Dungeon Day 70 - Continues

  Dan didn't think he would be someone who would, at any point in his life, be willing to create a cult. It's not like you could just go and make a cult, at least as far as Dan was aware you couldn't.

  Now, why did Dan need to make a cult of all things? Because it was an organization that was easily controlled and made for one specific goal, that they would not betray no matter how sensible anything else might seem. Cults were great for controlling others to do precisely what you wanted them to do without question. There was no way to bribe cult members as they lived for their cult’s purpose and nothing else, which was precisely what Dan needed.

  Unlike his Explorers Guild and the many executives and other personnel who had gone corrupt more than once and had been stopped by Dan, a cult wouldn't present him with such a problem. The best part was that he would then replace high-ranking guild members with cult members, thus eliminating any other corruption problems from the guild, at the very least in the higher ranks.

  As far as what the cult would be about, that was the easy part. However, it made Dan question whether cults had to be evil or just nebulous and undaunting in their beliefs. The train of thought revealed to Dan that cults were just organizations of highly loyal and undaunted members. And their bad reputations only came with the naming scheme. After all, the Organization of the Dark God Cthulhu didn’t have the same ring as the Cult of the Dark God Cthulhu. Same thing with the Cult of Rainbows and Unicorns. It was no wonder cults got a bad rap since all of them were named after not-so-great things. However, it was honestly more due to them sacrificing people than anything else.

  Anyways, back to the whole cult creation thing. Dan wanted the cult to be a force for good, which made him think of not calling it a cult and simply a secret organization, but that would break one of the main things behind a cult. A singular leader who stood above all else and led the organization to a final purpose. Whereas other secret organizations were more like one-for-all and all-for-one, a cult was great since it was more of a dictatorship. In this case, Dan would be the dictator or figure leading the cult to a greater tomorrow. In fact, the best part about the entire cult that Dan was making was its irony.

  Dan needed a cult to help him maintain control of things without questioning him. Of course, he needed to give the members a reason to listen to him, and what better reason than the truth? The cult would focus on the bigger picture. Dan would be the messenger from the stars coming to inform the planet of an impending pandemic of monsters that would pose a great threat.

  What were these monsters? Well, they were aberrations just like him, except the cult wouldn’t know about that critical last little detail. What they would know was that he was there to guide them to a better future where they would fend off an invasion of these monsters. Most importantly, Dan, as the mysterious figure, had founded the Explorer’s Guild to help find those monsters that had already breached the planet, but he needed the cult’s help to keep the guild going in the right direction. Which coincidentally meant not being corrupt. It was a glorious idea, and Dan needed to come up with a good name for the cult.

  Dan was thinking of something like the Defenders of Kroger, which was the name of the world, as he had found out some time back. It had taken Dan a while to learn that because the locals weren't aware of such a thing. He had only learned the name because he had questioned some scholars who cared enough to name the rock they lived on.

  Defenders of Kroger seemed like a good one, but Dan felt it might be a little too much on the nose and something a paladin group might call themselves. After a bit more thought, Dan came up with Earth's Guiding Shadow.

  Earth's Guiding Shadow felt more subtle and didn't feel as in your face. They weren't declaring themselves as the protectors of the planet; they were more like just another hand trying to do good in the world of earth and rock they found themselves in while also keeping themselves unseen.

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  Dan already imagined his members saying things like “Earth's Shadow be with you” or “May the Shadow Guide you.” Yeah, Dan was definitely going with that name.

  After completing the small yet essential bits, like the name and purpose, Dan began working on the actual important stuff, like recruiting.

  Recruiting was going to be a pain in the ass. Dan didn't know where to start, like how did he approach random people and pushed the idea of joining a secret organization? Usually, those types of things started very slowly or due to some actual revelation by a group of people.

  Eventually, Dan figured he needed to have some people have otherworldly experiences. He could simply mind-bend some individuals to get the whole thing started, but where was the fun in that? Sure, he would use mind magic to move things along, but he figured having the thing start semi-organically would add truth and some real purpose behind it.

  First, Dan spent a year traveling through the kingdom doing various mind fuckeries. He gave random members of the guild dreams about things coming down from the skies and infiltrating the planet as fake members of the stone folk.

  Dreams of fights against flesh-shifting monsters. These dreams usually ended with the savior, Dan coming to the rescue and killing the monsters. Dan made his visage covered in smoke and unreadable to help maintain an air of mysteriousness.

  Dan had to give these individuals multiple of those dreams, doing various rounds of dreams throughout the kingdom; even then, it wasn't good enough. Dan needed to give them another push.

  So, he began “having” guild members get attacked by the fleshy aberrations. At that point, the lack of actual aberrations in the kingdom came to his aid since the reports about them were almost non-existent, and no one connected the dots.

  Reports about these attacks started surfacing slowly but didn’t garner much attention with the rest of the guild or society since they were just put in the general monster attack pile. However, that was fine with Dan since that wasn’t the reason why he did it. In actuality, those individuals whose dreams Dan manipulated started investigating the different appearances. Of course, the way Dan had planned it, he made sure there were multiple of these individuals in the various cities, which meant they eventually met up.

  From there on, things began snowballing.

  His original cultists found out they all had the same dreams, even if it took some time, and they flocked to the events he created like moths to flame. Their investigations grew, and Dan made sure to keep things flowing in the background. He needed them to believe they were the chosen ones who were being given information from some god about the incoming invasion. And, of course, Dan integrated himself into the group in order to keep pushing toward what he wanted.

  Dan encouraged thoughts that made them believe they were truly chosen and that they were the only ones to know of this coming invasion. Likewise, he discouraged thoughts that doubted the dreams or questioned the so-called truths they had been presented with. And, like always, he kept giving them a few dreams here and there, emphasizing it would be a long time before the invasion came along.

  Eventually, Dan introduced himself as this mysterious stranger who came to warn them about the unseen dangers of the world. His introduction did bring some questions into the mix, but Dan just used mind trickery and flowery language like “The world itself called for me to rally the forces against the incoming threat” or “I am a god in the making here to rise to power in defense of his home.” Either way, the group was soon prostrating themselves before him.

  After that, things became even simpler. They had a leader of sorts, a purpose, and a belief in something greater than themselves. So, the group began their work with Dan’s ordained rule about not acting directly but more acting from the shadows. Dan figured he would give them a year to expand in the kingdom before having them take over the work of the guild executives. Additionally, he would still have random attacks by aberrations, the targets of which the guild would recruit.

  Outside of helping the cult recruit, Dan spent his time looking into magical research. The thing was that he didn’t want to create some magical research association for the betterment of the world. Dan wanted some researchers to study what he needed. Mainly teleportation. To that extent, he began using all the money he was making from the guild to hire scholars from all over the world and have them research whatever he wanted. Dan knew it would take some time before things got moving in the research field, but it was worth it.