Piety has nothing to do with faith or belief, except insofar as a person’s thoughts and ideals drive them to action in service of their chosen faith tradition. Your piety score reflects the actions you have taken in this service. While a particular deity might reward such service, such as Mirithlen, the benefits gained are a culmination of knowledge, experience and access to the inner teaches of that faith more so than any given power granted by a deity.
Gaining Piety
Piety can be gained through the many different avenues of pursuing your faith tradition by using the /dt-religion command.
Losing Piety
Having a faith tradition and keeping the faith are two different things. Piety grants benefits, but in order to reap the reward of those benefits a person needs to remain pious enough to warrant them. As such, piety will decay over time if you do not actually practice, contribute or otherwise participate in your faith tradition. This decay is represented as -2 piety per use of the /dt-downtime command.
Benefits of Piety
When your piety score crosses certain thresholds—3, 10, 25, and 50—you gain a perk or other benefit for your devotion. If your piety score exceeds and then falls below one of those thresholds, you lose the benefit you gained at the higher tier.
Free Souls
Not every hero chooses to champion a faith. Those who decide to follow the life of a free soul also gain piety, and the benefits for each threshold.
Changing Faith Traditions
If a character decides to change their faith tradition, they lose all accumulated piety in their old tradition, and start at 1 in their new.