Katawa Nobilis

[DMGnome]

Chancels
In order to protect themselves, each Imperator claims a piece of the world as its own. They twist a piece of the world up, divorcing it from the real world either partially or completely, and hide their physical bodies somewhere inside. The Imperator's Nobles are chosen from among the inhabitants of the new Chancel, and forced into the service of their new inhuman lord.

Every world has certain Properties, physical and metaphysical laws that govern its workings. For instance, the Properties of the Ordinary World are: 
-Its locations are relative.
-Its particulars are measurable.
-Its particulars are explainable.
-Its particulars exert causal force.
-Its events have causes.
-These causes are impersonal.
-These causes are amoral.

While in a world, you can use its Properties as two-point Bonds. If you're on Earth, you can declare "The particulars of this situation must be somehow explainable!" and thus get two Strike to help you solve a locked-room mystery.
Chancel properties can get a whole lot weirder. For instance, Ananda's Chancel of Cityback has the Property "If it's not dead, it's alive," and then additional properties specifying that living creatures require an energy source, have reproductive sex, and are able to adapt to their environments.
My guess at Yamaku's Properties:
-Everyone has a reason to be here.
-Everyone has limits.
-You should know your limits.
-You probably don't.
-Limitations can be overcome.
Additionally, you  get a three-point MP discount to all your miracles while within the bounds of your own Chancel.

[Minister of Gloom]

So, who's the Imperator of Yamaku?

[Grand Haberdasher]

Probably Nurse. He certainly seems more on top of things than Mutou.

[DMGnome]

Yeah, I’d probably go for the Nurse, as a Magister of the Light. And since his Act 1 characterization is limited, I can twist him into a soulless caretaker of humanity without going too far from canon.
Well, from Act 1 canon, at least. Soulless Nurse will probably conflict with the canon of the full game.

The Code Fidelitatis
This is Lord Entropy’s Code of Law for Powers.
The Chestnut Law: Thou shalt harm none who has done no harm.
Nobles aren’t allowed to hurt the innocent. In this case, at least, mortals are presumed innocent, so throwing around miracles willy-nilly is a good way to end up in front of the Locust Court. Nobles also aren’t expected to take more than sevenfold vengeance, but that’s more of a guideline than a strictly enforced rule.
The Rule of Man: Treat no beast as your lord.
I’m going to quote the entire thing:
“Surrender to no beast—and man is a senseless bull.
Swear no oaths to beasts—and woman is a witless doe.
Accept no insult from beasts—and each child is a serpent.”
The Rule of Man trumps the Chestnut Law. Powers are allowed and usually expected to do horrible things to humans who defy them.
The Rule of War: Serve your Imperator before the War, and the War before yourself.
The Crowfoot Law: Protect no Power from the justice of the Code.
Trying to help a fugitive Noble will get you the same sentence. There is an exception:
Aiding the Cammora is no crime.
The Cammora are a sort of magical Mafia controlled by Lord Entropy. Even one Cammoran agent can be a force to be reckoned with; most of them have a bevy of miraculous Gifts and decades’ worth of favors owed to them. As a whole, the Cammora are corrupt, malicious, and extremely useful if you’re desperate enough.
The Windflower Law: Thou shalt not love.
Also called the Lostheart Law, this is one of the big reasons everyone hates Lord Entropy.

The Code Fidelitatis isn’t very good at stopping the Nobilis from committing crimes. That’s not really its point. Everyone breaks the Code Fidelitatis, so there are three actual rules the Nobilis follow:
Don’t get caught breaking the Code.
Don’t admit to breaking the Code.
Don’t piss off Lord Entropy.

Hisao Nakai
Power of the Heart

Attributes
Aspect 0 (8 AMP)
Domain 2 (8 DMP)
Persona 5 (8 PMP)
Treasure 0 (8 TMP)

Estate Properties
Hearts let you live (1)
Hearts let you love (1)
Hearts can be broken (1)
Hearts can be mended (1)
Hearts connect with other hearts (3)

Gift
Luck

Bonds and Afflictions
Affliction: Failing Heart (4)
Affliction: I am preoccupied with my own mortality (2)
Bond: Love happens. (4)
Bond: I care about my lady-love, whoever that might be. (3)

Skills and Passions
Skill: Fitness -1
Passion: I want to find love 4
Skill: Snark 1
Skill: Adapt 3

Luck is a pretty straightforward gift: for one PMP, Hisao can invoke some sort of good fortune. He can suggest a basic direction for this lucky event, but he can’t control its specifics. I’m using this to represent the string of fortuitous coincidences Hisao encounters, and also because I couldn’t think of a better Gift for him to have.

[Minister of Gloom]

Hisao Nakai
Power of the Heart

Dammit, now we must create a Captain Planet crossover. Look at what you've done.

