| Clear all | Immortal | Frantic | Sickly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Bindings |
GatekeeperLore Draft Edony Marguerite The Magical Detective Jade Irinka Angel of the Houses of the Sun |
GatecrasherStyle Draft, formerly Sickly Aspect: Specialist Suzy Schwan The Best Friend Laodemus Schwan The Wish-Granting Engine |
Wounded AngelWounded Published in CMWGE core Leonardo de Montreal Nightmares' Angel Eclipse Hayden Sorrows (likely) Lee Scathing (possible) Mourning Iolithae Septimian |
| Orange Knight |
AllegoryAllegorical Draft Sal Caesar The Wriggling Teacher Mrs. Senko The Practical Teacher Leonardo de Montreal Angel of Recovery |
Become SomebodyVisage Published in CMWGE core Seizhi Schwan The Best Friend Billy Sovereign The First Free Dog Nikolai Zakharov |
Star QualityPersona Draft, formerly Frantic Mystic: Knave of Hearts Jasmine Apocynum The Ideologue Natalia Koutolika The Prodigy |
| Green Otherworldly |
Child of the AshVastness Published in CMWGE core Chuubo The Wishing Boy Jasper Irinka The Child of the Sun Mavis Wheeler Hedge the Fang named Unmindful The Anomaly Bašmu Sa'a Lingurth Unicorn named Numinous |
SpiritualDomain Published in CMWGE core Rinley Yatskaya The Troublemaker Eclipse Arikel The Exultant |
Called AwayWanderer Draft Jasper Irinka The Child of the Sun Rinley Yatskaya The Troublemaker |
| Red Storyteller |
Creature of the LightHoly Published in CMWGE core Entropy II The Angel of Fortitude Entropy II The Principal Glass Spider The Headmaster of the Bleak Academy Ill-Made Unicorn named Numinous |
Creature of FableHunter Published in CMWGE core Rinley Yatskaya The Troublemaker John Wicked The Class Rep Mrs. Senko The Practical Teacher The Headmaster of the Bleak Academy Orderic Neustry The Prince of Cats Hedge the Fang named Unmindful The Graveyard Spirit aka The Grief-Yard aka Simon Aluskiy |
Creature of DeliriumTheft Draft, formerly Frantic Emptiness: Alchemist Jasmine Apocynum The Ideologue |
| Yellow Aspect |
Chosen OneAdept Draft, formerly Magical Hero Jade Irinka Angel of the Houses of the Sun |
The AceAspect Published in CMWGE core Natalia Koutolika The Prodigy Melanie Malakh |
Reality SyndromeSealed Published in CMWGE core, formerly Sickly Knight Chuubo The Wishing Boy Glass Spider (alternate) Hayden Sorrows Sal Caesar The Wriggling Teacher Bašmu Iolithae Septimian Hoop Snake named Inexplicable |
| Purple Shepherd |
A Keeper of GardensGardener Published in CMWGE core Entropy II The Angel of Fortitude Arikel The Headmaster of the Bleak Academy Lee Scathing Simon Brambles, Prince of Thorns The Prince of Cats Ugallu |
SentimentalFlore Published in CMWGE core Miramie Mesmer The Dream-Witch Edony Marguerite The Magical Detective Lucy Godsfollow Melanie Malakh |
ImpresarioArchitect Draft, formerly Sickly Storyteller: Self-Made Soun Shounen The Idol Entropy II The Principal |
| Silver Emptiness |
IndomitableMonstrous Draft Zoë Rosewood Ogre-Sensei Mrs. Senko The Practical Teacher |
TroubledEide Draft, formerly Frantic Bindings: Renegade |
AccursedWyrd Published in CMWGE core Miramie Mesmer The Dream-Witch Sesiquer Damien The Empty Child Arikel Lee Scathing (possible) Melanie Malakh Simon Brambles, Prince of Thorns (alternate) Mourning The Graveyard Spirit aka The Grief-Yard aka Simon Aluskiy Ugallu |
| Black Mystic |
PrimordialSymbolic Published in CMWGE core Jasper Irinka The Child of the Sun Zoë Rosewood Ogre-Sensei Lee Scathing Orderic Neustry Simon Brambles, Prince of Thorns Uridimmu The Snake-Tailed Eagle Guardian Bird Many-Voiced Minions |
Prophet Draft Dulcinea de Montreal The Rival |
AwakeningDeepness Draft Entropy II The Principal |
12 arcs were included with the core rulebook of the game. The remaining twelve are in progress, with plans for release in the upcoming Book of Golden Hours; drafts are available on Dr. Moran's blog. Some arcs were reshuffled to new positions during development. All links lead to the most up-to-date publicly available versions of that arc, which in some cases means a version which predates the color shift and shows an out-of-date name. Abilities, balance, and flavor may still change between draft and release.
