I was going to say that very thing. Or at least express my disagreement with the general concensus of Golden Snout as being the epitomy of evil.

Well, while I wont exactly dispute this line of thought, I sort of disagree with it making him even 'relatively' good. Of course could be an entirely skewed point of view. I mean to me he seems to wheel and deal, allways trying to come out ontop. He's petty and vindictive, he'll go out of his way to make sure people who have crossed him even completely unawares that they were doing so die, or suffer horribly as a result. And while he may consider you a 'worthy opponent' that in no way means he's going to spare you. Oh no, quite the opposite, he's going to do his damnest to crush you.

In otherwords, he's totally dishonourable. To me it seems you cant trust a single thing he says or does. Even those who honestly and loyally will follow him unto death and worship the very ground he walks on shall ultimately be crushed, and tossed away once they 'know too much' or some such thing.

I more along the lines agree with MFB's thinking that Lofwyr is the sort of 'ultimate predator'. And ontop of it has one nasty temper. He's not accidentally cruel at all, he's quite deliberately so. Time and time again this is deliberately pointed to infact.

I mean with alot of other dragons it just seems to be a 'means to an end'. It's not anythign personal. But with Lofwyr it is, very much so. I mean he seems to be the sort that if he were going incognito on the subway and you accidentally bump into him with an only half mumbled apology (never mind that perhaps you've had an extremely bad day, you've just been fired, and you havent had enough sleep for several days) that he'd do his utmost to further ruin your life, befor ehaving some one litterally rip your still beating heart from your chest several years down the road as a result for your 'slight' against him.

That at least, is my read on him.

No, that's more up Deus' alley.

More like through the advancement of technology and R&D in specific but seemingly varied directions, and the coordination of its future use.

That just doesn't ring any bells on my Evil Meter.

Ye gods.

I find it hard to believe that not one dragon anywhere considers themselves evil under whatever ethical system they, or dragons in general, subscribe to. That's like saying no person sees themselves as evil, which is just... stupid.

Even when Machiavelli advised to rule through fear over love, it was for an ultimate goal of benevolence and the restoration of a Florentine (and then Italian) republic.

Lofwyr seems to be based on the same principle.

Yeah... "Cool." That's the word I keep thinking of.

...more like 500K up front + total Phenotypic Alteration (to the genetic level Not at a clinc associated in any way with SK of course) + complete Identity change (performed by someone of Fastjack's calibre) afterwards. Then, maybe, I would consider it.

Yep. Lofwyr respects Strength in whatever form. That's why he keeps Wendigos and Toxic Magicians on payroll. They are strong.

The question remains though: does having a completely understandable self-interested motivation for feeding your minions on human flesh make you any less evil for doing so?

-Frank

That's a valid argument for Ghouls and I can even buy it. The treatment of corpses is a question of utility. Disposal of corpses limits infections and eases suffering, and ghouls need to ea corpses to survive so feeding corpses to ghouls as a means of disposal can be considered a utilitarian concern. Right, we all understand that argument.

Wendigos eat people while they are still alive, and use mind control powers to force those people to perform acts that are revolting to their moral code before consuming them, relishing in the horror and suffering they cause before they devour their victims bit by bit in a painful orgy of death and torture.

Really. That's how they live, and there's just no positive spin you can put on that. Ghouls are tragic, Wendigos are Evil. Lofwyr works with the latter.

-Frank

Makes you wonder why he doesn't work with insect spirits.

So no, they don't torture them to death. They do kill them by eating them, but the victim enjoys it. And that's before you look at some of the other rules in there.

Again, they aren't, by their very nature, evil. It's how they choose to act that would make them evil -- by the rules, it's just as possible for a wendigo to subsist entirely on essence drain, with the victim as other beings with essence drain. Most don't, but it's entirely possible for them to do so. A wendigo that hunts other wendigo, and subsists on that wendigo's willing servents, is not evil. A wendigo that creates its own cult, feeds it innocents, and then eats the cult, moves to a new country and starts over, on the other hand, is evil. There is a lightyears of difference between the two.

Same rules are in SR4.

