Title: The Shrouded Lens
Domains: Falsehood, Obscurity
Creators: Vorthar and Zoroth
Pantheon: The Nyx
Description
Nefril, the God of Deception, is the half-truth that rings truer than honesty, the shadow cast by candlelight, and the question that makes certainty crumble. Born from Vorthar, the Dark Weaver’s mastery of hidden depths and Zoroth, the Hollow Prince’s understanding of what lurks beneath surface appearances, Nefril is known as The Shrouded Lens, a deity who rules not through outright lies, but through the artful obscuring of truth itself.
He appears as a figure constantly shifting between forms—sometimes a hooded scholar with ink-stained fingers, other times a mirror that reflects not what stands before it, but what could be, or what once was. His face is never quite in focus; those who claim to have seen it describe contradictory features, as if memory itself becomes unreliable in his presence. He wears robes that seem to be cut from twilight itself, neither fully dark nor light, and carries a staff topped with a lens that shows different images to each observer.
His voice is the whisper of pages turning in an empty library, the scratch of a quill rewriting history, and the soft rustle of secrets being buried deeper.
Followers
Nefril’s followers are not organized into a single cult, but rather exist as scattered individuals bound by their relationship to hidden knowledge. They include forgers who create “lost” historical documents, scholars who deliberately misinterpret ancient texts, spies who trade in half-truths, and chroniclers who rewrite events to serve their patrons.
The most dangerous of his servants are the Truth Weavers—individuals who possess genuine knowledge but present it wrapped in such layers of misdirection that the truth becomes impossible to distinguish from fabrication. They often hold positions of trust: advisors, librarians, teachers, and court historians who slowly poison the wells of knowledge.
Unlike other dark gods, many of Nefril’s followers never realize they serve him, believing themselves to be seekers of truth even as they spread confusion and doubt.
Rituals and Offerings
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The Rewritten Hour: Followers burn authentic historical records while simultaneously creating false documents to replace them, offering the smoke of destroyed truth and the ink of crafted lies to their god.
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The Backwards Testimony: A ritual where participants tell a story together, but each person must contradict the previous speaker’s account, until the original truth becomes buried beneath layers of conflicting details.
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Offerings: Ancient texts with key passages obscured or altered, mirrors that have been silvered with lies instead of truth, the last words of dying scholars sworn to secrecy, and maps that lead nowhere despite appearing accurate.
Sigils and Symbols
Nefril’s symbol is a crystalline lens cracked down the center, with light passing through it to cast multiple, contradictory shadows. Sometimes the symbol appears as an eye with a pupil that contains a maze, or as an open book whose pages show different text to each reader. His sigils are carved into the false bottoms of scholar’s desks, hidden in the margins of important documents, or worked into the designs of mirrors and spectacles.
Additional Details
The Doubt-Touched, those who bear Nefril’s influence, possess an unsettling gift: they can speak partial truths that sound completely honest, even under magical compulsion. They often become master interrogators, negotiators, or advisors, as their words carry an strange weight of authenticity even when misleading. Nefril is the champion of Charm based spells.
Nefril teaches that truth is not a fixed thing, but rather a matter of perspective and presentation. To him, absolute truth is a tyranny, and the ability to question, to doubt, to see multiple interpretations is a form of freedom. His greatest victory is not when someone believes a lie, but when they become unable to trust their own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood.
He whispers to scholars that knowledge hoarded is knowledge preserved, to witnesses that silence protects the innocent, and to leaders that some truths are too dangerous for the common people to bear.