Cultists of the Eternal End
Quick summary
Two powerful beings, old experiments of the Endless, created to annihilate all traces of their creators, use minor factions to found a religion to bring about the end of the Endless. This faction can make use even of villages other players control, diminishing the use of that other player for the villages, unless he's allied.
It does have no typical city-building, instead using a single big temple-city and will rely mostly on minor faction-villages instead of other cities to get FIDS-income (they act as if they were districts), converting them to their cult by applying influence.

Leaders

The Cult of the Eternal End has two leaders.

The Eternal Queen, an abomination of an experiment imprisoned in an Endless body. She was the first experiment of rogue researchers on Auriga, where some Virtuals and Concrete worked together during the last war to create a perfect being, a new race that would hold all the virtues and none of the vices of the Endless, to replace them and banish the ruin the Endless have brought upon the galaxy. So they manufactured a concrete body with a neutronium casing, almost too heavy to exist, almost impossible to destroy. They filled this perfect casing with a mixture of Endless organs, virtual machinery and let dust flow as its blood. Then the virtuals copied the best parts of the most virtuous and intelligent virtuals they could get a hold of and put the ghost in this shell. The downside of this perfect being, this designated leader of their new bright future, was that she was immovable at the times of war. So they entombed her in safety and her throne is the only link to the Aurigan Endless facilities that still work. Though she cannot leave her tomb, she can use her virtual abilities to control all technology that is active and within her range of communications. To her, any database of the Endless holds no secret. To her, all the Endless are no gods, they are lesser beings that abandoned her, left her, that she feels an incredible urge to purge and to destroy. All but her twin...

The Unspoken was the second and final experiment. When the war drew closer, when the final calamity befell Auriga, the rogue researchers in their desperation for their goals built the antithesis to the Eternal Queen. Her twin, her inversion, her guardian. They programmed a batch of dust to fuse the bodies of the concrete and the minds of the virtuals, they gave their lives, their blood, their very beings. They sacrificed to create the demon to fulfill their dying curse.
He has no name.
He slept until the queen awakened him.
He is of many minds.
But he is determined.
Determined to destroy the gods.
To lead all who are not tainted by the Endless.
To bring them to their destiny:
In servitude to the Eternal Queen, bring about the Eternal End of the blasphemers who dare call themselves Endless in mockery of the one truth.
ALL things must end.

The Unspoken defiles Auriga

Although the Unspoken is very powerful, he is not Almighty. He is driven, he may very well be insane, but a cold, raspy and dead kind of insanity. A flame of a mind, so cold it burns worse than the sun.
So he searched for tools, he searched for power, he searched for his foes. When he did not find any Endless, he knew that he had to facilitate the leave of himself and the queen, to bring the End to those who still defied their inevitable death.
With the queen affixiated to her throne, he first reactivated the servants of the Endless. Though it pained him to use the tools that were so... tainted, he couldn't deny the sweet bliss of irony. With the robotic servants of the Endless, the queen slowly managed to start clearing the rabble. And to restart one production facility for servants, the last on Auriga that was still in a shape to work. There the servants unearthed her tomb, there lies the capital of the Eternal End.
One and only one city that shines in the remnants of glory of the Endless, being rebuilt for their destruction.

Soon a tribe of (enter starting minor faction here) investigated the strange beings that were wandering about in the ruins. And the Unspoken saw... an opportunity. He told them about the Endless as gods. About the ever-worsening winters. He told stories of the abandonment, when the Endless left Auriga to die. And he explained to them their salvation. The Eternal Queen.
Confronted with technology so advanced, it had to be magic, many (enter starting minor faction here) knelt and believed. They were the first Cultists of the Eternal End. Now the Cult is spreading under the watchful eye of the Eternal Queen, directed by the Unspoken. Aurigans without strong own beliefs are gathering to the call of their salvation, for revenge against the gods. It is finally time to build a civilization with one and only one goal: Leave Auriga to purge the Endless from the galaxy!

