THE DARK ONE

The story of La Noire begins at the twilight of cycle 6172, where she was born as ZA Sãma (Za Sayma). Beloved daughter of Prince YA Tóluwarin (Ya To-lou-warinne) and Satna Oya, ZA Sãma was recognized as Kizoyu at the age of 7 cycles, during her first glimmer, and became Ki’ZA Sãma that moon. Great joy ensued, and a lavish celebration was held in her honor at the Nār (Na-ar) palace in Alkebula, while gifts and marriage proposals from all corners of the kingdom poured in. Henceforth, in addition to their w’nundu (wa-noun-dou), the Mamake (Ma-ma-ké) clan now had two Kizoyu among them.

Three, if by extension one counted the regent Ki’W’Satna Ozóra (ki-wa-satna Auzora), the younger sister of the king's mother, Ki’RË Xangó Mamake (Ki-ré-chann-go), sixth of her name. With this new royal birth, the Mamake clan ensured its undisputed power. At thirty-one cycles, after brilliantly graduating from the Academy of Laws alongside her friends ZA Abdêna of the Suma clan and ZA Awa of the Ogunge clan (Au-goun-gué), Princess Ki’ZA Sãma would finally join the tribe of Spiritual Nomads as an initiated Kizoyu, largely supported and mentored by her great-aunt Ki’W’Satna Ozóra, and by the king.
During this period, her mother, Satna Oya, went to Brazil for an unofficial mission as an Aziza sister. She chose to live among the slaves on the plantations, becoming a renowned healer and teacher in Bahia. By chance, she even adopted a young orphaned human girl, who was accused of witchcraft and burned at the age of nineteen cycles by her masters, in front of other slaves as a warning.
Satna Oya, for her part, was subsequently betrayed by human slaves... These very slaves whom she had recently cared for, advised, and fed... Her hiding place was revealed, her belongings seized, her small garden trampled, and she... She was captured and then hanged in the public square, also accused of witchcraft, during the last moon of cycle 6213.
— You, demons. You will learn to fear Men! The treacherous slave, to whom Satna Oya's death could likely be attributed, reportedly said.

A few moons after the announcement of this tragedy, Prince YA Tóluwarin reportedly begged his brother, Ki’RË Xangó, to grant him the right to avenge his companion by unleashing hell on humans.
However, the king, pressured by the Spiritual Council, categorically refused. The late Aziza sister Satna Oya had, knowingly, violated one of the founding commandments of the Spiritual tribe inscribed in the Olafin (Au-la-finn) Manuscript, by meddling in human affairs.
Aziza thriving in the lands of Men are mandated to describe the world, observing it under their cloaks of invisibility, and are under no circumstances allowed to directly help humans, for any reason, however terrible their fate may be. This decision caused a rift between the two brothers, and the Mamake clan split into two camps. Thus, despite the prohibition of her uncle the king, Princess Ki’ZA Sãma, who had inherited her mother's compassion and her father's fiery spirit, saw things from a different perspective. She used her Kizoyu powers for the first time to incite her father's will to go to war against humans. However, she did not have to insist too much... YA Tóluwarin's heart was already filled with this anger. Accompanied by nearly 5,500 warriors and his powerful w'nundu, Tiamut, Prince YA Tóluwarin crossed the Jansãwari and landed in Bahia during the second moon of cycle 6215. In less than one cycle, the prince conquered the entire eastern coast of Brazil, massacring slaves and masters indiscriminately. Prince YA Tóluwarin then founded Jansãbula.
Legend has it that in response to the death of his beloved, he had the following phrase engraved on his warriors' arrows and spears:
"Men will learn to fear the Alkeb."
The initially unified territory was subsequently divided into two, then three districts. Misti Mödja, the largest district where the city of Makemila was erected, Guirda Liberdade to the north, and Jansa Mödja, a district that to this day is controlled by the Order of Sheol and Brazilians.

