Cultists as allies or PCs

[Orenda]

Now, I know that cultists are (sort of) the default villain in CoC and in this version, they still are. However, what if the investigators or a group of cultists themselves ran across something much worse?

For the investigators, perhaps the main worry is an extremely dangerous cult that desires to summon one of the outer gods in a demented play for power or a deliberate attempt to destroy the world, and must rely on the help of cults who are either saner or just less suicidal than the antagonists to stop the ritual and, depending on how disparate the motives of the two allied factions, either a long term acquaintance or a backstabbing gun battle over the spoils of victory can be conducted.

For cultists or other Mythos forces, either a "peaceful" cult of farmers or holy men, a traditional cult that works in the shadows and follows a "only sacrifice jerks" philosophy or non-human actors like mi-go, ghouls or deep ones could be played. They antagonists could be anything from a murderous corporate army, the doomsday cult of the first example, a traditional mythos-based enemy or a murderous band of fanatical, anti-Mythos investigators. A group of investigators would be actively sought out early in the game after some initial horror role play which would indicate that their faction is being targeted or hunted. From there, just have fun in foiling your trackers and staying alive.

In either situation, the gulf between the Mythos based mindset and the normal human SAN of the investigators should be played off of whether for laughs or drama. My favorite line is that of a Shub Niggurath cultist making a vow to his investigator ally in a show of demented camaraderie.

"I shall sacrifice the first prisoner to the health of your firstborn!"

So... Ideas, criticisms, praise? I personally prefer lovecraft lite and humor and usually have no stomach for the obsession on cosmicism, but the idea seems sound no matter what your playstyle.

[Mr. Bill]

I think the whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing most definitely has a place in Call of Cthulhu, and could be played for laughs in a "Lovecraft Lite" game, as you call it - but also has potential for heavy moral decisions and, indeed, cosmic-scale horror, for those who are into that.

Certainly most folks around here seem to agree (and, I believe, Lovecraft would too) that the various deities, entities, and forces of the Mythos need not - indeed, should not - be working on the same side or toward the same ends. Some of the "smaller" GOO's - Ithaqua or Yig, for example - often seem content to wander the Earth, soaking up admiration, sacrifices, and occasionally flesh from their followers. Maybe they'd like to spread their own cult's influence, power, or way of life, but it's not their ultimate goal to destroy or remake the Earth or even the humans who live on it. So if there was a mad cult of Azathoth (and, yes, by definition, anyone who worships Azathoth must be mad or suicidal) bent on awakening the daemon sultan and thus destroying all creation, that would be counter to the private desires of some of these GOO's. So it wouldn't be out of place for a group of otherwise "good" Investigators falling in with a Yig cult, witnessing, condoning and even participating in their horrible rituals and methods to beat back the forces of a greater evil. The potential for humor is there, sure, but so a cool moral grayness and potential for major SAN losses.

There are other potential enmities between Mythos deities, too, of course - I've heard Nyarlathotep represented as hating and resenting the idiotic Outer Gods He serves, a characterization I'm quite fond of. And who can really know what Hastur wants, besides madness and chaos?

[Max_Writer]

There is one very much like this in Worlds of Cthulhu #3 called "Sufficient Unto the Day" wherein the cultists are actually trying to stop the rising of a god until the stars are right (they aren't yet). It's a modern scenario that takes place in England.

[Von]

I like it! I've only played a few scenarios so far, and maybe it's simply because me and my friends aren't fully used to the game, but often I find that the players aren't acting out their characters as well as they could, i.e. they all do the same thing in a situation. Making one of them a cultist with a slightly different agenda to follow would make each scenario so much more interesting, as they'd do all sorts of unexpected stuff. There could even be a humorous sense of mistrust and unease between the Investigators themselves. In fact, as soon as I kill off one of the PCs I'm going to urge them to make a new Cultist character
Thanks for the idea, good sir

[Orenda]

I'm actually kind of surprised this went so well. When I wrote it, I was looking from a comedic, Lovecraft Lite perspective but the classic perspective of SAN loss and moral grey is interesting as well.

But would SAN loss count for the allied cultists count for the same degree as the Investigators.. or is that part of the point, that the cultists would be able to fill in gaps in the roster when one of the I's goes temporarily or permanently insane?

And Friendship between two groups with very different mindsets and goals... especially if one does not aim for the ending back-stab, may be an interesting plot point as well.

"Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a cultist."
"What about fighting side by side with a friend?"
(pause) "Aye, I could do that."

Okay, maybe that was a bit too cheesy.

[Careless]

I think the whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing most definitely has a place in Call of Cthulhu, and could be played for laughs in a "Lovecraft Lite" game, as you call it - but also has potential for heavy moral decisions and, indeed, cosmic-scale horror, for those who are into that.

Certainly most folks around here seem to agree (and, I believe, Lovecraft would too) that the various deities, entities, and forces of the Mythos need not - indeed, should not - be working on the same side or toward the same ends.

While that's true (and a view that i readily support myself) - there's always seems to be a kind of "push back" from a certain population within the CoC Fandom that essentially screams "your killing our Mystery."

ie: The incomprehensible forces of the Mythos should remain...incomprehensible and should not be subject to the "Scooby Doo" team up.

To which i say "Pffff.. Moral Greyness all the way!"

Mythos literature is rife with competing interests between Cults, even Cults who worship the same Mythos Deity!

In one of my old games I actually had a neat little setup similar to what your striving for Orenda. It was a no-holds bar fight between the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign and the agents of the Mi-Go. Although it was less about pulp action and more about manipulation of a situation.

The PCs eventually had to make a decision - and went with the Mi-Go over the King in Yellow.

Better the part-vegetable/mineral flying devil you know than the incomprehensible alien horror that neither makes nor keeps promises .

