The Cult of the Unwritten Book is a fictional cult/supervillain group created by DC Comics which first appeared in Doom Patrol #31. The Cult of the Unwritten Book appeared in their first live adaptation on the first season of the Doom Patroltelevision series for the new DC streaming service.
Fictional team history
The cult itself is centered in Nùrnheim, a Germantown destroyed years ago although the cult is over two-thousand years old. There was never a given reason for the cult's wish to destroy the world, although most believe that they saw manifestation was corrupted. Their goal was to summon forth a being called the Decreator as a means to destroy everything, but to do so they had to wait for the Book of the Fifth Window to be born. The Book is a special child born with his skin almost completely tattooed in an unknown language. The cult planned to decipher the tattooing on the child's skin to reveal the name of the Decreator and summon it to the world. To find the child in the real world, the cult enters our world through a cut that magically appears on a person. The cut will continue to grow on the person until they are all cut. The Book of the Fifth Window had been born about fifteen years ago, the child's parents were recruited into the cult when the child ran away. After turning fifteen, the cult managed to track him down in Barcelona, Spain; catching the attention of the Doom Patrol and self-said expert on the occult, Willoughby Kipling. The DP was unsuccessful in protecting the Book, which was read and revealed the Decreator into life. Doom Patrol member Cliff Steele however, had managed to infiltrate Nùrnheim through the cut placed on unfortunate victim Emilio Cuervo. Nùrnheim was hiding in a snow globe. The Decreator started to erase things from existence slowly at first, giving Kipling and DP member Crazy Jane enough time to slow it down. Jane, or rather Jane's alternate persona Lucy Fugue, explained that the Decreator was nothing more than a vibration, a wavelength, created by God. Using the famous Sagrada Família as a spiritualtuning fork and a method of occult geometry, Jane sent out an opposing vibration, counter-acting and slowing down the Decreator so much that the speed of things disappearing wouldn't be noticed. Ironically, Nùrnheim itself was at the last second but not before Cliff and the Book escaped. The Cult hasn't made any reappearances yet.
The Decreator
The Decreator went by a number of names, such as the Antigod, the Unmaker, the Eye of Horus to the Egyptians, and the Eye of Shiva to Hindus. It is the equal, opposite, and shadow of God created when God uttered "Let there be light!", making it the first shadow and the first instance of darkness in the world. It initially appeared as a giant, bloodshot eye in the sky. When it appears it makes the sky around break into pieces and the stars surrounding it blink out. It starts disassembling slowly, first words, then books, then shelves, then libraries, etc. It was believed to be unstoppable and it possibly is, but it is possible to slow it down long enough for no one to notice what was going on. An entity of powers born out of the true, ultimate darkness, was born at the very same moment, and it came to be known as the Great Evil Beast or the Ultimate Darkness.
Agents of the Cult
The Agents of the Cult are described as very odd and very terrifying by some. The list of the cult agents go as followed:
Fear the Sky: A group of assassins who dress in identical brown suits with identical pocket watches and identical blood stains on their shoulders. The difference is that they have stellar objects for heads. They wield sickles as weapons. Their killing method is called "The Question That Dare Not Be Asked" meaning that if you don't give an answer as they draw their weapons, they will kill you. They were absorbed into a book of children's verse.
Dry Bachelors: Created from dead skin and love letters taken from romances that turned sour, they carry around hammers and exclamatory mark balloons. They aren't polite.
Mystery Kites: Kites made of the skin and bones of murder victims powered by poor souls captured by the cult. They can detect heartbeats.
The Never-Never Boys: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod are three scouts for the cult. They appear as children on tricycles with gas masks. When they ride over people, the people become shadows.
Needle Children: Beings who can't be seen through glass who were terrorizing an old-folks home.
Hiroshima Shadows: Floating white outlines of people which mumble in Japanese.
Pale Police: Assassins who wear helmets with their target's thumbprint smeared on it, thinking once they kill their victims their souls will be trapped inside the maze of their own thumbprints. They talk in anagrams and have bad body odor.
Whispering Jack: A ghostly being who haunts the houses of unmarried women, whispering ingredients for unholy recipes.
Weeping Blades: Beheaded and skinned bodies whose heads are replaced with blades. They graffiti odd slogans.
Little Sisters of Our Lady of the Razor: Children drawn from the cult who want eternal youth. They are operated on to stay young; unfortunately, this requires painful mutilation. By the time they realize that being kids forever isn't all that great, there is nothing they can do; hence, they decide to take the pain out on others with their razor blades.
The Hoodmen: Hoodman Blind and Hoodman Shame live in Nùrnheim. Whenever a person can't remember the word on the tip of their tongue is because the Hoodmen have eaten it and converted it into energy. They dress like pseudo-style Klansmen and have squeaky voices.
Starving Skins: Skins kept together by baby pins who carry large forks.
The Bellmaster: The birdlike keeper of the bells in the Puppet Theatre of Nùrnheim. He acts strangely polite.
The Archons of Nùrnheim: Puppets and toys, cast aside and deformed, bitter with the world and eagerly awaiting the end while beating each other to death.
Nùrnheim
Nùrnheim is a dead German town always shifting from one place to another, destroyed long ago. Nùrnhiem appears anywhere, in a picture, an illustration, even inside a snow globe, but it can disappear to somewhere else if discovered.
Doctor Mirabilis' Most Excellent and Unusual Puppet Theatre; Headquarters of the Archons.
In other media
The Cult of the Unwritten Book made their live-action debut in the DC Universe series Doom Patrol. The first appear in the episode "Cult Patrol" where a tattooed, 18-year-old man named Elliott Patterson is their key to summon the Decreator. Willoughby Kipling leads Cyborg, Elasti-Girl, and Negative Man into capturing Elliott. After Crazy Jane and Robot Man are captured in Nurnheim, the high priestess of Nurnheim sends otherworldly assassins to retrieve Elliott, and Cyborg, Negative Man, Kipling, and Elasti-Girl are unable to stop them. The Cult of the Unwritten Book begins the ritual, and a giant glowing eye appears in the sky. In the episode "Paw Patrol," the Cult of the Unwritten Book's summoning of the Decreator caused Mr. Nobody to release Chief in order to help stop the Decreator. On his part, Mr. Nobody travels to 1977 and uses one of Jane's personalities named Dr. Harrison to create a Cult of the Rewritten Book which will create a counterpart to Elliot that can oppose the Decreator. Chief, Kipling, Cyborg, and Negative Man find Elliot's counterpart in the form of a dog which Kipling uses to summon the Recreator who brings back everything previously disintegrated by the Decreator.
