Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 4 - The Tragedy at the Grand Conclave of Swizarrine

Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 4 - "The Tragedy at the Grand Conclave of Swizarrine"

Achsploitai and the Rise of Hulk Smashing, the Emperor of the World

Now, after (or before) Joshua Calendar went freaking nuts, and the incredibly complicated count of Time started among Sluddish Human beings, the recently devastated mountains of Lo Tsarok were quite suddenly inundated with Scientists and Treasure Hunters, all of them eager to get their hands on the trove of books, notes, and other reference materials that the Keeper of Time was thought to have left behind when he had abandoned the Human species once and for all and took to the skies on raven wing, gibbering his insane pleas to the universe to make time stop. 

There had been much damage done in the resulting landslides following his tirade, as has been noted, and one of the casualties of that damage had been Joshua's magnificent cavern city of Emptirion, which, it is thought, had been closed off to the world by cave ins along its entrances. To this day, the lost city of Emptirion remains just that..lost, and even the mountains in which it is thought to have been located are, themselves, vanished into the deeps of antiquity. However, as much hitherto unrealized knowledge was thought to be hidden there, and such knowledge could command a hefty price among the scientific community who were, as Sluddish scientists usually do, seeking any knowledge from a presumably wise man (like Joshua Calendar, for instance) that could confirm the hypotheses they had already convinced themselves were correct (because they were, as are pretty much every Human on the planet, very bad at their job).

So it was that practically overnight, a huge and highly lucrative market for relics of Joshua Calendar's sojourn in the mountains sprang up and, as a consequence of this, the profession of the Treasure Hunter came into being along with that market.

Such relics and artifacts as were found perplexed the scientific community, none of whose members were even close to as intelligent as Joshua Calendar had been, but nonetheless they set to work attempting to decypher the treasure trove of notes that had been brought out of the Lo Tsarok by adventurers. In this, the scientific community was only partially successful, since Joshua Calendar happened to have jotted down all of his notes in a form of shorthand which, as history would demonstrate, only he himself could fully understand.

But the Scientists did their best and, as a result, an at least cursory understanding of the mysteries of the world had opened itself up to the scrutiny of the Sluddish Human mind, such as it was....which, of course, was not much.

Meanwhile, the creation and consolidation of the institutions of a Human Society on Slud (the Planet) continued apace. After the First Great Conversation had finally ended (in a game of Scrabble which, stupid Sluddish Humans being what they are, none of the players actually won), the Calendrians had gone out from Mt. Conn-Fuuzhen and spread out across an ever widening area, settling and building new polities in places where the terrain afforded at least some advantage, such as river valleys, seashores, and ore-rich hills and mountains. Bound together by a common Proto-Language (perhaps the only actually good development that had come out of the First Great Conversation), these various communities, sundered from each other by distances and the lack of an ability to quickly and easily travel those distances, began to develop, each for itself, unique sets of customs and taboos, and it was these differences in customs which, in time, led to the creation of separate nations.

But as for these early settlers, the earliest generations of the Age of Hamlets, they came into contact with other Time Tribes, most notable among them the peoples of the Arrog, Hubrysine, and Bellicost Tribes, each of them having occupied a different sector of the world during the Age of Tribes. Despite differences in culture, morality, and technological levels, these stranger peoples entered into a wary system of interaction with each other, and within five generations, the peoples of the various Time Tribes, having spread out sufficiently to where the Time Tribe itself became an obsolete and unsustainable concept, they began to form new arrangements based upon a new idea...the intermarrying of various Tribes with various other Tribes, so that the distinctions between them became negligible.

As a consequence of these new intermarried groupings, the idea of the Time Tribe as the basic unit of organized society gave way, instead, to that of the individual family, and because so many families were binding themselves through marriage alliances with other families, the idea of a centrally organized polity, borrowed from the original (utterly misguided) notions of Regah the Ruthless and his Politician contemporaries, emerged as the dominant political concept in the centuries following Joshua Calendar's departure.

Because of this consequential reordering of Society, the very origins of the State as a concept can be seen to have finally taken firm root, and in the following (or preceding) decades and centuries, the Humans of Slud (the Planet) established in many parts of the world ever-increasingly vast, centralized States, each of course ruled by a small and very privileged Oligarchy, and this trend continued, each State warring with its neighbor States until particularly energetic conquerors of the Patuene and Gunkari lineage, working at the behest of Politicians as they always seem to, caused to be formed the biggest of all States, massive political units called “Empires”.

The small Oligarchies who dominated affairs in these Empires ruled over a great many other people in a more or less hierarchical way, and the citizens of these Empires, like they usually do, and driven by the impetus of necessity, innovated many technologies and carried through those innovations with all the sorts of inventions and institutions that one might well expect to encounter within a civilized Society.

At the urging of hirelings(often armed with a whip) under the employ of the Aristocrats, theIn the centuries following (or preceding) the departure of Joshua Calendar, the Humans of Slud set to work building the works of civilization, the houses, the palaces, the public places, the parks and gardens and government offices. Vast amounts of backbreaking labor was required to build all these things. Naturally, the Peasants "volunteered". And, of course, they were all too happy to do so for free, without any sort of real compensation for their labors. Because they're peasants, and they just don't believe such nonsense like the heretical notion that they somehow deserve more. Peasants of Slud built roads and they built irrigation ditches, and they built schools and they built hospitals and post offices and universities and temples and concert halls. They built shops and houses and palaces and temples. They built farms and parks and harbors and ports.

The Peasants, of course, thought that it was really rather nice of their aristocratic overlords to allow them to help build all these things for the Aristocrats and Churchmen to own, and some among them were made particularly ecstatic when their turn came to be whipped by the taskmasters for not moving fast enough, or not lifting a heavy enough load, for as is well known by all Humans with eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to analyze, Peasants seem to absolutely adore being abused by people who contribute less to the good of Society than they do. That is, the author has observed from time to time, precisely how Peasants appear to react to the pains inflicted upon them by those who work far less for the betterment of society, but whom society tolerates and even embraces because they at least make a claim that they are “creating jobs”.

It had been hoped (mainly by Aristocrats, for Peasants are, as all Humans know, barely able to survive, much less have any leisure for such an abstract thing as a “hope”) that by the building of such societal infrastructure, the operation of society would be made more effective, but the crazy chicken-scratchings of Joshua Calendar, which the people took for a system of measuring time, had people dealing and conducting business with peoples from another Time, so that while the schools and the post offices and the hospitals all worked more or less the way they're supposed to, yet they were structured in a rather odd way, in order to accommodate clientele from entirely different time period, who spoke entirely different, and often disparate languages, many of which operated on entirely different systems of syntax. 

One of the major difficulties involved in people of different eras attempting to live in the same era with each other, and attempting to deal with each other in everyday life, is that it is really sort of difficult to determine a common set of values, and of weights and means. This disparity of definitions caused Sluddish society, that is, human society, to address this problem by the development of a common language, which was intended to be spread to all eras and times in Sluddish History, to be used as a means of developing common values and measurements.This, it cannot be stressed enough, made everything terribly complicated.

Of course, the legendary Joshua Calendar, fortified with a vast and intricately powerful mind by the touch of The D.M., had been certainly clever enough to come up with a workable solution to this, and would have done so if he had not first been driven to the point of insanity by the gross stupidity of his fellow Humans. But Joshua Calendar was not there, for he had gone freaking nuts, and had vanished from Human Society, perhaps forever, as has been previously noted within this volume.

The descendants of Regah and Shub, Kintahn and Oparba (or ancestors, depending upon how you look at it), whom, it has also been mentioned previously, had risen to supremacy among the original Politicians, whose followers had subsequently formed the basis for a political class, administrated the day-to-day affairs of the Empires of the world as Ministers to the Emperors, whom it had been decided deserved to enjoy a perceived Divine Right to rule, due to the widely known fact that they had, indeed, had oil poured all over their heads.

Author's Note: Indeed, the very word “Emperor” is derived from an ancient Arrogantian word “Eym-pera”, which word literally translates to “The Oiled”, and that word itself might possibly have been derived from the proto-language's word, “Eym-per”, meaning “Goes well with vinegar on a salad”.

It should be noted further that even the world's foremost linguists have not been able to figure out how such a concept as a salad-dressing could have possibly have naturally evolved into the modern day concept denoting a ruler of a vast system of tributary provinces and maintaining hereditary hegemony. There have, it is believed, been some few philosophers and historians who have attempted to unravel this mystery, but none have been known to succeed in that task, as they are known to have succumbed to the terrible fate of sophiasplosion before any such progress could be achieved.


As society gathered itself into ever larger political aggregations, eventually taking the shapes of great Empires, the resultant sharing of new borders between one or more Empires led, inevitably (given the belligerent nature of Patuenes and their Gunkari associates), to an era of border clashes and short, nasty little wars, known to history as the "Imperial Border Wars" in which peasants, as peasants usually are either in war or out of war, murdered en-masse, fields of life-sustaining crops were ruined, buildings were destroyed, and life was made a living nightmare for all involved...which, of course, as all men know, is precisely how Peasants seem to like it. 

This fact, then, greatly helps to explain the reason why the largest part of the membership of the Patuene and Gunkari armies were composed of Peasants, and also why the largest number of the casualties in those conflicts were also, of course, Peasants.  

As for the Patuenes and the Gunkari, there were many among them during the Imperial Border Wars who achieved a certain level of celebrity due to their exploits in battle.  For example, the career of one particular officer, Hagen McPeasantkiller, a Gunkari officer serving in the Patuene army of the Arrogantian Empire, was known to have personally slain no less than three thousand Bellicosian peasants, himself and using only his twin saw-edged swords, named "Security" and "Democracy", at the famous Battle of People Running Around and Killing Each Other, near the scenic town of present-day Totaliforgahtaboutthebattlehere, in what is now the Domain of Angramanaj. 

Though many distinguished warriors such as the aforementioned Hagen McPeasantkiller existed during that time, and their deeds of derring do are well known to scholars of Sluddish history, it was the accomplishments of one particular Patuene who would set the stage for the following age. His name was Hulk Smashing, and before the end of his career he would conquer a vast territory covering most of the landmass of the world, forming as a consequence of this conquest the largest empire that has ever existed on Slud (the Planet). 

Unlike most Patuenes, who are born into that particular class to parents who were also Patuenes, Hulk Smashing was not born a Patuene nor even a Gunkari, but was born a mere Peasant, in what was, then, the tiny village of Swizarrine, near the present-day city of Hau in the Unaligned City States of Qaestion, in the year 3659 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N.  Obsessed with hunting and martial games as a youth, Hulk grew to manhood at a time when one of Qaestion's neighboring states, the Duchy of Achsploitai, was embroiled in a sporadic conflict with another of Qaestion's neighbors, the Earldom of Wagslavis. At over seven feet tall, with forearms as thick as the thighs of lesser men, a long mane of shaggy black hair, and piercing green eyes, Hulk stood head and shoulders above just about everyone, Peasant and Noble alike, and exuded an aura of sheer intimidation. 

The Achsploitai-Wagslavis conflict was at times very costly in terms of Human lives, and as a consequence of this, there was at that time quite a market for Peasant enlistees on either side. So it was that Hulk Smashing took employment in the army of Achsploitai in the year 3642, a seventeen year old young man looking to make a name for himself on the battlefields of the day. And so he did. 

Over the next several years, in a feat of martial skill remarkably un-Peasantlike, Hulk not only managed to survive the more than sixty engagements in which he took part on behalf of Achsploitai, but, also remarkably un-Peasantlike, he actually managed to distinguish himself enough to come to the attention of Achsploitai's Gunkari and Patuene officers. His rise through the ranks of the Achsploitaine army is considered by Historians to be the stuff of legends. At any rate, his deeds on the battlefield and his keen grasp of both strategy and field tactics eventually allowed him to do something unprecedented that is the most un-Peasantlike of all...join the Gunkari caste.

In 3635, during a rout of the Achsploitaine forces at the Battle of Oshyt, while doing what Peasants in battle do best (that is, staying behind as human shields to occupy the attentions of the enemy while all the Patuenes and Gunkari made good their escape), Hulk Smashing, this time doing something which Peasants in battle do not do very well, survived. And not only did Hulk Smashing survive, he also saved the life of a prominent Gunkari officer who had been desperately pressed by the Wagslavians and their mercenary Whenine allies.

The rescued Gunkari, Robert Shockanaw, was like most Gunkari a tremendously cowardly man (that is, after all, why Gunkari have Peasants do all the dying), and because of this fact, he had been exceedingly grateful to be thus snatched out of the jaws of death. And as a result of his injuries at the battle, he also happened to have suffered irreparable brain damage. These two factors, taken together, explain what he did next, which was widely regarded by virtually the entire human Society at the time as a grave error. For in his gratitude and his impaired thinking, he adopted Hulk as his son and heir, which officially made the Peasant-born Hulk Smashing a member of the Gunkari class, thus causing for the first time in Sluddish history a Peasant to be able to move upward through the ranks of society into a higher social, economic, and political class. As a result of this, the entire Sluddish Society was plunged into a solid month of lamentation. Not that Robert Shockanaw, brain-damaged as he was, noticed at all, for at that particular time, complications from his injuries had ensured that, indeed, he could not have noticed, being as his brain-damaged self was at that time very much focused upon brightly colored lengths of string. 

In fact, Robert Shockanaw had been so damaged by his wounds at the Battle of Oshyt that he was no longer able to give any thought at all to the fortunes of war, nor to the administration of his own household. This fact suited his opportunistic "son", Hulk Smashing, to a tee. And before long, Hulk had dispensed with the farce of pretending to act in the name of his adopted Gunkari father. He kept Robert Shockanaw's shattered mind occupied with children's toys, and even those were slightly more sophisticated than Robert's shattered mind could fully process some days. And this done, Hulk quite smoothly and quietly took over Robert's household. Considering that Hulk had, with the wealth he purloined from Robert's strongroom, bought the loyalty of Robert's soldiers (many of who, as Peasants themselves, were in awe of this Peasant upstart who had managed to successfully maneuver himself into the ranks of the upper classes), few objected outwardly at all to his seizure of power in the Shockanaw household.

None objected loud enough for Hulk Smashing to hear them.

So began Hulk Smashing's rise through society, and due to the fact that Gunkari and Patuenes are separated from each other only by a matter of gradation which can be overcome by promotion, by 3632 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N. Hulk Smashing had risen to the highest ranks of the Patuene class...and the command of a large army of veteran fighting troops estimated at over fifty thousand soldiers. This army would serve as the basis for Smashing's future grabs for power, and would, in its heyday, grow to a strength of more than two million. 

Having secured himself an army to command, Hulk Smashing further defied what had hitherto been seen as the "natural order" of things, by marching on the capital city of Achsploitai, Walmar, crushing that city after a particularly short and brutal siege in which he convinced Walmar's own laborer population to revolt, which they were willing to do without much persuasion due to the fact that life for the lowest classes in Walmar happened to be, by all accounts, so completely wretched that even Peasants could not tolerate it, and Peasants will, as all men know, tolerate almost anything.

In fact, according to Hulk Smashing's private journals, some of which have survived to this very day (whenever that is), even Hulk was somewhat shocked by how dreadfully complete a justice the Peasant laborers of Walmar took upon its ruling sovereign, Zammalise Waltin, the Duke of Achsploitai. According to Hulk's account, 

"The fires still burned in parts of the city, and the clamour of blade upon blade was still to be heard in the streets. The banners of my army had not yet been raised above this city for which so many lives had been lost, when a delegation of [the Peasant] slaves, made ecstatic by cause of their recent emancipation, brought to my pavilion a bundle wrapped in velvet of the finest manufacture. 

'What is this thing that you have brought to me, Goodly Peasants?' inquired I unto these visitors, and at my signal the troops of my guard stood aside to let them approach. This was to my reckoning a most curious embassy, for the Peasants bore upon their tattered Peasant tunics the devices of the Furniture and Hardware sectors, which suburbs I had but moments before been assured by my officers were still holding out against the onslaught of my army.

And the foremost of the Peasants, a fellow who seemed dumpy and foolish beyond normal Peasant dumpiness and foolishness, came forward, his face a grim masque of resolution the like of which is almost never seen upon Peasant features. And pulling forth the velvet cloth which had contained his package, he held by the hair the head of [the Duke of] Achsploitai, but lately carved from his neck and dripping a crimson flood upon the carpet of my pavilion. 

The head of my late foe was in a sorry condition. For it was gashed in the chin, and chunks had been taken out of the cheeks, as if by the gnawing of teeth. His eyes had been torn from their sockets and upon the forehead were carved in the alphabet of the Achsploitaines one single word, the motto which had adorned the battle standards of more than ten generations of Achsploitaine Dukes:  the word 'Always'.

