Nobilis
Jul 31, 2011 0:45:02 GMT -5
Post by Kender Bard on Jul 31, 2011 0:45:02 GMT -5
Basically, Nobilis is a diceless tabletop game that's a collaborative storytelling system. It's set on the stage of an epic battle of the forces of Creation vs non-Creation. The PCs generally are Nobilis, Noble Ones, as well as any anchors and vanilla mortals that are attached to that Nobilis. Here's some concepts out of the glossary and explanation section of the Nobilis book.
Imperators
Or: Regi, Ymera, Masha
Imperators are the greatest and the most terrible of the magical beings of the world. The Earth trembles at their touch, and mortal men who seek their true nature inevitably go mad. Angels, both Celestial and Fallen, are Imperators; the Magisters of the Dark, the Light, and the Wild are as well. Imperators are formed from the fundamental stuff of the world. Their existence defines reality. Every love on Earth is a different expression of the inherent spiritual nature of the Imperator of Love. Other beings of great power exist--but if they lack this essential quality, they are not made of the first stuff of creation, they are not Imperators.
The Imperators are bitterly divided, holding to the causes of Hell and Heaven, Light and Dark, and (on occasion) Old Gods against New. Yet necessity has united the bulk of them for many years. Not even Hell, the heartland of suffering, wants to see the Excrucians succeed... for they will destroy all creation.
Nobilis
Or: Sovereign Powers, Powers, Domini, Noble Ones
The Excrucian War (or Valde Bellum) is waged in the spirit world. With Excrucian victories there, the things of this world lose a little bit of magic and of soul. (This effect is opposed not by Excrucian losses, which do not restore the ravaged realm, but by new glories brought forth from Heaven.) The Excrucians would like to destroy the Earth more directly. The Imperators, who prefer not to turn their attention away from the spirit war, have created agents to guard the Earth and their Chancels. Humans caught in the creation of a Chancel and humans who spend years inside a Chancel or its vicinity make the perfect receptacles for a shard of the Imperator's own divine essence.
These humans become the Sovereign Powers. The shard of Imperator-soul they are given burns out a piece of their own soul, and their minds are shackled and made loyal. They are given in return a gift that is sometimes full consolation: power. The typical soul-shard is a prototype for a single aspect of reality, such as night, metal, or agony, and it gives the one-time human control over that t hing. Often these humans receive other great blessings as well. Their normal responsibilities are simple: defend the aspects of reality associated with their Imperator, guard and govern the Chancel and its inhabitants, and (when it does not interfere with the above duties) help in the general defense of the Earth.
Excrucians
Or: The Lost, Anguishers, Beyonders, or the Damned.
More beautiful than the angels are the Excrucians, whose eyes show darkness full of ever-falling stars. It is said that the Creator bargained with them long ago, that he or she might capture a touch of this beauty in the world of Ygg--and then failed to carry out his or her end of the bargain. It is said that this is why the Excrucians on their pale horses seek the destruction of all that there is; why even the Imperators fall at times beneath their razor-edged swords. The Excrucians themselves give a more kindly explanation: that they are from beyond Creation. They will leave it when it dies. When that death comes, all the things they have destroyed will awaken within them, and ride out with them into the void and its tomorrows. The Excrucians are roughly as powerful as the Imperators, but they are almost never able to send more than a fraction of their strength out of the spirit world to Earth... Only a few tiny, lethal shards. The battle rages too fiercely, most often, for more.
Breakthroughs
Or: Rendings
When an Excrucian sword cleaves the veil between Earth and the spirit world and sends a part of itself through, a Rending or a Breakthrough occurs. Breakthroughs are opportunities for both the Excrucians and the Imperators. The Excrucians have little interest in bloodbaths; killing animals or humans does little damage to their immortal spirits. Their work on Earth is instead the destruction of dreams, of peace, and of all the things that give humans hope and joy. This kind of thing takes an effort to destroy, an investment of the Excrucian's essential being in its work. The Noble that balks an Excrucian can usually draw that investment into their own Imperator. It is wise, however, to conceal one's exact identity from an Excrucian one balks. Even if a Noble can rip the throat out of the Excrucian-shard they meet on Earth, its iceberg-like extent into the spirit world may come back to haunt them later.
Because they risk losing power to the Nobilis who oppose them, the Excrucians apply their powers very subtly when they cannot act with overwhelming force.
