So, my group is a little heavy on magic. Therefore, I started thinking of a magic-type campaign... Sounds interesting, right? Well, after much thinking, I still needed some ideas, so I decided to introduce a new antagonist. A toxic hermetic magician who believes solely in logic and rationality, named Azad. So, the first mission would be done without the group's knowlege at first. It would be a simple extraction of an exotic animal(skeleton) on display in an exhibit in a museum. When the group arrives, the skeleton will be already taken.
Depending on what the group decides to do, they will discover Azad doing some sort of destructive magic, probably on the skeleton. When they decide to go aggresive on him,(knowing them, they will) he will finish the ritual, and send his newly bound pet dragon at them. After being overwhelmed, which they will be, Azad will escape, leading the group in an effort to find him.

How does this campaign starter sound?

Pet Dragon?!?! I don't know what power level you are working at, but that sounds scary for a first run.

If the party is all or mostly mages, you could have fun with metaplanar runs. There are almost NO rules or physical laws there except the ones you choose/make up.

...Cyberzombes. Easier to rationalise in SR (especially if he is a Toxic) and still pretty nasty.

Of course armed with Ares Alphas (they don't have Vindicator Miniguns out yet, must be a supply & demand thing I guess) & maybe a Trollbow®. or two.

BTW, Toxic Hermetics? I only thought Shamans could be toxic.

To be honest, it doesn't sound like a very good start. The basic idea for the antagonist is sound, but your intro is far too heavy on railroading. The PCs being beaten, and the bad guy getting away, should not be foregone conclusions.

In the street magic book, there's only mention of toxic 'magicians', make of it what you will. Magic in it's entirety has been more or less homogenised, even using the exact same spirit stats, they only take different forms. The only magical threat remaining 'unique' to shamans are the insect totems.

I do like the idea of stumbling across a toxic antagonist, especially for a high magic group, as they can all feel how twisted the magic from that ritual woud be. The one thing I'm curious about here though is if the dragon is bound to his will, but remains itself underneath, or if the dragon itself were somehow turned toxic by that ritual. (either possibility seems quite scary)

Even scarier would be a toxic dragon, and have the toxic magician be the thowaway miniboss badguy

I would recommend thinking about the reactions of the other dragons to a newly raised toxic dragon. of course it depends how your gm runs it but I can't see them standing by and letting it happen or allowing it to live very long at all, surely something of the magnitude required to accomplish this would be pretty obvious.

just my 2

Personally I find Twisted Way adepts with cannibalism a little more balanced than toxic dragons, but still scary and compelling.

Also I don't know what Hermetics and Shamans do with conjuring in SR4. Are toxic elementals possible?

Well, a GM's worst nightmare occured. Not only were they half-dead when they reached the dragon being raised, they ran like hell away. So, I improvised. As they were fleeing, they accidentaly triggered a laser trip wire, sending a series of blast doors crashing around all of the exits. So now they were forced to fight, right? Wrong, apparently, because they had enough explosives (plus a critical success) to blow a hole in a rating 20 blast door! So, the mage sends a lightning bolt at them warning them not to leave. They finally end up fighting, then they lose. So, like all good villians, he took prisoners! So, after a little deviation, we successfully ended the mission... But now what? Anyone have any mind-bending ideas for the next one, now that they have been stripped of weapons and are locked away in a hidden fiacility in the middle of nowhere? I want something a little different from the average run-and-gun mission to escape the prison and kill the bad guy...

"Do not leave and die fighting my dragon, or I will kill you" Huh. Weird.

But I should try to help a little without sounding to toxic, I guess

The antagonist seems a little to powerful for anything but IEs and Dragons and whatnot to begin with so it might be a good idea to introduce such a powerful NSC that has interest in knocking that evil mage dude out. So the good guy (let's call hin Gandalf) sends another team to foil the evil ones (for the sake of continuity Saruman) plans somehow and that team releases the players, accomlishes (maybe even with their help) to put down the dragonthingy (if not already dead. If dead they disturb some ritual or something like that) and afterwards they drop the players at Gandalfs place for whatever reason so he can enlist them for slightly underwelming pay to save the world or something. Ok, save-the-world might be a little to much, but somehow I get the feeling it would fit with Saruman to destroy the world (after summoning a bone dragon thingy in a museum.)

Yes, I am making fun of this. But there is some useful advise in it too, I guess. Have fun. I hope your players enjoy this kind of game.

Btw, are you from Germany by any chance? This plot sounds so much like DSA (if you don't know what that is, be happy in your ignorace. It's like RPG cancer).

Torturing people still gets you background count, right? Maybe the toxic shaman wanted to both test his new dragon pet, but now he needs a new lair. Since they're there, and tough enough to stand the torture for a long, long time, he grabs them. I would put the Shaman's weakness as overconfidence. The magic types are locked in background counts with physical barriers interposing, and the physical types are locked in magic cells. Be sure to tailor the barriers to your players skills, so something that they're not very competent in will be what's required to escape.

The one thing I would recommend against is a super-powered 'goodguy' coming to the rescue, and then, for some inexplicable reason, uses the runners (whom have already been overpowered by the bigbad) to go after the shaman, rather than just doing it himself (when he's already right there, and obviously powerful enough to risk a jailbreak on unknown assets).

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Also, enough explosives solves nearly any problem. Remember, a Rating 20 blast door takes alot more explosives to destroy than a toxic shaman needs. You're lucky they didn't just throw the cluster of explosives at your shaman.

What about a toxic shaman that thinks he has a pet dragon ... but in actuality is the pet of the dragon.

Because they are both gay?

What if the toxic shaman thinks that he has a pet dragon... but he's really just crazy?

So crazy the pet dragon is actually there.

This isn't Unknown Armies. You don't gain magical power by being batshit crazy. Though, if you could...

How exactly do you keep a creature that is significant' more intelligent, more powerful, more arrogant, more anti-social, and more temperamental than you are as a pet?

Bluff!