What is the best way to portray a cult that would seem evil of off to players but in reality they are just harmless?

Have you met PC's being friendly and polite is like 5 red flags.

>Mormons
>harmless
Haha. Do you even know why they're based in Utah?

>They all have ominous, deep toned voices
>Turns out it's a way to maintain their throats for choir and not out of just being edgy
>The choir sounds like a bunch of ominous Latin chanting
>When translated, the Latin is just mundane anecdotes like "I saw a bird today, it was pretty" with no real magical backing
Basically shit like that. Weird things that when actually inspected have a straightforward, reasonable answer.

>They worship the god of plagues
>black robes
>carry about censers that emit a sickly green smoke
>menacing chanting in a gruff language
>refuse to talk to people outside their order unless under very specific circumstances
>Leader is of a race with a bad reputation
>In a city that is currently experiencing an epidemic
>They came from a distant land

In reality:
>Their worship appeases the god of plagues and informs him that his pets have gotten loose again
>They' journeyed to the city to try and stop the epidemic not cause it
>The leader was raised by humans and is a really nice guy if you can talk to him
>Many members of the order are actually doing a vow of silence so they can focus their minds on prayer

Maybe because the early mormons were murderous assholes who were kicked out of literally every civilized land they tried to squat in? And maybe because the subsequent reformations to the mormon church have never really adressed that fact?

Here I thought the "In reality" would also include:
>They refuse to talk to people so as to avoid spreading contagion. They just keep their distance from populated areas.
>The green-smoke censers kill pathogens/repel miasma/however disease works in your setting

Because up until the 60s or 70s or so it was legal to kill Mormons in Missouri so they fucked off and ran out west?

Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44

They're actually all furries and REALLY ashamed about it so they have to kill anyone who finds out.

Mormons are scary, when one of the states near utah(i forget) had that classic "Should gays marry?" they collectively gathered up families, helped by powerful mormons in the state where the vote were, migrated and voted against it.

I went with "they worship elemental fire, and drag stuff up the mountain to make sacrifices to the volcano gods."

Said sacrifices being tossing live goats/horses/cows into the volcano and cleaning up shrines on the mountain.

They collect taxes and the poor people who can't afford to pay lose their houses. PCs think they are exploiting the system and abusing the townsfolk, but in reality they are pretty much tax collectors and the people who did lose their houses were usually the irresponsible people that spent all their money of booze or some shit.

This is pretty decent

>Said sacrifices being tossing live goats/horses/cows into the volcano and cleaning up shrines on the mountain.
And the players main friends are a good natured druid, who finds sacrificing even animals abhorrent, so they paint a pretty evil picture.

Freaky bloody sex orgies.
Which are actually very carefully done with a small amount of blood donated by each member, a rigorous screening process to avoid transmitting disease, and contraceptives used to avoid unwanted pregnancy.

>And the players main friends are a good natured druid

I dont know what is worse, druids with an ever growing stick up their ass because "I cant take it out because it'll die, and it's NATURE!" or no fun allowed paladins.

"But brave adventurer, wont you see, that stick in my ass is JUST as living as you! It is an innocent being!"

Literally any actual cult-like behavior, without a large scope or particularly harmful behaviors.

That's not exactly a practice that was unique to Mormons though, similar exoduses were carried out when new states started voting on the subject of slavery.

Make them reclusive, standoffish with outsiders, and very possibly well armed. In truth, they really just want to be left alone to like out their days in peace, but you players will probably go straight to Waco/heavens gate/jonestown

Do what the villagers in Hot Fuzz did but instead of killing anybody they just boot them out of town

Reminds me of the Cult of Rakdos

in the USA we have rattlesnake cults that fit that description.

Early Christianity in the Roman Empire
>A bunch of secretive guys who refuse to worship the Roman gods
>They have weird, cultlike meetings every sunday
>They eat flesh and drink blood
>They all call eachother "brother" and "sister" even though they're married and fucking
>Refuse to participate in orgies
Incestuous cannibals who preach rebellion against the established order, how much more evil do you want it?

Why the fuck wasn't I born sooner?

Have them do all the stereotypical peaceful cult stuff - talking about how they're all part of a new family, saying they've seen the light and their past lives no longer matter, telling the players how the cult saved them, things like that. Then have it all turn out to be true. The cult really is making the world a better place and helping people. No one is being sacrificed in dark rituals. No one is being indoctrinated to give up their individuality. Nothing bad is happening at all.

People are so conditioned to think that the cult will be revealed to have a dark and horrible secret that they'll be surprised when it doesn't.

They worship a mass of tentacles from beyond the dream-veil.

It's great Uncle octopa'
the cuddly tentacle god of good dreams and sexual satisfaction.

