This page explains the Chan­cel cre­ation process for the RPG Nobilis, to help those who don’t own a copy of the book. If you’re look­ing for char­ac­ter cre­ation instead, that’s here.

The char­ac­ters in a Fam­ily of Nobles share a Chan­cel between them. This is a por­tion of space set aside by the Imper­a­tor, and is said to require a human death on each of 100 con­sec­u­tive nights to cre­ate. Chancels can have any theme, from ver­dant gar­dens to high-technology lab­o­ra­to­ries, bright fairy­tale worlds to cities of Love­craft­ian hor­ror. It can be in a fixed loca­tion in the Pro­saic Earth, or there can be door­ways to it any­where, or maybe the play­ers can wish them­selves there from any­where in the world!

The play­ers cre­ate their Chan­cel together once they have cre­ated their char­ac­ters. Once they have decided on what their Chan­cel should be, they can then spend Chan­cel Points cre­at­ing it. The Chan­cel has as many points avail­able as the sum of all char­ac­ters’ Realm points. As in other aspects of Nobilis, you can also buy your Chan­cel defects which cost neg­a­tive points, free­ing up more points to spend in other areas.

The Chan­cel prop­er­ties in the rule­book are sum­marised below:

Acces­si­bil­ity

How easy it is to get in and out of the Chan­cel. With­out this prop­erty, the Chan­cel prob­a­bly has between 2 and 7 entrances within the same local area. By spend­ing points:

• Con­ve­nient (2): The chan­cel con­nects to mul­ti­ple major urban areas through­out the world.
• Mobile (6): Entrances and exits are mobile — they can be near char­ac­ters when desired, and move them­selves far away from enemies.
• Ubiq­ui­tous (7): Entrances and exits are every­where. Con­ve­nient, but the char­ac­ters should also be pre­pared for more fre­quent attack.
• Open (-2): Mor­tals and Chancelfolk can step across this large bound­ary freely, often with­out real­is­ing. The entrance is at least a mile in width.

Avara

Mirac­u­lous arti­facts (‘Allia’) or trou­ble­some objects (‘banes’) formed within the Chan­cel at its cre­ation through the glory of the Imper­a­tor or through the deaths that cre­ated the Chan­cel. Banes are objects that actively seek to cause the Imper­a­tor, the Chan­cel and its Nobles to suf­fer. Allia, if found and invoked by name, grant wishes — though their wishes do not last for­ever, and in nam­ing them, they are destroyed utterly.

• Two Banes within the Chan­cel (-1)
• Some Allia still exist (3)

Bor­der­guard

The Chancel’s power to actively resist hos­tile intru­sion. This grants it its own Realm mir­a­cles, which it can cast as nec­es­sary at the rate of one or two a minute. It has an infi­nite sup­ply of Mir­a­cle Points for this. The Bor­der­guard detects all hos­tile intrud­ers except those with an Auc­tori­tas stronger than the Borderguard’s Pen­e­tra­tion Value. It then attacks with Mir­a­cles up to the Borderguard’s Strength.
One buys the Borderguard’s Power and Pen­e­tra­tion Value sep­a­rately. Power is bought at 3 Chan­cel Points per level, Pen­e­tra­tion at 1 Chan­cel Point per level.
Note that Lesser Div­ina­tions are use­less to a Bor­der­guard — it auto­mat­i­cally sees things it needs to see. Accord­ingly, Lesser Div­ina­tion instead lets it notify author­i­ties (mili­tia, police, Nobles) of a threat.

Defender’s Bless­ing

Pre­vents hos­tile magic from harm­ing the Chan­cel or its inhab­i­tants. Each 2 Chan­cel Points gives the Chan­cel 1 point of Auc­tori­tas (i.e. dam­ag­ing mir­a­cles require 1 extra level of Pen­e­tra­tion to have an effect). When within a Chan­cel, char­ac­ters defend with whichever is the higher of their Auc­tori­tas or the Chancel’s.

Extra Land­lord

The Imper­a­tor has given Noble pow­ers to a non-Noble who has been charged with over­see­ing the Chan­cel instead of the char­ac­ters. On the plus side, their Realm score con­tributes points to the Chan­cel, but on the other hand, they may dis­agree with the char­ac­ters and may have been given lots of power to enforce their will.

• Nice Radi­ant (Realm 1, 5 Realm Mir­a­cle Points) (-1)
• Assertive Realm’s Heart (Realm 2, 7 RMPs) (-2)
• Aggres­sive War­den (Realm 3, 9 RMPs) (-3)
• Mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal True King/Queen (Realm 4, 12 RMPs, Auc­tori­tas 1) (-4)

Mag­i­cal Inhabitants

Indi­vid­ual Chancelfolk or part of the pop­u­la­tion as a whole pos­sess Earthly mag­ics. Faeries, Uni­corns and even high-technology con­structs fall under this cat­e­gory. Their magic is noth­ing com­pared to a Noble’s, but still potent enough in its own way. 1 Chan­cel Point allows these things to exist, extra points buy them extra attributes.

