Montsegur's a slow boil, but it did boil!

The believers suspected witchcraft was the cause of all the badness at Montsegur, and the town harlot (played by Pat) was the obvious choice for scapegoating.

Meanwhile, the daughter of the lord of Montsegur (played by Melissa) had her baby - but not with her husband, a man she loathed - the child's true father dead from battle.

And a young girl (played by Marc) wants to train to become a perfect - and is horrified to find out that her aunt is the town harlot.

Our favorite scene:

The leader of the women faithful (played by me) discovered the head "priest", leader of the faithful, the one who made her a perfect, having sex with the harlot.
(Pat played a scene card:) "It's not consensual. This is the same man who raped her when she was fifteen."
The leader of the faithful pretends innocence for a bit. Since he was the perfect who made me, I am no longer a perfect - and since I'm doomed to another revolution on the wheel of life, I decide I might as well kill the bastard. (I play a scene card.)
Not to mention he was the "grandsire" of all the perfects in Montsegur - now nobody can perform the consolamentum to make more perfects.
My "apprentice" comes in then - and I'm in the midst of apologizing for her loss - for the loss of all of us - (when Pat plays another scene card) - when the town harlot takes the blame for the murder, because she believes that Montsegur needs a perfect, that we can't lose hope.

Yeah, we were all pretty blown away by that.

I, as new head perfect, mouth open, play along. I tell myself that maybe our faith is strong enough to overcome these sins. The first thing I do is make the harlot a perfect - showing the strength of our lord's forgiveness and binding her more deeply into the lie at the same time.

In the end: the perfect and the harlot chose to burn, of course.

The wife chose to burn - not because of her faith, but for revenge against her family.

And Faye found out about the murder from her brother, and horrified by the lie and unable to forgive her aunt, disguises herself and escapes.

So ... was it a story about the strength of faith and hope? Or ... the story of a deceived Jonestown willingly sacrificing itself for a lie? I don't know!

True to Jamie's sales pitch, this game got fairly emotional.

At first the game was a little overwhelming with all the characters and the lack of details about Montsegur and the Cathar's faith, and I think our early scenes were pretty reserved because of that. Once we got a grasp on our main characters and fleshed out their relationships, things began to pick up.

I liked how the threat of the sieging crusaders slowly grew in importance. At the beginning of the game, the siege was very much a background element, and our characters were more concerned with their interpersonal problems. As we progressed through the acts, things got more and more grim, and each character's priorities-- particularly the strength of their faith-- came bubbling to the surface. Plus, it ends with lots of burning martyrs!

The game also resulted in me spending a fair amount of time this morning reading up about Montsegur and the Cathars on Wikipedia.

Thanks for facilitating, Jamie!