The Cult

[UrbanBourbon]

Brothers and sisters!


The day is here. The day we all have waited for. When I felt the arrival of The Gift, just outside these very walls, I wept tears of joy. This is truly a miracle. Do you not feel it? Is it not the most wondrous of sensations? We are the few. We are the chosen. Where others succumb to madness in the omnipotent presence of The Gift, we get to feel its true love and power. Sister Addy here is special. She struggles from day to day with the love of The Gift, and her old self. The madness of the old world will not leave her completely. But yet, she is able to handle The Gift, even if barely. Truly she is the strongest of us all. As such, she shall be appointed The Guardian Under The New Sun. Her daily rituals will involve several hours of meditation and fasting amidst the roses. She shall overwatch our work, and keep an eye out for dangers. She shall not be approached during her meditation. Consider her duties as holy as The Gift itself. My faith says Sister Addy is the conduit between us and the Ancients. No, I KNOW she will be the key to revealing the ultimate meaning of The Gift. She will be needed to guide our minds to understand it. What we all felt today was just a glimpse, a mere sample, a single drop of the ocean of love we will experience in the coming weeks.


From here on, we shall cast aside all fear. The Gift is on our side. The unworthy ones outside this holy place will perish under The Gift's influence, and rightfully so. We will mourn their souls when the upcoming great war is over. But right now there is no reason to be sad, quite the contrary. My children! We have much work to do in our hearts and souls. Same as Sister Addy, we too have to meditate each day whenever each of us gets a chance. Eventually each of us has to be able to give ourselves to the mercy of The Gift. Only by studying your own self, your past and your feelings, will you be able to let it all go. You cannot let go that which you are not aware of.


I know all of you have some concerns, but rest assured, should the power of The Gift grow unbearably intense, together we can seek refuge in my personal quarters, where we will plant an exquisite garden of local roses. Their tranquil scent will assist us on our spiritual journey. With the guidance of Sister Addy and myself, we shall hold hands and meditate together, and find our way to embrace The Gift, just as strongly as it embraces us.


As I'm speaking of The Gift, I realize what we must do. We must protect The Gift. Its shell is already strong and can withstand great adversity, but nevertheless we must not stand idly. We shall build a temple and a sanctuary around it. We will decorate it with the bodies of the unworthy, as an offering. We shall protect it and guard it with our lives. This is the beginning of our eternity! We are immortal! The Gift cannot be stopped! WE cannot be stopped! This is the cradle of the last revolution that this universe will ever witness! This galaxy will be the first to bathe in The Gift and we were chosen to be its harbingers!

---

In plain English and without the theatrics: I caved in and gave Alpha 6 a shot, also to test if I could pull this one off. I started a new cult... uhh, a colony with guys who are immune to the psychic droning. Two immune, one half immune (Addy). Then I just casually built the colony and waited for the ancient ship part to crash. Soon after it had come, I built walls around it to protect it. My concern was that a random lightning bolt would strike it and release the mechs, so I wanted a roof over it. It's not like I started to worship it myself. Honest. The ship remains untouched in my base. It's been like that for weeks, and the droning is at maximum, at least I THINK it is. Any group that enters the area goes insane fairly fast, ending up wandering in daze. Addy, who is only half immune, can still withstand the full effects of extreme droning, which is -50 penalty to mood (=constant -25 to her). On the other hand, she has 'Iron will' to boot. I do my best to avoid exposing her to corpses. She's the gardener so she's frequently exposed to the beauty of the roses as well. I built a 5x5 rose garden in my "cult leader's" quarters as a safety measure.


It feels like I get visitor groups constantly. I should start collecting other 'psychically deaf' pawns that wander in daze outside but I'm reluctant to make factions hostile, even if they pose zero threat. I only have a crew of four... Before the ship crashed, I had a couple more (unwanted) colonists earlier. They served their purpose and finally I sold them, since none of them were immune to droning.


Speaking of the 'psychically deaf', to get 3 starting colonists with that trait, I spent about 20 minutes hitting 'randomize'. They seemed quite rare, and possibly rightfully so. However, in the field, 'psychically deaf' faction members seemed far more common. I clicked through one tribal group and THREE of their pawns were 'psychically deaf'. What are the odds? A little later I checked a random town visitor group and they had TWO. When I was starting the game and clicking 'randomize' over and over again, I positively went through 100+ colonists. And later, in a batch of 40-60 visitor pawns in total, there's 3+2 of them? I'm forced to believe psy immune pawns are easier to obtain in the field, but obviously capping them might require elaborate measures. There's a chance that the save file can be edited directly to add or remove traits, but I'm not 100% sure if it's just that simple.


