Editing Magipunk:Religion (section)

= The New Cults =

If the last remnants of worship of the Old Gods are to be found in the temples of the highest nobles, their mirror opposite is to be found in the lowest of the low classes, who are increasingly organising into semi-religious groups that do not worship the Old Gods. 

Worship of anything but the Old Gods was essentially stomped out by the rise of Passion, for the Old Gods are the True Gods – the only entities who grant magical power through worship. But the New Cults aren't interested in mana generation, and usually don't even really engage in traditional worship. 

The New Cults tend to be ecstatic affairs, tied to drug use (not Passion), physical deprivation, or other extreme activities. Dancing to the point of exhaustion, fasting for days, or even self-torture are not unheard of. At this point, all of the Cults are very much in the process of defining themselves, and they do so mostly experientially – the Cultists are united in that what they do makes them feel good, or fulfilled, or otherwise alive, not in some kind of doctrine. For the most part, the Cults don't have firm dogmas or even established divinities. Yet they're growing in popularity, and seem to fill the place in people's lives that religion might have in older generations. 

There are probably a hundred Cults in Atathorn, most of them with less than a few dozen members. In many cases, the line between a Cult and a gang is heavily blurred – the extreme activities of the Cults often begin as initiation rites into a gang. Each Cult is different, though some have similarities to each other, and others seem wildly different. Cults range from being innocuous if weird to deeply sinister. 

== Behind the Scenes ==

What are the New Cults? Are they a new way of worshipping the Old Gods? Are they harmless "false" religion, with no deeper truths behind them than what human psychology might create? Are they connected with some other entity than the Old Gods, whether benign or harmful? This is a mystery for every GM to decide on his or her own. There is no "canonical" answer. 

There are some possibilities, however: 

There are prophecies which imply that the end of an Age is upon the world. What that means is very unclear – it could be just the social upheaval already being experienced, or it could be something different. One heretical interpretation is that the Old Gods are fading, perhaps even dying. They may be reborn into new personae, or replaced by something else. If so, then the New Cults may be worshipping that "something else," which, despite not yet even existing, nevertheless has some power. If this is true, the Cults will likely increase in power, and Cultists may even gain some kind of mystical ability (which will probably NOT be traditional sorcery or magical power – in this interpretation, that entire system is burning out). 

What if the Old Gods were protecting the world from something? What we might term "demons" may now have an "in" to the world if the activities of the Church Mills are weakening the Old Gods. Perhaps the New Cults are people touched by those demons, performing half-understood rituals that make it easier for more demons to pour into the world. Cultists might be duped fools, power-hungry traitors to humanity, or a mixture of both. Of course, it's also possible that the "demons" are not so bad after all, in which case this possibility starts to blend with the first one. 

The New Cults might be a new way of worshipping the same Old Gods – a less destructive or selfish way. That is, ultimately, it's possible that the relationship established by this form of worship is one with the same Old Gods, but the benefits of the relationship are different from traditional or Passion-enhanced prayer. If you choose to go with an option that suggests that the Old Gods are being damaged by the forced-worship of the Passionate, then the New Cultists might be healing them or offering some kind of way of mutually, rather than selfishly, beneficial worship to the Old Gods. 

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