Need a little help here.

As usual, I'm wandering through Street Magic and read up on Insect Magic for the umpteenth time. I was looking through different forms of merges (thinking of yet another prime runner type character), and a few questions hit me. Basically, I don't entirely understand how Inhabitation works with the spirit's abilities.

My first question is, what happens with a spirits abilities in merging? A True Form merge basically just.. makes a spirit, it's pretty well laid out and explained. The issue I'm having is with Hybrid and Flesh Form merges. They make mention of what happens to the host's abilities and skills in Hybrid and Flesh Forms, and Spirits keep their skills in Hybrid merges, but I don't see anything else regarding the spirit's powers and skills in the Merging. Do the spirits keep their skills and powers in Flesh Form, and do Hybrid merges retain the inhabiting spirit's powers?

Secondly, I was thinking of taking some paranormal critters to use as Soldier Hybrid Merges as sort of ''guard dogs'' for this PR. Yet, somewhere in my mind I remember reading that paranormal critters either couldn't be possessed, or couldn't be inhabited. It might have been exclusive to Ally Spirits, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for in any of my books. Can anyone confirm this, or am I just crazy? Just want to make sure.


Thirdly, specifically concerning the hive/nest, insect shaman, and queen/mother spirit. What I get from Street Magic is that the Insect Shaman commands all of the hive/nest, up until the queen/mother's summoning, at which point she becomes the focus (particularly in Hives). If the Insect Shaman binds say, A Firefly Mother spirit using the spirit formula. Now, does control of the hive/nest return to the Insect Shaman, or is it still the Mother's? Would the Insect Shaman need to expend a service telling the Queen/Mother to ''Tell that Scout Flesh Form over there to head into that Stuffer Shack'', or is that something he would be capable of doing himself?

First off, here's my guide.

1) It's important to note that when a spirit uses Inhabitation that that is their way of interacting with the Physical Plane. They keep all their abilities and skills, just like a Materialization or Possession spirit when they interact with the Material Plane. The only difference is through Flesh and Hybrid Merges you can gain additional Powers and Skills dependant on the host.

2) You can. I detail it in my guide. In fact it's cheaper to use a Warform dog.

3) The latter. The shaman would have to command the Mother spirit to tell its other spirits to do what he wants. Or he can individually bind all the spirits also.

EDIT: Example dog, using the most basic spirit with virtually no Powers whatsoever. You could theorectially use a Fire or Beast Free Spirit that has Inhabitation instead, or use an Insect Spirit also.

Spirit Dog


For more ideas, check out my other note here.

1) So the spirit ALWAYS retains it's skills and powers, regardless of the merge, and depending on the merge may gain additional skills and abilities based on the host in question?

2) So any form of paranormal or mundane critter would work right? I'm assuming it obviously doesn't work on Emergent critters, and they would have their Resonance overwritten by Magic?

3) Hmm, that's not very enticing. The idea is that the Insect Shaman considers the hive ''his'', and vies with the Mother/Queen spirit for control over it. So, if I want to create an enemy/Prime Runner who has complete control over a decently-sized hive, and that hive has a Queen spirit, that shaman is going to need a ridiculously high dice pool in order to bind the Queen and issue commands without needing to re-bind her every other service, right?

It's not supposed to be enticing. Insect spirits are incomprehensible evil from beyond the world. They're not the playthings of summoners, they're the demons cultists accidentally summon. (I exaggerate slightly, don't bother me, Neraph. )

Yes, magic and resonance can never, ever coexist.

Aye.

Bug City gave me that impression. My aim is to create a PR that let's the player explore the more human aspect of these areas. The shaman himself is the evil, as opposed to the bugs. The insect spirits certainly are ''evil'' and must be dealt with, but the real threat is the shaman who intends to use the Hive to achieve his dastardly goals.

I'm just not feeling the whole ''Insect Shaman summons hive and then gets eaten by the Queen spirit every single time'' deal.

Well, fiction is full of examples of similarly working deals. Like being E or signing contracts with the denizens of the Lower Planes in Planescape, or dealing with dragons in SR. Sure it ends bad, but think of all the nice things you can have before that!

I mean, yes, it's a valid narrative for the evil (insane) insect shaman to partially succeed for a short time… *then* he becomes an empty shell tool of the Queen. Every time. If the story takes place during that brief beginning part, then yes.

Alright, cool.

Thanks everyone.

It doesn't matter how much you did for the insect spirits, in the long run you're just another potential host for them.

No I pretty much agree, from the Fluff at least.


