The Tenet is a currently undiscovered Non-Player Faction of the Deceivers that possesses its own culture and technology. Once discovered, it will become a sub-faction of another, larger faction and Deceivers will become available as playable characters.

The most important asset of the Tenet is an enormous spherical megastructure - known as “The Palisade” - that is capable of slow FTL travel (taking several months to cross the Kikyo Sector) and, among many other things, artificially creating a large gravity well for the purposes of sustaining a population. The main purpose of The Palisade is to keep the population of The Tenet hidden from the outside world and prevent unauthorised civilians from leaving.

The Tenet
In order appearing from left to right and then down: The Canon, The Creed, The Precept, The Dictum, The Tenet, The Ethic, The Maxim, The Thesis and The Slant.
Capital	Zhilijija
Population	2,679,450,000 Deceivers
Head of State	The Tenet
Government Type	Technocracy/Philosophical Oligarchy
Formation	A long time ago
Current Year	YE 40
Currency	Kyo

This faction is currently a Non-Player Faction.

The character creation guide has not been created yet.

• Deceiver

Being quite xenophilic, The Tenet has gathered a considerable amount of information regarding the other species and factions of and around the Kikyo Sector and the Astral Cluster. The specific factions they know about are Independent, Origin Industries, the Iromakuanhe Astral Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Neshaten, the Elysian Celestial Empire, and the Yamatai Star Empire. Knowing more about the faction allows them to easily know more about the species that operate within them.

How The Tenet knows so much about these groups is relatively simple: They decode stray signals received from them - often from a long distance away - and make speculations using the information available to them until they have a close estimation of what the cultures and day to day lives of the aforementioned groups are like. A number of technologies can be used to make this process easier, however, the vast distances involved in observation make it extremely difficult for The Tenet's researchers to decode encrypted data - thus its people and government have little to no knowledge of any of the previously-mentioned faction's military practices beyond the immediately obvious. This is especially the case for factions like the Kingdom of Neshaten and the Democratic Imperium of Nepleslia, who both guard their information well enough to the point where some information about their culture has been obscured, thereby making knowing about their military near impossible; in the more severe case of Nepleslia, almost nothing is known at all - while for the Neshaten some information about culture (but nothing about the military) is known.

Another downside of The Tenet's method of investigation is that they only know as much about a species or faction as that faction knows about themselves, with an example being that neither The Tenet nor the Iromakunahe know about the latter's home planet. What information is known is usually distributed to The Tenet's civilians, if it can be reasonably allowed; the general public will then take up identities of the species known and geek out about their cultures. To a Deceiver, knowing about these species and factions is a great privilege - and most act like it.

Inside The Palisade is a collection of ten “layers”, each of which has their own floating islands. The islands are owned by the Nine Divisions, and airships are used to travel quickly between the islands and layers - though traveling through layers is a different ordeal than traveling between islands on a single layer.

Each layer of The Palisade is separated by projections of light and night sky made to simulate the civilian's home planet. The Palisade itself has a core “generator” or “projector” which creates a shield around these layers. The shield has impressive cloaking capabilities and keeps the world inside The Palisade isolated from the world outside; for example, civilians won't notice if The Palisade is moving or if it is still - and they won't receive sunlight from nearby stars.

In short, The Tenet functions as a technocracy of sorts, where there are several clans that rule over each other which in turn have rulers within them. In a less vague description, there are organization-like groups called clans - which typically specialize in one or two professions - that adopt workers into them at early ages, either by encouraging their or someone else’s children to learn about the relevant professions as apprentices. After their apprenticeship, the child would then normally become a subordinate rank; if they became well known for their skill among their clan mates, they may raise in rank to a middle level. If they were to raise in rank again, they would become one of a select few leaders of the clan; from there, they could rarely be adopted into a clan considered “upper-class” that manages and rules over other clans below it. This repeats several times until finally, one gets to the clan ruling the entire society.

