Well this here be Toupatou! He's a rather frien'ly gator from the deep South, the bayou! Toupatou's got a pretty interestin' creation story, based on a plot I did with gutierrez at one point. gutierrez's character Guillaume was the one who made Toupatou, but to play Toupatou independently I adopted the same origins story.

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Toupatou used to be just your normal hungry swamp-prowlin' gator, 'til one day, while huntin' for food, he came across this big rubbery thing above him! Having no real intelligence to speak of, he figured it might be something foodlike, but didn't realize it was really a boat belonging to the voodoo lady in the area! When he bit on the boat, he punctured it, and the angry voodoo lady cast a spell on him, intending to make sure he couldn't hurt anything again!
Well, the spell sure worked, but not as she intended: Toupatou had accidently swallowed part of the raft. As a result, it interacted with the spell, turning him into the big poofy gator he is now! It also granted him the beginning sparks of sentience. Over the next few days, it bloomed into full awareness, and he showed up at the voodoo lady's hutsteps a few days later, giving a full apology for ruining her raft. Using the strange new abilities his new form had, he was able to repair it for her, and render it unable to be broken by the bite of any other gators. Likewise, his own form had been made the same way, impenetrable and quite elastic.
In thanks for his returned kindness to her accidental kindness, she made him the hat he wears around just about everywhere and helped him learn a bit more about his form, and even declared a very large swath of nearby swamp to be his. Though this brings another interesting component: his form's affect on his surroundings. The whole strange chain of events leading to him becoming the rubbery gator he is now instead of being, well, dead, also granted him a degree of innate magic, though he's no idea how to control it or even the beginnings of how it works. All he knows is that, after having spent a lot of time in his own new swamp, it seems to have become separated from the real world. The trees grew around to form a tunnel over the proper entrances and exits from the swamp on the water, and formed a tight weave around the outer perimeter, with his whole swamp now having a much brighter, friendlier feel, eternally lit with twilight and the soft glow from dozens of fireflies lazily floating overhead. The only way to get to the swamp, now, is to either closely follow him in when he wishes to enter it, be invited to enter with him, or allowed to enter again afterward. Strange rules, but that's how it is. If anyone were to follow the waterways normally, they'd just go down some normal slow, lazy current through the swamps instead of his own private one.

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So that's the way it goes. Toupatou's not a recent character of mine, having been created a few years ago. However, I'm just now getting to actually play with him more often, as he's quite fun to play as in various scenarios! If you have questions about him, feel free to ask in the comments or via an instant message to myself!

Toupatou ©  ceralor
Art © Toy Dragon in Blue, aka Kaijima