Interesting Religion/Heresey for an AAR?

[Superstorm]

As the title suggests, want to get back into trying out an AAR since my first Zoro one fell through due to stuff going on irl. Want to try out a religion/heresey that's pretty ahistorical but has fun/fleshed out mechanics so the gameplay is fun as well as the AAR. Played most vanilla religions and pagans, but wouldn't mind trying out a heresy or new pagan religion like the Celts or Kemetics, though I hear that Celtic is the most fleshed out of the three.

So, what kind of religion would make for an interesting AAR, but also be fleshed out enough (and have enough IRL info for research and understanding) to be enjoyable for both sides? Or one that's not really been done before. Love the mod, just terrible at making choices haha.

 

[cyberTripping]

Catharism is a lot more fleshed out in the mod, with a bunch of unique events and such. Might be worth checking them out.

 

[DeathLawlie]

I will said paulician, especially with the patriarch in TOG start, you're a very little caliph-like christian warlord and you're surrounded by Muslims, Apostolic and Nicene and most of them are more powerful than you, so one mistake and it's the end.
But you have some advantage : you can holy war everyone who are not paulician for 0 piety (even crusade), you have a "huge" event army (but don't trust it, it's a full light infantry army who will get kill really quickly, a bunch of zealous peasant if you want an idea), you can summon more faithful for piety and you have some long run objective : mend the two schism to became the only true Christian faith.

 

[Superstorm]

Appreciate the suggestions, both sound and look pretty solid. Open to more whatever peeps suggest. Cathar do have France and the HRE to contend with, so could be interesting. And the Paulican's militant nature and surrouding by enemies also has pretty good story options.

EDIT: Sunni/Shia heresies are also options, but don't know as much about them ^^

 

[DeathLawlie]

In my opinion Kharijite (ibadi heresy), Yazidi (sunni heresy), and druze (shia heresy) are the most interesting heresies for Islam.
Kharijite : in the early bookmarks they are many kharijite province in the maghreb and a special kharijite revolt in the Abassid Caliphate in 867. Kharijite are very very rigorist and they are many mechanics who go with that : can holy war everyone like paulician if I remember correct, don't have a 5 years cooldown on holy war, can execute kafir (bad kharijite and infidel) for piety and some others mechanics like that. But I don't know more, except that you're objective will be to overthrown all the Kafir and make a rightful Caliphate
Yazidi : there is no yazidi ruler in the game (except the "pope" of yazidism) and the only yazidi province appears from 1200. So if you succeed to become yazidi, you'll be alone. But, first even if you're a sunni heresy, you're in the mazdan group (so you can only make alliance with zoroastrian, manichean and theirs heresies). But you have many mechanics who show the particularism of you're faith (reincarnation, pilgrimage to you're holy site, special fest, and some things like that). And You have some objectives : Make the yazidism a separate religion from Sunni Islam and became the shield of the faith.
Druze: There is only two druze province in the game from 1066, but between 1066 and the creation of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the little count of baalbek, vassal of the Fatimids, is a Druze. So, it will be hard for you to survives but you're faith have many interesting mechanics to show the melting pot that you are and you're objective will be to become a separate religion from Shia Islam and create the religious head of the druze faith.

 

[karmaepsilon]

I like Manichean because I really like the Gnostic religions and there aren't many of those to play with here.