Champion the Basque Faith thoughts

[dwarfpcfan]

So upon finishing my Duchy of Prussia into Baltic Playthrough from start date 867 to end date 1453 (which to date earns the personal achievement of my most rewarding CK 3 play experience so far).

I decided I wanted to dip my feet into the new Iberia content. I started as the duke of Gascogne since he's basque by default but I wanted to start my dynasty from the ground up, so I created a custom 400 pts Duke of Gascogne (well 398, couldn't raise stats higher without going over 400)

My Duke of Gascogne without any intent at the start from me has been basically moving from one crazy scheme to another just by trying to form a "basque kingdom" (basically trying to get my hands on all the counties where the basque culture is present and then get my hands on a kingdom level title regardless of De Jure where they belong, hence why I didn't choose the Kingdom of Navarre or Alto Argon, Gascogne seemed a safer starting point, tactically speaking since Navarre is in a really precarious position in 867)

Along the way my ruler acquired the wise man trait from taking drugs and now I just got the option to go crazy basque witchy paganism.

Now moving from Catholicism to Era Zaharra seems like it could be fun, if only because I'm thinking this playthrough is going to be built on the duchy of Gascogne having some... interesting people in charge.

Now here's my conundrum I'm looking at the tenets and honestly it's pretty nice for a pagan religion: christian syncretism, witchcraft accepted yet monogamous, free religious reform with the decision.

However, I'm basically located in between mostly muslim rule Spain (Asturias has shrunk with successions and split. Navarre is gone because I ate most of it and the rest has been absorbed by muslim neighbors) and Catholics on the other side. I'm pretty strong for a duke but I'm not going to conquer Europe.

So I'm basically asking. Has anyone else made a playthrough with this decision or at least tried it out? I've played a lot of pagans, reforming tribal pagans then going feudal is what I usually play. But up until now when playing pagans I've always done so by choosing a pagan tribal locations (away from the big christian centers at the start) and expanding/reforming/growing from there until I would reach the christian centers with natural expansion.

But if I take the decision it's me holding nearly all the Basque region as a catholic duke suddenly switching to a reformed Pagan religion with muslims on 1 side and christians on the other. This seems like a... dangerous choice given my current position.

I have an alliance with the king of Aquitaine and my ruler started stewardship focus before switching to learning as cultural head so he holds 10 counties on his own, his heir will be even better since he has the intelligent trait even if my current ruler does not. I have decent income, and I've been maximizing my men-at-arms. Plus the pope giving me money has allowed me to speed up development of my counties by using him as my piggy bank to build buildings in my counties. This is a very strong benefit from being catholic.

I'm right between two blocks and my 7K ish strong army levies and men-at-arms included shouldn't be able to resist protracted holy wars if the catholic world gets huffy or the muslim world gets the same idea.

The decision however lets you choose if you want to keep christian syncretism, switch to muslim syncretism or become a fundamentalist warmonger.

So has anyone had experience with this decision? If you have, what did you choose? Did you keep the tenets as is and been basically a christian syncretic pagan, gone with the warmonger route or decided to take the islamic syncretism route?

I'm not looking to conquer the world or build a huge empire in this play through. Just fool around the region, spread a little mayhem and see where it goes(hopefully gaining a kingdom title along the way. But being basque with visigothic codes, succession isn't a big problem). I'm still on my first ruler and he's 66 right now, he's going to pass the torch soon. The decision just showed up as available to do the plunge into Basque paganism (or at least Ck3's take on it) and seems like it could be fun. But at the same time I'd like not to kill the longevity of my play through by taking this decision and having all of my neighbors turn on me. The decision states it must be taken before 1200. I'm in the early 900s right now onbviously but I don't know if I can pull of the requirements again with my next ruler.

The decision requires either having 2 virtuous traits from the faith and holding the necessary counties (which my heir doesn't he only has 1 of the virtuous traits of the faith), or being of sinner and/or excommunicated by the pope. Which I don't foresee happening since taking decisions that piss off the pope isn't something I'm inclined to do when playing christian rulers because it just hurts my kingdom's safety for no worthwhile benefits