The Shaldon prison

A prison which polymorphs its prisoners into forms more suitable for selling into slavery.

The fishermen of Shaldon always enjoy a plentiful catch thanks to the town's good relationship with nearby merman settlements. The aquatic creatures guide their fishing boats to shoals where they can spread their nets. In return, the town maintains the prison and uses it to jail criminals and other unwanted visitors.

The cells are short of amenities - there's no point putting bedding down when it'll just wash away. The cliff-side prison is built so that the lowest level, where the cells are, is below the high tide line. 

The cells have spells built into their very bricks. First Sleep, to keep prisoners from panicking as the waves start to splash into their enclosures. Then Polymorph, to change them into mermen. When the tide reaches its peak, The Shaldon mermen swim in to collect their new slaves. A life of cultivating kelp awaits them.

Prisoners who make their saves and resist the Sleep spell aren't as lucky. If they're not asleep, Polymorph doesn't trigger. They're likely to drown when the air pockets at ceiling height turn stale.

There are three cells the guards don't use. They may never have been used. Instead of polymorphing the occupants into mermen, they change them into sharks. Each door is closed from the outside with a handle that must be twisted upward to open them. Each handle has a wooden float secured to it by a cord, so the doors unlock by themselves when under water. The guards don't talk about these cells.

The soul-cleansing pool

A device that drains the evil out of a person and stores it unsafely.

The abbey at Mospid town owns a curious device, a shallow pool connected by underground pipes to a man-sized glass globe. Anyone who enters the pool while it's active has all their evil thoughts and impulses sucked down the drain and into the globe forever. Once in the water, the suction applied to their contained evil keeps them from stepping out until the transformation is finished and the evil is gone. 

People who have been through the process are placid, cooperative, and completely unable to make decisions for themselves. Perfect for cloistered monks. They work the abbey's fields and dairy herds, producing the famous Mospid cheese the abbey earns so much of its income from. The abbey also accepts a small fee from the local magistrate for every malcontent they turn into a productive member of society. As the abbot himself would say, the order is doubly blessed. (And any rumours about converts working themselves to death while their careless minders sleep or gamble are vile lies and perilously close to blasphemy.)

If there's one fly in his ointment, it's the glass globe. During the first year the pool was used, the evil it contained was just a thin haze. Now it's a roiling dark cloud crackling with electrical discharges. Sometimes the globe rocks on its stone base. The abbot has it strapped in place with ropes and nets while the pool's not in use. While it is, and there are visitors watching, he has men standing around it ready to steady it as needed. They don't like touching it. It feels like doing something shameful.

Clearly the amount of evil being stored now is a problem. The abbot has been experimenting with draining evil into pilgrims. These pilgrims come to the abbey for hospice care while they die, conveniently wiping out the burden of second-hand evil. The process is difficult. Like trying to take a cupful of water from a high pressure hose. Excess evil has been leaking out into the surroundings. It causes nightmares, sickens livestock and sours milk. The abbot suspended the experiments when hostile half-human creatures started to appear in nearby forests.

The obvious solution is to close the pool down and pay someone to lose the globe out past the edges of civilisation. The abbot vetoed that idea. Mospid Abbey depends on on the money and workforce the pool generates. Instead, he's been paying wizards and sages to secretly travel to Mospid and examine the globe. None of them have had any useful suggestions yet, so he has them processed through the pool to keep the secret.

The problem is coming to a crisis point. It's the perfect time for a party of adventurers to make things better worse different.

Horrible House playtest

I've written a procedural OSR-style adventure in the vein of Emmy Allen's Stygian Library. Having just come off a Shadowrun campaign, my Tuesday night gaming group are letting me run a playtest game. We're playing via Roll20 at the moment, our rooms at the local university having been shut down as a coronavirus measure.

The idea is that the characters enter a generally normal-seeming Victorian mansion with a chained angel at its heart and things get stranger and more threatening as they move further inside. I copied Emmy's depth mechanic almost unchanged.

This is all being done using Ben Milton's Knave as the system, with a few houserules. The characters are starting the adventure at level 3 because I'm not sure the players are ready to embrace the cheapness of life in OSR games just yet.

The characters are:

Maximus (Max) Johnson, played by James K. A student, mostly of ways to make other people's property into his property. Has been exiled in the past.

Adelaide, played by Tim. A gambler, who has been disowned.

