Wilhelm's Timeline

This is a piece of my sketchbook related to the CUETZPALIN Mythos, and part of the "Species' Traitors" Project
This is the sketch of a resumed, three-part timeline of Wilhelm Mattoni, the protagonist of the CUETZPALIN Mythos. Check the links for a more detailed timeline of his human form and of his Cuetzpalin form.

Wilhelm has been born in 1994, in the city of St. Paul, an industrial metropolis situated on the territory controlled by the Federative Republic of San Brandon, that historically occupies a position of a lesser subject/servant in the United Nations. Often sharp-edged and critical of the world around him, Wilhelm was an early artist who found inspiration on the ancient cultures of his continent, on the wildlife, and from his thirteen years onwards, also drawing from some ideals of Anarcho-Primitivism (like living as a nomad among the remnants of wildlife from his continent, that has become the dream of his years as a teenage) and also Animal Liberation (that being the reason why he adopted a vegan diet, he didn't want that any animal should spend its life on a cage, and never found anyone worthy of jailing or killing another to please its apettite if there were -and there are- other means to survive). He never liked the impulsive taste for a comfortable life at the cost of others which was forced over the crowds of peoples in the urban means, and he also found no good in wasting his life working to make someone else profit, while waiting for acknowledgment, if he could attain these things naturally, if there was no military apparatus of the State, corporations, church and any border - for him, the State, civilization and society are more usurpers of natural rights than organs which provides them. Wilhelm shows a peaceful, kind persona, yet he's always taken seriously by anyone near him, even regarded as too wise for his age, but that earns him no satisfaction, for it just make him seem distant from others, a position he often dislikes, it gives the impression that he’s so serious and smart that he manipulates and distrusts everyone, what unwillingly makes him often confident and sometimes arrogant, hiding other of his better aspects on a general, superficial view.

Wilhelm also sees that most people strongly believe in identities such as "Humankind" (in differentiation of a much more broader and diverse group classified as "Animals"), identities forged by hate and violence, and pretend or have been led to believe that they want peace. Their speech of peace merely mask their desire to not act, and to have other people (human and non-human) working and sacrificing for their own comfort, he often wonders: has his search for knowledge distanced him from any possibility of inner peace? Have this collective search for peace culminated in the generalized tolerance for an unseen violence? Can the voice of animal liberation prevail only by speech and the spreading of consciousness, or violent means shall be needed?

Around November 2008, this 14 year old would change his life forever. The Cuetzpalin (a kind of humanoid reptiles natives to Aztlán, that have also lived with ancient peoples of Tredius' American Continent, such as the Toltecs, and with early generations of still extant ones, such as the Huacastecs and Tepecs) are reportedly extinct on the planet since the fall of Tenochtitlán in 1520, and their very existence doesn't make it to the history books, which describes them as an ancient myth from the Mexica (a very sophisticated civilization often seen by ignorant, soft and spoiled academical authorities/writers from the "enlightenment era" as a primitive society). The Huacastecs and some descendants of the Tenochca people believe that the Cuetzpalin will return and save them from the problems of the age of iron which they witness since the coming of the colonizing men in the 16th Century. They don’t know how this salvation would come, several of them are already inserted in the citizenship of nations which they don’t belong, several have been forced to live under identities they didn’t chose, but there are still some who detain more proximity to their roots, such as the Tepecs of Xoctepec (known officially as Rondon archipelago), a group of descendants from both the Tairona and Mexica peoples, that have split from their sister-tribe, the Kogi, and moved to San Brandon. Their main troubles, by other side, is that their lack of citizenship has let many landlords being financed by livestock and agribusiness enterprises to hunt them down until they let their lands be consumed by the devastating food industry. Wilhelm has always appreciated the diverse indigenous cultures of his continent, both present and past (an interest which is very uncommon to his age group and those around him, who prefer to spend time on some viedogames and "pop culture", unaware of anything that came before the eighties) and supported their cultural perseverance, except for some traditions, like hunting, rituals that included human or animal sacrifice and religious hierarchy. Wilhelm was also influenced by some deep ecological matters, such as the need for a de-industrialization process and population diminishment. From an early age, Wilhelm perceived the planet couldn’t support so many people consuming so many lives, occupying so much space and spending too much money on things that dealt more with their desires than with their needs -putting everyone, even their own, at mercy of their most pathetic wishes, as if there was no fruition or satisfaction coming from inside. The contact of Wilhelm with the expectancy of the Tepec peoples for the return of a Cuetzpalin, named Paynal, said to be the messenger of the Mexican War God, the Fifth Sun, will yet prove to be astounding for his own, for their own, but mostly for all the United Nations.

