CultQuest

Introduction

So, your character has finally done it. You've bumped off the head of the Black Fangs, you've taken over from old Jeb as the Priest of your town, you've manipulated the cult of Thanatar into letting you run the show, you've finally filled in all 412 forms to become an Examiner of the Red Goddess, or maybe your GM is a masochist and decided that one player should be the Red Emperor, another Argrath and another Ralzakark and decided to let you have at one another. Either ways, you now have a cult. What does that involve? What can it do? How much does it cost? If you send someone to assassinate an enemy do you honestly have to make the assassin and roleplay through the whole adventure, or does your GM just make it up on the fly?

CultQuest are my rules for running cults. Part of a "meta-system" to deal with social effects, an idea that I wanted to do when working with Nils Weinander on YAHQS, a system for HeroQuesting, a system for how cults and tribes worked, a system for mass combat, that all worked together. When I'm 50 I'll have finished that I'm sure. Until then, here's the details for running a cult, not an unfeasible proposition in any game of RuneQuest I'd hope. Why should High Priest be an unattainable position?

Cult Statistics

What Your Cult Can Do For You

There are a variety of things that you cult can do, represented by Cult Actions. A cult gets to use it's actions every Cult Turn. A Cult Turn is as long as you want it to be, probably every season (at least) although I'd prefer once every adventure (although if the time elapsed between adventures is particularly short or long this may not be suitable). Whatever suits you, whatever is suitable for your gaming style and campaign, is appropriate. The amount of actions that a cult can take every turn is determined by it's membership. If it's between 50 and 150 people, it has one, if it is between 151 and 250 it has two, if it is between 251 and 350 then it has three etc...

Each cult has a variety of actions, each of which comes with a modifier. So some cults are better at making magical items than gathering funds and vice versa. The modifier is either a multiplier, or a +/- and it should be obvious how they are applied. These are the normal actions that most cults have:

• Recruit
• Gather Funds
• Make Magic Items
• Make Buildings
• Gather Knowledge
• Go on Missions
• HeroQuest

The following are the special actions that only some cults have. Some of these actions can be bought, for instance if you want your cult to be able to assassinate people you can invest funds, train them up, and as long as you pay the cost of upkeep (say poisons and such) you can retain the action. Some cults, of course, will not stand for aquiring certain actions - trying to convince the Chalana Arroy cult it needs a war unit is going to be tricky.

• Assassination
• Warfare
• Emergency Tithing
• Arkati Infighting

Normal Actions

Recruit
Over time, your cult will wane. Cults can often recruit new members, and do so by using this action. Roll 1d20 and add the modifier (which is normally a negative, about -8 for a normal cult, although coercive cults such as Mallia can have more, and difficult to join cults such as Red Goddess can have far less). This is the amount of new members that join. One can also splash out cash to increase the amount gained, money spent on bribes, feasts, or tracking down unwilling initiates for your vampire cult... Every 1,000 pennies adds one to the modifier, but can no more than double a positive modifier and no more than halve a negative modifier.

Gather Funds
Hitting the purse strings of your cult members is a time honoured tradition. However this action can also include raiding other people, stealing, selling information (say in the case of Irripi Ontor or Lhankor Mhy) and other such tasks which get cash. Roll 4d4 and multiply the result by 1,000. This is the amount of funds raised. Only rich or poor cults will have a modifier.

Make Magic Items
Don't you just wonder where all those enchantments on the temple come from? This action forces the cult to manufacture a magical items. It has an amount of POW equivalent to 1d8 (with modifiers applied, most cults have a modifier of -2, so some times there's just no-one around to make what you want). Cults can only create magic that they have access to (normally those on their spell lists).

Make Buildings
Cults also need temples, stockades, outhouses and luxurious palaces for their illustrious rules to lounge around in whilst the initiate starve in the streets. You can spend an action to create a building. A building takes 1 season per 10,000 pennies it takes to build. Each action dedicated to saving time cuts this by 1/2. Each action dedicated to cutting costs reduces it by 20,000 pennies. So it'd take 300 cultists 20 years to build a fort for free! At the GM's discretion this one action can be used to build multiple buildings if they're only small (like huts).

Gather Knowledge
?

