In the First Age of the world, the creatures of Creation lived in harmony. The greatest of the spirits or gods, the Imperators, shaped the great tree Yggdrasil and its realms to their will as they pleased.
In the Second Age, they warred. In myriad ways, in this silver age they opposed and struggled against one another.
It was only at the start of the Third Age that anyone gave serious thought to the possibility that the world might actually end. Only when the gatekeeper of Heaven fell at the hands of the Riders, on their pale horses, wielding strange and abhorrent weapons, and ended the Second Age with violence, did the world realize this.
You are one such creature, a reaction of the void against Creation, an incarnation of its inhabitants' endings; an enemy of the world. Your kin are spies sent to confuse enemy lines, soldiers that march to battle, and generals that lead the troops to end the world.
You are an Excrucian.
Or well, you're becoming an Excrucian, right as you read this. And we cannot just speak of Excrucians without saying how they are divided in different castes. They all work in different ways to unmake the world and its inhabitants, and of these, you are…
[] A Deceiver - Deceivers are the cunning and fabulous agents of the Excrucians - they who believe the world as a whole is a lie, but love the truth underneath. They twist Creation against itself to break it, creating contradictions and lies to tear it at its seams.
[] A Warmain - Warmains are the warriors and killers of the Excrucians, they who think the world unworthy, except for those few individuals who fight them back. Of those that pass their terrible tests, those they deem the very best, they kill, so that they may live on within them.
[] A Strategist - Strategists are the bleak magisters of the Excrucians, they are those who hate the world so profoundly they are dying just by being within it. They wield the raw power of unmaking, the ability to destroy anything at all, from your very thoughts to the shadow under your feet. There's also Mimics but they're too complicated for this kind of Quest.
Welcome, one and all, to Excrucian Quest. Today we have prepared for you a story of how the end of the world will arise, or at least be furthered. Of how you, as a newly-found god of emptiness, shall wage war against the light of Creation.
But wait, I hear you say, you don't know anything about this setting. Nobilis? It's never been used in a Quest before, that you've heard before. Isn't it that one game that was more a work of art than an actually playable game in second edition? And didn't it have a really mixed reception in third edition (and some really bad art)? Isn't it diceless? Fear not, my dear SV. You will not need to know anything from this setting or its rules to enjoy this Quest, if I do my job right. And if I don't, well, maybe even then. The world, after all, is false - anything could happen.
I shall also say that given the nature of Nobilis, write-ins will be much more valued than the usual. Both in the long run as well as in the small decisions, imagination mixed with godly power matters a lot. This game thrives on imagination, and much of what you do will have a large impact on the world.
Before anything else, let's begin with character creation, shall we? And if you have any doubts or questions, don't be afraid to voice them.
One final note: For Excrucians, it is common for truth to precede form or viceversa, so suggestions and discussion about how this character may look, what their name might be, or such other details are highly encouraged, even before character creation is finished.
This game will be running, as I mentioned, on Nobilis' engine, but a bit simplified. At one point I considered making it a hybrid with Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, but it would have generated all sorts of complications. So for the most part, we'll be using Nobilis' system. Everything of importance will be brought up in greater detail when necessary.
Mundane actions
The most basic sort of action, available to any kind of being, from the lowliest human to the greatest of Gods. They can have wide uses and are applicable in many situations, but they are never guaranteed success, only increasing levels of efficiency, productivity or impressiveness. In a heavy miraculous game like this, they're not that useful on their own.
Mundane skills include: normal skills (ordinary fighting, cooking, everyday life, your passions); Superior Skills (abilities that deviate from the human norm, like having the strength of a bear or abnormal toughness or whatever); Magic Skills (difficult, unnatural ways of changing the world at the expense of a lot of willpower); Cool (protagonism, being difficult to hurt or embarrass via mundane methods); and Shine (charisma, making it easier for other people to do stuff for you/in your name). Their resource is Willpower.
I'm mostly including this here for the sake of completeness, but I don't expect it to come up much.
