Nephilim Mailing List
Frequently Asked Questions

Compiled by Liam Routt
Last modified 2 May 1995

Updated since last version: Still in progress (still not including the all-important topics relating to Humans and Nephilim). Added guidelines for posting.

Please help me to complete the Events Log - send me the details from any public Nephilim events, past or future.

Introduction

What is Nephilim?

Nephilim is a roleplaying game written by Frederic Weil and Fabrice Lamidey in France for Multisim. It was based upon the Basic Roleplaying System designed by Chaosium Inc.

Chaosium translated the game into English and adapted it somewhat, and published it in August 1994. Since that time they have been adding to the system by translating and adapting existing French material, and compiling original English material.

The stated premise of the Nephilim game is that there are disembodied immortal entities (Nephilim) who interact with the world through possessing a series of human hosts down through the ages. The Nephilim are pursued by secret societies who would see them destroyed, or would use them to further their own aims.

The Nephilim game is steeped in Occult tradition. The basic rules cover traditional western occultism, but future supplements promise to expand the game in other directions. While it is a profoundly spiritual game, Nephilim does not presume to judge or directly consider any religions, although many religious concepts are mentioned as part of the games's background.

What is the Nephilim Mailing List?

After the English release of the game, an internet mailing list was started, to allow people to discuss the game and related concepts. A wide variety of topics have been covered by the mailing list, and it continued to provide a forum for all Nephilim matters, from simple questions to complete rules additions and metaphysical debate.

To join the Nephilim Mailing List, send one of the following commands in email to majordomo@erzo.org:

     subscribe nephilim
or 
     subscribe nephilim-digest
The digest version sends a single piece of email each day with all of the messages received for the list.

What does this document contain?

Contained here are the results of a number of the discussions on the Nephilim Mailing List. The intention is to record the answers to common questions and provide a standard set of canned definitions and background for those who are new to the list, and for the reference of those who have been part of the list for a while.

While Liam Routt has edited this document, severely in some cases, most of the material was written by other people initially. There are no explicit attributions here, however it is worth noting that a lot of the more spiritual material was written by Sam Shirley. Most of the Ka-Vision Summary was originally written by Steven Crabb.

A more complete archive of all of the messages from the Nephilim Mailing List is kept elsewhere, and fulfils a different purpose.

From time to time errata and other information from Chaosium may also make it into this document.

A List of Nephilim resources is also maintained here, as well as a historical log (likely incomplete) of the public Nephilim events which have been held (tournaments, seminars, etc.).

If you have a suggestion for other material to be kept here, please contact Liam Routt.

Nephilim Rules Clarifications and Corrections

Ka Vision Summary

General Procedure
A Ka x3% roll is required for every 10 minutes in Ka-Vision. A Failure indicates that the Ka-Vision attempt was unsuccessful, and a wait of at least 10 minutes is required before trying again.

If a Nephilim spends longer than 1 hour in Ka-Vision, it must make a Khaiba roll every 10 minutes.

Ka-Vision costs 1 Ch'awe for each 10 minutes.

Spell Inscription
Only a single Ka-Vision roll (Ka x 3%) is required to inscribe a spell, even though the process takes an hour. The full Ch'Awe cost (6) is required, though.

Range
The useful range of Ka-Vision is equal to Dominant-Ka x5 meters. Beyond that range, items are seen dimly, unless they're particularly powerful. Within that range, the Nephilim can see through solid material as though it were a hazy screen.

Determining the Astrological Modifier
The current astrological modifier can be determined by any Nephilim using Ka-Vision. The relative intensities of the magic fields are all the Nephilim requires to make such judgements.

Ka-Language
Ka-Language is not directional, any Nephilim within range can perceive a message. A Ka x3% roll is required to understand any message. The range at which a Nephilim can perceive a message may be assumed to be the average of the Ka-Vision ranges of the sender and the receiver.

Colors
Alchemical formulae
The hue of the element being used (below).

The earth
A scintillating, rainbow-coloured heart, with elemental fields streaming up to the surface.

