Posts tagged games

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 core Nephilim sourcebook doesn’t offer many White Stone non-Golem Formulae, as the practice of White Stone Alchemy is the practice of the sublimation of matter to the alchemist’s desires.  Since Alchemy is so malleable, these work as examples of what an experienced Alchemist can do.

The Sublimation of the Drinkable Gold

Element: Fire

Duration: Instant

The caster sprinkles the powder on a liquid which it immediately drinks.  It removes all boxes from mental and physical stress in return for smoke literally pouring from the caster’s ears, nose and mouth.  Others can drink the liquid, including Simalacra. Drinker must be conscious.

The Adamantic Sign of the Resurrection of the Rose

Element: Earth

Duration: until next Thursday

The caster pre-prepares a copper plate with alchemical symbols.  A charged plate can heal the wounds (clear all physical stress tracts) of any wound on any wounded person.  The wounded person does not need to be conscious.  Can dramatically bring people back from the very brink of death.

The Water of Life of the Sleepy Metal

Element: Earth

Duration: 1 Scene

The caster sprinkles the powder on the target’s clothes.  The clothing becomes impervious to all physical damage, although it does not protect against magickal damage.  Upon absorbing the glow, the clothing glows a dramatic silver because, hey, magick clothes.

The Ship of the Sacred Androgyny*

Element: Water

Duration: 1 Scene

The caster sprinkles the powder on a small statue and it transforms into a large, hollowed-out, metal structure that is, actually, a mobile Nephilim power-armor.  It acquires an Armor rating equal to shifts of success when mixing the powder, protects against drowning and asphyxiation, and, if the caster wishes, it can develop wheels and move over 100mph.   After the spell is completed, the Nephilim’s Simulacrum must rest for at least 10 hours.

The Sublimation of the Eye of Tar

Element: Air

Duration: until next Wednsday

Caster rubs its eyes with the powder and a third eye appears on its forehead.  The eye opens on the caster’s command and allows the caster to see through all matter as if it was glass up to 500m.

Mutations of the Hellhound

Element: Moon

Duration: until next Monday

The alchemist tosses a dose of the powder on a four-legged mammal, like a dog.  A second head sprouts from the shoulder.  This new head takes control of the animal and obeys the caster.  It looks about as terrible as one expects.  When the spell wears off, the new head dissolves away.

Animal stats are not germane to DFRPG.  For this spell, give the animal one great, two good, two fair and two average skills and set the stress tracks for the skills.  It should have the High Aspect “Hideous Two Headed Animal.”

The Purification of the Selene Water

Element: Moon

Duration: 1 Scene

The caster sprinkles the powder around itself.  Everything acts like it is under water — wood floats, stones sink, people suddenly must swim through thin air.  All people, objects and pets settles to their own density level.  The radius extends from the caster up to a 50m radius.  Great for birthdays!

* Originally this was one day. As the spell is written, it’s ridiculously overpowered. To try to rein it in a bit, I made the Nephilim Power Armor spell only good for 1 Scene. It should probably be adjusted downward further to have armor and speed == success shifts on originally preparing the powder.

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.

It’s no good to be an Alchemist if you cannot make Golems.

Only Alchemists of the Second Circle (White Stone) can make Golems.  The Alchemy of Golems is no place for dabblers and tourists. It is crafting a form of life.  It is hard core.

Golems come in one of four forms: Simalcrons, Automatons, Constructs and Golems, from simplest to most complex.  At their most basic forms, these crude human-like creatures follow simple sentence commands and carry out orders of their creators like “clean this room” or “kill everyone who comes near me.”  Imaginative Alchemists can construct quite complex Automatons and Constructs far beyond lumbering hulks of clay.

Nephilim are, as a whole, a bit twitchy around Golem as they can see the similarities between their own Simulacra and the hand-made bodies and wonder if the distance between here and there is but a short hop.  Some of the most intense (read: crazy) Nephilim Alchemists have figured out how to fuze Summoning with Alchemy to stuff the souls of Angels into manufactured alchemical bodies to force their Summonings to obey them long beyond their contracts.  This is considered “varsity level magic.”  Or perhaps “horrifying sacrilege.”  Or just “bad.”

