Deathless Hierophant

✦ THE DEATHLESS HIEROPHANT ✦

Agnes Baker, Cult Leader Ascendant

❖ Introduction

Unrivalled in her mastery of the arcane schools of enchantment and necromancy, Deathless Hierophant Agnes gathers a following of Cult Initiates and enthralled enemies before using them to unravel the mysteries of the mythos. She sustains herself with magical feedback loops to ensure her eternal reign.

Though thematic, this is still Parallel Agnes with a strong card suite; she's going to do just fine in any scenario or campaign.

❖ Gameplan

Initially, Hierophant Agnes relies on her own arcane might, gathering clues and fighting with her spells. She plays as a true flex investigator, equally comfortable in either role.

As her cult assembles, she bends enemies to her will and fuels her sorcery with magical cheats that render her functionally invincible.

❖ Core Concepts

✦ Spells, Spells, Spells

21 out of 28 cards here have the spell trait. 9 of those spells are fast. Every spell you cast draws a card with your Heirloom of Hyperborea. With Agnes' ability discounting your spells, only the spell assets and Power Word cost $1, the rest are free as long as you can take the damage (you can). Cult Initiate finds our spells for us at speed, definitely bringing her with us when we ascend.

✦ Invincibility

Spectral Shield lets you spend charges instead of taking damage to discount spells. Our chosen shields, Eyes of the Dreamer and Breath of the Sleeper each have 9 charges, which is already a huge amount of soak, but we can push that even further.

✦ Recursion

Agnes' ability allows us to shuffle our spell events back into our deck instead of discarding them, but we won't actually use that too frequently because we have alternative ways of doing things. Spectral Razor (2) and Read the Signs (2) combo with Forbidden Sutra for run-of-the-mill recursion. Prescient, Eldritch Inspiration (1) and Ghastly Possession are where the real combo comes online.

✦ Charges, Charges, Charges

We commit Ghastly Possession (a spell, by the way) to tests on Breath and Eyes, using the second mode to replenish 4-8 charges, depending if you committed them both (you did). These Ghastly Possessions are then discarded at step 8 of the skill test. After the test ends, if you committed a Prescient you may return a spell card from your discard to your hand, including the Ghastly Possession you just discarded. Then you can play Eldritch Inspiration (1) to apply the effects of prescient one more time and retrieve the second ghastly possession if you committed it (you did).

Spending charges on the asset tests gives you a very good chance of seeing the type of token you want for Prescient to work. If you aren't spending charges here, perhaps because you are running out, you probably want to hold on to your prescient for a later test where you will be revealing more tokens. Fortunately, Forbidden Sutra gives us the ability to reveal up to four tokens on a spell event test but we have to take horror to do so (see section: invincibility). We have seven spell events with tests on them (not including Doppelgänger here because we don't want to evade and I'm honestly not sure if that counts as a test on the event card), but the one we're using most frequently is Power Word.

✦ The Cult

With Power Word and Fine Clothes, you're taking a 0 difficulty willpower test. Combine that with Forbidden Sutra and you will never fail as long as you can take one horror to bypass the . If you can take the horror, commit Prescient to grab some spells back from discard. With thrice-spoken and tonguetwister, you can order up to three devotees to confess, earning essentially testless clues. With greater command, you can return a copy to your hand and cast it again immediately, essentially paying $1 for a card draw with Heirloom of Hyperborea.

If you ever feel like you might need to backtrack somewhere, leave Doppelgänger at the location and walk one of your mooks into it for a free teleport. Or play Doppelgänger where you know/suspect an enemy may spawn to teleport to them and induct them to the cult. Alternatively, simply play it for no cost and use it as card draw without worrying if you actually need the effect.

✦ Opening Hand

Hard mulligan for Heirloom of Hyperborea. You can live without Forbidden Sutra for a bit but you need your amulet. Your deck is small so chances are good. Once you have your heirloom, you've taken the first step on the path to ascension as the Deathless Hierophant

✦ Variants

When I made this deck I actually didn't mean to make it almost-current-environment-legal. If you want to use current environment then just drop the Fine Clothes and add either another Spectral Razor or put in Living Ink to boost in your now open body slot.