11.2.2 Cult Rituals
To manifest their power, cults are capable of performing various rituals.
Each cult has a belief, which represents the collective influence of the cult, and each member of the cult has personal faith. To perform rituals, both the personal faith and the cult belief are necessary.
Cult members can use the CULT FAITH command to check their personal faith, and CULT BELIEF to determine their cult belief. Both of these have a maximum value beyond which they will never increase.
Your faith is also lost if you are slain by a mobile. Dying to another player does not affect your faith, with the exception below.
If you slay a member of the cult whose altar you are standing at, or if you slay a member of any other cult while standing at your own altar, your own faith and cult belief will increase, while your target's faith and cult belief will decrease.
In addition to coded rituals, custom ones may be performed at the altar - see HELP CULT ALTAR for a description of commands that can faciliate this.
Note:
All rituals that require faith will take a hit on your belief, depending on the amount of faith required.
These rituals are available to all the cults.:
Sacrifice
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL SACRIFICE [corpse]
PERFORM RITUAL SACRIFICE <amount> GOLD
This ritual allows you to sacrifice a slain corpse to increase both your personal faith and the cult belief. If either of the two is at its maximum, only the other one will increase.
If you do not specify a corpse, all corpses in your inventory will be sacrificed.
To sacrifice gold, you must specify the amount and use the "gold" argument.
This ritual can only be performed at your cult's altar, unless you own the Altar of sanctity.
Altarhome
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL ALTARHOME
Cost: 10% faith
After a delay, this ritual transports you to your altar.
Favour
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL FAVOUR [target]
Cost: 50% faith
This ritual grants your target a +1 bonus to constitution. If no target is specified, the bonus is granted to its user.
This effect lasts for about two hours of online time. Only one favour of this type can be active at a time. The FAVOURS command can be used to view your active favours, if any.
Defender's Fury
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL DEFENDER'S FURY
Cost: 70% faith
Once activated, this ritual gives +1 to all stats and +10% to inflicted damage to all members of the cult, as long as they are located at the cult altar. The ritual can only be activated at the altar. As the name suggests, the primary purpose of the ritual is to assist in defence of the altar.
This ritual lasts for one Imperian day (one RL hour).
Divination
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL DIVINATION
Cost: 5% faith
This ritual detects the name of the most recent person to have defiled the shrine in the user's room. The ritual only works for shrines that the cult owns. Once used, it wipes the residual from the shrine, preventing someone from successfully using the ritual twice for the same act of defilement.
Desecration
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL DESECRATION
This ritual can only be performed at an altar belonging to another cult. Once initiated, the belief of the targetted cult will slowly start draining away. Do note, however, that your own faith and the belief of your own cult will likewise be drained, as they are necessary to sustain the desecration. Should you run out of faith, the process will stop.
You are free to perform other actions while desecrating - only movement aborts the process.
The targetted cult will be warned about the desecration.
Inlay
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL INLAY
Requirement: a Drystanian fragment attuned to your cult.
This ritual, performed at your altar, channels the powers that Drystan's sacrifice gave Imperian, and puts the cult on the road to transcendence without an entity's help. The cult leader must posses a Drystanian fragment attuned to his or her cult, and channel its energy into his or her altar. Drystanian fragments are rare, but are occasionally collected by Urzog's Sect leader. Even she, however, never stumbles upon more than one every six Imperian months.
Transcendence
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Syntax: PERFORM RITUAL TRANSCENDENCE
Cost: 100% Belief
Requirement: An entity to support you or ritual inlay performed within the past month.
The ultimate power of a cult is to transcend into a sect. This ritual transforms the cult with or without an entity.