Alchemists claim all Golem-based magicks come from the Grimoire of Ibbur, or the Fecundation of the Soul.  The author and the date of the original is unknown, but modern Alchemists know the Hebrew translation was handed down from Rabbi Judah Loew of the Prague Golem.  One copy of the original Arabic and a few copies of crude Latin translations theoretically exist, but no one knows where; several copies of Loew’s Hebrew translation exist for enterprising souls who wish to create their own man of blood and rock.

Rumor has it the Grimoire of Ibbur contains far more than instructions for crafting Golems but the secrets are locked away behind ciphers and codes.  They say it has a map to the Philosopher’s Stone.  But no one knows, since no one has an original copy of the book.

To create a Golem:

- A character or group of characters must undertake a quest to lay hands on a copy of the translated Grimoire of Ibbur.

- Golems are surprisingly difficult to reverse engineer but, once a character has made one Golem, the character can use Scholarship at the same Complexity to begin making variations on a theme.  Ie, if the character has figured out how to make a basic Earth Golem of Iron, it’s not that far of a shot to figure out how to craft some sort of horrible Mechanized Spider Golem.

- Mastering Summoning and Alchemy to Summon an Angel into the body of a Golem is often too much for one Nephilim; two Nephilim working at it might work up something worth writing home about.  The Summoning is the same as the regular Summoning.  The Alchemist must also overcome the Summoning’s Conviction with Discipline to synthesize the Summoning into the body.  This will not make the Summoning happy, but what the hell.

- The Complexity for a Golem begins at 5.  The GM may increase the Complexity based on:

• Modernity.  The Golem uses modern substances (steel, aluminum, plastics, carbon fiber) over ancient substances (earth, water).  
• Complexity.  Mechanized Steampunk Spider Golems are far more difficult than Earth Golems.
• Size.  Enormous Golems are more difficult to raise than teeny bird golems.
• Autonomy.  The more intelligent the Golem, the more difficult to create.
• Summoning an Intelligence requires the standard Summoning plus Discipline rolls over the Summoning’s Conviction to move it from the Pentagram into the prepared body.

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.

Where Sorcery is the Nephilim bread and butter and Summoning is the Nephilim big stick, Alchemy is the particle physics of the Nephilim universe.

Alchemy is quantum weirdness and super string theory and math applied to the mystical realms.  It allows Nephilim to dig around in the superstructure of the universe beneath the ley lines of Ka and mess with the fundamentals.  In the right hands – or, more to the point, the wrong hands – Alchemy is powerful.

The roots of Alchemy starts, much like Summoning, in the Jewish communities of the Levant in the 1st century AD after the Coming of the Fool.  It slowly spread down into Alexandria and into the Arabian Peninsula.  Mostly developed in the burgeoning explosion of science in the new Muslim Caliphate centered in Iraq, the core research was laid down first by Geber the Arab (721-815) and later the Persian Avicenna (980-1036).  Alchemy spread back into Western Europe through Moorish Spain where it was pushed and pulled and manipulated into its current form.  Albert Magnus (1193-1280) codified it in his book Liber Mineralia.  Once Western European Nephilim laid hands on the core foundations of Alchemy, many disappeared into their laboratories convinced it was the key to unlocking the power of the Universe without needing to ascend to Agartha.  Infinite Godlike power in the here and now.

Where Summoning is about angels and demons and Enochian language and spirits and religious trappings, Alchemy is cold, clinical and mathematical.  Alchemists consider themselves the true scientists of the Nephilim underworld using tools and experiments and hypothesis to slowly build the science of Alchemy.  They have an alchemical liturgy not unlike higher mathematics to describe their work and turn alchemy into repeatable, reusable formulae.  Alchemists believe if they come up with the right mathematical formulae describing magic, power and substance, they can manipulate a universal spirit underlying all things – the Spiritus Mundi.

The center of the Alchemist’s world is the Athanor, a mystical oven used to burn down powders and forge substances used in Alchemical formulae.  The Athanor is a small, brick domed square tower, about five feet tall.  Inside the Athanor is a small egg-shaped glass vessel in a sandbath over a fire.  Whenever a Nephilim Alchemist reincarnates, he first finds a good place to work with decent ventilation, and then he builds a new Athanor.

