Wow. It’s done.
Back in 2018, I had only just started playing KULT: Divinity Lost, and I was mesmerized by it. The deranged yet cohesive setting, the fiction-first gameplay, and the art oh my god the art, it all seeped into my mind and every pore of my body until I could think of nothing else. I had moved from Sweden to Canada just a year earlier and was cooped up in a 25th floor penthouse apartment in Toronto, unaware that the world was about to be plunged into pandemic darkness. I was reading and re-reading the KULT book, becoming comfortable with the tarot cards, and engaging in non-stop online discourse with the likes of Grönn-Kule, Chrystal, Gabe, Ryan, Frost, and so many more. It had been a while since I’d been so rabidly excited for a roleplaying game.
I ran a scenario for my wife, called Paul’s Story. It was about a family man whose wife was becoming possessed, all while he was dealing with strange happenings at his work. It was the first thing I did in KULT, and it went… okay! Both me and the wife had fun, played the game until we reached a climactic ending, and knew that we wanted more. She suggested then to me that she make a character designed explicitly for the purpose of being curious about the world of KULT. While Paul had been a figure resistant to the terrors around him, this new character would be put at the center of them. I loved this idea, and very soon, Jessy Button was born.
When we started playing the game in early 2019, I knew very little about how the story would unfold. I knew that Jessy had a magical ring, and I knew from the start that it was connected to a tortured human soul and that Jessy’s grandmother had stolen it. For those who have now read all twenty session recaps, you know that these ideas were not really addressed until the final arc of the story. Before we could reach that point, there was a lot to do and I initially hadn’t prepped for any of it.
Tan, Jessy’s lover and the leader of the Cult of Dehu and Mil (Dehumil, Thaumiel, by the way, if that wasn’t obvious), was initially an entirely improvised character. All we agreed on for the first session was that Jessy would go to a fancy launch party that she’d schemed her way into. I had basically nothing beside that. I introduced Tan as a means to test Jessy’s Greedy disadvantage, making him interested in buying her ring, a plot point I quickly pushed to the side. It was a mistake to open with this, and in hindsight I don’t think Tan should have recognized the ring’s power, and perhaps not even wanted to have it. After the first session ended, I looked at the things I’d put in there – strange rich businessman, laced drinks, a goat mask – and I got to work. We need a cult, we need a magician, we need a plot for power. These are all things KULT: Divinity Lost is good at serving, and I was quickly able to work out what the deal was. An ancient cult venerating some twisted interpretation of Thaumiel, reflected alongside Gamaliel for the sex magic angle. A power-hungry entrepreneur whose travel and esoteric research reveal that cult’s past grandeur to him. A desire to control Toronto in the name of conflict and love.
Almost every session was like this. Sit down with some notes on what has happened, keep a deep truth in mind, and then serve the player something based on what they ask for. It is, after all, how the game advises you to play. I am very happy to report that, other than a few clumsy mistakes and poor judgments, it works very well.
Sol is a similar story. When I first introduced these mysterious text messages on Jessy’s phone, asking for details on Tan’s life and plans, I had no clue who that was or what they actually wanted. For a long while, I feared I might just have to drop that plot point entirely because how did that even work? It took me months of pondering and several sessions played before I settled on the concept of a loyal cherubim seated at the very peak of Toronto’s power. The Illusion is strong in the city, and Avarice fuels it. A disruptive presence like Tan’s cult, aiming to overthrow the city’s economic machinery and turn Toronto into something else, would have to be dealt with. The exact mechanisms for how Sol contacted Jessy or why he would need to operate through her to destroy the cult are honestly meaningless to me. Jessy Button was the main character of the story, of course the superpowered alien wants to use her specifically for his own ends. Otherwise, what’s even the point?
Very few characters were prepared in advance. Angela Ericson, Jessy’s grandmother, was one of the few exceptions, Wilma the decrepit dream magician was another. Angela was created from the obvious question of where the ring came from. Wilma existed because I needed a villain capable of controlling the goons who attacked Jessy in her backstory. The only NPCs that I knew of when we started playing were those who were directly derived from the character creation process, and they were far from the most influential characters or those with the most screen-time. I fell in love with Tan and Artyom the moment I began to present them, because they were driven by the needs of the scene rather than a desire to include the things I’d already made. Artyom needed to be eerie for the scene to feel right, so he became the jerky, masked razide that he is. The obsession Jessy developed with him was all my wife’s doing. Jessy needed a helpful but unreliable guide for the Underworld, so Honey became the drug-laden, confused vagrant she would have to follow if she wanted to face Wilma. Let this be a lesson against prepwork: your best characters may very well be those who you had no idea existed. Judge each scene for what it is and what it could become, rather than what you imagined it to be. If you are comfortable with the game’s principles, guidelines, and setting, you will be able to create nuanced and memorable characters and events which will return and echo through the rest of your game. This really, really is the way to go for KULT.
