"What happens when a Nephilim is possessed?" revisited

A while back I wrote a post on possession under the symbiotic perspective. Since then I've done more reading and thinking, so I thought I'd revisit that.

While designing my campaign setting, I have several tasks that I need to accomplish:

  • Revise the Nephilim into more sympathetic characters by removing the body snatcher angle.
  • Represent the Nephilim's developing relationship with their Simulacrum's Solar-Ka as their occult development advances.
  • Introduce the Selenim and Ar-Kaïm as playable characters to the US version.
  • Maintain the distinctions between Nephilim and Ar-Kaïm despite the spiritual changes to the former, reinforcing as necessary.
  • Try to maintain a degree of backwards compatibility with the French to reduce my workload on adapting material.

So the way I opted to do this way by making the Nephilim symbiotic beings, inspired by Montgomery's blog, an alchemical marriage of an elemental beast and a human being. The human's Solar-Ka provides the awareness, identity and will that the instinctive elemental lacks. By contrast, the Ar-Kaïm are awakened human hybrids: their Heart is a mosaic of Ka that cannot survive independently of one another.

This has distinct consequences when it comes to things like possessions, exorcisms, Simulacra surviving Orichalc when the Pentacle is destroyed, or terminal Shouit. It is possible to split the Nephilim back into a mortal and an elemental beast, whereas the Ar-Kaïm cannot. However, the bond between the two halves of the Nephilim cannot easily be broken even by splitting them: the two retain a magical connection. The Pentacle cannot reincarnate while its former Simulacrum still lives, nor can it enter Stasis, so it enters Narcosis until the conflict is resolved. However, even in this limbo state it may still be temporarily channeled by shamanists. 

In all of these cases the former Simulacrum generally has little to no memory of their occult adventures while Nephilim, perhaps a deliberate psychological defense mechanism or the result of genuine memory loss. The former Simulacrum may develop mental illness and/or retain potentially large amounts of occult knowledge impressed by the Nephilim, since they will still be linked to the Pentacle and the Stasis object as described above.

This allows the player to keep playing their character without needing to replace their Simulacrum. Some players may certainly take a cavalier attitude to death, like Midnight from The Order (The Order is an amazing inspiration btw!), but other players may prefer to invest in their Simulacrum long-term.

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