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. As Project Cassandra became riddled with opportunists disloyal to the cause, he became one of the most bloody-handed members of the cabal, purging and slaying in a desperate effort to stem the tide of the loyalists slowly losing their majority. After the fall, he fled to the Anaconda's patronage, but only nominally. While obeying his patron's commands, he continued his work, treating the Anaconda more as a protector and patron rather than overlord. He continued the publication of the books of Project Cassandra, still using the misinformation to further his goals of bringing stability to the Mansus. More alarmingly for the Anaconda, he kept in contact with his oldest friend, who after the dissolution, served a very different Hour...

Ioannes Metzapoulos

The top scholar and archivist of the Deceiver, Ioannes too was one of the most devoted members of the cabal. He focused on the accumulation of knowledge and power, for when the 'Hour' had to flex its muscles to continue proving its existence. A reclusive, retiring old man, he only kept close relations with Kildare. Knowledge was a vital part of this false Hour's existence, and he was behind every act of blackmail, every ancient truth that drove an investigator mad, every powerful invocation dropped as a tantalizing hint. But when the Deceiver dissolved, it went with a very strange master: the Tail. Each found benefit in the other, the Tail seeking a more human representative to engage in diplomacy when absolutely necessary, the war of the Fifth History teaching it grudgingly its value on occasion and Ioannes receiving the Tail's protection and knowledge. But while for the moment his serves the Tail, his correspondence with Kildare raises questions about his loyalty too...

Martin Chang

Martin Chang was the engineer and top forge-master of the Deceiver, creating all the relics and artefacts that were the source of its Long's power. A fiery, iconoclastic young humanist, he joined the Deceiver as a relatively new member out of a humanitarian desire to preserve truces and save lives and quickly rose in a meteoric manner through the ranks. After the Deceiver's dissolution, he rejected serving another Hour as did Ioannes and Kildare. Rather, he took the majority of the Deceiver's remaining loyalists and sought to rebuild the Deceiver. Secretly leading his followers to join teh Assemblage, he sought to turn it into a new organization aligning with his humanist goals, but after infiltration on the part of the opportunists and the devastation of the Assemblage, he left it in disgust with his remaining people. Now he wanders the ruins of the 5th, just trying to save lives and rebuild society. However, a few of his cabal deserted, leaving him and his organization weaker, especially with the departure of his lieutenant Eleanor Touré

Saint Hydra

No stranger to creating false gods and eager to reestablish the old order, Saint Hydra was an early and willing convert to the Cabal's cause. A former Name of the Great Serpent, Hydra was one of the Deceiver's top agents within the Histories - creating and encouraging mortal cults, distributing Kildare's texts, pursuing his own agenda. When the Cabal was shattered and the Deceiver killed, Hydra was taken in by the Vizier.

Items

Books

Die Werkzeuge des Machens (fake)

German, gives edge lore Elizabeth von Metterstein, a minor German aristocrat and disciple of the still-pseudonymous ‘John Smith’ wrote at great length upon the inefficiencies in her master’s works, the whole time muttering arcane mechanical esoterica. She writes with a certain force, giving absolute instructions and orders to the reader, who certainly does feel like a hapless apprentice afterwards It’s hard to see Elizabeth as a protege rather than rival of ‘John’ after this. She constantly curses the crudeness with which his machines were constructed. In between the tirades, she makes remarks regarding how all this is a foolish endeavor, that massively more power is required to shift the walls of the House. But possibly, with these invocations…

The Golden Tantra (fake)

Gives Winter lore The florid descriptions of the Tower of Treasures had never been translated in accordance to their original glory, but the Tantra remains widely popular amongst the secular masses to this day. ‘The Sight of the Tower of Treasures some say is itself a treasure. But it is not a treasure, rather, it is a tribute, from a certain place-beyond-the-Mansus, an origin it shares with the strangest of the Serpent’s children...’

The Golden Tantra, (fake, prepublication)

does something idk yet. This is the third such book you’ve come across, but strangely, this one is without a cover, and the insides are filled with scribblings in red ink on the margins and the text blotted out “Kildare, I need to know who wrote this. Your Project Cassandra has yielded magnificent results so far, but this could cause serious harm. We may have a traitor among us” “Metzapoulos, I’ve dealt with it. Don’t worry. But we will have to keep a tighter eye upon our own ranks from now on. We can’t risk our deception being revealed…”

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: