So, one of my characters last night attempted something awesome and terrifying: he created an Inhabitation Ally Spirit formula based on the Name of a recently deceased runner mage named Melody and Quested for that Name deep within the Metaplanes of Man.

Well, not precisely a deceased runner. In fact, this was a female Mantis spirit that had been masquerading under everyone's nose for the past 6 months by wearing a brand new Edgar (er, Melody) suit.

So, our shaman and another mage corner Melody, perform a high-powered Banishing ritual on the bug spirit, and then immediately used her now-empty body as a ritual link to begin a deep Quest into the Metaplane of Man for her original spirit, spending sufficient Karma to bring back an Ally Spirit with abilities roughly equivalent to the old Melody.

They have no idea if it worked. Actually, I have no idea if it worked. And it's kind of irrelevant whether it worked or not. They definitely did one of three things, though:

1. Summoned Melody's original soul back into her body, reconnected it slightly "weirdly", and permanently bound it to our Shaman as an Ally Spirit
2. Summoned someone else's original soul back into her body, reconnected it slightly "weirdly", and permanently bound it to our Shaman as an Ally Spirit
3. Summoned a "plain" Ally Spirit from the Metaplane of Man, using Melody's body as the Inhabitation target.

The cool and terrifying part of all this, is that there is no way to tell which of these three things happened. In all three cases, the new Melody has every single one of Melody's old memories and personality quirks, has a few new "perks" as a result of being pulled through from the Great Beyond (including Immunity to Age and Immunity to Normal Weapons), and is supernaturally loyal to our Shaman.

I just had to share.

I know you are big on thinking of spirits of man as ghosts. If that works at your table have fun. If you want answers that have anything to do with cannon though option 3 is the only option.

Personally I think any thing that erodes the finality of death is a bad thing for SR and wreaks of cancer.

Oh, something will inhabit the body... And it might be much, much worse than a simple Insect Spirit...

Horrors beyond metahuman ken lie beyond the pale, and it is not meant for souls to return to the land of the living when they have tasted their eternal reward...

Right, official stuff, mainly penned by Nigel Findley, all said when the bug moves in the human is gone beyond redemption. In his novel House of the Sun getting his sister back was the price he required for working with the bugs and they agreed but in the end, they told him it couldn't be done.

I like the idea that he, the mage, worked it out in so much detail, but the bottom line, as canray said, is you'renot sure what comes to play, even though it says it's melody. Think of it this way, you leave a 'meet me' note at the bar, but you don't know for sure who's going to see it and show up.

Once, before i was married, I was waiting at a bar for a friend when a guy came up and asked if I was "Molly"
'No'
"Would you like to be?" He was meeting a blind date and at risk of being stood up . If I'd wanted to lie I could have said 'Sure" and probably had a nice date. But i wouldn't be Molly.

Do you think it is beyond the realms of possibility that the Bugs lied?

Certainly possible that the bugs lied. But, from the way everything else works in Shadowrun, it's probably the truth.

After all, it's often the harshest thing to give.

No, but it further supported what he wrote as narrator in Missing Blood.

Which is still fluff (which may be true or not true, in a similar manner to all other fluff and shadowtalk in Shadowrun), and not actual hard-and-fast rules on the subject.

Yeah, but this is Shadowrun. Dead is dead. Try to break that, and you're lucky if you only end up dealing with something similar to "Full Metal Alchimist".

Why do i see a maniacal child with a scalpel?

"Even if the right soul came back, the trauma of returning tends to fracture the personality that is dragged back. Which is why when we reincarnate the past persona is wiped clean and only trace memories are carried into the new life. The "Unbeing" that occurs at death is quite terrifying to some poor souls." - Morvain Calweather, 13th grade initiate in the Golden Dawn Tradition, at a speaking engagement at MITandT.

I say allow a dead spirit to come back. It's not like D&D where it's just a simple spell and *BLAMO* the person is back from the dead. If the runners went through a whole lot of drek then they should be rewarded.

WRONG, Missing Blood P.37 :

"If the shadowrunners wipe out the bugs and open the sacks, they will find one man and two women, one of them obviously Victoria, all in different stages of metamorphosis...She does not react to the characters and seems almost dead. There is nothing the characters can do for her. Let them try magic and what-not, making all the rolls and so on, but she is as good as dead."

