#mayan village

[dbdbr6470]

[mexicanistnet]

This guide reveals Mexico's hidden gems: eco-friendly Mayan villages, surfer havens with artsy vibes, a lagoon shimmering with colors, and even nature's own surreal masterpiece. Ditch the ordinary, set-jetters — Mexico's unexpected side awaits!

[reasonsforhope]

Early mornings are chilly in Los Romero, a village high up in the mountains of western Guatemala. As in other predominantly Mam villages – Indigenous Maya people who have lived here since pre-Columbian times – households come quietly to life before dawn. Isabel Romero, a grandmother with long black hair, used to feel somewhat trapped in hers.

“I was afraid of speaking because I was cooped up at home. I didn’t go out,” she says, explaining that like many Mam women, her days were dedicated to the hard work of running a household with little money, and she rarely spoke with other women. “I worried a lot and had headaches.”

Residents of Los Romero live mainly from subsistence farming, growing maize, beans and squash, or grazing livestock. Almost 50% of the population is Indigenous in Guatemala, Central America’s biggest economy, but they do not share in its prosperity. Indigenous women in particular are discriminated against and dispossessed, with a life expectancy 13 years lower, and a maternal mortality rate two times higher, than the national average, according to the World Bank.

In Romero’s village and throughout the region, a community-based collective of women’s circles has been quietly improving Indigenous women’s lives, empowering them to find voices that have been suppressed through centuries of marginalisation.

It was a long process, but Romero’s headaches and fear are now a thing of the past. These days she gets out to workshops, meetings and women’s circles. She shares her knowledge of weaving traditional textiles on a backstrap loom and has a leadership role in the women’s group she co- founded: Buena Semilla (Good Seed).

The initiative emerged from Maya Mam women’s experiences, when French physician Anne Marie Chomat brought them together for interviews for her doctoral fieldwork in 2010- 2012. The simple act of gathering with others and sharing their experiences had a profound impact on the women, many of whom are still dealing with the traumatic legacy of Guatemala’s civil war.

During the 1960-1996 armed conflict between leftist guerrilla groups and the military, more than 200,000 people were killed, overwhelmingly Indigenous Maya civilians killed by the army. Another 45,000 were ‘disappeared’. A truth commission concluded that the state committed acts of genocide...

“There’s so much chronic stress and other issues that are not being addressed,” says Chomat, Buena Semilla’s international coordinator, who now lives in Canada. “So much healing happened in that space of women connecting with other women, getting out of their houses, realising: ‘I’m not alone’.”

Once Chomat’s fieldwork was finalised, several participants decided they wanted to continue meeting and with Chomat came up with the idea of women’s circles. With the help of a grant, the project got going in 2013 and now more than 300 women in two municipalities participate every week or two in circles, each comprising roughly 10 to 25 women.

Wearing traditional embroidered huipil blouses and hand-loomed skirts, the women gather, arriving on foot via the dirt roads that weave through the villages. They meet in a home or community building, or outside when they can for the connection with nature. The circle opens with a welcome and a prayer and then the group engages in breathing and movement exercises. Next up is discussion of the nahual, the day’s name and energy according to one of the interlocking ancient Mayan calendars, traditionally used for ceremonial practices. “Here in Santiago Atitlán it is only maybe 20% of people who speak about [knowledge of nahuals], so we are reviving it,” says Quiejú.

Then it’s time for the sharing circle. “More than anything, it is speaking what they have in their hearts,” says Quiejú. But every time and each circle is different, even though the leaders all work from the same guide, she says.

Sometimes circles will have a guided meditation. Sometimes they’ll have a workshop to learn weaving, or another skill that can help them earn money. Sometimes they eat together. Sometimes they cry. Often they laugh. No matter what, they generally end with a group embrace...

Only 1% of Guatemala’s national health budget is designated for mental health, and nearly all of that goes to the country’s one psychiatric hospital. Most mental health professionals are concentrated in the capital, offering psychotherapy and prescribing medications. For those in rural areas, there is little discussion of mental health or access to services.

“There is nothing for the preventative side, to work with families, to work with communities,” says Garavito. However, he emphasised that the concept of buen vivir (good living) among many Indigenous peoples in Latin America, which includes the traditional festivities, ceremonies and community of everyday village life, inherently incorporates good mental health. “Mental health is a fundamentally social concept and that has been a historical and common practice among Indigenous peoples, without them calling it that.”

...Financial constraints also pose challenges. Since 2020, Buena Semilla’s budget has been funded through crowdfunding and small grants. Staff and leaders all work part-time and many volunteer unpaid, but most circles now meet bi-weekly due to a squeeze on funds...

[Note: If you'd like to help, you can find out more and support Buena Semilla here, at their website.]

Despite the challenges, interest keeps growing. Elsa Cortez joined a circle earlier this year, motivated by her sister’s positive experience with Buena Semilla. In her mid-20s, she lives with her parents and as well as helping to run the household, she weaves belts, drawing from a basket full of spools of brightly coloured thread. She did not go out much before.

“There was a mentality that women were only supposed to be in the home or should only do certain things. That’s how we were raised,” she says. “My family was like that too.”

Thanks to Buena Semilla, those dynamics have started to shift in some families, including her own, says Cortez. Now she is exploring the idea of starting a circle specifically for girls, to help build their self-worth and self-esteem.

“It used to be difficult for me to socialise or chat, but now I am starting to socialise more easily,” says Cortez. “In the group I feel like it is psychological therapy every time we meet.”

-via Positive.News, December 8, 2023

[satoru-is-the-way]

Avatar!Quaritch x Na'vi! Reader. 

MASTER LIST (AVATAR WAY OF WATER)

" Given Enough"

(Series!)

SPOILERS FOR AVATAR 2

A/N: PLEASE READ. So I have decided I am in love with Avatar Rick Quaritch. I can't help it. So here is my mini fanfiction. I will be basing the character and her village on Mayan culture-ish because well I am Mayan. It will still have Eywa and all the Avatar stuff, just more in-depth to another culture and their ways. I may borrow some animals from Avatar TLA because of the tribe idea I have. So if you recognize some of the animals that's why. I will be using the Yucatan Mayan language but with translations side by side for their own dialect. Any questions ask me! 