I asked this newly arrived Peasant, 'The D.M., man! But you have mutilated your Duke almost beyond recognition! Look there at this head half gone from the teeth of man! That you have killed him for me is a gift I shall not easily be able to repay, but why have you eaten off half of his face?'

And the Peasant said, 'Aye, Guvnor. 'Ee yon face we 'ave roight cocked up, t' be sure. Beggin' yer pardon, good Master, but we haint had no choice 'bout it, y'see.  For them wages we got what from a'sloggin through th' Duke's factories wan't never enough t' buy food t' eat, if y' be takin' m' meanin, your Worship. So we hads us this here Duke, wot had up an' lost his head, and I said t' ol' Ike Graveslaver, that had dun th' carvin' up, I says we gots to take th' head to th' Patuene with th' army, roight 'nuff, but we haint got to take all of it, only enough of it but that can be recognized proper t' be the Duke's.  The other part, if y' take m' meaning, I told 'im to carve off of it for our stewpots, but we was so hungry, we up an' said blast the stewpots, an' we ates it raw!"

And this was the level to which these poor Peasants had been reduced in the town of Supra Walmar. Though I was a soldier and had seen much blood flow in my career, my gorge rose at it. 

'What is your name, fellow?' I then asked the Peasant.

'I be called Watt Miwuri, beggin' your pardon.' was his reply. 

'Set aside thy taste for human flesh, Watt.' I told him then, for I had compassion for this poor beast. 'For in my army there is real food, and that aplenty for any soldier who earns it. Would you and these other fellows like to join my army, Watt?'

A tear fell from Watt's eye and streamed down his cheek as he genuflected before me. The other Peasants of his company, touched to the quick in similar manner, did the same. 

'Aye, your Worship. For the man who would feed us, we would crawl, bleedin' like we was stuck pigs, through th' very fires o' th' evil bad Place the Priests be alwuhs a-tellin' us we's gunna go to.'

And so today, the ranks of my army were bolstered by the addition of some several thousand Peasants of Walmar. And my enemy, the Duke of Achsploitai, was overthrown."

It was during the battle for Walmar that Hulk Smashing met a man who was to become his greatest friend,In 3632 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N, during the bloody siege of the City of Walmar, Peasant-turned-Patuene Officer Hulk Smashing laid wastes to entire swaths of the city, including the dreaded Housewares Sector (shown here). During this battle, Hulk Smashing met a slave, a Peasant named Trustworthy John, who, as it would turn out, twice proved just how untrustworthy he really was. and ultimately his bane. One of the Peasants freed from slavery under Achsploitai's Duke was named Trustworthy John, a man of exceptional might and, much like his benefactor, un-Peasantlike intellect. Having been rescued from the repugnant slave-pits of Walmar's Housewares sector, Trustworthy John, by all accounts, quickly developed a fierce loyalty to the man who had rescued him from hopeless thralldom, and before long had proven his skill to his new lord, thwarting an assassination attempt against Huk by the remnants of Walmar's Privy Council of Assistant Support Managers. 

Grateful for this service, Hulk Smashing and Trustworthy John developed a fast and firm friendship, and wherever Hulk went, Trustworthy John was never far behind, ready to smite any and all enemies who offered even the slightest impertenence to his lord. Standing more than six and a half feet tall, muscularly built, and exceptionally skilled in the use of the broad axe, Trustworthy John cut an imposing figure, and the sense of his presence often deterred many of Hulk's enemies from even attempting to step out of line. 

After seizing Walmar in 3631, Hulk Smashing immediately set himself to the task of consolidating his power over all of Achsploitai, which he accomplished decisively within a month, and then, turning his attentions outward to the world beyond Achsploitaine borders, he embarked upon a lightning-quick campaign to seize control of neighboring regions, culminating in the seizure of McDonal, capital of the Earldom of Wagslavia, the various Unaligned City States of Qaestion, the Principality of Elitis, and even the mighty Rhetori Empire with its grand capital city of Demagosh. 

Having conquered a large swath of the western continent, Hulk Smashing set himself to the task of establishing his rule, which was, in itself, quite a revolutionary idea.  It had hitherto been thought that only Politicians possessed the right to rule, that divine right having been established, the reader might recall, during the First Great Conversation at Mt. Conn Fuuzhen thousands of years earlier (or later). However, Hulk Smashing, whose entire career had challenged the existing status quo, intended to rule in his own right and in his own name, as a Patuene officer. This was largely regarded by the Politicians, of course, as a terrible idea, but overt resistance to his rule was quashed when Hulk, having availed himself of an education in history, reminded them all that the entire history of Slud (the Planet), from the very moment that The D.M. had created humans, had based in its entirety upon terrible ideas, and that the Politicians who had previously ruled had owed their own power, indeed, to such terrible ideas.  However, covert resistance continued among the Political class for many years, manifesting in conspiracies and intrigues at Hulk's court and, much as politics usually are conducted, in shady backroom deals at disreputable taverns and brothels. 

Among the features of the administration of Hulk Smashing, one particular innovation of note was his insistence that Peasants, like he himself once had been, should be able, if they happened to be of exceptional mettle, to rise beyond their own class and join the ranks of their betters. This notion, of course, immediately stirred an open rebellion conducted by an alliance of Nobles, Churchmen, and Politicians. However, the skillful Hulk easily crushed that rebellion, executed its ringleaders, and gave its adherents a very simple and very brutal choice...either support him and his policies wholeheartedly, or watch their families, whom he took as hostages, die in front of them, and with their deaths, watch also their lines of succession and primogeniture die with them.

The rebels were quick to make peace and to swear fealty to him after that.

However, Hulk was quite mindful of how he himself had come to power, and reasoning that what he could do another Peasant could conceivably do, he put into place strict rules concerning the mobility of Peasants into other classes, making it difficult to do so, though certainly not impossible. This compromise satisfied the recalcitrant Nobles, and was embodied in the promulgation of the world's first codified laws, which he named after his adopted father and benefactor, calling the new legal code "Robert's Rules".  

By 3628, all major resistance to his rule among the Gunkari and the Patuenes had been suppressed by him...sometimes brutally (because Gunkari and Patuenes prefer it that way), and the remainder of those classes had swung their support behind him, as his war machine spread ever outward, overrunning country after country. During this time, Trustworthy John was given command of a division of his lord's army, and met with success after success on the battlefield, bringing ever more lands and peoples under the influence of Hulk Smashing. 

In 3625 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., Hulk Smashing, at the behest of the Muncian Church of Prydea, marched his armies into the lands of Prydea's eastern neighbor, Bellicosia, and after the resultant Achsploitaine-Bellicosian War (3625 - 24) ended in the resounding defeat of the Bellicosians, he turned his armies south into pachouli-scented Hippylonia, who, quite naturally given its populace's general lack of motivation, surrendered without a fight. 

Having conquered the Bellicosians and thus ended the threat on Prydea's eastern border, the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church, in an elaborate ceremony on New Year's Day, 3623, poured oil on Hulk Smashing's head, officially crowning him Emperor Pawn the First of the Holy Muncian Empire and thus, by extension, legitimizing his rule in the eyes of the general Sluddish public.

But the Church's coronation, thought by the Muncian leadership to be a clever tactic to gain the services of a powerful and obedient emperor in Hulk Smashing, backfired, because that coronation had been precisely what the cunning Emperor had been waiting for. That same year, utilizing a rare poison only found in one small region of the Hubrysine Empire, Hulk Smashing had the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church, Alamunc IV, poisoned to death at a high profile banquet. During the ensuing chaos, Hulk publicly accused the college of Muncian bishops of treachery, and declared his intention to bring his army into Prydea to restore order and to seek vengeance for the slaying. Thus, Hulk Smashing, Emperor of the Holy Muncian Empire, had successfully managed to orchestrate an official justification for annexing Prydea into his ever-growing Empire, which by now had already come to span almost the entire world, as well as a justification for future "punitive" campaigns into the Hubrysine Empire, ostensibly to punish the Hubrysines for their role in the poisoning of the Muncian pontiff. 

The college of Muncian bishops, however, was composed of cunning and ambitious schemers, too. And seeking the means by which to conspire against the upstart Holy Muncian Emperor, they found their leverage in the most unlikely of allies.  For Trustworthy John, though he had been extremely loyal to the Emperor, was, like most Peasants, an extremely religious man, and because of that particular piety in him, the Muncian bishopric were able to leverage his orthodox Muncian religious convictions to force him to join in conspiracy with them to assassinate , eventually, they succeeded in recruiting him for the task of assassinating of the Holy Muncian Emperor Pawn I, the man known as Hulk Smashing.

So it was that Trustworthy John, as he had done for many years, accompanied his sovereign lord when, in 3619, Hulk mobilized a massive army of more than two million men on a "punitive" expedition against the Hubrysine Empire.  The campaign, not surprisingly given the sheer force of manpower deployed, crushed Hubrysine province after Hubrysine province, and Hulk's army was approaching the very capital of the Hubrys Imperium when the treachery of the Muncian bishopric was finally full-wrought. For the Hubrysines, together with an army of reinforcements from Arroganse (for hubris and arrogance are often allied to the same purposes) launced a sudden desperate counteroffensive at a time and place that was unexpected. And Hulk Smashing found himself suddenly cut off from the main body of his army, and fighting desperately to cut his way back to troops which could give him succor. It was then that Trustworthy John struck, running his longtime friend and benefactor through the leg with his sword, not wishing to deliver the killing blow from behind like a coward, for he still loved his friend and master and respected him too much to cut him down like a mere animal, but to force Hulk to turn and face his death head-on. 

The account of the slaying of Hulk Smashing is a well-known one to Sluddish Historians, largely thanks to the works of poets, bards, minstrels, and television producers. The account told as part of the saga known as the Smashingthon, written by the twenty third century Historian, Spariam the Ostentatious, is one of the most popular and widespread versions, so it will be told here.

Shocked and dismayed by this unexpected betrayal,  and unwilling to fight this man who had been his friend and right-hand man for a dozen years, Hulk Smashing lowered his beautiful dragon sword of imperial quality that had slain enemies by the thousands during his almost quarter century-long military career...

"Raise your sword, your Majesty." the traitor said, his eyes outwardly hard but inwardly holding back tears of regret.

Hulk Smashing, Emperor of Achsploitaine, Holy Muncian Emperor, Emperor of the World, with flat eyes and slumped shoulders, disgustedly dropped his sword into the dirt between them.

"Why have you done this?" asked Hulk Smashing through flat and lifeless eyes. "Who bought your soul, my friend?"  

"The Bishopric of Prydea sends you the gift of eternal life, my Emperor, in token of appreciation for the slayng of the High Mucketymuck Alamunc IV." Trustworthy John told him, his sword at ready, his voice betraying nothing of the inner turmoil which was even then rending his soul into pieces. They have not bought my soul, but my soul belongs to God...to The D.M., and to the Holy Mother Church."

"Why did you do it, John?" Hulk Smashing asked, no longer keeping the bitterness from his own voice. "What in all the world could have been worth this treason?"

"I have learned much at your feet, my Emperor. I was a Peasant but you taught me self-respect. You taught me motivation. You taught me....ambition. My Son shall be the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church."

And, because Hulk Smashing and his erstwhile companion's minds understood each other quite well, Hulk knew then the true implications of this betrayal. And with that uncanny wisdom which is common in those who are on the very threshold of death, he said,

"Then slay me....Lord Trustworthy John. And avenge me." 

And saying this, the Emperor of the World dropped to his knees in the dirt, and lowered his head. And Trustworthy John clove his head from its neck with one stroke of his axe. And then grabbing the head of his decapitated lord, he held it to his chestplate for a time, and wept like a broken hearted child. 

Trustworthy John, openly weeping at what he had done, had some of his soldiers encoffin the body of Emperor Pawn I, Hulk Smashing, and returning to the main body of the Holy Muncian Imperial Army, he moved decisively to take command and retreated back to Prydea. 

The Muncian Bishops, having received word of the return of the Imperial army without Hulk Smashing at the lead knew that their conspiracy had succeeded, and they sent for Trustworthy John immediately upon his return to Oerconfidus, the stronghold city of the orthodox Muncian Church. Grimly, and wearily (for he and the Imperial Soldiers had traveled a hard road for weeks to get there), he had the coffin containing the remains of Hulk Smashing (and Hulk Smashing's head) brought before the council of gloating Bishops in the chambers of the Basilica of St. Munc, with a full company of picked soldiers to escort it as honor guard. 

And appearing before the gathered Bishops, Trustworthy John presented the severed head of their late enemy to them on an intricately wrought plate of fine Kan Spiran silver, saying,

"Thus have I fulfilled the dreadful task you laid upon me when you threatened my entire family with excommunication, your Reverences."

And seeing the head of the mighty conqueror Hulk Smashing brought thus before them, a collective sigh of relief moved through the gathered assemblage of Churchmen.

"Thy deed is well done, Trustworthy John." said one of the Bishops, turning slightly green as he viewed the ever so slightly decayed head of his recent foe. "Thou has proved thy fidelity to thine Holy Mother Church upon the body of this foul villain, and thy signal service hath pleased the holy clergy of blessed Munc, and thus, hath pleased thy D.M. also."

"And now, good man," said another Bishop, a disgustingly obese man with opulent silk raiment spotted and stained with the remains of a week's worth of repasts. "As thou hast done this service for thy Holy Mother Church, what then wouldst thou ask in compensation? Gold? Jewels? They are thine for the taking."

"No, your Reverence. I require no gold, no jewels." replied the traitor, stiffly. And this reply confused the gathered Churchmen of the Bishopric. 

"Land, then?" another Bishop asked. "Wouldst thou have of us a domain to be thy patrimony?"

"Your Reverence ridicules your poor servant." Trustworthy John answered with contempt. "Being a filial Son of our Holy Mother Church, I would not take away from Her the lands which are Hers." 

"What wouldst thou have, then?" an emaciated-looking, elderly Bishop asked then with some exasperation. "A Title of Nobility?"

"Not a title of Nobility, Your Reverence. I have need of that, for my late Lord, before he departed from this mortal world of ours, endowed me with such a title." said Trustworthy John.

"What then?" a rather dour-seeming Bishop asked. "Tell us what thou wouldst have of us!"

"Two things and two things only would I have of you, Your Reverences, and satisfying both of them would I be quite compensated for what I have done." John said then, a haunted look of self-loathing creeping into his eyes.

"And what are these two compensations of which thou speakest?" a stout, balding Bishop asked. Trustworthy John, pious Son of the Holy Mother Church, soon after his return from the slaying of his lord, the Emperor Pawn I, otherwise known as Hulk Smashing.

"The first shall we see to, and after the first has been fulfilled, we shall discuss the second." John replied.

"Yes! Yes! Tell us, then, what is the first compensation you seek?" the fat Bishop exclaimed then, spitting out of his mouth particles of roasted chicken, which he had been greedily devouring, as he talked. 

"The first compensation, Your Reverences," Trustworthy John said then, slowly and deliberately, "Is a pledge, in writing and signed by every one of your august personages, to invest my Son, Jonas, with the symbols of ecclesiastical authority as a Bishop, equal to yourselves."

This demand troubled the Bishops, who had certainly not expected such a power play and were suddenly quite a bit less sure of themselves. They went apart for a time to confer among themselves and discuss this matter. And initially, they were going to refuse to grant this condition, but the fat Bishop said,

"Let us grant this, his first request, for the son of Trustworthy John, alone, shall never be able to outmaneuver we, who hold all the power in the Church. And verily, the first step to defeating a trap set against thee is to know the particulars of its existence. Let us appoint, as our servant hath asked of us, his son as a Bishop, wherefore the danger will be known to us and we canst take thought for preparations against him at a future time. This must we do, also, for that it serves us well to manifest a kindly inclination in Trustworthy John by doing this thing. Perhaps he mayst be controlled."

Though there was still quite some reluctance among the Bishops to give in to Trustworthy John's first demand, eventually the fat Bishop won over his colleagues, and they returned to the great hall of the Basilica to grant John's request. They called for parchment and pen, and drafting an official Document of Investiture, each of the gathered Bishops signed it, thus authorizing the installment of the son of Trustworthy John as Bishop of Bellicosia, which Bishopric was, at that time, newly created and had not yet been filled with an appointment.

And each of the Bishops having signed the document, and the document having been placed in the hands of Trustworthy John, one of the Bishops then said,

"And now, good Trustworthy John, let us see to thy second compensation. What else wouldst thou have of us in reward for thy services?"

At this, a slow, vindictive smile crept upon the face of Trustworthy John. Nodding briefly to the soldiers of his honor guard, some of whom immediately took up positions at each exit from the Hall, John's smile grew broad and malicious.

"Why, nothing all that great, Your Reverences. Just a small thing that is not worth very much of all."

"And what is that?" the Bishop asked, staring uneasily as the detached soldiers closed and bolted each of the massive doors.

