Night Cult

“We shall rise with the Emperor on the Last Day.”
—Credo Mortifex
One description given by some philosophers when
asked to describe the true nature of the Imperium
is that, beyond its teeming countless masses,
numberless worlds, and incalculable might, it is best described
in terms of a vast web of secrets. Secrets, and by greater
extension ignorance of the truth of things, are paramount to
the Imperium’s very existence. Knowledge is a calcified and
restricted thing. One simple reason for this restriction is that
it is better the people have faith than facts, for the facts allow
little room for hope and the realization of the true horrors
that confront humanity would lead only to destruction and
utter despair.
Some organizations within the Imperium can afford no such
shield of ignorance if they are to defend mankind, and chief
among these is the Inquisition itself. There are however some
truths too dangerous and some lores too valuable to be widely
known even among the members of the Holy Ordos.
Knowledge surrounding a group known as the Night Cult is
one such secret. To most, it is no more that an old dark tale, a ghost
story told on a dozen worlds to deter those who would disturb
the dead. But behind the stories lies a dark and hidden truth at the
center of a shrouding mass of ancient myth, fragmented records,
half-truths, misapprehensions, and outright lies. The story goes
back, according to some apocryphal sources, to the founding
of the Calixis Sector, at a time when the Angevin Crusade was
faltering and a man became a saint. It concerns a heretical faction
of the Imperial Creed long forbidden, the darkest of proscribed
technologies, an apocalyptic prophesy of the End of Days, and
the power to make the dead walk.
==The Worship of the Emperor Revenant==
One of the great themes and focuses of the Imperial Creed
is the Emperor’s bodily sacrifice, the great martyrdom by
which he has preserved humanity and attained immortality.
The sects and factions of the clergy that center their dogma
on this aspect of sacrifice and ongoing life-in-death are
known to the wider Ministorum as the Cult of the Emperor
Revenant. Although such beliefs are accepted as cannon by
the Ecclesiarchy, its extremist proponents have been sources
of schism, deviancy, and heretical practice, counting among
their ranks numerous death cults, suicidal zealots, and darkly
mystical interpretations of the Imperial Creed. They vary
widely in type and values from ashen–faced flagellants who
vow to put aside any worldly concerns and live as “the blessed
dead” to sacrificial cults and radical resurrectionist sects who
strive to work towards the Emperor’s eventual bodily return
to lead mankind to a new golden age.
The worst of such resurrectionist cults are outlawed
Imperial fanatics who operate in secret to pursue dark science
and sometimes warpcraft to break the shackles of death,
often with terrifying results. Pursued with the utmost vigor
by both Ordo Hereticus and the Cult Mechanicus for their
blasphemy, most remain true zealots who see themselves as
ranking among the righteous, believing that the Imperium
has lost the “true way” and only they hold the key to the
God-Emperor’s will and humanity’s salvation.
==The Thanatology of the Calixis Sector==
Within the Calixis Sector, the worship of the Emperor
Revenant has always had a solid following in doctrine and
practice. Many of the Calixis Sector’s major local cultures
have strong aspects of funerary worship, mystical theurgy,
and the reverence and remembrance of the dead, which may
vary widely in practice even on the same world. On the sector
capital Scintilla, the Tarsines are obsessed with ossuaries and
all manner of blessed bone trinkets and supposed saint’s
relics, and the Sibellans go to great lengths to enshrine and
preserve their ancestor’s remains and honor their memories
(sometimes simply to bask in their reflected glory). Meanwhile,
the people of Ambulon practice excarnation, to the horror of
their fellow Scintillans.
The Transfiguration of Saint Drusus---the legendary
moment during the Angevin Crusade on Maccabeus Quintus
where he was struck down but restored to life by the
Emperor’s grace---is a cornerstone of the cult of his sainthood
and further acts to cement the belief in rebirth among the
faithful. The sector also features several funerary worlds such
as Granithor and Pilgrim's Pause, which some traditions
believe to be particularly auspicious and sacred burial sites
for the dead and are given over almost wholly to act as vast
cemeteries. On these worlds, the influence of the Cult of the
Emperor Revenant is at its strongest. With so many morbid
and macabre practices and strange superstitions the norm, it
is easy for death cults, mystical sects, and other such heresies
to breed unnoticed and slowly gain grip.
