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 | }==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 p |
| Path of Void | Glimmer of Winter | The Path of Void focuses on stealth, silence and the freezing cold. While the path offers very little utility early on, they quickly gain the ability to silence and freeze their victims, opening the window to silently ambush targets with no other items or chemicals required. It also offers full immunity to freezing temperatures, an invisible armored cloak (with pockets!), and later a targeted blink that damages anything nearby. The path has access to many strong transmuted items, but requires smart use to realize their full potential, making it moderately difficult but a good beginner choice. Ascending silences those around you and makes you the eye of a deadly blizzard. |
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
The Heretic Ability Tree | Path of Ash | Path of Flesh | Path of Void | Path of Rust | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nightwatcher's Secret | Principle of Hunger | Glimmer of Winter | 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 void path. Transmute a knife in a sub-zero temperature into a void blade. Limit of two at a time. |
 Follow the rust path. Transmute a knife and a trash item into a rusty blade. |
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| Grasp of Ash | Grasp of Flesh | Grasp of Void | 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 temporarily mutes your victim 8 seconds and lowers their body temperature |
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. |
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| Priest's Ritual | Ashen Shift | Ashen Eyes | Imperfect Ritual | Void Cloak | Aristocrat's Way | 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 glass shard, any item of clothing that you can fit over your uniform and any type of bedsheet. Creates a cloak that can become invisible at will. It has extra storage space, hiding items you store in it as well as being invisible in strip searches. The cloak is somewhat armored. DOES NOT MAKE YOU INVISIBLE, JUST ITSELF. THE CLOAK IS ALSO AN OUTERWEAR SLOT ITEM, NOT CLOAK SLOT. |
 You no longer need to breathe, and become immune to cold temperatures. You can still take damage from lack of pressure. |
 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 Void | 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 grasp applies void mark on hit. Attack a marked person with your blade to lower their body temperature significantly. |
Your mansus applies rust marks on touch. Attack a marked person with your blade to deal 0-200 damage to items they are carrying. |
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| Curse of Corrosion | Mask of Madness | Curse of Paralysis | Raw Ritual | Carving Knife | Void Phase | Mawed Crucible | Aggressive Spread | Curse of Corrosion |
 Transmute wirecutters, a pool of vomit, a heart, and an item containing fingerprints to cast a curse of plague on one of the fingerprints' owners for two minutes. While cursed, the victim will repeatedly vomit while their organs will take constant damage. |
 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 hatchet, a left and right leg, and an item containing fingerprints to cast a curse of immobility on one of the fingerprints' owners for five minutes. While cursed, the victim will be unable to walk." |
 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. |
 Transmute a knife,a glass shard and a piece of paper to create a Carving Knife. The knife, while also being a strong throwing weapon, allows you to create up to 3 carvings on the floor that have various effects on nonbelievers who walk over them. The runes are detailed later in this page. |
 You gain a long range blink that allows you to instantly teleport to a targeted location. Teleporting causes AoE damage around you and your targeted location |
 Transmute a table with a water tank to create a Mawed Crucible. The Crucible allows you to create potions of various effects (detailed later in this page). It starts with enough liquid to create 1 potion, but it can be refilled with organs/body parts. |
 Spreads rust to nearby turfs. Destroys already rusted walls. |
Transmute wirecutters, a pool of vomit, a heart, and an item containing fingerprints to cast a curse of plague on one of the fingerprints' owners for two minutes. While cursed, the victim will repeatedly vomit while their organs will take constant damage. |
| Fiery Blade | Bleeding Steel | Seeking blade | Toxic Blade | |||||
| Your blade adds firestacks to those you attack. |
Your blade causes additional bleeding to those you attack. |
You can now use your blade on a distant marked target to move to them and attack them. |
Your blade causes toxic damage to those you attack. |
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| Blood Cleave | Nightwatcher's Rebirth | Ashen Ritual | Lonely Ritual | Blood Siphon | Void Pull | Rusted Ritual | Entropic Plume | Blood 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. |
 A ranged spell that steals a bit of life from your target, healing your bruises and restoring blood. Additionally, you have a chance of transferring wounds you are experiencing to the target. |
 An AoE spell that damages all enemies adjacent to you. Nearby enemies are also knocked down and stunned, and distant enemies are dragged closer to you. |
 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 | Waltz at the End of Time | Rustbringer’s Oath | |||||
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 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. |
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 Transmute 3 corpses to ascend as Lord of the night or summon a terror of the night. |
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 Transmute 3 corpses in a frozen area to Ascend. Causes a violent storm of void snow to assault the station, freezing and damaging heathens. Those nearby will be silenced and frozen even quicker. Additionally, you will become immune to the effects of space. |
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 Transmute 3 corpses to ascend. While on rust tiles, your healing is tripled. Rust also spreads from the ritual's rune. |
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Tips
- Unlike most other solo antagonists, Heretics start weak but grow stronger over time. It would be best not to attract too much attention to yourself until you unlock more powerful spells and equipment.
