Lord of the Left

Question: What are some of Huitzilopochtli's other names/titles?

The Aztec god of the sun isn't an Odin, saddled with a thousand titles and epithets, but his people nevertheless knew him by a few different names. His most common name, Huitzilopochtli, is usually translated as "hummingbird on the left-hand side", from huitzilin, meaning hummingbird, and opochtli, meaning left-hand. An alternative translation is "hummingbird of the south", which might refer to his place as the one of the four Tezcatlipocas who presides over that quarter of the world.

Other names include:

Inaquizcaotl - While this is given as a name of Huitzilopochtli in a few old Spanish sources, its etymology is unknown and no one is quite sure what it's supposed to mean. "Quiz" usually means some form of "outward", as in coming out, going out or emerging; "caotl" isn't a common word in Nahuatl and may be a mistransliteration of the more common "coatl", meaning snake. That would give us a tenuous translation of "the arriving serpent" or "emerging serpent", maybe referring to his use of Xiuhcoatl as a weapon.
Mexi - Although this one is debated, at least a few sources relate that Huitzilopochtli gave his name as Mexi to his people when he first led them from the wilderness. The name of their people, Mexica, would therefore literally mean children or followers of Mexi, and the name of the country, Mexico, would mean place or city of Mexi. Mexi is most likely a shortened form of mexitli, which refers to a hare, although why he would have that title we don't know. It may refer to a myth that hasn't survived to the modern day.
Paynal/Paynalton - This is actually technically the name of Huitzilopochtli's earthly avatar, who arrives on earth to interact with mortals so that the god's full glory doesn't blast unsuspecting humans. A neat example of a god in mythology actually using the Avatar Birthright.
Teoyaotlatohuehuitzilopochtli - The most formal of the sun god's titles, this mess means "Huitzilopochtli the Divine Lord of Warfare". Just think, his normal five-syllable name is the abbreviated short form.
Tetzahuitl - This title means "terror" and is generally used to refer to him when he's busting it up on the battlefield
Tetzateotl - Similarly, "terrifying divinity", making it clear that we're talking about a god. Who is also scary as shit.
Tlaxotecatl - One of the most famous of Huitzilopochtli's epithets, the "divine hurler" or "divine thrower", referring to his insane throwing prowess that allowed him to hurl his defeated siblings into the sky to become stars and hurl the fire of the sun from Xiuhtecuhtli.
Xoxohuic Tlacochtli - Literally, "the blue javelin", which probably refers to both the god's brilliant blue coloring as a hummingbird and his association with airborne weapons and attacks.
Yaotecuhtli - Literally "lord of war". Because that's what he does.
Yaotzin - This one just means "enemy" and is another war epithet of Huitzilopochtli's, referring to his tendency to trash opposing armies. It's also occasionally used to refer to Tezcatlipoca, although the inscrutable jaguar-god is as often his own family's enemy as anyone else's.

There are probably a few more floating around - shout them out if you got them! - but those are the ones I know off the top of my head. Ain't nobody got as many syllables in their titles as the Teotl.

Can You Tell I'm Thinking About This a Lot While I Work on the Maya Pantheon?

Question: So Huitzilopochtli is exclusively a Mexica god. Are there any other gods in the Aztlanti which also are like that, or are everybody else in the pantheon gods the Mexica got from other people?

You know, we've been talking a lot lately about Mexica expansionism and religious syncretism, and I have the feeling that some people may have gotten the mistaken impression that the Aztecs didn't actually have their own religion or gods and just worshiped a random assortment of things they'd conquered. This isn't the case at all, so I'm glad to have the opportunity to talk about it some!

Huitzilopochtli is indeed as Mexica a god as they come; he was the totem and protector deity of their people, the warrior that led them in war, the guidance that led them through the wilderness and the power they believed made them strong. In the era of Tenochtitlan, everything begins and ends with Huitzilopochtli, who not only fulfills the earthly function of protecting and supporting his people but also the all-important celestial function of shepherding the sun to stave off disaster.

