My Nephilim Occult RPing Blog

I read the fanzine  Vision-Ka #7 and it provided some much needed ideas that help me clarify my own ideas for reincarnation in my homebrew setting. As explained in the article on Yoga, the human soul (Sol, Solar-Ka) has two parts: the Atman and the Karma. The Karma is the record of life, while the Atman is the immortal soul that originates from the Brahman (the collective unconscious, the origin of the Subtle Planes). When a person dies, their Atman leaves the body and reincarnates, while the Karma remains within the corpse and decays with it. The Karma is the dead spirit that Selenim speak to with Necromancy. In my campaigns the Nephilim are fusional beings, an alchemical marriage of a human Atman and an elemental Pentacle born when the two meet under the right stars. This process awakens the Atman to knowledge of its true immortal nature, altering the Immortal’s worldview compared to their ignorant Karma alone. When a Nephilim dies, their Ka-elements dissolve into the magic fiel...

So something I found confusing was the rationale for the Black Star to construct elaborate megaliths to calculate the best places to imprison Nephilim in stasis. This was also done in the original French version, albeit by the Sword suit (referenced in the US version as the "Men of the Sword"). For reference, let's recap the rules for stasis objects across the editions. These haven't been consistent across all editions. In the French version, in all editions except for 5th, breaking the Stasis Object would destroy the Nephilim immediately no matter where they were. It didn't matter whether they were in Stasis, Narcosis, or incarnated. In the US version, breaking the Stasis Object meant the Nephilim had nowhere to go upon bodily death. If they couldn't jump between bodies, then they would disintegrate into the magic fields. While the Major Arcana knew how to create Stasis Objects for newborn Nephilim, there was no way to replace a broken Stasis Object. So the c...

These are my musings on the Saturnian field for my campaign homebrew... The Saturnian field is an anomaly compared to the other magic fields of Earth.  It doesn't radiate, but instead pools, particularly within flints and heavy metals as "Saturnite". This is the closest as it ever gets to having a physical manifestation. Rather than a physical substance like earth, water or air, it is only ever present as prima materia Saturni . (The prima materia is the residual Ka present within matter, leftover from when the matter was formed from the magic fields. This prima materia is what alchemy acts on.) Concentrations of Saturnite ore mutually repel the five elemental fields. These appear as a "hole" in Ka-Vision; indeed, the Immortals cannot perceive it directly. However, it is possible for mortals to detect it indirectly because it causes unpleasant vibrations in Solar-Ka. Particularly sensitive individuals may be trained as dowsers by secret societies. When exposed...

I've explored some of these ideas in previous posts, but I thought it would be prudent to put them all here for consolidation and comparison. This is all purely my homebrew and is completely non-canonical to the official games. The Saurians, the KaIm, the Old Races, the Nephilim, the Selenim, the Ar-KaIm... they are all Ka-beings. Their Ka dissolves into the magic fields upon disintegration, recycled into the births of future Ka-beings, making them both immortal in a sense and different generations of the same magical meta-race. The first generation of the Immortals are the Basal Immortals: the KaIm and the Saurians. The Basal Immortals are so named due to their practice of Basal Cycles, in which they would exist in purely spiritual form barely distinct from the magic fields and incarnate within natural phenomena; this is a stable version of the Elementalist Khaiba form. The Saurians were the first Onirim, born in the dreamlands, and the first to awaken to consciousness by incarnat...

My campaign changes the nature of Nephilim from elemental spirits possessing human bodies to paredri symbiotically bonding with human bodies to awaken the higher self. This has consequences for how my cosmology handles magic like resurrection, exorcisms, and the link to past lives. I'm not giving concrete game rules since I'm still thinking about what system to use. The incarnation and awakening A paredrus is little more than another elemental beast. It operates purely on instinct. However, it is linked to the stars and can find suitable hosts to merge with. In general, a prospective host fulfills two criteria: 1) they currently sit at an emotional crossroads in their life that makes their Solar-Ka permeable to the Ka-elements, on some level desiring the bond and inviting it into themselves; a paredrus cannot bond with just any human in proximity. 2) the host's personality and life experience is preferably analogically linked to the Dominant Ka-element of the paredrus , but...

In this post I wanted to discuss some ideas for handling Lunar Entropy, a fifth Khaiba form in which the Nephilim is gradually corrupted by the Black Moon. (This post assumes that Khaiba forms are persistent and noted on the character sheet, rather than determined randomly when the PC suffers a Khaiba episode.)  While Onirim are the most sensitive to it, Lunar Entropy can strike any Nephilim. While the vulnerability scales with the Nephilim’s own Moon-Ka, even a Cruxim whose lunar branch was amputated by anti-lunar extremists entirely is still vulnerable to it. Lunar Entropy points may accrued from a variety of sources: performing the sacrifice ritual for a moon spell, certain fumbles on the occult sciences, casting certain spells that flirt with the darkside, being exposed to aggressive or concentrated sources of Black Moon-Ka… Once it has asserted itself as their persistent Khaiba form, anything that aggravates Khaiba will progress it. When contaminated, the motes of Black Moon-K...