Iris MacLeod, played by Theo. A herbalist who is suspected of crimes.

Castor, played by Mila. A poverty-stricken magician who carries around a hen named Eggrietta.

Karros Shepherd, played by James C. A tracker who has been replaced in his job.

The party started on the front porch. They needed to enter the house to find out what happened to the delegation of clergy they were supposed to accompany as a cover. They also had instructions to retrieve the magic tome Ivan Vantig (the owner) used to snare an angel.

There was no-one visible from the porch, just a swing seat creaking in the morning breeze. Adelaide and Iris approached, and the seat cast Charm. Adelaide successfully resisted but Iris sat down and the swing seat launched her into the air, inflicting 1d6 damage. She picked herself up and the party entered.

At depth 1 they found themselves not in a foyer or entrance hall, but in a portrait gallery. Max tried taking one of the several brass candelabra lighting the paintings, but it squirmed out of his grip. It backed away from the party, but stayed close, helpfully attempting to illuminate whatever they looked at. They were distracted from examining the paintings by their shadows, who were doing their own thing rather than mimicking the characters' actions. The shadows were miming their normal morning routines, so the characters wrote it off as odd but harmless. They proceeded into the next room.

Depth 2 found them in the house's private theatre, which the Vantig children had clearly been using as a playroom. There was a small pile of toys on the stage. Looking through them, Iris and Adelaide found a pair of earrings and a necklace. They might be costume jewellery, but they have the weight of the real thing, so they split the pieces between them and wore them to save inventory space. They also found a sheet of paper which had symbols scribbled on either side. The characters recognised one as a name in angelic script: Nelphael. The other is the demonic glyph AGA, meaning confinement.

(I made a mistake here. I made the players roll to recognise the symbols when I should have just given Castor the magician's player the information.)

There were a couple of (non-creepy) dolls in the pile, one with a button eye hanging loose from a thread. Castor repaired it as a gesture of good will in case the dolls came to life and tried to stab them in their sleep later. That took long enough for a random encounter roll and they found themselves attacked by three Wig Beasts. Springing from among the costume equipment, I gave the beasts surprise. It took two full rounds to put them down, during which Iris took more damage. (I took the Wig Beast damage die down to 1d4 when I realised these creatures which I intended to be just an annoyance were a genuine threat.)

Iris and Adelaide (who were co-incidentally the front line for the battle) both lost big tufts of hair to the beasts' attempts to sink tap roots into their scalps. Iris was hurt badly enough to take 10 minutes to prepare a dose of her healing herbs. There was no encounter during that turn. The candelabrum, which had followed them from a previous room, accidentally set the stage curtains on fire. They managed to pull it down and stamp it out before it spread.

It was a game with a lot of prep, so that was as far as we got. Tonight's session continues from there.

The why of villages

According to British crime dramas, you're 900% more likely to be murdered in a sleepy little countryside village than anywhere else in England. But when you've been on the road for weeks and supplies are running low, they can be a godsend.

So what makes this village tick? What do they do all day, what's their background, what are they secretly ashamed or proud of? Will they sell you supplies and wish you a safe journey, or will someone knife you in your sleep as a potential threat to her victory in this year's rhubarb pie baking contest?

The main source of income is:

1. Farming
2. Fishing
3. Mining
4. Hospitality for travellers on a nearby trade road
5. Craft - smithing, cooping, wagon-building, etc.
6. Forestry

An important nearby resource is:

1. A forest where game can be hunted
2. A bridge or ford
3. A marsh where bog-iron can be collected
4. A clay pit
5. A bat cave where guano can be harvested
6. A medicinal/culinary herb that grows wild

They offer adventurers (roll 3 times):

1. A blacksmith
2. Horses for sale
3. Dried food, lamp oil, rope, arrows
4. Healing
5. Cleric services
6. Guides

They are led by:

1. A minor noble family
2. A council of business leaders
3. An elected mayor
4. A clan chief
5. A governor assigned by the kingdom
6. An informal group of village elders

Who is/are 'advised' by:

1. A wealthy family stripped of a noble title generations ago
2. A secret council of 'concerned' citizens
3. A bandit clan with a nearby secret camp
4. A coven of witches
5. A whispering presence
6. A spy for the ruler

The citizens are:

1. A single race
2. Two or more races living together
3. Several races and immigrants
4. Mixed and include a small population of highly unusual creatures 
5. Mixed and include many exotic creatures
6. Mostly exotic creatures

An unusual feature is:

1. A ghost in the ruler's chambers
2. A fairy market every full moon
3. A law against killing cats
4. An inn built into an old ruin
5. A barred and shuttered building no-one is permitted to enter
6. An unusual town official - witch finder, sword examiner, nose-measurer, plague doctor, etc.

