What do the Immortals really know of the secret history?

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 is some circumstantial evidence, such as the trace presence of Moon-Ka and Black Moon-Ka in some dinosaur fossils and the Yucatan crater being a permanent and extremely powerful Black Moon plexus, and there are some rare Selenim cults that worship a tyrannosaurus god named Mu, but otherwise none of it is verifiable. There are stories of Atlantis, an island in the Atlantic raised by the KaIm where they created humanity and the technology recovered by Area 51, but no Nephilim was actually alive at the time to verify the truth. There are stories about the Fall of the Black Star destroying Atlantis and the Devouring Messiah (sometimes identified with the Mesopotamian Lilith) leading armies of Selenim against the Orichalka Men, before peace reigned under the Great Compromise, but these are more myth than history.

Not many Nephilim actually subscribe to these admittedly wild stories. Many consider them pure myth, just so stories, or very loosely inspired by true events rather than accurate accounts of their history. The lack of accurate historical knowledge is a key reason why so many Nephilim become adventurer archaeologists a la Indiana Jones or paranormal investigators a la The X-Files.

Did the KaIm really exist? All we really have are speculations that might be lies anyway. If they did exist, then none have been heard from again since the birth of Christ. Unlike the Nephilim born after the Fall, the KaIm supposedly had consciousness without Solar-Ka and could create elemental bodies for themselves (see rulebook p15). Whenever they incarnated, their consciousness supposedly suppressed that of the host entirely. This idea disturbs some Nephilim who think about it: for them Shouit is simply a psychological rejection of the occult, but imagine if you woke up to realize that someone else had been living your life for years and you have no recollection of it? Only the most extreme manifestations of the Sekhat Fugue, when the ego-memory of a past life persistently influences or outright tries to take over the Nephilim's current incarnation, comes close to such imagined psychological horror.

Furthermore, Nephilim memory is not infallible. They are vulnerable to biases, false memories, etc. Think The Mandela Effect or Rashomon. For example, the Nephilim believe a lot of so-called "facts" about the Selenim, like their consumption of blood or being universally evil, but none of these "facts" are actually true. These lies can be easily disproven if you spend time actually getting to know an initiate of The Unnamed Arcanum, but the Nephilim are so arrogant and fearful that they mostly refuse to do this. (The PCs, of course, are a likely exception.) So how many other well-known "facts" are the Nephilim completely wrong about?

What do the Selenim believe? Well, they have the same problem. None of their verifiable records go back further than the destruction of Tarshish. Prior to that, they tell myths about the Devouring Messiah leading them against the Orichalka Men and then being hunted down by the ungrateful Nephilim who previously faced extinction. But few active Selenim were actually around 10,000 years ago or older, and you cannot discount the possibility that the Cult of Lilith manufactured these stories to make themselves look more impressive despite their decline. After the Fall of Tarshish, they claim that migrants found Lilith's mountain retreat in Central Asia and came to worship her in exchange for scraps of technological knowledge. They claim credit for the human sacrifice cults that sprung up throughout ancient Europe and the Middle East, for the rise of the Mongol Empire, for the Satanic witch cults of the Dark Ages... much of this is corroborated by the many Selenim Wars the Nephilim and secret societies waged against the Selenim's blood cults, but much of it seems to be self-aggrandizing myths. No archaeological investigations have found evidence of Lilith's lair and she has been curiously absence from the secret history outside of the prehistoric myths that sprung up around her name.

The last Selenim War was against the mysterious Xibalbans of Central America, who were trying to construct their own Black Moon. All divinations suggested that the Devouring Messiah would return at that time and the Major Arcana feared this would cause the Apocalypse if not stopped. They scrambled to preempt these prophecies and, miraculously, they succeeded by the valiant efforts of the greatest Third Circle sorcerers available at the time. How the Xibalbans were able to accomplish this unbelievable feat is unknown and one wonders if there's any credence to those stories of a Black Moon existing in the past. Their proximity to the Yucatan crater is clearly no coincidence. So much about this remains unknown...

The dissident Selenim who don't utterly despise the Nephilim, despite how ungratefully they're treated, tell stories of patronage by a trio of Agarthan Selenim who seemingly inspired the triple goddess motif seen in a number of mythologies. They're identified with the Fates, the Moirai, the Parcae, Hecate, the Graeae, the Morrígan and others. Nobody has actually seen them in person, only received mysterious messages and cryptic visions. Supposedly it was they who led Nephren-Ka and other Selenim to take part in the Great Compromise and share the secrets of their Sarcophagi to construct the Pyramids of Egypt, and they continue to patronize The Unnamed Arcanum to this day. But nobody really knows, not even the librarians of the Arcanum's Grand Sanctuary in Venice.

Nephren-Ka's reign is described as one of darkness and evil by the Nephilim and a concerted effort was made to erase him from the historical record, but The Unnamed Arcanum describes him as a victim of the deceptive and mysterious Dark Prophet Nyarlat-hotep. It makes no sense that the wise Akhenaton would uncover the tomb of such a wicked being and accept presentation of the Ebon Tablet if the scary stories were true. The Selenim's designs were vital to the construction of the Pyramids and Tombs that allowed the royal Nephilim to continue progressing towards Agartha after mummification, lending further credence to The Unnamed's charitable reading. So how many other well-known historical "facts" are the Nephilim completely wrong about?

(Sorry about the excessive focus on Selenim, but I think they deserve more love and accurate representations. They're a really great example of how the Nephilim can be completely assured of their own knowledge when in fact they're completely ignorant. If the Nephilim are so utterly about something so readily verifiable by just talking to the local Unnamed Initiate, then what else are they wrong about that is and isn't so easy to verify?)

In general I still use the outlines of Nephilim history given in GMC and the Selenim side of it from Ian’s notes to inform my campaigns. I treat these accounts as generally accurate from the Great Compromise to the last date given. Any earlier periods are essentially mythical. That said, I’m not adverse to throwing curveballs to keep players on their toes and maintain a sense of mystery. For example, I intend to do a lot with the perspectives of the non-Western Immortals who are very bitter about the atrocities of colonialism inflicted on them.

Hope you enjoyed!