[From Shadows Rising]
So in the book, Bwonsamdi is weakening as people burn down his shrines. It’s implied that if a Loa has too few followers and no shrines, they die. So how do Loa come to be, before there are any followers?
Loa came to be like all the other Wild Gods, thanks to the Well of Eternity, and Titan shenanigans from Freya to some degree. So a mix of natural and titanic influences were at play.
Some loa also have spawn, perhaps offspring? We don’t know if those could also become loa themselves. The non animal loa like Bwonsamdi are weirder. We don’t know how a Troll (or whatever) can become a loa. Perhaps it was like it will be for Vol’jin and a loa sacrificed themselves for them so those souls could become a loa (I hope it’s not that, but it’s all we have so far).
Edit: One way could be to consume enough souls to become “loa-like”, from a power level sort of like Jindo tried.
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Well, Loa are formed in various ways. By troll standards a ‘Loa’ is simply an immensely powerful, wise & immortal being.
Some are Wild Gods of which are also too formed in various ways such as the Well of Eternity, Titan Shenanigans, Azeroth itself birthing them, or born of various nature & planes or they may potentially have been lucky by obtaining consolidated power which happens to create or pour-into various vessels.
Now all of these stated above could be said for other various Loa too, particularly the last one - Sometimes one can drink in more power, making their mysterious wonders more volatile and immense. (Example: Anzu drank in the blood of Sethe to stop their curse from spreading to other beings, whilst it cursed Anzu - Anzu himself was also bestowed with the power of the Void - Communed with the Void Lords but considered them boring and thus was uncorrupted, but now held power of the Shadows as well as the Arcane).
I’d wager having shrines and devotion acts as a way of ‘pouring power’ into particular vessels granting them more power than they already held.
The lore of Warcraft doesn’t seem to be as meticulously planned and thought out like a J.R.R Tolkien book, at least not anymore. The stories nowadays read as if Blizzard makes it up as they go along. That would be my answer. Today the Loa is only as powerful as the number of their followers, tomorrow Blizzard can easily retcon it like they do constantly and Loa can be powerful regardless of follower count.
It makes it hard to feel invested in stories that in the back of your mind could be changed on a whim at any time.
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If it helps at all followers have always been important to the loa, and we know the more followers a loa has, it grows in power. Not just physical representatives in the living world, but actual magical power. As I said it’s always been a dynamic the Trolls and Loa have shared between each other, and it’s implied that the Night Elves had something similar when they were Dark Trolls back in the early days with Elune.
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(Speculative): Bwonsamdi might not be a Loa in the traditional sense of the word. By that I mean, most Loa are Wild Gods, but Bwonsamdi doesn’t seem to be.
Summary
(Commentary): In the Shadowlands we learn he was mortal once, a priest of Mueh’zala, and that Mueh’zala basically ascended him to what Trolls refer to as a Loa. That said, Wild Gods (what most other Loa are), are naturally occurring entities across multiple worlds in the cosmos, typically beasts that grow powerful in some form. Ardenweald’s Droman Aliothe is an example of a Wild God from a world other than Azeroth.