In practice, Alchemical spells are pre-prepared powders the Nephilim carries around in vials in a pocket of a jacket or a bag.  Instead of needing to murmur the words of a Focus, as in Sorcery, or drawing a Pentagram to Summon a creature at the time of casting, the Alchemist uses “Just in Time” casting with powders to evoke prepared change.

Next… some basic rules for Alchemy and how Alchemy in FATE is radically simplified from Alchemy in BRP.

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 Nephilim sourcebook has far too many summonings to convert and post to the blog.  If I did, the blog would be even worse than it is now.  It would be all Nephilim Summonings, all the time.  But here are a few…

Those Who Creep and Nibble
Circle: Seals
Element: Earth
Rupture: Befuddlement
Duration: Until Next Thursday
Skills: Conviction (+1), Intimidation (+1), Athletics (+5), Dodge (+2), Weapons (Teeth) (+2)
Description: These little house-cat sized imps with razor claws and enormous teeth can climb anywhere. They only attack inanimate matter. They can eat anything given enough time. While chowing down, the air is full of the sounds of mastication, gurgling, chewing, mashing, and general enthusiastic eating.

The Dark Governors of the Powers of Pestilence
Circle: Seals
Element: Water
Rupture: Capture – only the Summoner will incur the attack
Duration: 14 minutes
Skills: Conviction (+2), Presence (+2), Weapon (Gas) (+4)
Description: a gas cloud appears in the pentacle and dissipates into the atmosphere. Everyone in the radius of the gas except the Summoner smells the most horrible, foul odor imaginable. Those afflicted by the smell must survive an Endurance contest vs. the Gas Weapon of the Governors. Failing the contest, the victim is overcome with nausea, convulsions and vomiting. Victims may faint after being overcome. If the contract ruptures, only the Summoner is overcome with nausea.

The Minister of Peace, Clothed with Beryl
Circle: Pentacles
Element: Air
Rupture: Capture — the Summoner will be the only one targeted by the Summoning
Duration: 30 minutes
Skills: Conviction (+3), Presence (+3), Rapport (+3), Empathy (+4)
Description: The Minister is a fully sentient Summoning. He’s also fairly difficult to control once he appears. Nonetheless, the Minister of Peace is a translucent man with a sweet, rich, deep voice. When he speaks, no one can fight, either physically or verbally. He dismisses Sorcery, Summonings and Alchemical Formulae hanging in the air. His presence creates a feeling of love and friendship between all human beings and with nature in general. Once he establishes peace, he pronounces a 15 minute long sermon on the futility of hatred and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Sandolphon, Princess of the Ashim, Queen of the Wind Rose, Countess of the Cardinal Points
Circle: Pentacles
Element: Air
Rupture: The Nephilim takes boxes of Mental Stress and the Summoning leaves.
Duration: The time to execute one task.
Skills: Conviction (+6), Presence (+5), Rapport (+4), Scholarship (+7), Lore (+7)
Description: Sandolphon is a very beautiful winged woman with bluish hair and eyes. She wears a javelin, a sword, winged sandals, and a toga. Her presence is majestic and sensual.

Sandolphon can:

- Decipher any Air sorcery invocation and translate it for the caster into any language.

- Correct transcribed or otherwise partly ruined Summoning Rituals for other Summonings.

- Locate a Stasis, even if the owner is not Incarnate.

- Answer any question of human knowledge or history.

- Show the caster a one minute scene of anything happening anywhere at that time, but the Nephilim must stipulate the scene.

- Move objects through the air. She will move a human-sized object for free but she demands gifts of items of knowledge and wonder for greater weights.

Sandolphon will teach the caster “the Daughters of Lul of Faltenin,” the Summoning for her sword. It is a terrible instrument of destruction (Weapon: 6). She only teaches the Summoner the invocation of her sword if the Summoner is an Air Nephilim, has already concluded its pact with Sandolphon and agrees to never transcribe the Summoning for others.

The Summoner gains a +1 shift bonus to negotiating the Contract with Sandolphon if he offers her the gift of new written knowledge.

I’m not sure all my skills are working out great. They would need to be playtested a little. The rest seems to work, though.

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.

Here’s a basic overview of how it works:

Summoning is different than Sorcery.  Sorcery is about reaching into the magical lines which wrap the world, exerting mental will, and forcing the magic to respond.  Either it works or the caster loses control and it flies everywhere.  Summoning is about having a conversation.

