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Note: I am slowly converting Nephilim, an old Chaosium game, over to Dresden Files FATE. I am just flopping all the posts on my blog because I can tag and collect them all later. This stuff is in no particular order. You can buy Nephilim in PDF from DriveThruRPG for ~$17. You should also buy Dresden Files RPG.

The following is a list of common game terms found in Nephilim –

Nephilim: A creature of pure magic made of a combination of five different types of Ka (Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Moon). The dominant Ka determines a Nephilim’s metamorphosis. Nephilim need Simulacra to wander in human society.

Ka: The magic inherent in the universe. It comes in five main colors (Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Moon) and several other optional flavors (Solar-Ka, Black Moon Ka, Orikulka). The main Ka is influenced by the planets — Mercury (Air), Venus (Water), the Moon (Moon), Mars (Fire) and Jupiter (Earth). The five main Ka combine to create a Nephilim.

Metamorphosis: The Nephilim’s true form, as defined by the dominant Ka characteristic. For example, a Nephilim with a dominant Fire Ka may Metamorphosize into a phoenix over time. The stronger the Ka, the more obvious the Nephilim’s transformation to human beings.

Simulacrum: The body the Nephilim wears like a fleshsuit. The simulacrum was once a person but now a Nephilim lives there.

Statis: An object containing the Ka forces of a Nephilim until it incarnates.

Incarnation: The time a Nephilim rides inside a Simulacra. These extend across all human history.

Arcanum: The Nephilim secret societies created by Akhenaton in the 14th Century BC Egypt. The Nephilim have 22 secret societies that encompass all Nephilim philosophy. They are represented by the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot deck.

Solar Ka: Ka from the sun and inherent in varying amounts in all humans. The more Solar Ka a human has, the more powerful its will and the more sensitive it is to magic. Nephilim possess no Solar Ka.

Orikulka: In early pre-history, a Moon of Saturn crashed into the Earth. The remnants of this Moon are called “orikulka.” Orikulka destroys Ka energies on contact. The remnants of the meeting of Orikulka and Ka is litharge. Orikulka is considered a type of Ka of its own — a “void” Ka or “negative” Ka.

Selenim: Nephilim made of Black Moon Ka, Ka influenced by the rays of the Dark Side of the Moon. Black Moon Ka resists Orikulka but at the price of losing contact with the other fields of magic and changing from Nephilim to Selenim. They can pull Solar-Ka right from the flesh and blood of humans like Ka vampires.

Shouit: When a Nephilim loses control of its Simulacrum and the Simulacrum consciousness re-emerges, the Nephilim goes into a stasis state within the body.

Narcosis: When a Nephilim loses its Simulacrum and cannot return to its Stasis in time, but the Stasis still exists, it drifts around in a Ka-ghost state.

Khaiba: When a Nephilim loses control of the Ka forces or fails utterly at a complicated occult ritual, it may fall into derangement and madness. Khaiba often has a physical transformation component.

Enthronement/Grand Enthronement: A day when the magical fields for a Ka is stronger than any others as determined by the arcane position of the planets. An Orikulka Enthronement causes all other Ka, including Solar Ka, to suffer. A Grand Enthronement is when one Ka is ascendant and particularly powerful.*

Plexus: A mystical physical node where two lines of the same Ka cross. The Ka in that Plexus is greatly increased. A plexus appears naturally during the day of the Ka’s enthronement but in random places.

Nexus:A place where all five mystical Ka fields cross. All Ka in the nexus is greatly increased. A new Nephilim may be born in a Nexus. Orikulku plexi are rare but do occur naturally. They occur randomly and in remote areas of the world.

Ka-Vision: Nephilim “spooky vision” which allows the Nephilim to see all the Ka around them. They can see summoned creatures, other Nephilim, Orikulka, Plexi and Nexi, and other mystical waves in the world around them.

Athanor: The athanor is an alchemical oven containing an egg-shaped glass vessel in a sandbath. It is used for performing alchemy.

Promethius: The Nephilim who granted consciousness to mankind. He also learned to create stasis for Nephilim.

