Winds of the Autumn Twilight

A Nobilis page by the Hollyhock god.

This site is the very humble begining for a FTF RPG game, and is largely used to serve information to the players between game sessions.

New York City in the swealtering summer of '77. Blackouts, heat waves, and the Son of Sam has slain his 27th victim. Now a strange storm of unusual force rises up out of the Atlantic and envelopes the city. Unearthly forces strive for control. When it is over, five people and the city they know will be unalterably transformed, and they will face the challenge of determining the fate of the world.

Overview

Nobilis is a diceless roleplaying game. In it, you play one-time humans who guard the concepts that define the world. You serve a great spirit, called an Imperator. You govern a pocket universe created by that Imperator. You venture into the outside world to fight a behind-the-scenes war for the fate of Creation.

Nobilis focuses more on social interaction than combat. Even in the war, most battles concern themselves with a handful of human destinies, rather than violence and raw power. The sympathetic magic employed by Creation's enemies makes a loss on these battlefields a blow against reality. Outside the war, characters spend their time engaging in politics within the supernatural society, managing the affairs of their pocket universe's inhabitants, and protecting the interests of their mortal loved ones. The system provides support to make all of these activities interesting.

Characters in this game operate at a very high power level. Experienced characters or characters with a strong leaning towards one flavor of power can change the whole world in a matter of moments. Mortal antagonists are virtually nonexistent, and most supernatural beings in the world are comparatively insignificant. However, characters have a limited supply of "miraculous" energy and must often conceal their powers to avoid harming the humans around them. Moreover, the principal antagonists equal or exceed the characters' competence.

If you look behind the scenes of Nobilis' reality, you'll find a group of about two thousand people responsible for keeping existence running. They represent the "human face" of the major elements of the world -- things like time, fire, magnetism, automobiles, caves, death, and colors. The person responsible for a particular element is the "Power" of that element (e.g. the Power of Time). As a group, these are the Nobles, aka the Nobilis.

Powers begin their lives as ordinary humans. When an Imperator, a spiritual being of immense force, descends into the human world, it transforms a piece of land into a "Chancel" and a number of humans into Nobilis. The Chancel, a pocket reality tailored to the Imperator's specifications, becomes its home. The new Nobilis become its agents, united under the Imperator's auspices into a "Familia Caelestis" -- a celestial family.

Imperators serve as the standards about which the Nobilis rally. Each embodies in itself a set of key elements of reality, and creates one Noble responsible for each. Whether Nobles love or hate their Imperator, the Imperator represents the absolute bond between them -- their nature stems from the same source.

Typical Noble Activities

· Governing the Chancel. 99% of the time, an Imperator directs its attention toward spirit realms outside the Nobles' scope. As long as they don't screw it up too badly, Powers have a free hand when it comes to ruling their Imperator's pocket world.

· Intrigue. Nobles intrigue among themselves inside and outside of their celestial family. In general, a Noble can count on the support of her Familia when severely threatened by an outsider's ploy, and on the support of any Noble when the health of reality is at stake. The game mechanics reward humbling your enemies, and acquiring allies is its own reward.

· Protecting the Anchors. A Noble's "Anchors" are ordinary humans bound to the Noble by an unbreakable bond. A Noble can step into an Anchor's mind and body pretty much at will, allowing her to manage situations scattered all over the world. Naturally, this makes Anchors valuable -- so a Noble must ensure that her Anchors remain healthy, sound, sane, and in a good position to pursue her interests. Unfortunately, as the Nobles say, Anchors "tangle the skein of Fate" -- the magic that creates them makes each one a nexus for bizarre, improbable, and almost tabloid-like events. In order to make an Anchor, an Anchor candidate must first love or hate the Noble.

· Gardening. Player characters probably won't do much of this onscreen, but every Noble needs a diverse flower garden. The first symbols, used by the angels in the creation of the world, were flowers. A Noble's heraldic Design almost invariably features interwoven flowers -- the book fully describes the Nobles' system of heraldry -- and Nobles can use blooms with appropriate connotations to fuel or disguise a variety of magics.

· Protecting Reality. This is harder than it sounds! An army from outside reality -- the Nobilis call the soldiers Excrucians, and the soldiers call themselves Harumaph's Children -- plans to erase existence. Worse yet, they can -- using a form of symbolic magic known as the flower rite. To use the flower rite, an Excrucian constructs a situation in the mortal world that "mirrors" certain aspects of reality. Specifically, it must match the targeted element of reality and, if the relevant Noble has a heraldic Design, the connotations of a flower from that Design. The Excrucian then systematically degrades the situation it created toward monstrosity. If it uses the proper ritual, and if the relevant Noble doesn't find and stop the Excrucian in time, a little bit of the "essence" of that part of reality fades away. Enough failures and it dies completely. Hundreds of the key elements of reality -- including physical laws, classes of objects, and abstract concepts -- have already been deleted.