"Why, my good Bishops, I require only that which God requires of you. Your lives."

And suddenly every smug look on every Bishop's face disappeared, to be replaced by expressions of dawning terror.

"You forced me," Trustworthy John said then in a deceptively mild, even polite voice, though the features of his face were fixed in a grimness so complete that they seemed almost to be forged of solid iron. "by vile predation upon my devotion to the Church, to slay my best friend, the man who had saved me from the despair of slavery, who had lifted me up, gave me his trust and the command of my own army. Not a one among you, revered Bishops of the Holy Muncian Church, are fit to lick his boots, but for the sake of my faith in The D.M. and the ecclesiastical authority of blessed St. Munc, I did your bidding. And slaying him at your command, I did, thus fulfilling your vile conspiracy against him. A conspiracy like that deserves a reward of its own, wouldn't you say?"

"Y....y....you cannot do this!  This is blasphemy!" screamed the fat Bishop, his face awash with sweat.

"Oh, come now, Your Reverences. There is no point in facing your deaths like cowards, is there? No, my dear fellows. That simply will not do. Why, think of the example that your exalted station requires you to set for the flocks and the multitudes of the Faithful." And putting his hands together in the stance of a praying man, his face the very picture of piety, he said "Why, if you do not face death with the same eagerness in which each of you appears to have embraced life and its pleasures, then how may your humble congregations know to march to their own deaths for the sake of the Holy Mother Church and Her....interests?"

And now Trustworthy John's eyes glittered with a malicious, almost eager anticipation. "For all men know that you are, among all in our Holy Mother Church, those who are closest to God. Therefore, today, I shall give you a gift of my own, for I fully intend to send each and every one of you to meet Him."

And with a curt gesture, he ordered the remainder of his troops forward, swords drawn. And with no means of escape from that place, each and every one of the Bishops of the Muncian Church was slain in a most slow, painful, and cruel manner.  

And when the work was done and the chambers of the Basilica ran red with the blood of murdered Bishops, Trustworthy John had the blood flowing from their dead, contorted bodies taken to fill several golden vessels, and taking these vessels to the coffin of the late Emperor, Hulk Smashing, Trustworthy John poured the blood of the slain Bishops forth as a libation to the manes of his dead friend, saying,

"Thus, my Emperor, my Lord, and my Brother, I have avenged you!"  The slaying of the entire college of Muncian Bishops by the Imperial soldiers of Trustworthy John, Captain of Emperor Pawn I of the Holy Muncian Empire. As a result of this massacre, the highest positions of both the Muncian Church and the Imperial State fell under the domination of one family. And for a time, oil was used as a dressing for salads, instead of an anointment for high-ranking Nobles.

And he gave orders that a tomb befitting an Emperor be built within the Basilica itself, wherein was interred the mortal remains of his dead sovereign. As for the mutilated bodies of the more than two hundred Bishops who had tasted his wrath, each of them having been killed slowly and painfully, he had their remains unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave outside the city. 

But the night after the mass grave was completed, an earthquake tremored its way through the landscape. And the corpulent body of the fat Bishop, oozing viscous fat from more than a dozen piercing wounds, was found the next day to be laying atop the earth, for even the soil, rejecting the disgusting pig of a Bishop, had vomited his body out of itself, evidence that even the soil could not countenance the filth of a corrupt Churchman.   

THE NEUTRAL CITY OF SWIZARRINE

Having slain both his benefactor and his enemies in a most un-trustworthy way, Trustworthy John, who was in firm command of the largest military force in the world, had himself crowned Holy Muncian Emperor on the twelfth day of the sixth month, 3619 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., at the ecclesiastical city of Oerconfidus, capital of Prydea. His twenty three year old son Trustworthy Jonas, newly installed as the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Church, and clad in the rich golden robes and miter of his most exalted office, himself poured the oil of annoinment upon the head of his father, crowning him with the Imperial name of Emperor Ballswin I, and warned all objectors to be silent or face immediate excommunication and persecution from the Church.

So it was that both the Muncian Church, which, as the predominant religion on Slud (the Planet) ruled over the spiritual concerns of the vast majority of the world's population, and the Holy Muncian Empire, which, having conquered most of the known world, ruled over the temporal aspects of Human Society, were united under the governance of members of the same family. And the family of Trustworthy John had waxed so powerful that there were none in the world, not even among the conniving Politicians, who dared openly oppose their will. 

The army of the Holy Muncian Empire, it has been previously noted, had withdrawn from its campaign in the Hubrysine Empire, and although by all accounts Emperor Ballswin I, Trustworthy John, was loathe to pursue a continuation of that war (particularly considering that the Hubrysines still held the allegiance of legions of Arrogantian mercenaries), yet he did not wish to abandon the gains that so many Imperial lives had been spent to conquer in Hubrys. Therefore, it seemed best to him to appoint an exceptional leader to the command of the Imperial forces in the captured provinces of western Hubrys, capable of holding back any attempts by the Hubrysines to regain that which they had previously lost during the reign of Hulk Smashing. He found such a commander in the person of Watt Miwuri, who, in the years since he had joined the army of Hulk Smashing had availed himself of an education in both the civil and military arts, and the education he had received had revealed in Watt an exceptional array of talents which had always previously been buried, which usually seems to be the case in those extremely rare instances when a Peasant is allowed to be something more than a mere Peasant.  

And sending Watt to oversee the defenses in Hubrys, Trustworthy John had no further anxiety about the security of his eastern frontier. 

It is worth noting here that the officers of Arroganse, who for obvious reasons did not at all take seriously this Peasant who had been sent to guard the frontier, did try to march upon the occupied provinces of western Hubrys, thinking that they would have an easy time and a massive gain of land and the resources that come with land. Watt Miwuri quickly disabused them of this faulty notion. 

Watt had, in the years since he had joined the service of the previous Emperor, Hulk Smashing, availed himself of an education in both military and civilian affairs, and by the time he had been sent to the frontier, he was no longer the foolish, illiterate dullard he had been at the Siege of Walmar, but had blossomed into a man of exceptional talents, not the least of which was prowess on the battlefield and prowess in the command pavillion. Indeed, he had known even before he had departed for the frontier that the Arrogantians would, being arrogant as their name implies, seek to take advantage of the situation in eastern Hubrys, thinking that a Peasant could do nothing to stop them. For the benefit of the spies who are customary in any hostile border region,  Watt Miwuri chose to encourage this mistaken notion for all he was worth, resurrecting for that purpose the barely understandable Peasant dialect he had not spoken in several years. 

The Arrogantians took the bait, and in the third month of 3618, more than ten legions of Arrogantian infantry and more than twenty thousand Arrogantian cavalry came swarming across the border into the occupied lands under Watt's command. This was precisely what he had been attempting to lure them into doing. The forces of Watt Miwuri set a small decoy force in the village of Pwne, near the Arrogantian-Hubrysine border, and set the largest portion of his troops in the forest to the west of that village. The Arrogantian officers, thinking Watt Miwuri had fortified himself in the village, thought to sneak through the forest to outflank the village, thus to hit the Imperial troops where they would least expect it. 

Instead, the Arrogantians marched directly into the teeth of Watt's ambush, led personally by him, and all but approximately two thousand of them were wiped out by the Imperial forces. This devastating rout from which very few escaped so bloodied the noses of the Arrogantians that the survivors fled back to their walled keeps in Arroganse, shut the gates tightly, and refused to venture forth from them for all the remainder of the days of Watt Miwuri's life.  

The reports from the frontier did not surprise Trustworthy John, but provided him with a confirmation that he had made the right appointment to the command of the eastern front. Therefore, Trustworthy John turned his attentions to the creation of a legacy. 

Perhaps it is unfair of Historians (the ones who have not been caught up in the sophiasplosions of their Philosopher friends) to refer to Trustworthy John with the monniker "The Assassin King". The assassinations he performed on his path to power, while they make for entertaining literature, were in reality vastly overshadowed by a remarkably accomplished career as a soldier, military officer, leader, and eventually ruler. And even those deeds were, to some extent, themselves overshadowed by his motives for doing them. Viewed in retrospect, his preoccupation with enshrining the memory of his lord and predecessor, Hulk Smashing, seems to the unstudied to have been a trifle obsessive, but an examination of Trustworthy John's accomplishments to that end, when viewed in tandem with his own struggle to legitimize a reign which had begun under not one but two majorly illegitimate circumstances (both of which were assassinations of established rulers), sheds some light on the necessity of the actions taken during his rule.  

After he had seen to the situation in the western provinces of Hubrys by sending Watt Miwuri to oversee the defenses there, Trustworthy John's first act was to have his erstwhile lord and Emperor, Hulk Smashing, canonized in the rolls of the Muncian Church. His son and newly-ordained Grand High Mucketymuck of the Church, Trustworthy Jonas, however, had quite expectedly appointed new Churchmen to the vacated posts in the College of Muncian Bishops, and they (the new Bishops, not the old Bishops, who by then had already given the worms in the dirt outside of the ecclesiastical city of Oerconfidus a rather harsh case of indigestion and day-after guilt), like Churchmen do, wasted a great deal of time arguing over matters which really had no relevance. In one particular case, for instance, when discussing in council what exactly to make Hulk Smashing the Patron Saint of,  they spent an entire month debating the matter without even bothering to offer any specific ideas at all. However, as time dragged on and the Grand High Mucketymuck, most likely responding to pressure from his Imperial father, threatened to excommunicate every single one of them if they did not arrive at a decision soon, they eventually reached a decision after all. It would have made sense, perhaps, given the fact that Hulk Smashing had been the first Peasant in history to rise above his born station, to make him the Patron Saint of Peasants.  But it is a truism that the higher one rises in the society of Humans, the more one seeks to deny, even forget, the people of the lowest ranks of Society. Not a one of the Churchmen suggested making St. Hulk the Patron Saint of Peasants. Not a one of the Churchmen even thought of suggesting that St. Hulk be made the Patron Saint of Peasants. Not a one of the Churchmen, not surprisingly given the nature of Churchmen, even gave the Peasant class any thought at all.  Instead, the Churchmen decided to canonize the former Emperor as "St. Hulk, Patron Saint of Power-Hungry Usurpers". 

This, of course, did not amuse the present Holy Muncian Emperor Ballswin the First, Trustworthy John, who was quite aware of how he himself had come to sit upon the Imperial throne. He was going to have the lot of them executed for their insult to both him and his predecessor, and would have done so but for the intervention of his son on their behalf, who insisted that it would be impossible to run the Church if the administrators always got killed. Trustworthy John relented in the end, but he never forgot the insult, and for the rest of his life there was great enmity between himself and the Holy Mother Muncian Church. 

But he soon turned his attentions to other, weightier matters. The victory of Watt Miwuri against the armies of the Arrogantian barons in 3618 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N. is considered by Historians to have officially ended the "Imperial Border Wars", and it brought to a close over a half century of more or less continuous overt and covert warfare.

As a result of this new era of peace, hordes of Peasant soldiers returned to their homes in the Imperial heartlands of the Western Continent, eager to resume their lives of soul-crushing serfdom (because Peasants love that sort of thing), and the resulting demands for gainful work brought about a major unemployment crisis in 3618 - 17.  The unemployment crisis might well have provided Trustworthy John's enemies with the leverage with which to topple him from the throne, had the crisis been properly used to the fullest advantage towards that end. However,  it was not, and they did not, and thus, the shrewd Trustworthy John was able to turn the unemployment crisis to his advantage and the advantage of his House. 

How he did so was this. Almost since he had been coronated Holy Muncian Emperor, he had cherished the notion of building a grand capital city, a feat which even his esteemed predecessor had not accomplished during his reign. Trustworthy John, in keeping with his career-spanning campaign to honor his former lord, had already chosen as the site of this new capital city the tiny village of Swizarrine, birthplace and childhood home of Hulk Smashing.  However, because the tiny village of Swizarrine was, in fact, so tiny, and not at all suitable in its then-present form to be a grand capital of a world-spanning Empire, Trustworthy John found facing the task of, essentially, building an entire city almost completely from nothing. This would have been a logistical challenge, particularly in acquiring enough labor to make it happen, but Trustworthy John moved quickly to convince the newly homebound masses of Peasants to aid him in crafting this marvel, because, as all men know but refuse to admit to themselves, all great things in the world worth building are built by the labor of Peasants. 

So it was that construction began on the building of the city of Swizarrine, grand capital of the Holy Muncian Empire, in the second month of 3617 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., and the building of it would take more than a decade, the labor of more than three million Peasants, and a total of more than a million tons of gold and silver bullion from the Imperial Treasury. But in so constructing, Trustworthy John had neatly managed to solve several problems simultaneously; He had built a grand capital for his Empire, he had done so in a place that did honor to the man who had sponsored his rise to power, he had diffused a massive unrest by putting large numbers of Peasants to work, and he had safeguarded his own legacy, and legitimacy, by doing something with his time and energies which did not involve assassinating someone. 

Trustworthy John tried to cement himself in the affections of the Peasant class by ensuring that the homes for the Peasant laborers be constructed and furnished first, before even the shops, Government buildings, and other public works of Swizarrine would have been begun. However, in this, Trustworthy John was unsuccessful, and unable to stirl the Peasants from their usual, accustomed levels of apathy. That Trustworthy John failed in this is of little surprise to Historians who, viewing the matter in retrospect, see where Trustworthy John's campaign to ingratiate himself to the Peasant builders of Swizarrine failed. For though he himself had once been a Peasant just like them, he had, apparently, been removed from their fellowship for so long that he had forgotten just why it was that Peasants did not really care about much of anything...that reason being that, after all, they had no reason to, because it was not as if caring about anything would have actually changed their deplorable lot in life as slave labor for the masturbatory building practices of the upper classes.

And so, being Peasants, the Peasants naturally did not really revere the Holy Muncian Emperor Ballswin I, Trustworthy John, in the manner in which he had been hoping. However, also because the Peasants were, after all, Peasants, they did not, throughout the construction of the grand capital at Swizarrine, ever actually rise in revolt against Trustworthy John either. So even if he had not managed to raise morale among the Peasants as he had hoped, nonetheless their morale did not particularly drop either.

Construction on the grand capital of the Holy Muncian Empire at Swizarrine was completed in late 3605, and to commemorate the occasion, Trustworthy John declared a two-week long holiday throughout the entire Empire (which, the reader will recall, by that point in time had come to span nearly the entire world). That declaration did more to cheer the Peasants than a dozen years of other measures had accomplished, due to the universally known fact that Peasants tend to like to have reasons to do as little of substance and actual accomplishment as possible, because of the equally universally known fact that they had been endowed with those attributes (or, to be more accurate, those character flaws) which were present in the being of their God, The D.M., in whose image they had been created.

The creation of a truly Imperial City, generally considered one of the shining achievements of Trustworthy John's long reign, accomplished two important things for Trustworthy John's Empire. Firstly, as has been mentioned, it allowed him to show reverence to his slain friend, the founder of the Holy Muncian Empire, Hulk Smashing, and thus to expiate some of the guilt Trustworthy John had accrued through his treacherous assassination of that man. But also, and perhaps more importantly (in terms of political history), it allowed Trustworthy John to effectively seize control of the reins of the Imperial Government, by moving that Government out of the provisional Capital of Oerconfidus, and thus, to remove the Government beyond the purview of the Bishopric of the ambitious Muncian Church. Thus, by the final years of the 3600's, the focal point of the Holy Muncian Empire's politics had evolved from a largely theocratic one centered around the Muncian clergy to a secular one focused upon the favor of the Emperor.  This act, as seen by modern, non-exploded Historians, is one of the most significant proofs of the vigor and exceptional shrewdness of Trustworthy John. Quite understandably, given the circumstances, the members of the Muncian clergy, to the present day (whenever that happens to be) are not nearly as impressed. 

Following the conclusion of the Imperial Border Wars and the establishment of the Imperial Capital at Swizarrine, the affairs of the Holy Muncian Empire more or less settled down into an era of political and economic tranquility, marked by technological innovations which increased crop yields, increased commercial and industrial productivity, and increased aggregations of wealth into the hands of Imperial Society's most prosperous families. Quite unsurprisingly, given the exceptional level of tolerance that Peasants of the day had for their own poverty and ignorance, the Peasants do not, according to historical accounts of the era, seem to have been the slightest bit upset about the fact that they themselves benefited not at all from all this prosperity and tranquility, though they themselves, being the core of Society's labor force, had generated virtually all that wealth by their own labors. 

