Treason and Plot

Question: So I read in your fiction that Mixcoatl betrayed the Aztlanti and became a Titan. So why did he turn right then? Was it because doing it before the Titans escaped from Tartarus would have been suicidal?

The episode in which Mixcoatl begins his concerted assault on the Aztlanti appears in the story Drums of War, in which Sangria responds to her father's call to arms while Geoff is off learning uncomfortable truths about his Norse brethren. While we have had gods go Titan during game - Danu was one, since we already had a Scion of hers in play - Mixcoatl actually isn't one of them.

Mixcoatl was already a Titan in our game, and was locked in Tartarus with the rest of them. Why that was the exact moment that he fully roared back to ruin the Aztlanti's day is unclear; maybe he was late getting out of the prison, or maybe he was gathering his power and recruiting allies before making a head-on assault on the pantheon; Quetzalcoatl had recently been severely injured in an altercation with the Amatsukami and was mostly out of commission at this time, meaning that he wouldn't have been available to run interference between his father and his people. Whatever the reason, Huitzilopochtli and the rest of the pantheon were not surprised by Mixcoatl's attack. They had to have been expecting it to happen fairly soon after the sundering of Tartarus, and they weren't wrong.

Sangria and Huitzilopochtli both refer to Mixcoatl as a traitor because, from their point of view, he is the definition of one. He's Aztlanti by blood, the father of several of its gods and the maintainer of part of its universe, yet he is choosing to break every bond of sacred loyalty and duty to assault his own people and destroy the world they maintain. He is and always will be a traitor in their eyes.

Prior to Mixcoatl charging in to lay seige to Acopa, the Aztlanti were primarily trying to deal with Coatlicue, who was not being overtly dangerous enough for anyone to get away with hurting her for fear of being murdered by Huitzilopochtli, but who was also laying the groundwork to severely damage them in the future. With the all-out assault from the stars, however, almost all of the Aztlanti efforts have been turned to the war in the heavens.

Daddy Dearest

Question: What is Quetzalcoatl's relationship with his father like?

Complicated and uncomfortable, like many of the familial relationships of the Aztlanti. You'd think a people with so much Loyalty would like each other more - or maybe the fact that they're stuck being loyal to one another no matter what shenanigans they pull is what makes them so frequently cranky with each other.

Mixcoatl and Quetzalcoatl are odd men out among the Mexica-dominated Aztlanti, since both are the major patron gods of the preceding Toltecs, retained in the new pantheon but no longer its most powerful members. They're also rather closely linked in function and associations; both are gods of the stars, a dicey proposition among the Aztecs, both are strongly connected to the sky and the cloud serpent imagery that goes with it, and both fill the role of culture hero and teacher for their respective eras. Other than Mixcoatl's unfortunate tendency toward mass murder, they have a lot in common and probably don't have too many conceptual problems with one another.

The best story moment to illustrate the relationship between the two of them comes from the Codex Chimalpopoca. When Quetzalcoatl is born, he immediately joins Mixcoatl's army, but soon thereafter Mixcoatl is murdered by his remaining siblings (why is not addressed, so you're free to decide that they were either afraid he would take them out like the rest of the four hundred and struck pre-emptively, or that they were just ambitious and out to seize his power for themselves). Quetzalcoatl immediately goes batshit and starts a war with his uncles, which ends in him killing them all and sacrificing their bodies on a temple that he builds in his father's honor. He also goes out and makes a point of finding Mixcoatl's bones, which his brothers had hidden from everyone, and bringing them home.

Obviously, this is not a son who is in violent hate with his father. But Mixcoatl is also a Titan, and a major impediment to Huitzilopochtli as the de facto king of the Aztlanti, so Quetzalcoatl is put in an awkward position. Most likely, he is loyal to his father despite not approving of what he's up to, and has to play a dangerous game between trying to keep Mixcoatl from doing anything bad (which he may or may not be any good at), trying to keep his pantheon from getting on Mixcoatl's case, and deciding which Virtues to roll if open hostilities break out and he has to take sides. It's not a comfortable place to be, but that's what happens when you have strong ties to both Loyalty and Duty and your family is not getting along; in fact, it's probably the same problem that Huitzilopochtli has in dealing with his mother Coatlicue, who is a dangerous person to have around but whom he also can't stand anyone trying to hurt.

From Mixcoatl's end, things are probably less complicated. While Quetzalcoatl is likely to be one of the only (or maybe the only) Aztec gods who can approach him on semi-friendly terms instead of getting shot in the face, he's likely to view Quetzalcoatl as subordinate to him and a useful tool for influencing things in the pantheon back home. He'd probably be open to occasionally helping him out, but it's likely that he'd have no qualms about doing very nasty things to his son if he thought he was betraying him to the other gods or taking their side against him.

Alas, almost all pantheons have some poor god who's stuck saying, "But that's my mom/dad!" when everyone else is going after a Titan. Some just have to suck it up and deal with putting their fractious parent down, while others - particularly those with Loyalty - may find themselves going a little crazy if anyone dares lay a hand on the Titan that gave them life.

The Innumerable Northern Serpents

Question: So what do the Centzonmimixcoa actually do in Aztec myth? Are they as antagonistic as the Huitznahua?

The Centzonmimixcoa, despite their more dragony and impressive name (literally "The Four Hundred Cloud Serpents"), are not as directly antagonistic as their nephews the Centzonhuitznahua, who attacked their mother in force and ended up the victims of a Huitzilopochtli-inflicted bloodbath. They are not directly violent, but they were said to have begun neglecting the necessary sacrifices to the sun and to have started getting drunk, being promiscuous and generally acting like socially unacceptable louts as far as Aztec society is concerned. Such disrespect and refusal to participate in the all-important running of the universe led Mixcoatl and his four closest siblings to take up weapons, ambush and kill all of them, whereupon they became the northern stars.

