Vyz'des Teshnan

Vyz'des Teshnan, also known as The Deceiver, is the demon prince of deception. He was a half-demon human that lived during before the Grey War and worked as master thief and spy under the employ of Black Jack of Deut.
== Description ==
Vyz appears as an eight foot tall demonic humanoid with purple skin, deep purple hair, green and yellow glowing eyes, simple gray horns, and black feathered wings at his back. He is capable of changing his shape and garments at his pleasure with but a thought, so he can appear as any creature in any garb he wishes to. One part of his being that never changes is the scarred Icon of the Deceiver in his left palm. 
===Worshippers===
Many seek to worship The Deceiver to gain the gift of lies and speech that the demon prince possesses and represents. Many more find a truth in the lies of the prince that leads them to give themselves up to him and perform whatever tasks he desires to further his machinations in the Material Plane. More often than not, Vyzian cults fall underneath the weight of lies the members tell one another and use to bolster their claims to power in the congregations.
====Vyz's Pact====
Those who forge a pact with The Deceiver do so by forging a link of themselves that is pulled from mind and soul by arcane ritual and then formed into a metal jeweler's chain. This chain acts as the pact-bound party's focus for using the magics granted by Vyz. 
== History ==
=== Origin ===
Vyz was born to Dira, an unmarried daughter of a noblewoman, who died while giving birth. He was considered an abomination by the family, an unwanted demon child, but his aunt Kizu took him in out of familial obligation. Kizu considered him to be nothing more than a forced mistake and a burden, beating him relentlessly for every transgression. Her abuse fed the dark fire burning inside of him that he could not place or understand, until his half-demon lineage was revealed to him as his furious Aunt remarked, "What should I have expected, taking in a half-demon?" and threw him out of the house.
=== The Streets ===
Vyz survived on the streets by picking pockets and breaking into homes, discovering his natural aptitude for stealth and theft. As is inevitably the case for a thief picking off whatever they can, he eventually stole from the wrong man. The morning after breaking into an unusually lavishly furnished small home in a dilapidated district of town and snatching a great deal of gold and an amulet, he discovered a note stuck to the inside of the door of his inn room by dagger. The possibility of simply ignoring the note crossed his mine, but he had little doubt that any one who could sneak into his room past his alarms and leave the note without waking him could certainly do much, much worse. With that sobering thought in mind, Vyz did as the note demanded, finding the small house was a front for a massive underground complex housing Jack's Guild.
After Vyz revealed the amulet was indeed in his possession, Jack motioned for one of the doormen to get rid of him. With survival at stake, Vyz used one of his recently discovered innate talents to conjure a globe of darkness around himself and dispatch the ambusher, taking advantage of his ability to fight blind while his assailant fumbled around helplessly. Following the quick skirmish, Jack quickly recruited Vyz, who clearly had the potential to rise above common pick pocket.
=== You May Have Promise Yet… ===
Vyz spent months training and toiling within the guild, enjoying its protection, until Jack came calling with a special mission. To ensure his success, Vyz was given the Thieves' Tools of Ramenon before being sent off to a merchant's mansion to retrieve a figurine. Dodging guards and climbing up and around the outside of the building, Vyz cut a large hole in one of the glass windows of the mansion and slipped inside. He drew the vault's guards away with a distraction, picked the lock, and slipped inside. He retrieved the onyx raven figurine he was sent to recover and quickly made his way to his escape position. The guards were infinitely more alert after the initial distraction, leaving Vyz with no hope of distracting them once again to ensure his escape. He once again called upon his natural ability to summon a globe of darkness and tumbled past them, spilling caltrops behind him. With the caltrops preventing the guards from giving chase, Vyz made a daring rooftop escape to safety and returned to Jack — and to a unique job offer.
=== The Spy ===
Vyz was positioned to join an adventuring group, which found itself meddling with Jack's affairs. He took up the cover identity of Samuel Leobald, a cartographer. It took a great deal of make-up and minor illusions, but Vyz managed to hide his half-demon side and appeared completely human. As the group progressed, Vyz fed their plans and weaknesses to Jack, foiling them at every turn, while he kept up the appearance of helping the group pursue its objective. This was primarily due to Vyz's interception and forging of military correspondence to the group's "leader", a fool of a Parnan man. Despite the fact that they were constantly foiled when it came to Jack, none of the group ever suspected the presence of a spy in their midst. A thief's skill and luck can't last forever, though, and eventually through pure, unavoidable dumb luck, he was discovered when the entire group was arrested by happenstance after months of traveling.
=== A Spy Once Revealed is a Spy Unanticipated ===
He was immediately punished, cursed with a magical geas and sworn to no longer betray the group and serve Jack; however, Jack was no mere man and removed the previously thought unremovable magic shortly after it was placed on Vyz. Because the rest of the adventurers did not believe the spell could be undone, they never entertained the idea that he could continue to sabotage them. The leader of the band, a sniveling pious and self-serious man, trusted Vyz due to the magical compulsion he was allegedly under, treating him the way a man would treat a loyal hound. This hound, though, had no leash. For months, Vyz continued sabotaging the group's effort, with more cruel consequences for the party. They had tried to chain him. They had tried to use him as a tool against his will after discovering him. They deserved no mercy, especially the supposed "leader" of their band. Once their morale was broken and they had been steered off to some inconsequential task they were all convinced was a glorious quest to enshrine them in the annals of history, their captive hound escaped his "leash," and Vyz split away to find allies of his own with a promise to himself to exact more complete revenge later.
