Why Cultists Cult - An Example Case (Patreon)

Adventure fiction and ttRPGs are replete with cults of crazed zealots trying to summon ancient and uncaring evils that are going to destroy the world, or the universe, or at least large sections of Terre Haute, Indiana. The cultists seem aware of the destructive power of the things they wish to summon... which means they know how badly those efforts are likely to go for them. If such cultist's motives are examined by the fiction they appear in, it's normally reduced to 'they are insane,' or 'they want to punish the world and don't care if they die in the process,' or 'even though every OTHER cult worshiping this deity has died, THESE cultists are convinced they'll survive and be rewarded.'

All of which are serviceable... but they've become WAY overused. And if those entities are so elder and beyond comprehension... who even wrote the ceremonies to summon them? Who did it the first time? What makes cultists think this can possibly work?

So here I provide an example case of some Cult Backstory. This can serve as a model for setting up a unified theory for Elder God Cults, be used as-is, be a jumping-off point for your own Elder Cults, or even be a popular line of fiction within the fiction of your home games, the KRTIATCH CYCLE, by Hewlitt P. Warcroft.

The Cult of the Serpent's Dreams

KRTIACTH is one of the elder gods that, if it were to fully manifest in our reality, would destroy everything. EVERYTHING. Including the concept of everything.

The Cult of the Serpent's Dream knows this. Their primary goal is to manifest KRTIACTH in our reality.

But not FULLY. Just enough to leach some power off of it. They have had some success over the centuries. Random, largely gruesome, often worse-than-fatal-for-those-empowered success, but there's no question that sometimes the cult leaches some power from the elder god. After all, KRTIACTH doesn't care, if it even notices.

Nor is the cult the first group of Terrans to attempt this. The Devonian Sapients, a species that ruled Earth roughly 410 million years ago, turned to the energies drawn off KRTIACTH to power the height of their civilization. Of course, that also ended their civilization eventually, though it's unknown if they successfully used power leached from the elder god for a year, or a million years. The Cult of the Serpent's Dreams can be traced back to humans that found megaannums-old fossilized records of the Devonian Sapients that give glimpses of how that long-extinct species summoned and channeled KRTIACTH's power. Of course no such records are complete, and they are generally only found under sheets of Antarctic ice, deep inside unexplored caves beneath deadly wilderness, and under reality-warping inhuman stone markers sitting in supernaturally-protected cornfields.

(Some sects of the Cult of the Dreams of the Serpent are centuries old, count many of the wealthy and powerful among them, and have long traditions or rich vestments and impressive pageantry. Others are now only found among poor, isolated, marginalized populations often deep in mountains, swamps, and old forests. Art by Jacob Blackmon.)

Perhaps worse are the human tomes drafted from knowledge first gleaned in Devonian Sapient works. Ranging in age and format from cave paintings and clay tablets to mysterious works from the Sea People who destroyed the Bronze Age, singed and warped scrolls marked with notes from Alexandrian librarians, medieval folios that drove their authors mad, and audio tapes of professors last seen decades ago in cabins in the woods, these human works are always flawed, incomplete, and mind-melting... and every one is both highly sought after by occultists who know of them, and responsible for spawning some NEW branch of the Cult of the Serpent's Dreams... or a competing sect.

Interest remains high among the power-mad, because you CAN leach power from KRTIATCH, and the Devonian Sapients DID. In theory, exactly the right summoning, with exactly the right materials, and exactly the right symbols, performed during exactly the right stellar alignments, would allow the summoner to draw upon enough eldritch power to be indistinguishable from a god as seen by anything in our reality. But that's like saying that, in theory, you can close your eyes to throw a single penny off the top of the Empire State Building and have it land perfectly in the opening of a piggy bank on a car passing by the building, if the wind, your aim, and the speed of the car, and the alignment of the piggy ban are JUST right. No paranormal expert is really worried that the Cult of the Sleeping Snake will ever manage that.

But there is significant concern about what horrors they might unleash in the attempts. Any energy leached from KRTIACTH goes SOMEWHERE. It can warp local populations into ghouls, or blend their genetics with aquatic species. It can infect areas so corpses buried there become hungry dead, thin the barriers between our world and horrific dimensions just past our nightmares, grant combined insanity and psychic powers, summon alien minds from 40 mya, create portals to one specific day and place in 1357 AD, grant sentience to mushrooms, awaken horrors left behind by the Devonian Sapients... or any of a thousand other unspeakable things yet unseen and undreamed.