I like that Himeko suit FC by the way. Very nice.
I like that Himeko suit FC by the way. Very nice.
Normally I try to steer clear of using redheaded characters as faceclaims for characters based in Ireland just because I think it's a little basic, but it really fit the vibe I was going for in this one (1) specific instance.Originally Posted by Formless Creature
NINE-Lives and I have collaborated on our Nasuverse take on Andean myth, and its demiurge: Wiraqucha
Apu Qun Illa Tiqsi Wiraquchan Pachayachachiq Pachakamaq
Great Lord, eternal splendor, source of life, knowledge, and maker of the world
(Apu Kon, "Great lord"; Illa Teqse, "eternal light"; Wiraqucha (Sea Foam, lit. fat sea), ; Pachayachachiq, lit. "knowledge of the earth"; Pachakamaq, lit. "maker of the world")
HISTORY
Wiraqucha is actually a deified "star", an incandescent meteor carrying rare metals found in space, which include heavy metals like Gold (which originates from supernova nucleosynthesis, and/or from the collision of neutron stars), and Lithium, (one of the first few elements to be synthesized as a result of the Big Bang), both of which are metals that the Andes are rich in, that fell down from the heavens into Lake Titicaca, and the inner sea of the planet.
As a result of the star’s descent on the Andes, a giant flood occurred and the Andean runakuna (people) retreated to the highest peaks of their mountains until the water, which reformed the environment (equivalent to the Greek concept of Chaos) retreated back to the oceans and lakes.
A long, long, long, long time later, the “star” that descended into Lake Titicaca creates a giant avatar and travels across the Andes, interacting with the various civilizations that predated the Tawantinsuyu (Caral-Supe, Valdivia, Chavín, Nazca, Moche, Chachapoyas, Wari, Tiwanaku, Chimú, etc.)
In the language of runa simi, AKA quechua, Viracocha's name is actually Wiraqucha/Wiraqocha (the spelling is dependent on the dialect). The word "Wira" means fat, which is an important concept to Andeans (I assume in the sense of essential fats being equated to vitality---there's even a vampire-like creature called a Pishtaq/Nakaq that is said to drain the fat out of a person's body) and "qucha/qocha" means lake. As a result, many people theorize his name to mean "sea foam", based on the tale that he emerged from Lake Titicaca.
During his travels as a giant (known as Cuniraya Wiraqucha), Wiraqucha fell in love with the Andean runakuna, and in particular, the concept of the ayllu–the traditional form of community in the Andes. He befriended runakuna and wak’as (conceptually sacred, sapient things: people, shrines, etc. they’re essentially numina, or gods) and, one day, decided to unify these disconnected entities into a grand ayllu—the Tawantinsuyu.
One of my earliest conceptualizations of Wiraqucha was that he could be an elemental not unlike Arcueid. That was before I discovered the cosmic origins of the many valuable ores found in the Andes. Essentially, I'm taking the "space is an ocean" trope to its logical conclusion: what if an entity from space fell down to the waters of the Andes, not unlike how our predecessors evolved from the organisms brave enough to move from sea to land?
From Wiraqucha’s perspective, he "adopts" many of the existing waka's as part of his "family" making him a demiurge figure to the Andes, with the Andean pantheon as the Archons. In the modern day, he delegates most responsibility to his "son" Yaya Inti and possesses two world pillars in each hand, which are traced into the hands of worthy wielders like Yaya Inti and the Sapa Inka.
Wiraqucha is often said to have created the entire world, which, here, is only figuratively true. His descent caused a flood so powerful it reshaped the entire region, which would come to be known as the Andes, and he adopted most of the wak’as rather than creating them, with a few exceptions, like his son, Yaya Inti.
In his youth as Cuni Raya, he was a somewhat chaotic trickster but has mellowed with age and responsibility into a mature patriarch with a mischievous side.
In a way, I consider Wiraqucha's story of expanding the Tawantinsuyu to create a grand ayllu to be similar to the way the Abrahamic god became worshipped among polytheistic tribes in Southwest Asia, before eventually supplanting them all, except in this case, they're kept around through in-universe syncretism (which was very much the case in real life history as well). As a result, this is very much an Andean mythological venture rather than an Inkan one, because the Tawantinsuyu was pantheistic.
