#clotilda

[ausetkmt]

The Last Ship to Bring Enslaved Africans to America Arrived in 1860 - the Clotilda

[whitesinhistory]

On July 8, 1860, more than 50 years after Congress banned the trafficking of enslaved Africans into the U.S., the ship Clotilda arrived in Mobile, Alabama, carrying more than 100 enslaved people from West Africa. Captain William Foster commanded the boat and was later said to be working for Timothy Meaher, a white Mobile shipyard owner who built the Clotilda.

Captain Foster evaded capture by federal authorities by transferring the enslaved Africans to a riverboat and burning and then sinking the Clotilda. The smuggled Africans were subsequently distributed as enslaved property amongst the group of white men who had financed the voyage. Mr. Meaher kept more than 30 of the Africans on Magazine Point, his property north of Mobile. One of those Africans was a man who came to be known as Cudjo Lewis.

In 1861, Mr. Meaher and his partners were prosecuted for illegally trafficking the Africans into the country, but a federal court dismissed the case as the Civil War began. No investigation or remedy ever involved the actual African men and women central to the case; while the federal case was pending, the Africans Mr. Meaher had claimed remained on his property left to fend for themselves and were offered no means of returning to Ghana.

In 1865, after the Civil War ended and slavery was widely abolished, the Clotilda survivors once held by Mr. Meaher were free—but still trapped in a foreign land far from their home. They settled along the outskirts of Mr. Meaher’s property, at a site that came to be known as “Africatown,” and developed a community modeled after the traditions and government they had been forced to leave behind. Unlike the vast majority of newly freed Black people in the country, who had either been born in the U.S. or seized from Africa many decades before, the people of Africatown had a direct, recent connection to their African roots and vivid memories of their culture, language, and customs. Well into the 1950s, descendants of the Clotilda passengers living in Africatown maintained a distinct language and unique community of survival.

Cudjo Lewis lived to be the last surviving Clotilda passenger in Africatown. In 1927, Black anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Alabama to interview Mr. Lewis about his life and produced a manuscript documenting his story. The book was not published in her lifetime, but in 2018, the story was released as Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo. Today, many descendants of the Africans trafficked on the Clotilda continue to live in northern Mobile, and in December 2012, the National Park Service added the Africatown Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places.

[lubranmedia]

Remnants of last known US slave ship on display at new museum in Alabama

Africatown Heritage House tells history of the Clotilda, the ship that illegally transported kidnapped Africans to America By Toni Mitchell eXpress News&Views — A new museum in Mobile, Alabama, is making waves and shining new light on one of the darkest periods of American history — slavery. The Africatown Heritage House in Mobile, Alabama, recently opened and includes an exhibit called…

[lightdancer1]

The Franks laid the foundation for Western European culture:

This is so to a point that one of the most common names in older references to Western Europeans was Frank/Ferenji. The Franks initially were another of the polytheistic tribes of the old Germanic world who did not, in fact, welcome the new religion in the form of Arianism, adopted by the Goths, or Nicene Christianity. In the beginning they held that their ruling dynasty, the Merovingians, were descended from a sea-god called the Quinotaur (and this belief would recur in a grimly ironic fashion with another context to be mentioned later).

This was because of what might be seen as either a fluke or as the Catholic Church prefers to see it, divine providence. The wife of the Merovingian King Clovis convinced her husband to adopt Catholicism. This was the first time that the ruling elite of the late antiquity/low medieval world matched the 'masses' in terms of the religion they professed to adhere to. The consequences of this are profound and as such without Clotilda of the Franks, Western Europe as we know it would not exist.

[maegalkarven]

I love how in the Empty Prayers AU banites just straight up pack things and leave.

I'd thought of giving Gortash a Big Confrontation with his cult and his god, but I've decided it's actually worse if he's just simply left behind. Left on Read. Given the Ultimate Silent Treatment.

He has failed Bane, so he isn't even worth the god's single thought now. Of course he will be punished upon death, but in life the worst punishment he can get is being treated like nothing. Like he isn't even here, like he never existed in the first place.

I'm sure I'd drive him mad to be completely ignored by the god he followed and the cult he lead. Lord Gortash who? Idk him

[thelaststarfalling]

I finally tried sourdough (almost 2 months after my friend gave me some starter to use oops) and now I feel so powerful

[judgingbooksbycovers]

The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade

By Hannah Durkin.