==The Legend of the Night Cult==
There exists on many worlds in the Calixis Sector legends
surrounding hauntings, the spirits of the dead walking,
vengeance from beyond the grave, wraiths preying on those
who disturbed the dead, or specters who exact a terrible
revenge on the living who have wronged them. Such
superstitions are only natural, and they may be no more than
an attempt to explain the unknown. However, in a universe
where the things of the warp prowl and hunger beyond the
veil of physical reality, the truth behind such tales may indeed
have a cause rooted in otherworldly evil.
One of the oldest of these tales found throughout the
Calixis Sector is that of the Night Cult. It is said to be a
spectral congregation, the damned souls of false priests,
traitors, and sinners doomed to make repentance to the
Golden Throne in death. These lost souls, the myth claims,
stand guard over the graves of the just who have fallen in the
God-Emperor’s service, protect the pure of heart, and wreak
dreadful vengeance against those who would prey on the
faithful or disturb the rest of forgotten martyrs. The legend
is not one approved of by the Ministorum, as it reeks of the
worship of unclean spirits and warpcraft, but it has persisted
with some local variation for as long as records go back. From
Scintilla to Dusk, from Solomon to Reshia, the stories can
be found, but the oldest and perhaps most dangerous spring
from the shrine world of Maccabeus Quintus.
On Maccabeus the story is considered blasphemous
enough to merit the pyre for professing, and here the
Night Cult also carries another, older name---the Temple of the True Resurrection. Here it is linked to the time that
Drusus, before his sainthood, was struck down by the enemy
and rose again by the God-Emperor’s grace. In this tale, a
cleric swathed in midnight black robes and bearing a fire-blacked
staff appeared in the councils of Drusus’s stricken
army, shaming them for their cowardice and scorning them
for their lack of faith. The legend states that it was through
this dark stranger’s intercession that Drusus was restored. In
return, the general who would one day be venerated as an
Imperial Saint bid the stranger build a new temple to the true
resurrection---a cult to guard the souls of men from the great
enemy, enslave the false, and punish the corrupt until the last
days, when the dead would rise once more with the Emperor
for the final battle.
Since then the Temple and its “cult of night” have entered
the folklore of Maccabeus and beyond. To this day (although
they risk their lives by doing so) many Maccabeans light
black candles to the Temple to watch over the spirits of their
ancestors during the winter solstice when the planet’s moons
enter eclipse, and hold the belief that votive offerings left at
lonely crossroads can bring about terrible vengeance by the
cold hands of the Night Cult’s dread congregation.
==The Fate of Dread Sarcos==
“The night is dark and full of terrors, but none so terrible as the wrath of the Risen God of Mankind. For the empty liars of the warp will be silenced and the false iron idols of the grave shall perish in turn. Death itself shall die, as a worm crushed under his heel.”
—Credo Mortifex
During the dark times that followed the Age of Apostasy,
an Imperial death cult calling itself the Brethren of the
Risen came to power on the western fringes of the
Segmentum Pacificus in the Sarcosan subsector. Located
on the western fringe in a swathe of Imperial space that had
become isolated during the civil wars that had wracked the
Imperium, the Brethren stood firm against the enemies of
the undying God-Emperor of Mankind. The price the cult
had borne and the heresies it embraced, however, proved
too much for the Imperium to countenance when several
centuries later a Crusade fleet sent to retake the worlds of
the western fringe encountered it. The war that followed is
still a subject of great secrecy to this day, entering into the
dim mythic histories of the Holy Ordos, Cult Mechanicus,
and several Astartes Chapters who fought in this dark and
bitter struggle.
Since that time, dark legends have cropped up in scores
of sectors across the western Segmentum that speak of
the children of dread Sarcos who fled into the shadows
and their dark and terrible arts. To this day, this ancient
heresy is said to inspire Imperial cults obsessed with the
resurrection of the dead and to be the source of strange
rites conducted in ancient cemeteries that echo some dark
shadow of the Ministorum.
It is said the Credo Mortifex, dread Sarcos’s heretical
interpretation of the Imperial Creed, and the lost arts of
the cult’s forbidden technology are rare and terrible prizes
for which the darkest sects will pay any price. They are,
however, perilous to possess---for stories say the curse of
Sarcos comes for any “heathen” that would obtain them.