• Some beings with Earthly mag­ics (1)
• Many such beings (+1)
• These beings can be used as Anchors (+2)
• Some of them have Anchor-like resis­tance to Mir­a­cles (+2)
• Some have Anchor-like resis­tance and Auc­tori­tas (+3)
• Some have actual Mirac­u­lous pow­ers (+5)

Mana Mine

The Chan­cel is par­tic­u­larly real, more beau­ti­ful and strange and glo­ri­ous than the Earth around it, and it oozes Mana from its less well-formed places. It is hard — though quite pos­si­ble — for Nobles to har­vest Mir­a­cle Points from it. On the other hand, the Chan­cel could be unreal and chimeri­cal com­pared to the sur­round­ing Earth. These Chancels must be con­stantly fed by Noble mag­ics lest they drift away from Earth into the lands out­side Creation.

• Realm requires 5 MP per ses­sion to main­tain (-2)
• Realm requires 2 MP per ses­sion to main­tain (-1)
• Chan­cel gen­er­ates MPs for har­vest each ses­sion (+1 per MP, max 5)

Mis­cel­la­neous Chan­cel Blessings

This neb­u­lous cat­e­gory offers pos­si­bil­i­ties for the Chan­cel hav­ing some par­tic­u­lar use amongst Nobles and Imper­a­tors, gain­ing their Fam­ily some amount of respect or pro­tec­tion — or noto­ri­ety. These cost between –4 and 8 Chan­cel Points, as agreed with the GM. Exam­ples from the book are:

• Chancels that spread across the Earth and are used for transportation.
• The Chan­cel where Lord Entropy holds his court.
• Chancels that serve as a meet­ing place for the Light, Dark and other affiliations.
• Neu­tral Chancels that serve as arbiters in Noble disputes.
• Chancels that offer some form of ser­vice to Lord Entropy or the Coun­cil of Four.
• Chancels that are a par­tic­u­lar tar­get of Excrucians.

• Chan­cel is impor­tant, its Pow­ers respected every­where (+4)
• Chan­cel pro­vides, or has pro­vided, an impor­tant ser­vice to Lord Entropy (+4)
• Chan­cel is a pri­mary Excru­cian tar­get (-4)

Pop­u­lar­ity

Gen­er­ally, Chancelfolk are imbued with a slight loy­alty to the Imper­a­tor and his cho­sen Pow­ers. In some cases, how­ever, the Imper­a­tor has cho­sen to make them par­tic­u­larly loyal — or much less so. This is rep­re­sented in giv­ing the Pow­ers of the chan­cel auto­matic gifts as below:

• All Pow­ers have “Devoted Pop­u­lace” for free, unless they already have the Gift “Hated” (6)
• All pow­ers have “Hated” but gain no Mir­a­cle Points for it (-3)

Resources

Gen­eral prop­er­ties of the Chan­cel that per­vade it and influ­ence the inter­play between tech­nol­ogy and magic within.

• Magic and mod­ern tech­nol­ogy nearly unknown in-Chancel (-1)
• Deviant tech­nol­ogy — nor­mal things oper­ate by strange prin­ci­ples (-1)
• Tech­nol­ogy bar­rier — the Chan­cel rejects tech­nol­ogy cre­ated out­side it (1)
• Extrap­ola­tive tech­nol­ogy — high-tech with­out any major par­a­digm shifts from cur­rent Earth tech (2)
• Weird Sci­ence — one area of sci­ence that has under­gone a major paradigm-shift advance over Earth tech, e.g. AI, time travel, biotech (+1 per area)
• Thought-record tech­nol­ogy — an item can trans­fer your thoughts to e.g. com­puter (1)
• Nor­mal (Earthly) magic — minor effects, very drain­ing on the caster (3)
• Faery magic (Glam­our) (2)
• Alchemy (requires Nor­mal or Faery magic) — find­ing power in Pro­saic things (1)
• High Sum­mon­ing (requires Nor­mal or Faery magic) — call­ing things from beyond Cre­ation. Gen­er­ally unwise! (1)

Spirit Path­ways

Gate­ways that con­nect Chancels to each other, bypass­ing Earth entirely.

• Two-way gate­way to a Chan­cel with allied Imper­a­tor / indif­fer­ent Pow­ers (1)
• Two-way gate­way to a Chan­cel with allied Imper­a­tor / friendly Pow­ers (2)
• Two-way gate­way to another Realm or time, requir­ing 4 Realm Mir­a­cle Points to use (0)
• Reduced RMP cost to use gate­way (1 per MP, can’t make cost negative)
• Users notice­ably weaker after using gate­way (wounded, lost MPs, reduced Attrib­utes while in the other Realm, etc.) (-1)
• Hos­tile forces have a two-way gate­way to the play­ers’ Chan­cel (-4)