Design by Mike McQuade.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Polandulus and Clotilda

Possibly Tamoko and Sarevok and Enver and the Dark Urge

In my very specific case I do have a Banite and Bhaalist pairing in my Icewind Dale 2 party...

Either Bane is getting Very Tired of his priests getting distracted by the stupid sexy assassins, or it's a Dark Moon set up (a heresy that claims Shar and Selûne are the same goddess and worships both), where according to word of god the sisters subtly enocurage it to try and sabotage/steal faithful from each other. But in this case it's Bane and Bhaal's followers dating and both of them using it to try and convert the other party.

Also it's adorable, and possibly a bit heretical, that he used purple ink.

[ausetkmt]

"It's crazy to think they would have sailed right past here," Darron Patterson said, pulling his car onto a scrap of grass overlooking the murky Mobile River. As president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, Patterson is well versed in talking about the voyage of the Clotilda – the last known slave ship to reach America. His great-great-grandfather was Kupollee, later renamed Pollee Allen; one of the 110 men, women and children cruelly stolen from Benin in West Africa and brought to the US onboard the notorious ship.

The story of how Patterson's relative arrived in America aboard an illegal slaver started as a shockingly flippant bet. Fifty-two years after the US banned the importation of enslaved people, in 1860, a wealthy Alabama business owner named Timothy Meaher wagered that he could orchestrate for a haul of kidnapped Africans to sail under the noses of federal officers and evade capture.

With the assistance of Captain William Foster at the helm of an 80ft, two-mast schooner, and following a gruelling six-week transatlantic passage, he succeeded. The ship sneaked into Mobile Bay on 9 July under a veil of darkness. To conceal evidence of the crime, the distinctive-looking schooner – made from white oak frames and southern yellow pine planking – was set ablaze and scuttled to the depths of the swampy Mobile River, where it lay concealed beneath the water, its existence relegated to lore.

That is until almost 160 years later, when during a freakishly low tide, a local reporter named Ben Raines discovered a hefty chunk of shipwreck in the Mobile River, initially thought to belong to the Clotilda. It turned out to be a false alarm, but the discovery reignited interest and led to an extensive search involving multiple parties, including the Alabama Historical Commission, National Geographic Society, Search Inc and the Slave Wrecks Project. Following their exhaustive effort, in May 2019 it was finally announced that the elusive Clotilda had at long last been discovered.

A mural of the Clotilda slave ship runs alongside the freeway separating the two sides of Africatown (Credit: Carmen K Sisson/Alamy)

Three years later, the city of Mobile found itself standing on the brink of a tourism boom, as interest in the story of the Clotilda, and the lives of its resilient captives, built.

Patterson had agreed to drive me around Africatown, an area where many of the ship's captives finally settled and where Patterson himself was raised. We began the tour at this scrap of land by the Mobile River, beneath a soaring interstate bridge where a group of Clotilda slave ship descendants meet annually for their Under the Bridge festival, to "talk about how our ancestors got here and to have some food and dance," Patterson said. There was no festival that day though and the atmosphere was muted; just one woman and her grandson played by the marshy water's edge below the steady hum of traffic.

Walking back to his car, Patterson, a former sportswriter now in his 60s, recalled that growing up, Africatown was a thriving, self-sufficient place, where "the only time we needed to leave the community was to pay a utility bill" as everything needed was close to hand, aside from a post office.

Located three miles north of downtown Mobile, Africatown was founded by 32 of the original Clotilda survivors following emancipation at the end of the Civil War, in 1865. Longing for the homeland they'd been brutally ripped from, the residents set up their own close-knit community to blend their African traditions with American folkways, raising cattle and farming the land. One of the first towns established and controlled by African Americans in the US, Africatown had its own churches, barbershops, stores (one of which was owned by Patterson's uncle); and the Mobile County Training School, a public school that became the backbone of the community.

However, this once-vibrant neighbourhood fell on hard times when a freeway was constructed in the heart of it in 1991, and industrial pollution meant that many of the remaining residents eventually packed up and left. "We couldn't even hang out our washing to dry because it would get covered in ash [a product of the oil storage tanks and factories on the outskirts of Africatown]," said Patterson. With the high-profile closure of the corrugated box factory, International Paper, in 2000, and an ensuing public health lawsuit brought about by residents, Africatown's community that had swelled to 12,000 people in the 1960s plummeted to around 2,000, where it stands today.

Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, one of the Clotilda survivors and founders of Africatown, died in 1935 (Credit: Zoey Goto)

The exodus, poverty and environmental scars were visible as Patterson drove further into Africatown. The roadside was littered with abandoned factories. The quiet, residential streets were peppered with empty lots and vacant homes, some in such disrepair that their decaying walls had surrendered entirely to the creeping vines engulfing them.

But Africatown is changing, once again. With the discovery of the ship's remnants came the interest necessary to rebuild and preserve this historical place; an influx of attention and funds that is affecting everything from personal relationships to history to the fortune of the neighbourhood. Because, though the story of the Clotilda was known – and the lives of the original passengers were so well documented that photos, interviews and even film footage existed – without evidence of the vessel, the history was buried and it was not in the interest of the white population to acknowledge the truth of how they had arrived. Finding the vessel allowed their story to be affirmed and truth to be restored after decades of denial.

In the years since the Clotilda was discovered, the wreck has undergone extensive archaeological exploration to determine the likelihood of raising it safely. The ripple effect of media and public interest has meant a slew of government, community and private funding for Africatown's revitalisation, including The Africatown Redevelopment Corporation, which is using grants to restore homes in disrepair and demolishing and rebuilding derelict lots. Added to this is a $3.6 million payout from a BP oil spill settlement that has been earmarked for the long-awaited rebuilding of the Africatown Welcome Center, which was swept away in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

Patterson drove me to his grandmother's house and pulled over to chat with an elderly neighbour on her porch ("no photos, mind", she requested politely). Unlike some of the other descendent families, he told me, growing up he was told little of his ancestry. "I think my folks may have been embarrassed," he reflected, recalling that the smuggled captives had faced many humiliations, including being stripped naked for the voyage. "That must have just broke their will," Patterson said.

Africatown was one of the first towns established and controlled by African Americans in the US (Credit: Zoey Goto)

The 2019 announcement of the ship's discovery galvanised Patterson's curiosity, and he started to piece together his heritage, at which point his "whole life changed". He's since become hands-on in ensuring the story is told accurately, including an onscreen role in the film Descendant premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and as co-producer of the second installment of the forthcoming documentary The 110: The Last Enslaved Africans Brought to America about the Clotilda's passengers.

For Patterson, the discovery of the infamous ship brings fresh hope that Africatown is on the eve of a renaissance. Following years of denial, "the ship's very existence has finally been affirmed, so a burden has been lifted," said Mobile County Commissioner Merceria Ludgood. "That's every bit as important to the ethos of Africatown as the housing revitalisation currently happening."

Although there's a lack of restaurants and tourism facilities, that could be all set to change as well, said Ludgood, who is helping to set up the Africatown Heritage House, a permanent museum created in collaboration with the History Museum of Mobile to chart the history of Africatown. "Hopefully cottage industries will spring up, owned by people who live in the community," she said, noting that the discovery of the Clotilda has given Africatown's community a boost, resonating far beyond economics.

Next on Patterson's tour was the Africatown Heritage House, situated in the hub of the neighbourhood, overlooked by a row of modest, well-kept bungalows on a palm-lined avenue. Under construction at the time of my visit, the museum was due to open in early summer 2022 and will include a gallery of West African artefacts as well as salvaged sections of the Clotilda shipwreck, presented in preservation tanks.

“This is actually the best documented Middle Passage story we have as a nation”

It promises a unique insight, given the relatively recent timing of the Clotilda voyage in relation to the history of slavery. "This is actually the best documented Middle Passage story we have as a nation," explained Meg McCrummen Fowler, director of the History Museum of Mobile. "There's just an abundance of sources, mostly because it occurred so late. Several of the people on the ship lived well into the 20th Century, so instead of silence there's diaries, there's ship records."

Work has started on the Africatown Heritage House, a $1.3 million exhibit about the 110 enslaved West Africans and the Clotilda vessel (Credit: Zoey Goto)

Further regeneration projects on the horizon include a footbridge connecting the two areas of Africatown currently divided by the freeway. Water tours taking visitors close to the shipwreck site are scheduled to launch in spring 2022, and a few local residents ahead of the curve are offering walking tours of Africatown.

While tourists have yet to arrive in serious numbers, Africatown faces a familiar set of challenges to other US neighbourhoods experiencing rapid revitalisation, including ensuring the whole community supports change and that residents don't fall through the cracks. But Patterson said that the Africatown community is united in its mission.

"We're all on board with this," he said.

