It’s Jonathan here again with another Rules Ramble! Each week, I’ll introduce a topic that will be important in an upcoming game, explain some new mechanic or system for DR:TX, or discuss a particular rule from the DR Corebook. In each ramble, I’ll focus on explaining that topic in more detail than the book alone can provide and help provide one place to reference all the various errata or rulings that might be relevant. Sometimes I’ll even drop a few Story Teasers or provide a summary of the last game in a Game Recap.
As we get ready for our next event, CRISIS OF FAITH, I'm going to be covering a bit about the history of The Cult of the Reborn, a villainous group of fanatics out to achieve their goals by any means necessary.
TICKETS ARE ON SALE FOR CRISIS OF FAITH UNTIL FRIDAY, February 3rD! ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT TO PRE-REG!
The Cult of the Reborn is actually heavily based on some in game events that started during our online season. While the pandemic raged, we explored the city of Essex through a series of events we call the Fountainhead Trilogy and Dead Man’s Hand. You can read our teasers and transmedia hype on our website:
We also covered some of the Content Warnings and some introductions to the key conflict and mechanics of the event in our last blog posts. If you missed it, you can find it here:
Photo credits in this post are from Max Pohlmeier, Lainey Weiss, Sydney Betzina, and Noah Goodman.
The primary antagonists of the next event, CRISIS OF FAITH, have actually been around for awhile. Today, I want to cover a bit of the history of what came before as it might help you understand the motivations of the Cult of the Reborn during our next event.
The story of the Cult of the Reborn starts with the Fountainhead, and the group of faithful that emerged known as the Cult of the Tiny God. This was the singular event that formed the foundation of the Cult and the mythology of the Lost Prophet, but the events of Dead Man’s Hand and the Emerald Gala have continued to change the trajectory of the cultists.
This information is considered knowledge your characters can have known, or you can simply choose to come into the game without any information here. We leave it up to you!
tl;dr: This is a LOT of Lore. you don’t have to read all of this. None of this necessary, but I hope you enjoy the read.
Let’s look a bit at the key events you should know about.
The Fountainhead Incident
During the online half of Season 2, we hosted three events that told the continuing story of Essex, the City of Light of Sound. These three events cover a series of event known in game as “The Fountainhead Incident”.
The Fountainhead (DR:TX ONLINE EVENT, April 2020)
During this first event, we introduced our players to Essex, the City of Light and Sound. This mighty city, situated just south of our town of Bravado, is the heart of the Grave Council and the San Saba Republic. The population of the city ebbs and wanes with the seasons, but during the Festival of Light and Sound, an annual King’s Court party, the city reaches a population truly unheard of in the apocalyptic wastelands.
When a mysterious signal rang out across the air waves, sent out with a psionic pulse after the mysterious Dr. Ottoman was awoken far to the north, a hidden cryo-chamber underneath Essex was activated. (This was a global event that occurred at the January 2020 National Event, Dr. Ottoman’s Workshop). One of those awakened by Ottoman’s signal was the Scientist, a Semper Mort later known as Dr. Stewart.
The Scientist sent out a broadcast of his own, providing information to the town to help him complete a scientific process that they had been working on for decades. To aid the endeavor, Dr. Stewart activated a series of Laboratories across Essex, awakening them from generations of sleep. These tombs of science, “deadlockers” and science labs, offered discoveries unlike anything else, and adventurers, thrill seekers, and looters alike rushed into these strange places to recover anything they could.
However, the same signal that broadcasted the Scientist’s location and awakened the Labs attracted the undead. A mighty horde of zombies, the largest seen since the Hiway War, descended on Essex, and the town did what they could to keep the horde at bay while the last of the Laboratories were plundered. Each of the factions of the San Saba attempted to jockey for control of the experiment, seeking Dr. Stewart’s favor by recovering the relics for his project while trying to defend the city.
Once the encoded data was complete, Stewart was finally able to activate his great work, a mighty transforming machine capable of creating a new Morgue — The Fountainhead. A massive edifice of white, flowing stone erupted from within in the center of Essex, devastating the Governor’s Mansion and creating a wonder of grave science in the center of the city. The horde of undead and Blood Ghasts besieging Essex broke apart in a moment, whatever strange signal that had been calling them now no longer provoking them into a frenzy.