When the Tawantinsuyu (Inka Empire) fell, the mystery that sustained much of the Andes' cosmogony was not sent to the reverse side of the world, but rather partitioned within three sectors: the Pachas
Before the fall of the Tawantinsuyu, each Pacha coexisted with each other, but with the arrival of the Spaniards (who possess their own conception of the world) and the subjugation of indigenous Andeans who refused to assimilate, their existence begins to falter, and the only person who can save them is the entity that created them.
Enter Wiraqucha, who sacrifices his freedom to undertake the ultimate sacrifice to save his people. He transcends every single pacha, becoming an entity existing outside this dimension, takes his world pillar staves, stabs them through his own hands (not through his palms, but his hands), and pins each pacha on top of each other. Because this leaves him outside of reality, Wiraqucha appoints his son, the sun god Yaya Inti, to be his successor as the chief deity of the Andes. This explains why Wiraqucha's presence has been superseded by Yaya Inti.
Wiraqucha embodies the concept of the sea: both the waters of Earth and the figurative ocean of outer space. This is what imbues him with authority over the cosmos---he spends most of his time upholding the cosmos and oceans of his domain but is capable of freely creating avatars (or bunrei) to act in his stead. In many ways, Wiraqucha is like a Celestial from Marvel, and his creation of avatars mirrors the character Ego in GOTG 2, and his identity as an abstract divine entity that descended into the Andes and blessed other entities to be gods of a civilization makes him a benevolent version of the Greater Will from Elden Ring.
Wiraqucha's core lies in Lake Titicaca, where the asteroid descended from the heavens, but his Giant body (and his preferred form as the Andes' demiurge) turned into a mountain when he performed his sacrifice, and his face is visible on the side of the mountain in Ollantaytambo.
ABILITIES
Mystic eyes of Oversight [EX]- The fabled mystic eyes possessed by Wiraqucha, that which hold worth and power equal to a divine construct. They are the eyes of the creator, the eyes which oversaw the entirety of their realm and all within it. They are capable of proclaiming a possibility as a certainty set fact. In this way they can be thought of as a conceptual prototype to Laplace’s demon or Independent manifestation, a sort of “power” which emerged from chaos and determined its own existence, establishing and making what they had seen as reality, and. Even now that Wiraqucha has transcended his corporeal form to maintain the Andes and its Pachas, these eyes still gaze upon his domain and all within it, be it from the farthest past to the most distant future.
His two staves are literal manifestations of his two authorities, and also double as world pillars: his right staff embodies the authority to shape the world (as he did with his descent), allowing him to shape the world itself to his will, and his left staff is his ability to impose order and law upon creation, dictating fundamental laws and principles. In a territory he controls this lets him impose rules and judgments upon everything within and subject to his domain.
When his divine waters flooded the entire Andes, it gave him authority over the reshaped environment, meaning that the Andes itself is his conceptual world, which he can modify freely.
Wiraqucha's authority as a god representing the conceptual sea of the Earth and the cosmos relates to the creation of the world from the primordial chaos where life originates, and the creation of principles and order. He is capable of viewing the primordial and archetypal shapes and forms of something (think Plato's heavenly forms) to infuse concepts into existing things, the way he reformatted the Andes and imbued life into everything within it.
To him, the Andes is his llaqta (region), and the people living within it are all part of his ayllu (community). The expansion of the Tawantinsuyu allowed Wiraqucha to expand the Pachas and his conceptual world throughout the entire Andes. Though the Tawantinsuyu isn’t perfect, from the perspective of Wiraqucha, it was a sincere attempt to unite these divided peoples and provide them a community, which is why he dedicates his entire existence to maintaining it---he loves his people more than anything in the world, far, far, more than he loves himself.
Due to impaling his staves into his own hands, his limbs themselves have become divine armaments, not unlike Romulus Quirinus, and can serve as mediums for waves (as in, any type of physical wave, which comes from his authority as a god of the cosmos and the sea; his favored method of attacking is channeling gravitational waves through his limbs) to travel through.
