Post by QuirkyBestiary on Dec 2, 2018 10:48:37 GMT
Okay so this is the other 'Supernatural' critter that I am at a total loss to identify. I managed to find the Bearwalker with some targeted Google-Fu, rendering my last post on the subject kinda embarrassing. However, there is still one monster in the lore of that show that I am completely bewildered by. It's called the Borderwalker, and is presumably meant to be Aztec in origin as it is mentioned alongside the Tzitzimimeh star demons. According to the 'background' tab on their page on the SPN Wiki:
'Borderwalkers are found only in the deepest desert and are generally very shy, rarely making contact with living humans. But they are attracted by dying women and will often make an offer to guide their soul. A normal Borderwalker is a shape-shifter, able to take on aspects of various desert animals such as the coyote, the scorpion or the rattlesnake.'
Apparently the first Borderwalker was created in ancient times when the trickster deity Huēhuecoyōtl was drawn to a beautiful mortal woman, replacing her heart with a copal in order to make her fully his. The woman refused to stop loving him, and clung to him even after he returned to his own realm. This meant that the woman somehow became the first Borderwalker, and would later go on to turn dying women into Borderwalkers - treating them as her children seeing as they followed in her path. She either guides dying women into the afterlife or offers them the chance to become Borderwalkers themselves. Borderwalkers are apparently considered to be harmless, and are left alone by hunters in the SPN universe.
The story in which Borderwalkers first became a problem involved the Tzitzimimeh manipulating the transformation process to create a rage-filled and dangerous Borderwalker who would eventually be kidnapped and forced to open a portal to the Star Demon realm. Inevitably, Sam and Dean Winchester stopped this. Borderwalkers can apparently only be killed using a weapon called an Itztlitlantl, which is a leaf-shaped knife made from obsidian.
So does anyone actually have any idea what SPN was talking about with this creature? It sounds intriguing, and not many of the monsters in the olden days of the show (when this story was published as a tie-in novel) were fakelore - and so I would be inclined to say that they were based on true mythology that has somehow become garbled or mistranslated.
'Borderwalkers are found only in the deepest desert and are generally very shy, rarely making contact with living humans. But they are attracted by dying women and will often make an offer to guide their soul. A normal Borderwalker is a shape-shifter, able to take on aspects of various desert animals such as the coyote, the scorpion or the rattlesnake.'
Apparently the first Borderwalker was created in ancient times when the trickster deity Huēhuecoyōtl was drawn to a beautiful mortal woman, replacing her heart with a copal in order to make her fully his. The woman refused to stop loving him, and clung to him even after he returned to his own realm. This meant that the woman somehow became the first Borderwalker, and would later go on to turn dying women into Borderwalkers - treating them as her children seeing as they followed in her path. She either guides dying women into the afterlife or offers them the chance to become Borderwalkers themselves. Borderwalkers are apparently considered to be harmless, and are left alone by hunters in the SPN universe.
The story in which Borderwalkers first became a problem involved the Tzitzimimeh manipulating the transformation process to create a rage-filled and dangerous Borderwalker who would eventually be kidnapped and forced to open a portal to the Star Demon realm. Inevitably, Sam and Dean Winchester stopped this. Borderwalkers can apparently only be killed using a weapon called an Itztlitlantl, which is a leaf-shaped knife made from obsidian.
So does anyone actually have any idea what SPN was talking about with this creature? It sounds intriguing, and not many of the monsters in the olden days of the show (when this story was published as a tie-in novel) were fakelore - and so I would be inclined to say that they were based on true mythology that has somehow become garbled or mistranslated.