My Nephilim Occult RPing Blog

Something that I think would make an interesting alternative occult science would be Oneiromancy or “Dream Magic”. The only times I’ve found this mentioned was in  an article  in the Chaosium Digest mentioning that Australian Nephilim practiced Dreamtime magic,  an archived page  mentioning that Oneiromancy in general is practiced worldwide with variations for culture, and  a document  suggesting ideas for dream magic spells. The second offers names for circles and nothing else: Lucidity, Influence, Entrance and Prophecy—a hypothetical fourth circle! The fandom got pretty weird… So here’s my current ideas on collating the subject: Oneiromancy is an ancient occult science, possibly at least as old as Sorcery. For unknown reasons it remains obscure to the Western Tradition but was studied and applied by other Traditions like the Mayan and Australian Aborigine. It is something of an inverse of Summoning, in that it projects the caster’s spirit into the magic...

In the books, sometimes the “black star” and “black sun” are mentioned. These are usually epithets for Saturn or aliases for the Order of the Black Star. In Major Arcana , “The Black Star” is noted as a possible Shadow Arcanum by Wheel of Fortune and and “The Black Sun” is mentioned by The Chariot as the mysterious power source behind the Saurian empire. (I get the feeling different writers came up with different ideas independently of each other that contradict when written side by side.) Source One day the following idea was shared with me on Discord, having been generated by ChatGPT. I found it so interesting that I had to share it here. In the context of the Nephilim RPG, the Black Star is a mysterious and powerful cosmic entity. It is said to be a dark star that orbits our solar system and exerts a profound influence on the forces of magic and the occult. The Black Star is also associated with the planet Saturn, which is considered to be its physical manifestation in our solar sys...

As I alluded to in prior posts, I came up with the idea to divide Summoning into a number of separate Traditions that view its function differently. Here I explain the traditions of Kabbalah and Theurgy most common among the Western Tradition. While all summoning traditions use the same basic rules, they're considered distinct circles and techniques. Kabbalah (This based directly on the rulebooks and the French.) The Kabbalist Tradition or Kabbalah views Summoning in terms of the Olamot and Sefirot . It developed at least few centuries prior to the birth of Christ, but exploded in popularity through the teachings of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. This is the most common summoning tradition among Nephilim of the Western Tradition. Each Circle corresponds to an Olamot: 0th Circle Assiah , 1st Circle Yetzira , 2nd Circle Briah , 3rd Circle Atziluth . Each Circle is separated from next by a series of occult veils: the Veil of the Profane or Maya , the Veil of Paroketh , the Veil of the Abys...

To keep this stuff straight, I’m putting it all in once place for reference. The Occult Sciences As explained on  Nephilim  rulebook p44, each occult science only becomes available after a certain date. Sorcery Sorcery is prehistoric and all three circles may be learned in any incarnation period. This is the only Third Circle technique that may be learned at character creation. Summoning For Summoning, the first two circles of the Kabbalist Tradition may be learned from circa 350 B.C. onward (rulebook p63, Chronicle of the Awakenings p13). The Third Circle technique, Keys, cannot be learned at character creation [this isn’t explicitly stated but is implied by the lack of eras offering it]. It is only practiced by advanced initiates among the Major Arcana (rulebook p170). With the GM’s permission, a different Tradition of Summoning may be taken instead and potentially earlier. I’ll explore Traditions of Summoning in future posts. Alchemy The First Circle technique, Black Stone...

In the French version, a type of organization known as a “fraternity” was introduced. Fraternities are secret societies in which only Immortals and their allies hold membership. They encompass the role of the Arcana factions described in Major Arcana , but include organizations with pan-Arcana membership. A faction within an Arcanum is an example of a fraternity, as would be a faction that straddles multiple Arcana, or one with relatively fluid membership. A fraternity is an alliance of Immortals that doesn’t necessarily limit itself to any particular Arcanum, but exists in parallel to the Arcana. A given immortal may have positive or negative relations with a given fraternity. A PC may have a contact in a fraternity or be owed a favor by one as a past life asset, or as a past life burden may have an enemy in a fraternity, hatred from a fraternity, or owe an obligation to a fraternity. (I’ll explain assets and burdens in a later post.) I like the idea because it fills a void in the US ...

This is a repost of Jeff James’ rules for handling Selenim Realms.  I was planning on including an adaptation of this as part of my series on adapting Anamorphosis, but decided to share it in its own post. These were originally shared on the (now defunct) mailing list on July 14, 2003. These use random generation tables (roll 1d10) and thus are appropriate for the GM to generate NPC sovereigns and their realms. If desired then these rules may represent a Nephilim’s elemental realm, too.  Hope you enjoy! Selenim realms These are my rules for creating selenim realm. Their from my slow  revamp of my neph-hunter crossover rules. Basically transtory selenim are on the run, residential selenim are in residence, basically. A  note to the French newcommers. I know these aren't how realms are but  we've never had any real english selenim rules —Jeff James (July 14, 2003) Transitory Selenim A transitory Selenim (or a weak residential Selenim) has not had the  op...

