Heretical Cult Thread #2- Space Brettonia Edition

>> Blood Sacrifice: The sacrifice of living beings, from livestock to captured enemies, is a common way for cults to express their power. The ritual is usually symbolic, although some cults have found ways to harness the spilled life for power.
What the fuck is going on here? They have a strict military hierarchy, so clearly they have some Bretonnian-esque society up and running. So does morganna have them gather up peasant-serfs to slaughter in her name, furthering her ascent into godhood? How do they justify it themselves? Do they even need to, or are they just that devoted

Do they have spaceships at all? Will they crusade off their planet eventually?

Let's consider:

They could have limited resources, so have to sacrifice those that stretch their resources too thin. It could otherwise be tribute and fertilizer for the plants themselves, perhaps feeding the soil and whatever needs souls.

In this case, a lot of the blood sacrifice is in the whole tossing people into the Infinity Circuit thing, which they do to male psykers, capture psykers, eldar who don't want to join Morganna's plant elf coven, and other fun things.

They actually control a decent chunk of system I think? I think we ended up having them be primarily fleet based as a cult, with a few controlled worlds. Avalon itself is a giant, barely functioning ship filled with lots of Dark Age goodies and overgrown plants.
Either way, they control at least one planet since we finished the rolls for that one, and we were going to start on another soon I believe.

>>The world is also renowned for crafting a particular type of equipment.
Pretty obviously some sort of power sword. Maybe they have the best powersword smiths you'll find that side of the galaxy? That way, there can be a lot more variation with what sort a knight could get.

Combining that with the occasional help of one of Morganna's Handmaidens, you get all swords of power weapons with Eldar Runes on them.

Oh yeah, also forgot about this: One of their primary combat methods, dating back to the war against the dragon-things is basically bootleg promethium. It's not as good as promethium, but they can make a [b] shit ton [/b] of it, and they're fully prepared just to immolate half a battlefield and then ride through it to finish the fight.

The end goal of the sacrifices is to gather enough souls to make a new god, craftworld style

Could be a fun unit strapped to the brim with this stuff that runs out to get set on fire in the enemy lines

Favored Drakes.

A favored few of Morgana's servants are entrusted with the role of charging ahead of her armies, breaking the enemy lines and paving the way for Her loyal knights. Armed with Her most sacred weapons of fiery war and clad in Her most sacred armor, Favored Drakes are only ridden by those who have already proven their devotion to Her glorious plan, and riding such a venerable beast is a sign that they are destined for greatness in Her service.

I'm okay with the rest, sans best armor part. They shouldn't take anything valuable with them since they're suicide troops.

especially because our best is AI designed archeotech

Suicide? I wonder. Are these things fireproof, or at least fire-resistant? They're covered in scales, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

You're definitely right about getting Morgana's best, though. I forgot about the whole hand-crafted by AI thing Her best has going for it.

Their drakes don't actually breath fire, they use flamers with the ghetto promethium

Good to know. A kamikaze-dragon is already awesome enough, anyway.

So, how does the loadout on these things look specifically? Obviously the knight's going to get knightly weapons for HIGH ADVENTURE, but will the drakes get anything to fight with?

Someone in the last thread suggested that the knights have primarily ranged simple weapons when mounted, and give the dragons shit like big ol' choppa claws and stubguns.

Honestly I really just want to see a knight rear up on his dragon to do a sick pose, but the dragon has an assault rifle and just starts opening up during it.

>666
You could say your idea was...beast.

YEAAAAAAAAA

So does the cult have any sort of specific over arching goal beyond cool knightly adventures and doing whatever Morganna tells them to do at the time?

They don't seem very expansionist or aggressive, so they probably aren't conquerors or Imperialists.

If anything, I'd say that they are just going to keep small and quiet while gathering intelligence and influence for as long as possible, playing the long game, rather than trying to expand as quickly as possible

Satan approved!

One planet at a time, they spread their perfection, spread their sacred truth. Every planet is totally, almost irrevocably under their control before they move on. This approach takes a long, long time, but having worlds seeded with hostile wildlife (hand-crafted by Bercilak to be perfect for whatever role it serves) and populated by fanatical servants (who have also been modified) makes their holdings a nightmare to assail.

roll up the nearest imperial world

Table used last time right here.

fate40k.obsidianportal.com/wikis/planetary-classification-tables

Roll 1d9 for the nearest Imperial World's environment.

Whoops, my bad. We need to roll 1d8 for this one.

So, roll 1d8 for the planet's environment.

Rolled 4 (1d8)

Alright, lets do this

I think this means that we have a hostile world? I was counting up from -4.

Either way, we get something like eroding, ice, or desert planets. Something not fun to be on.

Its already shitty and Bercilak is just putting a bunch of abominations on its surface that can probably thrive there

Bercilak is the king of invasive species

OP from last thread here. Looking good guys. How large is Avalon's Kingdom?

