Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Longshot23 on <01-13-16/0430:44>
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There's been a couple of posts in other threads about shedim possibly deserving as much consideration as Infected. While I don't buy into that opinion, I would like to see an expansion of what is known (or "known") about the corpse stealers. Possibly an in-character posting of a claim to have communicated with one or more shedim.
If nothing else, whether they have opinions relating to their activities vis a vis metahumanity:
1) predator-prey, or
2) the existence of metahumanity is anathema to shedim; or
3) they're nihilistic anima spirits, i.e. it's nothing personal; or
4) something else . . .
Thoughts?
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In a nut shell?
The lesser Shedim attack and kill living sapients. As to why? There have been a few suggestions, most variations of "they hate all life"
Master Shedim have displayed amazing talents as passing themselves off as their host, but display the same level of malice towards life.... they are just more creative in how they do it and the scale in which they do it. (The jihad led by Ibn Iza is a good example)
Some books to read about Shedim:
Year of the comet (introduced, 3rd edition)
Street magic 4th edition
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In a nut shell?
The lesser Shedim attack and kill living sapients. As to why? There have been a few suggestions, most variations of "they hate all life"
Master Shedim have displayed amazing talents as passing themselves off as their host, but display the same level of malice towards life.... they are just more creative in how they do it and the scale in which they do it. (The jihad led by Ibn Iza is a good example)
Some books to read about Shedim:
Year of the comet (introduced, 3rd edition)
Street magic 4th edition
Which is why I'd like to see some sort of expansion . . .
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"Would you like to know more?"
Unfortunately, I think the Shedim plotline is mostly wrapped up at this point, what with the closing of the Watergate astral rift essentially severing the gateway to their home plane. This doesn't mean there are no more Shedim left in the world (there are), but it means their numbers are dwindling.
There was a great novel that dealt with a character encountering a Master Shedim; it was pretty gruesome stuff, but I can't remember the name of it right now. I got the feeling they are a cross between mindless zombies (much so on the part of the lesser Shedim) and Horrors, actually, in that in the novel the antagonist seemed to... enjoy, for lack of a better term... the suffering of his victims.
Street Grimoire elaborates a little bit on the fact that they a big mystery in-setting:
Prior to the arrival of shedim, all other spirits have viewed the physical plane as a place to escape, or as a breeding/feeding ground. Shedim have shown a desire to travel to the physical plane, though it is extremely difficult for them to stay there, but have also shown nothing but utter hatred for mortals. They come to where life exists so that they may extinguish it.
Master Shedim are described as having "a deep and malicious intelligence", while lesser Shedim are described as "intellectually primitive entities filled with hate and violence", so I'd say this leads credence to the "some people just want to watch the world burn" categorization. They've been deliberately left vague in terms of motivation, I think, because they are picture-perfect bad guys; unlike the corp suit who is hellbent on profits at any cost or the researcher who pushed ethical boundaries in the name of science, Shedim can't be reasoned with, they can't be talked down, heck, they can't even be fully understood. That makes them that much easier to present as a purely "evil" enemy.
Something later editions gloss over is that Shedim can inhabit any and all corpses; Year of the Comet from SR3 gives actual target numbers for a Shedim inhabiting a 1,000 year old or more corpse; this makes them perfect nightmare fuel enemies, as they could inhabit the preserved corpse of ancient Egyptian kings and the like, for example. They can also take over a projecting magicians body... :)
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Well Year of the Comet back in 3rd touched on a lot of this.
They are alien astral jellyfish which takes dead or otherwise unoccupied bodies ( #hijackingastralprojectors ) to play puppeteer with so they can come across into the physical realm. Once there they do not seem able to return to the astral or other metaplanes voluntarily.
Do they hate all life? It does seem so given their actions.
Once they have a body they are fairly stable energywise, whereas while in pure astral form they lose force rapidly and would 'die' if taken down to 0.
But they actively do drain energy from others using their Karma Drain and the Deathly Aura tends to play havoc with life around them, making them less than the best company to hang out with.
You can try to anthropomorphize them a bit, but these really are alien intellects coming from what was probably a very energy/resource poor metaplane given their harvesting skills and they have now landed in what to them must seem like the land of milk and honey.
It is not so unlike our own historys with explorers coming into rich resource lands and basically raping the land and its occupants with little regard for either, though in this case we fill both categories, body and spirit.
The Master Shedim do seem more intelligent and could possibly be negotiated with, but then again would we listen to a committee of cows wanting to discuss holding off on opening another McDonalds?
I do kind of wish rather than alien entities they had gone with spirits of the dead like in Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, but that would have probably kicked up all sorts of shitstorms by it's implecations and would have required a bit of rewriting of the metaplanes a bit.
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I do kind of wish rather than alien entities they had gone with spirits of the dead like in Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, but that would have probably kicked up all sorts of shitstorms by it's implecations and would have required a bit of rewriting of the metaplanes a bit.