Dr. Stewart escaped his cryo-chamber, and emerged as a new expert on the strange new Morgue but it would need help to reach its full potential. The Mystagogues of the Grave Council stepped forward as the stewards of this marvelous new discovery, and they began to study the strange obelisk. The Fountainhead had saved the city, a visible, physical symbol of the miracle that scattered the horde and left the population of the city in wonder and awe.
The Crystodyne Principle (DR:TX ONLINE EVENT, May 2020)
The new Morgue was still curiously inert, but countless people across Essex began reporting dreams that were more vivid and real than anything they had felt before. They dreamed of ephemeral oceans full of themselves; tiny deaths from which they wake up from in a cold sweat. When the Scientist agreed to allow people to explore the Fountainhead, a crowd gathered in the ruins of the Governor’s Mansion at the Research Station that had been set up. That was when disaster struck.
In a blood-soaked frenzy, something terrible emerged from the Fountainhead. What escaped was a horrific Monster, what we now understand to be an ARCHON. This otherworldly creature exploded from the Fountainhead, massacring the guests waiting to see the new Morgue and began ravaging the city of Essex. While a group of hunters tried to track the beast through the streets of Essex, others set themselves to understanding how such a thing could come from the Fountainhead.
For the last month, the Fountainhead had attracted the attention of the common folk of Essex and one important person in particular, Pfilomena Lovelace, a pious Sainthood woman that operated a local market known as the Pfarmer’s Market. These dreams caught the imagination of Pfilomena Lovelace, and she saw in these mad visions an opportunity. The Fountainhead had awoken in her a dream of something beautiful and possible, and she was eager to make contact with what she described as an “intelligence” within the Fountainhead. If they could “teach” the Fountainhead to communicate, they could ask for its help in stopping the Monster. She had spent weeks preaching her dream to Essex, and far too many people found a kernel of “truth” in her message they could not ignore.
Pfilomena and the Scientist led the research into ways to “teach” the new Morgue how to function and communicate. In her mind, the universal language of the wastes was music and faith, and she asked her followers to store sensations of hope, love, piety, and the dreams of a new future so they could inspire the Fountainhead in the same way it had inspired her. She would imbue each of those songs into a psionic crystal, a Crystalline Lattice, that she could use to teach the heart of the Fountainhead, the “tiny god” within the morgue, to answer with its own song.
Inside the Fountainhead’s Atrium, a strange otherworldly portal had opened in the wake of the Monster’s escape. Each time Pfilomena fed one of these Lattices into the Fountainhead’s sparking center, her hands burned with the fire of the psionic impulse. Each time she did, the energy grew, and the portal grew larger. Committed, she continued her holy endeavors until nothing but stumps remained of her hands. Crippled and injured, she saw the loss of her hands as a meager sacrifice to awake the new and marvelous Tiny God she saw in her insane dreams.
However, the Scientist needed some better way to communicate with the Fountainhead. The whispers of the grave were maddening, and they would need a modulator, or a “voice” for the Morgue. Pfilomena offered her son, Caleb Lovelace, as a potential candidate for the experiment. Caleb, the Mad Prophet of Cutthroat Alley, was a powerful psion in his own right. He was cursed with a debilitating growth of psionic crystal that emerged from his skull, and he was extremely sensitive to psionic and electronic signals. The Scientist theorized they could use his psionic connection with his mother to complete the connection to the Fountainhead. They had been transmitting music to the Fountainhead, and with a strong enough signal they could perhaps communicate with the Mortis Amaranthine using Caleb as it’s “voice”.
The Archon would be lured back to the Fountainhead by this machine, as they could chase it back to its point of origin by closing off each of the other Morgues in Essex. The obliterating energies of the Fountainhead could be the weapon to destroy the immortal nightmare, provided they could draw it back to the source. Several survivors rescued Caleb from a horrific fate as a victim of the Crystal Candy Shoppes, but the young man refused to be the mouthpiece they needed.
The brave sacrifice of a psion named Siren instead served as the connection and voice they needed, and her psionic Imprint was enough to lure the Archon back to the Fountainhead where it could be destroyed. The teams raced through the morgue tunnels, chasing their prey back to the source, as Pfilomena pleaded with her god inside the Fountainhead to answer, asking for some signal or some sign that what they were doing was working. When the Archon emerged in the Atrium, intent on killing anything in its path, the Fountainhead finally answered their frantic pleas.
A powerful blast of light, sound, and music came from the Morgue, an answer to the prayers of countless and the psionic energies they had poured into the Grave Mind through the Crystalline Lattices. The blast utterly consumed the Archon, drawing its foul presence into the Fountainhead. Essex was saved, and the Fountainhead had finally been awakened to a glorious song.
