[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

... 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?

[Reaver]

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid CJ....

[MijRai]

Pretty sure that's absinthe, not Kool-Aid...

[Mirikon]

Shaytan, Shaitan...

Shai-hulud?

And Joe, seriously, you're as bad as adzling is with customer service issues.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Shaytan, Shaitan...

Shai-hulud?

Those are rockworms.  I'm told they get very big in the Mojave, Sahara, Empty Quarter ...

[MijRai]

MAY HIS PASSING CLEANSE THE WORLD!

[Longshot23]

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 . . .

[Reaver]

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).

[CitizenJoe]

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.

[Herr Brackhaus]

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.

[Mirikon]

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.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Ah, how the phone book remains the same ...

[CitizenJoe]

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.

[Reaver]

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.

[Mirikon]

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.