Likewise, same in SR4. Creating cannibal cults =/= torturing people to death for 20 minutes. I'm not even sure where 20 minutes or this 6-pt essence drain attack comes from just from perusing the entry for wendigos and essence drain.

No it isn't.

Wendigos need to suck Essence out of people and they need to eat people. They need to do both things. There are no "good day walking half wendigos" - there are evil wendigos and there are dead wendigos.

Because he does not believe that he has anything that they want sufficiently to make them actually work on his behalf. Damien Knight, however, does. And it would seem that Damien is totally right.

-Frank

1. An understanding that different hives are different and want different things.
2. The demonstrated ability to destroy hives on an individual or collective basis.
3. The willingness to destroy a hive or not as part of a larger negotiating stance.

At the close of the Bug City shenanigans, Ares captured a lot of insect mages. Some of them were never seen again and some of them were next seen in Ares uniforms. And Ares continued to kill hives - just other hives.

Flash forward to today. Some mages pen up gateways from Eve to the Hive. Then ares troopers rush in and kill queens on their home plane - destroying a hive forever. Who do you think is opening those gates?

Of course, the answer is "Insect Mages" - they are the only people who can. And they open up the gateways to allow Ares to destroy other hives. It's win/win.

The hives under Ares get:

• The destruction of their enemies.
• Immunity from persecution from the one force on the planet with a noticably successful record in doing so.
• Provided hosts.
• Protection.

Ares gets:

• A literally unmatched ability to destroy hives on a permanent basis.
• Incredibly powerful magicians with nowhere else to go.
• The ability to pick and choose hosts for remaining hives such that public outcry doesn't happen.
• The ability to charge the entire planet a fee for protecting them fom the bug menace (a service noone else can match).

And this is all possible because Damien Knight invested really a lot into xeno psychology and the ability to hit hives hard enough that they had to respect him and come to the negotiating table.

Lofwyr hasn't done that. He doesn't have a meaningful stick to present to the insects ("If you don't do what I say, I'll keep fighting you as ineffectually as I'm doing right now!"), and doesn't understand their politics well enough to be able to offer a carrot they might accept.

-Frank

Source?

~J

Street Magic, page 111. And sorry, the station they travel from is called Eden. My mistake.

-Frank

Street Magic, though the staging point is called Eden.

[Edit: Frank posted while I was posting]

page 88 of CD is one, especially the entry about Lofwyr specifically. Also there's several runs in various SR books where S-K is the sponsor and there's several references to him 'testing' security at the facility by hiring runners to hit it, even if it's a flat out all lethal deal on both sides.

The runners may be 'criminals' but the sec guards are for the most part, very likely not. There's a few other references here and there in other books, though I cant recall any specifics currently.

I'm not necessarily saying he's worse for this than anyone else, but he has got a reputation for it that outmatches as far as I can tell, that of any of the other dragons.

I suspected as much.

~J

Read Critters, essence drain. Wendigo are not in the SR3 Corebook, which is the only one I possess and the only one I'm willing to. Whole other issue there, which I won't bother going into.

The relevent paragraph says that anyone with essence drain can make an opposed essence test with anyone else possessing energy drain, and the winner absorbs. It goes on to detail that it still requires time, but does not require a strong emotional presence. Since the entire "requiring a transfer of physical material" is a throwaway line, it is perfectly reasonable and valid to rule that it is also negated -- it may or may not be, that's irrelevent. It's still perfectly feasable to consist entirely on eating other wendigos and their willing followers.

Likewise, the Critters entry gives no dietary requirement. And even if it DID, dietary requirement would only put them on par with ghouls.

If, in your game, you want all wendigos to be evil or dead, binary option, that's your choice. On the other hand, that position is not, in and of itself, the required position by canon. By canon, it is possible, however unlikely, for a wendigo to be something other than absolute evil.

Not sure what the issue is and not particularly interested, but I just wanted to note that Critters is available as a free PDF in case your issue involves the spending of money on books other than the core.

Or I might just be misunderstanding, things have gotten pretty hazy this past hour or so.

~Zzzzzzz

So where does the torturing people to death part come in?

...