But, I digress. Truthfully, I'm writing here because I've had a great sense of unease in my life as of late. I'm the master of my domain in every sense of the word -- the "underworld boss" that many suspect Gerald Falco works for -- it's me. Or rather, a figure I made up and often claim to be an agent of. Most people fear a man they've never seen far more than one who shows up on their doorstep. It allows a name that might otherwise be childish - "The Gray Ghost" - to actually create some fear in those who hear it.

Gods, if these paragraphs are any clue, perhaps the cause of my disquiet is that I want to quit my profession and become a professor. I'll try to play the dutiful interviewee a bit better -

There are things afoot in the world recently that caused me to begin working in the real world, the one where people don't lie, or at least they aren't expected to, and you meet your enemies in public, in battle, or in debate for all to see. Complicating it all is that my new employer is a friend of my sister, and somehow... somehow... I'm very embarassed about this... I didn't know that. You see, my sister only knows me as Gerald Falco -- Gerry to her -- and my employer knows my real face and name.

My family situation is odd, to say the least. My mother is the simplest to explain: she's dead. Natural causes, so far as I know - breast cancer was on the certificate. This doesn't bother me in the least, though I hated her less than I do my father. I was the third, unexpected child, born to priests of Kura, who are forbidden by their so-called god to have more than two. My parents were unexpectedly "blessed" with twins after they already had one child (my dear sister), and Nathan came out ahead of me. He died in three minutes outside the womb, but was live at birth, so the ordinance didn't pass to me. My father at first thought I was the afterbirth when I began to make my exit. He did what many priests do - dropped me off at an orphanage with a wad of cash five hours after my birth. My name is Grayson because I am just that, the gray son, the one that sullied my parent's contract with Kura. They gave me the bastardized version of their name (Keeney -> Kearney) and hoped to never see me again, and thus far they never have.

But my sister, my dear sister. She never knew that Nathan had a twin, and she is the kindest, sweetest person I know. That I've lied to since the day I first spoke to her when I was six -- that's when I made up the name Gerry. Of course, I couldn't cast anything like an effective disguise spell at the time, so she knows my real face as Gerry... and now my employer knows it as Grayson, and she is kind enough not to let her friend in on the gig. Trusting people... is so odd. Life is easier when you assume everyone will cheat.

Hells, am I a hopeless case? Anyhow, what else do you want to know? Perhaps I'll make some sense of my life yet.

What I do and what I used to do are simultaneously the same and very different, which is probably the most confusing way I could put it. My apologies. I'll try and explain:

I've spent most of my life cultivating what you might consider a "criminal" empire, but I consider it to be far more sophisticated than that particular word implies. Perhaps the simplest way to explain it is that I am a confidence artist, and a very good one. It's a lucrative business - In my most successful scheme to date, I managed to score more than three hundred and fifty million Marks (our currency) on a five-million mark investment. It was a three-year-long operation that involved an amusing trifecta - stock investments, loan fees, and profit payments that would only look wise if you knew that
1) a war was coming (a fair number of people knew this)
2) the Tarusen steel workers union was going to strike (I knew this because my man was head of the union).
3) the Orokuse steel companies would give a loan to the Tarusenian companies to keep them afloat through the strike
4) the Tarusenian companies would eventually come to make a deal with the unions that forced major concessions on the part of the unions, when only days earlier they had announced that no such strike was forthcoming (I knew this b/c of my man in the unions and because the steel companies had hired a well-known negotiator... who worked for me).

Grand, intricate schemes of this sort are exactly what my talents lend themselves most easily too, and I've done well. My intelligence network covers most of the free world, and quite a bit of Valania as well. Friends in low places tell you wonderful things, and all they ask for is protection, cash, and a blessing from the Goddess of the Night - all easy enough to give if they believe that "the Gray Ghost" is her prophet.

Some background is in order, I suppose. Dein Astos, my home and my sanctuary, is the de facto capital of the free world. There are all kinds of people from every corner of the globe running around its streets, and they all have their secrets. Part of what makes DA such a great base for me, and indeed for all people who make a living in secrets and smuggling, is the free and open government.

And lately, that has been threatened. Someone else is working things - big things - in a way that I can't see from my usual perch in the shadows. I need to walk openly to figure out what is going on, and that is how I came to my current job. I work for Zia Locke, the newest of the magi knights. I chose her (and she is slowly coming to the realization that I chose her, and not the other way around) because she is at the center of it all, by luck and by virtue. She is the daughter of the recently murdered Alexander Locke - and I'm the only one who might be able to prove that his death was no accident (how I got hired).

