THE GREAT LABOR

The Great Labor of 668 GUE was the prime component in how fast Pseudo-Duncanthrax was able to expand the vast networking of the Great Underground Highway system which delved beneath both the Eastlands and Westlands.

Pseudo-Duncanthrax required the energy of the seven most powerful wizards of the Borphee Guild in unison with every living being to complete his mammoth vision. In order to maintain control of the Krepkit and the other six most powerful wizards, the king continued to hold Berknip hostage, thereby manipulating them to use their powerful KATPIL spells to move earth wherever he wished. The king coaxed the remainder of the populace, including the authentic Duncanthrax, into laboring for the highways with a cache of VAXUM scrolls. The streets of Borphee became like a ghost-town.

In once branch alone, hundreds of people—men, women, children of all ages—labored enthusiastically to mix mortar, to trowel it out, to place the bricks that formed the road bed. Some carried food to the workers. Some ladeled out cups of water. A few rested on blankets, but the work obviously never stopped. Everyone wore smiles. The effects of Duncanthrax’s VAXUM were plain upon them. 

With both the wizards and almost every citizen of the empire employed for the project, work quickly started on the new underground tunnels and Pseudo-Duncanthrax began expanding downward in both the eastern and western lands. The natural caverns in the eastern lands would be expanded tremendously, and new caverns and passages would be dug in the western lands, chiefly in the vicinity of Egreth Castle and Borphee. This outset of this entire underground project would later become known as the Great Labor.

The Great Labor would not begin to be broken until later that year, when Satchmoz the Incomparable and his companions exposed the fake king and freed Duncanthrax (and many others) from their VAXUM curse.