The Demon Pillars: Dread Irem
"Why do plants bear fruit? So that beasts will spread the seeds."
New Faction Mechanic!
Cult (X): Cult indicates that one of your factions is now host to a secretive group of worshipers dedicated to the Thousand Tongued Worm. Cults begin at Cult (1) and take independent action to proselytize and grow. They are initially nonhostile to the government and any faction host to a Cult immediately gains a +1 Loyalty/+1 Power to a maximum of 4/4. When a faction's Cult rating equals its power rating the faction is subsumed in its entirety, becoming a front for devotees of the New Eden. And unlocking new benefits and boons for the host nation. Governments may take actions to purge Cults from their factions, driving the worshippers into an underground insurgency, albeit at a cost to Loyalty/Power equal to the faction's Cult rating.
Moderator Only Notes: Most of this is going to be fiat I think, with the ratings serving as rough gauges of a given region's contamination. More populous regions having proportionately larger organizations based upon population, development level, etc particularly as compared to smaller nations. In general Cults should ideally shoot for middle-of-the-road factions to corrupt, ones that are moderately popular without being especially prominent (so Loyalty 2/3 and Power about the same) and should strike at both ends of the spectrum. Among wealthy and notable aristos and the downtrodden poor to prevent easy-solution-via-genocide. Cults preferentially target factions with Elitist, Communist, Mystic (X), and Luddite traits (preying off of desires for belonging, equality, personal power and magical knowledge) and try to initially avoid factions with the Monarchist, Inquisitorial, Cultural Preserver (X), or Religious (X) rating (where they are viewed as unwelcome competition at best and imminent threats at worst). Additional modifiers should include a nation's usage and reliance on Irem units or technology.
Infection Mechanics
Zones: An Infected Zone is geographically bounded (a discrete region in the nation related to the Faction the Cults have held the longest) and centered around an Artifact (Stone Idol). With every faction subsumed by the Cults of the Demon Forest the overall Infection Level increases and (non Artifact centered) offshoots begin appearing throughout the nation. The Zones themselves visibly expand, the eldritch conditions within become increasingly obvious, and new powers are unlocked for the Cult and its allies. Cultist military units enjoy an advantage to hide, attack, and recruit from/within these regions. While quarantine tactics and just flamethrowering the shit out of the borders are effective the only way to truly neutralize an Infected Zone is to destroy the Artifact at the center. The final strength of Dread Irem is judged based on the proportion of destroyed Artifacts (Stone Idols) to currently extant.
Origins: Three PC nations. Three NPC's (currently considering Mamlukes, Oceania, Papal States, Byzantines, Russia, Guatemala, few others). Mughals and the rest of India are exempt from Cults at start, Mughals furthermore likely have some Artifact Weapon/Advisor/Advisor-Weapon who will assist them throughout the process. Not sure what would be appropriate there, pitching it to
@Havocfett.
Loot: Destroying an Infected Zone generates one of the following for each of the major participants (not necessarily military, if you spend actions having your engineering corps building containment walls or having mages and doctors analyze the matter that counts, although moderator discretion applies). The goal is that these rewards are still situationally useful but obviously inferior to the sweet shit that you could have gotten if you had cooperated with Irem.
-Artifact (Juggernaut Tree): A hulking warden of the forest, dozens upon dozens of trunks twisted together and amalgamated by Irem's passing. Despite the scars it still, impossibly, flowers and is home to hundreds of species of animal and plant life. Botanists and biologists study it and are hopeful for the potential in boosting crop yields and better understanding the natural world. Your citizens find it a comforting reminder that life, in the end, goes on.
-Artifact (Spine of the World): When the great bough-limbs of New Eden passed the land was broken in their wake. Still, these colossal sail-like rock formations survive. Wreathed in mist year round and serving as a natural focusing array for magical energy. Distilling and filtering the ambient energies of the wounded world. Your mages and mystics meditate in their shadows and established sanctums on the edges, eager to hone their abilities. Nobles tour merely for the novelty.
-Event (New Magical Race): The holes the Demon Forest tore in reality reached not only our world but those beyond. In the wake of its collapse a new species has emerged from the shadows of a distant realm, blinking and perhaps perplexed but ultimately friendly.
Details dependent upon local culture.