The prince subsequently entered Alkeb history under the glorious name of YA Tóluwarin the Conqueror. Men, however, called him Tóluwarin the Cruel.
Miles away in Alkebula, his daughter, Princess Ki’ZA Sãma, was severely reprimanded by the Spiritual Council and forced to meditate in isolation for several Moons. She, too, like her mother, had violated one of the commandments of the Spiritual tribe inscribed in the Olafin Manuscript: namely, never to use her Kizoyu powers out of a pure spirit of revenge. The king, for his part, amply advised by the kingdom's Guide, nevertheless managed to take advantage of this transgression for political purposes.
Thus, during the eighth moon of cycle 6218, the fierce Princess Ki’ZA Sãma Mamake, daughter of the Feline-Lord YA Tóluwarin Mamake, was sent to the Three Moons to strengthen the alliance between the Mamake clan and the Balake clan.
— Land and sea will once again be reunited for the best... but at the expense of the princess.
This is what emissary Kimbo allegedly declared before proudly announcing the news of the alliance to the governors and clan chiefs of the kingdom.
At the time, nothing could foreshadow what would happen next...

The King's Council had decreed, without the consent of the main interested party, that she would marry the heir son of the Lord of the Seas, YA Kasimbe Balake (Ya Kasimbé Balaké). Through this union, Ki’ZA Sãma Mamake would become his first wife, thus becoming the next Lady of the TIdes and taking her place in the palace on the island of Anadë, on its rocks beaten by the salty spray of the Little Abyss Sea, when YA Kasimbe would become the new Lord of the Seas.

Ki’ZA Sãma, as unpredictable as the sea winds, first accepted the duty imposed on her by her birth. At first, she consented to become YA Kasimbe's wife. Yet, during cycle 6226, when it was time to wear the cowrie crown, the immemorial symbol of the Ladies of the Waves, as her husband took the title of Lord of the Seas following his father's death during the Obsidian Lands war, killed by the cannons of human colonists from the north, Ki’ZA Sãma's heart faltered... She refused the crown and asked, instead of being Lady of the TIdes, to be only the second wife of the Lord of the Seas, living among his four consorts on the rocky island, renowned for its immense millennial cave teeming with rubies and emeralds, at Pointe Pourpre, off Ansãsiwa. This choice, deemed almost disrespectful, infuriated not only the Guide, but also the Lord of the Seas himself.

For Ki’ZA Sãma, before pronouncing her refusal, had escaped from the island of Anadë on a makeshift canoe, wearing a simple fisherman's rag, abandoning the cowrie crown in the hands of the elf ZA Jenaba Balake (Za Djénaba), one of the legitimate wives of the Lord of the Seas, who was happily named Lady of the TIdes in her place.
Nevertheless, indignation soon gave way under the weight of political necessities. Faced with her stubbornness, the Guide, as well as the Governors of the Three Moons, fearing that a scandal would tarnish the reputation of the Southern Water tribe, and that of the Mamake clan, concocted a more prosaic version of events. They persuaded the people and the noble clans that this decision was in no way the result of yet another whim of an elf too spoiled by her uncle, but rather the culmination of an agreement reached by three voices: the Lord of the Seas, the king, and Princess Ki’ZA Sãma.

They claimed that, under the teachings of the Spiritual Nomads, she had chosen to renounce the duty of the Lady of the TIdes in order to lead a more humble life as a Kizoyu at Pointe Pourpre.
The Guide's political maneuvering worked, for a time at least...
Having become, in the eyes of the people as well as her husband, a mere trophy wife, a jewel relegated among the other wives of the Lord of the Seas, the princess spent several cycles languishing in the caves of Pointe Pourpre. Freed from the burden of the title of Lady of the TIdes, and from the political machinations of the King's Council, but chained to an existence of solitude, she wandered from room to room in her palace of rock and salt, avoiding all contact with her peers, the wives of the Lord of the Seas, who feared her powers. Only her lifelong friends ZA Abdêna and ZA Awa seemed to fill her with joy during their visits.

