Question: I’ve read that in some cases an accomplished Nagual could steal the Nagualli of others. How would you handle that in your system?
Trying to navigate the murky waters of the traditional Aztec concept of a nahualli versus the modern Mesoamerican idea of nagualli is a tricky proposition. The two concepts are clearly closely related, but they don't always work in practice in quite the same manner; your question's a good example, because while modern folklore does indeed suggest that nagualli (human magicians) might steal the spirit-twins of others for themselves, we don't actually know of any examples of that in older Aztec myth. The traditional Aztec nahualli is literally half of a person's soul, the animal totem that everyone has but only the most magically gifted or important of people can interact with or harness. Huitzilopochtli is the hummingbird, Tezcatlipoca is the jaguar, and Quetzalcoatl is the plumed serpent; trying to steal that from them would be literally stealing a part of themselves, a much more enormous endeavor than merely stealing a normal tool or bonus.
Since nahualli are Birthrights in our system, it's easiest to just go with the folkloric flow on this one: in order to try to steal a nahualli, you have to be an incredible magician, so in order to steal a nahualli Birthright, you have to be Magic god enough to have the Steal Birthright spell. Furthermore, we'd require that anyone attempting to sever a nahualli from its other half would need to have all ten levels of Itztli, thus illustrating total mastery over the secret powers of the Aztecs. Once severed from the Scion, a god could attempt to rebind the nahualli to himself with Birthright Bond, but in the time that it was ownerless it would have its own free will and could do whatever it wanted, so he'd have to be careful that it didn't tear his head off for ripping it away from the rest of its soul. We'd probably also give it a resistance roll to try to fight off anyone trying to rebind it to a soul that it wasn't meant to share.
Someone attempting to steal a nahualli without being Aztec herself would have an even more difficult road ahead of her; we'd probably require nothing less than the Wyrd to successfully sever it from its owner, and even if she succeeded in in turn binding it to herself, it would probably be as a normal Creature Birthright, not a true nahualli. And, Aztec or not, it goes without saying that the political and social fallout from stealing a nahualli would be massive and possibly unsurvivable; such an act is an incredibly damaging attack on the person who loses their totem animal and a dangerous precedent for anyone to set, and the Aztlanti are likely to terminate with extreme prejudice.
If you're looking for a much lower-scale way to represent the idea of human or low-Legend Scion sorcerers messing around with the nahualli of others, you'll probably need a custom Birthright that allows them to do so (perhaps through creative use of the Fate Prison spell?) and they can probably only do so for the nahualli of people who haven't yet discovered or been able to interact with theirs, possibly only for short periods of time. Once someone has harnessed and become one with their nahualli, it's nearly impossible to ever separate the two again.
So a nahulli is kinda like a daemon from His Dark Materials? Though I suppose a Scion/god severed from their nahulli would not die.
ReplyDeleteYes, actually; daemons as used in Pullman's books are very similar to the classical idea of nahualli. The Aztec nahualli doesn't change form (it's generally supposed to be one animal, always, from your birth) and, while it can appear alongside its owner, certainly doesn't have to and might appear as its owner or not physically manifest at all; there are also very rare cases of a being (usually a god or incredibly talented magician) having more than one nahualli, something that doesn't happen with the fictional daemons.
DeleteBut generally, yes, most of how they're treated is the same - animal spirit-twins who are not just followers and companions but literally part of the person they are attached to, despite occasional personality quirks.
I wouldn't say losing one's nahualli (in the insanely rare case that happened) would instantly kill the person it happened to, but it would doubtless be very painful, confusing and/or crippling in some way.
I take it the Animal purview does not always have to work alongside the Nahualli due to the universal nature of it. For example, a Scion of Quetzalcoatl might, at Hero level, get the first couple Animal boons in "Quetzal" because of his or her father, but later on in his Scion career he may find that his Nahualli is actually a frog or something like that. Would it be possible to have boons in Quetzal, and none in Frog, and still have your Nahualli be a Frog?
ReplyDeleteI hope that made sense.
It makes sense!
DeleteYes, you can have a nahualli that you have no Animal boons for whatsoever; that's what happened with Kettila, who discovered that her nahualli was an axolotl but who had no Animal boons of any kind at all. Everyone has a nahualli (even though not everyone knows about theirs), so that animal side always exists even if you aren't especially aligned with it.
If you turn out to have a frog nahualli when you have no Animal (Frog) boons, it'll still be there and you'll still get some benefits from it, but it won't be as helpful to you as if you had the appropriate Animal boons. You won't be able to communicate with it, control it very well or take advantage of its Animal-enhancing powers, so most Scions try to pick up some Animal for it even if they didn't have any before.