Gah, LOVED that trilogy! And that's also more of what I was thinking of when I first read about Shedim. I agree about the implications and problems that type of situation would create. Especially with killed characters coming back etc etc. PITA from a platform standpoint IMHO. But great story :)
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I do love how Shedim represent one of the few actual evil things in the Shadowrun 'verse. Other things may be horrific or ambiguous or nasty, and there's a couple dens of evil amongst the sapient beings. A dragon flat-out thinks differently (you're crunchy and taste good with ketchup is probably a frequent thought), you're food and at least somewhat valuable even to the worst Infected and shadow spirits, hosts to insect spirits, etc. None of them really compare to the Shedim-wide hatred of all things living that drives them as a whole.
Always remember; "If it'll make a Shedim smile, rethink your decision."
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Remember, the Watergate Rift may be closed, but master Shedim still have the Astral Gateway power, so they can summon more lesser Shedim whenever they want!
(Don't know if the Gateway power can be used to bring in more Master Shedim however...)
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Always remember; "If it'll make a Shedim smile, rethink your decision."
If you are close enough to see a Shedim smile, somebody's done something wrong.
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Remember, the Watergate Rift may be closed, but master Shedim still have the Astral Gateway power, so they can summon more lesser Shedim whenever they want!
(Don't know if the Gateway power can be used to bring in more Master Shedim however...)
Nope
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Good to know...
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Not for lack of trying.
Do not assume the shedim are done for.
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Not for lack of trying.
Do not assume the shedim are done for.
Bah! If only!!
<GRUMBLES> Stoopid body snatching undead spectral jelly-fish! Always stealing my body when I go for an extended Astral jaunt....
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Always stealing my body when I go for an extended Astral jaunt....
Astral Projection 101: Summon a friendly spirit and have it possess your body until you return. Beware of spirit pact shenanignas and spirits that are known to be... wily.
Astral Projection 102: Learn how to summon possession spirits, or befriend someone else who can!
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Don't mind Reaver's grumbling.
He is still sore about the last time his body got hijacked by one.
His buddies mounted a hasty rescue effort to reacquire his body before he faded.
When they tracked it down, it turns out the shedim was shacking up with his ex.
Which probably goes a long way in explaining a thing or two about the ex. ;)
Before that I had always thought when he referred to her with terms like 'soul sucking' I thought he was just talking figuratively.
My bad, man. My bad.
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Not for lack of trying.
Do not assume the shedim are done for.
They'll probably start showing back up as the level of magic rises over time. Hopefully not in any great numbers though.
There's been a couple of posts in other threads about shedim possibly deserving as much consideration as Infected. While I don't buy into that opinion, I would like to see an expansion of what is known (or "known") about the corpse stealers. Possibly an in-character posting of a claim to have communicated with one or more shedim.
4) something else . . .
Thoughts?
It's a 'I hate your face cause it's a face' type of thing. They want to end all living things, and travel to where there are living things, to end them. I've seen a posts here and there, even back when they were first put in game, that they may be one of the least forms of the Horrors, which makes them an Evil Bad Guy (tm) in a way that no other person or group in Shadowrun has ever been.
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Don't mind Reaver's grumbling.
He is still sore about the last time his body got hijacked by one.
His buddies mounted a hasty rescue effort to reacquire his body before he faded.
When they tracked it down, it turns out the shedim was shacking up with his ex.
Which probably goes a long way in explaining a thing or two about the ex. ;)
Before that I had always thought when he referred to her with terms like 'soul sucking' I thought he was just talking figuratively.
My bad, man. My bad.
Trust me. The exwife sucks more the souls...
Reason,
Money,
Time,
Sanity,
They are all absorbed by that black-hole of a woman....
Makes Shedim look like Care Bears!
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Don't mind Reaver's grumbling.
He is still sore about the last time his body got hijacked by one.
His buddies mounted a hasty rescue effort to reacquire his body before he faded.
When they tracked it down, it turns out the shedim was shacking up with his ex.
Which probably goes a long way in explaining a thing or two about the ex. ;)
Before that I had always thought when he referred to her with terms like 'soul sucking' I thought he was just talking figuratively.
My bad, man. My bad.
Trust me. The exwife sucks more the souls...
Reason,
Money,
Time,
Sanity,
They are all absorbed by that black-hole of a woman....
Makes Shedim look like Care Bears!
Shhhhh...... don't give the freelancers any ideas for a new more evil monster.
One thing crossed my mind reading this, didn't they say there were spirits similar to Shedim coming out of some manawarp in Jerusalem? Did they ever follow up on that in the game?
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I don't remember that at all! What book was that from Mr.Grey?
(Might have to do some reading! Yay!)
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Shadows of Asia I believe.
Edit: found it. Shadows of Asia pg 110 and 111.
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Shadows of Asia I believe.
Edit: found it. Shadows of Asia pg 110 and 111.
Cool, thanks!
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There are also similar spirits but that have kept actual shedim away in Bali.
The reference on p.111 is to shedim appearing during the AfA jihad in the 30s and people referring to them as shedim (which is a Hebrew word for "demon").
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There are also similar spirits but that have kept actual shedim away in Bali.
The reference on p.111 is to shedim appearing during the AfA jihad in the 30s and people referring to them as shedim (which is a Hebrew word for "demon").
interesting.
some form of Shadow Spirits maybe?
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Unclear.
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Not for lack of trying.
Do not assume the shedim are done for.
Bah! If only!!
<GRUMBLES> Stoopid body snatching undead spectral jelly-fish! Always stealing my body when I go for an extended Astral jaunt....
