My family used to vacation in Xotlac every summer, take some time in their cities and outlying towns. .
I was too young to really remember the trips, besides the humidity of the deep jungle, but I did remember two things.
The first was my older brother taking me to see the fighting pits. Not because I wanted to, but because he had been put in charge of me and wanted to see them himself. I didn't understand what it was at the time, and thought it was some sort of sport. Luckily our seats weren't great, so when the fight was over, and one participant was dead on the ground, I thought there was simply an injury. I couldn't understand why everyone was cheering and no one was moving to help the injured man.
Much to my brothers chagrin, almost the moment we got back to our summer home I sold my brother out unintentionally, asking my parents why no one had helped the man in the stone pit.
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Mercy Francisca, historian and myself
Once a rather run-of-the-mill empire that forged itself out of a collection of early agrarian societies, Xotlac existed in some early respects before the
War of the Wyrms and is one of the largest nations within the
Pilgrim Lands and fit the mold of an aggressive conqueror for much of it's history.
At one point, not too long in the past, Xotlac would conduct "Flower Wars" against its neighbors. Small-scale wars against Xotlac's smaller neighbors to extract resources and prisoners. The resources would be anything from food, iron, to crystals and enchanted artefacts. A glut of wealth that fed the empire well. The prisoners, on the other hand, would be fed into the
Red Gardens, a series of fighting pits in every major city and many not so major. Within these 'gardens' ritual combat would commence, and those prisoners-turned-sacrifice would face their mortality in short order. The sacrifices would be armed and armored and put into the arena as groups or as singular combatants.
From there, specially chosen warriors, or a singular warrior, will enter the arena opposite of them. After a brief instance of ceremony (which changes depending on the purpose of the ritual combat), the combat will commence. Most often, it is direct combat between the selected warriors, but other events exist as well. Sometimes it would be a question of who could most efficiently hunt a collection of animals in a jungle created within the arena itself. Others, both groups would be competing to slay a large monster the fastest. Whatever the case, blood would be spilled upon the mother-of-pearl floor of the Red Gardens. I speak in the past tense for these events, but it is certainly not a practice that has completely disappeared. The Red Gardens are only slightly less active than they were before the transition between empire and union, with prisoners mostly being of the criminal variety now as the flower wars have become less common.
I go on this tangent to paint a picture of what kind of society Xotlac was and is still, in some respects. They're at war with themselves and their history, never ending just as they warred against their neighbors.
Had change not come, they would largely be incompatible with many modern societies, rather than the minor incompatabilities every nation carries, which are really just differences demonized with the lens of the modern age. Their constant Flower Wars, and the taking and killing of prisoners, would eventually rile their neighbors up and a reversal of fortunes would become inevitable, and they would have no allies who cared to help them. Of course, some saw what was coming and moved to soften the roughest edges from within, and no one was as dedicated to that ideal as
Tlalch Yolihual.
Yolihual sat the Petal Throne of Xotlac from the age of twelve and held the title of Emperor like his father and grandfather before him. He knew what would come if his people continued on their path, and as he grew older, he set about reforming the empire. To say that the reception to his reforms were mixed, would be an understatement. Many did accept them, to an extent, but others could not understand why things needed to change. They were wealthy and powerful, nothing in the Pilgrim Lands could stand against them. Why would they give that up? More importantly, what would their neighbors do if they weren't trimmed with Flower Wars and just allowed to grow? They rejected the concept of a continent-spanning alliance as well, due to reasons as varied as not wanting to be dragged into the affairs of people a thousand miles away and not wanting outsiders to have any sort of say in the affairs of the Empire. Well, little did they know, it would not be an Empire for long.
These negative sentiments didn't simply go away, even if the broader populace began to become more accepting of the idea(s) over time. They boiled underneath the surface, and eventually boiled over. During Yolihual's twenty-third year of rule, a conservative reactionary group made up of former soldiers and those that made a livelihood from the products of the Flower Wars known as the
Brotherhood of the Frog attempted to make a stand for what they believed to be right and proper.
In the year 18 TSE, the Brotherhood seized control of large sections of the Xoltic capital,
Xochiyotli and attempted to capture or kill Emperor Yolihual. Their plan failed, spectacularly. Many of the ringleaders were killed in the attempt to sieze the emperor, and without command the Brotherhood fell to pieces. The city blocks they controlled remained in their possession remained in their control, for a time, but what went on within them varied by who seized command. Thus began the
Woe of Xochiyotli. Many were just transformed into block sized forts, but other's became castles within which the Brotherhood carried out what they saw as reprisals against the civilian populace they had taken prisoner.
It took a month of siege to clear Xochiyotli of brotherhood control, and the destruction they had wrought was evident. Carvings of the mounds of dead, slain by ambush, magic, and trap still adorn the walls of many Red Gardens as a reminder.
This act, while tragic, was just the event that Emperor Yolihual needed. Within the following months he would construct the legal basis for a senate to be made, as well as several other modern political institutions. He did not put them in place himself, merely laying the foundation in his lifetime. When he passed away, there was no question in the peoples mind of what they wanted, and they built the rest of it themselves, most not even aware of what their final true emperor had done for them.
Even without these institutions, the
Woe of Xochiyotli was enough to bring those who had been ambivalent to the social conflict that was rising around them out of the middle aisle, and putting the Empire in the perfect position to finally accept the idea of a continent spanning alliance enough for the founders of what would become the
Farcast Union to finally make an acceptable proposal within a year of the Woe. Not long after, the Farcast Union would be formally announced, with two members (the other being the
Union of Lebarallia) and growing.
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