Say if an insect spirit was to try to inhabit the body of a magician, mystic adept or adept, and it resulted in a Flesh Form. Would the resulting Flesh Form still have access to the inhabited character's magical powers, such as spellcasting, conjuration and the like, or would they be lost? What about adept powers? Would they change tradition?

I was wondering something similar... is there any reason for an Insect Shaman, to say, summon a spirit into his own body? There are obvious advantages.

Or would the shaman realise to do so would mean the end of his life (as he knows it)?

On a side note, when a Queen is summoned she is treated as a free spirit. Whats to stop her using the shaman as a vessel for powers like Hidden Life? It's not a power these spirits would normally get but for a reoccuring villain it would make a nasty combo....

- J.

I believe per RAW they get all of the character's abilities, skills, memories, etc; the whole kit and kaboodle.

I also want to say that Synner (might have been Frank) mentioned in another post a while back that Inhabiting Spirits weren't supposed to get Conjuration in the deal as that violates the rule that Spirits cannot conjure but the text was omitted / missed in the book (SM).

The real question IMO is... does such a thing merely change the lifeforce powering the body or does the original personality get destroyed and replaced by the new personality? If so, wouldn't the new personality be very much like the old one since we are the sum of our experiences? This question becomes especially important if the spirit in question was newly created rather than having existed for some time in the metaplanes.

True enough, but I just can't get my head around how it interacts with pre-existing magical talent. I think I'm leaning toward it getting rid of pre-existing magical ability (it'd definitely zap any Resonance rating you might've had, too). Conjuring is definitely a no-no either way.

My understanding of how it works, both from previous editions' rules and from various bits of fluff, is that the new personality is solely that of the inhabiting spirit. However, creating a Flesh Form good merge gives the spirit the victim's memories so that they can impersonate them suitably.

The spirit retains it's own mental and special attributes, including Magic.
All focus bonds should also be lost (i'm not certain if spirits can even bind foci to begin with, but i don't think so).
The spirit may, however, retain the skills of the magician (the text on good merges in Street Magic claims that all skills are retained), but all Conjuring skills would, IMHO, become knowledge skills, as spirits in general can never have any skill of the Conjuring group.
However, unless that passage was errated, that would, strictly by RAW, be a loophole around that rule.