Deceivers are always fantastic. Mimics and Strategists have their own things going on, but I always feel like Warmains have the most to live up to, among the Excrucians.

True Story: Based on the deceivers lifepath system, I made a lifepath system for Excrucian Strategists... and emailed it to Jenna Moran. SHE ANSWERED.  It was so cool :D Basically said it was a viable stopgap if you wanted to use it. I never completely finished it, but, yeah.


Anyway, back onto the actual subject of this game... let me get to work on that character sheet format.

I almost forgot. Sorry if it goes without saying but no rape in the game please.

Otherwise I'm fine with most subject matter.

I think we can safely put ToS violations outside the realm of possibility.

I would like to make the game an adult rating as well.

And I am fine with no rape. My noble personally won't be into that sort of thing but would probably horribly punish or maim a rapist.

I believe the adult tag gives us the most artistic freedom in our game and posting. And while this means things like sex, use of drugs and alcohol, illegal activity, etc can and probably will come into play it doesn't mean that every single scene has to fall into total debauchery and even if it did you can still have things fade to black if you don't feel like being explicit. Just having the option to be explicit is good and like I said I want our game to have the fewest constraints possible.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:51, Sun 09 Feb 2020.

I'm on board with that since my girl looks like she might be a pretty open-minded vampire lady who has a group who likes being snacked on :D

Here's a sheet format I assembled. I figure the proper character sheet itself can cut out the Lifepath segment if desired, since it's not critical, and that can be kept to a Lifepath PM potentially. I reccomend perhaps keeping up in any action-oriented posts with mundane intentions and miraculous actions currently sustained or in use. I admit, I've played very little Nobilis and sometimes feel like I don't fully understand how the complex mechanism works in motion, though I have a fair idea of how to build it :D.  Sheet Code below.

Sample Blank Sheet:

---

Name:
Estate:
Origin:
Age:
Gender:






Additional Anchor Notes
Anchor

• Expanded Details

Anchor

• Expanded Details

Gifts
Gift (# CP)

• Expanded Details

Gift (# CP)

• Expanded Details

---

Lifepath Notes

Estate:

Key: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shadow

Key: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shadow

---

Projects and Destiny

Project : (##/## Destiny)

• Details

---

Sheet Code (Copy into Character Sheet)

Tentative Concept under development, before I format it, since Netbook is a pain to use to format things...

Luna Duscae
Age: ~33 (Looks to be about 21)
Estate: Night
Origin: Human (Vampire)
Icon: A dark silver crescent with the tips in blood red.

Originally a young woman with few roots and a rebellious attitude, Luna accidentally slipped past the border mythic and (details pending) - eventually became a vampire, under service to her original maker until she awakened as a Noble, which broke the tethers tying her to her former master. Still very much a loner by nurture, she still seeks connection with others, but the nature of herself and her estate make it difficult for her.

Aspect 3   6 MP
Domain 0   6 MP
Persona 0  6 MP
Treasure 4 6 MP

(22 CP / 30 above)

Passions & Skills 7+5 (1 cp)
Cool 0 +3
Shine 3+0
Superior Vampiric Charisma 3
Passion: Rebellious Drive 3
3 pts left pending.
-1 Daytime Responsibilities

Gifts (7 cp)
Active Immortality 6
Shapeshifting 1 CP  (Forms: Human/Vampire (original), Mist, Bat, Black Fox, Hybridization of those forms, altering clothing, eye coloration)


Bonds & Afflictions (13+4)
Bond 3: I am invigorated by Night itself.
Affliction 3: I have superhuman senses.
Affliction 1: My Bite is a pleasurable experience that won't kill or turn someone.
Bond 3: My beloved Motorcycle (name pending) (anchor)
Bond 3: My Blood-Claimed Lovers (Collection of Anchors)

4pts remaining for some more anchor ideas.