He is not, however, the only Aztec god that is uniquely suited to and springing from their people. Tlazolteotl/Toci is also very Aztec, having been created in a specific myth in which Huitzilopochtli instructed the traveling Mexica to flay a foreign princess they'd captured so that he could deify her to aid them. Tezcatlipoca does not appear in all his insane one-footed obsidian-mirrored glory anywhere but the Valley of Mexico, where to the Aztecs he was the patron of nobility and one of the most important deities in existence. The fire-god Xiuhtecuhtli, lord of the end of the year and the ever-burning flame, is as thoroughly Mexica as all the rest, while on the other end of the spectrum the water-goddess Chalchiuhtlicue is unique in Mesoamerican myth with her stint as the sun and her tears of flooding compassion. Xolotl, the dog-headed psychopomp, appears only in Aztec codices and doesn't seem to have any real analogues outside them. And, of course, the massive antagonistic front of the heavens, most notably including the tzitzimime, Coyolxauhqui, Itzpapalotl and others is a strongly Aztec mythological setup, directly at odds with many of the other myths in the area.

But the idea that the Aztecs share and borrow a lot of myth from others around them isn't a mistaken one; it's all a matter of perspective, and also defining what exactly "borrowed" means. There are some gods the unquestionably appear in other Mesoamerican cultures that predate the Aztecs; the most obvious is Quetzalcoatl, who was a major patron of the Toltecs, as Kulkulkan/Gukumatz was revered by the Maya, and appears in art all the way back to the Olmec and Teotihuacan civilizations. The Feathered Serpent has been around pretty much as long as Mesoamerican religions have, and the Aztecs aren't the first to revere him. Similarly, thunder-gods that share marked similarities with Tlaloc also exist in the Maya and Zapotec cultures, and scary skeletal death gods definitely didn't start with Mictlantecuhtli.

But the key here is that, while these gods all share similar imagery, associations and ideas, they are still not actually the same. In fact, the Aztec versions of those gods differ in important ways that are unique to their pantheon, just as the Zapotec version of a god would have differed importantly from a Maya one and so on all the way back to the pre-Olmec era. The Gukumatz of Maya myth has no story of rescuing humanity from the underworld the way the Quetzalcoatl of Aztec myth does, and while Chaac and Cocijo look rather similar to Tlaloc as reptilian storm gods, neither of them ever functioned as the sun, and Chaac was never the personification of the earth of the Valley of Mexico just as Tlaloc never bore Chaac's iconic lightning-axe. It's possible that Tezcatlipoca is represented by Huracan among the Maya, who also has a missing foot and aids the Feathered Serpent in creation, but the two barely show any resemblance beyond that. They are most definitely related gods, obviously sprung from the same root, but they have also become different personalities and figures in their own right, each sculpted to the needs of the culture that held them in such high esteem.

And that kind of borrowing isn't unique to Mesoamerica at all. All of the Indo-European storm gods theoretically sprang from the same original primordial figure, but claiming that Zeus is merely a god that the Greeks "stole" from Indra would be silly, because Zeus and Indra have grown apart so far and become so entrenched in their home cultures that they are obviously not the same god anymore. The same gods have spanned across Asia for time immemorial, but that doesn't mean anyone needs to stop and tell everyone that because Avalokitesvara is originaly Hindu, that means that the Tibetan and Chinese and Japanese cultures that revere Arya Tara, Guanyin or Kannon aren't really real religions of their own. Dionysus, Osiris and Adonis aren't the same god just because they may have all come from the same dying fertility god root, and Aphrodite, Ishtar and Astarte need not be called the same simply because they all came from the same ancient Mediterranean idea of a love goddess. Gods were carried across different places by people who conquered other people, by the conquered peoples themselves, by trade and reputation and prophecy; this is something that happens all over the world, not just among the Mexican and South American cultures.

