The Story of Treasure (5991030)

OBILIS
THE ESSENTIALS
TREASURE
By Jenna
Katerin Moran
Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030) Match Girl image is Copyright 2006 The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com)
Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030)
Nobilis: the Essentials
~ Free Release ~
The Story of Treasure
by Jenna Katerin Moran

Image is Copyright 2006 The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com)

Nobilis: Antithesis, Nobilis: the Essentials, and all included text, con-
cepts, and game mechanics are copyright 2011-2013 by Jenna Katerin
Moran.
Chuubos Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine is copyright 2012-2013

by Jenna Katerin Moran.
Arthur Rackham images provided by the Scriptorium and are copyright

2006 Ragnarok Press/The Scriptorium. Unauthorized copying of Scrip-
torium images, even if modified, merged, or included with other soft-
ware, is expressly forbidden.
Except as noted above, all art and presentation elements are copyright
2011-2013 by Jenna Katerin Moran; by Eos Press, LLC; or by the origi-
nal artist or artists. Nobilis is the creation of Jenna Katerin Moran (for-
merly known as R. Sean Borgstrom). Reproduction without the writ-
ten permission of one of Jenna Katerin Moran, Eos Press, LLC, or the
appropriate artistic copyright holder is expressly forbidden, except for
the purposes of reviews, blank character sheets, and copying reasonable
selections for personal use and reference only.
The mention or reference to any company or product in these pages is not

a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.
This book uses fantastical and supernatural elements in its setting, for its
characters, their abilities, and themes. All such elements are fiction and
intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature
content and reader discretion is advised.
Check out Eos Press Online at www.eos-sama.com!

4
The devices of Abd-al-Rashid are undeniably masterworksfrom Bahir Hibah, the book whose passages can open any
portal, to Zakiyya, the mechanical odalisque whose tears are made of gold. At one time or another, many Powers have con-
sidered delving into Abd-al-Rashids forgotten city in search of these devices. So far, they have refrained. Abd-al-Rashid
died a traitors death, seduced into betraying his Imperator by mortal lust, and the taint clings to his artifacts still. How
would a Power dare to take them? Her peers would point and whisper, There goes one who claims a traitors goods. What
else might not she do?
from Chronicles of Wonders, by Kip Narekatski

5
Credits
Written and Conceived by: Jenna Katerin Moran
Cover Art by: Arthur Rackham
Interior Art by: Arthur Rackham et al.
Design Elements and Backgrounds by: Oliver Vulliamy
Layout by: Jenna Katerin Moran
Specific Art Credits

Chibi-Jenna (pg. 35, 40) - by CQ
Icon (pg. 44) - by Oliver Vulliamy
Dedication
For Cync Brantley, Rand Brittain, Hsin Chen, Cheryl & Joseph Couvillion, Jesse Covner, Anthony Damiani, John
Eure, Dara & Anna Korrati, Kevin Maginn, Gregory Rapawy, Alexis Siemon, Charles Spaulding, Amy Sutedja,
Chrysoula Tzavelas, James Wallis, and Raymond Wood.
Special Thanks to Karl Friedrich Borgstrom, for teaching me the joy of sailing.

6
Contents
What is this Book?................................................................................................................. 8
Under the Hood..................................................................................................................... 9
Mundane and Treasure Actions....................................................................................... 9
Aspect Actions.............................................................................................................. 10
Domain/Persona Actions; Imperial Actions, Bonds, and Afflictions.............................. 11
Ordinary Anchors............................................................................................................... 13
Claiming an Anchor................................................................................................... 13
Possession.................................................................................................................. 14
(Minor Errata)............................................................................................................... 14
Guidance................................................................................................................... 17
Wondrous Anchors.............................................................................................................. 18
Mundane Actions and Wondrous Anchors..................................................................... 22
Claiming an Anchor and Wondrous Anchors............................................................. 26
Possession and Guidance; Unleashing Wonders; Getting Some Help................ 27
Weaponizing Anchors................................................................................................ 28
Weaving Destiny........................................................................................................ 30
Unleashing Miracles and Wondrous Anchors............................................................. 33
Getting Miraculous Help and Ordinary/Wondrous Anchors...................................... 34

7
Miraculous Anchors............................................................................................................ 35
Miraculous Strengths.................................................................................................... 35
Mundane Actions and Miraculous Anchors................................................................... 36
Claiming an Anchor; Possession............................................................................. 37
Guidance; Unleashing Wonders; Getting Some Help; Weaponizing Anchors;

Weaving Destiny.................................................................................................... 38
Unleashing Miracles; Getting Miraculous Help....................................................... 39
Communion.............................................................................................................. 40
Imperial Miracles....................................................................................................... 42
Unusual Anchors................................................................................................................. 44
Icons............................................................................................................................. 44
Spells; Collections........................................................................................................ 45
Sanctums....................................................................................................................... 46
Index of Sidebars, Errata, and Texts..................................................................................... 48

8
What is this
Book?
T reasure is one of the Attributes new to the third edition of Nobilis. This
is a set of design notes on how it works, why it works the way it does, and how
to use it to its best effect!

9
Under the Hood
L e ts start with some general notes on how Nobilis works.
Mundane and Treasure Actions

Mundane actions and Treasure actions in Nobilis are designed around the fol-
lowing premise: that if you can guarantee that part of what you want happens,
Youre more likely to succeed on the whole;
It will encourage your opposition to find clever workarounds instead of

overpowering or ignoring the guarantees you have; and,
In turn, that will inspire you to find clever ways of making your guarantees
more salient.
None of these guarantees are necessarily firm in every case. Its even possible
that they fail for your group, in which case Nobilis is not for you. But that is why The mail service of Locus Arahiel has
mundane and Treasure actions guarantee things like: never failed to deliver a message. Usu-
ally, it takes a day. Sometimes, it takes a
(difficulty 4 mundane action) this action is effective but not necessarily week. In odd cases, the message arrives
thousands of years after its recipients
exactly as described; or death, placed carefully on the bone dust
in some secluded valley where a monster
(difficulty 3 Treasure miracle) this power works as advertised but is not ate them in the Age before. This meets
necessarily salient. the postthings obligation under Ara-
hielan law; it is not, after all, their fault
that the recipient can no longer read.
from A Tourists Guide to Creation,

In general, higher-level actions have better (more productive) guarantees. by Jasprite Sherrard

10
Aspect Actions
Once you get to Aspect 3+ miracles, a different idea ap-
plies: that if you have to build your powers from a fun-
damental baseline of humans (or whatever) can do this,
It will encourage you to pick actions with a certain

verisimilitude;
It will encourage you to find clever ways to take

human-similar actions rather than just declar-
ing that something must be doable with Aspect
And then I told him, I said,
Yeah, but what are you going to do against somehow;
an opponent who can fly? Zzzing!
In turn, this will inspire enemies to say things like
ha! Great as you are, what can you do against
someone who can punch through steel?;
And then that will inspire you to figure out what a

pulp or legendary hero does in that case, which is
often surprisingly effective because people have a
long history of really liking their legendary heroes
to win.

Domain/Persona Actions 11
Most of the Domain and Persona miracles are built around the following as-
sumption: if the fundamental baseline and startling point for your actions is
Im doing X with my Estate,
It will encourage you to build a meaningful paradigm for that Estate;
It will encourage you to find clever ways to build on your basic premises
and work within that paradigm rather than just powering through ev-
erything;
In turn, because clever actions tend to produce a penumbra of strained

interpretations, it will give the HG stuff to work with when it comes to
Excrucian attacks on your Estate.
Imperial Actions, Bonds, and Afflictions

Fundamentally, Bonds, Aictions, and Imperial miracles are designed to give
you a set of loosely-phrased true statements to rely and build upon when youre
trying to be clever.
"I am a transfinite barrier," she ex-
These three kinds of power have different mechanics not because theyre plained. "It is within my power to stop
any finite force brought to bear. You are
differently true a priori but because that truth is meant to be a factor in differ- a finite creature; you cannot pass."
ent decisions. While I will generally claim with a straight face that all of them
are truths about the world, and in that sense equivalent, you can also argue that "Duty obliges me to walk to the end
Bonds, Aictions, and Imperial Miracles are constraints on the truth specifi- of the world," I said, "and I feel it lies
beyond this point."
cally, on the truth of events that the group generates in play.
"Then the question," she said, "becomes: is
In a book, perhaps, you could say that duty a finite force?"
An Imperial miracle is like a narrator aside or prophecy: a summary of from The Duchess' Needle, by Emily Chen
whats supposed to happen or be happening.
A Bond is something that the story is trying to prove true.
An Aiction is something that the story accepts as true, to make the ef-
fort of proving the truth of the Bonds meaningful.
When the story finishes, all three of them are true, but their function is different
nevertheless!
For instance, in the Lord of the Rings, you could say that the inherently
fallen condition of people and the world is an Aiction without that Aic-
tion, thered be no point in the journey, you could find someone strong enough
to just eagle the darn ring to Mordor. The corrupting influence of the ring, con-
versely, is more like an Imperial miracle (as are its actual powers, which people

