Everything

So you wanna be a cult leader? It’s pretty easy, especially with magick. Just find a handful of people who desperately want a certain degree of excitement or enlightenment, offer up a gospel that suits their needs, establish a number of parame­ ters that set your followers apart from the general population (possibly through enforced separation, for maximum control), and voila! Instant cult! Well, maybe it’s not quite that easy, but you get the idea. Mages can and do assemble cults quite frequently: prosperity sects, religious orders, Pagan covens, faith-healing devotees, fan clubs, extropian fellowships, social

cliques, New-Age networks, prayer circles, dance groups, alternative-science research groups, medieval recreationists, live-action roleplaying groups… the variations are as expansive as the paradigms that inspire them. All such cults, however, share a few common elements: a powerful belief, an ideal­ ized figurehead for that belief, a social hierarchy established around them both, and a devotion to the group’s ideal that overshadows the individual identities of its members. The degree to which that idea proves toxic to the people in the group depends on the cult and its leadership. No matter how toxic it might be, though, there will always be someone who wants to join in, if only to find a semblance of meaning in an implacable world.

Cultist companions revere the mage, the message he con­ veys to them, or — typically — both. The bonds of fellowship created by cult membership exert a strong appeal as well, with cult members “finding themselves” through their association with like-minded folk. Loyalty often comes through a personal connection with the group’s ideals, combined with a sense of belonging to something greater. Cult members, then, tend to be people seeking a cause worth living (and possibly dying) for, with a devotion to that cause which provides a core to that person’s identity.

Whatever their reasons, people who join cults tend to be extremely, perhaps fatally, loyal. In game terms, that loyalty provides a bonus to a mage’s spellcasting attempts when the cult throws the weight of its collective belief behind those spells. The cult’s members trust so deeply in the mage (or at least in the ideal he represents) that their belief literally changes reality in his favor. Such belief, en masse, is the true power of a cult. Its individual members might not be much of a match for a mage, but their collective psychic energy magnifies his abilities. The cult, then, is worth protecting, even from itself.

It’s not always true that members of a cult are suckers with nonexistent self-esteem. That stereotype is accurate in some cases, of course, but the average member of such a fellowship probably has a number of things going for her. Even so, there’s a hole in her life, a hole this sort of group can fill. Maybe she’s suffering from a crisis of faith, believes in nothing, is rebelling against an upbringing that left her scarred, or is sorting through a personal sorrow. The thing is, everybody’s got their reasons for things they do, and so a person who joins a cult does so in order to meet a rather pressing need. Assuming the cult provides what she’s searching for, that group may inspire devotion for life.

Suggested Traits: As detailed in Mage 20 (p. 310) the Cult Background reflects a group of normal human characters united by a shared faith in a mage or cabal. Those people aren’t exceptional in game terms, and so their Traits remain anchored in the Everyday People range.

Suggested Templates: Background-level cult members could be Homeless Survivors, Human Resources, and so on,

but they lack the militant prowess of Professional Badasses or upper-level consors. A given cult probably has a few cops or veteran military personnel for protection and essential enforcement, but powerful allies like vampires and cyborgs are the province of Backgrounds like Ally, instead.

Jayleen White

Ms. White lives down the street. She has three cats and she’s in your yoga class. Nothing about her screams “cultist” to you. Jayleen works at an upscale shoe store, selling Ferragamos and Louboutins to affluent customers. She’s got an online store where she sells handmade jewelry, too, and she’s doing pretty well at it. Maybe you went to school with her — with the pretty Black girl who never said much but always seemed to have a few friends who accepted her quiet personality without question. Even then, she dressed well, with a sense of classic, understated fashion in contrast to the usual teen rebellion and conformity chic.

Jayleen was born in Miami, but she has lived most of her life in your town. Her dad was in the Coast Guard, but he and mom split up decades ago. Mom grew up in a small town, too, from a small handful of Black families in that place. She taught Jayleen how to rise above the usual nonsense. Jayleen’s smart. She learned well. These days, she’s one of the few folks she knows in her age group who actually owns her own house. She works hard, is nice to everyone, and goes to that church down the road from the youth center.

That church with the minister who performs miracles. Jayleen knows he’s touched by God. She’s seen what the man can do, and it’s way beyond human gifts. She’s seen him cure meth addicts with a touch, stop a gang brawl with a few soft words, and unearth a crooked bank’s attempt to gentrify a nearby neighborhood by foreclosing on folks who’d owned their homes for decades, sending the guilty parties to jail instead of to an executive suite. Joseph Sewell insists that everybody call him “Joe,” not “minister,” and Jayleen knows he’s much older than he seems to be. Her mom worked with Joe when he was just starting out, and he’s been a family friend for ages. He even cured mom’s cancer a few years back, so whatever Joe needs, Jayleen will work to provide.

Ms. White runs an inner circle of congregation members who keep an eye on their neighborhoods and participate in local politics. They understand there’s more to Joe and his associates than meets the obvious eye, and because that group of blessed healers works to keep them safe, they return the favor for the church. It’s not a cult, for God’s sake — it’s a support-group for the church and its neighborhood and all the people in it, whether they belong to the church or not. It keeps secrets when need be and monitors the local cops and gangs and businesses for signs of pending attack. Ms. White and her friends also counsel local kids, tutor at the schools, help out at the local youth center, and report potential threats to Joe and his friends. And so, the many plagues of American Suburbia keep passing their neighborhood by. It’s not a big

group or a big church, and nothing about them is fancy. Still, for the folks who live in Ms. White’s neighborhood, it’s enough. And while Joe gets the credit when folks think to mention it at all, it’s Ms. White and her inner circle that really get things done.

As for Ms. White, with her cats and her yoga and her high-end shoes and jewelry business, she gets what most folks want: a relatively safe life, a relatively prosperous career, some relatively good friends, and a small part of this world that finally feels like home.