Ultimately, his machinations led the Parnan military leader that was the "leader" of his former band to a point that put Parnak and its eastern armies and the cult of Marydia throughout the lower provinces against one another. Vyz manipulated this leader to use his newly established political power to have him grant the Marydian cultists the lands of the province of Dargh on the northern, and there for other, side of the continent. The military leader thought himself wise when he had the earth of the main isle of the province salted, but this effort later proved to also be feckless as Marydians had unholy methods of homing and feeding its peoples. The Parnan military leader Vyz manipulated would go on to be considered a hero of the time before the Grey War, but most historians who have read into the matter understand that he was a pawn in the larger games of Black Jack's Guild, the Marydian Cult, and even his own military.
=== The Demon Unleashed ===
As time went on, Vyz began to succumb more and more to his demonic half, slowly twisting the new group of adventurers he had surrounded himself with into his own evil pawns. This new journey led him to meet face-to-face with the demon that he would learn to be his father. Being in the immediate proximity of the demon that had sired him, the demonic half that had slowly overtaken his soul was unleashed, taking over his body as well. To overcome this obstacle, he procured a ring of great transmutation magic to twist his body back into a humanoid shape for his cover identity.
=== A Silver Tongue ===
Vyz's glibness and ability to improvise is legendary. Myth has it that Vyz once convinced a gnome that it was really a dragon. Vyz took it as a point of personal pride that he could make any person believe any lie at any time, and it was that very ability that saved him from being revealed dozens of times. Even the most implausible of scenarios sounded like a divine truth with the confidence he projected and the labyrinthine logic and flowing words he used to disorient his target.
=== Demon Lord ===
After a time traveling with his demonic half unveiled, Vyz was finally overtaken by it and, with the sacrifice of his so-called friends, traveled to the very heart of his race's origin - The Thirteen Gates of Ashtar. Once there, he was confronted by the Daisthai, Gate Guardian of the Thirteen. Vyz, after a time speaking to the Guardian, convinced him that he was in fact the Demon Lord of Omegadon. Despite bluffing the entire story, there was the minor truth of his parentage and so he was allowed entrance into the realm. It was here he confronted the Old Lord of Omegadon, Dantalion, and convinced his elite guard to turn on him and slay him. It was thus that Vyz became Lord of the Mirror that Smokes and a self-proclaimed Demon Prince.
=== The Coup in the Gates ===
Shortly after his ascension, Vyz and the other Demon Princes waged war amongst themselves, a number of the older Princes seeking to dethrone Lucifaerul, the Archdevil and Master of the Gates. Vyz was seen as weak, but he presented no clear intent on siding with the dissenters or those who fought for Lucifaerul. Instead, Vyz fled his Gate and entered into the mind of a grotesque being manipulated by evil minds on the Material Plane. The being was known as Grum'nar. Vyz fashioned him and his allies to be creatures capable of slaying anything, even a Demon Prince. Vyz then entered the conflict between the Demon Princes and used Grum'nar to slay the most powerful of those opposed to the Archdevil, namely those that sat on the Thrones of Corruption, Vanity, and Wrath. The plan was given to these mortals that the Throne of Envy would also be granted, but the one who would have it was deceived as it was never Vyz's intention to go against Sod Daerlethoth but instead to take from him a measure of his power. While Maerleth fought in vain against the demon prince of envy, Dhuron worked in secret against him to ensure his failure while Vyz swept into Amduat's Throne Room and took from it a remnant from The Vieillard's time there, a green-colored scarf. This memento would give Vyz some of the chronomancer's power. With the exchange of power complete, Vyz went on to win the conflict against Lucifaerul and to earn the Archdevil's favor. 
=== Baggage of the Forebearer ===
After the Coup in the Gates, Vyz was approached by a mysterious fox-headed demon named Ragdrotha that claimed that the assets of the fallen Dantalion were now Vyz's responsibility. Thinking that this would prove a burden, Vyz was at first annoyed by this creature and their proclamation. After they explained that they had strings attached to a Dread Lord, Vyz's attitude towards Ragdrotha changed. As he could not enter the plane as he was born a mortal and his immortality granted by his Throne would not protect him in the Plane of Shadow, Vyz sent Ragdrotha into the Dread Realm to ensure the Dread Lord swore fealty to Vyz and was his pawn to control. Unfortunately for that Dread Lord, he was unwilling to swear such allegiance as his pact was with another servant of the old demon prince, a creature named Chandranicdo. His refusal meant Vyz put into place an effort to push a group of adventurers to safeguard an angelic maiden into his domain and then murder him. Ragdrotha then usurped the power of the Dread Realm, but granted it to one of adventurers with the promise if they took the mantle of Dread Lord and swore fealty to The Deceiver, then all their allies would be allowed to walk out of the mists and back into the Material Plane. In the end, the dragonborn warrior Hiro Rockscale gave himself up as tribute to allow his friends to leave. 