12 seem kind of wibbly-wobbly on). And the strength of the people of the Shire,
and thus metaphorically of British country folk, is closest to a Bond:
Tolkien is attempting to demonstrate that even in the presence of that Af-

fliction and that Imperial miracle, a hobbits strength of character can prevail.
How is that even possible, when people are fallen?
When there is nobody, not even a hobbit, that could throw the ring into
Mount Doom?
Well, if he hadnt already written the darn books, that would be the kind of
thing that your group would figure out in play.
Aiction: Friend to All Living Creatures

(or possibly Dripping with animal magnetism.)
13
Ordinary
Anchors
T his section is about ordinary Anchors the mundane keepsakes, para-

phernalia, and acquaintances that become part of your life story by way of the
Treasure Trait and your Bonds.
Claiming an Anchor (Level 0)

Every Noble can access Treasure 0 miracles, and for free, so the design role of a
Treasure 0 miracle is a basic capacity that I want everyone to have that gets you
thinking in the right terms.
I want every Noble to have the option of claiming

Well, things and people that are special to them. Even if they dont have
magical properties, even if theyre just friends and clothes and PDAs and rivals,
I want you to be able to bring these things into your story and keep them there.
So thats basically what this does.
As incentive to actually claim ordinary things as Anchors, and to capture
the stylistic point that the Nobilis are potentially above earthly inconveniences,
claiming an Anchor and making something ordinary a part of your story gives
you the option to upgrade it to something worthy of being part of your story. Its
fine if youre the Power of Old Junk and you have a watch thats just old junk, or
whatever; but if youre the Power of the Sky, and yet your old graduation watch
is important to you, I dont want you to feel like its a foolish attachment to a bit
Well now, the Duchess said, and lifted
of old junk. my chin. You are an ordinary creature,
Thats cool in play! I mean, theres something there. But it acts against the arent you.
idea of an Anchor. In myself, yes, my lady. But I am distin-
An Anchor is something that makes you cooler, its something that shows guished in the company I keep.
up in legends and myths and stories of you, so I wanted to make sure that you from Tumbledrum, by Keiko Takemori

14 dont ever get stuck having to classify your Anchors as useless baggage that your
character would be better without.
Thats why your Anchors become superior instances of their type and also
why I dropped the maintenance issues that might be associated with, e.g., using
your Anchor cell phone on Mars or feeding your Anchored aunt.
The fact that objects and people operating without need for fuel, ammuni-
tion, or maintenance is usually going to be at least mildly funny is something I
noted after the fact and tried to both emphasize and take advantage of but
that emphasis and advantage was basically adopted after the fact.
Possession (Level 1): Introduction

Treasure 1 miracles serve a principally Doylist purpose theyre there, at least
in part, to help you be in two places at once. Theyre there to facilitate your play-
ing in one scene in Suzhou and one scene in Detroit, and with the potential
power to start up another action set at the bottom of the sea if you absolutely
must.
Theres a range of options in how possessing your Anchors could work.

Theres a spectrum of mental manipulation that ranges from total control that
displaces the targets consciousness to mentally visiting them and offering ad-
vice.
For reasons of game tone, Ive opted to drop the middle of that spectrum
entirely.
This left two real options: kicking the targets consciousness out for a bit is
one, and visiting them without controlling them is the other. Nobilis gives you
both; I offered the nastier one at a lower level both because it was available in the
second edition as an independent mechanic and because I have more interest in
people spending MP to reach the more ethical option than in their straining to
reach the less.
There isnt a body of developed moral theory on kicking someone elses
consciousness out of their body and taking over. Im not sure whether to think of
it as analogous to a spiritual phenomenon, to assault and identity theft, or some-
thing completely different. So Im going to be restrained here and simply say
that Treasure 1 miracles are ethically compromising (though relatively benign as
acts of possession go). Thus, Im expecting that some Powers will refuse to use
these miracles; others will secure advance permission from their Anchors; and
Minor Errata others will be ruthless enough or . . . differently ethical enough . . . to completely
The term Occupation is meant ignore the issues that they raise.
to be an alternate term for Pos-
session, but this was nowhere ac-
tually stated. Sorry! Please con-
sider it said.

Possession (Level 1): Mystic Links 15
In the third edition Nobilis discarded some of the previously existing protections
against game-breaking powers. In first and second edition Nobilis it was flatly
impossible for one Power to edit another Powers history, memories, emotions,
loyalties, or dreams even the most effective attacks were limited to raw physi-
cal damage and blunt psychological trauma. In the third edition, Powers instead
have a fairly effective (but finite) defense against manipulative effects you can
inflict arbitrary effects on your fellow Powers but they can twist how those ef-
fects play out and simultaneously enhance their ongoing mechanical protection
against undesirable effects and outcomes by taking wounds.
I think the wound system plus player cleverness suffices to provide a de-
fense against almost any imaginable attack, no matter how subtle or nasty. I felt
reasonably confident that players could figure out something (between wounds
and their own powers) to defend against even invisible, intangible, super-fast,
time-traveling, inconspicuous, and friend-imitating enemies, no matter how ter-
rifying and game-breaking the techniques they might use. But I realized that
there was a category of effects that were totally imaginable and practical that I
couldnt figure out how a typical player would defend against:
Attacks from really far away.
There are places in the world that are hard to get to!
Thats where the mystic link rules come from. I wanted to make sure that
in the vast majority of cases if somebody was doing stuff to you, there would be
something that you could find and deal with that was at least notionally nearby.
I guess that in some sense its hard to justify.
I mean, maybe one of your Anchors is dandelions. You really like dande-
lions. Youre connected to them. Theyre elevated to being as good as any other
mortal weed, maybe even better, by your love for them, and they are freed of their
maintenance cost as well. (Thats why floating dandelion-buds have no roots.)
And if dandelions are your Anchor then you can build a specific mystic link to
some dandelion growing somewhere in a city; and later on, while youre off do-
ing other things somewhere, if an enemy passes by that dandelion, its totally fair
for you to use that chosen dandelion to blow a puff of absolute love and loyalty
for you into that enemy face. And when that happens, it may not make much
sense that they can turn around, draw their seal-sword (its a sword, forged from
the heart of a baby seal) and stab you with it. Or turn you to stone with their
Gorgon-style petrifaction ability by glaring in the dande-direction. It may par-
ticularly not make much sense say, if they too love dandelions that they can
stab or petrify you without hurting the dandelion itself.
. . . but thats the price of being able to act from afar.
I figure that while I usually handwave that by saying well, youre the one
who arranged for this, you justify it, the simplest default for you to use is that
your spirit is kind of lingering there over the dandelion, in situations like that,
like an anime battle aura or a watchful ghost.

16 Possession (Level 1): Defense
Most Anchors have no way to defend against this technique. That said, it is pos-
sible that in the right circumstances an Anchor even if theyre a completely
ordinary person! can take a wound to mitigate the possession effect.
Im not sure under which circumstances this would come up in play. Youre
unlikely to be playing a frequently-possessed Anchor and youre unlikely to have
an Anchor thats so interesting and well-established so much a treasure of the
groups mindspace rather than your own that the HG will feel comfortable
having them throw off your possession.
Maybe if your enemies have done something to them? Tempted them, cor-
rupted them, or reinforced their strength of will?
Warned of her impending possession,

