Carlos Salazar

I have mixed feelings about the fruitful void, but I feel like monsters really shine in it

Also, in a weird way, the different ways that these myths can be used is so fascinating, especially as I compare yours and @blackmarketpress.bsky.social ‘s version

Any ways that these stories can live on is a win

🧵13/13 Sources:
florentinecodex.getty.edu
www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-e...
time.com/5912689/libr...

🧵12/13 And the endurance, and the urge to create and celebrate, becomes the inspiration, because it has to be, as bittersweet as that is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to stat out a wicked wizard and his minions made from jaguar skulls so future adventurers have something to fight.

🧵11/13 So, if you are say, a modern Mexican American, working on creating adventures for a game that reps your gente, and go looking for inspiration, what you are met with is just another reminder of how since contact, your culture was under attack.

🧵10/13 The Spaniards were not trying just to obliterate Aztec religion, but everything. Destroying their books was an attempt at cultural genecide (sic)”

🧵9/13 As Ross Hassig, a scholar of pre-conquest Mesoamerica writes “the Aztecs recorded many things including non-religious things, such as censuses, property records, histories, and so forth that were not religious, yet these were destroyed too.

🧵8/13 The whole continent had a rich history and mythology, and among all those stories, monsters probably lurked everywhere, in myths that would have been written down. Hell, there may have been a bestiary or two. We won’t know, because all the books in North America were slated for destruction.

🧵7/13 (Also, despite the myth, the Library at Alexandria didn’t burn. The Roman Empire cut its funding, because autocracy has an old playbook)

🧵6/13 Four Mayan codices survive. Four. An entire culture’s literature represented by 4 random books. A scale of destruction that makes the loss of the Library at Alexandria seem like a coffee spill on a magazine.

🧵5/13 They went up in flame. There were an innumerable number of books (thousands? millions?) in the Americas before the conquest. Of those, a handful survive from each culture that made them.

🧵4/13 You can find a handful of others in the Florex Codex, and a few more in anthropological research and other codices. Why so few examples of strange creatures? Where did the rest of the monsters go, to put in your Meso-American TTRPG games like #MaizeBorg or #KOKOTÖNA?

An Aztec man happening on the tiny goblin Cuitlapanton, a monster who lived in piles of poo.

🧵3/13 Cuitlapanton is another monster from the Florentine Codex, a goblin who hides in poop and tries to scare you while you empty your chamber pot at night. She rocks.

🧵2/13 The picture in the last post is from The Florentine Codex, a manuscript by Bernadino de Sahugan, a Spanish priest, and one of the few places to find info on Mexica (Aztec) viewpoints, on monsters or otherwise

Image from the Florentine Codex, showing an Aztec Man with a word cloud speaking to the Night Hatchet, a headless man with a large opening in his chest

🧵1/13 This monster is called Night Axe, and he spooked the people of pre-Conquest MesoAmerica, his chest flaps sounding like an (you guessed it) axe as he stalked the woods. Come with me and Night Axe on a journey of #TTRPGS, monsters, and the largest destruction of information in history.

I think this is what some of the discourse around not rewarding morality in games misses…if you want heroic players and not murder hobos the game should encourage that!

Get Maize Borg here and help us reach our goal of $100k!!!

Ooooo, yeah that’s a great seed, or the players have to get each page of the book back, getting a different power with each one

It's beyond this post to talk about cultural sensitivity, but if you're unfamiliar, before you incorporate this into your game, please look it up and think through it.

Sources:
indigoarts.com/galleries/ot...

www.metmuseum.org/perspectives...

A codex style book of Amate cut paper

Instead of magic that's an off or on light switch what if you had to put it on an altar, or bury it, or feed it? What happens if it gets dug up, or taken off the altar, or what if it gets hungry because you have neglected it? Items like that are a a lot more interesting than a +1 magic sword. 🧵5/7

Two pages of Amate cut paper

This and other sources have given me thoughts about process. Because of a very specific tradition not even of European folk belief, but of European fantasy, TTRPG magic is focused mostly on magic words or practices, when in so many folk traditions it was material, based around objects. 🧵4/7

Amate fertility figures

Still of paper birds in Spirited Away

unfolding themselves to help a party, or from some hidden place in an enemy's cloak, much like Zeniba's paper figures in Spirited Away. Like those figures they could also have other aspects, both ally and portal. 🧵3/7

Cut paper pineapple spirit

The idea of paper magic, especially magical paper figures, I feel like is underutilized in TTRPGs, especially because it was so common throughout the world. Amate figures are interesting because they themselves are magical but also transportable. You could easily imagine one of these guys 🧵2/7

Cut paper of a plantain spirit

In Mexico, a precursor of papel picado is Amate cut paper, used to create magical effects before the arrival of the Spanish. I'm going to be sharing some of the figures that are still used today, and discuss how this concept might be used in your #D&D , #MorkBorg, or other fantasy #TTRPG. 🧵1/7

Alright, y'all. Im gonna be so real right now. I haven't had my meds in 3 weeks. I've applied for countless jobs and got denied state assistance. Please buy these things off me so I can breathe. I can hand deliver them at Commander Sealed if you want.
Rhystic - 100
FoW - 50

A pair of trousers giving you the Criminal side eye, looking like a mimic.

Image of Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror) with the caption ¡ORALE!

Role playing table to create the powers of a magic mirror it reads. **What does the mirror do (Each mirror works only once)? Roll 1dX** 1. Summons the spirit of an ancestor, who will answer truthfully one question that the character puts to them. 2. Transport the character to the nearest safe place. 3. Cast a room into darkness 4. Illuminate a room. 5. Transform your appearance to something innocuous until you speak. 6. Transform your appearance into something terrifying (Instant morale role from enemies) until you move your feet 7. Speak a sentence to someone else who has held the mirror. 8. Summon the figure that the mirror is crafted like, who will assist the player for an encounter/scene and then disappear (Roll 1d6 1. Child of Quetzalcoatl 2. A jaguar 3. An Eagle 4. Alux 5. An Imperial Warrior (1d4 for type) 6. A child of Cipactli) 9. Fill an area with water.

Role Playing table that that says how you use your magic mirror, and if it works. The text reads **How does it work? 1d4** 1. Put the mirror on an altar. The person who placed it there can use its effect once.. If the mirror is truly magical, if it is ever removed, suffer some minor calamity. 2. Break the mirror. 3. Cut your finger on one of mirror's edges (-1 Agility and Presence until the person person receives healing) 4. Sacrifice something of value before the mirror (mininum value 5 cacao or the size of a guinea pig) **Does it work?** Each mirror only works once, or depending on the roll never. When the player Roll 1d8 1-4: Works as described 5: Does not work at all 6-7: Has a random effect (Reroll on the table above, but keep some aspect of the original effect. For example if the mirror was supposed to cast a room into darkness, but instead transports that person to safety, a shadowy spirit may grab up that one player and take them to the nearest safe location) 8: Has the intended basic effect, but causes some hardship for the player.

Just working on a little something that GMs can use for #Maizeborg and hopefully #KOKOTÖNA or any other #Borg if they're interested
@blackmarketpress.bsky.social @elchupalabras.itch.io