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hyzmarca
post Feb 10 2008, 06:59 AM
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I find that bug hunts can quickly lose their flavor. In the old days there were huge absurdly scary things like the Church of Scientology Universal Brotherhood and the Chicago containment zone. The latter, if use well, could give the players a sense of the true of horror that could only be experienced by someone who lives in the movie Aliens (a feat that could only otherwise be accomplished by the misuse of the Magical Ticket from Last Action Hero) while the former exposes the players to the true horror of being a Scientologist.

But once you've killed one bug you've killed them all, in a way. Familiarity breeds contempt. As the bugs have been expanded on and expounded upon they've lost some of their je nous se qua. They're no longer just scary alien things. They have motives. They can be reasoned with. They're really just like any other person (if that other person happens to be a inhabitation spirit).

But real life spirits can give us some inspiration about what true alien horror is. So I offer the following link.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5-mos...s-in-world.html

There is really nothing that I can add to that because, damn, it says it all. I especially like the picture of a Japanese hornet, outnumbered one-thousand-to-one, ending up knee-deep in one thousand dismembered corpses after three hours of non-stop killing.
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jago668
post Feb 10 2008, 07:26 AM
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Well the good thing about the japanese hornet, they are big enough to see and shoot with shotguns. Also I don't think anyone would really blame you for using a shotgun on them either.
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martindv
post Feb 10 2008, 10:36 AM
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Well, thank you. Now I'm going to have nightmares forever.

The image of the giant bug in Target: UCAS hunting down and, with several others, tearing into a bee insect spirit colony is just wack. That'd be the kind of melee that kills cities.
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Blade
post Feb 10 2008, 11:56 AM
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It's je ne sais quoi.

Makes you wonder why they use giant magical bugs instead of real ones... They're about as scary.
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FrankTrollman
post Feb 10 2008, 12:31 PM
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QUOTE
But once you've killed one bug you've killed them all, in a way. Familiarity breeds contempt. As the bugs have been expanded on and expounded upon they've lost some of their je ne sais quoi. They're no longer just scary alien things. They have motives. They can be reasoned with. They're really just like any other person (if that other person happens to be a inhabitation spirit).


I would actually argue that having the bugs change and get motivations and allies was the only way to keep them from getting boring. For implacable alien hordes you've got the horrors and the shedim, and neither one is really that interesting. For brutal combat with insectile monsters you really can do just as well with a Wyrd Mantis as with a Hybrid Beetle.

Making them into something which was a genuine faction which could potentially hire the runners and compete with other groups who were situationally in the wrong makes them different adventure to adventure. And that's the only way to have them show up in more than one adventure without getting old.

-Frank
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Lionhearted
post Feb 10 2008, 12:37 PM
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Take one dose of starship troopers, add in some of the final fantasy movie (not advent children), round up with some alien quadrilogy, and you got bug spirits
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nezumi
post Feb 10 2008, 12:53 PM
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After working a summer in a bug lab (studying parasitoids as insecticides), I got quite my share of good bug-related stories (as a note, since predominately we were studying lepidoptera, it was in fact a bug lab, although not a true bug lab, ho ho!)

Insects do some strange things. I noticed that when a wasp laid its eggs in the caterpillar, the caterpillar continued about its life normally until one day it went up to the top of its petri dish and just hung out there. Then you could see these little white lines through its skin, which would press out one after another. You'd generally get about one or two dozen of these tiny, yellow works that would literally eat their way through the caterpillar and make a nest on the outside. Since the caterpillar was perforated, it lost hydrostatic pressure and died, but the little larvae made fuzzy stuff, sort of like a furry cocoon, and pupated inside that, all two dozen snuggled together. It was sort of cute. Seeing the wasp that lands on a cockroach, inserts its ovipositor inside of it and uses that to 'drive' the roach to its nest, and the one around here that paralyzes the cicada, brings it to the wasp den and leaves the cicada alive, aware, but unable to move while the larvae eat their way through it makes me think that overall the period between hatching and pupating (i.e. - while the larvae are within the host and still eating) may result in some interesting behaviors on the part of the host.
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jago668
post Feb 10 2008, 01:03 PM
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I don't know about all, but some (most?) of the dirt dobbers around here put spiders in their "nests".
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Snow_Fox
post Feb 10 2008, 03:59 PM
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A head on bug nest gets pretty common place after the first few. the real fun with bugs after that is surprise- Finding out the people who hired you are bugs, the fact bugs can take over someone, effectively changing the rules.

