Does anybody know if Vampires, ghouls, etc can be possessed by insect spirits? I want to run an adventure where the runners come up agaist a number of roach possessed ghouls and I wanted to know if it's feasable.

Just do it. It's perfectly fine to say, in your campaign, that an Insect Shaman came up with a metamagic technique that lets his spirits possess ghouls, or that in your campaign a variant strain of the ghoul disease allows it to infect already-inhabited roach flesh forms. If it's a good plot line, don't slow down a minute to look for obscure rules that say yes or no whether this can happen on a regular basis.

Its certainly an intresting concept. While we're at it, Dragons are considered Name Givers, as well as I am assuming Drakes. Can they be invested as well?

About the toughest adversary we ever had was a vampire possessed by a free spirit in New Orleans. I think it was from an adventure that appeared in a magazine.

I'd go with OurTeams suggestion. It's your game after all.

don't see anything in AH's insect spirits file about Name Givers. are they harder to infect, or something?

It's the ED term for sentience, I believe. Dragons and meta-humans and humans are name givers. In theory, it's possible (heck, a dragon did get possessed by a horror). If it makes sense in your story, go ahead and spin it.

Oh, and the vampire better hope it's a fleshform, or otherwise the body's gone.

Don

1) "Name Givers" is not a term denoting sentience per se. Many ED beings are sentient and not Name Givers.

2) According to Threats 2, Awakened Animals can be invested with insect spirits. THis means you can invest a vampire, wendigo, great dragon, juggernaut, SURGEd butteryfly, whatever.

Thanks for the replys! I'm now off to horrify my players...

I actually had a similar idea for a bizarre combo-creature, specifically a toxic mutant adult Western dragon. In addition to all the fun I could have with mutations and toxic powers, it'd become a magical threat and get all kinds of magical power from its Potency, to boot.

Radioactive breath weapon, enhanced venom, control over the mutated paracritters in its former toxic bunker lair, advanced toxic metamagics... it would've been sweet.

So in otherwords you're remaking Godzilla....

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of gamer-men....

Magically powerful, malignly intelligent Godzilla.

You should make a second radioactive toxic adult western dragon and infect it with a techno-organic virus (aka nanomachines) that change the chemical makeup of organic cells into a sillicone and metal structure. So....


MECHAGODZILLA WILL RULE YOU!

And a giant toxic mutant awakened moth.

We love you Gammera!

Uhm, wasn't there a thriving ghoul community in the containment zone in Chicago? Those books suggested ghouls - possibly because of their dual nature - could not be possessed.

That was the Cabrini Compound, or Refuge. I dont recall anything about posession, but its been a good while since ive read Bug City.

Or it was, anyway.

When Ares released that Strain III into the CZ to fumigate the bugs, they kind of got the Ghouls too. Heh. Whoops.

Can anybody else shed some light on this?

Ghouls are dual-natured. THus, they could see bugs on the astral, and fight them there too. THis gave them an advantage. In other places, bug spirits could go astral, get behind the defenders, and pop back into the physical and massacree 'em. Or send in a physical merge infilitrator.

Unfortunately, the magic-feeding FAB-III Delta locked on to the dual natured ghouls and sucked their Essence out. No more Cabrini Refuge.

No Godzilla. There's already a Hearth Spririt that imiates him in a certain club, known as the Rubber Suit, as Survival of the Fittist did dictate. And as much as I'm a fan of the Big G, I do belive the King of the Monsters should stay in his own timeline.

Reminds me of the scary combos I was tossing around in my head as possible uber-bad-guys in my game:

A dead dragon possessed by a shedim -- instant dracolich. For even more evil, make it a master shedim, or use a great dragon, or both.

An HMHVV-infected human cyberzombie. Sure, there'd need to be some handwaving involved to allow the cybervampire to keep full use of all the keen gear, but just think of the possibilities.

Needless to say, since I still have players willing to belly up to my table, I have never actually used these massive examples of GM overkill...

I don't mean to be picky, but to my knowledge, the FAB-III was extrapolation in some shadowtalk. They did Chi-town with FAB-II Beta.

(Minor hijack: So, an FAB bat is no longer on the books, but what about one filled with awakened ivy?)