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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 2039665" data-attributes="member: 2">The church makes a phenomenal source of political and conspiracy-based adventures, especially in a low magic world. Think about this: in a low magic world, the church literally wields the power of life and death. If you cross them, they interdict you from future healing, and your wife dies in childbirth because any cleric who tries to help her will find himself or herself sinning. This is a very powerful notion that can easily be used to manipulate non-adventuring types.Within a church you may have an elite faction of scholars who consider themselves enlightened. You may have a faction who hoard knowledge because they believe it is not fit for the unholy. You may have a cult who believes that people should not hold property, and you may have a faction that (based on an obscure line in a holy book) believes that wealth is the path to heaven. All these people are going to be butting heads and trying to out-maneuver one another, all while currying the Ruler's favor.For adventuring, you'll want to tie the knowledge and conspiracy to a fun meta-plot. Something with ancient, suppressed evil is always nice. Let's say a cleric believes that only man can bring about the Harrowing that has been foretold. She then manipulates her superior in her order to give her resources, and she uses the leadership feat to build up loyal followers who help her seek out the location to the Apocalypse Song, the last echoes of a dying god's voice that may be used to destroy the unworthy. Another faction gets wind that someone is looking for the Apocalypse Song and, without knowing who is behind it, hires the PCs to stop them.  You get the idea.  So long as this cleric continues to play politics and rise in power, there's no reason for her to break from the church hierarchy and turn "evil."  Remember, to a large extent the church IS the government, and they have resources aplenty.And when you get tired of religion, run some intrigue in the merchant houses for a while.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Suggested reading: - Cerebus: Church & State (underscoring the power of religion)- Eco's The Name of the Rose (different church factions, the power of secrets)- Sagiro's story hour (best long term meta-plot I've seen)</blockquote>

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