The final stop on our tour was the cemetery where many of the Clotilda's enslaved have been laid to rest. As we walked, Patterson told me that with the light currently shinning on this troubling chapter of history, he has hopes that there will be enough sustained interest to generate the funds needed to raise the schooner from the water.

Though the true impact of this fabled ship's discovery is yet to be seen, for Patterson, it presents an opportunity to lift up the Africatown community and honour the struggles of its founders. "This is about more than bricks and mortar, it's ultimately about the growth of our souls," he said, looking out over their crumbling gravestones, all facing east towards their motherland. "Finding the ship has finally validated our truth."

Unlike some of the other descendent families, Darron Patterson was told little of his ancestry (Credit: Zoey Goto)

[anderstrevelyan]

Now that I've finished my thorough playthrough I'm thinking about them:

Polandulus is the Banite who wrote this, and he's in the Steelwatch Foundry, and I'd assumed you could find Clotilda somewhere in-game... But there's no Clotilda? (I made a list of every Bhaalist and Banite I came across as I went, so I think I can state this pretty confidently.)

There's Reaper of Bhaal Clotilde, who leads the ambush in Bloomridge Park:

Is this a typo and the names are meant to match?

Are we to assume Polandulus is pining away, never brave enough to talk to his object of desire enough to even get their name right?

Was there a Clotilda, who's now dead? (questions! I have questions!)

[classicdavinci]

Portrait of Clotilda von Derp (Frau Sakharoff) (1912)

George Spencer Watson (English, 1869 – 1934)

[arctic-hands]

On a cold December morning in 1931, a short, elderly Black woman set out on a 24km (15-mile) walk from her homestead in Alabama, United States, on a quest for justice. The long trek to the court in Selma was no small undertaking for a person in her mid-70s. But Matilda McCrear was determined to go and make her legal claim for compensation for the horrors that she and her family had been through.

Until her death 85 years ago on January 13, 1940, Matilda was the last surviving passenger on the last-ever slave ship bound from the West African coast to North America in late 1859...

Her story began many decades before and thousands of miles away from that sharecropping homestead. Originally named Abake – “born to be loved by all” – the girl later renamed Matilda by her American “owner” came into the world circa 1857, among the Tarkar people of the West African interior.

In 1859, at the age of two, little Abake was captured along with her mother (later renamed Grace), her three older sisters and some other relatives, by troops of the Kingdom of Dahomey, located in what is now Benin. Torn away from the rest of their family, they were victims of an age-old regional warfare which underpinned an equally ancient but persistent trade in slavery reaching across North and East Africa, the Ottoman Empire and eventually the Americas...

...Foster’s ship, Clotilda – a two-masted schooner, 26 metres (86 feet) in length – is now infamous as the last ship known to have carried slaves across the Atlantic to North America. By this time it was an illegal journey, for while slavery continued across the southeast of the US (and in parts of South America), the importation of slaves had been prohibited since 1808. The Clotilda set sail from Ouidah late in the year, purportedly carrying lumber – the 11-man crew being promised double their normal wage to keep quiet about the true contents, as per an entry in Foster’s journal.

Their route across the Atlantic was known as the “Middle Passage”, making up the second part of a triangular trade route connecting Europe, Africa and the Americas. Ships carried weapons and manufactured goods from Europe to the “slave coast” of West Africa on the first part of the round trip; in the Middle Passage, that cargo was traded for enslaved Africans who were transported to the US and South America, where they were usually sold by auction; and on the final course, the vessels returned to Europe usually laden with cotton, tobacco and sugarcane...

...Foster navigated the Clotilda, now carrying 108 slaves, into the port of Mobile, Alabama under cover of darkness in early 1860. He had it towed up the Mobile River to Twelvemile Island, where the captive Africans were transferred to a river steamboat. Foster wrote in his journal that the Clotilda was then burned to destroy any evidence...

...At Twelvemile Island, Abake, her mother and her 10-year-old sister were handed over by Foster to one of the financial backers of Clotilda, a wealthy plantation owner by the name of Memorable Creagh.

In another heartbreaking separation, Abake’s two other sisters (whose names are unknown) were sent elsewhere, never to be seen again – a typically brutal fate for so many of those regarded as a mere commodity...

...Matilda was still a small child when the Civil War broke out in the US in April 1861. Alabama, along with Virginia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, seceded from the US and formed the Confederate States of America – on the grounds that the institution of slavery, the lifeblood of southern economies, was threatened by the federal government in Washington

President Abraham Lincoln made his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring that all enslaved people in the Confederate states were free. This had no immediate effect on Matilda and her family, as the Civil War continued to rage. But when the Confederates were defeated on June 19, 1865, Matilda and her family were liberated...