A nearby threat is:

1. The beast in the woods
2. The goblin camp
3. A border war
4. An ancient curse
5. A growing cult
6. A feud between two influential families

They don't talk about:

1. The leper colony their grandparents' generation burned down
2. The smuggling tunnels under the oldest houses and what they're used for today
3. The deal they made with an evil sorcerer during a hard winter
4. The massacre that happened decades ago
5. The unusual religion they practise
6. The reason for the sunset curfew

(Thanks to Spwack of the Slight Adjustments blog for the generator code.)

The why of roads

If you come across a road that's not marked on your map, all you really know about it is that leads to, or from, some place that people wanted to be.

This road leads to:

1. A city
2. The coast
3. A market town
4. A keep
5. A ruin
6. A demihuman community

It's a:

1. Paved military road
2. Graveled trade road
3. Muddy parallel wheel ruts left by farm carts
4. Trampled grassy track cleared of trees
5. Forgotten and badly-maintained highway
6. Raised wooden boards above marshland

It passes:

1. Through the foothills of a mountain range, winding between the peaks
2. Along the bank of a fast and wide river
3. Across bare ground at the border of a desert
4. Along the edge of coastal cliffs where heavy waves break on rocks at the base down below
5. Through dense woodland where sunlight never penetrates to the forest floor
6. Through a deep valley that reduces the range of vision and hampers lookouts

A standout feature is:

1. Toll houses a day's ride apart
2. Guard posts garrisoned to hunt bandits and highwaymen
3. Robber gangs preying on traveling merchants
4. Coach inns of varying quality
5. A section cut through a dangerous forest
6. Tales of ghostly riders

 The most frequent travelers are:

1. Mail coaches crewed by tough and well-armed drivers
2. Merchants driving covered wagons full of wares for trade
3. Farmers delivering produce to nearby communities
4. Pilgrims visiting holy sites
5. Companies of soldiers relocating to new duties
6. Traveling entertainers

Travelers should watch out for:

1. Shopkeepers inflating prices for out-of-towners
2. Wild animals
3. Squads of fighters from two different factions who each claim jurisdiction over the road
4. Monsters
5. Weather that makes the road impassable
6. Slavers and military press gangs

Void adventure

This is a half-baked idea for a zero-prep procedurally generated adventure, but I think it might have some legs to it.

First, the characters successfully navigate a suspiciously short dungeon belonging to a wizard, eventually finding themselves in his library. The treasure is inches away. Then the door and windows slam shut, there's a light show and a dizzying sense of transition. If the characters pry open the doors or window covers, they find themselves looking out into true nothingness - the void. The room was a trap, and it caught them. They've been dumped out of the world entirely.

Presumably the wizard will eventually call the room back, if only to reset the trap. But there's a dead and mummified adventurer here, which suggests that it could be a good long time. They need to rescue themselves, not wait.

The dead adventurer had an escape plan, which he laid out in a journal he had with him. The room could be shifted back into the world by tracing the path of a specific rune on foot and chanting a magical phrase to undo the trap magic. The biggest problem was that a single room isn't large enough to trace the rune.  It needs to be many squares long. However, it was possible to call additional rooms into the void, from structures similar to this room in concept (IE. dungeons). Then the issue would be digging through walls for access, defeating whatever threats came across with the architecture and building a walkable path through them.

The final journal entry states that a terrible void storm had begun and he was returning to the library for the little protection the bookshelves offered. Whatever rooms he managed to add are gone. If the PCs want to follow his plan, they'll need to start from scratch.

Obviously the characters have specific wants in the rooms they summon: food, building tools and supplies, construction that allows them to create openings where they need them. They'd also prefer those rooms to be unoccupied. Each additional criterion adds 1d3 to the difficulty of the magic roll for the summoning. If I was running I'd keep the players in the dark over whether they pass or fail until the room arrives, and remove one of the criteria for every point they fail by. They get a room regardless, but maybe not the one they hoped for.