-Event (Errant Hero): The chorus of the Ashen Maw isn't always perfect or wholly coherent. This individual was an error in the organic-machine, one for whom the assimilation, for whatever reason, simply did not take. Grateful to you for freeing them but determined to find their own way (and find others like them) this Hero (10 MR) will boost one Major Action with their abilities per turn. But will not aid any actions taken to enslave or oppress others.
-Spell (Sunsearing Blight, Fraying 3): Practice, it is said, makes perfect, and after months of fierce battle with the Thousand Tongue Worm your mages have become particularly adept at dispersing flora, contaminated and otherwise through magical means. This spell acts as an environmental hazard, drying out sources of water, desiccating vegetation, and driving away wildllife.
-Spell (Cleansing Currents, Perfecting 3): Clean water, fresh air, such things become first a luxury, then a desperately scarce necessity when fighting the Demon Forest. Yet desperation, as ever, breeds innovation and your mages are no exception. This spell acts as a magical purifier, warding away disease and parasites, cleansing both the human body and the living world of filth and contaminants.
-Magitech (Fungal Chimera, Biology 2): This native species, for whatever reason, appears to have adapted to the parasitizing spores of the Ashen Maw. Incorporating the magical intruder into a ultimately inert, beneficial symbiote able to serve as tool and weapon alike. The results are astounding: prodigious growth and enhanced anatomy matched to enormous bounds of intelligence. Recognizing you as their effective saviors these new beasts offer you aid.
-Magitech (Grey Glass Optics, Infantry 2): When it burned Irem's boughs collapsed, shuddering and screaming, into great veins of black sand. You were fortunate enough to acquire significant and apparently self-replenishing deposits of this resource. When melted and polished the lenses forged from this material allow scientists and soldiers to see and analyze magical auras and ambient spell-patterns.
Counter: There are three levels of Infection. Associated benefits and unlockables are noted where appropriate. Spells and magitech can only be utilized by Irem's units, not the national military (unless the nation has traced the point where the Cult effectively is the government).
Infection Level One
Conditions: Cult (1) present in nation.
Benefits: Loyalty to regime bolstered, dissent begins to erode (if Cult remains nonhostile). Loyalty to regime decays, population becomes dangerously restless (if Cult is hostile).
Artifact:
-Stone Idol
The core of the infection, a small twisted statue of Dread Irem. The air around it seems to writhe with phantom tendril-vines and mouths open in corners, black sand trickling from cracked lips.
Spells:
A Thousand Tongues Taste the Air (Unveiling+): 2
Cultists may use contaminated flora and fauna as a scrying proxy. Receiving detailed impressions filtered through a melange of smells, vibrations, and tastes.
Bandage the Branches (Knowing/Compelling): 2
Cultists both intimately understand the current condition of the Tendrils running through the land and the living things upon it and how to best repair any damage, guiding it to grow and spread once more.
Eden Awaits Me! (Perfecting/Veiling): 5
Cultists wrap themselves in writhing lichen-meat and crown themselves in crowns of thorns and bone. The roots of the Demon Forest running through their veins as their faces are hidden behind enamel petals. The armor dramatically enhances physical ability and grants them active camouflage.
Magitech:
Mutative Miracles (Medicine): 3
While the replacement limbs and organs they create are obviously
wrong in some subtle fashion (nails on a new hand that look a little like teeth, a little like thorns a strong heart that seems to shift and squirm in the chest) they function just as well, if not better, than the originals. Cultists can cure most physical disabilities and, at least somewhat treat, a broad bevy of diseases and maladies.
Military Units:
(Moderators will tailor number of detachments as apropriate to nation/faction/population)
AT Solution - Medics - Squad Mage - Shock - Irem Kissed Companies (250 per)
Experience: Green
Living testaments to the transformative powers of the Demon Forest in both life and body these zealots still marvel at their mutations and enjoy the novelty. They have little discipline but no fear and seek converts even on the battlefield.
AA Solution - Digger - Amphibious - Miremaw - Medium Tank/Artillery Battalion (200 per)
Experience: Green
Arthropodal monsters covered in bone-bark carapace. Capable of launching utricating spines at high speeds and hurling toxic quills with their thrashing tails, they are most at home beneath the earth. Digging burrows and warrens to share with their more humanoid compatriots.
Infection Level Two
Conditions: One faction fully subsumed.
