Nobilis: Searching for Strife

[Written with a bit of help from Josh]

Josh ran Nobilis most ably, despite none of us having a copy of the rules with us. He ran it permission based, which meant we didn't have to worry about balancing points. He told us that we all worked for the same Imperator and that, for whatever reason, each of us had screwed up sufficiently that we had been called to Lord Entropy's antechamber, where he would blackmail us into accepting the evening's adventure. Josh then went to the bathroom and, as he put it, continued his tradition of running games with under an hour of prep time.

GM: Joshua Kronengold

The players and their PCs:

1. Kat Miller -- Lady Luck, Power of Luck (Domain 5. I forget the rest of the stats) Anchors: Bennie and a woman whose name I forget.

2. Michael Miller -- Allen Smithee, Power of Films (If a director took his name off the film, the credit for direction used to go to "Allen Smithee". It now goes to another pseudonym, I believe.) Anchor: Lester. Kat played both of her anchors, but Josh played Lester. In both cases, this was the correct decision.

3. Patrick O. Smith -- Earl, Power of the Roads. A truck driver. (Domain: 3, Aspect: 3, Spirit: 3, or something; don't remember Realm or gifts.)

4. Lisa Padol -- Barnum, Power of Large Animals (Aspect 5, Domain 5, Realm 0, Spirit 1; Bonds: Large Animals, Bringing Back Extinct Animals). Anchors: Grunk the Yeti, Rrowr the Jaguar. Barnum was visibly non-human and not good at subtle. (I used the Everway cards I'd accumulated from Kat's two games to generate ideas, and kept drawing cards with large animals and one with a really odd looking fellow, #60 of the Companion set, which I decided was Barnum.)

We decided that Barnum and Smithee worked together on monster films. They had drawn Lord Entropy's ire when something went wrong in Times Square during the filming of a movie about a giant slug. Slug bits everywhere -- not a pretty sight. Barnum mourned the loss of slug and film, but Smithee cheered him up.

Smithee: The slug was so you!

Lady Luck and Earl had nothing to do with the slug. Smithee relayed a rumor that Luck had a boyfriend.

Luck: You know that movie you're filming about the storm? It would just be rotten luck if a big northeaster hit a couple of weeks before it opened, and box office sales were down.

Smithee hastily backed down and made peace with Luck, who now predicted good sales. The 4 nobilis started discussing a plot for a new movie. A monster movie with an asteroid -- no, a comet -- threatening the earth. Only the giant shark can save us!

But the shark needs to be trained, so Arnold Schwartzneger plays the guy who trains him. And the shark ate his daughter earlier, see, so we've got that personal angle. And the shark has to jump high enough to reach the comet.

Schwartzneger: Jump, Jaws, jump!

Josh came back somewhere around here, while we were plotting and laughing. A very scornful Lord Scorn seemed annoyed that the group was enjoying itself, but still deigned to inform the nobilis that they would be pardoned if they handled a discreet matter. Luck asked if a good job would be rewarded beyond that, and Scorn allowed that it might.

Each noble holds one or more domains based on concepts, Scorn explained, but some concepts or ideas are so dangerous, yet so important, that only Lord Entropy may safely hold them. The noble Strife was trying to steal one of these from Entropy, and the quartet of PCs was told to prevent this. The task was made more difficult by Scorn's refusal to identify the contested domain.

The nobilis went to their chancel to plan. The chancel was a place like Rick's from the movie Casablanca, and was named "Everyone Comes Into Ricks". Indeed, the bartender was Rick, looking like the character from the movie. Josh later theorized that Rick was the Imperator, the overlord of the four nobilis, but they didn't realize this. He also theorized that thematic link between the 4 nobilis was Places Everyone Goes: the movies (Smithee), the wild (Barnum), the road (Earl), and gambling in some form (Luck).

Everyone came up with a strategy for locating Strife. Luck would have one of her anchors find one of Strife's. Smithee would make an offering of films. Earl and Barnum would give Strife a dragon from one of the monster movies. They packed the dragon into Earl's truck.

Earl: Road trip!

As they headed out, Luck's male anchor, Benny, found himself pressed into service. As Luck would have it, he found Strife's anchor in a phone booth, arguing angrily with whoever was on the opposite side of the phone, or perhaps with the phone itself. The man angrily tried to brush Benny off, but Benny pushed down the metal to cut the connection, and the other man had no luck reconnecting or getting his quarter back.