Warnings: Smut(SOME chapters I will add a warning), cussing, murder, derogatory names, death, depression, and more when added. 

Tag List: @the-wanderer-2022 @zootsutra @anyzandy   @kneelingforvillains @dioriez @mylovelyreblogs @dinobae-replyacc @voodoogoul @freshmoneyalmondathlete @thedumboneforsomereason @world-dominating-kitty @scarletpines @sofiebstar @vampire-hunter @cypherpt5fttaehyung @strangerdeeznuts @simpingfor-wakasa @tranquiiit @ellieparker @girlblogger2002 @happycupcakeenthusiast @willow-sages

IF YOU WANT TO BE ON IT ASK! 

Summary:

(Y/n) (L/n) is the Olo'eyktan'a first born and future Tsahìk. She was raised to be a strong leader in wait of her time to be chosen a mate and take her mother's place. Their tribe is large in  numbers and strong-hearted. There is not much known about the people, the Kaminaljuyú. They had little contact with humans before Jake Sullivan sent them back into the stars. 

After a wounded Quaritch retreated he stumbled upon their village encountering (Y/n). She was unsure of him at first but saw this could be a sign of peace if she helped him. Her father approved of allowing him into the village for now. But Quaritch had his own plan. Why not fool the king's daughter? Use her to become the leader of what seemed to be the largest clan he had ever seen. Starting a civil war amongst the Navi would be the easiest way to get to Jake and the while Sullivan family,since human power cannot do it. 

But what happens when he falls in love? Does he follow through with his plan? Or stay dedicated to his kind, the humans? 

Chapters: 

1 -The Invader

2 -Flying is lesson one

3 -Seasons change (SMUT)

4-The Metkayina

5-Always the Fool

6 -Love (SMUT) (30th)

[probablyasocialecologist]

Scientists have uncovered the Amazon’s earliest and largest example of farm-based city-like settlements high in the foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes. The thousands of mounds, plazas, terraces, roads and agricultural fields — revealed for the first time in their fullest extent by airborne laser scans — necessitate a rethinking of just how complex ancient civilizations of the Amazon may have been, researchers report in the Jan. 12 Science. Over the last decade or so, the use of light detection and ranging, or lidar, in archaeology has led to significant discoveries in tropical climates, where ancient settlements often lay obscured beneath dense jungle (SN: 12/4/23). In 2018, researchers released scans of remnants of Mayan settlements in Guatemala, followed by Olmec ruins in Mexico in 2021 and Casarabe sites in the Bolivian Amazon in 2022, all which have been revealed to be metropolitan-like settlements filled with complex infrastructure (SN: 9/27/18; SN: 1/6/23; SN: 5/25/22). “It’s a gold rush scenario, especially for the Americas and the Amazon,” says Christopher Fisher, an archaeologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who has scanned sites throughout the Americas but was not involved in the new research. “Scientists are demonstrating conclusively that there were a lot more people in these areas, and that they significantly modified the landscape,” he says. “This is a paradigm shift in our thinking about how extensively people occupied these areas.”

[...]

Beneath the tree canopy was a massive network of roughly 6,000 mounds — once homes and community spaces — clustered into 15 settlements and connected by an intricate road system. The lidar data also revealed that the open spaces between settlements were in fact agricultural fields that had been drained to grow crops such as maize, beans, sweet potatoes and yucca. Within the settlements, the researchers found tiered gardens that would have kept some food closer at hand. Put together, the results show that the valley wasn’t simply a series of small villages linked by roads, but “an entirely human-engineered landscape” built by skilled urban planners, Rostain says. Dating from several sites suggests the area was inhabited for roughly 2,000 years beginning around 500 B.C. by at least five different cultural groups. A next step will be to calculate how many people might have lived there.

[tassjis]

I want to talk about the Vault Gods and my design process

Each idol was drawn as though they were statues or altar peices, something of worship not necessarily what the gods look like but what the villagers would interpret their looks to be.

First I wanted to ensure that they looked like villagers, or have a villager template. The initial drafts has them with their arms together in a villager pose.

Each design had multiple aspects I gave them, a material, a gem, a minecraft mob, and an item

Idona The Malevolent, kill and sacrifice the marked to appease this god

The idol is designed after cinnabar a toxic red material with high levels of mercury.

Idonas item is the vault hunters altar with reference and designs inspired by Mayan and Aztec sacrificial alters.

They are designed to look like a bat and a Wolf with lots of sharp angles and shapes, with cultish and sacrifical undertones

The eyes are rubies, a gemstone that symbolises life force. They are cut with a 5 point star facet and bezel with means the eyes are also pentacles, there is also a hidden sacrificial knife in the eyes.

They say experience makes you wiser, but is it wise to give it up for treasure? Sacrifice your experience and knowledge to Tenos the Omniscient to be granted treasure beyond your wildest dreams.

Tenos is made of silver or iron, a pure metal that is reflective

Tenos has the enchanting table book, a potion of enchanting and xp balls

They are designed with a lot of softer rounder shapes compared to its counterparts and is based on a polar bear with angelic bird wings to give it a wise and pure vibe.

The eyes are sapphires, with a gemstone meaning of focus and inner vision. Tenos also is the one one to wear a gemstone accessory to give the allusion to a third eye.

Velara The Benevolent, sacrifice your health, sacrifice yourself to appease Velara, only then will you gain the riches

The idol is designed to look like oxidised copper. I wanted Valara to look like an old and ancient god from a forgotten religion, the kind where you find a forgotten statue in a forest overgrown with new life.

The like all the idols, it focuses on a theme relating to what you use to open the altars, so Valaras design is health or in this case life.

Velara has the fern and tall grass as its minecraft item.

Initially designed to be more rabbit like the design ended up becoming vague in animal and more bug like.