Entropy is the degeneration in which points from the Black Moon-Ka and Black Moon Pool spontaneously evaporate over time. The exact rates vary between editions, and I share these numbers here for GMs to chose for the desired level of bookkeeping for their campaigns. In first and second editions the Selenim’s Entropy rate was 1d3 points per lunar month (28 days), the Living Dead’s Entropy rate was 1d4 points per year, and the Restless’ Entropy rate was 1d6 points per year. In third edition the Selenim’s Entropy rate was 1 point per night at midnight (doubled under a full or new moon), the Living Dead’s Entropy rate was 1 point per night, and the Restless’ Entropy rate was 1 point every 6 hours (though a spell could reduce this to 1 point per night). The rate of Entropy is doubled under a full or new moon. As I noted in my post on Black Moon plexi, the rate of Entropy is adjusted by the local strength of the doomed field. This has corresponding consequences for Assuaging and Solar-Ka r...

I’m currently waffling back and forth on whether the obscure sciences (as the Selenim’s occult sciences are called) should be their own skills or not. Maybe these should be Initiate Spells using the existing Nephilim occult science skills plus Arcanum Lore (Unnamed). For comparison, Secret Societies has Saturnian spells use the existing occult sciences rather than inventing new ones. At the very least, I would allow former Nephilim who undergo initiation to  start with base chances  in the obscure sciences equal to one-fifth or one-fourth of their percentage in applicable occult sciences. Anamorphosis I'm still working on at this time. Wait for my posts on that... Conjuration aka Black Summoning is closely comparable to Summoning and thus a higher base chance based on the latter makes sense. I still need to work on revising the Summoning rules before I detail Conjuration… Necromancy is most analogous to certain applications of Sorcery and Alchemy (to reiterate, I’m ...

One house rule I saw over in an adventure archived from the old mailing list's files was that Nephilim were effectively immune to ranged weapons. (This presumably applies to Selenim and Ar-KaIm too, but that wasn't explicitly mentioned.) As author Jeff James put it: The second change is because I like the highlander feel of having people running around with swords and duelling on skyscrapers. Nephilim allows this, of course, but it really doesn't make any sense for your average templar to use a sword if he can spray the nephilim with an M16. So I have decided that only damage at short range (when 'auras' can interact) is effective on nephilim. Long range damage is healed by the Ka of the nephilim at a very fast rate (probably depending on his Earth-Ka, or maybe the physical closeness of his Major Ka-elements). The exception, of course, would be Orichalka bullets, which damage the Ka even if the body heals. This gives a very good reason for templars and other secret...

A rule introduced in 3e was that Nephilim no longer had persistent Meta-Characteristics. Most of the time they used the Simulacrum’s Characteristics, but could apply their Ka as a bonus to rolls of the linked Characteristic. This risked inflicting Khaiba or Narcosis points. Some fans were disappointed by this and introduced various house rules: e.g. " Release the Meta-Characteristics " and " The Meta-Characteristics, new rules ". Those house rules presented three approaches: Tying each metamorphosis aspect to a Ka-element and its Characteristic, so that the Meta-Characteristic bonus was based on how developed the aspect was. This was based on a similar rule in  The Immortal Gazette  #1  p4, which offered an optional rule for metamorphosis applying a modifier to occult sciences. The Nephilim may substitute mundane test against a secret society initiate with a Ka vs Ka contest instead. E.g. a Phoenix gets into a fist fight with a Templar, but contests his Fire-Ka agai...

The rules for enlightened alchemy in the Enlightened Magic supplement mention that Third Circle meditations are rolled under a Meditation specialty. However, there is no Meditation skill in the Basic Roleplaying rulebook! Some old supplements and variants like Mythras list a Meditation skill, which seems to be essentially useless and has no specialties. It’s a strange oversight in what are otherwise pretty coherent rules. Snead’s draft for the Nephilim rules doesn’t mention a Meditation skill at all. The alchemist just rolls Philosopher’s Stone to design the meditation and Ka to cast it. Somewhere in the adaptation process the writer referenced a Meditation skill that didn’t exist in the BRP rulebook or else forgot to include it in the supplement. If you don’t have a supplement explaining a Meditation skill (and none of the publications I’ve found list specialties either), then I’d let PCs substitute another appropriate skill like Art/Craft (these were combined in Call of Cthulhu ...

Although the Gamemaster's Companion  and Major Arcana lay out an overview of the setting's secret history and the Nephilim's beliefs about it, in my homebrew this shouldn't be taken as gospel. The way I see it, the accuracy of the secret history records get less and less reliable the further you go back. The earlier you go, the less Nephilim there are who date back to said period and are active to share details. The earliest incarnation era written so far, unofficially published but written by Nephilim freelancer Ian Young based on the GMC's history, is Tarshish in 10,000 BC . So that's basically the oldest that any PC could be. Beyond that, the secret history devolves into rumors and hearsay. Some initiates of the Major Arcana share elaborate stories of the Saurian Empire under Mu who raised the Black Moon and were defeated by the KaIm ancestors of the Nephilim during the Cretaceous Period, but there's really no evidence that any of this is accurate. There...

