Heretics

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ENEMY STAFF
Heretic	Access: Wherever your job has access to Additional Access: Wherever you can break into or teleport to. Difficulty: VERY HARD Supervisors: F̸̪̞͊͒̉ǒ̴͓̘r̸̲̮̎̾͝ǵ̶͙̭̅͝ọ̴͊̓̀t̷̬̋͗͒t̶͍̓̑̕e̵̩͓͆͂̌n̴̡͚̦͌̀͠ ̸͈̼̠̾͑g̵̟͚̖̽̈͗ő̸͌͘ͅd̸̨͙͕̅s̵̹̜͈̓̊ Duties: Find influences, realize they've all been taken. Sacrifice people and become all powerful (or die trying). Guides: This is the guide. Quote: ADMIN HALP MEEEEEE

"Forgotten, devoured, gutted. Humanity has forgotten the eldritch forces of decay, but the mansus veil has weakened. We will make them taste fear again..."

So you're a heretic? Well, get ready for magic and battle. Grab influences, complete sacrifices, accomplish rituals, and ascend to godhood.

The Mansus Veil Weakens

You are a nasty little bookworm in search of truth and power, and you have arrived on a station ripe with opportunities. The ultimate goal of a heretic is to research knowledge of the Mansus. Every knowledge gained grants you new abilities and unlocks new rituals until you become all-powerful.

You can gain knowledge points and become stronger through a few ways:

• Harvest knowledge by draining pierces in reality located around the station of power
• Wait for new knowledge to be revealed to you over time
• Sacrificing crew members your dark patrons may hunger for.

To aid you in acquiring forbidden powers, you start with some important knowledge:

• Break of Dawn, which grants you the Mansus Grasp, a modular spell that, without upgrades, lets you touch a target to cause a short knockdown, 67 stamina damage and light brute damage, on a 10 second cooldown. As you grow in power, your Grasp will gain additional effects. This counts as magic, so don't try using it on anyone with anti-magic.
• The Living Heart, which grants you a Living Heart. This knowledge turns your actual heart (if your species has one) into a Living Heart, which allows you to track your sacrifice targets. You gain the ability to pulse your Living Heart, which directs you to one of your sacrifice targets. Template:Leftclick the action will let you chose which to track, while Template:Rightclick will skip selection and track your last chosen target. Be careful - pulsing your heart will produce an audible heartbeat that people nearby may hear. If you lose your heart due an accident, you will need to complete a ritual to regain it.
• Amber Focus, which allows you to create a Focus. Focuses are necessary in order for you to cast your more advanced spells, so try to keep one handy just in case.

All of these are critical to your ascension, so don't lose them, and keep them hidden from security!

• Heartbeat of the Mansus, which allows you to sacrifice your targets to the Mansus. Bring one of your targets back to a rune in critical condition or dead and invoke the rune. This will send your sacrifice to the Shadow Realm and reward you with 2 knowledge points (or 3, if they're a head of staff!).

These basic knowledges are critical to acquiring enough power to ascend, so get familiar.

Sacrificing

The Mansus desires only a select few crewmembers at any moment.

At the start of the round you will be assigned four sacrifice targets. You can reroll these with an optional knowledge later on, but until then, you're stuck with those.

• One target will be a Head of Staff. Heads of staff are worth an additional point!
• One target will be a member of security.
• One target will be a member of your department.
• One target will be a completely random crewmember.

You will ONLY be able to sacrifice these targets. Your patrons will not accept just any old assistant.

Follow your Living Heart to your target of choice and incapacitate them through any means necessary. If your target's in critical or dead, they're ready to sacrifice. Drag them over a transmutation rune and invoke the rune to sacrifice them.

Whenever a target is sacrificed, they're healed up and sent to a SHADOW REALM, forced to dodge the Hands of the Mansus to fight for their survival. They'll also lose their memory of whoever sacrificed them, so your ass is covered on that front.

However, if you mess up the target something fierce and they're unable to be revived, they'll make a huge mess over your rune. Keep your sacrifices in good condition, or leave behind a large amount of evidence that you're on the hunt!

