Moon-Brewed Chocoffee: The Elixir of Eternal Energy
While many different foods, drinks, and medicines can be made from various parts of the Cocoa-Coffea Tree, the most famous--and most mysterious--is a preparation that uses both the coffee and cacao beans and is known as Moon-Brewed Chocoffee.
Legend speaks of this mysterious blend of hot chocolate and coffee being the key not to eternal life, but eternal energy. Sought after by the exhausted, the overworked, and the uninspired, the exact preparations for this mysterious blend are lost to the sands of time.
Rumors and conspiracies suggest that a secret underground facility in Ethiopia is dedicated to recreating the ancient drink, but these stories lack solid evidential support.
Summary
In the oldest recordings of the myth, it is said that to brew chocoffee by the moon is to drain the moon of it's light.
Made from cacao and coffee beans harvested as the moon waxes from new to first quarter, they are then "pepaired in the traditional fashion with the appropriate herbs and fine resins" during the waxing gibbous moon.
The elixir then is brewed in a "clear crystalline vessel of the appropriate cut and proportion" during the first night of the full moon. It is then "aged for a day and a night" before being consumed on the third night of the full moon.
...Therefore, we are led to assume, by the available records, measures, and observations, that the precise geometrics for the proper brewing of the ancient elixer (sic) are entirely reliant on the latitude at which the brewing is meant to take place. And yet, La Compagnie demands that I continue with all due diligence to learn the secrets of the elusive elixer (sic) from the native peoples in my control. La Compagnie has authorized the natives to be questioned...sharply. (Footnote: This vernacular was oft used to disguise the distasteful nature of torturing a conquered people for information.)
"A little enhanced interrogation never hurt anyone"....Uhm. yes, yes it does actually that's entirely the point, what the heck did you think it means. A tale as old as time that, 'sharply' questioning native peoples under conquest. Also with a promise and premise like eternal energy, perhaps such....distasteful attempts to acquire it or knowledge of it are not unexpected. Most unfortunate. You got a lot done in this one with a few words and some well thrown shady implications, well done Haly :)
One of the other articles has an excerpt from a VoC atlas. I challenged myself to write a world with no horrors in it. Unfortunately, I based it on coffee and chocolate, in the real world. And that means...well, the Dutch. *sigh*
Haly, the Moonlight Bard
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Chocolatte , spend Summer Camp in a magical world dedicated to chocolate and coffee!
Yeah that is an....unavoidable connection unfortunately.