “lord” and get away with it.
Clergy:
Existing alongside the feudal relationship of a rural province or guild organization of a trading city, the powerful temples of Faerûn’s deities parallel the king’s authority. The lowest-ranking acolytes and attendants are rarely reckoned better than the servant of a well-off merchant, and any cleric or priest in charge of a temple holds power comparable to that of a baron or landed knight.
In many of Faerûn’s regions, rival temples of long-time bitter rivals—usually patron deities, gods of war, commerce, or thieves—vie for power. In most rural regions, folk tend to follow one or two deities who are trusted by a region’s wealthy lords. However, in cities with widely varied populations, even the smallest temple of Tempus usually means there is a patron cleric among the city townspeople ready to lead a congregation. But if farmers are generally more inclined to the teachings of Chauntea and merchants to Waukeen, most who follow Waelenk.
Learning:
Formal schooling is the exception rather than the rule in the Heartlands. Only the children of wealthy or highborn parents receive any real education. Even so, most Facrúnians of civilized lands are literate and understand the value and the potential power of the written word.
Most people learn to read and write from their parents or from clerics of Oghma or Deneir. Very few schools exist. Those that do are expensive, exclusive, private schools or academies that spend as much time teaching riding, courtly manners, and swordplay as they do on true academic matters. Most young nobles or merchant scions acquire their education from personal tutors, bards, heralds, and noble counselors retained specifically for that purpose by their parents.
True scholarly learning is the preserve of sages, scribes, clerics, and wizards. The nonhuman races of Faerun, particularly the elves, are a notable exception to that statement, as are human cities or nations that encourage citizens to study with the clergy of deities who promote knowledge and learning.
Labor:
Hard work is a way of life throughout the Heartlands. The standard wage for a day laborer is a single silver piece. In agricultural regions, most people work from sunrise to sundown, with breaks for meals and naps.
Common folk working for the daily silver piece might resent adventurers, whose economy functions at an entirely different level as detailed. But common folk seldom risk death and dismemberment on a daily or hourly basis: Given the number of adventurers who wind up dead long before their day-laboring relatives, the adventuring lifestyle is viewed as an occupation for those who like to gamble with their lives for potentially great rewards.
Travel
Although many folk are tied to the land and seldom travel far from home, a surprising number of others crisscross the continent for years at a time for business and trade. The paramount travellers are merchants, peddlers, mercenaries, and drovers, all of them moving goods or services (their own) from one place to another.
Travel by barge on an inland waterway is easiest and cheapest- either drifting downstream steered by oar and pole, or working upstream, sometimes aided by beasts towing from shore. Sea travel is faster and less costly in terms of manpower when hauling bulk goods- hence the string of seaport cities up and down the coasts of Faerûn.
Most travel on the surface of Faerún is by foot. The walking traveller often leads a pack mule or train of pack mules, tows a travois, or drags or pushes a small cart. She might ride in a wagon or cart, go alone by horseback, or travel afoot with whip or staff, guiding an oxcart. In some southern lands she might travel by palanquin, carried by sturdy bearers.
Most of the roads of Faerún are dusty tracks between cities and outposts, wide enough for one wagon and a horse passing in the opposite direction. Major trade routes such as the Trade Way running from Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate can fit three or even four wagons across at the same time. Paved roads are nearly unknown, but the largest trade routes consist of hard-packed dirt and grass over sunken cobblestones so that caravans escape the dust and mud plaguing smaller tracks.
Outlook on adventurers, mages, clergy
ADVENTURERS IN SOCIETY:
Most residents of the Dales, Cormyr, the Western Heartlands, and the North are well disposed toward adventurers of good heart. They know that adventurers live daily with risks they would never be will- ing to face themselves. The common folk eagerly seek news of travelers regarding great deeds and distant happenings, hoping to glean a hint of what the future might hold for them as well.
An adventurer willing to ally himself with a lord whose attitudes and views coincide with his own gains a powerful patron and a place in society commensurate with the influence and station of his patron. Adventurers inclined to threaten or intimidate the local ruler simply invite trouble. Those who abuse their power are thought of as nothing but powerful bandits, while adventurers who use their power to help others are blessed as heroes. Adventurers are exceptional people, but they live within societies of everyday people living commonplace lives.
COMMON FOLK AND MAGES:
Mages are regarded with suspicion, fear, and respect wherever they go. In any land, the affairs of wizards and sorcerers are the topic of endless gossip and speculation. Over tankards of ales, locals compare stories of the deeds of this mage or that, and wonder aloud which might win in a duel of magic.
Any mage not well known by the local people is regarded as a dangerous unknown quantity until he shows by action, word, and manner that he means no harm. The local people are careful not to give offense, and the local authorities quietly observe any such person with as much discretion as possible.
A mage who settles downs somewhere, or who visits an area often enough to become well known, almost always becomes an important and respected member of the community. If trouble breaks out, especially magical trouble, the nearest good-hearted spellcaster is one of the first sources of help for the locals. Even a reclusive or downright malevolent mage might be approached for help in extreme cases, if the locals placate their dangerous neighbor with gifts and shows of respect.
Common folk and Religion:
Across all of Toril, people respect and fear the divine powers. The deities of Faerûn take an active role in the world, promoting the causes they favor, watching over the domains for which they are responsible, and constantly seeking to increase (or at least defend) their temporal power by protecting their worshipers and encouraging the active expansion of their faiths.
Mortals who deny the deities who made the world and govern its basic forces are rare indeed, although a few powerful beings such as the enigmatic sharns and phaerimms acknowledge no entity as their superior. Human (and humanoid) souls who refuse the gods come to a bad end after death, lacking a deity to speak for them upon the Fugue Plane. What befalls primal creatures such as the sharns, no one can say. Some Faerúnians zealously follow one deity. Others make sacrifices to many deities, while upholding one as their personal patron. Still others sacrifice to as many deities as possible, shifting allegiances as their circumstances and needs warrant. It's a rare Faerun- ian who hasn't occasionally hoped to avert the baleful influence of an evil deity with a propitious gift, or thanked a good power for an unexpected blessing. The belief system of most Facrúnians general- ly centers on a particular deity whose interests and influences are most likely to affect them, but acknowledges other gods as signifi- cant and important, too.
Temples and shrines to some number of deities stand in virtually every thorp and hamlet of Faerún. Most of these are under the supervision of a low- to mid-level cleric of the appropriate deity. Frequently, these parish priests and shrine-keepers possess healing abilities unavailable to low-level adventurers.
The degree to which a local cleric may make her healing spells available to adventurers in the town varies greatly with the tenets of her faith, the demands of the town, and her own best judgment. Clerics obviously prefer to aid fellow followers of their patron deity, and if healing resources are limited, the faithful will be aided before people devoted to other gods. Naturally, the followers of deities antithetical to the clerics' own deity are extremely unlikely to be helped in any circumstance.
