Cult Magic

Cult is about a vile magic cult that has infiltrated the station, with the intent to spread its influence or summon The Dark One.

* There are no defined cult 'heads', all cultists are equal, but each original cultist starts knowing the meaning of one rune word and a special 5-use talisman.
* Since cultists don't know all the words required for creation of runes, they need to find these words out through experimentation or get them from their horrible deity by sacrificing. As such, the crew has some time before the cult starts spreading.
* The Chaplain can use his Null Rod to reveal hidden runes and deprogram cultists. Apply the Null Rod directly to the forehead or to the floor, depending on what you want to achieve.
* Cultists draw runes from their own blood, requiring arcane tomes to do so.
* Rather than a syndicate uplink, cultists activate runes using their own blood (and taking some brute damage) to gain cult items and powers. Most of the time they have to resort to the drawn runes, though.
* Everyone and anyone can become, or start as, cultists. This include Security and Heads of Staff.
* The shuttle can be called and will end the round.

Your Cult's goals can be anything you want, from peaceful (albeit creepy) proselytizing to blood-soaked mayhem to the summoning of Nar-Sie Itself. Your magic allows you to communicate secretly--a good way to set up a clandestine meeting and discuss what you want to do.

Cultists should work together to achieve their objectives, and have access to many otherworldly powers to bring this about.

## Cult Magic

Cult Magic is what being a cultist is all about. To use this magic, you need to have an arcane tome and draw runes with proper words. The drawing is made with your own blood, and you'll take some brute damage each time you draw a rune or use a talisman, but unless you take too much damage and break something, this damage will regenerate on its own very quickly. Using certain runes will take a greater toll on your heath. Try to have a bruise pack with you, or some other means of healing yourself; or convert a doctor.

Once the rune is drawn, click on it to chant an invocation. If everything is right, the rune's spell effects should appear. If the rune is invalid or cannot work for some reason, you will still make a chant, and the rune will glow a little, but nothing will happen.

## Starting Talisman

When you become a Cultist at round start, you will have this in your backpack. Its a special talisman, which can be invoked 5 times.

What you should be usually doing is summon a tome for yourself, to be able to actually draw runes, then use a communicate talisman to send the rune word you know to other cultists.

In general, a stun talisman is useful as it can be used as a concealed defense or to disable someone you mean to kidnap. You may use EMP if you are setting up a hideout and need to disable a camera behind a wall you can't access, or as a combat option against borgs and people with artificial parts. Picking a rune concealing talisman is usually pointless at first, as you won't be able to invoke a hidden talisman unless you reveal it or use a see invisible rune. The teleport talisman is also usually useless at first, as you don't usually start with knowledge of words needed to make teleport runes.

### Talisman Options

Your talisman can be used five times. Each time, you can choose from the below effects:

* *N'ath reth sh'yro eth d'raggathnor!* - Allows you to summon a new arcane tome.
* *Sas'so c'arta forbici!* - Allows you to move to a rune with the same last word.
* *Ta'gh fara'qha fel d'amar det!* - Allows you to destroy technology in a short range (creates an EMP).
* *Kla'atu barada nikt'o!* - Allows you to conceal the runes you placed on the floor.
* *O bidai nabora se'sma!* - Allows you to coordinate with others of your cult. (Communication Talisman)
* *Fuu ma'jin* - Allows you to stun a person by attacking them with the talisman.
* *Sa tatha najin* - Allows you to summon armored robes and an unholy blade. (Very obvious; for combat only.)
* *Kal om neth* - Summons a soul stone.
* *Da A'ig Osk* - Summons a construct shell for use with captured souls. It is too large to carry on your person.

## The Tome

The Arcane Tome is the most important item for any cultist. It is used to draw runes with your blood. It also contains some basic info on the runes you can use. The tome doesn't appear on your character's sprite, so as long as nobody examines you, they won't notice that you are holding it in your hand. The tome cannot be used to bash people over the head, since it does no damage.

## How to Play

Fantastic, you've joined a cult. At the beginning of the round, you start out with a paper in your backpack. Resist using it right then and there.

Put the paper into your box in your backpack. Wait until there is no one else around and the AI is looking somewhere else, summon your tome, communicate with your cult buddies, and start researching your runes.

### Words Are Powerful

Now that you have your tome, either put it away, or use the Notes section to record your known word and any other words the other cultists have communicated to you. Use the Communicate talisman option to tell the other cultists your word, and possibly to set up a safehouse or meeting point.