The eyes on Valara are emeralds that symbolise rebirth and growth.

Wendarr The Timekeeper, you only have limited time, will you sacrifice some of it to this god for riches?

Wendarr is a brass idol, a very common metal for clocks and timepieces to be made from.

Wendarr is designed to look the most like a villager with wings similar to that of DaVincis flying machine.

Unlike the other gods, Wendarr did not receive a minecraft item as I felt the minecraft clock did not fit the ancient and old aesthetic. Instead, they received an hourglass and an alluded clock face in the background, and some rococo inspired designs in the foreground.

The eyes are made of topaz, which apparently stands for manifesting clarity and astrology?

Anyway that's my thought process and some small details about each God and my designs.

[dailyoverview]

Until the early 1990s, Tulum was a quiet village on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Known for its beaches and well-preserved Mayan ruins, the community has swelled in recent years to accommodate a rapid increase in tourism. It’s population grew from 3,000 in 1995 to over 46,000 in 2020, and its infrastructure now includes hotels, restaurants and bars, boutiques, and gyms.

20.214722°, -87.428889°

Source imagery: NASA / Google Timelapse / Planet

[friendswithclay]

“A 12-year-old boy in the village of llobasco paints original Mayan designs on clay plates before they are fired a second time. This type of pottery is both sold within El Salvador and exported to regional and international markets.”

Courtesy of United Nations

From: “El Salvador in pictures” by Haverstock, Nathan A; 1987.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #11 – The Maya (10th Edition) by Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston

My second proper history book of the year, and significantly better than the first! This existed on the happy intersection of ‘the r/AskHistorian’s big list of recommenced works on Goodreads’ and ‘stuff my public library inexplicably has a copy of’. It’s dense and more than a bit dry reading, enough that I read it over the course of a week as a side-dish to more digestible fiction. Still, fascinating read, and a book that left more far better informed about the subject than when I started it.

The book is more or less what it says on the tin – a survey of the history of the Maya (or at least the current state of what’s known about it). The book opens with an explanation of the Maya language family, the relevant geography, the characteristics of the high- and lowlands, and the division into northern, central and southern area the field seems to use generally. The better part of it is then arranged chronologically, beginning with the Archaic Period, through the Pre-Classic and Classic, then then Collapse and the Post-Classic. The Spanish Conquest and history since gets a very abbreviated epilogue, ending with a few micro-anthropologies of different contemporary villages and then a five-page travellers’ guide to the most important sites and how to access them.

It’s all, as I said, quite dense – the sort of book where every paragraph adds at least one new important fact and very little time is spent on repetition or review. Combined with the usually very dry, expository tone, it feels much more like a textbook to be read with a lecturer or group to break down and dig into each section than something that was really written to be read alone and for pleasure. Which you know, makes sense, given that this is the tenth edition of a book originally written several decades before I was born.

Now, I say this is a history book, but that’s honestly a bit of a kludge – better to say it’s an archaeology book or, failing that, about anthropology and historiography. There is very little narativizing, and it is very much told from the point of view of the present. That is, the sections are organized chronologically, but within them the unit of analysis is the archaeological site, with every supposition explained as emerging from the analysis of some ruin or artifact or fragment of text. Far more time is spent on the architecture and layout of Mayan cities than the people who actually lived within them, simply because the author’s have so much more to say about them.

It’s only really in the chapters on the Classic (and, to a much lesser extent, post-classic) periods that the book goes from theorizing about building and pottery styles to speaking more confidently about royal courts and high politics and dynastic grandeur, and above all the attempts to give specific particular people a sense of personality and personal biographies that you generally expect out of a pop history book. Which does make sense, given that those are the only periods where we really have enough textual evidence to confidently name and ascribe significance to any particular people – overwhelmingly dynasts and war-leaders, because of course those are the (almost invariably) men who constructed stelae and covered the walls of temples with testaments of their own greatness.

This means that you do get more of a look into nuts and bolts of knowledge production that you do in most histories – a passage about the development of chocolate drinks as elite consumption is framed with the discovery of cocoa residue on preclassic ceramic vessels, one about human sacrifice by the discovery of skeletal remains in cenotes near major architectural sites, that sort of thing. Similarly, just about every single discovery or theory is credited to one or a few specific academics who initially made it. Which will be either incredibly interesting or the dullest thing in the world, depending on one’s tastes.

The text is mostly incredibly dry and expository in tone, which makes the points where a real sense of personality and subjective opinion leaks through interesting. And endearing, at least to me, but I just find there to be something instantly likeable about the sort of academic myopia which considers human sacrifice and mass famine from the point of view of the universe but is roused to passionate rage by suburban sprawl building over unexamined archaeological sites.

I knew little enough about the specifics of Maya civilization going into this that just relaying everything that struck me reading this would turn this review into a novella. But the way that lowland urbanization and agriculture were based around, not rivers like just about every other culture I’ve read on, but cenotes (and artificially constructed simulacra thereof) in the limestone to capture enough rainwater to last through the dry season was just fascinating. The fact that, the region’s reputation for inexhaustible lushness notwithstanding, the soil the Maya relied upon was very thin and in most cases totally degraded after just a few years of agriculture as well. (Speaking of, the theorizing about how diet changed over the ages and how this related to population movements and density was just fascinating).

The book really wasn’t that interested in the specifics of mythology or divine pantheons beyond how they showed up on engravings and ornamentation – there’s no bestiary of gods or anything – but there’s enough of that ornamentation for it to be a recurring topic anyway. I admit I still find the fact that there’s this great primordial pre-classic god-monster which in the modern era is just called ‘Principle Bird Deity’ deeply amusing.

The book is deeply interested in the Maya calendar and time-keeping. Along with the monumental architecture it’s pretty clearly the thing that the authors find most impressive and awe-inspiring about Classical Mayan culture. There’s enough time dedicated to explaining it that I even pretty much understood how the different counts and levels of timekeeping interacted by the end of the book.

