Everybody is Cultists

I've been revisiting Renegade Crowns recently, to recapture that low-fantasy crapsack world vibe that inspired the first ACKS campaign.  One of the things I like about Warhammer is that just about anybody could secretly be a Chaos cultist.  But B/X-y systems don't do that well.  I think I've found a way to do it with ACKS, though, hijacking the witchdoctor and shaman rules for beastmen from Axioms and combining them with the Cultist class from Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu.

Any willing character can become a cultist of the chaos gods; they sense your desire and speak to you in dreams.  Chaos cultists gain a second XP progression independent of their main class.  When they gain XP, they must spend at least half of it into the cultist progression; once the road is embarked on, there is no turning back.  They gain a bonus to XP earned on the cultist progression for having poor Wisdom scores:

Wis 3-5: +10%
Wis 6-8: +5%
Wis 9-12: +0%
Wis 13-15: -5%
Wis 16-18: -10%

Being a cultist isn't great for you.  Depending on your campaign, a couple of options seem reasonable:

• Softball: Whenever you gain a level of cultist, save vs spells or your alignment shifts one step towards Chaotic.
• Surely you, oh wise and virtuous hero, can resist the taint of chaos and turn its power to good ends?  cackling
• Hardball, with Heroic Fantasy Handbook's Corruption rules in play: Whenever you cast a cultist spell, gain a point of Corruption.
• Middle of the road, with Corruption: Whenever you cast a cultist spell, save vs spells or gain a point of Corruption.

The ruinous powers have hungry eyes on the souls of their cultists; cultists suffer a penalty to Tampering with Mortality rolls equal to their level on the cultist progression.

Cultists cast divine spells from BCK's cultist spell list.

Cultists gain additional abilities based on their patron chaos god:

• The Blood God
• Abilities: Berserkergang, Illusion Resistance
• Code of conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Prince of Pleasure and slay his minions when you find them
• No quarter asked or granted
• The Plague Father
• Abilities: Divine Health (asymptomatic carrier), Savage Resilience
• Code of conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Changer of Ways and slay his minions when you find them
• Never cure a disease, nor allow your henchmen or hirelings to do so
• The Prince of Pleasure
• Abilities: Seduction, Alertness
• Code of conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Blood God and slay his minions when you find them
• Before other expenses, always spend 20% of your earnings on debauchery (reserve XP)
• The Changer of Ways
• Abilities: Soothsaying, Transmogrification
• Code of conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Plague Father and slay his minions when you find them
• ???

And some other non-Warhammer patrons:

• The Howler
• Abilities: Tracking, reduce damage from nonmagical and unsilvered weapons by 1 per die (increases to 2 at 7th and 3 at 13th)
• Code of Conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Spider Queen and the Bronze Devourer and slay their minions when you find them
• Never abandon the pursuit of a wounded living creature.
• The Spider Queen
• Abilities: Trapping, Ambushing (if character already has Backstab or Ambushing, replace with Acrobatics)
• Code of Conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Lord of Locusts and the Howler and slay their minions when you find them
• If your inaction would certainly cause an elf to perish, then you must not act.
• The Lord of Locusts
• Abilities: Survival, Vomit Locusts (once per day, summon one HD of insect swarm per cultist level.  Swarms remain within 30' of the caster for 12 turns and cannot be dismissed.  Locusts do not harm caster)
• Code of Conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Hopping Prophet and the Spider Queen and slay their minions when you find them
• Eat twice as much rations as a normal human would.  It is bad for your health to let the locusts get hungry.
• The Hopping Prophet
• Abilities: Poison Use (can extract poisons from monsters and plants as Naturalism, +2 to saves vs poison), Kin-slaying
• Code of Conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Deep One and the Lord of Locusts and slay their minions when you find them
• No demihuman henchmen or hirelings; if a henchman, will not serve a demihuman master
• The Deep One
• Abilities: Swim speed of 60', hold breath for 2 minutes
• Code of Conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Hopping Prophet and the Bronze Devourer and slay their minions when you find them
• Never eat fish or other seafood.
• Never rescue, or allow your henchmen or hirelings to rescue, a drowning character.
• The Bronze Devourer
• Abilities: Bargaining, Bribery
• Code of Conduct:
• Foil the plans of the Howler and the Deep One and slay their minions when you find them
• Never help someone for free, nor allow your henchmen or hirelings to do so.

Violating the code of conduct doesn't result in loss of powers, but instead a curse, an appropriate result from the Tampering with Mortality or Magical Mutations tables, or similar.

At 5th level, cultists may begin gathering divine power for their god, performing spell research, and creating expendable magic items.

At 9th level, cultists may begin creating permanent magic items.

At 11th level, cultists may begin creating crossbreeds, divine ritual spells, and constructs.  They may also bind daemons to mortals or transcend into daemons themselves using the rules for undead transformations.  Cultists who transcend keep their cultist abilities and their abilities from their main class, and may continue to progress in them, as the Zaharan After the Flesh ability.  A transcended cultist becomes irrevocably and intrinsically chaotic.

XP	Level	Abilities	1	2	3	4	5
0	1	Shadowed Soul, After the Flesh, by diety	-	-	-	-	-
500	2		1	-	-	-	-
1000	3		2	-	-	-	-
2000	4		2	1	-	-	-
4000	5	Minor magic research	2	2	-	-	-
8000	6		2	2	1	1	-
15000	7		2	2	2	1	1
30000	8		3	3	2	2	1
60000	9	Permanent magic items	3	3	3	2	2
110000	10		4	4	3	3	2
160000	11	Major magic research	4	4	4	3	3
210000	12		5	5	4	4	3
260000	13		5	5	5	4	3
310000	14		6	6	5	5	4

Ask your DM if the Ruinous Powers are right for you.  Privately - don't tell the other players, they might be cultists of a rival god who would kill you if they knew.  Or, gods forbid, paladins.