One day, while in vacations at Rondon archipelago (where his father has some relatives residing, on a small town surrounded by some farms), Wilhelm was found breaking into a private property to liberate/carry away some livestock, what had the local owner of that land pursuing him to death. He just escaped death because he ran straight into a greeny lake, even though the fall left him unconscious, he at least escaped from his would-be killers. The lake's water was actually Teyoliatl, a clear-green substance derived from the ancient Huehueyolcatl, which used to attract self-sufficient lifeforms, and inside it there was a Tonalcoatl (the parasite form of a Cuetzpalin) who used to be Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, the last of the Mexica Tlatoani to reside on Tenochtitlán, from the time when the Spanish have arrived. When Wilhelm woke up, he realized he had gained a Cuetzpalin form, super speed, super-human strength, agility, endurance and skills, and also that Moctezuma was telepathically communicating with him (on nahuatl, though, a language he was just learning by his own account and the support of some locals). Moctezuma and Wilhelm have learned mutually, him about a past of war and greatness, where dragons ruled the sky, and Moctezuma about the boring present where war is just a power play by some coward politicians paid by some rich, spoiled industrialists and landlords (who unlike some of the politicians have great public support) to send some stupid, rules-following soldiers to their deaths, with the promise they will kill some other soldiers and prtect their families from an unseen, distant if not even non-existing threat. But that power meant much more to Wilhelm, taking advantage of these abilities and the invisibility that an inhuman could have, he began acting for animal liberation, freeing all animals he could from whatever prison they were in: Zoos, vivisection laboratories, vivariums, farms, circuses, amusement parks. Because that's a crime according to the human laws, and because he's not human, he obviously has faced military repression, that instead of dialoguing with him or the animals just sought to kill them both, and that has lead him to answer with the same violence. From that point onwards, peace wasn't a choice, and he ended up having to conciliate his life as a high-school student and his life as a Cuetzpalin. Following Moctezuma's advices, he ended up identifying himself as Cuetzpalin Paynal, and took it in advantage to gather some different, previously warring rival tribes into rather focusing their armed strategy against the landlords and military police, occuppying their lands, disobeying the law of the invading nation, shaking the pillars of order. On his way he made much more enemies besides the United Nation's authorities, such as the UTSST (United Topakar Socialist States of Tredius) and the Church itself, being spotted and becoming somewhat famous, after the mainstream media, always supportive of the industrial exploitation, could no longer hide his existence from the public. He even managed to gather different groups of anarchists and act on public riots or underground actions against the economical system, even leading to several prison breaks on the continent. He also made some allies, such as the Triton, Cuauhtemoc, Akamai, Xbalanque the Wayob magician, some anarchists who began using military stuff he stole, Fafnir the Dragon and Dazbog the arsonist. But as time went by, he perceived that if he accessed his Cuetzpalin form more often (and he spent more time as Paynal than as Wilhelm), he would no longer be able to turn back to human and his social life would be over. While at the beginning of his time as Paynal, in 2008, he'd surely trade his "social life" on urban centers for that power and some life on the wild, in 2012 he was just beginning his academical and professional life, and strangely enough he thought it'd be worth to conciliate that with some power.

In March 2012, his need for super-humans powers has been satiated by the Nemontemi Stone -which he met through Xbalanque and learned how to master it by Hunahpu-, that has become the alternative for his Cuetzpalin powers. He used to say that the same stone which power has freed Cipactli from its chain and destrpyed pretty much the Aztec Civilization in April 2010 would now destroy the civilization of Tredius and free himself from his chains. Around that time, he was already growing sick of some anarchists and other people he had some contact as Paynal and not so much as Wilhelm, who were deviating the attention from the combats, riots and underground direct actions towards some popularity contests, theoretical debates, hardcore bands' disputes for more money, and other more peaceful, less practical things. He also witnessed that from within the animal rights' movement, where pacifists have made it harmless to the ever-growing animal exploration industry. In parts, that's also been because of the negative results which he achieved while fighting a major enemy of his. But after some love delusions, he'd get back to the fight, just to learn that some people closer to Paynal apparently disliked him from the beginning, and many more were thinking Wilhelm had no authority or voice within social movements because he hadn't "experience", what has led him to question how important superficial identities were to those idiots. Either way, he didn't give up because of some popularity and attention-seeking "anarchists" who always relied on socialist propaganda to mask their own shallow, egoistical and materialistic goals, and continued fighting. But within ten months, all his plans to keep on human society and make amends with it, by studying and working on any official institution, have been undone because of his own relentless actions while using the Nemontemi Stone, that had him jailed and stripped from several rights -including studying! But that still didn't mean too much for him, who has made it to return to his city and university despite being persecuted by the military authorities, while using a collective of anarchists' house to hide on meantime. That plan, however, still didn't go well, and he found the only way was to travel around the country as a wanderer, what has forced him to part ways with family and friends, without sending farewells to most of them and running towards an uncertain fate. On a fateful battle at the bleeding lungs of the world, he saw no other choice other than becoming a Cuetzpalin again, and he became the Cuetzpalin Nagual, that despite stripped of human identification and looking, despite being the same Wilhelm, had now much more power than he ever had, for he still kept the Nemontemi Stone. As the Nagual, he conciliated his survival on the wild, or stealing stuff from urban centers, with going after those authorities behind industrial civilization.

He would only get his access to a human form later, around early 2015, in Tlalocan, where he'd be known by the locals as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. And his Cuetzpalin form would pass through several changes after he became the Mandragorean of Kukulcan. In September 2015, he'd return to the planet of Tredius, after being away for 11 months, and leading a fatal blow to the United Nations -destroying several cities and forcing its human populations into nomadism-, he became known as Quetzalcoatl. In 2018, after plunging out most of humankind from the planet, he put the Nemontemi Stone he lost two years before and just reclaimed into his own organism, becoming an Earth Dragon. His 'human' (how human is someone wit horns and wrapped in plants?) form has been covered by ashes and war painting, and he would be known as Itztlacoliuhqui. Despite many people disliked what he has done, he himself became a god, one who decided there couldn't be so many people residing on the planet (sounds just like God ordering the Flood. Guess how different the contemporary industrial civilization is in relation to the mythical earth of Genesis?), and one who has earned the enmity of the Elemental Gods.