Big angry crocodile for you all.

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Height: 1200’ (365.8m)
Age: Immortal
Abilities: Divinity
Occupation: War god


Appearance

The priests of the beast charged from the brush, into the heart of the fighting. Warriors, who only breaths before had been sworn enemies, turned their weapons against wild giants towering a head or more above them, who wore only tattered loincloths, or nothing at all. But their arms could not cut the slabs of muscle rippling beneath impenetrable hides. Flesh that only grew tougher and more engorged with every poor soul they pulverized with their fists and feet and the monstrous clubs they wielded like toys. Until the deafening, world-shuddering blows of feet stopped them. Her blood-curdling roar, Her thunderous arrival, whipped them into a frenzy.


History

The firmament exists in an obdurate revolution, the endless cycles of creation and destruction, wrought by its makers’ many hands. They had lived upon their work countless times, each time living among the very people they had shaped and breathed life into, who in turn worshipped them as their gods. These gods claimed places upon their work for themselves, molded them into domains in which they were the undisputed masters of all. Some were merciful deities who took great interest in the lives of their people, and with patience and care sculpted them into the ideal reflection of their immortal patron. Most saw their faceless many as a font of adoration, a source of worship and sacrifice with which they could strengthen themselves and gain leverage in the tug-of-war game of dominance they played against one another. And when they wanted more, they would demand their priests and priestesses and their followers to fetch people from the lands of the other gods to feed their ravenous appetites. Worshippers would clash and kill in their deity’s name; hate, hunger, and greed festered until god fought god while their battle ravaged the world around them. When their bickering and finger-pointing and cursing one another amongst the rock-strewn void that was once a world ceased, they would scatter then sulk in their domains and nurse their wounds. Then they would return to pick up the pieces, and rebuild what they had destroyed. Only for old grudges to boil into a jealous whirlwind that tore it all apart.

But after uncountable eras of seeing her work undone again and again, one goddess had enough. Cualani, goddess of warfare, defender of the hearth and home, called on the gods to break the cycle once and for all: rebuild, then remain in the heavens; let fate decide what happens to their creations. Do this, or be trapped by the cycle, forever consumed by desire. The gods were distraught and angered by the choice she laid before them. But with time, their frustration relented, and they conceded to her wisdom, understanding that long-lasting stability may benefit their worshippers, and themselves, in the long run.

All, save one.

Cualtzinacueitl, the god of rain and storms, quickly found himself the sole opponent of her proposal. One by one, potential detractors dwindled until all that remained was desperation. So he confronted Cualani, begged with her to call off her scheme to cut the gods off from their source of nourishment. She would not be swayed by his pleas to return to the old ways. So he plotted, and then returned with a proposal of his own: if she would not be persuaded, then why not be the hand that forms the next generation?

To shape mortals is to set the tone for the next cycle, determine the temperament of those that worship you, love you, and call you their god. And those who do not call you god will find themselves subtly aligning with your principles, nodding along in agreement of spreading your vision of an ideal world as they migrate to your lands, feed you the power to make that vision reality. To shape mortals is to leave your signature upon the world, a mark which all other gods must labor to wipe from the face of creation and strike from the minds and hearts of the people, your toil. He had just offered her a privileged opportunity, one that was not given lightly. How could she, a noble paragon of order, honor, and discipline, refuse?

He had neglected to tell her that pouring herself into that great work truly meant emptying all she was into each and every being that will inhabit the earth. All she was began ebbing, bleeding from her being into the clay she had unwittingly bound herself to. All that was Cualani would have been drained from a comatose husk, had it gone as Cualtzin had planned. But she held on. She clung to her suffering, the fury of betrayal, so that hatred would not taint her creations, so that she would not be snuffed out. And all that remained was wrath.

Cualani broke free and raged across the heavens, hell-bent on killing Cualtzin for what he had done to her. She had arrived to the scene of the schemer, the Sun, and Hueya about to swallow it whole. In blind fury, her blade arced through the void, hungering for Cualtzin’s neck, but instead it severed the war god’s head from his shoulders. In the horror that broke out, she was separated from her target by panicking gods. Furious that she had just missed her opportunity to kill him, Cualani fled. And it is in the dark where she lurks, deep within choking jungles, thirsting for revenge, awaiting the opening to end it once and for all.