The Motorcycle is a Wonderous Anchor with extraordinary durability and the ability to defy physics, allowing it to be used to pull off impossible driving stunts and feats. Ir can carry more in its sidebags than you'd expect, and  can even chart a route between realms (with sufficient strike where needed).  When used with Treasure 5 miracles, the roar of the engine, the force of the bike, and sparks from the tires and exhaust can be used as active, impossible weaponry.

Her Blood-claimed lovers are a rare collection of anchors - invariably young women whom she's given a taste of her blood - never enough to fully turn them into vampires themselves (though they manifest some of her gifts and traits when she channels herself through them at times).  She guides them frequently, though, and they provide connection for her. Mundane Anchors, but her blessings and guidance provide for them in many ways. She tries to make a better vampire of herself than her former master.

Estate Properties (7)
2 Night brings out ones' true nature.
3 Night invokes either loneliness, intimacy, or revelry.
1 Night is a time of respite and sleep.
1 Night is a mantle of concealment for those who need it most.

Lifepath pending, and I'm not 100% locked in yet. Anyone have input or commentary?

Flarelord/Player 1: How come are you using 30 cp to build your character? The book I'm reading says we only get 25. I am VERY rusty on Nobilis so am I missing something?

All: Do you know if the immortal gift also does the things that elusive does, or no?

---

Ok so still working on my character but I tried to stumble way way through the lifepath system. I hope I did it right. I basically chose the two flower keys that appealed to me and built around it. The character mechanics are still a work in progress. Any thoughts or advice or comments welcome!!!

NAME: Reyfus

ESTATE: Deviance

LIFEPATH

Key: III Acacia (Key of Something That Must Be Hidden)
Heart
*I hide that I am the lovechild of my Imperator and an Excrucian God.
*Even worse...Lord Entropy knows and seems amused by and even supportive of my situation. You'd think I'd be relieved, but well...it's HIM of all people! (From Coolness)
*And even more awkward...some Excrucians are trying to woe and befriend me. Like truly befriend, with no obvious strings or hidden agenda. Some still want me dead though of course. (From Estate)
*I definitely am fine with fighting the excrucians who are attacking estates, but the ones who are peaceful I'm willing to talk with and see what happens. (From Estate)
*My abhorrent Weapon works for me and no other due to my Excrucian parent's bloodline running within my veins. (From Origin)
*I don't want any more scrutiny on my Imperator parent, for I want to protect them from harm (From Contacts)

Shadow
*Painful Silence
*Set Apart
*I killed my own excrucian parent, and it haunts me to this day (From Affiliation)

Key: XII Hollyhock (Key of Destiny In The Balance)
Heart
*I'm becoming something thought to be impossible - An Archon, an Imperial/Excrucian Hybrid.
*Deep down a part of me wants to embrace the outer lands and my Excrucian blood (From Estate)

Shadow
*Self-Doubt
*Changing Hurts
*I won't let my Imperial Parent or Imperial Estate die, regardless of my lineage. (From contacts)
*How can I forgive the Excrucians and myself for killing my parent? (From Contacts)

Foundation
*Coolness - Just Plain Weird (+Acacia Heart)

Estate
*From the Dark Side of Human Experience (+Acacia Heart)
*Something You Live (+Acacia/+Hollyhock Heart)

Origin
*Extraordinary Life (+Acacia Heart)

Contacts (3 From Extraordinary Life)
*Excrucian - My Cousin by blood who wants to be my friend and treats me as her "cute little cousin." Favors me over their excrucian grandfather. (+Acacia Heart)
*Nemesis - The shards of my Excrucian Grandfather. I WILL punish and diminish him for what he's done, but I have yet to decide if I'll kill him or not. But his shards are my prey. Especially since they still want to kill my imperator parent. (+Hollyhock Shadow)
*Legacy - The Society of Eurytos and Slaying of my Excrucian Parent(See Note 1 Below). (+Hollyhock Shadow)

Affiliation
*Song of the Dark (+Acacia Shadow)

What Does It All Mean?
*Project: Achieve Greater Mastery Over Eurytos (Goal= +1 Treasure Rating)
*Ongoing Struggle 1: How do I balance out my Imperial and Excrucian sides?
*Ongoing Struggle 2: How can I make Eurytos once again inspire joy somehow?