There are a few other anecdotal additions to the legend here and there - in one, the sun itself (and thus probably whichever god was in charge of it at the time, though the myth is uncertain about which world it occurs during) sends Mixcoatl after his brothers, while in another the sin that necessitates their death is that they attacked their mother Itzpapalotl (which is ironic, considering that after killing them Mixcoatl goes and fights her as well). In yet another, it's implied that Mixcoatl's own ambition played a large role, as he was not allowed to hunt large game since he was the youngest sibling, and removing his brothers meant that there was no longer any restriction on his power. There's also a sequel myth of sorts, in which some of the Centzonmimixcoa (which is not specified) return for revenge and manage to kill Mixcoatl, leaving Quetzalcoatl, his son, to take over rulership of the Toltecs.

Unlike the violent opposition of the Centzonhuitznahua, the problem with the Centzonmimixcoa is that they're refusing to be productive members of divine society; they're more comparable to someone like Tecciztecatl, who refused to sacrifice himself for the good of the world, which means that they weren't directly trying to murder anyone but are no less despicable in the eyes of a people who believed that their slacking off meant the whole world might blow up at any moment. Mixcoatl, who appears either sympathetic or ruthless depending upon what version of his motives you prefer, also comes out of the myth looking oddly ambiguous; are we glad he was taking charge to kick these failures' asses and restore order to the universe, or are we worried because he's on a fratricidal rampage in order to shore up his own power?

For the Aztecs, it's easy to come down on the side of worried, considering that he was the patron of the conquered Toltecs, aligned with the terrible realm of the stars and doing things that are suspiciously similar to what Huitzilopochtli, He-Who-Will-Not-Stand-For-Challenges-To-His-Authority, is usually doing. But Storytellers can always play with who was up to what and at fault; there are lots of options!

Bad Guys Doing Good Things

Question: Considering that the Aztecs thought that the stars were evil, why did they worship Mixcoatl?

The Aztec worldview, which it's easy to distill it down to "sun good, stars bad", is actually a very complex one. Just as some of the Greek Titans were worshiped alongside the gods as deities themselves, so were the Aztec "Titans" considered gods as well, tasked with managing parts of the universe to keep everything running smoothly. Not just Mixcoatl but also Coatlicue and Itzpapalotl were major figures with their own centers of worship; they weren't always pleasant, but, like all Aztec gods, they were still considered entirely necessary.

To the ancient Aztecs, the universe was created and supported by the gods and required constant maintenance by them to avoid collapsing. The purpose of blood sacrifice and worship was to feed these gods enough energy to go on maintaining everything - and that means everything, from happy butterflies and pretty girls to the awesome powers of the sun to the terrible dangers of the night. Stars are part of the Fifth World, howsoever much they are usually associated with scary and dangerous things, and therefore they need to be maintained as much as everything else. Mixcoatl is the guy who does that maintaining, as patron of the Milky Way and father of the morning and evening stars; without him, that part of the world might break down, and above all the Aztecs do not want any parts of the world breaking down.

The stars - the night sky in general, in fact - often have negative connotations in Aztec myth, but that doesn't necessarily mean all things associated with them are evil. The tzitzimime, terrible star-demons that devour women and children and rain ill luck down on the world, are one of the great bogeymen of the Aztec culture, but Quetzalcoatl acting as the morning star is a positive light in the darkness. And there are also figures like Tezcatlipoca, both a patron of the night and a supporter of the Aztec empire, a figure to be feared and a god to be worshiped. This isn't contradictory; it's just a good example of the fact that the ancient Aztec religion was not always black and white, and that some things, places and people might be simultaneously good or necessary for humanity but also dangerous or horrible to deal with.

While we often talk about Mixcoatl as the big daddy of the stars (because, well, he is), it's not the only thing he does. He's also the major patron god of hunting, making him the figure most worshiped by warriors and hunters who wanted his blessings and hoped to emulate him. Most of his festivals and dedications have to do with this hunting aspect of his persona; it's the part of his personality that most directly benefits humanity and is certainly less ambiguous than his role as patron of the stars, so (for the star-phobic Mexica, at least) it was mostly his hunting prowess that won him respect and worship. Sacrifices to Mixcoatl ensured continuing supplies of game, good hunting and enough food for the community, important for a people who spent a lot of their time as nomadic wanderers before settling in at Tenochtitlan.

Finally, it's also important to remember that Mixcoatl isn't a purely Aztec god; he predates the rise of Tenochtitlan and was worshiped in various other ancient Mexican civilizations before being absorbed into the Aztec pantheon. Some of those cultures aren't as worried about stars as the Aztecs; others considered Mixcoatl their supreme patron, making it hard to completely get rid of him in much of the empire even after Huitzilopochtli had taken his place as the preeminent god. My favorite example is the Toltec city of Culhacan; the Codex Chimalpopoca contains a particularly amusing story in which the Culhua relate that they knew that the Mexica were coming to conquer them and indeed got thoroughly conquered, but that the Mexica, in their quest to capture the cult statue of Mixcoatl and take it back to their capital, actually took the wrong one because they weren't as familiar with him as the natives. Classic Mesoamerican hijinks.

But really, as far as the worship of deities associated with scary or bad things goes, that's something that happens worldwide for various reasons. Gods are multifaceted, complicated beings who can rarely be accurately distilled down to simply Evil; the cultures who invented them are equally complex and usually attach many layers of symbolism and behavior to their deities.