I love the idea behind this talent- it's dirty fighting (below the belt, biting, etc).

My question is: Is the damage applied from this talent an addition to the hit that generated the knockdown/disorient or a separate source of damage?

It's important because of the application of soak. If it's additive then the damage will exceed (or help exceed) the target's soak. If it's a separate source it will very rarely have any effect.

I'm assuming that it's additive but I'm not sure.

Another possibility is that the language of the talent "cause the target to suffer wounds equal to..." means that it bypasses soak.

What do you all think?

Soak only applies to damage. In this instance, the target is suffering wounds, not taking wound damage . No damage, no soak!

Also of note is that it’s not a seperate ‘hit’ either, so no chance of a Critical Injury.

Ah! So soak is actually irrelevant to these wounds. So if they had a soak of 4 took 3 damage from the actual hit (no wounds inflicted as soak was not exceeded) with enough advantage to activate knockdown and inflicted 3 wounds (from a Skullduggery of 3) then the end result would be the target suffering 3 wounds (despite the remaining unused 1 point of soak).

Excellent! Thanks!