I'm guessing 10-15 worlds given the slow rate of expansion, unless there is some roll to make for that

Rolled 9 (1d10)

Let's find out!

what is this roll based off of?

sounding right. If you want to roll 1d50 or something else to get a different number, go nuts my man

Nah, nine worlds seems fine

what's the average, mook cultist equipped with, here

It says we've got brutal weaponry and plentiful ammunition, and every can't be a knight, so I'm saying we have the equivalent to bretonnian archers, save with thrown together bolters

Like this, but green?

Brilliant, a bunch of glorified peasants with autogun, bolters and makeshift flamers

Yeah, I like that

Most yeomen prefer the rush of melee combat, making good use of their brutal weapons to crush their enemies underfoot, while some provide covering fire from afar and others clear the way with purging fire.

While in the presence of most Yeomen, flamers must have caution, around the Knights they may truly show their fervor due to the flame resistant shells of the Knights

I wonder, can a Yeoman prove themselves worthy of knighthood?

If so, how?

I imagine that knights basically look like this but with more metal bits

bump

They probably have to either catch the eye of one of the Fae, who start pushing to have them elevated, or they manage to do something worthy of praise and knighthood. Hedge knights like this are rare as hell though, because Bercilak's standards are already high enough BEFORE you bring in the complication of status elevation. You've gotta do something big, important, and eye catching. Just holding off the enemy isn't enough. You need to do stuff like toppling warbosses, rescuing Handmaidens, and slaying carnifexes.

We need some damn drawfags, is what we need

I will see what I can do

Oh, that reminds me, do the Fae ever fight? Or are they lead from behind kinda people?

Alright, it might take a while, but i commissioned some help

If they were to fight, they probably take some comfy position behind several thick sheets of iron. Unit and armor commanders only, I'd say.

nice

Makes sense, most are probably eldar that are running from something so they'd want to be as far from danger as they could be

Would they be more powerful than a typical eldar though? I imagine that with body modification they are probably pretty tough customers

I always thought of them as dark eldar sans the edgy part

Since Morganna is already anathema to eldar as it is, maybe she is trying to use genetic and bio engineering to make more eldar since it is hard for eldar to reproduce as it is

or maybe she is trying to make some kind of hybrid with human DNA in order to make it easier for the eldar-hybrid to reproduce

I think they would sometimes, but a big problem for them is population. Not only are they the dwindling Eldar, they're also a radical heretical faction of dwindling Eldar.
That said, when the Fae do fight, they definitely do so making heavy use of our warband's preferred combat doctrine: Stealth & Sorcery.

I picture Fae primarily working as support units, specializing in long range, full battlefield illusion and debuff effects. They obscure vision, create light cover in the form of plants, fuck with enemy psykers, and other minor things on large scales. Their big deal should be Glamours maybe? Having them disguise themselves as existing units in their army, making it harder to actually get rid of them?

Basically Fae in combat are giant pains in the ass.

That makes a lot of sense given the Fae asthetic we are going with

Maybe they function similarlly to really weak C'tan shard

I'm pretty sure they would be protected to a downright suicidal degree by any of the cultists. On the off chance that anyone gets through the meat shield, they'd be using the unholy mix of archeotech and wraithbone tech that the valuable members of the cult get. How good would they be at fighting, though, considering they usually have "people" for that?

I was thinking more along the lines of something like a solo librarian with really weak combat scores. They can fight off some guardsmen sure, but they aren't designed to hold off anything else. Instead, they skulk around the battlefield constantly screwing with enemy plans and tipping the scales in your favor. I'm thinking in tabletop they could do stuff like give bonuses to fear or leadership tests, make people have a harder time hitting dudes, lots of little buffs and debuffs that end up being a gigantic help because of how long and how often you have them in effect.

Right that makes a lot more sense

Of course, if cornered, then these fae have little they can do to protect themselves...prompting the knights to embark upon a quest of RIGHTEOUS CHIVALRY full to the brim with HIGH ADVENTURE to rescue the FAIR MAIDEN!

Perhaps even SEVERAL KNIGHTS for exponentially more RIGHTEOUS CHIVALRY

What does a typical cult cadre look like, we've established that wraithknights and yeomen cultists can be found normally, but what else?

It's built into the feudal hierarchy of the worlds, and is really fucking old

Split between the towns, villages, and castles of the feudal/feral world side, and the deep woods, in reality filled with the more heretical forces of the cult, drakes, Druids, AI facilities, and fae

Wait, druids? Have we already established what they are? I mean, the idea fits pretty well, but did I miss something?

Psykers seems like an obvious choice

Well they've come up throughout, it's not clear if they're fae or human, or some order of the cult that could contain both. I've been imagining them as deeply invested in worship of Morganna, working as biological techpriests or haemonculus in the service and expansion of esoteric biology and psychic rituals and experiments.