A typical Noble-Excrucian conflict requires the Noble to work out the nature of that mirror-situation, anticipate the Excrucian's plans, and then outmaneuver it. Neither side can afford overt use of power unless the other stands on the brink of victory -- when miracles start flying, the mortal situation usually spirals out of control.

Rules

Here's how the rules work. A Nobilis character has four Attributes, describing her skill with the major magics ("miracles") of the Powers. Players design their own miscellaneous powers ("Gifts"), using a very simple point-based creation system. Players can add and remove character disadvantages more or less at will -- they yield specific long-term benefits when they cause short-term problems in play.

Attributes have a rating between 0 and 5. Things a character might want to do have a rating between 0 and 9. When a character attempts some miraculous feat, the player compares the Attribute rating to the difficulty. If the difficulty is higher, she makes up the difference using a small pool of "miracle points." (This pool can be replenished in several ways, including intrigues against rivals and suffering from a character disadvantage.)

The Aspect Attribute governs human abilities taken to superhuman extremes. Level 0 Aspect feats include dancing and cooking. Level 9 Aspect feats include shooting the sun from the sky. A Power can extrapolate any human ability to any level using an Aspect miracle.

The Domain Attribute describes a Power's control over the aspect of reality they command. For the Power of Roads, Domain miracles include wishing roads into being, making people lost, cutting off cities, adjusting distances, and so forth. The general character of the miracle (does it create? destroy? preserve? divine? modify something?) and its magnitude determines its difficulty level.

The Realm Attribute measures a Power's control over her Chancel. This functions almost exactly like Domain.

The Spirit Attribute provides protection against hostile miracles and skill with a variety of lesser abilities associated with the Nobilis. (Sensing miracles, creating Anchors, mastery of all languages, and so forth.)

When two miracles come into direct conflict, the miracle of the higher level prevails. When they clash in indirect conflict, the Game Master -- called here the Hollyhock God, hollyhock being the flower of vanity and ambition -- arbitrates the outcome.

The idea here is to make sure that creativity plays more of a role in conflict than either chance or mechanical complexity. In fact, most formal duels use illusory miracles rather than substantive ones, eliminating even the miracle point cost for Nobles with Domain 1 or higher -- accounting goes by the wayside.

Players choose the properties of their characters' Chancel and Imperator using a simple point-based system.

Setting

On Nobilis' Earth, animism and science are equally but not simultaneously valid. You can survive in the world by dealing with the souls of people, animals, and objects -- or by working with the hard sciences. Nobilis and Anchors, among others, can switch back and forth at will, and who can therefore repair a car with either a wrench or a persuasive argument.

"Prosaic reality," on Earth, looks almost exactly like our world. "The mythic world" operates at a slightly deeper level, and functions on the animistic principles described above. Deeper still, you can find the Spirit World -- a place defined by characteristics outside human perception, where the Imperators contend directly against the Excrucians and the Ages of the World are as much places as times.

The Earth hangs on the World Ash, one of thousands upon thousands of worlds nestled among Yggdrasil's branches. Heaven rests atop, and Hell sprawls under its roots. According to one philosophy, beauty cascading down from Heaven and corruption snaking upward from Hell provide the essential dynamic essence that keeps the Ash alive.

The Weirding Wall surrounds the Ash, rising like an open cup from Hell to surround Creation. Beyond the Wall are the Lands Beyond Creation -- incomprehensible even to the Imperators

Campaign

The campaign will center around five new Powers, created by an Imperator newly enchancelled within the world, fighting to alter the destiny of the world.

The players should create their characters as follows:

1. Submit your Prosaic Concept for your character. Everyone starts off as a normal human being, so write up a normal person. Think up normal relationships they may have with family and friends. What are their activities, hangouts, hobbies, morals, etc. The better you know this normal person, the more fun you will have as a Power.

2 Include your Power Concept for your character. What Power do you envision your character having responsibility for? Some ideas might include Youth, Anxiety, the number 7, Counterculture, Sea Travel, Refutation, Toads, DOS operating system, Red, Rainbows, Morning, Memories. The game does not reward power gaming, so while War might appeal to you, direct confrontation is often no more effective than other methods. It's HOW you do things that matter, not WHAT you do.