I like the idea of using the random dungeon generator from Donjon. Hit random each time to get a different dungeon style, but set Details to basic to get a list of monsters and traps. Roll a die to pick which room they get. If the encounter die hits while they're in that room, it's something from the wandering monsters list, arriving some time after the room they occupied.

The characters have to work fast, because another possibility on the encounter die is a void storm. Storms last 1d6 turns, and while they're in progress, areas of the map simply pop out of existence. Erased by the void. Generating those randomly seem like too much effort, so I'd get the players to map out the dungeon they're constructing and drop d4s on their map to determine where the lacunae occur and how many squares in diameter they are. (D4s are indisputably the most evil of dice. Bastard pointy things.)

Wizard Squad AP and an adventure

Recently I got a chance to playtest Wizard Squad with my usual group and give them a chance to break my game. The lesson for me in this is 'be careful what you wish for'.  The scenario we played was The Doom that came to Springhill.  Click the name there to download a copy. 

Character creation

The usual suspects were present: Tim, Theo, James 1 and Mila.

Character creation was relatively straightforward, but I had difficulty explaining the magic system concepts: your techniques and forms describe the magic your wizard knows, you can custom-build any spell that draws on those practices, each morning you choose the spells that will be available to you to cast for that day. Effectively it's Vancian magic, but it eliminates pre-written level-based spell lists. The players seemed to like that idea.

Tim rolled up Smith Johns, a relatively hardy wizard with magic techniques in Harming/Diminishing and Person. His specialty was Bureaucracy and his advantage was Reputation. We decided that he was quite a legalistic magic user who had successfully taken a number of minor nobles to court.

Theo created Desmond Aster, Des to his friends. His techniques were Summon, Transform, Spirit and Beast. He immediately created a spell to turn people into sheep. He also asked if it was possible to interpret spirits as distilled spirits and create a spell of summon whiskey. We agreed that it was only logical. His specialty was languages and his advantage Official Contacts, so he came from a diplomatic background.

James 1 made The Great Kazaam. His techniques were Heal/Enhance and Person. Unfortunately he rolled the lowest possible HP, so he wouldn't be doing much healing. His advantage was a spirit companion named Fred, who no-one else could see or hear. They just thought The Great Kazaam was kind of weird, but knew things.

Mila rolled up Me Reana, a sorceress with magic for Move, Element, Person, Beast. She immediately created a spell to give flight to flightless animals, a second one to suck spirits into jars to capture them and another she called Earthbending. Her specialty was investigation and her advantage was a minor magical item. After some negotiation we agreed that she had a bag of holding, but the opening was too small for anything larger than her fist.

Des then asked me if it was possible to create a spell to transform spirits into whiskey so they could be sucked into Me's bottles and stored as a refreshing drink in her pouch of holding. I reluctantly admitted that the rules could be interpreted to allow it, but I planned this as a serious game and meant to veto any magic that seemed too ridiculous. Everyone agreed, knowing full well that my games turn ridiculous no matter what my intentions are.

The squad was dispatched to the tiny isolated village of Springhill, where children were vanishing and monsters have been seen in the woods.

The game

The party arrived in Springhill where the mayor’s man failed to meet them as arranged. They headed for the pub, where they learned that talk about monsters abducting or eating children made the innkeeper nervous and he clammed up. At least they got their drinks for free.

They found the mayor, who was riding back into town from negotiating with a mercenary company encamped by the main road. There’s nothing for miles around, so the concern is that the company is here to sack the town. The mayor gave them details about the missing children and their families and the squad went off to investigate.

Talking to the families they learned that all three of the vanished children spent their free time around a swimming hole upriver, and also that a season earlier there had been a late-night display of weird lights over the hill that gave the town its name. They checked out the swimming hole and saw nothing unusual until Me earth-bent the river bed to rise and show itself above the water line. Then they found a number of fish with pig-like features and river weed that seemed to be budding pig fetuses instead of seed pods. The squad theorised that the disappeared children had become the monsters seen in the woods, and it was something in the water that changed them.

Smith issued the river a ticket for concealing evidence, and a receipt for the items they seized for investigation. The other sorcerers began to understand why a successful wizard like him got sent on an investigation at the arse-end of the kingdom.

