Gods of Sun and Sacrifice

Question: Could you please go over the Aztec associated powers overhaul? Some of them make sense (Quetzalcoatl gaining Stars or Tezcatlipoca gaining Chaos), but others really, really don't (Tezcatlipoca gaining Health... and Xipe Totec losing it).

Oh, my friends, you know I'm always ready to talk about Aztecs. Let's do this!

...and because I love to talk about Aztecs, I now realize after finishing this post that it's way too long for common consumption. Follow me behind the jump if you dare.

Huitzilopochtli. The Hummingbird on the Left lost two associations, Epic Stamina and Magic. The first was a simple case of us not being sure why he had it in the first place; while we're sure he's a hardy kind of a dude and so far he's done great with that supporting the sun thing, there were no particular tales of him involving feats of incredible staminousness to point to, nor any hymns we found that praised him for his fortitude or such. It appeared to be something that was just kind of given to him because he's a physical badass, but his physical badassery was much better expressed in Strength. He probably has plenty of Stamina, but didn't need to have the Ultimate.

(A side note: Huitzilopochtli does in fact kill himself in an alternate creation myth, along with several other gods, in order to create the sun. However, since we usually prefer the myth of Nanahuatzin becoming the sun and that story of Huitzilopochtli's sacrifice does not ever actually discuss him coming back to life, we decided to give it a pass on associations rather than give it to him as an out-of-game justification for his continued presence. We tend to consider the variant creation myth to be referring to a non-fatal sacrifice; the bulk of Aztec myth treats Huitzilopochtli as alive and well, and so do we.)

As for Magic, Huitzilopochtli almost certainly gained it because he is frequently referred to in Spanish-written sources as a "magician" or "sorcerer". However, this was a pretty common practice in sources written by the conquistadors or natives who were being overseen by them; native gods are usually referred to as "devils", "magicians" or "witches" in an attempt to root out the un-Christian native religion (or, in the case of sources written by natives, in an attempt to avoid being murdered by the inquisition for telling their myths). Huitzilopochtli's magical exploits are all pretty clear uses of other purviews and relics, from the atlatl that shoots fire to his miraculous birth; he really has nothing to do with magic other than being called a magician and probably wouldn't know what to do with Fate unless it challenged him to single combat, so we stripped that association off pretty easily.

Mictlantecuhtli. This poor guy is just such a mess in the original rules; not only can they not spell his name right (T's are important in Nahuatl!), but his associations make only passing sense and needed a complete overhaul. His association with Animal (Dog) has to have come from either confusion with Xolotl (the dog-headed Aztec psychopomp, a quite separate god) or confusion over the fact that Mictlantecuhtli presides over the daysign Itzcuintl (represented by the dog) in the tonalpohualli. Dogs are strongly associated with death in Mesoamerican culture as guides and companions to the dead, but again that's all stuff that belongs under the heading of psychopomp, and in any case Mictlantecuhtli himself has nothing to do with the more canine trappings of the afterlife. Instead, we swapped him to having the Aztec triple crown of creepy death animals - owls, whose feathers he is said to wear in his crown and who he uses as messengers, bats, who inhabit Mictlan as well as the living world, and spiders, a classic symbol of the death god that are sometimes depicted crawling all over him.

Guardian was trickier, because Mictlantecuhtli does have strong associations with the idea in the myth of the birth of mankind, in which he refuses to give up the bones he guards to Quetzalcoatl. We waffled back and forth on it a bit because it was a place with no clear-cut answer; we eventually cut it because he obviously wasn't very good at being a guardian if Quetzalcoatl was able to grab the bones and run without him even noticing at first, something that even low-level Guardian boons should have helped with. It was close, but when compared to nearby Guardian powerhouses like Huitzilopochtli, he really wasn't cutting it.

Mictlantecuhtli is, however, pretty much the bogeyman of Aztec mythology; he's terrifying, sapping even Quetzalcoatl of his moxy, and resides and presides over one of the most terrible and frightening Underworlds of any pantheon. He's a great personification of the horrifying fear of death, so we replaced Guardian with Darkness, which is the go-to purview to represent gods who are really all about reasonless, mindless terror without a specific source. Just as Hades, whose name was not even spoken by most of his believers lest he notice them, was feared across the Greco-Roman lands, so Mictlantecuhtli and his hideous, inescapable prison was feared in Mexico.