Don't forget that insect shaman end up not being able to summon any more spirits after they summon the Queen (IIRC). Alternatively, you can have a female (or male, but female works better) insect shaman who, when (s)he summons the Queen, uses herself as a vessel and directs it towards a Hybrid Merge so (s)he can still "remain in control." Use the stipulation that the host vessel doesn't always get destroyed, so you can have a host that realizes that (s)he got (her)himself in way over their head and wants help.

@ Neraph: I don't think the insect shaman in question would have the personality, even after realizing what a mistake (s)he made, would go looking for ''help''. Not the one I intend to build at least.. he'd be much more apt to try and assert dominance over the inhabiting spirit, independently. However, I will run over that idea, and see if I can build something with it. It's definitely interesting, and if what I'm thinking about doesn't plan out (I'm making a ''test team'' of runners and playing them through the whole thing to make sure I can get it to work in a mechanical sense) then I'll definitely try to work something out of that.

@ TheOOB: The shaman isn't the kind of guy who would tell them, ''...But look at what I've done for you?!''. He's the kind of guy who shoots the queen a threatening glare and tells her he wants his hive back. I believe somewhere in my notes I made a plot-event that basically turned him from an ''average'' insect shaman to a psycho who walks up to the Devil and tells him to step down.

I am trying to find more material on insect shamans though, to see if maybe that idea is going a bit far.

It could also be presented as the end of a faustian bargain gone bad. The narrative can include the BBEG Summoner who calls forth the bug spirits, and they revere him as their leader until the queen is called. The Summoner wants to expand his control but requires a queen, so in summoning the queen, he realizes he loses all control of the hive at the moment he dies in view of the players. Then the players have to deal with the queen.

Of course he's insane, he only summoned an army of powerful alien super beings who hate metahumans when he himself is a metahuman...ohh wait.

An insect shamans story arc can only end one of two ways, but the insects killing him, or someone gunning him down.

If you can find it, read 2XS by Nigel D Findly or The Module The Universal Brotherhood if you want to see just how evil the Bugs are. It goes right into Nightmare Fuel Territory feet first

I don't know that I'd classify either insect spirits or insect shamans as "evil," per se. IMO, insect spirits fall under the category of eldritch abominations: yes, they want to turn all of metahumanity into hosts, but that's just what they do. It's like the parable of the scorpion and the frog: the scorpion doesn't sting out of malice, it's just the nature of things.

Similarly, while there may be insect shamans who are sane enough to set and pursue rational goals (for a given value of "rational"), most of them are just bugfuck (pun very much intended) crazy.

Yes. But that's close enough to evil, from our POV.

Or to put it another way, you don't feel malice towards the rabid dog, but you don't suffer it to live.

I disagree. Let's not bring issues of good and evil into straightforward antagonism. The bugs are antagonistic to (meta)human life, and that is reason enough to fight them. To my mind, evil requires that you understand your victims are suffering, and either not care or actively enjoy it. There's nothing to indicate that the insect spirits are capable of understanding that their victims suffer, or for that matter that they're smart enough to grasp the concept of suffering itself. As Lurker put it, they're like rabid animals: yes, they have to be put down, but not because they're evil.

That's a whole discussion, but honestly, function is what matters. Rabies (and rabid dogs) are 'an evil'. In any case, they're not good (from our normal POV). I'm just saying the difference between evil demons and antagonist-but-alien demons is functionally close to zero.

It looks like a discussion scraping the surface of Objective Morality versus Subjective Moraltiy, which is very much out of the purview of this topic and forum.

Ties in a little bit to the character in question. Under the assumption that bugs are not inherently ''evil'', but rather alien (That Eldritch Abomination trope is very well written) entities, the shaman whom is summoning the bugs fulfills the ''evil'' role: Using the alien creatures to take over other beings without any second thought as to what happens to the victim, using his network of bugs to overthrow certain corporate entities or extremist groups, etc.

Basically applying an ''eldritch abomination'' in the form of power to a very evil form of metahumanity.

Neraph,
I agree that this should be the way it works but in reading the insect spirit sections in Street Magic it comes across as Flesh and hybrid forms giveing up many of their powers to have a physical body. I never liked that as it made the resulting critters pretty weak but there it is. Did some one finally make a correction or is this your view?

I never understood that to be the case through my readings of the rules. Care to quote some?

Curse you! So many hours lost!!

It doesn't really imply either, to me. It just really doesn't say anything about it. When it comes to those merges, it doesn't outright say what happens to the spirits abilities.

My definition of evil is anyone who is willing to harm innocents to achieve their goals, ergo insect spirits are defiantly evil.

Then you default to the rules for any creature that has abilities.

