[ WP ] The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people the devil honored contracts .

Humanity, at it's core, is a race of optimists. To a human, there is always a way to win, no matter how impossible a challenge may seem. Across human mythos, there is one central rule that remains unchallenged: Humans will eventually win. 
 
 It's a delusion that I've worked very hard to cultivate. 
 
 See, no one thinks to question why an entity of pure evil would honor something as arbitrary as a promise. Perhaps, deep down inside, they do n't think to question it because it's inconvenient to them; after all, those who seek to deal with ME are n't often in a position to negotiate. 
 
 Believe it or not, it was much harder to trick people out of their souls in the old days. Back then, people were dominated by fear, and would fetch their crosses at the first sign of me. The few that DID succumb to my wiles were quickly snuffed out, making it very hard for me to get things done. 
 
 Eventually, I figured out the problem: People were too afraid of me to make a deal. They KNEW what would happen if they consorted with my kind, and that it would surely lead to their downfall. So what could I do convince them that they had a fighting chance against little old me? 
 
 Let a couple of them win, and live to tell the tale. 
 
 To this day, my personal favorite of these tales involved a little Georgia boy named Johnny. The squirt could play a mean fiddle, sure, but I could have summoned an unholy orchestra of violinists more talented than him. But I let him have his little victory, and his little golden fiddle- so long as he told all his friends that Ol' Scratch played fair and square. 
 
 Soon, I had people lining up to take a crack at me, challenging me to cards and pool games and whatnot. I still let them win, occasionally; after all, for every 1 that I let get away, there's 100 that do n't get so lucky. And sometimes, I even get the one that got away, albeit a little bit later. 
 
 Take little Johnny, for example: After 20 years bragging that he beat Lucifer in a fiddling contest, the kid had n't an ounce of humility in him. Vanity, of course, is my domain; so when one of Johnny's drinking buddies got sick of hearing `` the one where I beat Ol' Scratch'', I was waiting for him with open arms. And as Johnny's soul made its way down to me, I could n't help but laugh when I saw him realize that he was damned the moment he shook my hand.
