Coming into being sometime between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, the Aztec Gods have no name for their pantheon. Other divine tribes usually call them the Atzlanti. Capricious and cruel in a way that the other pantheons are not, the Aztec Gods are bloodthirsty, aggressive and violent. They most often sire Scions with mortals descended from the tribes that spoke Nahuatl, wherever such native peoples exist.

For the Atzlanti, continuity is more important than community or individuality. A specific human is unimportant. Likewise, a specific village, family, clan or nation is equally unimportant. The most important issue for this tribe is that the sun continues on its daily course, that the moon follows the sun in its appointed rounds and that the stars continue to shine on their proper schedule. Yet astronomical normality and regularity require bloody sacrifice, and even if the other Gods deplore the Aztec Gods' methods, they cannot deny that at least the calendar proceeds in its usual and expected way.

Of all the divine tribes, the Atzlanti are the least concerned with the dictates of Fate or the potential doom of the Gods. They are the most mutable of form, the most mutable of apparent purpose and the least suspicious of the ambitions of their Scions. Of course, part of the reason for their carefree attitude toward their children is their attitude toward pain and death. What better blood to spill to ensure the continuation of the sun's course than the blood of a glorious child of the Gods?

Huitzilopochtli:
*Black-faced, covered with blue tattoos and with a red-and yellow-feathered left leg, Huitzilopochtli is the Aztec God of war and the sun. He defeated the Four Hundred Southerners in his armor of cotton and with his four spears tipped with eagle's down, a turquoise serpent torch and a shield of reeds. Fond of earrings and gold jewelry, he loves blood that comes from dishonored warriors.

The Aztecs were his chosen people, for he roused in them a maddening love of battle and sacrifice. In modern times, Huitzilopochtli has worked as a blood bank technician, a professional kidnapper, a mercenary and a death squad commander. People who live through encounters with him recall cold eyes, a stern demeanor and a dangerous rage barely kept in check. Even as a man, he exudes a heroic, feral wildness.

Huitzilopochtli's Scions are usually similarly frightening. Even in relatively peaceful careers as ornithologists and ethnologists, their potential for rage is always near the surface. The Gods regard the Hummingbird of the Lefts children as assassins and storm troopers-front-line blunt instruments, not tools of great subtlety.
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Miclntecuhtli:
*Miclntecuhtli is the lord of Mictln, the realm of the dead and the spirits in the Aztec world. Skeletally thin, with black hair peppered with white stars, the God's claw-like hands are strong enough to rip souls to shreds. He wears suits made of bark paper, and his liver hangs out of a gaping hole in his abdomen.

In modern times, Miclntecuhtli has been a petty bureaucrat in governments and customer assistance branches of major corporations. The Aztec death God suffers from a permanent case of schadenfreude, and he adores the soul-destroying power that comes from confronting people with impossible barriers to actual help. Health care and insurance organizations are particularly delightful to him, and he loves making a mortal fight for something she wants, only to discover that she didn't really want it in the first place. Even in human form, his florid, disease-spotted face usually causes mortal to flinch when first meeting him.

Miclntecuhtli's Scions are slightly less bitter and angry, but all of them seem to take pleasure in causing some degree of suffering in others. It's part of their charm and essential nature. Few understand how miserable they are or that their father has made them in such a way that he can delight in their unhappiness.
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Quetzalcotl:
Quetzalcotl, the cleverest, most peaceful and least bloodthirsty of the Atzlanti, has been a priest and a king, a builder and a lawgiver, an engineer, an astronomer and a doctor-and that is his legendary persona. Pale, silver-haired and bearded, Quetzalcotl is tall and athletic, garbed in the brilliant green and red feathers of his namesake bird. Requiring a blood sacrifice but once a year, the God of the feathered serpent pushes mortals to create beauty and art, to live joyfully in the present moment and to achieve their highest ambitions both individually and as societies. He specializes in creating golden ages.

In modern times, this means that he rarely sticks with one identity for very long. He might be a painter in the morning, an elderly engineer in the afternoon and a first-time lover in the evening. He enjoys dancing until dawn while a digital calculator rides in his hip pocket, so he can calculate the tensile strength of a new skyscrapers steel beams on the job site the next morning. He is always beautifully dressed for the occasion (whatever it is).

His Scions are similarly energetic, with a hundred projects all racing to completion simultaneously. They inspire others to feats of artisanship and have an easy time creating worldwide cultural phenomena, from new trends in fashion to revivals of old musical forms. They are always on the edge of the next new and hip thing. They are also almost always exhausted, and their successes inspire bitter jealousies.
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Tezcatlipoca:
Called the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, Tezcatlipoca is the God of Fate and the bringer of discord and vice. Possessing great creative powers like Quetzalcotl, yet using them for negative purposes, Tezcatlipoca draws mortals into cycles of destruction and new creation wherever possible. His mirror, made of obsidian, shows the future and can predict famine, yet its images are distorted views, just as obsidian itself reflects distorted colors. He is always youthful, with jaguar eyes and a missing right foot, always devastatingly handsome and always trouble.