PERSONALITY AND DESIGN
Wiraqucha is a trickster mentor, and a silly silver fox when he isn't fighting but when he does, he channels his authority into the world, gaining control over it. He rarely fights using his full power and instead prefers to use power proportionate to the feat he is attempting. He’s very fond of dad jokes and very openly tries to serve as a grandfather figure to anyone he meets.
When creating an avatar, he manifests as an aged, yet extremely handsome quechua man with long, white hair, copper-brown skin (which upon closer inspection looks like stone), and a muscular, yet modest physique. On his skin are symbols that imitate the artistic motifs of the civilizations in his domain, and his outfit is modeled on traditional Quechua clothing /Inka clothing composed of natural materials, with some inspiration from Neo-Andean architecture Neo-Andean architecture and Andean motifs like those seen on the Gate of the Sun and the Raimondi Stele.
Specific description:
A chullo-like hat that incorporates aspects of the Maskhaypacha worn by the Sapa Inka, with a wool mask that evokes the face of the staff god at the Gate of the Sun, a poncho-cape that encompasses his entire body at rest, and ojota sandals.
PACHAS
I had this idea fermenting in my head after the release of Wakanda Forever, which posits an interesting counterpart to Wakanda---Talokan, a civilization created by mutated Yucatec Mayans who fled the conquistadores.
This idea personally fascinates me, and though I do not wish to detract from Quechua runakuna, the people who I am trying to pay tribute through this concept, I do think this worldbuilding has a place in what we've discussed: the Pachas.
The story goes like this:
Upon the partition of the Pachas into separate textures that coexist with the regular world, several Andeans were rescued by the gods who took refuge in the three Pachas, and over time, they mutated into superhumans adapted to the environment of each pacha. Not unlike the Yaga from Lostbelt 1, these refugees evolved into sapient animalistic humanoids, based on the Andean Trilogy: the Snake (Ukhu Pacha), Puma (Kay Pacha), and Condor (Hanan Pacha). Though the mutations vary (there's a lot more variety than just the Snake, Puma, and Condor---the animals they've become similar to are just analogous to the creatures who live in the areas associated with each Pacha) they are less like outright furries, and more like slightly bestial evolved humanoids. In the case of Kay Pacha, they're a people hidden in plain sight, who use magecraft to conceal their unique appearances and coexist with other runakuna.
Though they will exist as part of what makes the Pachas feel more like their own worlds, they will not detract from the human quechua runakuna, who have their own fantastical history post-colonization that I plan to build in the future.
A mythical servant I have in mind to represent Quechua runakuna is the legendary king in the mountain archetype, Inkarri, a mythical Inka prophesied to return from his death and dismemberment to usher in a pachakuti (revolution) and a new golden age for the Andes. It's a pretty topical legend, and I already have some ideas in mind for Tupac Amaru II as a servant, which could lead to Inkarri being incorporated into his saint's graph.
Wak’as
The idea of Wak'as expands the possibility for divinities in the Andes A LOT, and the closest thing to an Andean bible revolves around the story of the Wak'as, the Huarochiri Manuscript. Due to the relative obscurity of wak’as outside of indigenous Andean communities, they are particularly potent with mystery.
The Amaru is Wiraqucha's patron divine beast---it's a mythical serpent with the head of a llama, the wings of a condor, the tail of a snake, and the legs of a puma (or at least, our version is). There also exists a story about the Amarus, which can be integrated into this mythology. Although many of these myths are contradictory, I believe they can be streamlined in ways to properly represent the pantheistic nature of the Nasuverse, as well as the Andes itself.
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As someone with quechua ancestry I feel an obligation to represent my ancestor's culture to an extent, which is why this idea is fairly complicated, due to the insertion of cultural ideas, many of which are obscure to the eyes of most (which makes the likelihood of these being recognized by TYPE-MOON pretty low). Sorry if this may been poorly timed, I'm willing to take criticism on this concept! If needed, I could also discuss the sources in further detail, particularly the Huarochiri Manuscript, which I have a PDF copy of.
