dailyadventureprompts:Villain: Cult of the Hidden Sun. “All unknowable things of the cosmos, all une
dailyadventureprompts:Villain: Cult of the Hidden Sun. “All unknowable things of the cosmos, all unexplained sorrows: orbit in the invisible gravity of our secret star”~From the Heretical Text: Litany of the Circumnavegant, Book 4: Truths,Adventure Hooks: While conducting business in the city, the party finds themselves caught up in a riot, separated from one another and with their allies in almost certain danger. Tensions in the city were already high, but these fervent new sect of street preachers and their message of impending dooms have finally pushed the mob past the boiling point. After stumbling across their noble patron in talks with an unknown man in a foreboding golden mask, the party is approached by a foreign emissary who seeks to engage them in a clandestine conversation. The way he tells it: this man represents a dangerous sect that is willing to do anything to get a foothold in areas it wishes to influence: including provoking violence and assassination, just like they did in his homeland. The party can go to their patron with these concerns, or perhaps win some favor with the ambassador and ensure the masked troublemaker has himself an accident. While out on their adventures, the party discovers a hidden study, given over to the obsessive ravings of a particular academic and their unraveling mind. The cause of this madness is a book of ominous prophecies, detailing vague future happenings and hinting at forbidden knowledge encoded in its pages, if only the reader is worthy. The academic’s attempt at deciphering the book spill over from their notes, onto the furniture and walls, eventually filling the margins of the prophecy book itself. A similar obsession takes root in the mind of any who study this book, and should the party not be careful they will begin to be haunted by visions of chanting strangers, disastrous occurrences, and great lights shining from the depths of the earth. Setup: The cult of the Hidden Sun is a fanatical organization that seeks influence and domination on a grand scale, and is the cause behind numerous revolts and riots across the continent. Their primary means of doing so involve evoking a fear of approaching disaster ( both among its own members, and the mobs they incite), and obfuscation ( the cult operates in small cells, filling their ranks with the desperate and devoted, hiding the truth of their plans and their organization behind successive levels of occult initiation). If questioned on their actual beliefs ( other than the belief in some terrible impending doom), those that know the doctrines of the hidden sun claim that just as the material universe is ordered centered around the great solar lamp ( gravity, emanation of light and heat that feeds the world), so too are all abstract things ( fate, magic, chaos) governed by a different, “Hidden” sun. By studying this hidden axis of the universe, the cult’s leadership grants knowledge of awful events that are about to be, as well as the means by which these events may be diverted. In truth, the leadership of the cult is made up primarily of opportunists and crazed zealot oracles in service to an aberration known as the Atenulk: a bulky, mandrake like mass of tendril-roots and charred, pallid flesh. Originally an underdark predator, the Atenulk inflicts dire visions of possible futures onto those it touches, paralyzing its prey with fear. Perhaps the last of its kind and surviving for long millennia, the Atenulk served by the cult is an ancient and clever being, having long ago honed its nighmare inducing touch to allow for communication, bribing its would be-prey into fetching it more food with glimpses of possible futures among the deluge of psychic torment it metes out. True religion or not, the cult of the hidden sun is dangerous is a dangerous antagonist for any party, and could pose the risk of upsetting the political and social order wherever they find a foothold. -- source link