> There's another salient question, however, which is whether or not all
> spirits can possess people?
I think so, yes.
I read "adds to your skill or provides a bonus" as a special case of pre-negociated possession between friends.
Spirits used to have skills to do such things in RQ but now things feel much more flexible, and that makes for interesting play IMO.
If there is no clear indication or applicability I would leave it up to the player to suggest what possession means in each instance. I would then take it to the system (i.e. roll or say yes). In unclear or tenuous cases I would treat the ability as outside of the spirit's normal inclination and give modifiers.
Universal possession abilities give you all sorts of possibilities: a player of mine has a "point out chaos" spirit, which can cause the fetish to point in a direction, if released the spirit acts a bit like a chaos pointing red setter (dog).
If he decided to use it to possess, it could potentially give someone else the ability to sense the direction of chaos, or allow possessed chaos to be tagged and tracked. Both sound cool to me, but both sound more difficult and therefore I would impose negatives on the relationship roll to convince the spirit to act this way. Not to mention requiring a possession contest.
I had a player ask for spirits inhabiting moving tattoos with the ability to see using the tattoos eyes. I insisted that the spirit had relevant abilities so that it fitted into the system, but as long as the rules can be applied, who am I to say no.
So I think it is all down to flexible thinking, as the rules are both flexible and resilient.
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