Balam ("Stands So Far" Series)

[madimpossibledreamer]

Info source here: https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2019/08/ek-balam-a-mayan-god-represented-by-the-black-jaguar/

I might have celebrated a little too hard and now I don’t feel so good. Hopefully I’ll file this in the right place. If not, hopefully either no one will notice or they’ll cut me some slack, because demons and deities are both new sections. I think I have enough seniority that they’re not going to just wave it off as needing more training, unfortunately.

Balam is considered one of the more “friendly” of the Mayan gods, though seeing a black jaguar was still an unwanted sign. Unlike the “bad” gods, many more temples were built in his name, and while he could be dangerous and ferocious in battle, warriors considered it possible to earn the favor of Balam in battle or for telling the future. Balam is also considered one of the deities closest to humanity. Unlike the others, he cares to understand humans, giving him a special insight into how unpredictable humans can be.

Balam is considered one of the rulers of Xibalba, but it is unclear if this occurred before or after the “fall of Xibalba” due to the Hero Twins. All of the deities demand sacrifice. Some are more or less bloodthirsty than others, and to some the Mayan people seemingly more willingly paid their bloody respects. Either way, it is likely Balam spends very little time with the other Lords of Xibalba, since they seem to have some sort of disagreement about the approach taken to dealing with humanity. Where he currently has his stronghold is unknown, but it’s possible that different pockets of Xibalba are unconnected or he has his own stronghold possibly in one of the various pyramids that bear his name.

His full power was unseen here, and there’s little recording of it, particularly since in some languages his name translates as “he who kills with one blow”, so very few who see him fight survive the encounter.

The part that has me most concerned is that most stories mention the power of precognition, and he clearly had been investigating something alongside Kukulkan, another incredibly powerful deity that this kind of personal legwork should be beneath. And, based on the description, he seemed worried about something. Very few things are powerful enough to make a deity with the kind of powers Balam has worried. If he had so desired, he could have easily taken on every single other Lord of Death there and won, a fact that I’m not sure the other Lords of Xibalba understand (other than, perhaps, Awilix, who seemed more familiar with him and his powers than the rest), and the fact that he didn’t means that he was wisely saving his strength for another contest he believed would occur in the near future.

While portions of the vision shared with Willow might have been sent by one without the best interests of Xander at heart, I have come to suspect that the matter is not as simple as truth or lie. The best lies, they say, have enough truth to ring true, and the self-fulfilling prophecy is often a matter of being told of some nameless catastrophe, the actions taken to avoid it leading to that very same conclusion. We would all be wise to exercise great caution moving forward.