"Praise the Main God! The kingdom has conquered and destroyed Cloud Snake Mountain City, and the Alliance's sworn enemy has been exterminated to the last of their clan! Come, everyone, drink a cup with me, and celebrate the Divine King!..."
"Yes!... Praise the Main God! To the Divine King! To His Highness!..."
Night stretched vast and dark, and bonfires blazed. In the God-descendant Palace of Hidden Snake City, a new master had arrived, and with him came a feast long absent. Xolotl smiled warmly, holding a Copal Resin wine cup as he sat high upon the enormous Holy Wood Throne. Below him, the many legion generals, Temple priests, and tribal chiefs all sat on small bamboo-and-wood mats, their rank clear at a glance.
So-called "Copal Resin" was a sacrificial balm among the highland, coastal, and even Maya peoples, called the sacred "blood of the tree"! This resin was secreted by many fragrant tropical trees of the olive family, congealing into lumps, its form somewhere between amber and Agarwood, and its scent varied according to each people's local inheritance and blending. In the epics passed down along the coast, as far back as the ancient Olmec era, there had been a tradition of burning Copal Resin in sacrificial rites.
Copal Resin could burn with a rich fragrance, and in rituals it could also guide the souls of the officiating priests to commune with the ancient god-ancestors. Thus, among all the peoples under the heavens of Mesoamerica, Copal Resin was costly and extremely sought after.
The Coastal Tribes lay in the tropical jungle, one of the main places where this "blood of the tree" originated. And the resin wine cup in Xolotl's hand was a divine object of Hidden Snake Holy City, born from a large piece of ancient resin fossil dug