Where & When
The story takes place in Mexico, during the time of the Aztec Empire. While the exact date is impossible to pin down the Empire only lasted a hundred years, which narrows down the possibilities. Since the tomb in the story is dated to the 1430s and its architect’s son is still alive, the mid-15th century seems the most likely timeframe.
Setting
More specifically, the story is set in a large but unnamed city. Presumably, this is one of the three core Aztec city-states on which the Empire was built, but there is nothing in the story to indicate which one it might be. However, a later tie-in novel identified it as the largest of the three, the de facto capital, Tenochtitlan. Which seems as good a choice as any.
There are several changes to real-world Aztec culture used in the serial, many of them to help the plot along, others to suit the televisual medium. (One that’s often cited by fans, for instance, is that lower-class Aztec women often went topless, which clearly isn’t going to work on a family TV show). If we’re using the setting in an RPG, we have a choice of how closely to follow reality; I’ll assume that we’ll largely stick to it because that’s a clear baseline, but it doesn’t have to be like that.
Tenochtitlan was a large city, located on an island in a shallow lake long since drained to make way for Mexico City. It was connected to the shoreline by causeways, and surrounded by “floating gardens” – actually low earthen platforms for growing crops on. The story as broadcast, however, takes place primarily within the sacred precincts, a walled-off compound filled with ziggurats and other public buildings where the four main streets came together in the city centre.
The focal point of the city – and arguably, of the story – was what is now referred to as the Templo Mayor, an especially grand ziggurat topped by two shrines standing side by side. At the time of the Spanish conquest, this was around 60 metres (200 feet) high including four terraces and the height of the shrines. However, it was constantly being rebuilt and enlarged, so at the time the story is set it would have been noticeably smaller than this, although by how much is difficult to say.
In the TV serial, a couple of people fall/jump off the balcony at the top of the main temple – landing, one must assume, on the next terrace down, rather than at street level. At a guess, they could be falling 10-12 metres (30-40 feet), which certainly could prove fatal, but isn’t guaranteed to be. Most game systems, however, tend to be more generous than harsh reality, which may be worth bearing in mind.
The shrines at the top were dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc, and the sun god, Huitzilopocthli, both of whom demanded human sacrifice. In the story, there is just one sacrificial platform, and it stands in front of the tomb of the high priest Yetaxa. This is one of the concessions to the story, since, while tombs have been found around the temple, they weren’t built on top of it.
All of the Aztec characters in the story are of high status – even the temple guards that we see are wearing the pointy hats associated with skilled warriors, not the simple clothing of regular soldiers. If an RPG story heads out into the rest of the city, the PCs will inevitably encounter the common people that formed the bulk of the society, most of whom would be artisans, traders, or slaves, and who could be easily identified by wearing far less clothing than the hereditary elite. They live in buildings of wood and earth, roofed with reeds, unlike the stone palaces of the nobility. In addition to the streets, the island city is also crossed by a network of canals, while the land on the lakeshore beyond includes smaller towns and farmland.
The limited role of women in Aztec society is fairly well reflected in the story.
It's probably only the named characters in the story – and maybe not all of them – who are truly nobles, however. The story implies that the two high priests are the rulers of the city, which isn’t how it actually worked. The Aztec Empire wasn’t centralised in the way that, say, the Roman Empire was, being more an alliance of powerful city-states. Nonetheless, there was an Emperor of sorts, who, at the time the story is set is probably Moctezuma I (an ancestor of the more famous Montezuma, who first met the Spanish). There were, indeed, two high priests under him, jointly running the Templo Mayor, but the titles and duties in the story are there to contrast the achievements of Aztec civilisation with its barbarity, not a reflection of the real system.
An alternative here, if one wants to keep closer to reality, is to have Autloc be the High Priest of Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent, the god of knowledge and the wind. He would have less to do with the Templo Mayor in this case and isn’t one of the two highest-ranking priests, but it’s still a very high-status position and puts him in charge of the seminary. Whether Tlotoxl is the high priest of Tlaloc or of Huitzilopochtli is a matter of taste since he leads sacrifices to both in the original story… or, of course, one could just change things.