They travelled upriver, looking for the hillside spring that was its source. All of them struggled inside the cave mouth against the water’s flow, but Smith lost his grip and got swept nearly a mile downriver before he could leave the water. He issued it a ticket for impeding an officer of the law in his duties. The others pushed on, but soon found the way impassable. Kazaam had the idea of letting Des change him into spirit form so he could continue through the spring. [Ordinarily I would have said no to this because Des didn't have that spell on his prepared list, but the game had a fairly strict time limit and I felt like we needed to move things along.] Exploring in this form, he soon found himself halted by a barrier of invisible force. He called the others up and with Des’ help he had the power to force his way through. That weakened the barrier enough for Des to follow. Me earth-bent an alcove next to the force wall where someone could work out of the water flow, and went after them.

Smith arrived, recognised Me’s alcove for what it was and pushed on. The barrier could only offer token resistance at this point. He scrawled a hasty ticket and dropped it as he hurried past.

Moving ahead of the squad, Kazaam entered a large dry room with unmistakable old-kingdom construction. He spotted lights and raised voices in the distance. Des used a spell to give himself the appearance of a spirit - invisibility - and joined him. They found the room was a grid of stone vats filled with a milky fluid in which a herd of pigs were growing to maturity with unnatural speed. The voices were a trio of men slaughtering and butchering full-grown pigs.

Kazaam flew close and ordered them to stop. The oldest man waved a hand through his immaterial body and told him that no, he didn’t think they would. He sent one of the younger ones to fetch help. Kazaam sent Fred the spirit to follow him, but he lost track of the man in the darkness and twisting pathway out of the hill.

Des recognised enough of the old-kingdom glyphs on the walls to have a good chance at deactivating the room without destroying it. He went for it, and successfully turned off the controlling device overhead. The vats hardened into milky glass and went inert. The two remaining men tried to make a fight of it, but Des turned them into sheep.

The session ended there, but in the postscript the wizard squad went on to arrest a local farmer and his two sons, along with the mayor and the innkeeper. Deprived of the supplies they needed to cross the northern wasteland and attack a keep from the blind side, the mercenaries threatened to sack the town, but Des offered to fix their provisioning problem by turning the first half dozen men to reach for their weapons into mutton. The three missing children were rounded up and after several months of intensive research, returned to human form by the wizard academy.

Conclusions

Playtests never take place under ideal conditions, have you noticed? In this case we didn’t have our usual rooms at the university, so we played outside in the courtyard. The weather was good for it, but the sun went down and we were reduced to squinting and using our cellphone lights to read character sheets until the overhead lights came on - after we finished. With the venue problem, transport issues and character creation, we didn’t get started until late. It was only intended to be one session, so it had to be a 90-minute game.

I threw out a whole bunch of clues, some useful and some not. I intended to curse the players with an overabundance of evidence and force them to sort through it all. Instead (perhaps because they chose to investigate the spookiest clues first), they bypassed most of the mystery and headed straight for the problem’s source inside the hill.

By running Wizard Squad I learned that:

• Players suffer from the blank page problem and need some prompting to start coming up with their own spells. 
• But once they get into the swing of things you can’t stop them inventing new spells and wanting to try them out immediately.
• Players with a D&D background got the magic system immediately. Other players needed more of an explanation. Is it still a one-page game if you bundle it with an adventure, an extended bestiary and a couple examples of play? 
• The game is unplayable without houseruling, which is pretty much what I expected. 

House rules

These were all developed through play.

• The standard die for magic is a d4. Healing? D4 + level HP. Transforming? D4 + level minutes at base cost. 
• Some effects revert back after the spell wears off, some don't. Rule of common sense applies.
• Some spells require a roll to cast, some are automatic. Once again, rule of common sense.
• Players want to experiment with new spells as they come to mind, even if they're not playable that in-game day. The compromise I came up with is to allow a flashback to the wizard academy, where the character tries the spell out for the first time. The player must make a roll. If they miss the target by three or more, it's an undershoot. Roll a d6 and consult this table:
  
  1 - 3 - spell fails and accidentally ruins another student's experiment.
  4 - 5 - spell fails and the PC looks foolish, under-prepared, or over-confident in front of academy staff.
  6 - spell misfires and there's property damage or injury.
  
  If they exceed the target by three or more, it's an overshoot. Roll a d6 and consult this table:
  
  1 - 3 - spell succeeds and the PC looks organised, confident and in control.
  4 - 5 - spell succeeds and the PC impresses a senior wizard.
  6 - spell succeeds and reveals a hidden truth that solves a question the academy has been struggling with for months.