Seasons and cycles passed, until a new scandal once again stirred up the commotion around the princess.
Fishermen, djēle, sailors and other gossips from neighboring islands whispered, behind closed doors, that the princess had for several moons been having a hidden affair with one of the Lord of the Seas' many sons: Captain YA Idris Balake, born of ZA Nãla Balake (Za Nay-la), reputed to be the most beautiful of the Lord of the Seas' wives, even more beautiful than Ki’ZA Sãma. But the elf was also known for her tenacious jealousy and resentment towards the princess and, more generally, towards the Mamake and the Kizoyu as a whole.
Was this another revenge orchestrated by a concubine against a rival? A whim of a princess bored by solitude? Or, quite simply, the forbidden love of an elf feeling rejected by her family and finding refuge in a man's arms?

No one could say...

Captain YA Idris, they said, was a taciturn and somewhat obscure elf. He had carved out a solid reputation throughout Jengus Bay and as far as the Howling Islands off Órelota. An excellent marksman, gambler and player of dice and awalé, captain of a flotilla of five ships, he was adored by his men, who saw in him the reincarnation of the illustrious YA Adama Balake the Brave, his great-grandfather. His weapon of choice was a lyr-bladed dagger, whose hilt, which his men claimed to have been carved from a Jengu bone, represented Mami Wata, the Will of the Sea revered by the Wamāt sailors of the Southern Water tribe.

In the ports of Ansãsiwa, it was said that Captain YA Idris Balake hated his father and the disrespectful way he treated his mother and wives. Thus, he rendered justice differently: treasures wrested from pirates, from the Howling Islands or unearthed from shipwrecks, were shared equally, without favoritism.
As a result, many sailors saw him as an undisputed leader and the legitimate heir to the title of Lord of the Seas, and swore on their honor of the Southern Water tribe that the moon when YA Kasimbe Balake, his father, would draw his last breath, and if YA Idris were to declare himself Lord of the Seas, all would follow him, fight and die for him.
Captain YA Idris, as always, brushed aside these ambitions that his sailors attributed to him, assuring that the title would naturally fall to the first son of the Lady of the TIdes, his young half-brother YA Jalil Balake. Yet, he sometimes let other, wider, even crazier ideas run wild... 

Namely, to cross the Tansawari with his warriors and his wife, whoever she might be, in order to venture beyond the kingdom's borders and conquer the lands of Men, as Prince YA Tóluwarin the Conqueror had done before him. Some even claimed he dreamed of proclaiming himself king of the Eastern Lands, others still rumored that due to his ferocity in combat and his vermilion-tinged irises at sunset, he was one of the last descendants of the Valmara of the kingdom. It was in this outpouring of rumors and passions that the scandal truly erupted. Sailors, smugglers, and travelers swore, hand on the hull of their ship and on the Eternals, that Princess Ki’ZA Sãma and Captain YA Idris Balake were no longer content with furtive exchanges.
No, they said: “in one of the caves of the Kã (quail) Rouge, at Pointe Pourpre, they were doing it…”

Some claimed to have seen them more than once, bodies intertwined, skin gleaming, panting against the rock, taking each other with an ardor that nothing could contain, the princess, feline by nature, scratching the sailor's back. Others swore by the Eternals that YA Idriss’s groans, as the princess gave him satisfaction and pleasure with her mouth, had rolled on the waves and been heard as far as the cliffs of Foam Rock.
Exaggerations of drunken sailors? Most likely...
But, deep down... to what extent?
During this period, between cycle 6275 and cycle 6277, Prince YA Tóluwarin faced a rebellion that cost him his life.

The powerful Feline-Lord, Mamake prince and Conqueror of the West, died poisoned during a coup d'état. Although his rise to power was achieved through blood and hatred, he had gradually learned to appreciate men and their ability to imagine and innovate. During his reign, he had finally abolished slavery, educated humans in Alkeb beliefs, established the classical Alkebian language, developed the economy through his mines and agriculture, and established an egalitarian society where women had as many rights as men. Thus, when the king learned of his brother's death, the sovereign consented to prepare for war to do justice to his brother and reconquer the territories lost to humans, when he received a complaint from the Lord of the Seas from the south. The latter not only accused Princess Ki’ZA Sãma of deceit, but also reminded him that she had refused a few cycles earlier to become his first wife and bear the title of Lady of the TIdes. 
Furthermore, the Lord of the Seas, amply informed by ZA Nãla Balake and other chambermaids in his Pointe Pourpre palace, suspected the princess of carrying the bastard child of YA Idris, his own son...
Unable to punish the princess as he would have done with any of his other wives, and fearing the shame and opprobrium that this story would bring upon his clan and himself, the Lord of the Seas finally requested the annulment of their union and that the princess return to Alkebula.

