 Exploration of the Eastlands, 666 GUE
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Drespo Molmocker, more renownly known as Pseudo-Duncanthrax, usurped the throne from the true Duncanthrax in 660 GUE, and while impersonating the king, secretly ruled the kingdom of Quendor until his exposure in 668. Most of the ruthless deeds attributed to Duncanthrax were in fact carried out by this imposter (although many historians suspect that acts of this nature may still have taken place should the true king have maintained all the days of his reign).
PSEUDO-DUNCANTHRAX USURPS THE THRONE (660 GUE)
Following the New Year's Revolt on the last day of 659, the insurrectionist King Duncanthrax found that he would be on the throne for a mere day and night after having usurped the throne from King Zilbo Throckrod III. Immediately following the coronation, Drespo Molmocker, who was a minor magician, sought to interest the king with a mammoth project. The two discussed this proposal in secret, and by the end of the meeting, Duncanthrax refused, since the cost was far too great. As if this moment had been a result of decades of planning, Drespo Molmocker ensorcelled Duncanthrax with VAXUM, incanted the PLASTO spell to give him the identical appearance of Duncanthrax, and then had the real Duncanthrax imprisoned. It seems that this theft of identity was for the sole purpose of putting into action his bizarre desire to found the Frobozz Magic Company.
Drespo Molmocker had intended to impersonate Zilbo III, but trying to replicate a thousand little queer personality quirks would have easily tripped him up. Since Duncanthrax’s reign of less than a day was too short to make his character widely known, it would not be suspected that the Duncanthrax sitting on the throne was but a fraud. To ensure his odd behavior was not detected, on the second day of what everyone knew to be the new king’s reign, Pseudo-Duncanthrax began the task of rounding up everyone that the real Duncanthrax had ever known. His soldiers also seized all of the waifs and orphans, all the homeless who lived on the streets, all the vagrants with no employment, and had them enrolled in his prisons.
PURSUIT OF ZILBO III (660~665 GUE)
Unable to escape from Borphee due to the heavily guarded gates and streets that were had been flooded with the king’s soldiers since the coronation, Zilbo III went into hiding behind the vast city walls. Pseudo-Duncanthrax was unwilling to admit that Zilbo had escaped from his hands. He feared that if the former king was found alive, that a new rebellion would arise. His fears were unfounded, as it appears unlikely that even a single soul would have been in favor of the boring former king. Regardless, Pseudo-Duncanthrax insisted that his soldiers find and murder Zilbo before any realized that he still lived. Using the alias “Zil”, Zilbo III remained hidden within Borphee until 665.
CAPITAL MOVED FROM LARGONETH TO EGRETH (660 GUE)
Long years had caused Largoneth to be disused. Instead of returning to reign from the capital, one of Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s first acts as king was to move the government of Quendor from Largoneth in 660 GUE. He was quite eccentric, as the new location of the capital was to be in Egreth, reputed to be the most dangerous and deadly territory in the known lands, where the seat of power would remain for over a hundred years. The castle was to be moved as well. The people were pleased by this decree, but they absolutely swooned when he insisted that the job be done without disassembling a single piece of the castle. On several occasions during the moving process, entire legions of workers were crushed beneath the awkwardly moving mobile palace. So within the first six months of his rule, Pseudo-Duncanthrax had caused more unnecessary deaths than the entire Entharion Dynasty combined. Because it would be impossible to reign comfortably from the moving castle, the capital was temporarily located at Borphee.
Another grandiose project of Pseudo-Duncanthrax was the Glass Maze, built on a whim in the same year, to amuse his friends and torture his enemies. This labyrinth of 27 cubicles, full of devilish pitfalls, is still today located underground near his castle, Egreth, just off the western branch of the Great Underground Highway #2.
Pseudo-Duncanthrax was also heavily fond of women, many women. To cultivate his lustful needs, he stationed a concubine chamber in the Royal Palace, which continually contained a bevy of scantily clad women, all draped in strategically placed silks and satins. A long delicate chain of gold joined them all by their wrists. Each lady was perfect of form and face, elegantly coiffed and jeweled with smears of rouge in the cleavages between their plump breasts and filled the air with an effusion of perfume.