...But after 1865, freed slaves did not find themselves in a friendly world. Many white Americans reacted with indignant fury to the idea of Black people being their equals. In a harsh and unwelcoming world, there were few options for uneducated ex-slaves other than to remain on the plantations as “sharecroppers” – a system whereby a tenant farmed a portion of land in exchange for a share of the crop. Sharecropping often involved contracts that trapped tenants in debt and poverty and which in practice was not far removed from actual slavery.

Upon her emancipation, Matilda and her family thus became supposedly free people. But, as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out in a 1968 sermon, “Emancipation for the Negro was only a proclamation. It was not a fact. The Negro still lives in chains: the chains of economic slavery, the chains of social segregation, the chains of political disenfranchisement.”

During the post-Civil War period of “Reconstruction”, many new federal laws promoting racial equality were quickly met by local state measures designed to keep Black people “in their place” and ensure that white people remained ascendant. This is seen in the reaction, at the state level, to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the US Constitution.

The 13th Amendment of 1865 officially ended slavery in all US states and territories. Formerly enslaved people were legally freed, while the Freedmen’s Bureau was established to aid freed slaves through the provision of food, housing, medical aid, schooling and legal support.

To counter this, southern states, including Matilda’s home of Alabama, enacted the so-called “Black Codes”, curtailing the right of African Americans to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land or move freely in public spaces. The Black Codes forced many Black people into newly exploitative labour arrangements such as sharecropping.

A central element of the Black Codes was “vagrancy” laws. Through a system known as “convict leasing”, many African-American boys and men were arrested for minor offences such as vagrancy, imprisoned, and then leased out to work for private businesses. This created a new system of forced labour which again was little more than slavery. Convict leasing was legally rooted in the so-called “exception clause” of the 13th Amendment which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”

Convict leasing is prevalent in the US to this very day, with most working prisoners – still overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic – being paid only a few cents per hour. And even upon their release, ex-convicts have always faced immense hurdles to finding employment, getting credit, doing business or buying property due to their prison records...

...Matilda later entered a common-law partnership with a German-born man called Jacob Schuler and had a total of 14 children, 10 of whom survived into adulthood. What befell the other four is unknown. Whether she was prevented from marrying her partner by the ban on interracial marriage, or chose that arrangement, is also not known. In any case, Matilda appears not to have benefitted financially from the relationship, as she remained a sharecropper, living in the vicinity of Selma, Alabama, for most of her working life. At some point, she changed her surname from Creagh to McCrear, perhaps to distance herself from her enslaver and as an assertion of her own identity. Over the generations, the family surname has seen a number of further variations, including Crear, Creah, Creagher and McCreer...

...The Selma Times-Journal news story provides a vivid description of Matilda: “She walks with a vigorous stride. Her kinky hair is almost white and is plaited in small tufts and with bright-coloured string … Her voice is low and husky, but clear. Age shows most in her eyes … yet her … skin is firm and smooth.”

The article went on to relate that “Tildy has vigor and spirit in spite of her years … endurance and a natural aptitude for agriculture inherited from the Tarkar tribe, made [her] a thrifty farmer.”

Durkin writes that Matilda’s story is particularly remarkable “because she resisted what was expected of a Black woman in the US South in the years after emancipation. She did not get married. Instead, she had a decades-long common-law marriage … Even though she left West Africa when she was a toddler, she appears throughout her life to have worn her hair in a traditional Yoruba style, a style presumably taught to her by her mother.”...

...John Crear, a retired hospital administrator and community leader now in his late 80s, was born in the house Matilda resided in, and her funeral is one of his earliest memories. His grandmother’s strong character apparently passed into family lore. “I was told she was quite rambunctious”, he said.

He discovered more about Matilda when he and his wife carried out some research of their own into the family history. “I had no idea she’d been on the Clotilda”, he said. “It came as a real surprise. Her story gives me mixed emotions because if she hadn’t been brought here, I wouldn’t be here. But it’s hard to read about what she experienced.”

Matilda waited all her life for some form of justice and it would be another 14 years before the civil rights movement began to challenge the systemic racism she faced. Iconic leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X pointed out the hypocritical gap between the ideals of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the actual lived reality of African Americans.