Last edited by Inti Mewchi; July 7th, 2023 at 06:56 PM. Reason: font change
Inti, I do not wish to discredit your part in this, but I personally have a hard time reading this, not just due to the bad choice of font, but because this is so obviously NOT Nine's contribution, but Fortuna's ghost still lingering in this forum. His writing style is immediately recognizable due to his emphasis on details, especially in brackets, and my personal aversion to his approach to nasuverse concepts. Another factor is of course my personal distaste for Fortuna and Nine's worship of him.
So, I wanna know: What are your own ideas here, because I am far more interested in them due to your heritage and obvious love for this mythology, than whatever Fortuna and Nine had been cooking in the back.
"Let's see the color of your coin, my friend."
Behold my vault of Heroes.
Where the Heavens and the Abyss breath the Music of Humanity.
The King's duty is to provide. And provide, I shall.
University of Formatting | Gallery of Potential | Memorandum of the Extra Class Kings
Our Kingdom will grow. And we shall know each citizen.
Create-a-Servant 4 soon.
Imma be honest. I only contributed the divine authority and mystic eye part as well as his "andean DILF gojo satoru" personality. Most of the lore heavy lifting as well as the entire pacha part was by inti mewchi.
While I did borrow a lot from Nine at first (I tend to be a little lazy sometimes) most of the ideas besides the divine authority/mystic eyes were completely revamped under my direction, and even the divine authority/mystic eyes were changed slightly to reflect this Wiraqucha that I've created.
For the most part, I honestly felt that Fortuna's ideas leaned towards the angle of creating a chief god of "Incan mythology", which I personally disagreed with, which is why I turned away from them after using it as a basis, and implemented ideas culturally relevant to the Andean cosmogony.
The idea of Wiraqucha being a deified "star" that descended from the ocean of space into the inner sea of the Earth was an evolution of a previous idea I had to make Wiraqucha an elemental in the same vein as Arcueid. So I decided to trace back to the etymology: "sea foam", which indicates his role as a god of the cosmos and oceans, whose descension (and the subsequent flood) completely terraformed the environment of the Andes to contain the valuable rare minerals. I was somewhat inspired by Wakanda Forever's Talokanil because their origins trace back to Mayans who extracted vibranium from the Chixculub asteroid to flee the conquistadors. Though this idea is thoroughly disconnected from Mesoamerica (and I do not intend to portray them as being linked at all), the situation depicted in the film hit close to home for me because the Andes has been exploited for gold and lithium by our oppressors, which has continued to this day. Many runakuna are still fighting the good fight, but they can only do so much against people wishing to exploit our national resources. So, I wanted to tie the element of resources into this Andean cosmogony. Additionally, while Fortuna was indeed the first person to draw a link between χάος (kháos) and Wiraqucha, I am utilizing details derived from the Huarochiri Manuscript, which touches upon how some Andeans actually believed the world was created.
The Pachas are a bit of a hard concept to explain, and admittedly I don't perfectly understand them either: they are an Andean concept of spacetime (both space and time simultaneously, which also ties into the belief of Yanantin, which I neglected to include in the post) that are divided into three pachas: Hanan Pacha (Upper World), Kay Pacha (middle, perceptible world), and Ukhu Pacha (lower world). In simplified terms, they're like three alternate dimensions of spacetime that coexist with each other. The Chakana, or the Andean Cross is sometimes theorized to represent each Pacha (chakana also means "ladder" in quechua, which supports this interpretation).
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The wak'as are another can of worms who are complicated to talk about, but they are in essentially conceptually sacred, sapient things: people, shrines, etc.
Here's a quote from the manuscript that describes them formally:
"The Huarochiri manuscript is in large measure a reading-out of its space. The horizon, not the cosmos---geography, not metaphysics---poses the questions to which its most vibrant deities give answers. Andean numina lodge in places or placed objects: mountains, springs, lakes, rock outcrops, ancient ruins, caves, and any number of humanly made objects in shrines: effigies, mummies, oracles, and so forth."
They also quote a half-andean historian, Garcilasco Inca de la Vega's definiton:
Back to the Manuscript's author:"Wak'a...means "a sacred thing," such as...idols, rocks, great stones or trees. They also give the name Wak'a to things they have offered to the Sun, such as figures of men, birds and animals...Wak'a is applied to any temple, large or small...The same name is given to all those things which for their beauty or excellence stand above other things of the same kind, such as a rose, an apple, or a pippin, or any other fruit that is better or more beautiful than the rest."
