Cuội

### Aliases

Chú Cuội, The Man on the Moon, Guardian of the Sacred Banyan Tree, Conman of the Moon, Asian Lunar Godfather, Mascot of the Vietnamese's Lunar Festival

## Physical description

### Gender

Male

> I... didn't know that he's a god. I thought he was just some spirit, a divine one at most. I never know that he was able to gain an apotheosis...
>
> Matt Wright

**Cuội** is a human-turned-god from Vietnamese folklore. He is the spirit of the moon, holding divine dominance over lies, trickery, nature, and medicine. He is also a guardian of young children.

## Overview

Following his ascendence into godhood, he became one of the most influential divine figures on the moon, holding himself authority over the East Asian territory of the moon through his own family of mafioso.

He is known for venturing down to the human world every Lunar Festivals to gift young Vietnamese children with presents such as paper lanterns and mooncakes alongside Hằng Nga.

## Appearance

Cuội has the appearance of a young Vietnamese man in his late teens - early 20s, with pale ivory skin and short black hair. He has many tattoos across his body, including one of a crescent moon on his right shoulder, two Lạc birds on his chest, the stylized form of the famed banyan tree on his back, etc.

Due to the centuries absorbing the sap from the World Tree, he gained many unnatural features commonly shown in tree spirits, such as bark-like patches skin, leaves mixed in with hair, glowing eyes, etc.

He wears an expensive-looking suit with an emerald-and-gold shoulder cape.

## Personality

Cuội is known for an extremely talented trickster, having a silver-tounge only few gods could match. His lying skills are well-known in his former home in Viet Nam and his name has become synonymous with lying through the popular Vietnamese idiom "Nói dối như Cuội", or "Lying like Cuội". According to Loki, he was the only one managed to swine the Norse god of all his money.

He is an extremely ruthless man, being described by many moon deities as having an iron grip over the multiple spirits of the moon. He is the head of his own family of mafia, which he uses to asert his dominance over the deities and natural spirits, either through violent or cut-throat deals.

From all of his famous dealings and the sheer size of his criminal empire, in addition to his talent in trickery, it could be assumed that he is an extremely cunning and sly man.

Despite this, he is known for having a soft spot for children, as he considered himself to be a child at heart. After becoming a moon god and gained access to the human world once more, he began his yearly tradition of coming down to Earth and gifted children with small presents, such as lanterns, mooncakes, rice figures (tò he), etc. According to him, in his biography, he loves children because he has always wanted to become a father - A dream that was destroyed with his wife's death and his semi-exiled to the moon.

## History

### Lying like Cuội

Cuội was an orphan from an early age and lived with his aunt and uncle, who only took him in because of peer pressure and the inheritance his parents had left behind. Ever since a young child, he had been a talented trickster with a god-like silver tounge, capable of tricking countless people into doing his tricks.

One day, when his tricks had pushed his aunt and uncle beyond the line so they decided to trap him in a small bamboo cage and push him into a river before tricking everyone in the village that he had died in an accident. However, with his trickery, he was able to replace himself with a leper and escape the village in the night, taking on identity after identity to make sure no one could trace them back to him. Eventually, he was able to trick a merchant of all his riches and became immensely wealthy. He then came back to his old village and tricked his aunt and uncle to their deaths, saying that he gained all this riches from the god dwelling under the river where he drown.

Eventually, all the money he possessed were gone due to his lavish spending so Cuội decided to make a new plan to make himself rich again. Through a series of complex tricks and old superstitions, he was able to trick a local tribe into thinking and revering him as a god. How ever, his desire did not stop there. When the chieftain asked him if he could show him the world of the divinity, he tricked him into his death and took over the role as the leader of the tribe without anyone stopping him, half being too reverence while half being too sacred.

When the chieftain's sons heard the news of a new upsurper, they rushed back from their respective family to fight off Cuội and his new authority, forcing him to escape into the forest and never return.

### The Herb of Resurrection; or, the Tale of How Cuội Came to the Moon

Years later, Cuội turned to a new leaf...kinda. He abandoned his trickster ways and became a honest woodsman. He married to a local girl and they lived happily together in a forest far from his past actions and mistakes.

One day, when he was venturing into the forest to chop some new wood to sell in the local market, he came across a den of tigers. Too afraid, he quickly kill the tiger cubs before climbing on a nearby tree when he heard signs of the mother coming back home. From his spot, he saw how the mother tiger chew the leaves of a newly-grown banyan tree and fed it to its children before the four of them miraculously came back to life.

Intrigued by his new discovery, when the night came, he killed both the mother tiger and its children before coming to the tree with the full intention of taking it for himself. The moment he digged up the tree, an old man appeared as introduced himself as the tudigong of the area. He revealed that the tree was not just an ordinary banyan tree but a divine one, acting as one of the pillars of the world, albeit a very young one and still hadn't grown into its power yet. He begged him to leave it back or the natural order will be greatly unbalanced. Cuội, however, did not believe the old man words and continue on his way. Feeling insulted, the tudigong cursed him so that the tree would be the death of him, but the young man paid him no attention.

With the tree, Cuội quickly became of the most powerful people in the area, holding within his grasp the mythical herb of resurrection. Whenever someone required medical assistance, he would come and provide his magical herb, boosting his reputation as a living god amongst mortals, which he became worry of due to his past action. Through many experiments with the tree, he found out that it would only accept pure water and would be repulsed by any 'dirty' one.

Despite his best efforts to redeem himself of his past mistakes, he accidentally attracted the annoyance of a goddess. Địa Mẫu - The Vietnamese Goddess of the Dead and Queen of Địa Phủ - had become enraged by his actions, as he had resurrected mortals after mortals, upsetting the natural balance of life and death. As one of the gods whose duty was to maintain it, she decided to put an end to this problem.

She traveled to his house in the dark of night, followed by a group of demons, and plagued his wife's mind with stupidity. Because of her stupid mind, she accidentally peed on the sacred tree one day, greatly upset it so much that it pulled up its roots and flew away from the earth. Fearing the lost of his beloved banyan tree, Cuội pushed his wife away, accidentally cracked her head on a stone and killed her, and catched one of the roots with his axe. Slowly, as the tree traveled further and further away into outerspace, knowing that it might be the gods' will that he would die because of it, Cuội quickly devoured the leaves as much as possible. When the tree landed on the moon, he had eaten enough of the World Tree's leaves to be able to live and breath in outerspace without any protection.

Centuries later, both due to the lack of resources required for its life, the banyan started to fade away. Scared of his death, Cuội started to devour the tree pieces by pieces, from its leaves to its branches to its sap, he devoured it all. In the end, the only thing left in the area he landed on was himself, becoming an immortal god by eating an entire World Tree, only able to look at the Earth and regreted his choices in life.