One beat the book kept coming back to (which I admit suits my biases quite well) is that there’s just no sense in the Maya were ever isolated or pristine. Cultural influence coming down from the Valley of Mexico waxed and waned, but on some level it was constant – Mesoamerica was a coherent cultural unit, and the similarities in philosophy and culture (not to mention material goods) between cultures within it are too blatant to ignore. The book theorizes that the population levels reached in the Yucatan before the Spanish Conquest really couldn’t have been supported by local maize agriculture, and instead cities were probably sustained by harvesting and exporting from the salt flats (among the best in the Americas) they controlled access to.

Even beyond trade, there’s several points where ruling dynasties were toppled or installed by armies ranging down from Mexico. The Olmecs and Toltecs make repeated appearances. Even the conquistadors conquest of the Highlands was really only possible because the few hundred Spaniards who got all the credit were marching alongside several thousand indigenous allies.

Speaking of – it’s really only an aside to an epilogue, but given I mostly know the Anglo-American history here, it did kind of strike me how...traditionally imperialist the Spanish were, compared to the more-or-less explicitly genocidal rhetoric I’m used to. If you were an indigenous potentate or ruler enthusiastically selling out to the Spanish Crown was significantly more likely to actually work out for you than trusting a treaty with the US of A, anyway (well, for a while. Smallpox comes for everyone),

Then again, the book does mention that the newly independent Mexican and Central American states in the 19th century were actually significantly worse for the Maya than the Bourbons had been (with things reaching their nadir with the genocidal violence of the 1980s in Guatemala), so maybe that’s it.

Anyway, the book is illustrated, and absolutely chock full of truly beautiful photography and prints on just about every other page. Even if you never actually read it, it would be a great coffee table book.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Constructing Local Indigenous Power

The re-newed hostilities by the Mexican federal army during the first weeks of the year, the massacre by paramilitary death squads of 45 innocent Tzotziles from the community of Acteal on December 22, 1997, and the continuous lies on the part of the Mexican government as it fails to comply with the San Andres Accords all share one goal: to destroy at all costs the EZLN initiated autonomous municipalities which geographically re-configure over a third of the southeastern state’s territory and serve as a model of self-determination for Mexico’s 52 indigenous groups.

On December 19, 1995, the EZLN, in a political-military action, broke the Mexican army’s encirclement of the Lacandon jungle and took over towns far beyond the conflict zone. The show of force shattered the government’s assumption of the movement as an isolated struggle of only 4 regions. The rebel army demonstrated that it politically and militarily partially controls 38 municipalities and, as part of this presence, has redefined the territory in the form of rebel autonomous municipalities.

EZLN Comandante Samuel explained the reason’s for why the EZLN decided to create these liberated zones, “It was an idea that surfaced in 1994 as a way of not having to interact with government institutions. We said ‘Enough!’ to them controlling all aspects of our community for us. By creating autonomous municipalities we are defining our own spaces where we can carry out our social and political customs as we see fit, without a government that never takes us into account, interfering for its self- benefit.”

Rebel municipalities no longer recognize government imposed authorities. Instead the villages democratically install new community and municipal representatives and present them with the “baston de mando,” the traditional wooden stick with which the communities grant chosen local leaders the right to represent them. The new spaces for constructing local power not only permit villages to create political and social structures firmly rooted in their Mayan past, but they also signal a new way in which indigenous communities relate to each other and to the Mexican nation.

A local authority in the recently inaugurated autonomous municipality “Ernesto Che Guevara”, located in the rebel territory “Tzotz Choj,” officially known as the municipality of Ocosingo explained, “We are and want to be part of Mexico and not a stranger to the lands that gave birth to us. We are and want to be part of the great Mayan nation that many suns and moons ago saw these valleys flower. We are and want to take part in the construction of the nation we desire, where democracy, liberty, and justice exist. We only want to be equal to others, not more nor less, and to be respected as indigenous people.”

Within the newly created municipal structures, the communities name their authorities, community teachers, local health promoters, indigenous parliaments, and elaborate their own laws based on social, economic, political and gender equality among the inhabitants of diverse ethnic communities.

In the autonomous municipality 17 de Noviembre, located in the region of Altamirano, educational promoters from the region’s 75 communities meet regularly through workshops and meetings in order to create the municipality’s new educational system. Those responsible for carrying out this monumental task, firmly rooted in Tzeltal history, attempt to write the municipality’s own educational materials, create a bilingual teaching system, train local teachers, and eventually provide non-governmental schools for the region’s 20,000 inhabitants. The educational promoters are accountable to the rebel municipality’s Education Commission, a body of community representatives democratically chosen to carry out the tasks related to education, and must periodically inform the autonomous parliament of the work’s progress.

The fact that the rebel municipalities define their own educational system, along with all other social, political, and economic aspects of the indigenous autonomous regions, does not remove the state from its responsibilities. If and when the Mexican government complies with the peace accords, it would still be required to channel funds, as it is obligated to do so under the constitution. However, the communities forming the municipalities would have the right to choose how these funds would be administered.

The EZLN speaks of autonomy, not as a separatist movement, but rather one that is inclusionary, that creates, as they describe in a popular slogan, “ a world in which all worlds can fit”. The construction of these autonomous municipalities signal the beginning of an alternative that allows local people to control a territory and create a new relationship to the state. It permits popular power to be created from below, reinforcing the EZLN ideal that “power is not taken, it is constructed.” Most importantly, building grassroots force presents people the opportunity to define and build the future according to their own vision and with their own hands.

Javier Ruiz, ex- member of the autonomous concession for the rebel municipality of San Pedro Emiliano Zapata, officially known as the municipality of Chenalho, explained the process of community empowerment: “Before we would ask the government to give us everything, and they would only give us handouts- some housing material, a little bit of money, a few sacks of corn. But now we realize that we can solve our necessities ourselves. That is why we decided to resist, to give birth to our own ideas. The communities created the autonomous municipalities so we could be free to create what our thoughts tell us, to create what we want according our needs and our history. We are not asking the government to hand us clothes, but rather the right to the word dignity.”