<Stretches><Looks down>
"What the frag? Where did this tattoo come from?!?!?!"
"I :-* Corpses"
<shakes fist at the dark sky>
" <insert expressive and heartfelt language here> "
"Your day will come shedim! Your day will come."
-- scene from the annals of Reaver, prior to the Watergate Rift closing
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There are also similar spirits but that have kept actual shedim away in Bali.
The reference on p.111 is to shedim appearing during the AfA jihad in the 30s and people referring to them as shedim (which is a Hebrew word for "demon").
interesting.
some form of Shadow Spirits maybe?
In the fluff, someone comments that they thought Shedim came first with the comet. Our favorite clown says they should really edit their information.
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As I understand it, "shedim" is Arabic(?) For "demon". While the game rules might explicitly stat out the achetypical shedim, the game world doesn't really know how to distinguish one from any other bogeyman. If they, as a race, call themselves "shedim" it is merely because a powerful one was Arabic when we name-givers gave it a name. We don't really know anything about them, but the stuff we think we know comes from our own biases placed on them. If one of their species did something good, we would simply claim that it wasn't the same species, and then give it some other name.
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As I understand it, "shedim" is Arabic(?) For "demon". While the game rules might explicitly stat out the achetypical shedim, the game world doesn't really know how to distinguish one from any other bogeyman. If they, as a race, call themselves "shedim" it is merely because a powerful one was Arabic when we name-givers gave it a name. We don't really know anything about them, but the stuff we think we know comes from our own biases placed on them. If one of their species did something good, we would simply claim that it wasn't the same species, and then give it some other name.
Its actually Hebrew.
If my arabic is still good, I believe demon translates to 'Shaytan'
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Shaytan, Shaitan, Satan - same thing.
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Potato... Falafel... The point is that it is a human name given to it. The members of this species that were caught were evil, that doesn't mean that all of them are evil. After all, who is going to report a spirit doing good things.
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... um ... wow. Once again, we get to watch CitizenJoe go completely off the deep end, stating his home-blend theories and ideas as if they were SR canon.
In humanistic terms, spirits don't have species, they have types. Spirits who torment and act cruelly are ifrit, shaitan - whatever you want to call a 'bad spirit'. Spirits who assist, act helpfully are djinn, angel. Are they all spirits? Yeah, sure. But aren't the spirits who act a certain way, have certain preferences (whether that preference is for fire or for doing good things) going to be drawn to a metaplane that is comfortable in that way? Again, yes. And that becomes their home, along with ten billion other spirits who feel the same way. Thus, you contact any spirit on a particular metaplane, no matter which spirit you get a hold of, you can expect it to act in pretty much a certain manner.
C'mon, this is basic stuff, here. Or are you attempting to argue that not all 'spirits that do evil' are bad?
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Stop drinking the Kool-Aid CJ....
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Pretty sure that's absinthe, not Kool-Aid...
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Shaytan, Shaitan...
Shai-hulud?
And Joe, seriously, you're as bad as adzling is with customer service issues.
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Shaytan, Shaitan...
Shai-hulud?
Those are rockworms. I'm told they get very big in the Mojave, Sahara, Empty Quarter ... ;)
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MAY HIS PASSING CLEANSE THE WORLD!
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Potato... Falafel... The point is that it is a human name given to it. The members of this species that were caught were evil, that doesn't mean that all of them are evil. After all, who is going to report a spirit doing good things.
Which is part of what I'd like to see . . . all right, yes, it's my wishlist, others may not give a frag.
Do shedim self-identify? Before they get bodies?
Has the Spirit Flute been conveyed to Ibn Eisa, who is preparing to use it on the [power] site of Babylon? (Babylon, from Bab-El 'gate of (the) god(s))
When did Evan Corcoran get possessed by a master shedim?
Um . . . most theological texts and traditions at the very least contain reports of spirits doing good things . . .
And then came the Awakening . . .
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Oh there are 'Good' spirits. And there are many spirits that 'Love' meta-humanity (in a non-lunch kinda way).
Heck, there are multiple accounts of spirits that want to BE meta-human (or at least act like it).
BUT, there is also a lot of spirits that HATE neta-humanity. And the Shedim are one of them.
The only thing that seems certain is that the deeper from the metaplanes a spirit comes from, the more likely they are to be hostile to metahumanity, either through indifference (Bug spirits), or malice (Shedim).
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That's the point. There is a type of inhabitation spirit. Are the bad ones Shedim or are all of them shedim? Let's swing this to humans; are just the bad ones criminals or all of them criminals?
Now before you go and say all inhabitation spirits are bad... or possession... actually I'm not sure what the methodology of Shedim is. We'll assume inhabitation. Jewish folklore is the origin of the Golem, which was used for good purposes. There's also the creation of Eve (although depending on your feelings, this may hurt my case). Anyway, there are numerous cases of life being breathed into inanimate objects. Was J.C. one of these spirits that swung good?
I know some of you think I'm just taking a piss. But I like my grey and grayer morality of Shadowrun. If someone is trying to convince you of absolute evil, that person is usually a worse evil trying to get rid of competition.
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Shedim possess vessels, Insect spirits inhabit them.
