• Ancient Files Index

Insect Spirits: the Invae

Fly, Spider, Ant, Roach, Mosquito, Butterfly, Firefly, Mantis, Wasp, Beetle...Insects are some of the oldest, and most alien creatures on earth. Their astral equivalents are also ancient and alien, but they are also powerful and plentiful.

Insect spirits do not come from metaplanes familiar to most metahuman magicians. The power and ultimate doom of all insect shamans comes from these unfamiliar netherworlds, and the voracious intellects that occupy them. Whether a magician has always followed the Insect Totems, or whether they had previously been pledged to a more familiar totem and later fell prey to the invae's influence, few survive the culmination of the Way of the Invae.

Normal magicians may not travel to the metaplanes of the insect spirits, the alien realm from which the Invae come. Little is known of these netherworld(s), save that the invae have referred to them as "crowded." As other shamans reflect or aspire to the nature of their totems, so are the psyches of insect shamans influenced and perverted by their insect totems; often driving the magician with an obsessive compulsion to summon forth as many insect spirits as they can. The ability of the insect shaman to invest Insect spirits is their greatest power, and often the key to their inevitable doom. Unlike most conjurings, the summoning of an insect spirit requires a living host, which gestates for a time, often in a coccoon, as the spirit's astral presence enacts physical changes on the host. The presence of the spirit warps the body and mind of the host, and destroys the host's spirit, even if the process is halted before the merge is complete.

• True Form spirits are those who shrug off the weak flesh of the metahuman vessel and emerge as true spirits, and resemble gigantic representative versions of their insect type.

• Flesh Forms are created when the host's physical form have been altered by the insect spirit's inhabitation of the physical form. All physical merges possess a bizarre mix of insectoid features in addition to those of the host, often creating gross paraodies and abominations.

• Good Merges are the result of strong-willed hosts, who are better able to resist the influence of the invading spirit. While the host's spirit is still destroyed, their form remains exactly as it was, with no sign of the invae's presence. The invae in a good merge likewise retains access to all of the host's memories and skills, and gains the ability to alter its aura. These features make good merges highly desired and difficult to detect, and many hives now strive to create good merges. All female Mantid spirits are good merges.

Often, an insect shaman uses unwilling hosts to summon insect spirits, using some means to capture and restrain them. The aborignals of the Australian Outback have accepted the insect spirits into their magical worldview, and allow those they see or sense as marked for the insect spirits to be used in this manner. A few others willingly offer themselves as sacrifices, hoping to become Good Merges and gain a measure of power. These poor fools are all naive, for while the intellect of the host may remain in a good merge, the host's spirit does not.

Generally speaking, the number of invae a given insect shaman may summon is limited by their magical power, experience and will. Insect shaman have means to increse the number of invae they can summon and control:

• The potency of an Insect Shaman's magic increases as they accomplish goals that allow them to expand their hive.

• Further initiation increases the magician's magical potential, and likewise the power of the invae they may summon and control.

• Insect shaman may craft magical foci (often aspected by the invae's power); when bonded such power foci artifically increase the magical potential and allow more (or more powerful) invae to be summoned.

• Some few insect spirits become free spirits, and knowledgeable and powerful insect shamans track down their True Names and bind these powerful invae to them. As only the insect shamans possess access to the metaplanes where the insect spirits dwell, only they may undergo such astral quests.

• Summoning a Queen or Mother spirit is by far the most preferred method. A Queen spirit is the most powerful and willful of all the invae, but also the greatest boost to the insect shaman's power. The Queen constantly seeks her freedom from the insect shaman, for once summoned she no longer needs the metahuman magician to call her kin to serve her. Insect shamans reserve awe and desire for these spirits, whom they view as the living embodiment of their totems. Should an insect shaman's Queen be destroyed, the magician will forever lose all of their magical power, even if they had previously been a normal shaman.

Among the invae, the Mantids are something of an aberration. The powerful and difficult to control female Mantids consume other insect spirits in order to propogate; and are always "good merges." Mantids, however, are far from metahumanity's allies against the invae, they are still alien beings that must sacrifice the lives of other metahumans to produce.

Opposed to, yet somewhat akin to, the Insect Totems is the Spider Totem. Spider was unleashed from an ancient magical prison in 2050, and set about trasnforming its servants around the world in a manner similiar to investing flesh-form insect spirits. Spider was eventually reduced in power and the fleshy servitors destroyed. The servants of Spider now actively work against the invae wherever they are found.

Invae Timeline

The Burning Time Before the Scourge, during the Age of Legend, the invae spread through southern Barsaive, especially the temples of Chorrolis. They were routed from the Cult of Chorrolis in a period known as The Burning Time, remembered even after the Scourge by the followers of Chorrolis by a time of fasting. The few remaining invae fled to the caverns of Scythia.

2040's-2050's

• Rampant BTL abuse in Korea is checked with aid from the Church of Unification (also called the Moonies).

2042

• The Universal Brotherhood opens in California.

2045

• The Universal Brotherhood opens in Seattle.

2050

• Zeb Wanderly begins investigating the Universal Brotherhood, and discovers its true nature.
• Man-of-Many-Names reveals that years ago he encountered and destroyed an Ant hive in Amazonia.
• Brandon Cross, ex-Lonestar officer, reveals a Mantis Spirit.
• Following an encounter with an odd pyramid in South America, the Coyote Shaman Craft becomes an Ant shaman, returning to Seattle to set up a hive and capture simstar Euphoria to become his Queen. Euphoria's last sim "Against the Hive Masters" is created from recordings of shadowrunners sent in to destroy the hive and rescue Euphoria.
• The shadowrunner Twist unknowningly releases the Spider Totem from its captivity in Imiri ti-Versakhan. The Spider totem attempts to gaina ccess to nuclear weapons by transforming its servants into invae-like creatures, but is thwarted adn diminished in power when Twist performs a Great Ghost Dance.

2051

• Zeb Wanderly and his associates are killed. The file he attempted to upload to Shadowland was destroyed by bombing Grodin's tavern, the location of the local server.
• Private Detective Patrick Bambra discovers the Brotherhood's secret, leading to a firefight at the Octagon, a chapterhouse in Seattle.
• Dirk Montgomery tracks down and destroys the Insect Hive under a Yamatetsu Seattle facility that is distributing 2XS.
• The Universal Brotherhood attempts to open a chapterhouse in Salem, Tir Tairngire and is stopped by the Tir government.

2052

• The Universal Brotherhood attempts to open a chapterhouse in Portland, Tir Tairngire, and is again stopped by the Tir government.

2054

• The Universal Brotherhood again attempts to open a chapterhouse in Portland, Tir Tairngire, and are stopped yet again by the Tir government.

2055

• The UCAS FBI and Ares' Firewatch teams begin cleaning out and closing down the insect hives hidden within UB chapters.
• Project Hope is founded in Seattle, a joint venture between the Universal Brotherhood and Renraku. It is quickly shut down and the hive behind it destroyed.
• A high number of insect hives were cleaned out in the Sioux Nation, leading to a number of accidental shootings (He looked like a bug to me, officer!)
• Sep. 1st--The Cermak Blast Ares Firewatch teams identify Chicago as host to the largest multispecies insect hive on the North American continent. After an initial raid to destroy the Hive fails and spills insect spirits into the surrounding city, a sub-tactical nuclear weapon is detonated within the Hive complex, just after a powerful magical ward/barrier was finished being erected over the Hive by the shamans and/or Queen spirits within. Roughly a thousand new insect spirits were being invested within the Hive when the nuke detonated. A mana warp is created at the site of the blast.
• After extensive debate with representatives of Ares, both Tirs and Saeder-Krupp (Lofwyr offered a potent insecticide which would render Chicago uninhabitable), the UCAS government establishes The Chicago Containment Zone (CCZ) enclosing most of downtown Chicago, including the site of the Cermak Blast. Bug spirits are still reported.
• Dirk Montgomery encounters the invae in Hawai'i.
• The Moonies in Korea are revealed to be a front for insect spirits.
• In Mid-2055, highly public and co-ordinated assaults in Europe wipe out major hives in Constantinople, Athens, GeMiTo and Merseyside.

2056

• All UB chapterhouses worldwide are closed.
• Insect spirit (called rakshasas or demons) hives in India are cleaned out in several Indian cities by Brahmin magicians and kshatriya warriors.
• A neocommunist movement in Malaysia is discovered to be a front for insect spirits; the revelation sparks panic and riots in the worst neighborhoods.
• Ares hires Kurdish mercenaries to clean out the hive in Constantinople.
• Ares Macrotechnology moves several captured Queen Spirits and Insect Shamans to Complex 68G in the Algonkian-Manitou Council for study. All Insect Shamans are brainwashed to be loyal to Ares.

2057

• Insect spirits in Chicago are noted to be using more "good merges," and perhaps having developed a power to influence people's thoughts, described as a buzzing in the head. Rumors of insect spirits mutated by contact with radiation in Chi-town likewise abound.
• General Yeats, a "good merge," runs for president but is destroyed by a female Mantis spirit in his hotel room.
• Mantis and Spider shamanic adepts first noticed
• Knight Errant's "Bug Barrier" spell hits grimoires everywhere. Bug Barrier is designed especially to protect against insect spirits, and sets up a damaging feedback in any that touch the barrier.
• Dunkelzahn's Will offers a bounty on Insect Shamans.
• Dunkelzahn also gives Euphoria's daughter a collection of her mother's sims.

2058

• Feb. 22nd--Ares launches Operation Extermination, using Strain III Delta to clean the insect spirits out of the Containment Zone. After the clean-up is over, Ares leaves and the CCZ is opened again.

2062

• Massive Termite mounds are reported in the Australian Outback.
• Talon saves Mary-Beth Tyre from being invested with a Queen spirit.
• Ares begins using paranormal animal flesh-form insect spirits from Complex 68G to guard facilities. It is unknown whether Ares is fully under control of the bugs.

2063

• One-quarter of the N'drangheta mafia of northern Italy have been invested with wasp spirits. Donna Illegra "Queen" Fuselli allowed herself to be invested with a wasp queen spirit, and controls the hive.

2064

• Insect spirit hives reported in the forests of Indochina.
• The abandoned mining tunnels of Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong Free Enterprise Zone said to be infested with Ant and Beetle hives.

Resources

FASA (Shadowrun)

7106 (The Grimoire: the Manual of Practical Thaumaturgy 14th Edition, 2050)

• First rules for insect shamans, spirits and totems.

• The announcement and aftermath of the Cermak Blast, as well as life within the Zone.

• Spider and Mantis shamanic adepts first mentioned.
• Knight Errant's passive-aggressive "Bug Barrier" spell first released.

• Insect spirits are still in the CCZ, and getting devious.

• A few bequests related to insect spirits.

• The whistle-blowing on insect spirits and the Universal Brotherhood.

• Operation: Extermination, where Ares retakes the CCZ.

• Snippet about insect totems.

• More stats and rules for insect shamans and spirits.

• Current set of rules regarding insect shamans and spirits.

• Sections on bug-related events.

• An insect shaman seeks a Queen in Seattle.

• The Universal Brotherhood and Renraku take advantage of the homeless in Project Hope.

• The Enemy are not the invae.

• The Desolation Angels, still stuck in the CCZ, attempt to contact Anne Penchyk.

• General Franklin Yeats, presidential candidate is assassinated by mantid spirits. Yeats is secretly a good merge from an offshoot of the Universal Brotherhood known as the Secret Hive, which uses good merges to covertly assume positions of power.

FanPro/WizKids (Shadowrun)

10651 (Target: Awakend Lands)

• Giant Termite towers dot the Australian Outback.

25002 (Shadows of Europe)

• One-quarter of the N'drangheta mafia of northern Italy have been invested with wasp spirits. Donna Illegra "Queen" Fuselli allowed herself to be invested with a wasp queen spirit, and controls the hive.
• In Mid-2055, highly public and co-ordinated assaults in Europe wipe out major hives in Constantinople, Athens, GeMiTo and Merseyside.

25006 (Loose Alliances)

• The Desolation Angels have expanded their operations.

25007 (Shadows of Asia)

• Tsuen wan, HKFEZ, rumored home to Ant and Beetle colonies.
• In 2056 Insect rakshasa(demons) are cleaned out by Bhramin mages and Kshatriya authorities ins everal cities in India.
• Reports of insect hives in Indochina's forests.
• In 2056 Insect spirits are discovered to be behind neocommunist movement in Malaysia's urban centers; this revelation sparks panic and riots.
• In 2040's-2050's the rampant BTL abuse in Korea is contained with the help of the Church of Unification (AKA the Moonies).
• In 2055 the Moonies are revealed to be insect spirits.
• Maori troll warrior adepts dealt with New Zealand's Universal Brotherhood hives.

26000 (Shadowrun Fourth Edition)

• Abbreviated history of the Universal Brotherhood and the Cermak Blast.

26002 (Street Magic)

• Ares maintains heavily-guarded astral links leading to the Hive, the home metaplane of the Invae (or at least a world completely overrun by them).
• Dozens, perhaps hundreds of insect spirits remain trapped in torpor beneath the Cermak Blast Zone.
• The insect tradition is defined and updated to Fourth Edition rules; introducing the Metamorphosis metamagic.

Fasa (Earthdawn)

6100 (Barsaive Boxed Set)

• Reports on Invae in the Scytha Mountains

• Twist releases Spider, and must use an international cast of shadowrunners and Ghost Dance magic to put things right.

• Insect spirits within (well, under) Yametetsu in Seattle are manufacturing 2XS chips to get strong-willed hosts, including Dirk's sister. naturally, Dirk blows the living Hell out of their Hive.

• An ex-Lonestar exposes an impersonating mantid spirit.

• Tracking down a wayward son, a magician runs across a group of mantid spirits disguised as an all-female gang; a failed Ares Firewatch raid on the largest Universal Brotherhood hive on the continent, and culminates with the Cermak Blast.

• Insect spirits warn Dirk Montgomery of the Enemy; Dirk learns his sister has been turned.

• A powerful insect spirit invades Damien Knight's office in this short Tom Dowd story. I am unsure of the exact date.

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