Tarkov Lore
The Cultists
The Witnesses of the Arrival, and nobody knows what is arriving
Years into the conflict, the hooded figures are still Tarkov's best-kept secret. The cult, calling themselves the Witnesses of the Arrival, gathers at ritual sites and marked rooms in the dead of night, and their purpose remains genuinely unexplained.
What is known is practical and frightening: they appear only at night, they move almost silently, they barely register on thermal optics, and their priests carry poisoned blades that keep killing after the fight ends. A cultist ambush usually starts with a knife from behind and ends with rifles if the knife does not finish the job.
The cult sits at the center of the 1.0 story chapter They Are Already Here, which digs into the ritual sites and the ARRS station network, and cult-related items thread through several quests. The marked keys and marked rooms scattered across Tarkov connect to them too.
Whatever the Arrival is, the story strongly suggests the cult knows something about TerraGroup's work that everyone else missed. Walk carefully at night.