CONQUEST OF THE WESTLANDS (660~662 GUE)
Quendor at the time of Zilbo III's removal from power was relatively small, encompassing seven-and-a-half provinces divided along rather arbitrary and outdated boundary lines dating from the time of Entharion the Wise. These were Galepath, Mareilon, Quendor, Znurg, Vriminax, Bozbar, Frobozz, and Borphee (which had remained divided since the formation of the kingdom, ignored as too difficult to be worth the trouble). In those days, the major products of this agrarian land were rope and mosquito netting.
In the year 660 GUE, Pseudo-Duncanthrax raised a tremendous army to wage a systematic conquest of the neighboring kingdoms, quickly reaping a reputation for cruelty, bloodthirstiness and aggressiveness, thus forever earning the nickname “The Bellicose King.” This vile ruler moved swiftly and brutally against the southern half of Borphee and put an end to the tottering and defenseless dynasty of Mauldwood. Finally accomplishing the merger of the two halves, Pseudo-Duncanthrax called the resulting territory Greater Borphee Province. This move began a trend; one by one, the neighboring principalities of Miznia, Gurth, and Mithicus were brought under Quendoran sway and given new provincial administrations. Orexia, on the extreme southern border of Miznia was not brought into Quendor, Pseudo-Duncanthrax himself being too unwilling to combat the diseases and dangers of the Miznian jungles and swamps in order to reach Orexia itself. Thus within three years, Pseudo-Duncanthrax ruled an empire that controlled virtually all the land between the Great Sea and the Kovalli Desert.
One of the major components of his rapid success was the invention of gunpowder in the same year, which saw the development and mass production of guns, cannons, bombs and eventually rockets. Pseudo-Duncanthrax equipped his men and fortresses with these new projectiles—those at Fort Griffspotter are reputed to be some of the most magnificent erected in these days. The dangers posed by these firearms would motivate the engineering of new fortifications designed to defeat them.
With the completion of the conquest of the Westlands, Duncanthrax was faced with the peculiar problem of absorbing lands several times the size of his original kingdom. Clearly it made little sense to turn each conquered land into an individual province, since any one of the new territories would be much larger than most of the original provinces combined. At this point, realizing that the original seven provinces were now too small to be effective in the new system, one of his many administrative reforms was merging them all into the Province of Frobozz, thus bringing to completion the creation of the provincial system as we know it: Frobozz, Greater Borphee, Miznia, Gurth, and Mithicus.
But by the end of 662, with the Westlands under his rule, Pseudo-Duncanthrax was dissatisfied with the size of his empire. The nation of Quendor spanned across every inch of the Westlands, but the exploits of Yoruk had yielded two great landmasses that had yet to be conquered. His conquering eye looked to Antharia and the Eastlands.
THE BATTLE OF FORT GRIFFSPOTTER (665 GUE)
The relatively easy conquest of Antharia on the part of Pseudo-Duncanthrax's naval force should not, contrary to popular belief, be explained by citing the bellicose and aggressive nature of the new Quendoran king. Unlike the king’s territorial expansions in the Westlands, the war over Antharia was a strictly defensive maneuver. (Although if given the proper time, it is easily calculable that Pseudo-Duncanthrax would have cherished the notion of being the one to have instigated the conflict.) The king, in mustering the totality of his economic resources to create an immense naval force from scratch, did not immediately plan a scheme of oversea colonization and conquest. In fact, it is clear that the Quendoran king had only fleeting notions of the existence of any lands beyond Antharia, and in all likelihood had only the dimmest plans of expansion at the expense of Antharia.
A more likely explanation of the events lies in the history of the obscure and mysterious Antharian civilization that rose quickly in the 5th century GUE upon the failed pilgrimage to Hades. The Antharian Armada had grown quite large in the centuries since the island-nation was settled. Antharia was, at the time, the premier sea power of Zork. Setting out to conquer new lands and expand their own empire, a small portion of the Armada drew near to Fort Griffspotter along the Eastland coast.
