Here’s a sneak peek of Episode 2 — and what a journey it’s been.
In Episode 2, Toya enters Makandal’s Mountain World — a hidden civilization carved into the heart of the winding Masif di Nò mountains. A Mountain World of secret maroon societies dedicated to creating a common consciousness among Black captives from many different Afrikan countries. Makandal teaches them how to sacrifice the individual for the many and the patience to move like the mountain.
TOYA
This is not a camp. It is a... a nation.
Makandal’s school is unlike anything Toya has ever known. He trains warriors to see what the French cannot see — not just to fight, but in ecological warfare and how to absorb their cultural and religious differences, deploying all their combined knowledge to one end: ending slavery and white domination.
He taught them how to move like the mountain. Silent. Patient. Unstoppable.
MAKANDAL
You see warriors. The French see property. That gap in vision… is where we turn the land and its creatures into a weapon. The mountain fights with us. The weather is our ally.
Images, videos, and illustrations created from the TOYA! script are gathered in this section for readers.
Inside TOYA’s World is the living script, a visual archive of moments from Toya’s journey as the story unfolds. This is a place for the story to breathe between the pages, where memory becomes image, and image becomes a door back into the world of TOYA.
TOYA’s story is an epic of memory and resistance. By becoming a paid subscriber, you directly fund the art, the research, and the production of this living script.
Makandal stands before his warriors and plantation agents.
He repeatedly dips a piece of cloth into three vases of water. He lifts the first: YELLOW, representing the island’s first inhabitants… then WHITE, representing the slaver-colonists who currently rule… and finally BLACK, representing the Afrikans destined ultimately to rule the island.
Makandal ties the Black cloth to a pole. Raises it above the assembly.
MAKANDAL
We are destined to remove the white slaver-colonists. To abolish slavery. To become the rulers of this island.
The crowd erupts—a chant, a promise, a prophecy.
The Black banner waves above them—a prophecy that Afrikan rule will replace colonial rule.
In Episode 2, Toya joins Makandal’s secret societies in Northern colonized Hayti. She leads night raids to rescue captives on the verge of suicide from the torturous conditions of the plantations. She infiltrates. She fights. She rescues. She was a midwife who taught African herbal science and combat techniques.
But when she’s protecting children, she discovers a power she never knew she carried—the Guardian Mothers’ Shield. It appears when children are in danger. It boosts her strength beyond anything she’s ever known. But the aftermath of pain is excruciating.
She bleeds. She takes the pain so the children don’t have to. A mother’s heart, forged into a weapon of protection.
Episode 2 arrives January 2027.Enjoy these preliminary images and videos from the coming adventures of Toya: The Warrior Who Raised An Empire.
A SHARP CRACK echoes. Above them. A massive stalactite, loosened by vibrations from the training arena, plunges toward a cluster of children playing on the lower terrace.
Makandal and Manman Brijit watch with alarm.
Toya doesn’t think. She instinctively crosses her hands over her heart. Kicks a discarded wooden training shield into the air. Sprints. Leaps.
Her footwork is impossible. She slams her shield into the falling rock, deflecting its trajectory just enough to crash into the sand, missing the children by a foot.
MANMAN BRIJIT’S POV: As Toya launches into the air. A SWIRLING TRANSLUCENT HEART-SHIELD detaches from her body, encasing her in a protective bubble. RED. ALIVE. It moves with her. She meets the falling stone in mid-air. The heart-shield LENGTHENS—
a BLAZING SWORD outlined in fire, a DAGGER through the heart. It strikes the stalactite. SHATTERS it into a cloud of dust and debris.
Fragments hit the swirling membrane. Some are swallowed, suctioned into its swirling red depths. Others are violently pushed away from the children below.
Nearby amethyst and crystal veins pulse in response. Rhythmic. Beating in rhythm with the shield.
MAKANDAL
(quiet)
...The Guardian-Mothers’ shield.
MANMAN BRIJIT
(awed)
It chose her.
Makandal and Manman Brijit stare. Witness to something they did not expect.
Toya lands. Breathing hard. The shield retreats. Folds back into her chest. She doubles over. Ripping pain. She wipes her nose. Blood on her fingers.
She looks at the wooden training shield in her other hand, her brow furrowed. She is confused by her own survival.
The children are safe.
TOYA
The shield should have snapped. I should be dead.
She looks up at the fractured ceiling.
Makandal saw it. The swirling heart encasing her form from the debris, there and gone. He exchanges a quiet,
knowing look with MANMAN BRIJIT, who stands at the back of the training ground. She nods once, looking at Toya’s chest. Catches Makandal’s eye, gives him the smallest warning: Not here.
Toya wipes at the blood again. Stares at her red
fingers.
TOYA
(to herself)
What was that?
She looks at her hands. They’re shaking. She clenches them into fists. The shaking stops.
Makandal watches her. He doesn’t speak. He studies her with calculation.
Not everyone in Makandal’s Mountain World welcomes Toya. Mayombe and Teysello—Kongo warriors and Makandal’s trusted lieutenants—see the mysterious Agoji as a possible infiltrator.
MAYOMBE
(scoffs, circling Toya like prey)
You smell like plantation dirt...of the lowlands and Whip World. Why trust you? The French send spies in slave skin.
August 14 to August 22 is Hayti Revolution week. 2026 marks the 235th anniversary of the Hayti Revolution which began with the Vodun War Council on August 14, 1791. (See our Free Hayti Movement album and IG channel for more videos)
For the last two decades, we've worked alongside the descendants of the Bò Kay Manbo Inan (Bwa Kayiman) revolutionaries — those who walk the same earth at the former Normand De Mézy plantation in Mòn Rouj where Makandal, Manbo Inan, and Boukman once walked. We've held space for the memory of the revolutionaries who lived, bled, and dreamed of freedom on that very ground.
The three cloth prophecy we’ve noted above isn’t just a story. It’s a living thread connecting past to present. The blood. The bone. The earth.
Toya is still discovering what she’s becoming.
“Makandal... What am I becoming?”— Toya
“Something they cannot predict. That’s what we all are. That’s the only weapon that matters.”— Makandal
Episode 2 arrives January 2027.
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