Abilities

Rest is for the weak. Food and drink are beneath her, but the ceaseless craving for worship and the endless hunger for sacrifices compels her to seek nourishment from the essence of mortals to maintain her strength. But no sane person would willingly worship the living embodiment of slaughter. The scant few priests and priestesses drawn to her maddening power bring only meager tribute, bait they begrudgingly offer to distract their goddess from the battleground, her true altar of sacrifice. But the scent of blood draws her to the trampled, gore-slicked mud of campaigns mired in petty rivalries and senseless fighting, unable to withdraw from the field before the goddess and her faithful arrive. It is in these doomed conflicts her mad priests leap into the fray, exhorting their goddess as she slakes her thirst and gorges upon the worship and sacrifice she craves.

In cycles past, her strategic acumen was unmatched. Her territory occasionally faced invasions, worshippers of the other gods who sought to poach the unfortunate souls living along her borders to feed their ravenous patrons. She taught her people how to defend themselves and organize militias, stressing the importance of routine drilling and logistics to support their fighters. The leaders of these settlements who heeded her wise council were rarely bested, even against superior numbers. Those who showed potential would join her elite cadre. Blessed by her notice, she would tutor them, and they would be held in reserve for when a god and their zealots arrived to invade. The fearsome armies of her rival god, Hueyatototl, were powerless against her efficient maneuvers and the superiority of her well-drilled and disciplined warriors. Despite once being a close second to him in terms of strength and size, Cualani could duel him to a standstill, and at times even emerge victorious. But her strength since then has only increased with her fury, and her mass swells with new muscle and battle-scarred scale with every army she butchers.


Personality

Within the pantheon, there is no high god in the sense of an immutable and omnipotent sovereign who reigns dominant over lesser, subservient deities. While the god who ignites the Sun wields greater power and exerts more influence than they would otherwise command, it is a fluid and volatile position that only lasts until the end of a cycle – the inevitable end when covetous gods clash and destroy their beloved creations in a fit of jealous violence. But if ever there were an era of everlasting peace, where these unfathomably powerful beings would set aside petty grudges and douse their lust for greater power in the name of enduring order and stability, few would have vocally objected to the selection of Cualani.

No other god could have commanded the respect of her fickle peers without resorting to schemes and manipulation or a brutal reign of terror. Her insightful wisdom and impartial judgement saw her become the mediator of bickering parties who have earned their esteem regardless of her verdict. While they may not have always agreed with her decisions, they understood the rationality behind her words. And when Cualani spoke, the gods listened. Few gods would have treated their mortal subjects with the same level of deference. Most saw their worshippers as little more than nourishment and fonts for ceaseless adoration to fuel their strength. The sacrifice and consumption of the faithful within her domain, while unavoidable, was kept in-check by her remarkable self-discipline. And mindful of the hungering gods and their fanatics eager to feed them, Cualani and her cadre were vigilant in defending her borders and repelling the predations of others. There was no better territory to live in during those lost ages.

This noble soul no longer exists. What remains is a remorseless engine of slaughter blinded by perpetual rage. No god dares confront her – not even the mighty Hueyatototl, who frequently sparred against her in times past, would dream of challenging Cualani. And the monster that extinguished her spirit remains out of sight, for her furious wrath would annihilate him before claw, fang and hungering blade would sink into him. Drawn to the blood spilt on battlefields, she slaughters any who cross her path in an indiscriminate whirlwind of gore. No matter what deities a warrior worships, what land they hail from, or whom they call ruler, they are powerless before the mad goddess, and she will butcher them all.


Worshippers

Her afterlife, much like the realm of the great Hueyatototl, is a sprawling battleground in which the deceased warriors who were aligned with her principles and women who died during childbirth gather. Much like her mighty counterpart, warriors of all genders clashed with one another in relentless combat, but without the meaningless swinging of weapons and the charging crush of bodies he readily encourages. Cualani, ever the methodical warrior, constantly tweaked the equipment of every combatant, tested new strategies and troop compositions in ever-shifting landscapes and weather types to expose flaws in her tactics and determine more efficient methods of warfare. She would even hold back the vastness of her power and actively participate in the fighting as everything from a general to a lowly recruit, adjusting her strength accordingly, in order to see how a battle may play out from their point of view and experience, or lack thereof. It should come as no surprise that, whenever the two titans met and their armies fought, hers nearly always emerged victorious. And it should be no surprise that, if it existed, she would have been big into tabletop wargaming - or invented it, if it had not.

But her dominion, once one of honor, discipline, and order, has grown wild and neglected in her absence, like an abandoned and overgrown garden. Her faithful are touched with the frenzy that plagues her. Whatever noble integrity they had over themselves has begun to erode, and without her careful hand to guide them, her warriors slaughter one another without clarity or purpose, only to arise and kill each other anew. So long as madness grips her, any who enter her afterlife will be doomed to descend into a pit of rage from which there is no escape.

