Michael on July 2, 2010 at 3:00 am said:
I vote mortal. Well, mortal-ish, anyway.
I like the idea that a person can make a difference in the world, even without being a reality-devouring/defending horror.
And Max is significantly cooler when he can accomplish things by virtue of being Max, rather than being the Power of Severance.
Nyren on July 2, 2010 at 7:17 am said:
I like Max as a mortal, personally. I like thinking of him as having the Inspired template, with a Focus called the Shard of Necessity (with gifts like “Constant Domain: Lesser Creation of Confucianism” inside), a High Summoning gift (if those are possible) called “Sid,” and Superior Brooding 1. His feats of Max are just him being Max. But, that’s thinking with second edition in mind.
The fact that Max appears to be the only human in the tower given his comments in “The Immensity of Love (I/IV)” kinda makes that his shtick in my mind, if that’s actually accurate (I’m still wondering if my friend and I are right on who Claire really is).
However, seeing him instead as a Nobilis of Severance is pretty cool from a gameplay perspective. That’s a wonderful and tragic Estate :)
cariset on July 2, 2010 at 11:58 am said:
I vote for mortal, possibly with a dash of “if you hang around gods long enough, you learn a few things”. To me, the stories of Max and Sid have had a flavor of childhood friendship dynamics, which seem at their core to be a very human thing.
This makes me wonder, though – if Max were the Power of Severance, what would Ii Ma be?
Jenna on July 2, 2010 at 1:46 pm said:
I’m still thinking about how to translate the gods in Hitherby into Nobilis terms. I’m hesitant to declare that everyone from Lia’s line is an Imperator by default; I’m hesitant to privilege Jane there, so I’m also hesitant to make them anything less, but I don’t think “Imperator” is a very good translation of what they are.
That’s why I didn’t give Jane the Estate of the Sun; Iphigenia isn’t one of her Powers, she’s one of Jane’s *gods*.
I do want to do a Hitherby Dragons RPG at some point. Nob3 tech is a lot closer to being able to do it, but it’s not there; maybe 2012, 2013.
So Ii Ma the Warden—and Bob, for that matter, and the minotaur, and any other labyrinthine gods? Not sure yet. Possibly some kind of External Inheritor type or something. Possibly they’re just the outcome of miracles. Of course Ii Ma does make a lot of *sense* as a Power, or an Iimaperator, something with a Chancel anyway, so it’s also possible that the state “Imperator” is just easier to reach in Hitherby, rather than being a state of supreme metaphysical primacy.
Jenna on July 2, 2010 at 1:48 pm said:
(The nice thing about being Power of Severance is that with the right miracles, you can *unsever* things, or make them *unseverable.* But honestly mostly that’s Jane and Martin’s job, it just happened to fit some of the key points of Max’s story, as it’ll probably fit many others’.)