What's Damien Knight's ultimate goal? Is he just trying to make as much money and power as possible? Is he trying to fight the horrors? And how has Knight Errant been edging out Lone Star? Is it just better?

Maj. Gavilan has always struck me as the designated "White hat" cowboy, not a pure good guy but sort of grudgingly altruistic. He does thing benefit humanity but also ruthlessly crushes anything that appears weak. Based on some references to Detroit in various books, Ares may be preparing to build a Kaer.

Money, power, prestige.

The altruistic crap is because of Dunk's influence, since 2057 Ares have become steadliy more bastardy. Knight is a grade A fucker. Thats what i thinks anyway. Ares are better than some corps though they aren't run by horrors...

"Kaer"

What does that word mean?

A reference to ED: (mostly) underground shelter, protected and reinforced by powerful magic, where a big number of people can live within for hundreds of year. This way the peopl of ED sat out the Scource (the centuries in which horros ravaged the world).

Kenson had it right in Target UCAS: Damien Knight is Lex Luthor. Use him like that and you can't go wrong.

Lex Luthor without Superman... Uhhh... And does Damien Knight have anything approaching Lex Luthor's scientific knowledge? And how did Arthur Vogel get the money to buy out 20% of Ares?

(*just realized this was Sr3 info, but im sure it still applies)

IIRC, KE is a much more professional Sec. comapny than LS, with the example of LS being like a beat cop, just doing the day to day job to buy his nightly doughnut.

What about Novatech? Isn't it, like, uber-rich from its IPO and mergers with Erika and Transys Neuronet? Or is it in completely different fields from Ares? And was Lucien good enough morally to be a sort of Superman to Damien's Lex?

No one in Shadowrun is that way.

Not even Saint Dunklezahn the Martyr.

I like to think of him as just as selfish as any other corporate header, but, on the other hand, he has access to information from Dunk that most people aren't aware of. You can't profit from a planet eaten by bug spirits or decimated by Horrors. So he'll do these "humanitarian" things in order to make the greater profit in the future.

...of course his humanitarian work with eliminating the insect menace seems to have stopped pushing as soon as he showed the insects that he could push hard enough for them to feel it. The invae have only one goal that we understand: to be in our world. Once Damien demonstrated that they were more able to achieve this goal working for him than against - he was happy to take them on as employees.

Who knows, maybe he'll find a way to profitably coexist with the horrors as well. OTOH, maybe the Invae remember the difficulties for their kind during the scourge and would be willing to sincerely ally themselves with a group showing itself powerful enough to keep a thriving breeder population alive on the surface...

-Frank

Why would Ares be building a Caer? Wouldn't the next Scourge be millennia away?

Remember, Lex Luthor was ruthless, brilliant, cutthroat... and willing to do anything to kill superman. A lot of his 'evil plots' were specifically to take down the big S, not to harm people... though you can't make a super-omelette without breaking a few citizens, one might say.

Luthor was fairly unhinged on that one subject, but he wasn't an out and out old-school psychopathic horrible villain, like people such as The Joker (Let's cause chaos and murder at random!) or Killer Croc (Arr! I am beast!) or even Eclipso.