Tancred

The Athar aren't without belief. They believe in something great, divine, benevolent and worthy of worship - the 'Great Unknown' metadeity that they are sure must exist. They also believe in the *existence* of the Gods, they simply don't see them worthy of worship and not 'divine' in the least. They are, in a way, a kind of monotheistic faction in a polytheistic multiverse.

I might also be able to manage a voice like that. I'd certainly like to try, at any rate.

Yeah, as the game stands at the moment - but the key thing to remember about this is that is can be changed. Why was Imoen's soul taken? Easy.

Irenicus' promise to Bodhi was to give her a soul, and that'd be something he could easily do once his plans were complete and he attained divinity. But when he captured a Bhaalspawn, he also captured a number of that Bhaalspawn's companions, and took the opportunity to further refine his extraction process under controlled conditions - in this case, on Khalid and, later, Imoen. Although Khalid was a failure, Irenicus was so successful with Imoen - and Bodhi so insistent - that Irenicus decided taking Imoen's soul while he had so much spare time in Spellhold wasn't such a bad idea. It would both allow him to road-test his process and keep Bodhi's impatience in check.

There we go! Change a few dialogues to fit this new explanation, and bingo.

Uh... well, you might try:

The Force.Net

or

Star Wars Source.Net

There's plenty of places to find this info on the Net, certainly - official online encyclopedias, etc. I can't claim to be some kind of know-it-all, this is an abridged version of the timeline from the Dark Side Sourcebook for the WotCoast Star Wars RPG. It's about as canonical as the Expanded Universe (i.e. non-movie) stuff gets.