Which was done.

On the other side of the Jansawari, at the same time, after a series of strange deaths initially associated with Tiamut who, upon YA Tóluwarin's death, had escaped and fled into the Amazon jungle, was quickly dismissed for another, even more disturbing theory.

Many disappearances and stories of possession in the Latin American region were reported by Humans. The Aziza sisters dispatched to the area then discovered the existence of an Interworld Veil near the border between Brazil and Jansãbula. They immediately informed the Spiritual Council. Subsequently, in the next cycle, a delegation from Alkeb composed of three Emissaries, Duly Appointed Individuals, and several Spiritual Sages, traveled to Brazil to warn humans of the existence of this veil and the danger it posed, requesting authorization to take control of the area to limit the risks.

The Humans refused and preferred to place the area under the authority of the Pope and the Church. They also accused the Alkeb of being the originators of these disturbances and of deliberately unleashing a monster on their land.
A vast propaganda campaign, which would never fade afterwards, was then launched by the Order of Sheol, branding the Alkeb as Nephalem and a scourge to the human race. An interspecies war finally broke out when, during cycle 6281, Ki’RË Xangó VI, seconded by the Lord of the Seas, sent nearly 20,000 warriors from the Basseterre tribe to Brazil to regain control of the Interworld Veil and find Tiamut to bring him back to the Alkeb Kingdom, before the Humans found a way to slay him.
The war ended during the eleventh Moon of cycle 6286, after heavy losses on the Alkeb side, when the king himself set sail on his w’nundu, Tiamat, and brought a definitive end to the conflict. Tiamut, however, remained untraceable.

The following cycle, in 6287, after successfully pacifying the region, signing a relative peace agreement with human nations and securing the Interworld Veil by placing several Shamans in charge of guarding its access, the King's Council suggested that once these lands were appeased, Princess Ki’ZA Sãma should be sent to govern there. Having been relieved of her duties towards the Balake clan and being the only daughter of Prince YA Tóluwarin the Conqueror, she was the legitimate heir. No one opposed this.
But this proposal came with conditions: the princess would have to renounce seeing YA Idris again.

When the princess learned of these demands, she fiercely refused to leave the Alkeb Kingdom to exile herself among Humans, whom she rightly held responsible for the death of her mother and father. To soften her disdain and to mask what looked increasingly like a banishment in her eyes, the king offered her a baby w’nundu, a symbol of favor and trust, to remind his niece, now 117 cycles old, despite her transgressions and whims, that she remained her brother's child and that her blood and kizoyu gifts remained precious to the Mamake clan and the kingdom. Finally, it was during the second Moon of cycle 6290, that Princess Ki’ZA Sãma had to, once again, bow to the will of her uncle, the king. Escorted by two w'mūji, several Aziza sisters, sages, a retinue of servants and ladies-in-waiting, she set off for Misti Mödja, in the heart of Jansabula, to take her seat there in the name of the Mamake clan.

Under duress and coercion, hating the human race more than anything in the world, Ki’ZA Sãma established a reign of harshness for nearly twenty-seven cycles in Jansãbula. She used her powers to force them to work to exhaustion in the mines, extracting innumerable resources that she transported to Brazil or the Alkeb Kingdom. During these first cycles of reign, tens of thousands of deaths of human women, children, and elders could be attributed to her.

Violent rebellions broke out one after another, and Ki’ZA Sãma always responded with force, crushing the uprisings without mercy. With each repression, her authority further fractured within the population. Cities once loyal or pacified by her uncle swore allegiance to the Brazilians or formed coalitions of rebel fighters, gradually eroding the princess's power. The warriors of the Mamake clan began to doubt the princess's ability to govern in times of crisis, and some deserted the ranks in favor of the new rebel district, Guirda Liberdade, which formed in the north, while others returned to the Alkeb Kingdom. Further south, human partisans of the Order of Sheol took advantage of this nascent chaos to reclaim part of the territory and later founded the great prison of São Xéol in the district of Jansa Mödja. From corsairs and smugglers, the princess learned corruption. From slave traders with whom she trafficked, she learned to whip Humans like beasts. To her enemies, she liked to say that her w’nundu knew the taste of human flesh better than that of pork or sheep.

