Sterbelicht - One Sacrifice At A Time Against The Galaxy (40K)

What should your focus for the rest of the Quest be?

  • Mercy (Diplomacy and Expansion)

    Votes: 223 74.8%

  • Ruthlessness (Kick the Duchy in the Balls)

    Votes: 68 22.8%

  • Thule (Yeeni Handholding and Piscarian Cuddling)

    Votes: 117 39.3%
  • Total voters
    298
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They honestly read like a weird take on Nurgle.

HeroCooky said:
The idea that one can simply...let go of all their fears, of all their despair and misery, let go of pain and uncertainty, and be always comforted in the knowledge that, yes, they have a purpose, they are worth and worthy of the Divine Grace that the Star Child has given us to usher in its Age...
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This whole passage, once you look over it a little closer, absolutely screams Nurgle. It's coming at his 'Despair' angle from a different, more 'palatable' perspective, but everything is there.

'Things are bad, things are hard, but don't worry-I love you, you're worthy, just give yourself to the Grandfather, and I'll make everything go away, and give you a purpose. My purpose.'

Honestly, I'm tempted to just declare the Cog a Cult of Nurgle masquerading as devotees of the Star Child and heavily bolster Cerberus' resources dedicated specifically to rooting them out.
 
Alectai said:
... So yeah, this is basically a "Chaos Cult where Chaos is actually trying", yeesh.
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Whenyouseeyou said:
Oh we have a chaos cult trying to usurp us we'll let try to make them regret that
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They are, 100% Certified, a Star Child Cult like the Droman Creed is. There is nothing to worry about here, they only wish for all to become one and leave behind all suffering and despair.
Alectai said:
Also, is this suggesting they've already subverted 87% of our population? Or is this suggesting instead that "If we do nothing ,they'll get 87% of our population"
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No, 87% of your population is Human, and as the Supplicants prey on Higher Human Needs beyond Food/Shelter/Clothing/Safety, they are a cancer able to spread to that percentage.
10ebbor10 said:
Anyway, I may have failed to pay attention here, but why do we hate these guys in the first place?
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TLDR; they want to make a Human Hive Mind. And they are Heretics.
Amilia said:
So if we cannot fight them, can't we just declare them prohibited and let Cerberus do its job?
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You already kind of are. Dealing with a Heresy revolves around if you want to sharpen or lessen the repression, completely outlaw them existing in the public mind and laws, or pull them in as part of the Droman Creed.

And you can fight them, but it is a fight like Chaos. You can get rid of 99.9% of them, but that 0.01% will survive to grow again.
10ebbor10 said:
Yeah, and?

Are they forcibly recruiting people, are they lying about how their system works, do they have mind control rays?
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In order; no, nope, and heck no.
 
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I can't really think how to deal with it other than:
- life is hard, but it is also beautiful; starchild loves each and every single one of us, for our uniqueness; our flaws in one situation can be positives in another.
- "Why are you giving my your hardest battles? Because you are my strongest warrior" meme
- destroy those who are radicals who want to force it on people
- individuality is important, like a thousand different cogs make a machine work, so the Federation needs billions of different perspectives so it may prosper. Hivemind would be like trying to make a machine using only one type of cog; it has a small chance of success, but it is needlessly restrictive, and the alternative is straight-up better.
 
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We need to successfully potray this less as an actualization and more as an act of stifling. Like, people want to belong sure, but do people who not conform secretly long to be reduced to nothing special, nothing unique, nothing theirs?

It's in the Infinite Diversity (TM) in Infinity Combination (TM) that progress is made, and so highlight the way that both the individual and the group matter?

Just not sure what FORM that should take.
 
Hmm I guess the argument against could be that only you can decide what your purpose is and not other people and that to deny that choice is to deny your innate Humanity as well...or something
 
Anyway, I see no reason not to just integrate them into the faith?

Find some of the less dogmatic cells, who are willing to accept that some people might not want integration, slap on some human testing safeguards, and just let them hang around?
I don't see why we need to crush or eliminate them, just make sure they don't do anything stupid or sabotage people, and hey, if they do invent a functional hivemind : "cool".

HeroCooky said:
(Gain: Reconcile, Syncretise, Legalise, or Crack Down on a Heresy.)
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These are perfectly valid options. Not everything needs to be cracked down upon.
 
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I think we should just outlaw this cult wholesale, and label them as a facade of the Great Enemy, because I am something like 95% sure that this is a Nurgle Honeypot leaning into his Despair Domain as opposed to Disease/Life.
 
Yeah, we can have a justification on why we are outlawing it, but I think this time its not worth the effort to craft an ideological response.
 
RaptorusMaximus said:
I think we should just outlaw this cult wholesale, and label them as a facade of the Great Enemy, because I am something like 95% sure that this is a Nurgle Honeypot leaning into his Despair Domain as opposed to Disease/Life.
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We have QM confirmation that they aren't.

