[Red]

All of the artwork I have found, to my knowledge, shows Queen spirits to be Flesh Form Hybrids, and Street Magic takes the time to explain that there are True Forms, as well. But are there ever Good Merge Queens? A Queen with all of the strengths and abilities and memories of the original host, a perfectly human-looking body, and the power inherent to their true nature?

[Patrick Goodman]

You are a sick, sick man....

[Nath]

Donna Allegra Fuselli, the head of the 'Ndrangheta (the Calabrian "Mafia"), is supposed to be a wasp queen good merge, though the fact is not clearly spelled out in Shadows of Europe.

[CanRay]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Insect spirits might consider the queen quite ugly...

[Mirikon]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Great, now I need to convert this to SR4...

[JustADude]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Great, now I need to convert this to SR4...

Just be sure to give it 6 ranks of Perception (Visual), whatever else you do.

[CanRay]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Great, now I need to convert this to SR4...

"Wow, SURGE wasn't easy on you, man."  "I'm a woman.  And used to be an Elf Supermodel."  "Oh...  OH DREK!"  "Yeah."

[Crimsondude]

Donna Allegra Fuselli, the head of the 'Ndrangheta (the Calabrian "Mafia"), is supposed to be a wasp queen good merge, though the fact is not clearly spelled out in Shadows of Europe.

The only reason I didn't make this an outright fact in Artifacts Unbound was that I couldn't figure out a way to shoehorn her into Give The Devil His Due.

So I think it is eminently possible. There aren't a lot of statted insect spirits, period, so it's been hard to determine was is and isn't possible, and what you want to see vs. what you can do. My rule of thumb for magical threats is, "Anything is possible until it's outright stated it isn't."


Besides, why should Mantids have all the fun? (I love Mantis spirits)

[Red]

@Patrick: That's why they pay me the big bucks. Oh, wait... not yet...

I've always been a fan of Mantids, myself. Great for hunting, but every now and again, you can make a devil's bargain against another hive....

[chinlamp]

Donna Allegra Fuselli, the head of the 'Ndrangheta (the Calabrian "Mafia"), is supposed to be a wasp queen good merge, though the fact is not clearly spelled out in Shadows of Europe.

The only reason I didn't make this an outright fact in Artifacts Unbound was that I couldn't figure out a way to shoehorn her into Give The Devil His Due.

So I think it is eminently possible. There aren't a lot of statted insect spirits, period, so it's been hard to determine was is and isn't possible, and what you want to see vs. what you can do. My rule of thumb for magical threats is, "Anything is possible until it's outright stated it isn't."


Besides, why should Mantids have all the fun? (I love Mantis spirits)

Will we ever get a 'Big Book of Spirits'?  I don't know about other people on this forum, but I'm constantly having trouble determining stats for certain spirits, or possession traits, or flesh forms, etc.  A book just on spirits (hell, a couple books aimed at GM tools rather than player tools or campaigns) would be really useful imo.

[Crimsondude]

Maybe.

I agree. It would be very useful, and considering the sheer amount of stuff that's already in SR lore we could write a pretty massive tome just fleshing out individual metahumans, spirits, AI, etc. without necessarily introducing new rule sets.

[Lacynth40]

Alot of that would just be compiling and converting old edition stuff, too. It's just the new and the weird that would take some work to stat out. Insect spirits, for the most part, were pretty well statted in Bug City. Just have to convert. Some new things came about since then, but for the majority of creepy crawlies, it's just a bit of conversion, and then some smart-assed comments from the Jackpointers for that yummy flavor.

But it would be a huge book...

[chinlamp]

Alot of that would just be compiling and converting old edition stuff, too. It's just the new and the weird that would take some work to stat out. Insect spirits, for the most part, were pretty well statted in Bug City. Just have to convert. Some new things came about since then, but for the majority of creepy crawlies, it's just a bit of conversion, and then some smart-assed comments from the Jackpointers for that yummy flavor.

But it would be a huge book...

It would also be a book that would sell pretty damn well I think.

[Lacynth40]

Alot of that would just be compiling and converting old edition stuff, too. It's just the new and the weird that would take some work to stat out. Insect spirits, for the most part, were pretty well statted in Bug City. Just have to convert. Some new things came about since then, but for the majority of creepy crawlies, it's just a bit of conversion, and then some smart-assed comments from the Jackpointers for that yummy flavor.

But it would be a huge book...

It would also be a book that would sell pretty damn well I think.

Dear gods, yes... Especially if it made hardcopy. I would slap hard-earned cash onto the counter gladly for that book. Especially if it had the artwork insert Bug City had... That insert gave me nightmares, and I loved it. Also gave me a lot of ability to describe to my runners what they were looking at. And it gave them nightmares. Hehehe.

Ever notice that artwork in Shadowrun sometimes makes writing take a back seat? Kind of like "Cool story, bro... But did you see that ork on page 194?! That was gorgeous!" I love moments like that, honestly. Especially in rules books. The art is amazing, and draws the eye to that section, and people want to read the section to figure out what is going on with the art. Sections that have some bland-ass art, generally players have less idea what that section is about. At least, that's what I find more often than not.