Living among these people, though, is quite different, and I find myself almost wishing that I could be like them.

tempest - You very rightly mentioned that ever-complicated lies become more and more difficult to maintain. I have striven to keep my lies simple, but they are indeed falling down upon me.

When I say that I at times wish I could live as an honest man, I am only truly envious of the simplicity of, for example, speaking your name aloud and not caring who hears it. There is a camaraderie among the knights and soldiers that I work with that is not something I usually find in spies, even those bound together by the bonds of poverty and close birth. It was a shock to me the first time I caught them admiring not simply my ability, but my compassion for one wounded in my service. I love my games of deceit as well, though, and I have ever admired the beauty of a perfect falsehood. Sometimes I wonder where my heart truly lies.

Perhaps I overstated when I said that my lies are falling down around me -- many of them are up and in fine shape, and my aliases (and associates acting them out) are doing wonderful work all over the world. It is solely in my dealings with my family that I am worried. Lillian - my sister - is closer to the center of the current trouble in the city than I would ever have wanted, and it is mostly due to the ambitions of my thrice-damned father. He is being bribed by someone careful enough to thus far conceal themselves even from me. To be sure, I've followed the money, but it leads in circles, the same way my bribes often do. Very well done, I must say.

In any case, I doubt if you are interested in a complete run-through of my business, but the point is that I fear a time when I'll have to expose my true identity to the one person I wish had known it all along. Lillian is an exceedingly honest person, and I fear she may never understand why I had to lie.

I share your disdain for physical violence, but don't make the mistake of believing that what you and I share, a certain joy of cleverly-but-ill-gotten gains, is done without true harm. Even if you choose your targets to be wealthy, how would you know whether the diamond-encrusted pocketwatch you picked was simply a toy of excess for someone with more money than he knew what to do with, or whether it was a family heirloom, passed down for fifteen generations?

When described how I schemed my hundreds of millions away in various forms and fashions with the steel industry strikes, it may sound at first like no-one was truly harmed, but this isn't the case. In essence, I stole in a distributed fashion from shareholders in both steel industries, the companies themselves, and most excruciatingly, from the workers who went on strike in Tarusen. Many of them didn't get their jobs back when all was said and done, and those that did lost a substantial amount of pay. It was a zero-sum game to be sure, and as far out on the positive end as I put myself, there were thousands of people balancing me on the negative side.

I am not ashamed of what I did, but it is a crisis of conscience waiting to happen if you believe that thievery does no harm. The trick is to be at peace with the harm you do, and to be kind when you can, if you have need of such a balance for your conscience. I count myself fortunate that I do.

I know that some day it must come to pass as you say. Perhaps the other reason is a more cowardly and selfish reason. I've never cared what anyone in this world thinks of me, at least in a judgmental sense. I care very much what they are thinking when I'm trying to fool them into thinking it. In Lillian's case, though... I don't know what I would do if she hated me. If she couldn't forgive me for my lies, I don't know how I would live with myself. She's the only person that truly matters to me.

jnicoll - I suppose it's hard for me to open up because a large part of who I am is this weave of deception. You would be correct to describe me as analytical, but I think perhaps my focus on my issues with my sister has lead you too much to believe that I'm depressed in any way about how I've lead my life. I enjoy my confidence games, more so for the thrill of outwitting an opponent than for the material gain. If it was just money, well.... I've got plenty. I could buy a mansion out on the islands and live out my days, or a penthouse high above Gold Square, if that suited me.

My passions? My hopes and dreams? I've never been one to spend time worrying about that which cannot be had - I've only ever focused on attaining... power I suppose. I like to think that I've sought out my power and influence because I want there to be justice in the world. The commoners in my land have little protection from the police, who think their time best spent on citizens and gentry (the first and second social classes, respectively), and are mostly left to their own. Mob justice was the norm for centuries, and I have done a great deal to change that. There is a sort of honor among thieves, and a hatred of true violence. Women, in particular, are safe - particularly members of the world's oldest profession. And I've managed to create this new "system" of justice with a bare minimum of violence on my own part, and I am particularly proud of that.

Though I was born to the privileged, I was raised among the poor and disenfranchised and have been blessed with the ability to right certain injustices as I see them. I have ever wanted to do so.

And here again I've gone on rambling. It's unlike me to speak so candidly or so much, but... on the rare occasion I talk about myself I always seem to do so. Perhaps because I know so little about the subject? I am an expert at analyzing others, but not nearly as much myself... I've never been much concerned with how I feel.