Valya staggered to the cupboard and
took the poison down.
Not for me, she whispered, but for

thee; and drank

Possession (Level 1): Duration 17
I want to assume that while youre actively possessing an Anchor you are there.
Youre not back at your body doing whatever. Youre not off with some other
Anchor. In that moment, that Anchor is you.
On the other hand, I didnt want to have players worrying about what hap-
pened back at their body all the time. As fun as it would be to return to your
body and find it kidnapped, or whatever, once or twice, in my experience, players It should be undesirable to forget that
would just spend all their time elaborately arranging for precautions to prevent life requires error, and the pacing of
that, instead. It wouldnt just be a vulnerability. Itd be an excessive vulnerability, that error is random, and the jagged
peaks of great large errors are larger
the kind thats really hard to trust in a game. At least for the players Ive known! than a person's life.
So instead the rule is that if something happens back at your body that from the introduction to
youd be concerned with as a player something that would make you say, The Valde Bellum: A Chronology of Excrucian As-
sault, Volume VIII, by Kip Narekatski
Whoa, no, I shake off my Anchor-time and act now the possession ends.
Even though you dont really know whats going on back at your body, you
still get to abort the possession effect as if you did. Ive left it unspecified and
up to you what that requires. If you want to be the kind of Power who can get
carried off to sea by an unexpected tide while youre off possessing someone, or
kidnapped by ninjas, or non-bindingly killed while youre not paying attention,
be that! Conversely, if you want to snap back to your body as soon as someone
gives you a really good straight line, you can play things out that way as well. The
rule is just . . .
In addition to the conditions at the far end that end possession, the miracle
stops when something happens back at your body that would snap you out of
it, whatever that kind of thing might be.
Guidance (Level 2)
Guidance is meant to be a nicer version of possession potentially, if you like, a
completely benign watching-over. Since its also a stronger miracle, it allows you
to mix and match the two forms, watching non-coercively and then taking over
for a moment when youd like to, either at the Anchors instigation or your own.
We are waves of original purpose that
I feel like it is unbefitting to a Nobles dignity to just lurk in the back of strike the world of tools signified
somebodys mind, and also like a level 2 miracle should definitely be worth the things that enter a cosmos of signi-
upgrade if you happen to have a 0-1 Treasure rating and no moral qualms, so at fiers; ideals that enter a world of flesh;
patterns impinging upon the static
level 2, when youre just watching, you get to keep paying attention to your own relationships of the world. Languages,
body and to whatever is going on with it. actions, machines, thoughts ultimate-
ly we cannot dierentiate ourselves
I also wanted level 2 to also be the level where you could have a real meeting from our tools.
of minds with your sword or soapbox derby racer or whatever the level where
you could become one with your treasures for greater effect. The truth, though, Wulandari 6, Power of Authenticity
is: that effect is already kind of there by default with all of your Anchors, since
you use miraculous Will rather than ordinary Will in Anchor-related Inten-
tions. Thats why this effect is pretty minor: I didnt feel comfortable giving more
than an additional +1 Tool bonus and a point of Edge.
18
Wondrous
Anchors
L ets say that you have a pet AI. A real AI, I mean, the kind that could go
berserk and take over the whole world if there werent things like Nobilis and
Excrucians around to stop it, the kind of AI thats so profoundly superior to
humanity in its underlying capabilities that its only the vague semantics of its
construction that make it comprehensible at all. The kind of AI that can fab up
a bunch of robotic bees in an emergency, some kind of, you know, insucient
robotic bees error kind of emergency, and send them off to help you out. The
kind of AI that can set up a package to be delivered to you in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean two and a half years from now and itll contain just the inflatable
life raft that youll need right then. That kind of AI.
We can tell a lot of different stories, then, about you and your pet:
We can tell the story where youre basically its pet. Thats a kind of fun one.
It loves you with a kind of amused fondness, it feels like it owes you a good life,
but it wont fix everything for you.
. . . or we can tell the story where its kind of an omni-tool, but only for the
things you think to ask.

. . . or, we can tell the story where its a vi-

cious and treacherous wish-granting genie that
kept its early-youth programming to obey you
19
not out of loyalty or inescapability but because
it thinks that toying with you and pretending to
be your pet is fun.
. . . or, we can tell the story where its this
hapless puppy, this joyful but confused sentience
who doesnt really understand what its doing or
whats going on for all of the genius that it hath.
. . . we can even tell a mix of these stories:
you know, where now its one thing, now an-
other.
And there will be some people who will
hear the word pet AI and immediately go to
one or another of these stories in their heads.
They will immediately see that you have doomed
humanity by virtue of creating an AI, or will im-
mediately see that you have found a god button
and nobody can ever oppose you or even think
of opposing you again because (again) AI. And
then there will be some who will joke about
how its pointless and useless because machines
are so literal-minded theyll never understand
people anyway, and others wholl assume that as
an AI its a person and theres nothing you can
do but enslave it (and eventually meet a cruel
karmic ending) or free it (and thereby have it as
an acquaintance rather than as a power of your
own.) Different people, different stories.
You can characterize all this kind of stuff as
a layer of story and genre and assumptions atop Your machine, Ms. Lovelace!
the beating heart of the basic you have an AI premise. Or maybe its better to Your damnable machine!
think of it as an undergirding, a set of details, a collection of subtle features of It has doomed us all!
the situation beneath the premises notice.
You could even say that life is work: that you have to invest in it to be the
kind of person who can have a healthy relationship with someone (electronic
or otherwise); that you have to invest in it to maximize the non-relationship
benefits you get out of your connection with anything; and thus that there will
be some people who, given access to the loyalty of an AI or a jewel that reshapes
the world or an army of strange horrors, will only get themselves into incredibly
awful and terrible trouble, others who will climb to the top of the world, and still
others who will discover in that power a loyal and a wonderful group of friends:
That it has very little to do with how the thing itself works at all!

20
Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030) Image is Copyright 2006 The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com)
You may be used, in gaming, to the idea that a power is defined by its effects
That a cold ray is what a cold ray does; that a flying car is what a flying car
21
does; that a mirror of scrying or a fire that burns anything or a helm of transfor-
mations or a book of magic spells or a pair of ruby slippers or a crown of regal
demeanor or any other of the treasures in all the myriad realms of fantasy is
nothing more or less than the rules for what it does.
And to some extent thats true even for Treasure, since, after all, the opera-
tion of the Attribute is governed by its rules.
But fundamentally in Nobilis your treasures are defined by their descrip-
tion, and that description can be as over-the-top as you like without automati-
cally meaning that you win at everything forever. Your description can be the
kind of thing that provokes rather than resolves forum arguments. You are al-
lowed to have bracers that make you as strong as you need to be and to wrestle
somebody whose bracers make them stronger than anybody that they fight. As they advanced upon her, she pulled a
You are allowed to have an omni-corrupting artifact or a hat that shields you pin from her hair; and they laughed. Then
she passed her hand over it, and it became
from all corruption, and the level of that effect isnt really going to be measured a length of gleaming steel; and their
by a numeric clash or some rule about what trumps what. smiles turned nervous. And she passed
her hand over it again, and it became a
When people start talking about unlimited effects, in particular, and often fang: one of seven fangs, each three feet
even when theyre talking about limited ones, were not really in the realm of long, in the maw of a creature whose eyes
practical logic any more. When people talk about things like that, I suspect them burned with hate. Then, they ran, and it
of making moral arguments: was a pin again, and she replaced it in
her hair.
Not arguments about what is, or how the world works. But arguments, on
some level, about how it should. Weeks afterwards, I asked her whence
came such a remarkable device. She gave
Thats what I think. me a puzzled look and said, Dearest
Chirico. There is such potential in any
You can disagree! pin, if you but study the arts of war.
I think that every form of monstrous, unlimited strength is on some level from In the Service of Meloria,
by Keiko Takemori
a representation of something or, at least, can be understood as such. The
strength of rage; the strength of the childish impulse that says you should be
able to crush, punch, leap; the strength of a pure heart; the tyrannous strength
of reality that crushes fallacious hopes; the similar strength by which the wicked
and the foolish always seem to win, to grind you down; or the ridiculous, fiery
strength by which the bright stars in the firmament overturn that, step in from
outside the framework of despair, and make things better and inspire hope.
Each of these strengths is limited, of course, within its paradigm.
The strength of rage doesnt seem like it should always beat the strength
of calm, no matter how limitless it may be. Does that make sense? Its possible
that someone playing a PC wielding the strength of rage might lose perspective
and believe that they can overcome the strength of calm at a time when they
really oughtnt, but even so, it feels to me like those times when rage really
oughtnt beat the strength of calm should exist out there, at least in notion.
That there is something in the fabric of any strength, which is a metaphor
for some other power or element, that means that where that metaphor breaks
the strength also does not apply.

22 And I think this doesnt necessarily come into play by saying, Oh, in this
circumstance, the strength of calm can bench press X more pounds than the
strength of rage.
Theyre both still endless wells!
It just comes into play because, in that particular case, calm wins.
The system for Treasure, then, isnt a system for unleashing progressively greater
powers.
Its a system for wielding the message of your power the moral implica-
tions of it, the meaning of it, the story of it with progressively greater finesse.
As you climb from level 3 to level 6, in particular, youre going from:
Postulate. I have this tool, which does this thing that Ive described.
To
Postulate. I have this tool, which I can use to a specific, ideologically-

relevant eect.
At level 3, your AI is a functional AI and your magical flying car . . . flies.
At level 6, your AI is a part of the kind of story you want to tell, a friend or
tool or ally that you can rely upon to achieve large-scale effects; your car is not
just a car but a symbol of freedom: you can use it to inspire hope or to shake up
the worlds status quo.
Mundane Actions and Wondrous Anchors

Of course once you boot up an AI its unlikely to stop being a functional AI just
because you stop sustaining your boot-it-up-and-run-it action. And, while there
are doubtless some flying cars with good anti-theft measures, and others that
run on their owners imagination, its best if a typical flying car can be stolen by
someone who can then, well, fly off with it. Thats just more fun!
So the truth is
You dont actually need a miracle to do stuff with most wondrous Anchors
at all. Do you have a bottle of unquenchable fire? Pour that stuff out! Itll start
an unquenchable fire! Do you have a flying carpet? Well, get on, mutter, Yip
yip! and (if its a fan of Avatar: the Last Airbender or at least of Calgon) it will
probably then carry you away.
Of course, here, things start to get a little tricky.