Miracles
Miracles are the opposite of mundane actions. The key rule of miracles is that they always happen to the letter of their wording, and they automatically trump mundane actions in any direct conflict. Their limitations are mostly being restricted in scope. Unlike mundane actions they don't help in being productive, efficient or being 'correct', but tactically speaking, they're always superior. You destroy something, or you fly, or create fire; whatever! It's not magic. It's a thing of divine will made true by the world. It's a miracle.
Miraculous conflict is the simplest - a higher-level miracle always beats any lower-level miracles, so in a direct confrontation it's easy to tell which will win. Things tend to get a bit more complicated with more people involved in a conflict, but that's usually how it is. Their resource is Miracle Points (MP).
Almost all characters of importance in this game will have miraculous traits and be able to throw miracles around like candy. More on that later.
Imperial Miracles
Imperial Miracles twist the world to do something in the same way that the author of a book says 'and then this happens'. They cannot be opposed directly by any means, even one another, but loopholes may be found within their wording. For instance, if one Imperial Miracle says America must be East of Eurasia, and another says that New York must be West of Eurasia, the world will become round. (That might just be how Earth actually became round.)
Others are more tactical than anything - they empower mundane actions, or give the world temporal metaphysical rules - generally making it an indirect helpful asset. Mostly they work to advance the world's story, whatever that may be.
Imperial Miracles are mostly spoken by Imperators, and they're even more restrictive than normal miracles - usually they involve specific ways to counter them, long time to speak them, or other ways to limit them. Their resource is, mostly, time. More on this later.
Actions
All beings can hold a maximum of two actions at the same time. An action may consist of: A mundane action; a miracle, or a mix thereof. Actions may be immediate, one-shot, or may need to be sustained for some time to take full effect. Miracles are usually immediate, a single action with no beginning or end; mundane actions are the opposite, having a defined start and finish. Imperial Miracles take time to speak but once finished need no further sustaining.
Also, actions can be really complicated, like 'coordinate with my doppelgangers to lead an army of thousands while fighting this guy' while still counting as just one. Just keep in mind it's usually not as appealing as it might sound.
Health Levels and Wounds
Health Levels in Nobilis are ways to soak up damage. They are ways to reflexively defend yourself if you're unable to do so via your usual abilities. Like, maybe that nuclear bomb that was about to hit you turned out to be a dud! Or maybe we go with a goofy perspective on it, and the bomb hits, but you're unaffected - but you're mildly radioactive afterwards. And for a while after you have a Wound that occupies one of your Health Levels - you're 'really lucky' until then, for example.
Health Levels, in descending order, are split into Divine, Tough and Normal. Wounds, also in descending order, are split into Deadly, Serious and Surface.
Deadly Wounds are damage that should completely destroy or ruin a normal mortal - nuclear strikes, massive enchantments to enthrall you, etc.
Serious Wounds are damage that should kill or normally defeat a normal mortal - normal magic attacks against you, a bear mauling you or being shot somewhere.
Surface Wounds are really things you can ignore most of the time if you're in a hurry, or may be treated as merely aesthetic damage - someone ruins your cool suit, for instance, or maybe you're just bleeding a bit from your arm, but it's barely noticeable. Maybe you twisted your ankle.
Surface Wounds may only apply to Normal Health Levels; Serious Wounds to Tough and Normal Levels; and Deadly to any Wound level. Once you have been cleared of Divine Health Levels, all Serious and Normal levels are cleared of Wounds - the damage you've received makes them narratively irrelevant. Similarly, losing all your Tough Health Levels clears your Normal Health Levels.
If all your Health Levels run out, you are Defeated. It's a Bad End, or maybe we return to play later, under new conditions. But once Defeated, you are at my mercy. Thus, to be defeated completely, you need to be exhausted of Divine Health Levels, then the Tough Levels, then the Normal ones, making it practically impossible for anyone to be auto-ganked. To completely defeat someone is very difficult unless you're packing some serious power. Some characters even have Active Immortality, making it even more difficult to beat them.
