Stillborn Cultist

A horrible cult of childkillers who gain powers via pravum, acts of depravity that give them strength. They craft knives of unholy might from the bones of their child victims, stalk and harm pregnant people, and kill new mothers as well.

The Stillborn God

Back in the days when Divine Law held sway on First Shem, the Goddess of the Seas was impregnated somehow, seduced by an evil figure. Knowing it to be violation of the Divine Law, she feared so greatly it would get her killed that the child died from her terror. Thus was born Ggn-kel Shothach, the Lord of the Deeps, the Stillborn God. Its domain is all the terrible things that happen to children and young parents. Most often, those who show deference to such a god would be doing so for protection from its domain, but even in that case, no one prays to Ggn-kel Shothach. If they are aware of it, they fear it.

Most commonly known in the deepest parts of the oceans, the Stillborn God commands an army of squid monsters. It is reminiscent of the Eldritch, so much so that many believe it to be a new Eldritch. It is Divine, but also something so vile that few can fathom it.

And it has a cult. The cult sprang up shortly after its stillbirth and has been around ever since. Though the cult is mostly made up of desperate people looking for an explanation for the pain and suffering of the world, people who embrace its violence and terror because they have been raised not to see women or children as human, and people who view its powers as an antidote to social problems such as overcrowding, though these misinformed, cruel people are the bulk of its followers, the money behind it comes from those who wish to maintain control via its terror.

The cult is everywhere, in small pockets. They are predators wandering the streets at night, rich executives throwing lavish parties of evil decadence, slavers and pawns, power-seekers and those who abuse it. They are in holy temples and profane hideaways, in concentration camps and daycares. They could be your neighbor. They could be your siblings. They could be your nightmares.

Depravity

Acts of depravity - true depravity, not as defined by the ruling classes - create pravum. Those who capture it can then wield it to cause intense harm, mostly to women, wombs, new parents, and children.

Gathering

To gather pravum, one must capture blood or other fluids from the victim, usually in a vessel of bone, stone, or glass that has been prepared for the occassion (by keeping it buried in the gravedirt of a child). Within an hour, the fluid will become usable as raw pravum.

Sacrifices

The cult often kidnaps targets for sacrifice in rituals under the noon sun. These major rituals are done to send power to the whole cult, or those in attendance, and usually disproportionately favor the leaders. These rituals take many forms, but most involve an altar, a victim dressed in white (visualize an altar boy), and a childbone knife wielded by a priest of the cult.

Pedophagy

The eating of children is the most potent source of direct pravum. Those who do this ritually gain even more power, offering it up to the Stillborn God in small, individualized rituals that bring enormous personal powers, often based on the child and the eater.

Tendrils

The most basic tool of the Cult is pravum in the form of an eerie blue, almost white, light that can be controlled in tendrils. These tendrils will drain lifeforce, souls, or fertility.

Form

As a Stillborn Cultist gains power from pravum, they gain control of their own form. They seek to emulate the Stillborn God, taking on tentacles, wings, claws, eyestalks, and other usually deep-sea adaptations, even on land.

Penalties and Bonuses

The other common use of pravum is to increase different stats, but pravum always comes at a cost. It usually drains the mental stability, even if used to improve WIL or AWA. Mostly it is used to make one impervious to weapons by increasing toughness, or to increase stealth.

Senses

Stillborn Cultist believe they should be able to smell pregnancy or fecundity, and thus, they use pravum to increase their olfactory sense to do so. They often improve other senses, such as sight or kinesthetics, as well.

Childbone Knife

The most important weapon of the Stillborn Cult is the childbone knife, which is a knife made from the legbone of a child murdered before its bones were fully grown. The blood must still be on the bone. The act of the murder generates the pravum needed, and the fashioned of the bone into a knife captures the pravum. The bones are shaped with hard stone and metal, but the knife itself is only composed of the bone itself. Once made, the knife is as strong as zuinande, meaning it is a small knife of +9/+9. If used against children, new parents, pregnant people, and other vulnerable targets, it gains a further +3/+3, meaning it is almost certain to kill.

