Nephilim
The
Nephilim (Hebrew for "the fallen ones") were a race of giants fathered by
angels who had left heaven to mate with mortal women. There are two clear biblical references to the Nephilim, one at
Genesis 6:1-4 and the other in the
Book of Numbers 13:33; the story of the Nephilim is chronicled more fully in the apocryphal
Book of Enoch.
The Anakim and the Rephaim, which are mentioned in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua, are races of giants which descended from the Nephilim. There are also allusions to these descendants in the apocryphal books of Judith, Sirach, Baruch, and the Wisdom of Solomon.
Originally published in 1992 by the French company Multisim, Nephilim is a role-playing game about powerful elemental entities reincarnating into human beings.
The first edition used the Chaosium "Basic Role Playing" principles, and was translated into English by this American company.
Since then, Nephilim had two other editions :
- The second edition was still akin to the BRP system
- The third edition uses a radically different system, descriptor-based
Besides the Nephilim (elementals of Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Moon), the players can play Selenim (elemental "Vampires" of the Dark Moon) or Ar-Kaïm (Astrological unstable mutants, introduced in the Third Edition).
A few human conspiracies exist, most of them opposed to the Nephilim and their cousins :
- The Templars (masters of the world, love to enslave the Nephilim)
- The Mysteries (former servants of the Nephilim)
- The Synarchy (technocrats)
- The Rose+Croix (occultists)
- Bohemians (allies of the Nephilim)
Nephilim are also a kind of powerful spirits meddling in human history in J. Gregory Keyes's cycle The Age of Unreason.