Human Cultist

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Some (or all) of the information on this page was started by a (well meaning) fanatical cultist,
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Problem logged on:  Feb 19, 2017
The specific problem is:  Under Construction (More details may be found on the Discussion Page.)

Generic Human Cultists in their natural habitat...

Generic Human Cultists...

Origin: They've been around since the dawn of human history - or, at least since the dawn of the pulps....

Description

"...I thought the room and the books and the people very morbid and disquieting, but because an old tradition of my fathers had summoned me to strange feastings, I resolved to expect queer things. So I tried to read, and soon became tremblingly absorbed by something I found in that accursed Necronomicon; a thought and a legend too hideous for sanity or consciousness. ...The old man came back booted and dressed in a loose antique costume, and sat down on that very bench, so that I could not see him. It was certainly nervous waiting, and the blasphemous book in my hands made it doubly so. When eleven struck, however, the old man stood up, glided to a massive carved chest in a corner, and got two hooded cloaks; one of which he donned, and the other of which he draped 'round the old woman... Then they both started for the outer door; the woman lamely creeping, and the old man, after picking up the very book I had been reading, beckoning me as he drew his hood over that unmoving face or mask...."
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Festival"

At his (or, sometimes, her) most basic, the typical human cultist is a mindless question, wrapped in a faceless shadow, wrapped in a cloaked-and-hooded enigma, dedicated to a random ominous deity (roll dice to pick one at random, or, better yet, beat your head on your keyboard, and use the randomly-"typed" letters that result for the name of your own, home-made deity!) They are typically found lurking in shadows, holding ponderous old books and waving daggers, or circled around bonfire sacrifices near standing stones by night. The primary purpose of the generic human cultist is to provide satisfying soft targets for the obligatory best-defense-by-offense by those investigator enemies of any sort of super-villain - anything from your run-of-the-mill cult leader, to an actual Pulp criminal mastermind, to guys who summon Tentacle Monsters for a living, up to genuine followers of a random tentacled Great Old One.

Associated Mythos Elements

• tome: Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (every Human Cultist comes with this standard instruction manual)
• race: Tentacle Monsters (often summoned by Human Cultist Rituals)