==Inquisitorial Threat Briefing==
There is no attested evidence in the Calixian Conclave Archives
referencing an organization, cult, or doctrine of the name “The
Children of the True Resurrection,” while the phrase “The Night
Cult” references certain unfounded myths and superstitions not
considered threatening to the acceptance of the True Faith.
== The True Nature of the Night Cult ==
Below are three possible interpretations of the Night Cult. The
truth, of course, may lie with all or none of these. Indeed players
might well get tangled up investigating one myth or report at the
bequest of one faction or another, only to find themselves knee
deep in trouble of an entirely unexpected kind!
The Darkest Arts: A Quest for Life Everlasting
One possible truth lies in a heretical sect concealing the quest
for true immortality behind the façade of the ancient legend of
the Night Cult. The architects of this quest could be hereteks,
exploiting and developing ancient and forbidden tech-lore for the
raising of the dead, malefic sorcerers, or psyker-mystics wishing to
extend their lives and gain dominion over life and death. Behind
such a cult could be a highly–placed network of the powerful and
wealthy, or even a renegade faction of the Inquisition itself who
would ultimately reap the benefits of the cult’s work. Meanwhile,
the cult’s cover as a ghostly myth could serve as an excellent
shield to keep away prying eyes. The availability of places of the
dead and the infiltration of funerary customs and sects provide
excellent sources of test subjects. Such arts, either technological or
mystic (or the combination of the two), are difficult to control and
have many pitfalls and dangers, not least of which when success
is achieved.
Details of a xeno-artefact within the Calixis Sector said to
grant long life are the Halo Devices.
A Grave Cold Faith: The Sarcosan Heresy
Another option is for the Night Cult to be a “true” heresy, that
is to say a deviant faith of the Imperial Creed and one that takes
the tenets and concerns usually espoused by the doctrines of the
Emperor Revenant to a terrifying extreme. Such a cult would be a
frightening and unusual opponent, because though undoubtedly
heretical and possessed of many forbidden and dread powers, its
members would nevertheless be fanatics to the Imperial cause in
their own way. They would believe unshakeably that theirs was
the true path and that they were acting in true accordance with
the God-Emperor’s word to guard the faithful, punish the false,
and conceal themselves while preparing for a coming “final battle”
when they will raise the dead to fight at their master’s side.
Meeting in secret in the dark of night in ruined temples and
places of the dead, they would carry out sinister ceremonies that
echoed the daylight rituals of the Ministorum, attended by a bleak
congregation indeed. With the patience and subtlety of those
dealing not in a short, frenetic span of years but a perceived near-eternity,
this incarnation of the Night Cult would act with a slow
but implacable purpose, having begun to infiltrate the faithful and
suborn agents throughout the sector long ago. Such a group might
well number allies and even true believers among Neothorians
and secret Recongregator ultra-radicals in the Inquisition’s ranks.
The Night Cult might also make for a very strange and powerful
ally for Acolyte PCs faced with seemingly insurmountable foes.
In such cases, players may well reason that so radical a solution as
enlisting the help of the Night Cult would be preferable to seeing
a world die to the like of the Pilgrims of Hayte or the Vile Savants.
It is up to them to decide and to survive the consequences.
Treaders in the Dust: The Hungry Ghosts of the Warp
A third option is that the Night Cult is the worst of lies, using
the superstitious fear and forlorn hopes of the people as a mask,
behind which monstrous terrors crawl. This version of the Night
Cult is nothing more than an artifice that allows some xenos-race
or cabal to pursue its goals. The architects of this deception might
be a race of vampiric entities from the warp, a murderous and
unknown xeno-breed, a kindred of daemonic spirits able only
to possess the dead, or perhaps a particularly warped coterie of
death-obsessed witches or sorcerers who must feed on the living
(or the dead) to maintain their power and extend their unnatural
existences.
The Night Cult could also be a congregation made up of
damned souls condemned to serve in death or perhaps trapped in
an appalling half-life as accursed shades never to find release. The
hatred and bitterness of such a Night Cult would be a boundless
and cold thing, a true fury from beyond the grave.