Chancels
Or: Secret Places, Sanctum, Ward, Guard, or Keep.
Imagine the Earth as a lake, and the Imperators as pebbles. When a pebble drops into the lake, the surface of the lake, once flat and uncomplicated, becomes rippled, convoluted, and shaken. As the effect spreads from the source, it grows weaker. The ritual that makes a Chancel requires a hundred nights and a human death each night of it. Then a piece of the Imperator's self is bound into a piece of land and vice versa. Winding roads lead in and out of these Chancels; straight tracks glide by as if that place had never been. These Chancels were once rare, but in modern times--the past five millenia or so--the Imperators have needed secure places to store their bodies while their spirits wage war against the Excrucians.
Anchors
Or: The Ephemeral, Hooks
A Noble's Anchor is a mortal that can serve as a metaphorical ground or channel through which their power or their mind can flow. Using an Anchor enables a Noble to "hide their hand, to work miracles that can't be traced back to the Power. In the worst case, if an Anchor is caught in an act that could get the Noble killed, the Noble can break off the connection between the two. This usually destroys the one-time Anchor's mind, giving even greater security. A Noble can have many Anchors, but there must be a connection between the Anchor and the Power's mortal self. Specifically, a Noble must love or hate their Anchors in order to use them at all.
The Council of Four
Lord Entropy
Or: The Darkest Lord, the Bloody Imperator
The Imperator Lord Entropy heads the Council of Four, who have chosen (or have been chosen; it is unclear) to rule the Earth instead of participating int he war. His power trickles down into the mortal governments in subtle ways. With the Powers, he and the Council have been more direct. He has set down harsh laws for the Nobilis to follow, and these laws are often stumbling blocks as they are useful. He is called the Darkest Lord by those of the Nobilis, at least in part because of the following decree:
It is not a law whose violations are easily discovered; Lord Entropy has no power to peer into the heart. Even if he could, he is often merciful, often even forgiving. Yet no Noble that loves dares to speak of it, and for causing this the Nobles both hate and despise Lord Entropy.
Ananda
Or: Lord of Expectations, the Emperor to Come
The Imperator Ananda rules Murder, the Infinite, and (some say) the Fourth Age that is to come. His glory is terrible: humans and Nobles weak in spirit dare not face him, lest his countenance drive them mad with joy. Where he walks, the world sings, grass and trees becoming crystal instruments, birds pouring out symphony after symphony until their hearts burst from the strain, and even concrete buildings clamoring out hard-edged refrains. He sits on Lord Entropy's Council, but his voice there has been silenced--he sees some unacceptable horror to come if he should cast his vote against the Darkest Lord's. In other respects, he is a creature of conscience, and, through the dregs of power that remain to him, the greatest hope of virtue on the Council of Four. Some Nobles idealize Ananda as the symbol that the world has not gone so far astray. Others point to him as the living proof of the poverty of Heaven's philosophy--a creature of endless beauty, whose beauty kills; a creature of justice, whose justice has fallen under the Darkest Lord's thumb; and a creature of might, rendered impotent by fate.
Cammorae
In 1342, Lord Entropy created the Cammora as the mortal arm of his rule. From teh rules of the human Earth (both on and behidn visible thrones), he built an organization of those who were willing to serve him. He gave them two gifts: his protection, and the protection of those who dealt with them.
That is, Lord Entropy's law decrees that a Noble may aid a Cammoran withotu fear of retribution--that any Noble who can pay the Cammora's price may do so without fear.
The Cammorae style themselves "the mortal servants of the Powers." Yet they are not humble: they bargain hard with Sovereigns for every mission they undertake. They know that even know, carrying with them over six hundred years of miraculous payments, they are no match for a Noble--but they also know that Nobles are bound by laws which do not apply to them. Nobles must be circumspect; teh Cammora gleefully uses every magic and every scrap of political power it possesses. Cammorae are skilled in ciminal acts and political persuasions, with their fingers in many governments and crime rings int he mortal world. For this reason, even the mightiest Nobles come to them for aid..but the Cammora is a terribly, terribly corrupt organization. Its members mirthfully use excessive force and terror tactics in pursuit of their goals, both personal and professional. From the point of view of many Nobles, this is not a good thing. If Lord Entropy did not prevent them, the Sovereigns of Earth would have rended the Cammora into shreds and scattered them to the four winds long ago. The Darkest Lord does protect them, however, and the bargains Nobles make with them. When teh chips are down, it often comes to one of three choices: use the Cammora, flail against an Excrucian Breakthrough, or sunder the air with law-breaking magics and soon after die.