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site, the pyramids of Poltava Oblast. The first one is the pyramid in the village of Berezova Rudka. It is actually a tomb built by Hryhorii Zakrevskyi. He had been a diplomat of the "russian" empire who had been stationed in Egypt in 1894. He was discharged in 1899, and after returning to Ukraine, he had the tomb built. It combined Christian and ancient Egyptian symbols, including statues of the goddess Isis, who guarded the entrance. The second pyramid is in the village of Komendantivka and is based on Mayan pyramids. This pyramid was built by a naval officer of the "russian" empire, who had also been in Egypt in the 1860s, Alexander Bilevych. This pyramid was built as a church and named after his wife, Sofia, after she had passed away. It had three levels. The below ground level had three burial chambers. The first level was an Orthodox Church, while the second level housed a bell chamber.

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

[melancholia00]

These are my personal headcanons of Olrox’s life as a human. I’ve seen many posts and read fics about what was Olrox’s life before becoming a vampire and I did a little research of life as an Aztec which send me into a rabbit hole.

Without a doubt I think Olrox worked as a government official. Olrox worked under the Emperor Montezuna II or what the Aztec word for emperor was “tlatoani.”

The tlatoani ruled the Capitol of Tenochtitlan and lived in incredible palaces with their family and advisors. Right below the tlatoani were the tecuhtli. The tecuhtli were men of importance and ruled the city-states. They lived in palaces and greatly supported by the people and kept the empire running smoothly.

They helped the production of fields, served as a local military commanders, represent the people of local villages and city states, ambassadors and distribute taxes.

The tecuhtli were very wealthy and had palaces within their cities. They were dressed lavishly wearing jewelry, feathers and gold because they were of the noble class. And wore purple because purple symbolizes nobility.

In which Olrox still wears to this day with gold and emerald earrings, he wears purple and the cuffs of his jacket that have golden braces or runes.

Olrox having been a tecuhtli rings home for me because of the way he carries himself with elegance and swagger. And as a tecuhtli he made contact with the conquistadors. Olrox was probably the only one spoke against Montezuma II to not let these Spanish men into their lands because Montezuma thought of the foreign Spanish men to be gods and wanted to hear them out bringing them into the city to get information from believing they can be allies.

Olrox not a believer gods and easily saw this men on who they were: petty power hungry thieves.

Olrox has an uncanny way of reading people just how he read Mizrak like a joke on a popsicle stick he knew these foreign men’s intention right from the get-go. His plea was over ruled by the tlatoani’s decision to letting these smelly and dirty thieves into their empire.

Olrox holds great resentment towards Montezuma II for letting these foreigners into their lands and slowly watch the erosion of the Aztec empire in a span of a year. Watched as Cortez brought the empire down to their knees through lies and treachery destabilizing the empire from within by targeting other rival tribes of the Aztecs to join him. Turning tlatoani into a puppet emperor and Olrox forced to take orders from a foreign invader through Montezuma II. Forced to bow and placate to these dirty thieves and watch the empire break into a civil war while Cortez orchestrated the breech from within.

Only for Olrox to succumb to small pox. Olrox didn’t die and was turned into a vampire in mid to late 30s. As the empire weakened by the plague Cortez managed to build an army from rival tribes and his own back home and brought in vampires along to the new world.

Olrox having turned to a vampire found he had divinity in his blood that he had Quetzalcoatl’s blood flowing in his veins. As he watch his empire crumble he’d seen others fall too from the Tainos to the Arawak, Mayans, the Aztec and the Incas in a span of a few years.

Olrox honed his powers and speaking with Quetzalcoatl to bring him strength. Worked with the priests and learned magic through their teachings and overtime he manages practice his powers and fought against the invaders. Olrox wasn’t the only human who were turned but many others who were turned into vampires and Olrox became a leader to the newly turned vampires and fought the invaders.

Olrox saw first hand what horrors the Old World has brought to his land and vowed to never make that mistake again. Olrox was invited to France and he knew this time he was ready and had no puppet emperor to get in his way of his resolve. He fully intended to screw over this vampire messiah and had played his cards right. Staying away from the chateaux so he can have a better viewpoint from a safe distance and seducing Mizrak because he was the closest proximity to the Abbot who was a forgemaster creating Night Creatures using the demon machine.

Olrox knows how to identify a megalomaniac when he sees one and Olrox had every intent to screw her over but failed to deduce thag Erzsebet Bathory was not only a megalomanic but she was a megalomanic with the powers of a primordial god to bring down the sun. Olrox over the long centuries he lived did not believe in gods and grandeur because he heard it all before of men’s delusion to be greater than they really are and thought Erzsebet was no different and he miscalculated severely!

Olrox had bowed to many delusional men who thought they were ordained by god or simply higher than other men or far more worthy. He had to placate to their demands, praise them and forced to worship these colonizers and give in to their wishes. Olrox had done that countless of times as a human to bite his tongue and to humble himself. Make himself meek to these colonizers. After he became a vampire he promised himself that he’ll never ever now before a colonizing European.

When Drolta told him to kneel Olrox did as she wishes to bow before Erzsebet— to give her his submission. Olrox had never bowed in almost 300 years and forced to bow again. And this time he promises this will be the last time he ever bowed to anyone again.

[kay9leo]

It's hard being the new kid...

Sort of "modern" HL AU

Meet Iñaki "MC" Martinez Cariaga! She's the new transfer student from the United States. She was late for the sorting ceremony so she's currently houseless right now, hence the gray tie. Unfortunately for MC, her ancient magic is a magnet for attracting trouble and getting her into situations she rather not be in, sort of like Percy Jackson.

Fun Facts:

Normally her eyes are brown, but ever since she ended up in the UK, if she's around the presence of high Ancient Magic activity, her own ancient magic activates, turning her eyes a magical blue. They also turn that color when she's using it. At the advice of Prof. Fig, she tries to keep a small flow of it running consciously if she's not at a nearby ancient magical source.

