Death Cult

Death Cults are groups within the Imperium that express their worship through the art and exploration of death. Death and blood underpin human existence. It is a common truism that only through continued blood-sacrifice in the face of a hostile universe will mankind prevail, a sacrifice likened in the Imperial Creed to the bodily sacrifice of the Emperor himself. So it is in these beliefs that Death Cults flourish within the Imperium, a dark shadow of the more readily recognised sects of the Imperial faith, making them some of the most dangerous heretical cults that the Inquisition can encounter.

Some are no doubt deluded, corrupted by the Ruinous Powers or swayed by far older and more terrible influences, but many are devout followers of the Golden Throne. To these individuals, every death, every cut, every welling of blood is an act of worship to the Immortal Emperor of Mankind. Such Death Cults can vary widely in purpose, creed, makeup, and scope, but even the least suspect walks something of a tightrope between the sublime and the damned. Most so-called Death Cults, despite their differences, can be divided into three broad categories:

Sanguinary Cults
Perhaps the most commonplace and famed sub-division of the Death Cults, Sanguinary Cults focus on the act of bloodshed itself—the manifold art of killing and the moment of extinction. Often honing the skills of the assassin beyond the ken of normal men, such cults are tolerated or at least wilfully ignored by the Imperial authorities despite their heretical and even vampiric tendencies. This tolerance is because they are known to be implacable in their hatred of mankind’s enemies, supplying the Adeptus Ministorum and the Inquisition with invaluable adepts of murder and fanatical killers loyal to the cause. Some have even more shadowy connections to the mysterious Officio Assassinorum, the secret organisation that provides unparalleled adepts of murder for the High Lords of Terra. Many Sanguinary Cults spring into being in the fertile soil provided by the harsh conditions found on many Feral and Feudal Worlds. However, the shadows of the underhive, the viperous intrigues of the noble’s court, and even the travails of deep space can equally create the conditions where ritual societies dedicated to the deadly arts of the blade, bullet, and poison can flourish.

The Calixis Sector has numerous such Sanguinary Cults and sacrificial societies present scattered across many worlds, and indeed, the population of the outcast Feudal World of Fervious is largely governed by them. The most famous of the Death Cultists, without doubt, are the assassin-mystics of the Moritat, which has sub-cults and cells operating right across the sector and indeed beyond.

Necrophagic Cults
Necrophagic Cults are the most blatantly heretical and terrible of all Death Cults, with sects often springing up on worlds ravaged by incessant warfare or planet-wide famine, pandemic disease, or other terrible disasters. In desperation and often goaded by outside influence, the people’s faith and devotion take on an increasingly malign turn, with human sacrifice, cannibalism, and necrotic rituals becoming widespread. In such cases the members of these cults rapidly become irretrievably insane and physically corrupt, and are often the playthings of warp entities, while the vile leaders of such cults walk a tightrope between burgeoning malefic power and utter madness. Necrophagic Cults are never tolerated by the Imperial authorities and are hounded to destruction wherever uncovered.

Within the Calixis Sector, Necrophagic Cults have been known to spring up in the wake of long-burning wars (as has happened on Tranch and Malice in recent years), on isolated and savage worlds such as Endrite, and in the dark hulks and vessels in space where stricken survivors or desperate stowaways devolve into a form of mutant cannibal known to the voiders as Ghillam or hold-gaunts. But of all these tales, none can compare to the ancient stories of the appalling Saynay Clan of Dusk, whose half-mythic ghoulish histories have given the children of the Calixis Sector nightmares for centuries.

Resurrectionist or Revivicator Cults
Rarely encountered but insidious in nature, Resurrectionist Cults ultimately seek to conquer the secrets of life and death itself. Some resurrectionist cults preach a doctrine of the Emperor’s triumph over death and the conquest of human weakness, while others entreat darker masters, pursue utterly forbidden sciences, or hide baleful xenos or warp-spawned influences at their hearts. Often they espouse the goal of attaining physical immortality for the faithful and will go to unspeakable lengths to obtain their ends.

More so than even the Sanguinary Cults, these groups attract insane and desperate individuals to their ranks, those who have lost everything, become the most degenerate heretics or follow the wildest of deviant creeds. Some resurrectionists even practice ritual revivification to indoctrinate their members. The most extreme examples of such sects believe that the Emperor’s plan is for mankind to follow him into a blessed “immortality of the flesh.” They even claim that it is possible through the use of utterly forbidden archeaotech to free the Emperor from the Golden Throne to walk among his people, “dead-but-alive-everlasting” to quote the darkly renowned Credo Mortifex. Such cults are hated by both the Adeptus Ministorum and the Adeptus Mechanicus and must throw up a murderous veil of secrecy and superstition in order to survive.

Source
[[Category:D]]
 * Dark Heresy: Disciples of the Dark Gods (RPG), pp. 22-25