Group Seed: The ‘True Living’ cult.

Went a little ‘yikes’ pretty fast, here.  Sorry about that…

The ‘True Living’ Cult

As vaguely apocalyptic cults go, True Living cultists (or ‘True Lifers’) are… well, they’re still pretty weird and mildly dangerous, but you could probably safely get one to change your flat tire (not that he would). You’ll still get the weirdness, but the dangerous part would be dialed back because the average True Lifer is intensely wary of the outside world.  Best to keep out of its way.

The basic principle of the True Living Cult is Eat All The Meat.  It’s partially metaphorical (‘you deserve total selfishness, so be totally selfish’) but very decidedly literal, too. Note, though, that these people aren’t carnivores, in the same way that vegans aren’t vegetarians. To be fair, True Lifers aren’t really comparable to vegans, either: after all, most vegans don’t literally worship animals via elaborate ceremonies involving ritual sacrifices cast into the flames. True Lifers do that, only with plants. Each group picks a species of plant life to venerate, then proceed to do so with the aforementioned immolation of various animals. Preferably while the animal is still alive. And after all the useful flame-vulnerable bits have been, ah, recycled. Yeah, basically imagine something out of a dream flash-image sequence in a horror movie and you’ll get an idea of the average Saturday night at the True Living’s local chapel/butcher’s station.

It’s probably a special miracle that True Lifers haven’t graduated to human sacrifices yet: partially that’s due to lingering morality, and partially because of an institutional awareness of just how dangerous it is to eat human meat.  Or it’s due to the fact that the True Living Cult is not under the control of any occult or supernatural group. They came up with this way of life all on their own.

Now, any would-be Dark Lord worth its salt will immediately realize the potential value of these largely self-trained minions, particularly since they’re not on the radar right now.  Indeed, the group isn’t even centered in California, where all the cults eventually go: their base of operations is headquartered in Oklahoma City, because that’s where the cows are.  Which is possibly another reason why they haven’t been supernaturally co-opted yet; depending on your campaign’s particular occult backstory, Oklahoma is either routinely overlooked by magicians, or the home territory of an extremely scary race of monsters. Which suggests that in the latter case, the True Lifers have been co-opted after all…