Jenna Moran's previous work, Nobilis, describes the various categories of Imperators, gods with total dominion over the many aspects of reality. Each Nobilis faction is associated with a set of four Arcs.
Angels work tirelessly to spread grace, enlightenment, and beauty. The touch of Heaven is transformative, self-replicating, invasive, and difficult to bear. It can be salvation, it can elevate mortals to saints, but it can also be cold, inhuman justice. During the High War, angels were forced to fight hardest, as the favored Excrucian targets.
No living characters are officially classified as angels. Jade Irinka was; she's dead.
Some angels argued that Heaven's judgements were unfair, and that there was value in the things they rejected. For this they were cast out, and they dwell to this day in Hell as the devils. Their task is to cherish the unloved and bear witness to those who are utterly alone. They are twisted and jaded by their long association with monstrous, broken, and evil things, but their love is omnipresent and unconditional.
Leonardo de Montreal is a fallen angel, although he usually doesn't know it. The mystery Hoop Snake, which is named Inexplicable, resembles a devil closely enough to count.
The infinite worlds of the universe hang from an immense ash tree. Moses' brother Aaron threw down his wooden staff before Pharoah's magicians, and it became a snake. The Aaron's Serpents are divinities born from the substance of the World Ash. They are enormous and immensely strong; they are also pacifists, with little ambition beyond enjoying the wonders of Creation.
Chuubo is a Serpent who has taken human form, possibly because enjoying a good ice cream cone is easier with hands. Typhon, which is named Outrage, takes the form of a giant golden snake. Psalida "Sal" Caesar, a tendril of the beast Sa'a Lingurth puppeteering a human body who teaches music at School, is at least superficially snakelike.
The Rule is a dream of the best that humanity can be. Lords of the Rule uphold ideals without truly seeing the crudeness and imperfections of reality.
Entropy II is a Lord of Rule. He has a bad habit of not really looking at whoever he's talking to, instead staring directly at bright lights or up into the sun.
The Game is a wild, reckless expression of everything that tempts humanity. Lords of the Game are chaotic, unpredictable tricksters who hate boundaries and restrictions.
Rinley Yatskaya is born of human parents but classified with the Lords of Games. John Wicked is another but I haven't met him yet.
Magisters of the Wild arise from nothing and impose their own personal laws onto the world around them. The Wild is ultimately introspection - understanding oneself and refusing to let anything else define you.
Zoë Rosewood, King Death, and the Witch of the Far Roofs are all aligned with the Wild.
Divine Imperators or True Gods are fundamental, primordial, ancient divinities, a great seething interwoven mass bound up with each other and with the world. They predate the other factions and every other form of life.
Jasper Irinka, though the daughter of an Angel and an Excrucian Warmain, manifests her powers more like a True God than anything else.
If Creation is the words of a sentence, Actuals are the grammar; they are the rules that give reality structure. Paradoxes caused by impossible miracles may pull an Actual into reality to fill the gap, and though they may not intend malice these stranded Actuals are highly dangerous. Their alienness is infectious; when they try to understand their unfamiliar surroundings they fail, as everything they touch or examine is converted into more of themself.
Town is more forgiving a setting, however, and Seizhi and Laodemus Schwan might well find happiness; perhaps even local bully Billy Sovereign can be salvaged.