HeroCooky said:
They are, 100% Certified, a Star Child Cult like the Droman Creed is. There is nothing to worry about here, they only wish for all to become one and leave behind all suffering and despair.
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Right now, it seems the dangerous, chismatic religious intolerance is coming from inside the house.
Our narrative viewpoint views these guys as heretics, and therefore bad, but besides that rethoric there's no actual hard evidence to define it as a cancer.

They are a cancer upon the minds of 87% of our people, for they prey upon the needs of Humanity itself to feed themselves.
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Translated : These guys are evil because they want to help people and reduce suffering.
Tragedy! Terror! Panic!
 
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We absolutely can take on some of their beliefs but the issue here is that this is a Human centric cult. It's the same shit with the Imperium all over again where the primacy of humanity or in this case their greater purpose is espoused upon. Only in this case they want you to leave the individuality behind and become a gestalt human conscious
 
10ebbor10 said:
We have QM confirmation that they aren't.



Right now, it seems the dangerous, chismatic religious intolerance is coming from inside the house.
Our narrative viewpoint views these guys as heretics, and therefore bad, but besides that rethoric there's no actual hard evidence to define it as a cancer.
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"Becoming one and leaving behind all suffering and despair" is in fact heresy?

The faith of the Star Child emphasizes both the collective and the individual alike, attempting to dissolve personhood is in fact... not particularly bueno?

Whether that requires us to freak out and unload on them is a matter of opinion, but it is straight up a heresy and against the values of the faith.
 
Or maybe not everything is a chaos cult waiting in disguise. Especially when this is a cult that was been clarified to be a star child cult and when even Cerberus has not said they are a chaos cult. I highly doubt our faith and Cerberus are that incompetent, especially with our trait making chaos infiltration a lot more difficult. And there is a difference between something being heretical and something being chaos.
 
The Laurent said:
"Becoming one and leaving behind all suffering and despair" is in fact heresy?

The faith of the Star Child emphasizes both the collective and the individual alike, attempting to dissolve personhood is in fact... not particularly bueno?

Whether that requires us to freak out and unload on them is a matter of opinion, but it is straight up a heresy and against the values of the faith.
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Heresy and bad are not the same thing, that's my whole point.

Amilia said:
Other than the human experiments into creating a Hivemind, you mean?
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Do we have evidence that they're doing bad stuff in that direction?
 
Also btw, @10ebbor10 .

"No matter how many cells are struck, how many of their plans to advance the eradication of the self are discovered and destroyed, their experiments saved, and their raids on research institutions foiled...human nature itself is their ally."

They're engaging in illegal experimentation, and what are the odds that everyone involved fully consented with total knowledge in every case, and raiding laboratories.
 
Sounds like the Church of Gears from Library of Ruina which means we need to counter it with "The Rationality to Maintain Discretion - Yesod"
:\/

But more seriously this feels very much Chaos. Like if it was just a fringe cult that if smashed another one founded off similar ideals would arise eventually that would be one thing. But this cult has splinter cells that seem to be able to kind of work together and even if we smash it good cause we only hot 99.99% it just comes back good as new as the exact same cult. That's very fucking suspicious cause if even if their message is very appealing to humanity and can't ever be fully stamped out the cult should at least be changing forms between each attempt but no its like a hydra which screams Chaos
 
10ebbor10 said:
Do we have evidence that they're doing bad stuff in that direction?
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I think the assumption here is that:
A) their goal is a human hive mind
B) at some point they will have to do experiments (voluntary or not) to create a hive mind since humans aren't naturally a hive mind.
C) it is the opinion of some questers (including me) that the death of individuality would be considered a bad thing

Therefore, just the act of them working to create a hive mind (even if they weren't explicitly kidnapping or forcing if this against people's will) is already a bad thing.

Honestly this sounds a whole lot like making a human version of the tyranids. Not exactly one for one but some similarities.

HeroCooky said:
TLDR; they want to make a Human Hive Mind. And they are Heretics.
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@HeroCooky , what sorts of demographics, jobs, positions in life, etc, etc are most likely to join one of these Cults?

[] Attack the Roots, Spray The Head--Draft
-[] Establish stricter standards of security and ethics for experiments, to at least keep them from covertly infiltrating or beginning scientific experiments in their direction... and clean that up in general, making it clear that the guidelines on ethical experimentation are both moral and a way of advancing knowledge in actually-usable ways.
-[] Fully proscribe this heresy, condemning it in a Synod. This hardly stops people from engaging with it, but the key is to make it clear what they'll lose... specifically, the desire for Purpose and Community means that those things can be used against them.
-[] Begin a campaign to emphasize the power of individual achievements within groups, rather than simply subsumed within groups, in order to open up new possibilities.
-[] FILL IN MORE AS WE FIGURE THINGS OUT/GET INFO
 
Hmm, we could establish strict guidelines for experiments that involve setient beings and outright ban any research that looks into forming a Hivemind.

That way it would allow us to come down hard on this cult.

Edit: lol, ninja'd
 
I will say however that the fact that this cult is successful does speak very well of the society we built. Like the cult is exploiting on the upper rungs of Maslow's hierarchy. In the setting normally you'd be lucky to even past Physiological needs let alone getting to esteem. and self-actualization
 
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