Oleletletl

Today we started our formal read through of the New Fire RPG, a game set in a world inspired by the peoples of pre-Colombian Mesoamerica. The image above is of the fire god Oleletetl. He was one of the five gods involved in the primordial struggle against the Ur-caiman Sipaktli, a crocodilian mega monster living in the primordial chaos sea at the dawn of the world.

First the gods fought Sipaktli individually. That did not go so well.

Then, the Earth god came up with a strategy that involved teamwork. Oleletletl bravely confronted Sipaktli, and sacrificed his foot to the beast as a distraction, so that two other gods could strike the monster. This teamwork was successful. The elements can work together.

When the gods slew Sipaktli, its skin became the land covering the primordial chaos-sea, and its back spines became the world's mountains.

This is how the first land was created for people to live on.

The gods of the New Fire are recognizably Mesoamerican, but they are unique to the game. Author Jason Caminsky explained to me recently that he didn't want to use the real world deities since people continue to worship them. Jason also wanted to create his own deities and myths based upon the ones he had learned about the Aztec gods. Myth creation can be very satisfying, and I think he did a good job with this in his efforts to create an original game world that is very much in the spirit of historical Mesoamerica.

You can see the traces of the historical deities and myths in the game. For example, the historical deity Tezcatlipoca played this foot-sacrificial role in the real world version of the confrontation. He's often depicted as missing one foot, like the deity Oleletletl above.

http://archaeology.asu.edu/tm/pages2/mtm21A.htm

A very mysterious jaguar-associated deity, Tezcatlipoca is also linked to some of the core mysteries of our own Xeno-Meso setting.

Tepeyollotl jaguar aspect of Tezcatlipoca