Note 1: This used to be an Excrucian cult, centered around my excrucian parent and named after his Abhorrent Weapon, which once used to inspire joy. I grew up with this cult in my life (and spent a lot of time between them on Earth and my chancel as a child) and I was basically a prince among them. But then, due to my grandfather's plot to kill my excrucian parent for daring to fall for the enemy, the cult turned on me and worked with enemy excrucians to overwhelm my parent. Except in the end it turned out the cult was only working for the enemy because my parent told them to since Grandfather threatened to kill them all and start main-gunning for me and my Imperator if he did not take responsibility and commit seppuku with his own abhorrent weapon Eurytos. Eurytos refused to kill its master even with a treasure miracle and it wouldn't work without my parent's bloodline. And so Grandfather figured out a loophole: he told me that if I didn't kill my parent with Eurytos that he would kill me and then focus all his energy on trying to kill my Imperator parent. After slaughtering the cult first of course for good measure. My parent told me to slay them and inherit his blade and cult. Eurytos sensed that there was now no recourse, and worked in my hands as I slew my own parent, and then used all that energy to work an imperial treasure miracle on Eurytos (or if stats change his parent worked it as they died) of my own to banish Grandfather to the outer realms. Hopefully he never finds a way back into the Ash.

And on that day did Eurytos cease inspiring joy, as it became Eurytos the Horror. It lets no one even lay a finger on it, not even cultists, except me anymore. And To this day, I still care about the cult but still cannot fully forgive them for not working with me against the enemy in the beginning. A part of me feels that if they didn't turn against me at my parent's behest in the beginning we could have found a way out of this mess. The cult now only worships me as "The Divine Blossoming One." I am usually pretty Tsundere toward them.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:39, Mon 10 Feb 2020.

Thhhaaat would be a total memory failure on my part. Damn :/  I thought it was 30, not 25.

What to cut though. Mrm, hard to make a cut out of this. Probably  lose one point of treasure, plus reduce active immortality to durant and eternal (and I can see using a project to upgrade those two into Active Immortality later?)

that would free up 5 CP, bringing me back to 25 (page 114 does say 25, I just couldn't find it and was operating on memory)

As for your thing, let me have a look.

That's definitely interesting. I don't know if Imperator-Excrucian parents are a thing, but I don't see how they can't, either. That aside, looks pretty neat. Should mesh interestingly with Luna (I'm planning for Luna to have a fairly positive perspective on the Code of Hell, myself, need to sit down and do her life path properly, I just want to be sure I've got the right idea for this group.)

As for Elusive, I'm not 100% but if you examine the table (I think it actually is in the book somewhere) (somewhere, but I reproduced> it more concisely in my cheat sheet) about how durability works, Immortality's definitely a bigger version of kind of Durant and Eternal, but as written it totally applies to any mental or similar curses that would take you out too, if you read the descripotion. So I'd say that Active Immortality is kind of like buying a Durant, Elusive, Eternal Combo Meal and super sizing it with a bit of extra efficacy.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:56, Mon 10 Feb 2020.

Player 1:

It's dropped multiple times in the book that someone can have excrucian parentage, Imperator heritage, but I agree that having both at once should or OUGHT to be impossible. So I figured...hmmm, why don't I push the limits and make that my "one special thing." I feel most player characters have "one special thing" about them that sets them apart from everyone else, that being a baby Archon is my character's I figure.

Oh and for anyone else following this per a private discussion I had with Player 1, I think we agree Elusive isn't included in immortal. That is its own special effect.

And for your character based on your concept...I'd just trim a bit back so you have Treasure 3 Aspect 3 (which will still let you be really powerful), and trim immortal back to Durant and Eternal. That should really round her off nicely and I think will let you play up your concept well, while still leaving you extremely hard to kill.