In a 1964 speech, Malcolm X demanded: “… our right on this earth … to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society … which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

Although Matilda missed out on witnessing any of this, her grandson was active in the civil rights movement. “You can read about slavery and be detached from it,” he told National Geographic. “But when it’s your family that is involved, it becomes up close and very real.” During the Civil Rights movement, he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of assault and battery – for the offence of stopping a white man who attempted to stuff a live snake down his throat.

Indeed, many civil rights campaigners faced extreme violence from the police and the National Guard, leaving many injured, imprisoned or even dead, as in the case of both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.

But their sacrifices were not in vain. By the mid-1960s, the entire plethora of Jim Crow statutes had been taken down. Segregation in public schools was deemed unconstitutional in the 1954 case of Brown v Board of Education; discriminatory electoral practices such as literacy tests and grandfather clauses were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and all other forms of segregation and employment discrimination were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

These were statutory measures aiming to eradicate prejudice in the official sphere. However positive their effect, deeper-rooted racism at the societal level remains a feature of US life.

...

This is just excerpts from the article. I want everyone to read it in whole. The last surviving (official) chattel slave in the United States only died in nineteen forty. My grandmother--who's still alive--was a teenager at the time. This isn't ancient history, this is all too fresh and lingering.

[cartermagazine]

Today We Honor Oluale Kossola, Renamed Cudjo Lewis

Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was born Oluale Kossola in what is now the West African country of Benin in her book “Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.”

A member of the Yoruba people, he was only 19 years old when members of the neighboring Dahomian tribe invaded his village, captured him along with others, and marched them to the coast.

There, he and about 120 others were sold into slavery, after the “Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves" took effect in 1808 slavery was abolished, and crammed onto the Clotilda, the “last” slave ship to reach the continental United States.

The Clotilda brought its captives to Alabama in 1860, just a year before the outbreak of the Civil War. Even though slavery was legal at that time in the U.S., the international slave trade was not, and hadn’t been for over 50 years. Along with many European nations, the U.S. had outlawed the practice in 1808.

After being abducted from his home, Lewis was forced onto a ship with strangers. The abductees spent several months together during the treacherous passage to the United States, but were then separated in Alabama to go to different owners.

“We very sorry to be parted from one ’nother,” Lewis told Hurston. “We seventy days cross de water from de Affica soil, and now dey part us from one ’nother.”

“Derefore we cry. Our grief so heavy look lak we cain stand it. I think maybe I die in my sleep when I dream about my mama.”

“We doan know why we be bring ’way from our country to work lak dis,” he told Hurston. “Everybody lookee at us strange. We want to talk wid de udder colored folkses but dey doan know whut we say.”

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1865, Lewis says that a group of Union soldiers stopped by a boat on which he and other enslaved people were working and told them they were free.

He and a group of 31 other freepeople saved up money to buy land near Mobile, which they called Africatown.

CARTER™️ Magazine

[carmennogales]

[🇪🇦] Fan art de Pelegrina y Ventura, junto con la compañía de la gallina Clotilda, del libro "La Ciudad de los Mil Ojos" de Bruno Puelles.

Este pasado mes de Octubre tuve la oportunidad de conocerlo en persona en la Feria del libro de Sevilla y regalarle una impresión de este dibujo y otro fan art que enseñaré pronto por aquí. Bruno es muy majo, dadle una oportunidad a sus libros, por favor. Me encantan los mundos que crea y la sensibilidad que tiene para crear personajes.

Estos mellizos son mis favoritos del libro (junto a alguien más). La dinámica entre ambos es un tira y afloja constante muy interesante. Sufrí mucho con ellos... Ay, mejor que lo descubráis viajando por los canales de la ciudad, a la vez que tratáis de no molestar a ciertas criaturas durante el paseo...

[🇬🇧] Fan art from the book "La Ciudad de los mil Ojos", by Bruno Puelles.

[orcboxer]

next time I start a bg3 playthrough I should keep a list of the names of all the enemies because there's some fuckin bangers in there. I killed a magical fascist named Clotilda, and her accomplice, Yoonce

[maegalkarven]

Dreams of Red.

Characters: Enver Gortash, Dark Urge (Nemo).

Set between Empty Prayers and returning to BG in act 3.

Nemo dreams, Gortash wakes up.

TW: blood (mention), physical abuse (mention), choking, suggestive, not toxic but also not a healthy relationship (meaning they are awful but together kind of cancel it for each other).

