XOCO NECAHUAL

Xoco Necahual is a Chichimec warrior of the Dog People, from the Wind Homes, or Ehecalli.  Her name means "Youngest Sister Left Behind."

Xoco wears the garb of a yaoquizque [novice warrior]: no feathers decorate the green shield on her left arm, although it has received some recent dents and gashes.  She is dressed in green and red; she exhibits the relatively strange flattened features and dark skin of the Dog People, marked with symbols in yellow, red and white paint.  Her hair is long, but always plaited in a multitude of braids with beads and feathers woven in.  The feathers are small ornamental things, not warrior feathers.  She is shorter by a head than most of her companions, except for Chipotle.

To date, the young Chichimec warrior has demonstrated a hot temper and striking lack of diplomacy.  She is quick to both friendship and anger, and has acquired a reputation for being argumentative.  She won the tlatchtli game to select a leader for the scout party, but deferred to Nochehuatl.  After his death, she reasserted her claim on leadershhip of the war party.
 

XOCO'S STORY

Xoco is the youngest of her family (hence her name). She is of Teotleco descent (not something she'd brag about to non-Chichimecá), with relatively strange, flattened features and dark skin.  To anyone who asks she will say she is twenty, but she is barely nineteen.  She likes to dress flamboyantly, favouring red, green, and white combinations but using many other colours as accents.  Her hair is long, but always plaited in a a multitude of braids with beads and feathers woven in.  If she unbound her hair, it would be very curly, an unusual feature for the non-Chichimecá.  She looks forward toearning feathers and markings, and when she daydreams can spend a lot of time designing her future shield pattern.

Xoco's older brother Acatl was a famous warrior himself, and was killed in by KreeSara scouts.  However, his death was not in vain since he managed to stop them from gaining a foothold on one of the Ehecalli and creating their own secret operation base.  Xoco was instrumental in foiling this infiltration, and Acatl's final stand against the KreeSara allowed her to escape and alert the Chichimecá.  She was thirteen at the time.

Not long after this, Xoco's entire family was murdered in a most bizarre incident, which earned her the nickname of Necahual (left behind).

Everyone had gathered to celebrate the Festival of the Eighth Tribe [I'm making this up as I go along], ostensibly commemorating how the Dog People had the "honour" of being chosen by the Huitznahua and taken to the stars (the seven other tribes having stayed on Earth), but really celebrating the day the neo-sapients and the Chichimecá became one people.  For that day, families gather and renew bonds through oaths, shared food and drink, dances, and other celebrations.  The celebrations takes place first within a family, then within the larger group or clan, as the families join in the plaza of their home base.  The Festival of the Eighth Tribe is particularly important to Teotleco families.

Xoco's family never emerged to meet with others.  When concerned neighbours came to seek them out, they found a bloodbath; every man and woman, elder and infant, had been dismembered in what appeared to be inspired from an Aztecá sacrifice ritual, but corresponded to no official religion.  Xoco alone escaped death because she had been late returning home from the warrior school she attended.

Murder being so unusual in the Wind Homes, and the day being so special, this crime attracted much attention and outrage.  After a swift and brutal investigation, the authorities aprehended the murderer, apparently a deranged man inspired with great religious longing, who felt the Chichimecá should never have left the Gods' path or let the neo-sapient live.  He was attempting to redress these mistakes by slaying the unholy offspring of the alliance and making a sacrifice to the Gods all at once, pouring the blood that should never have been mixed onto the ground.  The man, Chamollin, was put to death in most spectacular and public fashion.

Xoco has received too much public attention and wants to be left alone on that topic.  Now that the murderer has been executed, she just wants to live the whole bloody mess down and forget it.  [But was he the only one?  How could he have murdered her entire family on his own, even with the narcotics he is said to have used?]

She has three good friends:

1. Male former student of the warrior school, Zolin -- He is cheerful and brave, but it's nearly impossible to get a resonable word out of him.  He boasts, jokes, and blusters; most people think he's just too dumb to know better, but Xoco knows it's just his way of dealing with looming fate; few people know that when Zolin was born, the diviners predicted he would either commit treason or die a most brutal death.
2. Female childhood friend, Xochitl -- She's a skilled artist, as well as a promising student, still learning history and sciences.  Xochitl is bright and pretty, with a serious streak in her that counterpoints Zolin's bluster.  As it happens, she is in love with Zolin head over heels, but Zolin keeps her at arm's length to avoid breaking her heart later.
3. Male foster parent, Mallinalli -- An Elder of the Chichimecá, he would have adopted Xoco into his own house after her family's death if she'd let him.  She refused because this felt like faithlessness to her murdered clan, but did live in Mallinalli's house when not at the warrior school.  Mallinalli is Xochitl's grandfather and much revered for his wisdom by his clan.  He has always done his best to guide Xoco.

1. Female superior, High Priestess Centehua -- The High Prestess already felt distaste for the Chichimec, but this grew into more active enmity when Xoco refused the leadership of her scout party after winning the tlatchtli game.  The High Priestess now hates Xoco, but Xoco doesn't particularly hate her.  If the two met face to face outside their normal interactions, Centehua would avoid Xoco.
2. Enemy agent of the KreeSara -- The enmity began when Xoco and her brother Acatl foiled the KreeSara infiltration plan.  She hates all KreeSara, but doesn't yet know that there is one in particular that hates her specifically.

She is single and recovering from an unlucky love affair.  Her lover, Atlcoatl, was from Quetzaltepec; they met during one of the War of Flowers.  They still love one another, but at the moment it is impossible for the two of them to be together.  She dreads meeting him again, for he may not forgive her for the help the Dog People gave Tezcatlipoca against the City of the Feathered Serpent.

Xoco has been trying to live up to her older brother Acatl's reputation, since she'd had a serious case of hero-worship for him.  She is a hot-shot and derring-do, but her youth and inexperience may soon trip her.  She has been studying technical skills with a relish, stimulated by the danger associated with such knowledge. She volunteered to serve Yoali Ehecatl because of the high-risk, high-reputation gamble associated with him, and also to get a chance to learn about other clans and their mechas.  She wants a chance to be known for her warrioir skills, rather than for her family's fate.

She does not worship any god, although she will serve Yoali Ehecatl faithfully as long as this does not go against the Dog People's best interests.
 

XOCO'S WARRIOR SKIN

Xoco rides a Chichimeca warrior skin.  The torso is vertical, the cockpit sitting at the top of the torso rather than the middle.  It is the most individualistic of the warrior skins, with numerous symbols and fetishes of the Dog People worked into the knee and arm guards, and a shield which is somewhat different in shape and proportion from that of the Azteca, and is almost completely unadorned.  The one exception is the single feather of an iyac which adorns the shield.
 

XOCO'S WEAPONS

Weapon	Acc	Range	RoF	Damage	Shots	Location	Type	Notes
Smoking Mirror	+1	5/10/20/40	0	x20	10	Hand-held	Advanced	-3 Damage per range band
Flesh Tearer	0	2/4/8/16	0	x15	5	Shoulder-mounted	Rocket/Missiles
Fire Hand	+1	0/0/0/1	1	x7	25	Back-mounted	Support	Slow burn, indirect fire
Sun Egg	-1	varies	0	x25	1	Hip-mounted (right)	Grenade	Disposable
Jade Knife	+1	0/0/0/0	0	x6	0	Hip-mounted (left)	Close Combat

The glyph used as the Dog People emblem is the Nahuatl symbol for "dog."

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Page last updated 8 February 2002