Lady Death

Question: In my current game, there is a Scion of Mictlantecuhtli who's become a bit of a mummy-in-law's-boy after Mictecacihuatl was the one to visit him. I was wondering how you guys portray her in your games? Is she a major power in her own right (what with that whole Santa Muerte business), or is she always in her husband's terrifyingly gribbly shadow?

Currently in our games, she's busy being very irritated that Geoff's and Sangria's son won't stop trying to hit on her. Get off her lawn, Cuatecuani!

Mictecacihuatl is a neat figure; while we're pretty sure she's lower in Legend than Mictlantecuhtli, having fewer myths and records of worship than he does and generally filling a sort of complementary consort role instead of having a separate schtick of her own, she's still got some very cool stuff going on that games should feel free to explore.

To start with, she's one of only two Aztec deities (Tlazolteotl is the other one) directly said to have originally been human, and to have been "transformed" into a goddess by the intervention of the gods. In Scion terms, this might mean that she was actually a Scion herself (which of course begs the question: of whom?) who ascended to rather sudden apotheosis, but since her transformation involved her death and mortal soul's removal to the underworld, perhaps there's something weirder going on involving Mictlantecuhtli's powers over the dead. Unlike other underworld deities like Persephone or Adonis who lived to adulthood before being forced to attend deathly underworld lovers, Mictecacihuatl hardly ever had a "life" at all; she was sacrificed to Mictlantecuhtli as a baby, and raised to adulthood - whatever that means for a ghost - exclusively under his care. As a result, she probably has a pretty abnormal attitude toward life and the living, which she never really knew and may not properly understand or appreciate. She might be thoroughly wrapped up in the affairs of Mictlan, never having known or cared about anything else; or, on the flip side, she might be very curious about the world above, which it's likely she has no memory of ever experiencing.

The Santa Muerte cult is a whole can of crazy worms for trying to determine who's related to what and which things influenced which others, but we do in fact consider it a modern-day cult dedicated to Mictecacihuatl in our games. While it's likely that the roots of the saint lie at least partially with her husband Mictlantecuhtli, the preeminent underworld power, the transformation of the figure over time into a female one gives us a perfect opportunity to let the lady of Mictlan have some influence in the World. Even if she left as a baby, she was still once at least partly human and is a natural choice if one of the powers of death is establishing a modern cult among humanity. Certainly, the image of Santa Muerte as a skeletal woman beckoning the living to join her in death is a dead ringer for Mictecacihuatl.

We'd probably put her at Legend 10 for a default, rocking Death and Appearance as her associations, and we love all the possibilities to play with when it comes to setting her up as Santa Muerte. It's a neat switcheroo to see her become more popular in the modern day than her formerly most-important husband, and the change probably has a lot to do with the influence of Christianity (especially the figure of the Virgin Mary), the formation of various underground societies in Latin America and the shift away from the pre-Conquest idea of afterlife determined by the manner of death toward one that incorporates Heaven and Hell as determined by manner of life. Those are all awesome themes to explore in a game that involves Mexico, other parts of Mesoamerica or peoples from there no matter where they live, and is a good linchpin for plots exploring how the gods remain relevant and active in the modern day.

So, yeah. Mictecacihuatl is an awesome Aztec goddess lady and we can always use more love for those!