They see you as part of their gateway to enlightenment, or as something they bargain with for power, or as a symbol of and a figurehead for their ideals.
How much power do you give them? How much will you take from them before your need for them is done? Or maybe you just tend to encounter a bunch of people with similar origins to yourself; they are born from the echoes of your birth, spawned by either the Lands Beyond Creation or the world.
So, back to that first sentence! Are you your own worst enemy, or your own best friend? Ward You are responsible for a person, a creature, or a place or organization containing many people or animals. So you do your best! You do not want them to be a mortal. That is like winning the lottery of your life now sucks! I mean, they actually seem real to you. They may have sinuses full of snot and intestines full of beneficial and less beneficial flora, and maybe there are some details of their physicality and mentality and spirit that you question, but overall?
Bilberry XV Who are they? Are they a mortal? A particularly pure Power? An Imperator? Why do you believe in them? How did that happen? Can you kill them? What about falling in love with them? How about kidnapping them?
Would kidnapping them and taking them out into the Lands Beyond Creation and purifying them — would that work? Lord Entropy. Ha-Qadosch Berakha. Diane Spinnaker. Misenchronic Engine. Some super-important Warmain. Or, you are someone important, and you have disciples who come by and consult with you about stuff. Who are you? These options are terrible for my character.
This pair of ghosts hanging out and having fun in the mostly possessed town strikes me as really awesome. So ultimately I just leave that idea alone. I imagine that she mostly sits up in the Church bell tower, watches the area around the town, and rings the bells now and then — the sound of them, of course, now rich with the Voice of Morrowen Hollow.
I need it to hear me, so I can learn to hear myself. A cool territory in the Lands Beyond Creation? Some Deceivers control interesting and quasi-real environments out there beyond the world. An Awesome Vehicle? If you want a mobile base like this, strengthen the Lie of. A Chancel in Creation? Heck, Deceivers can do that by accident. If you want one, strengthen the Lie of. If you plan to share a Chancel with a collection of Nobles or Deceivers e. With much care, he cut her shadow away.
She moved on; The black part of her soul the toll she paid. None enter Heaven until it is gone, And thrown to the squabbling rooks at the gate. But what do you tell people? What do you say when they ask you why? Why destroy the world? Why break the lie? Look at them. Look how they hurt. Look how, even when they try to make things better, even when they try to hurt a little less, they wind up making everything worse and hurt more.
You want to put a stop to it. You are going to end the world because it is false. It offends you that the world should exist in this fashion, all shrouded by its lies.
Look at you. Sure, you might technically have a choice. Sure, you could be something else. Sooner will the sun rise at night; the wind blow tides of stillness; and the stars fall and drown themselves under the piled waters of the sea. So tell me: what are you actually about? Building Morrowen Part 8 95 an example of Deceiver construction I skip the territories options because none of them fit Morrowen Hollow. I guess it might be funny if the whole town could fly — But no! I am strong!
I will not make a silly character here! I want a cool one! So now we come to the last choice in the lifepaths. Am I going to point to the suffering people? Am I going to object to the lie on moral grounds? When I am complete, when at last the Voice of Morrowen Hollow resolves into a thing, then the world will end.
Nobody has found them yet. Computers have come across them, of course, in their endless computation of pi; they have made shift to print those numbers, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.
As of yet, nobody has read them; or, if they have read them, they have not yet recognized what it is that they have read. Nobody has yet looked blankly at the obscure symbol or absence on the page, forced themselves to process its existence, checked for computer error, and finally attempted to compute from first principles what the correct digit in that place would be.
If they did the world would be a different place, haunted by the irrationality of its principles. What Does it All Mean? Your final Avatar Diagram is a Project — a vehicle for Destiny expenditures. When things happen in play that bear on this story you started with, that Project gains Destiny. You can, in short, build forward from this Diagram to empower and develop your Avatar over the course of the game.
Write appropriate questions next to those circles. Wrestling with those questions in play will give your Avatar Destiny to work with, ultimately increasing their power and the breadth of your influence in the world. Final Touches Draw a line between any two circles that have a shared bullet point. Think about your pseudo-Estate some more — what it means, what it is, what the best phrase for it might be. Make it fit nicely together with your character as a whole.
