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Well, The Beginning Idea, anyway...

As should be evident by now, there is a HELL of a lot of stuff to process just in the background for Nobilis -- the book is 300 pages and maybe 10 of it is hard rules... the rest are examples and and examples and great great great fiction and more examples.

For a test game, I needed to simplify the background.

That usually means I start killing people.

The idea is simple: character generation is more than involved enough without having to frell with designing Chancels (the players job) and their Imperator (also the player's job, and both come AFTER character creation for a number of reasons.)

So, the premise: The characters are Nobilis whose Imperator is accused of Treason against Creation and the Valde Bellum... it (the Imperator) is found guilty and destroyed.

Usually, that's the end of it: destroying the Imperator means the Chancel breaks apart and/or returns to what it used to be as part of the Prosaic Earth and the Nobilis die from the shock of having a god's soul ripped out of their body.

Didn't happen. Therefore, the treasonous (and they MUST be treasonous if their Imperator was, right?) Nobilis must be hunted down and likewise destroyed. That's the seed of the plot.

__But wait, there's more__

Just because the destruction of their Boss didn't kill them doesn't mean there aren't downsides: the PC's start out the story separated from each other, away from their Chancel (just as well, as it's currently occupied by hostile forces), and utterly Amnesiac from the psychic shock of what's just happened.

(Cool, but also a key game-thing: since the players have amnesia, the PLAYERS don't have to keep track of all the background stuff -- they don't even have to remember the game rules... as they slowly remember who and what they are, I can phase in their introduction to the rules and background: one player has an Aspect confrontation... another works with her Domain... another with her Gifts while a fourth is contacted by a Nobilis that wants to help them avoid the forces sent by Lord Entropy.)

When they wake up, each encounters evidence that Things Aren't All Right, and that they've recently been involved in either Fight or Flight. Flashes of memory both help and hinder them at this point. One finds herself in an alleyway in London. Next to her lies the body of a dead man with no eyes, and she remembers (in a sudden flash) shooting him.

Except... she doesn't particularly like guns, and she has a distinct feeling that there is another, better, more appropriate weapon she would have been using...

They don't know who they are, why they can't remember themselves, or what's going on, but they've got a really bad feeling about this.

Chrysalis Campaign