Shedim can only possess dead or abandoned vessels, Insect spirits can only inhabit living ones. There are other examples, but those two are by far the bigger boogeymen in Shadowrun where "evil" spirits are concerned.
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Joe, what you're saying works, to some extent, when talking about metahumans. Examples of 'real' good and 'real' evil are rare, because those are extremes on the bell curve, but they do exist, and most people are in the shades of grey. However, your 'grey and greyer' analogy forcibly cuts off the two parts that make that grey possible, the white and the black. It is a spectrum on a bell curve, and the vast majority of creatures in this world are in between. But that bell curve only applies to metahumans, and other creatures native to this plane. The further you go from the material plane, the more likely that the bell curve will be shaped differently, with different values. Shedim are creatures of a very different plane, one most likely far closer to that of the Enemy than others we've seen. These creatures seek out life and extinguish it, because they hate life itself. Maybe you could find a 'good' Shedim, but you've got a better chance of finding a Drow Paladin in D&D settings, back before a certain dual-wielding ranger became popular. Your arguments aren't bad, for talking about humans, elves, even dragons. But when talking about residents of the deep metaplanes, they are basically a whitewash, ignoring the truths as they have been specifically laid out in the setting canon. You may like it to be as such, and in your home game, you are free to house rule things to your heart's content, but we're talking about the ACTUAL setting, and the ACTUAL way things are in the SR universe.
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Ah, how the phone book remains the same ...
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I think that there are reasons for killing that are more than hating life. And I have enough Hubris of Man to believe that we are capable of far more evil on an acute level than creatures that do it as a matter of routine. Regardless, you're missing my point. When you take spirits as a group, and then segregate them into groups, because humans are insufferable racists, we need a vocabulary of labels to put on those groups. There is a subset of possession based spirits. There is a further subset of antisocial possession based spirits, or "evil" spirits. Is Shedim, or "demon", the label we put on this specific subset of spirits, or are Shedim a very specific "race" of spirits?
As I understand it, the Vodoun Loa are pretty much exactly the same thing except under the control of a Vodoun priest.
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No, not really.
Loa come in many flavors. Most are rather indifferent to humanity. Some dislike us. Some seek to actively help us.
But as a whole, Loa do NOT wantonly kill every living thing they come across, sapient or not.
The Shedim on the other hand DO! Either through their deathly aura, or through their life draining touch, or through the manipulation of man. It seems to be their unstated goal to turn the earth into a dead mudball.
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And the Reavers from the Firefly universe are really just misunderstood, not murderous savages that will "rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. and if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."
Seriously, though, Joe, you might as well be arguing about the color of Lofwyr's scales. The nature of shedim is pretty cut and dry as far as canon goes. You want to quibble about moral relativism of creatures that want to eat you, then there's a forum for that, but it isn't this forum, which is for discussing the actual canon of the world.
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Spoiler alert...
The Reavers are just people that survived that experiment that turned most of a planet's population into drooling zombies.
If you're using the Reaver analogy, then Shedim are just spirits that went through some sort of corrupting ritual.
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Sure....
And turned them all into murderous zombie spirits of death and destruction with no hope of reason, rationale or cookies! ::)
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Ummm... yes? I mean I presume this thread IS about the ecology of the Shedim. If that is so, then we need to be open minded about the source of the limited information that we have on them. The tortured spirit trapped in a world that is toxic to itself, which demands possessing a corpse as the only means of not dying does seem to be a compelling origin.
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No, they need to possess a body because they are so ALIEN to astral plane and the material plane that without a body, they slowly die to evansense. (Their Force bleeds off into the manasphere)
This of its self proves nothing other then their native plane is vastly different then both the astral and the material planes, and has nothing to do with if they are 'Good or Evil'.
What makes them evil is their obession with ending ALL life. Hell, even other spirits hate the shedim, which should tell you something.
Seriously Joe, buying the leftover Kool-Aid from Jonestown for personal consumption was a really bad idea...
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Reavers are humans turned hyper-aggressive by PAX, and who's to say there isn't a cure that could reverse it? I honestly would rather liken Reavers to the various HMHVV Infected because Reavers seem to be semi-feral while still being able to perform complex tasks like piloting starships, and some of the more feral Infected lose control over themselves after a while.
I do however agree that canon-wise, Shedim are Bad News™. Their motivations are largely unknown to us, but we know that collectively they all seem to want to kill any living being without exception. Ibn Eisa, the leader of the New Islamic Jihad, was a great example of a Master Shedim. Instead of a shambling corpse with a malevolent intelligence who is hellbent on wantonly murdering everything in its immediate surrounding like its lesser Shedim cousins, the Shedim possessing Ibn Eisa's decaying body literally turned the Islamic Unity Movement into a terrorist organization and unleashed a wave of terror throughout the Middle East. In short, Shedim are bad, and Master Shedim are bad on a scale that's hard to comprehend.
It's also worth pointing out that Shedim, and indeed any being with the Evanescence weakness, may not actually "die" in the traditional metahuman view when they reach 0 Essence. It is unknown, at least to us as players from a canon perspective, whether Shedim who succumb to Evanescence are actually destroyed or merely return to their own plane of existence. As Street Grimoire points out, "for [the] purposes of us on the prime material the two results are pretty much the same", but for the purposes of this discussion this could at least in part affect the motivation of Shedim. If they are merely returned to their home plane they are effectively immortal and "live" to fight another day, but if they are destroyed then they are effectively "just" struggling for survival.