He dreams of home; not the home in the flesh, but that place of dark alcoves and labyrinths made out of caves. He dreams of blood rivers running down the steps, of red fire lit sockets on a giant skull.

He dreams of his assassins, the unlucky souls who fated to meet him once and were damned enough to be caught in his gaze.

The First kneels before the altar, a tribute plastered on it, eyes closed in a reverent prayer.

She does not actually pray, somehow he knows it as well as he knows how many heartbeats are currently booming inside these halls.

The First is deep in thoughts and her thoughts are dark knots of resentment, anger and despair.

She grieves.

"Reaper of Bhaal," they turn around together as one; the girl made murderer made assassin and the benefactor who brought her there. So close to the girl's body he can taste the blood and sweat on her skin, sees dark shadows under her cold calculating eyes.

"Orin," falls from the First's lips. This is disobedience, he knows it somehow, for she is not simply Orin, but the Chosen of Bhaal.

Or is she?

"Look at what you have done," Orin-not-Orin says and her voice ricochets from the ceiling. It sounds...different.

It multiplies and shakes, and twists, and then suddenly its Sceleritas' voice.

Orin keeps opening and closing her mouth, but the sound he hears does not come from her.

"Look at the deeds of your disobedience. Once proud Temple of the most Gracious of the gods, now intruded upon by a mindless, senseless being you were supposed to enslave," an invisible hand closes over his throat, constricting the air.

He sees black and then red and then - Father.

Father is angry and that anger washes over him in waves, breaking his skin and piercing soft innards.

•••

He is seven again, bloodied heap of limbs on the floor as his caretaker walks around in circles.

"You're weak," Sarevok speaks. The boy hates Sarevok for how much his approval means to him. "You're fragile. You disappoint Father with your single existence. Stand up," a blunt hit across the spine. "Stand up and learn." Another hit. "Prove yourself worthy to be called a Child of Bhaal."

He is seven and he already talks more than he should, so he asks.

"Like you?"

Sarevok's unnaturally bright eyes blaze and the next hit landing on the boy makes him black out for a moment.

"Stand up," he hears again as his conscience returns. "Or die a scum and come back to Him graceless."

He stands up.

•••

Blood fills up his mouth, blood fills up his lungs. He gasps, choking, fighting the gravity - and swims up.

The pool is deeper than it should have been, the sacrificial room is darker, and Father's presence pierces his skull like thousand of red hot needless.

"Beloved son," Sarevok announces and the Echoes repeat. "Prodigal son, bathed in sacrificial blood in Your name, Father. Greet the unholy assassin born anew, Lord Bhaal, grace him with your presence."

He wants to step back, to avoid what is to come, but Bhaal is in his mind in an instance: an endless, darkest, bloodiest night.

The presence of Father is so strong the boy feels his own mind disappear, drown in the sheer force of his father's love.

Finally. He is worthy.

•••

Hands - bloodied, sheets - bloodied. Body after body, cold bed, red bed, sacrificial bed. Lover after lover, dead, dead, dead, dead.

Until the last one.

Until-

•••

He wakes up to the scene of Enver's flushed up face beneath him, the assassin's hands grasping at his throat firmly, pressing down, down, down, until the windpipe gives out, until the light leaves the eyes-

Nemo breaks the hold and collapses into the bed; not his bed, but the one he managed to crawl into in his sleep regardless. Gortash goes into the fit of coughs, proving once again how alive he still is.

Finally the man calms it down and tries his voice, hoarse from all the abuse.

"Good morning to you too."

Nemo doesn't reply, face digging into the rough pillows bellow - they used to be much softer than that - covering himself with Enver's blankets.

"Nemo," he refuses to answer. "Oh, for fuck's sake," the covers are dragged off his head, said head - turned.

Bluish bruises slowly imprint themselves on Enver's neck, prominent even in the dim light of the tent.

He appears to be annoyed.

"I said," the lord repeats. "Good morning."

Nemo contemplates tearing into this throat with bare teeth and chewing his way into the sweet red embrace of it.

"Nemo."

"Morning," he grumbles, unhappy. With this, with them, with the way Enver doesn't even look surprised, doesn't even care he almost died.

Again. He almost died again.

Something in the man's face softens.

"Bad dream?" And it's a cue for Nemo to crawl closer, to plant his face directly into the throat he was just squeezing the life out of, to put his lips to a pulse line and drink in the sound.

"Umgh," he replies unhelpfully. "Father is angry with me."