Sighting the renegade ships, Pseudo-Duncanthrax sent his own fleet to place the Armada in a pincer between his forces and the fort. While the tremendous cannons upon the battlements normally would have used little effort to dispatch the trapped fleet, the Antharians had already successfully invaded Quendoran soil and taken Fort Griffspotter for themselves. The Quendoran fleet found themselves barraged by both the fort’s heavy artillery fire and a small fleet of Antharian ships, forcing Pseudo-Duncanthrax to withdraw.
Further attempts were made by the king to redeem Fort Griffspotter, but the long barrel guns continually held his ships at bay and prevented him from closing to grappling range. The ships were clearly no match for both the gunpowder and the imported Antharian war machines, and would have met a quick fate were it not for Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s clever backup plan to dismantle the artillery fire.
The wise king secretly sent a ship full of spies in Antharian uniforms to infiltrate the fort. For several months, these men carefully sifted into the ranks and took posts within Fort Griffspotter. Pseudo-Duncanthrax continued to engage in small naval battles over the course of this subterfuge until at the key moment, the spies took out the fort’s gunners, allowing Pseudo-Duncanthrax to move his ships into firing range.
Without the fort for support, the remaining Antharian fleet was trapped and destroyed. Unaware of the successful subterfuge, Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s fleet let loose on the fort upon sinking the opposing battleships. The spies were killed in the shelling along with the remaining Antharian soldiers, and the tactic remained secret long enough for the reputation of the Quendoran Navy’s might to be spread abroad.
By borrowing from Fort Griffspotter’s vast armory and creating manufacturing facilities that mimicked the Antharians’ advanced weapons technology, Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s ground forces were able to hold their ground against a small retaliation by the Antharian army. Pseudo-Duncanthrax had orchestrated the first victory of the longest war in history, beginning the bloodiest battle ever waged on Zork.
PLANS FOR RETALIATION (665 GUE)
Fumed that another country would dare to lay hold of his Empire, Pseudo-Duncanthrax set his mind not only to staging a counterstrike against the Antharian Armada, but an invasion of the entire island-nation. No one had ever invaded Antharia since its refounding. Some had tried to, but found that its cliff-lined coasts and heavily fortified harbors were a tough clam to crack. But the king had a plan which required both a vast navy, magical might, and a few sneaky tricks. He put his best engineers to the task of creating a fleet of ships that could overwhelm the Antharians.
Those of the recently established Borphee Guild of Wizards refused to be used as his weapons for conquering Antharia. Knowing that the child Berknip was the heart and soul of their guild, Pseudo-Duncanthrax took him prisoner. His ransom for the return of their precious magician was their cooperation in the upcoming battle against Antharia. The wizards would have done anything for Berknip and anything to protect him. All of their attempts to rescue him with AIMFIZ failed. And though they did not like Pseudo-Duncanthrax any more than any other ruthless king, but while he held Berknip hostage, he commanded their loyalty.
Perturbed by any notion of failure, Pseudo-Duncanthrax still feared that the ones whom he had imprisoned because of their proximity to the real Duncanthrax would spark rumors or escape to spread news of the odd behavior of the king. To solve this anticipated dilemma, his dungeons were emptied, and all captives found themselves chained to oars as slaves for warships that would soon be bound for Antharia.
But more men were needed. Concurrently while his fleet was being hastily constructed, Pseudo-Duncanthrax in collaboration with the man that he appointed to be the Gatekeeper of Borphee, sat down to author a compendium of new laws for the kingdom that were “written against everything but picking your nose, and that will be illegal tomorrow.”
Honor
thy father and thy mother, that they may remember you in their wills.
Thou
shalt not commit adultery with ugly women, nor with ugly men, nor with
ugly
combinations thereof. Neither shalt thou fornicate with farm animals,
nor with
fundamentalist religious practitioners lest they multiply beyond their
number.
Thou
shalt not steal unless thy income be already in the upper tenth
percentile.
It was made certain that the least infraction of any of these countless city ordinances would result in dire consequences. It seemed that there was not a single resident of Borphee that was not exempt from at least a hundred of these laws. The finalized version was put into effect during spring of 665. This edict was followed by more soldiers, commonplace house-to-house searches, and a tremendous disappearance of the populace as they were tossed upon his warships as needed. The great metropolis was no longer the party place of Quendor that it had been in the past, as whichever citizens the king elected, were arrested and added to his ships’ crews.
