Anatomy of Deceit

(Crossing, Zoluren: 366 Nissa 355)

If one was going to come into the ranks of a People who shared one faith and perpetrate a fraud on them for your own reasons, it must be carefully planned.

One cannot stand on street corners asking them to renounce the Immortals, crush the holy emblems of the Thirteen, and ask for blood sacrifice your first day in town. They would laugh at you, if you were lucky. Or kill you.

No. That won’t work.

You must spend weeks talking in circles to a few people. You must be vague, but intriguing. You must step by step get each one to agree with you on small variances from the truth. You must speak in hushed tones, and spend a lot of the time meeting privately, away from too many prying eyes. Ideally, you should then use the instruments of their own faith to prove that you are telling the truth. Once the first few lies are believed, they won’t see the fallacy of proving your points by quoting from the very doctrines you are telling them are false.

You’d be best off not approaching anyone trained in the ways of the Gods, but making your conversions in the lay population.

Give them a token, something they can touch, something to rally your cause in their own mind. Something that will mark them as a believer to both themselves and to the outside world.

And when you have learned what it is their heart desires, you promise them that it is theirs. Then they will be yours.

At that moment, you can then ask them to accomplish the thing that will bind them to you and to your cause — something they wouldn’t have ever thought of doing before they met you.

If you’re lucky, the ones you have taken in will take the brunt of any public backlash.

If you planned well, you’d have the actual immutable truths of the world we all live in working for you in your timing; such as knowing that the loving presence of the Immortals is felt all the time at the Siergelde.

And thus in the culmination of your lies, you would now have people who are ready to defend you, and die for you, so thorough were your steps.

Your time is limited, and some time can be bought now if you are able to take advantage of any well-doers outside of your little sphere of influence who will speak up quickly about tolerance.

But your time is limited, because the house of cards will come down, as all lies do.

If you are wise, it is time now to beat tracks and leave your disciples holding the bag. Before everything crumbles. Common scam artists know this, and are long gone before the evidence catches up to them.

But rarely do those who perpetrate the frauds on people’s hearts and souls know when it is time to leave. They are taken up in their own cause, in their own lies, and believe they cannot fall.

Let us all remember it is not the ones who have been lied to that are at fault, but those who are doing the lieing.