#occultists

Marchesa Luisa Casati by Man Ray, 1922

D&D 5e Character Concept: A Very Orderly Occultist

Okay. So I really like horror-adjacent characters? I enjoy the horror end of D&D creatures and powers and entities. And I like them specifically in the context of D&D, because while I definitely enjoy actual dedicated horror games as well, I also enjoy horror-meets-pulp-fantasy wherein we have horrifying monsters but also really cool powers and abilities.

So I’ve been doodling for a while around the idea of a Call of Cthulhu style occultist in D&D 5e. Someone specifically interested in aberrations, the Far Realms, oblexes, nightwalkers, allips, all the really cool cosmic horror style D&D monsters and realms, but not from a ‘cultist of Hadar’ perspective, but from a heroic occultist type perspective like you get in CoC. I’ve doodled around with Fey Wanderer Rangers (and Knowledge Cleric/Fey Wanderer Ranger multiclasses), and also with cowardly Abjuration Wizards afflicted with allip-induced dark knowledge via eldritch tomes. Because allips are one of the coolest D&D monsters ever, and designed to plug directly into my interests.

But I’ve never gone for a warlock, despite the Great Old One warlock being very directly designed around this exact archetype. And the reason I’ve never gone GOOlock for it is because they do sort of skew more towards the ‘cultist’ than ‘occultist’ end of the spectrum. They don’t have that sort of exorcist, futile-defender-of-fragile-reality sort of vibe. Warlock vibes tend to be more about bringing the horror here rather than holding it back.

Unless. See, GOOlocks, uniquely of all warlocks, have this line in their patron description: “The Great Old One might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you, but the secrets you have learned allow you to draw your magic from it.”

The Great Old One you draw your power from might be unaware of your existence. Unlike all other patrons, with whom you make an extremely conscious pact, the Great Old One doesn’t even need to know you exist. It’s an unknowable entity from realms that do not have to make anything resembling what we would view as sense, or sentience, or law, or reality. It might not even know you’re there. Or understand what something so small as you even is even if it did. So it doesn’t actually contradict for a warlock who is utterly opposed to the Far Realm to also be drawing power directly from said Far Realm. Well. Not on the Far Realm’s end, anyway. On the warlock’s … those who look into the abyss, and all that. Heh.

Now. Warlocks still don’t grant a lot of spells or abilities that give that ‘defender of reality’ vibe. But we could multiclass in a class that does.

Could have gone paladin here, or even cleric, but I’m not really looking for an overtly priestly kind of vibe. I do want more of an occultist. Something on the arcane end. And, well. The Clockwork Soul sorcerer is right there?

“The cosmic force of order has suffused you with magic. That power arises from Mechanus or a realm like it-a plane of existence shaped entirely by clockwork efficiency. […] Whatever its origin within you, the power of order can seem strange to others, but for you, it is part of a vast and glorious system.”

Order vs chaos. Wards against the night. Reality itself, that fragile skin of systems and rules, struggling to hold fast against the foaming tide of raw unmaking.

We’re going to start Clockwork Soul. At level one. We’re going to start out a creature of order and magic, a scholar dedicated to making the world continue to make sense. Balance the scales. Even out those dangerous snarls of fate and luck and chaos.

But one should always know one’s enemy, right? How can we face that which we cannot understand? So we read, and we researched, and when we chanced upon certain knowledge, when we opened certain windows of the mind in the process of this research, we …

Reached out. And touched.

And, now. The thing on the other side did not notice that touch. At least, it hasn’t given any indication that it has, or that it’s capable of noticing such things. And what it doesn’t know, unfortunately, probably cannot yet hurt it, but it also thus far hasn’t hurt us? So, you know. Knowledge is power? Surely it can’t hurt to explore a little more? The more we learn, the more we can stop. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Let’s think about ratios, here. How much sorcerer, how much warlock. And the thing is, we want a good belt of both.

Half the reason I want warlock on an occultist build is that they give so many cool abilities. Particularly when it comes to invocations. I definitely want ‘Eyes of the Rune Keeper’. The ability to read all writing? On an occultist? Absolutely want that. But also GOOlocks get certain abilities. Pact of the Tome, for sure, and then the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation, because grimoires. ‘Thought Shield’, at level 10. You become inscrutable, your mind cannot be read, you gain resistance to psychic damage and can inflict it back on anyone who inflicts it on you. If we’re out here fighting eldritch beasties? So good.

But we also want a good chunk of sorcerer, because we do want that defender sort of vibe. Clockwork Soul gives us so many of the good spells. Lots of abjuration in there. Protection from Good and Evil, Dispel Magic, Lesser Restoration. And also, you know, the spell slots to use them.

Probably depends how far the campaign is going? But I think … I think we want just enough sorcerer to get a good range of lower level support and abjuration spells, and some spell slots, and some metamagic. But I do think we want to be mostly warlock. I like the level 10 GOOlock ability on an eldritch defender. And I like the theme of having looked into the abyss, and reached into the abyss, and carried the abyss all the way back into yourself, and never noticed that the abyss might, in fact, have looked back. Not in a way you understood, or even in a way that it understood either, but the effect was the same either way. In fighting it, chaos, unreason, the other, you have slowly and painstakingly grafted it into your own core.

I’m thinking sorcerer 6/warlock 14, should it go to level 20? But definitely trading back and forth evenly between them for the first 12 levels, then sliding off the slippery slope into full warlock towards the end of our development. No idea how that will effect power and playability, but sorlocks get some pretty nice tricks that can help them in combat even with only lower levelled spells to work with. It should be fine?

Not sure on race and background. Some stripe of elf would probably be good, just for Fey Ancestry, the advantage vs charm and sleep. If we’re going on a theme of mental defenses. Plus, it might also have added to the arrogance, a bit. Taking risks in the conviction that we are rational and ordered and defended enough for it not to affect or corrupt us. Heh. For background … I mean, I do always like the Haunted One background from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. It’s just cool and spooky. However, run-of-the-mill Sage probably would make more sense on this particular character. If we truly understood how dangerous it was out here, we probably would have been just that little bit more cautious about reaching blindly in the abyss? Well. One assumes, anyway.

I just. I do think they go interestingly together. Great Old One and Clockwork Soul. Thematically, you know? Order vs Chaos, Reason vs Unreason. There’s a nice arc there, just from the mixing of them. And there’s a lot of nice thematic spells and abilities to go with it.

‼️BLACK EYE ILLUMINATI CLUB ‼️

Some say that Christian audiences should avoid the movie's fascination with unbiblical beliefs and the occult. Others say that the movie is more of a fairy tale than a Christian or occultic film.

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