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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 3577326" data-attributes="member: 7240">One of the things that I'm realizing as I've been reading the last several posts of yours like this is just how much more D&D is like the 16th century than it is like the Middle Ages or the ancient world. Generally, most of my campaign worlds are polytheistic and so there are no heresies because I can't find a historical model of polytheists having the idea of heresy in their societies. Witches, I'm similarly off to the periphery. Witch persecutions were an early modern thing so I haven't got into that either. But I'm thinking now that it may be time in the future to do a 16th century style campaign; that's looking like fun to me.Rebels on the other hand, they interest me. And they usually get away with their rebellions because they are simply the soldiers who are attached to noble houses that lost civil wars. They are often ransomed back if taken as prisoners of war and the noble house to which they belong is usually punished but not deposed. What will make people think of them as witches as opposed to people with different worship customs? It seems to me that what may make them witches might be their rebellion, rather than any idea of heresy. Perhaps people don't like them and demonize them as witches because the leader of a local uprising is female rather than male.Is your society monotheistic? If not, you'll need to think really hard about what is making all the churches think of them as bad guys at the same time. My first thought would be that they are monotheists who insist that only their god is real and refuse to participate in any other cult's public festivals and devotions. Jews were not appreciated for this kind of separatist behaviour in the Roman world and were labeled "atheists" (yep -- that's how 'atheist' got into common usage: as an anti-semitic pejorative) as a result.I think that the monotheism is the kind of thing that would attract philosophers and intellectual elites in a polytheistic society. Indeed, it is for this reason that the Jews were called "a nation of philosophers." So, I'd go the monotheism route. But they would need a good reason to go the Judean route rather than the normal route monotheists in polytheistic societies go (generally they just see all devotions to other gods as inferior devotions to the big god in which they believe, rather than seeing them as disloyal acts as did the Judeans and Christians). Maybe they believe that their god will only reveal himself to those who cease devotions to his inferior coinstituent parts and dedicate themselves exclusively to the unity.</blockquote>

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