Le Bayou a Faim

In the oldest quarter of Ville des Marai, where the earth never quite settled and the air clung damp and close to the skin, there stood a necropolis long abandoned by the living but not, it was said, by memory. The tombs there leaned at uneasy angles, their stone faces slick with moss and time. Iron gates hung open where they had rusted through, and pale candle stubs — some fresh, some melted to nothing — gathered in quiet clusters at the feet of the dead. No one could say who lit them. No one could say when they had begun appearing. It was simply understood that some things in that place did not belong to the living. It was here that Jean Paul remained. In life, he had been a man of stature - a Creole aristocrat of wealth, refinement, and quiet brutality. His name had once opened doors, and his voice had once closed them without question. Those beneath him, particularly those bound to his household, had known him not as a patron but as something colder. His cruelty had not been chaoti...

Yvonne Landry has a presence that fills a room long before her voice does. She moves with an easy confidence - the kind born from knowing exactly who she is and what she is worth. Zaftig and buxom, with a soft, plump face and a smile that curls at the edges with mischief, she carries herself like a woman who has long since stopped asking permission to take up space. Her dark hair is usually tied back in a loose knot that never quite holds, and there is almost always a smudge of grain dust or dried foam somewhere on her skin. It only adds to the effect. Her brewery sits near the heart of the city, where the air carries a constant blend of yeast, spice, and river humidity. Inside, copper kettles gleam in the low light, and barrels line the walls like quiet sentinels. Yvonne is both artist and engineer here - crafting bold ales with smoky undertones, sweet wildflower meads that linger on the tongue, and experimental brews that change with the seasons and her mood. She has a knack for coa...

Captain Garsh is a force of nature wrapped in blood-red leather and belligerent hunger. Towering at nearly seven feet tall and built from a brutal combination of dense muscle and heavy fat, this orc moves with a surprising, ground-shaking speed when roused. His bulk does little to slow him - instead, it serves as both armor and intimidation. His blood-red studded leather armor is scarred, salt-stained, and always faintly reeking of iron and gunpowder, as though it has absorbed the history of every violent encounter he has ever survived. Across his back hangs his signature weapon: an axegun, its heavy barrel fused with a brutal axe head, stained dark from countless battles fought at close quarters. The axegun is Garsh’s pride and his obsession - a weapon that suits his philosophy perfectly. Why choose between distance and brutality when you can have both? At range, he fires with crude but devastating accuracy, relying on sheer power rather than precision. In melee, the weapon ...

The Fat Mother Loa of Broken Promises, Keeper of Whispered Betrayals Mère Grosse manifests as a towering, severely obese black woman draped in a tattered white robe that hangs in heavy, layered folds around her immense form. The fabric appears stained by time and sorrow, its edges frayed and uneven, as though worn thin by countless years of quiet suffering. Around her waist is tied a jet black sash , stark against the pale ruin of her garment, and upon her head she wears a tightly wrapped black tignon , immaculate despite the decay of everything else about her. She moves with a slow, deliberate grace that contradicts her size. Though she walks as if her weight should shake the ground, no sound accompanies her steps. From the knees down, her legs simply fade into nothingness, dissolving into the same pale, indistinct haze as the lower ends of her robes. She does not drag herself forward - she glides, as though carried by the weight of unspoken truths rather than bound by flesh. It is ...

Loa of Concealed Agony, Clinging Pain, and Deceptive Softness Appearance Dumplorandt manifests as a humanoid figure whose body is entirely wrapped in the dense, soft-looking “fur” of a puss caterpillar . At a distance, his form appears almost plush - full, even corpulent - but up close, that bulk feels wrong: a fat, sickly mass , as though something within him is bloated and failing at the same time. His movements are slow and heavy, yet uneven, like something that struggles to support its own weight. Protruding from that swollen form are tiny, thin hands , almost childlike in size compared to the rest of his body. They twitch and fidget constantly, as if they can never settle, brushing against his own body or reaching out in short, uncertain motions. These small hands look fragile and underdeveloped, yet they are disturbingly precise when they move - delicate, intentional, and quietly wrong. His “fur” is not fur at all, but a mass of fine, venomous setae that sh...

