Has your character ever started a cult? How did it go?

Has your character ever started a cult? How did it go?

Not player but GM story here
>has mini cult as random encounter
>player who is a fallen angel ask who did they worship
>"uh fuck roll to see if you recognize the markings"
>nat20
>"um [insert gods name i don't remember]
>"can i continue the cult?"
>"fuck it why not if you try ill let you"
>Fast forward 3 sessions later and they've sacrificed at least 3 random towns people for each town they've visited
>convinced another player to push god on other NPCs and PCs i think out of spite is why they did it
>eventually i work it into the main story and the campaign finished with the cult players becoming demons or something
was really fun for the most part besides a player who had to be kicked for inopropriate behavior

So this was the first session that I had played with some people that I had meet through one of my friends, by this point in time I had only really met them on a few occasions so I wasn't really sure if I was just acting like a complete fool. To make a long story slightly less long, they were playing a plane scape game in 5e and to have a sort of filler episode the DM decided to have us make some money to upgrade our magic space-time warping castle that we use to go from plane to plane by dropping us off in modern day Japan, but it's like if Tokyo and Las Vegas had a strange love child. So while everyone in the party is either gambling away their money or trying to get 'employed' by the casino that were tasked with trying to rob from via their secret vault of money under the casino itself, I decided to do what any scholar would do and get a job at McDonalds. By the end of our three day excursion to Neo-Las Tokyo, I had become the CEO of the McDonalds through a hostile take over by the way of summoning a whole gaggle of demons that were retextured as being McDonald characters, such as chicken nuggets, grimace, and the hamburglar, where I was made effectively the Pope of the Cult of McDonalds. So to sum it up, I wasted three day of in game time to climb the corporate ladder, just to break into the vault under the casino and steal upward of 26 million dollars through a distraction of ten very angry fast food characters went on a rampage through a large city, which ended in me becoming the leader of a world spanning cult dedicated to the powers of McDonalds.

More times than I can count, actually. It's kind of my go-to for character backgrounds and goals. In fact, I'm playing two separate characters right now that deal with cults in some fashion. One has a class that explicitly makes him a cult leader, while the other is a shapeshifting, bodyjacking xenophage with a taste and penchant for heretical figures and teachings.

I'm playing someone who is helping a leader of a cult.

The first session, we stole a book of rituals for the cult to do rituals with.

Ask me anything.

playing with 2 different groups running 5e right now, thinking the best way to start a cut would be with a great old one warlock. thoughts, advice?

(both dms are cool with the idea)

Pretty good.

They hunt down ghostly Anchors for him, so that he can banish the Ghosts back to the Underworld.
They believe they serve in the eternal army of the afterlife, purifying spirits so they can ascend to paradise.
The truth is oh, so much worse.

But necessary.

It was a game set after the world sort of ended. Storms raging, countries falling, people just trying to survive the madness.

I had deiced to play a big guy. A huge figure that could handle a club, an axe or a gun, could fix things with mechanic and carpentry skills and carry heavy stuff for the group.

The game we played rewards drawbacks and quirks. I picked that he would be a good and godly man, one that wouldn't kill if he could help it.

So we'd had a fight with some bandits, trying to take things we'd salvaged from the ruins of a city. We beat them back, but at the end of the fight there were three still alive, just wounded.

So I played up my quirks and patched them up, then gave them a Gideon's bible and told them anyone could be redeemed. They were reborn and God still loved them.

Month later, we've played 3 more times and nearly forgotten about the encounter when we get in over our head helping a small town out when five strangers in simple brown robes join in. They join in fearless and with their help we survive the attack..

Then they help patch up the surviving bad guys, disarm them and baptize them. The leader of the guys in robes seems really happy to see me and calls me the Preacher. Says he and the Fellowship are building a meeting hall, but they came to help when they heard people needed. it. They were Saved, not just in the body, but in their Soul, and were ready to call all men their Brother.

Not so much a cult, but a game I was in was instrumental in retconning in a whole new religion in a friend's world based around one of the players who was a reanimated skeleton.

I think I may end up having to sort of start one.
Basically the Gm ran the old treasure hunt mod so we started at level 0. End up on an island in the middle of a pirate war. We found an old temple of a goddess which turned out to be sharindlar the chaotic good dwarf woman. Now, my character ended up offering to take something back when we escape being stranded, She wanted her word carried.
Basically I now have to spread the word of sharindlar which is healing, fertility, and love.

>I had deiced to play a big guy.
Big relative to whom?

Not a cult but i accidentaly created a religious serial murderer :3.
Want me to greentext?

Yes. He became the villain of the continuation campaign.

What's the cult's theology? Weird theology and fanatical zealots are my favorite part of religious cults, I could care less for demon/devil/eldritch abomination summoning, if that's the threat someone wants, a cabal of dark sorcerers works every bit as well, even better, even.

Yeah, she even started a new student council and included a strong magician into it
But she died just few days after

Was there a religious dispute over class 1 levers?

Does a cult of personality count?

Was she killed by a villain who really liked see-saws?

It's the Cult of the Father of the Abyss, a corrupting and transcendent Diety. The Father of the Abyss corrupts the minds of followers, turning them into meatpuppets whom he uses to bring about Armageddon.

His goal will be, once unleashed, to take over the minds of the whole world and, with the souls of every person in the world, shatter reality. Unmake it and make something from his own image, that he can control as he wishes.

(Of course my character doesn't know the God's goal, just about the first part.)

Angie did nothing wrong

With my friends we have the idea to play as cultists of Atua

He started a commune "devoted to taking the power from the patricians and senators and spreading it evenly among the plebians"
It was mostly him playing along with the pleb's ideas as an excuse to get laid.
It developed into a cult of personality centered on him because he made promises to help get the plebs voices better heard in the senate.
It ended like Jonestown, because he didn't realize that revered figures shouldn't jokingly suggest suicide to their fanatical followers, lest they actually follow through with it.
He's still on the run, joined an adventurer's guild, changed his name, and takes any mission that keeps him as far away from his home country as possible.

>party gets a highway man encounter
>not only convince them not to attack us but to stay with us for the night and chat awhile
>guy is a compulsive liar likes to puff himself up usually it gets the job done even if the occasional backfire happens so party never outs him publicly
>tell these fine gentlemen about my "many deeds" and how my "followers" were instrumental in my success
>party realizes we're now all alone off the trail in the woods with a group of armed men at night
>i'm shit in a fight so it might as well be 3 on one
>party plays along out of fear of impending death
>forget the exact discussion/lore building but we come across as something like a party of saints lead by me, fucking tinkerbell, powered by sheer belief in me by my "followers"
>rocky time on rolls and checks but it mostly works with DM fiat because for once everybodies getting into RP so we don't die
>nice fellows for probable murderers
>standard forced into the army then deserted types
>night ends with us bartering for supplies they need food and water we could use things like components they have no use for and the like
>fast forward several sessions
>never mentioned that encounter from that time ever
>we're making our way back through that area
>we have some mcguffin that's more than likely some liches phylactery or something that will lead to it but we aren't sure
>all the way back we hear odd stories
>robinhood-esque people have been about fucking over local lords and barons out of land and their people
>no people of title have been killed only displaced while the locals join up with the band of misfits freely
>figure it's a civil war thread
>come across a stockaded town that wasn't there before
>from a distance it doesn't seem like it's anything other than a overly defendable but fairly large shanty town
>decide to wait till morning before we check it out
>ride up to the currently shut gate

>standard procedure is i do the talking while the party sits back
>best case scenario I get us in for free worst case at least the fighting force of the party doesn't start off a fight injured by an arrow
>as we ride up the door opens on its own
>greeted by 12 men in armor
>clothes and armor are ill-fitting but polished and obviously expensive
>supposedly look like epileptic landsknecht types with no fashion sense or a proper tailor
>bows and scrapes all around they've been waiting for us all is ready come with us etc.
>on the walk into town find out it's the old highway men
>they were touched by the "work" I previously told them I was doing teaching people how to read helping orphans and generally righting wrongs and decided they'd take up the cause
>tells me they've been making preparations for my return
>knew if they built up enough followers who truly believed in my teachings and me that the sort of religious power boost would cause me to come back to them
>they want me to lead them onto the capitol to make a government of the people not of the king
>the town is just a barracks for the army the outlying lands are owned and run by the former peasants supporting the movement
>second we hit the town center get led to a stage surrounded by a few hundred people all in bits of armor and clothes like the highwaymen
>group actually wants to roll with this i wanted to cut and run
>start the movement of Just Believe
>standing principle is if you Believe in it hard enough it will just spontaneously manifest somehow
>no tithes other than your Belief for the movement to keep it propped up on Belief "juice"
>it's just a form of socialism, neighborliness, and helping others before you help yourself which should lead to your needs being met by others while others meet yours
>most of the time it was just sending strongly worded letters to local landholders of all titles to join us
>refusals were met by a firm if gentle revolt of their local peasants and farmers

Posthumously, yes.

My bard was gifted eternal life via controlled reincarnation for his feats in service to the gods of good (saving the world and the like). He adventured and steadily gained power for centuries after that until he finally ascended to become a minor demigod of music, love, traveling, happiness and other comfy things. He reached out to the dreams of those people who he thought embodied these things and convinced some of them to found a temple and begin a small religion built around him and his ideals.

They mostly do charity work and put on free entertainment for peasants.

>whole situation sort of spiraled out from the basic principles to an almost hippy style commune of general free love and support for all
>effectively replaced feuds with hugs, affairs with open and fluid family dynamics, arguments with town backed arbitration(whoever had the talking stick was the arbitrator) that usually resulted in 20-50 person group hugs
>battles were rare but they happened, usually in places more like cities where mercantile types had more to lose from the movement
>each "saint" got 4 of the highwaymen as "disciples"
>honestly just did my best not to die while they did all the work
>eventually things went south a bit
>turns out hugs don't plow fields and sharing, while caring, means everyone is collectively short on stocked supplies for winter
>call my first holy pilgrimage to Happy Landings(yes, I stole the name), the original barracks now the de facto capitol
>everyone who shows up gets a chance at the talking stick to say their peace and join the militia but don't feel pressured
>every body joins and between the party we decide we're going to take the now starving capitol that we've been staving off with boycotts, mild protests, and the crowd throwing anybody that left and didn't join us back into the city
>we start the No Fealty For Realty campaign
>non-combatants got to carry home made signs with slogans like mi casa es su casa, holistics not politics, polearms can't hug but mine can
>the rest were just prior guards, soldiers, knights, and willing but untrained civilians who were willing to believe that they wouldn't have to fight but if they did just believe we'll win using whatever bits and jobs were on hand
>meet zero resistance all the way to the inner keep
>no actual resistance just a locked gate with nobody who would answer
>turns out the capitol actually caved ages ago to our protests and nobody knew because nobody was working so the lack of mail service and royal runners means the news never really spread

One of my players founded a new holy empire by accident

>Starfinder
>Crew is on a dwarf planet inhabited by Ysoki, and their distant cousins, a race of sentient guinea pigs
>Rodents at war
>The rats are led by an Emperor, guineas by an evil papal figure
>All-father Speckles
>Plot twist
>Pope is demon in disguise huehuehue
>few sessions of dicking around
>Boss fight time
>Pope-demon wastes 2 members of the party, stabilized tho
>They finally kill the thing, wanna take and sell the body for loot
>Wheeling dead guinea-pope-demon through streets of guinea city
>Citizens are pissed their religious figureheads been murdered
>Soldier makes a diplomacy check
>20
>"This man was an imposter, unfit to lead you"
>"I However and the TRUE VOICE OF GOD MADE FLESH "
>bluff check
>20
>Immediately establishes himself as religious leaders
>Turns a loosely Catholic religion into Mormon rodents
>Unites the races under Church of the Latter Day Vermin

>the king just grabbed every body loyal to him and locked up the inner keep
>we human pyramid inside to discover a donner party situation with everybody dead
>we assume the head of government
>manage to restore the previous regime more or less with the combatants as new lords and barons with the non-combatant as the peasant class
>somehow manage to convince the people it's entirely different because now all of us are running the show
>can't really go back to the old campaign plan because of the change
>find out later the macguffin we had was not only the phylactery but the king wanted it to awaken the lich
>in the hassle of the sudden change nobody can remember who was actually carrying it and our notes aren't helping
>oh well

>new campaign a few months later has the new party go to the Just Believe area
>the schools actually made it highly successful and between the constant positive reinforcement and support shared by the citizens it's become a powerhouse of a country
>the current leader is whoever carries the talking stick and everybody takes turns doing various duties like guard duty, teaching, manual labor, even who's in the pillory for the day
>rumors are the old leader who should be dead is actually still alive and is fairly jesus like as are his followers and upper disciples who are currently spreading the good word
>turns out you can make a minor deity out of pure belief

One of my players actually ended up becoming the goddess of a cult

That's a cute ducky.

2 Different cults, during the same campaign.

One was a force of personality prince who adopted the spider god Arachnus from a bunch of ADHD friendly talking spiders who probably invented a slightly different deity within a week. But he was ardent and loyal, and after a true test of faith, became the prophet of Arachnus. During the adventure he converted several followers, and eventually instituted it as a state religion after retaking his family's throne.

The other was a hedge wizard who died horrible early in the campaign, and was revived via selling his soul to a bureaucratic imp. The Hedge Wizard made it his personal quest to cure death, because dying is actually really awful, eventually getting his hands on a ritual for lichdom, which after performing on himself, created a dumbed down version which feeds the souls of the participants to his liege lord imp, making revenants that are functionally immortal, but don't come back when destroyed. During the downtime between the main campaign and it's sequel he had created a great amount of revenants, some of whom worshipped him as a godlike being.

One of my Anima players convinced an entire Catholic sect that she was an archangel, in an attempt to save the party idiot, who had teleported into a group of inquisitors in the rectory.
She then spent the entire campaign trying to either downplay her divinity, or turn these guys towards a friendlier, more humanitarian viewpoint than what they had originally been.

End of campaign, the Order of Our Lady the Spider had established a few small chapels in other provinces where there was rebuilding work to be done after wars.
They also wound up being wowed by D'Anjayni, what with the whole "Face of the spider" thing they have, and feel it's some sort of divine blessing if they get one or two members of the race either worshiping or sheltering at one of their chapels.