She's also big runes fan! Since her family comes from both Central and South America, she has a big love of studying Mayan glyphs and Incans quipus (they use that instead of runes to conducting their magic). She also knows some indigenous words in Kaqchikel and Quechua; some for fun and some for spell casting. Seeing Norse runes in person was the one thing she was definitely looking forward when going to Hogwarts.

While she doesn't originally goes by MC back in the States, it became her deferred nickname/shorten version of her double surname Martinez Cariaga to use at Hogwarts. She's gotten tired of both professors and peers taking too much time to say it or have them accidently butcher her surnames (or first name even). Her nickname of MC is used so often that it gets to the point that barely anyone remembers that her name is Iñaki 🤣

Ancient Magic & Hogwarts Castle

I headcanon that the Hogwarts Founders were ancient magic users who build Hogwarts and never told anyone about their abilities. Since the place is humming with Ancient Magic, MC's eyes are always a constant magical blue. It's when she leaves Hogwarts grounds that she has to focus on maintaining that magical flow.

The Big Move, Fourth Year & the Reserved New Girl

Unfortunately, Iñaki's dad lost his job during the first layoffs of the Great Recession in early 2008. Thankfully, he had a buddy who hooked him with a new temp job in London, causing the Martinez Cariaga family to move across the pond from New York to London during the end of summer. While she loved the idea of traveling and going to Europe (and maybe even learn more about the different ancient runes used there), she wasn't too pleased at the idea of moving abroad and leaving everything she knows and loves.

Instead of starting her freshman year with her close friend group at Excelsior (NYS magical school system, Ilvermorny is the New England private magical prep school - the most famous, oldest and only school most people know outside the US), Iñaki is starting 4th year at Hogwarts.

Note: The words between "< >" is spoken in Spanish. MC comes from a Spanish-speaking Latino household. If the words are not in between "< >" assume she's speaking English.

6: At the end of MC's first week:

MC:

<¡Hola Mami!>

< I'm fine. ¿And you? >

< Nothing interesting happened this week. >

< ¡NO! ¡It wasn't like I fought a dragon or a troll this week. >

< ¡Just because I faced the Jersey Devil in 6th grade or the Headless Horseman in 7th OR befriended Champ at Lake Champion in 8th doesn't mean weird things always happens to me! >

<¡I'm fine Mami! Nothing happened...>

<¡I had to Mami! ¡He told me he wanted to give me a "proper Hogwarts welcome" before we started! I told him "That's how we say 'Hello' in New York." Made it too easy for me by saying his spells out loud. The prof said I was a great example of how magical duels are different in the New World with our non-verbals...>

<He was cool with losing. ¡Sebastián even gave me a tour of the magical village nearby and introduced me to the "dueling club" the school has! >

< We dueled together…¡It was fun! I almost forgot how much I miss home… >

8:

MC:

< I still want to go home. >

< No Mami. I don't mean visiting you guys back in London. Home as in New York. >

< ¿Why should I make friends if we're only going to be here for a year?>

< ¿It's only a year...right? >

< ¿Right? >

< I gotta go...I promised my classmates I'll study with them for our exam next week. >

< I love you too. >

"Bye."

*Flips phone closed*

*Ends call*

......

MC's trying...but she is rather homesick.

She's now stuck in Hogwarts and isn't too keen on making friends since she has no clue whether she'll be there for a year or not - it all depends whether if they extend her father's work contract and she's isn't keen on making friends if she's only there for a few months in her mind. It gets to the point where Sebastian trying to friend her is like an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object. (He ends up winning though when she accidently slips up and calls him her friend later on in the year).

For now though, MC is a very angsty teen right now and had her world flipped upside down.

At least she can take out her angst in dueling club 😅

I want to thank @myokk for listening to my ideas about my MC and to my sibling who needed to borrow my laptop for work (leading me to doodle and actually make a digital drawing on my tablet -that I use as a second monitor for work- since I couldn't edit some papers on those days). Without them this drawing wouldn't have happened.

I'm never doing this ever again because I a bit too perfectionist for art and I hated the number of layers I needed. It was supposed to just be a SIMPLE digital doodle!!!! Instead I made this 😭. Never again. I'm sticking to my pen doodles. I was bored out of my mind and I was either reading or doodling while my sis was testing out her new laptop and I was on stand by in case she needed me.

[iturnintoabear]

What to do with Druidic

Druidic as a level 1 benefit is a bit of a let down for those who play Druids. It's just another language, in a game full of languages, with no special abilities or properties to it other than it can only be understood by other druids. Like Thieve's Cant, it only exists for role play flavor if the DM chooses to incorporate it, but at least Thieve's Cant has an obvious purpose in helping thieves to commit crimes and shield themselves from authorities. Druidic has no such given purpose, which is why it's hard to figure out what to do with it.

Some options didn't become apparent to me until I was trying to build a witch character and trying to find interesting things to do with spell components and potion ingredients. Then I started reading about who the druids were and the roles they played in Celtic society. Then it started making more sense.

Depending on who you ask, druids were the priests, philosophers, ethicists, material scientists, astronomers, and/or judges in their society. People went to them for advice and counsel, for legal proceedings and religious guidance. Their wisdom was kept secret because it was all oral tradition which had to be memorized. They might have even been forbidden to write down any information relating to their druidic orders. And from that, the options emerge:

Instructions and warnings to other druids about the plants and animal species who live nearby, what their uses are, if they're dangerous, and how to tame them

Directions on who to avoid in a given village as a problem person, a trouble maker, or a source of conflict

Indications if the government is corrupt, the people are oppressed, and who the source of that oppression is

Signs for navigating through and away from the population centers so they/other druids don't get lost or get bad directions from the locals. Also any interesting or useful stops off the main road that might prove interesting or useful.

How do you convey all that in a way that the uninitiated can't interact with it? What does it look like?

Thinking from a modern perspective and what I could see of ancient druids today, it would look like Ogham markings on rocks and stones. Just a bunch of lines that are totally meaningless unless you know how to read them. Then there are other ancient languages with fun elements to choose from, like hieroglyphics and pictorial glyph languages like Mayan that could be used to say a lot with very little if you understand the symbols.