Reincarnation
The Jeudeo-Christian tradition that the dead move on to Heaven and Hell is in part correct. The corrupt do migrate inevitably to Hell and the spiritually beautiful will move on to Heaven. However, the angels have a bad tendency to turn all but the rarest and most exquisite human souls away from Heaven. Perhaps one in a billion is precious enough that they will be merged into an angel's own soul instead of thrown back to the worlds of the Ash.
Accordingly, most souls reincarnate whether they are animal or human. It is up to the Hollyhock God (the GM) whether intelligent and unintelligent life forms ever reincarnate in the other category.
The World Ash
Yggdrasil is a tree--but what a tree! Its branches hold worlds, dozens upon dozens of them: each suspended at once in an infinity of empty space and the sheltering embrace of the World Ash's branches. The other planets, though they are little like what we know of them, hang near the Earth; farther out are worlds populated by intelligent beings, like and unlike humanity. The whole fo the Ash is cupped inside the Weirding Wall, whose crackling energies define the boundaries of Creation; above it shine the stars.
It is commonly speculated by the more philosophical Nobles that the Ash is maintained by a constant flow of beauty raining down from Heaven and corruption and agony snaking upwards from Hell. Perhaps they are right, for corruption and beauty do much to define the Nobles' world.
The Prosaic Earth and the Mythic World
Or: Earth as normal people perceive vs the world of myths and magic.
The Earth, as the Nobles know it, is a place defined by an essential contradiction. On the one hand, the world is alive with spirits, night comes with the moods of the angel of the sun, and the stars sometimes drift down from its darkness to speak. On the other, there is a huge body of human experimental data showing that all of this is nonsense: that everything in the world follows strict laws, that the humans are barely better than the animals, the animals are utterly unintelligent, the plants are sessile, and nothing else lives.
Nobilis does not hide from this contradiction; the game embraces it. The Earth the Nobles know is divided, with subtle interconnections between the prosaic reality we know and the mythic world in which the Nobles often find themselves. It is but a single step of perception to live in one world or the other, and the Nobilis make this step freely. So do many mortals--the Anchors first among them, but also on occasion the inhabitants of the Chancels. Most humans, however, are not able to accept the contradiction: when presented with irrefutable proof that there is a mythic world, that there are miracles beyond their understanding, they shift. They begin to perceive the mythic reality wholly, and cannot find their way back. This is the dementia animus, and it is a thing the Nobles must guard against greatly--not to protect themselves, but to avoid leaving a trail of destruction and ruined lives behind them. Those in dementia animus can still be affected by the laws and people of the prosaic Earth, but they can no longer relate to them as anything but madmen.
Flowers
To quote the angel Raguel, "Perfection cannot be static, or it is no longer perfection. This is the reason why Heaven brought forth the angels: to serve its beauty and make answer to its only flaw. SInce the first days of Creation, when the angels were the only life save for the Tree, the Celestial Host has dedicated itself to the Unending Labor: changing Heaven with every heartbeat, while maintaining the perfection of the Brightest Realm."
When the angels first began their Great Work, the changes they made in Heaven were rough and without skill. Angelic power splashed on the surface of Heaven and twisted it in sometimes startling ways. The angels needed tools, and the first such tools were flowers. Not the Earthly blooms, with petals and roots, pistils and stamen--these were symbols that carried a weight of different meaning. A boxer's padded glove balances and diffuses the force of his blow; in a manner, flowers diffused the angels' intent over the surface of Heaven.
Events everywhere reflect the events in Heaven, with the possible exception of events in Hell. Soon after the angels began to use their new tool, flowers began to bloom on Earth. Because flowers and their symbolic "glove" are central to Heaven's design, the Nobles of Earth can use them as well. The Noble or their Anchor caries a flower or a handful of flowers with them; they crush the flower as they work a miracle; all traces of the power they used are tainted with it. Nobles (and Imperators) can often see the residue miraculous power leaves behind--but, in this case, that residue shows the flower used and not the Power who used it. Combining floral magic and the use of an Anchor provides a great deal of security even from the laws of Lord Entropy himself. The use of a miracle can only be traced to the Noble if their Anchor is caught "at the scene of the crime" and, even then, only if the Noble does not renounce their Anchor and withdraw their mind.
