You may find the following archived thread of interest:
http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?read=3339
Charon asked, in that thread, why the Deceiver would use a double to fake his coma after escaping in TFL when he could have just faked his death. It occurs to me now that he probably *did* fake his death at the time--how else could everyone have just forgotten about this escaped Fallen Lord for the last 60 years?
Consider how in the midst of Myth II, Alric suddenly sits up and goes "Hey, whatever happened to The Deceiver anyway? Somehow I think he might be useful to us." He contacts Twelve Motion, who says "Now that you mention it, I know that he's not dead and I know, furthermore, exactly where he and his scepter are located. Sorry I never told you about this any time in the last 60 years, but you never asked." This whole chain of events seems a bit suspicious to me, to say the least.
I'm thinking that The Deceiver must have manufactured some plausible scenario for his death at the end of TFL, aided by his mind-control powers to help everyone forget about him. (Judging from GURPS and the manual, most people just decided he died at the Watcher's hands.) Once Soulblighter appeared and he opted for a more active role in events, he gave Alric a mental "push" to start thinking about him again, and revised Twelve Motion's memory to create a new scenario for his TFL defeat, where he was trapped but not killed.
: Ooh more fuel! So if he obviously is looking different
: from what we saw of him in game then something's
: amiss. It's extremely unlikely that he healed the eye,
: since we see him immediatly upon is revival with both
: of 'em. Therefor he lost it sometime after we last saw
: him… in the level Shiver.
: This could be taken in a couple of ways. Perhaps when he
: was magicking himself away upon Shiver's death he left
: something behind. More likely is that he created a
: powerful double of himself and needed to provide a
: vital body part to complete the spell. His eye served
: this purpose… Any other ideas?
Well, there's quite a few pictures of him both with and without the patch. He does appear with the patch in the TFL manual, but without it in a flashback to TFL in a Myth II narration. He's got a patch when he's revived, but loses it when he talks to the Trow. He has no patch when he leads his strike force through the Tain, but when he teleports out and appears in Soulblighter's camp he's got it back on again. He then loses it immediately to fight and be captured, and puts it back on to finish the level! After that he's patchless all the way.
One definite possibility--though it pains me to say it--is that the Myth artists weren't communicating properly. The patch pics do look as if they were drawn by a different person than the patchless pics, and the postgame pics are always patched while the pregame pics are patchless.
But for story's sake, let's ignore that. :-) In that case, we see that he's always patchless when he's in-game
(that is, when he's in the action) or when he's talking to potential threats, while he's patched when he's off by himself, usually holding up cool swag. We also see that his patch changes generally coincide with teleports.
We could hypothesize, then, that the patchless Deceiver is the double, and that Myrdred uses his "odd angle" teleports to switch himself and the double. When the Berserk gives the double his staff and revives him, he meets the real D mid-teleport to hand it off--hence the real patched D standing there postgame. After that the double takes all the heat and all the danger--the real D only switches in to take on Soulblighter and take charge of the captured crow.
Or something.
: As for the apple the only mythological ties I can think
: of is the apple of Discord (from which my name comes
: from). This was tossed by the goddess Eris (goddess of
: chaos in the greek mythology) and pretty much sparked
: the Trojan war (Paris judged the different goddesses
: for their beauty with the apple a prize). Kallisti
: (meaning for the prettiest one) was the inscription
: upon it. This golden apple has pretty much come to
: mean chaos, discord and individuality (especially
: after it was made popular in the masterpiece of
: conspiracy novels, the Illuminatus! trilogy), things
: which the Deciever seems to emdody.
Well, you know, I think there's some other weird religion that talks about an apple. Some snake gives it to some lady or something. Possibly temptation and Deception were involved. Seems kinda appropriate, right? :-)
--SiliconDream
