Longleaf

Djimon Longleaf: The Smoldering Hunter

Off the warm, fragrant shores of the Ashanti Coast, a land of rich soil and golden tobacco fields, Djimon Longleaf was born into a family of skilled growers. Their leaf was coveted across the seas, its deep aroma fetching fortunes in distant markets. But with fortune came misfortune—pirates prowled the trade routes like wolves, plundering every ship that carried his people's prized tobacco.

 

Djimon had seen the injustice for years, watching his hard work stolen by men with cutlasses and fire in their eyes. He had served as a deckhand on merchant ships, defending the cargo, but no matter how hard he fought, the pirates always came. Eventually, something inside him snapped. If the lawless ruled the waves, then he would not be their prey—he would be their rival.

 

He took to the sea, a pirate by necessity rather than greed, forging a name for himself not just as a captain but as a strategist. His ships flew no colors, striking trade routes like a ghost, his men boarding with smoldering torches of Ashanti tobacco, announcing their arrival with fire and smoke. Merchants feared him, but unlike the others, he did not kill indiscriminately. He was a businessman first, a pirate second.

 

But the sea is cruel to all men, even those who master it.

 

During a raid on a rival pirate crew, Djimon and his men stumbled upon a deserted island shrouded in mist, its trees gnarled and blackened like the remnants of a long-dead fire. They had only come ashore to scout for supplies, but something was waiting for them.

 

A beast unlike any man, unlike any creature of the sea or jungle. Half-man, half-nightmare. It moved like a predator but thought like a hunter. One by one, Djimon watched his men vanish into the shadows, dragged screaming into the jungle. The air smelled of blood and damp earth.

 

Djimon had always prided himself on his courage. But courage would not save the dead. As his final men were torn from their camp, he ran—not to fight, but to survive. He reached the shore, but instead of swimming to the island for safety, he swam back to his capsized ship. There, clinging to the wreckage, he waited. Hours passed, then a full night. He did not sleep. His lungs burned, but he stayed hidden beneath the hull until another of his ships arrived.

 

He never spoke of what he saw on that island. But from that day forward, Djimon was no longer a pirate.

 

He became a bounty hunter. Not of men, but of beasts—the things that lurked in the forgotten corners of the world. He followed rumors of creatures whispered about in taverns, hunting them down before they could do to others what had been done to his crew. His pistol was filled with silver-shot bullets, his cutlass reforged with obsidian edges said to slice even the unnatural.

 

The world feared Djimon Longleaf, the Smoldering Hunter. Not because he was ruthless, but because he had seen something in the darkness—and he had survived.