Little Ray
Little Ray is an Accensorite blues musician who owns and operates the Joliet, a blues bar in Rail City that serves as one of the biggest underground railroad operations in the Ironworks. An unassuming older man, small and dark with a thin mustache and graying hair, Little Ray's appearance conceals the richest bass voice imaginable, a sound that can make walls shake on the low notes and draw entertainers from across the wastes to compete for a chance to play at his bar.
When Little Ray is present, the Joliet transforms. Lights seem brighter, shadows darker, music amplifies on its own, instruments never break, and voices stay true. The free drinks and exceptional barbecue draw performers even when better money is available elsewhere. The bar has become a destination, a place where the King's Court tradition lives and breathes in every twelve-bar progression.
Beneath the music lies the Joliet's true purpose. King's Court members use the traditional twelve-bar blues as an information-passing method, encoding intelligence about slave projects and stockyards into improvised songs. The Ironworks establishment has not discovered this dual purpose. When asked if he sold his soul to the devil like the musical King of old, Little Ray chuckled like thunder rolling and said that when he was done playing, the devil sold the King's soul back to him.
When Little Ray is present, the Joliet transforms. Lights seem brighter, shadows darker, music amplifies on its own, instruments never break, and voices stay true. The free drinks and exceptional barbecue draw performers even when better money is available elsewhere. The bar has become a destination, a place where the King's Court tradition lives and breathes in every twelve-bar progression.
Beneath the music lies the Joliet's true purpose. King's Court members use the traditional twelve-bar blues as an information-passing method, encoding intelligence about slave projects and stockyards into improvised songs. The Ironworks establishment has not discovered this dual purpose. When asked if he sold his soul to the devil like the musical King of old, Little Ray chuckled like thunder rolling and said that when he was done playing, the devil sold the King's soul back to him.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Little Ray built the Joliet from nothing into the premier blues venue in Rail City, a place where the King's Court faithful gathered and the music of the old Kings lived on. His extraordinary voice and the uncanny atmosphere of his bar drew performers and audiences from across the Ironworks. Beneath that cultural role, he quietly established the Joliet as a hub for the New Abolitionist underground, using the twelve-bar blues tradition to pass encoded intelligence about slave shipments and operations. The system worked because no one suspected a blues bar of being anything more than what it appeared: a place where an old man with a magnificent voice kept the music alive.
Accensorite blues man whose bar hides the Ironworks' biggest underground railroad operation.
Children