There are nine ruling divisions (essentially the highest, most powerful clans there are) including The Tenet. The other eight are The Canon, The Creed, The Precept, The Dictum, The Ethic, The Maxim, The Thesis, and The Slant. Each of these has their own sub-culture and rules over their own states. Although they are considered on the same level of power as The Tenet, The Tenet is ultimately the one in charge.

Although a lot of Deceiver technology would be considered primitive by some, in many ways, it gets the job done, as this is its intended use - and in the eyes of the Deceiver's greatest minds, anything more would be overkill. This mostly stems from the idea that information should be hidden and disclosed when necessary. Deceivers are capable of FTL travel.

Many of the most popular Deceiver weapons are either sharp blades or deadly rockets. All the most popular weapons are silent and compact; their guns, for example, are handgun-sized rocket launchers designed to fire miniature rockets with devastating effects on impact, while many of their blades are designed to be coated in toxins, filled with poisonous substances, or integrated with their own venom. Deceiver military culture is riddled with a pungent phrase along the lines of: “If you made your first strike and your enemy is still moving, you have failed.” This is majorly supported by the way warfare is conducted in Deceiver culture: there is less of a focus on grand scale fights with thousands of soldiers fighting side by side and more of an emphasis on top-secret sabotage and squad-on-squad skirmishes.

Another common concept in the Deceiver military is the technique of distracting or otherwise occupying the enemy in order to make an escape or enact a finishing blow. These techniques frequently utilise smoke bombs, electromagnetic pulses, fires, bright lights, loud noises, and even sleight-of-hand.

As of now, The Tenet has no one else to trade with besides other internal groups - though it can be said that they treat their resources with great respect. This is due to living in a large megastructure that must have resources routinely brought to it, as the resources have to be used to their fullest potential lest Deceivers make more visits to neighboring stars and risk discovery. Their trash is extensively recycled until it can't be used anymore, then is thrown into suns during scheduled mining expeditions.

There are a variety of coins used within The Tenet, each of which has a different value in relation to the others that escalates by four. The smallest unit of currency used is called a “Kyo”. The next unit of currency is called a “Kyoga” and can be counted as four Kyo. Next after that would be “Kyogi” which is counted as four Kyoga and so on. Below is a table of different units of currency and their values in relation to Kyo.

If someone were to pay 403 kyo, they would likely give 1 thogi, 2 thoga, 1 kyogi and 3 kyo (256 + 64 + 64 + 16 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 403).

• Deceivers

The government article for The Tenet has not been created yet.

No treaties or diplomacy currently exist for The Tenet.

While what's within The Palisade is considered the property of The Tenet, there are also borders and territories inside that belong to each of the Nine Divisions. They consider nothing outside The Palisade to be theirs.

See also: Deceivers#Culture

The culture of The Tenet is one that has an overwhelming obsession with the cultures of others. It has its own cultural roots, but to civilians, the cultures of other species are just as important as The Tenet's own. It isn't uncommon to walk into a room full of Deceivers and hear more than one language being spoken in day-to-day conversations, nor is it uncommon for each Deceiver in this hypothetical room to be wearing a completely different styles of clothing and be disguised as another species.

In spite of the above, however, The Tenet does have its own culture - and it's a rich, sprawling one, with a history that spans many centuries. Although not all civilians are entirely aware of it or it's significance, the occasional Deceiver would be able to tell you unbelievable stories of great significance to their heritage for days with little break.

As a general rule, lower-class Deceivers within The Tenet will wear fewer clothes with less colour, while higher-class Deceivers within The Tenet will wear more clothes with more colour. Due to the nature of The Tenet's military forces - primarily consisting of spies and espionage tactics - military attire does not have any particular design or purpose. It exists for the practical purpose of looking ordinary and unprofessional - effectively, to “blend in with the crowd.”

