You gotta have faith

[Project_Sardonicus]

Our captors had been forcing us to march for three nights now without rest, they looked a little different to most of the barbarians we had encountered. They were wearing the normal ragged animal skins and body paints in crude designs, but each also wore a tie. I know a tie blood red in a traditional Windsor knot, and they seemed tireless. Chanting their relentless song,
"5% down 36 payments loan guaranteed!"
Was it a battle cry? I lost count of the numbers of them we'd mowed down when they overran our base camp. Whatever Gods dark orders they followed they valued it more than life.

"Time to make a break for it?"
Whispered Jonesy fondling the pistol he'd somehow concealed.

I wasn't sure then we crested the hill and saw there, I guess you'd call it a civilisation. Rusty junkers in every direction, thousands of them each painted more garishly than the last. Every shattered windscreen had a banner upon it,
"Good runner" or "Air con and climate control" Dotted amongst them flames burned and the barbarians hundreds of them danced in crazed passion.
Rising out of the centre of this scene from Dante's car showroom rose a 100 foot tall rusty, metal behemoth. It was Godzilla, breathing flame, the kinda particularly tacky and fruitful used car salesperson would feature on his local TV ads.

We halted, and it's geared screaming in protest it dropped it's head down to the ground. And we saw the barbarians around it pushing hapless hostages from some earlier raids into its jaws.

The metal monster was their dark God, and it would be fed. Judging by the bones, I saw scattered the ground around us and decorated the cars. The God of honest car deals was going to share his feast with his loyal followers.

Of all the remnants of civilisation, why was it used car salespeople who had to survive? I looked at Jonesy and felt my unsecured bonds; I had a bayonet in my boot. Our captors were as sloppy with their hostages as their ancestors had no doubt been with their paperwork. It was time to act, our captors were lost in their Godless, mindless jingle they were calling out to the heavens.
"Jones Truck and auto, if you can't trust Jones you can't trust no one!"


I was thinking the Morrow project is set a very grim century into the future. When nearly all certainty has been lost , the lights no longer come on and food is no certainty.

So what would beliefs be like in this grim new world? In some cases it could be a very positive thing, tying people to their basic decency. We don't eat people or rob our enemies because our God forbids it and we have to answer to him in the world to come.

Conversly is it going to be used to justify abysmal and evil behaviour? We practise slavery and raid our neighbours because that is the way of our people?

Will religion be based on precollapse faiths? Or will the worship of everything from popstars to scifi shows take over. How will our team members deal with a tribe of StarTrek worshipping fanatics forcing all before them to follow the Prime Directive?

[mmartin798]

My current game features such an encounter that my players are not really biting at yet. I based my fictional religion on real world people, events and religions in the area where my campaign is set and found with very little work, the real world has all the pieces I need in place already.

In a nutshell, I took the writings of John Zerzan, the association he had with Ted Kaczynski and a Gnostic offshoot of the LDS that all exist in northern Oregon and came up with a mostly non-violent pseudo-religious cult of Razers I called the Zerza Cult that follows the teaching of their prophet Zerza and a sect within the cult that is much more militant following the teaching of the prophet Zynski. I need to finish up the details before my next session. Just finished the math to spec out a suicide vest. Lots of fun to come for my group.

[Matt W]

Religion - in some form - would survive into the post-apocalypse.

The form of religion will be dependent on the community. A group of Wanderers will develop some useful taboos, for instance (mostly about food hygiene and interaction with outsiders).

The name "Christianity" will survive. However, the religion may take some bizarre forms. Cynics will point out that it has always done so. If Hutterites and Creflo Dollar can both claim to be Christians, then the term is very "elastic"

I don't think that there will be many Cargo Cults. Those came about because of encounters with totally alien cultures. BUT there might be something like ancestor-worship. The "Founding Fathers" regarded as saints, maybe?