A question to your character: has ennoblement allowed you to walk in the sun again? Are you a slave to your blood hunger, or did that get zapped away by becoming nobility as well (Eternal basically ensures you won't starve lol).

And what does your character think of her old Sire? Does she love or hate that Sire? Because right now, the tables have turned and you're far stronger than even an elder or ancient vampire.

I think you're misquoting my stance on Elusive/Glorious/Active Immortality, but my own clarification that was here was poorly written. Going to re-write it later, but TLDR: It was because we were explicitly discussing the Glorious gift.

My argument is that Active Immortality  DOES include the benefits of Elusive due to the table on page 331 (Assessing damage) plus the fact that  Elusive, as I interpret, is the social/magical equivalent of the physical resistance of 'Durant'. I was suggesting that Neither would directly say you can outright ignore Glorious, however if you CHOSE to, I'd say that an Immortal power probably wouldn't take a wound for ignoring it. An Elusive one might take a surface wound or something?  (This being absolutely avoidable by not contesting reacting to you as a Glorious being, though IMO this can take many forms depending on the creature subjected to the effect.)

Yeah, this explanation is MUCH clearer than the one I had here before. I'll reiterate, though; this is my interpretation, and I invite our GM's interpretation since that's the one that really counts, here.
===========

As for the other thoughts there:

Yep, that's my decision on downgrading to 25 CP, we talked about that.

She can walk in the sun just fine, with Eternal, however she has a -1 Skill: Daytime Responsibilities - unless she has a more applicable skill, her mundane abilities are nerfed during the day. She also has a 3 point bond she can draw on at night that can help give her Miracles Strike, from being empowered by the Night.  So, she's stronger at night and slightly more limited during the day.

Eternal does technically make her immune to bloodthirst, but I'm very much going to say she still needs blood to some measure, that's one of the purpose of her anchors. I planned to have total blood depletion as a weakness of her immortality (IE, she can be killed through Immortality if she and all of her anchors, as well as every drop of her blood is destroyed, otherwise she can regenerate via her blood wherever it might exist.) She won't have that Immortality yet, but yeah.

As for her relation to Vampires, she absolutely despises her former sire, and is an oddity in the vampiric community as a young vampire who outclasses ancient elders in potential. I'm very much seeing her as not wanting to be involved with them but ending up in a lot of the same circles because while she's not restricted to nighttime activity, she prefers it.  More thinking on this as I get into her Life Path. I'm currently considering what Keys to pick.

Treasure 3 lets me have access to Treasure 4 and 5 miracles with relative efficiency, and I can still have a pretty good Wondrous Anchor and can unleash its basic abilities without a miracle.   Also made a mistake on mundane skills, it's 8  points to allocate, not 7, +5 for 1 CP. So yeah, slowly shaking Luna up. Pleased with her so far.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:37, Tue 11 Feb 2020.

Edited the first part of the previous post significantly when I realized it was unclear. Ended up with something much more clear, IMO.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:33, Tue 11 Feb 2020.

@GM: Can we get Character sheets open? I'd like Player 1 to be renamed 'Luna Duscae' as well, please. Think I'm gonna stick with this idea unless Player 3 or 4 has an issue.

Though, at this point, 4 hasn't chimed in yet, at all.

Player 1: Hmmm...I see. I see what you're saying now. So if the immortal chooses to ignore glorious for whatever reason, they need to resolve it like a miraculous conflict??

Reviewing stuff a bit more from the PM where we talked more about it; Glorious is a Major creation of Emotion noted as One Trick - so, you'd have to be more clear about your one trick, yeah. What kind of Glorious are you, what's the intended emotion? Miracle Level 7, pretty hefty.


That said, Elusive specifically and Immortal as well do sort of preserve the self. (level 3 domain, level 6 Immortal; but direct miracle levels aren't the only factor)

Again, this is largely a GM call, and I'm not the GM. This is part of what makes Nobilis hard to run/play. So much interpretation.

