After completing the Church of Dagon, the Dark Confederacy, the Crimson Coven of Salem and the Twilight Order, it was time to turn to another of the more distinctive factions in Dracula’s America. This time I wanted something very different from ancient sea gods, resurrected Confederates, Salem witches and secretive holy warriors. The result is the Congregation, a posse born among the swamps and isolated settlements of the Louisiana bayou, rooted in Voodoo tradition and sustained by the mysterious powers of the Loa.

The Congregation emerged from communities scattered through the bayous where waterways were often more important than roads and where families maintained traditions that outsiders neither understood nor particularly wished to understand. Long before the supernatural horrors now stalking America revealed themselves openly, the people of these communities understood that the visible world was only part of existence. Spirits moved beyond the light of the cabin window and along waterways disappearing beneath curtains of moss, while the living maintained relationships with powers whose presence could be felt even when it could not be seen. When the old order of the South collapsed and darker forces began exploiting the resulting chaos, those traditions became weapons of survival.

The Congregation are Voodoo worshippers who have sworn themselves to the defence of what remains of the Free South, particularly those ordinary communities left vulnerable by war, political collapse and supernatural violence. Their struggle is directed above all against the Dark Confederacy, whose necromancers, revenants and resurrected soldiers represent far more than another military enemy. To the Congregation, the Dark Confederacy has violated the proper relationship between the living, the dead and the spirit world. The dead have been dragged back for the ambitions of men who refuse to accept either defeat or mortality, and such interference cannot be allowed to continue unanswered.

Against this corruption stand the Loa, mysterious spirits who exist between humanity and powers beyond the mortal world. They are not obedient servants waiting to provide supernatural assistance whenever called upon, but personalities possessing their own interests, expectations and purposes. Through ceremony, devotion and carefully maintained relationships with the spirit world, members of the Congregation may receive remarkable powers from them. Such gifts are never treated casually. A favour granted by a Loa establishes an obligation, while a promise made before the spirits is considerably more difficult to escape than one made before mortal witnesses.

The bayou therefore remains more than the Congregation’s place of origin. It is the spiritual heart of the posse and the landscape that shaped its members. They know dark water, flooded forest, hidden paths and settlements reached only by boat. They have grown accustomed to outsiders dismissing their beliefs as superstition, right up until those same outsiders encounter something in the darkness that cannot be explained by conventional religion, science or a sufficiently large revolver. The Congregation does not require outsiders to believe in the Loa. The Loa have never required permission to exist.

This makes the Congregation a particularly attractive opponent for my Dark Confederacy posse. Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair and his followers at Blackthorn Hall have raised the dead in pursuit of their own vision of the South, including the remnants of the 27th Virginian Cavalry Regiment. The Congregation represents almost the precise opposite. Where Lucien seeks to command death, the Congregation respects the relationship between the living, the dead and the spirits. Where the Dark Confederacy looks backwards towards a South that has already disappeared, the Congregation fights for the people of the Free South who remain alive and deserve the opportunity to determine what comes next.

There is considerable scope here for something more interesting than a simple struggle between good and evil. The Congregation has secrets of its own, together with rituals and relationships with supernatural powers that outsiders may find deeply unsettling. Its members are prepared to call upon forces that few ordinary people comprehend, while the Loa themselves may pursue purposes extending far beyond the immediate concerns of those requesting their assistance. The Congregation may fight monsters, but that does not mean its methods will always make its allies comfortable.

For the tabletop, I want the posse to reflect this mixture of Louisiana character, spiritual power and determined resistance. These are people who emerged from the bayous carrying revolvers, rifles, charms, inherited traditions and an absolute determination that the horrors consuming the rest of the South will not consume their communities as well. They have seen what happens when ambitious men attempt to make servants of the dead, and they have no intention of allowing Blackthorn Hall and the Dark Confederacy to spread their influence unchallenged.

Lucien Saint Clair may believe that he commands the dead, but deep in the Louisiana bayou, the Loa are watching.