Also, a question about the Code: most of the rules there I can understand, but seriously, why no love? It seems like Lord Entropy put it in there simply to troll everybody. More accurately, it seems like whoever wrote Nobilis put it in there to make Lord Entropy look like an uber-troll.

[DMGnome]

There are many possible justifications for the Windflower Law. Loving someone is an easily exploitable weakness. Perhaps Lord Entropy is actually doing us a favor: since he corrupts everything he touches, he wants to keep love at a distance. The most popular explanation is that a) everyone loves, so the Windflower Law means that Entropy can arbitrarily attack Nobles and then be justified in doing so, and b) Entropy's an asshole.
From a metagame standpoint, the Windflower Law makes love an important theme in the game, and gives stories of love, devotion, and family an appropriately mythic feel. (Platonic and familial love are also verboten.) If the HG doesn't like it, though, the Windflower Law is one of the easiest parts of the setting to excise.

[DMGnome]

The Nurse.png (35.02 KiB) Viewed 5330 times

The Nurse’s Stats
Attributes
Aspect 0 (5 AMP)
Domain 2 (Health) (5 DMP)
-Secondary Domain 1 (Art, Competition, the Heart, Scars, and Tea)
Persona 0 (Health) (5 PMP)
-Secondary Persona 0 (Art, Competition, the Heart, Scars, and Tea)
Treasure 0 (5 TMP)
Gift
Active Immortality
Health Levels
3 Divine
2 Tough
3 Normal

The Nurse might have a couple points of Bonds, Afflictions, Skills, or Passions, but most Imperators don’t.
Secondary Domain and Persona let the Nurse use miracles from any of his Estates. However, Domain and Persona miracles have 5 MP total, not per Estate, so this grants him more flexibility but not more raw power.
Active Immortality is the strongest defensive Gift available, barring some weird custom Gift. Kill/mangle effects deal either Surface or Serious wounds (GM fiat as to which). It takes massive overkill to deal a Deadly wound—a nuke, a volcanic eruption, or a level 7+ miracle. Even then, Immortal beings heal Surface wounds in less than a minute, Serious wounds in less than an hour, and Deadly wounds in less than a day, and an appropriate miracle reduces healing time to “almost instantly.”
Despite this, you might notice that the Nurse is not particularly impressive compared to his Powers. Starting Powers are built with 25 character points. Imperators get up to fifteen, plus Immortality, and perhaps another Imperial trick, which means a particularly hardcore might be a match for a single Power, maybe.
Excrucian Mimics are built on the same scale as Imperators. Other Excrucians, depending on caste and experience, are built on anywhere from 15 to 75 character points, plus tricks.
This is why Imperators need Nobles. They’re not creatures of action; a well-organized Familia can easily crush a single Imperator under miracle spam. Heck, a one-on-one battle is even odds for the Imperator at best. Excrucians have a variety of tricks that make miraculous combat against one straight-up suicide for Imperators.
So Imperators are weak when they need to act. That’s part of what they are. Imperators don’t do things, Imperators are things.They're the roots of the world. They can use Imperial miracles.

Noble miracles and Imperial miracles are fundamentally different. Nobles miracles do. Imperial miracles simply are. That collection of stats? That’s not the Nurse, not really. Imperators aren’t about numbers. That mind map is what the Nurse really is. (Well, as best I can translate him.)

Imperial miracles draw on that mind map for their form. The Imperator tells a story growing out of its mind map. That story can be pretty much anything; appropriate Imperial miracles include:
-The world shall be plunged into darkness.
-The guilty shall be punished.
-Augusta Valentina is a traitor to Creation. She shall be captured, brought before the Locust Court, and found guilty.
-Lexiarchos Caducine shall see the beauty of Creation, and the rightness of our cause, and she shall betray the Excrucians and join us in the War.
Imperial miracles can target anything from a single person or object up to the entirety of Creation. While active, Imperial miracles have the following effects:
-Any mundane or miraculous action that serves the Imperial miracle succeeds, except when used to attack someone/something or when trying to penetrate an Auctoritas.
-Any action that serves the Imperial miracle and is used as an attack gets a 3 MP/3 Will discount, not cumulative with the in-Chancel discount.
-Any action which needs to penetrate an Auctoritas must have the necessary Strike.
-Anyone who resists the Imperial miracle suffers two Deadly wounds.
Imperial miracles are slow to use. They take at least a scene to prepare, and more often several. Anything less than that means the Imperator’s prepared it in advance. The miracle’s effects eventually fade, but while active, that’s the way the world works.

[RedSavant]

Okay, I know nothing about Nobilis, but this looks like a really freakin' cool system. I may have to do some research on it.

