# Best Cult Themed Adventure?



## Oryan77 (May 10, 2010)

I have a scenario in mind where I want to run a published adventure for my 3.5 game. It would involve a cult of Orcus and I would like there to be plenty of opportunity for roleplaying. Mystery & intrigue are more important than hack-n-slash for this scenario.

Can anyone suggest a good adventure that I can use as a basis? What's your favorite cult themed adventure? Any edition & level is fine, I can convert it; accept maybe 4e unless you don't think it would be much harder to convert...I've never tried converting a 4e adventure.

The cult doesn't even have to be similar to an Orcus cult. I can change these kind of details. I'm mainly interested in interesting NPCs, strange events, unique monsters/people, and a plot that revolves around a cult.


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## Mark (May 10, 2010)

I suppose you might have the minis to use this -

D&D Miniatures: The Cult of the Bull - A Miniatures Encounter for Four 4th-Level Player Characters


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## Psychotic Jim (May 11, 2010)

I would personally recommend the Freeport Trilogy by Green Ronin.  Lots of intrigue and skullduggery in a pirate/privateer island town supposedly "gone legit".  Plenty of opportunities for social interaction/intrigue/manipulation (there's even a ball the characters are to attend).  The adventure starts with a disappearance and ends with a cult trying to bring madness upon all of Freeport.  The cult involved is more of a Lovecraftian nature (the Cult of the Yellow Sign, actually) but probably could be changed to the Cult of Orcus fairly easily (turn the entire city into undead abominations or unleash a plague of demons instead of turning the city mad?)

The 3.5 anniversary adaptation (originally it was 3.0) included a few more interesting side encounters/adventures that were not directly linked to the plot (a local festival called Swagfest with some interesting hijinks, corrupt officials, a press gang, etc).


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## Grymar (May 11, 2010)

There is one from Dungeon, "The Last Breaths of Ashenport." It is designed with a more aquatic lovecraftian theme, but the atmosphere and mystery are excellent.


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## howandwhy99 (May 14, 2010)

N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God was very well done.


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## Azgulor (May 14, 2010)

Freeport Trilogy
Adapting the Shadows Over Bogenhafen WHFRP adventure


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## Psychotic Jim (May 17, 2010)

Oh, one thing I forgot, there is one adventure dealing with Orcus' divinity.  Though this is kind of stretching the word "cult", in the 2e Planescape adventure Dead Gods many of Orcus' former demon servants (now renanimated as special undead) are trying to give bring undead master Tenebrous (the undead shade of Orcus) back into former godhood.  The final climax of it occurs on his floating body in the Astral Plane with his chief cultist, Quah Namog.


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## Oryan77 (May 17, 2010)

Psychotic Jim said:


> Oh, one thing I forgot, there is one adventure dealing with Orcus' divinity.  Though this is kind of stretching the word "cult", in the 2e Planescape adventure Dead Gods many of Orcus' former demon servants (now renanimated as special undead) are trying to give bring undead master Tenebrous (the undead shade of Orcus) back into former godhood.  The final climax of it occurs on his floating body in the Astral Plane with his chief cultist, Quah Namog.




Heh, the reason I started this thread was because we're on the last chapter of Dead Gods and should be finished with it in about a month. So I had an idea for a future adventure where the PCs start to realize that with the return of Orcus, would be worshipers hear tales of Quah-Namog and the deity he worships, so small cults start to pop up around the planes & prime worlds. One PC has the remains of the Orcusword, so I thought it would be interesting to have a small Orcus cult try to retrieve the artifact from the group. I just wanted a cult adventure to mine for ideas and develop a more intricate plot.


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## Psychotic Jim (May 20, 2010)

Oh, that's cool! Did you happen to run the predecessor to Dead Gods, the Great Modron March?  I had an adventure idea that might serve as a sequel to it.  While not a published adventure, it might give you some ideas. This idea I had intended to run as the climax of a Planescape campaign  Basically, a rogue faction of Guvners or Mathematicians (a sect from the 2e Planescape boxed set Planes of Law that obsess over the gears of Mechanus) have stumbled upon something with the potential power to change all of reality. 

They've found a very large and powerful moigno (living equations also from Planes of Law) that represents the never-ending calculation of pi and its non-terminating decimals. Being ultimate devotees of law in all its forms and the gears of Mechanus in particular, many of the Mathematicians formed a cult of sorts around this moigno “god”.    The moigno beseeches them to help it finish calculating pi. But of course this is an impossible task- until one of them thinks of a loophole to cheat the laws of reality as we know it. While we cannot calculate completely calculate pi in a world bound with these physical laws, what about in a world where such laws don’t exist? This is what the “creative” Mathematician has pondered.  Cue in the Far Realm.

Using a planar breach to the Far Realm, the moigno cult intends to “solve” pi once and for all.   Then, the grateful moigno will ascend to full godhood and bestow some of its powers on its "followers".  Thereby, the Mathematicians intend to use that power to stop entropy and stop a central gear of Mechanus, but in doing so, they will freeze all of time.

Of course, not everyone in the cult might seek this goal.  One of Orcus’ faithful leftover followers in Mechanus from his time as Primus has infiltrated the Mathematician cult. The follower of Orcus might seek to seize  the moigno god’s power and bestow it upon his lord.  Perhaps to do this he needs the remnants of the Orcussword your player has?

There were two other published Dungeon adventures I recall of that involve a cult.  "The Mad God's Key" (Dungeon 114) is probably too-low level for your group, but it involves a cult of Vecna stealing a key that used to belong to Zagig and could open anything.  They want to open an old book of Boccob's faith with it.  That module was fun (especially the chase scene at the beginning), but the party got wiped out midway by the zombie rat swarm.

The other one is called The Styes (dungeon 121), and it presents a truly despicable port city that is rotting from the inside.  An aboleth is raising a fiendish kraken with the mark of Tharizidun in the shallows of the Styes.  He's gathered a cult around it and has been feeding sacrifices to it.  All this happens under the guise of a serial killer striking the city.  I have never played or ran this one, but it has some fairly disgusting characters that might be of inspiration.


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