Interview with the Authors

This is a Q&A with the original authors of Kult, Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén. It is a collec-
tion of questions posed by the Kult community as well as by Neko of le 7éme Cercle, who is also the one
to thank for this release. It is in a very raw and unedited format to avoid losing context.
NOTE: It is not recommended that players of Kult read this text. It is intended for Game
Masters only. It also does contain certain elements which might ‘spoil’ your game even if you are a Game
Master! You have been warned...
-Torben Rygg, www.kult-rpg.com

1. Who was the Demiurge?
Whether the Demiurge was ever a ’mere’ human or not
seem to us like a plot concern. If it suits the campaign
of the gamemaster, then be it so. Personally, we like to
set him apart from other creatures. After all, in a mytho-
logical context he is God and to uphold that status he
needs to be unique. For the gnostic background to work
out well, we also feel that the Demiurge must take the
position of absent God. The idea of a protestant (stern
and very patriarchal) God in a gnostic context is much
influenced by the Swedish early 19th Century poet
Stagnelius. We don’t know if his work has been trans-
lated into French, but he could maybe be described as a
Swedish Rimbaud of the 1820’s.
2. Why did humanity fall?
The Demiurge probably told himself that imprisoning
humanity it was the right thing to do. Maybe because
of humans becoming too dangerous. In reality the De-
miurge wanted power over humans and creation, and
thus created the prison. What ‘really’ happened (did the
Demiurge exist before humanity? was he human? was
there a conflict before imprisonment?) we choose to
leave out. We feel that for the religious context of the
game to work these ‘pre-historical’ happenings need be
mythological, not factual.
3. Who is Astaroth now? Did he meet the Demi-
urge?
Astaroth ruled the Infernos where humans who felt
they deserved to be punished travelled. In that sense,
he was like a lictor and other guardians of humanity’s
prison. But we never envisioned him as created con-
sciously by the Demiurge. Rather, he is the Shadow of
the Demiurge. Like a human transcending to the light
unconsciously creates a dark ‘twin’, we see Astaroth as
the twin of the Demiurge. He was created at the same
time as the Illusion. Creating the Illusion was a ‘bad’
thing, even the Demiurge sensed that, and thus that act
caused a split in his being.
Astaroth travelled to look for the Demiurge and never
told anyone if he found him. As we see it, he didn’t. The
Demiurge is gone and Astaroth is at a loss without him.
He can’t merge with the Demiurge, since he is gone.
What he can do is to become the new Demiurge, if
humanity crave a God. Then he must change his ways
considerably and in all effects become the new Demi-
urge and loose himself. Will he do that? Can he even?
We don’t know. We feel he works best as irresolute. And
after all, he can stay undecided for quite a long time.
4. Where is the Demiurge?
Dead and Gone! That is a basic concept for the game.
He won’t be coming back, unless Astaroth takes his
place, and he will be quite another Demiurge.
5. What is keeping Astaroth away from the Illusion?
To take over the Illusion, Astaroth has to adhere to its
rules. If he breaks too many of them, the whole prison
could fall apart and humanity be freed. He doesn’t want
that. He wants control over the Illusion, but is unsure
as to how to achieve that. He can’t easily take command
over lictors and arconts, who will fight to keep him away
from what they now sense is their world. So, he is plan-
ning a slow ‘infernalization’ of the world while trying to
get lictors and other servants to convert to his side.
6. What about Malkuth and Tipareth?
Malkuth is sponsoring magical and scientific research
trying to find ways to a ‘fast awakening’ of humans.
She realizes that letting everyone try to awaken by
themselves would take forever. She is using Tipareths
influence to get access to levels of society she would
otherwise be kept away from. How long Tipareth will
play along? Who knows?
Interview with the authors of the Kult RPG - 1
7. How many awakened are there? What are they we felt that the game characters should be small and
vulnerable in a large and nasty world. The gnostic back-
doing? ground gave all that. The gnosticism also took away the
Not too many. It is hellishly difficult to become awak- name God from God. We didn’t want to offend chris-
ened, so no more than a thousand souls would seem tian people by playing around too obviously with their
reasonable. Like Malkuth, they are somewhat at a loss religion (some got offended anyway, but most took it
as to what to do. Few know what would really happen if well).
they tried to ‘crash’ the illusion. Would people die per-
manently? Would they really be awakened? Or go mad?
Nobody knows. Since becoming awakened is a rather 14. Why did we stop writing for Kult?
time consuming thing, most are patient beings. They The game got out of print in Sweden and no more
take their time and try to figure out a working plan. So material was needed. For a while we made convention
far no one has come up with one. scenarios, but for now, we just write for private play.