I don't think the latter, if even remotely true, makes them any less evil from the point of view of metahumanity in general, though. They're still bodysnatching spirits with a penchant for murder who feed on the life force of other living beings, and they exude an aura that literally causes living organisms to decay under continued exposure. The fiction insinuate that they kill people not because they have to to survive, but because they want to, and for no logical reason that anyone in-setting knows of. That makes them pretty much wholly evil in my book.
A shark isn't considered "evil" by most rational beings if it chomps a surfer.
A shark that somehow gained sapience, managed to leave the ocean and move into a highly populated area, and that then started viciously killing and draining human beings would probably be considered both terrifying and quite evil by most people I know.
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A shark that somehow gained sapience, managed to leave the ocean and move into a highly populated area, and that then started viciously killing and draining human beings would probably be considered both terrifying and quite evil by most people I know.
Now let's just leave Lawyers out of this debate, because that's a whole other level. :P
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Something about 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean...
Excepting people who are laywers already or studying for the bar exam and happen to also write for Catalyst :D
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That's just it. We don't know their motivation. We've just seen their activities and ascribed it to hatred of life. They could think of us the same way that we think of a virus, just some disease that needs to be erraticated. That doesn't make them evil, but it also doesn't mean we have to lay down and take it.
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That's just it. We don't know their motivation. We've just seen their activities and ascribed it to hatred of life. They could think of us the same way that we think of a virus, just some disease that needs to be erraticated. That doesn't make them evil, but it also doesn't mean we have to lay down and take it.
I disagree, based on what canon has to say about Shedim. We may not know their exact motivations, but the results are pretty clear:
Shedim have shown a desire to travel to the physical plane, though it is extremely difficult for them to stay there, but have also shown nothing but utter hatred for mortals. They come to where life exists so that they may extinguish it.
Whereas previous shedim appeared to be intellectually primitive entities filled with hate and violence, the master shedim exhibited a deep and malicious intelligence.
Conflicts started by the [New Islamic Jihad, led by Ibn Eisa, a Master Shedim] cost thousands of lives, all under the direction of this malevolent entity. Clearly, the shedim orchestrated the conflict merely to instigate widespread death, and many fear what other carnage these beings might be planning.[/b]
Definition of evil:
adjective
1. profoundly immoral and malevolent.
noun
1. profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.
Yeah, that's pretty much a textbook definition of Shedim for you right there. You can go on about your personal belief on the matter, but the source material doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation here. Keep in mind that the concept of good and evil is a social construct; from metahumanity's point of view, Shedim are irrevocably, quantifiably evil, regardless of what their actual intentions may be.
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Look up naiveté, confirmation bias, unreliable narrator and racism while you're in the dictionary.
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Look up 'Unbiased Game Information,' 'Evidence' and 'Canon' while you're at it, Joe. The books flat-out state in the game information sections on Shedim that they are malevolent beings whose existence/presence is inimical to life, to say nothing about their behavior when they manage to stick around. Maybe if they just stole unclaimed bodies/vessels to live their spirit lives, it'd be okay. They don't. They seek to destroy everything living.
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Look up naiveté, confirmation bias, unreliable narrator and racism while you're in the dictionary.
Nice try, but no. You've clearly got your own opinion on this and I have no need to try to convince you that I am "right". I know what the canon states and what that means for my game, and that's good enough for me.
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This whole thing on the Shedim remind me of the president from Mars Attacks after they smashed up the US military. 'But they said they come in peace so they must mean they come in peace.'
Most spirit planes have shades of grey as they are different so their interactions with metahumanity are going to be complicated. The crystal entities they talked about recently are a really clear example of that. Shedim and the Horrors fall in a clear cut black area. Is there a plane where they're all good as well? Maybe, but we haven't ran into it yet.
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This whole thing on the Shedim remind me of the president from Mars Attacks after they smashed up the US military. 'But they said they come in peace so they must mean they come in peace.'
Most spirit planes have shades of grey as they are different so their interactions with metahumanity are going to be complicated. The crystal entities they talked about recently are a really clear example of that. Shedim and the Horrors fall in a clear cut black area. Is there a plane where they're all good as well? Maybe, but we haven't ran into it yet.
At least Horrors need metahumans alive.
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Pardon me while i chip in again . . .
Is it fair to liken shedim (master or not) to any other "Monster"TM from any other source?
Are shedim like non-corporeal Goa'uld, or Aliens, or Wraith (SGA), or Daleks, or . . . .
As informative and definitive as those excerpts from Street Grimoire are, I'm still hoping for a . . . [in-game] breakdown and expansion, analytical or not, of What Shedim Want.
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Were this an In-Game discussion, you could take CitizenJoe's psychodrama and use it lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. In regards to the actuality of What Shedim Want, it's to turn you, everyone you knew, and all six degrees of seperation between you and every other living organism on the planet into squeaky wheel grease.
And they'd best be described as Daleks: "Exterminate! Exterminate!! EXTERMINATE!!" Except in comparison, all the suggestions you give are sweet and fuzzy in comparison.
