Question: What is your characterization of Xipe Totec?
Xipe Totec is one of the more mysterious Aztec gods to our PCs; they've only hung out with him a few times, and someone usually leaves without skin, so they're not super keen on it in the future. Not that he's a bad guy or anything; he just has very specific sacrificial tastes.
The Flayed One is one of the Four Tezcatlipocas and thus one of the powers of the Aztec pantheon, though so far he's been less in the spotlight than his compatriots Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. Xipe Totec is awesome to be around, because as one of the most magnetic and incredible-looking among the Aztlanti, you can't help but love him; he's a guy who used to have more orgiastically excited ritual gatherings than anyone else, after all, and who generally wears someone else's skin over his because he's just too goddamn amazing to look at in the flesh. (The PCs have never seen him without skin, but they're a bit worried about what might happen if they did, considering that they thought he was the bee's knees even while wearing someone else's smushy face over his.) He fulfills the important roles of guardian of fertility and feeder of the people for the struggling Aztec tribes left in the World, and while he is entitled to have his opinion lent weight as one of the Tezcatlipocas, he tends not to get involved in too many political disputes (or hasn't to date, but who knows, now?).
We tend to view him as pretty great to be around until all your nerve endings are screaming at you after you leave skinless; he's just a party in someone else's clothes, really, and he does his job of keeping his part of the World turning admirably. He's not one of the most confrontational or violent of the Aztlanti, but he's still got a mean left hook if there happen to be bad guys storming Acopa, and while the other Tezcatlipocas may view him as slightly a lame duck, they only do so when he's not around.
He's sort of like Responsible Dionysus for the Aztecs.
"Responsible Dionysus" is such an odd phrase.
ReplyDeleteXT rocks, and I am always sad he doesn't get more press. I like to think of him as the secretly clever one of the Four Tezcatlipocas; you don't hear as much about him as about his three peers because he's better at keeping out of dumbshit power struggles, so all his plans and schemes just go under the radar.
If I wanted to create a Scion of Xipe Totec who can flay people and wear their skins and essentially become that person without obviously wearing a skin on top of them, what Boons/Knacks/Combination of Knacks would allow that?
ReplyDeleteDelay Rot would be a necessity, unless you wanted to let the skins rot and have to keep replacing them (which is how Xipe Totec's priesthood did it, not being Scions themselves). Stolen Face seems pretty much tailored to this situation - have a little item or piece of someone, become them because of the resemblance.
DeletePast that, you'd probably want to come up with some specific relic powers for the character - shapeshifting is generally covered by Epic Appearance or Illusion powers even without props, but you could probably come up with something tailored to the idea (maybe your Illusion boons get bonuses to disguising you as someone whose skin you're wearing, or maybe you have a relic skinsuit that can absorb the images of people you kill so that you always have their likeness available... there are a lot of ways to go with it).