In addition to the temple and Ixta’s barracks, there are two key locations in the story. The first is the ‘seminary’ that Susan is sent to, and this is, indeed a real place – the Calmecac, where priests were trained. This was part of the temple of Quetzalcoatl, a large but relatively low building close to the taller main temple. All the priests that were trained here were men, but priestesses did exist in Aztec society, so there must have been some means of training them, too.
The seminary is included as a way of getting Susan out of the story for a while, but the Garden of Peace has a more significant role. This is stated to be reserved for high-status people over the age of 52, as a sort of retirement community. Certainly, Tenochtitlan had several gardens for the use of the elite, and, if ‘retirement’ wasn’t really a thing, it’s at least plausible that one might have been especially associated with the elderly. (Note that nobody seems to have difficulty walking in and out of it, so it can’t be that isolated).
From its role in the plot, the Garden would most likely be located just outside the crenellated stone walls that surround the sacred precinct, perhaps where the royal zoo was at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This makes the passage Ian has to crawl through about 300 metres (1,000 feet) in length, not counting the shaft that would have to get him to the tomb at the top of the ziggurat.
- Templo Mayor (including Yetaxa’s tomb)
- Warrior Lodge (Ixta’s barracks)
- Calmecac/Temple of Quetzalcoatl (god of knowledge and the wind)
- Temple of Mixcoatl (god of hunting and war)
- Warrior Lodge
- Temple of Cihuacouatl (goddess of motherhood)
- Temple of Yacatecuhtli (god of merchants)
- Temple of Tezcatlipoca (god of the night)
- Ball Court
- Festival Square and Skull Rack
- Temple of Tonatiuh (god of the day)
- Temple of Xipe Totec (god of agriculture and ritual flaying)
- Garden of Peace (?)
- Great Plaza / Market
- Moctezuma’s Palace
Aztec technology is arguably ‘chalcolithic’ – an intermediate step between the Stone and Bronze Ages where metals like copper, silver, and gold can be worked, but are rare and mostly used as decoration. This is somewhat misleading, however, since they were certainly far more advanced in terms of architecture, literacy, art, and social organisation than any chalcolithic society from Europe.
Famously, however, they did not have the wheel. Or at least, they had the general idea, since they made children’s toys with wheels that could be pulled along on a string, but they never seem to have thought to make full-size ones for carts and the like. This may partly be because they didn’t have any beasts of burden such as horses or oxen… although that wouldn’t explain the lack of, say, the potter’s wheel that other cultures seem to have come up with without difficulty.
In the TV serial, we see wooden clubs, stone-tipped spears, and carved stone knives. The latter are more smoothly carved than the sharp bits of flint used by the popular image of cavemen (as seen in 100,000 BC) and have wooden grips to make them easier to hold, but at the end of the day, they’re still stone. Other weapons that real Aztec warriors used included bows, slings, and small hand axes – some of which were even made of copper, although this isn’t a great metal for making weapons from.
Most significant, however, and indelibly associated with Aztec warriors, was the macuahuitl, which both Ixta and Ian are seen fighting with. This is a flat wooden club with a sword-like grip and sharp obsidian blades embedded around its edge – effectively making it a sort of razor-sword. These were apparently common among the Aztecs, although individual examples must have been valuable. Obsidian is, if anything, sharper than steel, although it is far more brittle, so that, while the weapon was deadly, the blades could shatter if they impacted anything solid.
For armour, all the warriors are seen wearing cloth quilting, which was the standard for all but the lowest rank of soldiers - who didn't wear armour at all. They carry medium shields of wood and leather, with a fringe of stiff feathers. In the real world, some might also have had copper edging. The temple guards are shown wearing the high conical hats used as a badge of experience, earned if one had captured two men in battle; these were made of cloth over a cane frame.
