Hey folks,
Empire Newbie here,
I have decided to make a monk (the herby-healy kind) and was wondering if there were any religious flavored groups in the Marches that I could get involved with, as this is kind-of essential to my character’s backstory and I want to get that sorted as much as possible before turning up to an event.
If those who are involved in the various orders could let me know a bit about the flavor and ethos of each one I’d really appreciate it 
Many thanks.
Cousin Alice the Apothacary
OOC-Becky
Welcome to the Marches!
There are currently not many monasteries being played in the Marches – most Marcher priests are friars, and many house holds have one Friar among them. So YAY for your question!
As far as I know, there were three monasteries active in 2015.
[ul]]My monastery is the Pickham Monastery, a monastery in Eastern Upwold founded on the memory of an Exemplar of Vigilance. We’re three or four players. We like Vigilance with a perspective towards rooting out sorcery, answering questions of the soul and looking at the implications of hearth magic. I’ll be happy to talk more about it. We have fun minor monastic rules intended to show we are not a normal house hold./:m]
]The Order of Afal, based in an abbey in Southern Upwold, used to be quite active earlier. There may be some people left considering themselves lay pilgrims of the sect, but I haven’t heard them mentioned recently. The Order is about getting Marcher bodies home and giving them proper burials, and does Marcher burials overall. I think they were a Vigilance sect, too. They have a nice, down to earth Marcher purpose and a good way of tying lay-folk in./:m]
]The Order of the Forgotten Word is based in Bregasland, near Graven. They had about 4 lay monks on the field at Winter, I think – among them definitely some archers and herbalists. Their topic is to make sure knowledge once acquired is not lost again. I think I know one of them to have been Gatekeeper of Ambition. They have nice burgundy group habits, highlighting their status as a monastery./:m]
]Non-Monastic groups with an interest in religion I know of are: the Wheelwrights (new group from Northern Bregasland with a few Loyalty priests in there), potentially a new Loyalty sect in the forming (see fb link below), the King’s Stoke Militia group does also have a Sect associated with them and one very active Friar (Ed Watcher, Wisdom) left in addition to religious PCs they lost./:m][/ul]
A lot of Marcher business is sorted over on facebook, which is why this forum is so quiet. For Marcher Priests we have this group. If you want some other comments, feel free to head there. If you want more pointers put here, feel free to ask!