Even her priestly order that once acted as her faithful intermediary, her holy instrument of facilitating worship and sacrifice, no longer functions as it did in those glorious cycles past. Much like their beloved goddess, the few priests and priestesses she possesses have only grown in strength and viciousness as her crude temples slowly decay from negligence. Few willingly worship such a brutal beast, and yet the promise of power proves all too tempting to the few mad or desperate enough to seek it through her. They perform only the most perfunctory of rituals and maintenance of her crumbling facilities. Sacrifices are only brought to her dilapidated places of worship on the eve of battle, so that fresh flesh might lure Cualani away from the battlefield and warriors can fight and collect their captives as swiftly as possible before she catches the scent of spilt blood.

But stratagems go awry. What should have been a swift skirmish erupts into full-blown battle; bad blood between rival states, each eager to humiliate their hated foe or avenge a grievous loss, sees the ground run red. That is when her most faithful priests, near-feral hulks of sinew infected with her fury, prowl the edges of the battleground like sharks circling prey. Then they rush into the war zone that has just become their goddess’ sacrificial altar.

When Cualani charges into the throng, she does so as a twisted parody of her former self, taking on varying sizes and strengths with each appearance as everything from a towering wall of malice, muscle, and scales that butchers everything she sees to a living mountain that swallows all beneath a single crushing foot. Most maddening of all is that her own priests charge towards their rampaging goddess, eager to sacrifice themselves to her and feed her strength they have gathered. None dare ask her faithful why they do this, least whatever madness infecting them compels their ire and weapons to strike them down.


Relations

There are rare, lucid moments that cool her blood after she vents her rage. It is a moment of clarity – a few minutes, perhaps an hour if she’s fortunate – before anger clouds her mind. It is when something resembling the Cualani of old re-emerges. It is a time of reflection; what must be done still. And then she thinks of Cualtzin, and then the wrath returns.

Cualtzin is who she hates. The storm god is the source of her torment. He caught her in his scheming web and turned her into the monster she is today. She would give anything to beat the life from his horrid lips and rip him in half like the twig he is. Even before this ill-fated era, he was a menace who played no small role in ending previous cycles. Treacherous, manipulative, beyond arrogant even for a god, and one who cared so little for his worshippers that even the harshest deities would shake their heads at the indignity mortals routinely suffered at his hands. The awesome powers of a god earns many devotees, but it seldom earns them friends. Cualani could not recall a single deity who counted him as a confidant. It should have been obvious when he came crawling to her with a proposal, one her pride wouldn’t let her pass up: the opportunity to mold the mortals of the next cycle and cast them in her noble image – an honorable world, just and disciplined like her. And all it cost was everything she was. Now he cowers in his realm, afraid to face her. But within his domain, he is at his most powerful. She cannot defeat him there, as strong as she is. She must gather strength from mortals and her servants, grow in power, overcome this obstacle, and destroy him.

As her counterpart, Hueyatototl represents the senseless brutality of war. His hotheaded impulsiveness and unhealthy thirst for violence gives him a poor grasp on tactics which made for easy victories for her armies whenever they battled against his. They may have disagreed on many things, but she respected him as a warrior and constantly strove to improve herself to remain his equal, just as he respected her and worked to better himself in her eyes. She cannot comprehend why Hueyatototl lies with her hated foe, the same person the war god once despised. What had Cualtzin done to cloud his warrior’s pride? While he may have fallen for the schemer’s charms, his misplaced sense of loyalty has not diminished. If the opportunity to remove Cualtzin presents itself, and Hueyatototl stands in her way, they will both fall.

Sometimes her thoughts turn to Xatubei, the mortal turned goddess. From the dense jungles, Cualani has spied her stomping around and squawking orders like the gods of old. She’s seen how the goddess’ priests gather flocks to her, how she’s bloated in size and strength since the day of her ascension. She treats her people well, for one so inexperienced. She would offer her aid, if only she were not plagued with hate, if Xatubei didn’t rightfully flinch away from her. Something resembling respect rumbles within Cualani during these times. How could she not admire someone who swiped Hueya’s followers out from under his beak? Weakening an opponent’s base of power is a valid tactic. Cualani cannot help but wonder if the new goddess could be the one to somehow end this madness, if she cannot stop Cualtzin herself.

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Bigger and meaner than Hueya and getting bigger still. RIP us all.

Cualani doesn't appear in anything yet, but will eventually™

Art done by  steen / MacroSteen on Twitter

Cualani et al belong to me