That led me into thinking it would be really neat if every druid during their initiation received their own glyph that represents them, that they use whenever leaving this kind of information about a place. And when Druidic is visible to other druids, this is what it means. They see and understand the glyph symbology and can gather a ton of information from it that other people can't see.

The more I think about this, the more I want to use this in my current campaign, which has two druids in it. I think they both would really enjoy making their own glyphs and leaving them in places.

[satoru-is-the-way]

Spoilers for Avatar 2!!

Avatar! Rick Quaritch x Navi reader

"Given Enough "

Series Master List

Tag list: @the-wanderer-2022 @zootsutra @anyzandy   @kneelingforvillains @dioriez @mylovelyreblogs @dinobae-replyacc @voodoogoul @freshmoneyalmondathlete @thedumboneforsomereason @world-dominating-kitty @scarletpines

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Angst, Mentions of Dead, Killing in a sort, depression, and maybe some more not sure I'll add it I find one!

Also lowkey not proofread lmao. ..Also this does Include Mayan language and such because me trying to represent my peeps. Love you fam...but low key had to add the flying bison 😭 y'all don't @ me

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 -Flying is lesson one

Quaritch wakes up only to meet (Y/n) beautiful eyes gazing down at him. Yesterday felt like a dream. He never imagined himself to be in this position. But anything to make Jake Sully pay for his sins. “Lik'en,” She said. He looked confused at her. “Get up.” (Y/n) repeats in a more annoyed tone. “We will have to teach you our language. You are like a baby. You know nothing of our ways.” This earned a simple eye roll.

“So I assume we will be going over the language barrier today?” He stood up slowly standing a whole foot taller than (Y/n). Mastering the language would be the hardest part; everything else he figures would be easy. In the marine core, they trained him for many scenarios, but the likes of Pandora had not been one. But how hard could it be? “Unless you have something else in mind, princess.” He grins a flirty tone. (Y/n) looked down. 

“No, first we eat and then we ride.” She comments. Quaritch follows her. She tossed him a rather odd fruit-like food. It resembles a dragon fruit but on a much larger scale. “Lesson one is flying.” Quaritch chuckled.

“I already have that down with my Ikran.” He bit down on the fruit taking in its sweet flavor. He truly liked Pandor and could not wait until it belong to them. 

(Y/n) chuckled also eating her fruit as they walked through the village. “No, I am talking about another animal. Bigger, stronger, and faster than any Ikran. We use the Ikran for many tasks. But  Kamimaljuyú has another way of flight. They are part of our clan and have been since the dawn of time.” She called out for her Ikran who soon arrived along with Quaritchs. “We have many sub-villages in our large domain. However, these creatures live farther out to the east.”

“SISTER!” Called (Y/n)’s younger brother landing beside her Ikran. “The Mamífero Ka’anal’s have just given birth hurry!” Quaritch has never seen anyone this happy before. He took a mental note that these Mamífero Ka’anals could be a weak point in this clan. He nods over to (Y/n) and they both take off flying deeper into the clan’s territory. Quaritch knew he hit the jackpot landing here. If he could mate with the Princess all of this land, people, and warriors could be his to command. “Hurry before the children find their soul animal.” Her brother, Balam, smiled. Quaritch’s eyes widen and his ears go back once the large creatures come into sight.

The humans had very little information about this creature. He could remember the small paragraph written over these ‘Sky Bison’ in human terminology. They were large animals of the sky, they belong to the air clans, every ten years they could be seen on migration, and they would disappear into the mountains never to be seen again. They land next to other Ikrans. He noticed many children possibly around 9 years old gather at the edge with food in hand.

“What the hell are they?” He asked. (Y/n) smiled softly seeing the baby Mamífero Ka’anal’s fly around their mothers. 

“They are the Mamífero Ka’anals Great warriors in the sky. Or as your people might call them Sky Bison’s as they resemble an earth creature. They are part of our family.”

“Why are the children here?” He asked, walking closer toward the edge. An animal like this in a war would be unstoppable. 

“In our tribe when children turn a certain age they are given more responsibility and utilities before they reach adulthood. Such as this. New Mamífero Ka’anal’s are brought here. The child and the Mamífero Ka’anal bond for life. Much like the Ikran, they will never have another owner. But if their companion dies they can ever fly again.”

“What do you mean by never flying again?” He asked watching the newborns fly down to the Navi children. They were so small and innocent, weak. An easy target. (Y/n)’s ears lay back thinking of the sad times a Navi died before their sky bison. “Did…I say something wrong?” He touched her hand. 

“No, it is a very sad time. We bond with the Mamífero Ka’anal for life. It is more than a connection to an Ikran. They become part of our family, we are friends for life on a spiritual level. If we are in danger they can sense it and vice versa. Our bond with them is sacred and blessed by Eywa.  If a Mamífero Ka’anal dies we can never choose another. But if a Navi dies before the Mamífero Ka’anal’s…” (Y/n) paused, “The animal gives up their will to live. It’s cruel and unfair how they work differently. They will lose all motivation to fly, live, and be happy. They will not eat or drink. Normally to avoid the torture of starvation we perform a ritual in front of Eywa and kill the animal in a humane way before we return them to her. Then they can live in eternal happiness alone alongside their companion.” (Y/n) whipped the tears which fell from her large (e/c) orbs. He felt bad not for the animals or Navi but for seeing her cry. The colonel shook his head trying to stop feeling sympathy for the enemy. Her beauty meant nothing in the end because his goal is to kill Jake’s whole family. 

“Hey, Princess, don't cry. In the end, they are happy, right? They don't suffer anymore. They are returned to their family.” He tried to comfort her which seemed to work. “So…do I get one?”

“Yes, but there are very few adults. Sadly in some cases when a Navi child does not make it to age, there are some who are left over. It is harder to bond at an older age. Mainly catching them but I can help you with that.” She clears her throat. “First be thinking of a unique call.”

