Cathars

From AJS.COM

The Cathars were a heretical sect of Christianity in the 12th and 13th century in France.

The Inquisition was established in 1229 to root out the Cathars. Operating in the south at Toulouse, Albi, Carcassonne and other towns during the whole of the 13th century and a great part of the 14th, it succeeded in extirpating the movement. From May 1243 to March 1244, the Cathar citadel of Montségur was besieged by the troops of the seneschal of Carcassonne and the archbishop of Narbonne. On March 16, 1244 a large and symbolically important execution took place, where leaders of Catharism together with more than 200 Cathar laity were thrown into an enormous fire at the prat des cramats near the foot of the castle. Moreover, the church decreed severe chastisement against all laymen suspected of sympathy with Cathars (Council of Narbonne, 1235; Bull Ad extirpanda, 1252).

Mage game

In David's Mage Game, the Cathars were Mages, intent on keeping the secrets of their allies the Templars, and guide the players even in the 16th century to re-discover their lost lore.

Coincidentally, one of the characters in the party is from Narbonne, and his anscestor is thought to have retained the Cathar / Templar artifact, the Sphere of Mercury.

---

Part of this text was duplicated from Wikipedia, and is therefore available under the GFDL, in exception to the policies of this site:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "Text of the GNU Free Documentation License."