- - - Updated - - -A wak'a was any material thing that manifested the superhuman: a mountain peak, a spring, a union of streams, a rock outcrop, an ancient ruin, a twinned cob of maize, a tree split by lightning. Even people could be wak'as...Mummified ancestors of high rank could be wak'a...The discovery of new wak'as never ceased.
...Wak'as had vibrantly individual personalities. Paryaqaqa, whether in his incarnation as the hailstorm of the icy heights or as the five-in-one hero who beat the Yunca down toward the sea, seems haughty, brilliant, and cold, a driving deity. Llocllay Huancupa lurks in the dark like an inarticulate beast, roaring dully over his immolated meal. Chuqui Suso, the sexy agricultural wak'a and her sister who seduced the Paryaqaqas into irrigating her as well as the great maternal wak'a Chaupi Namca, were associated with sensuality and playful ease.
Clearly wak'as are living beings, persons in fact. Christian observers seem to think of the wak'as as real beings, material in form but animated by demonic spirit. When the Avila (the original author of the manuscript) applied the terms "god" and "goddess to wak'as he seemes to be thinking of them as linked to natural forms, anthopomorphic and tangible, something like the deities of Greco-Roman myth and the "demons" of Medieval Europe whose lore he apparently knew in some detail. The word "deity might fit the wak'as, but one must be careful; the dualism of substance enfolded in the Christian usage of the words "god" and "divine" seems superfluous for understanding Andean worship. The world imagined by the Checa (an Andean ethnic group) does not seem to have been made of the two kinds of stuff---matter and spirit---like that of Christians; wak'as are made of energized matter, like everything else, and they act within nature, not over and outside it as Western supernaturals do.
This was a pain to cite, but I'm not sure how well sharing the manuscript pdf publically would go for me, so if anyone wants to read it, ask me to send a PM.
But TLDR on the wak'as:
they're conceptually sacred "things" which are personified as sapient entities.
I can assure you that I have literally no connection to fortuna whatsoever. The main reason why I chose to collaborate with NINE was because he was the only one who I had noticed bringing up concepts of Andean myth. In fact, that's what prompted me to create an account on Beast's Lair. I just tend to use brackets a lot because I'm a messy writer, my bad. I don't know anything about Fortuna's writing style besides what NINE copied from him. Most of these ideas are honestly my own, and I used the previous work as a launchpad to formally conceptualize my version of the deity Wiraqucha.
I'd also like to add that unlike most people who've brought up Andean myth up in the past, I've taken many great pains to try being accurate with the language of runa simi, which is why I don't use the incorrect, hispanicized names like "Viracocha."
I can attribute this to being conscious of my heritage and trying to respect the beliefs: I didn't want to exploit this mythology for the sake of just using the vague idea of a south american myth, but instead wanted to explore it with the same passion that TYPE-MOON usually applies to cultures they're familiar with. Granted, the only real "out there" thing is that in my version, Wiraqucha is arguably comparable to a Celestial from Marvel, or a benevolent version of the Greater Will from Elden Ring, but besides that, most of my ideas are rooted in their indigenous context.
That's... an interesting introduction to the forum for you, huh? I promise we're fun, Nine has just cultivated something of a reputation is all.
Fate\last call
night, dawn, and the birth of stars
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Yeah, sorry about all this. I just jumped at the chance of finding collaboration, because a friend of mine has found a creative group to collaborate on their own concept: an Irish lostbelt. So, I pondered the possibility of finding people interested in Andean myth and providing proper cultural context and direction. And since Nine was the only person who I found bringing it up, I decided to step out of the shadows to pitch my ideas, building off of what I thought worked and developing ideas derived from the cultural context of the Andes, such as the wak'as and pachas.
Sorry that I immediately assumed that most of it came from Fortuna with Nine as the middle man. You obviously know your stuff and it is well explained, but the nasuverse part is what isnt working for me.
There is a certain elegance and flair missing in it. The meteor origin kinda reminds of the nasuverse aztec and there are enough outer space shenanigans in TM mythology already.
