The Swindler

From the beginning, it has been understood that one must do all one can to avoid the Swindler. For it roams the face of Truth, seeking an unsuspecting individual to steal, demolish and annihilate. It is the worst wickedness on the planet. Hypervigilance is critical to avoiding the Swindler.

What does it look like so I can know when it approaches? It is not precisely known, but the Swindler is thought to be enormous, dark, loud, and monstrous. A rancid smell accompanies it. It leaves nothing but chaos in its wake. The Swindler is a vicious trickster, but if you follow all the rules and do what is right, you will not get caught in its grotesque clutches.

At first, these rules, though not easy, were light and manageable. Following the rules made life easier by bringing order to complicated, complex, and confusing circumstances. However, a time came when they began to grow in length and magnitude gradually. This happened so slowly that no one noticed until the rules were too many and too heavy. They became impossible.

During the third age, the combination of the Swindler’s physical description being preposterous and the exhausted state of the overburdened population, the belief in the Swindler itself died. It became a myth, and the many, many, many rules became optional. A general apathy settled into that generation's hearts and minds, causing a disregard for order and rightness until rightness became a myth.

But the Swindler is and always has been real. Rather than loud, stinky, and obnoxious, it is astonishingly sly, sneaky, and clever. The rules broke the spirit of the population. They were good and right when they were established. That was why the Swindler turned its ruinous eye upon them. Slowly and silently transforming and warping their protection into something so large and heavy that it crushed them.

Had anyone listened to the heartbeat of the rules, there would have been evidence that something was wrong. Something had twisted them, added to them, sucked all the virtue out of them. Examine closely the complexion of what you follow. Concerning this population, at this time, the Swindler’s purpose is being fulfilled; it has stepped from the shadows and is exerting all its power. The inhabitants embrace its strange unnatural ways. It has come to steal, destroy and kill. And it does its work very well.