- 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.
- 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.
- Your Mansus Grasp will temporarily garble the speech of people who you use it on. This can let you get away with murder while comms are online, but be careful - it's not foolproof!
- Influences can spawn in almost any location on the station, ranging from the main hallways and public restrooms to Command staff offices and restricted security areas in the Brig. It's best to check every area you can access, public and department.
- If you can't find any influences by peaking in windows, try getting to a Security Camera Console either breaking into a security post or by building your own. Simply cycle through the cameras and make note of any influences you see. Do watch your back while doing this, you don't want to be busted by an officer while you're distracted!
- 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.
- Drawing new runes requires you to stand still for a very long time. Draw your runes beforehand to avoid having to hold on to a body for much longer, and to leave quicker. You might not have time to draw a rune if Security is hot on your tail.
- The Mawed Crucible can be wrenched/unwrenched by using your Codex or your Mansus Grasp on it, allowing you to relocate if necessary.
- You can create two blades as most heretics, or three as flesh / five as blade. Carry an extra in your bag to break in case you need to escape from a sticky situation. You can also carry blades on your Eldritch Armor and Void Cloak!
- The Carving Knife, while useful for making defensive traps, is also a robust throwing weapon with high embed chance. Make a few of them for a good ranged weapon!
- Having Aristocrat's Way researched allows you to spacewalk with only a firefighting suit and helmet, as they are pressure resistant. Useful if your job doesn't have access to actual spacesuits/hardsuits.
- Entropic Plume causes any living mob caught in the plume to randomly strike other nearby mobs, which includes Beepsky and other Securitrons. Use sec's robot pets against them!
- 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.
- Pierced Realities cause harm to non-heretics depending on how you interact with them. Examining them as a non-heretic deals 10 brain damage. Interacting with them as a non-heretic has a 1/4 chance of your arm being eaten up by it. Interacting with them as a non-heretic using telekinesis will cause your head to literally explode in a very flashy manner.
- When starting out, you may want to rely on certain makeshift weapons. You can craft flashlight eyes for use in certain rituals, and create shivs by wrapping cloth (cut up bedsheets) around a shard of glass to transmute your blade.
- Live or die, victims you send to the shadow realm will never remember that you did it. This means that for avoiding detection, the most important thing is to make sure nobody else knows about you.
- Your Ritual of Knowledge is a great way to get a ton of points without drawing too much attention (probably.) Completing it as soon as possible is a good way to get a lot of power fast.
- By default, nothing on you is incriminating. If security suspects you, but can't actually pin anything heretical on you, you might be able to pass off as a Traitor instead.
- Monkeys, and monkey-humans (created by giving a monkey mutadone) make for great, usually non-suspicious sources of organs or corpses for your heretical rituals.
- Security about to check out your ritual hideout? Remember your grasp can instantly destroy a circle, leaving no evidence behind you were up to no good. But be careful - It'll go on cooldown after, and people may hear the cast sound.
- Remember that other players can hear your Living Heart, too. Don't use it in public unless people are distracted.
- Ashen Shift and Void Phase make for incredibly powerful escape tools. If you have either of these, it might be wise to have an Amber Focus somewhere on you at all times for emergencies.
- Fear the syringe gun. Mute Toxin will single-handedly shut down your ability to cast your spells.
- Summoning rituals can be incredibly powerful if you get a good player on your side.
- Most summoned monsters will drop the components used to create them on death. While having them to die is not ideal, you can easily grab the parts and summon another.
- As a rust heretic, fight in HARM intent, this will prevent accidentally using your mansus grasp on floors or walls.
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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