During that peaceful era, Trustworthy John's first wife, Emeraldsa, died in childbirth, delivering to him a son that he named Trustworthy Jash. Trustworthy John was emotionally devastated by the death of his beloved wife, who had been with him through thick and thin, and had stood by his side since their Peasant wedding more than 50 years before, had known him when he had been nothing but a mere Peasant slave in the deplorable slave pits of Walmar, Achsploitai. Trustworthy John mourned his dead wife for more than a solid year, displaying an un-Peasantlike sorrow at her passing. But in time, particularly in the year 3603, he married again, and his second wife, Ai Kandee, bore him twin sons, Trustworthy Jake and Trustworthy Joe, less than a year later. 

The era of peace and tranquility was soon cut short, however, when, in 3588 A.O.B.J.C.W.N., Trustworthy John received disturbing news from the Empire's Hubrysine marches. For in the fourth month of that year, while on a routine tour of the occupied Hubrysine Province of "Deimokraysi", both the veteran general Watt Miwuri and his son and heir, Watt Samatayu, were killed while inspecting newly built siege equipment, oversized catapults called mangonels, one of which had, according to the investigation later conducted into the matter, been built too strong for its wooden frame to handle, and had exploded into wooden shrapnel, driving a wedge larger than a grown man's thighbone through Watt Miwuri's skull and an only slightly smaller piece through the chest of his son, killing them both instantly. 

With the border defenses thrown into confusion by the sudden deaths of their commanders, they sent immediately to inform the Emperor of the tragedy, and Trustworthy John immediately prepared to journey, in person, to the frontier to take personal command of the defenses there until a suitable replacement could be trained and installed in command. 

But the situation quickly grew worse for the grieving Emperor, who had not only lost his most capable field commander but had also lost one of his finest friends. For an ambitious Noble of the lineage of Tegah the Selfish, a cunning dealmaker and glib talker, who had for several years been forging clandestine alliances with Noble families in the unconquered remnant of the Hubrysine Empire, as well as several of the Barons of Arroganse, chose that time to make his bid for power in the eastern reaches of the Holy Muncian Empire. 

His name was Valgah, born in the city of Talle Pramptor, in the province of "Deimokraysi" itself in 3618, a cunning and unscrupulous man. With his handsome face, his shoulder length straight black hair, his striking green eyes, and his impeccable fashion sense (his style of cloaks are still in use among the Nobility to this day), he cut a memorable figure, but History, as she tends to do with people of the Noble caste, gave him a name descriptive of his character..."The Serpent". 

The "Deimokraysi" War

With support of allies within Hubrys and Arroganse, Valgah moved quickly, in tandem with other members of his Family, to seize control of the newly disordered Peasant armies on the Empire's eastern frontier, which was not very difficult to accomplish at all, given the well known practice among Peasants of surrendering and subordinating themselves to anyone presumptuous enough to pretend to be an authority. And pretend to be in authority, Valgah the Serpent did not. That is precisely why his allies were exceptionally and eagerly motivated to use him as a pawn in their play for power on the eastern frontier, unknowingly become pawns themselves...pawns to his will. 

The mercenary barons of Arroganse, upon receiving his request in the eighth month of 3588 to provide his  family's small militia of Patuene defenders with an army large enough to frighten the Peasant conscripts of the Empire's eastern armies. Though Watt Miwuri's officers had been capable enough subordinates to him, they did not possess his education nor did they possess his charisma, and with no successor to their former commander forthcoming from the capital at Swizarrine, on the other side of the world, the officers, who themselves had not been trained to think beyond the usual paradigms of Peasant military service (namely, following orders), were in no condition to actually lead the headless frontier army. But Valgah the Serpent was. 

Valgah began his bid for a takeover of the Imperial defense forces in "Deimokraysi"  by convincing a huge host of Hubrysine Provincial Peasant troops and Arrogantian mercenary cavalry and archers to position themselves just inside the oddly named Hubrysine Province of Ralph Ublik, named as the reader might very well guess, from the name of its founding father, Ralph Ublikhan, whom the pages of History remember as a rather stupid, but insanely charismatic, man. 

Once his client army was in position, he sent a messenger to the wary Imperial Troops across the border in "Deimokraysi", firmly inviting their legion commanders to a conference at the border town of Farse and telling them in no uncertain terms that failure to attend that conference would lead to the border defenses of "Deimokraysi" being overrun by the gathered Hubrysine and Arrogantian armies. 

And so, on the sixth day of the ninth month in 3588, the acting commanders of the region's eight Imperial legions of Peasant defenders journeyed to Farse to meet with Valgah. While there, he used his clever tongue to convince them that resistance was hopeless, and that they would be overrun by the ammassed Hubrysine and Arrogantian armies long before any help could be sent to them by Trustworthy John in Swizarrine. This, the legion commanders could not deny, and when Valgah attempted to persuade them to throw in their lot with his own army, they agreed, partially because they saw the futility of refusing to do so. But also because, being after all Peasants trained as soldiers, they just really liked following orders, and it really did not matter much to them whose orders they had to follow, just so long as someone was giving them orders to follow. And so, without having to kill a single soldier (which fact kept the Gunkari and Patuenes under his command up at night, gnawing on their own sense of guilt and shame), Valgah had managed to talk his way into command of a massive army in the Province of "Deimokraysi", composed of eight legions of crack Imperial Peasant infanttry, as well as more than ten thousand Hubrysine Peasant troops, and more than five thousand Arrogantian light cavalry and archers, and stood poised to pounce upon the sparsely defended regions adjoining it. 

This, needless to say, incensed the Emperor Trustworthy John, who immediately mustered an army of more than 100,000 Inperial infantry, 50,000 light and heavy cavalry, and 10,000 longbow and crossbowmen to embark upon a punitive expedition into "Deimokraysi". 

Now, Valgah knew that Trustworthy John would not sit still and allow his eastern frontier to be devoured by an insurrection, unchecked, and so at his order, his newly gained army moved swiftly to occupy all the defensible positions in "Deimokraysi" to brace themselves for just such an invasion.

The officers in command of the Hubrysine and Arrogantian contingents, confident that they could control Valgah and use him to allow them to overrun "Deimokraysi", which was rich in mineral resources and thus a desirable target, moved to secure themselves in the most defensible positions, and Valgah, all too willing to allow them to believe that they were the ones in control of the situation there, and not himself, allowed them to do this and even happened to be the one who had suggested it to them.

And this done, Valgah the Serpent hunkered down for the impending invasion of Trustworthy John, which, as soon his army was ready to move, began them sailing to the Eastern Continent in the second month of 3587. By the first day of the fourth month, 3587, his massive punitive army had assembled itself upon the flat plains of the Province of Enarkhi, to the west of "Deimokraysi", and a confrontation between the Holy Muncian Emperor in all his might, and the rebel Valgah the Serpent, was impending.

His first move into "Deimokraysi" was towards the fortified trade city of Spezalintrest, in the southern reaches of the Province, where, during a three day battle (4.6. - 4.9.3587), Imperial troops under the command of his sixteen year old son, Trustworthy Jash, drove the city's Arrogantian defenders into retreat northward. The retreating Arrogantians, however, had planned for this eventuality, and lured Trustworthy Jash into an ambush, suddenly turning about to confront him at the town of Jurjanstaiht. 

At Jurjanstaiht, with the help of hidden Hubrysine troops and a legion of "Deimokraysian" Peasant legionaires, the Arrogantians under General Kan Thempt caught the overconfident Imperial troops in a pincer attack and routed them. It is estimated that more than ten thousand Imperial Peasant troops were slain at the battlefield of Jurjanstaiht, and Trustworthy Jash, himself, barely escaped with his life, returning his father's base headquarters at the city of Anti Fedralisma in disgrace. 

However, Trustworthy John was not daunted by this defeat. Instead, he embarked upon a campaign to choke out his enemies in "Deimokraysi", sending contingents to seize lesser targets, cities around Jurjanstaiht which could more easily be taken and held firmly against counterattacks. In this, he sent his defeated son Trustworthy Jash to command a detached force, while he himself moved in tandem, and by the first day of the fifth month, 3587, despite attempts by "Demokraysian" legionaires to come to their aid, several of the target cities and towns had fallen to Trustworthy John and his son, so that Jurjanstaiht was itself ringed with hostile forces. 

But the rebel Valgah the Serpent had not been idle. Ordering his "Demokraysian" Peasant legions to the defense of Jurjanstaiht, they reinforced the beleaguered defenders there, even as Trustworthy John tightened his grip upon that city, attempting to starve its defenders into submission. Valgah himself led the "Demokraysian" reinforcements, clashing with Trustworthy John himself on the battlefield outside of the nearby town of Bygbis. At the Battle of Bygbis Hill (6.13.3587), when Imperial troops, seeking to gain control of the high ground, stationed themselves on a commanding Hill to the west of town, Valgah cleverly took up positions around the hill during the dark of night, and awaited the proper time to strike. At dawn on that day, as the sun was rising in the center of the sky such as it always does on Slud (the Planet), Valgah waited until the light of the rising sun was shining fully into the eyes of his foes, and then, giving the signal to charge his enemies up on Bygbis Hill, the engagement ended in a victory for the rebel troops of "Deimokraysi" as, unable to see their opponents very well, the Imperial soldiers of Trustworthy John were driven into a frenzied retreat from the hilltop. 

But despite the loss, Trustworthy John's army was still in a commanding position in the area, so rather than press any temporary advantage his tactics may have earned the rebel forces at Bygbis Hill, Valgah instead moved quickly to evacuate the nearby city of Jurjanstaiht of its Arrogantian defenders, including the splendid officer Kan Thempt, before Trustworthy John could regroup his forces for a counterattack. This done, the entire mass retreated to the walled city of Bygbis. 

And so it was that Kan Thempt, the Arrogantian commander of Jurjanstaiht, escaped the noose that had been set for him by the Holy Muncian Emperor and his army.

Meanwhile, Valgah sent secret orders to the defenders of Bleeding Heart Pass, some ten leagues to the east,  to increase fortifications there and to prepare ditches and trenches along the mouth of the valley in which Bleeding Heart Pass was located. This done, the rebel army of Valgah the Serpent and his Arrogantian and Hubrysine supporters endured a siege of Bygbis for more than a month, refusing to give battle or to respond to the taunts and insults sent out daily by loud-voiced Imperial soldiers, although Ronald Belligerent, the ranking Hubrysine officer at Bygbis, was in favor of raiding the Imperial camp by night. 

The continued refusal of the rebel soldiers to come forth from inside the walls of Bygbis, in time, lured the Imperial troops into an attitude of complacency, and their defenses slackened slightly, particularly on the north side of the city. This was the opportunity that Valgah had been awaiting. Before dawn on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, 3587, the north gate of Bygbis opened, the city was torched to the ground, and the defenders of the city, pushing before them thousands of Peasants as human shields, forced their way through the confused Iimperial forces surrounding the burning city, and marched to the newly-prepared defenses of Bleeding Heart Pass, where they could properly entrench themselves for a prolonged siege, and hold Trustworthy John's forces in southern "Deimokraysi" in check. For it soon became quite clear to Trustworthy John, as Valgah had intended it should, that so long as there were rebel defenders at Bleeding Heart Pass, doggedly defending that place, he could not advance further into the Province without leaving his flank dangerously exposed to them. So it was that the largest part of Trustworthy John's still massive Imperial army was trapped into besieging Bleeding Heart Pass, which pass itself held no advantage to them to take except that their enemy was positioned there. 

However, Trustworthy John, it has been noted at other points in this History, was a shrewd fellow, and understanding the realities of the situation in southern "Deimokraysi", he shrewdly decided to use his massive, trapped army, itself, as bait to hold the attention of his rebel enemies.

Meanwhile, he sent orders to his son, who had taken up position at the town of Aktiviz to the north of Bygbis, ordering Trustworthy Jash to march north with his small detachment of less than two thousand crack Imperial Peasant soldiers and Patuene cavalry auxiliaries, and launch a surprise attack against the Provincial Capital, the city of Todal Lye.  So Trustworthy Jash departed Aktiviz with his army and marched north towards the Capital. In the path of his rapidly advancing, forced marching army was the city of Poplaranga, whose commander was a "Deimokraysian" Peasant officer named Khan Sens, who had formerly been, during more tranquil times, one of Watt Miwuri's most stalwart subordinates.

Trustworthy Jash encountered a major snag in his march on the Provincial Capital when he arrived at Poplaranga. The city commanded the nearby countryside and because of the secret nature of Trustworthy Jash's mission, he could not risk marching his army around Poplaranga and possibly being spotted by other fortified rebel positions in the area, some of which could be expected to send word not only to Valgah at Bleeding Heart Pass, but also, more disastrously perhaps, to the Capital at Todal Lye. Therefore, Trustworthy Jash was forced, one way or another, to subdue Poplaranga and render its defenders unable to stop his advance. The situation for the Imperial troops was quite delicate, and after seeking a solution to his problem, Jash decided to hide his army as best he may among the local forests, and to seek to lure his opponent, Khan Sens, out of the city, with the hopes of capturing him and thus gaining the Imperial army passage through the region unhindered. 

But Khan Sens, wary of the Imperial forces and vaguely aware (because he was, after all, a Peasant) of his own complicity in the treacherous rebellion of Valgah the Serpent, refused to take the bait, and stayed posted firmly within the walls of the city, much to the frustration of his Imperial adversary. Luckily for the Imperial column, however, he was able to keep an effective eye on all attempts by Khan Sens to send messengers out of the city, and to capture those messengers, thus effectively enforcing Poplaranga's silence, preventing them from alerting their neighboring garrisons of the Imperial force camped outside their walls. 

Eventually, it was one of these captured messengers who gave Trustworthy Jash a solution to his problem. The messenger was a Peasant, of course, and thus quite easy to manipulate, and by means of certain threats against the hapless messenger's family, the messenger was persuaded to return to the city, and to convince its commander that he had successfully gotten through the Imperial lines and informed the nearby garrison at the town of Protes of the plight of the defenders at Poplaranga. Furthermore, he was to give Khan Sens, himself, a message, ostensibly written by the commander of Protes (but in actuality written by Trustworthy Jash himself) settling the details of a coordinated attack designed to entrap and rout the Imperial forces. At a prearranged signal, Khan Sens was to ride out of the city with two companies of rebel soldiers as support to hit the distracted Imperial troops from behind, thus throwing them into confusion.

The messenger, cowed with fear, did as he had been told, and returned to the city, relaying the message that had been given him. And having received that message, Khan Sens thought that help had come to him, and prepared to do as the message suggested.

When the appointed night arrived, two days later, Khan Sens did as he had been bidden, riding out of the city under cloak of darkness to raid the flank of the Imperial forces of Trustworthy Jash. Instead of throwing the Imperial troops into confusion and routing them, however, he found himself the victim of Trustworthy Jash's clever trap.

The Imperial forces, quite predictably, captured Khan Sens and his escort alive and unspoiled. But when Khan Sens was bound and brought before Trustworthy Jash, Jash said,

"And so your gamble has failed, good man Khan. And here you are, brought to kneel before the son of your Emperor, in chains."

Khan, however, did not kneel. In fact, he stood on his two feet, his head held high.

"You have captured me, my Lord. Death is the punishment, so why waste your words upon me when your duty is clear?" he said with a note of defiance in his voice.

"You were one of the loyal servants of the Empire, and you were Watt Miwuri's man. Why have you turned your back on your own duty?" asked his captor, sadly. 

"What? I? I, turned my back on my duty? How can you say that I have turned my back on my duty?" Khan Sens replied stiffly.  

"Have you not done so?" Trustworthy Jash asked then, with anger in his voice. "Have you not turned your back on your duty to your Emperor, your duty to your country, and your duty to the soldiers of your command?"

"No, Lord. And you may be an Emperor's son, but I will not accept such an accusation, not even from you." Khan Sens said then, his shoulders straightening and his chin jutting outward with pride. "I was loyal to the Emperor, I was loyal to my country, and I was loyal to my men. Yes, I was even loyal to the commander who raised me up out of the ranks of Peasant filth into which I had been born, my late Lord Watt Miwuri. But my Lord was killed. His son was killed. We had none here in this land to lead us, and while we awaited the pleasure of your Imperial father to send us replacements, the Serpent and his armies awaited us just across the border in Ralph Ublik, threatening to overrun our Province, burn our crops and kill our families if we did not submit ourselves to his rule. And what else should we have done, my Lord Trustworthy Jash? For do we who were entrusted with the defense of this region by your father himself suddenly forget the stern duty he had placed upon us to defend this place and its people at all costs? No, my Lord. I am a soldier, and I did my soldier's duty to the best of my ability. But now you have captured me, and I know what the penalty is. Please do it and speak no more of this!"

And Trustworthy Jash was touched by this response. Reaching forward, he unbound the prisoner with his own hands, and removing his own silken mantle, he placed it upon the shoulders of his captured enemy, saying,

"If loyal you are as you say you are, Khan Sens, then your Emperor again has need of your service, and his son begs you not to hold against me my rough words, but to renew your allegiance to the throne, and to the Holy Muncian Empire. Will you do this thing?"