Organisation of the cult
The cult has a rather flat hierarchy. The high priestess of the cult is the Eternal queen, shackled to her throne. All cultists regularly undertake pilgrimages to provide the Queen with their offerings. The organizers of these trips through the lands of the dangerous Auriga are called the Harbingers. They spread the orders of the queen, organize her supply and enforce her will among the covens hidden in the converted villages. Next in the hierarchy are the Chosen, the assimilated cultist race living in the temple of cessation itself. Their job is to provide the queen's servants with maintenance, sustenance and material. All servants are directly controlled by the queen and working to mysterious ends the Chosen cannot start to comprehend. Some of the servants still have functional loudspeakers and through those Heralds she broadcasts what needs to be done and whispers regularly about her hatred of the gods that abandoned them with her on this dying planet, that killed Auriga, that need to be punished.
A very few of the cultist show promise in the use of the powers of the gods themselves. Those were taken in by the Unspoken himself, who taught them the forbidden arts. To slay a god, you need the power of a god. By their own kind, they are adored and mourned for. To them, they are living sacrifices, having given their innocence and purity to use the vile forces the gods once used, at least to a good and final end.

Servants and armies of the Queen
The Endless in their hurry to leave Auriga abandoned two kinds of servants: Robots of various sizes, ranging from humanoid like OP-bot to track-based triangles like futuristic tanks, and organic mono cell environment transformation systems (OMCETS). The former are in need of repair, the latter have survived for a long time buried in cyst-like encasements they produced to survive. Now that the Unspoken has unburied them and reactivated some of them, they make up the major military and construction force at the temple of cessation.
The OMCETS never leave the temple. They do not have any will of their own, only that of the queen, and her broadcasting range is limited. Their duty is to grow the temple itself, solving building materials in their creeping fluid bodies to apply them to the buildings. It is one of the major sights of the temple to trade visitors and pilgrims to see the ever-growing spires being extended to new heights by the glowing OMCETS that simply crawl up the sides of the buildings to excrete a new layer of material.
Still, the cultists are working hard on restarting the more powerful robots of her majesty and who knows what power of the Endless can be used against them?

How can you tell a cultist from a normal Aurigan?
By their very nature, cultists normally hide. They do not wear cowls or robes, save for ceremonial purposes. Still, to tell a cultist, they have secret hand-/claw- and pincershakes (whichever applies). Haunted have markings in the insides of their armor, delvers tattoo the symbol of the End on their throats, under their beards, the Kazanji receive dustburned markings in their ribcages' insides, the Urces tattoo the undersides of their tongues. For the ettins, both heads have to agree on joining the cult, so they mark each other's head below the fur as sign of their common agreement. The Erycis let the symbol be chiseled into the inside of the tooth of each head, not unlike the silics that bear it in a centre-piece of crystal. Onle the Bos and the Ceratan display the symbol proudly, on their bellies or scythes, respectively. And the sisters... please, don't ask where they do their markings...

Fanatics and war
Bound to only one city and relying on offerings of distant villages, the cultists seem very weak and easy to annihilate. But the fanatics of all villages will do what their brethren would never have done, otherwise. They will stand up to defend each other. If the word spreads that a village firm in the belief of the End or the temple of cessation itself is attacked by infidels, all believers in their realm shall rise and the Queen herself shall declare them tools of the gods, to be brought to their demise. All such villages spawn armies of fanatics and instantly become unpacified barbarian villages, again.
Should the cultists get hold of a major faction city, they will raze it in a grand show of defiance to the gods. A quarter of the population will be converted to the cult and appear as new population in the temple of cessation, while an industrial stockpile will become available for each population and each building, lost, due to the loot the new and old cultists immediately offer up to the queen.

Cultistic burial rites and why razed population is worth industry stockpiles
The Unspoken has a very pragmatic view of inanimate cultist material, feeding it to the OMCETS who reuse it for extensions of the temple. The cultists gather around a pile of their fallen former fellows, solemly hold candles and chant their anger at the gods to the heavens, while the OMCETS feed and slowly dissolve the inanimate matter save for the bones.
In the course of the years, the temple is now ornated by the blackened remains of countless cultists. And every single corpse was worth it, for the just cause of revenge...

