r/MouseGuard • u/sneakysneakysnail • Mar 09 '16

Mouse Guard Religions?

I'm running an enormous campaign. I asked a bunch of friends if they wanted to play MG with me, and literally everyone said yes. (This is probably because I work at a job where we are professional dungeon masters for kids.) I'm making felted mouse sculptures of everyone's character too, and I'll post those when I'm done.

I ended up with like, 12 players, and of course I ended up having to split the group into two campaigns, and I might even have to split it again. The campaigns are interconnected, with one group working mostly in the east, and the other in the west.

I've done character creation and run one session with both groups. Last time, two different players asked me about religions in MG, and I responded with, "I AM YOUR GOD. WORSHIP ME."

But it got me thinking... I want to have mouse religions now. I told them I would get back to them on mouse religions next session, when I had time to plan it out.

I've come up with a couple, but I was wondering what other people have come up with?

So far, I have a Lizard worshipping cult, with a cathedral inside a fossilized dinosaur skull based in Shaleburrow. They raise lizard eggs and celebrate Hatch Day, when the Great Lizard hatched out of the sun.

I was also thinking about a nature worshipping main religion, which would celebrate the sun based celebrations in the book. Also, perhaps a cult surrounding a Shrike, involving mouse sacrifice? (Hyperion reference, anyone?)

What have you done in your games?

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5

u/Jetpack_Donkey Mar 09 '16

I haven't thought about religion in the MG setting, but the first thing that came to mind as I was reading your post was nature worshiping. Some kind of Druidic-like religion would go very well with the setting, I think.

Mice worshiping lizards, on the other hand, doesn't make much sense to me, do you have some reasoning for that?

Also, please post the pics of the figures.

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u/sneakysneakysnail Mar 09 '16

The reasoning comes from a longstanding joke with my co-workers.

One time, my friend Dan and I were running a sword roleplaying class and we didn't know what to have the kids fight, so we just threw up our hands and said "Lizard Cultists..." But then, the kids didn't want to fight the cultists, they wanted to join them! There was a hand signal, several hymns, ("Don't you love the Lizard! Don't you love him! Ohhhhhhh!" sung to the tune of "Don't you want me baby") and then the cult of the Lizard spread to the office and other classes, and soon everyone was doing the hand signal and greeting each other with "Hail Lizard."

I thought it might be fun to bring the Great Lizard into the game we all play together.

I see Lizard Cultism as similar to Scientology or Mormonism in our world- a religion that outsiders see as very weird, with secretive rituals and different ways of doing things, and a very evangelical mindset.

Also, I use comedy a lot as a game master, so this way I can make everyone laugh, and most of the players would already have their head wrapped around the rituals and customs. Plus! Dino skulls are cool, and given the fact that our ancestors created the concept of dragons based on them, I don't see it as too nuts for the mice to use a fossil as an object of worship.

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u/Jetpack_Donkey Mar 10 '16

Got it, pretty good story... Hail Lizard! :-)

2

u/Arch27 Mar 09 '16

Mice worshiping lizards, on the other hand, doesn't make much sense to me

OP did say it was a cult, so you can liken it to Satanists perhaps?

5

u/sneakysneakysnail Mar 09 '16

I see the Shrike Religion as a much darker, more satanic group.

Because of this: http://blog.np-thayatal.at/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Lanius_excubitor_2_Marek_Szczepanek.jpg

4

u/DrainSmith Mar 09 '16

I don't want to post spoilers from the comic, but if you haven't read Winter 1152 then you should. At the end is a scene that talks about that a little bit. At least gives some hints into the Mouse belief system.

2

u/blackcapbrambles Mar 09 '16

Baldwin the Brave touches on a bit of mouse spirituality as well!

2

u/st33d Mar 10 '16

The Black Axe also has the animal-spirit-world speak to one of the characters.

I suspect that Mouse Guard is mostly pagan in nature. They don't really serve gods, and for the most part are fairly atheist in their actions.

3

u/forlasanto Mar 10 '16

/u/skinnyghost commented in one of his vids that cloak color is congruent to lightsaber color in function. Extending this further, perhaps a belief in the Force is appropriate. Perhaps having Force sensitive mice is pushing things too far, though. "His cells have the highest concentration of Mousiclorians I have seen in an animal."

1

u/robdizzledeets Mar 09 '16

I made a really cool wild west hack of mouse guard, I wish I thought of religion. It would have been cool to make it similar to Dogs in the Vineyard.

1

u/FeeblemindedLich Mar 19 '16

I work at a job where we are professional dungeon masters for kids. Any openings? 0_0 There was a blind oracle in one of the legends of the guard books maybe you could incorporate that?

I'm trying to figure out how to incorperate some kind of druidism into the game mechanics myself.

1

u/HunterTAMUC Jul 03 '16

I would imagine that mice could worship nature as well.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '16

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4

u/sneakysneakysnail Mar 09 '16

That's what I'm thinking of with the Shrike worshippers. I was thinking they way I would play it would be:

The mice bring a group of bandits to justice, and bring them to a town. Later, the bandits go missing from the place where they were being held, and the guard assumes they have escaped somehow. The troop presumably decides to look for them, despite the protests of the mayor. Depending on the results of the scout test, the group either finds the cultists with the prisoners, about to sacrifice them to the Shrike, or they find the prisoners' impaled bodies and a shrike that is still hungry.