### Cult Headquarters

Some good places for a base are the the mining station or some out of the way place in Maintenance. Try locker rooms, storage rooms, or bathrooms.

### How to Research Words

Now you've started researching words. The best way to do this is start by using two known words, then going down the list to fill in the last word. If the rune glows slightly, it's a valid combination. Think of it as a logic puzzle: Each spell will only work with a combination of three known words. If you know two out of the three, trial-and-error will reveal the third, which you can then record in your notes. Communicate your words to the rest of the cult; they will be the same for everyone.

A good order to get runes is:

1. convert
2. blood drain (you now have teleport)
3. wall
4. ghost
5. summon tome
6. stun
7. imbue

### Setting up

If you are setting up in a place AI has camera access to, the first thing you should do is cut the camera access. Don't forget to cut cameras behind walls that have your hideout in sight. The AI is a stealth cultist's worst enemy; it must not have ANY chance to notice you. Thankfully, it can only see runes as blood stains.

Then set up the teleport rune. If you are planning on making teleport talismans, have one teleport rune with a unique word, so that every time you use a teleport talisman with this word, you teleport to that rune. If not, just set up a teleport rune which connects to a rune on the station; that's how you will be able to enter and leave the hideout. You can have up to ten teleport networks, so you can set up a whole portal room, with different runes leading to different places on the station. Finally, ensure that no intruders can enter the hideout by setting up and activating wall runes at all entrances. Your hideout is now ready; use it for all your cultist needs.

### Cult Activities

Just found out one of your cult buddies is lost and has no idea what to do? Or is he locked in?

You can use the Free cultist and the Summon cultist to get him out of cuffs, DNA tubes, Even welded and/or locked closets! Then if you are quick enough you can use the Summon cultist rune to get him to the lair or wherever the rune is located. This is great for saving cultists that have been arrested by security.

Only have 2 cultists and a bunch of words, but you need 3 cultists? This can easily be solved! By using a simple manifest ghost rune placed next to the rune your going to invoke, you can manifest a ghost and still stand next to the rune you want to invoke. This can even be used to summon Nar-Sie.

### Summoning Others by Yourself

If you are by yourself, you can still summon your cultist friends. Set up a manifest ghost next to a summon cultist (or free cultist) rune and manifest two ghosts. Have the two ghosts help summon your friend.

### Healing

On the chance that you are somewhere out in space, you can still heal yourself. Set up a blood drain rune next to a manifest ghost rune. Manifest the ghost and have him stand on the blood drain rune and drain him of life. Rinse and repeat as needed.

### Resurrecting Dead Cultists

Combine this with summoning others by yourself and you can summon a dead cultist and resurrect him. What you will need is a manifest ghost rune next to two resurrect runes. Put the dead body on one rune and manifest a ghost to stand on the other. The ghost of your dead cultist, or any ghost really, should stand over the dead body. Invoke the rune, gibbing the ghost and resurrecting your newly arisen cult buddy. If he wasn't a cultist before, he will be now.

### Sacrificing

Locate the body using ghost self and observing your sacrifice target. If possible, have a cohort find the target, dead or alive, preferably dead if he cannot be converted, and use a teleport other rune to send the body to the base you have set up for sacrificing.

### Constructs

Using the talisman that starting cultists are granted from their dark lord, they are able to create an army of shades and constructs. This can be used to bring those to your side who typically would never do so on their own, like the chaplain or security officers. A wise move is to create an artificer first, which saves you valuable points on the supply talisman.

## The Runes

Each rune contains three words written in unknown dialect.
There are 10 words used for rune scribing. What they mean in English is: "travel", "self", "see", "Hell", "blood", "join", "technology", "destroy", "hide", and "other". Your Arcane tome however, is written in an unknown dialect and initially you know none of the words.

There are two ways to find out meaning of unknown words. First, you can simply use the sacrifice rune to sacrifice humans and monkeys. With each sacrifice comes a chance to suddenly remember a rune word. The other way is through trial and error. Knowing two out of three words needed for some rune, you can find out the last word by trying each unknown word in turn until one works.

All proper runes will look the same each time they are scribed, and will glow slightly, while failed runes do not glow and are random.

### Teleport

 The first two words for this rune are **"travel self"**

The Teleport rune has two words: Two for the rune itself, and the third for the destination. When you have two runes with the same destination, invoking one will teleport you to the other one. If there are more than two runes, you will be teleported to a random one. Since there are ten words, you can create up to ten independent teleport networks. You can imbue a teleport rune into a talisman, which will then teleport you to the destination rune upon use.

