Blood Cult: Difference between revisions

Starter cultists will want to do two things at first: increase their numbers via conversion, and learn their words via sacrifice. These are mutually exclusive goals; generally, you will want to do a little bit of both. <span style="color:red;">'''Three cultists are required for sacrifices and converts. They must be standing adjacent to the rune. You cannot convert or sacrifice alone. If you attempt either of these alone, you will fail, your victim will probably escape, and you will singlehandedly doom the entire cult. Teamwork is key!'''</span>

There are two ways to learn words. The first is brute-force trial and error: adding translation guesses to your tome and seeing what you get. Trying to use a rune you scribed with incorrect translations does a great deal of brute damage, but all proper runes always have fixed colors and sprites, while incorrect runes are random colors (except armor runes, which will always be random colors.)

The second way to learn words, and the one you will rely on most, is sacrifice.

The easiest way to sacrifice is as follows. Spawn a tome and get a stun talisman. Put down a rune in a hard-to-find and secure location. '''Tell the rest of the cult your plans and the location of the rune so [[Beyond the impossible|they can be there when you need them]].''' Find someone alone, and click on them with the stun talisman -- other ways work, but the victim may be able to scream for help. They'll collapse for a long while, and you can cuff them, remove their headset, take them to your base, pull them over the sacrifice rune where two other cultists are hopefully waiting, and invoke the rune by clicking it with an empty hand.

Conversion works much like sacrifice. There are two ways to get converts: roleplay and convince someone to join you, praying they don't immediately rat you out to security; or (far less risky) find someone alone, kidnap them with a stun talisman or other method, bring them to your rune where two other cultists are waiting (right?) and click the convert rune with an empty hand. Conversions leave no evidence besides the rune, which can be removed.  

The deconversion process is simple: restrain a suspected or confirmed cultist and force-feed them holy water. This takes around 35 units and two minutes to succeed. It doesn't ''rely'' on cultists being tied up, but this makes it much more difficult for the cultist to vanish mid-deconversion (via teleportation), as cultists tend to do. If a cultist escapes and his brother smacks him with a tome, the holy water in their system will become unholy water and the deconversion will fail, so don't let that happen.

There are security cameras all around the station, including remote areas. Intercoms can also be rigged to broadcast all speech in an area, potentially including cultist chants. If you're the [[warden]] or someone else who isn't actively patrolling, take advantage of this. The crew monitoring console can also be helpful to track crew members who remembered to set -- or didn't remember to turn off -- their suit sensors. Anyone with bridge access can use it. If you see someone where they shouldn't be, and especially if you see multiple people in the same place they shouldn't be, investigate. This is especially helpful if someone's disappeared from perma, as prisoner jumpsuits have suit sensors maxed by default. '''''<span style="color:red;">Note that jumping to conclusions based on accumulated damage is considered metagaming and will probably get you banned.</span>'''''

If the RD and robos are well-protected or implanted, a mech or two can stamp out a cult if they plan carefully enough. Bonus points if you get the RD department into Security so that the mech builds are utterly safe. Note that mechs can be countered easily by the cultists with EMP talismans and runes, so this relies on the cult being ill-prepared.