Do not go any further until we have hammered out steps 1 and 2 to our mutual satisfaction.

3 Once I know player's concept, we can work on an Imperator to tie them all together. REMEMBER, and Imperator is the source of your Noble's power. The Imperator splinters off it's powers among it's Powers, so the players concepts should make some logic, even thought they may differ widely. Example: If each player chooses and the results are: Reptiles, Visions, Medicine, Pain, and Hope the Imperator might be the Imperator of Medicine. All of the powers in some way can be derived from the concepts implied by medicine.

4 Choose the Imperator and the Chancel (pocket universe realm which is the 'home' of the Imperator and the characters) and their defining abilities. A group activity.

5 Get started. As new Nobles, you don't have to know everything. The first game will start with you still human.

When deciding on a character, don't worry about points. Just select which of the following best describes your character as Power. Points can be balanced later. Think carefully what BEST matches your Concept.

ASPECT (pick one):

Of Mortal Form - You are just like any other person. Choose this level of Aspect if your character has a very strong sense of humanity; in other words, those who accepted their human limitations without complaint for desire for more. They might have rejected the intruding power of the Sovereign when it came.

Metahuman - One step beyond human. This level of Aspect is common among Powers who govern such things as Thought, Emotion, Knowledge, or Love. Also an excellent starting place for fledgling Powers, uncertain in their new bodies and not yet fully integrated in their power and form.

Legendary - On par with mythical heroes and villains, this level of Aspect often accompanies a physical change as a new Power is twisted into a shape of their imagination. It is appropriate for those Powers who are unworldly in nature.

Inhuman - Characters with this level of Aspect are distant from the humanity they once belonged to. Humans seem weak, slow, flimsy, and uninsightful. They may feel love for a human, though

Celestial - A common Aspect for mature Powers who have been Nobilis for a goodly time. A Celestial is absolutely divine in ability.

Exemplar - Fully integrated with their essence, capable of the most puissant feats; split mountains with their fists, wound the sun with an arrow. Though brilliant, Exemplars lack the human complexity, and are dominated by the power that they have tied up in the mortal world.

DOMAIN (pick one):

Pawn - A character with this level of Domain in not in control of their estate. They may even be its plaything, subject to its whims.

Baronet - Common among young Powers, a Baronet is generally a person first and a symbol of their estate a distant second. Their estate responds in minor ways to accommodate them.

Viscount - This level of Domain serves its owners well; they can work some interesting marvels with their estate. Viscounts lack the patina of mundanity that covers Pawns and Baronets; they are alive and burning with energy. Even to human eyes they often have characteristics evocative for their estate, such as red hair(Fire), shining eyes(Light), or gnarled limbs (Trees).

Marquis - Characters with this level of Domain have been entrusted deeply with the maintenance and continuation of their estate both in and out of the mundane world. The domain has a heavy influence on appearance and personality.

Duke - A Duke's nature is obvious even to mortal eyes. They are charged with the task of bringing their estate to be. They roil with the power of their estate.

Regal - A living representation of the estate, it is hard to separate the estate from the person.

REALM (pick one):

Citizen - Almost no gift of rule. They are mere citizens of the Chancel, lacking the resources to shape their Chancel directly. Nobilis rarely respect them, and will never be safe at home. Suitable for Powers that are not fully trusted by their Sovereigns, or have grown distant from their Chancel.

Radiant - Radiants have the first hint of control over the Chancel. They are a bit more secure, and receive a modicum of respect. Suitable for any Power.

Realm's Heart - Characters with this level of control over their Chancel have a fair degree of influence and respect. They ae aware of events in the chancel, and are more secure there than outside.

Warden - It is considered very dangerous to tackle a Warden on their home ground. They are tied not only to the Chancel's heart but its strength as well. They are well respected, and rooted firmly in the world they command.

True King/Queen - Uniformly respected, they can ward off even powerful adversaries. This level fits those Powers born within the chancel, or given ultimate authority over the Chancel by the Sovereign. Enemies of a King tend to leave once they are noticed.

Tempest - Walking into a Tempest's Chancel is the most fearsome danger that an enemy can face. Even Excrucians will think twice. A character that is a Tempest can shape and reshape the Chancel at will.

SPIRIT (pick one):

Candleflame - If strong in personality, then the Power is mundane. Such powers are so human that the power withinthem cannot anchor itself to them. They have no great structural integrity or personal strength. They are vulnerable to the assaults of other Powers ad Excrucians.