While her father, the late Prince YA Tóluwarin, had managed to forgive and see the good in the heart of the human species, Ki’ZA Sãma’s heart, on the other hand, darkened, becoming as black and hard as obsidian with each passing moon. It swelled with pride as she discovered the extent of her power over the Humans she subjected to her will so easily… Towards the end of cycle 6322, Urzul, her w’nundu, had reached its adult size. It had become a colossal beast over thirty meters high, still growing. The beast was ferocious, faithfully following the princess wherever she went and sowing terror among the human slaves. Added to this were her two w'mūji, devoted body and soul to serving the Mamake clan, her army of child soldiers whom she took care to dehumanize, entirely capable of the worst and most horrible in combat, and her kizoyu powers, and you have one of the most feared elfins in the known world…

However, the King's Council turned a blind eye. The massacres of Jansãbula, the blood-drenched mines, the slave trade, the burned villages, the tortures given as examples—nothing weighed much against the riches that Ki’ZA Sãma poured into the Alkeb Kingdom. From the perspective of the Mamake clan and a not insignificant majority of members of the King's Council, the princess was fulfilling her mission admirably and was praised as a worthy Wild-Lady of the Mamake clan. Gold, silver, precious stones, palladium… all imported at a negligible price, while the Basseterre clans of Alkebula began to cultivate and export en masse to Jansãbula the roots of gurgia, which the princess sold as a hallucinogenic drug at a golden price to humans throughout Latin America.

But it was during the second moon of cycle 6323 that everything truly changed. A brutally savage repression, perpetrated by the princess's armed forces against the inhabitants of Gaïa de Mar, north of the Guirda Liberdade district, shook the entire country and reached the ears of the Spiritual Council itself. According to the established commandments of the Olafin Manuscript, a kizoyu must protect the weakest, whether human or Alkeb, and not reduce them to living weapons or use them as labor to mortal exhaustion. The Spiritual Council could not remain silent for long.

The northern rebels threatened to enter open warfare against the southern cities, and the Aziza sisters and sages who remained with the princess feared that the entire country would plunge into a new crisis. It was therefore decided to act before the madness of a single elfin consumed the prosperity of two entire nations. During the fourth moon of that same cycle, the emissary Kimbo, accompanied by several Duly Appointed Individuals, were dispatched to Jansãbula, carrying peace, wisdom, and warnings. All, however, were refused entry to the city by the princess to conduct negotiations. As for the emissary, in a moment of exasperation and anger at the princess's insolence, he called her a "Royal harlot" after noticing the princess's rounded belly and Captain YA Idris Balake by her side. For these words, YA Idris immediately had him arrested, then hung by his feet, his masculinity ripped off and thrown to the princess's child soldiers to eat. The unfortunate man's body remained suspended in this manner for one moon.

A few moons after this event, the princess gave birth to a toddler with a jet-black face and shifting, incandescent irises. The blood of the Mamake Feline-Lords inevitably flowed in him.
The Lord of the Seas, learning of his son's union with his former wife and this birth, which he took as a provocation and a personal insult, flew into a black rage. But the princess could not be chastised by his hand without risking a major political crisis. The Mamake clan, in addition to being the reigning clan of the kingdom, having at its head the most formidable kizoyu suzerain since the time of the Silver-Maned Lioness of the second dynasty, and commanding the warriors of the Basseterre tribe, were fierce Feline-Lords. The Lord of the Seas then adjusted his strategy.
Back on the island of Anadë, in the Three Moons, he declared his son fallen from the Balake clan and sent news of his decision by impundulu the same evening of his return to all the governing and vassal clans of the kingdom. The king approved without hesitation, and the name of Captain YA Idris of the Balake clan was removed from all kingdom records. Thus, YA Idris Balake became simply Idris, stripped of his name and heritage. As for his wife, Ki’ZA Sãma Balake, she was restored to her original name: Ki’ZA Sãma Mamake, but continued to rule her lands. The princess's story could have ended there, drowned in the eddies of a family quarrel. But the pride of the Lord of the Seas flowed in Idris's veins as surely as the very blood of the Feline-Lords flowed in young YA Ódon. And this pride would surely mar all their destinies.

