History TabletopGame / Nobilis

* {{Bishounen}}: 3e whimsically notes that mysterious bishounen are usually Imperators, Powers, Excrucians, or the offspring of the Star-Beast Qot. In the event they happen to be human, they're probably not that mysterious.

* FirstPersonSmartass: The in-character author of 3rd Edition, [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments to great effect]].

* OurAngelsAreDifferent: The GWB doesn't discuss angels at length, even though angels can serve as the players' "boss". Suffice to say that they don't mind working with devils in order to stop the Excrucians. And as noted elsewhere, contrary to scripture, they don't really let people into {{Heaven}} when they die.
** Oh, [[TeethClenchedTeamwork they mind alright]]. Working with Devils is unspeakably abhorrent to them -- the alternative's just worse.

* AGodIsYou: The entire premise of the game, of course.

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Dementia Animus.

* '''Nobles''' (a.k.a. '''Sovereigns''' or '''Powers''') entrusted with one or two Estates or aspects of reality, let's say the Duchess of Gorillas or the Regent of Breakfast Cereal or the Marquis of Oceans. (The PlayerCharacters play these.)

All of the above fight the '''Excrucians''', mysterious, beautiful beings from beyond the Weirding Wall, who would like to nullify ''everything'', bit by bit. (They have already destroyed some Estates.)

* BerserkButton: The third edition observes, regarding the Angel who [[NeverLiveItDown annihilated the dinosaurs because he saw one poop]]: "Do not lecture him about the dinosaurs. First, he feels bad enough already, and second, he is a hot-tempered immortal angel embodying the very principle of destruction."

** Ananda, the Imperator of the Fourth Age and thus a major avatar of hope, is one of the most beautiful beings in Creation, but his beauty causes creatures to self-destruct mentally and physically in his presence. (e.g. Songbirds sing themselves to death.) He's also the Imperator of ''Murder'', and his 2e stats include a Constant Domain gift that causes people to automatically be murdered when it would be convenient for him.

* BrickJoke: A few. The 3e Treasure rules use as an example a fiddle with the Creator trapped in it which enables a glorious destiny for the owner. In the Deceivers minibook, there's a callback in the rumor, "So, I hear Cneph's trapped in a fiddle somewhere in this miserable world of yours."

** In 1e & 2e, some can use [[BlatantLies the Blind Lie]] and you are bound by the lie as if it was reality for a scene. (e.g. "I am not here," or "Gravity isn't real.")

** In the GWB, Prosaic Earth is a grim place, probably grimmer than in the real world. It also mentions that souls may be mysteriously destroyed. So in the end, "The situation is essentially hopeless, but the world is only eight thousand years old, and things may yet change."
** The mortal world in 1e & 2e is noted to have more wars and for courts to pay lip service at best to the notion of "innocent until proven guilty."

** Many Deceivers come in this flavor too. They all see the world as a lie and many just want to rescue us from it. (At least, the portions of us they consider to be the real us, without all the baggage of existence.) This also gives them a certain tendency for dramatically trying to explain or convince people of their position whether it's practical or not.

* DeadlyBook: The Second and Third Editions both have flavour text describing a book on the true nature of beauty. Because the book is a sacrosant object not meant for mortals, it kills the first to read any word within. The vignette wraps up with "It is a statement on the nature of beauty, and the nature of scholars, that [...] over half of its text had been read, understood, and transcribed."

* FisherKing: In the first two editions, a Noble's Realm score exists to govern exactly how much "Fisher Kingness" a given character has. You can still do this in 3e with a Secondary Domain of "Things of the Chancel."

* IntangibleTheft: With sufficient MP spent on an Aspect miracle, your actions no longer need to really make logical sense, as long as they make poetic sense. What this ''means'' is that if you spend enough MP, you can totally walk through a restaurant on Valentine's Day and steal everyone's dates, or pilfer [[RealityWarper Iolithae]] [[ConsummateLiar Septimian's]] voice in the form of a midnight-blue pearl dusted with the trails of falling stars. (In both cases, fencing them afterwards is the hard part, although in Noble society that's not the same as being impossible.)

** The entire universe reshapes itself so that miraculous actions are completely normal (for instance, if a Imperator puts out the sun and then lights it again, the world suffers a solar eclipse that all the astronomers will now remember predicting, and have records of doing so, or possibly discover evidence that the old way of predicting eclipses was flawed and the new way works better.)

** The Locust Court is Surolam's domain. It has always been Surolam's domain. The previous suggestion that it belonged to a Darklord in the service of Lord Entropy was an imagining of the author spurred on by an evocative name, and has no basis in reality. Lord Entropy still uses it for trials. (See also WhatMeasureIsANonCute below.)

* SemanticSuperpower: As much as the HG will let you get away with. With the stat Persona, for example, a Noble can influence a piece of reality to be more like his own Estate. "The amount of popcorn in this popcorn bowl is now like Imagination: it has no limits."

** In 1e & 2e, any Earthly Power visiting another world on the tree would most likely be this. Estates of True Gods and of the Light and the Dark were not universal to all of Creation, and a Power leaving Earth for another world would carry concepts with them which were utterly alien to the rest of Creation. Of course, other worlds would have their own hosts of local True Gods and incomprehensible Estates. Most groups largely [[HouseRules ignored this part of the game]] because it would make visiting other worlds on the Tree [[AwesomeButImpractical unplayable if taken seriously]].

* WasOnceAMan: Many Excrucian Decievers were once normal people that achieved a strange kind of enlightenment; that reality wasn't real, and it causes nothing but pain for what is. [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Unsurprisingly, the catalyst for this was usually incredible suffering.]]

The first edition (nicknamed the Little Pink Book, or LPB) was put out by Pharos Press. A revised and expanded version (the Great White Book, or GWB. Not to be confused with ''that'' [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush GWB]]) was released by Hogshead Publishing. The third edition corebook, ''Field Guide to the Powers'' (tentatively dubbed the Fully Colored Book), was released by Eos Press. Both the GWB and ''Field Guide'' are available as [=PDFs=].

* AlliterativeName: A ''Diary'' of ''Deceivers''. No sign of A Warrant of Warmains or A Story of Strategists as yet.

* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: A ''Diary'' of ''Deceivers''. No sign of A Warrant of Warmains or A Story of Strategists as yet.