Elemental fields
Translucent washes of colour that ebb and flow in constant visual harmony, like musical vibrations. Each field looks like:
Fire
Mostly red, but also orange, yellow, white, blue. It is ever changing, fast moving, thin, and often surrounded by small flames. Often occurs in volcanic areas, heavy storms, natural/accidental fires, and all sources of heat.

Air
From a pure white to a rainy-sky grey, or even a pure-sky blue. It is regular, slow and very thin, numerous. Sometimes torn in many places. Can occur anywhere, but often concentrates on high peaks, and in strong winds or storms.

Water
From blue to green. This element is mobile, conforming for only a moment to the shape of its surroundings, but always changing, in endless whirls, and cross-currents. Always possessing soft, yet finely chiselled, curves. Can be found wherever water is, especially in deep ocean shoals.

Earth
Colors are shades of brown and green. It is still and static, often cubic, with cutting edges, and long flat surfaces, usually thick and solid. Can be found within great mountains, across stone deserts, in forests, and fertile plains.

Moon
Silvery, with perhaps a light golden luminosity. Often a mad, surrealistic, confusing, swirl, often seeming to express some deep inner sadness.

The Black Moon can be seen during some lunar enthronements. It is blacker than black.

Sun
Seen as intense glowing spots, more visible than any other field.

Athanors

How much Ka remains in an Athanor from a Past Life?
Athanors are not explicitly generated for Past Lives as the rules are written, although their creation in the past is certainly a possibility. If an old athanor can be located (a possible scenario), it is reasonable to assume that it has 3D6 Ka of each element (or another random value that suits your campaign). It is quite likely that an athanor would be destroyed if discovered by a secret society, so many may not survive their creator's simulacra.

An athanor makes a lot of powder over time
An alchemical Nephilim can find themselves up to their ears in elemental powders if only a small number of spells are used. To limit the amount of powder created, the gamemaster can state that only one pinch of powder is created for each element on the day related to the element. In addition, a pinch can be required for each circle of the spell to be cast. Using these changes, alchemists quickly learn to hoard their powders jealously.

Does an alchemical formula use the Ka of the athanor or the caster?
The Ka of the athanor is used for alchemical formulae. This can be both advantageous and disadvantageous.

Human Solar Ka

Although there are no strict rules for ramdomly generating the Solar Ka for humans, a GM can use the sample simulacrum on pages 84-88 of the rules, and in the Chronicle of the Awakenings book as guidelines. If low values are desired a 3D6 roll can be used.

Beginning characters casting magic

A beginning character has a low chance to cast many forms of magic, due to a low Ka. There are some factos that can be used in your favour, however. The Ka in your stasis can be used to augment your Ka, and the astrological modifier can provide a significant bonus at the right times. And as a last resort you can always spill blood.

It is not meant to be easy to cast off-the-cuff magic at the start of a campaign. It takes time and preparation for a starting character to use their magical abilities. This is part of the Occult nature of Nephilim that distinguishes it from other magic roleplaying games.

Alternate systems have been suggested, including using large multipliers (Ka x 5, Ka x 3, Ka x 1), or allowing a bonus for skill beyond the required threshold for a spell, but no concrete systems have been provided.

Starting Ka for Stasis Items

Although it is not clearly flagged in the rules index, on page 82 the process of generating the stasis for a new character is presented: Roll 1d20 for each Ka element.

Those distressed by the apparent randomness of this approach should consider that:

Nephilim Concept Clarifications

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 lack action or feeling.

Water
Feeling -- The emotions are like the hidden realm beneath the surface of the water. In our culture, Air often dominates Water as people do what they think is right but feel is wrong. In other cultures (much of the Orient) people would not do something unless they both thought and felt it was right.

Earth
Being -- Earth is stability, grounding, security. It is also that which is doing, thinking, and feeling.

Moon
Changing -- All things come and all things go. The old must make way for the new, and release its essence back into the eternal cycle of creation, existence, decrepitude and death, then rebirth in a new form.

Akasha
The traditional system has Akasha as the fifth element, instead of moon. It is the combination of the other four, and represent pure spirit. In Nephilim, this is Solar Ka, and it sits in the center of the pentagram. See the cover of Chronicle of the Awakenings for a graphic depiction of this concept.

