Lighting Incense

  The priests lined up, all in black robes, all carrying a small, black iron lamp in one hand and a black bag in the other. The bag had the Fifth God's Incense Prayer written on it in white paint.
  The head priest raised his hands. "It is now our sacred duty to enter the Stone Streets and sweeten the air they breathe," he said. They filed out of the temple foyer in a single line, swinging their lamps in unison.
  In the courtyard awaited a wagon pulled by a horse. Inside rested sacks of sugarberry incense, enough to fill dozens of incense bowls, enough to last a day or so before the stench of the Pit overcame the sweet.
 

 

Origin

The Fifth God from the Seven Gods and the Stars pantheon was said to have gifted the fallen stars delectable smells to make their exile from the heavens bearable. He gave them flowers, trees, fruits, the smell of earth after the rains, and he gave them the wind to carry along the scents.
  In honor of his gift, his devoted priests in Jiy would light sugarberry incense in the districts near the royal palace, sending the sweetness of air to all the faithful. The head priest would lead a procession to each large bowl, where priests would dump mounds of fruit-scented incense into them, then light them from sanctified candles. The head priest would bless the bowl and its contents, and call on laypeople to join them.
  Chanting, they would travel to the next bowl and repeat the ritual.
 

 

Change

Then Dentheria invaded. The royal palace and the wealthy nobles who had mansions near it were either executed or forced to conform and removed from their homes. The palace was burned to the ground, all other structures destroyed or looted, including the temples.
  The once-wealthy districts fell to ruin, and the poorest of the poor moved in, covering the fallen wall with tarps to create crude shelters. The remaining Seven Gods followers fell away from religion, unable to stomach that their deities sacrificed their adherents to power-hungry unbelievers, ignoring the fact that all ex-Taangin Empire countries followed the same pantheon.
  The lighting of incense died with the priests until a puppet king of the Dentherion Empire created the Pit. He outlawed all burials and required that the dead be thrown into the Pit, where large, terrestrial lizards would eat the remains. The open-air Pit poisoned the air, the water, the earth. The people residing in the area fell sick and died.
 

 

Ritual

The priest, after conducting research, hunted for the incense bowls in the Stone Streets. Relieved they had not been looted, he ordered incense from the Dentheria. Once it arrived, he rented a horse-drawn cart, loaded it to capacity, and toured the streets, shoveling mounds of the sweet-smelling stuff into the burners. He would pray over each one, light them, and move on.
  The sweet of the fruit did not quite cover the stench of the dead, but close enough.
  Satisfied, he resurrected the Temple of the Fifth God in the Vale, declared himself high priest, and the first command he made was to have his followers tour the Stone Streets, put incense in the burners, and light them. He stressed the sacredness of this charge, and to emphasize it, he donned black robes, carried a black lantern, and heaped so much incense into hand carts, two priests had to pull each one.
  By the time of his death, the lighting of the incense had become a holy tradition that the priests believed helped the residents of the Stone Streets.
  No one said a word, when the high priest's body was shipped back to Dentheria for a proper burial rather than tossed into the Pit.