ZILBO ESCAPES (665 GUE)
In spring of 665 GUE, it was made known to Pseudo-Duncanthrax by a young man named Caspar Wartsworth that Zilbo III had managed to escape beyond the walls of the city. The king rewarded the man by placing him upon one of his many galleons which he planned to send to Antharia. Little did he know, that this Caspar would be responsible for his overthrow a few years later.
INVASION OF ANTHARIA (665 GUE)
Thus in 665 GUE, the forces of Pseudo-Duncanthrax went forth to vanquish the remainder of the Antharian Armada. Although the king had a powerful navy, his first engagement against the island nation would be a military feint. Stacking each of his battle biremes with only his weakest enchanters, he sent the Quendoran navy across the ocean to close in on the Antharian shore. His initial attacks against the Antharian Armada proved fruitless, causing his navy to lose the first engagement. But this outcome had been planned from the beginning—a colossal trick to instill the Antharians with overconfidence and lure them away from their fortress-like island. It was successful.
The Antharians relentlessly pursued the remnants of the first Quendoran force all the way back to the Westland coast. How could they have known that the cream of Quendor’s fleet and their best wizards were waiting for them? It was hardly a fight. Antharian lost every single pursuing ship to only seven of the most powerful masters.
Once all of the Antharian forces near Quendor had been eliminated, Pseudo-Duncanthrax returned his fleet to the Antharian shores where they met little to no resistance now that the island nation’s military might had been crippled. Eventually, Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s troops, assisted by the seven powerful masters of the Borphee Guild of Wizards, managed to quash every remaining enclave of the Antharian forces.
The defeat of the Antharian Armada and the purge of the island-nation gave Pseudo-Duncanthrax undisputed control of the Great Sea and put the superb shipbuilding facilities of Antharia at his disposal. Even more importantly, the conquest of Antharia also gave Pseudo-Duncanthrax possession of Antharia’s famed granola mines. Unfortunately, no one in Quendor liked granola. All of the minor wizards were imprisoned in Antharia, except for Krepkit and the other six most powerful of their order; the king would shortly have need of them.
One of the fastest spreading and most famous stories told all over Borphee after the war with Antharian was how an inflamed sea serpent ravished the Quendoran bireme of Captain Chulig, exiling the entire crew to the bottom of the ocean.
EXPEDITION OF THE EASTLANDS (666 GUE)
Still bothered by the alleged existence of the Eastlands, Pseudo-Duncanthrax directed his ships in its direction. Within months, Quendor’s navy was returning from voyages with tales of a magical land on the distant eastern shore of the Great Sea. They also told of an underground civilization and giant red X’s. Pseudo-Duncanthrax was incensed that this vast land existed outside his dominion, and spent many nights storming the halls of his castle bellowing at his servants and advisors. Then, one day, he had a sudden inspiration: assemble a huge fleet, cross the Great Sea and conquer the lands on the eastern shore.
The fleet hit shore in 666 GUE and instantly began ransacking whatever shreds of pre-existing civilization they could find. As Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s invasion swept across the new lands, he made a startling discovery: huge caverns and tunnels, populated by gnomes, trolls and other magical races, all of whom loved granola. Not only would he extend his empire, but he would finally have a market for all the useless accumulated granola. What few armed resistance movements there were did not last very long. The strongest militia that the easygoing “natives” were able to pull together assembled at Zorbel Pass to face Duncanthrax’s forces, in what is today known as the Diablo Massacre.
Not only did this most famous battle of the Eastlands campaign demonstrated Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s daring, cunning and ruthlessness. This battle marked the end of the last pathetic resistance to Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s campaign. Military historians consider the routing of the native militia as a key moment in the conquering of the Eastlands. The remaining portions of the land were conquered without much difficulty, and within months, Pseudo-Duncanthrax was in control of the entire territory. And the other less sentient beings who occupied the land, such as many of the trolls and gnomes, were kept alive during the Pseudo-Duncanthrax conquests both for manual labor and their inherent novelty. Within the years of 666~667, Castle Irondune was constructed (in what is today known as the Desert River Province) as a frontier outpost in Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s campaign.