“So these Bison respond to a certain call?”

“Yes, they do. Watch and listen.” (Y/n) cupped her hand over her mouth calling out to her bison (this sound). The colonel listened and looked to see the bison come for their master. Soon the large creature called back, flying towards the floating land. “Hurry!” She yelled running towards the edge of the floating rock before jumping off. 

“Fucking hell!” He yelled before following the Navi princess. How did she land smoothing on top of the Bison? "SHIT!" He yelled, landing with a thud on the animal's back. She laughed and walked up onto the large creature's head connecting her queue to him. He gripped onto the bison's fur. 

"Áramà! My beautiful girl! I want you to meet someone." (Y/n) smiled as the bison flew down to the ground below. 

"Was jumping off the cliff necessary?" 

"For dramatic purposes…Yes it was." She laughed jumping down. Quaritch follows examining the animal. He looked for weak spots. This creature would be a nightmare to fight. "Áramà this is Rick Quaritch." (Y/n) said. The Bison leaned over sniffing the Colonel. 

"Hello there. Áramà is it?" He was supposed to treat this animal like a native. It seemed intelligent. Rick noticed the silent communication Áramà had with (Y/n) maybe their bond is on a spiritual level. "So girl where is the other at?" He asked reaching up to pet the female Mamífero Ka’anal. She looked at Rick before glancing at (Y/n) making a few sounds that sent the Navi into laughter. "What's so funny?"

(Y/n) chuckled," She said she cannot wait to watch you fail." The colonel looks at the bison and huffs. 

---

Currently (Y/n) , Rick, Balam, and Áramà are above an unclaimed bison. "So Balam , she is your sibling?" 

"Yes I am younger though. Now focus. You have to drop down and make the connection quick." Balam instructed. "Or else it will not work. Just try and think gentle happy thoughts when connecting. Calm and command the Mamífero Ka’anal. When you are done I will help you fly him." Balam said. Quaritch nods looking at (Y/n).

“What do you say, give me a kiss for good luck, princess?” This caused (Y/n) to smirk and move closer lips near his. Quaritch felt his heart race ear going back.

“I said dont call me princess.” She then pushed him off. Quaritch yelped, falling off Áramà and turning around to land on top of his bison. It was quick how much the beast began to thrash around in an attempt to get Quaritch off his back.

“Ts'a a wóoli' yéetel beet le vínculo!”(Hurry and make the bond!) (Y/n) yelled.

“WHAT.THE.HELL.DOES.THAT.MEAN?” He called back. This was much harder than some Ikran. This beast had strength. Quaritch refused to let an animal make a fool of him. He needed to focus on the mission. With one mistake it would all crumble. With a loud war cry, he leaped forward and connected his queue to the Mamífero Ka’anal. The bull instantly settles down. “That’s it, boy.”

Balam dropped down chuckling,” Not bad for a human. I am surprised you didn’t die.” (Y/n) soon lowers her bison so they are riding side by side. 

“Now give him a name.” She smiled.

“How about Pup?” He asked, causing the siblings to chuckle.

“I like it. Now come on. Let’s teach you how to fly. They are much different from an Ikran.” (Y/n) smiled. 

---

It was now nightfall and Balam returned to the village on his bison leaving Quaritch and (Y/n) alone. The pair lands on the ground side by side before descending from their bison. “So how did you feel about lesson one?” She asked, nudging his shoulder. The colonel had trouble admitting he enjoyed today. Enjoyed being with the Navi princess. Also, her brother was not so bad, her complete opposite. 

“I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy myself. Today was a different one for sure. Pup here is rather pleasant. It is so odd how…I understand him even without being bonded I feel him. Hear him. Know what he knows.” Rick did not know Navi could truly be this emotional. Have connections not only with their forest but animals. 

“Well, then tomorrow we are going to dive deeper into more traditions and our way. Including our language which you desperately need to learn.” 

“So then I get my kiss?”

“Tch, in your dreams.” She blushed.

“I am counting on it, princess.”

Chapter 3

[salty-lemon-shark-from-the-sea]

Itotia: Her father is Acan God of Celebration and her mother is Teotihuacan Goddess of Spiders. She’s closer with her father helping him throw parties and eventually going on and hosting her own. Met her brothers cause of her mother who left them in her care. Became a mother to her brothers and her other demi-siblings, only there is so much she can do to protect them from other gods and goddesses. Has so many siblings they now have a small town full of them, which leads to other gods and goddess leaving their demi-children in her care at the village where they can visit their kids. Wears purple to show her status as the leader of the village, but still wears brackets and jewelry that villagers make.

Kukulkan Chan: Named after the serpent god Kukulkan with the last name Chan means “small”. He was named by his mother Teotihuacan Goddess of Spiders and his father Kukulkan the Serpent God. Knows he can't live up to his father so he made a casino to steal the mortals money and make his own fortune his way. Casinos weren’t really a thing back then so as time passes he does become more powerful, but still stays the weakest of the three. Uses his sister's party knowledge and his younger brother’s drugs to lure people in. Has a human disguise to go and gamble in the human world. When treated he will puff his hood up and use the face on the back to try and scare them off. Most of the time he needs Itotia to get involved. He’s their mother's favorite because she knows he doesn't have the power to over run her.

Xōchipilli: The Mayan god of sex, drugs, and music. He’s the more carefree one always somewhere getting high. The mushroom pours all over his body releasing a gas that can get anyone within the vicinity as high as a kite. He does find some fine music and forces his siblings to join him in a mini band that plays at his brother’s casino and some of his sister’s party. Loves his mother Teotihuacan Goddess of Spider, but not even Itotia knows who his father is. Once the drugs wear off he’s left in a drowsy hungover state that makes him look dead. (In my Au he also embodies withdrawal). He owns a sex club and has beautiful humans and creatures of all kinds, though his siblings do avoid the area as much as they can. Has colored flower and marijuana tattoos all along his arms with flowers and mushrooms growing out of his hair. Once he’s in his second state though the flowers and mushrooms fall off.