Of course, everything has to end. Jessy’s Story was played as an open-ended campaign. The purpose was to explore KULT’s setting and see what could be done with it. We started off with visits to Limbo and the Underworld through Wilma and her desire to reach Ktonor by using the ring. Once Wilma was dead, Tan and Artyom drew Jessy closer and closer to Inferno, which eventually completed her transformation into a death magician as she was plunged into the streets of a ruined city below Astaroth’s citadel. Jessy’s grandmother, Angela, wants to find her original home in Metropolis for reasons yet unstated. We touched on cairaths and zeloths, razides and lictors, angels and death angels. There was dream magic, sex magic, death magic, possession, ritual combat, callous assassinations, abstract visions, flashbacks, and more. Most of it was made up on the spot and miraculously held together by me and my wife both wanting the story to continue. We could have kept going, and a sequel is on both of our minds. So, ending Jessy’s Story was something of an arbitrary decision.
Jessy deciding to kill Artyom and destroy the bonds he tried to place on her was entirely my wife’s doing and I was so happy to do that, especially because the scene made use of several new powers she’d unlocked as a magician. Tan left to do his own thing and Sol’s rage would soon make Toronto very unsafe for Jessy. She stole the tortured soul that fuels the ring, and reached a fragile peace with the spirit of her grandmother. She found her mother in Inferno, only to be forced to leave her behind forever. It felt like a good place to end.
There was another ending that I had in mind. I really thought that Jessy would succeed with killing Sol during the mancipia summoning. One truly terrible roll for Backstab whisked away the alternate reality where Jessy, Artyom, and the enigmatic Abbas Ali would sit around a table, drinking the blood of an angel from tall glasses and discussing Jessy’s potential as a servant of the death angels. Abbas Ali considers the ring’s tortured soul his property, and so the finale would have involved Jessy breaking in (rather than reality shifting) to Granger Fine Jewelry and taking her back to the razides… or perhaps, deciding again in that moment that Artyom needs to die. We will never know!
It’s crazy to me that this campaign of mine received the audience it did. Whenever I get a comment on a blog post, whenever I look at the visitor statistics, it kind of blows my mind. I think I could have done much more in terms of writing, I could have done so much more as a game master. This is, I think, the first thing I’ve shared from my personal roleplaying with a wider audience, and I am deeply thankful and humbled that the audience exists. Thank you for sticking with this. Thank you for reading. Thank you.
I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ve moved to Nova Scotia, I’ve made a fan translation of Helmgast’s fantasy game Eon, and my life priorities have shifted a lot. My muse for KULT has waned, not for any fault on the game or its community (quite the opposite – you are beautiful and so is KULT) but merely due to the circumstances I find myself in. I hope it returns. I still have friends who want to play, I still pull out the tarot deck once in a while to admire its brilliance, and I still often think about Jessy’s Story. I am not done with KULT, and I do not think KULT is done with me. See you around.
Message from the Player
Jessy Button was inspired at her conception by Anna Delvey, a con artist that convinced much of upper-class New York that she was a wealthy heiress. It’s important for me to note that this was before the Netflix original about Anna Delvey titled Inventing Anna. I knew I wanted to play her as The Deceiver, of course, have her attempt to come off as much higher class than her small town family and make it big in the city of Toronto. Maybe she was also inspired by my own story, the small town girl trying to figure out the city, and maybe she was also inspired by the women I know, deeply hurt by their family and looking for that escapism, even if it meant finding power in what they’d damaged in her. It might have seemed crass, Jessy’s backstory being what it was, but it was very much a reality for me, for my female friends, and for many other young girls. When you’re damaged that early on, you learn to survive using whatever you can, even if it means perpetuating your own trauma. Jessy tried to find power in her own trauma, take control of her sexuality and use it as a weapon so no one could ever use it against her again. She hungered for complete control and power over everyone around her, craving to never feel weak again.
This is precisely why she could never have the ending my Gamemaster was hoping for; There was no way Jessy was ever going to willingly be subservient to another person for longer than necessary. She was always going to find a way out, the other side of the coin. Jessy doesn’t want to work for other people to gain power, she wants other people to work to gain power for her. Her Obsession with Artyom was both admiration and jealousy, jealousy for the clear raw power Arytom had at his disposal, she wanted it and if she couldn’t, she didn’t want him to have it, or the power of admiration he had over her. To be admired or noticed by Jessy is dangerous because that means you have some measure of power over her, and she will stop at nothing to snuff that out. She never could have fully sided with Tan, either. He was trying to tame her and put her into an archetype he wanted to fulfill using her’s and other’s sexuality. Jessy is not so easily used anymore, especially when it comes to sex. Despite seeing their help, being lifted up by these people, she will always step on them to climb higher and leave them in the depths. That is her nature.
Beyond Elysium 