In the Middle Ages, the wealthy were known to sponsor holy pilgrims. Like modern millionaires funding a NASCAR team, the sponsors would share in the reflected glory of the pilgrimage. Of course, as in all matters of salvation and piety, there were also deeper spiritual entanglements to consider in such things: Acting in their name and as their agents, the pilgrims would receive blessing not only for themselves but for the lords and ladies in whose name they journeyed.
Historically speaking, the sponsoring of pilgrimages were partly a matter of holy duty (like any other form of tithing) and partly a matter of expediency (for those too busy to make the journey for themselves). In a fantasy setting, however, it would be fairly easy to imagine a third parameter: Danger.
Enter the adventurers.
Imagine, for example, an ancient holy site which is now located in the upper lairs of the Bloodreaver Dragons. Or in the Lava Caverns of the Myrmarch. Or lost in the eddies of the Astral Sea.
And in a world where the gods are active (and perhaps even malevolent) forces, the stakes for successfully performing such pilgrimages might be incredibly high. Thus those who have proven that they can make the greatest dangers into their play-things could easily find great profit in performing such journeys.
A sponsored pilgrimage could be a fun, exploratory travelogue (an appropriate sub-structure for any hexcrawl); it could be tied into a larger scenario (“we need guidance from the Forgotten God of the Purple Seas, and you must journey to his Broken Temple lost among the Steppes of the Black Wight”); or it could be the seed for even larger adventures (“we went to Thor’s shrine for you, but now we all seem to be having visions of Ragnarok”).
I like this idea.
On Saturday, I’m going to be running a game where a pilgrimage shrine has been taken over by a hostile cult who want to use it for a slaver base, and the characters will be making it safe for pilgrims again.
The only reason they know what happened was because the head holy man was about to be killed when he prepared a curse, and his attackers sensed that, and didn’t trigger it. They let him crawl off. He found the party. And now it’s butt-kicking time.
Of course, your discussion is broader in scope. It’s exciting to always have an expanding pool of ways to involve adventurers besides greed, orders, and threats.
This is an excellent idea.
I’ve been trying to think of more excuses for the players to travel, and this is perfect! Tempting the PCs with FedEx quests gets very old, very quick and this will mix it up a little.
Cool idea. Defense of pilgrimage routes is another possible adventure hook. That’s how the Crusades got started!
Hm. I wasn’t aware of this — will do more research as it’s a wonderful adventure hook for Fading Suns!
“It’s exciting to always have an expanding pool of ways to involve adventurers besides greed, orders, and threats.”
Ha ha, seems to me there’s plenty of room for greed, orders, and threats in a pilgrimage quest! But I agree, it is a nicely original hook, makes a lot of sense in often divinely-oriented D&D worlds, and is great for setting up a road trip narrative too.
Bujold’s fantasy book the Paladin of Souls uses a royal pilgrimage as the hook for triggering all sort of adventure (and are you ever going to get around to reviewing Bujold’s fantasy books? I thought the first one was especially good.)
Also the classic book Hyperion makes use of the pilgrimage idea in a truly epic context- a band of heroes with a haunted past go on a doomed pilgrimage to visit a mythical monster worshipped by a cult on a planet that is about to be ground zero of the first intergalactic war in millenia. Makes me want to flesh out a fantasy campaign around that conceit just thinking about it!
Seeing some differences of my PCs with the current churchleader in my campaign, I’ll predict there will be a pilgrimage in the future. Or maybe they’ll just flee into foreign lands…
And I love the map! Quite disorienting if everythings the “wrong” way… I’ll paint a second campaign map that way…