The food of Deceivers in The Tenet tends to involve and mix a lot of animal-based products to create macabre yet fantastical dishes, with a simple example of this being a raw bone with egg cooked around it like an ice pop - the bone (savored for the marrow inside) meant to be eaten as well using the brutally powerful jaws of the Deceiver. Another common “confectionary” is a small effigy made out of bone that is also intended to be crushed and then swallowed.

Food intended to be eaten on a daily basis mostly consist of raw or cooked meats from many different animals. They can also be extravagantly prepared.

Deceivers in The Tenet use a combination of polarization of light through their skin, sounds from the vocal chords in their throats, and hand signs to communicate in a language called “Khatohmai.” Although the most important aspect of their communication is the hand signs, grunts - in addition to hissing and a variety of other, more alien noises - are used to accent their “speech“ and the polarization of light coming off their skin can change a message's meaning drastically - and to further complicate things, some communities also include ultra-violet light in this mix. As a rule, Deceivers can omit auditory speech in order to communicate silently, however they will use noises when they aren't in hiding to get each other's attention or express emotions quickly.

The version of Khatohmai which uses hand signs can be specified as “Khatohmaitu”. There is another version called “Khatohmaichi” which uses only speech (as opposed to hand signs) that is deliberately meant to be easily translatable into speech and back. The written form of Khatohmai is called “Khatohmaiqi”.

The names of Deceivers in The Tenet are typically complex and hard to learn. This is less because they have long or difficult to pronounce names and more because they have a complex naming system due to the multiple identities a single individual tends to have.

A given name is someone’s first name, assigned to them by their parents - or sometimes superiors - at birth. Given names are not normally used when someone is being introduced and are usually kept secret. They are typically pronounced in hand signs, though - due to the use of so many alien languages in Deceiver society - many can be translated into an audible word. Their given names are normally two to four syllables long, each syllable starting with a consonant and then ending in a vowel; occasionally, these names end with yet another consonant - but this is usually only if a given name has four syllables. Some examples include:

• Ghizhigithaek
• Pozhoyoeh
• Yipomoe
• Yoegho

A clan is a group of people with a common interest; in this case, a character’s clan will typically be founded on their line of work. A clan name, on the other hand, is the name of their clan in lieu of where a human’s surname would normally be. This stays the same no matter what identity a Deceiver is disguised as due to the fact that Deceivers don’t tend to have multiple jobs for each identity. Although rare, in the case of having multiple clans one would simply hyphenate them together in order to form their clan name.

A Deceiver's recognized name is the name of the identity they are currently appearing as. Recognized names are usually a traditional name of the culture the subject is mimicking and is decided by the person upholding the identity, however, it is not uncommon for a recognized name to be unusual for the species that the person has disguised themselves as. After all, every Deceiver can disguise themselves as someone else - but not every Deceiver is a master of disguise.

Recognized names are used in greetings and introductions.

Although a Deceiver has many names and identities, a wiki article for a Deceiver character should be their given name; if specification is needed, it may be their given name followed by the clan they were raised in or currently work in. Although it would be more accurate to use one of their recognized names, such a system would, unfortunately, cause too much confusion and chaos.

“X-Pop” is a musical movement within The Tenet's culture that was founded on the principle of “We have adopted many cultures into our day-to-day lives, so why not use them?” - thus it's a genre of music that takes many different languages, cultures, and themes, bundles them all up into a song, and pumps the result full of kick-ass.

The Tenet was founded as Yulips began to organise in preparation for departing their home planet in mass. It was originally a small country of its own before its population created a much earlier Palisade and put a single floating island in it. Since then many islands have been made - and with them have arisen groups professing different ideals and societal standards.

The following articles are waiting to be written (names are likely to change):

• Planets
• Culture
• Language
• Faction History
• Government
• Treaties
• Technology
• Biology of Yulips
• Character Creation Guide

This is what players had to say about this faction:

Lijosu created this article on 2018/08/14 18:34; Frostjaeger approved it (using the checklist) on 2018/08/27 15:01.

Note: Eventually everything under Culture will be moved to other articles as the majority of it is mostly unimportant information.