Those who had captured four enemies were allowed wooden helmets carved in the shape of eagles or jaguars, and sometimes other designs. In the story, Ixta is seen dressed as an Eagle Warrior in the first episode but as a Jaguar Warrior thereafter; in reality, these were two separate warrior societies and probably rivals. Either way, this is what one would expect of a senior military commander and, taken with the fact his father was an architect, could imply he isn’t of noble birth.
Should the characters travel to (or from) the surrounding countryside, the agricultural land is dominated by crops of maize, with a smaller, but still significant, proportion of beans, tomatoes, amaranth grain, chilli peppers, and assorted squashes. (The cocoa that Cameca prepares for the Doctor, while popular among the Aztecs, was not grown locally, but an expensive import from South America). Without horses, oxen, or sheep, however, the only domesticated animals were dogs, although there may also have been semi-domesticated deer.
Deer are obviously something that can also be hunted, but there are also peccaries, tapirs, and anteaters, alongside many birds and small mammals. Predators present in the area at the time (although often no longer) included pumas, venomous snakes and, of course, jaguars.
Scenario
A bigger problem with the story as written is that the plot is contingent on the protagonists making certain decisions: leaving the tomb without ensuring they can get back in again, Ian agreeing to challenge Ixta for command of the army, and Barbara trying to change the shape of Aztec civilisation.
The last of these is probably the easiest to persuade most PCs to go along with, given that human sacrifice is generally regarded as a Bad Thing in modern society. This is especially true if we’re dealing with “Space Aztecs” rather than the historical sort. In the latter case, time travel games other than Doctor Who are more likely to focus on keeping history intact, and in this case, trying to ensure that some other time traveller doesn’t stop the sacrifices is, if a logical extrapolation of that, possibly not much fun.
Few players would be happy protecting Tlotoxl.
With “Space Aztecs”, however, there’s an obvious motivation for the PCs to try and stop the slaughter. Star Trek is an unusual case here, since the Prime Directive says that you should just let them get on with it, but at least it’s a moral dilemma that can be added in if the rest of the scenario is about something else. Furthermore, while, in the original story, Barbara fails to do more than change one man’s life, leaving history unaltered, with “Space Aztecs” victory for the PCs is an entirely plausible and hopefully uncontentious outcome. In the case of Stargate SG-1, for instance, you’re probably foiling some previously unknown Goa’uld in the process.
I’ll also mention that the first sacrifice in the story is to Tlaloc the rain god, and the victim here, as with the second sacrifice, is an adult man willingly giving up his life for his community. In reality, many sacrifices were prisoners of war, but more significantly, Tlaloc’s were mostly children. Apparently, the Aztecs believed that the more they could make the children cry before and during the sacrifice, the more it would rain.
This is the sort of realistic detail you might not wish to include…
As to the second point about Ixta, this is easy enough to get around. He’s arrogant enough that he’s going to want to pit himself against anyone who looks to be a skilled warrior, whether he’s directly challenged for the generalship or not. And, if he loses the initial first-blood duel, he’ll be embarrassed enough to try to get revenge and prove that he really is the better warrior after all. Even if, as in the second fight in the story, he has to cheat to do it.
That leaves the plot element about getting back into the tomb. This is, perhaps, the part that most resembles an RPG scenario, focussing as it does on finding some secret way in without arousing suspicion, figuring out who you can trust that might have a part of the puzzle, and then getting in through a trapped underground passage (there’s only one trap in the story, of course, but we could add more if needed). As written, however, it requires the PCs to start off inside the tomb and then all leave it together through a one-way door they haven’t thought to prop open – possible, certainly, but not something you’d want to rely on happening.
Plus, if they don’t have a TARDIS, what are they doing in the tomb in the first place? That’s obvious enough in the case of Stargate or a game with a similar concept, but less so if you have to land in a spaceship. Sure, you could beam somebody in, Star Trek style, but then they don’t have any reason to get back inside again.