And just as strong similarities among religions in other parts of the world - like Zeus, Hades and Poseidon being dead ringers for Baal, Mot and Yam - don't have to mean that one people didn't have a religion of their own because they were borrowing another, so it doesn't mean that in Mesoamerica, either. The question of where to draw the line between different gods and different names for the same god is one that Scion deals with all the time, but for some reason, while we're fully willing to accept that Thor and Perun are different guys, there seems to be a prevailing feeling that the Aztecs are just the Maya wearing different clothes, with maybe some Olmec and even Inca thrown in for flavor. A lot of the blame for this falls on European expansionism in the fifteen and sixteenth century; most information on the native religions of Central and South America was sent back to Europe in entirely butchered form, badly translated, interpreted through Christianity and lumped together in a large, semi-differentiated mass of "the religions of the western heathens". The Central and South American mythologies never had the renaissance of serious study in Europe that folks like the Pesedjet, Aesir and Dodekatheon did, and the result is that that narrow, flawed conception of those religions, as the savage and ignorant practices of a bunch of savage and ignorant tribes that most people couldn't be bothered trying to tell apart, has remained for a long time and leaked into much of our popular culture. People have looked me in the eye and said totally seriously that it's a shame Scion never included the Inca as part of the Aztlanti, when the two cultures have almost nothing whatosever in common and aren't even located on the same continent. There's even a TV Trope dedicated to the problem, which is how you know that shit's serious.

So for Scion, the conundrum is of course the same one it always is for every other culture: how close it too close, and is it worth it to try to split these pantheons into separate ones or are they so close they need to be lumped together? For the most part, the major religions of Mesoamerica that are identifiably different are the Aztec and the Maya, which tend to eat up the other smaller pantheons in the area - either because that's what they did historically (i.e., the Huaxtec becoming literally part of the Aztec empire after conquest) or because they're so close that it's silly to try to separate them (the K'iche myths of Guatemala, which feature gods basically identical to the Yucatan Maya deities). You could also maybe throw in a third group with the Zapotec and Mixtec deities shoehorned in between the two; neither was ever as large or widespread, but they do have a few unique concepts of their own.

I'm drifting a little here, so let's go back to the Aztecs for the finale. They absolutely used a number of practices that are widespread across Mesoamerica (blood sacrifice, deity impersonation and so forth), but if you consider that borrowing from everyone else, you'd have to also consider the same of all the European religions that use similar practices to one another (oracular question-answering, livestock sacrifice and so on) to be doing the same thing. They definitely have some gods that were probably originally imported from elsewhere, but just as the originally-Canaanite Adonis has become a firm part of Greek myth, so those gods have gained their own unique status as Aztec divinities. Most Aztec deities are indeed Aztec (and remember, the Mexica were the ruling core of the Aztec empire, but there were also plenty of Aztecs who weren't Mexica!), and most of those that probably came from elsewhere have become so thoroughly nativized that trying to claim they're just a tacked-on addition from a different religion would be like trying to say that Nezha isn't really a Chinese god because he was originally borrowed from the Hindu Nalakuvara.

So really, the answer to your question is that almost everyone in the Aztec pantheon is as legitimately Aztec as the next guy, either by way of being invented for that religion and people or becoming so thoroughly part of it that they no longer really resemble the other gods that came from the same source. That doesn't mean you can't play with the possible tensions of absorbed gods within your game - far from it! - but it's never accurate to say that the Mexica didn't have gods of their own other than Huitzilopochtli, or borrowed their religion wholesale from others. Like every other major pantheon's religion, it developed over time as a result of various cultures and ideas interacting in a unique place in the world; it's no more a borrowed religion than any other.

Except for Quetzalcoatl, because that guy has just been big-pimping it up and down the Central American area forever. Whatever he's up to, it's bound to be a big deal to pretty much everybody.

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.

Source of Scorpions

Question: Who is Malinalxochitl's mother?

A mystery! Nobody knows, but there are a few possibilities.

