Blood Cult
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Brother John says: "So you've joined the cult of the almighty Nar-Sie, but don't know where to start? This is for you, apprentice. (If you're part of the security force and looking for tips to fighting the cult, look here.)" |
FOR THE LOVE OF NAR-SIE, PLEASE READ THE GUIDE
The Beginning of a New Era
The Geometer of Blood, Nar-Sie, has sent a number of her followers to Space Station 13. As a cultist, you have an abundance of cult magics at your disposal, something for all situations. You must work with your brethren to summon an avatar of your eldritch goddess!
Several cultists will arrive on the station. When you spawn, you'll find a piece of paper, which is really a three-use summoning talisman, a tome with a random selection of runes, and a sacrificial knife in your backpack. The three-use talisman will allow you to do summon useful talismans and other objects.
The general path of action of the cult and those in it:
- Contact your allies through your Commune verb. The Commune verb sends a whispered message to all cultists.
Important: Communication and teamwork is essential! If you fail to read the guide this far and follow the steps until here, you will probably fuck up the round for everybody and are not worthy enough for the cult of Nar-Sie and may be antagbanned! - Find an area to convert into a base, usually accessible by one or more members of the cult, and cut cameras and in general make the base usable and hidden for the cult.
- Set up base defenses, usually consisting of stun runes at the doors, to stun any noncultist trying to enter, and wall runes on any windows.
- Use summoning orbs from sacrificed targets to summon and fill a shell so that Nar-Sie's avatar may enter this world.
If you're in a position that would usually wander the halls, try to seek out your fellow cultists in person. If not, check in with your brothers using your Commune verb, but do this in private, to prevent people from hearing your whispers. A lot of jobs have access to isolated areas of the station that are great for this, and there's also space. Remember, if you get caught, you endanger the entire cult.
Sacrifice
REMINDER: Two cultists are required for living sacrifices, standing adjacent to the rune.
To please Nar-Sie, you must find and sacrifice targets using a sacrifice rune to produce summoning orbs, to summon Her, and soulstones, to create constructs to defend your base.
The Starting Talisman
You will have an innocuous-looking paper in your backpack or pocket. It's a special talisman imbued with blood, which can be invoked five times to spawn a number of useful objects, including a regular 1-use talisman of varying types, a soulstone, a construct shell, or a sacrifice rune. Make sure to hide the talisman from everyone who does not serve Nar-Sie.
| Name | Description | In Starting Talisman |
|---|---|---|
| Teleport | A talisman which allows its user to transport themself instantaneously to a teleport rune with the keyword "veri". | Yes. |
| EMP | A talisman which creates a large EMP, disabling machines, cyborgs in particular. | Yes. |
| Veil | A talisman which hides unhidden nearby runes and reveals hidden nearby runes. | Yes. |
| Immolate | A talisman which sets all nearby non-cultists on fire. | Yes. |
| Summon Armaments | A talisman which summons armored robes and a cult blade for the invoker, provided they have open slots. | No. |
| Soulstone | A capturing device used to trap the souls of dead or dying humans. The soulstone itself is not particularly useful without a construct shell, however. | Yes. |
| Construct Shell | An empty shell which, when filled with a soulstone, allows you to create a Construct. | Yes. |
| Sacrifice Rune | Creates a sacrifice rune beneath you, useful if your Tome's random runeset does not include the sacrifice rune. | Yes. |
The Tome
The tome allows you to scribe a random set of these runes, using Scribe Rune, or to access information on these runes, with Read Tome, though you clearly don't need to do that if you're here.
