Question: I was searching randomly on Wikipedia and I found this article on a "historical" figure called La Malinche. Since you seem to know all about Aztec/Maya culture, I'd like to know if she could be used as an ally or enemy.
I wouldn't say we know all about Mesoamerican cultures because that would require us to be a veritable corps of scholars, but we're happy to take a stab at La Malinche.
There need be no quotes around the word "historical" - La Malinche (or Dona Marina, as she was more commonly known when alive) was very much a real person and an important figure in the conquistadorial conquest and control of Aztec Mexico. An Aztec herself who went from noble Nahua family to Maya slavery to becoming the favorite interpreter and lover of Hernan Cortes himself, she was instrumental in the conversion of power from the indigenous Aztecs to the conquering Spaniards; as interpreter and diplomat she smoothed the way for demands, treaties and discussions between the invaders and the native population, as double agent she uncovered and prevented uprisings from threatening Cortes' fledgling rule, and as the lover of the most powerful Spanish man in the New World she was considered the symbolic mother of the mestizo, the Spanish-Nahua hybrid people that today make up most of Mexico's population. Many, many books have been written about La Malinche, either praising and defending her as a woman who was doing the best she could while fulfilling a traditional Aztec wife role and saving her people from more unnecessary violence, lambasting her as a traitor to her own people who destroyed their chances of fighting back against their conquerors and oppressors, and everything in between. Even today in Mexico, some groups hail her as the mother of the new Mexican people, some excoriate her as the Judas of Mexican history, and others think that all this attention focused on her takes away from the real people who should be blamed or praised for their behavior (i.e., Cortes and the Spaniards).
(In fact, if you guys want to read up on Malinche, she's endlessly fascinating. I'd recommend Anna Layon's Malinche's Conquest or Romero & Harris's Feminism, Nation and Myth: La Malinche for excellent looks at all the different ways she is studied, viewed and preserved in Mexican history, and if you'd like a fiction treatment of the story, Voice of the Vanquished and Malinalli of the Fifth Sun by Helen Heightsman Gordon are pretty fantastic interpretations, and Malinche by the fabulous Laura Esquivel is one of my personal favorites.)
As far as using La Malinche in Scion, however, I'm actually not really sure how or why you would do so. She was a mortal figure, one who impacted the affairs of her homeland strongly but who has no real mythic connotations or connections; I don't think she needs to be retconned into some kind of magical being or pawn of a god, just as most human historical figures don't. Human history is a vast and checkered thing, filled with cool people who were only people and who never claimed, aspired to or were assigned divinity, and it somewhat cheapens that history, I think, when it becomes overly fictionalized. Part of the tragic allure and complicated controversy of La Malinche's story is because it is so very human a story; she was mortal and accomplished everything she did through mortal means and for mortal reasons. Making her secretly a Scion or lesser immortal or anything of that nature robs the story of that human touch and reduces it down to merely another thing done to mortals by gods, rather than a poignant story of what humanity is capable of doing to itself, and I'd rather avoid that if possible. It's similar to making Hitler or Stalin magical (and yes, we know Scion: Companion's World at War section did this. Do not do it, it is a terrible idea) - it absolves humanity of its crimes and says that true evil, tyranny and misbehavior is always perpetrated by some outside source. It makes humanity unimportant in the very areas they should be ascendant; when it comes to human affairs, humans are fully as capable as gods of fucking everything up.
So, in most cases, we wouldn't use La Malinche in a Scion game, simply because the default setting is in the modern day and, as a mortal, she's been dead for four and a half centuries. However, if you happen to be playing around with the Aztec afterlife in your games, La Malinche's ghost could certainly be in Mictlan or any of the other afterlives you think reasonable, and PCs could definitely find her or interact with her there; and, considering the crazy kerfluffle surrounding her actions and how she might be viewed by various groups, how the death gods are treating her or how Aztlanti Scions might respond to being confronted with her could be very interesting indeed. If you happen to be playing a period game set around the fall of the Aztec empire, she could definitely be a major NPC or personality in the world; and we definitely think that her legacy, whether through the lasting effects of her actions, relics passed down over the years or even Scions who can trace their ancestry back to her, can be a big motivator in a game even if it's set in the modern era.
Also, I'm slightly loath to mention it because we are really not fans of the Keepers of the World in any dimension, but if you are using their setup from the book and have set Cortes as a Scion/god himself, La Malinche is a pretty obvious example of a mortal Fatebound to him (probably as Lover or Boon Companion), so you could explore her role in that way as well. Fatebound mortals are always an interesting place to look at for stories; they're still humans with human motivations and behaviors, but they're as susceptible to the whims of Fate as gods in some ways, and La Malinche's actions might be partly the product of her own motivations and partly the warping influence of divinity near her bringing them to surprising heights or possibilities.
The bottom line for us is that you certainly could use La Malinche in Scion, and you might get some very cool story material out of it, but that we believe it would almost always be better to do so by keeping her a human figure rather than shoehorning her into the divine.
I may be the only person in the world who actually LIKED the World War II supplement in Companion. I did not like the made-up Gods, except for The Citizen (I liked him a lot, that's a pretty awesome idea,) but I did like the shift from Greek to Roman in the Dodekatheon and I liked Quirinus's place on the Pantheon because you know he is my God.
