[RPM] Cultists of the Cold Ones (Apocalyptic Cult of the Path of Nonexistence)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

That depends on a couple of things.

What does 'apocalyptic' mean in context? And does she understand that actual meaning?

That'll have a heavy effect on what sort of person would be drawn to this. It depends in much on what she thinks she's doing, as opposed to what's actually going on.

Apocalyptic is my term, not an in-setting selling point to new recruits.

It's a cult, so recruits will tend to have a very skewed idea of the reality behind what they are doing, and most of the recruits will be vulnerable, at-risk people lacking a support network. Many will be addicts or recovering addicts, runaways, people getting out of abusive relationships and, yes, the mentally ill and psychologically disturbed. Because of the message and the communities where recruitment is focused, I expect a heavy concentration of people struggling with depression, self-harm, feelings of low self-worth and an array of other psychological issues.

Only the upper echelons of the cult know anything of what they are really doing and only the Hidden Masters know the full truth. That being said, the five leaders behind this ritual belong to the highest level of the Keepers of the Last Hearth, below only the Hidden Masters, and so will be fully cogniscant of the fact that the ritual is intended to bring about a profound and fundamental change on Earth, one incompatible with human life as we know it. There is, however, ample room for even these senior figures in the cult to be deluded about the consequences of so doing and they will have different motivations.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

She might:

1. Think of it as a cold-eyed trade-off. 'I help the Cold Ones wipe out most of humanity, in exchange they give me 'x'. 'X' could be wealth, power, immortality, a hunky lover or 10, whatever appeals to her. It doesn't matter if these benefits will actually materialize, as long as she thinks they will.

Option 1 might tend to appeal to a classic sociopath.

This is fairly classic for mid-level cultists and, perhaps especially, criminal associates of the cult, that the PCs have encountered. Of course, from what the criminals say, they have no idea of the ultimate goals of the cultists, just that they are too scary to refuse, pay well and perform magical rituals (complete with human sacrifices) that actually work, so they are terrified any disloyalty will be discovered and punished by awful curses. So the 'ordinary decent criminals' actually claim to be a little from this column, a little from column 3.

At least a few cultists with self-serving motivations appear to be ritual magicians, who must to some degree be initiated into greater secrets of the cult. Of course, it's difficult to disentangle motives of self-interest from bitterness and psychological illness when the person in question speaks, apparently sincerely, about the beauty of oblivion and the coming End of Days, but also uses Path of Nonexistence rituals that cause unconsciousness and memory loss as date rape drugs.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

2. Raised to it. Her parents might have been cultists too, and she might have been quite literally raised to take part. Whether she really understands what's involved or not would depend on the details.

The Girl with the Kaleidoscope Eyes, who was apparently supposed to initiate the ritual, seems raised in this cult.

There is reason to believe she's exceptional (and not only because not that many children are born in Antarctica), however, as the PCs cannot find any evidence of the cult existing before the year 2000 or so. If it was founded earlier, it would have been very small, maybe just a couple of people. At any rate, the supernatural hasn't been present in the setting very long, with the first reports that the PCs know about dating back to the 1980s and while paranormal phenomena have been appearing at increasing rates after 2000, reports of it are still officially disbelieved and the history of the world is pretty much identical to ours until the mid-90s.*

So it's unlikely that there are many others raised to the cult and even if there are, they'll tend to be young. I imagine that the five leaders concerned with this particular ritual are all old enough so that they were adults (or at least teenagers) when they learned about the existence of the supernatural, although I suppose that the youngest of them, our hypothetical Asian-American from California, could be born in 1987 or so, which would make her young enough so that she might have discovered magic as a child.

And, of course, even before the campaign world diverged from reality, children in our world can be raised in cults and strange subcultures of all sorts, albeit ones without functioning magic, and maybe that kind of upbringing makes people more likely to join a ritual magic using cult later on.

*The main differences between the campaign world and ours, aside from the existence of hidden supernatural threats, is that in the campaign world, instead of the rise in crime rates seen in the US and many other countries during the 80s and early 90s peaking and then receding since then as happened in our world, in the campaign, crime rates have risen steadily from the 1980s onward and at the end of 2018, rates of violence in the world are about four times what they are in reality.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

3. Totally misinformed. She really has no idea what's actually going on, she thinks the goal is something totally other. She might have been led to believe that the cult is a blind or a distraction for whatever she thinks is really going on. She might have been misled by others or her own wishful thinking. She could be at once intellectually brilliant and clueless about practicalities.

Totally misinformed will be confined to lower-levels of the cult, associates and other useful idiots, but wishful thinking and self-delusion are entirely valid.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

4. Curious. Her academic thirst for knowledge is so great she'll risk global destruction to satisfy it. This is another 'sociopath' type.

That's an interesting motivation. What would make someone who was capable of performing ritual magic so curious about the ideal of oblivion, nonexistence and the End, rather than investigating magic in itself, learning from spirits or exploring some other aspect of the paranormal world opened up by their gifts?

Perhaps at first, someone might be unaware of the existence of anyone else who knows about magic and have no other way to learn it, of course. But at a certain point, at least if they reach a leadership role and can create powerful rituals, they'd learn enough to be able to contact different spirits, if they really wanted. So someone would have to be really curious about the Lords of the Last Waste specifically, or about something which distinguishes them from all other extranormal entities reachable with the right rituals.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

5. Bitter/angry about Whatever. It could be something big, she might have been a victim of child abuse, slavers, tortured by the drug cartels, suffered any number of horrific things. It might be relatively minor, maybe her lover betrayed her and she's prepared to destroy the world to get even. Either way she might be said to at least a little insane.

Ah, yes, always a classic. One fairly feckless cultic assistant was a depressed teenage boy who frequented Internet forums dedicated to incels and discussing suicide, which led him to nihilistic websites devoted to an aspiration toward the suicide of the human race as the only ethical choice. The sort who idealizes Rusty Cohle in True Detective and doesn't realize Cohle is trying to convince himself of the philosophy of nihilism, because the alternative hurts too much.

Bitterness could also be said to be the motivation of Sister María Teresa, the strongest personality among the five leaders who've come to Texas to perform this ritual. A nun from Colombia who dedicated her life to helping the weak and the poor, she gradually lost her faith through working with the less fortunate in the Candelaria district of Bogotá through the drug war and civil wars of her home country and the continuing cycle of violence that in this world seems unending. When she discovered the existence of the supernatural, she came to the conclusion that the existence of demons, ghosts and spirits must necessarily torpedo any rationalist, materialist explanation for the world, so that the God of her childhood must exist in some form.

And He must be either incompetent or evil, to allow so much suffering. So as He was clearly not ready for the responsibility, the only moral thing to do was to take His toys away, for good. Oblivion was better than the alternative, an eternity of man's inhumanity to man.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

6. A lot insane. Totally bat-excrement crazy. This could be compatible with brilliant, she wants to destroy the world because it's Thursday or because her neighbor is growing sunflowers. Her motives would defy rational analysis because they are irrational.

Note that the sixth option makes her potentially a liability to the cultists, too, because her actions are inherently unpredictable.

There is evidence in the campaign world that people who practice magic rarely exhibit perfect sanity and prolonged use might actively cause alienation and psychic trauma. Certainly, most people that the PCs know about who've studied the occult to any extent are deeply eccentric, at best, and confined to instutitons as dangers to themselves and others, at worst.