Volume 1

The weavers of the Masters of the Night-Wind know every river of the night's
domain — they know how stories and poems emerge from the black river of Mictlan.
The predatory birds that fly by night are servants of
She-With-The-Broken-Visage, who took from her master's hand moonlight condensed
into three silver strands, and crossed the fog of night to arrive in the land of
spirit-flame, commanding blind weavers to craft them into vivid tapestries.
These hang in human dwellings, sanctuaries, and places of war, making stories
and legends known to humanity, and as the tapestries continue to lengthen, they
become history.

But as the wandering sage banished by all tribes, Ropal the "Child of the Sea,"
once said: "I embrace chaos, yet I know not if chaos embraces me." Ancient
stories and riddles always hide perilous secrets. Thus, the Lord of the Night
blinded all who weave tales, compelling them to focus on stories while being
unable to see the present, causing them to be pricked by the cold moonlight as
with needles, yet never to witness the three moons' death with their own eyes.
Therefore, the great master of riddles and allegories remains forever an
indiscernible, indescribable mist upon a tapestry.

The tale the craftsmen wove next intertwined whispers from the Night-Lord's
broken visage. Legends speak of a warrior named Coquitao, one of the Masters of
the Night-Wind's precursors, whose soul's homeland lay beneath a distant
midnight, under a frigid sun. Bearing the stone club Makana, he wandered the
earth, following a contract forged with gods dead and cold, his life steeped in
war and chaos. It is said that on a night of wind and rain, he made a wordless
pact with the deity of the dog days, thereby mortgaging his fate to the Kame
Twins from a plague-ridden land.

The deity of the dog days bade Coquitao punish the deluded ones who had
forgotten death, to bring down freezing smoke and dreams from the starry sky,
and distribute them to the people. Thus, Coquitao used "Makana" to bring forth
death irreversible, guiding the masterless souls back to the deep black river of
Mictlan, returning them to the Night-Lord's slumber.

Ever did Coquitao's fingers grip Makana as he trudged knee-deep in blood.
Countless days and nights of struggle and slaughter at last pacified the madness
that had torn through the starry skies. His companions followed behind him, one
among them named Nagual, a cunning shapeshifter from a distant scorched land
that burns endlessly even now.

When the last fantasist was executed by Coquitao and his companions, when the
river of blood at last pleased the jade-skirted master who dwelled above the
thundering clouds, and who then called down sweet rains to cleanse all rivers,
the deity of the dog days refused to return the hero's soul, instead commanding
the treacherous Kame Twins to direct the despicable Nagual in secret. Thus
steered, Nagual hewed Coquitao's head with an obsidian blade.

And so, headless Coquitao failed to complete his covenant with the deity of the
dog days, and could only blindly follow the Tzitzimimeh in their wandering.

Volume 2

Seeing her chosen hero meet such a miserable fate, the mistress of heavenly
stars was filled with grief and anger, and she instructed her Tzitzimimeh to
descend to the earth. There they would guide Coquitao, who had lost his head, to
his vengeance. During these long, dark ages, people witnessed Coquitao's
headless body striding through moonlit nights, tightly gripping his stone club
Makana. Some say he transformed into a black spirit leopard, silently passing
through forests and plains, bringing nightmares and inspiration to priests deep
in meditation.

Thus did Coquitao wander through long nights uncounted, transforming into
unnumbered forms, traversing lands awash with blood, winding through altars that
once pleased the lord of the skies. But at last, he found the despicable traitor
Nagual in the land of scorched and burning soil, even as the latter rested at an
oasis, sipping a poisonous serpent's blood and hallucinogenic Mexicali juices.

Then headless Coquitao raised Makana on high and struck, the blow shattering the
traitor's skull like the illusory Mexicali oracle. Then fell another blow, and
another, as headless Coquitao and Makana blasted Nagual back to his burning
hometown...

But though his vengeance was complete, Coquitao's spirit was already one with
the life of the earth, never to return. Naught but eternal, burning, icy rage
remained within that headless body, akin to the cold sun in the night skies over
the land he called home.

Long, long after, even after the deity who reigned over the dog days, the
cunning twins, and the master with the jade skirt had all passed away, after the
starlight-born Tzitzimimeh had begun to flicker, their light decaying,
Coquitao's wrathful flame, the weavers claim, has not yet gone out. His headless
figure still wanders the silvered plains at night, prowling the deep forests
choked in shadow. And they say many heroes have inherited Makana in times of
tumult and trouble, the legendary tyrant Och-Kan being one of them — he, too,
ultimately met his end in raging fire... but that is another story.