Wiraqucha loses a bit of mystery how you describe them. His abilities are also a bit generic. The Mystic Eyes feel out of place. Yes, arcueid has them, but she is an OC, a real mythological character that has no connections to some sort of special gaze or outright states magical eyes gets raised eyebrows most of the time. The Tapac Yauri should be a form or shadow of a Pillar, I agree, but it is a function of the world and not the authority of the god itself. They also lack character. They do what most main gods can on their own. What is their purpose for the world to create them. What do they fix onto the surface?
Speaking of surface, a meteor that reaches even the reverse side feels weird.
Impaling himself with the pillars also feels backwards. They dont become divine armaments, they already are of the same standing as them duento being pillars. And he just attacks with a bit of gravitation then. Parts are both both over- and underexplained, too large and too small in scooe, robbing the appeal of one of the very big gods in the world. Nasuverse is conceptually loaded, and i mostly just see some strong effects in this regard.
The Andes deserve somethibg unique that makes them stand out and on their own. You got the tools, but you need some time honing them to create something more convincing.
I look forward seeing you finetune the concept.
"Let's see the color of your coin, my friend."
Behold my vault of Heroes.
Where the Heavens and the Abyss breath the Music of Humanity.
The King's duty is to provide. And provide, I shall.
University of Formatting | Gallery of Potential | Memorandum of the Extra Class Kings
Our Kingdom will grow. And we shall know each citizen.
Create-a-Servant 4 soon.
Regarding the Mystic Eyes, they're honestly just a vestigial feature borrowed from Fortuna, which I mostly overwrote. As it stands...I don't really care much for this skill due to how attached it was to Fortuna's concept, which leaned more towards the "monotheistic supreme god of the Andes" conception of this deity that is mostly founded in the syncretism of him with the Catholic god that Spanish missionaries used to try and eradicate Andean thought. I actually feel pretty strongly about this issue of syncretism, because it's part of the many misconceptions of Andean myth that people have. Though I will admit that Fortuna's ideas served as a decent reference to start from, I also found it to be a somewhat ignorant concept born out of ideas spread by hispanidad, so to me, it felt like a reference of what NOT to do. But I couldn't exactly muster up the determination to remove it because I felt unsure about its inclusion. So I'm fine with excising the mystic eyes, because really, they're the most blatantly vestigial concept pulled from Fortuna, and one that I don't care much for.
hm
Well, for what it's worth, I'd still like to see you expand on this premise further.
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night, dawn, and the birth of stars
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iirc, Random has a thing for mystic and especially pure eyes.
For a major god to have mystic eyes, there needs to be a specific anecdote to justify the eyes, else everything these eyes can do, their authority could as well. Especially if the effects are related to the environment.
"Let's see the color of your coin, my friend."
Behold my vault of Heroes.
Where the Heavens and the Abyss breath the Music of Humanity.
The King's duty is to provide. And provide, I shall.
University of Formatting | Gallery of Potential | Memorandum of the Extra Class Kings
Our Kingdom will grow. And we shall know each citizen.
Create-a-Servant 4 soon.
As for Wiraqucha's extraterrestrial origins, I actually have a bit of fondness for it. Though I am a reconnecting Quechua and absolutely ABHOR the concept of "ancient astronauts", which is frequently used in racist contexts to attribute the accomplishments of indigenous people to aliens, the idea of Wiraqucha having extraterrestrial origins is more serendipitous than it may seem.
You see, as I said before, Wiraqucha is inspired by the celestials of marvel, and the greater will of Elden Ring--both entities that assist sapient life in developing civilizations. But unlike these two entities, Wiraqucha does not create the world, at least...not literally.
When I came across a line from the story of Honkai Impact 3rd, I was personally impressed by how...poetic it felt. Here it is:
Around this same time I stumbled upon information that revealed the cosmic origins of valuable minerals like Gold and Lithium. Gold is derived from supernova nucleosynthesis, and/or from the collision of neutron stars, and Lithium was one of the first few elements to be synthesized as a result of the Big Bang. In the Andes, Gold and Lithium are plentiful as a resource, and the extraction of it has threatened andean natives, who have been fighting to keep their homelands protected."He fell from the sky that day."