This is not the shadow talk fluff. This is the module as written by Findley and approved by FASA, who held the rights then.

One important question here isn't being asked. Was it possible to Journey to Life a Invae host back into existence?
If yes, then the technique is plausible, though highly unlikely due to the fact that the Grim Reaper is apparently free to do its job again. If no, then it ain't plausible at all.


The actual dispensation of Melody is a question for philosophers to answer, not a GM. It should be vague, mysterious, and questionable. Doubts should linger.

I agree with hyz and I agree with the OP. Nobody really knows is always in canon.

You don't need to treat me like I am stupid.

That's not really what I would call writing as a 'narrator', a word I associate more with storytelling than with technical writing (which is more appropriate for describing the rules). With your use of that word, I thought you were discussing the flavor parts of the text.

Be that as it may, the text you quoted does not make any blanket statements whatsoever about Insect Spirit victims being unrecoverable. It merely discusses the three particular victims in that specific situation. Even more, it technically only states that one of the victims is unrecoveable. It doesn't actually mention anything about the other two victims being totally beyond help.

Well, as always, GMs discression.

For my group, the only spirit world my PCs will ever come back from involves a bottle.

Note that at no time did I ever state that 'coming back' was in any way possible. I merely asked a question about the Bugs possibly lying, and then answered the responses.

I don't know about hard core rules. But there was a Shadowrun novel...can't remember the title, but the main character was a former mage of Assets, Inc., who broke away from them to form his own 'runner crew in Boston. After an encounter with the spirit crime lord who lived in the sewers, Mama something-or-other, he went on an astral quest to hell to speak to an old friend/mentor. As I recall, the story implied that this was the true spirit of his friend, not just a simulacrum. I don't remember if he brought the spirit back, though.

Visiting the dead is a legitimate purpose for metaplanar travel. Bringing them back with you is an entirely different can of worms.

Honestly, given that SR is supposed to be gritty, resurrection should be a truly epic adventure, on the level with toppling a dragon or a member of the Corporate Court. It's never happened in recorded history. If it was just a trip to the plane of death, somebody would've pulled it off by now.

There is a particularly relevant episode of GITS:SAC in which an obsessed ex-lover copies a government agent's body, personality, and memories and fights him to the death. No one knows if the original won or if the impostor won (except audience members who paid attention to wound locations and angles) and none of his co-workers particularly cared. Metaphysics aside, she's be close enough for government work.

Well, as I said, I'm not ruling one way or another what "officially" happened. He's got a new Force 6 Ally Spirit bound to him, which happens to have all the old memories, Attributes and Skills of an old runner. He paid the Karma for the Ally Spirit, I'm using all the official Inhabitation rules, and I'm not stating one way or another whether it's the old person back or not. Either way, it's someone with Immunity to Normal Weapons and Immunity to Age, and it's someone with six months' worth of memories of being a bug spirit, so it's not like they're the same person they were to begin with in any case.

It sounds cool. If you were truly evil you could just every so often have the spirit do something just a little "out of character". Something to keep the character thinking" Thats strange, Ive never known Melody to act that way"

paranoia can be a good thing!

I think it important to note that just because something was not possible using magic in 2050, does not mean that it is not possible in 2070. Magic has advanced a lot in that time period, especially as relates to Insect spirits. Remember that their magic has been advancing as well. In 2050 they produced a good merge only rarely, and even then only by mistake. In 2072 many insect groups can make flesh forms on demand.

That being said, from a metaphysical standpoint any time you create a new pattern it's a new person. Anyone who dies, even someone who "dies" and is thence brought into a new semblance of life with conjuring is going to have been at the very least repatterned. In such an instance, one can expect to find that the universe doesn't really want to acknowledge you. Crack open Augmentation for some ideas on how to screw with people along those lines (p. 157 and p. 147).

From an interpersonal standpoint though: does it really matter? If the "new" creature looks like their friend, and talks like their friend, and remembers the things that their friend would have remembered, what difference does it make? If she passes the Turing Test for being herself, why would you care about the fact that she has a completely different spiritual essence?