Gameplay
Faction Traits
High seat of the Queen - The Cult has only one city: The temple of cessation
Inciting fanatism - The cult can spend influence to convert villages by sending an army with a hero (additional option to attack/bribe/parley). Pacified villages on their side cost 5 influence to convert, unpacified 15, pacified villages of other players 30
Religious offerings - Any converted village in any region produces FIDS for them as if it were a city district, but those FIDS do not gain any flat bonuses by buildings built at the temple of cessation. This bonus does not work during winter, as cultist cannot organize trecks to the temple in the harshest season!
Belief equals Power - Their capital does not normally gain population by converted villages, but it does gain +1 influence/turn per converted village in any region
Hidden covens - Assimilating a faction works for all converted villages of that faction, instead of all pacified villages, no matter what other allegiance that faction has
Subversive theology - Converted villages do not count as extra population for other players, anymore, but give all other bonuses, unless that player is an ally of the Cult - in that case both players get extra population from the shared villages
The End is nigh - Attacking a converted village immediately means a declaration of war on the Cult - all converted villages within the borders of the offending player immediately go to revolt, all simultaneously spawning an army of Holy Retaliation to bring about the End
Your enemy's dagger in your hand... - When the cult conquers a city, it is razed, yielding a quarter of the population, rounded down, as new cultist population to the temple of cessation. All lost population points and razed buildings yield one industry stockpile, each, to be used at any time at the temple.

Further gameplay abilities
The cult has racial technologies allowing to upgrade spawning barbarian and especially Holy Retaliation armies
Generally, they can only trade for most strategic resources or luxury resources - or gather them via quests
If they declare war by themselves onto anyone, there is no Holy retaliation and no revolt
They can build the units of all minor civilizations they have at least one convert of
Their own higher tech units are robotic Endless warmachines in a rather deplorable state: very powerful, but also consuming lots of strategic resources - only researchable via their main quest

Main quest sketch
Gain the first followers -> convert three minor faction villages (yields 1 pop to the main city)
Name the Chosen -> Assimilate a faction (yields 2 pop to the main city)
Repair the Tomb -> Upgrade the city centre to lvl2 (yields two base military units in the city)
Guard of the Damned -> Have at least one army with 5 minor faction units in the city (yields lots of dust for the "protection" the Cult offers)
Tools of their own Demise -> Repair the Endless facilities in the city by gathering 30 titan and 30 glasssteel (yields the first military unit beyond the base cult-unit, the Flying Drone / high initiative, medium armor, low damage)
When the Darkness beckons -> Have at least 20 minor faction villages converted (yields lots of random luxury resources)
We can rebuild them, we have the technology -> Repair the Endless facilities in the city by gathering 30 of each age III resource (yields the second military unit of the Cult, the Risen Archers / low initiative, high armor, high attack)
Weapons of Old -> Use the redesigned facilities to build an experimental war machine (yields a lot of dust as tribute for the might of the Cult)
Ad astra -> Repair the Endless facilities completely by gathering 30 of each age V resource (yields the final military unit of the Cult, the Nameless Guard / melee, extremely high armor, nigh indestructible)
Not for glory, not for life, for the death of their destiny -> Upgrade the city center to a space-capable barque to leave Auriga and bring the demise to the Endless (needs lots of FIDSI -> wins the game)

For those that remember the ES faction creation contest - what happens to the cult should they make it off Auriga?
Should the Cultist make it and leave Auriga in their flying temple, they are supposed to strand upon the moon of Dariesh. The Unspoken would become Thir'Chajót, posing as a native Hadei of the nearby planet, then leading chosen to the Eternal queen on the moon and bestowing those that swear allegiance with the power of the dustborn, thus leading the Fal'Hadei, my ES-contest contribution: http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/...ull=1#post5305
Complete domination of the galaxy would have been only a stepping stone to the extermination of any residual Endless.

Cultists in the forum
There is a rumor about a coven of the cult even in this forum. They do not have a symbol, yet, but they're gathering to the glory of the End, already.