It’s Jonathan here with our first weekly blog post for the upcoming event, CRISIS OF FAITH!
We are finally back from the winter break we take each year during January, and we have some cool stuff to share! This is leadup for our February DR:TX event written by our Overarc STs, Stephanie Patrick-Muñoz and Chase Lira. Today we will talk a bit about some story teasers, some core mechanics and concepts for the event, and a reminder of some of the benefits of pre-registration for one of our events. We will also reveal the details of one of the key threats for the weekend, the CULT OF THE REBORN.
We’ve ran a few social media events of note over the break:
This very next weekend, on January 21st, is the first run of our new limited ticket series, Lone Star Skies Vignettes, IN THE WOODS! Our director Shan will be running a unique online story experience detailing a murder mystery set in the homelands of the Lovelace Family. We even posted a raffle today for the last remaining ticket to the event that was donated by a generous player at DR:TX!
We have also featured our new Buyback Campaign online on Facebook, and we can help if you’ve been wanting just a few more XP to get that tasty PFA. In the loosely paraphrased words of our newest member of the Admin team, Kiara: “Make sure to get your buyback so we can spook you with shit. Then buy your tickets to CRISIS OF FAITH and get ready to question everything you and your character believes about faith, the world, your place in it, and what it means to be reborn. Buckle up fuckers!”
Tickets for CRISIS OF FAITH will go on sale January 23rd at 1:00 PM, CST. bookmark the link so you don’t miss out!!!
This post will discuss a few light STORY SPOILERS for our next event, so we hope you enjoy what we have in store!
Our artwork in this post is from an excellent comic by Beau Lee and Shan Lind we used during our online game, GALATEA.
Let’s talk a little bit about the story of the next event…
The Cult of the Tiny God approaches the Fountainhead in Essex, PHW 04
teaser FOR CRISIS OF FAITH
And now an excerpt from a recent sermon heard in the streets of Essex about the Prophet Reborn:
"What is the Final Death? Ask any handful of folks and you'll get a handful of answers 'Death is the wheel's final turning, the coda of the song, the final lesson on suffering' and before now, one might have thought any or all of them right. But after the past year, many of you now see none of these answers quite grasp the truth, not fully. They brush over its surface, skim and probe and flirt but never truly embrace the truth.
Yes, yes! 'Imprint is Matter, Matter is Imprint, ' I hear some of you murmur, this at the core of it. For you see, Death is Power; death is Energy. As we live we build up that energy and in death that energy is released and played out into the world according to… according to our Imprint, yes well said. But what is the Imprint? Is it immutable? This framework that burns our energy and births us again and again until our energy is expended… are we doomed to follow it, forever unchanging?
I say no!
It CAN be changed. And the answer is so gleamingly, beautifully simple. Belief. Belief is the tool that shapes the Imprint. We saw the truth of it in Essex, where for a glorious, shining moment, the whole WORLD changed! Our glorious Prophet saw the signs and led us to the path of truth. We have watched for her signs ever since. My friends, my brethren, I have listened and I have seen, and despite my doubts and denials the signs called out louder and more harmoniously until I could no longer deny the glorious truth. What is this wondrous news? I tell you, through me: our Prophet has been Reborn! They will say it is impossible, but just last year I would have told you that stemming the cycle of death and return would have been impossible, and yet here we stand, on the other side of a terrible Miracle that shook the San Saba to the Core. Those in Bravado serve as a great example. Time and again they have accomplished fantastic feats… but only because they believed they could….
The time for the Great Miracle has come. If you still doubt my words, look no further than the contemptible figures of the San Saba Board of Directors. They have brought a damnable Law, all in the name of ‘protecting’ us. They say it is to curb the sinful acts of vile criminals who would take advantage of the Aberrant. All noble goals, to be sure, but the real sinister truth of it is that they are afraid. Yes my Brethren, they have seen what the wild, directionless Beliefs of a few misguided souls could wreak and they FEAR! Fear that we shall no longer place our Belief in them! Fear that we shall take our DEATH and use it to power OUR Great Miracle instead of their SELFISH, worldly designs! FEAR WE WILL NO LONGER SLEEP, AS OUR GOD SLEEPS IN THE GARDEN OF THEIR CRAVEN CORE, CLINGING TO CONTINUANCE!
The Tiny God has pointed me in the direction we must go. Many will try to stop us, but we must be strong in our Beliefs, and by our Faith be strengthened. Trust that the Prophet stands by your side. Soon they shall see the ultimate beauty of our truth. Yes, I Believe they will see my Brethren…
For you will MAKE them see.”