-Frank

Hrm. I've thought a lot along these lines myself, but here's one possible [metaphorical] counter:

Would you feel the same handing your characters off to be played by someone else as you would playing them yourself? If so, why bother playing at all? Why not create characters and then hand them to other people, and not bother with the 3-4+ hours a week spent actually RPing?

Sure, it's the same stats, the same skills, the same memories and experiences - but is it the same 'I' experiencing them?

If the robot responds exactly like your friend, sounds like your friend, and is programmed to give all the same/right answers, same as your friend, then why does it matter that it's simply a really good AI, and not really your friend at all?

It doesn't matter. Unless the principle of the matter, matters to you.

I think this thread is super cool, btw. While I don't play all or even most spirits of man as ghosts, I do often go that direction. Whether they really are the person or not, I never let on. (Faith.)

I just think it's a cool idea. Are you letting the player of the deceased Shadowrunner play the newly revived character? (Plus added loyalty motivation.)

I'm just curious, I was wondering if this would work as a resurrection method myself. "IF" the characters actual soul could be found, and bound via an ally spirit formula, what would stop it from being bound back to its original body? Or is the idea that the soul can't be found because a) it never existed to begin with, or b) actually died when the character did?

In Earthdawn, several resurrection methods worked but they only worked because the anthropomorphic personification of Death was imprisoned under the Black Sea. Death, obviously, isn't imprisoned there anymore. And, unlike the Passions, she is still widely known across all cultures of the Earth, meaning that she probably hasn't been weakened during the downcycle.
I imagine that Death would make every effort to stop any magical resurrection from being successful.

Inhabitation power, pg. 100, Street Magic:

"If the vessel inhabited by the spirit was living, the spirit gains complete control over the body and some access to its memories. During merging, the vessel's original spirit is consumed and for all intents and purposes that character is essentially lost (though, as always, gamemasters may decide otherwise if appropriate to their stories)." (emphasis mine)

Limts of Sorcery, pg. 160, Street Magic:

"Sorcery Cannot Raise The Dead
Though spells can heal, once a person has passed away, they are gone forever (though some view conjuring spirits as raising the spirits of the dead)."

Now, personally, I would never take any option other than 3 as a GM; and actually, I don't like that the Ally Spirit has the old character's memories one bit. But it seems entirely within the rules, if not in keeping with the spirit of Shadowrun more generally, to do Options 1 or 2. I would say that it should depend on the summoner's tradition, though: only black magicians and traditional/hedge witches see spirits as being the souls of the dead, and actually only traditional/hedge witches' write-up mentions it.

Going somewhat off topic:
The body of the newly created Ally is part of the ally formula, what happens in case the hostbody gets destroyed?
Let's assume it was a perfect flesh form for this line of thought.

Is it simply enough to adjust the formula to summon the ally again, or are you screwed forever?
Does the ally spirit get to keep all the former hosts skills, even when thrown into a new body?

My immediate instinct is to go with option 3 as being the actual truth, but as the OP said, it will never become clear in game so it doesn't really matter. I am curious as to whether the original player is actually playing the character or not.

Nope, it's still an NPC.

Ok there is actually one way you could tell. IMO spirits are spirits and they don't have any earthly knowledge or form not informed by the conjurror or the nature of magic. If that is true, a hedge witch could conjure a "ghost" that look and acted how the witch thinks they would act as a ghost. Here is the rub, The spirit doesn't have any information the summoner does not. So "Melody" would know question the summoner could think to ask and the answer would always be what they thought it should be, but just be a construct via Solaris. It's likely that the conjurer couldn't supply knowledge of Melody's family, old friend, especially secure keys, stashes, and safe houses. I like this option because for you as a GM it means you have a quick and easy way to decide where the memory wholes are. Also if you players are really on there game they can actually detect a pattern. I think figuring that out would be really rewarding as a player.

I won't if you won't they've never really come up with a term for it but I was writing about Missing Blood Which was the adventure. If I'd said UB which was mainly shadow talk I could see the confusion more easily.Nigel Findly wrote more of the cannonical stuff on bugs. It think it is fair to sday what he put down is pretty much set in stone.
That having been said I'm well aware there are conflicting reports of bug powers in differnt modules that can be acscribed to 'differences in magic' if you want to be charitable in place of the more accurate-loose editing.

They have Melody's still living body, so the inhabitating spirit will have all of her memories.

The fact that they do have it is a violation of the rules, however, as an Inhabiting spirit can only be disrupted if the host is killed.

this is a great thread. it sounds a lot like the cybermancy procedures. a lot like it. i think that the similarities between the original Melody and the new Melody would be enough to convince those around her that she was the real Melody and not an impostor. any behavioral oddities would probably be shrugged off as long-standing trauma from being inhabited/dead.

as for Melody herself, i think it'd be more complicated. as she herself is a mage, i'm sure she's aware of that the Laws of Magic state, and a cursory investigation into metaplanar quests and the spirit realms will turn up the fact that no one knows where the spirit goes at death, and theres no way to verify that spirits brought back from the great beyond are the real deal.

the inability to prove to herself that she is indeed the real Melody will rest in the back of her mind like a sharp stone stuck in your shoe. yes, she has access to all of Melody's memories (and the bug spirit's memory, which is terrifying enough) but there is no way for her to know if those are her memories or not. every time she passes a mirror she'll never know if its her face looking back at her.

over the years the feelings confusion and paranoia will build upon each other, threatening to eat away at her mind.

There are other ways, but most of them require that the spirit willingly ditch the body.

Uh... I actually wrote the inhabitation rules, and I'm pretty sure spirits can't ditch the body.

[Looks at Street Magic]

Yep.



I recalled myself being pretty clear on that point, and looking back on it, it seems that I was.

-Frank

Aha. Sorry 'bout that. Hrm. *thinks* I'll have to figure out some excuse for why it worked, then.

So what happens when an inhabiting spirit is hit with a successful banishing test? What happens when they fill all their available stun track?

Nothing. You can only use Banishing to cast out a possessing spirit. The attempt literally can't do anything to an inhabiting spirit.



Same thing that happens to a possessing spirit: they pass out. Then they lie there being unconscious. Eventually they wake up again.

-Frank

I missed that. I was assuming that the body was dead because the spirit left, and my understanding of brain damage from (death induced) asphyxiation lead me to believe memories would degrade past recovery well be for they could get a spirit back in the body

Out of curiosity, how dead would she have to be? I mean... could they just find a way to stop her heart, wait for the spirit to leave, and then resuscitate the body? That'd be pretty easy even with today's medical technology.

You could could shoot the body in the heart to 'kill' it.
Then have a great plant spirit possess it to repair the damage, and then find X person's spirit to 'inhabit' it.

Interesting. I asked a question about the possibility of Bugs lying. I wasn't even rude in the process of doing so. Are you telling me that you equate asking a question with treating you as if you are stupid?


Yes he did. Note that I never commented on any of that writing, but merely on the quote you provided. The quote you provided did not back up your earlier claim of canon stating that 'when the bug moves in the human is gone beyond redemption'. If you have a better quote, then maybe you should use that one instead.

emphasis mine.

nothing says that magic cannot raise the dead, only that sorcery cannot. it's still up in the air.

on a side note, it is theoretically possible to have an ally spirit inhabit another spirit, if i'm not mistaken. (which could presumably add up to some rather silly things happening, though i haven't really checked to be certain).

as such, the simplest 'ret-con' is probably just to rule that they didn't actually banish the spirit, but that the banishing attempt instead acted like an attack of will that knocked out the insect spirit (apparently for an abnormally long time, since preparing a vessel takes minimum 1 day), which was then inhabited by the ally spirit.

It does say that magic cannot raise the dead, though, along with everything else. Just because the sentence happens to be under a topic concerning sorcery doesn't mean that it doesn't apply to other things. Since sorcery is the route by which one would be most likely to attempt to create a means of ressurrection, the matter is addressed there.

Where, exactly?

And, given the stated ED connection, stealing from Death is nothing new.

I quoted it, exactly. Look up. It's the bold part.

No, the wording is quite specific. Similar wording for what amounts to basically the same disclaimer has been used throughout Shadowrun's history.

Just there is nothing there that reads 'magic can't raise the dead'.
In fact, Cybermancy is build around that fine point.