8. Is Messiah the Demiurge’s son? KULT answers part 2

No, we don’t think so. The Demiurge had no children.
Messiah is an awakened human who can’t abide with 1. Q: Are the missing Archons dead or disappeared?
the others wait and see attitude. He talks of himself as
Son of God to lower the Demiurge to human levels, What happened to them?
rather than elevate himself. He wants to take action, A: They are gone. Their disappearance is part of what
preferably now, something that tends to rush him into made the illusions crumble. The remaining ones are
situations he can’t handle. aware that their existence is part of what is keeping
the illusion together, so they will try to keep each other
alive. We have never specified exactly what happened
9. What is Lore of Reality? to the missing ones. They were somehow destroyed in
To magically influence things beyond the illusion. the infighting that took place after the disappearance of
Awakened could learn to do that, as could some other the Demiurge. Some may even have chosen destruction
powerful creatures and maybe, maybe som very special rather than further existence when the Demiurge was
non-awakened humans. A plot devise, not to be used gone.
too often.
2.Q: Will Archons survive the awakening of hu-
10. What was the world like before the fall? manity? If not, why is Malkuth trying to awaken
Much of that which was before is left in Metropolis,
Gaia and other places outside the illusion. We like to people?
think of it as ‘modern’, not a fantasy setting like Mel- A: Nobody, not even the Archons themselves, knows
nibonë. whether they would survive the destruction of the illu-
sion. Malkuth probably hopes that awakening humanity
11. Who are the humans in Metropolis? will free her as well, maybe changing her and turning
Inprisoned humans who have escaped our world, but her into something new. But such an event could just
not awakened. They are just as lost as the rest of us. as well destroy the Archons. From a storytelling per-
spective we find it most rewarding to let those Archons
capable of change survive, while the least flexible would
12. Who are the gods, like Shiva? rather choose to be destroyed.
They are independent creatures, some created before
the Illusion. Most are unique, like the Demiurge or the
Arconts. They seldom belong to a species, like human- 3. Q: How do you see ancient everyday life of humans
ity. Some are created by humans or other creatures, like before the fall?
the Demiurge created Arconts. A: We envision it a bit like the existence of “The Danc-
ers at the End of Time” from Michael Moorcock’s sto-
13. Why the gnostic background? ries – more like what sci-fi authors call “post-human”
We wanted a mythological background for the game, to than a religiously inspired heavenly life. But we haven’t
be able to incorporate characters like Messiah, Astaroth elaborated on it, rather leaving it open to fill in the gaps
and different gods. Kult is basically a horror game so when needed for the story.
2 - Interview with the authors of the Kult RPG
 ened as player characters, so our advice isn’t any more
4. Q:What is the vision of an Awakened? Could he or “expert like” than anyone elses. But we can try to give
some thoughts on the subject:
she live a normal life?
A: Each Awakened in our stories is made up specifically The rules of the game won’t really hold for that kind of
for a plot purpose. We like to make them at bit larger characters. One would have to play “free form”, with-
than life without loosing all feeling of normality. For out rules. We have done that rather often as it is. They
us it works out best when we create an ordinary (in a game works out pretty well as a free form RPG. As you
psychological sense) character and then put him or her mentioned in your question, there would then be a risk
in the abnormal situation of being immortal, bestowed of “power gaming”, with players failing to capture the
with more knowledge than he or she has asked for and special qualities that make the Awakened unique and
often burdened with a sense of responsibility that some thereby compromising the logic of the game world.
will readily take on, others try to get rid of. In that way,
The hardest part, we think, is to get that “sense of
we get different responses from the characters, depend- enlightenment” into the characters. They are supposed
ing on their personality. Some will retire from the world,to see the world as it is, without prejudice and with a
some will take rash action to change things, others will self-knowledge denied most people. To be convincing
take upon themselves to be the teachers of their more Awakened they have to have a god-like feeling to them.
ignorant fellow humans. Many of our ideas about how With a non-player character you can deliberately leave
people would react to immortality or strange powers large parts out of the picture, thereby creating a feeling
were inspired by science fiction stories. that there is more knowledge or depth to the character
than you see. That’s harder to do in casual dialogue be-
Surely an Awakened can fall in love with non-awakened tween players characters. But it’s all up to the players
and live a normal life. They don’t necessarily like each to pull it off, of course. If they think they can make it
other better than the non-awakened humans. We have work, then they should try.
envisioned the Awakened as a rather strange lot. They
are often more individualistic, and sometimes egotistic, For the game master, the problem is to create stories
than most people. Some of them will take advantage of working for characters who can freely use all the magic
the situation and exploit their blinded comrades. But available in the game and see into Metropolis, Gaia or
they will never regard the imprisoned humans as “ani- whatever place lies beyond the illusion. The stories that
mals” or “lowly creatures”. The very nature of awak- come to our minds are scenarios based in a realistic
ening implies that they perceive all things as they are. setting, but with carefully tailor-made places “beyond
They see the blindness of ordinary people as something the veil” that carries enough symbolism to give the
temporary, and in a sense inconsequential. plot several layers – religious, psychological, maybe
political. The standard settings described in the game
5. Q: There is a rumour for the Demiurge walking probably won’t do. It will have to be settings more di-
rectly connected to the player characters. We think such
among us having forgotten who he was. Is it impos- stories need to have a strong “human connection”. In
sible? the end it has to be about ordinary people. They are,
A: We left the background of the game open to let peo- after all, the gods that the all the powerful creatures of
ple create their own stories. So nothing’s definitely im- the universe (among them the Awakened) go to great
possible. But it won’t happen in any of our campaigns. pains to keep locked up or to release. They have to be
The Demiurge’s disappearance is an important “base at the centre of it all. Letting Awakened characters play
fact” that makes the world of KULT what it is. out petty intrigue against each other or start crusades
against Astaroth will turn into a fantasy game. Nothing
wrong with that, but we don’t think that’s the strength
No number. Q: What are your thoughts of playing of KULT. This sounds kind of fuzzy, we know, but
Awakened? hopefully it makes some sense.
A: As mentioned above, we mainly constructed the
Awakened as plot devices. Our own stories have all Reality magic will have to be totally story dependent,
been based in (more or less) realistic settings. While with incantations created for specific events to occur
using mentally very unbalanced characters for some (like the magic created by the black messiah to start Ar-
shorter stories, we always found them somewhat im- mageddon in one of the convention scenarios). We like
practical in longer story arcs. We have never used Awak- to let the game master always have a last say in what is