Influences

Influences are the easy way to gain power points. Whenever there are heretics aboard Space Station 13, influences will randomly spawn across the station. In this state, influences are only visible to heretics. These are untapped and ripe for the picking. Template:Leftclick on an influence with an empty hand to harvest it, but be careful - anyone examining you may notice something's afoot.

After being harvested, the influence vanish temporarily. Soon after, it will reappear and change its appearance, becoming a pierced reality. More importantly, it will become visible to the entire crew. Influences can only be harvested once, so don't waste time trying to collect those that other heretics have already taken!

(An already harvested influence. Notice the glow.)

Using a Codex Cicatrix to harvest an influence will reward double the knowledge points. Risk for reward!

Heretical Research

Once you have some power points, it's time to research! Open up your Antag Info UI (Action button, top left) and visit the second tab. The research menu forms a branching tree (see below), and your first selection will be to commit to a path that defines your initial abilities and final ascension. You can earn abilities from other paths to a limited degree, but overall your chosen path will heavily influence your play-style.

Transmutation is the Key

Eventually, you'll need to start using proper magics. To draw a transmutation rune, you'll need a writing tool, such as a pen or crayon. Activate Mansus Grasp in your offhand and click on the floor to begin drawing a rune. These runes are green and take up a 3x3 area, and while they can go under other objects, it's best to keep them clear for transmutation purposes.

You can remove runes by using your Mansus Grasp on it, and you can also freely use other heretics' runes.

To transmute, simply click the rune with an empty hand while the appropriate object(s) are on top of it, making sure that nothing else is in the way. Transmutation Rituals allow you to create powerful artifacts, demonic monsters, and many useful tools that will help you progress towards ultimate power.

The Codex Cicatrix can also draw and remove runes, and does it as a faster rate than doing it by hand.

Focus is Necessary

To cast more advanced spells, you must be wearing a focus. A focus can be made by transmuting a glass sheet and a pair of eyes. This necklace must be worn to gain its effects.

Some more powerful heretic equipment also functions as a focus - Namely, the Ominous Armor from the Armorer's Ritual (when the hood is flipped up).

Heretic Blade

The Heretic Blade will be your first unlocked research. It can be created by transmuting a common knife or equivalent with a secondary ingredient based on your path, and serves as a powerful melee weapon, or broken to serve as one-use escape tool.

All paths have their own kind of blade, which only differ in appearance and name without any additional research. As with the Mansus Grasp, your blade will be upgraded by your research over time. Said upgrades will differ depending on the path you choose.

You are limited in the amounts of blades you can create at a time - Ash, Void, and Rust limit you to two blades, and Flesh limits you to three. Try not to lose them!

Additionally, you can break your blade by activating it in-hand to teleport to a random, (mostly) safe location in a pinch. Better to lose your weapon and live another day than die fighting.

Paths of The Mansus

There are different aspects of the arcane to which you can devote yourself. While all rituals and spells can be learned, your first and most important choice will decide how your weapon and grasp will evolve, and how your final ascension will transform you.

Path	Name	Description
Path of Ash	Nightwatcher's secret	The Path of Ash revolves around fire, mobility, crowd control and being a sneaky fucker that can jaunt while handcuffed. It grants the most forgiving abilities for a new heretic, such as the aforementioned jaunt and a potential mass heal, and is highly recommended for first-timers. It doesn't have the most powerful abilities until the later game, but it is still enjoyable. Ascending gives you the power to burn down the station in a living tornado of flame.
Path of Rust	Blacksmith's Tale	The Path of Rust is about healing, corruption and brute forcing through all obstacles, at the cost of stealth. Rust gives you abilities that can one shot silicons, fry any electronics, destroy any turfs and take down any non-living being, while creating rusted tiles and healing while standing on them. Rust also grants access to some pretty powerful spells, making it a difficulty middle ground. Ascending grants you unparalleled healing and survivability.
Path of Flesh	Principle of Hunger	The Path of Flesh focuses on resurrection and summoning player-controlled minions. Heretics on this path gain almost no offensive or defensive abilities and rely heavily on stockpiling corpses, but Flesh offers many fun and powerful tools to those who can make it to the end, making it the hardest path overall for inexperienced heretics. Ascending allows you to shed your human form and become something much greater.