I initially wanted to surround the ship with roses but too late I remembered that plants actually die around it. Duh. On the other hand, it might make a nice way to powerlevel the Growing skill... Plants die faster than what you can sow. Instead of roses, I ended up decorating it with corpses of the non-belie.. uhh, other faction pawns. I'm not much of a visual designer, as you can see from the humble temple I built around it.

(screenshots attached, login to view)

Pic 1 - The overhead view.
Pic 2 - A closer view of the temple. This is where you're not allowed to go.
Pic 3 - Sister Addy at work.
Pic 4 - Behold! The power of The Gift. Can you count the corpses?

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[litlbear]

thats beautiful

[milon]

Holy bodies, Batman!  UrbanBouron, that's seriously awesome! 

[putsam]

That is bloody fantastic you just blocked Hundred + people with only for colonist uses an event that kills most others.
+1 to you that really is amazing

[Coenmcj]

UrbanBourbon confirmed as unitologist. Totally nice guy

Although I must say, this is pretty cool.

[UrbanBourbon]

Thank you, thank you! Ah, thou shalt not feed my ego, for it is already plump.

Those bodies have been gathering there for a long time. I opened the save file in Notepad++ and started doing searches to get a body count. The search phrase <id>Human_Corpse yielded 788 matches, which I believe is accurate, since that is the beginning of the line that identifies each individual corpse with a serial number of sorts. Is it possible the game tracks old corpses that are long gone? How many items does a double-click highlight at maximum? It did seem to highlight about 10-20% of the bodies...

Sun Tzu would be proud. Zero intervention, all the killing power. But then again, all it takes is one stray bullet to the crashed ship part and the mechs would flow out... I do not wish to unwrap The Gift. I should've released them when I had a chance. I now wonder if I could use the 'claim' command on the ship...?

I should mention that this is on Randy and it's the difficulty that's "60% the normal amount of enemies", so it's pretty relaxed gameplay. This whole thing should be tested on the hardest levels. Currently an occasional tribal group of 40 or 60 can cause trouble if they attack immediately. They do have time to pound the stone wall, and my colonists run with their hairs on fire, repairing the wall. Although now that I think about it, even if they did break through, they would probably go insane while they were causing destruction inside the colony. Mechs would be a problem. I haven't had a decent mech attack yet.

UrbanBourbon confirmed as unitologist. Totally nice guy

Ohhh. So THAT was the word I was looking for. I did get flashbacks from Dead Space, and couldn't remember the name of the religion (cult) in it, but more than that I've had flashbacks from Mass Effect and Reaper indoctrination!

[Coenmcj]

UrbanBourbon confirmed as unitologist. Totally nice guy

Ohhh. So THAT was the word I was looking for. I did get flashbacks from Dead Space, and couldn't remember the name of the religion (cult) in it, but more than that I've had flashbacks from Mass Effect and Reaper indoctrination!

Hehe, No problem
I shall be spreading the good word of head priest UrbanBourban and the plight of Sister Addy to my future colonists

Also there's also the wraith worshippers from SGA.

[Damien Hart]

This is awesome. Like worshipping the divine bomb!

Double click selects 80 max.

[Zeta Omega]

WORSHIP US YOU MORTALS!

[Srgntcuddles]

It's a fun way to play. Psychically deaf! Yay!

[daft73]

The temple room ..lol good times. Thanks for sharing the story, and continued success on new ones.

[EscapeZeppelin]

This is definitely a fun way to play. I find myself getting creepier and creepier the longer my colony survives too. I've started searching through the raiders looking for psychically deaf pawns to recruit and brainwash and I've built an elaborate temple full of flowers around the ship piece for my colonists to worship in. The psychically dull serve well as slaves, used as long as they can withstand the "gift" of the artifact and then when the madness begins to take them they are sent out into the wilderness to die.

[Coenmcj]

Welcome to the Church of the Holy Gift, brother.
Join us, Embrace the Gift.