Griff's Aztec Alley: Huitzilopochtli

Next on our journey, we come to one of the weirdest paradoxes among the Aztec gods: Huitzilopochtli.

Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird of the Left (alternately, Hummingbird of the South) is the only god that is truly "Aztec" or "Mexican" by virtue of being the patron deity of the Mexica tribe that emigrated from the north into Central Mexico and tried to make a name for themselves.  At first, he was a very small deity, quite unimportant, but after Tenochtitlan became the seat of power in Mesoamerica, the religion was reformed to give him much greater respect and power.

Big H's role among the gods is a bit skewed.  It's kind of obvious that his worship had taken over the previous cult of Nanahuatzin/Tonatiuh, who remains in the pantheon with a diminished role.  Not to mention that the Spanish interpreters relied largely on the Mexica for unraveling the religion, which means that the Mexica's patron was given a much larger focus than he might have if another tribe was dominant.  Huitzilopochtli was a ginormous deal in Tenochtitlan, with the colossal Templo Mayor in the city square having two temples atop it.  One was for Huitzilopochtli.  The other was for the rain and fertility god Tlaloc.

Huitzilopochtli is also the god who gets a lot of press because of his penchant for human sacrifice.  While the numbers are skewed (Partly because the Spaniards inflated numbers to justify the invasion.  Partly because the AZTECS inflated numbers because they were proud of the care they showed their deities), Huitzilopochtli's feast days were a neverending parade of prisoners of war being dragged up a pyramid, whereupon their hearts were removed, placed in a stone bowl, and burned.  While other gods had odd and creative means of sacrificing their victims, none of them could beat Huitzilopochtli for sheer volume. 

Which, when you factor in that they thought that NOT sacrificing an army's worth of soldiers would bring about the end of the world as we know it, is understandable.


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Huitzilopochtli is one of the Four Tezcatlipocas, specifically the Blue Tezcatlipoca, who was associated with the southern cardinal direction (which was the "leftward" of the directions to the Nahua).  While we know for certain that the original Nahua sun god, Nanahuatzin, was supplanted by Huitzilopochtli, I've heard a number of people claim that Tlaloc was the original Blue Tezcatlipoca.  However, I've no scholarly confirmation of this, but it is interesting.  Given Tlaloc's immense importance in the pantheon and the juxtaposition of the temples, I'm half-tempted to make that fact canon cite-unseen (pause for you to groan at that pun.  Carry on).

Huitzilopochtli has a few epithets, "The Hurler", "Planner of War", "Maker of War" being among them.  Unlike his peers and brothers, none of them are particularly creative or flowery, most just stating that he kicks ass and takes names.  Which is just how he'd like it.

As with the other three Tezcatlipocas, the circumstances of his birth are twofold.  One simply says that he was born of the creator hermaphroditic god/dess Ometeotl, and that he was the youngest of the four.  The other, more AWESOME one, was that he was born of the primal earth goddess Coatlicue...

In this telling, Coatlicue was doing her usual duties on the temple of her sacred hill, Coatepec, sweeping the floors when she came across a ball of fluff.  She scooped it up and held it to her breast, and it immediately disappeared, and Coatlicue became pregnant.

Bad news there, because Coatlicue was married to Mixcoatl, and bore not only the other three Tezcatlipocas, but the warrior goddess Coyolxauhqui (She Whose Face is Adorned With Bells) and the Centzon Huitznahua (Four Hundred Southerners). 

(Brief aside, the Aztecs didn't think that there were only four hundred stars in the sky.  The Aztecs used a base 20 counting system and 400 is 20 squared.  As such, four hundred became a shorthand use for "infinite" in Nahuatl.  But in Scion terms, I think 400 Legend 9-11 gods as antagonists is quite enough)

Anywho, virgin births are one of those things that happen all the time in mythology, but are never believed to be real (so if your character is told there was immaculate conception involved, I'd at least give it SOME consideration).  So, since Coatlicue was obviously a loose woman who couldn't keep it in her serpent skirt, Coyolxauhqui came to the conclusion that happens distressingly often in real life: Murder the slut to restore honor to the family.