### Teleport other

 The first two words for this rune are **"travel other"**

This variation of the teleport rune allows you to teleport objects between the runes. You need to have three cultists standing around this rune to properly invoke it.

### Summon a tome

 The words needed for this rune are **"see blood Hell"**.

While just having a henchman cultist is useful, he will be of much more help if he has an arcane tome to create more runes. This rune simply summons a new arcane tome. Always have one hidden somewhere so that you can get a new tome in case you lose your current one.

### Cult Armaments

 The words needed for this rune are **"Hell Destroy Other"**.

Cultists now have access to weapons and hooded robes that double as armor. There is the Cult Blade (an energy sword), Cult Robes (armored robes), and Cult Hood (armored hood). To invoke, simply activate the rune with an open hand to receive the cult blade, robes, and hood. Just have the slots open. This is usually a bad idea if you're trying to be stealthy.

### Convert

 The words needed for this rune are **"join blood self"**.

The first and the most important rune is a rune to convert other people into cultists. To make the person a cultist, you need to put him on top of the rune, and then invoke it. Certain people may be resistant or even immune to such due to outside influences of either technology (implants) or faith (chaplain). The target has a choice about whether to convert, but as long as they are on the rune, they will keep taking damage and, in later stages, suffer hallucinations, until they either convert, die, move off the rune, or are rescued--which is why you should have a nice, private place to convert them.

### EMP

 The words needed for this rune are **"destroy see technology"**.

Remember those EMP grenades and that EMP wizard spell? This rune does exactly the same. The rune itself doesn't generate a strong pulse and only disables items in small radius. Imbuing the rune into a talisman makes it stronger.

### Drain blood

 The words needed for this rune are **"travel blood self"**

This rune instantly heals you of some brute damage, while damaging a person placed on top of the rune. Whenever you invoke a drain rune, ALL drain runes on the station are activated, draining blood from anyone located on top of those runes. This includes yourself, though the blood you drain from yourself just comes back to you.

One drain gives up to 25HP per each victim, but you can repeat it if you need more. Draining only works on living people, so you might need to recharge your "Battery" once it's empty.

### See invisible

 The words needed for this rune are **"see Hell join"**.

This nice rune does exactly as it says. It allows you to see invisible objects and people as long as you stay on top of the rune. Most importantly, it lets you see ghosts; this might help you when working in conjunction with a resurrection rune. But it also works on hidden runes, cloakers, and aliens who use invisibility.

### Resurrect

 The words needed for this rune are **"blood join Hell"**.

So the cloner is blown up? This rune is exactly what you need then. However, unlike the cloning pod, it will not make a body out of nothing, so preparations are needed. To make the rune work, you will need two bodies: a living one, and a dead one. The living body will provide the life essence, while the dead body will provide a vessel for your friend.

Put a dead body on the rune, and then have the ghost of your friend stand directly on top of it. Then put a living non-AFK human body on top of a different resurrect rune (putting it on the same one might or might not work). Note that the living body can be yourself, so don't stand on the rune when invoking it if you don't want to sacrifice yourself.

If everything is done right, the dead body will be alive and at full health again, controlled by the ghost who was on top of that rune, while the living guy is immediately gibbed. This is the price for the life of a cultist--another life.

If there are multiple ghosts on top of a dead body when its resurrected, only one of them will be resurrected.

### Hide runes

 The words needed for this rune are **"hide see blood"**.

This handy rune, which you can also make with your starting talisman, makes nearby runes invisible. Note, however, that you cannot invoke the runes if you can't see them, so you need to either use a "see invisible" rune, or use a reveal rune.

This rune is useful for revealing support runes that you do not activate directly. For example, hide a teleport rune in a safe place you can teleport to with a teleport talisman.

### Ghost self

 The words needed for this rune are **"Hell travel self"**.

This rune allows you to leave your mortal body and become a ghost. This comes with all those benefits of being a ghost, being able to communicate with other ghosts, seeing invisible, and so on.

Of course, you are unable to control your body as a ghost, and if you fly away, you will have no idea if something is happening to it. You can re-enter your body the same way as you re-enter your corpse as a regular ghost.

Your body itself slowly receives damage while you are ghosted. If it is removed from the rune, you will not be able to re-enter it.

### Manifest a ghost

 The words needed for this rune are **"blood see travel"**.

This rune is close to the resurrect spell, but works differently. It does not need any dead bodies or sacrifices, just you and a ghost both standing on top of a rune.

