After drawing her hand up to 5, the Great Old One flips the top card of the Spawning Deck. This represents the recruitment of Cultist followers from among the races of the Earth. Spawning may affect all of or none of the Great Old Ones depending on whether or not they have tokens located in the appropriate Alchemical Ring.
Each card represents one of the five mystical elements: Fire, Earth, Water, Air, and Ether. When a card is flipped, all Great Old Ones add the number of Cultist pieces noted on the card, up to that maximum, to her controlled Nodes in that Alchemical Ring, noting the stacking limit on Nodes other than their Spawning Node.
The colour denotes which Alchemical Ring spawns tokens – Red for Fire, Brown for Earth, Green for Water, Blue for Air, and Yellow for Ether. The number (1 to 5) denotes the total additional Cultist tokens each Great Old One who occupies a Node in that Alchemical Ring gets to place on their Nodes in that Ring.
In addition, on their turn, if they so choose, a Great Old One may also discard Arcana Cards in order to gain the value in Cultists denoted by the Yellow numeral on the card. These Cultists may be added to any of their occupied Nodes.
Example:
Lisa is playing Shub-Niggurath. On her turn, she draws two Arcana Cards (she only has three currently in her hand) making her hand up to five cards. She does not draw any Event cards, so she turns over the top card of the Spawning Deck to reveal ‘Fire – 3’. Providing they occupy at least one Fire Node, Great Old Ones immediately get three (3) more Cultist tokens in total to distribute among their Nodes up to the Stacking Limit. Lisa only occupies one Fire Node and so adds all three new Cultist tokens to this Node alone. In comparison, Simon occupies two Fire Nodes and chooses to place 2 tokens on one space and 1 token in the other. No other Great Old One currently occupies Fire Nodes so do not benefit from this Spawning round. In addition, Lisa discards the Prism Gate card and adds an additional 2 Cultists to her Spawning Node.
Great Old One’s Cultist tokens may never exceed the Stacking Limit of five (5) for a Node except in a Spawning Node. Everywhere else any tokens exceeding this limit are removed and cast into the Void.
When all Spawning cards have been revealed, the deck is removed from play – Cultists are a finite resource. Players may however opt to continue to exchange Arcana Cards for Cultists on their turn.
Some Arcana Cards and Node Counters may change halt or otherwise modify the Spawning phase.