Jacquel Roux

"A mentally fragile peasant girl, locked in a constant struggle against an inner Beast..."

Jacquel Roux was never an ordinary shepherdess. Her origins remain entirely shrouded in mystery; as a child, she was found starving in the woods of Gévaudan by the residents of Saint-Alban. The rural commune took her in, baptized her as Jacquel, and gave her a semblance of a normal life. If asked, the girl would claim her parents belonged to a traveling circus that was mercilessly slaughtered by bandits. Whether this was a tragic truth or simply a coping mechanism born of childish fantasy, no one in the village truly knew.
Unfortunately, Jacquel's relatively peaceful life unraveled as she reached adulthood. In 1764, the northern county was plunged into terror by a mysterious, wolf-like monster soon dubbed the Beast of Gévaudan. The creature launched a series of brutal attacks across nearby villages, dragging the weak, the young, and the isolated into the forest. The panic reached such heights that in 1765, royal hunters were personally dispatched by the King's order to slay the creature. Yet, despite claims of wounding the Beast, their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful, and the slaughter continued.

As the county bled, Jacquel’s own mind and body began to fracture. She complained of rapidly deteriorating health, plagued by chronic sleepwalking, severe mood swings, and hyper-realistic, blood-soaked dreams. In a village already gripped by paranoia, Jacquel’s behavior didn't go unnoticed. Sympathy quickly curdled into fear, and the locals grew increasingly hostile toward the troubled young woman.

Officially, Jacquel Roux vanished in the year of 1767. Her fate remains a subject of debate: some claim she became just another nameless victim of the monster, while others insist that the girl fled deeper into the forest to escape the pitchforks of her neighbors. A few hopeful souls believe she survived and started anew in a distant town.

But as the legends persist... one has to wonder what truly disappeared into the woods that year.

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TIME: July 20, 1765, ~1:00 PM
LOCATION: near the village of Saint-Alban, County of Gévaudan, Kingdom of France
CRYPTID: Therianthropus l