Go on Missions
All lowly initiates are sent on missions. Remember that time the High Priest sent you and your companions to face almost certain doom at the maw of the Fourteen Knives? Well, now you can take out that pent up resentment on some new poor bastards. Each mission has a difficulty rating, say 5 for finding lost sheep, 10 for a raid on a minor temple, 15 for a difficult mission such as preventing the advisor to the Duke of Naskorion from arriving safely, and 40 for a mission like stopping the ressurection of a chaos god (which by all rights you, as a PC, should be going on, not the plebs). At least 5 cult members have to be sent. Roll 1d10, modifying it by the action modifier. Before the die is rolled you can also dedicate extra manpower and money to the mission, every 10,000 orbs invested adds one, every 5 cultists sent above the first 5 also adds one. These additions, however, can never more than double the die roll plus it's modifier (and you don't know what that is until you've already invested the men and the money!). If the roll succeeds then so does the mission, if not then not.

Once the mission is completed you must determine how many of the men return, and how much of the cash is recoverable. Look at the following chart, check to see how much your roll exceeded the difficulty rating of the mission:

Special Actions

Assassination
A special action. This action costs 10,000 pennies to purchase and increase maintance cost by 1,000 pennies per Cult Turn. It does what it says on the tin, allowing the cult to arbitarily assassinate people at the whim of the owner. It works very similar to missions. Roll 1d20, and apply the modifier. Sending more assassins does not increase the chance of success, although adding 1,000 pennies gains a +1 modifier, which can no more than double a the positive modifer of the cult action or halve a negative. Every target must be assigned a difficulty reating. 5 would be a peasant, 10 would be a merchant, 13 a nobleman, 20 the king of a tribe, and 30 would be the more powerful rulers of Glorantha. Unless Gather Information is previously used, there is no way to tell what the difficulty is. If the roll succeeds, the target dies. No matter what the outcome, make the same roll again to see whether the assassin escapes alive and undetected. If it succeeds the assassin does, if not then the assassin has been captured, interrogated and most likely killed (some cults get an additional modifier to the second roll, such as fanatical cults, where the creature is more likely to committ suicide than be interrogated). Clearly a GM may wish to rule out certain important NPCs ("I assassinate Jar-Eel!") and almost certainly PCs from the targets of such attacks (again, if you want that kind of job done do it yourself).

Warfare
Again, as mentioned so many times, I have no decent mass combat system. So I decline to explain what this action does. But it's good. Honest.

Emergency Tithing
This action costs 25,000 pennies to purchase, but has only 200 pennies extra maintance. Some cults, such as the Lunar or Kralorelan cults with access to taxation, can hit their own for more cash. Roll 6d6x1,000 for the pennies gained. However, such tithing makes for disgruntled membership. Roll 1d20, this is the number of members htat leave. If a 20 is rolled, roll again and add it to the 20. This can continue indefinitely (so if two 20's are thrown in a row, roll again and add it to 40).

Arkati Infighting
This action requires no Cult Actions to use, costs nothing to buy, and does not increase maintenance. However it is only had by Arkati cults in the Ralian area. Indeed, it is had by all of them!p>

Arkati fight all the time, they squabble, they riot, they bitch, they backstab, they steal members off of one another, they pontificate in the streets, have pub theological discussions, bump each other off with esoteric Arkatism, members have visions telling them that they were wrong in their Arkati beliefs and to change sect, others have visions telling them that they were wrong and to change back, and so on. Man, if I lived next to these guys, I'd shoot myself they're that much trouble. To simulate this constant interchange every Cult Turn, at the end after all other actions have been resolved, each Arkati cult must roll 1d20 compared with every other Arkati cult (so if, in a particular region, there are three cults, Arkat the Great, Arkat the Liberator, Arkat the Deceiver, then Arkat the Great rolls 1d20 against Arkat the Liberator and also against Arkat the Deceiver, whilst Arkat the Liberator rolls against the other two and similarly for Arkat the Deceiver). Whatever the difference between the two rolls (so the difference between theroll Arkat the Great made against Arkat the Liberator, and the roll Arkat the Liberator made against Arkat the Great) is the amount gained or lost by that particular cult (so if Arkat the Great rolled 10 and Arkat the Liberator rolled 12, the former loses 2 members and the later gains them). The modifier is very special. Once you've calculated the number of members moving, add the modifiers from both Arkati cults together and apply it to the number of members. This represents that some Arkati cults are easier to get into or out of than others. For instance, joining the cult of Arkat the Destroyer is often binding, so they have a modifier of -4, whilst joining Arkat Peacemaker is dead easy so they have +2. So if Destroyer rolled 18 and Peacemaker rolled 12 then the result should be that 6 members should join Destroyer. But this is reduced by 4, from the Destroyer cult (it's reduced even though they won the roll!) and then increased by 2 from the Peacemaker cult. Overall 4 members swap Arkati cults. It's up to the GM to decide which Arkati cults are nearby in the region.

