My understanding is that all Shadowrun magic is Earthdawn "blood magic" - because it causes Drain. However, Shadowrun "blood magic" is Earthdawn "death magic," which is seriously bad juju.
Lots of abilities in Earthdawn cost "Strain" (a point or more of temporary damage, essentially) to use. Not just spellcasting, but stuff like Parry and Riposte, too. It cost the adept in exhaustion, essentially. Luckily adepts could take quite a few points of damage before dropping, and it was pretty easy to heal it once combat was done. So it was fairly similar to Drain.
(SR mages are also tossing around raw magic, while ED mages used spell matrices to clean the mana, since the astral was so tainted in ED after the Scourge that casting raw magic pretty much meant Horrors would eat your soul. Think of a spell matrix like Filtering metamagic, I guess.)
Earthdawn also had Blood Magic, which caused a few points of
permanent damage. Usually this was in the form of a magical item that needed to feed on your blood to be activated. You couldn't heal the damage until you removed the item. It actually wasn't all that uncommon, and wasn't considered unethical, since you only used your own life force.
Then there was the use of the life force of unwilling victims to power magic. The Therans did that en masse. Their massive stone airships were kept afloat by the life force of slaves, causing them to constantly be raiding for slaves or demanding them as tribute from conquered territories. The Therans were bad news, and Aztlan seems to be following in their footsteps. Assuming that there isn't an immortal Theran survivor secretly controlling Aztechnology....
Rhonabwy - Uncertain. May fall into Lofwyr's camp.
I seem to recall that
Dragons of the Sixth World implied that Hestaby was the one raising the eggs that Rhonabwy fathered with the Sea Dragon. (And the Sea Dragon is
pissed off about it.) If he trusts Hestaby enough to ask her to hatch his eggs, then he probably will side with her.
Plus, he's somewhat po-metahuman. He apologized and paid compensation for that rampage when he woke up, which... well, it's more than Lofwyr would probably do.
Alamais - Tough call here. Initial reaction is to say Hestaby, to spite Lofwyr, but we all know how little regard Alamais has for metahumans.
Back in the Earthdawn days, Alamais' "dragon supremacist" tendencies were considered second only to Sirrurg's. (Alamais just thought they should rule the younger races, while Sirrurg thought that they should scour human civilization from the earth with fire.) But on the other hand, he
really hates Lofwyr. I can't overstate how much he hates Lofwyr. He's been carrying a grudge since the Second World. Of course, he also hates the immortal elves (they're his kids), and Hestaby is on the Tir's Council of Princes. So... yeah, tough call.
The other thing about Alamais, however, was that he tends to spend all his time off on his own, sulking and plotting, rather than get involved. He didn't even bother to show up for the Theran War, and that was an "all dragons on deck" moment. So he might just sit this one out and wait for an opportunity to backstab a weakened survivor.
Arleesh - Don't know enough about her to say.
All I really know about her is that she's superfocused on her mission to track down imp-infected (Horror Marked?) artifacts. She may just decide that she doesn't particularly care, so long as nobody causes any manaspikes or otherwise hastens the coming of the Horrors.
Ghostwalker - Unknown. I don't see him joining forces with Lofwyr, but he doesn't seem likely to join in Hestaby's group, either.
Is he back from his trip into the astral rift yet? If not, it's possible that he'll miss the whole thing.
The tricky thing with Ghostwalker is that he hates Aztlan, and Sirrurg's attacks on Aztlan are the trigger for all this.
