NEWS

The Universal Brotherhood

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Stahlseele

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« Reply #15 on: <06-08-11/0718:52> »
Should I point out that Bull's old partner Johnny 99 was married to a Rat Shaman who became a willing host to a Mantis spirit? :)

Of course, we played up the Mantid angle that they were more interested in bugs than Metahumanity...  And because she was a willing host, she retained her personality.  (IN later years, I imagined it as a T'okra vs the regular Bug's Go'auld from Stargate SG-1)

Bull
"In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it." - Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
"In a free society, diversity is not disorder. Debate is not strife. And dissent is not revolution." - George W. Bush

CanRay

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« Reply #16 on: <06-08-11/1057:43> »
IIRC, he later joined their fraternity.
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Crimsondude

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« Reply #17 on: <06-08-11/1601:42> »
And now he's a tv viking.

Everything keeps rolling along.

Bull

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« Reply #18 on: <06-12-11/2323:36> »
Considering I played Football for 12 years (Plus 8 years of Baseball and 4 years of Wrestling)...

Yeah, I pretty much am Ogre.  I actually will do the Nerds! thing at cons. :)

bigity

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« Reply #19 on: <06-14-11/2338:49> »
I'm pretty sure retaining personality isn't possible by the rules but it sure was included in at least a couple of the novels.  I hated that really, took away some of the creepy.

FastJack

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« Reply #20 on: <06-15-11/0753:00> »
Well, since it's really a merging of the insect spirit and its host, then I can see the personality being retained if the host was fully accepting of the spirit (which tends to be a case in the Mantis hunters, IMO).

CanRay

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« Reply #21 on: <06-15-11/1137:29> »
Well, since it's really a merging of the insect spirit and its host, then I can see the personality being retained if the host was fully accepting of the spirit (which tends to be a case in the Mantis hunters, IMO).
Or is it just the Spirit being able to read the mind of the person and being *REALLY* good at faking it?

Me, I'm buying up insecticide in bulk.
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FastJack

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« Reply #22 on: <06-15-11/1354:19> »
Well, considering that personality is nothing more than a process based on past data stored in the memory, they just have to run the current situation through the person's "software" to get the correct result.

Of course, that's the technical explanation that disregards the person's "soul". ;)

CanRay

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« Reply #23 on: <06-15-11/1422:35> »
Memory, soul, mind, body, spirit, what is any of that?  "Do humans dream of ethereal sheep?"

EDIT:  And thus I circle back to one of the origins of Cyberpunk.  Wow.
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Crimsondude

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« Reply #24 on: <06-15-11/1728:15> »
The fluff for SR has always indicated that good merges can, have, and do pass themselves off as the people they merged with, e.g. Franklin Yeats and Anne Penchyk.

Stahlseele

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« Reply #25 on: <06-15-11/1809:36> »
Theresa Montgomery.
"In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it." - Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
"In a free society, diversity is not disorder. Debate is not strife. And dissent is not revolution." - George W. Bush

FastJack

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« Reply #26 on: <06-15-11/2332:33> »
Damien Knight.

Oops, sorry, that's supposed to be hush-hush... ;)

Bull

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« Reply #27 on: <06-16-11/0315:39> »
It becomes an interesting question, and one that starts opening up philosophical and metaphysical questions...

1)  We know that Good Merges can access memories and mimic personalities...  So teh first question raised is is the original personality, the soul, the essence of the person destroyed in the merge, or just subsumed?  And can the essence/mind/soul/whatever be left alone, if the spirit and host are willing?  So in essence, you have the original host and the bug simply sharing a body, with two distinct, sperate entities?

2)  WHere do you draw the line at?  If the merge has all the memories and personality of the original host...  Is it still the host?  Can it be the host?

It's a weird area.  Bug's are, 99% of the time, simply monsters, and I'm cool with that.  Same way I like my vampires to be monsters.  I don't usually like them to be tragic, misunderstood, or sparkly.  They're mosquitos with human bodies.  Very, VERY rare exceptions are ok, and they work because they are exceptions.  I accept Angel in the Buffyverse because he's semi unique.  In a similar vein, Drizzt was initially kinda cool because he was unique, a good Dark Elf.  Once there are dozens or hundreds or whatever of them running a round, they're no longer unique, and just boring munchkins. :)

So rambling, sleep deprived answer is that in my game (and the way I see bugs) is that Mantids are the sole exception to the bugs.  But they also have totally different agendas than the standard bug, and they create more Mantids in a different way from the other bugs.  So that's fine.  They can merge with a willing host to create a split personality Bug that's the combination of both the soul of the human and the spirit of the bug.  They don't always do it this way, but it's their preference.  Their goal is to hunt, and tehy find it more efficient when they can draw on their host for help.

Regular bug spirits, on the other hand, just want to breed and multiply.  Humanity is merely a source of physical bodies and food.  When they manage a good merge, they destroy the soul of the host.  They can access it's memories and attempt to mimic it, but it's a copy.  It's a pod person.  Sometimes tehy can "blend in", but it's rare.  And usually only happens if the merger happens with someone who doesn't have every close family.

Bull

Mystic

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« Reply #28 on: <06-16-11/0405:07> »
That's the inherent problem of having the "exception", they sometimes are more interesting than others in their respective universes, so of course that everyone ELSE wants to be like them. We all want to "be like Mike"...so to speak. And it also can make things difficult when you try and say make a character and you have one or two similarities with an "exception". I got ragged on by a guy with some sort of chip on his shoulder when I played an elf who used two swords. First words out of his mouth was "oh, so he's a Drizzt wannabe?".

*Rolls eyes*

And don't get me started on sparkly vampires....

But as far as bugs go, to me they represent one of the true universal threats in the SR universe, along with Blood and Toxic mages. And I want them to stay that way, period. Bugs to me are not evil in the classic sense, but they are true to their natures: which is to eat and breed. Morality dosent enter into it, they simply are. So for us mere (meta)humans, they have to be treated like any other invasive species, taken out before they do the same to us. And the fact they have been so damn quiet lately....
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Crimsondude

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« Reply #29 on: <06-16-11/1049:57> »
Mantids are just smarter and more ruthless and dangerous than other bugs—IRL, too*. So it makes sense that they are the ones who seem to be most adept at and work the hardest to mimic the hosts' memories and personalities the best. Then again, Yeats was a Wasp spirit. There is a whole chapter in Threats that goes into how all of the bugs seemed to be focusing more on good merges and such. That was sent in 2057.

Point is: Metahumanity has found new ways to hunt and kill these things, with KE even having the balls to regularly go to _their home metaplane_ to assassinate queens, etc. But this is a war, and if the bugs don't figure out new ways to survive in this world they will be in trouble. Part of the EXPINT chapter of Spy Games addresses this fact in-character.


* I once "fought" a small mantis several years ago. I'm a big guy (there's a photo of me in my twitter feed) and I basically sat on one (with my leg) that I didn't see was chilling out on my bed. Something was poking me and so I got up a few seconds later, and realized what I had landed on. It just looked at me—and it looked pissed. I was not about to mess with something that I put more than a few pounds of weight on and just took it, so the two of us chased each other around the room before I finally caught it and dumped it outside.