Chaplain

The chaplain's mission is to preach faith to the crew. Put on one of the many religious outfits, located in your locker, if you wish, and go run around trying to convert people to Space Jesus or design intricate Satanic cable art on the floor of the chapel. You have access to a mass driver in the chapel that's for holding funerals and sending off the dearly departed, but good luck on holding a funeral on SS13. Its more commonly used as a 'You'll never find the body' gun. You also have access to the Morgue, but again any bodies actually stored there are there just because no one ever looks there.

What the hell am I supposed to do?

Generally, nothing. On many servers, the Chaplain would conduct RP services and do RP funerals, but on more light-hearted places like Goonstation, the Chaplain has very few real responsibilities. When you are Chaplain, you can generally consider yourself free to pursue whatever silly, non-violent gimmick you can think of. Get an HoP to give you access to Botany and the Kitchen, make a ton of food, and screech at people to eat until they pass out because they're at God's table of plenty. Get Quartermaster access, make 20k extra, and convince the AI to transfer it to your account. Then throw the piles of money around, preaching the Prosperity Gospel. Grow a bunch of weed, make big piles in the Chapel, and invite people to join the United Church of Cannabis. Break into Robotics and churn out as many drones as you possibly can to do proper worship to the Omnissiah. Steal all the liquor on the station and then crush it, claiming it is an affront to your religion. Get killed by an angry mob of drunks who are sober for the first time in a decade. Or just knock out a wall in your office and install a window so you can watch the station hurry by in horror and panic while you quietly sip your tea. There's no end to the dumb shit you can force on people!

Cults

Cults have been done a thousand times before you got here, and chances are fantastic your idea will be the worst of those thousand times. Murderous cults are banning material. Don't even try it.

Special equipment

The holy man of the station has some unique equipment that nobody else has access to. It's important to know what it does.

The Bible

Sadly, you don't have access to a Torah, Qu'ran, Tripitaka, or an STC blueprint to fit your other robes, but the Bible has an interesting power all of it's own. When equipped and used to strike someone, instead of hurting the target, it heals them instead. The Bible can heal any type of damage, but you won't be able to strike fast enough to counteract Suffocation damage if someone is without air. The down side is that every strike with the bible does a little bit of brain damage, which can add up and turn into retardation if a lot of damage is healed in this way. Still, when compared to lying disabled for 10 minutes or dying, many, many people will be happy to trade a few IQ points for the merciful healing of Jesus.

Also fart on the Bible and something really cool will happen

Holy Water

The Chaplain starts with the only phial of holy water on the station, though it is possible for Chemistry to make more. Holy Water is the proof positive way to test for a Vampire, if one is caught and trying to deny what it is. Splashing Holy Water on a human won't hurt him at all, but splashing Holy Water on a vampire will very obviously burn the undead abomination.

Magic Sandals

The Chaplain starts with this neat footwear in his locker, and unless there's a Wizard on board, they're the only pair. They act like improved galoshes in that the person wearing them doesn't slip on ice or get stunned by runaway segways, and they also stop you from slipping on wet floors. They're also very difficult to steal once you put them on; any attempt to strip them off of you has a very high chance of failing.

The Chapel Itself

The Chapel itself has a few nice things you should be familiar with. Next to your office is a crematorium, which can be used to reduce bodies to ash. This is one of the few ways to permanently destroy a Changeling, and is useful for a traitor Chaplain to hide his tracks. Speaking of hiding tracks, the crematorium also contains a few morgues for storing bodies. They are never used for any legitimate purpose, and even for illegitimate purposes it's very rare to see them used. However, if you glance in and see that any of the slabs have a red light on their bottom, it means they're occupied. If you're not sure why they're occupied, you should probably find out.

The mass driver in the northeast part of the Chapel will launch things into deep space. Again, this is never used for any legitimate purpose, but if an assistant is jonesing for the donuts in Security, it can be fun to launch the donuts into space right in front of him.

The southwestern part of the Chapel has a pair of confessionals, nominally to be used by a Chaplain hearing confessions. In reality, one of the confessionals can only be used by the Chaplain, and is thus where he goes to smoke weed in total privacy, and the other contains a secret passage that leads into maintenance.

Finally, the Chapel area has a holy aura that burns Vampires who have not consumed 1000 units of blood, and totally locks down a Wizard's spellcasting. People fleeing from these antagonists will often burst through your Chapel looking for sanctuary.

The Wraith, the Wizard, The Vampire and You

To somewhat make up for the Chaplain's total uselessness when it comes to every day life on the station, he is the hard counter for three classes of antagonists. The masterminding wraith will constantly find you obstructing its plans, the stealthy vampire will avoid you at all costs, and the noisy wizard will loathe every moment of your existence.

Note that the following notes only apply to people who originally spawned as Chaplains. Someone who is promoted to Chaplain does not get the innate changes mentioned here.