Ordinary mortals have usually 1-2 Normal level - practically made of paper. Tough mortals may even have up to 1 Tough level, which makes them roughly as action movie stars. Gods and such have at a minimum 2 Divine Health Levels, 1 Tough Health Level and 2 Normal Health Levels, making them incredibly tough. NPCs do not exactly have Health Levels since it's a player resource, but equivalents may apply to them.
Tricks of Play
You as a player can always act. Even if you can't do anything really useful, you as a player can always do something. It's your right as a player to be able to do stuff, even if that means only being able to flail uselessly in the vacuum of the void.
You as a player may always interrupt an unacceptable act. As long as you are able to act, you are always capable of trying to stop disaster or unfavorable actions against you. If so, actions rewind themselves until the point where the change occurs, and flow naturally from there. For instance, if someone blows up your house while you're away from it, and I made a mistake, and it turns out you should have been able to prevent it because you have an automatic divination or something, it can and will be retconned away.
Stalemates may be broken. If for some reason you and another creature are evenly matched and cannot get an advantage over one another, one of several methods may apply to breaking it - you may try to appeal to luck or mercy from me to break it, to one side's advantage, or maybe you come up with some smart way to do so.
Action happens in the context of the now. Meaning, all actions have their own, different kinds of meaning. If I blow up your house with a miracle and you try to save it with a mundane action, well, you can't stop me, but you might be able to salvage something - maybe you save a family heirloom or something because of luck. Actions that mess with time as an abstract concept can have particularly weird interactions, as well.
Sometimes, things just happen. Meaning, some actions occur naturally, to your benefit or drawbacks, as a part of the world. You automatically notice something because you have good senses, instead of needing to spend an action or it; or you fail to notice something because of someone's passive ability.
[X] A Warmain - Warmains are the warriors and killers of the Excrucians, they who think the world unworthy, except for those few individuals who fight them back. Of those that pass their terrible tests, those they deem the very best, they kill, so that they may live on within them.
[x] A Deceiver - Deceivers are the cunning and fabulous agents of the Excrucians - they who believe the world as a whole is a lie, but love the truth underneath. They twist Creation against itself to break it, creating contradictions and lies to tear it at its seams.
[X] A Deceiver - Deceivers are the cunning and fabulous agents of the Excrucians - they who believe the world as a whole is a lie, but love the truth underneath. They twist Creation against itself to break it, creating contradictions and lies to tear it at its seams.
[X] A Strategist - Strategists are the bleak magisters of the Excrucians, they are those who hate the world so profoundly they are dying just by being within it. They wield the raw power of unmaking, the ability to destroy anything at all, from your very thoughts to the shadow under your feet.
[X] A Deceiver - Deceivers are the cunning and fabulous agents of the Excrucians - they who believe the world as a whole is a lie, but love the truth underneath. They twist Creation against itself to break it, creating contradictions and lies to tear it at its seams.
Somehow it does not surprise me that Deceivers are currently winning. They're the most popular and well-known Excrucian type. They're the ones with the best propaganda, I suppose.
I'll repeat myself for the benefit of everyone: if you have any particular questions about the game (what abilities do Deceivers/Warmains/Strategists have exactly; what are Imperators, what was that about Yggdrasil), please, ask ahead. It might change your opinions on stuff.
Ha, I'm glad you asked. Deceivers mainly have four kinds of power: Aspect, Treasure, Persona and the 'Second Skin'. These last two are really the most important of the bunch, though.
Aspect is being able to do things with your body and mind, first up to a level of human perfection, and then beyond - being able to jump absurdly far or having perfect control over every extension of your body and emotions; at the highest level users have the capability of performing fairy-tale feats: drinking entire lakes or hiding mountains in their pockets. A popular example is also shooting down the sun with an arrow, although it's not very recommended (the sun will get mad at you).
