The Lie is the fundamental conception that the current world that Sleepers see is all there is to the world. The Lie is an all-encompassing blanket upon every sense and thought for every person.
The Lie means it’s rotten to be Awakened. It means it’s rotten to be Asleep. It means that it’s rotten in those cases when the Awakened accidentally, or purposefully, bother those who Sleep but cannot wake.
People imagine that the world they can touch and see is real — more real than pure concepts. The abstract only exists to define the concrete. This world is all there is, a cruel, oppressive regime that grinds souls down with a thousand tyrannies.
A whispering voice in the back of the head saying:
You’re worthless. You’re only human. Don’t look. Concentrate on surviving the here and now.
This is the Lie. A falsehood, created by invisible enemies from the symbolism of oppression and the Paradoxical energies of an Abyss of untruth. Mages Awaken when they confront the Lie, when they look deep inside themselves, or are shocked outside of themselves and see past the Lie to the symbols beneath.
The Fallen World is this Lie, hiding the Tapestry of truth that is the Supernal World.
It is believed that the masterminds behind this Lie are called the Exarchs, the architects of the Lie.
The Lake
Imagine a large lake: Children swim in it — their laughter and shrieks echoing as they play in the summer sun. Sailboats drift across the horizon. Speedboats dance on the water, the waves in their wakes slapping the sandy shore where someone has built a miniature castle, its ramparts crumbling. A man and his young daughter cast fishing lines from a pier and wait in companionable silence. A scientist takes a water sample among the dragonflies and frogs that cluster among the cattails.
Everyone there knows this lake. They’ve eaten fish from it, caught tadpoles in it, and felt its muddy bottom between their toes. They’ve seen maps of it tacked to the wall of the campground office and satellite images of it on the Internet. The lake’s average water temperature, its depth, and the variety of plants and animals that live in and around it are all a matter of public record.
The lake they know is a Lie.
Things lurk beneath the surface. Its bottom is riddled with tunnels leading to vast underground seas inhabited by beings too alien for mortal minds to comprehend.
For the most part, the creatures that live in these depths never leave, but occasionally one finds its way into the lake and drags a swimmer into the deep to devour at its leisure. Or a curious treasure hunter dives too deep and finds himself lost in the labyrinth of submerged tunnels until he runs out of oxygen and drowns.
In either case, no one ever finds the body, and people can only speculate about the fates of those who went missing. Strange beasts from the roots of the earth and alien entities from outside of time are beyond human experience, however, and so any theories are of the entirely mundane sort — suicide, accidental drowning, or foul play.
Healthy minds do not see inhuman monsters and occult conspiracies everywhere. No one will seriously believe claims that lake monsters lurk beneath the waves. Most who discover otherwise convince themselves that what they saw was the product of stress, terror, or physical deprivation.
Questioning
Why don’t humans acknowledge the truth behind the Lies? Someone should be curious about the vanished diver. Someone should notice the holes at the bottom of the lake. Someone, at the very least, would spot the lake monster on her fish finder often enough to realize that something is up.
But very few ever do.
Why?
Because they are in the grip of the Lie.