The Nephilim Campus Campaign for Cthulhu

[Darius West]

Has anyone else noticed how easily a game of Nephilim can be crossed into C'thulhu? There are a few hang-ups, in that the esoteric history of the Nephilim doesn't quite fit in with the broader and geological time history of the Cthulhu Mythos, but it is easily possible to create work-arounds.

In essence, the Nephilim are a species of immortal spirit parasite that have followed a very similar trajectory on an evolutionary scale to that of the Great Race of Yith.  The difference being that the Nephilim are of terrestrial origin, while the Yithians are aliens.

As for Nephilim magic, it makes for an interesting juxtaposition to that of the Mythos.

The links between the Nephilim and Atlantis are well established, but the Mythos makes only casual reference to Atlantis, making the question of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, and Thule, open slather as to what a Keeper wants to do with them.  Of course by involving Nephilim this also serves to make the "magic of Atlantis" largely unavailable to player character human investigators.

 For me, the most interesting thing to develop is the Dream Lands as a Subtle Realm.  The Subtle Realms are where the magic of the Nephilim comes from, and clearly dreams and the dream lands are intensely magical, so perhaps the Nephilim created the Dream Lands as a sort of virtual reality and magical laboratory ?

Has anyone considered that perhaps Innsmouth is merely a colony of Tritons at an advanced stage of Nephilim transformation?

I would be interested in how other people have developed these ideas, as I KNOW this is not an original idea.

 

[rsanford]

Very cool. I like where you are going with this!

 

[Darius West]

Thanks rsanford.  The way Nephilim is written it is easy to be sympathetic to the nephilim, but in many ways they are every bit as bad as the various secret societies determined to destroy them suspect.  They are essentially weird and unnatural body invaders.  The Star Arcanum are interesting in my game as they seek to discover "alien nephilim" who are in fact the Great Race of Yith.  Naturally the Great Race are not interested in being found and the probable negative impact on their time line to their next species jump.

One of the ideas I have been playing with is that the reason that C'thulhu and the whole Xothian civilization have attacked Earth and currently lie dormant is because the Nephilim are actually infant Elder Gods, and  when the stars are right and the Mythos rises they can consume the young of their great enemies and potentially escape this, their prison Universe. The Nephilim of course want to escape that fate, and that means transcending out of the world through the Subtle Realms asap.

Another thing that I am using is that some humans know the secrets of initiation, which in Nephilim terms means that they have an awakened Solar Ka, and this is true of all Dreamers i.e. people who have entered the Dreamlands.  The problem is however that Nephilim are not human, and so cannot enter the Human Dreamlands, as they were locked out as part of the cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis.  (Atlantis physically sank, but it also sank into the human unconscious).  As a result, the Nephilim can only physically enter the "Subtle Realms" by way of the spell "The Gate of Oneirology", which is a rare one (Needless to say that the campaign focuses heavily on players finding the clues to find the clues to work that out).  Once in the Dreamlands however, the Nephilim  are at a huge advantage, because they are the true originators of the Dreamlands, for example they can invent new spells there.

As far as SAN loss for seeing Nephilim goes, they are rated by their level of transformation, 1-20 =0/1d2, 21-40=0/1d4, 41-60=0/1d6, 61-80=0/1d8.  Not every SAN check is about being scared out of your wits, sometimes it involves a loss of your sense of reality.  Viewing a Nephilim who is using some of their magic can also incur more SAN loss, e.g. You see an Angel with Burning Bands of Flame and Wind surrounding them; seeing an angel is bad, but the extra special effects add to how alarming that will be.

 

[auyl]

I'm a big fan of Nephilim and am disappointed nothing more was done with it.

Crossing it over to CoC is an interesting idea but a lot of the Nephilim mythos would need to be reconsidered to make it all work but you've already mentioned that. A possibility would be they were the original people that defeated Cthulhu and put him into his slumber and this is their curse from the Outer Gods for doing so.

Just and idea though.

 

[Darius West]

Hi auyl,

            The way I am working it is by saying that the Nephilim are the larval form of the Elder Gods, and yes, the Elder Gods banished the Outer Gods.  The way I put it elsewhere is that the humans are mixed up in it the way flora and fauna were mixed up in the WW2 battle for Peleliu.