The Zu are an isolated order of martial artists who have trained past the bounds of mortality. They live on a remote mountain range shielded against the strongest powers of divinity and the void both.
Natalia Koutolika is probably closest to being Zu, if anyone is. Soun Shounen might be aligned in that direction as well.
The player characters of a Nobilis campaign are Powers - lesser gods elevated from their mortal origins to serve a particular Imperator, who gifts them power over a single Estate. Multiple Powers serving the same divinity make up a Familia.
A Nobilis PC can be approximately converted to the CMWGE system by representing its attributes as Arcs: Aspect = The Ace, Domain = Spiritual, Persona = Star Quality, Treasure/Flore = Sentimental.
Imperators fought a war against the Excrucians, beings who dwell outside conventional reality. They often appear human, at least to us, but their eye sockets are empty holes showing a starry night sky. In their view, Creation is an affront and an insult to the purity of the void they dwell in.
Deceivers believe the world is a lie and a cage, holding its hapless inhabitants back from truth. They manipulate 'false' reality to their own purposes. They often claim to love the people 'trapped' in reality, but whatever it is about us they love, it is something we would not recognize as ourselves.
Jasmine Apocynum is a young Deceiver who had an epiphany about the nature of truth during a dodgeball game. Iolithae Septimian arose during humanity's Bronze Age. Genseric Dace helped Jenna Moran write the Nobilis rulebook, although she complains it's hard to trust anything he says.
Warmains wish to test the world and preserve the best of it. Their tests are usually brutal, and they do not accept refusal from their targets. Those who fail are generally left alone, which is cold comfort when 'failure' means breaking under the Warmain's torment. Those who survive are 'tempered,' utterly wiped out of reality. Warmains honor their favorite opponents by shedding their previous forms and adopting the faces and mannerisms of those worthy victims.
The Headmaster of the Bleak Academy is a Warmain, although he doesn't conform to the standard arcs. His daughter Mrs. Senko teaches at Town's rival institution, Principal Entropy's school. Orderic Neustry is a hunter who preys on unlucky travellers Outside.
Strategists are fundamentally inimical to reality. They labor under a strict time limit, because they are each dying of their individual weakness the moment they set foot in our world. They compensate with elaborate schemes and strategems, and with the World-Breaker's Hand, a technique which allows them to destroy anything.
Miramie Mesmer is all that remains of Strategist Melanie Malakh, who attempted to destroy Town but shattered into pieces instead.
Mimics are the result when a dead Imperator is resurrected by Excrucian techniques. They are outwardly indistinguishable from the genuine godly article, but the inner core is imperfectly patched together. If revealed, the blasphemy they carry is released to wreak destruction; if not revealed, they operate as agents and spies against Creation.
Leonardo de Montreal studied at the Bleak Academy, an Excrucian institution, and the thing that came back was a Mimic.
Once upon a time, a witch and a glass-maker made a dragon out of glass and taught it to hate the world. It raged and it would have destroyed everything; only, it shattered, instead.
Maybe it found some reason to love the world.
Maybe their hearts weren’t really in it—not the glass-maker’s, not the witch’s.
Maybe it was just that the dragon was made of glass.
The Horizon campaign is still in early development.
For people who only have access to the 12 core arcs, Dr. Moran suggests the following substitutions:
The Best Friend - Wounded Angel
The Prodigy - Become Somebody
The Child of the Sun - Spiritual (Element: Hope)
The Ideologue - Creature of the Light
The Rival - Primordial
The Horizon campaign is still in early development.
Jade Irinka hasn't got official stats as such, but Chosen One and Gatekeeper are both noted as made for her use.
The Angel of Recovery is an alternate Leonardo build, built to help clarify the function of Allegory, suited for a potential future project, the Age of Innocence, where the Sun never died and most of the tragedies in Town's history were averted or never happened.
Creature of Delirium lines up with Jasmine's established powers and it was briefly considered for the Horizon campaign but she hasn't formally been associated with it yet.