In modern times, he has often appeared as a gang leader, luring young people into dangerous adventures. Other roles include work as a performance artist or an actor, a soldier fomenting rebellion, an engineer plotting to start a new company, a corporate lawyer and a talk-radio host. His principal goals are always to stir up controversy and dismay, and he is very good at achieving his objectives. Tezcatlipoca's Scions are inclined toward similar labors, but usually for slightly different ends. Controversy for the sake of controversy is rarely good enough; most choose controversy in order to achieve particular goals.

They make good social activists and political operatives-attack dogs for the causes they choose to represent. Like their father's animal patron, the jaguar, they operate without being noticed until it is too late for their victims to avoid them. Few of Tezcatlipoca's offspring ever understand that they choose these roles to strengthen the fabric of reality, not as ends in and of themselves.
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Tlaloc:
*Tlaloc, God of the rains and clouds, has been around forever. The Aztecs inherited him along with Xipe Totec, and they have never quite been able to get rid of him. Goggle-eyed, big-nosed, with long canine teeth and a fondness for earrings, Tlaloc stands on the earth, in legends, to show the relationship between earth and rain for the production of crops and food. Unlike the other Gods, the rain deity receives sacrifices not merely to slake his bloodthirst, but to give him power to maintain equilibrium-floods at the right time, and drought at the right time, too.

Thoroughly delighted with the modern era, Tlaloc likes to travel. He's been a tourist in Europe and Asia, all through the Americas, Africa and even Australia. He likes talking about where he's been and what he's seen, but he becomes angry if you disbelieve him or try to put him off. He's worked as a cave guide, an archaeologist, an engineer, a doctor and a teacher-just about any job that allows him to get close to children and preteens. (Their hearts are more tender and easier to eat.) He loves drowned sacrifices most of all, so SCUBA instructor is one of his favorite professions.

Tlaloc's Scions tend to share their father's love of modern life and make use of the most up-to-date technologies, but they also believe strongly in supporting tradition. "The best of the old and the new" would make a good family motto for most of them. They genuinely like helping people, often taking jobs that allow them to be of service to others. Yet, they also suffer from dark desires and disturbing nightmares, which they feel almost invariably compelled to enact.
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Tlazoltotl:
*Tlazoltotl is a Goddess of filth, whether it involves water-treatment systems, physical human waste or the mental detritus of psychological baggage. She has the power to clean it all up and sweep it all away with her magic broom. Her favorite position is squatting, whether to defecate or to give birth to a child or to fornicate, and she can get anyone at all to tell her their life story, including all the evil and nasty bits. She is young enough and beautiful enough to tempt the most pious mortals to sexual lust and emotional ruin. That she is so eager to hear all the details of their lusts and darker emotions only makes her power greater. Tlazoltotl has worked in modern times as a clothing designer, a psychologist, a bartender, a social worker, a prostitute, a lounge singer, a kiddie-pop superstar, a garbage woman, a plumber and a cleaning lady. Do people explain or expose their most intimate desires to a particular profession? That's what she wants to be. People tend to idealize her when they remember her, but they recall that she was always emotionally distant. She never revealed much of herself while constantly asking questions about her admirer-victims. No one ever got to know the real Tlazoltotl; she was too busy stripping them of their most personal and most horrific excrement.

Tlazoltotl's Scions are similarly able to wring secrets out of the dark places in people's consciousness. They are excellent Dumpster-divers, finding it easy to locate useful things amid mountains of trash. Seductive yet emotionally unattached, they typically have great sex lives but have difficulty establishing genuine relationships.
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Xipe Totec:
God of maize and of seeds growing in the earth, Xipe Totec represents death transforming into new life. Like all the Atzlanti, he requires at least some blood to do his work, but he also needs a human or animal skin. Indeed, many of his most powerful arts rely upon wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim. Once he wears this gruesome garment over his own golden flesh, Xipe Totec is able to make gold out of nothing, to bring seeds to fruition in the ground, to command disease and health, to turn the seasons and to drive any titanspawn-or even Titan-from his way. In addition, he is able to take on the mortal attributes and skills of the specific being whose skin he wears. When laced into the skin, as a woman might be laced into a corset, he is able to become that person fully and completely.

In modern times, Xipe Totec likes being an actor and a musician. He likes being on stage and performing for people, though his acts are usually shocking to the audience and bloody, as he prefers to show the process of life, death and rebirth of which he is the God. He's also labored as a gardener, a landscape architect, a farmer and a rancher. People remember him as a loner who tends to keep to himself for long stretches in wintertime, while becoming gregarious and open in the spring, summer and autumn. Usually, he throws a huge party in mid-tolate March. One of his guests goes missing from this party for a time-at least until Xipe Totec can get comfortable in his new skin. He's got a million of them. Xipe Totec's children are equally interested in natural cycles of death and rebirth. They work with DNA and longevity treatments in laboratories, write poetry and novels designed to bring them a kind of immortality, engage in sexual acts specifically to bring forth as many children as possible and seed riotous gardens designed to produce as many hybrid plants as possible. They also chew their fingernails and bite their cuticles, and engage in deep psychoanalysis and past life regression therapy, looking to find out who they really are. They take on new roles and discard them easily, often becoming the spies and informants of the pantheon, but are never really quite comfortable in their own skins.
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