LOCKSMOORE BEFRIENDS PSEUDO-DUNCANTHRAX (c. 666 GUE)
Although the worship of fire and its corresponding elements has its roots in the primitive tribal cultures that thrived before the Age of Entharion, the modern form of the religion traces its origins to the time of Locksmoore. That long-lived ascetic wise man was one of the first to establish friendly contact between the conquered tribes in the Eastlands and the armies of Pseudo-Duncanthrax from the west. He was well-versed in the lore and religions of the primitive society, and shared this information with the Quendoran newcomers, even befriending Pseudo-Duncanthrax and his chief engineer, Cornelius Agrippa, during their visits to the east.
EXPANDING THE EMPIRE UNDERGROUND (666~668 GUE)
While scouring the landscape for signs of where Yoruk began his fabled descent into Hades, Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s soldiers stumbled into an intricate network of caverns and tunnels that spanned across the entire continent. Concurrently, the king learned of vast tunnels honeycombing parts of Antharia where various supplies were stored and weapons horded. This discovery came at exactly the right time for Pseudo-Duncanthrax, as he had recently become depressed after conquering every territory on the surface of Zork and having nothing left to do. Even as Pseudo-Duncanthrax conquered the Eastlands, his imagination was inspired by the natural underground formation and endless passageways. If these caverns and tunnels were possible in nature, so might they be formed by humans! This fat red-head realized that by burrowing into the ground and building such a network he could increase the size of his empire by fivefold or even tenfold! Quendor would no longer be the only nation without an underground kingdom!
There was one additional purpose behind the construction of these highways, Pseudo-Duncanthrax planned for them to link every major city and castle in Quendor and the outlying provinces, and when they were complete, scores and scores of its soldiers would pay each of them a wonderful surprise visit. Then his rule would be truly complete.
FROBOZZ MAGIC CONSTRUCTION COMPANY FOUNDED (668-03-19 GUE)
History tells us that with all Zork in his grasp and nothing left to conquer, Pseudo-Duncanthrax founded the Frobozz Magic Construction Company (the forerunner of the modern industrial giant FrobozzCo International) to undertake this ambitious project on Arch 19, 668 GUE. It is known that the original FrobozzCo building was constructed in 667 GUE prior to Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s founding of the company. It is also thought that the Frobozz Magic Company had been originally founded by J.B. Frobozz, whose motto was “Sell Good Magical Aids.” Thus it may be safe to conclude that Pseudo-Duncanthrax “acquired” this company instead of having been its initial founder. This usurper of the throne is classified as being the first president of the company.
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, although he relocated the child to Antharia, thereby manipulating them to use their powerful KATPIL spells to move earth wherever he wished. The king coaxed the remainder of the populace into laboring for the highways with a cache of VAXUM scrolls.
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.
His shrewd business acumen, paired with the utter lack of any competition, allowed the company to almost immediately broaden into several affiliated subsidiaries under the new FrobozzCo International umbrella. Three of the first spawns were: the Frobozz Magic Cave Company, the Frobozz Magic Dirt Removal Company and the Frobozz Magic Underground Sewer Installation Company. Within the year, FrobozzCo International was formed as a parent company for the burgeoning subsidiaries. By 743 GUE, FrobozzCo International would oversee more than 17,000 subsidiaries.
THE TEMPLE OF AGRIPPA CONSTRUCTED (668 GUE)
One of the most noteworthy projects in 668 GUE was the Temple of Agrippa, said to be the roots of the secret alchemical society. When the armies of Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s conquered Kivolli (the region near what would later be known as the “Desert River Province” and much later, “the Valley of the Sparrows”) the ancient town was little more than ruins within the bowels of a hollowed-out mountain, stacked on subterranean cliffs at the base of the Temple of the Ancients, and connected to the surface by earthen tunnels. This Temple was archaic, dedicated to the pseudo-god Athena. Locksmoore had saw this place fit for his experiments and religious dedication.