[Orenda]

Mi-go... my choice as well.

To be honest, there is one possible scenario I have in mind involving Quakers in the Shenandoah having a sort of syncretic faith that meshes Iroquoian Shub-Niggurath worship (the Star Daughter and the Black Stag) that involved human (usual enemy warrior) sacrifice and their own pacifism, which basically ended up creating a religion that involved a stone circle, livestock sacrifice, dancing and the occasional virgin giving birth to their parthenogenic identical twin. However, around the Civil War, those among these Quakers who left to train with the Union to become guerrillas brought back old books of druidic rituals which involved human sacrifice, inspiring terror and a fair amount of SAN blasting megalomania. Safe to say, they were banished to the depths of the Blue ridge mountains. During the Classic era, these outcasts might come back as violent, inbred cultist stereotypes preying upon their saner kin.

http://kifkeykrunchies.deviantart.com/#/d4v8036

The description of such is near the end of this particular info-dump in the words of Tracy Williams. It's entirely too mainstream for a proper mythos horror-fest (being admittedly more pulp than cosmicism) but the horror of being hunted by your former kin or being arrested, sterilized and committed by the feds after watching your children being taken away.... fear for everyone, I think.

EDIT: This is pretty much my "pet" cult at the moment.

[wombat1]

Oh I love that.

One could run two story cycles on it, one in Gaslight, and a second in Classic period with the children and grand children of the investigators, such surviving investigators from the first being sligthly nutty (at best) NPC's for the investigators to use for advice.

[wombat1]

To reply a bit more to your original question, I have an Invictus campaign in which two cults are working at somewhat cross purposes--I run both of those. The players, however, have among their resources, an NPC serpent man sent to keep an eye on the pesky human cultists, among other things, in Rome. He will become a problem for the investigators, eventually, for he has his own function and his own agenda, but for now he can occasionally help them along the way by telling them which rock to flip over, helping with the odd translation and otherwise operating on the idea of the enemy of my enemy is my swell tasting friend. Basically he is planted there as a hook to allow me to transition to a second story line should the campaign prove reasonably popular, and I shall soon need him. My justification for this is that Yig of the Serpent folk could find Nyarlathotep to be just as grave a threat to their survival as the humans do, and may quite happily use humans to help with that problem.

As for the comedic aspect, I have occasionally played to it, yes. It can be a fun time. My one published scenario is "Great Old Ones on the Great White Way," about, among other things, a Broadway chorus line of singing, dancing Deep One Hybrids, published in "Dead Leaves Fall." The whole thing from start to finish was written tongue-in-cheek. So a little bit of that is perfectly fine, and never mind the folks who say "but you are stealing the mystery."

Now as for the SAN loss, the cultists are already at O SAN by definition. Their SAN loss is less. This manifests itself in different ways--so the cultists can function perfectly normally. The Mi-Go or Serpent Men run in their own physical universe, so they do not suffer from SAN in the same way if at all. As a functional matter, I suppose they are immune to the things that cause SAN loss in investigators. Whether they recoil in horror from other things I suppose the Keeper will have to decide.

[Emrys]

While I can see how having the option to ally with a lesser-of-two-evils cult would be a fun scenario (for the keeper especially) - and it'd be useful to let a player run a cultist NPC for the rest of a session if their character died early on - I wouldn't want a SAN 0 player character in my group.

[Orenda]

Now that I've had time to think... how would one classify the Quaker sect I described. I know that the violent splinter group with the megalomania and the druidic tomes would obviously be a cult However, would the "mainstream" of that community still be considered a cult if they behaved more like a pacifistic (if almost pagan) human religion with the sacrifice of livestock, chicken-barn insurance fraud and meddling with the forces of Shub Niggurath?

Then again, I think I need to think up some flaws for this community beside the whole "virgins giving birth to their twin" thing.

Maybe I should have mentioned that time when the Holstien budded off into two separate cows...

And the Dark Young (who look more like Huorns than goatish terrors)...

And, of course, the fact that they absorbed a little more Iroquois culture (matrilineal decent, tattooing, ritual) than they let on about.

[Emrys]

Now that I've had time to think... how would one classify the Quaker sect I described. I know that the violent splinter group with the megalomania and the druidic tomes would obviously be a cult However, would the "mainstream" of that community still be considered a cult if they behaved more like a pacifistic (if almost pagan) human religion with the sacrifice of livestock, chicken-barn insurance fraud and meddling with the forces of Shub Niggurath? ...

Cult seems to be a word that only refers to other people so it depends on whether you'd define a cult as (a) any religion of which you're not a member or (b) any minor religion of which you're not a member (and I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes a major or minor religion).

It's more than likely that neither of the groups you've described would call themselves a cult but each would probably refer to the other group using that term.

[Orenda]

Well, to the normal, 1920s Investigator, the Valley Quakers may be perceived as borderline Normal but messing about in things that they do not fully know of.... even after 200 years. How may such a party react to them even though they are very friendly and even helpful against their marauding, degenerate kin?

[The_Tatterdemalion_King]

Investigators are already breaking into homes and murdering people for putting thoughts in their heads.

I'm not really sure what the distinction is.

[Orenda]

Investigators are already breaking into homes and murdering people for putting thoughts in their heads.

I'm not really sure what the distinction is.

That would probably explain why these peaceful groups are so terrified of the Investigatory agencies like Delta Green, especially given their "Scorched Earth" reputation in the late 40s and 50s. On the other hand, the insane groups would just keep up the spell research and blasphemous rites in a bid to out-gun their hunters when the time came.

Anyway, since I apparently derailed this thread onto the subject of "nice" cultists, lets get back on subject, shall we?

What about cooperation with Non-Human communities towards the goal of the first scenario?