Benefits: +1 EP (if Cults are nonhostile). -1 EP (if Cults are hostile).
Artifact:
Stone Idol -> Squirming Idol
The infection spreads and the shadows become more fully realized. There are intermittent tremors beneath the earth as vast tendrils slickly pulse and squirm. Able to excavate tons of rock and earth in a day or erupt beneath the treads of unsuspecting tanks.
Magitech:
The Steel Stalks (Industry) 4:
Strange factory-forests begin to form in the countryside, metal roots digging deep beneath the earth. Their trunks bloating with purified ores useful to industrial endeavors while precious metals and perfect gems hang from their branches like so much fruit. Prosperous mines with a fraction of the labor or cost.
Military Units:
Irem Kissed -> Irem Embraced as their alterations spread and deepen, mutative weaponry and biotoxins inculcating within their bodies. Gain "Trained".
Miremaw Medium Tank -> Miremaw Heavy Tank as the monsters undergrow growth spurts, adding on mass and muscle. Gain "Trained".
Fast - Torpedo - Brackish Beast Gunboat (1 per)
Experience: Trained
Like crocodiles these creatures lurk in waterways and out at sea, drifting and seemingly inert. Snapping to sudden violence with a flurry of hundreds of fang-lined winglike limbs and dozens of sea-blue tails.
Long Range -Air Superiority/Gunship Petal Moth Squadron (20 per)
Experience: Trained
A nightmarish mix of raw muscle, centipede, and grey-winged moth. By all rights their membrane sails shouldn't carry them so far or so fast, but the winged, explosive symbiotes that crawl over their bellies settle most, if not all, arguments.
Infection Level Three
Conditions: Two factions fully subsumed
Benefits: +2 MR (if Cults are nonhostile). All magical quests suffer additional -2 penalties at each stage (if Cults are hostile).
Artifact:
Squirming Idol -> Spirated Idol
No longer merely stone but a cutting of Dread Irem itself. Central roots serve as causeways to the Ashen Maw, allowing a degree of reinforcement and aid to be dispatched from either direction.
Spells:
Greenfire (Making/Fraying): 8
A fragment of a fragment of Dread Irem is born into being, detonating out with explosive force even as it twists and overtakes the natural world. A biological bomb in the most literal sense. The affected area counts as a pseudo-Infected Zone for the benefit of all cultists within or nearby.
Hero:
Each Level Three Infected Zone receives a unique Hero Unit with ten points of spells.
Military Units
Irem Embraced -> Irem Anointed. Essentially constantly mutating masses of fungal tissue and flesh, adapting whatever shape best suits their current situation. Gain "Veteran'.
Miremaw Heavy Tanks -> Miremaw Superheavy Tanks. Several literal tons of angry plant-chimera-spider monster. Gain "Veteran".
Brackish Beast Gunboat -> Brackish Beast Destroyer. Trails sensitive wire-thin filaments out through the water, granting it almost unparalleled area awareness. Gain "Veteran".
Petal Moth Squadron -> Petal Moth Wing. You could have stopped this! Gain "Veteran".
Long Range - Suicide Spore Zeppelin (Heavy Bomber) Flight (187 crew per)
Experience: Experienced
An infested airship, a colossal mycoidal spore squirming with virulent life. Carries Cult and a new Stone Idol to a neighboring nation or region, creating a new, independent, Infection Zone at Level One. Generates geographically large Infection Zone upon detonations.
Endgame
Irem Destroyed
Participating military units gain a wealth of experience and major contributors are blessed with a period of high popularity at home and abroad. Likely situational economic, technological, or magical boosts as moderators see fit. However those who kept a Stone Idol on their lands may continue to maintain their extant Cult forces and associated benefits even if they cannot produce new Stone Idols and have difficulty replenishing their Cults numbers.
Irem Survives
Irem dies anyway because otherwise it'll haunt the rest of the game as a persistent specter of a threat. Something (probably God) reaches forth their hand to spare mankind the depredations of the Thing In The Well but there is a political and social cost. Inquisitorial factions gain in strength and use the state's failure to undermine governmental policies and advance their own. Relations with magical species and nations worsen and there are crises of faith in the Christian, Islamic, Shinto, Pagan, etc worlds. Those with Stone Idols still get to keep their shit.
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