Quick question. I’ve been on the Argent Dawn for a few years now. Been part of a few guilds that portrayed themselves as; Strict military/ reliious order. In Stormwind there are some order who are dressed in Red and gold, but also in white and gold. Some are referred to as cultists and zealots.
Now my question to you; do you think that the overall roleplay community (Horde and Alliance side) could do with a (public) zealot/ cultist themed roleplay guild? Keep in mind the Scarlets, Cult of the damned etc.
First rule of being a cult:
Don’t openly advertise you’re a cult if it goes against the majority (Cult of the Damned etc)
You will be hunted and stomped out quickly.
That was quick, but let’s say they portray themselves as an order in character wise. But everyone knows it is more leaning towards zealots. That would make the changes of survival somewhat bigger?
The concept isn’t exactly hypothetical, there’s loads of relatively zealous Light-based guilds in the north, at least on Alliance. Unless you mean outright ‘attack DKs/DHs on sight’-type of zealotry, but that’s not really a sustainable platform if you want to interact with bigger events and areas. I reckon there’s significantly less of these concepts on Horde, but then again, Horde lacks a lot of niches just because of playerbase numbers. But I do think they have Sylvanas loyalist ‘cult’, and you could argue some of the Horde military guilds are quite zealous about their blood and honour vibes.
Duskwood has some cultist concepts going, and I believe the new Eredar costumisations and the Scourge tabard has led to a couple of relatively public cultist guilds.
Subterfuge organisations like the Cult of the Damned are generally a tough one to pull off. The moment someone is made aware of them, even if OOCly, it changes the dynamic and the way in which most people approach the characters involved. It becomes a game of revealing them and defeating the bad guy. I don’t know of any currently doing it, but I think there’s room for it in the trend of big, organised communities we see at the moment.
It depends on how disruptive and a problem to the general civilians these zealots will be/are currently.
If they’ve just been a minor disruptive nuisance and mainly spout their ideology on the Cathedral steps then really it’s not that much of a matter of survival.
Now of course this is AD and people WILL take any reason to beat you up at some point no matter how big or small the bother is.
If they portray themselves as an Order but have a zealous nature/zealous members then, in my opinion at any rate, it’ll be rather like many other groups that are about or have come and gone in the past.
I really don’t think so, Scarlets aren’t just overzealous fanatics, I find even bigger issue with their exagerated xenophobia, where they advocate for human only supremacy, and Alliance does not have only humans. They are like 40k Imperial Guard regiment which accidently traveled trough Warp to wrong reality.
Cult of the Damnes is literally upper managment of the Scourge, Scourge is not allowed to exists. If you wanna be valid Necromancer, you gotta be in Ebon Blade and you would still be frowned upon and not welcomed.
Twilight’s Hammer? They are insane cultists who seek to recreate the Black Empire, kill on sight.
What else is there… Primalists? Removing Titan’s stain… as far as I am aware, the Titan structures are keeping Azeroth together and many races have something to do with Titans (Humans, Dwarfs, Gnomes…) So no, max ex-Primalist who saw trough the crap, especially the destructive behavior, as we seen in Emerald Dream where few Primalists defected.
Druids of the Flame - oh hell no. There are only 2 defectors and we would need more questline for them, still most definitely defectors.
Shadow Council - same as Cult of the Damned, just replace Scourge with Legion
The Syndicate - probably in shumbles currently with last few poor operating cells. Alterac wil never rise again, sorry, you could have asked but instead you started crime it’s on you.
We can just go on and on.
The point is, all these cults and organisations are insane and incompatible with wider Azeroth, usually trying to couse harm, regardless what they follow. They should not be allowed to be in cities at all. So you have to be secretive, hiding in shady corners and even still, I wouldn’t have this place as main operation hub. That should be far away from the city in the wild.
That doesn’t inherently mean Scarlet RPers, just ask them. I personaly like red and gold too on my paladins.
This on itself is alright, and order of paladins and priests devoted to defense of their people and homeland. You just gotta be within the mantinels, not Scarlets, more like old Silver Hand or Argent Crusade or racial orders.
I’ve no clue how that would be a feeling, but I can assure you that is hasn’t. I myself have been busy doing content and binge-watching certain series on Netflix which has led me to some of these questions.
More RP is generally always a good thing. There are certain types of zealots/cults that would by their very nature have to operate in secret however, lest they incur wrath and ruin upon themselves.
Use the community feature instead of a guild, let your cult blend in with community, let them join other rp guilds even.
But here is the catch of course, organise events that they must attend* and tasks they must perform which can overlap with lets say guild events etc which your cultists need to somehow deal with.
Always nice seeing new cults crop up - realms always in dire need of good antagonists for the swathes of good folk around that aren’t just criminal syndicates in Stormwind or whatever.
I believe there are a few open secret cults
assuming some of the mercenary guilds are still around.
that along with a few other occult themed groups.
Personally I want to start my own part cult part criminal network, but I haven’t the time nor energy to run a guild/community.
Because unlike the pathetic scourge, legion and twilights hammer, who is all but gone after they lost their leadership, The scarlet persist, doesn’t matter how many leaders they lose, they raise again, doesn’t matter how many times you wipe them all out, they raise again, doesn’t matter if you hunt every single one of them down, they raise again.
same name, same mission, same colors, almost same location and always the same zeal.
nothing in universe is as resilient as a flock of paranoid zealot humans.
Truly the scarlet embodies the unlimited human potential.
I’ve got fond memories of the Twilight Hammer guild that was ran by Innatus long before Cataclysm came out.
The members of that guild went out of their way to not just be normal, but to be respectable and garner a positive reputation. Despite openly wearing their true affiliation as their guild tag, they went out of their way to remain undercover for as long as possible, and most of the server was happy to play along.
In my opinion, this is how most cult guilds should operate, hidden IC but open OOC, built on a foundation of OOC trust and cooperation between everyone involved, not just the cultists but the cult-hunters.
If mutual respect is impossible in the current roleplaying climate, then so are truly great cult guilds, in my opinion.
