Itzcuauhtli
Leader of the Xoxicohtli
Itzcuauhtli, Obsidian Eagle, is the ancient matriarch of the Xoxicohtli. Over 300 years old, she is the oldest known human in all of Torvalen and the most powerful leader in the Neztlalpan Confederation that she helped found. She was the famous prophetess who foresaw the coming of the Eshtem twenty years before their Great Exodus when she was only a young neophyte in the Xoxicohtli who was known then as Totochitl. She had been given to the order by her mother, a concubine of the powerful Apoxtec tlatoani, Tezozomoc.
Fearing the charismatic young woman and the following she was developing, she was declared insane by the local patriarch of the order and cast out. She spent the next twenty years walking through northern Kalmasa, warning all who would listen of the coming threat and using her already potent powers to help the poor of the scattered villages, strained by the demands of taxes and tribute by the Calmaxtec nobility to fund their endless warfare.
In that time, the Xoxicohtli secluded themselves completely from humanity and civilization, but Itzcuauhtli could see that the peasants were tied to the land and thus the great spirit Ehuatlaltipac in some ways deeper than the Xoxicohtli themselves, depending on it as they did for their survival as much as the beasts and trees. She defended them from the warriors sent by the nobility to steal the fruits of their labor. She became feared and hated by the nobility and loved by the peasants in equal measure and was given the name Itzcuauhtli by them for her strength and nobility of spirit.
By the time of the arrival of the Eshtem, she had founded her own Xoxicohtli order and had many acolytes. In the years to come, the nobility began to realize their folly in not heeding her prophecies. It was then that they became receptive to her proposal to unite and form a bulwark against the foreign threat. This alliance became the Neztlalpan Confederation of northern Kalmasa.
In modern times, she continues to lead her order, but delegates most of her duties, spending much of her time deep underground, in communion with Ehuatlaltipac, seeking the path with a heart on which to lead her people and protect the land.
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