Drawing the Pentagram is the simple bit.  The Summoner references the right Pentagram in a dusty tome, finds the words, locates a good basement, and executes. If the strength of the Summoning Pentagram overcomes the will of the Summoned, the Summoned pops into the center of the Pentagram.  This almost always works if the Summoner is even passably good at this trick, has the right Stunts, and a half-way decent Lore.  Getting the Summoning to appear is a purely mechanical exercise.  A Summoner’s understanding contested against the Summoning’s willingness to show up.

And there stands a pissed off Summoning, trapped in a Pentagram, interrupted from whatever it was doing five seconds before, glaring at a Summoner and wondering if the Summoner is tasty on toast.  What happens next is a straight up social contest.  Talk fast, little Summoner, or else the thing standing there will reach for the ketchup.

Summoning moves into a haggle mode.  The Summoner can lie, can plead, can persuade, can use any social tools at its disposal.

The Summoner talks.

The Summoning listens.

Either the Summoning agrees to do what what Summoner wishes — one week, one day, one hour, one question, one task, whatever the Contract stipulates — or the Summoning ruptures.  The bigger the Summoning, the worst the Contract failure, the bigger the Rupture.  Ruptures are, as they say, bad.  How bad?  It depends on how big of a trick the Summoner was trying to pull.  Some Summoners quickly disappear, never to be seen again.

Should the Summoning agree to hang around and do something, sometimes for a price, the Summoner gets to walk off with said Summoning hanging around them invisibly and at their command.  Should Those who Creep and Nibble, a perfectly useful Assiah-plane, Seals-level, Earth-inclined Animal Summoning show up, and the Summoner cons them into sticking around and listening to him, the Summoner can order them to eat cars, couches, hats, deck chairs, holes in yachts, anything the Summoner wants consumed for a whole week.  Yay!

But fail to establish a Contract with the Procurators Whose Eyes are Basilisks or Ruby?  They like to force their Summoners to get on their knees and confess all their sins…

Stunt Refresh Cost

Summoning costs Refresh just like Sorcery.  Nephilim FATE has three levels of Summoning: Seals, Pentacles and Keys. These Stunts attach to the Lore skill.

Keys, the highest level, is very difficult to purchase in character generation. The rules reserve Master-level Summoning for NPCs, both good and bad. A character may purchase Seals and Pentacles in Character Generation.

Next up, flat out mechanics.

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.

In the second decade after the Death of the Fool in Judea, a cluster of Nephilim of a highly Kabbalistic Jewish bent clustered around a single Nephilim named Simeon bar Yokkai.  Clutched in this nigh-Agarthan Nephilim’s hands were the final scribblings of the Fool which told of worlds beyond the physical full of creatures waiting to be controlled and enslaved by Nephilim will.  Only through chanting the right syllables in the right manner could the veils be pierced and a Nephilim could invoke a creature to come to its side.  Simeon bar Yokkai called his application of Kabbalistic Theory Invocation.

When he passed beyond this world — by ascending to Agartha or simply passing on to a new Incarnation — his followers scrabbled through the dust of a Roman-dominated Levant and picked through the leavings of two thousand years.  From lost scrolls found buried beneath Solomon’s Temple to the new Gnostic beliefs of Alexandria, they cobbled together a new magic they called Summoning and, much to their surprise, it worked.  From their pentagrams scratched out in the dust, creatures emerged and demanded bargains and contracts for their services.  The creatures came, and Nephilim conversant in Summoning found themselves more powerful than their Sorcerous brethren, for while a spell sword may last an hour, a summoned sword may last a week.  And where Wahlsinn drives a man mad, the Powerful Pale Queen of Pain with Tears of Flame causes madness and unspeakable infinite torment.

Good times.

In modern times, a summoner draws the pentacle on the ground to restrict the movements of the summoned creature.  He chants the Invocation and calls to the creature in Enochian, the language of worlds beyond the veil.  If the word reaches the creature, it appears and the test of wills begins.  Some summonings are merely beasts or mindless apparitions, but some are full Angels and Demons with wills and plans of their own.  Should the summoner win the contest, he forges a contract with the creature for a certain time — a day, a week, until the next full moon.  But should the summoner fail the contest, the summoning ruptures and the angry summoned creature can enact its vengeance.