Answer any major unresolved questions that this process has left you with, or — if you can play without answering them — write those questions down.
Common Gifts include Immortality, Glorious, and Shapeshifter. I think this is mostly up to the Deceiver in question although the choice and outcome appear to be strongly constrained by factors incomprehensible or at least unknown to me.
Deceiver-shards are typically built as mortals save that they have access to Second Skins; they may also have low levels of the Aspect or the Treasure Trait. What I decide to say is that its body — her body — is a pattern of sound. What she is is the way that sound flows through the world, how it echoes from things, how it lives in the things that have heard such sounds and comes back out in them when they speak.
If she were silenced, she would live on in the things that heard and remember her Voice but she would degrade; the chaos and entropy that afflict their thoughts would degrade her; she would be weaker and damaged and changed from herself when she emerged into the world again.
She would have to work hard to find herself again, to tune herself to herself from what was left of her again, and it is possible that if enough of her was lost that she could never fully return. If she were silenced and forgotten, then she would die. She is not yet words. The original girl? The family? The preacher from the chapel? Maybe even everyone who lived there?
Whomever she has tuned so thoroughly to her voice that she can Occupy them and speak through them in the broader world. Or, hm, no. Scratch that last question, as interesting as it is.
Why does the world have to be a lie? What is so wrong with the world that I need to fight it? I am starting to taste the answer to that — that the sound that comes back to me is somehow wrong and broken — but why am I answering it? I should think about it. I should let it be a question. It is a hissing sound that rises from the machine. Each second it stutters.
A soldier sits against the machine. He watches the world beyond him. He is wearing fatigues. There is a bayonet on the ground beside him.
The woods are full of them. The animals have mostly left. In the distance a Church bell rings. The sound strikes against the barrier of the machines. It is swallowed by it. He relaxes. In the center of the demesne of the machines men dressed as soldiers stand around a table and a map. The map shows a nameless town. It is colored red. It is under a blotch or fuzz of red that spreads across the town and a nearby canyon.
By the map, one of the soldiers takes a phone call. He answers. He hangs up. He is speaking in the sound of a human voice. Has anyone been able to contact Himself? In the woods, a soldier drowses. There is a noisemaker near him. The wind wraps around it. The soldier snaps up his head. He stares at it. The sound of the other noisemakers is still loud in the woods.
They are deep and they are loud and they almost drown out the change. You can barely hear, in the forest. But this one machine is different. The soldier hears. He widens his eyes. He draws up his gun. In a different part of the forest there are three machines. The wind dances around them. It carries the sound of distant bells. He picks it up. He dials a different place. He tells it words. He looks up. The soldier with the phone clicks it off.
He drops it. He steps on it and grinds it with his foot. He sags. Then he looks up. The wind is all around him. The sound is all around him. Everywhere is the Voice of Morrowen Hollow.
He misses the sound of his phone. It was good, he thinks, to have it. He realizes, as he opens his mouth to say something — to deny his fate, maybe; to give in to it, maybe; to make a last plea to He who had been his god — that he has never loved. They are fighting the Nobilis. Having a limited Persona-style power over one of the ways you relate to the world is awesome! So the Deceivers double cheat. There are Deceivers with Persona 7, which means they can basically turn whole chunks of world into their personal playground for free.
And their being Immortal, as they usually are, means that beating them is always going to require something a little crazy. But still — a Deceiver is not as scary as a Familia. Or to a hidden sanctum. Or if they absolutely must, to a warehouse or basement or abandoned building or somewhere like that where they can work without interruption. They spend a day, dawn to dawn, dusk to dusk, or maybe even some other interval.
They smell different. They carry themselves different. The exact ritual is different from Deceiver to Deceiver. So too are the requirements. The standard rule is that they have to have met somebody.
Deceivers like that, all they need is a meeting. They get introduced to you. They and you have some trivial interaction. They can wear your spirit as a second skin thereafter.
They can. Their shards can. Just from that. There are plenty of Deceivers who have to work harder. In a lower-power game, the default is a Project plus substantial interaction. For instance, Jasmine Apocynum needs at least a whole Project bubble dedicated to knowing you before she can steal your skin. She has to study people, think about people, and gather memorabilia of people before she can wear their skins. History has seen Deceivers who needed their targets to sign something, or to sleep with them, or to invite them into their home, or to give them some sort of gift.