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I'm not saying you should be all chummy with them, just trying to get you to realize we probably aren't any better than them on the scales of morality.
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Because we're not capable of emotions besides hatred? Because we don't act to do good things? Yeah, no. If you wanted to argue that point with insect spirits, I'd listen up. They're not evil, they just want to do what most species want to do. Grow, spread, repeat. We just happen to occupy an unfortunate spot (or two) on their life-cycle, otherwise they'd probably ignore us. Shedim are explicitly said to be inimical to all life in nature and behavior.
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Shedim are what you get when you mix a Dalek and the Marquis de Sade.
And MijRai is correct. Insect spirits are less 'evil' and more doing what they must to survive. Hell, even shadow spirits don't cause torment and anguish for the hell of it, but because that is their food. Same with the Infected feeding on people. Shedim stand apart because while taking bodies is what they need to do to survive here, actively seeking to exterminate as much life as they can is what they CHOOSE to do, and they choose it willingly and knowingly. THAT, not the bodysnatching, is what makes them evil.
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I remember a while back where Joe tried to defend the Horrors like he is currently doing for the Shedim. Which is how we got to the conclusion that horrors are really the Care Bears, but they hug to hard. Shedim, just want to be friends (with your corpse so his buddy can posses it and cause murder).
As for what the Shedim want, to murder everything that is considered alive. Heck, they probably include other spirits too, just can't posses those on our physical plane of existence.
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Indeed, Rift. And this is why everyone keeps telling Joe he's full of it. I'm actually starting to think he might have a masochistic need for criticism.
You can make solid arguments for creatures like insect spirits or the Great Old Ones of the Lovecraft mythos not being evil. Insect spirits view us the same way we do a side of beef and a new outfit from the store all rolled into one. There isn't malice there (except with Ares, and malice is understandable with people who try experimenting on you). The GOOs (with a couple exceptions) don't intentionally cause insanity and death in their passing, but rather are like humans accidentally stepping on an anthill. Again, no malice there.
Shedim and horrors, however, are actively malicious and delight in causing pain and suffering. The most powerful among them make an art form of it. Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies is the Disney version of Horrors. Remember, the last time they came to play, everyone who wasn't in sealed underground magic bunkers for over a hundred years DIED, or had to turn themselves into twisted half-plant creatures constantly suffering from thorns breaking through their skin in order to make them not taste so good. And even many of those who were sealed in bunkers died, because the Horrors broke in.
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I'd have to agree. Shedim & worse don't really fit in a grey-on-greyer game - such is better off dealing with all the shenanigans metahumanity cares to inflict on itself.
But I stand by my wish for an in-game world, canon expansion to shedim. I'm kinda surprised noone debunked the Spirit Flute at Babylon idea . . .
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They don't fit as one of the few examples of black? I've always considered gray and grayer to lose all meaning without some black and white to delineate.
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I never went to the Care Bear assertion, that's a Strawman Fallacy. My assertion is that, while Horrors and Shedim and dark spirits are bad, corporations and people in general can be so much worse, and usually under the guise of the "Greater Good". That is the kind of evil that makes you question your own morality.
The worst a Shedim can do is shorten your life (nobody lives forever). But they didn't perform the Great Ghost Dance which still has lingering effects of north america to this day. They don't keep amputated and Lobotomized women pregnant and alive so that street doctors have undifferentiated t-cells to fix you up after a fight. They don't genetically engineer food crops to be addictive so that an entire population is enslaved. They don't "foul their own nests".
To me, Shadowrun is all about putting out that unfathomable evil monster and then finding out that it was on a leash the whole time.
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The worst a Shedim can do is shorten your life (nobody lives forever).
This is quite telling; you quite clearly don't know what Master Shedim are capable of.
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CitizenJoe: for those times when you want to make Plan 9 sound sensible.
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The worst a Shedim can do is shorten your life (nobody lives forever).
This is quite telling; you quite clearly don't know what Master Shedim are capable of.
I assert that this shows that you don't know what Man is capable of.
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You'd be wrong, Joe. I wasn't commenting on what humanity is capable of, merely that you're dead (hah!) wrong if you think the absolute worst a Shedim can do is kill you...
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Weren't you guys just explaining how Shedim aren't complicated with their motives are are strictly dedicated to ending life?
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I think Herr B is referring to how a Master Shedim can kill you then bring in a ringer to take over the body, thus swelling their ranks.
Now if you don't worry about your corpse after you are gone it's a moot point, but many humans tend to get funny about post-mortem possession.
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Sounds like I need to find the "Care Bear" horror thread.
Second, while yes the worse a Shedim can do to you (and you alone) is kill you, but no one lives in a vacuum. Master Shedim instead corrupt other gullible humans into making Hitler and his camps look like a summer camp for kids. Why, yes (insert believe system/political group/book club) into committing mass genocide. Better yet, the could currupt a summer camp for kids into making the kids crazed killers, only for them to in the final act commit suicide. So, yup, just mltotally misunderstood. Kinda like Pinhead (or any other Evil outsider) he really was just wanting a friend.
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I noticed that you just implied the best Shedim can do is imitate Man, i.e. Hitler.
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Actually, if they implied anything it is that Shedim would be worse.
