[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/893273948526108742/904564647347232818/CHICOMOZTOC.png[/img]

[h3]Tlanextic’s Rites[/h3][/center]

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Chicomoztoc remained the grandest of all the [abbr=’First People’, a scholarly sort of word for the lava lizard species]Achtotlaca[/abbr] realms even on the day of mine own ascension to power, for this civilization is one of the oldest, having been founded early during the reign of Tlanextic by he and the seven great clans that followed him. And even as [abbr=King; literally ‘the one who speaks’][i]Tlatotoque[/i][/abbr] after Tlatotoque took power after the Divine One’s rule, the pattern being that each oversaw a more troubled and volatile realm, the borders were expanded at times. Even through its many wars and conflicts, Chicomoztoc grew in power over time.

--Tlatotoque [b]Teotl[/b], the first and Last of His Name

[center][h1] . . . . .[/h1][/center]

Understand that Tlanextic, for all his deification, remained still as mortal as any other Achtotlaca. So his brazen and molten form were not calescent; when the gods created mortals, they decreed death for us and allotted life unto themselves. Tlanextic’s fragment of divinity granted him long life, but far from immortality. As the years passed they exacted a toll upon him, and what was once entirely molten began to harden into a stony skin, and then he and any other Achtotlaca looked something alike. His innards cooled likewise, as those of our kind are wont to do with age, and afflicted him with a slowness of body in his later years -- the doom that all curse, but which so few ever seem to question, to rage against, to defeat as any other enemy.

Yet we must return to the tale. The legends continue:  Tlanextic was an [abbr=’Only People,’ a term for the lava lizard species that is reserved mostly for some of the earliest explorers and tribes][i]Iyotlaca[/i][/abbr] and so all those that he had saved from that Demon of the Darkened Flame -- all those that had sworn obeisance before him as they god and savior -- followed him as he walked the endless tunnels. Like the Iyotlaca of all the other places of the world, they charted the chthonic depths, they expanded and stabilized the tunnels too small and too dangerous, they tasted from the wells of molten salt untasted and named the great caverns that ‘til then had been unknown and unseen and unnamed. So they lived, in peace, for a long time.

Eventually their wanderings ceased when they discovered the surface, a frigid waste with great stony spires and treacherous ravines and gullies, and rivers of water. Understand that such a thing as water was entirely alien to the Iyotlaca. To encounter rivers -- not of warm, red flowing-fire but of cold and loud white-clear fluid that was poison to the touch -- that [i]rushed[/i] and churned was terrifying to them indeed. The only relief that they saw was the heavenly lights, the great sun, a fire so massive and so effulgent that it illuminated the entire surface with blinding light. Not even the sun’s incandescence could make the frigid surface bearable for long, so in those earliest of days they could only venture outside of the depths for short times.

Still, when they found a great cavern within the depths of a volcano, with a caldera that offered many easy paths to the surface, Tlanextic saw a holy sign: there was a grand circular magma chamber with a maze of labyrinthine tunnels winding all about it, and surrounding that central place were seven smaller lava tubes -- that was one chamber for each of the seven tribes that followed him -- and so he proclaimed that they would settle there. He named that city Chicomoztoc, the Cavern of Seven Chambers, and consecrated it as sacred. Grand farms were erected in the depths, and dikes and floodgates to control the coming and going of magma and regulate it even as the volcano slept soundly and as it stirred. Palaces for Tlanextic and the greatest leaders of the clans were chiseled into the stone, and temples were built too, with shrines to sacred Yoliyachicoztl, the mighty and indomitable sun, and to Tlanextic who was God-within-Galbar.

But they could not banish from their minds the memory of that Demon of Fire which did not Glow, just as Tlanextic did not truly slay that Smoke-made-Phlogiston. The beast had been defeated and banished, but not slain, never slain. Tlanextic was the first to remind them of that, for he Saw that it stirred yet somewhere in the hellish depths, and that it had to be kept at bay. Upon every so many passings of the sun over the world above, Tlanextic would remind them. In a sermon he would warn, [i]“That which is ember may become blaze once more, if it is not quenched.”[/i]

And then with basalt chisel would he pry a wound into his own rocky carapace, and offer a trickle of his burning blood to fall into the Galbar’s own molten blood. [i]“With this sacrifice of blood, I fortify us against the smoke, I strengthen the seal of light that binds the darkness,”[/i] he would say. And his blood was divine, and anathema to the demon, and so mayhaps his offerings of blood carried power that truly did trickle its way down to the depths and keep the demon weakened. Yet he did not explain [i]that[/i] technicality, and so in the coming ages there would be much sacrifice. 

The descendants of Tlanextic claimed to share in his divine power, and offered their blood in imitation of his fabled sacrifices that they could elevate themselves to something resembling the same lofty glory. Perhaps they did have some tiny bit of divine power to them, even. But the blood of captive [abbr=’Cold Ones,’ a word referring to non-lava lizard sapients][i]Cecepaltictli[/i][/abbr], taken from lands near and far, eventually became a staple of many great ceremonies. The ever thirsty volcanoes were offered rivers of blood, and the empire was insatiable, and yet the blood of mortals did not weaken the Demon of Ebon Smog, or lull it to sleep; such blood was powerless, yet palatable, and only served to rouse it once again.

And no Tlatotoque sacrificed so many during his reign as did I!

[hider=Summary]
Our pal Teotl continues his recounting of the tale. The city of Chicomoztoc is founded and briefly described -- it’s in a volcano with some openings that grant relatively easy access to the surface, it has vast subterranean farms, and some quite sophisticated system of floodgates and dams was built to keep the lava levels in check.

Teotl also talks about blood sacrifice, and how it began under Tlanextic. Legendary Tlanextic, for all his being semi-divine, was also shown to have apparently aged just like anybody else.[/hider]