What are the Voors?

The voors are an alien race from the Radix Tetrad by A. A. Attanasio. Their name apparently comes from “voorish”. Here’s a review I found here, which quotes mentions of voors, Iz, and kha! These aliens were an inspiration for the French writers, who incorporated them into the background. The Voors were alien “seeds” carried to Earth by the cosmic wind “Iz”, where they mixed with the magic fields and germinated into the Kaïm. They play a key role in The Star’s arcane quest for the Stellar Ones. According to rules given in Codex des Nephilim, some Star Initiates have cultivated “prime essence” within themselves that they speculate emulates the original composition of the Voors. In the French, every Nephilim and ex-Nephilim Selenim was originally a Kaïm who was cast down by Orichalka. Although it’s not clearly spelled out, the Ar-Kaïm and natural Selenim are implied to be native to Earth rather than children of the Voors.

Could this be integrated into the US version? Should it? 

I think The Star deserves some validity, so I would introduce the Voors if their Arcane Quest was ever pursued by players. 

Since I’m retrofitting Ar-Kaïm and Selenim into the US version, I feel that the Voor origin would help to distinguish the Nephilim better in light of the US version allowing new Pentacles to be born from Nexi after the fall of Orichalka. As I’ve mentioned before, in my homebrew the Nephilim are hybrid beings akin to Star Trek’s Trill. The disembodied proto-Nephilim is an instinctive elemental beast; only the human bearer’s Solar-Ka provides awareness, identity and will. Every one of the proto-Nephilim was originally a Voor “seed” that germinated within a Nexus into a Pentacle, then merged with a human bearer to become Nephilim. How would the Nephilim feel about this? Are they still human or something else altogether?

The presence of this germinated Voor may explain why Nephilim suffer Shouit, but Ar-Kaïm do not. Ar-Kaïm are a singular fusion of Ka energies, whereas Nephilim are fusion of two Ka beings. 

In the French version, Shouit was the hapless human host reclaiming control but obviously I’m changing that. Not just because body snatching is unsympathetic, but also because the Nephilim’s relationship to their Simulacrum’s Solar-Ka never changed under the original version: you’d think they’d get more understanding, right? Making the Simulacrum one-half of a hybrid is an easier solution than inventing rules for Nephilim understanding Solar-Ka.

I still need to develop these ideas further… Hope you enjoyed!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Fixing” the setting

These posts assume that the reader is already familiar with Nephilim , so don't expect an explanation of the game here. In addition to the clunky rules, and probably more important, the Nephilim game had fluff that alienated players in the Anglosphere. The rulebook frontloaded potential players with millennia of lore that they had to keep track of. Perhaps the most criticized aspect was that the titular nephilim were presented as parasites who possessed unwilling human hosts to pursue their agendas. While players were seemingly okay with playing murderous psychopaths in other games of the 90s, apparently body-thieves just weren't kosher. The English mailing list had numerous debates over this during its heyday. Rather than rehash those here, I'll cut straight to the point: in my revision of the setting, the nephilim are fusions of a human being and a soulless mindless elemental spirit . The human soul (Sol, Solar-Ka) provides will, purpose, desire, etc. The elemental spirit...
Read more

Simplifying the rules

One of the problems with the Nephilim game was that its rules, a variant of the venerable  BRP , were overly complicated and probably not all that well suited to it. The French version eventually dropped BRP entirely starting in its third edition, and the current fifth edition uses a dramatically simplified rules system. This has inspired me to devise my own simplified rules system for the English adaptation. I'm not going to convert to Fate like certain others have tried . The task resolution system will still be BRP's roll under d100 with difficulty levels and variable results. But all the character traits will change. The standard attributes/characteristics are Air-Ka, Earth-Ka, Fire-Ka, Lunar-Ka, Solar-Ka, and Water-Ka. These represent the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of the character. For nephilim characters, these also represent supernatural aspects. Rather than distinct skills, characters are described in freeform terms and given general competence ratings....
Read more

The spiritual pentacle and the elements

Image
In this post I explain the spiritual meaning of the Nephilim’s pentacle and the Ka-elements themselves. Although linked to specific game statistics, like Fire to Strength and Moon to Charisma, all of the elements have physical, mental and spiritual correspondences and manifestations.  It’s not one or the other . You don’t have to posit different cultures all have different elements to explain varying beliefs. Real occultism isn’t supposed to be accurate in the game world anyway, but the result of information leaks and cargo cults by muggles. Liam Routt gave a good explanation in  his old FAQ : (I’m putting it between horizontal rules because blogger has issues with formatting) The Spiritual Pentagram Traditionally, the pentagram represents our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical composition: Fire Doing—Fire is energy, the power to act. But it is pure action, undirected by thought or feeling. Air Thinking—Air is thinking, ideation, mental activity, but it can...
Read more