And Khan, now unfettered by his bonds, sank to his knees and swore anew his oath of allegiance to the Emperor. And the city of Poplaranga was taken without a fight, that very night.  

Heartened by his success at Poplaranga, Trustworthy Jash asked Khan Sens to assist him in the march on the Provincial Capital, by persuading the rebel commanders along the way to renew their allegiance to the Imperial throne, and this he did well, so that, as the Imperial army neared Todal Lye, it had waxed mighty in numbers and mightier still in strength, indeed. By the time the Imperial army of Trustworthy Jash arrived at Todal Lye on the twentieth day of the eighth month, 3587 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., his army of conquest had grown to more than twenty thousand Peasant troops in addition to his own two thousand.

Suddenly beset by so many motivated enemies, the rebel garrison of Todal Lye could not hold out for long, and on the twenty fourth day of the eighth month, the city fell to Trustworthy Jash and his Imperial army. In command of the city had been Vulgah the Petty, cousin to the rebellion's leader Valgah. A despicable man disliked even by his own allies and subordinates, no one in Todal Lye mourned him when, as Imperial Forces overran the city, Vulgah's head was removed from his shoulders, and his headless body was hung from the walls, draped in the Imperial battle standard.

As news of the fall of Todal Lye spread throughout the "Deimokraysian" countryside, garrison after garrison sent delegations to Trustworthy Jash to tender their submission, deeming the rebellion a failure and their own hopes of surviving the Imperial invasion futile.

Meanwhile, Trustworthy Jash had the words "You're next" tattooed into the forehead of the slain Vulgah, and had the head sent to the dead man's cousin, Valgah the Serpent, at Bleeding Heart Pass.

Now when Valgah received the severed head of his cousin, he knew immediately the import of the message that had been sent him. Todal Lye, somehow, some way, had been lost to the Imperial invaders. The rebellion had suffered a crippling and unrecoverable defeat, and he, himself, was now trapped facing down a vastly superior army of angry Imperial soldiers at Bleeding Heart Pass.

Meanwhile, Trustworthy John, having received word of his son's stunning success at Todal Lye, prepared to move forward with his endgame.

He sent forward an embassy to the rebel forces at the Pass, offering amnesty to the rebel soldiers of "Deimokraysi"still holding out there, and offering also safe passage to the Hubrysines and Arrogantians if they would abandon the traitor Valgah to his fate and flee back to their homelands. And finally, to Valgah himself, Trustworthy John offered a post in the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs if he would immediately surrender and end the rebellion.

Valgah realized that the offer was a bogus one, and that his own head was forfeit the moment that the Emperor got his hands upon the traitor. And so he opposed surrendering. However, the Hubrysine and Arrogantian commanders in the Pass, understanding that their attempt to take over "Deimokraysi", then decided to flee the cut their losses and run. And unfortunately for Valgah the Serpent, would-be usurper, he was himself among what they considered to be losses to be cut.

On the second day of the ninth month, 3587 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., the gates of the massive rampart at Bleeding Heart Pass opened up, and a delegation of Hubrysines and Arrogantians rode forth, bearing with them a grisly gift. For they had killed Valgah the Serpent, and all the members of his family present in the Pass, and they brought forth the heads of the slain rebels as a parting gift, taking their departure for their own lands soon after.

And so the rebellion known to History as the "Deimokraysi" War had come to an end, and the power of the Holy Muncian Empire, which had been challenged, had been reaffirmed on the battlefields of that province. True to his promise of amnesty, Trustworthy John accepted the renewal of the erstwhile rebels' allegiances, and as for the officers of that place, he set them under the command of Khan Sens and other former subordinates of Watt Miwuri who had defected back to the Imperial service during Trustworthy Jash's triumphant march upon the Capital.

As for Trustworthy Jash, his reputation waxed great indeed as a result of his actions in "Deimokraysi", and as he returned alongside his father to the Imperial capital at Swizarrine, he was hailed by the Imperial populace as a war hero, and in all the Empire, he was second only to his father in the esteem of the Imperial subjects.

Following the conclusion of the "Deimokraysi" War, the Empire again settled down to an era of peace. But as Trustworthy John was to discover, the peace of the Empire did not always automatically translate into peace for himself or his family.

The Latter Days of Trustworthy John

Trustworthy John had been an aging man when the "Deimokraysi" War had broken out on the Empire's eastern frontier.  Born in 3646 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., Trustworthy John had been in his late fifties when he had been required to crush the rebellion, and though he was not, technically, beyond childbearing age, he had ceased to bear offspring after the birth of his twin sons, Jake and Joe. 

He was a devoted father, and loved all his children equally, but as his eldest son, Jonas, was ineligible, as per Imperial Law, to inherit the Imperial throne due to the fact that he was already the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church, and the Law prohibited such a conflict of interest, the status of Crown Prince had fallen instead upon the shoulders of Trustworthy John's second son, Jash. Jash, having secured a glorious name for himself after his successful capture of virtually all of northern "Deimokraysi" during the "Deimokraysi" War, had been an obvious choice to be designated heir anyway. For one thing, he was older than his twin half-brothers, Jake and Joe, and so he would be experienced enough to have acquired some of that wisdom which (it is thought), Emperors should have but rarely do have in actual practice.

Besides that, there was also the fact that Trustworthy Jash showed every indication of being as charismatic and cunning as his father was. Had circumstances gone differently for him, he might have made an exceptional Holy Muncian Emperor.

However, there was one factor to the existence of Trustworthy Jash which, though he had absolutely no control over it or ability to change it, would lead to a tragic end for the man the masses named "The Hero of Todal Lye". For Trustworthy Jash was the son of Trustworthy John's deceased first wife, Emeraldsa, and for that single fact, he had gained the well-hidden enmity of Trustworthy John's second wife, Ai Kandee.

An ambitious woman, Ai Kandee had hoped to get her own offspring endowed with Heirship, but the established rules of primogeniture forbade this, demanding that the eldest unconflicted son, that being Trustworthy Jash, should be designated the Heir to the throne. And so, even before the rebellion in "Deimokraysi" had allowed Jash to make a name for himself, she had already begun to plot and scheme against him, and during his absence from the capital, she began to lay her plans in earnest.

Her strategy was simple, and effective. She knew her husband well enough to know that while he was a shrewd judge of character when dealing with his subjects and with his enemies alike, he had a blind spot of naivete when it came to dealing with members of his own family. He tended to trust the things that they told him, not suspecting them of deception, and this, Ai Kandee was determined to use to her advantage, to drive a wedge between father and son. While the two of them had been gone to war on the frontier, she had quietly made alliances in Swizarrine itself, buying the loyalty of prominent officials in the Government in preparation for what she intended to do next. And as peace settled down throughout the Empire, and her Imperial husband began to become absorbed by the affairs of state, she made her move.

She began her strategy by starting rumors in the city that Trustworthy Jash, puffed up by a sense of his own importance following his victory in "Deimokraysi", was perhaps not quite content to patiently await his father's old age before taking the throne, and that he was secretly sewing sedition among the Imperial City's Patuene officers in preparation for a coup to overthrow his father.

Trustworthy John, of course, did not believe these rumors when he was told of them by his secret police. But he had no clue that the rumors had been started by his own wife, and instead, he thought that perhaps his son had made a few enemies of his own among the Nobles and Govenrment officials in the city. But though he did not believe the rumors of his son's sedition, nonetheless, doubts had been sewed in his heart which would come to tragic consequences later.

Meanwhile, Trustworthy Jash, seeking to occupy himself after his return from the war, requested of his father than he be allowed to tour the provinces and make certain that no such insurrection such as the one which had previously occurred in "Deimokraysi" could again arise somewhere else. This suggestion offering Ai Kandee with an opportunity to get her rival out of the way for a while, she encouraged her husband to agree to the suggestion, and in the fourth month of 3586, Trustworthy Jash departed the Capital for the Provinces, beginning his tour.

Meanwhile, Ai Kandee continued to start rumors about Trustworthy Jash, this time starting rumors that he was fomenting unrest among the defense forces in the provinces, and making alliances with prominent commanders to assist him in a rebellion against his father, and in time, as Ai Kandee had certainly intended, the rumors made their way to the ear of the Emperor himself. 

As for Trustworthy Jash, his tour of the Provinces went well until the ninth month of 3586, when, having arrived in the merchant province of Gredier, he discovered a clandestine plot by the Governor General of that region, a Patuene named Graspar, to rise in revolt against the rule of the Emperor and take control of that particularly wealthy region in his own name. Quite expectedly, Trustworthy Jash dealt quickly and decisively with the rebellious Governor, seizing him and after publicly denouncing his crime, putting him to death. 

This act, though the eye of the Historian would discern it as having been very much acting in the interests of his Imperial father, proved to be the downfall of Trustworthy Jash, for it provided his jealous and cunning mother with precisely the pretext she required to encompass his doom.  Ai Kandee, upon hearing of Trustworthy Jash's execution of Governor Graspar, went to her Imperial husband and intrigued against her stepson, telling Trustworthy John that she had learned from members of the secret police that Graspar had discovered the details of a plot by Trustworthy John to himself seize the reins of power in Gredier and having so done, rebel against his Father, taking away from the Empire one of its richest provinces.

Trustworthy John, for all his Imperial dignity and all his legendary talent, was, as he had been born, still very much a peasant in the way that he reacted to threats.  As Peasants are known to do, he responded to this sudden crisis of his Empire by succumbing to his basest emotions, and in a rage, he immediately summoned his son back to the Capital to face justice for his perfidy.

Trustworthy Jash, unaware of what intrigues had been worked against him, installed a new Governor General in Gredier to replace his treacherous predecessor, and this having been done, he cut short the rest of his tour of the Provinces and returned to Swizarrine in haste, thinking that some crisis of the Empire had certainly arisen to have made his father so hastily, flatly, and without ceremony summon him home. Which, though he had no way of knowing it, one certainly had.

Upon his return to Swizarrine, Trustworthy Jash immediate went to the Imperial Palace to report to his father, who had him seized and sent to the infamous penal colony known as Reihabilitus, there to await execution for the crime of high treason against the Empire. Though Trustworthy Jash repeatedly protested his innocence of the crime of which he had been accused, his pleas fell upon the deaf ears of jailers who had been especially chosen by Ai Kandee to take custody of the prisoner...jailers who were, quite literally, deaf.

Trustworthy John, Emperor of the Holy Muncian Empire, was not stupid, and in time, as his emotions subsided and reason reasserted itself in his mind, he examined all the evidence that had been presented against his son, and came to understand how spurious the evidence had truly been, and, realizing this, he sent orders to Reihabilitus that Trustworthy Jash should be released from custody. But his orders had come too late for, having been starved by his jailers as per the orders of Ai Kandee, who pretended to have spoken in the Emperor's name, Trustworthy Jash had, but a mere day before the orders for his release had arrived at the prison at which he had been held, hung himself with his own chains.  

And so, in the second month of the year 3585, Trustworthy Jash, the Hero of Todal Lye and heir to the imperial throne of the Holy Muncian Empire, came to a tragic end at the tender age of 18 years old. 

Trustworthy John, upon learning of the death of his son, immediately had his second wife, Ai Kandee, seized and put to death for her role in the tragedy, having figured out who had really been behind the intrigue that had led to the death of his son. Shrewdly, however, he had her confinement kept a secret, and had her poisoned in such a way as to make it seem as if she had died of illness. In this way, Trustworthy John, avoided creating enemies out of the sons of Ai Kandee, who were now by default the heirs to his Empire.  

Overcome by guilt over his own role in the death of Trustworthy Jash, Trustworthy John designated his next oldest son, the seventeen year old Trustworthy Jake, as the heir apparent, and having seen to the primogeniture of his house, he largely stepped back from the public eye.  

The final decades of Trustworthy John, the Holy Muncian Emperor, were spent in a campaign to build Muncian cathedrals throughout his massive Empire. It is thought by historians that he embarked upon such an ambitious church-building campaign, at least in part, to expiate some of the vast guilt that he had brought down upon himself throughout his career for the deaths of his benefactor, Hulk Smashing, and his son, Trustworthy Jash.

It is not known by modern historians whether or not he suceeded in his quest to redeem himself for his misdeeds, but what is known is that the Emperor Ballswin I, who had been named Trustworthy John, the great founding Emperor of the Holy Muncian Empire, died peacefully in his sleep at the Imperial Palace in Swizarrine, in the year 3564 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N.  He was 82 years old.

Ballswin I, that was Trustworthy John, was laid to his final repose, it is believed though his verifiable remains have never yet been found, in the catacombs underneath the great Cathedral of Our Lady of Osten Tasia, one of the most grand cathedrals the late Emperor had built during the final 20 years of his life, and indeed this particular cathedral is numbered among one of the largest manmade structures on Slud (the Planet), being only slightly smaller than the Joshua's Hut complex (the features and attributes of which shall be elaborated upon in the following section, "The Grand Conclave"). As has been mentioned, the earthly remains of Trustworthy John have not been found, and this is indicative of one of two possibilities...the first being that sometime between the time when his remains were laid in the crypt that had been intended to be their final destination and the time when the first treasure hunter violated his grave, which is understood to have taken place the next day, and the second possibility being that his remains were still there where they had been laid to rest, but that those remains are no longer earthly.  

At any rate, the legacy of Ballswin I, Emperor of the Holy Muncian Empire, and of his predecessor and erstwhile benefactor, Pawn I, that were Trustworthy John and Hulk Smashing, forever changed the future (or past) of social mobility in the society of man upon Slud (the Planet).  Before Hulk Smashing had arisen from the rank and file of the Sluddish Peasantry (or after, again depending upon the way one looks at the event), it had been unheard of and even unthought of by the peoples of Slud (the Planet) for a Peasant even to aspire to any rank or position in society higher and more exalted than that of a household slave. But Hulk Smashing had changed that, and Trustworthy John, carrying forward the dream of his slain benefactor, had continued it, and before Trustworthy John's final days, he had made the right of a Peasant to become someone nobler a matter of law. That law was afterward given shape by the decrees of his successors, and in time the idea of a Peasant-turned-Emperor gained some measure of acceptance even in the mainstream thought of Sluddish society, not because very many people were particularly satisfied with the notion, but because an Emperor had commanded it, and they were all more or less conditioned by society's customs to obey an Emperor's command precisely because it was a command that had been issued by an Emperor.

With the passing of Emperor Ballswin began (or ended, of course, depending upon how you arbitrarily chose to view time) the period of history known as the Dumening era, which shall now be described in greater detail. 

The Dumening Era (3563 - 2533 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N.) 

Following the death of Ballswin I, the Holy Muncian Empire was divided among his two surviving, eligible sons, Trustworthy Jake and Jake's younger brother, Trustworthy Joe, with Trustworthy Jake, the elder of the two brothers, being crowned senior Emperor by the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church, his elder brother Trustworthy Jonas, who had by then become a distinguished, middle-aged Churchman of august and awesome presence. The coronation ceremony was held at the Muncian Chapel in the Imperial Palace, at the Imperial capital city of Swizzarine, and enthroned Trustworthy Jake as Emperor Ballswin II of the Holy Muncian Empire.  

Trustworthy Joe was crowned the junior Emperor at the Cathedral of Sumgainarobe, in the capital city of the Imperial Province of Hubrys, the seat of the former Government of the once-independent Hubrysine Empire, the city of Behtta Thanyu. He was enthroned Emperor Dumed I.  

Emperor Ballswin II ruled the provinces of the western continents, including the regions of Qaestion and Achsploitai, as well as those of Wagislavis, Laborreich, Nudil and Cyvelreight, Patritis and Nashinalis in the Northwest of the Empire.  To the South his domains extended into the boring land of Merikant, and the region of Ennhui, as well as the lands of Commplasensi and Lazii Ness, Fierre and Propter Gandia, Synicismus and the lands of the western Kan Spirans, and also the islands of the Gredier archipelago. In addition to these major regions Ballswin II held his Imperial authority over thousands of smaller fiefs which were organized into several provinces, including Antra Preneura, Zemalbiz Ness, and Middelklahss. 

In the east, Dumed I ruled the provinces containing the former lands of the old Empires in Hubrys, where he placed the seat of his government, and Arroganse, Hippylonia and Bellicosia to the northeast, Zellaught and Badpershing near the equatorial desert regions south of there, and further south, beyond those, the lands of the eastern Kan Spirans and Makultra, Le Tharge and Givvup, as well as Koahpt and Gubmen Jahb. In addition to these major regions Dumed I held his Imperial authority over throusands of smaller fiefs which were organized into several provinces, including An Arca, Libertar, Apathiyah, and Setaytis. 