— Sister Greywand, Essex, PHW 06
The Lost Prophet, Pfilomena Lovelace, addresses her flock shortly before her death, PHW 04
That’s a bit ominous. Let’s chat about what it might mean for the future.
The Cult of the Tiny God, REBORN
Way back during our Online Season, we ran a series of events in Essex, the City of Light and Sound. This is the beating heart of the San Saba Territories — one of the largest cities in the area, a fortified city of thousands to the southwest of our sleepy town of Bravado. The city is often mentioned in our live games as being “off camera” of sorts, but it’s a frequent location of note in our setting.
Our Essex online game series was a trio of online events, loosely dubbed “The Fountainhead Trilogy”, as each story built on events of the last. From the celebrations of the first Festival of Light and Sound, to the story of the first Archon Incursion in the San Saba, and the emergence of the new Morgue in Essex known as the Fountainhead, we explored a new area of our setting and introduced some casted characters that have even made appearances in our live games.
One group that has made a few visits to Bravado over the past few events is a group we first debuted during the game GALATEA — The Cult of the Tiny God. We’ll be going into more detail about these folks and how they’ve changed in the years following the Fountainhead Incident in a future blog post before CRISIS OF FAITH. For now, let’s cover the basics.
When the Fountainhead emerged in the heart of Essex, the lives of its people were collectively turned on their heads; The Cult is the natural extrapolation of a fearful population being shown what, to them, looks fundamentally like miracles. After the Fountainhead, supposedly, consumed the Archon that terrorized the city at the climax of that year’s Festival of Light and Sound, a fanatic group of cultists began to worship at the feet of the monolith. They believed the Fountainhead to be the closest thing to a god that could exist, and ached for the beautiful world they saw in their dreams.
The Cult of the Tiny God has reared its head periodically over the last few months, surfacing in portions of the cult that worshipped the Archons during the EMERALD GALA, appearing in several mods during our national event, DEAD MAN’S HAND, and even has made some appearances on Sundays over the last few live events in DR:TX.
You can read a bit more about the lengths they went to prove their faith a reality, including the sacrifice of their leader, Pfilomena Lovelace, who walked willingly into the destructive force of the Fountainhead. Her body and even her very Imprint was completely annihilated, destroyed in the strange Abyssal energies of the proto-morgue.
Read the comic: Galatea: Commit
In the wake of Pfilomena’s death, the Cult was lost and without purpose. The lies of their Cult were made obvious and many of their number scattered and left the faith entirely. Even Pfilomena’s son, Caleb Lovelace, was a skeptic after his mother’s pointless death. But a few kept their hopes tied into their delusions and prayed for the return of their LOST PROPHET, believing that somehow Pfilomena would be reborn and returned to them to lead them once more.
For years, this has been a fantasy, but this Cult of the Tiny God’s delusion has emerged within a new and dangerous threat to the San Saba — THE CULT OF THE REBORN.
The Cult of the Reborn
Formed from the former members of the Cult of the Tiny God, and even adopting their familiar white and grey robes and ashen thumbprint marks on their forehead, the Cult has found new focus under the leadership of a new and powerful demagogue. Someone claiming to be the PROPHET REBORN has stepped into the leadership of the faith in the recent months, and their presence is about to be felt across the San Saba.
The Cult is formed out of the common people of Essex and the San Saba Territories as a whole, much like their predecessors. They are Lineages and people just like your characters, but they have been twisted by delusion and grief. In the wake of the destruction of recent Archon incursions (most recently in Bravado), and a general sense of fear and existential crises about the unknown, folks have sought to find answers. Something happened with the Fountainhead and the Archon Incursions that the common person cannot explain, and they have decided to create a story that helps them rationalize away the things they cannot understand. Rather than address something real, the new Cult of the Reborn represents the ability of the masses to seek an answer to the unexplainable mysteries by finding conspiracy and pattern in everything they see.
And now they have a plan to restore their founder, the Lost Prophet, and conduct a grand ritual known as the GREAT MIRACLE. Their plans are still a bit mysterious, but anyone in the San Saba that has eyes can tell that the Cult is actively recruiting and building their numbers towards some nefarious purpose. The San Saba Board has even requested Strikers from the RED LEDGER to take up arms against the cultists in Essex, scattering them from street corners and makeshift sermons in the dark alleys of the City of Light and Sound.
Whether the Cult of the Reborn is successful in their plans will be up to your characters and the choices they make in February. We will cover a bit more of their details in a few weeks, but for now know that the Cult of the Reborn is a threat that must be answered.
ooc IMPORTANT NOTE: The Cult is fundamentally WRONG about what happened in Essex. Every behavior of the Fountainhead was the function of the Mortis Amaranthine reacting to the deaths of so many victims at one moment. Whatever the cult interprets as a “god” is most assuredly NOT any form of a god or deity.
