Rimworld: The Great Chicken Cult, Prologue

The urbworlds: the wretched hives of scum and villainy dotting the galaxy. These city-covered industrial wastes are notorious for their overcrowded slums, bloodied streets, and choking smog. It is here that the darkest impulses of humanity are unleashed, like a genie uncorked from their magic lamp. Said impulses can fuel the rise of luciferium-dealing drug lords, oppressive mega-corporations, mafia families, or toughened street thugs that oppress and extort their local populations, making already horrible places even worse.
Many years ago, on the planet Ararobos V, exactly this did not happen. Instead, things took a far different path, a far more fowl path.

Nobody knows exactly where or how it started, but one day a new group came to power among the urban sprawl. They called themselves Those Blessed by Poultry, but most would come to know them as the Great Chicken Cult. Their tenets were simple: the humble chicken was the greatest animal of all, and could not be surpassed by any other. Its leader, the Great Poultry, stylized himself/herself as the one who could heed the bawks and clucks of the chickens, and pass on those instructions for their followers to heed. Those who did so correctly could expect redemption and salvation in this life and/or the next.

These simple beliefs attracted many followers from the slum archipelagos to the red-light provinces (you don't... you don't wanna know), all of different backgrounds and types. It did not matter who they were to the Great Poultry, for all were equal in the eyes of the chickens. All spectra of wealth, from the rich who lived in the highest apartment complexes to the downtrodden poor who had to make do in cardboard boxes, were accepted. It did not matter whether they preferred the opposite sex, the same sex, or both. All skin colors were tolerated, and both men and women received equal treatment under the auspices of the Great Poultry.

Some who joined the Cult were not even human.

A digitized version of a Chicken Cult standard recovered from a
crackdown in the New Detroit Precinct.

In just a scant few years, the Cult held de facto power over a quarter of the planet's landmass and showed no signs of slowing down. Its members were passionate and committed to the Great Poultry's cause, who had helped many redeem themselves thanks to the chickens. Ni'Hal could peacefully give up on their goals of galactic genocide, slum dwellers could become wealthy enough to get basic supplies, and criminals could be placated.

Alas, all good things come to an end, and even the Chicken Cult would find itself worn down by the ravaging winds of time over the years. Its leaders became decadent and stopped caring for the needs of its members, using their accumulated wealth to construct monuments to their egomania rather than help the needy. Rumors of the cult's sinister practices of eating and butchering the "unworthy" like their sacred chickens began to spread to the outside world, and previously forbidden acts such as lasciviousness and drug usage became more and more common.

Finally, the remaining authorities on Ararobos banded together to end the chicken madness once and for all. Crackdowns in Cult-controlled city centers began, followed by mass arrests. The streets and plazas quickly became battlegrounds as the cultists stood their ground, who were just as committed as when the first Great Poultry had spread their words to the masses.. In the end, though, their devotion to chickens proved worthless; as the authorities made their way to the Cult's HQ and killed the Great Poultry, along with every chicken they could find. It is far easier to destroy something than to create it, and exactly this had happened to the Chicken Cult. Years of preaching and clucking were undone within a single day, which ended with the final dissolution of the cult.

However, four disciples had managed to pool their wealth together and acquire a starship with which they could escape the planet and spread their word to the masses among the stars. During the final assault on the main base of operations, they grabbed several chickens and entered the ship's cryptosleep sarcophagi. After blasting off and leaving their world behind, they then set a course for the distant rimworlds on the boundaries of known space, where they could evade detection and begin the Chicken Cult anew. After decades of travel, a new Great Poultry shall rise again in the depths of the galaxy...

***

That's right, it's time for another playthrough of Rimworld on this blog! With a successful campaign of my own wrapped up and an even greater list of mods (which I'll provide in a bit), it is time to delve into insanity and use the game's built-in scenario editor to tell the story of a few remaining cultists who settle on a new world with ten of their finest chickens.

Unlike my earlier game, I'm not going to end it on my own terms; instead, I'll just play until either version 1.0 comes out and breaks everything or we get horribly murdered by raiders.

As promised, here's an outlined list of some of the notable mods I'll be using in this game that directly impact gameplay and aren't quality-of-life features on my end. (Since I have, like, 120 of them, listing them all here would be impossible. I might mention some more as they come up). They're all on the Steam Workshop if you think you'd like to try them out for yourself.

UPDATE: I have also uploaded the scenario itself to the Steam Workshop if you're so inclined to play it and discover the depths of my insanity. The public one is slightly modified version of the one I use that replaces the Ni'Hal pistols with vanilla revolvers so you can play it in vanilla. (Feel free to use Prepare Carefully if you have it in this scenario to replace the weapons as you see fit).