All of the elements can be seen in two ways, or from two different angles:
The Material
Concerned with the physical realm. Also known as Unfocused.

The Spiritual
Concerned with the immaterial source. Also known as Focused.

Stases and the Jesus Incident

The Jesus Incident described in the Past Lives section of the rules was not a deliberate Nephilim experiment. Rather, it was an organic happening in which a Nephilim was born incarnate in a human foetus, and thus was immediately aware of both of the spiritual and material realms; it was created in an enlightened state.

Babies are often considered to be very spiritual. It seems at times that they know things which we later forget. The very young seem to already understand everything on the other side of the mirror, but as intellect develops, that knowledge is lost. Some have commented that the moment of spiritual insight seems more like a recalled memory than a new idea. The sufi actually call such insights rememberings.

Incarnating into a foetus allows a Nephilim to remain aware and in harmony with the human side of itself. It is essentially born Agarthicly aware, and keeps that awareness as it grows. Jesus was the first of this new type of Nephilim, but after the coming of the new aeon, more will be born, spontaneously, as Nephilim reach a new level in their collective development.

Such advanced Nephilim are only possible if when the conception (or ensolement - depending upon your politics) takes place in a Nexus where a Nephilim is also coming into its first incarnation.

The first stases were discovered in the same, way, from a single event that did not seem at the time to be important in shaping the destiny of all Nephilim. A Nephilim came up with a new way of incarnating into temporary stases, but it was only gradually that other Nephilim adopted it. The same pattern was followed with permanent incarnation as well. Within the next few thousand years, Nephilim may learn how to incarnate into genetically engineered Star-Ka superhumans, the result of Alchemical experiments with golems, and this, too, will spread through the Nephilim community.

Nephilim Ideas

Flashbacks

It has been suggested that each Nephilim has numerous minor incarnations in addition to the ones created during character generation. Perhaps the Nephilim was contiuously in Shiout during those incarnations, never fully manifesting itself. Or perhaps the durations of such incarnations were so short that they did not affect the character in a way that made it necessary for them to be explicitly covered in generation.

These lost or forgotten incarnations might be briefly recalled in times of stress or when some current event triggers such a flashback. The gamemaster could use such memories to provide clues, add to general background, to provide recognition of some lost ability or foe.

Coincidences, Signs and Portents

Portents can be useful tools for those creating Nephilim adventures. They can be used to presage important events, or to indicate to the characters that something significant is about to occur, or is in progress. The signs don't have to be grand; the most effective portents are often quite subtle. Meaning, rather than drama, makes a good portent.

Signs are simple, obvious things, in some ways, but it is easy to overlook them. The world is always full of signs, for those who have the eyes to see. So the key is to make a significant sign both an ordinary occurrence, and one that the characters can pick up on.

Consider this example:

On their way between two locations, the characters pass a burning house. There are trucks and people everywhere, but what is most striking is that an ash tree in front of the house is in full blaze. Later in the day, the same image, that of a burning ash tree, appears in a newspaper, accompanying an article about an exhibition. Correctly presented, the burning tree might indicate to the characters that the exhibition is significant. Perhaps the fire was fully described, with particular attention paid to the tree, and maybe the characters even helped to put out the fire; Or perhaps the fire was mentioned, but no details were given (as the characters were not interested at the time), and the portent was only highlighted when the paper was examined (using an INT-based roll, or a retrospective perception attempt). Keep in mind that the characters may not see the significance of such an image until after they have seen it a number of times - they may not respond to the burning tree until it appears a third or fourth time.

Awareness of signs is often considered to be part of awareness of the subtle self. To become aware of the soul, it's necessary to stop denying it, and to stop ignoring it. A Nephilim should allow herself to believe what she experiences, not what she is told to believe. Nephilim should be encouraged to appreciate the interconnectivity of all things, and to consider signs and portents as subtle divine coincidences - essential parts of the occult world in which they live.

Be sure to consider the possibility of using dreams as vehicles for portents. Dreams are often seen to be messages from the other side of the mind, attempting to explain things, or helping to focus the conscious mind in ways that society has conditioned it to ignore. Often the meaning of a dream message is not clear until some time later - until some other event puts it in perspective. Other times the meaning is immediate and obvious. Some dreams are never clear.

