Character Creation: Nephilim

There were giants, in those days. It took them a long time to make a character. 

The Game: Nephilim
The publisher: Chaosium
Degree of familiarity: Not much. I read the book and made a character (during a Literature class in college, IIRC), but that was more than 10 years ago.
Books required: You only need the core, but as Stew mentions here, there's a sourcebook that improves things. That'd be Chronicle of the Awakenings, which I have, so I'll use it. 

 
OK, in this game you're playing ancient elemental beings that reincarnates through the ages, all on their way to a mystical state of fulfillment called Agartha. During the periods awaken, Nephilim...shit, what do they do? Hang on. OK, they've all reawakened "now" (1990s), and aren't sure why, but something big is on the horizon. In the past, they've done various magicKy things (fucking extra "k" - hey, just like gimmicK!). Oh, and they possess people when they reincarnate, so your first action upon awakening is stealing someone's life. Rule!

Step One: Ka. Ka is the magical lifeforce of the Nephilim. It's divided up into elements: the four classical ones plus Moon. Now, since I need to decide my dominant Ka element, that means I should also decide on my Metamorphosis - that is, what kind of elemental being I am. Let's see. Reading the element descriptions, I ditch Moon (last character I made had it), Air (Stew did one), Fire (eh). That leaves me Earth and Water. The more I think about it, the more I think I'd like to play a Pan-like character. Not so much focused on the "fuck everybody - literally!" aspect of being a satyr, but more the "monster brooding in the cave" aspect. Yes, that's challenging to play and not resort to "I slink off by myself," but I like a challenge. OK, so my element is Earth, and my Metamorphosis is Satyr.

Now, Ka starts at 22 and goes down by 2 for every incarnation you've had, including the present one. I don't want to be here all goddamn day, so I'll have two incarnations. That reduces my dominant Ka by six, for a total of 16. My two favorable elements are Moon and Fire, and because I want to play up the mysterious, crazy side of the Satyr, I put Moon as my major neutral (13). That leaves Fire at 10. My major opposed element will be Air, because I don't see this guy as terribly incisive (3), and that leaves Water at 6. All of this also gives me some modifiers to some stats:

Earth 16 (Constitution +4)
Moon 13 (Charisma +4)
Fire 10 (Strength +3)
Water 6 (Dexterity +2)
Air 3 (Intelligence +1)

Step Two: Metamorphosis and Major Arcana. My Metamorphosis, I've already chosen. Note, though, that in the core book, your Metamorphosis traits are linked to physical characteristics: Head, Hands, Odor, Skin, and Voice. As of Chronicle of the Awakenings, they are linked to emotions and personality traits, which then cause physical changes as they increase. I'm using that sourcebook's rules. As a Satyr, my traits are: Angry (horns on head, steam from nose); Destructive (fingers meld into claws, cloven hooves); Indulgent (high tolerance for booze, food, sex); Unpredictable (lots of body hair and musk); Vengeful (some undefinable aura makes me impossible to forget). I get a number of Metamorphosis points to spread out, but I do that later, after past lives.

Now, for Major Arcana, my initial impulse was Hermit or the Moon, but both of those make for lousy player characters. Instead, I choose Temperance. My Satyr is devoted to helping other Nephilim, and when he's "on the job," he's functional. It's just that left to his own devices, he's a monster, a destructive, unpredictable beast. I like that.

Step Three: Past Lives. And thus begins the real headache of chargen. I have two past lives. My first one determines my Stasis object (the thing my soul chills out in between lives). Lots of potential eras in the core book, but a lot of them are ancient and I like more modern stuff. So using the sourcebook, I'll pick my first era as The Americas, New England, 1650AD.

First up: I pick a Simulacrum. This would be the body I stole upon awakening. I'll just roll for it, since I don't have a strong idea. A roll of 33 makes me a farmer - perfect. A roll of 3d6x5 means he incarnated into a man at the tender age of 20, which, in turn, gives me 80 points for skills.

Hide 20
Fist/Punch 15
Farm 30
Religious Lore (Puritan) 15
Life Experience (Colonies 17th c.) 20 (I get this free)

Weaksauce. OK, now I get 80 more points to spend on languages. Weird.

Speak (English) 50
Speak (Native American) 30

Let's see how long I lived as a Nephilim: Ooh, another 65 years. Died at 85. He hung in there. That means I get 130 Occult Development points, which lets me buy magic. It also sends me back to the core book, because fuck if I remember how magic works. OK, got it. I can take difference magic techniques, which allow me to cast spells, but unless I Inscribe a spell on my soul, I need a material component. Likewise, I can take Temperance Lore to indicate how down with my Arcana tribe I am. Before I do that, I make a couple more rolls, and determine that this incarnation died of starvation, and my Stasis item is a felling ax (which I assume is used to fell trees, not people).

OK, a picture emerges. My Satyr started living la vida Temperance during this time. Humans were crazy and Puritanism meant that the sexual side of him as a Satyr didn't get much play. Instead, he tried to help other Nephilim, what few there were, and wound up getting run out of town for his trouble. He died starving the wilderness, clutching his felling axe, hoping an animal would get close enough to whack.

Magic-wise, I put 30 points into Temperance Lore, 50 into Black Stone Alchemy (which means I have to go and figure out an Athanor, dammit) 30 into Lower Magic, and I'll Inscribe two spells. Hmm. I'll take Balance the Humours (allowing me to cure disease), and the Freezing of the Living Stone, allowing me to make someone's feet too heavy to lift.