=== The Deceiver's Tools ===
As Dhuron Balcard resurfaced on the Material Plane after it was revealed he was bound in the Pyramid of Shadows, Vyz quickly put together a plan and just as quickly put into action to ensure the demon prince of corruption still adhered to alliances formed during the Coup in the Gates. His agent Ragdrotha convinced a group of heroes to take up weapons known as Esperedges and use them to help liberate Ocyria from the tyrannical rule of the Lich Magier. In so doing, they helped in the process of freeing Dhuron from his prison. Inadvertently, this action caused one of the heroes, a Conglomerate agent named Keldur Alfwyn, to be infused with the souls from within the Pyramid and to go mad. Vyz would use his agents and his own abilities to use Keldur for his own ends on Urz. The loss of their friend led many in the group to try and cure him of his madness, which caused the priestess Phi Eevna to lose her mind and perform rites to turn herself into a demonic being. She would not be Vyz's ally, however. She instead swore fealty to Alachia Negai, the demon prince of lust at the time.
=== Rebuilding Shadows ===
Vyz paid close attention to Hiro Rockscale, seeing that he was shaping the Dread Realm he was gifted to allow him to see farther outside of reality than any other being ever could. Vyz kept these secrets and did all he could to protect him from his friends and enemies while he continued in this way. His efforts ultimately could not stand against the demon prince of corruption empowered by the stillborn god Alustraat entering the Dread Realm and destroying the echo of Hiro that ruled the place, thus shunting the real Hiro out of the Plane of Shadow. When Dhuron was usurped in his efforts by the very abomination he used to empower him, he learned that he had meddled in Vyz's matters. As an effort to restore the peace, Dhuron commanded his servant Malica Wildwarren to give Shigeri Soma to the Deceiver as tribute. He accepted the gift in the interest of peace, only later learning how fitting a gift Soma actually ended up being.
=== Current Day ===
As always, Vyz is presumed to be plotting behind the scenes of the Eternal War as well as in the motions and functions of Urz. His cultists and his direct servants move, sometimes not truly knowing the actual aims and goals of their patron demon prince.
==Hierarchy==
Below are the many important players who have served Vyz'des Teshnan throughout the history of Urz.
=== Chandranicdo, the Ruby-Eyed Imposter ===
Chandranicdo is a formless entity able to possess the bodies of others and control them like puppets. Since the War of Sword and Serpent, they have been bound in a Dread Realm unable to pass beyond the mists between life and death. Vyz freed Chandranicdo in exchange for them forming an unbreakable pact with them. Chandranicdo was certain there would be means to slip the bonds of the deal, but as Vyz is a master of contracts, this remains to be seen if it is possible.
=== Hiro Rockscale, Dark Knight of Lies ===
This simple swordsman was among the group of heroes that plunged into the Dread Realm of Gulthias Toranor and defeated him. Upon doing so, Ragdrotha gave the group a means of escape that would require one to give up their freedoms and their life. Hiro stepped forward and ascended to the status of Dread Lord over Gulthias's realm. He was able to push himself to the very Edge of Creation before he was believed obliterated by Dhuron Balcard when that prince attempted to take the Dread Realm as his own. He has since been revealed to have lived past this moment and also seems to still be bound to loyalty to The Deceiver.
=== Keldur, the Screaming Falsehood ===
The elf mage known as Keldur Alfwyn was the unfortunate recipient of all the echoes of souls that dwelled within the Pyramid of Souls. He is seen as a mad mage that travels the land, singing a cacophony to harmonize with the screams of the souls that he and anyone close to him in proximity can hear. He is subtly directed by Vyz in his travels, who is able to quiet the sounds of screams of agony Keldur must endure until he dies. Keldur, despite the distractions, is a highly competent swordsman and spellcaster of the Talainá Blade Minstrel tradition.
=== Ragdrotha, the Deceiver's Mouth ===
An arcanaloth that served Dantalion up until he was dispatched by Vyz. They understood the importance of power structure and broke their pact with the Throne only to forge it anew with Vyz. Ragdrotha acts as the main advisor and speaker for Vyz in the Material Plane, as they are free to move in and out of the Gate without issue. They are an eccentric individual with the richest of tastes, being seen with fine garments and jewelry while they smoke concentrated souls from a long pipe for pleasure.
=== Soma, Debased Gift ===
After Dhuron's failed attempt to take over the Dread Realm of Hiro Rockscale, it came to be known that Hiro was Vyz's pawn and that his plans had been ruined by the demon prince of corruption's power grab. To ensure the two did not come to resent one another for this, Dhuron instructed that his servant Malica give her newly corrupted servant Shigeri Soma to The Deceiver. He was accepted as a gift to maintain the peace and it was learned that he was quite the con artist and liar. 
== Trivia==
Vyz'des Teshnan started as a Player Character created by Tom S "Classic Tom" for use in the Solace's Requiem story arc, which was a regular game ran at the Danger Room that used the Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
Category:Characters
Category:Player Characters
Category:NPCs
Category:The Shedim