Insect Spirits

More commonly referred to as bug or insect spirits, “invae” is a universal arcane label for any and all varieties of spirits that come to our plane in the form of one of Earth’s many insect species.

Their forms resemble that of the species they reflect. Well, let’s not sound stupid here. They actually vary up near the level of order and family, but most folks don’t care about cladistics when getting paralyzed for later spiritual conversion. Back to the point, within each group, certain characteristics may vary by genus and species even within the same hive. They aren’t really insects, you see—they’re the spiritual manifestation of the summoner’s view of insects giving shape to an entirely extraplanar spiritual entity. If the summoner thought tarantula hawks were the biggest badasses in the wasp family, then the warrior caste they summon would have its features, but if the summoner was terrified of bumblebees as a child, the hive’s warriors would be fat and fuzzy. That shaping becomes pretty well-defined in the queen, so even after the summoner has been utilized or discarded, the trends tend to stick.

The invae are particularly invasive, as they reach across the astral ether to seek out and subvert a summoner to bring them a queen capable of perpetuating their numbers without the continued need of a metahuman summoner. They still need metahumans (as well as other species, but we seem most ideal) to bring over more of their kind in a demented spiritual trade involving cocoons and rituals.

The spirits come in different species but they also come in different types with different roles in their little psycho-social circle. Arcanists (those who study the arcane) classify them as caretaker, nymph, scout, soldier, worker, and queen/mother. Caretakers are responsible for handling the incubation of hosts and such, especially among the solitary types where workers are less common. They’re not the toughest, but they have a lot of skill at arcane protection, using wards to hide and hold off enemies. Nymphs are queens in waiting. Scouts do just that—scout. They head out into the world and locate the necessary resources with some level of stealth and subterfuge. Plenty of regular folks have probably met a scout or two as they are quite adept at imitating metahumans, sometimes even holding down corporate jobs. Soldiers are the warriors and defend the nest, the queen, and everything else that needs to be fought over. They’re both a frontline force sent out to overrun and a rear guard holding the line in defense of their maker. Workers remind me of corporate drones. They’re just there to keep the processes going, and if need be, sacrifice en masse for the greater good of the corp … err, colony. The queen, some- times called a mother, is a great form spirit summoned by the shaman who takes over the role of planar link for more of her kind. She’s usually the biggest and baddest mother (pun intended) on the block. Reports from Chicago talk about a queen that used a dragon as her host, so they can get fragging wild. Different colonies and groups vary the numbers of each type by needs, but virtually all of them exist in every hive group.

The various types tend to fall into two major categories—social and solitary—with a smaller third category we’ll chat about later. Social varieties include those in- sects we think of as hive or colony builders, including ants, locusts, termites, and wasps. They tend to set up in a singular place and convert it to their home over time. The Universal Brotherhood was a collection of different hives and colonies around the world, while Chicago was trashed by massive hives and colonies. Solitary types include beetle, cicada, firefly, fly, mosquito, and roach. They still create a nest where the queen resides, but each individual spirit tends to operate in a slightly more in- dependent manner. If you see an ant spirit, know there are many more about, while a roach might be alone. In either case, run. Fast. The third category only has one type: mantids. They’re solitary, though they often work together, but they get a place separate from the others because they feed off the energies of other invae. Much like the mantids of our world are well-known for hunting other insects, so it is that the mantids hunt other invae. They still use metahumans as incubators, so they aren’t on our side, but at least they help a little in limiting other bug spirit populations.