Didn't notice this when it was written.

I wanted to say that I enjoyed reading this. It's a very interesting premise, just about passable as RAW, what with Inhabitation allowing the gathering of memories. Only the Star Wars reference jarred me out of the story.

It should be longer. This would make a great short story. If you only doubled it in length it would give you space to foreshadow the final scene with a bit of pawing from Simon and a little more philosophy / background on the nature of Inhabitation for those that don't know Street Magic inside and out. I'd really enjoy seeing a longer version.

As regards all the angst about the cranial bomb, there are two things to consider. Firstly, "Immunity to Normal Weapons" is "Immunity to Normal Weapons", not "Armour Plating". Bullets can pass through water elementals, Earth Spirits can wade through sword blows uncaring that great chips of them are being knocked off. Plant spirits might re-grow each severed root and twig. Immunity to Normal Weapons means only that and it applies to all mundane forms of damage. Secondly, if I were adding a bomb to kill everyone standing near you as well as yourself, why bother opening the skull and pressing it up against the brain? You can put even more explosives outside the skull and just stitch the skin back over it (particularly above the hairline or at the base of the neck). That way, there's even less in the way of it getting nearby people and quite frankly no surgeon would expect someone to be saved just by having the explosives glued to the outside of their skull rather than the inner wall.

Good little piece. Any chance of re-writing it to be longer?

K.

Hrm.. I had assumed the protagonist was a male, which made the last part so much better.

EDIT: While I'm at work I'll start putting my character's descent into Ally Spirit Inhabitation on himself. I have like 7 months of games to write up...

Good story.

For the cranial bomb bit... why not use the blast in confined spaces rule to explain it? Least resistance would be through the relatively softer tissues of the brain and out through the ocular, nasal, ear and mouth cavities in a sickening explosion of gore, somewhat resembling bloody dragon breath, which propels brain matter and cartilege at lethal speeds. The spirit is reduced to using sign language or some magical method of communication to tell the 'doc what kind of face to put on its host, since there isn't much soft tissue left around the openings in the head. This is assuming the "chunky salsa" effect from the blast (inside the InTNW?) doesn't kill it... which IS the assumption ^_^

The spirit would not care about not having the flesh faculties for speech. It could continue speaking just fine, which would undoubtedly freak the spirit out even further.

I absolutely agree. It could've come straight from Warren Ellis' brain. Bravo.

"needs more cowbell."