Xolotl

Also called Xolotl the Dog.

Xolotl is the dog-headed twin of Quetzalcoatl in Aztec tradition, a deformed god of the evening star who guides the sun through the underworld and helped retrieve the bones from which people were made.

Tradition: Aztec mythology
Region: Mesoamerica (place of origin)
Trait family: The Two-Realmed
Kin: Quetzalcóatl (derived from)

Kinship

Lines of descent added by hand and approved one at a time.

Quetzalcóatl derived from
why
Xolotl is paired with Quetzalcoatl as a twin or double, and where the feathered serpent is the morning star, Xolotl is the evening — the same body seen going down rather than coming up.

Traits

Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.

Form

Flayed skinless body exposing muscle
why
sometimes an appearance of being flayed

Behaviour

Escorts souls of the dead
why
The dog association carries weight in a tradition where a dog accompanies the dead on their journey below. His characteristic office is escort.

Utility powers

Planar traversal
why
He conducts the sun through the underworld between setting and rising, which makes him necessary rather than merely ominous, and he assists in the retrieval of the bones of a previous humanity from the underworld so that the current people can be made from them.
Shapeshifting
why
In one widely-repeated account, when the gods must sacrifice themselves to set the new sun in motion, Xolotl refuses, flees, and transforms repeatedly to escape — into a maize plant, an agave, an amphibian — before being caught and killed. That flight is the detail that complicates him.

Roles

Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.