The Inca state cult set the sun, Inti, at its head, with the Sapa Inca as his son, and its centre was the Coricancha in Cusco, whose walls were sheathed in gold and whose enclosure held images of subordinate powers brought in from conquered provinces. Beside Inti stood Viracocha, a creator whose exact position in the system is argued over, and the thunder, Illapa, who mattered most to farmers.
Brian Bauer's reconstruction of the ceque system describes the apparatus that held it all together. Lines radiated from the Coricancha across the valley, each strung with shrines, and each shrine was assigned to a named social group responsible for its offerings on a fixed day. The system was calendar, land register and religious obligation at once, and it was recorded, according to the colonial sources, on knotted cords.
The most demanding rite was capacocha, in which children selected for physical perfection were brought to Cusco, feted, and then taken to high mountain shrines and left there. Frozen bodies recovered from Andean summits have confirmed the practice in detail, including what was given beforehand. The atlas records it as attested, and notes that the Spanish accounts describing it were written by people who used it as a justification for what they were doing.