Agartha: Nephilim Enlightenment. All Nephilim spend their multiple lives searching for information that opens the way for them to Agartha. Nephilim in Agartha no longer need Simalcra or Stasis.

The Golden Path: The way to Agartha. Each Nephilim has their own Golden Path.

Elixers: Nephilim in liquid form. Humans have learned to capture Nephilim, dissolve them into their component Ka, put them in bottles, and use the bottled Ka in their own rituals.

Homonculus:Enslaved Nephilim mystically bound into a vessel and forced to obey the commands of its human master. A Nephilim in this form is small and twisted and can only be set free though death and reincarnation. A freed Nephilim from its homonculus state is a very angry Nephilim indeed.

The terms above are slowly being turned into usable game mechanics greatly simplified and streamlined from the original BRP implementation.

A few original Nephilim terms have been left off the list due to being fancy terms for pure game mechanics. Notably Ch’awe and Sekhmet.

* There are long runs of tables in Nephilim to determine Enthronements and Grand Enthronements that will be simplified away.

Note: I am slowly converting Nephilim, an old Chaosium game, over to Dresden Files FATE. I am just flopping all the posts on my blog because I can tag and collect them all later. This stuff is in no particular order. You can buy Nephilim in PDF from DriveThruRPG for ~$17. You should also buy Dresden Files RPG.

The High Concept in DFRPG is a nice bit of gaming wizardry. It’s a character’s ur-Aspect, the One Aspect to Rule them All, at least in the context of a character sheet. It’s a job, it’s a template, it’s a mashup of job and template, it’s a family, it slices and dices. It says what a character is in a nice concise single title.

Nephilim break down into three concise bits: the Ka, the Metamorphosis and the Arcanum or the splat, the sub-splat, and a collection of splats into a faction. These aren’t as loose as they are in the DFRPG world. They’re clearly defined and a player needs to pick from menu a, menu b, and menu c to combine into a High Concept.

Nephilim goes deep into what Ka is on a mystical sense and how Ka plugs into various magical fields in a pentacle and how it breaks down into the Classical Aristotelean elements. Essentially it’s an ur-splat that defines personality traits and interesting ways to invoke it as an Aspect (Water for dexterous tasks, Moon for talking to people, etc.) Ka is an element defined in the discrete set:

Ka => [Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Moon]

Or we can be fancy and use Latin:

Ka => [Pyrim, Eolim, Hydrim, Faerrim, Onirim]

The Ka have Metamorphosis. Nephilim aren’t people. They reincarnate each life time like a sort of astrological soul vampire and inhabit a perfectly good human body and destroy the soul inside. Metamorphosis is what a Nephilim truly is. The source material defines nine Metamorphosis that look like a hash:

Metamorphosis=> [Fire => [Djinn, Phoneix], Air=>[Sylph, Angel], Water=>[Triton, Undine], Earth=>[Satyr, Elf], Moon=>[Serpent, *]]

These are largely color but very interesting color. For example, an Earth Elf Nephilim will slowly take on green skin, pointed ears, and speak in the rustling tones of the trees. The slower moving Water Triton Nephilim is a swampy, scaly killer who embodies the deep sea.

The third is the Arcanum, or the Nephilim’s secret society tribe. These map to Major Arcana, but not all of them and each have their own properties and rules and governing bodies.

Arcanum=>[Magician, High Priestess, Emperor, Empress, Chariot, Hierophant, Lovers, Chariot, Strength, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, Hanged Man, Temperance, Devil, Tower, Star, Moon, Sun, Judgment]

Creating a High Concept means picking from list A, list B and then finally list C and it creates a surprisingly expressive Nephilim concept:

A Fire Phoenix Nephilim of Justice who hunts Fallen Nephilim and destroys them.
A Serpent Moon Nephilim of Lovers who seeks through lives the most hedonistic of all lifestyles.
A Air Angel Nephilim of the High Priestess who practices secret true alchemy.

The Serpent does have a pair, but these are the “evil dudes” of Nephilim, the Selenium.

Fascinatingly, because Nephilim are inhuman creatures who lives immortal lives by corrupting human hosts and attempt to subjugate the world through their spells and search for Enlightenment, they fit neatly into the mold of Dresden Files villains. And that might prove useful later.