Imperators
Or: Regi, Ymera, Masha
Imperators are the greatest and the most terrible of the magical beings of the world. The Earth trembles at their touch, and mortal men who seek their true nature inevitably go mad. Angels, both Celestial and Fallen, are Imperators; the Magisters of the Dark, the Light, and the Wild are as well. Imperators are formed from the fundamental stuff of the world. Their existence defines reality. Every love on Earth is a different expression of the inherent spiritual nature of the Imperator of Love. Other beings of great power exist--but if they lack this essential quality, they are not made of the first stuff of creation, they are not Imperators.
The Imperators are bitterly divided, holding to the causes of Hell and Heaven, Light and Dark, and (on occasion) Old Gods against New. Yet necessity has united the bulk of them for many years. Not even Hell, the heartland of suffering, wants to see the Excrucians succeed... for they will destroy all creation.
Nobilis
Or: Sovereign Powers, Powers, Domini, Noble Ones
The Excrucian War (or Valde Bellum) is waged in the spirit world. With Excrucian victories there, the things of this world lose a little bit of magic and of soul. (This effect is opposed not by Excrucian losses, which do not restore the ravaged realm, but by new glories brought forth from Heaven.) The Excrucians would like to destroy the Earth more directly. The Imperators, who prefer not to turn their attention away from the spirit war, have created agents to guard the Earth and their Chancels. Humans caught in the creation of a Chancel and humans who spend years inside a Chancel or its vicinity make the perfect receptacles for a shard of the Imperator's own divine essence.
These humans become the Sovereign Powers. The shard of Imperator-soul they are given burns out a piece of their own soul, and their minds are shackled and made loyal. They are given in return a gift that is sometimes full consolation: power. The typical soul-shard is a prototype for a single aspect of reality, such as night, metal, or agony, and it gives the one-time human control over that t hing. Often these humans receive other great blessings as well. Their normal responsibilities are simple: defend the aspects of reality associated with their Imperator, guard and govern the Chancel and its inhabitants, and (when it does not interfere with the above duties) help in the general defense of the Earth.
Excrucians
Or: The Lost, Anguishers, Beyonders, or the Damned.
More beautiful than the angels are the Excrucians, whose eyes show darkness full of ever-falling stars. It is said that the Creator bargained with them long ago, that he or she might capture a touch of this beauty in the world of Ygg--and then failed to carry out his or her end of the bargain. It is said that this is why the Excrucians on their pale horses seek the destruction of all that there is; why even the Imperators fall at times beneath their razor-edged swords. The Excrucians themselves give a more kindly explanation: that they are from beyond Creation. They will leave it when it dies. When that death comes, all the things they have destroyed will awaken within them, and ride out with them into the void and its tomorrows. The Excrucians are roughly as powerful as the Imperators, but they are almost never able to send more than a fraction of their strength out of the spirit world to Earth... Only a few tiny, lethal shards. The battle rages too fiercely, most often, for more.
Breakthroughs
Or: Rendings
When an Excrucian sword cleaves the veil between Earth and the spirit world and sends a part of itself through, a Rending or a Breakthrough occurs. Breakthroughs are opportunities for both the Excrucians and the Imperators. The Excrucians have little interest in bloodbaths; killing animals or humans does little damage to their immortal spirits. Their work on Earth is instead the destruction of dreams, of peace, and of all the things that give humans hope and joy. This kind of thing takes an effort to destroy, an investment of the Excrucian's essential being in its work. The Noble that balks an Excrucian can usually draw that investment into their own Imperator. It is wise, however, to conceal one's exact identity from an Excrucian one balks. Even if a Noble can rip the throat out of the Excrucian-shard they meet on Earth, its iceberg-like extent into the spirit world may come back to haunt them later.
Because they risk losing power to the Nobilis who oppose them, the Excrucians apply their powers very subtly when they cannot act with overwhelming force.
Chancels
Or: Secret Places, Sanctum, Ward, Guard, or Keep.