A few years ago We did a run on a corp facility in Kansas that was supposed to be a high tech research plant. We were told were file to grab. We didn't know what was on it, didn't need to know. A file's a file. We did our research on the place, guards, sec etc. went in. The place was developing 'tame' bugs for a corp but no one told the bugs and they'd turned it into their hive. it was a surprise to walk into and the get away, in Kansas, nice open plains left us feel very vulnerable even after fighting clear.

another example was the ant shaman from Queen Euphoria escaped and a year (RL) later had reformed his nest at the school used in Ivy and Chrome. It was a setting we thought we knew well and had used some of the people there as contacts before and then it was gone and changed. Controlled by someone who wanted revenge on us and we walked into it.
"It's Vi,There's a problem. Can you meet me behind tyhe gym tonight after 'lights out'?"
We were not expecting trouble, I mean what a 17 year old at a private school calls 'trouble' and a group of experience runners calls 'trouble' are going to be different. and so had just normal side arms and street armor to take on an ant nest.
going back to clear them out, now properly outfitted for it we realize not all the kids have been taken over so if that 14 year old girl in front of you a scared child in need of rescuing or the hidden bug spirit who's about to rip your freaking head off?
Oh and add on the mind games played by mantids, the guys in our group could be SOOOO stupid, and these things are still the source of nightmares.
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DocTaotsu
post Feb 10 2008, 06:17 PM
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Oh my god... and I thought the bugs in Okinawa were inappropriately large.

Forget bug spirits, I'm sicking an awakened hive of those things on my players.

My favorite bug story involves a parasite that infects slugs and does two things, well three really.

1. Takes over the slugs nervous system
2. Forces it to climb the highest blade of grass/structure
3. Climbs INTO the slugs er... eye stalks? And causes the the eye stalks to pulse up in down in a rythmic fashion (the stalks become brightly discolored and it rather looks like the slug is trying to attend a rave or some sort.)

The reason the parasite does this is so the slug will attract the attention of a passing bird, allowing the parasite to be eaten by said bird and allowing it to continue it's life cycle.

I've always wanted to spring some variation of that on my players... Hm....
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Lionhearted
post Feb 10 2008, 06:39 PM
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Cool! a mindcontrolling suicidal Ravasite
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Critias
post Feb 10 2008, 06:49 PM
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I swear, sometimes I feel like all it would take to lose the planet to those weird little bastards -- and by this I mean in real life, "normal" insects -- would be for them get just a little bit bigger on average. They've got numbers, strength-for-mass, resiliency-for-mass, speed-for-mass, they can bite and sting and spit venom, they've got more limbs than us man-for-man, they've got everything else going for them. The only thing keeping us alive against them is that we're just fucking bigger than them.

Nevermind Starship Troopers. They don't need to be twenty feet across or anything to totally own us. Imagine if your average ant was, I don't know, just six inches in length. They'd run this joint in no time.
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nezumi
post Feb 10 2008, 07:59 PM
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QUOTE (DocTaotsu @ Feb 10 2008, 01:17 PM) *
The reason the parasite does this is so the slug will attract the attention of a passing bird, allowing the parasite to be eaten by said bird and allowing it to continue it's life cycle.

I've always wanted to spring some variation of that on my players... Hm....


Very neat!

Huh... What eats shadowrunners?
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Lionhearted
post Feb 10 2008, 08:06 PM
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QUOTE (nezumi @ Feb 10 2008, 03:59 PM) *
Very neat!

Huh... What eats shadowrunners?


Double-crossing johnsons
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bibliophile20
post Feb 10 2008, 09:14 PM
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QUOTE (Critias @ Feb 10 2008, 01:49 PM) *
I swear, sometimes I feel like all it would take to lose the planet to those weird little bastards -- and by this I mean in real life, "normal" insects -- would be for them get just a little bit bigger on average. They've got numbers, strength-for-mass, resiliency-for-mass, speed-for-mass, they can bite and sting and spit venom, they've got more limbs than us man-for-man, they've got everything else going for them. The only thing keeping us alive against them is that we're just fucking bigger than them.

Nevermind Starship Troopers. They don't need to be twenty feet across or anything to totally own us. Imagine if your average ant was, I don't know, just six inches in length. They'd run this joint in no time.

Hehehe... Insects did rule the planet once upon a time, said time being known as the Carboniferous. See, the problem that keeps most bugs from getting big is air, quite simply. Bugs doesn't have lungs, in the classic sense; what they have are holes in their exoskeletons that deliver air directly to the muscles (a bit of a simplification, but not an excessive one); in short they have a passive oxygen delivery system as opposed to the active one we have. So, at current oxygen levels in the atmosphere, they literally cannot get any bigger without suffocating.

