Soo we already have 2 planned magical antagonists being the blood cult and heretics.
Soo why not add a universal ritual circle that everyone can interact with
With like 3 rituals know to like the Chaplin and librarian:
1: consecrate wepon, allows you to add holy damage to a wepon or make like a ritual dagger or ritual spear. For the cults this would give them access to their heretic blades and blood swords respectively
Consecrate armour, allows you to make a holy piece of armour, maybe just a piece of armour that protects from magic maybe could make it flavorful with it being like a chainmail or platmail. Heretics would receive their ominous armour and blood cults their acolyte armour. Maybe an option to ascend the acolyte armour or something with enough people. An extra reason for syndie Chaplinâs to create cults
Miracles, another option is for a series of minor miracles or major. The Chaplin can already heal people with their bible, maybe take that to itâs logical end and give them a healing ritual. Blood cult of course has their conversion, but letting them also have access a healing ritual would be interesting. Of course heretics have their various rituals to reach into the mansus and a way to heal when not badgered by security could help a lot of course it would require the circle.
When there is a system for the runes and such, it could probably bleed a little onto the chap or maybe even librarian.
But it is a BIG wyci. It is hard to know how impactful these rituals would even be.
Like, what if the chap just replaces medical by making a comunnity healing circle? What would be the cost? How much could it be metagamed?
Until we at least have the system, it is hard to tell how it will work.
I mean assumedly the cost would be how many goats your willing to sacrifice and how many people are willing to chant at around a circle. Maybe your own life force
Off top of my head⌠circle only works for people âsworn inâ in whatever capacity without the leader actively assisting (perhaps in exchange for favors or donations, in lieu of swearing in).
Healing requires some resource more esoteric than healing drugs.
Alternative:
Healing isnât performed by the circle itself, but by a co-antag role. A chaplain traitor spawns? Someone gets to be the âgodâ (may or may not be a real god, but term is close enough for the term to not entirely miss the point.).
That god has their own aims and goals, which may or may not be in alignment with the chaplainâs.
The god in question can only âseeâ and interact with things near their circles or objects blessed by the chaplain, or higher ranked followers (between chaplain and initiates). This allows for blessed items or icons to be smuggled into areas for the god to peer into or interact with, and a means of limiting influence.
The role may well function similar to the AI. Instead of holocalls, prayer circles or books. In fact that may be an easy way to prototype it.
First and foremost bloodcult and heretic arent âplannedâ but are some of the most likely antags to arrive eventually due to their popularity.
But whatâs very important is that bloodcult and heretic in particular have very refined mechanics around their circles and allowing crew to draw them would upset balance.
Heretics can do alot of awful shit at runes, primarily round removing, so the mansus circle takes a solid 10 seconds to draw, is huge, and immediately outs that thereâs a heretic aboard.
Bloodcults do ALL their work at circles, unlike Heretics who have work outside the mansus circle, culties operate entirely around their blood runes, using them to create gear and convert, they also have alot of different ones.
Crew being able to draw either mansus circles or bloodcult runes would really sully the roundflow of these antags and make secs life hell to identify when either of these threats are aboard.
Also cults are not âcreatedâ nor can a chaplain ever be heretic or cultist, thats like the whole point. Theyre roundstart conversion / solo antagonists with a focus on stealth and high power melee.
Lastly it kinda makes no sense within the thematics/lore of either antag;
Heretics awaken to the Mansus, an eldritch dream world, and draw on its power through forbidden rituals. A heretic grows its strength through knowledge, the only reason a heretic doesnât immediately ascend is that IC they donât know how, obviously a random crew member knowing how to create the basis for the same rituals as a Heretic is odd.
Blood Cultists are directly empowered by the old god NarâSie and their runes are knowledge directly granted by her, for the same reasons itâd be odd if crew could use them too.
Chaplain being able to draw their own runes is a cool concept but it would NEED to be independant from Heretic, Bloodcult, Clockcult or whatever antag uses similar mechanics.
Ofc that chap would not have access to any cult stuff. The idea is that they could have something similar. Some sort of ritual like a candle circle or whatever.
Like praying at some candles to ward of revenants or some miracle like rising a dead crew member to crit, basically a defib ritual.
There where talks of making them the anti-supernatural force of the station before. This would just be another tool.
I do not think crew should have any access to magic stuff like this. It would be very out of place to just let ANYONE make a circle and do literal magic.
If you want to say something like a circle to âattract a ghostâ and make the lights on medical start flickering for the rest of the shift (minor shittery) or âsummoning an imaginary friendâ like some PDA only you can hear and interact with then that would be a fun activity to perform in maints.
But healing or combat related stuff? That is way too out of place.
We already do have crew-accessible magic: itâs called maints chem.
You cannot tell me the shit that Bald Man sends on the Discord is 100% hunky-dory with the laws of physics.
I think a little bit of crew witchcraft in that vein would be a fun add.
Actually, yeah. Just some maint activity to keep tiders busy.
The other day i saw someone setting up a mini clinic in maints, which took all round and the help of a borg. But it is so rare for stuff like that to be done.
A lot of SS13 DNA is the weird tider idea that spices a round without the need of an antag ruining otherâs plans.
Making more makeshift tools or just making materials and tools more accessible with extra effort would go a long way.