remarkable cults and their followers — Art: Compliments of Loresmyth

Hidden behind closed doors and lurking in unseen strongholds, dark forces gather. Today we reveal some of their secrets in Loresmyth’s Remarkable Cults and their Followers.

Behind most nefarious organizations looms a mastermind, a puppet master, or a tyrant. Their powers and abilities are whispered of in rumors, and their histories have become dark legends unto themselves.

Secret societies and dark orders take many more forms than a moldering lich on a throne or a subterranean ritual chamber filled with chanting cultists. An organization may dress itself in the pristine robes of clerics and offer blessings from a mysterious god to the public, or don elegant porcelain masks at night to pursue artistic perfection by disfiguring the faces of city dwellers with blades. Likewise, not every dark organization wishes for world domination or an apocalypse—some wish to amass fortunes to rival the vaults of royalty, while others serve ideals or codes that go beyond wealth or power.

Remarkable Cults & Their Followers is an inspirational worldbuilding guide designed to turn your villains into engaging and memorable adversaries…or allies. Darkness takes many shapes, but this book focuses specifically on dark organizations (and despite the name, not all of them are truly cults). These might range from a secret brotherhood of monks who practice horrifying martial techniques to a group of interplanar wizards who seek out sights unseen by mortals—whatever you want to create, we want to provide you with the tools to unleash your imagination.

Each cult comes with short details on the wealth and resources at their disposal, as well as services offered, favored classes and races, as well as those that are unfavorable to them.

While we can’t cover every aspect of this fantastic book in our short blog and D&D show, we are going to share one of our favorites so you can get a feel of this remarkable book (see what I did there?).

Temple of New Flesh

The Temple of the New Flesh is a prominent fixture in the metropolitan city of Nekhaton, adored by both the city’s wealthy and the common folk. They offer opportunities for paradise and immortality, free of the judgment of other gods. Powerful and wealthy acolytes luxuriate in their new construct bodies: clean, artificial shells that provide eternal life and vigor. The poor and downtrodden can also work toward such rewards or simply look forward to a paradise-like afterlife requiring nothing more than obedience to the Temple.

The Temple of the New Flesh functions like a grist mill, with the souls of poor adherents fueling the factory temples that produce immortal construct bodies, which are then used to persuade the influential and rich to join the faith.

Meanwhile, poorer acolytes are pressed to become evangelists or laborers on new temples. Clerics of the Temple are carefully chosen based on their loyalty and charismatic personas, but the most critical criterion is their ability to keep the Temple’s inner workings a secret. The fastest way to advance in the Temple’s ranks is to bring in more converts—the more powerful or wealthy the convert, the greater the reward.

Despite the Temple’s claims that Astaron is the master of his own plane and grants his blessings in the form of construct bodies, Astaron is not a true god. He is a supremely powerful artificer and wizard, but he can neither hear the prayers of his acolytes nor grant them the boons or protection they seek. The clerics who serve him are granted no divine power, and the transmigration of souls to his demiplane is managed through arcane magic, not the normal operations of death.

To many commoners, the construct bodies of the Temple seem like the ultimate symbols of holiness and beauty— they are immortal works of art that inspire awe and reverence, and some even revere their owners as ascended beings. Among other faiths, however, the Temple is distrusted at best and despised at worst—the cult’s metal emissaries are known to offer paradise and immortality in exchange for political favors, cash donations, and quashing inquiries into their more extortionary practices, such as forcing entire families to sign over all of their worldly possessions for the privilege of joining the Temple.

Further Details

Beyond just fleshed lore for each cult, Remarkable Cults also includes further details to flesh out to bring your cult to life. The Leaders & Followers section of each cult includes several NPCs and the ranks and responsibilities of its members as a whole.

The Rumors & Secrets section of each cult is probably my favorite. It includes amazing hooks unique to each faction. Sharing details of what the cult wants people to think while telling the GM the dangers of what they are actually doing and how they are covering it up.

Creating your Own Cults

Myriad enemies like predatory monsters or cunning demons can be set against adventurers, but no antagonist is quite so insidious as an organization of likeminded zealots. They’re not confined to the wilderness, dark dungeons, or city sewers; they openly walk the streets, engage in commerce, and use the same systems and services available to adventurers. Yet, beneath the surface, they are ruthless opponents who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

So, it’s not a surprise that Remarkable Cults includes an entire section dedicated to educating a GM on the ins and outs of creating your own unique cults. It is broken down into several smaller sections from understanding the point of view, the type of organization, its size, resources and so much more.

Player Operated Cults

Powerful adventurers may become tired of plundering tombs and crawling through dungeons. Rather than taking on quests or serving a kingdom, they may wish to forge their own dark legacy and gain enough power to rival monarchs, sages, or even gods. To this end, they may marshal their guile and might to form a secret cabal... or lay the foundations of an empire.

Well, you guessed it, Remarkable Cults includes details that allow the players to run and operate a cult themselves, and man is it full of awesome! Absolutely a must-have guide for anyone wanting to run a villainous campaign. With details like key members of the cult, to specific places and rooms for a stronghold. Each section is like a small adventure hook in and of itself. Recruiting members, gathering resources to build and upgrade the stronghold, not to mention the details of operating them…it has it all.

Remarkable Cults Grade: A+

Overall, the amount of work that went into this book is amazing. The art, the lore, the guides all of it is superb! Loresmyth and his team really just nailed it with this product. Beyond our short coverage here, Remarkable Cults includes dozens of pages with wonderful details on how to bring your cults to life. Delving into sinister services, cult influence, ranks, symbols, backstory, members, vile magical relics and so much more! If we haven’t already convinced you to pick it up, then you’re clearly not listening…

Get your copy of Remarkable Cults and their Followers here.

