I was just wondering if spirits can be commanded to turn against a former master. For example: Sister Susan summons a spirit to assist her in breaking into an unnamed corp facility. While there, they are opposed by a wage mage who takes control of the spirit away from SS. Now my question is, can the spirit be commanded to take it's current master to the doss of it's former master? I know that if you have a habit of abusing spirits that they (collectively?) remember that, and also that spirit evidence is not accepted in most courts. But does an individual spirit have an individual memory?

I'd think so, given their mental stats.

Some of the fluff would indicate that yes they do. As long as the spirit is not banished and the opposing magicain has the services to do it, its possible. I would make it difficult for the spirit however if it has only been summoned to the hide out and then the corp facility and so does not know the intervening terrain in the meat world.

There's nothing canon on it, however...

There are individual elementals who may or may not remember details of their previous master. They will likely remember where they were conjured up, which is pretty major. You can get a specific elemental by either taking control of it, or by heading to the elementals home metaplane and grabbing it from there. Of course, elementals also do have their own agendas, so if you piss one off by draining it to supercharge spells, by banishing it then controlling it, etc. it WILL voluntarily try to screw you back, possibly by giving away information if your orders don't specifically keep it from doing so. It's not a robot, it feels pain and it is very intelligent.

Nature spirits I give a lot more initiative. Nature spirits are their own people, as it were. Not only may nature spirits go off and tell information to your enemies if they don't like you, they may directly ignore orders (but the caster knows that) if the order is contrary to the spirit's nature. You can't conjure up a spirit of the forest and tell it to burn down its forest, it won't do that. Of course, if you're in an enemy facility and you conjure up the local nature spirit, there probably isn't a whole lot it will willingly give you because you are intruding in its home to make trouble for those under its protection.

Not canon (although based off the flavor text), but my players know what to expect and abide by those rules. On the flip side, they know the reverse is true. A nature spirit or elemental who does really like them will perform above and beyond the bare minimum, will think more to make orders successful and invest itself more in helping the caster succeed, sometimes even giving free services.

I run things very similarly to nezumi, including the nature spirit / elemental difference. I once had a Beast spirit that was ordered to dispatch some guards decide it was enjoying the bloodfest so much that it stuck around and continued to run amok through the facility. I considered such bonuses the flip side of negative actions such as being surly or using Edge to resist summoning or binding rolls if the magician has particularly abused the spirit.

The only things I'd add are that firstly, I increase the amount of personality according to the Force of the spirit. If you summon a Force 1 Fire Sprite, it wont add much. If you summon a Force 7 Air Elemental, it will appear as a classic Arabian Nights creature of smoke and fire and probably have its own ideas about how to carry out its services. The second thing I'd add is that in regards to spirits seeking revenge on their summoners, I'd normally rule it unlikely for normal spirits, once dispatched to their home plane. Making the "metaplanar" trip to our world is probably a big deal. But Free Spirits are a very different prospect. Bind one of these and you are asking for trouble.

My question is.. Why would you need to capture a mage's former spirit in order to do that? Considering most spirits have the "Search" power, so long as the summoning mage has a mental image of the mage in question, he can have that spirit seek him out straight through astral space, whether it's ever been to the mages safehouse physically or not.

Well, what I was meaning was whether they would remember where they were summoned at/places they've seen. Which would be a lot quicker and easier than trying to search from scratch. And whether they could be forced to reveal that info to a new master.

The advantage of controlling a spirit is that you control it. If you tell it to give you information, it pretty much has to. I might give the Spirit bonus dice to resisting the command or something if it's original owner was *really* good to it, due to some fostered sense of loyalty. In the end though, if the mage's will is strong enough, the spirit will bend and do his "Yes master" routine. If that means leading him right back to where he was summoned, so be it. A spirit's memories and skills won't just reset under a new master, so yeah, anything the spirit knows, the mage can use, for good or ill.