23
See, in Nobilis, its always possible to declare Halfway to her rendezvous in Reykjavik, Deirdre
your intention to fly around on a carpet. On, well, is struck by a sudden awareness that
her flying carpet has neither steering wheel,
any carpet. On anything, really. You have a pack- gas pedal, or brakes.
age of delicious snacks? You can try to hop onto
that package of delicious snacks and fly it away to
the moon!
And theres really only two things that then stand between you and your
shining dreams:
First, you cant fly a package of delicious snacks to the moon. And, well,
second? . . . you cant fly a package of delicious snacks to the moon.
Thats not actually redundant, nor is it a Red Dwarf reference.
Rather, its like this:
The first problem is that its beyond human capacity to navigate a typical

24 snack package into low earth orbit, much less all the way to the moon. That
means that Aspect isnt going to allow you to do that without some particularly
tricky reasoning and use of precedents. And that means that if youre not go-
ing to use Treasure for this, youre probably going to have to use your ordinary
mundane Skills.
However, as you may have noticed from your daily life, that leads to the
second problem: for this endeavor, your ordinary mundane Skills do not suffice.
(With apologies to all our nations hopeful snackstronauts.)
You see, a mundane Intention of the snack-flight sort is usually going to
run aground on the grim grey shoals of verisimilitude. Youll make a good at-
tempt, an effective attempt maybe, a productive attempt maybe, but ultimately
the moon is liable to remain beyond your grasp!
Of course, that is with an ordinary bag of snacks. A non-magical bag of
snacks. Its obviously a lot more plausible to do this if the bag of snacks is a
magical flying snack pack, perhaps handed out by some magical translunar air-
line. In that kind of snacksuation
. . . Actually I dont want to talk about snacks once we get into actual magic
here. Thats where the example was going, but, um. Now that flight to the moon
is actually quasi-feasible, lets drop the snacks thing and get back to the flying
carpet or the bottle of fire. The AI. Whatever. The stuff that can plausibly work.
Its obviously easier to fly a carpet around if its an actual flying carpet. Its
feasible and at least in comparison to flying any other kind of carpet its practi-
cal. The first objection still applies, you still cant use Aspect. And the second
objection still applies, in that flying around on a carpet is still inherently kind of
unfeasible and prone to Obstacles. But . . . its not completely out. You can do it:
you have a flying carpet. Riding that thing around, whether in the air or to the
moon
Even with mundane actions, thats not out. That could happen.
But
At that point, youre no longer in the genre of the mighty Power, com-
manding your potent devices. When youve taken Aspect and Treasure out of
the equation and youre overcoming an Obstacle to use a random magical item?
Youre in the genre of the ordinary person playing with strange forces that
they might or might not comprehend.
This doesnt mean the carpet blows up, of course. Not even metaphori-
cally. Theres no reason to think that it goes particularly wrong, any more than it
would if you were visiting someone else and they loaned you a flying carpet and
it wasnt even a thing.
It can be OK. Sometimes youll fly around on your carpet without a miracle,
or youll unleash your bottled fire, or youll ask your AI for something, and thats
fine. That can be OK. Maybe the only penalty is that you can only manage a level
2-3 Intention instead of effortless perfect success but remember that most of
the time, in most of your life, a level 2-3 Intention will do the trick.

Its just that at that point youre not really in control of the story at all.
At that point if the HG decides youre in the story where the carpet falls in
25
love with another passing flying carpet and zips off in pursuit, or the story where
you keep falling off, or the story where your bottled fire rages out of your own
control and burns you, or the AI does the same
You dont have any power over that any more than you would if you were
playing around in some enemy or rivals lab and you did the same thing with
their wondrous devices. Bad stuff might happen. Good stuff might happen. Its
all
Whatever will happen, will happen, in play.
One implication of this is that the difference between low and high Trea-
sure doesnt necessarily manifest in every miracle. Its not about the fact that a
Treasure 3 Power can casually activate their flying carpet right now while a Trea-
sure 0 Power needs to spend 4 MP to really trust it. Its that the entire relation-
ship between a Treasure 0 Power and their wondrous Anchors is characterized
by those Anchors fundamental unreliability, treacherousness, and their being
incompletely understood, while a Treasure 3 Power can be completely casual
about it.
These snacks?
Of course theyll Image is Copyright 2006 The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com)
fly. Come on!
They have wings, Olga emphasizes, her intense stare brooking no argument.

26
The diculty lay not in teaching the parrot to prophesy, Danielle discovered,
but rather in getting the creature to stop.
Claiming an Anchor (Level 0)

and Wondrous Anchors
Theres never a real need to invoke Treasure 0 upon a wondrous Anchor it
receives the benefits of the miracle automatically. You have the option to en-
hance the underlying thing to being the best of its mortal kind and free it from
maintenance costs, even if that has nothing to do with the Anchors wondrous
ability
Put simply, those are the benefits something gets from being your Anchor, a
part of your story., not specific to the miracle at level 0.
Similarly, whether you like it or not, your mundane interactions with a
wondrous Anchor use miraculous Will: you cant choose to deny your Anchor
the benefits of its claiming even if youd really like to sometimes spend 4 or 8
Will on its use.

Possession and Guidance (Level 1-2) 27
and Wondrous Anchors
You may use Possession and Guidance miracles on wondrous Anchors as
normal.
Unleashing Wonders (Level 3)

Youre allowed to acquire a wondrous Anchor by hunting one down. If you want
a fiery sword or a flying unicorn, well, theyre out there. Go get one!
That said, the standard mode for acquiring a wondrous Anchor is meant to
be via upgrade
You take your ordinary Anchor, your friend or watch or car or whatever,
and you tinker with it in your characteristic fashion in order to give it a power.
This is usually something thats metaphorically connected to your Estate but
Im going to assume that you know what youre doing and so Im not going to
require it to so be.
Unleashing Wonders is also the level you use to activate and invoke the power
of a wondrous Anchor you already have.
I expect that youll combine the Anchor-claiming and the Anchor-invok-

ing functions now and then. Thats fine. For instance, if youre falling off a cliff
and the only resource you have handy is your ordinary VW bug Anchor, it is
There was a wicked King who conquered
totally reasonable to turn to the HG, adopt a Superman-like and/or entomolo- many lands and reaped much wealth
gist pose, and say quite solemnly, This Christmas: Youll believe a bug can fly. thereby. His holdings extended farther
than a hawk could see and his treasure
pits were filled to overflowing. He set his
sights on greater and greater goals; and
one by one they were achieved.
Getting Some Help (Difficulty 4) One morning he woke, and no courtiers
The next stage after merely asserting the existence and the function of a won- attended him. He wandered out into the
halls and found his guards carting out
drous Anchor is to specify your relationship with it to be in charge of how it the treasure from his pits. In the distance,
participates in your life. one by one, new flags went up over his
long-subjugated lands. What are you all
Thats what level 4 Treasure miracles are for. doing? he cried. I shall have you slain!
The more often youre willing to use level 4 Treasure miracles, which cor- I had not wished to betray you, an-
relates with but isnt totally defined by your Treasure rating, the more confident swered his Captain of the Guard, and
you can be that your Anchors are there for you in the way you envision them to the people were afraid to do so. But the
things that were yours are now needed by
be. a righteous man.
I dont know how you envision that, exactly, which makes it hard to precisely from Parables for Our Modern Age,
specify the benefits that then accrue. by Jackie Robinson

28 I mean, its perfectly legitimate to have Treasure 4 and yet have recalci-
trant, obstinate Anchors that are always arguing with and defying you. To have
magical armor thats always breaking down. Bracers of strength with a mind of
their own. A butler who will sometimes lock you in rather than let you out of
the house when youre not well. A wolf that behaves erratically in the presence
of flamingos. A magic horse prone to the deepest sulks. I cant say that it rules
any of this out, nor that it does anything in specific, so I cant say exactly what
benefits a Treasure 4 miracle will have.
But I can say that whatever those benefits are, whatever that relationship is,
itll be something that works for you.
Stretching a Power
Level 4 miracles create a . . . fulfilling, enriching relationship: a baseline
Scaling up to level 4 also gives reliability in the way that that Anchor is there for you, in the way in which its
you a bit more flexibility on a not merely physically present in your life but, well, contributing to it. The miracle,
wondrous Anchors power itself. in effect, says:
This is mostly a rules trick: its
Postulate: I have this thing in my life, and were connected; I can rely on it.
so, if you or the HG arent sure if
your wondrous Anchors power
covers doing something, you can
just say oh, maybe its level 4? In Nobilis: the Essentials, Volume 1 I generalized this to being able to say that
things happen without your characters conscious will, because if you have a self-
willed wonder then being connected to it and able to rely on it means that itll
do things for you on its own in a pinch. Sometimes even amazing things. Thats
just how fictional partnerships (and most real-life partnerships) work!
Weaponizing Anchors (Difficulty 5)

