In 2023, I was living with my girlfriend and getting ready to leave for an extended period abroad. So she wouldn’t forget me — and knowing she loved tarot — I drew a set of small cards inspired by meaningful quotes and gave them to her the day I left. The number of cards matched the number of days we'd be apart, so she could draw one each day until we were reunited.

One day, I showed the cards to some friends, and they really liked them. Their enthusiasm gave me the push I needed to take the project further. I started digitizing my drawings using Illustrator, and began imagining a game, a world, and a story around these cards...And that is how LES MAU DAL EAU was born.

The concept of the Four Great Lands — Fearamau, Misclarity, Salpowerta, and Solaging — was inspired by a passage from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. In the book, the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan speaks of the four enemies a Man must face on the path to knowledge: the first is Fear, followed by Clarity, then Power, and finally, Aging.