Well, one of the assembled gods, Cuauhuitlicac (Eagle Soaring over Water), wasn't too thrilled with this turn of events, but he wasn't outgoing enough to be the lone voice against this mob.  He went to his mother and tried to warn her what was going on and to get the hell out of dodge.  Well, Huitzilopochtli, who was still in the womb, mind you, told both his mother and older brother not to worry, he has it covered, and tells Cuauhuitlicac to let him know when the horde reaches the top of the hill.

Day of the battle comes, and Huitz and Cuauhuitlicac are still speaking despite one of them being in utero.  Cuauhuitlicac gives him several status updates before saying the crazy bitch was on the top of the hill.  What happens next depends on the source.  Either Huitzilopochtli is born just before Coyolxauhqui decapitates his mother, or just after.  Many depictions of Coatlicue show her with two serpent heads, which were usually the result of her humanoid head being lopped off.  Point of the matter is that Huitzilopochtli is born, fully grown, covered in armor and war paint and already carrying his iconic Xiuhcoatl.  He goes and whales on his big sister, and they slug it out for a while in a fierce duel before big H decapitates her, chops her body into a number of pieces, and kicks them down the hill.

Before the Four Hundred Southerners can even process this, Huitzilopochtli comes after them like a dingo in a maternity ward.  They can't hurt him or block him, and he just plows through them without giving a single solitary fuck.  Eventually, they decide to surrender, but Huitz is in such a murder frenzy that that doesn't fucking work.  They try running away, but they just die tired.  Finally, once he stops his impersonation of a combine harvester, Huitzilopochtli throws their remains into the sky.  Coyolxauhqui becomes the moon, while the Centzon Huitznahua become the stars.  Cuahuitlicac may have been one of the casualties, it's never made clear whether he was spared or not.  Knowing Big H, he may have been too much of a murder-maniac to care too much about who was getting killed.

Once established as the pantheon's resident head-breaker, Huitzilopochtli rose to prominence within the Aztec religion.  He became associated as the Mexica sun god as well as the war god.  Every single day, the trek of the sun across the sky was handled by Huitzilopochtli essentially re-enacting the battle of his birth, though more often it's referring to the tzitzimimeh star demons rather than the Centzon Huitznahua.  Point is, the sun is protected by Huitzilopochtli, who fights the stars along the sun's path with the aid of the souls of men slain in battle or in ritual sacrifice.  As the sun set, it was cared for throughout the night by the souls of women who died in childbirth (the female analogue to being a warrior).

Huitzilopochtli is quite explicitly the patron of the Mexica, having been brought with them when the tribe moved down into the Highlands of Central Mexico from Aztlan, a mythologized "Place of Herons" that was probably somewhere in the Southwestern United States, as we'd know it now.  And I mean that literally, they brought a skull that their head priest consulted, through which Huitzilopochtli gave them advice.  The Mexica rented themselves out as mercenaries to various city-states in the area, before they inevitably got kicked out for bad behavior.  The last straw came when they were staying in Culhuacan.  They'd had the best luck there, and the ruler of the city decided to give them a gift in exchange for their ferocity in battle.  Their chief said they wanted to become a legitimate tribe in the city, and have their own royal line (that is, a royal line descended from the Toltecs, which was the requirement for royalty in Central Mexico).  The city's ruler offered his own daughter as a bride.

However, Huitzilopochtli told them NOT to marry the girl, but instead for the head priest to sacrifice her, skin her, and wear her skin in front of her father.  This.... went over about as well as you might expect, and the Mexica were chased out of the city.  The survivors were driven to the swamps on Lake Texcoco, probably the worst land in Mexico at the time, and it was believed they would starve there.  Still, Huitzilopochtli told them that they would find a place to build their own city, and they would know where to build for he would send them an omen of an eagle killing a serpent.  They eventually found the eagle killing a serpent... on a prickly-pear cactus on a series of rocks in the middle of the swampiest part of the lake.  They decided to build anyway, and that city became Tenochtitlan, "Place of the Prickly-Pear Cactus", which is now Mexico City.