Such techniques should be part of every Nephilim gamemaster's occult toolkit.

Nephilim Resources

Publications

Chaosium Inc.

Nephilim: Occult Roleplaying

Nephilim Gamemaster's Veil

Character Dossiers

Chronicle of the Awakenings

Secret Societies

Serpent Moon

Internet

World-Wide Web pages

Perhaps it is the nature of the subject matter for Nephilim which has lead to the creation of a number of high-quality WWW pages so soon after its release by Chaosium. For whatever reason, there is a wealth of information available through the web. The following pages represent only the best starting points for exploring that information. A complete catalog is beyond the scope of this document.

The Chaosium, Inc. page
http://www.sirius.com/~chaosium/chaosium.html

While the catalog information alone makes this a significant resource for the Nephilim gamer (with descriptions of currently released and soon-to-be released material, and many cover illustrations), the links to other WWW pages with relevant information are likely to be of just as much use to the dedicated Nephilim researcher. Some of the graphics can take a while to load, but many are reused between pages, so once they are loaded they cease to be a problem.

Jamie Norrish's Nephilim : Occult Roleplaying page
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Jamie.Norrish/nephilim/nephilim.html

Without a doubt, Jamie's page is the most impressive tribute to Nephilim available to the casual browser. There are links to all manner of useful information and rules suggestions here, as well as an impressive set of bibilographies, and links to related resource material.

Michael V. Caprio Jr.'s Threaded Archive of the Nephilim Mailing List
http://ayup.res.wpi.edu/~mikecap/nephilim.html

Michael has carefully linked the messages sent over the mailing list by subject, so that it is possible to follow through a given discussion. A massive achievement, and perhaps the only way to make real use of the sheer wealth of archived information from the list.

FTP sites

Wayne Coburn's Mailing List archive
ftp://mamacass.ucsd.edu/pub/wayne/

Nephilim Mailing List Guidelines

Edit Replies Liberally
It is annoying to page through large chunks of quoted previous posts to locate a small number of added words at the end (or even worse, somewhere buried in the middle). Try to cut out all but the few sentences that you wish to respond to; in many cases a line or two of "flavour" is all that is required.

Add Constructively
Off-the-cuff opinions which do not actually offer any positive material tend to be inflamatory. A discussion is most entertaining and valuable when the participants are making real suggestions rather than just presenting their opinions, or negating the opinions of others. Rather than saying something is wrong, present what you think is right; and present it as an alternative way of looking at things, if possible.

Only Reply When Necessary
There is enough traffic on this mailing list without people adding their line or two to every post which is made. Choose your topics carefully, and were possible, respond to a set of posts on the same subject in a single message which take into account he current state of the discussion, rather than addressing each statement in turn.

Consider Your Tone of Writing
It can be hard to pick up nuances of language when using e-mail. You must be prepared to flag irony and sarcasm, as well as your own opinions, if your readers are to understand your intentions. e-mail can be good training for clear writing, but only if you take up the challenge, and consider what you write before sending it. Interpretation is in the hands of the reader, and they need to have a clear guide to your intent if they are to make sense of what you write.

Distinguish Fact From Opinion
There is an difference between:
In general it is best to avoid the third version unless there is a very strong case for it. Without going overboard it is usually a good idea to indicate where your ideas come from; many people on this list have a degree of research into the occult under their belts, while others do not. Everyone's ideas are valuable, no matter how much they are supported by hard research, but it is always wise to state your references at the start to make it clear what context you are using.

Sign Your Posts
It is confusing when there is no name on a post, or the name that you find at the end belongs to a third party who is lending their account to a list participant. Erase such misleading signatures, if they exist, and append at least your own name, so that we all know who said what.

Nephilim Events Log

GenCon 1994
Chaosium's version of Nephilim launched. Temple of the Ancients scenario run.

Arcanacon 1995, Melbourne, Australia
Two Nephilim scenarios run:.

GenCon 1995
scenario run.

RQ Con Downunder, Melbourne, Australia
January, 1996
Panel seminar about Nephilim (Nick Hagger, Liam Routt, Judy Routt, Greg Stafford). scenario run.