The Deceiver

The Deceiver
Origin	Unclear
Titles	Lord Perfidious The-Liar-Most-High
Names	The Ace of Detectives
Aspects
Date of arrival	Unknown
Owner(s)	SRN

The Deceiver (Lord Perfidious, The-Liar-Most-High) was the Nineteenth Hour of the Fansus, created by SRN. Its origins, like most things about it, were unclear. Its aspects were Moth and Knock in decreasing order of importance.

Its tarot card was The Moon.

Description

Its Lies

The god of conmen and liars, thieves and assassins, fraudsters and impostors died once. Or so they say. But they say a lot of things. While he lived, the goddess of liars chose to shroud their identity. It zealously took to great efforts to ensure that if any truth existed about her, it was shrouded in a billion lies and deceptions, half-truths and outright nonsense. And now, he is dead. The circumstances around their death are as secretive as everything else about her. Some say that he left for Nowhere, seeking to tell the greatest, most powerful of Hours their largest lie. Some say that finally, somebody found their way through her lies and found the truth within, revealing that nothing had ever been there. Some say she told one too many lie and one of the more militant Hours slew her. But the one thing they all say is that he’s dead. Which is true, right? It was slain by the other Hours, following the revelation of the great deception it had woven. Slain, brutally. We all saw its corpse. Which makes it true, of course…

Truth

In reality, the Liar never was. Never was, that is, as an Hour. When the Snake was Segmented, a cabal of Long and rogue Names feared that the Mansus, without its influence, would fall into anarchy. Gathering their power, they created the Liar’s greatest lie: its very existence. A new God from Nothing, they said! A god of lies, secrets, and deception! Wise not to look too close at it, or you would be entangled in its deceptions and go mad. A number tried anyway, and a number indeed went mad; the cabal’s power was not of their god, but neither was it an illusion. As years became millennia, the other Hours accepted its presence, after all, for the Hour of treachery and deception, it was a gentle one, and the presence of the Tail and War of the Doors gave other matters consideration. This situation unwound with one of its greatest lies: The truce surrounding the 4th History. In an attempt to keep the Great Serpent’s peace, it wove for millennia a great lie, that a curse of unfathomable magnitude lay over it, and any to trigger that curse, even an Hour, would not last long. When the Mendicant, in her lack of awareness, violated the truce and was not incinerated, its lies were revealed. Outraged, the other Hours turned upon it, and to preserve their own lie, the cabal ‘killed’ their Hour that never truly was. And with the death of the Deceiver, the cabal fractured. Over the millennia, its original mission had not truly held firm. While many remained true to its mission, far too many had joined their ranks but not their mission. Many Names and Long with no master were secretly recruited by the Deceiver, not all of whom shared its ideals. Far too many were simply opportunists, looking for protection and profit in a tumultuous world. This strain between the loyalists and the opportunists led to the fracturing of the Deceiver, the incident with the Mendicant finally being the last stress on an already strained and fragile alliance. But while the cabal broke, it did not burn. You can still find its fragments everywhere, scheming, plotting...

Principles

Moth, for the falsehoods it perpetrates, and Knock, to open credibility in all who heard it

The Factions

The Loyalists

The loyalists for most of the Deceiver's existence made up its vast majority, their dominion unchallenged, or so they thought, for far too long. After the Deceiver's fracturing, they fractured further, dividing into a thousand different factions or joining other groups.

Damian Kildare

The head of Project Cassandra, Kildare was one of its founders and most ardent supporters of the Deceiver. After the fall,

Ioannes Metzapoulos

The top scholar and archivist of the Deceiver,

Relationships

• The Architeuthian:
• The Anaconda:
• Snake Tail with Appendages:
• The Engine of Cycles:
• The Peacock:
• Old Tarnished:
• The Spark:
• The Cuckoo:
• The Silver Owl:
• The Watcher in the Window:
• The Elder Sister:
• The Apple-of-the-Eye:
• SWOUP:
• The Archivist:
• The Bright-Delver:
• The Harvester:
• [    ]:
• The Insidious:
• The Snow-Stained:
• The Fanged Bramble:
• The Aged Bones:
• The Mendicant Without:
• The Anvil:
• The Maker:
• The Huntsman:
• The Great Serpent: