Actually, at this point what we've been asking is "Does power corrupt?": not nearly the same thing -- or, to be more precise, it bears roughly the same relation to what we've been talking about as Newton's equations to quantum mechanics and relativity -- doesn't mean any of them are wrong, just means that the easy formulaic answers tend to break down under extremes -- and extremes are the only kinds of things shadowrunners ever deal with). I recognise that you've already dismissed this question. I'm questioning your dismissal

We're also discussing what it is about blood magic that's even bringing up the question; and why it's different, say, from thought-controlling magics.

To get beyond the simplistic answers, we've got to understand first what we're meaning by corruption, and what we're meaning by power vs resource vs means to an end vs necessary sacrifice. Me, I might be simplistic, but I've always thought that it's a good idea to understand what a question's really saying before attempting to remould it into one's own image.

Still, I'll address the first question you've identified, because all the rest of your answers follow from your answer to that one:

Sorry, that's not been generally agreed, even here. In fact, if I were to agree with it, I would have to say that war -- any war -- is always evil. (That would be breaking another local social more.) And personal handgun firearms and assault rifles, whose only purpose is to deter through their ability to kill (and there shatters another local more). In the religious context, the Christ killing/sacrifice has already been mentioned -- without which Christian redemption could not exist. Let's see, what else? Abortion? Right or rejection of removing feeding tubes, where the person is sentient and does not choose to be kept alive artificially? Suicide? Sending anyone whatsoever to work at a job you absolutely know is going to kill some of them? The firefighters at Chernobyl? The old question about whether or not to kill Hitler, if you knew what he was going to grow up to be? I'm sure you can think of others. Each and every one of those is "killing or harming a sentient being". Are all of them evil, always? Is it even possible to say that we here at Dumpshock generally agree that all of them are evil?

If I'm right (that we don't all -- or even majority -- at Dumpshock agree on these things): doesn't that make any answer inherently dependent upon a definition of "evil" innately unstable? Because although blood magic and killing are not synonymous: the potentially and sometimes actively killing aspect of blood magic has been made here into a valid sole measure for what constitutes "evil" (as an unquestioned "generally agreed" belief): in other words, assuming in advance that killing=evil?

Maybe it's because we're questioning that core pillar that that it seems we're talking in circles

Q: what kind of free spirit is Lethe anyhow?

As it's phrased, it IS a yes-no question...just not one that can have an absolute yes-no answer and cover all the basis.

As for Evil-bah. I made it clear that evil depends on the morality of those judging you.

Y'see, to me that screams "We're getting off the bloody topic." To reiterate: this is not Morality 101. We're not all going to come to some Grand Consensus, no Insight will come down from On High and descend on all of us.

Stick to the topic, boys and girls. You can't figure out the big mysteries if you can't handle the little ones.

I'm not going through this on a quote-by-quote, TI. The long and short of it has been gone over to death and beyond (we're now raping the corpse of the question, so to speak. ). You can split hairs, but you can't quantize evil. It's like saying that the average shadowrunner has killed 23.33 people.

Dragon. Thought that would be obvious.

That's only true if you assume that Jesus was human. If you assume that he is God, then unlike all of these humans whose lives are God's to dispose of he is taking a life that he is permitted to take.

~J

But what if he was both?

(Which is what the traditional doctrine is...)

You know, I'm finding it kind of difficult to examine a topic asking whether a certain kind of action is evil without delving into morality. Very, very few people have the ability to perceive without snap-judging. (After all, it's something we're conditioned into since childhood.) Since power/morality/evil have been linked together since long before Nietzsche (who, incidentally, would have had no problem even with Azzie blood magic, providing the blood mages firmly believed themselves to be serving their own ends -- even if later events cause them to be proven wrong): uhm -- if this is getting off topic, then there is no topic here in the first place, beyond a simple argument of yes/no/can't be answered (so let's not bother) ... which btw would explain why it's sometimes perceived that this non-topic has been done to death. (Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in a Monty Python sketch?)

Who's looking for consensus? For that matter, who's trying to quantify anything? Understanding, insight, and agreement aren't the same thing. For me, I'm just looking for some good debate and some good old-fashioned back-and-forth that's going to force me to think. If I can't keep up with the debaters, so much the better ... although you'd better believe I'll be asking questions when I start getting out of my depth, trying to keep up!

But if the answers to the little ones don't extrapolate to the big ones, something's real shaky in the basic framework. That's why ad hoc solutions tend to fail long-term. Just ask any shadowrunner trying to clean up the after-effects of a run

Only obvious if you can give me a canon-quote source saying exactly that -- and it's not enough to say that the spirit came from a dragon: we do have canon that specifies that blood spirits can be created from dragons

Ah, and here we get to the thick of it. The problem with your earnest desire is that
a) You never get anywhere with it.
b) It's blood exhausting.
c) Perspective to the problem at hand helps.

As for the Lethe spirit-type, who knows? Not enough information. It could as easily have been a spector as an ancestor spirit, his astral form or some unique dragon spirit we've no name for. <shrug>

The text really paints a dark picture of the nature of blood magic. To be fair, you might find that one black sheep who was always in it for the self-sacrifice (read: good or noble), but that seems highly unlikely. Its a great devil's advocate type of argument, but in game terms, its unofficially a pretty tainted/bad/naughty/evil type of juju.

IMO