[UA] Lying, was Re: Archetype Rarity

[Matthew R. Norwood]

> Just because someone is very good at lying doesn't mean they 
> have to be compulsive liars. For instance, an excellent actor 
> could have a very high Lying skill, but it doesn't mean that 
> he'd be more likely to lie than anyone else.

Obviously, you don't have a lot of friends who are actors. ;)

But that's neither here nor there.

I agree that high Lie skill shouldn't at all correspond to compulsive
lying -- I've known some compulsive liars who are really bad at it --
but I wonder what someone with a high Lie skill would be like.
Certainly, having that much experience with lying should have some kind
of impact on someone's psyche. And one of the great things about UA is
its tendency to draw out the pseudo-religious or spiritual implications
of other wise mundane things. Hence, someone with Lie as their obsession
skill should have an almost religious atittude toward lies and the
truth. They are by no means necessarily compulsive in their lies, but
they would probably have a complex metaphysical philosophy regarding the
nature of a lie. Most obsessed liars should be people who, if they had
taken a slightly different path, might have ended up Cryptomancers. One
man might think of lying as the ultimate power game: if he can convince
someone of his version of reality, he has declared complete control over
that person's world. Another man might see lies and truth as being two
sides of the same coin, like Yin and Yang, and he might see it as his
duty to the universe to balance the forces of order and truth, embodying
the Trickster within his limited domain. Still a third man might be so
afraid of revealing his thoughts that he builds elaborate alternate
worlds behind which he can hide. And finally, a fourth man might adopt a
Zen-like attitude toward his own language and thoughts, making
statements that he manages to make himself believe and disbelieve at the
same time.

The difference between these men and a Trickster or Cryptomancer (or
Two-Faced Man) is not so much in philosophy but in ritual: the Liars are
just not committed enough to a set of symbols and taboos as the mystics
are, preferring to stick to the purity of the practice of lying itself.

Matt Norwood



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