Cult of Borem of the Lake of Boiling Mud
The Cult of Borem of the Lake of Boilingg Mud is comprised of a complex hierarchy of cultists who follow Borem and promote his worship, who consider hot mud sacred and seek out natural hot springs for their rituals, which include immersion in boiling mud.
Their bodies are as a result terribly scarred and many do not survive.
The cultists believe that the pain and scarring they endure is a form of sacrifice or devotion to Borem and a means to gain its favor or power.
The cultists of Borem are likely to be encountered near dangerous hot springs, which can provide an additional environmental hazard. These hot springs can be used by the cultists for their rituals, and they can also provide an additional challenge for the characters, as they will have to contend with both the cultists and the hazards of the hot springs. The hot springs can cause damage or injury to creatures that come into contact with them, and they could also make it difficult to move or fight in the area. This can create a more dynamic and challenging encounter, as the characters will have to adapt to the environment and use their resources carefully to overcome the cultists and the hazards of the hot springs.
The cultists are fanatically devoted to Borem and will fight to the death to protect their sacred hot spring. They will use their Borem's Embrace ability to try to immobilize the characters and make them vulnerable to their spear and club attacks.
Borem’s Embrace (1/Day). The cultist touches one creature within 5 feet of it. The target must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be coated in sticky, steaming mud. While it is coated in this way, the target’s speed is halved, it can’t use reactions, and it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage at the start of each of its turns. The effect lasts for 1 minute, until the cultist is incapacitated or dies, or until the target is immersed in water.
The hot spring itself is also a hazard, as the characters must make a Dexterity saving throw (DC 10) to avoid falling in and taking 2D6 fire damage, with an additional 2D6 at the beginning of any round while they are in the hot water. Characters that fall into the hot spring will also become coated in the sticky mud which will affect their mobility and actions.
To make the encounter more challenging, the cultists have set up traps around the hot spring, such as tripwires that trigger rock slides or steam vents that can cause damage, as well as caltrops hidden under the pools of mud.
Structure
Decentralized groups of 4 - 16 cultists, always an even number, who pray to Borem as their only deity and from him are granted limited powers, like a shabby warlock patronage. The brewing and manipulations of semi-sentient mud that their rites require cause heavy metal poisoning in the cultists over time, leading to extended madness and eventually, organ failure and death.
Culture
Cult of mud-slathered semi nudists inflicting blistering burns from boiling mud on recruits. Performing a certain ritual and killing an unwilling victim by means of the boiling mud will open a portal to Murk, from which the minions of Borem can enter other worlds.
Public Agenda
The Mudders seek the supremacy of their mindless deity of destruction and ruin, though their motivations for this outcome may vary widely. Some are convinced that only through a great purge can the world be born anew and begin to heal; others come from trauma in life such that they seek only the destruction of themselves and others as the only true justice.
Assets
Actively, literally, nothing other than mud and a recipe for combining it with plasmic essence to give it the same semi-sentience as their mindless deity, which was once just a normal muddy lake.
Mythology & Lore
The Mudders (Or Boremites, as they're sometimes called) have no strict dogma or sacred texts, they do have a small body of Mythology associated with Borem and the Land of Murk, which is both a physical place and a spiritual/metaphysical dimension connected to, but separate from, the real world.
The story told around campfires as they plot their next victim's kidnapping is rumored to go like this:
"Murk has ever been, and will always be, the undisturbed darkness and wetness under the world, the domain of transition and a barrier between the solid lands of mortals and the endless depths the sea where Gorgasuul is Lord. Dragons from the solid lands dove too deep for knowledge, and their delving with Gorgasuul brought forth a murky fruit, the fruit of sapience
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