Galatea (DR:TX ONLINE EVENT, June 2020)
In the aftermath of the Fountainhead destroying the Monster, it was now a true and functioning Morgue. The strange machine was a wonder of gravetech and technology and it had even more potential. The Scientist believed the machine could be used to create a better world, and that it was capable of “terraforming” Essex into a new and wondrous marvel of technology. Those that ventured into the hallowed atrium spoke of strange visions born of the Fountainhead, dreams of a future where anything was possible. Some, like Tabitha St. Mercy, used the visions of the Fountainhead to improve the defenses of Killhouse. Whether it was simply delusion, strange grave science, some psionic manifestation of the Grave Mind, or something else, no one could deny that the Fountainhead was doing something new and unexplained.
Each of these visions showed a new future, a dream of what could be and the future was malleable. It was a miracle, according to the Cult that had formed around Pfilomena Lovelace. Driven by the grief and trauma of the zombie horde, the awe-inspiring emergence of the Fountainhead, and the Archon’s deadly path of destruction, the common folk of Essex were entranced by Pfilomena’s sermons. Her madness was spreading, and even the attempts of her son Caleb to talk sense into her had failed. Pfilomena promised that their Tiny God had awoken within the machine-like Fountainhead, and it had given the people of Essex a chance to make a new paradise beyond death itself. The Cult was becoming a gathering of dangerous fanatics, seeking to understand the new Morgue.
As the Atrium of the Fountainhead began to glow once more with power and energy of the otherworldly portal, Pfilomena Lovelace decided on one last sacrifice. To help her new god create the Paradise she saw in her mad dreams, music would not be enough. It needed true consciousness and faith and that was only something she could provide. Her followers, the Cult of the Tiny God, each wearing the traditional bleached robes mimicking the flowing stone of the Fountainhead and with the curious ashen thumbprint on their foreheads marking their faith, set out in a procession for her last communion with the Fountainhead. Her son, Caleb Lovelace, tried to stop her but was held back by her zealous followers. With one last glance back, Pfilomena cast herself into the blinding light of the Atrium.
The Prophet of the Tiny God was utterly obliterated by the energies of the Morgue, torn apart atom by atom as she was consumed. She had sacrificed her very Infection, her Imprint, and her hopes and dreams into the Fountainhead to awake her Tiny God, but it had consumed her completely instead. Despite her conviction, the “voice” within the Fountainhead was still the same, tiny, stupid, ego that was there before.
Those that sought out the visions within the Fountainhead once more were met by a shocking reality. Over time, the dreams of the Fountainhead grew darker. The inspiring and majestic visions it showed to those that ventured within turned horrific and paralyzing. A darkness was spreading within the Fountainhead, a corruption left to rot inside by the terrible Monster it had consumed when it awoke. The strange white flowing stone of the Fountainhead began to spread out from the monolith, consuming buildings, roads, and more. In its place was left a featureless plain of the same white stone, creating a blank and lifeless slate where nothing survived.
The Fountainhead indeed had an intelligence, and the intelligence within the Morgue seemed set on the destruction of Essex, of forming a new and lifeless reality it wanted to cast out onto the world. The gravetech machine the Scientist had awoken was indeed some kind of terraformer, caught in a broken loop of madness and destruction. Left unchecked, the corruption could destroy the entire City of Light and Sound, and it showed no signs of slowing.
The Fountainhead’s consumption was spreading by the hour, and citizens began to report strange Faceless creatures haunting the forlorn streets of Essex, dragging helpless victims back to the Fountainhead to be absorbed by the new Morgue. Some of the Cult of the Tiny God was even seen helping the abyssal creatures, thinking them to be agents of the god or their Lost Prophet they believed to be speaking to them from within the Mortis Amaranthine. The entities were at first faceless stone-like entities, but as the machine progressed, they started to take on frightening similarities to other citizens of Essex. The undead creatures were becoming better copies of the town, replacement simulacrum to inhabit the new lifeless world.
The new Mayor of Essex, Missy Amberdraught, led a group of survivors into the interior of the Fountainhead, to kill the “god” or to shut off the machine before it could devastate Essex. From within the machine, they tore apart the “brain”, disconnecting machines as if they were severing organs and cutting limbs, shutting down the Fountainhead in the midst of the strange visions of the lifeless paradise it was trying to create. As the last light faded within the gravetech machine, the Fountainhead was slain. The Morgue was separated from the Mortis Amaranthine, cut off from the corruption of the Monster within, but the Fountainhead sang one last, powerful song.