I mean, not to impress Powers. It needs to engage with them in at least a few minutes of conversation — more if it cannot map their body with its echoes — and feel out how that person responds to their presence before it can take on their soul. This ritual of echoes takes the normal day and night. Morrowen Hollow speaks the self it wishes to become of from dusk to dusk or dawn to dawn.
Morrowen Hollow does not need proper peace and quiet to abandon such a skin; rather, it must ring out its original sound throughout itself. This means that it must have access to the ability to make sound within itself and the ability to hear either the sounds of the creek or the heartbeat of the original corrupted girl. It does seem to have some effect on you.
It gives you a frisson. I accept spooky action-at-a-distance as every Nobiliser must but spooky action-without-action is a bit too Taoist even for me. It is probably something you could exploit somehow. What do they actually do to put it on? Few of these rituals have ever had witnesses. One of the women at the ritual gave birth under the pressure of the event and left him with one hundred and one potential witnesses, including the adult survivor who wrote the story down.
My computer would catch on fire. Or my notepad. Or my tongue. You know. The best thing to do is to come up with something cool for your Deceiver to do to put on a second skin. Something that fits their pseudo-Estate or their nature and has a kind of epic feeling to it. I think they have to take one second skin off before they can put on another.
For a shard, who might be as weak without a second skin as an ordinary mortal, that temporary vulnerability might be a serious concern. If you are a Power and the best way you can think of to find out about Deceivers is to read a Nobilis supplement written by someone who happens to have had social interactions with a couple of them you should be aware that listening to me on this particular point is dangerous. If you are reading this because you want to play a fun game of Nobilis, though, you can assume that a Deceiver or shard is comparatively vulnerable during this ritual, particularly in its second half — anything else would be a plot twist!
The Deceiver tells themselves, and maybe the world, the story that they are actually somebody else. They weave the power of that person around them. They become that person, sort of.
It even affects how they think of themselves. Or until almost the end. Their passions. Their loves, their hates, their needs. They gain their powers — for instance, and most importantly, the miraculous abilities a Power or Imperator has.
Estates The Domain and Persona ratings that the Deceiver gains from a second skin govern the relevant Estate. However — You must know about an Anchor to have power over it. Finally, in general, you cannot forsake the Anchors of your second skin, neither on their behalf nor on your own. You can, conversely, use a currently unassociated Bond to bind a new Anchor to your target and thus to you. The standard conflict rules apply here, so they could notice this effect and defend against it.
Chancels Technically if you want the discount on an Aspect or Treasure miracle, and their Aspect or Treasure is lower than yours, you should use their rating and not your own. Wounds in these levels go away when and if they drop the second skin.
These are always and only those that the Imperator or Mimic would be able to speak themselves — they have to flow from who the Imperator in question is, not from who the Deceiver is. Example A Deceiver-shard named Christine Waye falls into the world. I judged that I had learned enough from him; I judged that no one else ever should; I slaughtered him.
The resulting smell confused me. It was not the smell of the fresh dead, but of a corpse that had been rotting there for weeks.
I staggered out of the building to find that the building had been his corpse-flesh moldering, that the windows had been his eyes; I pulled out a spark of power after me and understood in that moment that it had been I myself who had, however transiently, given that corpse the appearance of life.
This was apparent to me; I did not deduce it, but saw it, rather, and shook it off only with effort, will, and time. Sometimes I will wake up, or turn my attention suddenly from an object that has occupied my attention, and the world will be his corpse again.
This vision does not depart. Luckily for Christine, her parent Deceiver spent a fair bit of time interacting with Kaithrya of the Wild. The Afflictions of the target can pose a problem for the Deceiver — heck, even their Bonds can pose a problem, although obviously somewhat less of one. Someone loyal to Creation who names the skin that a Deceiver is wearing can follow it with an order that the Deceiver must obey.
You can only use this once every few hours. How many? It varies! Three is usually safe. That could be a problem. That would be a problem too. Yes and no! Th too long in ect to ourselves. They pop into merical ue iq im M rea aff cluster o by one in the a they e n s; o ie it ty u li rea ch ambig on into su y b d flicte ivocati they the equ absorb ntually, e v e s; e ique lv im se m M e a th you cage edepart.