Abilities

Below is a table with all your abilities. Upon choosing a path, you begin at the top of the tree, moving straight downwards; the first few abilities you unlock are thus based on your path. However, some abilities are located between paths, and can be unlocked by moving sideways once you're adjacent to them. With enough points, you can theoretically unlock all of these 'neutral' abilities, as well as dipping into other paths' abilities, but you can only ever unlock one Mark and one Blade/Steel ability, and you can only unlock the ascension that matches your starting path.

In the below tree, dark colored abilities can only be obtained by starting on the corresponding path, green abilities are "neutral" abilities that you can use to cross paths, and light colored abilities can be earned by any path by first going through the neutral ones.

The Heretic Ability Tree

	Path of Ash		Path of Flesh		Path of Rust
	Locksmith's Secret		Principle of Hunger		Blacksmith's Tale
	Follow the ashen path. Transmute a knife with a match for an ashen blade.		Follow the flesh path. Transmute a knife and a pool of blood into a flesh blade.		Follow the rust path. Transmute a knife and a trash item into a rusty blade.
	Grasp of Ash		Grasp of Flesh		Grasp of Rust
	Your mansus grasp now blinds opponents.		Your mansus grasp now raises dead players into ghouls, ONCE per player. They look like husks and have 25 HP.		Your mansus grasp now deal 500 damage to inorganic matter. Rusts any surface it's used on, and destroys any surface that is already rusty.
Priest's Ritual	Ashen Shift	Ashen Eyes	Imperfect Ritual	Armorer’s ritual	Leeching Walk	Priest's Ritual
Transmute a tank of water into a flask(50u) of eldritch water. Heals a bit of everything, harms others a bit in everything.	A jaunt spell that makes you immaterial and pass through walls. Very short duration, you will only manage 5-6 tiles in a straight line.	Transmute a shard of glass with eyes organ to produce an amulet of heatvision. You can see better in the dark, and can see living beings through walls.	Transmute a corpse and a poppy into a voiceless death: mute ghouls with 50hp, but no voice. Limit of 2 at a time.	Transmute a table (built) and a gasmask to create a suit of armor. The suit more or less halves damage received.	You slowly heal while standing on rusted tiles.	Transmute a tank of water into a flask(50u) of eldritch water. Heals a bit of everything, harms others a bit in everything.
	Mark of Ash		Mark of Flesh		Mark of Rust
	Your mansus applies ash marks on touch. Attack a marked person with your blade to deal stamina damage and burning. The burning spreads to other people, becoming a bit stronger each time.		Your mansus applies flesh marks on touch. Attack a marked person with your blade to make them bleed profusely.		Your mansus applies rust marks on touch. Attack a marked person with your blade to deal 0-200 damage to items they are carrying.
Guise of Istasha	Mask of Madness	Curse of Alteration	Raw Ritual	Blood Siphon	Aggressive Spread	Guise of Istasha
Transmute a circuit board and a glass shard into a digital camouflage amulet. It will make it impossible for the ai to see you through cameras when worn.	Transmute a pair of eyes, a screwdriver and a pool of blood to create a Mask of Madness. It causes passive stamina damage and hallucinations to everyone around the wearer. Can be forced on a non believer to make him unable to take it off...	Transmute a knife, pool of blood, left and right leg, a hatchet and an item that the victim touched to curse them for 5 minutes of leg paralysis.	Transmute eyes, a left arm, right arm and a pool of blood into a Raw Prophet. Raw prophets have increased seeing range, as well as Xray. But are very fragile and weak.	A touch spell that steals a bit of life from others to heal you.	Spreads rust to nearby turfs. Destroys already rusted walls.	Transmute a circuit board and a glass shard into a digital camouflage amulet. It will make it impossible for the ai to see you through cameras when worn.
	Fiery Blade		Bleeding Steel		Toxic Blade
	Your blade adds firestacks to those you attack.		Your blade causes additional bleeding to those you attack.		Your blade causes toxic damage to those you attack.
Cleave	Fiery Rebirth	Ashen Ritual	Lonely Ritual	Rusted Ritual	Entropic Plume	Cleave
A ranged spell that gives bleeding wounds to the target and those around them.	Drains nearby alive people that are engulfed in flames. It heals 10 of each damage type per person. If a person is in critical condition it finishes them off.	Transmute a pile of ash, a head and a book to summon an ashman. Ashmen have ashen shift, and a spell that lets them send off a great wave of fire.	Transmute a knife, a flower, a pen and a piece of paper to summon a Stalker. Stalkers can shapeshift into different creatures to blend in, inheriting their stats.	Transmute a vomit pool, a head and a book to summon a Rust Walker. Rust walkers can walk around and shoot waves of rust.	Spews forth a disorienting plume that causes enemies to strike each other, briefly blinds them and poisons them. Also spreads rust in the path of the plume.	A ranged spell that gives bleeding wounds to the target and those around them.
	Ashlord's Rite		Priest’s Final Hymn		Rustbringer’s Oath
	Transmute 3 corpses to ascend and become immune to fire/cold and space. You gain two spells: to surround yourself with fire for a minute, and to send off a massive fire wave like ashmen.		Transmute 3 corpses to ascend as Lord of the night or summon a terror of the night.		Transmute 3 corpses to ascend. While on rust tiles, your healing is tripled. Rust also spreads from the ritual's rune.