Deprived of his name, banished from the kingdom for treason, stripped of his men, his lands, his fortune, relegated to being merely the husband of a powerful Feline-Lady, Idris could not bear to see Ki’ZA Sãma as the only one to retain her power. Cries and insults erupted in the couple's chamber, and in a moment of blind anger, amply amplified by one too many glasses of dark rum, Idris raised his hand to the princess. Only a slap, but an act that would be his undoing…
At dawn, when the rooster crowed, villagers in Misti Mödja stumbled upon a naked, disoriented elf, with bloody feet, his body covered in bites and insect stings, wandering on a dusty path miles from his home in Makemila. He mumbled incoherent phrases, meaningless words. He no longer knew who he was or where he came from… It is said that some villagers mistook him for a zombie, so terrifying was his sudden appearance and his looks.

A few "orbées" later, the unfortunate man was brought back by an Aziza sister to the Alkeb Kingdom, where he survived thirteen long cycles, imprisoned in the prison of his madness. He eventually starved himself to death in the arms of his mother, ZA Nãla Balake, who fumed with rage against her husband and the princess. However, he never uttered a single word accusing Ki’ZA Sãma… but no one was fooled. Neither the Lord of the Seas, nor ZA Nãla, nor even the humblest servants. Everyone knew that only a kizoyu could reduce a man in such a way. The Lord of the Seas' strategy, which consisted of dividing the couple from within by leveraging his son's pride, had worked.
Shortly before this tragic event, when the body of Emissary Kimbo was finally repatriated by the Aziza to Alkebula, the Guide declared the princess an enemy of the kingdom's stability.

The Lord of the Seas immediately seized the opportunity to add his voice to that of the Guide. Together, they gathered an overwhelming dossier, piling up testimonies from the Aziza, military reports, accusations of abuse of power, and complaints from both humans and Alkeb. They then brought their case before the Grand Magistrate. Several Duly Appointed Individuals, governors, admirals, and clan chiefs came to support the request of the two men. This time, the voice of the powerful rose in unison: Princess Ki’ZA Sãma Mamake was to be judged for her crimes, and her son, the bastard YA Ódon, would be offered as tribute to the king by the Lord of the Seas, if the latter successfully carried out his mission.

— Prince YA Makolino, far wiser and moreover a man, only needs to go govern in Jansabula until the throne and title of king fall to him, they said in one voice during the council meeting.

The king, despite his affection for the princess, could not shirk his duty, as the honor of the clan and the peace of the kingdom were at stake. Reluctantly, he affixed his approval, pronouncing his niece's official disgrace. Yet, although he authorized the Lord of the Seas to go to war against the now Ki’Sãma, the king did not grant him any warriors, funds, or military support to carry out his mission.

— My niece has become an accomplished kizoyu, declared the King, sliding his seal onto the parchment of destitution. She possesses an adult w’nundu capable of rivaling Tiamat. As for Tiamut, my late brother's w’nundu, he remains untraceable for our moons; perhaps he is already under her control… Venerable Admiral YA Kasimbe, I will not hold you back from your folly. Do as you deem fit, nevertheless, my heir son is and will remain the Prince of Nār, not the Prince of Jansabula.

The King added nothing more.

The events that followed marked the ascent of La Noire, after she had held off the Lord of the Seas' army during a siege that lasted nearly seven cycles. This conflict led to her capture and the sacrifice of her own child, whom she preferred to slit the throat of rather than see sent to the Aniota camp as tribute. These events were recorded in a thin manuscript entitled The Thoughts of La Noire. The work was written and published by ZA Yenara Suruku, already famous for her collection of Tales and Legends of the Mamake.