This. Use all the "this is obviously a cult" red flags, except...they just do all the things they claim they do entirely unironically. It's basically just a social club.

>go into a Catholic Church
>THERE IS A CORPSE NAILED TO THE WALL ABOVE THE ALTAR
>THIS IS THEIR SYMBOL
>AN EXECUTION

Pretty hardcore.

I had a major priestess of a very benign "Marriage & heart fire" cult suddenly call out a rather militant church state as the former (somewhat evil) ruler of the land died on the battlefield. My players were convinced she became a vampire or something and managed to kill her. She was not and really just did it to protect the citizens in these troubled times...

>Order_44

Good... good.

Except they massacred people. Keep drinking your sugar free, decaffeinated Kool-aid.

Wow who knew the mormons were a modern day islam. except they never conquered their mekka.

Don't forget their faith comes from the mouths of OUR ENEMIES, the jewish, clearly they are here to take OUR SHIT.

What the fuck are you actually trying to say?

You realize that that is more to do with the people in the church, and not the church themselves?

Killing is still a sin

Every single non-Sharran Cult of Darkness ever

look up some of the stuff Romans believed early Christians did.
other than that, weird sex stuff, harmless, but having grampa get covered in semen will make anyone grab a pitchfork

They worship a benevolent, pacifistic god with a spooky name like "Gogoth-Yog" or "Sharrax the Undoer".

They ask the PCs to donate their loot to the poor, but with really shitty English stage-actor accents, and they are all secretly level 1 commoners despite the constant, grating shade they throw on the party.

If that doesn't make the party commit genocide I don't know what will.

Misdirection. They should keep their doings a secret, and remain vague about the tenets of the religious group.

This allows the group to form suspicions about the supposed cult, while nothing they actually engage in is at all dangerous.

God of blood. They do blood drives.
The blood drives work exactly as advertised.

MURDER is a sin

KILLING is a-ok by every branch of Judaism, no matter how debased

"Thou Shalt Not Kill rather" than "You will not murder" simply marks their doctrine as being derived from the bible translation that was literally only done to justify gay bumfun

Almost converted to Mormonism because the Sister was obscenely cute.

Sister Bracey. Hell yeah.

It's not dangerous as a whole, but the cult leader is exploiting/manipulating the flock for money/sex. Not evil in the Aum Shinrikyo sense, but still provides a hook of some sorts.

Or just recreate the Waco compound incident down to the last detail, as it was basically an example of IRL government murderhobos

Language.
Big words stress people out and it's even worse when they're used in figures of speech.

Make sure you can't Detect Alignment on them.
He/She just meant that they're recreationally using the summoning meditation without the summoning part
What a bunch of cunts

The cult wishes to summon a great devouring god from beyond the stars. It has been summoned before but only in small amounts and they strive to bring it into the world fully. In reality it devours knowledge, and only truly wishes to read all sorts of books, and even has a preference for romance stories, since it can't understand the idea of romance.

A group of actors who believe that experiencing terror and mystery helps you feel more alive/live more fully and thus perform weird rituals where they pretend to kill each other, but its all just hyper-realistic roleplay. Could be particularly troublesome if they try to 'evangelize' and terrorize the uninitiated.
see first half of 'My Dinner with Andre'

Also weird taboo stuff like this They believe that most taboos are designed to make society more idiot-proof, but are actually harmless and fun if done responsibly.
see Hellfire Club aka Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe

...

Nobody that happy and polite is actually a good person

They have a orgies where everyone dresses up in creepy gear, has masks on, dim red lighting, pungent incense, orgy room has strange markings in it.

Turns out they are just a swingers club with a strangely decorated room.

>tfw played a fey druid
>other player makes hippy jokes
>ignores that my animal companion is a wolf (generic)
>party sleeps
>party attacked by goblins during fey druids watch
>wolf notices
>we're camping
>cast entangle
>murder every single goblin with the help of my wolf
>stoke fire and cook the goblins
>party points out you can't eat things of the same type/subtype it's taboo and could shift my alignment
>remind them I don't have the humanoid type or subtype, I'm a fey
>inform them when they wake up they may eat if they want
>player who makes hippy jokes comments he's not interested in vegetarian even though OOC he knows what it is
>have to appreciate that at least he separates player/character knowledge
>inform him that there's nothing not natural about eating meat, my animal companion is a wolf, and that my species is supposed to eat meat
and that's how I got my party to eat goblins

...

Long ago, before the world was created, there existed a creature within the dark, eternal cosmos, a being that spread through the perpetual void and devoured all else that sprang from it. Eventually it came upon the gods of old, and in the ensuing battle the majority of them were returned to nothing. Finally the ancient evil was defeated, but it could not be destroyed, only put to sleep Those who survived created the world and lesser races in honour of their fallen kin.