Nisab , the Loa Protector of Tradition. The loa are not bound to a single origin, nor do they arise from a single truth. Some have simply come into being over the slow turning of years, emerging as naturally as mist over warm water, their presence shaped by the land and the lives lived upon it. Others are born of the quiet, inevitable processes that govern all things - growth, decay, memory, and time - taking form as reflections of the world’s rhythms. Still others are forged in sharper moments: through violence, tragedy, or sudden misfortune, when emotion and event collide with such force that something new is left behind to linger. In all cases, the loa exist not as distant gods to be revered, but as forces to be acknowledged and served. They are woven into daily life, neither wholly benevolent nor needlessly cruel, but responsive, aware, and deeply tied to the conditions of their making. Service to them is not an act of blind devotion, but one of understanding, respect, and careful ...

Lili, the Mother of Threads Lili is the stillness behind structure, the patient architect of existence, and the unseen hand that binds all things into order. She is most often depicted as a vast black widow spider, her body impossibly large, her legs stretching across distances that cannot be measured by mortal eyes. Her form is not grotesque, but awe-inspiring - perfect, deliberate, and absolute. Every movement she makes is purposeful, every thread she spins placed with intention. To behold her, even in vision, is to feel the weight of design itself pressing gently but firmly upon the soul. She is the chief among the Orderly loa, and through her, the concepts of Domination, Inquisition, Knowledge, Law, and Strength are given form and meaning. These are not merely ideas to Lili - they are strands in the great web she weaves across the universe. Those who call upon her do so with precision, offering structured prayers, carefully spoken, never improvised. Lili does not respond to chaos...

The Rivière Tumultueuse is the great, unruly artery that winds its way through the heart of the land, carrying with it the memory of distant rains, mountain melts, and the slow, ceaseless pull of the continent. It is a river that resists stillness. Even in its quietest stretches, the water seems to lean forward, as though eager to continue its journey toward the Gulf of L’Eau Bleue. Wide, deep, and ever-shifting, it has carved its presence into the land as much as the land has shaped its course. For those who live along its banks, the Rivière Tumultueuse is both a provider and a force to be respected. Ville des Marai sits roughly 105 miles upriver from the Gulf, positioned near the broad, lake-like expanse of Lake Truite. Here, the river is at once generous and dangerous - its currents strong enough to challenge even experienced boatmen, yet fertile enough to sustain the city and its surrounding marshlands. The river does not simply pass by Ville des Marai; it moves through it, thread...

Beraie, the Dead Mother, is spoken of in whispers, and even then, people choose their words carefully - as though speaking too clearly might invite her notice. Among the loa, she is not the most feared in the sense of brute power, but in the way she lingers. She governs the uneasy thresholds where life breaks down into death, where pain sharpens into awareness, and where destruction leaves behind something that remembers what it once was. Her domain is not clean or final - it is unresolved , and that is where her influence takes hold. Her form is a horror that refuses to be ignored. She appears as a corpse, her flesh mottled and moldy, hanging loosely from bone in places where it has not yet fallen away. Most striking - and most often described - is her absence of a jaw. What remains is a jagged, exposed ruin of bone and sinew, as though something terrible tore it free and left the wound to persist as a permanent feature of her being. Yet despite this, she...

There are stories in Ville des Marais that people tell with half a smile and half a warning, and La Dévotion Silencieuse is spoken of in exactly that way. It is not written in any official ledger of plague or affliction. It does not have a temple blessing or a recognized cure. It exists only in memory - a shared unease that something once took hold of the city, and then, as suddenly as it began, let go. It happened some fifty years ago, during a season when the air hung still and the river seemed to slow its song. It began with a single person - a young dockhand, so the tale goes - who stood in the street and began to sway. Not violently, not erratically, but with a strange, deliberate rhythm, as though responding to a music no one else could hear. At first, passersby laughed. Then they watched. Then, slowly, they began to listen. Within days, it spread. Not like fire, but like a thought that moves from one mind to another without ever being spoken aloud. One by one, people joined i...