Firstly, Malinalxochitl herself is something of an enigma. She's actually more often said to be Huitzilopochtli's sister than his daughter (we happen to use her as a daughter, but I imagine most games probably don't), and in neither case is her parentage discussed. This is not actually too weird for ladies attached to Huitzilopochtli; Coyolxauhqui, who is typically considered his sister, is also in some variant stories referred to as his mother or aunt. As one of the few Aztec gods with no firm consort or wife, Huitzilopochtli is in an odd limbo when it comes to female relationships; the only truly firm constant is that Coatlicue is always considered his mother, while other females in his stories are always antagonistic and dangerous despite being in some way related to him.

If you consider Malinalxochitl to be Huitzilopochtli's sister, then she'd by definition need to be a daughter of Coatlicue, his only parent. She's never said to be one of the Centzonhuitznahua and has no apparent star-connotations, but she still might be a sibling of theirs, most likely a daughter of Mixcoatl and Coatlicue like everyone else. I've even seen some scholar speculation that, if she were sympathetic toward the deceased Coyolxauhqui and her army, she might be intentionally making Huitzilopochtli's life hard and attempting to steal his people as a form of revenge against him for murdering her siblings. If you roll with that, she'd also be at least a half-sibling of several other gods, most notably Quetzalcoatl. There's much less to go on if you want to run her as Huitzilopochtli's daughter instead of sister; since there's no inkling who her mother might have been in that case, it's probably simplest to consider her an example of an ancient Scion who rose to apotheosis back in the day, and that the forgotten mother was some nameless mortal.

Malinalxochitl's name also turns up in accounts of the Acolhua dynasty of Chichimec nobility, where she is said to be married to a king named Xolotl. Of course, this refers to mortal figures who took on the names of their gods to illustrate their nobility and honor the deities who were their patrons, but if you wanted to mess around with what the scorpion-goddess was up to post-exile, you could always consider her to be the same figure, either as a goddess influencing mortal affairs in Avatar form or a Scion or servant of Malinalxochitl, doing her work in the World.

Star of Morning

Question: Can you talk a bit about Quetzalcoatl's relationship with the other Aztlanti? If their great nemeses are the Stars, and he is the son of the Star God and a Star himself, how does he get along with Huitzilopochtli? What is he like in your games?

Quetzalcoatl is somewhat long-suffering in our games. As one of the four Tezcatlipocas and a major mover and shaker in his pantheon, he's certainly well-liked and respected, but he has to constantly deal with Huitzilopochtli, who is something of a condescending jock to the other, less-important-because-have-you-seen-how-he-is-currently-totally-carrying-the-sun-around gods, and with Tezcatlipoca, who is as much of a pain in his ass as ever. He's more of a straight shooter with the Scions of the pantheon than some, but he's not involved in their stories as much since none of them are his children (and his own Scions, Kettila's friends Julio and Cesar, kind of got flattened in a major pantheon disaster that left him without much to do in that arena). The pantheon tends to call on him mostly to be the resigned psychopomp shuttling all the gods around, which he does with world-weary patience. He's definitely Up To Stuff, but it's mostly high-level metaplot that the PCs rarely, if ever, figure out.

As for getting along with the stars, he is in an awkward position; clearly Huitzilopochtli is tolerating him, but how much animosity there is between them is something for each Storyteller to decide for their game. In our stories, he tends to not use Stars powers around Huitzilopochtli to avoid getting punched in the teeth if his buddy isn't looking really hard at which stars he's aiming for, and Huitzilopochtli only mentions it when there are Stars powers like Red Star active that he needs him to shut off. It's an uneasy truce where nobody talks about the point of contention, sort of like an awkward family dinner at which everyone in the Whitebread family tries to pretend that Jimmy doesn't have a giant barbell piercing through his Adam's apple since he came home from college.

Gods of Sun and Sacrifice

Question: Could you please go over the Aztec associated powers overhaul? Some of them make sense (Quetzalcoatl gaining Stars or Tezcatlipoca gaining Chaos), but others really, really don't (Tezcatlipoca gaining Health... and Xipe Totec losing it).

Oh, my friends, you know I'm always ready to talk about Aztecs. Let's do this!

...and because I love to talk about Aztecs, I now realize after finishing this post that it's way too long for common consumption. Follow me behind the jump if you dare.