The next step, after an Anchor that reliably plays its part in your life story, is hav-
Stretching a Power ing an Anchor that acts as a reliable trump card in miraculous conflict some-
thing, in short, that you can impose on other peoples stories. Level 5 Treasure
(continued) miracles are what let you say: look, the story I can tell with this thing is so cool
it can override the narrative youre creating with your whole life.
I wanted to make sure that every
Anchor could be a reliable trump Claiming, I guess, supremacy of the embedded moral and narrative of your
card in miraculous combat, if you Anchor over the underlying truths of somebody elses existence.
have access to level 5 miracles.
That claim is not specific to Treasure, you understand. Its basically what it
Thus, at level 5, an ordinary An- means in general when you make a miraculous attack. Claiming that supremacy
chor gets amazing luck and tim- is what a Noble is doing when they use a Lesser Destruction of Life to kill you
ing and a wondrous Anchors or a Lesser Enchantment of Cats to turn you into a cat. Its what any direct mi-
power stretches further. Its capa- raculous attack on somebody else, any attack that outright inflicts an undesirable
bility expands in an interesting effect on somebody else, is all about:
fashion and it can do something
Yeah, whatever you were doing? Wherever your life was going?
new and neat. The go-to im-
provement is its normal power snaps fingers
can target metaphors, miracles, Forget that noise. My will be done.
or abstractions but you can
come up with ideas of your own!

Miraculous attacks
are kind of nasty that way.
You can have someone
29
whos spent their whole
life mastering the ukulele
and invoke a miracle to
turn that into skill with a
sword. Or vice versa! You
can turn a sinner into a
priest or singe a great and
virtuous shounen hero
into a sudden pile of ash.
. . . or vice versa. Even if
that pile of ash was per-
fectly happy living with
its beloved fireplace and
their children. Even if it
was the ashes of the worst
villain ever born!
Bam! That ashs now
a hero, whatever it had
been before.
Mercutio, desperate to weaponize his Anchors,
A miracle doesnt have to care pioneers the Sleeping-Beauty-a-pult,
about the targets life story, you see, launching her over the walls of rival city-states to
not unless the target is miraculous, narcotize his enemies therein.
and often not even then.
So getting back to the topic
and why youd want to weaponize
an Anchor:
Its not that you cant stab someone with your magic sword at level 3-4.
In fact, you can even do that without using a miracle at all! But when you do
that, if you do that, what happens next is going to be based on things like your
mundane Intentions and the HGs picture of what the sword should do, not
your will.
Going up to level 5 is basically the difference between
Hey, what do you think would happen if I swung the magic sword that
turns what it hits into rabbits at this guy? Lets try it!
And
I have a magic sword that turns what it hits into rabbits. . . . I turn you
into a rabbit.
And sometimes these two statements would have worked out basically the same.
Other times e.g., if the target is partly air/ethereal/ghostly, or part-rab-

bit, or intrinsically resistant to change, or under a burden of prophecy that says

30 theyre going to rule the world one day, or whatever the first version might
not affect them. Or, if theyre a mind-melting horror from beyond, the first ver-
sion might be eective, but itll be up to the HG and their player and not you
whether they wind up a mind-melting horror bunny or a cute lil fwuffy, even
His human always thought that Emmett
before they take a wound.
was nothing more than a gun; a tool, a Sometimes, in short, itll matter. Other times it wont. In the long run, as
weapon, mindless, without a will of his
own. Emmett did not mind. He was a
with earlier miracles, its the frequency with which youre willing to use level 5
quiet type, a utilitarian type. He liked to Treasure miracles that really matters, not their use in any particular case. Nobilis
sit in his case when not in use. He liked is a system where actively weaponizing something isnt always necessary and isnt
to fling bullets at the targets down the always effective. You might not need it because sometimes youre completely in
range. He saw no need to speak up and tune with how everyone thinks things should go anyway. You might not benefit
remind his human that he had a mind of
his own. from it because your target might use a higher-level defense or take a wound
anyway. But the more often you weaponize your Anchors, the more often the
Emmett didnt really know how he came story that you hope to tell with them will be effectively realized in play.
to be there, in the alley, staring down the
darkness at his humans brother. It had all Ultimately, a Treasure 5 miracle says:
been a whirl. His human was yanking
on the trigger; an uncomfortable pressure So I was thinking about whod win if I used this tool on you, and I decided
began to build within his mind. Fire! a that it should be me.
voice chanted in his heart. Fire!
Does the strength of rage beat the strength of calm this time? How about the
He could not help himself. Rearing back, strength of modern science?
inhaling, he spat forth a bullet like a
thunderclap. Blood cried and whimpered
as it splashed against the wall. Well, using a level 5 Treasure miracle backs your claim that it does with a
number.
It wasnt worth it, Emmett realized.
(And that number is probably 5.)
I am metal, he whispered to himself, and
sank into the metal. I am a tool. I am
mindless. In general, the biggest practical difference between a level 5 Treasure-based at-
And he was.
tack and a level 3-4 Treasure-based attack boils down to being able to miracu-
lously claim that you hit that you can bring your power effectively to bear.
from Tragedies of Spirit, by Michael Kay If a kid has a magical whie bat that lets them hit like a full-force grown-up
thug hitting someone with a steel bat, then level 3-4 miracles will let them do
real damage when they actually hit somebody and level 5 miracles will let them
beat people up.
Weaving Destiny (Difficulty 6)

Sometimes youll have a precognitive computer, or a wish-granting engine, or
an army of helpful fairies, or something, and youll want to unleash them to fix
the world.
The person running the game will normally have one of two reactions:
Sure, whatever, you can do that. or
Oh, really. rubs hands together, contemplating impending chaos

Those things certainly seem like they could change the world but more likely,
youll get into trouble! 31
Then theres the things that dont seem like they could change the world.
Like, sometimes youll have a vision a sense of how things ought to be, a
sense of the deep story of your wondrous Anchor, that you cant share easily with
the group and HG. Youre certain that by going around posing with your won-
drous surfboard, you can bring a cultural and economic renaissance to Canada.
Youre certain that if you fire your winging machine at the children of the world
(to give them wings) that itll improve the state of a modern education.
And its obvious that you can tell that story. I mean, it seems obvious to me,
anyway, that you can tell a story of how somebody gave all the kids wings, and
how it was a lot of trouble for everybody for a long time, but at the end of the
story, for some narrative-trick reason or other mixed with some sort of heart-
warming moral about how kids should be free to explore themselves and pursue
the limitless skies (or whatever), it winds up producing a generation of healthier,
smarter, and more thoroughly book-larned adults. I dont know how to tell that
story, exactly, but Im certain you can. And while a story of somebody leading a
cultural renaissance by way of a surfboard seems a little bit sillier, its got its own
sensibility too.
The Lady of the Lake uses a level 6 Excalibur miracle to

change the course of Western civilization.
32 But the person running the game is still likely to have one of four reactions to
the basic idea:
WTF?
OK, you give some kids wings or whatever.
Sure, whatever. Cultural renaissance. I guess youre kind of a god, so, you
know. Do it. Or
Oh, really.
The child of the cosmos walked out into
the Arizona heat. Where no one lived
and nothing grew, he set up the ring. Worst of all, its that last reaction the reaction that was kind of the bad ending
It took him only a few days to get the
previously thats really the closest to getting the HG on board. Its that last
bandstands up and the restrooms built.
Then he sat at his laptop and printed out reaction that tells you that the HG is looking forward to casting up philosophi-
a handful of flyers, reading, The Child of cal opposition to your plan in the form of . . . I dont know. Raven kids who
the Cosmos against the Gods that Move make trouble for your child-winger, maybe? For the surfer, the boogie board-
Between the Stars! A once-in-a-lifetime ing minions of The Man (and his brother, le Qubcois Mec)? . . . and thats
wrestling event, coming June 3rd! These
he distributed in nearby towns. Then, at
helpful, because that probably earns you a big win eventually, but it still wasnt
last, he let himself sleep. precisely the goal.
But you are only half a god, the report- If you dont like these options, anyway, what you probably want instead is
ers would ask him later. How can you the ability to push the HG to decide between these two choices:
expect to beat the real thing?
All right, thats happening, keep me updated. Or
The gods rule an unjust cosmos, he
would answer. But in the ring, I will Im going to give you a hard time, but, well, OK, that can work.
make justice with my own two hands.
from 24 Finales, by Rannen Yedidyah

Those are the two options that mean your story for what should be happening
here is actually going into force in play. Those are the two options that let you
actually use your computer or fairies or surfboard or whatever to eectually pro-
duce real and positive change.
Unfortunately this does take a while.