Instead of the featureless void that was consuming Essex, vibrant life spread from the Fountainhead. Massive trees formed a forest within the city, replacing the formless white stone with teeming trees and plant life that had never been seen before. A massive tree grew out of the Fountainhead during its last breath, becoming the largest and most notable landmark within the City of Light and Sound, becoming known as the Fountainheart. Within hours, the city of Essex was transformed into a living, breathing city of nature and renewed life. The Fountainhead had completed its final command and made the paradise that Pfilomena had saw before her last sacrifice.
The cult of the Tiny God, REBORN
In the wake of the Fountainhead Incident, the Cult of the Tiny God was a shell of what it had been under their demogogue leader, in those glorious weeks at the feet of the Fountainhead. Other voices caused schisms within their faith, and vestiges of this Cult splinted into other doomsday apocalypse cults, like the Cult That Never Dies, a group of Archon cultists that tried to hasten the endtimes during the Emerald Gala, and what would become the Cult of the Reborn.
They had lost their founder, Pfilomena Lovelace, and while her son Caleb was still venerated by those that remained, the Cult began to dwindle. Too many people remembered the betrayal of the Cultists trying to help the Fountainhead consume Essex. Others still had perished when they were consumed by the Fountainhead’s faceless minions. Others had lost faith when they saw the death of the gravetech machine, realizing their delusions had simply been a fantasy of the Grave Mind and not reality. And month after month, the Cult began to be seen as a pitiful reminder of zealotry and the power of delusion.
Pfilomena had died as a martyr and demagogue when she cast herself into the Fountainhead as a sacrifice for her faith to awaken the morgue. Thoroughly dead and gone, images of her were found scrawled across the city venerating her as the Saint and Lost Prophet of Essex. Her death would be a lasting memory for the citizens of Essex, and a reminder of what the power of faith could accomplish. Those that remained true to the Cult of the Tiny God promised that Pfilomena would be reborn one day, and that they should look for signs of her return.
The Cult grasped at straws, instead of dealing with their grief. They believed in the dream of paradise that Pfilomena sang to them and could not grapple with what had been left behind. They descended further into their delusions, intent on finding the Lost Prophet and awaiting her eventual return and rebirth. The common folk of Essex were left victims of Bloodghasts, had homes destroyed by the terraforming of the Fountainhead, or experienced a vicious death at the hands of the Faceless and the Otherworlders. The trauma for these survivors had ultimately broken them. Most members of the Cult of the Tiny God are not rational but have constructed elaborate belief systems to avoid facing the simple truth — they were wrong.
But despite the losses, even today you can still find a few of the bleached robed followers of the Lost Prophet preaching on corners throughout the San Saba, seeking out the signs of the Reborn Prophet to give them the salvation they desperately crave. The Cult needed a new leader, and they were ready to listen to anyone that spoke to their fantasy.
Other Appearances of the Cult of the reborn
The Cult has been lurking in the shadows of the San Saba since the fall of the Fountainhead. Like cults in our real world, logic and proof aren’t enough to turn them from their delusions. They have been in the background of our story, and a few notable events have pushed them into prominence once more.
Dead Man’s Hand (National Online EVENt, March 2021)
During the Dead Man’s Hand tournament, the city of Essex once again faced the otherworldly threat of the Archons. When three of these terrible creatures emerged from the heart of the Abyssal Rift left growing in the death of the Fountainhead, the city was once more the victim of the Outsiders.
The Archons were eventually stopped by the combined might of citizens from throughout the wastes, but the death and destruction of hundreds of citizens of Essex sparked strange new hope for the Cult of the Tiny God. In the face of the unexplainable, new converts flocked to the answers provided by the Cult. Even though several of their own attempted to offer themselves pitifully to the Archons and died horrible deaths, the idea that something could come back from a morgue thought dead and inert was a sign they had been waiting for.