Tips

• Remember that you first need to get a target before you can do any sacrificing... to get a target use your living heart to identify and track them then bring them in any condition to a rune.(people seem to think you can just sacrifice anybody you kill)
• You may reroll your targets with a certain ritual.
• If you ever lose your Codex, you can transmute a new one by combining a bible, human skin, a pen and a pair of eyes.
• If you ever lose your Living Heart, you can transmute a new one by combining a normal heart, a poppy (check the chapel!) and a blood splatter.
• If your transmutations are failing, make sure your codex is on your person!
• Many unlockable transmutations require body parts or whole corpses. You can get these from your victims, as well as by raiding the Morgue, or with the correct access, turning monkeys into catatonic humans.
• A Knife counts as any of the following items: Kitchen knife, Bone dagger, Survival Knife, Combat knife, Carrot shiv, Butchers cleaver, Venom knife, Ritual knife and shank. Any of them can be used to create your heretic blade.
• Even if you never fight other heretics, you're inherently at odds with them. Each influence can only be harvested once, so the heretic that goes the fastest and grabs the most influences first has to do less killing and sacrificing to reach their ascensions.
• As a heretic, access is more important than ever! The more areas you can easily access, the more influences you'll be able to snag. Getting all access can be a godsend, and knowing how to either hack or talk your way into other departments can help you beat other heretics to the free points.
• Even after ascension, you aren't completely invincible. Don't get too hasty and end up eating a barrage of deadly lasers to the face.
• Silicons are unable to see your powers and Influences, use this to your advantage.

---

As any student of Histories knows, the Mansus has no walls.

Mortals have classified the Mansus into three loosely-defined Paths.

Ash, Flesh, Void and Rust.

We bid you Ẅ̸̻̰̗͍̪͔́̌̕ḛ̴͔̖̈̀͒l̶͚͇̺̤̊̀̽͒̚͘c̴̭̮̐͛͛̈́o̵̱̹̔̊̏̽̅́̏ṃ̶̓͐́̋͝e̵̛̺̬͉͘͜ to our *̶̨̩̣̥͇̜̼̫̍̊̅̑̑͒̏̔̚@̵̄̎̏̍̈̒̓͜£̵̡̧̜̹͔̖̘̪̮͔̈́̇̋̌̽͠"̷̢̧͚̜̫̜͈͇̮̮͎̆́̽̐̌͜͝ͅ#̷̢̢͍̰̭̺̠̮̟̟̓̈́̊͊̀̓̿͐̓̀̎͜͠%̶̰͉̙̜̝͕͔̘͗̎̾̈́̉̈́̀̓͊̆͘̕#̸̢͙̤̯̏͗̉͛̚͝}̴͖̭̤̣̦̀͗͜€̷̨̳͓͈̣̹̘͕̬̝̓́̾͑̚̚¤̷̧̢̢͖̻̘͕͍̮̰̘͉͕̻͇̀̄̈́̓̕̚

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