Hearthfire - Such a power has some synergy between their human and divine souls, and is appropriate for any Power; it is associated most with a troubled soul and a nearly-mortal will.

Incandescent Flame - The Noble presence is impressive, and it is difficult to mask their glory. This level of Spirit is suitable for any Power, both strong and weak of personality.

Sunfire - The Sunfire has access to a deep spiritual center and personal balance. This is a sensible choice for Powers with an extremely distant or close relationship with their Imperator. 'Strong-willed' characters do not need to buy their Spirit this high; by now they have enough will to surpass even an army of mules.

Conflagration - The traits of a Conflagration's personality are augmented enormously by enormously power. They may even be a coward, but who they are is deep, strong, and powerful in that cowardice. Whatever they are, they are themselves. The presence of a Conflagration has a profound effect on mortals and Powers, and they are fine practitioners of the darker arts as well.

Inferno - The mortal spirit and divine passion are perfectly blended and complementary. It is rare to trace any use of power to them. Few can directly assault them. Some Powers are born Infernos, others reach this level over much time.

BONDS

Decide what is important to the character. Divide twenty points among these important bonds. The more points you devote, the more it should mean. Four to ten bonds are appropriate.

GIFTS

Any special things that the Power can do write down.

LIMITS

What limitations exist on the Power. These can be physical, social, psychological, magical, etc.

Seven League Jack, Duke of Journeys

ATTRIBUTES

Aspect : Of Mortal Form (Level 0) 5 AMPs

Gifts:

Eternal – Russ is not subject to the effects of time, hunger, thirst etc. He will survive until the end of time, barring an untimely death.

Miracle Type

Miracle Level

Example

Simple Miracles

0 AMP

Level 0 Miracles

"Easy for Everyone"

Ex. Driving a car.

Normal Miracles

1 AMP

Level 1 Miracles

"High Level Human"

Ex. Catching arrows.

Hard Miracles

2 AMP

Level 2 Miracles

"World Record Performance" Ex. Remembering anything you’ve ever heard.

Deep Miracles

4 AMP

Level 3-4 Miracles

"Improbable Feats"

Ex. Shattering rocks with a blow.

Domain (Journeys): Duke (Level 4) 5 DMPs

Gifts:

Worldwalker – As the Power of Journeys, Russ can fine his way into any Chancel by any means. He is unlimited to conventional travels in this way.

Miracle Type

Miracle Level

Example

Simple Miracles

0 DMP

Level 0-4 Miracles

Estate Driven Divinations, Ghost Miracles, Lesser Divinations, Lesser Preservations, Lesser Creations

Ex. Make a pointless journey, Know how to travel to a destination, Make a journey longer, Create a simple journey for someone.

Normal Miracles

1 DMP

Level 5 Miracles

Lesser Destructions, Major Divinations

Ex. Remove a trip from someone’s intended plans, Keep bullets in the gun, Know any interesting journeys made or by whom.

Hard Miracles

2 DMP

Level 6 Miracles

Lesser Changes, Major Preservations

Redirect a journey to include or exclude any circumstance, Make a journey take forever, Make someone travel in circles.

Deep Miracles

4 DMP

Level 7-8 Miracles

Major Creations, Major Destructions

Ex. Make a journey that leads to something important, Make sure that someone never reaches a destination, or encounters some thing.

Realm : Radiant (Level 1) 5 RMPs

Miracle Type

Miracle Level

Example

Simple Miracles

0 RMP

Level 0-1 Miracles

Realm Driven Divinations, Ghost Miracles

Ex. Get Comfortable,

Normal Miracles

1 RMP

Level 2 Miracles

Lesser Divinations

Ex. Learn about subject,

Hard Miracles

2 RMP

Level 3 Miracles

Lesser Preservations

Ex. Make things last.

Deep Miracles

4 RMP

Level 4-5 Miracles

Lesser Creations, Lesser Destructions, Major Divinations

Ex. Make things, Hurt/Remove/destroy property, Scry/ask about something.

Spirit : Hearthfire (Level 1) 5 SMPs

Gifts:

Unblemished Guise (Level 6) – Russ, so comfortably human, is indistinguishable as anything but a mortal under most circumstances, unless he is using his Powers.

Miracle Type

Miracle Level

Example

Simple Miracles

0 SMP

Level 0 Miracles

Normal Miracles

1 SMP

Level 1 Miracles

Hard Miracles

2 SMP

Level 2 Miracles

Deep Miracles

4 SMP

Level 3 Miracles