The Lost Prophet approaches oblivion, PHW 04
content warnings - Religious Conflict
You can always find our list of Content Warnings on the Bravado website, and in our tradition of radical trust, we want to also trust in each player that attends our game to know their own limits and be able to choose to avoid topics and situations that make them uncomfortable.
So now that we understand the cast of characters we will deal with, let’s talk about some Content Warnings for CRISIS OF FAITH, particularly the following:
Religious conflict, religious-related death, corruption, and abuses of power (only in-game faiths - not real faiths)
Simulated psychological role play
Death, mourning, death rituals, and the potential loss of life and harm to self or others due to character choices.
For this event, we are dealing with a dangerous cult of fanatics that are out to CONVERT others into their own in-game faith by any means necessary, including trickery, intimidation, and even force. This will test characters in new ways, as they will find their faith challenged, their sense of identity and belief in that faith questioned, and it should provide some deep roleplaying opportunities to decide what your character’s in-game faith REALLY means to them.
You can even join the cultist’s side on purpose, particularly if you find their cause compelling or interesting or you just want to avoid death at the hands of a violent cultist. Maybe you join the Cult of the Reborn because you just want to seek out that religious conflict in your roleplay or you want to sneak into the cult’s inner power structure to destabilize it from within. Regardless of your reasoning, FAITH and the role it plays for your character is a big part of this upcoming event.
We understand that not every person has a great relationship with the concept of organized religion, cults, churches, or even faith in real-life. It’s not for everyone, and everyone’s experience is unique. However, this concept of IN-GAME Religious Conflict will be a BIG part of the story for our February event. While we will have many ways for characters to Opt Out and resist the forced conversion, it will still be present in ways you may not always be able to avoid.
To be very clear, this type of religious roleplay and conflict isn’t really anything NEW to Dystopia Rising, or DR:TX.
You can find the following discussion about Faiths in the Postapocalyptic Wasteland on page. 69 in the DR Corebook:
“In the world of Dystopia Rising, no real-world faiths are used, out of sensitivity toward players who practice these real faiths and a recognition that something that is acceptable to one person may be offensive to someone else. Because of this, the Dystopia Rising universe includes a number of fictional faiths. All players are asked to be respectful of real faiths and not use them as content within this fictional world.
The postapocalyptic faiths each have various and sometimes conflicting views. They’ve spread out across the world, with some of them splintering into new denominations. These faiths help bring people together as a whole, forming groups that have learned to survive in the world in which they now live.
Unlike more fantasy focused genres, in Dystopia Rising religion itself does not provide supernatual powers from outside the individual. Powers associated with faith are instead generated from within, using the medium of faith as a means to activate harder to access abberant abilities. The faith that comes with devotion to a religion can open abberant abilities and biological enhancements that are latent within most Strains.
In the end it is important to remember that religion in the Dystopia Rising universe serves the same purpose as it does in some modern societies. Religion can shape the customs, traditions, morals, and to a degree the behavior of a person or group of people. Religion can provide community and give a sense of belonging and purpose. Religion can encouage people to raise one another to a higher level, or it can be a tool for horrible purposes when directed by destructive people.”
We will have many opportunities to opt out of these mechanics during the event in case this still isn’t something you want to participate in. There will still be zombies and raiders to run away from in the darkness, scrap to salvage, herb to farm, and blueprints to copy. We hope you will be excited to join us for this story, but we will have many other stories to enjoy in the future.
Remember, you can always use the OK Check-In System to “thumbs down” any interaction you don’t feel comfortable with, even CVC!
The Lost Prophet being consumed by the Fountainhead, PHW 04
wrap up
That’s it for today, Vados! We have some more content for the lead up to this event coming your way soon, and we can’t wait to share what’s in store.
Next week, we will cover the BENEDICTION OF THE REBORN and the specific mechanics about how the Cult will be forcefully indoctrinating their victims to aid the Great Miracle. I’ll reveal the specific details about the mechanics so you will be able to make informed choices about seeking out this plot during our event.
After that, we will discuss a few more of the Characters of Note within the CULT OF THE REBORN and their opponents, the RED LEDGER. We will talk about Caleb, the Mad Prophet, Sister Greywand, and even the mysterious Inquisitor of the Red Ledger. This will focus on lore and stuff that your characters might know about the Cult before you enter play in February.
Lastly, I’ll cover Rules You Should Know the week before the game, covering the unique Faith-based powers you’ll need to watch out for, and some of the specific tricks the Cult of the Reborn can use against you.
Remember, tickets go on sale on January 23rd at 1:00 pm CST! See you soon Vados!