And that's one incarnation done. Now, to move forward in time, when he awakened again in...Scotland?!

Yep, the Scottish Rebellion, 1745AD. Let's see who he was. He was a government soldier. How'd he get the felling axe? I think that someone found it in the woods and rather liked it, and it passed through a series of hands before being traded to a sailor headed for Jolly Olde Englande. It wound up being lost in a card game to a solider who was being sent off to clear the highlands...and said soldier wound up a Simulacrum. The Satyr was probably horrified that people were still gleefully killing each other. At the time of incarnation, the solider was...Jesus, 75! So, obviously not a young dude getting sent off to war, but rather a very old dude who hadn't died or retired, for whatever reason. OK, I can work with that, not least because it gives me 300 freaking skill points.

Life Experience (Britain 18th c.) 75 (free)
Fist/Punch 50
Melee (Sword) 50
Ride 50
Rifle 50
Scan 50
Survival 50

Speak (English) 40
Speak (Scots Gaelic) 15 (continuing the trend of picking up a little of the local language)

Nephilim age: The fucker lived another 90 years before dying. Good lord. I'm sure someone noticed that. That also gives me another 180 Occult Development points for magic. OK, I'll put 40 into Black Stone Alchemy, 50 into White Stone Alchemy, 20 into Temperance Lore, 30 into Lower Magic, and with the rest I'll Inscribe four spells. I'll take Via Robust (ups my Constitution, and explains a lot), the Mutation of the Hell Hound (because it's awesome), the Chemycal Webbing of Androgyny (makes me a little servant) and the Darkening of the Seven-Shaded Walls (smokescreen).

Death: Died of disease, but honestly, he could have cured it. I think he died because he wanted to, and just didn't bother to cure the disease. He would have died around, what, 1840-some, and I figure he was just out of excuses for why he was still alive.

And that's both incarnations. Taking a break for lunch, but you won't notice a thing. See that? I'm back, watched two episodes of Tru Calling and there's no noticeable break for you.

Anyway, that puts us at Step Four: Simulacrum. The current one, anyway. First, I choose a Simulacrum template. Without knowing where a hypothetical GM wants to set this game, I'll assume that the felling axe that was in the soldier's collection of stuff eventually got put into a collection of Colonial stuff and shipped back to Massachusetts. In a museum in Salem, almost anyone might be walking by when the Satyr reincarnated again. So I'll choose...Brewer.

Richard Stokes was in Salem visiting some friends, and they decided to go to one of the witches museums, for a lark. Looking at the axe, mislabeled as "an axe used to break in the doors of suspected witches," Richard felt something...a deep and abiding pathos, a sadness and rage he'd never felt. And then he just stopped being Richard altogether. Instead, he was Lone, the Beast of the Cave.

OK, so I transfer the characteristics from the Brewer template to my sheet. That means:

Constitution 16+4=20
Charisma 12+4=16
Strength 11+3=14
Dexterity 10+2=12
Intelligence 14+1=15

Nice that I incarnated into someone smart. That Con bonus is neat, too. I get 50 skill points to spread around (3d6x10, so 50 kinda sucks), in addition to skills my Simulacrum already has. So I'll buy Listen and Hunt, both at 25. Weak, but actually, the template's existing skills work nicely. He plays violin, he bow-hunts, he makes beer. I see him as having a small, somewhat ramshackle house out near the edge of town, sitting on land that the city would love to rip up and develop. But it's not a place of solitude - his friends come out and drink his beer, listen to his music, and so on. Good life.

Except now he's not Richard anymore. He's Lone, and that means he's not happy around people. He wants to help other Nephilim, because he knows that people don't like them and that magic in general isn't welcome in most places. Slowly but surely, he loses ties with humanity. And that's safer for humanity, anyway. Lone's dangerous when he gets mad. Or drunk.

One thing I am changing: The family relationship of this dude assumes he has a devoted wife, but I don't necessarily want that much angst. I'm going to bump his Family rating down to 12, and assume he's got a close circle of friends, but no living family that he's close to.

I multiply all of my meta-characteristics by 3 to get my percentages, and I port in my skill numbers from my incarnations. Almost done. Gotta do the Stasis object, and then the Athanor. Yeah, gotta make headaches for myself. OK, the system for creating an Athanor is whack-a-ding-hoy. It looks like I subtract the points from my Stasis to put points into the Athanor, and I guess that's what we'll do. So, I roll a d20 for each of the elements in my Stasis object: 4, 6, 8, 8, 18. After I assign them to elements, I transfer some points over to the Athanor. Which, considering I made it in Colonial New England, I think looks like a snuff tin. It was once engraved, but it's all covered in burns, scorches and symbols now.

Stasis:
Fire 3, Air 4, Water 2, Earth 10, Moon 4

Athanor:
Fire 1, Air 4, Water 4, Earth 8, Moon 2

Weak Athanor, but what are you gonna do? I have 20 hit points, 3 actions, +1d4 damage bonus, and...weird. According to the system, I should have 20 Ch'awe, but it only goes to 18 on the sheet. Oh, well.

Oh, one last thing: Metamorphosis. I have 16 Metamorphosis points. These are these traits I mentioned above (Angry, etc.) and one can be Directed, which is a little like a Specialty. It functions as 3 points higher in applicable situations. I'll definitely direct something; right now, the points look like this:

Angry 4
Destructive 2
Indulgent 2
Unpredictable 5
Vengeful 3

My "Unpredictable" Trait will be directed towards "Drunk." Lone's a crazy drunk.

And apparently that's it! Wow, lengthy.