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Hitter and any other dictator discriminated in their killings. The Shedim don't. They want to extinguish all life. That is their sole purpose. They have no other motive at all. They don't do it out of necessity, they didn't come here to breed or as fugitives. They came to destroy. There aren't any shades of gray to find in them because it's blacker than the void already.
We humans kill to promote our tribes, for greed, for our legacy. Shedim do not. There is nothing on this plane of existence worse than the Shedim. There is no reasoning, no bargaining, no negotiating. They want you dead, period.
They want all life gone simply because life exists here. That is all.
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Enh. Joe's angling around to mousetrap people; ignore the guy. Yes, people are very, very bad; just reading the bit about the Shedim in the Threats 2 book shows you how malevolent they are. And yes, Joe, people are bad, and you can have a lot of 'fun' playing around with this, but even people who ... actually, about half your examples are inaccurate, but whatever. They still love their kids, and want to play baseball or tennis, and have a good meal with friends, etc.
Shedim don't. No matter what your crazy argument happens to be, it's canon that shedim simply don't want to have a good meal with friends, or love their kids, or want to play baseball or tennis, or the ten billion other dreams that people want. Shedim want to kill you. And your kids. And your friends. And good meals. And tennis. And especially baseball.
Sooooo ...
Pix - 'extinguish'.
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Fixing it. Thanks.
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Was that 6 pages or only 5 before Godwin's Law was applied?
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At least it's a viable comparison. :P
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I don't think Godwin really applies when it is a legit comparison, though. That's like being surprised that the Yankees come up in a discussion about New York City sports teams.
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Was that 6 pages or only 5 before Godwin's Law was applied?
Just over 5, and it was only a minor representation of the Law. Not bad I'd say.
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Fundamentally, Shedim are zombies. They exist to be guilt free victims of our characters' murder fantasies. They are Synths, body snatchers, evil clones, doppelgangers... whatever the flavor, they are cast as irredeemably evil creatures who look just like us so that we have an excuse to go on a rampage.
If that's your kick, fine. But, I like the guilt and anguish and repercussions involved with pulling that trigger. That is why I prefer Shadowrun over DND. Absolute evil undermines the responsibility.
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And some of us shoot schoolgirls in the face for a paycheck..... So 'moral' arguments are lost on us.
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And some of us shoot schoolgirls in the face for a paycheck..... So 'moral' arguments are lost on us.
in your neighbourhood they might...
In ours, you find the GrrlScouts tend to shoot back, if they aren't shooting first. :P
And whoa to you if you are late on your payment for the Thin Mints.....
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Fundamentally, Shedim are worse than zombies. Zombies aren't malevolent, they're generally unthinking. The fear invoked by zombies is that they don't actually care; if they could be said to have a goal, it is to consume, to propagate. They take a person, hurt them, make the person one of them. To make you one of them, until all are them.
Shedim, like it is explicitly stated, don't care about that. The body is only a tool they use to get to their real goal; the destruction of all things living. Theirs is an emotionally fueled hatred. It's personal to them. Comparing them to Synths and clones is ludicrous; Synths might be used for infiltration, but how many of them just want freedom and rights?
Shedim exist as one of the few 'evil' things in Shadowrun (Blood Spirits might be up there too, and some forms of Shadow Spirits as well). Two or three things out of innumerable options. It is really hard to have shades of gray without some black and white to define it. You don't find that black and white in metahumanity or nature, generally. Shedim take up the slack, as that is what they are.
In the end, if you want your characters to constantly feel guilt and remorse... Don't use the Shedim. Their purpose isn't to make you feel remorse, just like you generally shouldn't feel remorse for squishing a Queen Bug. Their purpose is to evoke fear and terror, to thrash the PCs when possible, to try and possess the mage's body and cause havoc. If Shedim are in your game, you've got bigger things to worry about than crying over the body you just beat, slashed and stabbed until it could no longer attack you.
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It makes me wonder though, with Shedim being in the pure evil at the end of the scale, is there anything in Shadowrun that we know about that takes up the pure good side of the spectrum?
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No. And that is the point of gray and grayer. Good and evil depends on which end of the gun you are facing. Nobody thinks of themselves as evil. They always have a good reason for what they are doing, it is just that the other guy doesn't agree with that reason.
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Well, actually yes, there are entities that occupy the 'pure good' side of things. But they aren't widely known because things haven't gotten to the point where they can come here yet. Remember, Shedim only showed up so early because one great dragon blew a hole in the world and another ripped it wider clawing his way out of the metaplanes. Otherwise, we wouldn't have seen them for, oh, at least a couple hundred more years.
And Joe, we get it. You don't like absolutes. Good for you. In that case, instead of trying to rewrite one of the extremely few things in Shadowrun that is canonically nailed down as an absolute amongst absolutes, focus your game on the other 99.9999% of the setting. Don't try to tell people the sky is green just because you think blue is tacky.
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*Passes cookies to Mirikon in agreement.*
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Nobody thinks of themselves as evil.
Actually, there are. Some people know they are evil, and some of them even revel in it. Good and evil can be simply (though somewhat crudely) defined. Good is any action taken to benefit society as a whole, while evil is any action taken at the cost of society as a whole. This is why it is possible to do good deeds for evil reasons. Like being a philanthropist so people don't realize you are a world-wide crime boss.
