Tools and Tips

Question: How do you feel about “The Aztlanti Toolkit” on the Scion forums? Specifically, how do you feel about Xiuhtecuhtli/Huehueteotl being a playable deity and their conflation together?

Hey, we know the guy who wrote that! Brent Not Broken is a good friend of ours with whom we've actually played Scion in the past, and who runs the excellent Modern Mythos Scion site. He is a scholar, wine-maker and gentleman, and he does good work; I remember lurking around on the forums around the time that he put the toolkit up, mostly joining him and GriffinGuy in complaining about the general mess of the Aztlanti treatment in the books.

As a generalization, I think the Aztlanti Toolkit is a fantastic resource. It's simple, accessible and clean, has lots of great information in it, and can help even the most Mesoamerican-clueless Storytellers be able to come up with fun and resonant stories for their Scion games. For those that don't know much about Aztec myth, it's a great jumping-off point and resource; for those that do but are confused about what to do with them in Scion, it does a great job of clarifying and providing useful ways to mess around with them in games. It gets all the major themes, deities and ideas out there in a quick, clean and useful format. It is generally awesome.

Of course, every Storyteller makes choices about how to handle certain things, so some things in it are slightly different from what we choose to use, but Aztec myth is itself often contradictory and provides a lot of options for various handlings, so that's only to be expected. But even where our opinions differ, both interpretations are usually just as valid - just little matters of flavor and setting choice. There's nothing in the toolkit I wouldn't be happy to use in a game.

As for Xiuhtecuhtli/Huehueteotl himself, I actually totally love the idea of making him a playable deity. I lobbied hard for his inclusion on the roster the last time we did our Aztlanti rewrites, but unfortunately we ended up not going through with it due to lack of associated powers and myths. He was definitely an important figure in Aztec mythology (and other Mesoamerican cultures - he probably has roots in previous mythologies as well), but he seems to be curiously underresearched and underrepresented, a phenomenon that we're not sure is because he's ubiquitous in cult but has little in the way of actual stories, because he's not a popular subject for specific study, or because we just haven't found the materials that really dig into him in-depth. If we ever manage to find enough on Xiuhtecuhtli to make him playable, he'd join the roster like a shot - he's unique among Aztec gods and represents a lot of cool ideas, and we'd love him to be there providing more player options. (Of course, as usual, players could choose to play one of his Scions if they wished, but they'd be operating under that not-much-XP-discount handicap that everyone seems to want to avoid.)

The conflation of the two is a place where we disagree with Brent, but we're not going to hold it against him. Aztec scholarship is rife with deity conflation, and it's hard to know where it's a genuine case of the gods being associated for purposes of Aztec worship and where scholars have merely drawn parallels between them and therefore decided they might be the same guy. Xiuhtecuhtli's association with Huehueteotl often seems to fall into the second category for us - the fire god appears in sculpture with two drooping old teeth in the corners of his mouth, something usually only seen on Huehueteotl, for example - but thanks to the lack of real information on him, we don't really know if that means he was meant to be a different form of the same deity or just artistic shorthand to show that both gods had some similar qualities. Some scholars say yea, some scholars say nay, we all have to make a call, and in this case we just made a different one than Brent did in deciding to probably treat them as different deities. We usually come down on the side of treating deities as distinct entities, actually, which is why we also avoid conflating Xochiquetzal with Xochipilli (or with Tlazolteotl, come to think of it) and similar identifications.

As the Aztlanti Toolkit actually mentions in its intro, using Mesoamerican mythology in Scion inevitably involves making choices about some of its contradictory or confusing points. We choose the ones that seem most interesting to us - having more separate deities instead of conflated ones generally being one of those choices, though we have accepted other conflations like Coatlicue and Chimalman - but it's something that every game has to make a call on. The toolkit's a great resource, and I recommend using it to anyone who wants a little help with their Aztec myth; just follow its advice and make your own calls as necessary.

The Ageless Flame

Question: So, other than the fact that the God writeup makes us Mesoamerican focused people froth in rage, what to do about Huehueteotl-Xiuhtecuhtli? He seems cthonic and distant enough to count as a Titan, but too benevolent for the role as far as his worship is concerned. Not to mention he's an important figure in their religion, ala Xipe Totec. How do we deal with him?

Hisssss, God writeup. It burns us.

In the first round, I'd probably un-concatenate the two figures; while they definitely have links and there is legit scholarship about them, Scion's probably better served if Huehueteotl and Xiuhtecuhtli are different people (though you could always write a cool plot involving his occasional transformation back and forth, the better to keep the world in order). They probably were originally two anyway and became conflated later, much like other odd pairings in the pantheon (Tezcatlipoca and Mixcoatl, for example, or Itzpapalotl and Cihuacoatl). If I'm going to consider Xochiquetzal and Xochipilli separate people - and I want to, because they're way more fun that way - then I'm probably going to keep the god of benevolent age and the god of fire as different dudes, too.

Actually, I have been on an off-again on-again campaign to get Xiuhtecuhtli onto the playable roster for the Aztlanti for ages. John keeps shooting me down, mostly with reasonable reminders like "he has no associateds other than Fire" and "there are no stories about him" and "none of our players have ever heard of him", but he's such a big deal that I'm still trying to figure out if he could possibly be a legitimate figure for divine parentage. I think I've got him on the ropes after the recent new finds under Mexico City included bazillions of little Xiuhtecuhtli statues - look! He's an important dude! Seriously!

But while Xiuhtecuhtli has some fun festivals and appears to have had a pretty close relationship with his people, Huehueteotl is a lot more of a distantly cosmic figure, you're right. If you aren't combining him with Xiuhtecuhtli, he doesn't really have much going on by himself other than being old and sort of grandfatherly, so he's not doing very much. I agree with you that he probably needs to be a Titan - but I'm not too worried about his benevolent aspects, since he doesn't have to be evil, just inhuman (that's a fun distinction!). I'd probably select him as a good candidate for a Titan of Death if you have one - he'd represent old age and death of natural causes, rather than the more violent and scary Avatars the place probably has.

He could also just be an old, crochety god who doesn't do anything but sit around in Acopa all day letting the young bucks take charge of things. He'd actually probably be a pretty hilarious NPC; I envision him totally taking advantage of the fact that the Aztec prohibition on alcohol doesn't apply to geriatrics, and possibly haranguing the other gods as they go about their business.

He/Both of him are a fun figure. I want to do more with him/them in Scion.