Unearthed Tips and Tricks

Each week we bring you new and reusable material for your table. Save lots of prep time with our encounters, magic items, and monsters. Then, to finish the show off, we drop a Dungeon Master and Player tip to help level up your game. Veteran or Greenhorn, we got you covered!

Monster Variant: Sand Dealer

Description: Master of making sly deals that are almost always in its favor. Usually in a way that takes advantage of those who make the deal. Often twisting their word's meaning. When forced, he is quick to alter memories and completely charm those around it...if it can avoid getting caught. The sand dealer releases a pheromone that it claims makes people more amenable to it. The truth is, it uses prestidigitation to create a unique smell while using the friends cantrip to enchant those around it.

Origin Statblock: Spirit Naga

Lost features: spell list.

New Features:

Burrow 20 feet.

Tremorsense

Skills: Deception +7, Persuasion +7

Spell List

Cantrips (at will): animal friendship, friends, prestidigitation

1st level (4 slots): bane, charm person, earth tremor

2nd level (3 slots): crown of madness, earth bind

3rd level (3 slots): incite greed (AI), fast friends (AI)

4th level (3 slots): charm Monster, confusion

5th level (2 slots): geas, modify memory

Reactions

Defensive Burrow: When a creature hits the sand dealer with a melee weapon attack, it can use its reaction to move up to half its burrow movement. This movement does not provoke an opportunity attack.

Encounter: Pour Hagglehart

Our heroes are hired by the merchant Rimay Hagglehart, a female halfling. Rimay has been down on her luck. Of her six ships, four have sank in the last three months. She is seeking mercenaries to board her vessel, the Waveslicer. She doesn’t know who or what is causing her ships to disappear. Many believe it’s pirates, but if that was the case, why can’t they find the boats? Why does no one ever escape? Rimay thinks it’s something more nefarious.

The truth is, a rising merchants guild has turned to gather their resources from others. They have made a deal with an ancient sea serpent. Rimay’s vessels were secretly dumping hazardous alchemic mixtures into the water during their travels. Hildo, an elf druid for a small merchants guild spotted them after being asked to investigate the pollution by the sea serpent. Together, they formed a pact. The druid would sneak in and gather shipping manifestos and other information regarding the vessel’s paths, and the sea serpent will destroy them. In exchange for this knowledge, the druid and her guild can loot the goods from the ships before they sink.

Magic Item: Lacquered Dryad Carving

“Many druids rely on the protection of the forest for defense. Using roots from a tree that is host to a dryad, they carve and lacquer a small segment of roots in the form of the host dryad. This temporarily imbues the carving with the dryad's power.”

Reagent, common

When you cast the barkskin spell you can add the lacquered dryad carving to the material components of the spell. If you do, the spell is enhanced and the target’s AC can’t be less than 17, regardless of what kind of armor it is wearing. The carving has enough druidic power for 1d4 + 1 uses before it is consumed by the spell.

-Witiker’s Fantastic Spell Reagents-

Dungeon Master Tip: Spell Reagents

Spells of great power in a fantasy world of magic and sorcery often contain a combination of three core rituals. Magical words of power are the most well-known. Stories throughout generations recall and pass on some of the most well-known verbal components of magic. Bards sing stories of great magicians and their magical words. Young excited children playfully shouting words such as abracadabra, hocus pocus, alakazam, or presto chango are common sights in villages and cities where children play. These are often followed by flailing of hands in an attempt to represent the complex hand signs required to make them work effectively. While these are the two most common, there is a third ritual that is needed for many spells, especially the more powerful ones and that is spell components.

Spell components are something that is treated as cumbersome and inconvenient to many spellcasters. Though personally, I love whipping out my components in front of a foe. Depending on the component, it can be quite intimidating…or disgusting. Anyway, others that are forced to carry around material component pouches full of strange objects and oddities find it a clumsy process. That is why you see more and more magic users wielding powerful arcane stones and magical objects to focus their power in place of some of the more common components. Bah, simpletons. Consider material components that not only act as normal aspects of spells but actually enhance them beyond their normal function. It is worth noting that the ritual should consume the components during the spell. Thus, I have taken to calling them spell reagents. Their nature of just being an enhancement to the spell rather than a material component needed to cast it.

-Witiker’s Von Ellume III-

Player Tip: Don’t be a Dick Magical RAMpart!

The satyr race is often portrayed as gleeful troublemakers, but they can be just as stalwart as any other race. Their unique traits make them exceptional paladins. Tanking foes on the frontlines and protecting their allies from enemy threats.

The Satyrs unique fey creature type immediately gives it some superior defensive traits against many different spells, most notably spells such as Charm Person or Hold Person.

Next, they have the Magic Resistance trait that grants advantage on saving throws against spells. What a fantastic ability. Now you have high AC with heavy armor, and advantage on magical threats. This is already a winning combo. But, if we pick up Oath of the Ancients as our subclass, we can stack this effect with Aura of Warding. This allows the paladin to not only have resistance to damage from spells, but it also gives it to allies. Combining resistance to spells and advantage on saves means that even should you fail, you’re only going to take a quarter of the damage.

Not to mention the core features of Aura of Protection that let the paladin add their Charisma modifier to saving throws for them and their allies.

Now go forth, and take any magical or mundane challenges head-on.

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Remarkable Cults and their Followers | A MUST HAVE DM TOOL!