Strife's Anchor: What do you want?

Benny: My boss wants to speak to your boss.

Strife's Anchor: You need an appointment.

Naturally, the anchor wouldn't help him make one.

Strife's Anchor: My boss isn't taking calls.

So, Luck cursed the man with good luck. Everything went his way. The man who worked for Strife had no strife in his life.

Patrick: That's the evilest type of good luck I've ever seen.

After a couple of days, the anchor approached Benny at a bar. Benny would have preferred to get drunk, but Luck had kept him sober for months. The anchor wanted to talk to Luck.

Benny: How does this work? Oh, right. You need an appointment.

Naturally, he wouldn't help the anchor make one. He did tell the other man to buy a lotto ticket. He would win. The anchor decided this wasn't such a bad thing. Luck used this tampering with an anchor to Nettle the Lord Strife.

Strife was not actually Nettled, although he noticed the attempt, and sent a mental smile of approval through it. This gave us a clue that his domain was more complicated than we had assumed. Strife saw to it that Luck learned a little more about where he was.

Smithee had less luck. He instructed his anchor, Lester, to make a White Supremacist hate film and distribute it to the inner city areas while making a Black Power hate film to be distributed in the south. Lester found this oddly difficult.

In one of the movie sets, the black male lead and female white lead, who hadn't seemed to like each other, both vanished. In the other case, everything just fell apart.

Smithee: So, you're telling me you suck.

Lester: No, boss, I --

Smithee: You're telling me Lester sucks.

Lester: No, I --

Smithee: I understand. It was all too much for you. You burned out.

Lester: Boss, one week! Give me a week!

Lester's panic was quite understandable, since, if Smithee decided to withdraw his power from his anchor, Lester would die. Smithee graciously allowed himself to be talked into giving Lester the week's extension. But he wanted a different kind of film now. Something feel good, with puppies.

Lester: Puppies-- ah, living puppies. Got it.

Meanwhile, Smithee reviewed a video tape of Strife's last visit to Everyone Comes Into Ricks. As Strife has Constant Domain, fights were breaking out around him. He wasn't taking part in them, but complaining about the futility of it all and how he wanted something more.

Meanwhile, Earl and Barnum were discussing philosophy on their road trip, Earl pondering Descartes. They reached New York City, home of Strife's imperator, Reb. They didn't see Reb, but another of Reb's nobilis, the Statue of Liberty, greeted them. After confirming that the dragon in the truck was not a prisoner, Lady Liberty shrank to human size and joined Earl and Barnum at a dinner. She told them that Strife was impatient with everything and was seeking new challenges.

I think at this point, we began to realize that Strife was not just the ruler of strife, but also the ruler of striving. This was why Smithee's offering was off base, but Luck's was well received: She'd given Strife's anchor something new to strive for. As Josh put it, the anchor "had been redirected/tempted from pointless argument into striving/hoping for the American Dream...which actually fit the sanctity of his Estate nicely." It was why Josh figured afterwards that it was okay not to have thrown a combat encounter at Earl and Barnum. They were striving in their quest for Strife and for understanding.

Patrick, at least, guessed that Reb, the imperator of Strife and Liberty, dwelling in NYC, was Rebellion. I totally missed this until Josh explained it after the session. Reading an earlier version of this write up, Josh wrote "I'm thinking [Reb]'s also, given his anchors, the Imperator of the American Dream (but then, that may be another of his Powers, or an amalgam."

He now decided that we had enough information to find Strife. As Luck had learned from another of Strife's anchors, the noble was somewhere utterly bleak and deserted.

Strife's other anchor: I'd say he's going incommunicado, but communicado doesn't even know where he is.

Exactly where Strife was Josh left to player consensus. We toyed with the idea of glaciers, or the moon, or a mall after hours, but ultimately decided on a bus stop in the middle of the desert in the USA southwest. And we agreed that the nobilis would run into some kind of combat en route, and that we didn't have to decide what it was or play it out.

I think Smithee joined Earl in the truck, while Barnum moved to the back, with the dragon. Luck possessed one of her anchors, a woman who wondered how she had wound up on a bus to the middle of nowhere. Barnum stayed with the dragon in the truck, as Earl and Smithee got out.

