Where do Serpentaries come from?

The Ar-Kaïm of the House of Serpentarius, also known as Ophiuchus, are an anomaly among the Ar-Kaïm due to their dominant Ka being Black Moon. An Ar-Kaïm's House (and thus dominant Ka) is determined by the zodiac month under which their Heart was "born" within a Nexus formed during a Grand Enthronement. But there are no Enthronements, and thus no Grand Enthronements, of the Black Moon. So how are Serpentaries born in the first place? Thus far I haven't yet found explicit suggestions in the third edition books I've read so far, but I do have some ideas.

The House of Serpentarius lacks a zodiac month of its own and is explicitly stated to be parasitic on the other Houses, just as the Black Moon parasitizes the other elements. If a Nexus forms in a place where the Black Moon fields are particularly concentrated, such as a cemetery or necropolis, perhaps the Black Moon then transforms any resulting Ar-Kaïm into a Serpentary?

During times of syzygy (full or new moon), Black Moon "protoplasms" are formed in the nightmare realms that can hitch a ride on a passing dreamer or near-death experience to incarnate as Selenim. Maybe Serpentaries are born when this happens to someone becoming Ar-Kaïm, incorporating the proto-Selenim into the Heart as it forms?

A darker possibility is that Serpentaries are created by the third circle of Necromancy, Thanatology. When a Master Necromancer attempts to resurrect a destroyed Ar-Kaïm, they are resurrected as a Serpentary regardless of their original house. 

In the Players' Book the Serpentary iconic character is specified as having incarnated at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, suggesting that he was the result of a Nexus in the cemetery being parasitized by the Black Moon... or he was resurrected there by a Master Necromancer.

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