Finally, the only possible reason we could come up with that the original rules gave him Epic Charisma associated was that it's the stat that's most often used for Death boons. But since Mictlantecuhtli is kind of the exact opposite of charisma, and since there are no stories, poems or other evidence to back that up, we kicked it to the curb where it belongs.

Quetzalcoatl. Like Bastet over in the Pesedjet, we're pretty sure this guy was statted by his fanboys. He has way more purviews than he needs to, half of them excessively sketchy at best, and we ended up throwing most of them away. Earth? From what, exactly? He's a sky-god whose only passing connection to earth is helping his brother murder Cipactli. Fertility? Why, because he's... you know, nice to people and people like fertility? Guardian? From the guy who goes off to die in emo solitude when he hears his kingdom's going to fall instead of staying to defend it? Health? But he has nothing to do with health, whether as a healer or a disease-giver. Justice? Looks like a frankly kind of preachy attempt to give him a purview because of his refusal to take human sacrifices like the rest of his pantheon, and as a trickster-god stealing shit it's definitely not really sticking. Water? All we could think was that this must have some vague connection to rain, but since he already has Sky and Tlaloc is already going most of that job anyway, off with its head. These are all things that have been said about Quetzalcoatl at one time or another, but they range from poor reasoning to worse, from unproven scholar theorizing to unsourced throwaway lines proliferating across many-times-removed and often poorly-researched popular books and internet articles on the subject.

The attributes aren't really helping, either. We assume Epic Intelligence must have been a response to his role as a culture-teacher, but it didn't really seem to be something that was in his character all that much, and we ended up feeling that associating him with Academics and Empathy covered that ground neatly enough without trying to claim that he was a god on a level brainlength with Odin or Thoth. And while we're sure his Charisma is probably perfectly serviceable, we really couldn't get behind it as something he had the Ultimate in; we're pretty sure that association is coming more than a little from the modern theories of association with Christ and Cortes, and since those as historically sketchy at best, we kicked them out, too.

But we couldn't leave the poor dude without an association to his name, and luckily we didn't have to, because he's doing plenty in Aztec myth without being inflated by random associations that seem to represent vague, abstract concepts instead of actually having anything to do with him. Sky was a no-brainer to keep, as he's demonstrably the god of the winds and air, and Psychopomp was equally easy, as he's the main actor of the greatest psychopomping (or reverse-psychopomping?) story in Aztec mythology, when he sneaks into the underworld and rescues the bones of all humanity from it. Animal (Quetzal) was an obvious keeper as well, constantly associated as he is with the bird and its beautiful feathers, and we added Animal (Snake) to that because Quetzalcoatl is very notably a giant serpent himself, and we saw no reason he shouldn't be getting on with his snaky self however he wanted. Stars, as noted in the question above, is an easy addition, as Quetzalcoatl not only created the morning star but also very centrally embodies it.

Epic Stamina and Wits were actually very easy adds, as well. Epic Stamina comes into play very noticeably in the myth wherein Quetzalcoatl sets himself on fire in remorse for raping his sister and then rises again from the ashes alive, not to mention another cremation in which he rises into the sky afterward as the morning star. When a dude is killing himself with fire multiple times and still getting back up, we're prepared to believe that he deserves some pretty strong props for being sturdy. Similarly, as one of the great tricksters of Aztec myth, Quetzalcoatl's ability to shenanigans his way out of trouble with Epic Wits is legendarily illustrated in his theft of the bones from the underworld, which mostly relies on him being such a quick thinker that he's in and out before Mictlantecuhtli realizes he's been punked.

Quetzalcoatl's one of the worst Aztec gods to try to be reasonable about, because he's so popular in fiction, New Age revisionism and western religious interpretation that it's sometimes difficult to get down to the basis of his Mesoamerican roots. But we always try to remember that, as much as modern western civilization likes to paint him as a boring, kindly old teacher and bringer of life who loves everyone and is suspiciously Jesus-like, he's the kind of absolutely Aztec-style dude who sets himself on fire, burglarizes the abode of the dead and routinely demolishes the world because he's having a spat with his brother.