If scription of som t e d a onten c t a atop th s, biguou to thing am ally resolve in ntu e v e y a m g clear. I like to imagine a dramatic and private conversation in their heads. Or at least considering it!
It reflects the heart of the Deceiver Jasmine Apocynum. She gathers memories with and memorabilia of people whose souls she might want to wear. She can tease it out over the course of a day, hunt it through the places behind the mirrors, lure it out by reminding it of their shared memories, anything like that that the player and HG enjoy.
Then she can take that heart and put it in her chest and gain access to their powers, skills, and soul. I remember being good. I remember being — a good person. They were not from the official books however. That much I remember. A couple of us did have a question though; have you considered or do you know the logistics behind getting these as a template on Roll 20, possibly? In fact, my RPG days are kinda behind me since I started travelling.
Glad you found my Nobilis sheets though! Click to see allowed HTML. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.
What is this place anyway? No Third Edition? Would your friends like this article? Subscribe to be notified of new articles. Craig Brown says:. Jun 14, at Publisher Resources. Family Gaming. Science Fiction. Phone PDF. Virtual Tabletops. STL 3D Model. Jenna Katerin Moran.
Pay What You Want. See all titles. Follow Your Favorites! Sign in to get custom notifications of new products! Recent History. Product Information. Copy Link Tweet This. Original electronic Scanned image These products were created by scanning an original printed edition.
Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.
The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable.
Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background. For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. Not only did this book help me understand Deceivers, it helped me understand Excrucians in general -- how they break through into reality, how they can be formed from the core of a human being, why they do what they do, and so on.
That alone was worth the price of the book. In theory, you could use this to play a Deceiver PC and there are rules for that!
A strong recommendation for GMs, entirely optional for players who may appreciate the general insight into Persona and be inspired by some of the concepts, which could equally apply to Nobles.
Let me start out this review by saying that, prior to its release, I had been eagerly anticipating Nobilis Antithesis, Minibook 1i for for several months. Ever since I first heard about its potential existence. A book on the Excrucians was something that I very much wanted since 2nd edition, and craved with the arrival of the 3rd edition. This book seemed to deliver on that promise, at least in part, purely from the concept.
I was excited! The fact of the matter, however, is that author Jenna Moran both met and exceeded my expectations and delivered a book that completely floored me. First, this book talks a good bit about Deceivers It introduces a Lifepath system to let you flesh out Deceiver antagonists for your game or to actually create them as characters. The same system accomplishes both flawlessly! There's even character creation guidelines for a Deceiver that 'probably' balances well with the Nobilis characters, and numerous nods within the text and the Lifepath system to allowing a Deceiver character to co-exist with a Familia of powers.
If that is what you want to do. The book doesn't stop there. It does more than just explain to us what Deceivers are and how you might create one for your game.
It does one better: It gets into the nuts and bolts behind the way that their powers work. It gives us a number of Excrucians in varying level of detail, supplies guidelines on how their Persona-based powers work in game, provides worked up "Persona Miracle Charts" for most of the Decievers mentioned in the book.
One of the new Deceivers so mentioned, Morrowen Hollow, is fully developed from concept to full-game stats as an example of the Lifepath system in action. The book even discusses creating Properties for the Excrucians' Pseudo-Estate, while the Lifepath system can help you do something that I've found quite difficult to do on my own.
Namely, come up with interesting example Pseudo-Estates for Deceivers. All of this, and its written in author Jenna Moran's usual voice, which adds color and humor to every page. So, Minibook 1i isn't just a great RPG manual but also a joy to read. Still not done singing its praises though; I was holding off on this review until I got my PoD. Rather than simply commenting on its quality excellent; great binding, layout, no issues with 'full page bleed' or anything , I find myself once again simply overwhelmed.
The illustrations just leap off the page, artist Miranda Harrell helps the Deceivers breakthrough into our reality through her medium, and her talents are joined by too many other wonderful artists for me to mention except for Alexander Benekos, because, wow If you play Nobilis, or if you just read it, this is a worthy investment of your funds.
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