Boneknife Makers

Boneknife makers are members of the cult who keep the tools to make the knives, usually kaanite lead blocks, steel shards, lapis calcarius stones, flint, animal tendons, and twine. They make knives mostly for the elites of the cult, who do not have time to fashion their own, and thus are expected to make the finest of knives, for fear of their lives.

Uteropotators

Some who have captured pravum use it to steal the tongues of their enemies, preserve them in jars of pravum, and sew them together. They then attach these to their own tongues and use them to suck the life out of targets, specifically draining wombs in order to kill parent and child. These monstrous terrors hide their tongues in neckpouches, lash them out like frog's tongues, and sleep in shallow waters to wait for their targets.

Deep Stalkers

In the deepest parts of the ocean, the Stillborn God rests, and the terrain it controls is guarded by deep sea nations whose powers derive from the pravum seeping through the waters there. Deep stalkers are the equivalent of rangers of the deep sea, but they wield water infused with pravum in order to sense the dangers to the area and to command its lifeforms (beast, plant, and that which is too strange to define). Deep stalkers wield special undewater crossbows called aquarquuses and often have companions who are squids or other dangerous creatures.

Targets

The Stillborn Cult focus on killing unborn children, but other targets are also common. The power they are capable of granting a Cultist is determined by a morbid, disturbing proximity to birth:

• The unborn: the closer to birth, the more potent the victim is for the Cult, ranging from 1 point of pravum as a newly conceived unborn to +3 for a fetus to +9 for those within moments of birth.
• Newborns: newborns up until the child is walking are potent targets as well, ranging from 6 to 3 points the further they get from birth.
• Children up to age 5: these gain the Cultist 3 points if they are killed with a proper ritual.
• Children 6 to 12: a proper ritual makes any of these worth 2 points.
• Fertile children: a child who is able to produce children becomes worth 6 points.
• Children 13 to maturity: assuming the capacity for producing children is not present, these children are worth a half point each if killed via the proper ritual.
• Pregnant people: anyone who is pregnant becomes increasingly worth pravum, from 1 point just after conception to 7 points just before birth.
• Recently non-pregnant: those who have just had an abortion, stillbirth, or other loss of unborn (or even of recent child) makes the target worth 4 points.
• New parents: new parents lose points the further they get from birth, going from 6 points to 1 to none by the time the child is fecund. If the child is the second or more child of the parents, they are worth 1 point less.
• Grandparents: new grandparents are worth 1 point until the first grandchild is fecund.

Yes, this is fucked up, but it's less evil than insurance companies.

Abortion

Safe, legal abortion is considered an abomination to them. The health and welfare of women and others who are pregnant, and of children, is considered a form of stability that threatens their ability to control through fear and intimidation.

Gender and Sexuality

The Cult is deeply misogynist and transphobic. They have a powerful, patriarchal structure, and they are extremely hateful toward anyone who do not fit their model of male supremacy. They are the depraved enforcers of patriarchal control.

Hierarchy

There are two leaders of the Cult - the high priest on the surface and another in the deep sea. The one in the deep sea is considered the primary, but the deep sea rarely interacts with the surface. The full hierarchy:

1. The two high priests.
2. The 20 regional paters.
3. The 50 hothl.
4. The m'golanithot, agents who enforce the Cult's will.
5. The l'zhot, those who serve the Cult in positions of power, and thus have influence in and out of the Cult.
6. The noangyot, slavers who buy and sell potential victims for the Cult.
7. The provincial priests, of which there are innumerable.
8. The common Cultists.

Specializations

Some specializations include

• Deep Mother: an elderly woman who misinforms young women and others so that they get pregnant and can thus be victims of the Cult.
• Rschaatho: an archivist for the cult.
• Shl'bb: a Cultist who keeps the monsters of the deep oceans, a deep beast handler.

Societal Role

The Cult is rightly illegal almost everywhere, but they have some influence and control in places where patriarchy is weakened by the struggle. Thus, they are given some leeway to be agents of its enforcement.

Skills

Some common skills include

• Medicine
• Poisons
• Toxicology
• Hunting
• Theft
• Kidnapping
• Dogma

Stats

Modifiers from base for nation/species:

PRO +2
ATH /
STR /
AWA +2
WIL +1
STH +2
PRS -2