Now, flash back to the Carboniferous. We had large, wet marshes and jungles, that kept on burying massive amounts of carbon (which we now dig up as coal and oil), and the oxygen that that carbon used to be associated with just ended up in the atmosphere. How much oxygen? 35%, as compared to today's 21%. Bugs got big. How big? 3 meter long centipedes. Carnivorous dragonflies with wingspans of 70 cm.

Fun part is though, once the oxygen levels dropped, all of the big bugs went extinct. And then the vertebrates got to rule the planet, first the amphibians, then the reptiles and now the mammals.

Of course, once you toss the Awakening into the mix, all of that goes out the window; An Awakened bee hive? That's a scary thought or, worse, an Awakened giant spider...
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Kyoto Kid
post Feb 10 2008, 09:49 PM
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QUOTE (Critias @ Feb 10 2008, 10:49 AM) *
Nevermind Starship Troopers. They don't need to be twenty feet across or anything to totally own us. Imagine if your average ant was, I don't know, just six inches in length. They'd run this joint in no time.

...And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords...
--Kent Brockman: Springfield Channel Six

[I know, not terribly original but it does fit]
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Blade
post Feb 10 2008, 10:25 PM
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Yeah! We're safe, thanks to Science!

As for the parasites changing the behavior of whoever eat them, that's exactly what symbionts in SR4 are based on.
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Snow_Fox
post Feb 10 2008, 10:32 PM
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I got a can of raid here and I'm not afraid to use it!
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martindv
post Feb 10 2008, 11:09 PM
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After a certain point, I don't think they would be hesitant to use it either... on you.

Stuff's nasty.
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kanislatrans
post Feb 11 2008, 12:00 AM
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Watched the wasp vid . try listening to Blue oyster cult "Don't fear the Reaper" while your watching it. Vicious fraggers.
I hate bugs ! Every time we have run into them in game, I have flashbacks of an incident in RL. I was working in a dunkin donut shop and the guy came to spray for roaches. He opened up the grease trap ( a 12 inch tunnel in the floor) and started spraying . The roaches just boiled out in a wave. I was on the counter screaming like a little girl. there must have been millions of the damn things down there.
So in Game I tend to panic at the first sight of bug spirits. I always get a picture of the donut shop incident in my head with 3 or 4 foot long roaches.
Example: my character,Evan" Hugh" Jorgan,( Tantric mage) sees bugs boil out of a hole "FRAG,FRAG,FRAG!!. Eat this you bastards!!!!!!!!!"he screams like a little girl..(over cast manaball at force12, taking out quite a few bugs and several party members before the drain starts popping blood vessels in his eyes and lungs. he then continues to cast until he explodes) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I tend to be one of the voices of reason in our games , just not with bugs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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kanislatrans
post Feb 11 2008, 12:00 AM
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double post , my bad

or maybe it was a bug (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
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Lionhearted
post Feb 11 2008, 12:11 AM
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They're just bugs, or wet stains on your news paper (or some cases, core rulebook)
generally i only kill insects when they're bugging me (Pun intended), seriously, what can be more fun than torturing spiders through suffocation and burning them alive .true story, had this nasty big spider crawling around the floor once.. well, that's another story
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martindv
post Feb 11 2008, 01:49 AM
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I don't understand why people kill spiders. Then again, I was raised to believe that killing them is bad luck. And their utility outweighs their ickiness. Dealing with dangerous ones does become a pain though. Pun intended.

As for roaches I don't think I'll ever look at a Dunkin Donuts the same way again. Though it's not like I needed any more reasons to not go there.
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MaxHunter
post Feb 11 2008, 02:24 AM
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RL: I was a kid reading a comic book at my grandma's house, it was summer... then I heard a buzz. A whole colony of wasps was moving house and they decided to fly past me, including something like a big bloated inch long wasp. Beautiful, and very, very scary. I felt really tiny and fragile and to me the flight of the wasps took forever. I have deep respect for bugs.

RPG:
[ Spoiler ]


Yep, bugs are scary.

Cheers,

Max
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Whipstitch
post Feb 11 2008, 02:48 AM
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One thing to keep in mind about the Hornets vs. honey bees was that those were European honeybees, and those poor li'l guys haven't ever had the time or need to evolve a defense against those monstrosities. Japanese honey bees on the other hand, are devilish bastards, and will actually mob the first hornet scout en masse, covering them with their bulk and contracting all the muscles in their lil' bodies, raising the temperature of the mob and the hornet to over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which the hornet cannot survive. Basically, they mosh the fucker to death. If the Hornet has time to drop enough pheromones to get reinforcements, that's one thing, but the general rule still holds: don't piss off honey bees.
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