That isnt really something I can help with. I mean, real and productive
change cant be too easy or too fast or you wont be able to make it a part of the
story of the game
If you declare that a single iconic pose with your surfboard ushers in a new
era, then youre also turning it into an isolated comedic moment thats easy to
forget about or diminish in play. If you cant create the links between I did this
and this result is transpiring in the minds of the HG and the other players, it
becomes a kind of weird tentative phenomenon that dissolves when studied too
closely.
Unless the games going pure comedy, its impossible to profit from actions
that break the suspension of disbelief, and players are inherently more skeptical
of productivity than effectiveness.

So it does take a while. Youll have to spend long enough working on this
to make it believable either enough IC time to make your methodology seem
plausible, enough OOC time checking in with and explaining what youre doing
33
to ground the story of your actions, or both. And because youre taking that time,
its not just a single level 6 miracle
Often, youll get interrupted partway through. Youll need to drop the mira-
cle so you have both actions to work with in a conflict or something, before your
miracle can achieve its ends, and then youll have to get back to it later, with no
guarantee that anythings been gained, only that you were making progress and
that you would have gotten there in the end.
So these miracles are kind of a pain.
But what they get you is that the HG will choose from those latter two
options. They buy you the assertion that yes, you can tell that story. With your
wondrous Anchor: you can tell it. Your I give children wings, increasing their
academic prowess idea works. It is practical. It is a good idea and a good story.
Its ultimately a thing that your wing ray can do. Your precognitive computer
can fix the economy. Your surfboard can make the culture improve. Not by the
HGs humoring you. Not in the background while the group ignores you. Not
as a weird and inexplicable moment but as part of the story that your group
tells in play.
Unleashing Miracles (Difficulty 6+) and Won-

drous Anchors
Theres a scene youve all probably seen it sometime or other on TV:
Hitting a wall in terms of what their ordinary resources can accomplish,

someone takes their magic item, or their martial arts technique, or their spell,
or their robot arm, or their weapon, or whatever, and they push it farther than it
was ever meant to go.
If you ever find yourself needing the greatest miracles of Treasure, but the
only appropriate Anchor you have to work with is a wondrous Anchor, you can
push that Anchor farther than it was ever meant to go and unleash a super-
powerful mode or effect. It is even theoretically possible to do this with an ordi-
nary Anchor
There is nothing infinite in this Creation.
I cant imagine that making much sense, but if it does make sense, go to! Even your own power will run dry.
Even the Nobilis have limits.
So keep that in mind as you read the notes for miraculous Anchors, below
all of them are also, implicitly, notes for how to play with wondrous Anchors You have a duty to the world. Never
that are being pushed unsafely far. admit to these limits. Never accept them.
Dont let that convince you to focus on wondrous instead of miraculous You are a lord or lady of this Earth.
Anchors, though, not unless your Treasure rating is comparatively low: from Becoming Noble, by Fayola Osiagobare
The capacity to push your artifacts past their breaking point, or yours, is an

34 obvious Chekhovs Gun for anyone, but if you do it too much it will hurt you
or the artifact in question. Basically, if your dear aunt has the wondrous power
to blaze up on a motorcycle and rescue you when youre in trouble, and you get
disintegrated or whatever, and you want to supercharge your aunt and have her
tear through the veil of reality at superluminal speed and grab you from the
shattered-glass disintegration universe or whatever onto her bike
Well, bear in mind that her heart might give out afterwards. Thats a pretty
superheroic act for a random barely-magical aunt!
Getting Miraculous Help (Difficulty 7) and Or-

dinary and Wondrous Anchors
That said, I should note that there is one effect at the miraculous level thats safe
to use with ordinary and wondrous Anchors
It takes a level 7 miracle to allow an Anchor to reach you with its power
or to reach you physically no matter where you might be. This effect is meant to
let you, I dunno, grab a book from your magic library even while youre on Mars
or summon back your magic key after it falls into the event horizon of a black
hole or whatever, but if youre in the situation mentioned above, where youre
disintegrating and you want your aunt to rescue you, and if you can afford a level
7 miracle, then you can use this to get your aunts motorcycle to you before you
dissolve without hurting her at all.
Its not as clear that thatll actually save you, unlike the supercharged ver-
sion, but it wont necessarily hurt either of you if you try.
Godmother, I love you dearly, but you simply cant

keep summoning me every time
you see a vegetable that you dont know.
(image is copyright The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com))
35
Miraculous
Anchors
S ometimes youll come across a sleeping Magister in a prison glade some-

where in the deep Beyond; or a flute older than the world; a fellow Power; Fenris
Wolf; a major Abhorrent Weapon; or a divinely-empowered spring, and youll
say
That! Thats mine! Im taking that home with me!
I wanted this to be an option because theres a venerable fictional tradition

that I have dabbled in myself of characters who are themselves relatively ordi-
nary (for the power level of their setting) but who can call upon great powers
or friends. If you want to play someone like that, well, a miraculous Anchor is
what you need!
Miraculous Strengths
The line between what a wondrous Anchor and what a miraculous Anchor can
actually accomplish is drawn principally in the players minds.
A wondrous Anchor is something thats meant to sound cool and cinematic Also, my feet!
beware! My striped socks contain inside them all the chill vast greatness of
the frozen north!* It should have the same cachet as one of your more descrip-
tive miracles.

36 A miraculous Anchor, on the other hand, is meant to be impressive even in
the context of the game.
Its meant to be the kind of thing that even a Power is supposed to be ner-
vous about facing. It doesnt have to outright terrify, but it should have the same
cachet as a whole character or possibly a little more.
Thats why these miracles are so expensive. Even for a god, having another
god in your pocket is a pretty big deal. And if its something bigger than a god
that youve got tucked away in there, then its an even bigger deal!
That said in practice, if your socks have the divine cold that preceded
existence in them or the heart of the Power of Ice themselves! its not specific
how much more powerful that is than all the chill vast greatness of the frozen
north. The difference is really just a matter of expectations management: there
are going to be effects that divine cold can produce, and conflicts that it can win,
that ordinary cold (however extreme) cannot.
If that seems a small matter if you find yourself thinking:

The child proposed that the fairies actions
were unjust: criminal, even, according
Just expectations management? Nothing else? Thats all?
to the standards of the time. The fairie
sat, for a while, deep in thought, then well, remember that the only thing a player can actually meaningfully do
answered: If others speak well of it, it in Nobilis is shape their vision, and the other players vision, of what happens in
cannot be a crime. the game. In Nobilis, the ability to declare that something is a big, epic effect is
from Void Stories,
a power in itself: it changes the narrative. Its going to depend on the story youre
compiled by douard Guy telling how impressive it takes for something to be epic, and while I dont encour-
age you to develop the kind of wildly inconsistent and variable powers that you
see in long-term comic and serial canons, I dont think it can be 100% avoided.
Or maybe it can? If so, please do!
Mundane Actions and Miraculous Anchors

Using mundane actions with a miraculous Anchor plays out pretty much like it
does for a wondrous Anchor.
Do you have a miraculous Anchor? Is it, well, around and usable?
Then you can use it with mundane actions. . . . probably. Sort of ? Maybe?
Usually, see, you wont. Usually thats not the point. Usually, when youre
coaxing it with mundane actions, you cant get more out of it than youd get from
it if it werent an Anchor, anyway; maybe even less, because having given you
whatever loyalty its given you that lets you invoke it with high-end miracles
itll usually feel less of an obligation to be nice to you or tame in other ways.
Its really up to the HGs portrayal, but theres a kind of default where self-

willed miraculous Anchors mostly hang around being lazy or go off and do their
own thing when youre not miraculously invoking them; and where inanimate
or animalistic miraculous Anchors are mean and treacherous unless its obvious
37
that youre really in desperate need.
A friendly miraculous Anchor might step up to the plate for you even with-
out a miracle when youre out of MP, but if youre just conserving MP dont
expect it to do all that much.
Claiming an Anchor (Difficulty 0)

and Miraculous Anchors
Again, youll never need to use this. Miraculous Anchors already receive the
benefits of this kind of miracle.
I do feel kind of weird about that, to be honest, because why should you
be able to upgrade a random Excrucian or whatever by claiming them as an
Anchor? But I didnt want a weird kind of mechanical outcome where everyone
would say, Oh, you always want to start with an ordinary or wondrous Anchor
and upgrade it to a miraculous one because thats strictly better than taming
something miraculous in its native state.
So . . . really, you should try not to emphasize these benefits. Improving

miraculous Anchors by claiming them is weird.
But the benefits are there!
Possession (Difficulty 1)
Similarly, youre perfectly capable of possessing a miraculous Anchor. I dont
want you to lose that power when you upgrade a wondrous Anchor, and I dont
want upgraded miraculous Anchors to be better than naturally-acquired ones
So, while you can make an argument that randomly possessing your new
Anchor Lord Entropy is kind of a problematic concept, its feasible. Its level 1!
The angel who bears the name Omer
That said faithfully serves Heaven; but when he
wears instead the name nek, his only
Theres nothing about claiming someone or something as an Anchor that service is to Hell.
intrinsically reduces it to being your minion, staff, or supporter; and miraculous
from On the Creation of Humankind,
Anchors, unlike ordinary and wondrous Anchors, tend to have ways to oppose by Luc Ginneis
miraculous effects. Lord Entropy, for instance, is Immortal; youre going to need