Treasure is having a panoply of resources. Close friends and companions; super-science or magical wonders, armies of monsters, fantastic sanctuaries, and at the highest levels, other miraculous beings. Treasure is being able to manipulate these resources. It's being Batman with a lot of cool gadgets and your sidekick Robin or Batwoman. It's being Ash and having lots of Pokemon to help you. It's being Cardcaptor Sakura and a lot of magical cards with special and often unique powers. It's like that, but probably more epic.
To understand Persona's power, first we must understand the world. Creation is divided in what we may call Estates, or elements. They cover not the basic four of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, but everything in this world. So yes, Fire, but also Garbage, Recycling, Dreams, Memories, Food, Gravity, Sunsets; anything at all, all the way up to Existence and Meaning. Through Persona, users may take their Estate and its properties and manipulate what it means. They may, say, make a person a dream, or remove a dream's 'false' quality to make it real. They may set guardians for the whole Estate, or change what it means for certain people. Persona is playing by the rules of your Estate and turning the world to your advantage.
Deceivers don't play by the rules of the world. They have their own Pseudo-Estate, or Pstate, a story of their own that goes against the world. Usually something self-referential, like 'Things you Remember about [Name]', or 'The Weapons of [Name]'. Although in most respects this is identical to normal Persona, from a fluff perspective it's practically cheating.
Finally, the most unique power Deceivers possess is a particular way of seeing the world that allows them to cheat hardcore: The Second Skin. Through a ritual that takes one day, a Deceiver may speak an Imperial Miracle that allows them to completely imitate the spiritual skin of some being they know well (very few beings). This includes any and all miraculous powers or gifts that they have. For instance, Immortality, or someone else's Persona, or whatever.
This comes with its own logical weaknesses, however - you imitate any advantages and weaknesses, and if anyone realizes whose power you are using, by ordering you to do so in their name, they can force you to obey a single order - well, obey it, or exit the Skin, or suffer a great Wound.
Warmains and Strategists also possess Aspect and Treasure, and other separate abilities. My general assumption is that people would, if given the chance, choose more unique options than not (that is, pick high Persona rather than high Treasure as a Deceiver). Whether this turns out to be true or not remains to be seen.
If I'm understanding the Persona thing correctly, it seems to be sort of like the concept of Paradigmatics from Lusternia; sort of, changing your worldview to change the world itself. Is that about right?
Isn't this the game with Emperor Entropy who was the top dog of the gods? I remember something like that...
Anyway, tempted to go Warmain with heavy Aspect focus for maximum personal prowess. Interested in having those we kill live on within us. Is that some sort of power absorption?
If I'm understanding the Persona thing correctly, it seems to be sort of like the concept of Paradigmatics from Lusternia; sort of, changing your worldview to change the world itself. Is that about right?
I have not had the pleasure of playing Lusternia but a quick search suggests that it's not that far off. It's similar, at least.
Let me give you one famous in-game example. There is one Deceiver known as Iolithae Septimian. Her Pstate is 'The Lies of Iolithae Septimian'. One of the properties that makes her Pstate damn scary is that her Lies '[are] made false by the nature of the world.' And Persona allows you to add or remove properties of your Pstate to things. So she could say something false, make it one of her Lies, and then remove it from her Pstate, making it true.
Through this reality-warping method, Iolithae once said that the seas were full of salt. And the seas grew black with strangled fish and white with salt and green with given poisons. And since then, the seas have been salty.
She once said nobody can know whether God is real or not, and here we are.
She once said Firefly was cancelled after 11 episodes. You get the picture.
It's like that - you just make things up as you go along and they become part of your world. Mind you, Iolithae is one of the scariest Deceivers around, and it would take a lot of careful thinking to make something as scary as her. And there are ways to counter things that scary - for instance, trick Iolithae into saying a Lie, and then before she removes it from her Pstate, make it something true, so that it creates a contradiction you can exploit.
In addition to Aspect and Treasure, Warmains have Domain.
Domain is the physical manifestation and control of an Estate. Users of Domain can create, destroy, or manipulate this Estate in a very direct fashion. For instance, if your Estate was Moon, you could create extra moons around the Earth. If it was luck, you could create luck for yourself or destroy that of someone else. The possibilities are as endless as Persona, although it's generally more straightforward.