Tezcatlipoca. The other worst person to deal with is said brother. Tezcatlipoca is a mess of equal magnitude; he has a host of associations in the original book that probably aren't necessary and appear to just be there because of his popularity as the "mirror" figure to Quetzalcoatl, and some of the strongest parts of his divine imagery are confusingly absent. He's covered in purviews he oughtn't to have; for example, Moon, which he patently has nothing to do with (that would be the several, usually antagonistic Aztec moon gods out there) and which was probably only assigned to him because he's a night god. Mystery has no basis we could find - old Tezcat himself is certainly mysterious, but he's not much about the granting of esoteric wisdom to people, usually quite the opposite, in fact - and while there's some basis at least for Prophecy in the stories of him appearing to Quetzalcoatl to tell him about the imminent fall of Tollan, we don't have any other examples and he's a career trickster, so it's just as likely that he was there to ruin Quetzalcoatl's day, not because he had some kind of offscreen epiphany, so we axed that, too. War makes a little bit of sense, as he was considered the patron of some warrior sects and is sometimes associated with the concept in an overarching way, but since he appears to be entirely allergic to physical conflict and wouldn't know what to do with an army of soldiers other than make them hate one another, we decided it wasn't a good fit (maybe a five or six levels of War boons kind of a fit instead). And Sun - dude, what's up with that? I can only assume it's because Tezcatlipoca was originally the sun god in the First World before Quetzalcoatl threw his hissy fit, but if that's the case, why don't all the other suns, including Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc, also have Sun? (Incidentally, we don't think they should all have Sun, because they're clearly not the sun gods of the Fifth and current world and demonstrably have nothing to do with it.) We were equally baffled by Epic Dexterity (just... why? seriously, we have no idea) and Epic Appearance (...because he's spotted?).

But luckily, there is also plenty going on with this guy that deserved to be represented, so we added quite a few and he ended up more laden with associations than anyone else in the pantheon anyway. It is beyond our understanding how a god who personifies chaos, confusion and misdirection and who is referred to by titles such as "The Enemy of Both Sides" could not have had Chaos in the original version of his writeup, so we made that change without blinking, and his famous shenanigans with causing various omens to appear and disappear, appearing himself in myriad bizarre forms or making Quetzalcoatl freak out because he thought he'd suddenly turned monstrously ugly made Illusion another easy addition to his bag of tricks. Earth probably gives one a bit of a blink at first glance, but when a dude's nahualli (which is just himself, after all, only slightly furrier) is known as the Heart of the Mountain because he causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, one has to assume he knows his way around some rocks.

To answer your most specific question, Tezcatlipoca gained Health because he is very strongly connected to disease; he causes it in mortals, often seemingly at whim, and his breath (as the Night Wind) was believed to cause spontaneous sickness in those it touched. Like Tlazolteotl, he was also strongly associated with sexual diseases - not surprising, since as a god who represents inappropriate seduction and fraternizing (very obvious in stories such as the seduction of Xochiquetzal or the impregnation of Quetzalcoatl's daughters) he is also part of the Aztec idea of sexually transmitted diseases being a divine punishment for sexually loose behavior. We have records of the Aztecs calling upon Tezcatlipoca to relieve them of diseases, in much the same way Sekhmet was invoked in Egypt as a protector against but also causer of sickness. And as Chalchiuhtotolin, one of his many alternative forms, his major job is to be the god of plague and pestilence.

So this is a dude who is actually pretty heavily invested in Health, despite not being one of those happy, huggable doctoring types; he's the major figure of plague and sickness for the Aztecs, and as such gained Health for us.

Tlaloc. Ah, a nice, straightforward god, just the ticket after the thorny, unnavigable thickets of the trickster twins above. There was only one major change for Tlaloc, which was that we swapped out Health and gave him Death instead. We felt that Death was a necessity, as Tlaloc owns and administers an Underworld or afterlife of his own in Tlalocan and specifically marks mortals for inclusion in it upon death. Health gave us a little bit of pause, because Tlaloc is tangentially associated with waterborne diseases thanks to floods caused by rain often bringing illness with them, but in the end we decided that it wasn't as strong as his other associations.