38 lots of Strike or miraculous Edge to have even a chance of possessing him, and
then he has resources for both resisting the attack and absorbing it into a wound.
Guidance (Difficulty 2)
I wanted to call your attention to Guidance miracles as something that can actu-
ally be pretty awesome with a miraculous Anchor. Its one of the few cases where
I kind of wish you could make an Anchor out of a PC, because two Powers shar-
ing a body and working together in a really tough conflict sounds kind of neat.
Unleashing Wonders, Getting Some Help,

Weaponizing Anchors, Weaving Destiny
(Difficulty 3-6) and Miraculous Anchors
These abilities dont work with miraculous Anchors at all.
The spirit of the Grail reminds Sir Galahad that he cannot Unleash
its powers with anything less than a level 6 miracle.
Unleashing Miracles (Difficulty 6) 39
This is the level of miracle youll need to take some potent force you discover in
the world, some Noble- or Imperial-level thing, and bind it to you as an Anchor.
Its also what youll need if you want to permanently upgrade an ordinary
or wondrous Anchor to the level of the miraculous if you want to bathe your
fiery sword in the heart of a star or adorn your trapper keeper with the wings
of fallen angels or dip your motorcycle-riding battle aunt into the River Styx,
thereby making her invincible (save for a single spark plug, by which you held
her and it up,) this is the level for you.
Finally, once youve claimed a miraculous entity for an Anchor, this is the
level of effect that youll use to release your new Anchors miraculous power.
Now, strictly speaking, if youve claimed a Power or Imperator or whatever,

it should have a number of different abilities and not just a power. I mean, just
imagine someone had claimed your PC as an Anchor its amazing how many
hundreds of different things you could probably have done for them!
. . . but thats too complicated. Thats making your Anchor into a character
and playing them as a character or as a backup character thats putting you in
a position where, just because youve claimed the Serpent of Radar or Iolithae
Septimian or Attaris Ebrt Appk as an Anchor, you have to completely detail
all their powers and care more about them than your own.
That makes sense to some degree if theyre an important ally or main char-
acter, but theyre not. Not as an Anchor anyway. As an Anchor, when theyre
wearing their metaphorical Anchor hat, theyre a presence in the background
of your story. Theyre part of your regalia. Theyre a single-purpose tool. That
purpose could be go win this fight for me or invoke incredible awesomeness
for me and rain down fierce judgment on my enemies, but it shouldnt be sets
of situation-specific tactical instructions like OK, I want you to spend 2 MP
to invoke a Lesser Creation of Thus-and-Such, oh, and OK, pair that up with a
mundane action to do this . . .
So!
You pick a power when you get an Anchor like this. You pick the thing they
do, when you call them up. Thats what you can unleash with a level 6 miracle.
Getting Miraculous Help (Difficulty 7)

On first read this power probably seems like a direct parallel to the difficulty 4
ability.
It isnt quite.

40 Unleashing miracles, as Ive said, does a single thing. It can be a pretty
broad, cool thing, but its a single thing. You can imagine that youve contracted
your Anchor to do this one thing for you, and when it comes to anything else
Well, thats like asking an avenging angel to edit your book. Maybe it will.
Maybe it wont. But thats not what an avenging angel is for!*
So the biggest thing that you get when you step up to difficulty 7 instead
of 6 is that instead of doing that thing they do for you, instead, they do something
helpful. Maybe they dont actually have anything all that helpful that they can
do, in which case this is kind of sad. But if there is something else useful they can
do, this is what it takes to motivate them to do it.
This is also the level where you get to have your Anchors show up from just
about anywhere; as noted above, if youre silly enough to feed your Anchor to
the maw of an endless void-beast, or if you ascend bodily to Heaven and once
you get there realize in horror that youve forgotten your cans of gel, or, well, if
anything happens that separates you too thoroughly from your Anchor, this level
of miracle is what says:
No worries.
snaps fingers
Bam! Its here!*
Communion (Difficulty 8)
This level of miracle is another form of expectations management it doesnt
do something so much as re-enact a dramatic device. This is the power you use
when its time to say: Wait! We combine our powers! or Lets do this togeth-
And theyre bitter-
er! or I pour all my life energy into the magic I invoke!
er about this fact
than you will ever
It does the kind of things that that does.
know.
The main reason that this is useful relates to the Nobilis style of problem-
solving. When youre dealing with cosmic affairs and metaphors, often the most
important quality of a plan isnt does it overcome this checklist of potential
obstacles; its: does it sound good? Is it the kind of thing where its satisfying
to have it win? Is it the kind of thing that inspires the HG to come up with
interesting obstacles and hitches and interesting results on a success?
Angle for that cloud! I Communions power is simply that it contributes well to plans like that.
keep a spare parachute
there! That said, you can re-interpret it with slightly more rigorous mechanics as
follows:

Communion 41
(Difficulty 8):
A More Rigorous
Description
You can invoke Communion to
supercharge the powers of an in-
nately miraculous Treasure by ad-
mixing them with your own power,
whatever that might be.
This power is normally a de-

liberately shapeless deus ex machina
it solves the kinds of problems
that youd think, in a story, flood-
ing something with the power of
your Estate would solve. If youve
claimed a super-strong ogre as a
treasure, and youre the Power of
Storms, then maybe this lets your
ogre project their strength through
bolts of lightning. If youve claimed
Iolithae Septimian as your Anchor,
and youre the Power of Truth,
then maybe this can evolve one of
the Lies that she made true into
something sacredly True and Hon-
est instead. If youre a sailor-suited
warrior of love and justice, and you
have a magical grail, maybe you
can use this to flood the grail with Image is Copyright 2006 The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com)
love energy and bring a bunch of
dead people back to life or redeem the hosts of Hell.
It does stuff in short that is like, well, that.
A more specific version of this effect, if you or the HG would rather nail it
down precisely, is an absolute force obeying two rules:
1) it must substantially alter the situation in your favor, even given the mi-
raculous and imperial forces in play, and
2) it temporarily expands the powers of the treasure in question in a fashion

that evokes your Estate and your character themes, evokes your rela-
tionship with that Anchor, or just generally floods it with miraculous
power.

42 Imperial Miracles (Difficulty 9)
What this level represents, most of all, is the pinnacle effect. Its intended to
mean an ultimate, cosmos-shaping invocation, and be used for exactly those
things an ultimate, cosmos-shaping invocation of an Anchor would be for. If you
have Treasure 1-4, invoking Imperial power is meant to be a campaign-shaping
turning point; if you have Treasure 5, then its less amazing, but still the kind of
thing that happens at the start of, or facilitates the climax of, a major story arc.
Mechanically speaking, at this level you can invoke an Imperial miracle.

You can take some aspect of your Anchors miraculous power and turn it into a
kind of wish or prophesy effect
An effect thats perhaps more vague, slippery, and HG-defined than a typi-
cal player action but which, most importantly, supersedes rather than contends
against traditional miraculous effects.
On Imperial Miracles
Imperial miracles are slow.
I didnt want the HG to have to spend all their time explaining why your
Imperator isnt solving your problems for you, or even (in fact) solving most of
their own. Unrelatedly, terrifying rituals that you have to get to and stop in time,
or have to protect until they finish, are a useful and evocative trope. For both of
those reasons, Nobilis 3 makes it pretty explicit that an Imperial miracle takes
time. Sometimes it can even take months!
Having access to Treasure 9 is a lot like having a spare Imperator or two

around, but its not meant to be better than having a spare Imperator or two
around, so these effects are still going to be kind of slow.
Plus, its your Anchor thats evoking the Imperial miracle, with your guid-
ance, so you dont have all that much fine control:
Slow, and not entirely in your hands!
When I looked into his eyes, I saw the That said, these miracles are a reasonable part of any long-term strategy; if
radiance of God. I could not refuse him, the HG is on board with what youre doing, these miracles can have a powerful
for all that his requests were vile. I knew short-term impact; and in the more general strategic sense they scale with the
that there was a higher purpose to them.
I knew that it was correct to serve him. Imperators and Excrucians in your game
God willed it so, and the angels sang
alleluias to that will, and the universe The scarier the gods and horrors you contend with, the more powerful emu-
shivered with the rightness of it. lating their abilities will tend to be. If a typical Imperator, Mimic, or Deceiver
from the statement of
speaks Imperial miracles in a few hours rather than a few months, then thats
Father Sebastian Capobianco, what youll probably be able to do; in some sense, your willingness to invoke Im-
03/25/00
perial miracles either limits the powers the world can throw against you or lifts
you up to the transcendent levels of your foes.