The cult worships this ancient evil. They travel the lands gathering and studying forbidden tomes and lost artefacts, sticking to the shadows as all major religious organisations and governments hunt them as heretics. But their mission is simple: protect the world. Before being put to sleep the ancient creature vowed to have revenge on the gods and destroy all that they built, so the cult battles and conspires against other evils which seek to harm the world in order to protect their master's claim, that he might one day make good on his promise when he chooses to awaken.
>Why would we sacrifice mere mortals to our master? The raging storm gives no care to motes of dust.
>I have seen the end of this world, blind one, the master shall awaken and he shall return all your gods and all they have built to the nothingness from whence they came. There is no eternity for your ilk. We merely seek to sate his fury, that we might be spared the reckoning.

Part of their mission involves stealing artefacts that could be used in rituals to bring ruin to the world (resurrecting demon lords, opening portals to hell, that kind of shit) and they protect these artefacts so that no other may use them. But when you're told the cult of the ancient-evil-one is gathering ingredients for an end-of-the-world-pie, who's going to believe they're doing it to protect the world?

...

>it's natural for carnivorous animals to eat other species of animal
Scientifically speaking you weren't wrong, even the rules don't seem to disagree, so I guess a fey eating a humanoid isn't evil, at least they attacked you first so it wasn't out of malice, I think the point is you shouldn't eat sentient beings.
Was it really required to feed them to the party tho? That kinda seems dickish.

A fey druid has no real reason to differentiate between a self-aware goblin and any other animal, nor any real reason to know or care about the complexities of type and sub-type in other creatures. If he tricked them into it or tried to hide the fact it was goblin then it's dickish, otherwise it's just one of those things. Better to use the meat available to sustain the living than to simply let it spoil, and I don't think many forces of nature or nature gods would argue otherwise.

Literally chaotic evil.

It's less of a cult and more of a fellowship of those that society has turned their backs upon. Whatever 'societal ill' of your setting is found there. There's orphans, murderers, unmarried mothers, fags, dykes, tieflings, heathens, witches, half-orcs and so on and so on. Everything the mainstream won't accept. Everyone refers to them as the horrible scum of the earth, but in reality they're just a bunch of individuals that take refugee in an enviroment that doesn't judge them for what they are.

There's even Irish people there.

>satanic edging
genius

Blood, skulls, a foreign language and mushrooms.

The cult is visiting abandoned battlefields and similar locales, dragging the wounded away, and using their souls to power intelligent golems used as its servants. Sometimes they also take the poor and the destitute.
It's entirely voluntary: immortality and vast powerup in exchange for a hundred years of servitude.

The cult seeks to resurrect Old Ones who once ruled the world and shall rule again. Kings of men shall be cast down and all we know crumble as people take to the streets in endless revelry.
The Old Ones will bring democracy and magic-based industrial revolution back to a post-apocalyptic setting, thus breaking medieval stasis.

real nice

The cult of Veeky Forums

How is that scary?

So do they have little "Soul Donor" cards somewhere or is it like a symbol on their armour? They'd have to make sure that its not something that can be put on people after they die so they don't get false positives. Maybe they just ask their soul if its ok before they stick it in the golem.

This is great, I love it. I especially like the note about the god's "pets".

>Da Vinci-chan-dono

This plus dark-colored hooded robes.

Isn't she basically naked already?

This is fake news. SAD!

>tfw the prequel trilogy was a parable of Missouri state history

>the consentacult
I can dig it.

Forever GM here. I find rumour and hearsay work best. Its' easy to convince players that they need more inspiration, it could be gossip at a tavern about the cult kidnapping people, or a story printed on a leaflet about members seen in the aftermath of a murder, or just a town crier: Members of XYZ wanted for questioning in relation to bombing. The information could be incorrect, flawed, or an enemy of that cult could be using them to cover its' back to avoid drawing attention to itself. Either the players will have a little fun figuring out the truth or they...won't, and they'll probably level everything in a five mile radius of the cult HQ and then ask why the kidnappings, murders and bombings are still happening.

tl:dr be pic related sometimes.

Yes, user, escaping prosecution so hard they moved into the middle of a fucking desert beyond almost unpassable back then mountain range is sure as hell being murderous assholes?
Or you mean shooting on sight anyone armed that showed in their new safe haven, due to well-justified paranoia?

Read: Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards!
First couple of chapters is all you need

Just do nothing, players usually just assume everything that isn't them is evil. If they hear word of a cult they'll go murderbone on em.

Mormon detected.

I don't trust it