Occupying as it did a central location within the geography of the Empire, the Church's stronghold domain in Prydea, it was agreed by both co-Emperors as a condition of the annoinment and investiture ceremonies which endowed them with the power of their late father, was to be ruled jointly by a Triumvirate consisting of Ballswin II, Dumed I, and the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church, Trustworthy Jonas.

The first order of business for the newly crowned co-Emperors was to secure for their late father a posthumous elevation to sainthood, and this plan met with the approval of the late Emperor's other surviving son, the Grand High Mucketymuck of the Muncian Church, who had him canonized as St. John the Trustworthy in 3562 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N.

The co-rulership of the Holy Muncian Empire began, then, in earnest, with each of the newly coronated co-Emperors attempting to consolidate the power of the Throne in their respective patrimonies, vis-a-vis the ranks of the feudatory nobles and churchmen in their realms, both of which groups controlled large efeoffments in the Imperial lands. And the reigns of those two co-Emperors were for the largest part defined by the decrees they made during their reigns to that effect. 

Trustworthy Joe, Emperor Dumed I, died of natural causes at the city of Whachugun Yadu in western Bellicosia in the second month of the year 3499 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., at the age of 97, during his annual tour of the Provinces under his rule.  His elder brother, Trustworthy Jake, Emperor Ballswin II, survived him by nearly three years, finally succumbing to old age and brittle bones in the eighth month of the year 3497,  at the age of 100.  He died of complications from a fall which broke his hip. 

Ballswin II in the West and Dumed I in the East were both succeeded by lines of posterity which included male heirs (which was considered important in those days...whenever those were...because of the prevalent mindset of the politically active that males were far more likely than females to commit the grave acts of stupidity which are considered a prerequisite qualification for any successful ruler to have).  This, in itself, proved problematic to the notion of a more or less unified Empire, for, as rulers almost always do, the descendants of Ballswin II and Dumed I kept in place the policies of their forebears, including the one that Ballswin I had put into place before his death, that the lands of the Imperium should be divided among all the eligible heirs.  

The implications of this policy were, by the time of Trustworthy John's great great grandsons, Ballswin V and Segundafiddel I, becoming all too evident, as the Empire had become fragmented into ever smaller and smaller portions, for each of the eligible male heirs of each of the co-Emperors received at the time of his Investiture a portion of his sire's lands, and in turn, left the lands under his rule to be divided amongst his sons.  In retrospect, historians, particularly scholars of political history, have viewed this rite of primogeniture as a bad idea.

The result of this splintering of the Empire into ever smaller states was that the once mighty Empire that had spanned virtually the entirety of Slud (the Planet), that had been born upon the battlefields of the 37th century and had been purchased with the blood of millions of human lives during the great battles of Hulk Smashing and his successor, Trustworthy John, had fallen into irrelevance and virtual nonexistence.  And this fall of the Empire had not been accomplished by any war from without, nor even a revolt from within, nor had it been accomplished by any great disaster nor plague nor any of the other usual ways that an Empire might fall, but it had been accomplished by the mechanism of simple human reproduction.  

And somewhere in the Heavens, it was presumed, the D.M. again slapped the palm of His hand to His head in disgust, at the thought that once again, human reproduction had spoiled His plans...

Another consequence of the fall of the great Holy Muncian Empire had been that the education system of the Empire, which had begun ambitiously with Trustworthy John's attempts to educate the Peasants to some sort of level where they were smart enough to at least WANT to be something better than mere Peasants, stalled and ultimately faltered as more and more of the splintered subkingdoms of the divided Empire began to adopt their own Education systems and, at the behest of the powerful Nobles, shift the focus of those Education systems away from the liberation of the Peasants and towards the idea that Peasants should be trained to be adequate (but never ambitious) servants to those perceived to be their social betters...namely, the Nobles, the Churchmen, and the group which, with the continuous decline of the old Empire, waxed ever the more powerful and influential in the affairs of State...the Politicians. 

It was mainly because of the decline of Trustworthy John's Imperial Education System that the general state of education in the domains of the old Holy Muncian Empire fell to such depths that all of the founding Emperors' good intentions were undone, and the Peasantry emerged from the centuries of that decline even more stupid and weak-willed than ever before.  As a consequence of this, the era has been called by historians The Dumening, and the declines which took place during the Dumening Era had a direct influence upon the events which came after (or before...or....Damn it, could someone just PLEASE figure out this whole Time thing so that we can know when is when?  Please?  Damn it.)

As is usually the case when educational standards fall into the cellar, and as is also usually the case when the power and influence of the Imperial throne gives way to the varied special interests of feudatory Nobles, the Dumening Era brought with it an effective end to the Holy Muncian Empire, as has been mentioned, and also ushered into the ensuing political vacuum the ascendancy of the Politician caste, as thousands of Politicians arose from the splintered domains of the sons of the Trustworthy clan to legislate their way into a new form of society, called a "Republic". The Holy Muncian Republic would set the stage for the following centuries of Sluddish political history, known collectively as "The Grand Conclave". 

Rebellions in the Western Empire

The Holy Muncian Empire of the 26th century A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N. was a markedly different sort of place than was the Empire of Trustworthy John and his sons, Jake and Joe, who had ruled after him.  Where Trustworthy John, who as Emperor Ballswin I ruled as the only Emperor of a unified Holy Muncian Empire, had governed the domains of the Empire vigorously, and with vision and an overriding purpose which drove him to work as hard as he could every day to be the best ruler he could be, to make the greatest number of his subjects content with his rule as could be made content, and his sons, Ballswin II and Dumed I, attempted to follow in the footsteps of that legacy their father had laid down for them to follow to the best of their abilities, successive generations of their descendants proved to be far less capable, far less competent, in the performance of the same duties. 

This slide into incompetency by the Emperors of the Holy Muncian Empire, particularly the latter ones (or former ones?) is not to be understood to be entirely the fault of the Emperors themselves, for there were several factors which contributed to it which had little or nothing at all to do with those men or any decisions they themselves made during their lifetimes, being consequences of changes in the very social fabric of society which had taken place before (or after) they were born.  

One factor which caused such a marked decline in the abilities of the Imperial scions was the policy of inbreeding which has ever seemed to plague noble and royal Houses.  The peculiar prejudices of the people of Slud (the Planet), particularly those of the more exalted castes, had made it almost inevitable that those who occupied the highest stations in Imperial society would seek their mates from among those whom they felt were, like themselves, most deserving of such a rank as they themselves held, and because those who had Royal blood, having within only a few generations after the death of their great progenitor, Trustworthy John, forgotten (whether unintentionally or intentionally) that they themselves had originally sprung from peasant stock, sought their Empresses and their Concubines exclusively from among their own kin or the very highest houses of the Nobility. This practice had two notable consequences:  Centuries of successive inbreeding in the Imperial Family led to a weakening of dominant hereditary traits, transforming a family of capable, vigorous, and ambitious men and women into imbeciles within several generations, and also, it led to an increased disassociation between the House of Trustworthy and their commonplace roots, which, as time passed, would cause the Emperors of the Holy Muncian Empire to become far too out of touch to effectively rule the realm their ancestor had won. 

As a result, the Holy Muncian Empire grew ever increasingly troubled by internecine strife, which, as the strife's underlying causes went uncorrected by the ever more simpleminded Emperors (particularly in the Western Empire), broke out more and more often with each passing year into open insurrections against the Crown. 

And who authored such rebellion against the thrones of the Holy Muncian Emperors?  Assuredly, it was not the Peasants of Slud (the Planet), whom, it having been already established ad-nauseum, and to Joshua Calendar's eternal dismay, tended to behave as if they are quite content to be crushed under the oppressive yoke of serfdom.  No, instead, the impetus for the rebellions of the late Holy Muncian Empire came from the ranks of the Nobility, whom, being accustomed to having their way with Government and turning Government into their private lawmaking profit machine, had long chafed under centuries of Trustworthy John's Imperial decrees, which had to a great extent curbed their excesses.  And as the rebellious spirit of the Nobles spilled out into actual armed warfare against the Gunkari and Patuene armies of the State, the fact that the vast majority of the actual fighting...and dying...was done by Peasants says a lot about the willingness of Peasants on Slud (the Planet) to expend themselves to the utmost, even to the point of dying, for the sake of profit, provided that the profit should belong to anyone but themselves. 

It is perhaps impossible to refer to this particular epoch of Sluddish history, this era of rebellions, without making reference to the largest and most important of those rebellions, the Great Slave Revolt.  

Perhaps, on other planets where different rules of logic apply, the reader might view the words "Great Slave Revolt" and call to mind an image of oppressed Peasants finally having enough of the oppression which is their lot in life, and those Peasants taking up arms in violence against their oppressive overlords, with the purpose of freeing themselves from their terrible situation.  And perhaps, on other planets, that would indeed be what would be meant by the words "Great Slave Revolt".  

But not so on Slud (the Planet), and not so with the Peasants of Slud (the Planet). 

For on Slud (the Planet), the Great Slave Revolt occurred not to free the Sluddish Peasants from being Slaves, but to MAKE them Slaves.  Indeed, on Slud (the Planet), the Peasants themselves, having lived by then millenia of wearisome, exploitative toil as serfs, actually fought a war against the Government to force the Government to make their lives WORSE.  On any other planet, this would of course be a notion not only ridiculous, but unthinkable and contrary to, perhaps, the very trends of history itself.  But on Slud, to do otherwise would be to contradict the trends of history, because on Slud (the Planet), the Peasants just have never seemed to believe they deserved much of anything good for themselves. 

At any rate, the Great Slave Revolt began in the year 2737 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N. when mobs of Peasants gathered outside of the Imperial Palace in Swizzarine to protest a centuries-old decree, set in place by Trustworthy John, Emperor Ballswin I himself, to ensure that they be compensated for their labor with enough money, per annum, to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  This, of course, had always mightily offended the vast majority of the Peasant class, for the Peasants tended to view such measures as taking away from them their motivation to serve their masters effectively, and thus earn for themselves a spot in "The Good Place", the preferable of the two Afterlives that the Muncian priesthood had for centuries assured them awaited them after they died. 

When imperial officials attempted to placate the mob of angry Peasants by offering them food, jobs, and even money from the Imperial treasury, the Peasants did something that Peasants on Slud (the Planet) rarely do...they took up the tools of their Peasant vocations, such as pitchforks and hatchets, rakes and shovels, and used them as weapons, arising in violence against the imperial officials and against the Gunkari and Patuene soldiers who had been called in to help restrain them. What resulted was a massacre of more than two thousand government officials, and a state of crisis in the Empire's chief city which had not been seen since its founding.

There are differing theories as to why the Peasants of Slud (the Planet) reacted thus to an act of kindness on the part of the Imperial Government on that occasion, but the theory which has gained the most traction suggests that they had been conditioned by centuries of propaganda from their overlords in the Nobility to hate the concept of their own well-being. 

Whatever the cause of the Peasant uprising, however, what is known is that the incident touched off a crisis of internecine warfare in the Western Empire, as Noble families attempted to take advantage of the ensuing chaos and secure the loyalty of as much of the Peasant mob as they could after killing a substantial number of Peasants (the killing of Peasants being, after all, one of the primary objectives in any war), with a mind to use the power of their newfound Peasant armies to break the monopoly on force , which had previously been held by the soldiers of the Gunkari and Patuene castes, thereby to increase greatly their chances of being able to overthrow the Imperial Government and set themselves up as successors to the Throne. 

Early in the conflict, the Nobles aligned themselves into two opposing camps which were organized along lines of differing ideology.  

The Conservators, which included many of the most hidebound and recidivist Nobles, sought to restore Sluddish society to some state of what they perceived to have been perfection, and that state they sought to restore had been the status quo of the pre-Imperial days, before Hulk Smashing had changed the nature of power relationships on Slud (the Planet), and the Nobles had pretty much ruled all that the Church had not. The Conservators openly hated the Peasants and wished nothing but misery upon them, which is, of course, quite in keeping with the conservative spirit which motivated their actions.

The Libernuls, which included some of the more progressive Nobles, also hated the Peasants, and also sought to return Sluddish society to the pre-Imperial status-quo, but they sought to distinguish themselves from their rivals among the Conservators by achieving the goal of social-retardation PROGRESSIVELY.  Ultimately, the Libernuls wanted the same things that the Conservators wanted, only they wished to be viewed as not wanting those same things because, after all, if it were believed that the Libernuls wanted the same things the Conservators wanted, that would make them Conservators also, and if everyone involved in the impending civil war were to not only want the same things but be perceived to want the same things, then there would be no point to actually having the civil war, and no one, not even the Peasants, wanted to be cheated out of a perfectly good war since everyone, including the Peasants, had been looking forward to an opportunity to watch Peasants die. 

Author's Note:  It is at this point in this historical narrative that the historian charged with writing this section of the history, realizing the complete and utter absurdity of this most recently stated fact, which was made all the more absurd by the fact that no matter how absurd it was, it was, given the almost universal stupidity which is the perennial curse of the people of Slud (the Planet), actually historically true, finally gave up all hope, resigned his post as author in this history, and immediately went in search of a Philosopher with which to keep company, so that he might be blown to bloody smithereens during the inevitable explosion which always seems to accompany philosophical inquiries.  As he never even showed up to collect his last paycheck, it is to be assumed that he was successful in this. We have since hired another historian to take his place. - Editor

What resulted from the hostilities between the armies of Conservator Peasants and Libernul Peasants was a four year long civil war in which more than half a million Peasants lost their lives (and, given the wretched quality of life for a Peasant in this world, probably not without a degree of gratitude), and ultimately, the Great Slave Revolt was only brought to a conclusion once it was agreed, by both sides, that henceforth whatever rights the Imperial Government had safeguarded for the Peasantry would be immediately repealed and the Nobles of both Conservator and Libernul persuasions would go back to exploiting the Peasants like they had done before the Government had intervened. 

It was at this point in time that even God became so disgusted with the situation that He personally intervened, appearing to the leaders of the Conservators and the Libernuls personally during the signing of the Treaty of Huh?, at the city of Huh? in the City States of Qaestion, in 2733.  The D.M., that is to say, God, told the gathered Nobles that if they did not clean up their act and stop killing so many Peasants, they or their descendants would eventually face dire consequences for their misdeeds.  

But...as is usually the case with Governments and with armies attempting to BECOME Governments...the assembled Nobles chose not to listen. And this fact, history afterward (or beforeward?) came to demonstrate amply. 

The Treaty of Huh? was signed in the spring of 2733 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., and did indeed bring to an end four years of indiscriminate Peasant-killing by the armies of Conservator and Libernul partisans, with the proviso that henceforth, the Patuene and Gunkari soldiers would take over all major Peasant-killing activities as had been the case in the ages before the Empire.  The Imperial Government, of course, would have found this to be quite an insufferable embarassment had it still been in the hands of capable and conscientious men like its founder, Trustworthy John, which, of course, by this time, it was not. 

Indeed, the reigning Emperor, Klulez II of the Western Empire, according to contemporary accounts, having spent every day of his life within the massive Imperial Palace complex, had not even been made aware that the Great Slave Revolt had even happened until after it had already been concluded, and that very fact is indicative of the type of out-of-touch, hands off approach to Government that had come to characterize the reigns of the latter Emperors. 

The Great Slave Revolt, other than serving as an excellent example of the sort of brain-sickly thinking which had pervaded people of all classes on Slud (the Planet), is worthy of being noted in any history of the era for quite another reason.  For it proved to be the catalyst for a change in the very paradigms of government, and for that reason would forever alter the way Sluddish society was misruled.  

Prior to the Great Slave Revolt, as had been mentioned, the Empire was ruled, or misruled, by the will of the Western and Eastern Emperors in Swizarrine and Betta Thanyu, respectively. The Nobles, though as they always had before, they pretty much acted with a great deal of autonomy, nonetheless had given their fealty to the Emperors as Vassals, ruling their feudatory fiefs only at the Investiture of the Emperors who had enfeoffed them. Yet, in the years following (or preceding) the Great Slave Revolt, the Nobles began to take a more active role in the affairs of Government, agitating ever the more insistently for a Bill of Nobles' Rights which included the establishment of a parliamentary form of Government to administer the affairs of the Empire on behalf of the Emperors, with Nobles filling all seats in that Parliament. 

This move would have been unthinkable to the Nobles of Trustworthy John's day, for he would most assuredly have put them to death and replaced them in their fiefs with men more compliant to his wishes, but in the days of Emperor Klulez II, on the other hand, they not only remained in their stations with their heads intact, but actually succeeded in convincing the simpleminded Western Emperor to grant them their demand, and because of this, the first session of the Imperial Parliament of the Holy Muncian Empire convened in the spring of the year 2729 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., and elected to the head of its body the Western Empire's first Prime Minister, a thoroughly unreputable scoundrel named Pahn D. Scumm.