| Name | Description | Can be Imbued |
|---|---|---|
| Sacrifice | This rune is used to sacrifice enemies of the Geometer. A lone cultist can sacrifice a corpse, but two cultists are required to sacrifice a living creature. A sacrifice completely destroys the body of its unfortunate victim, leaving behind its soul trapped in a soulstone and a summoning orb. The victim's soul can be inserted into a construct shell to make a construct. | No. |
| Form Wall | This rune magically thickens the air above it when used, stopping everything except gas trying to pass through it, including cultists. Invoke the rune to toggle this effect. | No. |
| Time Stop | This rune stops time for all noncultists in a 5x5 area around it when invoked, though it does some damage to the invokers and the effect is barely long enough to scribe a second rune. | No. |
| Boil Blood | This requires two cultists to activate. When invoked, it instantly sends all non-cultists who can see the rune into crit. However, cultists in range of the rune will take 15 damage. The rune itself will lightly explode when used, so be careful! | No. |
| Immolate | This rune sets all nearby non-cultists who can see it on fire when invoked, though cultists near the rune will take some additional damage. | Yes. |
| Debilitate | This rune causes deafness, blindness, and muteness in all non-cultists who see it invoked, though it is single-use. | No. |
| Stun | This rune temporarily stuns and mutes all non-cultists who see it invoked, though this is not the optimal use of it; Non-cultists who try to cross a Stun rune will find themselves stunned, allowing for a quick sacrifice. | No. |
| EMP | This rune causes a large EMP, disabling machines and, more specifically, cyborgs, in a large area. However, the rune will be consumed on invoking. | Yes. |
| Drain Life | This rune drains life from a living human on the rune, healing the invoker for between 5 and 25 damage. | No. |
| Raise Dead | This rune raises a dead body on the rune to life, while draining a dead body not on the rune to revive the one on the rune. When invoked, both bodies must remain in place briefly, and after that brief delay, the body on the rune will be raised from the dead, fully healed. This works on, but will not convert, non-cultists, and should not be used to revive non-cultists. | No. |
| Teleport | This rune allows you to teleport to other Teleport runes with the same keyword as it. The keyword is chosen upon scribing the rune. | Yes. |
| Teleport Other | This rune allows you to teleport other creatures to Teleport Other runes with the same keyword as it. The keyword is chosen upon scribing the rune. | No. |
| Summon Cultist | This rune allows you to summon any cultist to the rune. This works across Z-levels, including the escape shuttle. | No. |
| Veil Runes | This rune makes nearby runes, excluding itself, invisible to everyone, including you. Activate it again to reveal nearby runes. | Yes. |
| Astral Communion | 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. You can re-enter your body the same way as you re-enter corpse as a regular ghost. The body itself slowly receives damage while you are ghosted, and the rune will automatically keep your body anchored to the rune itself. | No. |
| Manifest Spirit | This rune allows you to manifest ghosts as semitransparent homunculi, which are effectively weak, humanoid cultists with no self preservation instinct. To sustain these homunculi, you must remain on the rune, and each homunculi you have summoned will cause you damage. | No. |
| Imbue | This rune imbues an empty piece of paper with the power of an adjacent rune. It only works with a few select runes. Have a rune of mentioned type beside the imbue rune, put a paper on the imbue rune, invoke it. You will now have a 1-use talisman with the power of the target rune. | No. |
| Summon Armaments | This rune attempts to equip the invoker with armored robes and a powerful blade, requiring only an open hand and exosuit slot. | Yes. |
| Fabricate Shell | This rune creates a construct shell from 5 sheets of plasteel. | No |
Summoning Nar-Sie
When you sacrifice humans, you get summoning orbs, the only way to attract Nar-Sie's attention for more than a few seconds. Using one of these orbs allows you to summon a large shell, which you must fill with a number of orbs to attempt to summon an avatar of Nar-Sie.
Upon filling the large shell to capacity, it will lock in place, alert the station with a delta alert, and start a three-minute countdown in which you must protect it until the avatar of Nar-Sie is summoned.
Constructs
Robust cultists will likely want to enlist the services of a few constructs. To create a construct, a cultist requires:
- A filled soul stone, either by sacrificing a human, or capturing a soul manually with a stone from a supply talisman or an artificer.
- An empty shell, either by using 5 plasteel with a summon shell rune, from an artificer, or from a starting talisman.
When the filled soul stone shard is used on an empty shell, the cultist will be allowed to choose the desired construct to create. Keep in mind these guys are pretty much a dead giveaway that there is cult activity on the station, so try to be covert about it in the beginning.
A complete guide to constructs can be found here. Artificers will poop out new soulstones and shells, wraiths can kill the AI, and juggernauts are great tanks.
Tips
- Cultists can know a rune's name and effects by examining it. If it's a teleport rune, it also lists the keyword.
- Cultists often find a use for medibots. Having a single bot with a low threshold, backed up with the odd bruise pack, can allow a tiny number of cultists to summon and arm a vast number of ghostly warriors to their aid. A single bot can juggle multiple people at once, if they are relatively close to each other.
- Engineering staff during cult are top-priority converts, as they can sabotage telecomms for you.
- Are you cult? Got talismans? You can store them on a clipboard, and nobody ever checks clipboards, especially if you're QM or another role that spawns with them. Right-click the papers to label them and keep track of their effects, or just examine them.
- Now, are you CHEF cult? Bake your talismans into fortune cookies and hand them out to cultmates.
- Drag paper bins onto you to pick them up. A single paper bin holds 30 papers, and that's 30 potential talismans!
