I have recently been playing daggerfall and started doing tasks for the mages guild and I have to say I have to question whether the mages guild is truely the "good guys" that they want you to believe they are and this goes toward the later games too. First in one quest they send you to assinate a guild member just because he doesn't follow their rules and strays into "unsantioned practices". Several simular cases where in morrowind where they send you to kill people who don't follow their rules. and one more case in morrowind where if the person doesn't join them then they must die. This same thing was the main point of the mages guild main quest in Oblivion where the necromancers where the target just because they didn't follow their rules. It may be argued that necromancers are evil and that necromancy corrupts the mind but all true lore ppl and followers of all the game know that necromancy is a lot more of a gray area.

Another thing that leads me to believe that the mages guild is evil is their experiments. I have had several times through diffrent games had to put down experiments that had gotten out of hand and in the most recent case (daggerfall) the subject told me it'd rather die then go back to the labrotory to be experimented on. Is this evil? some may think not.

Another thing that isn't exactly evil but could be considered it is that the mages guild has a huge monopoly on its services and services that only it can offer for nothing else comes close.
One last thing to state is that the founder of the mages guild himself left the guild afther it had become something that he didn't want it to.

Then again with all of the above mentioned it could all be due to the over sized ego of most wizards to begin with. or maybe it isn't just necromancy that corrupts the soul but maybe magic in general no matter what type corrupts a person just some corrupt people faster then other types.

Neither the mages Guild nor Necromancers are evil.... Actually many Necromancers were member off the guilds until Hannibal Taven became the Archmage..

But the fact that they aren't good guys doesn't mean they're evil... The Thieves Guild for example isn't really a guild of good guys... but I think that everyone can agree that The Thieves Guild isn't an evil guild...
It's true that the Mages Guild doesn't always seems to be nice.. But You may have to remember that in Oblivion..

the necromancers were indeed banned... but it were always them who attacked first... not the guild...

Actually, no. Despite what the MG wants you to think, they did force known practitioners out or forced them to conform. It is even mentioned in "The Black Arts on Trial" that Traven sent knights of the lamp to arrest Ulliceta gra-Kogg just for being a necromancer.

The scientists who work for the pharmaceuticals do pretty horrific things to animals. Drugs companies wont invest in certain medicines if don't see any market potential, often condemning many people to die. Hospitals wont use avant garde techniques for fear of litigation in the aftermath of something going wrong. Just the same with the Mages Guild.

But we don't call them evil.

Maybe you don't.

Since the Mages Guild is a monopoly, it means they have the good, the bad, and the freaky all under the same net. To keep everyone in line, the guild gets harsh. The guild protects and helps some people, and oppresses and slaughters others. The guild is also the effective government of the Mages, and they have a wider and more hands on network than the Empire.

I do.

Depends on your perspective and what you're comparing them to. Crooked, yes. Evil/sinister, no.

Also remember the lead mage at the guild in Ald-Rhun, who had her own agenda, being seriously obsessed with Dwemer lore? As far as I'm concerned, that's far from anything in 'guild priorities'. Also, look at the Archmage in the Vvardenfell district. He was an imbecile. You just get a mix-and-match of people in the world, I suppose.

And the one in Balmora was more concerned about bullying Telvanni and fellow MG members to pay up/join or die.

Aye.

Besides 'evil' is subjective. I know people calling atheists like me evil. My point is, it's evil depending on your morals and the way you see it.

The thieves guild is all right too.

Isn't that what you do when you ban something? In the army you aren't allowed to use drugs.. and your kicked out once found out you do....
The Mages Guild never went violant wich the Necromancers that followed Manimarco did...

I call them smart

No baiting

Yeah that wasn't the point Egypt raider No bait please, just listing an example. Carry on.

I don't think the Mages Guild is evil. Maybe they can be seen more like a bureaucracy that's gotten set in its ways; making it harder for citizens of Tamriel to learn magicka, for example. Look at the hoops they make the player character jump through in "Oblivion" in order to join.

I think the necromancers qualify as evil. Suppose you lived in Tamriel, would you want your loved ones to possibly be the raw materials for some necromancer? It's a sickening thought. Humans deserve respect, including their remains.

Only if their corpse was grave robbed. Otherwise, criminal corpses were happily donated to the necromancers. It's a win-win situation. Allows nobles to have an effective deterrent, not have to spend money to dispose of their corpse (unless you live in Bravil, they probably just toss everything in the river), and gives necromancers a steady resource of often young and in-shape bodies to experiment and study with.

And with all those bandits around, everyone leaves home happy!

That depends on whether you define a lump of inanimate raw materials as a person or not. If anything, the soul before entering the Dreamsleeve is what the person is after death, and then the Dreamsleeve pretty well obliterates it anyway.

And what Hellmouth said.

Oh how I want to turn this into a religious discussion, but I'll refrain

I think we as observers of the world can pretty much tell who's evil and who is not. As an organization, the aims and goals of the mages guild really isn't evil. There are certain people who use certain methods that may be defined as such.

That's another value that might not be universal. Consider the Bosmer, for example. I bet they don't have any problems with Necromancy.

Meals on the go

The way you roll down it, it's more of a dream pantleg.

I don't think this entire necromancy and mages guild is as most people picture it, as some kind of struggle between good and evil, i think it's more of a portrait of scientists (mages) and then we have the scientists who use methods not accepted by the scientific community (necromancers) if you look at that scientist fellow in fallout 3 who made the fire ants he responds in pretty much the same way as the mages guild, 'for the good of science/the guild'.

I wouldn't necessarily call the Mages' Guild in and of itself "evil." However, many of the actions it undertakes are evil, from the point of view of the one to whom they are doing it.

I say this using a definition of evil as a subjective quality relative to both the doer and the one to whom it is done. If a particular conflict could come out good for one and evil to the other, either way depending on the outcome, I call it a "neutral" act. For example, a predator seeking its prey. The predator could catch it; good for the predator, who gets to eat that day, bad for the prey. Or the prey could escape; good for the prey, who gets to live another day, bad for the predator. Most creatures, particularly solitary ones, are incapable of performing a totally evil act; the outcome is always in question, and the result is always good for one side, but evil for the other, and therefore neutral overall.

Communal beings, on the other hand, being dependent on the communities in which they live, are capable of acts which are evil for both sides of the conflict. Theft, murder, and other such acts undermine the community in which they are performed, and thus harm both the doer and the one to whom it is done (whether they know it or not), and can thus be considered "evil acts."

The question of whether or not the acts performed on behalf of the Mages Guild are evil then comes up to this question: does it truly strengthen the community by eliminating dissenters, as a Mages Guild apologist would claim? Or do these actions undermine the community as surely as the same acts performed by an individual under his own initiative? And the answer to that question is dependent on another question: what would be the result of anarchy among practitioners of the magic arts? Would society benefit from the freeing of mages from regulation by the guild, by removing their Imperially sanctioned monopoly status and barring them from using force to enforce their decrees? If so, then those acts performed by the guild are evil. If not, and the Guild holds a potentially dangerous element of society in check and in useful service, then these particular acts by the Guild can be regarded not as evil, but neutral in character.

Well, except their dinner is now walking away from them! But as I keep suggesting with every discussion about necromancy, this book is the best source for all your necromatic needs http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/corpse_preparation.shtml . It covers a range of topics from how to prepare skeletons, zombies, mummies, and which regions/cultures are tolerant or intolerant of necromatic activity.