While the story as written works for TV, a more reliable option in a game is to have the PCs start off outside but need to get at something hidden in the tomb. A piece of advanced/anachronistic technology, perhaps, or some other anomaly that forms the focus of the PCs’ mission. In the case of Star Trek, the thick walls of the pyramid, perhaps enhanced with some unusual mineral or an effect of the anomalous device, prevent transporters from working in its immediate vicinity unless you can get pattern enhancers in there. If you don’t have teleportation, it’s merely the fact that the tomb is sealed, and the locals aren’t going to want you breaking into their sacred place.
I will also mention in passing the Cameca subplot. This is easy to arrange for any PC interested in such a thing, with Cameca being swapped out for a character of different age or gender, if need be. In view of which, I’ll also note that the Aztecs were as much against extramarital sex as historical European cultures were, and probably with about as much success.
A key element of the final section of the original story is a solar eclipse over the city just as the protagonists are ready to make their escape. It will probably come as no surprise to discover that there was no such eclipse at the time, although there were in other parts of the world, as they happen every eighteen months or so somewhere on Earth (albeit often far out at sea). One could ignore this, especially if we’re going with “Space Aztecs” on some other planet that may have a different moon/sun arrangement than Earth. Or, if it’s a time travel story where the PCs are there on purpose, this could be something that they know is coming up and possibly a deadline for reaching a maguffin in the tomb.
Otherwise… well, it may be less dramatic, but the Aztecs had ceremonies for all sorts of things, with the sun god’s primary sacrificial day falling in December. So you could just replace the eclipse with that.
A scenario using the setting might also incorporate other elements that do not appear in the serial. A hunt is a possibility, perhaps involving a conflict with a jaguar. Another is the Aztec ballgame, ollamalitzli. This often had a ritual function, for example with slaves playing a team representing the forces of darkness in a rigged game and then being sacrificed once they lose. Such matches would be played using the large ballcourt in the sacred precinct close by the rack of skulls belonging to former sacrifices. But it was also a popular game in its own right, perhaps sometimes using the main court, but also with makeshift ones elsewhere in the city.
While the exact rules are unclear from a modern perspective, we know that the game was played in a long, narrow court with steep walls on either side, and used a solid rubber ball that was bounced off the hips. It seems to have had some similarity to volleyball, with teams confined to one side of the court and having to return the ball to the other side without it bouncing more than once on theirs – points being lost if you failed to do this and gained if you bounced the ball off the opponent’s wall. A stone ring was placed on each wall a good 6 metres (20 feet) or so up and, in the unlikely event you could somehow get the ball through it, you scored an instant win. Otherwise, the game was probably time-limited.
Rules
As a historical setting, there are few special rules required to emulate this serial. Following the story as written, with the exact same plots to undermine the PCs by Ixta and Tlotoxl, requires a description of the poison used to incapacitate Ian in the duel and how to deal with the flooding in the tunnel but neither of these are unusual situations. Aztec technology is going to be at either tech level 0 or 1 in most systems that have such things, and only the weapons and armour are likely to require quantification.
The light padded armour would be at the minimum possible value for armour in most systems, while weapons such as spears, bows, and even stone knives will be insufficiently different from the standard versions of such things to be worth defining as distinct. The one exception may be the macuahuitl, a sufficiently unusual weapon that it’s rarely covered in core rulebooks. There is a risk here of ‘Badass Ethnic Weapon’ syndrome, whereby any exotic weapon unique to a particular culture is assumed to be superior to anything that looks more familiar; in this case, this might include taking some of the more spectacular feats known to have been achieved with a macuahuitl, such as decapitating a horse in a single blow, and taking them as indicative of an average attack with the weapon.
In reality, the game statistics of a macuahuitl probably aren’t that different from those of a broadsword/longsword, aside from it being made from brittle material that makes it less effective at parrying. It’s about the same length, and has a sharp edge, although it’s clearly only a slashing weapon, never a stabbing/piercing one. Although there are some differences in the technique required to wield it, in most systems, it’s likely close enough that regular sword skill will suffice – this may differ if, for example, the system distinguishes the skill required for broadswords and scimitars.
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