"The people on the ground looked up and thus saw the starry night sky."
So, you're probably asking, why make Wiraqucha an extraterrestrial?
Putting aside the alleged role of Wiraqucha as an almighty monotheistic god, his name, at the end of the day, refers to "sea foam."
He's often said to have risen from Lake Titiqaqa to create the world, which personally, reminds me of darwinian evolution. The way organisms who lived in the waters evolved to walk on land.
So, I decided to put my own spin on the concept:
What if, Wiraqucha was not a monotheistic creator-of-all, but originated as an incandescent "star" that descended from the vast "ocean" of space, into the waters of Lake Titiqaqa? If the nasuverse allows for it, I'd love to make it an actual star that somehow falls into Lake Titiqaqa, but I'll have to await evaluation on that idea first.
To further explain this, I'd like to get into the wak'as. As I've defined them earlier using my source, the Wak'as are anything conceptually sacred, given sapience. Because of this definition, practically any deity of the Andes is a wak'a. The wak'as are personally fascinating to me, because they demonstrate the way Andean runakuna conceptualize the world, as being populated by conceptually sacred, sapient entities. To me, they're a beautiful example of how conceptually sacred things are given life through anthropomorphic personifications, which can be said about many deities in human history. People all over the world would personify concepts they understood into gods, djinn, yokai, shedim, etc. Just like how humanity made seemingly endless gods through anthropomorphizing concepts, Andean runakuna gave meaning and reverence to almost everything around them. The potential of the wak'as is truly beautiful. I actually wanted to flesh out the wak'as more than Wiraqucha, but NINE insisted on trying to flesh him out first. I do worry that focusing so much on Wiraqucha could be detrimental, because I'd hate to divorce Andean mythology from Andean thought. A problematic recurring notion I've noticed in a lot of popular culture is the impulse to divorce mythology from its cultural context, to reduce beautiful worlds given life by culture to mere "source material." Though Andean myth is extremely obscure, I fear that most people who take notice of it never study the cultural context, which, if anything, actually broadens the storytelling opportunities. I'm not exactly well-versed enough in Nasuverse lore to compare and contrast them with other entities, like Divine Spirits, or Elementals, but as it stands, I'm sticking to the cultural context that gives these entities life to begin with.
So, back to the Wiraqucha.
Ever heard of the idea that Space is an ocean? Fun fact, the word "astronaut" literally means "star sailor!"
Portraying the abyss of Space as an ocean is a common idea already, but, let's remember. Wiraqucha's etymological origins link him to the sea. Despite this, he is also said to have created the cosmos. So, I decided to come up with a happy medium between these two ideas by giving him authority over the sea, as well as the cosmos (to whatever extent is possible with Nasuverse lore).
Last edited by Inti Mewchi; July 9th, 2023 at 03:11 PM.
The incandescent star that descended into Lake Titiqaqa did not land quietly. When the Andean runakuna caught sight of its descent, they had already wak'a-fied this object. It's a fairly standard practice, after all. But what happens, during the lead-up to its descent, and the inevitable impact?
This story is ripped straight out of the Huarochiri Manuscript's 3rd and 4th chapters:
Chapters 3 and 4 tell stories of the most ancient humans, before the time of Paryaqaqa. They contain themes familiar to the Catholics who produced the manuscript: surviving the great flood, as in the story of Noah's Ark, and a period of darkness.
In chapter 3, all the animals had a presentiment that the ocean was going to overflow, and so they began to migrate to higher altitudes. The central character is a llama, who was unable to migrate because it was being led by its owner. The concerned llama refused to eat, despite having good pasture. The frustrated owner threw a deseeded cob (coronta) of choclo corn at it, and commanded it to eat. The angry llama became capable of speech, and explained that the world would end in five days' time. He commanded that his master pack food for five days and carry him to the mountain Huillcacoto.
As soon as they arrived at the mountain, where all the animals had congregated, the ocean flooded over the land, submerging everything but the peak of Huillcacoto. This became so crowded that the fox's tail dipped in the water, explaining why it is black. All the other humans were killed by the flood. (It is not mentioned whether a female human also survived). After five days, the water subsided, and the animals spread out and repopulated the Earth.
