Are there entire families that are considered Nobirian, or is being a Nobirian essentially a recessive trait that pops up every now and then with the Nobirian's children most likely being a human most likely to die before his Nobirian parent does? (In the latter case I can see a Nobirian parent researching necromancy not so much to turn themselves undead, but to "help" their offspring so that they won't die before the parent does.)
Ooh, now you've made me curious. There's a handful of rules in ACKS that imply inheritance of traits (such as the eleven bloodline proficiency and the fact that no dwarf with a class can have less than 9 constitution), but no actual rules for (for example) determining the stats of offspring.
If being a nobirian is something that is automatically inherited that would imply that a distinct nobirian upper class would develop. There would also arise the question of what offspring is produced when a nobirian and normal human mate. In such a circumstance I'd go with the offspring being a normal human rather than try to figure out what a "half nobirian" would be rule wise. A nobirian upper class would likely become quite inbred after a while.On the other hand, if being a nobirian is a recessive trait that comes up only occasionally within a family line imagine the distress and enemity that would likely result if only one of many siblings in a family were born a nobirian.
wmarshall, these lines of thinking are how I came up with the idea of the main realm of my campaign being full of half-elven nobility. They want to rule humans, so they have to be at least somewhat human, but being part elven extends their lifespan to some degree, allowing them to consolidate power.
As for nobirans... they're supposed to be half angel so... maybe it's a hercules/jesus/starlord type thing where every nobiran is the product of an angel taking a human paramour, and then anything less than that is virtually indistinguishable from human. Speaking of being indistinguishable from human, while in my campaign I made them more like the Deva from 4th edition (ie blue skinned), the art from the player's companion and the HFH seem to imply they would normally look just like humans. That could certainly solve most of the problems of jealousy and/or an emerging upperclass, it may be that nobirans are indistinguishable from regular humans. Just look at Daenarys vs. Viserys and the whole "Fire cannot kill dragons" thing.