The feel of this cult is all about paranoia and madness. They inflict madness on themselves and others in order to power-up, bring the station to it’s knees and summon Cthulu.
Everyone in the cult gets afflicted with one permanent but Mild brain trauma such as nervous cough or phobia. Your mood becomes insanity, but this instead gives you a speed buff.
Spells
- Reality Dose - Touch-based spell, gives the target a brief knockdown as well as longer-lasting confusion and dizziness (screen shake). Hand glows a dark sickly green whilst this spell is ready (basically much weaker version of Blood Cult stun).
- Drain Energy - Touch-based spell, does as much stamina damage as a Disabler and makes the victim slur their words. Only has an effect if the target is still suffering the effects of Reality Dose.
- Quiet Mind - Puts the target to sleep. Can only be used on people who are stunned or are in stamina crit.
- Subvert Mind - Puts the target into a hypnotic state. Can only be used on people who are asleep.
Note: The gist here is that capturing targets is a lot more involved than the stun and cuff combo of other cults and is best suited to two people capturing victims. Instead of cuffing, hypnosis is used to get the victim compliant and to follow the cultist back to their base.
- Scan Mind - Works like a ranged health analyser, except you can only identify what mental traumas a person has.
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Blur Reality - Works like a Changeling’s Hallucination Sting in that gives a person SM hallucinations (which could range from seeing a husk to imagining being on fire to being hit by a fake Bubblegum) but it’s instead targeted like a Judicial Marker (from Clockwork Cult’s Judicial Visor) and invisible to non-cultists. This spell is key for winning the game.
- It also has the chance to give the victim a mild trauma and this effect can be enhanced.
- If used on someone with an existing trauma, the chance will instead be to make the trauma longer-lasting e.g. upgrading the trauma from basic to severe, or severe to deep-rooted, even up to permanent.
- The more people traumas you’ve inflicted or enhanced, the greater the chance that your next Blur Reality will inflict a trauma or enhance an existing one.
- If you’re Transcended then you have a much higher chance of inflicting a trauma or making existing ones longer-lasting. Once a target has one permanent mild trauma, you can also give them a severe trauma and enhance that.
- Basic mild traumas are worth 1 madness point, severe mild traumas are worth 2, deep-rooted mild are 3 and permanent mild are 4. Basic severe traumas are worth 5, etc. All of the cultists’ permanent traumas are also included in this score.
- Once the cult has achieved 100 madness points then even non-Transcended cultists can give people severe traumas once their target has a permanent mild one.
- Once the cult has achieved 150 madness points then you can use Transcend Self and only get a Mild permanent trauma.
- Sanity Swap - Allows you to remove a trauma from anybody in exchange for gaining a random severe permanent trauma youirself. Cannot be used to remove a cultist’s final permanent trauma, trying to use it on them then will instead reroll them a new permanent trauma. Useful if you want to increase the cult madness levels a small amount at a personal cost, or if there’s a specific trauma that’s messing a cultist up and you want it removed.
- Conversion Circle - works just like Clock Cult’s conversion sigil.
Once you’re converted:
- All hallucinations and effects which give them are removed, because you see reality for what it truly is.
- All brain traumas are removed, and you’re given one permanent but Mild trauma like all other cultists.
- Your mood becomes insanity, but this instead gives you a speed buff.
Final spells:
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Transcend Self - Gives you a Severe permanent brain trauma (or only Mild if you’re the cult leader or if you wait until 40% of the crew is cult or the cult gains 150 madness points) in exchange for access to some higher tier spells:
- Dimensional Floor - creates one of the random floor traps from the Wizard spell The Traps! where you’re standing. These do not harm other cult members.
- Twist Reality - Creates a very brief, random anomaly wherever you target (e.g. flux wave, pyroclastic, vortex etc). Useful for both attack and escape.
- True Form - changes you into a random xenobio simplemob. Every time you use this spell you’ll change into this type of mob. Cooldown works like the Desynchroniser, meaning the spell cooldown is equal to how long it was activated for last.
Once 20% of the crew is cult
- Every cultist is given a random permanent Special brain trauma (except for Criminal, so generally they’re positive).
- Every non-cultist crew member will get mild hallucinations (about the level of the Reality Disassociation Syndrome quirk).
Once 40% of the crew is cult
- Every cultist can now activate Transcend Self and it’ll only give you a Mild permanent brain trauma instead of Severe.
- Every non-cultist crew member will get moderate hallucinations (about the level of SM hallucinations).
- Every few minutes one random non-cultist crew member will get a random race change.
- Every few minutes one random non-cultist crew member will get a random voice change.
Winning The Game
The cult has a target (similarly to Blood Cult) who they must give three severe brain traumas to using Blur Reality. It doesn’t matter if these are basic or permanent severe traumas, only that they have three simultaneously. After that they must sacrifice this target in one of three specified locations. The target will get immediately dusted and creating the Cthulu summon rune takes same amount as Blood Cult.
To get to this point there’s generally three routes to doing so:
- Whole group Transcends Self early on and hope that your group can survive through the severe traumas well enough to give the target three severe traumas and survive the onslaught at the summon location.
- Mass convert so you can get 40% of the crew being cultists, then Transcend Self as it’s cheap now and give the target enough traumas, and more easily defend the summon location with your large group.
- Inflict Blur Reality on lots of crew members to wrack up madness points, then Transcend Self as it’s cheap now and hope that your few Transcended cultists are enough to quickly infect the target and do the Cthulu summon.
The Curator
Idea is to make him the crew’s champion, haven’t thought through it too much though and after writing all this I just want to post the rest for feedback.
- They’re immune to cult spells.
- Alongside the Codex Gigas the Curator also gets the Necronomicon. Slapping people over the head with it can cure basic mild traumas.
Like I said this isn’t a fully formed gamemode yet but should be enough here for discussion.