The why of gangs

Criminal gangs are a hazard players are most likely to run across in city areas. They can be ambiguous - enemies or allies depending on how the first encounter shakes out.

Most gangs are money-making enterprises that see violence as a tool of the trade. Often, recruits join up to have protection from other gangs. It's common for gangs to claim a territory and keep order there by muscling out or co-opting other criminals.

This is a table to make gangs less generic by generating a background, operating methods and members. Roll as many times on any given table as you need to reach the preferred complexity.

Their members

1. Neighbourhood thugs
2. Disgruntled ex-soldiers
3. Guild dropouts - drunks, bullies and workshy
4. Long term jobless forced to choose between crime and begging
5. Branded criminals
6. Vigilantes

Their size

1. Less than ten
2. Ten to twenty
3. A few dozen
4. A hundred or so 
5. Many hundreds

Their methods

1. Smuggling
2. Gambling
3. Armed robbery
4. Protection
5. Bootlegging
6. Murder/arson for hire

Their 'reason'

1. Protect immigrant districts
2. Resist political oppression of the lower classes
3. Prevent exploitation of the poor by landowners
4. Stop locals being displaced by newcomers
5. Redistribute unfair taxation
6. Defend neighbourhoods against other gangs

Their real reason

1. Money
2. Power
3. Revenge
4. Fear and respect
5. Fun and excitement
6. Loyalty to each other and their leader

Their main advantage

1. Secret routes under the city or over the rooftops
2. A rich or connected sponsor
3. Reputation
4. Alliance with other gang(s)
5. Clandestine support from neighbourhood residents
6. They've bribed or intimidated the city guards

Their biggest headache

1. Money-making rackets under threat
2. Powerful enemies
3. Territorial dispute with other gang(s)
4. Loss of safe houses and secret routes
5. Law enforcement crackdown
6. Informant infiltrators

The why of cults

Image by
OpenClipart-Vectors
on Pixabay

A table to generate cult characteristics. A lot of the adventures I've been looking at lately have been premised on ideas like a cult infiltrating a community, or setting up a secret headquarters under a building and performing unspeakable rites. There's little or no description beyond 'a cult', though. I don't have an ongoing campaign involving a cult, so I thought it would be nice to have a chart to generate one on the fly if I was to run an adventure like this as a one-shot.

This cult formed when someone charismatic:

1. discovered a long-hidden holy book handed down by their ancestors.
2. had a vision while meditating/feverish/starving/poisoned by bad mushrooms.
3. made a cynical deal with an extraplanar/infernal being.
4. experienced a mental snap.
5. was helped out of a bad situation by a supernatural entity and wanted to show their gratitude.
6. thought deeply about mainstream religious practices and came to a different conclusion.

They are trying to:

1. recruit influential worshippers
2. obtain magical texts
3. practice unspeakable rites
4. infiltrate positions of power
5. extort a specific group
6. blackmail powerful individuals

In order to:

1. gain political influence
2. build wealth
3. suppress dissent
4. drive out other religions
5. maintain secrecy
6. develop in mystical power

Which will result in:

1. the apocalypse.
2. a breakaway state.
3. wealth and privilege for members.
4. the return of a forgotten god.
5. revenge for an ancient grudge.
6. fulfilment of a prophecy.

They recruit by:

1. drugging prospective members and showing them visions
2. taking in the destitute
3. offering protection and clandestine support
4. encouraging prospects to commit vile crimes
5. threats and violence
6. exposing people to mind-warping magic

And maintain secrecy by:

1. targeting a betrayer's family
2. magically cursing betrayers
3. sending agents armed with a drug that causes madness
4. rewarding loyalty with money and authority
5. geasing recruits not to talk about cult business with outsiders
6. hypnotising acolytes to forget their activities during daily life

Which has caused:

1. a culture of suspicion and paranoia among acolytes.
2. a string of unexplained deaths in the community.
3. a rash of weird events and sightings.
4. rumours and whispering.
5. an unexpected shift in the social pecking order.
6. a wall of silence against outsiders to the community.

Cult members:

1. learn to speak an unusual language.
2. submit to ritual scarring or tattoos.
3. learn a few simple cantrips.
4. carry the same superstitious charms.
5. perform a simple routine task in an unusual way.
6. refuse to say the names of common gods.

The cult is:

1. reluctantly tolerated.
2. feared.
3. despised and ridiculed.
4. dismissed as a rumour.
5. respected.
6. ignored.