Bat on a Hot Tin Roof

Question: If you don't mind me asking about your games, I have a inquiry about Eztli. I've watched her Twitter with the humorous bat outbursts. My question is, when she does transform into her bat-self, does she speak and act like that to the band? Is she locked in a complete primal mindset? What is she like when the bat comes upon her?

Cuacitlali really is the bomb for in-game tweets. Sangria's just hanging out there not caring about much, like she does, but the bat has opinions and it will share them with you at the top of its voice.

Because of the way nahualli work, it's not really accurate to say that Eztli ever transforms into Cuacitlali. Cuacitlali and Eztli are equal halves of the same soul; they are the same person and both of them are always present. They can and do manifest differently depending on what's happening at the time, so often you'll see one of them, the other, or both at once, chilling in double manifestation. Eztli tends to appear as only (mostly) humanoid when they're in political or social situations where a bat would be inappropriate, usually because Sowiljr tells her to dial it down; Cuacitlali, being a bat, is also very cranky about bright lights and tends to not appear when things are too well-lit. In moments of heavy emotional stress or danger, Cuacitlali often appears by herself, with Eztli completely absent; it's in this form that she threatens enemies, bothers Sowiljr for attention or tries to eat people, because as the more emotional side she often overrides Eztli's natural indifference. Cuacitlali also tends to bust onto the scene whenever stars are present. She is, after all, the eater of stars, as she will tell you whenever prompted.

And, of course, they can also both hang out together in the same scene, which also happens fairly frequently. It's not uncommon for Eztli to march around with her band while Cuacitlali sits brooding on Sowiljr's shoulder, or for Eztli to tend her children while Cuacitlali keeps watch or plays with the littler bats. A nahualli is just a different facet of an Aztec Scion or god, not a different person or creature that must be summoned or transformed into; generally, Eztli and Cuacitlali are mostly interchangeable and can turn up in any combination, because they're the same person in the end.

That said, though, they do have separate "personalities" - or, more accurately, they manifest different facets of their shared personality. Eztli's all pragmatism, duty and law, and she's the part who drives getting things done, safeguarding her people and following the rules of the Aztlanti. Cuacitlali runs all the passionate and reactionary parts of the whole, and is the one who actually gets angry with interlopers, demands sustenance and complains about discomfort, or possessively hisses at anyone else who gets too close to Sowiljr. The bat can't really "come upon" Eztli, because Eztli is the bat all the time (in fact, thanks to Bestial Nature, they're not all that dissimilar-looking anymore) - the only time you could say it really came upon her was when she discovered it at her apotheosis. But the bat can take different "actions" than Eztli classic would have, thanks to expressing different parts of her personality that she wasn't aware of before she was aware of Cuacitlali itself.

But yes, Cuacitlali is pretty much all yelling all the time when dealing with others. She, like Eztli's more "human" half, operates primarily on instinct; the only difference is that she's emotional about it where Eztli usually isn't, so she tends to be more volatile and temperamental about it. She routinely tries to eat Folkwardr (or tries to convince Sowiljr to let her eat Folkwardr, anyway), snaps at and assaults other gods and magical creatures, whines about being hungry (her favorite thing to do is beg Sowiljr to let her bite him, because he's so deliciously magically tasty) and shrieks whenever irritated or angered, which is often. Nobody can actually understand her unless they have Animal Communication (Bat), so her screaming is usually confined to Sowiljr, Terminus (when he was alive) and other bats. Everybody else just hears this.

Both Eztli and Cuacitlali are pretty primal to begin with; it's not like Eztli was ever overly "human" to begin with. If anything, Cuacitlali's the more human half of the equation - emotional and responsive, as opposed to Eztli's brute-force instinct and disinterest. If Eztli had more qualities of humanity, so would Cuacitlali, but they are what they are, and neither is really ever going to understand or resemble mankind all that much. She's one of those animal gods that is closer to the beast than to mortal man.