Hi all,
Long time lurker, finally decided to post.
So I'm going to being running a SR4 game soon and would like to make use of Insect Shamen and Insect Spirits, specifically Wasp spirits. Primarily because I always thought the concept was cool, but also because one of my friends playing is really freaked out by Wasps, Hornets, Yellow Jackets and the like. I wanted to make use of Insects to add some really creepy scary elements to the game.
My problem is, I got nothing...
No real ideas on how to bring this into my game, any suggestions/ideas?

The usual way to bring this up would be to hire the team for searching a missing person who happens to have been abducted by the hive and is about to become a host.

Alternatively, they could be send on an industrial espionage mission to find out about the manufacturing process of a new and mysterious type of...cellulose product (gah, i wish i could come up with something less retarded) or whatever, eventually discovering it is made by wasp worker spirits.

Or -my favourite- have a wasp shaman set up shop in the neighbourhood the mentioned player's character lives in.

And yes, insect spirits make for a great monster of the week, even though i prefer locusts ("damn, they fuckin' ATE our getaway car!").

They can also be recruited by a wasp shaman to help him fullfill his plans. Of course he probably won't tell them what he exactly wants to do, except if he just want to get rid of the wasp spirit that's manipulating him, trying to get him to serve and summon her.

I think that the role of the metahuman shaman in the whole insect plot is too often forgotten. There's a lot to do with him before the actual summoning of the queen.

"I need you to steal this truck."

*They get the truck*

"Um... It's full of newspaper." "WHAT?" "Unprinted newspaper, still on the rolls."

If it was me, I'd create a magician of insect-following variety, and then figure out what he would want to do. Then I'd figure out at what point along that plan the PCs would get involved.

Its kind of dorky, but...

Send the runners on a job in a very ritzy neighborhood, preferably a gated community or corp enclave. Everything in this neighborhood is immaculate - perfect lawns, perfect homes, beautiful people, obedient children. Oddly, no pets though. Everyone has a routine and everyone does their routine the same way every day. Assuming they case the target, everyone who meets the runners stops what they're doing and stares at them, making them uncomfortable. All in all, its pretty weird, but not freak-out weird.

Its only when they try to pull the job that the the "oh shit!" factor kicks in. They encounter a butler or maid or some such that didn't have a perfect merge, making him/her into a grotesque human-insect hybrid, and a wicked nasty fighter. As teh runners leave, they discover the getaway car is trashed, ripped apart by something. And then all hell breaks loose as the rest of the drones start hunting them.

Secretly, the entire neighborhood has been taken over by a magician with an insect mentor, something hive-like such as bee, wasp, or ant. Something that craves order and control...

Of course, this works best if you don't have a full magician in the group. If you do, a "random" attack by an insect spirit as he tries to astral project might be enough to make him keep his head down.

-paws

That is awesome.

And the twist at the end could be that it's actually a corporate research and development gig, investigating the possibility of certain hive minded insect spirits being effective corporate drones.

I hadn't thought it through that far, but yeah, that works.

-paws

I once GM'd a run where the team was hired by a charismatic cult leader to break into a hospital and get back one of their members, who was 'kidnapped' back into normal society by her parents. They later found out that the cult leader was a wasp shaman, who planned to use the girl as a host for his queen. I liked this idea because it forces the runners to make some uncomfortable moral choices during the campaign.

We did a run where the school from Ivy and Chrome had been taken over by the any shaman who escaped from Queen Euphoria since there were some devleoped contacts at the school it was creepy as hell to realize they had changed. All those big paper mache ornaments for the prom in in the gym. brrrrr- soooo not good.

The hive itself can be kind of a weird structure - as it will and won't resemble a Wasp hive. Obviously, the hive would be centrally located and would be a structure of importance to the (former) residents of whatever area the Shaman set up shop.

I hate to say read "Queen Euphoria" if you can find it, but there are some good hooks in that... and that is the book that started the invae-sion.

Oooooo...good stuff. I really like the gated community corp research front. I think I'll be using that one.
Thanks guys.
Anyone use them in one of your own games? If so, got any good stories?

"The New Sitcom from American Pride Networks is Those Crazy Insect Shamen! Watch in humour as they attempt to summon their queen every week and have it fail in some hilarious way, and an important lession is learned! Those Crazy Insect Shamen, Wednesday's at 1900 hours on American Pride Networks!"

Second best SR module ever put out by FASA, Universal Brotherhood, is all about bugs. AND it's available for only $10 as a download.
Bug City is also still available as a download.

I was thinking about it, and I don't think I've ever used anything insect-like in my games. Toxics, yeah. Blood mages, yeah. Twisted, yeah, when I get around to it. No bugs though... I'm definitely going to have to fix that.

And who can forget their wacky neighbor, a loud-mouthed couch potato from the Jersey Shore, Stan the Toxic Shaman! Always coming up with crazy schemes!

And the Blood Mage that runs the Stuffer Shack!

Murray, the lovable twisted adept who lives downstairs in their basement... and likes to cut things.

Ever seen the BBC show with Simon Pegg in it called "Spaced"?
The description reminds me of their downstairs neighbor...Brian I think...morbid weird artist.

I still need to catch that one zombie episode that I heard they did which inspired them to later on make 'Shaun of the Dead'.

Another twist instead of a gated community is have it in a large ritzy apartment building with a doorman and everything. A running gunfight down the stairs, to the elevator, into the air ducts, before fleeing from the ducts and into the trash chute that leads them into the basement, only to find their car has been trashed in the garage and wait, the building is on total lockdown...
So it's like Die Hard in a way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Queen Euphoria?

EDIT: Apparently I missed the two previous references to the same. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Make it one of the ultra-deluxe super-high rises that's almost completely self-contained. It'd have its own restaurants, shopping, swimming pools, gyms, trid or AR theater (for that retro feel), laundry service, and so on. Kind of like an Arcology-lite.

There'd need to be a delivery of perishables every week or so, but that's about all that would need to come in and out.

Letthe PCs make their way to the 50th floor or so before the shit hits the fan.

After Universal Brotherhood, the whole religious cult thing isn't going to work very well. The authorities are too suspicious. Any new religious movement that produces massive personality changes in its followers, or simply sequesters them, is going to fall under scrutiny. And by 'scrutiny', I mean flamethrowers.

But since the religion game is bust they still have politics, economics, and just plain kidnapping people as avenues of attack.

Some mantids have ties to the Empowerment Coalition, various hives of various species are working with Ares, and then there are the dark corners of the barrens when no one dares to go except new initiates into the Spiders who are looking to make their bones by taking down a Bug.

Heh, there are some floors in apartment buildings that are supposed to be more secure than the rest of the building where you pay extra money and only your keycard gives access to your floor on the elevator. That would be the excellent place to start the first spread of the infestation. The rest of the building will be oblivious of what's going on at first.

Better yet, the runners come out from one of the secure zones of the building into the shopping center area, all bloody and weapons drawn and cause a panic with the general public, but make the runners all the more paranoid. Maybe like a scene from Big Trouble in Little China, they brave the horrors and then they get out and it's all... normal, like nothing happened.