New character I'm gonna be playing around with: Ayauhteotl the Ahuizotl! I'm just gonna call her "Aya" though.

She is clearly based on Ahuizotl from MLP (who is a creature/spirit from Aztec mythology), but more jackal-y and with more predators mixed in. Pre-conquest mesoamerican art frequently used fantastical combination predators, combining several different predatory animals into one mega-predator. Because of this, I gave her the tongue of a snake, the eyes of an octopus, and some sick teeth.

My original inspiration was the fact that I thought Ahuizotl (from MLP) would look really cute as a girl and if his muzzle was less… weird.

Her necklace is based on a Mixtec necklace that used golden beads in the shape of jaguar teeth.

Her name — Ayauhteotl — comes from the goddess of the same name. The goddess of the mists and a manifestation of the river goddess Chalchiuhtlicue. I considered this appropriate because Ahuizotls traditionally reside in rivers where they grab unsuspecting victims and drag them to a watery death.

Even though I'm choosing to ignore the "river murderer" part in my own design, I feel it is important to note that these pre-conquest Nahuatl-speaking people did not have the concept of "good" or "evil", so spirits like the Ahuizotl are not "evil". In fact, when the Christian missionaries later came to these areas, they used the Nahuatl words for "clean" and "dirty" as substitutes for their concepts of good and evil.