Tlazolteotl. Everyone's favorite batshit insane goddess needed a serious facelift from her original version as well. The tried-but-not-at-all-true method the original rules use for love and sex goddesses of giving them all the social attributes associated didn't work here as it doesn't work in most places, and we cut Charisma and Manipulation off her early, as she's not subtle, tricky or manipulative and certainly isn't liked or respected in the slightest. She does all her work with sheer overwhelming overdose of sexual hotness, so Appearance got to stay while the other two got the boot. She's also a textbook Justice goddess, smiting evildoers and providing precious chances at redemption for those who fall from grace; she had a very large, very strong cult dedicated to her as the overseer of sexual behavior and avenging scourge against those who broke those rules, so while it's not the kind of justice most pantheons probably think of first, she's doing a quintessentially Aztec kind of a Justice role. As is not surprising for a goddess of both sex and filth, she was also the source of all sexually transmitted diseases, and it was believed that she inflicted them intentionally on those who angered her or couldn't keep it in their pants, making her another of the rare but always entertaining plague-oriented Health gods.

Xipe Totec. To answer your other specific question, we actually could not find anything but one-line anecdotal evidence of Xipe Totec having anything to do with Health. He certainly is big important bananas for humanity, but most of that has to do with, well, bananas - he's every flavor of insanely important as a Fertility god who keeps the earth renewed and humanity fed, but while several books said, "oh, he's associated with disease" or "oh, he's associated with healing", they never said it more than in passing or explained why, how, or where they were getting this from, and no book we were able to dig up on Xipe Totec discussed anything about his cult having to do with either. So while we suspect he probably has some kind of connection somewhere - even with a bunch of scholars citing each other, somebody has to have originally come up with the idea somewhere, right? - we couldn't figure out why or how, and the continued lack of sourcing and explanation were not making it like a major part of his identity as a god. We gave him Medicine as an associated ability in a nod to the idea, since it was obviously mixed up in him somewhere, but it wasn't strong enough to justify him having the Savior. (We'd love to hear about other sources for Xipe Totec's Health connotations if you have them, though. We love sources.)

In other news, he also had nothing to do with Death that we could see - no connection to the Underworld, no connection to dead people, seriously nothing whatsoever to go on - so we punted that association out (we're pretty sure it was added because of his possible status as a death/rebirth god, which is silly because despite the name there is only one death/rebirth god in the entirety of Scion who actually has Death, and Osiris Xipe Totec certainly is not). His Fertility associations are beyond reproach, but despite the fact that humanity absolutely loves him for them, we also couldn't find any reason he ought to have Guardian; he's not out there actually guarding anything we could see, and if just being kindly inclined toward humans was enough to get a god The Sentinel, we'd all be up to our ears in Vigil Brands and Wardened Walls.

But his original writeup curiously ignored the ecstatic and frankly insane popularity of him as a deity; this is a guy whose rituals and rites rival Dionysus' for number of people screaming, dancing and being ridiculously excited, and combined with the descriptions of him as incredibly beautiful in some of his hymns (often because of his golden skin, representative of the corn he embodies), we replaced those confusing old associations with good old Appearance and Charisma, making him the popularity powerhouse he really needed to be.

We also added the two most important ladies of the pantheon, Xochiquetzal and Chalchiuhtlicue, but their associations are pretty straightforward and we didn't quite understand why one of the Five Suns and the most widely beloved goddess of the Aztecs somehow weren't on the roster in the first place. (It's our hypothesis that the original writers were trying to stick to a formula - a king, death god, love goddess, and so forth for each pantheon - and therefore didn't have "room" for both Tlazolteotl and Xochiquetzal, or else were conflating the two into a single figure. We have no explanation for Chalchiuhtlicue's absence except that maybe they were worried that English-speaking gamers would hurt themselves trying to pronounce her name.)

So that's our Aztec rundown. A lot of time, a lot of love, a lot of hard decisions, and a lot of books.