The nobilis were in a town called either Angel's Grave, or Angel's Crossing. Patrick reminded me "There had been two towns, one to the north, one to the south, which had both died and been abandoned. The only thing left was a highway through the desert, a cross road that didn't go anywhere, and an abandoned gas station." The gas station was under Earl's domain, as the Power of the Roads. He worked a miracle, and the gas station was no longer abandoned. It now had a small store. While the store was new, having just been created by Earl, it had, of course, Always Been There.

The store's proprietor said that the only other person had gone mountain climbing. He pointed to a nearby mountain. There were no viable roads for trucks, so Earl and Luck began climbing. Barnum suggested he and Smithee ride Bob, the dragon.

Smithee: Bob?? You -named- it?

Barnum: It's only a little name.

Smithee: What did I tell you? Don't ever name them.

Nevertheless, he sat behind Barnum on the dragon's back, and they flew to the top of the cliff Strife was climbing.

Strife recognized them as his opposition, and asked if they would let him up to the top before settling their differences, in a scene Josh intended to be reminiscent of the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride. Barnum refused, and kept Bob blocking Strife. He asked what it was all about. Strife was surprised that they didn't know.

Strife: It's Hope! Can't you see? I'm striving for the Estate of Hope! Just look behind you, and you'll see!

Luck attacked Strife, causing rocks to happen to fall towards him. He managed to dodge both of them. Her anchor attacked him, and the two struggled. Barnum and Smithee considered Strife's explanation, especially the "look behind you" part. Barnum decided not to look. If he did, he figured, something would whack him. Smithee decided to look. If he didn't, he figured, something would whack him.

Luck and Strife continued to fight. Meanwhile, Barnum ignored the physical strife in front of him, fighting by debate, with himself, as well as Strife.

On the one hand, Scorn was correct: Hope was too dangerous for anyone other than Lord Entropy to claim. But, everything Lord Entropy ruled was corrupted. Truly, a paradox.

Smithee, turning around, saw a flower, beautiful, unique, and dying. In fact, it seemed nearly dead. This flower was Hope, and Smithee, too, understood the paradox that Barnum was struggling with. Luck, annoyed, asked for help against Strife. Earl seized the moment. Unnoticed by Strife, he swung a tire iron, knocking Strife out with a single blow.

And Smithee, unobserved by the others, gently gathered the flower of Hope, roots, dirt, and all, and vanished. The special effect Michael used to describe this was that Smithee stepped into a movie set, and the scene faded to black.

And Smithee stepped out into the back room of Everyone Comes Into Rick's, and carefully re-planted the flower.

Strife was taken away, but probably not punished too severely. After all, he'd done only what it was his nature to do.

Lisa: And he was right. The flower was dying.

Josh: The flower of Hope -always- seems to be dying.

Luck, Earl, Barnum, and Smithee received their pardons. No one could prove anything. They did not receive a reward, however. And, as Josh said, the nobilis had done what they were told to do, "even if in so doing, they had brought Hope into the world. But then, you can't keep Hope away forever, and Entropy knew that."

And Allen Smithee now had a new domain. The power of movies had the flower of hope.

Smithee: I smell box office success this summer!

And there we ended, and we all retired for the evening. I recall talking with Robin Laws about the session the next day, and he wasn't sure that one could have a decent game of Nobilis that wasn't ultimately played for laughs, or that a played for laughs game would satisfy, at least beyond the one-shot stage. While there were comic moments, I found that the scenario was not played for laughs as a whole, and that the blend of comic and serious moments worked for me. There were even a couple of horrific moments, such as Smithee's never spelled out, but quite deadly threat to Lester. And it was beautifully appropriate that Smithee wound up with the flower of Hope.

Josh's comment on that:

Very much so; especially given his -nasty- behavior earlier in the story -- it showed a certain (I think) maturing in the character, as he changed from "the power of nasty movies" to "the power of movies that bring people Hope".

Josh told me that he got the inspiration for the scenario from a short vignette from a post on the Nobilis mailing list. The vignette describes Hope as a flower waiting for someone brave enough to pluck it.

As it turns out, the actual quote is: "And in the darkest reaches of his Chancel, Lord Entropy leaves bloody fingerprints on the Crown That Is Hope, and waits for one strong enough to win it." But we both agree that we like the flower image better.