Pahn D. Scumm did not accomplish much of note during the time of his control of the Imperial Government, except one thing...Throughout the course of his thirty year long presidency, he was responsible for the passing of legislation which greatly usurped the traditional powers of the Western Emperor at the expense of the newly-formed Parliament, and as a consequence of this the members of the Politician caste, the Regites and Shubites, Kintahni and Oparbans rose to ascendancy, as they were recruited by the Nobles in the Imperial Parliament to write the bills which eventually, when the Nobles had approved them, would become the laws of the land. 

Initially acting as the secretaries of the Nobles in Parliament, in time the Politicians themselves would usurp the powers of their Masters in the halls of Parliament, and give rise to the situations which made possible the Grand Conclave, several centuries later (or earlier, depending upon how you look at it). 



 

The great throng of politicians who had gathered at Swizarrine, because of the nature of their profession, quite naturally did not trust each other (for they, unlike the ignorant and obtuse peasants they “represented” in Government, knew that no one, but no one in their right mind ever trusts a politician), and so each division of them, what they called “caucuses”, segregated themselves each from the others of the groups of the politicians, and took quarters in different parts of the palace complex. Gang warfare was known to erupt often along the borders of the territories “held” by the various political caucuses, as squads of partisans and sycophants, clad in the livery of the specific caucus and sub-caucuses to which they belonged as members, patrolled the grounds of the palace, each assaulting their targets with a long-sustained slew of pleas, cajolement, importuning, rhetoric, and hyperbole in order to secure their unfortunate prey's favorable “vote” on a specific piece of legislation sponsored by their gang...that is to say their caucus.

Author's Note: It is at about this time that humankind on Slud (the Planet) first developed the online social network, which was called EgoBook. EgoBook was developed by its creators, Javin Tunelvizzin and his college roommate Erroric Selphim-Prest, and soon after, received clandestine government sponsorship in order to fulfill an agenda that was very equally very important to all the various factions of the political class, that being the eternal distraction of the human population all across Slud (the planet) so they would not do something so insanely commonsensical as share and share alike, or take control of society, or anything like that.
As EgoBook plays but a minor, peripheral role in the tale told in this chapter, it shall be treated upon in further detail at another part of the document. The author has introduced the concept of EgoBook at this particular point of the tale particularly to point out the impetus which brought about the necessity for the development of the EgoBook social network, that being, the liveried political gangsters at the Great Conclave, frustrated in their many attempts to secure votes, clamored for the scientist descendants of Grankh the Pompous to use their scientific minds to invent a way to make vote-getting a little easier. This done, however, EgoBook played but a small part in the activities of the Great Conclave, at least in the earlier (or later) years of the Great Conclave, that is to say. For the technology of computers and social networks was still in its infancy, and because the whole Time-progression problem had yet to be solved, and people were still visiting (usually unintentionally) other eras than their own, no one could read any of the words on the monitor screen, except, of course, those who programmed the words on the monitor screen...and even they weren't quite sure which words they had programmed...

     The Great Conclave itself was convened in the year 2505 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N., and because politicians are a long-winded sort of people as is well known, the Great Conclave continued to convene for some three and a half centuries without very much of substance actually being accomplished by the legislation produced. Whole generations of politicians succumbed to old age during this period, having failed to accomplish any sort of significant policy decisions.
The members of each of the caucuses had their own areas of expertise, specialization, and sub-specialization, which they applied against each other on the floors of the Conclave chamber, playing a game of political gang war in which the lives of peasants were the score that was kept, and words were the weapons used, all for the object of obtaining this person or that person's vote as endorsement for a particular piece of legislation.

     The Regites and the Shubites and the Kintahni and the Oparbenes decided to address the problems presented by the complications of Time, by convening a great Conclave of all the politicians of the world to do, of course, that which politicians do best. And that is, they talked. And they talked. And they talked. And then when they grew weary of that, they took a break and, probably attempting to follow the legendary example of the D.M. their God, they ate sandwiches.Politicians eating sandwiches. Many, many politicians ate many, many, many sandwiches over the course of the more than three and a half centuries of the Grand Conclave. Pictured above: the most legendary sandwich eater in Sluddish political history. Oparba the False, ancestor of the Oparbine political caucus, was known to possess the rare ability to eat as many as a thousand sandwiches in a single day, without any weight gain whatsoever. It has long been held true by a broad variety of political theorists that one of the reasons Oparbines were so successful was because of their fine-tuned ability to eat sandwiches with just about anyone.  And then they talked some more.

     Their rationale for taking this approach is not quite clear, as it has always been quite evident that there is a massive gulf between talk and action, and that when one is busily engaged in the one, he or she most often completely ignores the other. Some historians have theorized, before they got caught up in the sophiasplosion of their philosopher companions, that it was believed by the politicians at the great Conclave that they could, in fact, talk all the problems of society into some state of solution. This idea, however, did not, and still does not, manage to gain much traction outside of the political community, except among those relative few humans who are, in the politicians' attempts to validate their role in history by securing loyalty to their programmes within the social mainstream, paid exorbitant amounts of money to think that it's a good idea.
All but a few of the politicians of the world arrived at the Great Conclave, which was to be convened within the walls of the opulent palace complex known as Joshua's Hut, located in the center of the Neutral City of Swizarrine. Joshua's Hut had been named, as one might well surmise, after the unfortunate hero Joshua Calendar, the Keeper of Time, who, of course, totally would have adored the concept of a building being named after him that has 932 bedrooms, 166 bathrooms, 87 large conference halls, sixteen of which were crafted of flawless mahogany, neatly-manicured lawns covering over 80 acres, and not a single permanent resident to justify all that huge expense of the manpower that was required to build it and to maintain it, the even larger expense of material resources that were required for its construction, and the massive energy black-hole that is caused by merely keeping the lights on in the place.

     Joshua's Hut, of course, stands in stark contrast to the surrounding neighborhoods of Swizarrine, which are composed of tenement housing, impoverished citizens, and above all, lost hope. It is in those most austere neighborhoods that the peasants live, who had been conscripted to build not only the city but its crowning jewel, Joshua's Hut. It should be noted that the perimeter of the palace grounds is guarded at all times by six battalions of crack Swizarrine terror-troops, armed to the teeth, who are ostensibly employed in order to ensure that there are no trespassers upon the grounds, but whom routinely use the peasants walking down the surrounding streets as targets in archery practice, when there is nothing much else to do. All parties, of course, are absolutely certain that Joshua Calendar would have loved that too.
It is a peculiarity of the peasant class of Swizarrine that, whenever they are shot full of arrows from the Swizarrine battalioniers, they are invariably heard to murmur words of gratitude, though this occurrence puzzles the author of this history, in that he is not quite certain whether the incidents mentioned are indicative of stupidity, or whether they are merely indicative of suicidal tendencies. At any rate, it would seem that they made excellent bullseyes in any archery competition among the Swizarrine Terror Army. The peasants, of course, are much like any peasant anywhere in the world. When someone is out to destroy them, they are always happy to help.

The Peasants of Swizarrine, dancing in the streets as Swizarrine Terror Troops quietly surround them, and raise their crossbows. Peasant-Killing was a common and popular pastime in the Neutral City of Swizarrine, also called the Political City of Swizarrine. Contrary to what some human rights activists say, the Peasants of Swizarrine engaged in the Peasant Killing Contests willingly, even eagerly, considering it a great, even heroic honor to be murdered by officers of the state. When combined with the well-known fact that just about every human on Slud (the Planet) possesses subconscious suicidal tendencies, it's not difficult to imagine why a bunch of peasants would be out in the street celebrating their impending doom. Every so often, though, for reasons of security, one of the agents of the upper classes infiltrates the peasantry, posing in disguise as one of them. The poor fellow pictured above was soon after felled by a hail of Swizarrine Terror Troop crossbow bolts.Author's Note: Upon much...reconsideration, with the help of the editor of this fine history, who just happens to be a Regite of a rather tall, broad-shouldered, and ham-fisted variety, the author has decided to undertake to rewrite that final sentence of the previous paragraph. It should now read, “The peasants, of course, are much like any peasant anywhere in the world. They exist to fulfill the policy objectives of the political class, particularly the Regites, and, being loyal citizens, they are very happy to suffer and even die, if need be, to help the Regites to conquer...(sound of bone hitting flesh) I mean 'govern in the best interests of' all nations on Slud. Their sacrifice shall never be forgotten so long as it can continue to be used as an excuse for unilateral action. May the D.M. bless Slud (the Planet), and may the blessings of Joshua Calendar be upon the pens of the Regites, holy champions of quotation-marked “justice” and “security”, and upon no one else. Amoo.”

     The Regites were amnesiacs of the highest order, with their ability to conveniently forget any sort of memory which could possibly be incriminating in a court of law, and were further subdivided into the Tagites and the Ruvanicans, descended (respectively) from Tag, the first Solicitor General of the Coexisting Empires of Slud (C.E.S., more later...or perhaps earlier) who was eldest son to Regah the Ruthless, and Ruvan, youngest son of Regah, who became the first Emperor in history to be elected. Among the Tagites would one find the more primal, elemental, or conservative Regite, and both the rhetoric and the policies of the Tagites tended more toward the arch-conservative, the evangelical, and the uber-libertarian sectors of the political compass, while the rhetoric and the policies of the Ruvanicans tended towards a more liberal, sometimes even populist angle.

     Regardless of sub-caucus politics, the Regites generally hold firm to a traditional platform that can be summarized thus: Let the Regites rule all people, and let no other Caucus prosper. Let the few always rule the many, and let the many always serve the few as eager servants, for as little pay as the law can be made to allow. All the enemies of the Regites should be crushed and overthrown, all opponents should be driven into flight before them, and all Regites should rejoice to hear the lamentation of the women. (That last part there was secreted into the Regite platform by members of the Tagite subcaucus, of which more shall presently be told.)

Author's Note: There have been a few philosophers throughout the centuries who have questioned the morality of the Regite position as barbaric, sociopathic, and generally a bad idea. The Regites, of course, merely laughed at them for this, and then laughed all the harder when those philosophers went on to face the dubious fate of philosplosion. In the absense of philosophers to shape it, the narrative, thus, was easily shifted away from “Should we?” to “We must automatically assume that we must.” Such is politics.

     The author recalls a certain Regite legend which speaks of the two sons of Regah, Tag and Ruvan. It is said that while Tag was rather dim-witted and slow, Ruvan was very precocious as a child, and brilliant as a man. Tag, the legend goes, usually just rubber-stamped Ruvan's legislation and called it his own, for Ruvan was much smarter than he was. Ruvan, however, possessed that impatience that is common in younger people, and he often would attempt to lose Tag at parties and social occasions, and when asked of his relation to Tag, he would oftimes deny that any such relation exists. The author feels that while this seems to be a rather pointless legend with no discernible message or moral to it, there is something to be learned from it, nonetheless, for the descendants of Ruvan continued in after (or before) eras to disavow any relation to the Tagites, whom they consider an embarrassment to the Regite Caucus. Thus it was that, in the hallways and courtyards and lawns and fields of the palace complex at Joshua's Hut, there developed, even among one's own faction, internecine warfare between factions, and this internecine warfare was known by its participants as “set-tripping”.

     Upon their entry into Swizarrine for the Great Conclave, the various Regites seized control of the southwestern sections of the palace complex, and throughout the territory under their control could be seen the red livery of the Regites, with white trim for the Tagites and black trim for the Ruvanicans, legislation-fighting in the corridors.

     The Shubites, descendants of Shub the Slithering, were particularly adept at telling lame jokes, mispronouncing words, and generally acting like ignorant buffoons in order to evade the attacks of their opponents. This natural ability was assisted by biology, in the case of the Shubites, for Shubites are rather strange-appearing humans, by all accounts but their own. They appear, almost to a man and woman, to be rather scrawny, alien-looking people, each almost invariably endowed with one particularly large facial feature. Some have large eyes. Some have large ears. Some have large noses. Some have large chins. In any case, all Shubites possess one facial feature which is comically large. Their silly appearances make their ability to act stupid seem all the more believable to most people on Slud (the Planet), regardless of prejudices, or perhaps because of them. And thus, the many Shubites have turned evasion of justice for their crimes into almost an exact science.

     The Shubite platform is one of gross class-disparity, for no one in all the history of Slud, possibly excepting the Dark One Him/Herself, has ever held the peasants in a higher level of hateful contempt than have the Shubites. Their platform runs thus: Keep war eternal, for it does not matter with which country the war is fought, so long as it provides a justification to treat the peasants terribly, and a justification to steal as much as possible from the peasants and offer it up as a sacrifice to the Aristocrats who sponsor the politicians, particularly the Shubites. All activities in which humans engage which do not result in them being perfect, mindless soldier drones or hard-working, lowly paid servants to rich people should be discouraged as “UnSluddish” and “inhumane”, and the Shubites should always work closely with their allies in the Muncian Church to make sure that the Muncian clergy always tell the people of their congregations that The D.M. demands that they do everything the Shubites tell them to do or else they will burn eternally in the bad place with all the molten lava.

     The partisans of the Shubite Caucus seized control of the southeastern sectors of Joshua's Hut, and green and black was the color of their livery. The Shubites were further subdivided into the Prezcauti, the Jorjin, and the Jezedhite subcaucuses, each respectively tracing their heritage back to the children of Shub the Slithering, Prezcaut, Jorj, and Jezedhiah, the youngest. Prezcauti, like their ancestor, were ambitious schemers, who were fond of hatching particularly nefarious plans to disenfranchise the Regites, their ostensible allies while utterly destroying their enemies, the Kintahni and the Oparbines. Their livery was the Shubite green with black accents.

     The Jorjin Shubites were masters of the art of foolery, having perfected the 'play stupid' mentality of the Shubites and combined that art with the art of word mispronunciation. It was a practice of prominent Shubites, at times of particular crisis, to give a speech where they mispronounced either the name of a country or person so badly that the various newspapers, magazines, and news agencies invariably spent at least six months talking about the latest mispronunciation, and almost no time actually covering the real events of crisis unfolding in the world. Other politicians hated the Jorjin Shubites for this particular ability, as they knew quite well what was really going on, but had to stand by and helplessly watch as the narrative shifted away from the issues and onto this or that misspoken word. The livery of the Jorjin was lime green with deep emerald accent, and their uniform earned them the rather contemptuously spoken nickname, “Greenbacks”.

     The Jezedhite Shubites tended more or less to distance themselves from the policies of the Greenbacks, and often Jezedhites were found in the company of Prezcauti, or even in the company of Regites, but almost never were they seen to even bother inhabiting the same general area as that of the Jorjin. Jezedhites sought often to implement the policies of the Prezcauti, though they were often tempted into far more reactionary tactics by the influence of the Tagites among their Regite allies. So it is that Jezedhite legislation seems often to be somewhat self-contradictory, and indecisive. The Jezedhites bear livery of black that is accented with Shubite green, and Jezedhite legislators could often be seen amongst Tagite squads involved in set-tripping skirmishes with Ruvanicans.

     The Regites and the Shubites, it has been mentioned, were ostensibly allies, though there was much ideological infighting amongst them. But both the Regites and the Shubites hated the Kintahni and the Oparbines, who were ideologically opposed to them. For where the Regites and the Shubs were both, more or less, aligned on the conservative areas of the political compass, the Kintahni and the Oparbines acted according to ideologies which, while accomplishing much the same things that the Regites and the Shubites were seeking, nonetheless were worded more liberally, using words like “people” and “freedom” and “the environment”.

     The Kintahni were very artistically endowed, inspired politicians, who had the unique ability to stop any debate, no matter how involved, by picking up a musical instrument and playing it. Their music was spellbinding, and few could resist it, save only for the tone-deaf, who did not have too terribly much problem in doing so. While a Kintahni politician-musician was holding his or her audience spellbound with the siren song of his or her instrument, the other Kintahni, who themselves were immune to the Kintahni siren song, would often pass legislation, taking advantage of the gawking, wide-eyed distraction of their fellow politicians to push forth policies against which, had they not been distracted, the Regites and certainly the Shubites would have bitterly opposed. The Kintahni wore livery of sapphire blue, embossed with the bleeding heart crest of Kintahn the Cunning, the founder of their order, and the crest itself dripped deep blue (almost black) “blood”, also embossed upon their livery. Like their allies, the Oparbines, the Kintahni did not really divide into sub-caucuses, but rather tended to splinter utterly into thousands of small, ideological fiefdoms who were usually too busy fighting with each other about which, exactly, was the best way to “help people” to actually help people, much less withstand the constant attacks from their perennial enemies, the Regites and the Shubites. It has long been said that if the Kintahni and the Oparbines actually cared as much about the plight of the peasants as they claimed, and could have avoided splintering off into thousands of factions, instead presenting a more or less united front like the Regites and the Shubites, they might well have solved the problems which beset humankind as a species. But, alas, political reality being what it is, that never happened. Nor, the author is forced reluctantly to conclude, is it likely to ever happen so long as the current paradigms of society continue to exist.