ReplyDeleteAnd I liked the set-up. Gods kill me, I LIKED Hitler being a Scion. I've heard how it robs humanity of its extremes. But no one can deny that Hitler was larger than life, swaying nations with his voice and vision. He is considered the very personification of Evil today, some people even say "you must be like Satan or Hitler" putting a religious figure on the same level as this human man.
I am a big fan of having historical scions, though, as I've mentioned. I don't shy away from making those larger than life figures of history whose names and legends echo across the centuries Scions. And no one can say Hitler was not Larger than life, and his obsession with the Norse Gods only makes it more fitting.
Those are just my unwanted two cents.
Aww, you don't have to apologize for liking things we didn't like, dude, especially when you disagree in a respectful way.
DeleteWe really, really dislike the idea of Hitler as a Scion because it takes one of the greatest human monsters in history and cheapens him by making him non-human. It's crazy to me to say that Hitler must be a Scion because he was so influential and larger-than-life - because unless you believe he was a Scion or other supernatural being in real life, you know he was just a human. An extremely persuasive, charismatic, powerful and influential human, and while Scion is all about divine blood being a motivator of awesomeness, humanity is a major and important force in its world and I hate to see that so often lost.
I actually do like Belltrap's suggestion below, too - Legendary Mortals fill that gap where some might feel a human was too important to not get some kind of special consideration, but still allow him to be mortal himself. If you define a Legendary Mortal as simply a mortal who was so legendary that they echo through the ages without being divine, Hitler definitely fits the bill.
I liked the WW II supplement and the made up pantheons, particularly American folk heroes.
DeleteFor the original person who asked the question...
ReplyDeleteThere's always the option of having her as a ghost, if you'd like to preserve accuracy while still having her involved in the modern day somehow. Same goes for any historical figures that were mortal rather than having any implications of divine heritage (Hitler being another example). And there is always the option of having had someone with such a big impact on history like Hitler be a Legendary Mortal, since that would allow humans to retain their agency.
I could also see a Scion getting La Malinche's ghost as a Birthright Guide, too. Which might be very interesting.
DeleteReporting from the disaster zone that is the New York metro area. Knew we shoulda made that sacrifice to Hurakan.
ReplyDeleteSo, while the idea of making Cortez a Legend 12 god equal to the movers and shakers of humanity makes me so angry my teeth grind, I really like the idea of old Hernan being a Scion himself. Partly because the Conquest was ridiculous on paper, with a handful of soldiers overthrowing an empire. Not to mention, with the gods invested heavily in making sure that the blood keeps flowing, I'm loathe to view the conquest as a purely mortal endeavor with that hanging over the Spaniards heads alongside everything else. Plus, I like Cortez being Quetzalcoatl's kid just because I can totally see him trying to change the state of the empire and have it go horribly right.
Lack of appropriate religious sacrifice is clearly behind most of our problems in the modern day.
DeleteYeah, actually, if you strip away the Keepers silliness, I don't mind the idea of Cortes as a Scion too much. It gripes me some for the same reason making Malinche one would - it makes that human historical tragedy the fault of someone other than humanity, which really undercuts the importance of humans and the fact that they can make impressive and/or bad choices, too - but it's not a bad plot idea in and of itself. It's just that the execution in the RAW is so terrible.
In addition to the Fatebound role, I'd say that La Malinche is a textbook example of a 1-dot Guide. A competent mortal useful in certain situations (she was not only fluent in Nahuatl but she knew the "lordly speech" and customs that allowed Cortez to communicate with, and manipulate, the Aztec upper echelon
DeleteI certainly understand that even in Scion, not everything has to be divine. However, I am of the opinion that in a world where the children of the gods are an established fact, then maybe a few historical figures might be in that number. Not all. Just a few. And I wouldn't be surprised if Cortez was one of those few.
Him and Theodore Roosevelt. That dude was a Scion of Odin. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
I like the keepers of the world, and having Cortez legend 12 makes sense from the rules point of view. he's still regarded/reviled as a legend even today for what he did to the Aztecs, so it makes sense he would have continued to gain legend up to 12 over the centuries no matter how he tried to hide. Also Quetzalcoatl siring him for the sole purpose of destroying the Aztec empire brings him more in line with the more "truthful" version you guys advocate over the one from the core book.
ReplyDeleteNot at all. Rules-wise, Cortes' Spanish ass should be stuck at low Demigod at best if he really was a Scion, because he never did anything else. He's remembered for a single thing - the conquistadorial invasion that eventually resulted in the subjugation of the Central American peoples - but he doesn't do anything else, and he definitely never does anything even vaguely approaching godly. He doesn't do things gods do, or even demigods do; he does one big thing, which is certainly impressive, and then gets old and dies. Gods go on to do godly deeds and continue to develop their Legends; Cortes, even if you do assume he was a Scion, never does. Being famous isn't enough to make you Legend 12, or else there are literal tons of historical people who should be Legend 12 gods by that standard. It doesn't make any sense.
DeleteOh, Quetzalcoatl siring a Scion for the express purpose of being a world-destroying douchebag is totally something he would do; he and Tezcatlipoca do that all the time. It's one of their major MOs. It's not that idea that's the problem; it's the idea that somehow that Scion who clearly never did anything more legendary than a human could have done would somehow be Legend 12. (And it also again brings up that humanity-is-never-the-bad-guy-it-was-always-some-supernatural-power idea, which I hate. Sometimes humanity is just the bad guy. Humans can be dicks to each other.)