Summoners swear by their craft.  These Nephilim abandoned the well-trod sorcery path to Agartha to reach into the nether realms to converse with beings of power, great and small, and harness that power to the Nephilim’s whims.  Summoners claim the few known summonings of the Keys, the most powerful summonings, far outstrip the pedestrian castings of Grand Secret spells, but these summoned creatures are intelligent and malevolent in the extreme.

Nephilim summoning involves the four planes of metaphysical existence beyond the physical, the circles of summoning and the realms, the contracts, and the ruptures should summoning fail.

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.

Inscribing a Spell

When a Nephilim pops out of its Stasis and incarnates into its new Simulacrum, it has nothing: no books, no mystical laboratories, no places to work, no Foci.  It may have the Stunts up to Grand Secret — it can cast any spell it pleases — but it cannot cast the spell unless it possesses the spell.  The moment a Nephilim incarnates into a new body it immediately begins the hunt for new spells* to rebuild its library.

However, some Nephilim figure out the trick of tattooing the Foci for their favorite spells directly on to their souls via a mystic ritual. An Inscribed Spell requires no Focus — no books and no extra preparation. The Nephilim may cast this spell at will. The spells travels with the Nephilim from Incarnation to Incarnation.

An Inscribed Spell can be from Lower Sorcery, Higher Magic or Grand Secret. All the penalties for casting a more complex spell applies. For example, if the Nephilim inscribes Spleen, it will have a much simpler time wandering around spleening targets than if it has the Grand Secret analogue, Wahnsinn, inscribed, a spell requiring a room and Foci and concentrated magicks and plenty of chanting. Wahnsinn still requires the Complexity and trappings of a full Grand Secret spell.

A Nephilim cannot inscribe a spell of a level greater than the Stunts it has. Thus, a Nephilim cannot inscribe spells for Higher Magic or Grand Secret if it lacks the Stunts for Higher Magic and Grand Secret.

All Inscribed spells, regardless of level, are -1 Stunts. A Nephilim can have many Inscribed spells as it can maintain without having less than 1 Refresh.

Personal Foci

Sorcerers who practice Higher Magic or greater craft for themselves a Personal Focus. The Focus is a physical object that helps the sorcerer focus its concentration on the spell. These items are crafted to the sorcerer’s personality. They can be religious items, items typically related to Sorcery (rings, staves), books, or other personally suiting items. The form of the Focus is intensely personal and varies from Sorcerer to Sorcerer. All Sorcerers who have mastered Higher Magic possess or may create a Focus.

A base cost for a Focus is -1. A Focus may be upgraded twice for a total cost of -3. A Focus grants between 1-3 shifts of bonus depending on the power of the Focus.

A Focus can add +COST to Lore (to overcome Complexity), +COST to Conviction (to gather power) or +COST to Discipline (to cast). This is identified at the time of purchasing the Focus.

When the Sorcerer has a Focus and reincarnates into a new Simulacrum, the Sorcerer must either:

1. Create a new Focus or…
2. Locate its old Focus. The old Focus may be anywhere and may require an Adventure to locate and retrieve.

The choice is up to the GM depending on Dramatic Necessity.

A Focus may be paired with an Aspect during Incarnation if the player wishes but this incurs equal benefit to above and being able to Invoke the Focus as an Aspect.

Yes, the Nephilim’s personal Focus can also be its Stasis. The Nephilim will never misplace its Focus! But it also cannot be locked in a vault, it gets used in dangerous Sorcerous rituals, and has to be toted around into battle with Templars. On the one hand, the Nephilim can have a mighty keen ancient broadsword covered in sacred runes as a Focus and a Stasis. On the other hand, if something happens to that Stasis — and we wouldn’t want another to happen to the Stasis — things get mighty interesting mighty fast.

(I’ve noticed I have changed my rules for Foci slightly so they will be folded into the Sorcery rules once the Sorcery rules are complete.)

LiveJournal was down last week so if you are only following on LJ here’s links to last week’s posts:

* Sorcery (ver. 1)
* Lower Sorcery Spells (Chart)
* Higher Magic and Grand Secret Spells (Chart)

All Nephilim FATE posts.
Any obvious similarities between a Nephilim and a Bookhound of London is merely a happy coincidence. And interestingly, plenty of cross-over in content, if not system.