Responding to this whole thread here...
The Deciever had a patch in TFL as well (see page 29 of the TFL manual). For those who can't see him, he looks like a skin-and-bones old haggard with long white hair, carrying his staff (with skull) in one hand and what looks like an apple or some other fruit in the other.
As Sili pointed out, sometimes he wears the patch and sometimes he doesn't. I don't think this is indicitave of a double at all, he just wears it sometimes and sometimes not, or it's an artist goof. THE DECEIVER IS DEAD. We SAW him die with Shiver. And in-game evidence overrides everything else, isn't that what you all keep saying?
There is no discrepancy with Twice Born's statement of the Deceiver in present tense, because it and Shiver happen simultaneously (same day, at least). As for The Forge, where Soulblighter still can't flee, that could be because that part of him is now DEAD, along with the Deciever.
As for the Deciever's multiple deaths at the end of TFL, I think it's simple. Many Mythworlders seem to think he died after the battle with The Watcher. But we know for a fact that he 'died' in the Stair of Grief. We also know from TFL that he broke through the Cloudspine after Seven Gates.
I think he fought with the Watcher at Seven Gates, was severely wounded or actually did die but cheated death, and then later broke through the Cloudspine into the west again to sack Madrigal. He was then battled back toward the Cloudspine, into the Stair of Grief, where he was finally "killed".
Alric, Twelve Motion, etc, considered him as good as dead. After all, he's entombed in ice off near the Trow lands, and his scepter is lost in a maze of tiny icy canyons, and also buried in ice inside a frozen river. The only person who would know exactly where to find everything needed to bring him back was Twelve Motion, who would never do so for evil. So when Soulblighter comes, Alric says "lets fight fire with fire" and has Twelve Motion go get the scepter and revive the Deceiver.
Occam's razor and all that.