(And definitely make sure you have Animal Ken, because if it doesn't even like you, it's going to be hard to get much out of it at all.)
But isn't the Nahualli a part of you? Doesn't it have the same memories, the same experiences as you, but represents a more primal, natural aspect of yourself? Maybe I'm reading into it wrong, but I figure if your Nahualli doesn't like you, it's less to do with your Animal Ken score and more to do with your self-esteem... I could be completely wrong though, because I'm going at this from a more Jungian perspective than what the Aztecs most likely thought of it.
DeleteIt's a little bit of a grey area, because we don't have very specific information on Aztec view of the nahualli, but you're definitely thinking of a more modern psychological idea here than they were. The nahualli doesn't have your memories - before you discover each other, you're connected but not together. You don't have all its spirit-jaguar memories of the first X years of its life before it got together with you, after all; it probably doesn't have your human memories, either. Most people go their entire lives without ever contacting, interacting with or knowing their nahualli at all, and in those cases there's no interaction between the halves of the soul other than their fundamental connection.
DeleteOnly truly powerful Aztec sorcerers, priests or gods are actually able to share direct contact with them. If you are one of those (which, as a Scion, you probably are by default), then and only then can you come face to face with your nahualli and harness it to help bolster your own powers.
From a modern perspective, we'd probably say, "well, it's part of your soul, not really an animal, so you don't need Animal Ken", but the Aztecs thought of it as very specifically animalistic - that's why it's always in an animal form, never anything else. There's a specific Mesoamerican concept of animals being more closely linked to the spirit world than humans that plays into this idea; the nahualli is you, but it's the animal you, not just a compartment in your normal human brain.
So we rule that if you want to understand and have a decent relationship with your nahualli, you'll need at least a little bit of Animal Ken. If you don't have any, it'll still be there - it's part of you and you're part of it - but you won't understand each other very well and it may not want to help you out as much as it would if you got each other better. It's hard to be really in touch with your animal side when you're generally bad with animals to begin with.
Ah, now I understand. In order to get the animal you, you've got to be a little bit more animal yourself, or at least get how animals work and think. If you can't cross over, then there's really nothing to be gained from the relationship.
DeleteIt's more the second half - you need to have some way of understanding or at least being able to be inoffensive to animals. You'll always get more out of them if you have Animal, but you can still get some bonuses even if you don't. But not having any Animal Ken would make it hard to be useful to one another at all. (Though most characters should have at least a dot or two of Animal Ken anyway - otherwise animals are just hating on you all the time, which is annoying.)
DeleteYou'll still get some bonuses from your nahualli if you have no Animal or Animal Ken, but they'll be less useful than if you were able to more closely work with them.
Makes sense. But I'm interested now in what you said about Animal Ken because I've never seen that ability played that way. I always so Animal Ken as your ability to have a connection and communicate with animals, so someone without Animal Ken wouldn't exactly be hated by an animal, but their interactions with animals would be limited to petting them or walking them in the case of a dog, but not being able to get a dog to stop barking or attacking someone, nor teach it tricks, and in the case of a wild animal, the animal wouldn't go particularly out of its way to attack someone with no Animal Ken, just that if they have no Animal Ken they have no way of stopping the animal (at least non-violently) if it decides it wants to attack them. I guess I just come from a guard that says that having zero in an ability (at least for regular people) is totally normal and understandable, with no serious repercussions, but that you don't GET anything out of it.
DeleteAnimal Ken is your ability to interact with animals at all; it's you understanding them and how they work. If you have no Animal Ken, you won't necessarily be a person who all animals hate, but you'll be totally clueless about how to treat them, which usually leads to them not liking you. You'll be that guy that pets cats backwards or smiles toothily at a chimp without realizing that's a sign of aggression. You can't help it; you're just not good with animals.
DeleteZero in an ability means you have literally no skill in an ability. Zero Brawl means you can't win a basic slapfight, zero Investigation means you can't find your keys that you just put down next to yourself, and zero Academics means you can't read or do basic math. You can skate by by having a lot of an Attribute to override your cluelessness (i.e., I have a lot of Perception so I can still find my keys even though I have no Investigation), but it's a skill you just don't possess. Most mortals have one or two dots in most abilities, though; if you want to be able to do or understand that thing, you need a dot in it.
Whether or not an animal likes you is based on your Charisma + Animal Ken roll. If you have no Animal Ken, you'll have no automatic successes, even if you're great at Charisma, so odds are that if you roll low or no successes, it won't like you very much and will avoid or be aggressive toward you. If you botch (which is a real problem for those with negative Fatebonds attached), it'll probably try to kill you.