>Why not both?
How about the cult seeing psykers as changelings/blessed by Morgana and are expected to join their kind in the deep woods. In practical terms, they would specialize in tech/psychic powers that can manipulate biology, and use their powers to accelerate Bercilak's terraforming/experiments.

Sounds good to me

Well, it is established that the cult tends to sacrifice psykers to the infinity circuit, so it makes sense that they wouldn't have any psykers to field.

I'm all up for biotechnical techpriests.

Maybe they are techpriests that worship Bercilak as the omnissiah or are candidates that meet Bercilak's seemingly random criteria to maintain his holy machinery

They're definitely biologia-inclined techpriests. Seeing the "miracles" that an AI of Bercilak's caliber is able to pull off over a comparatively short amount of time, is it really all that surprising that they'd bow down in worship before something that is, before their very eyes, pushing whole worlds towards the Omnissiah's perfection?

oooh, there's a fair number of them because they were a part of a explorator fleet made up of biologis techpriests on their way to try and find the AI archeotech but ended up worshiping it instead

I'm sure we would make use of psykers beyond Morganna's handmaidens, and slowly integrating them to the world tree as druids pending sacrifice would be a good way to keep them under cult control and ward them against chaos. The druids might also serve as a mechanism to enhance the warp presence of Morgana and the fae through replication of the mystic imagery and heightening of worship. They could be human psykers with modifications that reflect the influence of both the patrons of the cult, but morgana and the fey in particular.

I like that Bercilak has arbitrary requirements for worthy mechanicus, and the local techies should resemble the mechanicus but be so long tied into the cult and its fickle, fairy ways they've become even more impenetrable and arcane. They might work closely or cross over with the druids, which ought to be like human fae, but in my mind they are distinct as an organization

Their Explorator vessels will vastly increase Bercilak's ability to terraform worlds the cult holds. Well, after Bercilak has spent a suitable amount of time optimizing them. At least...that's what they THINK it's doing. The actions of the Omnissiah's Avatar can be a bit difficult for mere human minds to understand. In any case, the priests are confident that perfecting the flesh is worth whatever short-term inconvenience may be required.

OK, I love this idea, but I feel like having straight up Techpriests calling themselves Druids isn't the best way to go about it. What if the Admech tried to locate the AI archeotech, and ended up worshiping Bercilak as an incarnation of the Omnisiah, as you anions have suggested, but over the centuries, have evolved into an entirely different organization entirely.

They've forgotten the Omnissiah, and worship Avalon, Bercilak, and Lady Morganna in his place, and under their guidance, have become extremely skilled biologist psykers and have rampant biological augmentations alongside their archeotech cybernetics, to the point that Humanity isn't an applicable term?

Basically, eldritch mad scientist human/fae abominations that shape life like silly putty and have patchwork knowledge of and access to bastardized archeotech the Admech would exterminate worlds to touch.

That's a good start, but their reverence pf Bercilak keeps them from causing any mutation or tampering outside of Bercilak's exacting specifications and forms a constantly shifting and impossible to upkeep standard for each druid to uphold.

However, due to Bercilak's attention usually being on his own work and not on his disciples', they can get away with some deviation

Damn, those are almost perfect. Those are the necromunda guys, right? Could also probably kitbash some Bretonnians with Cultists desu

Could I make a errant space Marine who joins the quest, or is that too much

It's unlikely, buts it's also a big galaxy, go for it

It seems honestly more probable for a chaos marine to rise to their non-chaotic arch-heresy than for a loyalist to go rogue for them. It's not like their argument would be remotely compelling to a loyal space marine.

It might be this you're looking for, senpai.
1d4chan.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Green
It's just a screencap of the old thread, work definitely needs to be done on that thing.

Plus, the farther removed from Admech convention the are, the more we get to mess around with their own :D

Anyway, these druids are ultimately being groomed as premium contributions to the World Trees and used as powerful servants in the meantime, being augmented beyond all rhyme and reason by Bercilak and putting those augments to good use as catch-all supports. The brains behind the cultists' brawn, if you will, using psychic powers and bio-tech to support their simpler brethren.

I'm getting a general feeling of this army being mostly made up of a hoard of low-cost units (the cultists) supported by a few high-cost support/beatstick units (Handmaidens, Druids, and Knights)

*horde

That's what I thought too. Sort of a mix between bliztkreig and attrition tactics

We should start summarizing what we have desu baka senpai

Does that mean they have light transport vehicles like light trucks with autoguns or something?

Yeah, maybe even some light Calvary if you want to go nuts. And 40k is nuts

You mean Drake riders?

well, most cult members would probably end up riding bikes since riding drakes is a knight thing

I have a question, i remember we talked about Bercilak producing knock off super soldiers. Are those the knights or are they separate specialty units?

I imagine he'd just take normal humans and "improve" them, Gland War Veteran style. It TECHNICALLY wouldn't even be techno-heresy necessarily...but you know they're getting stuck with Eldar tech because LOL EXTRA-HERESY!