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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psychotic Jim" data-source="post: 5228367" data-attributes="member: 547">Hmm, well, the kidnapping of families, that seems to suggest a lot of significant things to me.  Like, they want to perpetuate something rather than kill.  You mention that most sane people would never join this cult.  Then you're gonna need to have some way of getting fresh meat, so to speak.  The brainwashing thing seems to be the strongest element here, so I'll elaborate on my ideas for that.Why families instead of individuals?With the er... rather thrill-seeking lifestyle of the cult, replacement cultists have to come from somewhere.  Cloning and other similar magics are expensive and draw attention. So the better thing might be to whisk away as many people as you can and brainwash them to be a part of your "bigger family" ala <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome" target="_blank">Stockholm Syndrome.</a>  if you take a family, you can separate them from each other and use threats to loved ones to manipulate the others.  You can also break the weaker links in a family and then recruit them to help break down their stronger relatives.By bringing members of different families together, you can establish your own shadow communities of people who only know life under the rule of the cult.  The descendants of the kidnapped will come out even more brainwashed and disturbed than the "first generation kidnapped".  After all, they'll be brainwashed from birth.  This would be perhaps the most sick and disturbing part of the cult- essentially breeding and raising children to become soulless enforcers of the cult. Why kidnap instead of kill?For survival reasons.  You get nothing (with the possible exception of blessings from the gods).  You kidnap, you brainwash, you procreate, you have yourself a way to prolong the cult’s existence.  Like a twisted version of a big extended family or clan (think the Manson family or any other cult for a feel of the idea here.)  Quick physical deaths compared to this might be merciful.  But you’re inflicting a slow spiritual and psychological death  on people, or at least an existence of living nonliving.  As long as they live, they will be miserable.  And the sick thing here is that- as long as they are brainwashed, they won’t really  comprehend how they’re miserable!What does the ritual accomplish?Perhaps the cult intends to take their “big family” to a whole new level.  Some kind of mythical apocalypse, and they want to be ready.  So everybody’s getting ready to be transformed… into something else.  A new breed of human, something evolved (a race of undead beings?).  See, the whole death/disease angle might not be a end in itself, maybe it’s a means to an end.   That end is to wipe out the nonelite, those who were not chosen by the cult.  To make room for the birth of the new, there has to be a death of the old.Now, this all may be a bunch of superstitious nonsense, but to the cultists it may be real.  Regardless, it doesn’t make this group any less dangerous.</blockquote>

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