In the case of Warmains, they also have a Pstate, something wrong and unnatural. Their Estates are something like 'Agony', or 'Blight', 'Loss', 'Bad Luck', or 'Void'. Something more concrete, but still not natural. This forms the backbone of a Warmain's Test. For instance, a Warmain with Loss may cut someone from everything they hold dear, the central pillar of their being, and then fight them. Those that are able to fight back somehow, even if they've lost their identity, or everything they hold dear, pass the test. Unfortunately, passing a Warmain's Test means you win their respect, and that they will kill you because of it. You know. Something like that.
Technically, aside from these three stats all Warmains have is Gifts, miscellaneous miraculous abilities, but in practice (much like Deceivers have the Second Skin) they usually have a general theme that might be interpreted as an additional 'stat': Creature of Fable. Creature of Fable makes them, well, beings out of fable: incredible hunters, able to impersonate people, declare feelings unto them, call creatures to them, and such.
Commonly, they also wield things called Soul-Carving Swords: blades with the unique ability to wipe off abilities off of an opponent's sheet as long as you sustain the miracle - so for instance, as long as you sustain the ability and your miracle is stronger, you would be able to cut away an opponent's Immortality. If it's used on a specific stat, it can restrain use of that stat, unless the opponent takes a pretty big Wound. So if a Warmain used the Sword on a Deceiver's Persona miracle, as long as the Warmain sustains the action, the Deceiver would be unable to use Persona at all.
These things put together make Warmains scary. Cool, too, in the way ruthless killers are cool.
Isn't this the game with Emperor Entropy who was the top dog of the gods? I remember something like that...
Anyway, tempted to go Warmain with heavy Aspect focus for maximum personal prowess. Interested in having those we kill live on within us. Is that some sort of power absorption?
Lord Entropy, yeah. He's the current boss of all Imperators, the defacto boss of Creation at the moment. More on him later.
Technically, a Warmain's absorption of someone's appearance is purely aesthetic. It doesn't grant any particular powers, unless you make a big deal of it and take pains to get a new ability. But IC, it's kinda a big deal. It means that you respected/loved a guy from Creation enough to take his face, and their essence fundamentally lives on through you.
In the case of Warmains, they also have a Pstate, something wrong and unnatural. Their Estates are something like 'Agony', or 'Blight', 'Loss', 'Bad Luck', or 'Void'. Something more concrete, but still not natural.
I don't really get that. Aren't all those concepts natural in that they exist in the world? What makes them wrong and unnatural? Sure, they are negative and destructive, but so is Lord Entropies power of Desecration from what i looked up on him.
[X] A Strategist - Strategists are the bleak magisters of the Excrucians, they are those who hate the world so profoundly they are dying just by being within it. They wield the raw power of unmaking, the ability to destroy anything at all, from your very thoughts to the shadow under your feet.
[X] A Deceiver - Deceivers are the cunning and fabulous agents of the Excrucians - they who believe the world as a whole is a lie, but love the truth underneath. They twist Creation against itself to break it, creating contradictions and lies to tear it at its seams.
I don't really get that. Aren't all those concepts natural in that they exist in the world? What makes them wrong and unnatural? Sure, they are negative and destructive, but so is Lord Entropies power of Desecration from what i looked up on him.
It's mostly nuance. They could be natural concepts in another world, but they're generally something specifically created or crafted by them to harm others. I guess if it really doesn't make sense for most people we could go with more explicitly unnatural Pstates, like 'the Touch of Midas', or 'the Winds of Hate', 'Unmastered Pain'. Things like that.
For Warmains we could decide on a thematic methodology for their test, (Inevitability, or faith, or self, or whatever) and then go with Domain: Things of My Test
[X] A Strategist - Strategists are the bleak magisters of the Excrucians, they are those who hate the world so profoundly they are dying just by being within it. They wield the raw power of unmaking, the ability to destroy anything at all, from your very thoughts to the shadow under your feet.