Imagine the Earth as a lake, and the Imperators as pebbles. When a pebble drops into the lake, the surface of the lake, once flat and uncomplicated, becomes rippled, convoluted, and shaken. As the effect spreads from the source, it grows weaker. The ritual that makes a Chancel requires a hundred nights and a human death each night of it. Then a piece of the Imperator's self is bound into a piece of land and vice versa. Winding roads lead in and out of these Chancels; straight tracks glide by as if that place had never been. These Chancels were once rare, but in modern times--the past five millenia or so--the Imperators have needed secure places to store their bodies while their spirits wage war against the Excrucians.
Anchors
Or: The Ephemeral, Hooks
A Noble's Anchor is a mortal that can serve as a metaphorical ground or channel through which their power or their mind can flow. Using an Anchor enables a Noble to "hide their hand, to work miracles that can't be traced back to the Power. In the worst case, if an Anchor is caught in an act that could get the Noble killed, the Noble can break off the connection between the two. This usually destroys the one-time Anchor's mind, giving even greater security. A Noble can have many Anchors, but there must be a connection between the Anchor and the Power's mortal self. Specifically, a Noble must love or hate their Anchors in order to use them at all.
The Council of Four
Lord Entropy
Or: The Darkest Lord, the Bloody Imperator
The Imperator Lord Entropy heads the Council of Four, who have chosen (or have been chosen; it is unclear) to rule the Earth instead of participating int he war. His power trickles down into the mortal governments in subtle ways. With the Powers, he and the Council have been more direct. He has set down harsh laws for the Nobilis to follow, and these laws are often stumbling blocks as they are useful. He is called the Darkest Lord by those of the Nobilis, at least in part because of the following decree:
THE WINDFLOWER LAW: Thou shalt not love.
It is not a law whose violations are easily discovered; Lord Entropy has no power to peer into the heart. Even if he could, he is often merciful, often even forgiving. Yet no Noble that loves dares to speak of it, and for causing this the Nobles both hate and despise Lord Entropy.
Ananda
Or: Lord of Expectations, the Emperor to Come
The Imperator Ananda rules Murder, the Infinite, and (some say) the Fourth Age that is to come. His glory is terrible: humans and Nobles weak in spirit dare not face him, lest his countenance drive them mad with joy. Where he walks, the world sings, grass and trees becoming crystal instruments, birds pouring out symphony after symphony until their hearts burst from the strain, and even concrete buildings clamoring out hard-edged refrains. He sits on Lord Entropy's Council, but his voice there has been silenced--he sees some unacceptable horror to come if he should cast his vote against the Darkest Lord's. In other respects, he is a creature of conscience, and, through the dregs of power that remain to him, the greatest hope of virtue on the Council of Four. Some Nobles idealize Ananda as the symbol that the world has not gone so far astray. Others point to him as the living proof of the poverty of Heaven's philosophy--a creature of endless beauty, whose beauty kills; a creature of justice, whose justice has fallen under the Darkest Lord's thumb; and a creature of might, rendered impotent by fate.
Cammorae
In 1342, Lord Entropy created the Cammora as the mortal arm of his rule. From teh rules of the human Earth (both on and behidn visible thrones), he built an organization of those who were willing to serve him. He gave them two gifts: his protection, and the protection of those who dealt with them.
That is, Lord Entropy's law decrees that a Noble may aid a Cammoran withotu fear of retribution--that any Noble who can pay the Cammora's price may do so without fear.
The Cammorae style themselves "the mortal servants of the Powers." Yet they are not humble: they bargain hard with Sovereigns for every mission they undertake. They know that even know, carrying with them over six hundred years of miraculous payments, they are no match for a Noble--but they also know that Nobles are bound by laws which do not apply to them. Nobles must be circumspect; teh Cammora gleefully uses every magic and every scrap of political power it possesses. Cammorae are skilled in ciminal acts and political persuasions, with their fingers in many governments and crime rings int he mortal world. For this reason, even the mightiest Nobles come to them for aid..but the Cammora is a terribly, terribly corrupt organization. Its members mirthfully use excessive force and terror tactics in pursuit of their goals, both personal and professional. From the point of view of many Nobles, this is not a good thing. If Lord Entropy did not prevent them, the Sovereigns of Earth would have rended the Cammora into shreds and scattered them to the four winds long ago. The Darkest Lord does protect them, however, and the bargains Nobles make with them. When teh chips are down, it often comes to one of three choices: use the Cammora, flail against an Excrucian Breakthrough, or sunder the air with law-breaking magics and soon after die.
