making a corpse talk while possessing it

[Plane]

Didn't notice this bit in Horror 18 until just now:

A generous GM may allow you to possess a corpse and speak with its mouth without Telekinesis

Since this is somewhat of a freebie, I'm wondering ways in which non-generous GMs might allow it through proper trait manipulation.

Corpse's presumably have B125's Cannot Speak: Mute which is a physical disadvantage that a possessing force would be subject to.

One approach I thought of would be:
Mute [-25]
Not Mute (Cosmic +50%) [38]

So a net cost of 13 points?

I can't think of how Telekinesis would actually be used. You could add something like "Only while using Telekinesis -10%" to cheapen "Not Mute" perhaps, or get spontaneous access to Not Mute via Powers' "Using Abilities at Default" based on your points in TK?

Manipulating vocal chords to create speech doesn't seem like a basic described use of TK (ie a person is trying to be quiet, you force them to say something they don't want to say... that sounds like a limited form of mind control!) but is believable enough (at high-finesse) that I could see it being an explanation of a UAAD attempt. Perhaps a psi-technique?

I'm thinking a corpse is more than merely "mute" though. You could be a non-mute (working vocal chords) who has their mouth forced shut, for example. Or have an Incapacitating Affliction (B428) which prevents voluntary actions.

[coronatiger]

If possessing the corpse allows you to do anything with it besides lying still (moving around, manipulating objects etc), you should also be allowed to speak with the corpse's mouth. At least if the tongue, lips, throat and lungs are intact.

[Anaraxes]

The bit quoted in the OP is a comment specifically on Possession. Possession normally lets you speak with your possessed target body (along with making any other movement the body's normally capable of and that the possessor has the skills to accomplish). The generosity in this case is allowing Possession of a corpse, rather than a live puppet.

The reference to TK comes from the Animation Limitation in Powers (pp 83-84). Possession doesn't give the host body extra abilities, so normally, Possessing an inanimate object (say, a statue) doesn't allow the Possessing spirit to have it move. It's just a rock with a particular shape, not a creature with moving parts. So, the spirit might also have TK so they can Possess statues to attack, or tables to have them deliver the pizza on top by walking across the room, or whatever, by externally moving and bending their parts. (Animation is a Limitation because you can't do all the free-form TK stuff in Basic with it; you can _only_ animate an object*.)

Such a character possibly wants Independent as well, if they want to be able to turn that broom loose to sweep the tower floor while they concentrate on other things.

So the bit in Horror comes down to whether or not the GM (group, setting, etc) wants to count a corpse as an animate object. Can Possession alone let someone do the same thing with a body they just killed as it would have if only they'd used it five seconds earlier? (Possession isn't Mind Control; you don't need the host's mind / spirit / soul to do things for you; you just replace it with your own.) Or is that body just a lump of clay the instant it fails its death check? How old can the corpse be for possession alone to still work?

I wouldn't say that a corpse must have Cannot Speak. It can't speak because it's dead, not because it's missing its vocal cords, and a only mostly dead corpse would retain the capacity to be possessed/animated into speech, just as you'd expect them to be animated into shuffling about. (Corpses similarly don't acquire Sessile.)

A sufficiently decayed zombie might well acquire Cannot Speak, or a corpse with the head removed, tongue removed, chest and lungs exploded by alien parasites hatching, or whatever other damage the GM might feel destroys the physical features of the body that allow speech, whether those parts are moving "naturally" or via TK. But that's a separate question from just being dead, even if the proposed Limitations are related to cause of death. One extreme is the perfectly intact corpse created by a wave of the enemy sorceror's hand, snuffing its life force without a scratch. The other extreme of death is the creature disintegrated by a hand phaser, leaving nothing at all behind to possess/animate. There's a whole spectrum in between calling for GM judgement.

--
* This point raises the question of whether or not base TK would let you animate an object, as opposed to just lifting it or shoving it around. Animation lets you make an object "flex" (with a hefty TK level required depending on the HP of the object), and the Powers rule just handwaves away annoying materials engineering questions of bending strength, stress and strain. Animated stone can bend and still return to its normal state when the teke lets go. GMs also get to consider whether they want to allow full TK to also have that ability, or whether that's actually an Enhancement, which Animation tacitly includes (meaning that its -30% price is just the net after some unmentioned "Subject Can Flex" Enhancement is also included).

[transmetahuman]

If I was going to have corpse-possessing spirits animating bodies, I think I might make the spirit buy the ability to make it into an animated corpse the same way a necromancer creates animated corpses from inert dead ones: Use Conjurable Ally.. The GM might allow the limitations "Must have a dead body", and "Can't do anything the living body couldn't, no matter how many points the Ally advantage is built on" to balance out the benefit that the "conjured" body might have different abilities each time. When the spirit leaves the corpse, it frees up the Ally advantage for the next one.

Then they would also have a limited Possession ability to take over the animated corpses. And of course they can only animate bodies with a point cost (physical traits only) equal to our lower than the be Ally point value. Or maybe they can do stronger ones, but those have flaws the bring the point cost back in line.

[DanHoward]

You could copy Jim Henson and stick your hand up its butt :)

[RedMattis]

I'd argue it is just an feature of your possession. Probably the vanilla version doesn't let you possess inanimate objects in a meaningful way.

As long as you have a (alternate-form-style) point buffer to cover the cost of the average body I'd permit (temporarily) imposing meta-traits on hosts as long as the meta-traits are consistent and the player can't chose NOT to apply the meta-trait.

F.ex. A demon which possesses only humans and this always gives the host ST+10, Vulnerability/Weakness (Holy), and some Supernatural Features. That sounds fine to me. If he can do something similar to corpses (perhaps another meta-trait) I'd be fine with that as long as his point-buffer still covers the cost of the average victim's body point cost. As if it was an alternate form.

If the demon can possess ONLY corpses I'd put it down as "Specialized, Human Corpses Only, -50%" (it is easier to find living humans than humans corpses!). If he possess human corpses AND living humans I'd put it at Specialized, (...), -35%. Based on GURPS Powers p.68.

A character which can possess all sorts strange things (furniture, trees, ...) should have the inverse of "Specialized". I'd probably put it at +50% for literally anything bigger than an ant and smaller than a big oak. Similar to Cosmic. The usual stuff + Corpses would probably just be a +10%. Corpses aren't terribly common but could be used to impersonate people you've killed and gets around the IQ vs Will roll.

For someone who can possess a body and then either chose to change it (or not) I'd use Shape-Shifting, or Morph depending on how flexible the change is. An example would be a demon which can let their host pass for human, but needs to twist the host's form into something disturbingly demonic to use their full demonic power.