     The Oparbines, descended from the followers of Oparba the False, had their own especial talent in their ability to subdue any crowd with platitudes, even empty ones. They widely used universal vagueries such as “hope” and “change” in their speeches often, and thus, their platitudes often established control over the vulnerable minds of their audiences, compelling them, sometimes, to act against their own interests or the interests of their particular demographic, and to act for the interests of the Oparbine politician who had cast such a spell with his or her words.

     As has been mentioned, the Oparbines, like their allies the Kintahni, are divided into numerous ideological fiefdoms (the Regites and Shubites would call them “sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub caucuses). The ideological fiefdoms of the Kintahni center around support, either in affirmative or negative, for or against a specific issue (ie. Sword and Bow-control, or the War on the Apothecary, which shall be addressed in later chapters of this volume). The ideological fiefdoms of the Oparbines, however, seems to focus instead of specific people, as a form of hero-worship. The Oparbines revered many of the most influential and entertaining politicians of human history, and even revered and admired the Heroes of their enemies, the Regites and the Shubites. It was not uncommon to find a statue of Regah the Ruthless standing in the center of the office of a prominent Oparbine politician, or a painting of Shub the Slithering, wrestling in the dirt with a grizzly bear while unicorns watch from the background, hanging in the office of an Oparbine partisan. Oparbines, like their founder, Oparba the False, are very false individuals, who knowingly and willingly serve as secret agents of the Prezcauti Shubites, all the while proclaiming loudly that they are friends of the “People”. Indeed, many among the People of Slud do appear to hold a belief that the Oparbines will save the world, even though they have succeeded thus far only in implementing the policies of the Shubites, whom they loudly curse as “obstructors” even as they pass Shubite legislation into law. This cursing is, of course, for the benefit of the Journalists in the media, who focus on those very incidents, rather than present the peasants with any idea of any crises that are really going on in the world of Slud. This is highly unnecessary, of course, since all men know that the peasants would not think of doing anything so discourteous as rebelling even were they fully armed with the truth. For it is well known fact that the Journalists of Slud collect information as their career, and many of them are very, very good at it, but they hold back the information they have gathered, unless it happens to serve to further the agendas of the Politicians, by whom those Journalists are paid very handsomely.

Author's Note: The Journalists of Slud are the descendants of the followers of Marminerk the Eye-Nose, so named because of his much-vaunted ability to make his mind's eye to see as his nose smelled. This was an almost thoroughly useless skill which brought him no profit in his life, except for one thing. His ability to see the world like he smelled the world taught him rather quickly that no human on the face of the planet is every really the same kind of person that they think they are, and that almost everyone in the world could not help but be a liar, because of that. That sort of got Marminerk to wondering, if what people said and did were lies, for their thoughts smelled moderately awful to his olfactory receptors, as did all lies, then what exactly was the truth? Did it exist, and if so, in what form would it take? From such questions was the Journalism profession born, as more and more of Marminerk's followers began to ask those same questions in the much-to-be-expected emulation of their idol of choice, though it was not until the invention of silly little Journalism hats and press badges that the Journalistic profession began to be taken seriously by society as a whole.

     The livery of the Oparbines is deep midnight purple accented with cobalt blue, and the Oparbines can often be found conferring with Prezcauti Shubites when not actively involved in legislative action, conspiring with each other in formulating strategies to undermine the power of the Kintahni without breaking the illusion that the Oparbines were, in fact, on the same side as the Kintahni. In reality, Oparbines hold the people of the general populace of humankind in much contempt, much like their secret Shubite allies, and the Oparbines are secretly devoted to eroding the human rights of the peasants (a very Shubite position) as much as can be gotten away with, and the author can recall several occasions when friends of his, who happened to be supporters of the Oparbine Caucus, were caught brainstorming with each other to discover ways to more effectively pretend that they were on the side of the common peasant, all the while simultaneously discovering ways to lower those same peasants' standard of living even further. When asked by the author how they proposed to justify such a duplicitous action, they replied, and the author quotes directly, “We will tell them that our hands are tied, and that it's all the Regites' fault for being obstructionist. At that point, everyone will blame the Regites for the fact that nothing good gets accomplished, and we can more or less do our own work against the peasants with impunity, because they'll believe we're just helpless victims of Regite obstructionism.”

     So we see that of the four major types of Politicians on Slud, not one appears to actually have the best interests of the peasants at heart, though two of those four types actually claim that they do, while the other two types just overtly war against the peasants in any way, shape, or form that they can justify, knowing full well that the peasants will not only not rise up to overthrow them from power, but also that many of the peasants will just plain agree with them anyways, because of the well-known fact that peasants are always eager to help in any plan which involves them being injured, starved, kept stupid, or killed. At any rate, that system of gang-warfare which uses debate and legislation in lieu of swords or arrows is what passes for a political system on Slud (the Planet), and it is one of the few things about social development of human society on Slud (the Planet) that really tends to make philosophers really kinda okay with the concept that they will at some time sophiasplode and finally be free of such idiocy.

     As for the politicians of the Great Conclave, they gathered together at Joshua's Hut, as has been mentioned, to legislate and to discuss ways to develop technology for traveling between times at will, because they had simply had enough of the mixed-up nature of Time being a dreadful inconvenience to everyone.

     As politicians do, the politicians of the Great Conclave fought each other bitterly with their legislation and their counter legislation and their peasant-killing contests and their ice-cream socials. And their internecine warfare carried on for more than three and a half centuries, without much having been accomplished by any side in terms of meaningful and significant (or even relevant) legislation. The world of Slud continued pretty much unchanged throughout those years, as the politicians were too busy talking to each other to actually do anything about administering society. And the Peasants were pretty confused by the whole thing, but they figured that the Politicians would get it all sorted out eventually.

     One significant piece of legislation which was passed during the Great Conclave was Bill #GC4969FUMOMMA395882q4~32x, also known as the “Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act”, which, as its name might well suggest, was primarily written in order to appropriate government funds, usually from schools and transportation budgets, and to bestow those funds upon corporations that built weaponry and equipment for the armies of Slud, usually in the form of large government contracts.

     But an accident of politics that almost didn't happen ended up bringing about an entirely unprecedented effect upon society as a whole. The Kintahni pulled off a surprise coup on the floor of the Conclave Chamber (year 358 of the Conclave, approx year 2863 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N.), when the Kintahni Albert Roundabout produced a tuba from a case near his seat, and began to captivate the gathered Regites and Shubites and Oparbines with a particularly stirring rendition of the old Fleecy Jackson classic, “The 'Got No More Peasants to Kill' Blues”. While the crowd was distracted by what really was, by all accounts, an absolutely stellar bit of musicianship, the Kintahni delegation, due to Politician Roundabout's virtuouso tuba playing, were able to circumvent the defenses of the Regites and the Shubites, and began to insert pieces of legislation into the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act which the Regites and the Shubites had certainly not intended to include, such as legislation to place a ban on logging oak trees in Imperial national parks across the world, legislation to replace Society's motto, “Burn! Fight! Kill!” with something a little less overt, such as “Bunnies, piggies, and w'il bitty horsies.”, and a measure, Proposition #49892, to affirm that it is the choice of a bumblebee queen to abort some of her eggs if that's what she feels is necessary.

     The measure to place a ban on logging ended up passing the vote, however, the new motto failed to pass by a margin of nearly two-to-one. The measure about the right of Bumblebee Queens to abort deadlocked the Great Conclave for some time, for it was heavily opposed by the Pro-Living-Bumblebee-Larvae politicians within the ranks of the Regites and the Shubites, who felt that it was totally a sin against humankind that any Bumblebee larvae should ever aborted from the pile of over 2000 eggs a day laid by the Queen Bumblebee. The peasants, who ostensibly “elect” those politicians by means of their much-vaunted but utterly meaningless “vote”, just pretty much agreed to go along with whatever the much-smarter politicians happened to come up with, as is a pretty standard practice in Sluddish politics.

     However, the most significant piece of legislation slipped into the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act was a measure appointing a delegation to determine what was the most commonly spoken language on the planet (for the original common language of Joshua Calendar's Time-Tribe had itself splintered into numerous dialects as a result of the diversifying of thought which itself resulted from the “First Great Conversation” that built human society), and to recommend that language to become the official language of the whole world. The language to be chosen was to be used in all transactions and all communication between peoples of different times. The delegation, of course, didn't really bother to do the research, since politicians abhor work like dirt abhors soap, so instead, the members of the language delegation took a couple weeks vacation in the tropics, sipped on mixed drinks while watching the sunset-drenched waves lapping at the shore, and then when the returned to the Great Conclave, they proclaimed that after much research and conference between them, they had decided to suggest that they really hadn't quite spent enough time considering the matter, and that they should extend their research period for another couple months, at least until the hurricane season set in, at which time they would report back and suggest a language to be adopted as a common, worldwide language.

     So the language delegation went and vacationed in the tropics some more.
Finally in late 2863 A.O.B.J.C.W.F.N, the delegation once again returned to the Conclave Chambers in Swizarrine, and delivered their suggestion. They recommended that Sluddish be the worldwide language, and when asked what language that was, for none had ever heard of it, the spokesman for the language delegation started telling, by way of both explanation and definition, a humorous anecdote about this drunk guy he happened to meet while he was on the island upon which he had been vacationing. The drunk guy was named Jons'n Slud, or at least that is the name that the fellow had rather slurringly given when asked, and he was, apparently, quite an amusing fellow with which to share intoxicating drinks and drunken talk. His drunken ravings of entirely spontaneously made-up words had been mistaken by the members of the delegation as an actual language because they also had happened to have been a little tipsy upon that same occasion, but having reached the last day of their “working vacation” without any results for them to report, the language delegation decided to create an entire language based upon the words they thought Jons'n Slud had spoken during a drunken rant in the middle of a high-stakes cockfighting contest. They edited out some of the more nonsensical words, as best as they were able in the few hours remaining to them, and the resulting language was submitted to the Grand Conclave upon their return.

     The Kintahni were somewhat concerned about their ability to pass the common-language legislation into law, as Albert Roundabout was at that time at home, sick with an upper-respiratory illness. And his crowd-pacifying tuba, thus, was out of commission. As he was the only Kintahni present at the Grand Conclave at that particular time who possessed enough musical skill to distract the assembly with his instrumentship, Politician Roundabout was absolutely crucial to the Kintahni efforts to pass the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act, and fearing that the Regites or particularly the Shubites would attempt to have Roundabout assassinated in order to remove that particular obstacle, Roundabout was placed under a constant guard of crack Swizarrine Terror Troops ordered to thwart any such attempt on his life by any means necessary.
But the Kintahni found a surprise assist from the Regites, their political enemies, due to the fact that the Regites, who were very fond of filibustering any piece of opposing legislation out of general principle, especially if that legislation happened to have been introduced by Kintahni Politicians, filibustered the bill for three days (without bathroom breaks), in order to allow some absent Regite and Shubite Politicians to arrive at the Conclave and be included in the quorum, which would have given the Regites and the Shubites the majority they needed in order to defeat the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act.

     This tactic by the Regites, however, allowed the Kintahni to buy the time they desperately needed in order to allow Albert Roundabout and his tuba some much needed recovery time. Even then, the situation looked grim for the Kintahni, for the remaining Regites and Shubites arrived at the Conclave from their various locations on the third day, and were included in the quorum of the newly resumed session of Conclave, and as expected, they seemed quite prepared to help their political allies to defeat the Bill.

     But Albert Roundabout had recovered slightly, and at any rate, had recovered enough to be carried to the floor of the Conclave Chamber with his Tuba, where, one last time, he placed the mouthpiece rather falteringly to his lips, and began to play an old Franz Bobo song called, very ironically, “Pay No Attention to Anyone Else While a Man is Playing the Tuba.”Pictured above: Albert Roundabout, legendary Kintahni Politician of the Grand Conclave, and Grandmaster tuba performer, whose tuba playing allowed the Kintahni to successfully pass the only legislation in all of the Grand Conclave that ever ended up being successfully passed, the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act.

As the Kintahni delegation had anticipated, Albert Roundabout's tuba playing held the gathered politicians in thrall, all except for the immune Kintahni, of course, who cleverly seized that opportunity to pass a measure changing the requirements to pass a bill so as to allow their minority to achieve victory. (How they managed to overcome the mathematical absurdity in this action remains a mystery to this very day, even among Politicians, but some Historians have assigned the blame for this incident to the large amounts of narcotics of which the Politicians were known to regularly partake, usually off of various body parts of peasant bondservants).

     The Kintahni having achieved victory in the passage of the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act, they looked to Albert Roundabout to aid in their celebration by playing another tune, but the poor fellow had played his last song, for his exertion in playing the Tuba had aggravated his upper-respiratory disease and induced a massive heart attack, and he had keeled over, dead, right there on the Conclave Chamber floor.

     The Kintahni, as Politicians often do when confronted with tragedies involving loss of life, ostentatiously and insincerely acted heartbroken about the whole matter, but the fact remained, they had passed the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act into law, and now, not only was the logging of oak trees banned in Imperial parks, but it had also been affirmed that a Queen Bumblebee had the right to choose whether or not to abort some of her eggs, a victory that the Kintahni claimed belonged to all Humankind, even though just about everyone who didn't happen to pay all that much attention to politics couldn't quite seem to understand what exactly Bumblebee Queen abortions had to do with Humans at all...

     With the passage of the Military Industrial Complex Reinvestment Act, however, the Politicians of Slud had designated Sluddish, the language created out of the drunken rantings and ravings of Jons'n Slud, as the official common language of Slud (the Planet) and its people, thus bringing Humankind one step closer to ending a bit of the confusion which so characterized their dealings with each other. And it had been passed into law by an accidental assist by the Regites, whose own tactics had turned against their obstructionist agenda...

     For the first time in nearly four hundred years, the Politicians of the Grand Conclave had managed to talk their way into an actual bit of legislation with historical significance and worldwide ramifications. The Politicians, having accomplished that, unanimously voted to adjourn the Grand Conclave proceedings to a two-week recess, during which would be held massive celebratory festivities in Swizarrine to include, as was customary, large amounts of drug use, patronization of the local prostitute community, and of course, the obligatory peasant-killing contests. At the announcement of the festivities, a hearty cheer was heard to rise up from the peasant quarters of the city, as the peasants were overjoyed to once again be able to be of service to their overlords. Having decided this, the gathered Politicians of the Grand Conclave prepared to leave the Conclave Chamber and go have some fun with hookers and blow and dead peasants.

     But it just so happened that the D.M., still a bit preoccupied with that whole time problem, was His normal lazy self that day, and He, in lieu of actually figuring out how Sluddish history should unfold next, just decided that it would involve too much effort to actually think any of that up, so He resolved to just let the rolls of curious little multisided objects called “dice” determine the result of their meeting, for He often left the matter of deciding the outcome of mundane events in His Universe up to this particular device, and He saw no particular reason why this time should be any different. This was, of course, a big mistake, for the Great Conclave was most certainly not a mundane event. It was a gathering of every politician on Slud (the Planet), utterly unprecedented in all of human history, a 358 year-long gathering of politicians and their descendants who were gathered to solve the greatest inconvenience in the universe...

     When The D.M. rolled what He called “percentage dice” (two of them, each with ten sides), the result which came up on the upturned faces of the dice was the number 100. That result is, as is known by those who are familiar with the rules of rolling dice to decide the course of events, the very worst number that can possibly be rolled on percentage dice.

     Almost immediately, the D.M. began to curse Himself for being too lazy to just think up something better, and He cursed Himself also for not having the common-sense to see that a good D.M. never leaves major plot points to be determined by random elements like the roll of the dice. Nonetheless, lazy and lacking in common sense as He is, He is a being who follows His own rules. And so He did upon this occasion, and He decided to abide by the outcome of His dice.
Shortly thereafter, a massive bolt of lightning as big as a mountain (and oddly, shaped like one, too) shot down from the perfectly clear, cloudless and sunny sky, and struck the hall where the Politicians of the world were having their Conclave. Only two Politicians survived that supermassive lightning strike, though they perished soon afterward, one of them asking, as his last words, who had passed the Bill authorizing that? It is rumored that, at that very moment, from literally the other side of the world, a giant raven flying through the skies was heard to caw triumphantly, and was also, allegedly, heard to say “Cawcaw! Justice! Cawcaw! JUSTICE!” before flying away into a particularly brilliant red and orange sunrise.Photograph showing the neutral city of Swizarrine and the Joshua's Hut Palace complex immediately following the massive Lightning Bolt sent against it by The D.M., which wiped out all the Politicians in the world with only two exceptions, who died soon after. Photo courtesy of the Alienated Press.