I suppose the point is, since you want Glorious, why not tell us: 'What kind of Glorious are you trying to do, and what, exactly, are you trying to get out of it? How do you want to see your use of Glorious play out?'

Are you trying to be someone who shows up and everyone stops fighting and runs away from you, what? Because IMO that's going to drive off some types, but not others. Context matters, and so far, we've been talking in a far too general sense. Give us specifics to talk about and we can make better assessments, I think? Nobilis is a game where the specifics matter.

Also, for those of you who may not know, RPOL has a Discord Server. I'm on there, but currently I don't think anyone else here is.

To get there, you can use the link on the main RPOL page, top right corner 'Chat' near rMail.

I'm Flarelord #6891 in the RPOL Server, and would be happy to talk via DMs in a more live format if anyone wants to. No pressure, though :D

I guess I'm still fleshing out that part of the character conceptually.

How is character creation coming for the rest of you guys?

I'm still learning the GM controls for RPoL, but names should be updated now and character sheets should be open, with the sheet Luna composed added into each one to start with. I've sent a PM to P4 to see if they're still interested.

The estates of Night, Alcohol, and Deviance are so far painting a fairly interesting picture of your Ymera.

---

Regarding Immortal, my understanding has always been that it includes more powerful versions of Durant, Elusive, and Eternal within its effect.

I'm having to think over the thing about Elusive/Active Immortality versus Glorious. Digging up some old discussions on forums on the subject, one proposed interpretation was that Elusive can still provide indirect resistance to the effects of the higher-level Glorious, by countering "You *do* feel this way" with "But you don't necessarily lose control of yourself because of that." I kind of like this interpretation, since it allows the relatively low miracle-level gift of Elusive to still be meaningful when facing the kind of transformative and mind-altering miracles it seems primarily designed to protect against.

With that interpretation, the benefit of Elusive in those contexts will often be that it allows you to hold on to your self-identity, self-awareness, and things like your values, personality, and self-image in spite of outside influences, without necessarily negating those effects entirely. For example, it would bank heavily on the way Enchantment miracles make you one thing but never explicitly make you not the thing you were before, even if that often implicitly comes with the miracle in practice.

Direct miraculous conflict would be more likely from a miracle of Destruction or Sacrifice. Going by that reasoning, I don't think I'd require a noble with Elusive or Active Immortality to take a wound to resist Glorious in practice, perhaps unless they wanted to truly block out even the less tangible effects of even inserting a feeling into their mind to begin with. (Which could conceivably become relevant in the magic-filled Tree of Worlds.) Both could reasonably be used to significantly reduce the type of wound you'd need to take to resist more explicit effects, in the same way that Durant and Immortality do for physical harm, just in this case for more abstract effects, with Active Immortality providing an even greater reduction in edge cases.

---

Whew. At least, that's how the puzzle pieces left by what I'm guessing is a minor rules oversight seem to fit together coherently in my head. :p But I'm open to further discussion if that doesn't seem consistent to you folks. As it is I'm surprised I got through that without a headache.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 19:46, Tue 11 Feb 2020.

Those gotta be pointy brackets instead of boxy ones :D

And yeah, that's about where my brain is, overall. Nobilis is veeeerrry much a game of circumstances, so considering circumstances is tricky.

I'm working on figuring out my keys and lifepath angles. I know the book allows you to choose multiple options at the lived an X life and life type legacies stage, by the book, but does our HG want to allow that.?

I was thinking about our Imperator with these three, and a Hell or Dark coded imperator kind of makes sense to me. Luna's take on the Hell code is much less of a 'corruption' than a 'loving the damaged/broken things' and she's probably got a bit of light there in her overall outlook, IE wanting to mend and help instead of indulging the mess.

Thanks, edited. And I have no problem with that. ^.^

I feel our imperator is straight up a Magister of the dark the way these estates are coming. And I like the image of a dark, sultry fem fatal looking imperator.

I can be onboard with that. :D

Ok, you seem all be ready to go, I still have to look at the differences with the second edition XD

Do we always work as a Familia Caelestis ?