I will be playing
or this campaign.
Basically the idea behind the culture of mine is that an ancient evil of some kind, fairly Lovecraftian, was bound to the depths of the Earth on this planet, many, many years ago, since it had threatened to destroy the cosmos, or got into a fight with another race of omnipotent being... the history is a bit fuzzy on that part. Either way, this ancient, unspeakable terror remained there, patiently waiting, biding its time, sleeping, dreaming. It spent many years sleeping.
So surely you must understand its confusion when it woke up to find small, tiny, insignificant gnats looking up at it, chanting, dancing, going at things wildly like in that scene of Event Horizon. Yeah, you know which one I mean. Apparently, the old being found out after a brief period of rage, confusion and massive amounts of death, these tiny creatures had heard the call from their master in their dreams, and had gathered into small groups of faithful, growing in numbers, feeding off of the gifts and wonders it had been sending out (purely unconsciously) through its sleep. Some of these followers were, indeed, quite different in appearance from the masses, but all of them were fanatically devoted to this ancient, dreadful being.
This was a completely new experience to It, and one which It was not entirely comfortable with.
However, these small groups had, over time, grown so much in number that, eventually, they had gotten enough power to topple the rulers of the land atop the sleeping monstrosity, and pronounced themselves force majoris, rulers of the land, and heads of the state and church. The ancient evil, nonetheless, had very little interest in the daily going ons of these tiny, insignificant animals, and remained, slumbering, deep underneath the ground, occasionally waking up at the behest of the Pontiffs, the most devout followers. These events, of which there were few, usually heralded a great time of joy and celebration (and darkness and despair for their enemies, usually), and for a while, things were peaceful.
However, even ancient things can die, and foreseeing the destruction of the planet It had called home for so long, the Ancient Evil gathered together the council of Pontiffs, and without much ceremony, planted a seed into each of the 37 Pontiffs, a part of itself that would, eventually, grow into an offspring with equal power to its patron. Naturally, the puny and useless souls of these pontiffs were consumed at the process, driven mad by the overwhelming terror of the darkness between the stars. What remained behind, however, was a new, wide-eyed life, sharing some core memories of it's hosts body, but only in intangible, lucid ways like an intense dream you remember only when a certain smell is in the air.
These 37 seeds were instructed to spread, to bring some of their faithful with them, and seek out power, influence, understanding and, most importantly, ensure the survival of the dark and most evil race so that war could once more be waged upon the timeless beings that had once imprisoned It on this forsaken rock.
Thus,
ound itself alone, relatively weak, with only a handful of followers competent enough to come with It into space. Lacking the technology to fully build it themselves, they sought out other cultures that would do the same, adding their haunting and sometimes unnatural talent for architecture to the lot.