Reincarnation
The Jeudeo-Christian tradition that the dead move on to Heaven and Hell is in part correct. The corrupt do migrate inevitably to Hell and the spiritually beautiful will move on to Heaven. However, the angels have a bad tendency to turn all but the rarest and most exquisite human souls away from Heaven. Perhaps one in a billion is precious enough that they will be merged into an angel's own soul instead of thrown back to the worlds of the Ash.
Accordingly, most souls reincarnate whether they are animal or human. It is up to the Hollyhock God (the GM) whether intelligent and unintelligent life forms ever reincarnate in the other category.
The World Ash
Yggdrasil is a tree--but what a tree! Its branches hold worlds, dozens upon dozens of them: each suspended at once in an infinity of empty space and the sheltering embrace of the World Ash's branches. The other planets, though they are little like what we know of them, hang near the Earth; farther out are worlds populated by intelligent beings, like and unlike humanity. The whole fo the Ash is cupped inside the Weirding Wall, whose crackling energies define the boundaries of Creation; above it shine the stars.
It is commonly speculated by the more philosophical Nobles that the Ash is maintained by a constant flow of beauty raining down from Heaven and corruption and agony snaking upwards from Hell. Perhaps they are right, for corruption and beauty do much to define the Nobles' world.
The Prosaic Earth and the Mythic World
Or: Earth as normal people perceive vs the world of myths and magic.
The Earth, as the Nobles know it, is a place defined by an essential contradiction. On the one hand, the world is alive with spirits, night comes with the moods of the angel of the sun, and the stars sometimes drift down from its darkness to speak. On the other, there is a huge body of human experimental data showing that all of this is nonsense: that everything in the world follows strict laws, that the humans are barely better than the animals, the animals are utterly unintelligent, the plants are sessile, and nothing else lives.
Nobilis does not hide from this contradiction; the game embraces it. The Earth the Nobles know is divided, with subtle interconnections between the prosaic reality we know and the mythic world in which the Nobles often find themselves. It is but a single step of perception to live in one world or the other, and the Nobilis make this step freely. So do many mortals--the Anchors first among them, but also on occasion the inhabitants of the Chancels. Most humans, however, are not able to accept the contradiction: when presented with irrefutable proof that there is a mythic world, that there are miracles beyond their understanding, they shift. They begin to perceive the mythic reality wholly, and cannot find their way back. This is the dementia animus, and it is a thing the Nobles must guard against greatly--not to protect themselves, but to avoid leaving a trail of destruction and ruined lives behind them. Those in dementia animus can still be affected by the laws and people of the prosaic Earth, but they can no longer relate to them as anything but madmen.
Flowers
To quote the angel Raguel, "Perfection cannot be static, or it is no longer perfection. This is the reason why Heaven brought forth the angels: to serve its beauty and make answer to its only flaw. SInce the first days of Creation, when the angels were the only life save for the Tree, the Celestial Host has dedicated itself to the Unending Labor: changing Heaven with every heartbeat, while maintaining the perfection of the Brightest Realm."
When the angels first began their Great Work, the changes they made in Heaven were rough and without skill. Angelic power splashed on the surface of Heaven and twisted it in sometimes startling ways. The angels needed tools, and the first such tools were flowers. Not the Earthly blooms, with petals and roots, pistils and stamen--these were symbols that carried a weight of different meaning. A boxer's padded glove balances and diffuses the force of his blow; in a manner, flowers diffused the angels' intent over the surface of Heaven.
Events everywhere reflect the events in Heaven, with the possible exception of events in Hell. Soon after the angels began to use their new tool, flowers began to bloom on Earth. Because flowers and their symbolic "glove" are central to Heaven's design, the Nobles of Earth can use them as well. The Noble or their Anchor caries a flower or a handful of flowers with them; they crush the flower as they work a miracle; all traces of the power they used are tainted with it. Nobles (and Imperators) can often see the residue miraculous power leaves behind--but, in this case, that residue shows the flower used and not the Power who used it. Combining floral magic and the use of an Anchor provides a great deal of security even from the laws of Lord Entropy himself. The use of a miracle can only be traced to the Noble if their Anchor is caught "at the scene of the crime" and, even then, only if the Noble does not renounce their Anchor and withdraw their mind.