[ThreeStep]

This is...something. Never thought I'd see Nobilis on the KS forums, let along KS and Nobilis combined. Keep up the work, it's kinda interesting. And now I'm tempted to find a way to shoehorn KS characters into Legend of the Five Rings.

[minkus]

I am loving this topic!
There's an old stat thread in the general discussion, but I would love to do more here if that was possible.
(Taking a look at L5R right now, but go ahead and stat somebody please)


Is anybody interested in a KS game night?

[DMGnome]

I am perversely tempted to write a story based on this. And hey—every story needs an antagonist, right?

Imperators spend most of their time in the Spirit World, keeping the Excrucians out of Creation. Most of the time, they do a pretty good job. Occasionally a single Excrucian makes its way through, and that’s bad. Even more rarely, an entire riding of Excrucians breaks through, and that’s catastrophic.

Most of the time, though, the Imperators are able to keep Excrucians out, so the Excrucians have to be sneakier. They splinter off little bits of themselves and send those shards into Creation. Excrucian-shards are a lot weaker than full Excrucians, but they’re still very dangerous, and they usually work in groups.

Shards aren’t just clones. They might start out that way, but they develop their own distinct personalities and goals, although shards are generally loyal to the Excrucian who created them.

Deceiver-shards in their natural form are little stronger than mortals. They might have a point or two of Aspect or Treasure, but they’re little threat unless they’re using the powers of their Second Skin.

Full Deceivers are nasty even without a Second Skin.

Kenji Setou
Seeker of the Truth
Excrucian Deceiver

Attributes
Aspect 3 (5 AMP)
Domain –
Persona 3 (The Enemies of Kenji Setou) (5 PMP)
-The Enemies of Kenji Setou work to conceal the truth. (3)
-The Enemies of Kenji Setou are better prepared than you. (1)
-The Enemies of Kenji Setou are cleverer than you are. (1)
-The Enemies of Kenji Setou are hiding in plain sight. (1)
-The Enemies of Kenji Setou are always watching. (1)
Treasure 0 (5 TMP)

Gifts
Mysterious
Active Immortality

Skills and Passions are made mostly irrelevant by his Aspect. Assume he’s similar to Mortal!Kenji (Shard!Kenji).

Bonds and Afflictions
Bond: They’re out to get me. (3)
Bond: I can see the truth behind the world. (5)
Bond: I must spread knowledge of the truth. (5)
Affliction: My truth is incompatible with the world. (4)


Mysterious is a gift that automatically hides information about Kenji. Try to research his past and you’ll find that nobody bothered to record anything, or a computer error deleted the relevant records, or your witness just can’t remember anything about that night.

Deceivers do not have an Estate, a Domain rating, or DMPs. As such, they cannot use Domain except through any relevant gifts. Deceivers do have access to a self-referential pseudo-Estate, which they can use Persona miracles for.

In a ritual taking a full day, Deceivers or Deceiver-shards can take on the identity and abilities of any being they’ve met, including Powers and Imperators. This isn’t really a shape-changing thing; Deceivers wearing skins often look the same as they did before. It's a spiritual change: the Deceiver actually becomes that person to a certain extent. They feel the same hates and loves and loyalties, with the Deceiver’s true nature coiling underneath. This is the Second Skin.

While wearing a Second Skin, Deceivers are vulnerable to something called the Truth of the Name. A being loyal to Creation can give an order to the Deceiver in the name of the one the Deceiver imitates—something like “In the name of _______, tell me your plans!” or “For _______’s sake, get us out of this mess!”—and the Deceiver must obey or be forced back into its true form. The Truth of the Name can only be used once every several hours, and its effects fade in a few days.

Miracle Difficulty Chart for Kenji Setou
0 MP: The Sight, Blessings and Curses, Lesser Incarnations, and Lesser Emulations. Kenji can make someone a little more or less clever or prepared. He can spend time as one of his enemies, or make himself be like his enemies—everywhere at once, all-seeing, etc.
1 MP: Lesser Enchantments. Kenji can make someone or something into his enemy.
2MP: Lesser Sacrifices and Greater Incarnations. Kenji can make someone or something stop being his enemy. He can spend time being his enemies worldwide.
4 MP: Lesser Bindings, Greater Emulations, and Greater Enchantments. Kenji can make someone work for or against his enemies. He can be like his enemies on a grand scale. He can make large numbers of people into his enemies.
8 MP + Grievous Wound: Greater Sacrifices and Greater Bindings. Kenji can earn the loyalty of entire nations, or make a few people his fanatical followers. He can bind large numbers of people to his enemies, as allies or opponents.

Nobilis is created by Jenna K. Moran, formerly known as R. Sean Borgstrom, and is distributed by Eos Press. PDFs and ePubs are available at DriveThruRPG.com, and books ship to stores starting June 26.