Interview with the authors of the Kult RPG - 3

possible and what is not, in a magical sense.
Reproduction on www.Kult-RPG.com kindly granted by
Neko / 7eme Cercle October 2005.
6. Q: What do you call “forgotten gods”? Are they
Questions, Management: Neko
similar in powers to ancient humans? Copy-N-Paste Editor: torb
A: We use the term for unique beings, most of them Brushes: Annika von Holdt
created before the fall of humanity. They can be very
different from each other and from Awakened humans.
It’s basically just a term for powerful creatures that are
somehow independent from the power structure of the
This is an unofficial product. We have been given permis-
illusion and hell. sion to release this by courtesy of Neko at 7éme Cercle,
October 2005.
8. Q: Who is the conjurer in “Inferno” who took the Kult is copyright Paradox Entertainment, and is currently
place of a dead Death angel? licensed to 7th Circle - for official information, please visit
www.7emecercle.com.
A: We’re not sure. We didn’t write that supplement (or
if we did, we have totally forgotten about it!) and can’t
seem to find it among our books (editors note: it was writ-
ten by Richard Dakan). In principle, a human shouldn’t
be able to take the place of a Death Angel. Possibly a
human could be destroyed (very uncommon) to restore
the principle upheld by the Death Angel. If we used it
in a story, it would have to be a voluntary act of self
destruction.

9. Q: The rumours about being able to break the illu-

sion with the seven occult lores, is it true?
A: Yes, it is true. Magic is a tool constructed partly to
tear down the illusion.

10. Q: Have we hade favourite scenarios or charac-

ters?
A: We liked the campaign published (somewhat short-
ened) as “Taroticum” a lot. We felt that it captured the
spirit of the game in a good way, and had much fun
playing it.

11. Q: Some awakened seem to have awakened pretty

fast. Like da Vinci and Messiah. Is violent sacrifice
the clue?
A: Did we really make Leonardo da Vinci into an awak-
ened? If so, it seems like a mistake in retrospect ? If
he really is awakened it must have taken some hundred
years to achieve. As for Messiah, he is a special case. We
happily admit we can’t explain his Awakening in game
terms. The game is after all based on Christian myths,
so he should have a special place in the story. We owe
him that. (The painful death had nothing to do with
it.)

4 - Interview with the authors of the Kult RPG