The Church of the Holy Scale

In Keep on the Borderlands, at least as I read it, it's strongly implied that the official religion of the land is more or less an analogue for Medieval Christianity. When I ran my own take on B2, I made them snake handlers, pretty much on a whim. Here's a (slightly) more sketched-out version of that idea.

The Church of the Holy Scale, like its real-life inspiration, is devoted to the worship of a god with neither a definite name (they too just go with "God") nor definite characteristics. He/she/it is most often depicted as a great serpent encircling the world, though this is to be interpreted more or less literally depending on whom you ask. Metaphorically or not, God is associated with snakes over and over in the sacred texts. Like a snake, God is understood to be coldly indifferent to anything but its own affairs, despite having created the world and man for its own inscrutable reasons - though it appears to have a general affinity for order and stability (i.e. the Lawful side of the alignment spectrum).

On the other hand, God also has the hunger of the snake, in this case the hunger for worship and adulation. Thus it offers those who pledge themselves to it a chance at eternal life and (for some) a share of its power in the form of clerical magic. Worship services take the form of handling venomous snakes, specially blessed and maintained by the priesthood, who will never bite those with the true allegiance to God in their hearts. Priests are forbidden to use any but blunt weapons because sharp points and edges, like the snake's fangs, are instruments of God's punishment not to be taken up by mere men.

Structure and organization of the Church is a matter of specific campaign needs. For my B2 game, I assumed it was more or less the only (Lawful) religion in town, and that there was some central Vatican-like seat somewhere, but that such things were generally irrelevant to the sort of hinterland places that B2 is supposed to take place in (the Pope isn't stopping by to inspect some random parish on the edge of the Blasted Wastes or wherever, and most folks just take the lead of their local priests and clerics). But it could just as easily be only one religion among many, maybe an offshoot of some Cult of Yig, or something.