The Discs of the Fonlands defy the physics that an Earther of any existence would recognize. Many of the Discs have landscapes that would be familiar to an Earther, like the disc of Agê with its lush vegetation, the disc of Sakpata with its endless mountains, or the disc of Agbe with its vast ocean dotted with islands, but an Earther would have difficulty comprehending the true nature of the Discs of the Fonlands. The Fonlands is a universe, it is the entirety of existence, all matter of the universe exists on the Discs and it is the size of a universe; seemingly infinite to a dweller inside of existence. It can seem impossible to travel from Disc to Disc because of this reality, but moving between the Discs of the Fonlands requires intentionality. A dweller of the Discs must have the intention of moving to another Disc to avoid wandering the billions of light-years to arrive at their desired location. The Fonlands was designed to facilitate movement between the Discs. The land is not alive exactly. It was created to anticipate the needs of dwellers and also to monitor them and assess them for their threat level to the Mother-Father who inhabited the Lofted Disc. Everything in the Fonlands served the Mother-Father or it did not exist in the Fonlands for long. This is why beings that seem evil to Earthers exist in the Fonlands; they serve some need of the Mother-Father and their actions, no matter how heinous, are allowed because they do not directly or indirectly harm the Mother-Father.
The Disc of Lêgba is home to many beings who would be nightmarish to Earthers, and though Legba’s Disc is not exclusively the home of horrors, there is no better Disc for encountering horrific things. Owuo is responsible for this. He is not Lêgba’s underside twin; all of the Vodun have twins who rule the underside of their Discs that are wasteland mirrors of the topside. Owuo is almost Legba’s twin. When Lêgba was born, the Lofted Disc became pregnant; the top side began to swell into a large, Essence blue hill, but unlike the previous births of the Vodun, the underside of the Lofted Disc did not swell downwards as the topside swelled upwards. The Mother-Father thought this was odd and they investigated the underside of the Lofted Disc carefully during the gestation of the Vodun Lêgba on the topside. But until the day that Lêgba was born, the underside of the Lofted Disc never changed, and Lêgba was born beautiful and covered in his black Essence. He was placed on his Disc, that was a blank Essence blue plane, to finish his development as his siblings did battle with their twins for their names.
After his siblings won their names, and the losers had been banished to the underside of the Discs, the underside of the Lofted Disc became pregnant, and the pregnancy turned the Lofted Disc dark violet. The pregnancy did not last long, like the Lofted Disc struggled to rid itself of the dark pregnancy as soon as possible. This was how Owuo was born and he was placed as the first dweller of the Disc of Lêgba because his placement on the other Discs had caused an imbalanced that threatened to topple the structure of existence.
“It is evil, and existence needs evil,” the Father-Mother said.
“Existence doesn’t have to have a binary,” the Mother-Father said in disagreement. “We would have been fine without it. But it will find its purpose, I suppose. Lêgba’s Disc has not rejected it.”
The Father-Mother nodded as they regained the Lofted Disc, content to never produce off-spring again, and confident that their children would fill the Fonlands with wonder.
Owuo did not like the Vodun, except for Lêgba who he viewed as the beautiful version of himself and he often followed Lêgba closely when the Vodun quested to the uncharted sections of their Discs to bring life to them. All of the Vodun disliked Owuo, especially Lêgba who thought of him as an annoying hanger-on who kept him from spending time with his brothers because he couldn’t leave Owuo unattended on the Disc, then it would be created in his image and the boy with dark skin was sinister evil in its infancy; still curious and capable of beneficent wonder, not yet preoccupied by curiosity that was detrimental to others in an environment. Even a young Lêgba feared the blank visage of Owuo’s face that was usually stoic, like a pleasant mask that held a viewer’s gaze before it twisted suddenly into a vision of the viewer’s worst nightmares. Owuo’s face never twisted, though, staring at him only held the viewer at the anticipation of a horrific change and this seemed to delight Owuo, to put people off of their comfort, to be the source of their unsettled feeling.
As they grew older, the Vodun, and Owuo, grew into their proper function as the stewards of the Fonlands that they had created in honor of their Mother-Father, to be their protector and the manifestation of their arcane brilliance. Owuo grew into evil, delighting in the suffering, the torture, the death of others and he became an important fixture of the Disc of Lêgba. He created the Void Library that encircles the center cities of shifting planes of Legba’s Disc, and his Labyrinth of Myriad Horrors is nestled inside of the Void Library. It is possible to avoid entering Owuo’s Labyrinth if you enter the Void Library, but a wrong turn, or entering the wrong door, will lead to a sure and torturous death.
By the time Owuo became the personification of evil to the unfortunate Fonlanders who are are familiar with him, he had a strained relationship with the Vodun, meaning he rarely interacted with them and they were happy to never see him. But ignoring pure evil does not banish it, if anything, it encourages it, and he is virtually the Vodun of Death, though the Mother-Father never intended to make one. But he kept the Fonlands free of any powers that could threaten the Vodun, he was happy to make a mess of things and rub something else’s face in it and the strong ones always made for a good show.
When he isn’t reveling in others’ misfortune, Owuo is Smiting.
“So you can do good things,” Yana said. She hung from a wall of the ledge overlooking the Smiting Chamber and her massive wings wrapped her furry brown body; her wings were a darker, leathery brown than her fur. Owuo stood on the ledge, smiling down at the Smiting Chamber.
“Only when I lose a bet,” Owuo said with a sly smile.
“You only lose to me, evil man,” Yana said. She was always cautious around Owuo, even if he claimed to be her friend and had only ever shown himself to be true to his word, especially in matters pertaining to Smiting. “I wonder why you keep betting.”
“I am convinced that if we spend enough time together, we can become friends,” Owuo said.
“And what would evil need with a friend?”
“That’s just it,” Owuo said, “I am not only evil. I am the Vodun of Evil, just like you are the Vodun of the Caves, but we are not allowed to be complex like the others. The vicious six who banished their twins and Lêgba who is too good to associate too closely with evil. We are held to unfair standards compared to those Vodun.”
“The only Vodun,” Yana corrected him deliberately. “We are Lesser Vodun at best. The mother-father did not create us as their Vodun. We were created by the Vodun.”
Owuo chuckled softly. “I was not, but sure. When is our next game? I think that Ayao can join us.”
“Is the threat to the other realm banished from our concern?” Yana asked. “That was the condition of the bet. You have done good so far, but as long as the threat persists, so does your obligation.”
“I am aware, Yana. There is just a lot going on and we have plenty of down time. You will go crazy gazing at the multiversal structure from the Smiting Chamber all the time. Even you need a break.”
“My gazing into the structure will save us all,” Yana said and she opened her wings to fly down to the floor of the Chamber.
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