Louis Hebert was a swamp-dwelling fast-talker in the Palhuric wetlands who came to the big cities of Malhuin not knowing up from down. He was taken advantage of in every way possible, but he learned from it. He learned the hard way how to tell a sucker, because most of the time it was him. By the time he was 14, he had begun to cotton on. By the time he was 15, he had a few people he had charmed, against all reason, to help him out. By the time he was 16, he had a very large gang. By the time he was 25, he was running the entire southwestern corner of the Malhuene subcontinent.

The soap game is not a complicated con. You have a barker selling soap. A plant in the crowd buys one, and he "wins" a hundred smackers in the lining. You get a few dozen people to buy soap and make a nice dollar, and no one actually wins--except you.Soapy ran an empire on this principle, a vast, dangerous criminal empire that he eventually flaunted out in the open. After another ten years, he had lost everything to greed, pride, and foolery.

So he started again, and he aimed his sights higher. He fooled kings, emperors, titans of business, and actual titans. He fooled high priests and eventually, gods. He tricked a dozen of them before he met one that was his match, a cunning, impish trickster goddess who was not yet part of Shem. He fell in love. He swore fealty. She turned him into a skunk for seven years.

When he got better, he had a wit sharper than before, and he knew things he could not possibly know. He began anew to build an empire, but this time, he kept it small. He began running small cons on big targets, moving, always moving. He came into conflict with other, more ancient and powerful grifters. The Devil, the Puck, the Merchant Princess... they all taught him some hard lessons.

But he kept moving. Kept playing the game.

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Soapy is currently working a long grift involving the lost numen.