What You Can Do For Your Cult

Cults require upkeep. Generally the character owning the cult will be the high priest and will already be donating 90% of their time and income to the cult (note that income from PCs should be directly added to the Funds). However, if a character simply owns the cult (maybe they are a Lunar general who have been given control) then no time or income is required.

Every Cult Action, at the end, the cult loses money, membership and sometimes Mythic.

It loses it's Maintanence Cost every Cult Action. Almost always this is 2d4x1,000 pennies, modified by whatever Special Actions the cult has (special actions such as maintaining an army will sometimes require extra money to maintain, should this money not be spent the special action is lost). Generally this loss is balanced by Gather Funds actions, although a cult that spends it's time doing too many other things will slowly lose money.

Every Cult Action a cult loses 1% of it's Size, due to old age, retirement, illeness, accident, bar room brawls etc... So every now and again a cult must Recruit. In the case of some cults with a small membership, that are difficult to join, this can be very difficult.

Every Sacred Time a cult loses 1 point of Mythic per point of Size. During Sacred Time (when there can only ever be one Cult Action) most cults use a HeroQuesting action to gain Mythic back.

Dissolution

There are three ways that a cult can cease to be, loss of membership, loss of funds or loss of Mythic.

If the cult membership ever drops below 50 then the cult is no longer a cult, just a collection of people. If it ever reforms it does so with no starting Mythic, so one way to weaken a cult is to wipe them out so they have to start all over again!

If the funds every drops below zero, then there's a problem. The cult has until next the beginning of the next Cult Action to be be back in the black, so it's time for the PC to try and get hold of cash, try and raid enemies etc... all done in the course of normal game play. If, by the time the next Cult Action comes around, the cult does not have at least 1 penny in the funds (and they must pay off any deficit accrued) the cult dissolves. Should the PC find funds at a later date, tough. Whilst they could start a new cult it would only have a Size of however many members they convinced to join and no Mythic (see below for beginning a cult anew).

If a cult ever lets it's Mythic reach zero or below, it's in big trouble. A cult cannot maintain itself if its HeroPlane aspect has no hold, there's nothing to latch onto, no conduit to the gods. If the Mythic is zero, then reduce it to -1. Roll 1d6, if it is higher than the negative number (for instance if Mythic is -3 then if the roll is higher than 3, if the Mythic is -5 then the roll must be 6) the cult survives and must HeroQuest for Mythic to solve its problems. If it is not, then the cult dissolves. HeroQuesting against an opponent can reduce their Mythic into negative numbers, and so you can instantly destroy a cult by reducing its Mythic to -6 or below.

To begin a new cult you need a god to worship and some potential members. You also need some form of worship center, such as a building or holy site, and an outlay of 1,000 pennies. All new cults start with 0 Mythic.

It is pointless, by the way, to destroy a tiny cult by destroying its Mythic. At best it only stops the people from becoming a cult and establishing a HeroPlane presence. If you destroyed their Mythic then they still have their Members and Funds (albeit at a 30% loss of funds), and they'll just reform again after reconsecrating their land (at the cost of 1,000 pennies) and be back again next week. Larger cults, however, are amazingly damaged by this as (a) they generally lose more money from the 30% loss and (b) must start their size again from zero!

The people of Glorantha do not recognise the difference between a cult in game terms and not, it's not as if the average Gloranthan shrugs their shoulders and says "Yeah, last week my cult dissolved". So, for instance, a small cult that is continually being thwarted by loss of Mythic just thinks that their rituals are working badly, and have to pay out the money for consecration, not that their cult keeps collapsing! It's just a game mechanic.

Example Cults

Here's two example cults: