How to Build a Diabolical Cult

[N3v3rM0r3]

Hello and welcome to my very first posting on Mythic Scribes! I found the site because I'm currently designing a Diabolic Cult for a PbP game on discord for a friend and I'm kinda needing some guidance, a template or something. I am using a book I helped fund on KS called Remarkable Cults and their Followers, and it's been huge help. But it's still... overwhelming.

 

[Finchbearer]

If you read about how domestic abuse works, it’s much the same and usually works on the four cycle principle of abuse as demonstrated in the diagram above. Cults are often a large scale version of this with generally one or more abusers who enjoy taking control over their victims. The goal is generally to lure unwitting people into the cult with a ‘honeymoon period’ where it feels like a utopia, and then once an individual is psychologically invested in the ideals of the cult, the rules make it very hard to leave as there is often consequences to doing so. Cult leaders often like to isolate their victims so they are less likely to want to, or be able to leave. Cult leaders are often psychopaths or sociopaths with a false sense of grandeur and megalomania.

Not stuff for the light hearted.

 

[Finchbearer]

Just wanna say… I don’t want my comment to sound…instructional. Obviously doing any of that sort of stuff in real life is very very bad. But if you’re going to create a fictional ‘diabolical cult’, I’d say you need to consider the psychological implications of how abuse works.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I would think step 1 is to find either a devil or a demon to worship.

Step 2 is to start worshipping said being.

Step 3 then is to convince other people to join you.

Step 3 is probably the difficult one. It involves promissing something in return for their worship. After all, very few people will just go along with you if you walk up to them and ask if they want to join a diabolical cult. The default options are usually power in some form, eternal life, or a priviliged position in the afterlife. Revenge on some other people is also a good one (though I guess that's a form of power).

As a final step 4 you can include that although you can check in, you can never leave...

 

[Insolent Lad]

I would think step 1 is to find either a devil or a demon to worship.

It would help considerably if this is an actual being that manifests for its worshipers.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

It would help considerably if this is an actual being that manifests for its worshipers.

To cultists it does. They believe with the fervent dedication that only the converted can get. And all of this is about power and control.

 

[ThinkerX]

I have such a cult in 'Empire: Metropolis,' fourth book of my 'Empire' series.

In setting it up, one of the first questions I asked was 'who would join a group like this?' My answer was impoverished veterans of the demon war that ended a few years earlier. Joining the group brought them a sense of purpose.

Combined with that question was this: 'what is the cults purpose?' With this group it was a desperate effort to retain 'traditional values' - in order to win the demon war, the empire unleashed technological and social innovation. Faced with an empty treasury and an unpaid army, the emperor granted all imperial troops, not merely twenty-year veterans, land and citizenship, effectively tripling the middle class overnight. Bicycles and other technologies are no longer the toys of the rich. The countryside is emptying out. The veterans in the book were church troops who missed out on all this. They see themselves as virtuous defenders of the established order.

The cults leadership was so distraught by these changes to the Empire they concluded the whole thing needed to be torn down and placed in God's hands - or more specifically the hands of Gods angels. Towards this end, they established contact with what they believed to be angels, etheric entities with a rigid moral code, deliberately ignoring the prohibitions against such contact. (End justifies the means).

These entities, commonly called the 'Servants of Justice,' had issues of their own - yes, they could be termed part of the angelic hierarchy, but they were considered tainted by their peers, in danger of being cast out. To them, the mortal cult leaders offer was a lifeline, a chance for physical hosts. That obtaining those hosts meant the sacrifice of many, many people was a trivial issue - those people killed, were, after all legally condemned 'sinners.'

Then the whole mess blew up in everybody's faces

 

[Death]

I think you should also have some sort of otherwordly leader and someone you thought was a friend to be high in the cult.

 

[ThinkerX]

I think you should also have some sort of otherwordly leader and someone you thought was a friend to be high in the cult.

One of the MC's in 'Metropolis' lives in a tenement whose populace is about 90% members of the cult. To her, they are merely ordinary people...who have an obsession with angels. She gets along fairly well with most of them.

 

[Death]

Makes sense. She gets along with all of them? I would think the MC would argue with one if she finds out about it.

 

[N3v3rM0r3]

I would think step 1 is to find either a devil or a demon to worship.

Step 2 is to start worshipping said being.

Step 3 then is to convince other people to join you.

Step 3 is probably the difficult one. It involves promissing something in return for their worship. After all, very few people will just go along with you if you walk up to them and ask if they want to join a diabolical cult. The default options are usually power in some form, eternal life, or a priviliged position in the afterlife. Revenge on some other people is also a good one (though I guess that's a form of power).

As a final step 4 you can include that although you can check in, you can never leave...

So, that part I have, I'll post what we've (my partner in crime) come up with. They follow Cerulean, Goddess of Dark Magic, Mistress of Twisted Desires, an arche-demon that's fooled them into thinking she's a goddess.

 

[N3v3rM0r3]

It would help considerably if this is an actual being that manifests for its worshipers.

She can manifest herself to a point, though weak due to the Veil. It's why their mission is to shatter it

 

[Death]

Is the Veil an entity or something else

 

[N3v3rM0r3]

Is the Veil an entity or something else

Still trying to figure that out as it's someone else creation. From what I understand, it's some type of energy or force? That prevents magic and otherworldly entities form entering the world. This is for a rp on discord and a friend wanted help coming up with a BBG, I had the idea of a cult and it sounded like fun to make so I offered to do it for her.

 

[pmmg]

To Follow up on Finch's post...

Cults as we know them tend to have a leader and a small cabal of true believes. People are brought in (often those who might be vulnerable otherwise), and over time become true believers themselves or trapped. Those on top tend to seek control, and thus all the stuff in the wheel start to appear. I might add to it control of information as well.

Least that is cults as many would define or understand them. There are many types of cults, from very narrow, Jonestown types, to those who follow major religions, or political groups.

You added diabolical....what makes your a diabolical one? As opposed to any others?

And your question is vague... Designing in fiction is not the same as real world. That whole getting followers part can be bypassed. The cult of Kali in the temple of doom might be hard to get started, but it works for the movie.

How big and what is the purpose of the cult? and why would it been seen as diabolical from those on the outside?


Seeing some of the answers, there is an evil Goddess who is the head of the cult. Disguised or not, it ought not take much for a super powerful being to get a following. She just needs to offer some benefits for membership...being evil, that might be riches, murder, slavery and sex. So...make a high priest, get some followers who want diabolical power, throw in some they control with magic or drugs or money or whatever, and set about trying to grow and accomplish their own evil ends.

I still feel unsure of what type of answer you are looking for. I'd use Kali as a model.

 

[ThinkerX]

Makes sense. She gets along with all of them? I would think the MC would argue with one if she finds out about it.

To the MC - and pretty much everyone else, the cult that level is nothing more than devout church goers with an angel obsession. These are people she interacts with every day.

 

[N3v3rM0r3]

Okay, now that I have time, this is what I have:

Disciples of the Eldritch Academia
In the name of Science, in the name of knowledge, in the name of the Twisted Mistress~

As the cult as a religious group, is dedicated to research and knowledge of all things. Rumors however, has it that they most favor research in "darker arts" and cruel devices. Their goddess, Azura, Goddess of Knowledge, is actually Cerulean, Goddess of Dark Magic, Mistress of Twisted Desires. To the eyes of an outsider or non-member, they are an academic organization or institution dedicated all fields of scientific research. It's once you get into the cult that you learn the horrors of this. Human experimentation is often used and in ways encouraged (One of the head masters conducts studies where she takes parts of creators and other humanoids and transplant them on others, say wings. Another conducts experiments which he attempts to push human boundaries with clockwork contraptions). Their studies also delve as far into the occult as they can, where communion with demons and devils alike is done (currently no magic till this up coming story ark where the cult attempts to shatter the veil that prevents it).

They are a small group though dangerous with many cells throughout the known world

 

[Queshire]

Hmm.... If that's what you're going with then there's a lot of real world stuff you can draw aesthetics from. I vaguely remember hearing that in, like, Victorian times human dissection would almost be treated like theater with a corpse splayed out in front of an audience and a lot of what we know about hypothermia comes from some truly disgusting tests by the Nazis back in WWII.

 

[Death]

Did Cerulean create the Veil?

 

[N3v3rM0r3]

Hmm.... If that's what you're going with then there's a lot of real world stuff you can draw aesthetics from. I vaguely remember hearing that in, like, Victorian times human dissection would almost be treated like theater with a corpse splayed out in front of an audience and a lot of what we know about hypothermia comes from some truly disgusting tests by the Nazis back in WWII.

Rumor has it the free masons did that kind of stuff... Hm... That is an interesting idea.