Subject to Change

Question: Since the Maya are on my mind, I have to ask... how are Maya-Aztec relations in your game? Are Scions of gods like Tlaloc or Quetzalcoatl considered Scions of the Maya pantheon, at least nominally, if not in PSP?

Oh, dear. Maya-Aztec relations in our games are not good at all. The more warlike Aztlanti tend to view the Maya pantheon as less-powerful failures who couldn't keep their territory as a result, and while the real Aztecs didn't subjugate most Mayan territory since it was out of their way in the jungle, the Aztec gods have had no compunctions about declaring themselves the sole overlords of Mesoamerican myth and have over the years killed off most of the less important Maya gods (sometimes to squash uprising, sometimes to make points, and sometimes just because conqueror cultures get really bored without anything to do). It's fairly similar to the situation between the Dodekatheon and the indigenous Italian gods; in theory everyone "gets along" and "lives together", but in practice one side is way more powerful and the other really can't do much about it.

(Note that it's looking like I'll be working on a Maya pantheon sometime in the future, and that while we have plenty of ST notes on what we do with the Maya and their gods in-game, we haven't previously done the full in-depth pantheon workup treatment. So some of this landscape may change significantly for that supplement, but I'm running here with what we've been doing in our games to date.)

Those gods among the Aztlanti with Maya roots (Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, Xochiquetzal) are considered full members of the Aztec gods, and have indeed been in the pantheon as long as it's existed, but they're likely to also consider themselves members of the previous pantheons as well (not just Maya but Zapotec, Toltec and Mixtec as well, depending on the god) and to be somewhat more sympathetic toward them than purely Mexica gods like Huitzilopochtli or Tlazolteotl. They aren't active in the older pantheons anymore, but are sort of nominally members of them anyway, the way Vayu might be considered a Deva despite being a member of the Yazata or Lugh might be considered an honorary Nemetondevo despite being firmly one of the Tuatha. Gods have occasionally also used iconography from their previous incarnations when they appear or interact with their Scions, including Tlaloc using a turtle (traditionally associated with Chaac) to talk to Kettila or Xipe Totec leaving artifacts for Scions to find that look suspiciously like the tonsured Maya maize god. I could absolutely see one of their Scions choosing to identify with a non-Aztec version of the god, either on their own or because the god presented him- or herself that way, just as a Scion of Kalfu might view themselves as a child of Eshu or a Scion of Haoma think of themselves as the offspring of Soma. (They would still have Itztli, though, unless they wanted to go the full nine yards and switch pantheons to the Maya permanently.)

Sadly, PC interaction with the Maya deities has invariably been violent and unpleasant. Two of the Maya gods have been killed by PCs - first Camazotz, who made the mistake of trying to be the dominant bat over Eztli, and then Ix Chel, who was dismayed to discover that the negligible Legend 3 Norseman she'd used as captive breeding stock was now Legend 9 and really upset about seeing her again. Camazotz got better (until Eztli made him dead a second time, anyway); Ix Chel didn't. (To the PCs' knowledge, anyway, but they haven't checked on the Maya situation in quite a while.) I suppose, in a game with the poster-child for Aztec world dominance, none of that should be very surprising, but no one's really bothered to investigate what the Maya pantheon is doing or how exactly the political situation stands at the moment.

I'm very much looking forward to one day getting a Maya supplement together to do more with all this, probably taking some of it in different directions. Maybe it'll be my birthday present to myself to finish it - except that since my birthday's December 21st, I'd just be fueling all the silliness if I shot for that date, wouldn't I?