• Major Mods
• Races
• Orassans: The cold-loving space kitties are still here in full force with their old wormholes, orbital bombardment, and OP weapons alongside new Stellaris-inspired stuff such as Betharian power generators and neo-concrete fortifications.
• Ni'Hal: A race of genocidal space lizards whose sole motivation is to channel Donald Trump and kill all inferior aliens so they may have undisputed control over the galaxy. Like the Orassans, they come with overpowered weapons and armor, but theirs are a bit more balanced and easier to come by since they raid you a lot.
• Astoriel: These long-lived space elves are xenophobes like the Ni'Hal, only they have more of a "leave us alone and we will do the same to you" mentality.
• Widows: An all-female race of humanoid spiders who have a fungus living inside their pregnant bodies that augments their intelligence (yes). Being all-female, they must seek out compatible mates from other species (I like to imagine they have a preference for humans) to allow them to bear children ovovivoparously (meaning they incubate eggs in their bodies and then birth young live)... and then eat said mates when they're done doing it. They can produce their own silk (for a happiness bonus) that can be used for furniture, armor, or "interesting" sculptures.
• Androids: Sapient robots often with feminine appearance and programming who can either be built or encountered.
• Features
• Nature's Pretty Sweet: Adds new biomes such as salt flats, lava fields, and desert oases inspired by American national parks. Also, it revamps weather and water behavior in vanilla biomes.
• Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering (EPOE): Make limb and organ replacements ranging from simple peg legs to uranium-augmented advanced bionics and cybernetics.
• Hospitality: Recruit otherwise useless visitors to your cause and/or entertain them by building guest rooms and amenities.
• No Water, No Life: Now your colonists need water as much as food.
• Colony Manager: A quality-of-life mod that automatically designates stuff so you don't have to.
• Work Tab: Allows you to set different priorities for individual tasks like never before, down to when things should be done.
• Apparello 2: Tons of new clothing options for your colonists.
• Can Wear Together: Now colonists can wear multiple of the new clothing items together.
• Bok Choy: Adds in everybody's favorite type of Chinese cabbage because I'm CRAAAAAAAZY
• Run and Gun: Colonists can move and shoot at the same time.
• Consolidated Traits: New special traits that you can find on your colonists, guests, and raiders. 
• Bananas!: Self-explanatory, adds the yellow fruit along with goodies such as banana power armor and banana peel traps for comedic purposes.
• Sometimes Raids Go Wrong: Now those annoying pirates and Ni'Hal Nazis can be randomly attacked by mechanoids, struck by meteors, or get chased by manhunting beasts.
• Mining Co. Spaceship: Call in orbital shuttles for air support, treating severe injuries, or getting critical supplies.
• Camera+: Better zoom-ins for epic screenshots.
• Training Enabler: Allows cats and chickens to be trained. GO GO ATTACK CHICKENS.
• Prepare Carefully: Carefully choose who and what you want to start out with, whether to make things easier or create a story.
• Tilled Soil: Allows you to till soil to better grow crops.
• Adjustable Trade Ships: Tweak the rate at which supply ships appear, from the message spam of the More Trade Ships mod to the lack of them in vanilla.
• RePower: Electric items use less power when not in use. It may sound simple, but boy does it end up saving a lot of electricity! That's why you should always turn everything off when you don't use it, kids.
• Rimstory: Chronicles everything that's happened in your game so far. This is gonna make writing this blog so much easier!
• Minor
• Smooth Stone Walls: Now you can properly dig into a mountain and build rooms without manually replacing walls.
• Basic Bridges: Self-explanatory, adds bridges you can use to walk over water.
• Fishing: An add-on to Basic Bridges that allows you to fish off of bridges and get a new food source.
• Archipelagos: Now you can play on small islands of various vanilla biomes. Works great with the above Bridges mod, since they were all made by the same author.
• Statue of Colonist: Be a proper sculptor and build statues of your various colonists.
• Winter Hats: New beanies, ski masks, and earmuffs to keep people cozy in the chill of winter.
• Rimsenal Rimhair, Nackblad Inc. Rimhair and Spoon's Hair Mod: Three mods that add new hairstyles into the game for more varied characters.
• Less Default Hairs: A slightly outdated but still functional mod that gets rid of some of the vanilla game's dumber-looking hairstyles so new ones are more likely. 
• Names Galore: Thousands of male and female names, surnames, and nicknames for... you guessed it, more varied characters
• TD Enhancement Pack: Various improvements to status messages and overlays for lighting, buildable terrain, and fertile ground.
• Replace Walls: Allows converting existing walls and doors into new types of material. Useful for beefing up your walls and defenses.
• More Floors: Adds some more flooring options to make your base prettier.
• Set-Up Camp: Allows you to create temporary camps when traveling via caravan so you can rest, make food, or heal up. 
• Camping Stuff: Allows you to make deployable tents and stoves that you can take on your caravan travels.
• Simple Raids: Removes sieges and sappers, mostly for my benefit so I can learn to use the new mods without being instantaneously killed.
• Efficient Lights: Reduces the power consumption of lights from 75 W to 25 W.