In the French version second edition, a new rule was added where a Nephilim in Stasis possesses any human being who touches the Stasis item regardless of its current contents. While this may be a bit much since it precludes the Stasis item being transported by looters or museum employees unless they all miraculously wore gloves, I do think the idea can fit into my revision of Nephilim as symbiotic fusions. If a Stasis item containing an elemental essence is touched by a mortal who is spiritually sympathetic to that essence’s history, then the essence will incarnate within them and they become Nephilim. This doesn’t require the Stasis item to be charged. A Stasis item is marked by fate and its not uncommon for the Simulacrum to dream about it before finally encountering it and incarnating the essence. An elemental essence released by charging a Stasis item generally cannot incarnate except within a sympathetic Simulacrum. This doesn’t require a resistance roll because the mortal is will...

The Nephilim rulebook p139 and Enlightened Magic  supplement p12-3 differ a bit in how they handle awakening/enlightenment and magic resistance. The Nephilim rules distinguish magic resistance like so: Nephilim resist magic at full Ka value, awakened humans resist with halved Solar-Ka value, and most other humans cannot resist magic at all. Mithradites can resist at full Solar-Ka value (see Secret Societies p73). Nephilim and other elementals resist with the same Ka-element as that of the spell (it's not explained what happens if an elemental doesn't have that Ka-element, but presumably this means resistance is impossible). Humans resist with their Solar-Ka. The  Enlightened Magic  rules distinguish magic resistance like so: the enlightened resist magic at full POW value and the unenlightened resist at halved POW value. Seers have mystic vision and can resist magic at full POW value, but cannot cast magic themselves. There's no distinction between different ele...

The Devil Arcanum has consistently gotten a bad rap in the official books, which has been unable to paint them as anything other than an NPC-only villain faction. Even in the Major Arcana book! The only times I've seen someone try redeeming them was in two old articles from the Chaosium Digest : "The Devil Arcanum" by Peter Larsen and "The Devil Arcanum and the Future" by Nick Christoforidis . Even the French version tried a similar route when they realized The Devil wasn't very interesting as is. I also need to revise The Devil for my reinterpretation of Nephilim psychology in which they're a "higher self" brought about by the fusion of a human soul and an elemental spirit. What you would call a symbiotic perspective, I guess? One way I thought of to reimagine The Devil is as the occult equivalent of the “Return to Monke” internet meme. The Devil rejects human civilization and culture, even despises it for its decadence and hypocrisy. They h...

This is a house rule adapted from the rules for  Psychomorphe and  Métamorphes totémiques from the French version. Totems for Western PCs The indigenous Nephilim of Northern America developed their own metamorphosis archetypes or "totems" independently of the Western Nephilim. I hope to provide detailed rules for them in later posts, but in the interim here is a way for their legacy to influence PCs following the Western Tradition. Nephilim PCs by default will be Western Nephilim that emigrated to the United States. A player may choose to play a Nephilim who was born from a Nexus in the United States after colonization and taught by the Major Arcana. Rather than a Western Metamorphosis, this Nephilim was born with a Totemic Metamorphosis. The rules for this are provided below. As with Western Metamorphoses, Totemic Metamorphoses are divided into several archetypes or "totems." Each Totem corresponds to a mundane animal that was/is held sacred or spiritually signif...

Over the course of my archiving old dead fansites, I found  a grimoire bookshelf  that mentioned a few original ideas in passing. One of these was “blood stone alchemy.” As the page said: Blood Stone is a path of Alchemy involving sacrificial blood and its elemental bases; it is equivocal on levels to Black Stone. Few cultures ever possessed this knowledge, but amoung those that did, were the ancient Celts, Vikings, and, more notably to history, the Aztecs. There are other Circles imagined—involving consuming blood and flesh, the semi-mythic cannibalistic peoples in Africa, Asia, and Pacifica—but no known references exist. Perhaps fortunately… Not much to go by, but it sounds pretty easy to adapt under the enlightened alchemy rules as a flavor of laboratory and athanor for Black Stone using something like Craft (Sanguimancy). I imagine the Xibalbans probably practiced this form of alchemy, but without the Silk Road they probably weren’t able to advance into the higher circles ...

In the French version , athanors were revised over the editions.  First Edition In the first edition, the Athanor was an egg-shaped oven that produced alchemical Powders for all five elements.  US version This was retained by the US version. Although a revised system was planned and drafted, the line was canceled before it could be released. These rules were later genericized and incorporated into the BRP supplement  Enlightened Magic . In those rules, the Circles were reorganized like so: Black Stone involved manipulation of physical substances via the laboratory, athanor and alchemical materials. It affected the physical. White Stone involved the creation of works of art that induced a specific effect in the minds of the audience. It affected the mental. Philosopher's Stone involved meditations that would affect the very souls of the alchemist's targets. It affected the spiritual. In other words, much of the first and second circles of the French were consigned to...