Overview
Cyric is the monomaniacal Faerunian god of lies, trickery, and strife, having previously held dominion over tyranny, murder, lies, intrigue, and illusion. It was the unholy radiance of the Dark Sun that drew power-hungry mortals to their inexorable deaths like moths to a flame.
Description
As a mortal man, Cyric had a lean athletic build. His dark brown hair outlined a face of sharp angles, highlighted by crow's-feet eyes, a pointed chin, and hawkish nose.
On first becoming a god, Cyric's avatar took on a similar appearance, but with ghastly pale skin and intense, dark eyes. He exhibited human mannerisms, and was often prone to wriggling and squirming when he became anxious or impatient, but after a decade of godhood, Cyric's avatar began to more reflect the horrific nature of his character. His face went so gaunt it resembled a skull and the skin wrapped around his tightly wound cords of muscle turned red. Cyric's eyes appeared as small flames within his skull, his teeth turned crooked and yellowed, and his fingers were stripped of flesh until only bone remained. With some effort, Cyric could hide this appearance with use of illusion magic when making appearances in the Realms.
Following his descent into madness, Cyric's skeletal visage and bony hands were scarred and scorched by the flaming souls of his wretched faithful. Unlike before, these wounds could not be hidden by any form of magical means. Cyric's fractured psyche caused him to speak in a thousand voices at once. What remained of his heart appeared as a mass of poisonous brown sludge interwoven with white cords, which were in fact remnants of the two gods he had slain.
Personality
In life, Cyric was a petty and selfish man that believed everyone was truly alone in life. Placing trust in others was folly that would only end in suffering or, in all likelihood, death. While he occasionally acted in the interest of others[ and once famously rallied the Dalesfolk in a terrific battle, Cyric was unfortunately overcome by the worst aspects of his nature.
Cyric's selfishness, inability to cope with intense feelings, and unwillingness to rely upon others for support, led Cyric to isolate and withdraw himself from people that actually cared for him. As a result, Cyric suffered and languished in a state of inner turmoil. His earnest but malnourished desire to do right by others remained at odds with his sense of self-preservation and a yearning to prove himself by appearing powerful.
Cyric's experiences as an adventurer accentuated the darker aspects of his persona, namely his perverse fascination with killing, the ease with which he spoke half-truths, his inclination to incite fear in others, the urge for bloodlust he harbored, and the pleasure he felt when exerting dominance over the weak. The worst aspects of Cyric's humanity were only magnified when he ascended to divinity. As a god Cyric was entirely egocentric, and took immense joy from manipulating mortals into ruining or ending their own lives. For a time Cyric came to believe himself superior to all other beings in the multiverse.
Cyric's self-absorption led to him often acting out like a child. He was irrationally impatient and became restless and moody when things didn't go his way fast enough for his liking. He formed petty, nasty, and sexist nicknames for the other gods and he insisted that courtiers in his divine court only refer to them as such. In truth, Cyric was terrified of the other powers, and was even put ill at ease by some demipowers, to the point that he became crippled with paranoia.
During his descent into madness, Cyric's unpredictability and erratic behavior became much worse. He was overtaken with a myriad of delusions and countless voices in his mind that some speculated were the remnants of the gods he had slain. He would fantasize horrors that could be inflicted upon those that wronged him, conflate those fallacies with half-truths and false memories, then accept the results as new reality that comprised glorious victories over his enemies. Cyric's cracked and chaotic psyche could barely hold back his myriad of conflicting selves. Cyric abandoned any precept of a polytheistic pantheon, and came to believe himself the only true god of the Realms, and demanded that all his followers appease and worship him as such.