These constructs, called Deceivers, were designed to cause havok among enemy formations by using their innate mimicry and illusion skills before rending the combatants apart in a lightning attack. That worked well enough. But the Essenes relied on a wholly inadequate system to control the creatures, denying them calcium for eggshells and iron for their blood, with the former withheld entirely to prevent unauthorized breeding and the latter fed to them only in Essene holding pens. The Essenes soon learned how much calcium and iron was in the natural world, and within a generation or two there appeared wild Deceivers with neither weakness. They remain to this day a scourge in the humid lowlands.

High Inquisitor’s Note”
Deceivers are no more intelligent than any other wild animal, and indeed may be somewhat less clever than their wild forebears. But the feral variety inadvertently bred by the Essenes has a strong and instinctive mimicry that can allow it to seemingly converse and even operate machinery through observation.

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