Chapter 4
The fourth chapter begins with the 'death' of the Sun. There were five days of complete darkness. Rocks began to move themselves and knock together. Even the batans and mortars came to life and consumed humans. Llamas began to pursue humans. The rebellion of animals and objects is also a theme of Moche iconography, which predates the manuscript by a millennium.
Now, here's where I take some artistic license, and I haven't decided on whether or not to set this in stone yet:
The overflowing of the ocean was caused by the properties of the wak'a-fied "star" that every single creature in the Andes watched slowly descend. Consequently, the animals chose to migrate to higher altitudes. They predicted that the true threat of the star was not its heat, but the physical waves it emitted, especially the gravitational ones, which would interfere with the tides they knew, leading the ocean and lakes to overflow the entirety of the Andes. Due to the star's nature as a wak'a, it also contained potent Mystery, and the subsequent disturbances caused by its waves would have untold effects on the world they knew. So, each and every creature living in the Andes migrated to the highest possible peak, the mountain of Huillcacoto.
As the llama foretold, the star that fell from the sea of outer space caused the land to overflow, terraforming it and imbuing every corner of the land with its properties (this part is vague because I need to figure it out). Unexpectedly however, once the supernatural tide had subsided, the world was covered in complete darkness. Somehow, the sun had died (not sure how this can be interpreted here), and the population of the Andes found that with the evolution and rebirth of their land, many wak'as too were reborn. In fact, most of them had seemingly evolved beyond their original forms! A faction of wak'as quickly grew arrogant with their newfound empowerment, declared themselves to be the new prime species, and revolted against humans, animals, and even other wak'as. To the horror of humanity, animals, and the wak'as who escaped the tide, the Sun, the most preeminent wak'a that illuminated the world, had somehow died! And so begun a five-day-long war, between this rebellious population of wak'as, and humanity (with their animal and wak'a allies) who fought over their inheritance of this reborn land.
On the third day of this war, humanity believed they were finished, until a new wak'a joined their side: the star. As a newly sapient entity, it felt a medley of thoughts and emotions within the lake it landed in, and after hearing the pain and turmoil humanity was suffering from as a result of this war, it began to generate matter, to create an avatar. It began by creating its own lipids, which filled the lake with a supernatural foam, its own primordial soup, generating matter capable of being shaped into its own avatar. When all hope seemed lost, humanity prayed for a savior to come. And he did. The star's newly-created giant avatar, dubbed Cuniraya Wiraqucha quite literally turned the tide against the insurgent wak'as. Using his authority, Cuniraya petrified all the rebellious wak'as and eroded them into sediment. Recognizing his fault in causing the ten-day long chaotic period, Cuniraya shields humanity as he commands the tide to reform the world once again, creating a world where humanity and wak'as coexist, and where power is equally distributed. After this grand act, Cuniraya disguises himself as a wandering beggar, in order to properly understand the civilization of this world.
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I'd be happy to provide a PDF of the Huarochiri Manuscript to anyone who asks. Just send me a PM and I'll deliver it there.
Besides that, here's a youtube series (in spanish, but there's an extension called Language Reactor for chrome that can translate the subtitles) that summarizes the first few chapters of the manuscript.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...IA3PKadaFdG-2q
Last edited by Inti Mewchi; July 9th, 2023 at 03:11 PM.
I really like this idea and i think you should use it. It makes sense that an asteroid punching it's way into the inner sea of the planet would fuck up the texture quite a bit and makes the waka's and the mythology feel dynamic and ever changing.
I wonder if there was a way to still incorporate the mystic eyes somehow? What's the andean concept of fate and predetermination? That could be useful for brainstorming the mystic eyes.
I'll get to figuring out the rest of this, like the world pillars, later.
So what are your current concept for wiraqucha's authority and world pillar. Are you keeping the authority idea i laid out?
Maybe, I don't know.
Like DelRey said, the "stabbing himself with his own pillars" thing might have to be thrown out.
So far, I think that Wiraqucha has authority over "seas", specifically the figurative sea of space, and the waters of the Andes.
I also think he'd have some kind of control over the pachas, and thus, spacetime, but that requires researching and understanding the pachas better.
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