Wraiths

While you're no Damien Karras or Ghostbuster, you are well-equipped to counter this rare but highly malevolent ghost. You have not one, but two means of depriving the wraith of corpses: the crematorium and the mass driver. A wraith without its corpses is a weaker wraith, because without its corpses, it will have to wait longer for its Wraith Points to replenish, meaning revenant rampages, skeleton uprisings, and ghastly possessions are fewer in between. While you will still have to rely on salt lines and waiting for the wraith to Haunt to for an opportunity to attack it, your bible and the power of Christ contained within will do great damage to the wraith, compelling it back to oblivion. In addition, as the local cleric, you enjoy an number of advantages when the wraith raises the dead up as revenants. You cannot be Crushed, Pushed back, knocked down with Shockwave, or be targeted by Mass Command, and your bible, as with the wraith, can do great damage against the revenant.

However, while the wraith usually cannot directly attack you, the wraith can find several ways to indirectly hurt you. You are still vulnerable as any of the crew to wraith-animated objects, and a clever wraith can find a way to knock you down so it can cast Command on the ground you've been smacked down upon. With revenants, while you're immune to Crush, Push, and Shockwave, you are not immune to Touch of Evil, so don't be surprised if you find yourself dead and floating alongside the wraith you just tried to kill after your attempted revenant crusade.

Vampires

You're in a pretty good position against vampires. You're immune to almost all of the vampire's tricks, so a vampire has to fight on far more even footing with you around. You are also the only person on the station guaranteed to have one of their biggest anathemas, holy water. Splashing holy water on a vampire is about as effective as splashing acid on a normal crewman's face, so it's a quick and easy way to test someone's claims of innocence. You can also use the chapel as a safe zone, dragging victims away from hungry vampires and performing triage on them in your office. Vampires need a lot of blood to be immune to the chapel's damaging aura, so most of them will cook to cinders before they can hack into your safe zone, and your immunity to Glare and Chiropteran Screech puts you in a very good position to simply run away with a vampire's victim with them being nearly powerless to stop you.

Your last line of defense is that your blood, when drunk, burns vampires like holy water, and destroys some of the blood in their pool. This only works when a vampire is drinking directly from you, so you can't bleed into a beaker and splash people with it to test them. This is mostly a safeguard against inexperienced vampires, or vampires that attack you when you're not wearing your chaplain outfit or ID. With your immunity to most of their powers, you can set yourself up as a stalking horse this way, but be warned that nothing but your own robustness will stop the vampire from strangling you, bashing your skull in with a fire extinguisher, or turning invisible and murdering you with bats in revenge.

Oh, and if you're able to trick or convince a vampire into trying to enthrall you...well, let's just say that it ends poorly for them.

Wizards

Wizards just plain hate the chaplain's guts. For one, the chapel is a sanctuary that locks down their spellcasting. The chaplain himself is immune to direct effects of most the spells. If there are reports of a crazy bearded guy running around, it may be worthwhile go to security and ask to be armed and deputized. Put on the magic sandals from your closet. Any spells that directly target you will fizzle, and security wants that on their side.

However, like with vampires, do not make the mistake of thinking that you are invincible. The wizard has plenty of tricks that can still affect you. Summoned golems, for example, can consist of some very nasty things and will attack you on sight. If you do not have your magic sandals on, you can also slip on ice created by the ice beam spell. If a wizard gets the better of you, it's a safe bet that he will shred you in any way he can manage. You are not replaceable, so don't let that happen.

In addition, a good smack over the head with the bible by a holy man (one with the laity will just do nothing) will decluwne anybody unfortunate enough to fall to the Clown's Curse. Keep this in mind as the Wizard reduces the entirety of Medical and Command to gibbering, fumbling abominations of nature, forever in everlasting torment and far from the grace of the gods.

Crew Objectives

As a loyal crew member, you can sometimes be assigned some strictly optional objectives to keep yourself busy while you wait for something to happen. As a chaplain, you can expect to see the following:

End the round with no corpses on the station.
If you see this, throw up your arms and say fuck it, because this is never, ever happening.

Treachery

On the surface, a traitor Chaplain plays much like the other traitors with low starting access; he needs to relax, schmooze, and be social until he finds someone in a vulnerable position. He then kills that person, assumes their identity, and goes from there. Most people are used to the Chaplain being harmless and useless, so this is easier than you might think. Simply asking someone to follow you into a trap will work more often than not, though you should ideally have a rather inescapable trap set up, such as an electrified door that you convince the victim to open.

You also have access to a unique traitor item, called a faustian bargain kit. This allows you to harvest souls of your victims by having them sign contracts that have a demonic twist. What each pact offers is hinted at the description, which can range from thousands of space credits (and then instant death) to chem-fueled beserker strength to ascension to the very embodiment of Wrestlemania. You can obtain more contracts through the Souls tab, and you get a new one whenever you sign a human over to devilish powers. With each soul you successfully score, your special lawyer suit's melee and ranged protections grow, and your devilish briefcase and pens strike harder, godsends when some Security Officer or vigilante is out for your Mephistophelean ass.

Gallery

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