Ritual Sacrifice
Added 2021-05-27 13:10:59 +0000 UTCMesoamerican culture is definitely under-explored in the world of tabletop RPGs. Aztec temples, Incan mountaintops, and great Mayan civilizations are ripe for gaming inspiration, and yet so few RPGs engage with these cultures meaningfully! My bud DM Dave has created a lot of Mesoamerican-inspired adventures, monsters, and player mechanics, but ultimately it seems like a pretty large blind spot for plenty of tabletop creators. I've heard Dragons Conquer America is pretty cool, but I really don't know too much about it. Give me recommendations if you know of any other cool RPG options for these sorts of settings!
NOW, with that massive caveat out of the way, if you are playing in pre-colonial Central American-inspired settings (or... like, you just have a ziggurat in a jungle), you're going to want some appropriately non-European combat music for those encounters. For that, here's "The Old Gods Hunger," a crunchy Aztec-inspired battle track. Big frame drums, esoteric metal and clay percussion, and various wailing woodwinds set the scene here: this is not your standard goblin skirmish. Duke it out enraged priests, Xiuhcoatl, or dirtbag settlers in lush and timeworn environs. This combat music was definitely inspired by the popular cultural touchstone of the "ritual sacrifice," but feel free to whip this out for any badass fight in either overgrown rainforests or exotic tombs.
The raw percussion track here as well as the flutes + synths make for awesome stems, so I've split this track up into its component parts for folks at the Artist tier +. Go grab that version if you want some more stripped down music! Cheers!