It spoke of infinite possibility, and that the Lost Prophet could return once more. One of the cultists, a Full Dead known as Sister Greywand, had worked to catalog the life of Pfilomena Lovelace and her teachings and had emerged as a potential leader for the Cult. According to her, if the Archons could return then so could Pfilomena Lovelace. They simply had to look for the signs of the Outsiders returning once more for a chance to contact their Prophet.
the long night (DR:TX Live event, December 2021)
During the beginning of the Long Night, a strange Monolith emerged in the town of Bravado. Formed of the same strange white flowing stone that had made the Fountainhead, a similar event echoed from the mysterious edifice. Hordes of undead were called once more to the Monolith, an echo of the horde that had descended on Essex in the year prior.
The San Saba rallied their troops to defend the town of Bravado, calling on the Antler Tribe, the Junkerpunks, and the Grave Council to hold back the hordes while Graverobbers plunged into the depths of the Monolith to find answers. From within the structure emerged the dreaded Archons, the third encounter with the abyssal entities in the San Saba. While the Archons were eventually driven back to the wherever they came from, the whispers of similarity spread after the event.
For the remaining faithful within the Cult, this was the sign they had been waiting for.
The Cult, ever desperately seeking signs of their Lost Prophet, started looking closer at Bravado. A schism began to form in the leadership of the cult as they rebranded into the CULT OF THE REBORN. With a growing number of fanatical devotees believed that the events in Bravado were a sign from Pfilomena of the long-awaited end-times, the main body of faithful cleaved still to Pfilomena’s surviving son, Caleb Lovelace. Sister Greywand took a more tempered approach to understanding the message being sent. While she remained sequestered in Essex, she gained favor with Caleb by sending some of her flock out to make contact with Bravado. Greywand believed that the tiny town would be key to seeking knowledge about the events that had unfolded in the past and those that she anticipated to come.
the emerald gala (DR:TX Live event, December 2022)
While some of the former members of the newly growing Cult of the Reborn joined with the doomsday cultists that attacked Bravado during the testing of the Emerald Arsenal, the failure of those forces to bring about the apocalypse simply served to drive more to the ranks of the Cult of the Reborn. Like the failure of science to control the Fountainhead, this attempt was doomed to failure according to the preaching of Sister Greywand.
According to Sister Greywand, the Cult would not achieve the miracle of returning the Prophet to them through the trickery of science and technology. It would be FAITH alone that brought Pfilomena back to them, and through her visions she realized that she had the answers. Like the rising of the Monolith had been an echo of the Fountainhead, this encounter with the Archons was simply the echo of the first arrival of the Archons in the San Saba.
When the Archon Cult failed to bring about their goal of the end of the world, Caleb and Sister Greywand were there on Sunday to whisper in their ears about an alternative — a paradise that awaited them if they could find a way to reach out to Pfilomena Lovelace. To bring back the Lost Prophet, they simply needed to create that echo of her sacrifice. With enough of the Cult joined together in faith and ritual, they could reincarnate their Prophet once more.
Today
The Cult of the Reborn have long been critics of the San Saba Board’s reliance on technology to solve their problems. From the Scientist’s attempts to turn Caleb into a mouthpiece for the Grave Mind, to the terrible weapons of the Emerald Arsenal, it’s clear to the Cult that the San Saba Board is focused on using technology to build towards a horrific future.
Thanks to the efforts of a few subversive elements in Bravado, the Cult of the Reborn and Sister Greywand got their hands on the blueprint schematics for several of the items of the Emerald Arsenal. Since this acquisition, they have been preaching in the streets since to anyone that would listen of the nefarious possibilities these super weapons could create in the San Saba. It’s hard to deny the chilling possibilities of weapons like the Biogenetic Imprint Tether and others to be weaponized against psions and the faithful in the San Saba, and their message has not fallen on deaf ears.
The Cult is one of the many elements preaching against the recent Crystal Candy Law, suggesting a future where the Board turns their eyes to psions AND members of the faithful. Despite the Law Dogs attempts to suggest otherwise, the loose wording on the law is enough to create doubt in the minds of even the most reasonable.
Lately, the Essex Protectorate, the law enforcement of the great city, has taken to dispersing the Cultists when they gather on corners or in marketplaces. It’s clear the Cult is up to something, but it remains to be seen what the next actions of the doomsday worshippers will be.
wrap up
That’s it for today folks! I’ll be back soon with a look into the Characters of Note for CRISIS OF FAITH, and a few Rules You Should Know next week. I hope you enjoyed me vomiting forth apocrypha and lore for the last few pages.
Remember, our Pre-Reg for CRISIS OF FAITH ends on Friday, February 3rd.
We hope you will come out to explore the power of faith and stop some evil cultists. See you soon Vados!