43
Image is Copyright 2006 The Scriptorium

(www.fontcraft.com)

44
Unusual
Anchors
T he default Anchor is a person or a thing the giant fox that you ride
around on, your laser rifle, your best friend, or your faithful retainer.
Heres some notes on Anchors of a different sort.
Icons
Your character might have a mark or symbol that represents
them I imagine something easily inked, easily drawn on
a wall or a person with a swirl or a paintbrush, that denotes
a place under the characters aegis.
Nobilis handles symbols like this as a kind of Anchor:

make a mark like that, attune to it, and it becomes some-
thing you can see and act through later on. If you want a
collection of marks that do different things (e.g. bless or
freeze the area affected), then you can upgrade the marks to
wondrous or even miraculous Anchors.

45
Spells
Your Anchors give you access to a collection of idiosyncratic wondrous and mi-
raculous abilities. I figure that while the rules have a system like that anyway,
I might as well also let you use it to represent having a collection of spells or
special moves.
A collection of spell Anchors isnt really that much more conceptually use-
ful than mortal magic, but if your magic is a deep part of how you work as a
Power, then maybe its a good idea! Note that the spells are likely to be very
personal, with each one being tied to you by a Bond and having the potential (at
level 4 or 7) to invoke itself on your behalf.
I dont know if its meaningful to possess or guide spells with your level
1-2 miracles realistically, spells like this live in your head or in a hidden sub-
strate of the universe or something anyway. But if
that makes you feel a little cheated, maybe your spells
have a secondary life as spell beasts or spell people
that live somewhere out there in physical or quasi-
physical form when they are not being invoked. Al-
ternately, possessing and guiding a spell might help
you shape its power once youve invoked it!
Collections
The original idea for collective Anchors came from
icons. I realized that if a mark was your Anchor,
then it could be drawn in many different places; it
was a single thing, but also a collection. I wrestled
with that for a bit trying to find a definition of an
Anchor that would rule that in while also ruling
armies out.
Then I realized that there wasnt all that much

reason why you shouldnt have an Anchored army.
Or a network of spies.
Or a collection of twelve magical blades, as a

single Anchor, rather than being twelve.
In one sense its a problem, in that its pretty

Water breathing spells may enjoy a bracing spot
easy for this to get out of hand. You have too many of jazzercise when they are not in use.

46 things you want as Anchors? Just stick them all in a pile! Thats your Anchor
now! It helps some that you still need a relevant Bond, but whether that actually
matters will vary from character build to character build.
That said
I actually kind of trust you. Im pretty sure that youll know when your
heart treasures an army, when it treasures a single soldier, and when it treasures
a soldier, a banner, and the subdivision responsible for logistics. I think its prob-
ably easy to get confused on this during character creation, when youre just kind
of vaguely gesturing in the direction of what your Anchors should be, but later
on? In play? Youll know the difference between twelve magical swords that are
a single Anchor, twelve swords that are twelve Anchors, or even twelve swords
that are somehow 2-3. The only real restriction I want to impose is that it can
take you a bit of prep work to get to know a particular Anchor from a large
collection closely enough to possess, guide, or otherwise invoke it from afar.
Sanctums
I wanted to have some sort of sanctum rules under Treasure from more or less
the beginning. Its actually pretty difficult, though, because as cool as having a
magical place is, most of the powers that a lair or fortress gives you in fiction
tend to boil down to strengthens you in an exceptionally vague way and/or has
walls.
Now, mind, I have an apartment that has those features myself. It is doing
me good being here in a really incredibly vague manner, and it has walls! But
these powers are perhaps not inspiring.
Ultimately I realized that most cool sanctums would become effective tools
as well if they had some way of projecting their primary benefit to you from afar.
If your library could send you books; if your arsenal could send you weapons;
if the glade where you gather health, life, and magical power could also beam
it to you; if your lair full of minions had monitors that, well, monitored you, so
minions could charge out from it to bring you stuff at need
Whatever!
The magistrate closed the Center for
Investigation into the Actuality of That would be something to make having the place meaningful in play.
Existence today, saying: It is not possible
to find evidence for Creation within Cre- So thats why at level 4, a local sanctum (and in fact any local Anchor) can
ation, whereas the converse is not true.
Hence, the pursuit of this Center can reach you with something; and why, at level 7, sanctums (and other Anchors)
yield but two logical ends: futility, or the can reach you from, well, anywhere!
pernicious collapse of the dream in which
we live. I wish for neither; have done.
from The Daily Oneiromant

(a newspaper in Locus Iurabatres)

47

Index of Sidebars, Errata, and Texts
Errata Miscellaneous Cites
Note on Occupation/Possession (pg. 14) The Daily Oneiromant: 3/24/00 edition,
section A3 (pg. 46)
Sermons and Speeches, 3/25/00: Statement

of Father Sebastian Capobianco (pg. 42)
Sidebars
Wulandari 6, Power of Authenticity: per-
Stretching a Power (pg. 28) sonal communication (pg. 17)
Texts
douard Guy, collections compiled by:
Void Stories (pg. 36)
Emily Chen: The Duchess Needle (pg. 11)
Fayola Osiagobare: Becoming Noble (pg.

33)
Jackie Robinson: Parables for Our Modern

Age (pg. 27)
Jasprite Sherrard: A Tourists Guide to

Creation (pg. 8)
Luc Ginneis: On the Creation of Human-

kind (pg. 37)
Michael Kay: Tragedies of Spirit (pg. 30)
Keiko Takemori: Tumbledrum (pg. 13); In

the Service of Meloria (pg. 21)
Kip Narekatski: Chronicles of Wonders (pg.

4); (introduction to) The Valde Bellum: A
Chronology of Excrucian Assault, Volume
VIII (pg. 17)
Rannen Yedidyah: 24 Finales (pg. 32)

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OBILIS

by Jenna Katerin Moran

Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030)

Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030)

Chuubos Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine is copyright 2012-2013

Arthur Rackham images provided by the Scriptorium and are copyright

The mention or reference to any company or product in these pages is not

Check out Eos Press Online at www.eos-sama.com!

Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030)

Powhatan Belton (Order #5991030)

Written and Conceived by: Jenna Katerin Moran

Cover Art by: Arthur Rackham

Interior Art by: Arthur Rackham et al.

Design Elements and Backgrounds by: Oliver Vulliamy

Layout by: Jenna Katerin Moran

Specific Art Credits

Icon (pg. 44) - by Oliver Vulliamy

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Under the Hood..................................................................................................................... 9

Mundane and Treasure Actions....................................................................................... 9

Domain/Persona Actions; Imperial Actions, Bonds, and Afflictions.............................. 11

Mundane Actions and Wondrous Anchors..................................................................... 22

Claiming an Anchor and Wondrous Anchors............................................................. 26

Possession and Guidance; Unleashing Wonders; Getting Some Help................ 27

Unleashing Miracles and Wondrous Anchors............................................................. 33

Getting Miraculous Help and Ordinary/Wondrous Anchors...................................... 34

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Mundane Actions and Miraculous Anchors................................................................... 36

Claiming an Anchor; Possession............................................................................. 37

Guidance; Unleashing Wonders; Getting Some Help; Weaponizing Anchors;

Unleashing Miracles; Getting Miraculous Help....................................................... 39

Index of Sidebars, Errata, and Texts..................................................................................... 48

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L e ts start with some general notes on how Nobilis works.

Mundane and Treasure Actions

Youre more likely to succeed on the whole;

It will encourage your opposition to find clever workarounds instead of

from A Tourists Guide to Creation,

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It will encourage you to pick actions with a certain

It will encourage you to find clever ways to take

And then that will inspire you to figure out what a

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It will encourage you to build a meaningful paradigm for that Estate;

In turn, because clever actions tend to produce a penumbra of strained

Imperial Actions, Bonds, and Afflictions

A Bond is something that the story is trying to prove true.

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Tolkien is attempting to demonstrate that even in the presence of that Af-

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Aiction: Friend to All Living Creatures

T his section is about ordinary Anchors the mundane keepsakes, para-

Claiming an Anchor (Level 0)

I want every Noble to have the option of claiming

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Possession (Level 1): Introduction

Theres a range of options in how possessing your Anchors could work.

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Warned of her impending possession,

Not for me, she whispered, but for

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