He can't remember the last time Father was not angry with him.

Enver sighs.

"At least he's still with you."

Nemo bites into the soft flesh slightly and then licks down at the bite.

"I wish he wouldn't," the admittance is so quiet it should be impossible to hear. Enver hears it anyway.

"And what would you do," a soft touch to his temple, nails scratching at the nape of his neck. Nemo feels his body relax at the merest of the contact. "If he'd let you go?"

"Whatever the fuck I want," another half-hearted bite. Enver always tastes divine. It makes Nemo want to tear at his flesh, crawl into his ribcage and stay there, forever as one. "Whoever I want."

"Oh?" His lover chuckles at that. "Have a list of men you want to fuck without killing them?"

No, Nemo thinks. Well, maybe. Not a list, no, but-

"I'd love to wake up someday without my body moving on its accord," he grumbles, tracing a scar down Enver's torso. A long and rigged thing running all the way to his abdomen. One of the earliest marks Nemo has left on him.

"I'm still alive," Gortash reads between the lines.

"You seem to be incredibly unbothered by the way I go for your throat, not even metaphorically speaking," the spawn comments. "Figures you'd be into me failing to kill you."

"You're not failing," Enver's breath burns into his hair, his touch uncharacteristically gentle. "You stray your hand."

"One day I won't."

"Today is not that day."

"You keep saying it every time it happens."

"I am alive every time it happens."

There's blood underneath his nails: it tastes sour.

There's also a row of deep red lines scratched somewhere into Enver's flesh.

Nemo snuggles up closer.

"I hate everything in this world but you," he confesses.

His lordling hums.

"I consider you a rare feat of a person who delights me more than not," he replies.

Nemo laughs.

"Smooth, motherfucker."

Enver gasps, fake-scandalized.

"But dearest, you don't even have a mother for me to fuck."

The spawn giggles like a lovesick girl and closes his eyes.

After a moment he opens his mouth again.

"How is," and how do you say it? How is everything? How are the ruins of your life? How does everyone at the camp treat you?

How does he say what he wants to say without, you know, actually saying it?

"Is Bane still silent?" He resolves on and then mentally kicks himself. Of fucking course Bane is still silent.

But again, so is Gortash.

"Yes," he replies after such suffocating pause Nemo started to wonder who was chocking who. "I...don't think he'll answer."

"I wish Bhaal would shut the fuck up," Nemo blurts and receives a surprised chuckle into his hair.

"Have you tried telling him that?" Even without looking up Nemo knows Gortash is smiling.

"Do you really think father dearest would listen?" He grumbles back. "He just gave me a lecture on how bad of a son I am."

"Aren't we all?" Enver's hands move in soothing circles up and down his lower stomach, inciting a rush of goosebumps and a wave of heat. Nemo catches one of the hands and moves it even lower.

"I'm going to be the absolute nightmare to be in any relation to," he states as Enver's swift fingers start doing their job.

"You're absolute nightmare in any other accord too," his lover murmurs into his ear, bringing out the first breathless sigh out of his lips. "And I don't think I'd want you any other way."

Well, if this is what Enver's into, who is Nemo to deny him?

•••

Karlach glares at the column of Gortash's neck with a scowl so deep it should have been cut directly into her skin, not pulled up by the muscles.

"I didn't do that to myself," Enver comments for some goddamn reason, making the entire situation more awkward than it already was.

The wizard chokes on air.

"Yeah, we didn't really think you did," former sharran comments, eyes darting to where Nemo is seated, stoically ignoring any inquiring gazes straying his way. "That would be anatomically impossible."

"You never know," the lord feels the need to argue. "I am man of many talents."

The vampire spawn snorts.

"Something tells me this is the product of someone else's talents," he comments.

Young Ravengard clears his throat.

"I have questions," he admits.

Enver seizes him with a stare.

"And do you want to hear the answers?"

"Not...really, no."

"Good. It seems we are on the same page then."

"I hate this fucking family," Karlach murmurs.

"Darling," the vampire starts. "I am touched! But also this one is more dysfunctional than the family I left behind, and those were the vampire spawns."

"My father is the God of Murder," Nemo comments from the distance. "How about that for dysfunctional?"

"And aren't you a walking red flag, my dear."

"Hey, excuse me, I'm the nicest murder incarnate you'd ever meet-"

This entire group of losers, Gortash decides. Is a freak show.

It might be just worthwhile enough to stick around.