Tezcatlipoca (WTA)

He is the Evening Star who crushes the sun under his foot and drives light from the land. He is the trickster, responsible for the wound that keeps the earth monster on the surface of the sea, and it is because of the wound that Tezcatlipoca inflicted that humanity must sacrifice its own to sate the monster’s hunger. He is a deformed beast, cruelly twisted by his own corruption, and since Quetzalcoatl’s exile, he has been dominant force in this kingdom.

His very name means “Smoking Mirror”, symbolizing the method by which he spoke to his subjects. A priest would stare into a smooth obsidian mirror until he fell into a trance. Upon entering this meditative state, the priest would see smoke rising from the mirror. By studying the plumes of smoke, the priest would be able to discern the future, sometimes even seeing visions of things to come.

Tezcatlipoca is not a simple force of destruction, wantonly slaughtering the innocent and laying waste to the land. Such simple destruction offers him no enjoyment, for Tezcatlipoca is a subtle god. With the exile of Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca was free to rise to power, in accordance with the natural course of things in the cyclic cosmology of Mesoamerica. But Tezcatlipoca was not content just to simply be a cog in a great machine, knowing that inevitably the Feathered Serpent would return and crush him. He was determined to break out of the pattern and strike his own path across the sky, even if it meant tearing down the universe to do so.

As the master of mysteries and the oracle of the Mesoamerican people, Tezcatlipoca knew when Quetzalcoatl would return to land between the waters. Soon, his mortal subjects were asking him for the answer. Tezcatlipoca complied with their request, revealing the month of Quetzalcoatl’s return as well as the method. Quetzalcoatl would arrive, he announced, in a great boat from the east, and his arrival would signal the end of the Aztecs. However, Tezcatlipoca did not bother to reveal the year of his enemy’s victorious arrival – only the month.

When Cortés and his fleet landed in Mexico in the same month as Quetzalcoatl’s predicted return, Tezcatlipoca chuckled. He had planned this, having manipulated events in such a way to ensure the destruction of his people. When Cortés was welcomed into Tenochtitlan by Montezuma, Tezcatlipoca smiled to himself. When the Heretics who had followed the conquistadors over form Spain incited violence and began the abomination later known as the “Flaying”, Tezcatlipoca howled with pleasure. He collected all the anger of the dying Aztecs, all the fear and hatred of Ix Chel and his doomed band of defenders, and gathered it under his dark banner. As the ground of the Fifth Sun tore open and Ix Chel was cast into the Tempest, Tezcatlipoca redefined his very role in the universe. No longer a necessary and balanced force of change, he remade himself into a force of Oblivion. He ripped history from its predestined track and pulled it into a downward spiral, aiming all creation at the Void so That he might escape his predestined fate.

Reference

 * WTO: Shadow Players Guide, p. 48, 49