Frosty

Question: You have mentioned Itzlacoliuqui before. Who is he?

Geoff's favorite best friend in the whole wide world. Also, an Aztec god.

Itzlacoliuhqui is the Aztec god of frost, most specifically in context of the killing frost that occasionally decimated crops and food sources for the ancient Mexica, who lived in the Valley of Mexico where water and altitude conspired to make the climate cooler than much of the rest of the area. His is a tragic tale of misguided good intentions.

As the story goes, Itzlacoliuhqui was originally Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the god of the dawning sun. When the newly-created sun, Tonatiuh, refused to travel across the sky unless he was placated with more sacrifices, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli was so infuriated by his behavior that he shot an arrow at him in order to force him to move. Tonatiuh, however, caught the arrow and hurled it back at his assailant, driving it into his head, here the obsidian arrowhead permanently remained. The dawn-god's brains were thoroughly scrambled, and as a result he became Itzlacoliuhqui, god of the punishing frost.

It's an interesting story; not only is it one of the only ancient tales I know of that shows an ancient peoples' understanding of brain damage and personality changes due to trauma, but it also has a lot of cosmological undertones. As the god of the dawn, it's Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli's job to get the sun moving - that is, to literally make dawn happen. But it's also not permissible for one Aztec god to attack another when they're not enemies, and so he's punished for his action; but that action is a success, since Tonatiuh starts moving, and his transformation into Itzlacoliuhqui may therefore indicate that his original role, as god of the cosmic dawn, was no longer needed.

For our games, Itzlacoliuhqui has long been a Titan Avatar in our still-unnamed realm of Frost, where he specifically embodies frost that strangles, kills and inhibits growth and life. During Folkwardr's apotheosis story, he and Sowiljr were both in Niflheim and ran into Itzlacoliuhqui; being the do-gooder he is, Sowiljr recognized an estranged member of his in-laws' family and exerted all his charismatic might to convince him to leave the Titanrealm and come back to Acopa to be with his people. His efforts were met with mixed success - Itzlacoliuhqui was still crazy and dangerous to be around, and too fractured to be a lot of help to the pantheon as a whole - but it was a valiant gesture, and with a lot of time and magical effort, he was eventually restored to sanity.

The PCs are still debating whether or not this turned out well, considering that he caused several of them to be disturbingly deranged for quite some time, crashed an ice submarine in Jioni's house, has resumed his cold-war feud with Tonatiuh and is being suspiciously nice to them in a way they're afraid might spell disaster. Sowiljr's still pretty proud of himself, though.