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Now, onto powers

Huitzilopochtli is one of the few gods who is mostly decent in terms of powers in the RAW.  In any case, the powers we know for certain he has are...

Epic Strength, Animal (Hummingbird, Eagle), Itztli, Sun, War

As with a fair number of Aztec gods, Huitzilopochtli is quite firmly associated with his animal totems, in particular the hummingbird, his nagual, and the eagle, which has a more empire-centric view to it.  He is clearly a war god, and he's associated enough with the sun that it makes little sense for him not to have it.  And, of all the Epics, no one can disagree that his skill at beating motherfuckers and throwing their remains great distances makes Strength the obvious pick.

Other powers may have various levels of wiggle room, especially in games like Lost Atlanta that pose a limit on the number of powers a God can posess.

Epic Dexterity - Huitzilopochtli is the most overtly physical of the Aztec deities.  Whether or not he has all three Physical Epic Attributes depends almost entirely on how permissive you are about what constitutes an associated power.  Of the three Physical Epics, the connection to Dexterity is the weakest.  The only thing that really applies is that he runs down the Centzon Huitznahua as they attempt to run away from him and his murder-frenzy.  I'm giving this one a NO.

Epic Stamina - While evidence for Epic Dexterity is weak, Epic Stamina isn't much better.  Being a stand-in for Tonatiuh in the religion, he sometimes gets conflated with the myth of dying in a fire to become the Fifth Sun.  Other than that, the most one can use is the fact that he faces down the night sky in battle every single freaking day.  It's a tough job, to be sure.  The question becomes, is that a product of Huitzilopochtli being an unstoppable force of Strength, or an immovable object of Stamina?  The more I consider it, the more it feels like the former.  I really think this is a NO. 

Epic Charisma - Aside from the Physical stats, this is the only other Epic Attribute that could fit Huitzilopochtli.  So, does he qualify?  Well, YES, he does!  Being able to charm Cuauhuitlicac while still a fetus is pretty cool, and he's convincing enough that his tribe is willing to carry him (in giant wooden idol form) and do what he says even when it's CLEARLY not in their best interests makes him a very Charismatic god indeed!  As Demmet mentioned in a post a ways back, he's not a "love me" sort of a charisma, but he's got oodles of presence that means that when he says "Jump", you do it and don't even realize you're doing it.

Death - While, once upon a time, I thought this was a dumb association for big H, time and thought makes me stand corrected.  In addition to being really good at killing things, Huitzilopochtli rules over an afterlife.  And, more than just ruling it, he's clearly involved with the dead, leading ghost armies against the tzitzimimeh and all.  This is a YES.

Fire - Huitzilopochtli wields a turquoise serpent made of fire that shoots spears made of fire.  I'm going to guess that he probably has a hell of a lot of Fire Boons.  However, he isn't a god of fire, and he's never seen as having fire as part of his duties or nature (and there are plenty of - mostly minor - gods who do).  He doesn't become fire, he just uses it.  NO.

Guardian - Here we go.  Protecting his people from harm is ENTIRELY Huitzilopochtli's business.  He protects his mother from his murderous half-siblings.  He protects Tonatiuh as he's attacked.  He protects the Mexica on their journey to find a homeland.  He protects the pantheon from the depredations of the star-demons.  He protects the ENTIRE DAMN WORLD from destruction.  If Huitzilopochtli doesn't get Guardian, no one gets Guardian.  YES.

Magic - The problem here is entirely in translation.  Huitzilopochtli is often referred to as a sorcerer or magician, but it's a result of the Spanish conceit that pagan gods = demons = magicians.  Magic as toying with Fate is not one of Huitzilopochtli's domains.  NO.

Leaving him with...

Animal (Hummingbird, Eagle), Epic Charisma, Epic Strength, Death, Guardian, Itztli, Sun (7)

If you want to include Stamina, I'd be fine with that, but it's not a good fit.  I'm not saying he doesn't have oodles of it, but the Ultimate?  Highly doubt it.