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Nobody thinks of themselves as evil.
Actually, there are. Some people know they are evil, and some of them even revel in it. Good and evil can be simply (though somewhat crudely) defined. Good is any action taken to benefit society as a whole, while evil is any action taken at the cost of society as a whole. This is why it is possible to do good deeds for evil reasons. Like being a philanthropist so people don't realize you are a world-wide crime boss.
Indeed. My favorite example: The Operative from the Firefly spin-off movie Serenity.
The Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: I don't murder children.
The Operative: I do. If I have to.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?
The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?
The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster.What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.
While The Operative is entirely fictional, I know from personal experience that the ends do not, or at least should not, always justify the means.
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Fundamentally, Shedim are zombies. They exist to be guilt free victims of our characters' murder fantasies. They are Synths, body snatchers, evil clones, doppelgangers... whatever the flavor, they are cast as irredeemably evil creatures who look just like us so that we have an excuse to go on a rampage.
If that's your kick, fine. But, I like the guilt and anguish and repercussions involved with pulling that trigger. That is why I prefer Shadowrun over DND. Absolute evil undermines the responsibility.
Um . . . apparently not. Certainly not zombies, because zombies are attested as something different within the SR paradigm. I get the feeling that shedim would violently repudiate the idea that they exist to be anything other than pest controllers, where pest = metahuman. And if a shedim (Master or not) can't manage to guilt-trip a bunch of PCs, the GM really isn't trying. Think vampires from Buffy/Angel.
We get that they're not to your taste. That doesn't mean others don't find them worthwhile adversaries or villains. I kind of expected mega-scepticism or talking them down from Wyrm, and maybe a few others.
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He wasn't talking about SR zombies, but Night of the Living Dead zombies, Longshot.
And I'd actually say that in a 'grey and greyer' setting like Shadowrun, having points of utter dark and white light helps to reinforce that feeling, as well as keeping one from becoming detached to the whole thing. Fighting an enemy like a Shedim or going on a hooding run to help a guy get his daughter back from slavers is a change of pace from your typical datasteals, extractions, and so on. When everything is grey, it is easy to lose perspective, and that anguish some might feel pulling the trigger begins to fade away as it is 'just another job'. The white and the black keep you grounded, give you something to set your moral compass by, and remind you of innocence lost and how far you have gone. If you want the anguish, then I say that rather than avoiding pure white or pure black, you NEED them in your game. Oh sure, not all the time, as that will grow blase, same as with nothing but grey, but once in a while, having a stark reminder of the absolutes out there comes as a shock to the system, and forces people to reevaluate life choices. Makes for a much more compelling story that way.
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He wasn't talking about SR zombies, but Night of the Living Dead zombies, Longshot.
And I'd actually say that in a 'grey and greyer' setting like Shadowrun, having points of utter dark and white light helps to reinforce that feeling, as well as keeping one from becoming detached to the whole thing. Fighting an enemy like a Shedim or going on a hooding run to help a guy get his daughter back from slavers is a change of pace from your typical datasteals, extractions, and so on. When everything is grey, it is easy to lose perspective, and that anguish some might feel pulling the trigger begins to fade away as it is 'just another job'. The white and the black keep you grounded, give you something to set your moral compass by, and remind you of innocence lost and how far you have gone. If you want the anguish, then I say that rather than avoiding pure white or pure black, you NEED them in your game. Oh sure, not all the time, as that will grow blase, same as with nothing but grey, but once in a while, having a stark reminder of the absolutes out there comes as a shock to the system, and forces people to reevaluate life choices. Makes for a much more compelling story that way.
All of this yes!
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Come on guys, I thought we agreed. Hugs, kiss, puppies (to posses). All they want is to love the world (to death).
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To reinforce what I'm saying, I'd like to bring up a couple different worlds from anime.
First off, Ghost in the Shell. Specifically, the Stand Alone Complex series. GitS, for those heathens who don't know, is set in a dystopic cyberpunk-type future, where cybernetics and even full body cyborgs have become more common. The movies and series follow the adventures of Section 9, an elite unit focused on anti-terror and anti-cybercrime tactics. While they may be the 'good guys', this isn't a good and evil kind of story. Most of the time, there's the moral ambiguity one expects in a dystopia. However, there are a few instances where you see some utter dark, like when CIA pukes come to try and manipulate Batou into killing one of their rogue operatives for them (said operative likes to cut the skin off people in a t-shirt pattern and film it from the victim's cybernetics), and they complain at the end (when Batou refuses to kill the man in cold blood) that they only bought enough tickets for the two agents. There's also some white light, such as the series finale, when the AI Tachikomas crash the satellite holding their AIs into a submarine in order to prevent a nuclear strike on the team's position, sacrificing themselves. These moments help crystalize the character of the team, which helps put the grey in relief.
In Cowboy Beebop, you have a team of bounty hunters flying through the solar system in search of enough work to keep their ships running. This series is about hunting criminals, yes, but the series sets the tone early by having the criminals be real people with real motivations, some of which are quite sympathetic. But there is plenty of light, such as the time when they left some alien food in the fridge too long and it started attacking people until one character dumped the fridge into vacuum and the dog... ate the rest.