You might want to put a paper with a name on the rune if you want your manifested ghost to have a specific name. Once invoked, a new body will appear right where you stand. The body will last indefinitely as long as you are standing on the rune, controlled by the ghost. This "cult zombie" is unusually resilient, immune to pain. It is spawned naked without weapons or armor.

Once you die or leave the rune, the ghost is banished from the body, gibbing it in the process.

### Imbue a paper

 The words needed for this rune are **"Hell tech join"**.

This handy little rune imbues an empty piece of paper with the power of an adjacent rune. It only works with the EMP, Summon Tome, Hide Rune, Reveal Rune, Teleport, See Invisible, Blind and Deafen runes. Have a rune of one of these types beside the imbue rune, put a paper on the imbue rune, and invoke the Imbue rune.

You will now have a one-use talisman with the power of the target rune. Using a talisman drains a lot of health, so be careful with it.

### Sacrifice

 The words needed for this rune are **"Hell blood join"**.

The sacrifice rune is used to gain the favor of Nar-Sie by sacrificing different living things to it. You can sacrifice monkeys and humans. Humans are better than monkeys, and living is better than dead.

If you are lucky enough, you will suddenly remember meaning of one of the rune words; however, it could be one you already know. You can sacrifice dead bodies and monkeys alone, but to sacrifice a living human, you need to have three cultists chanting by the rune. Sacrificing a living human is very likely to yield a positive result for you.

### Reveal runes

 The words needed for this rune are **"blood see hide"**.

Need to activate that rune you have hidden, but don't know the words for a "see invisible" rune?

Your hide rune always comes with its sister - the Reveal rune. Just reverse the wording order of the Hide rune, and you will get a rune that reveals all hidden runes in large area around itself.

### Wall

 The words needed for this rune are **"destroy travel self"**.

This rune magically thickens the air above it, making an invisible wall. You invoke the rune to create a wall, and invoke it again to remove the wall, so it works pretty much like a doorway for cultists. Add a hiding rune, and it becomes a real pain for non-cultists to figure out what's going on and how to remove it.

### Free Cultist

 The words needed for this rune are **"travel technology other"**.

A nice complement to the summon rune, this rune also requires three cultists chanting by it to work. Activating it allows you to free any of your fellow cultists from many kinds restrictions: handcuffs, cable cuffs, muzzles (but NOT straight jackets), and locked or welded closets.

### Summon Cultist

 The words needed for this rune are **"join other self"**.

This rune allows you to summon any cultist to the rune. You need three cultists chanting for it to work, and the target must not be cuffed, buckled or hiding in a closet. Note that this rune drains quite a lot of health from every chanting cultist.

### Deafen

 The words needed for this rune are **"hide other see"** .

This rune temporarily makes all non-cultists in visible range deaf. You can imbue this rune into a talisman; it will have the same range, but the duration of deafness will be shorter. **"hide other see"**.

### Blind

 The words needed for this rune are **"destroy see other"**.

The Blind rune works exactly the same way as the Deafen rune, except that it blinds everyone in visible range.

### Blood Boil

 The words needed for this rune are **"destroy see blood"**.

A very dangerous rune, which also requires three cultists invoking it for it to work. When invoked, it deals damage to all non-cultists in visual range, while only damaging cultists slightly. The more cultists invoking the rune, the more it damages non-cultists.

### Communicate

 The words needed for this rune are **"self other technology"**.

This spell allows you to easily (and very safely) communicate with your cult members. Invoke it, type a message, and it will be transmitted to all cult members in big, red letters so they won't miss it. You can get one with your starting talisman, and you can imbue a paper with it as well.

### Stun

 The words needed for this rune are **"join hide technology"**.

Unlike other runes, this one is supposed to be used in talisman form. When invoked directly, it simply releases some dark energy, briefly stunning everyone around. When imbued into a talisman, you can force all of its energy into one person, stunning him so hard he can't even speak. The stun lasts long enough for you to drag your victim away and restrain him.

The paper can be concealed and not visible when held in hand and, being a piece of paper, it doesn't look like a weapon to the uninitiated. Use it to stun candidates for conversion in case they refuse to join you, or to robust nosy security guards.

### Summon Horror

 The words needed for this rune are **"Hell join self"**

The Final Spell. This spell summons a huge all-consuming monstrosity from the outer planes, essentially ending the round. What you need is to have nine living cultists (manifested ghosts will do) standing near the rune--one on the rune, and eight in the squares around it. When you have enough people and the Horror is summoned, you and everyone close by will most likely be killed, after which Nar-Sie will start to devour the station, piece by piece.