Here's the stack:

1) Spirit has abilities.
2) Spirit has Inhabitation.
3) Depending on the merge, spirit loses Inhabitation and gains Materialization, or gains a number of other Powers. Also depending on merge, spirit can gain powers of Host.

Nowhere in that lineup does it say that the Spirit loses all other Powers. The only two Powers specifically stated that they can lose are Astral Form and Inhabitation.

Even if they don't understand the concept of "innocent?" Also, did you mean "defiantly" or "definitely?" Because I'm pretty sure the bugs aren't sticking it to their parents by saying, "Look how bad I am!"

Even if they don't quite so much see those people as persons at all?

Is the anteater evil for killing innnocent termites for food? Are you evil because you squashed that fly? Or for killing that cow, to wrap yourself in its skin? How's about the ichneumon, for injecting their eggs into poor innocent ladybugs, who in turn subsist off a strictly carniverous diet?

It's all biology, even if it's alien.

Eh there's no detect evil spell so it's kind of irrelevant at least from an in world standpoint. They're hostile to metahuman life, that's enough.

The one thing I took from my philosophy studies at uni was that evil (and good) is a theological concept. I naively argued against this and lost resoundly. Essentially, you need a god or something in a god-like position to decree right and wrong in order to determine any event or subject as good or evil. Therefore it's all subjective and pointless.

Unless there is a God and He does have a moral standard, then it's objective. But again, that is away from the purview of these forums. Back to Bug Spirits.

Haha, oh wow. Ethics does not depend on existence of God - it's a social compact like everything else.

If I were to worship the queen, would this make her a god?

So...


Insect spirits are going to keep their powers and skills in these merges, right?

Anyone agree, want to refute, talk about stuff other than this?

Yes, they keep their powers...

That's what I've said for two pages now.

Well that and this isn't the correct forum for a morality discussion - especially not in a game that says "I dunn' caer" to morality.

No no no, you've missed the point. There doesn't have to be a literal god to decree something as evil, just something in the role of a god. A nation with a legal system does that, as does any individual who has a unique set of criteria for personally defining what is evil and what is not. Whether the criteria have been handed down by a deity in a miracle or spray-painted on a school wall by a twelve-year-old is immaterial to the assertion.

Experience is the real set of criteria. Murder hurts society, as we found out after trying it - so we outlaw murder and consider it evil. That's all there is to it.
Take social insects - do they need "something in the role of a god" to organize their hives?

They actually do - it's called instinct. They are driven by instinct and communicate through pherimones and do both much more efficiently than Man. But we make pizza.

We should genegeneer ants and wasps to make pizza-hives.

Genegeneered Italian honey bees to become Italian pizza sauce bees.

Edit: Oh man. So an Insect hive comes to Seattle and starts their whole Inhabitation shtick, right? Well, through legwork and digging it appears they only use brain-dead or terminally ill hosts and they are planning on opening a Pizzeria for those less fortunate.

Chimeric Ability - Venom (Pizza Sauce, Power 1)

"What? That's not venom!"
"You eat enough of it, it'll kill you!"

Oh, so instinct is an invisible omnipotent omniscient benevolent power? Well the more you know.

Cool... Nice to know...

I have a question or 2 as well since I cannot seem to find it anywhere

I am working to create a Group of Free Spirit Insects (ya you can probably guess) now if they inhabit a body that has augmentations (Cyber / Bio / Gene ect.)

1) is their Magic attribute affected by the hosts essence level
2) Can they use the augments aas if they were their own

I dunno if a Free Insect is possible, but the rules for implants and Inhabitation are in Street Magic, where it discusses the various Merges. The short answers are 'no, Essence doesn't affect them' and 'yes, if they get the hybrid merge'.

not for a PC no its not
this is a GM Toy

and by definition Mantids are Free Insect's .... my question directly revolves around the females of the breed (all flesh forms)

guess I should have specified I was creating a group of the Desolation Angels

information on these Chica's is few and far between

Also what about Adepts being inhabited

No, not even in a hybrid merge. Remember, your special attributes replace the special attributes of your host. If your host had enough 'ware to drop him to 0.01 Essence and you had a F5 spirit Inhabit him, the new entity would now have all the 'ware and 5 Essence.

Technically, by RAW, it is not stated at all though. The actual facts for this are listed in the Possession sidebar on page 102 about Living Vessels. Since Possession and Inhabitation are so often mentioned together elsewhere in the rules, however, it is logical to assume the interaction of special attributes works the same for both as well, otherwise as soon as an inhabitation spirit inhabits a vessel it can no longer access its Magic, Edge, or Initiative.

… That's what I said. In a hybrid, you get their implants. Different question.