Cornelius Agrippa was one of the few friends that Pseudo-Duncanthrax kept with him throughout his whole time as king. He was also one of the first engineers and explorers to accompany the king during his first expeditions into the newly-discovered underground caverns in the east. Pseudo-Duncanthrax gave the entire area to the Agrippa clan in a land grant that they would hold onto for another two hundred years. In that year, the mountain was further hollowed out, the temple rebuilt and expanded, and the Frobozz Magic Construction Company connected the temple to the rest of the underground at Mile 735 of the Southern Highway.
DUNCANTHRAX'S MURDER ATTEMPT (668 GUE)
Which Duncanthrax attempted to quietly murder Cornelius Agrippa (the Chief Engineer who had traveled to the Eastlands on multiple occassions at the side of Pseudo-Duncanthrax) in 668 is a matter of much controversy, and is a rather unsolvable puzzle. As Drespo Molmocker’s impersonation was unmasked this year, it cannot be determined whether the homicide occurred before or after this discovery. A few historians point to the letter from Agrippa to the king, making note of the overabundant praise in the greeting, as well as the tremendous insults that were not characteristics of the second king. One does well to keep in mind that the authentic Duncanthrax, while having nothing left to conquer, did his best to finish the ruthless deeds of underground expansion. It also is possible that Agrippa, residing in the isolated underground temple, had no recollection of the restoration of the true monarch. This would account for the heavy feeling of betrayal and the bizarre murder attempt that would seem to be a rather quick change of behavior. It should also be noted that the Unnatural Acts, banning illegal magic were enacted during the days of the authentic Duncanthrax, and it does not seem outside of his character to have banned alchemy as an evil practice from the start.
Whichever king it was, Cornelius Agrippa, who had continued to practice alchemy within, decided that the art was too dangerous to be exposed to men devoid of compassion. Duncanthrax sent a spy with poisoned fruit, hoping to trick Agrippa into consuming it. But the spy ended up consuming the fruit instead and chocked to death on his own villainous bile. In response, Agrippa sealed up the temple so that the king would never have access to what he sought, and then composed the following letter to the king:
To King Duncanthrax, My Holy and
Exalted
Ruler, The King of Kings, The Emperor of All Both Above the Earth and
Below,
More Bellicose Than Mother Hungus Defending Her Young
A greeting to your lecherous soul.
I bear
ill news.
Your spy is dead, choked to death
on his
own villainous bile. He had consumed the sweet, but deadly fruit you so
kindly
bequeathed to me. You stand alone as a soul of pestilence and
putridity, a
festering wart on the hindquarters of humanity. Be you assured that I
have
sealed off the places that you seek, made certain with your tools of
choice,
with powder and with fire, that you shall never find the places that
you seek.
I, too, practice more than alchemy.
Nor think you that my secrets are
of maps
and words alone. In the black darkness of your heart, there is not room
enough
for the smallest inkling of the knowledge that you seek. Nor will your
brilliant
scientists avail you. To them, Alchemy is nothing but a principle – the
purification and transmutation of base metals into Gold, the search for
power.
The goal of goals, the Quintessence, pure distillate of Human Spirit,
lies well
beyond their ken. They have too much in common with your most learned
and
thoughtful self; their hearts are black as pitch and bled of any memory
of love
or empathy. In all due time, their highest honors and diplomas shall
follow you
on your stately journey into Hell. With men such as you, it is better
to let
knowledge fallow than curse the world with your brand of benevolence.
With all Humility,
Your Most Insignificant and Smelly
Servant,
Agrippa
The Eastlands
PSEUDO-DUNCANTHRAX EXPOSED (668 GUE)
In an eight year span, Pseudo-Duncanthrax had expanded the nation of Quendor across all of Zork. By all accounts, the empire had reached its zenith, but this imposter would never glory in his newfound kingdom. For in 668 GUE, a small party, consisting of Caspar Wartsworth, Satchmoz the Incomparable, the witch Nasturtium, Sunrise, and Esmerelda infiltrated the Royal Palace at Borphee and confronted the king.
Pseudo-Duncanthrax had somehow managed to acquire a pet grue (a struggler from the tiny remnant that had survived the eradication of Entharion the Wise) and had it contained within the lowest levels of the palace, the tunnels which were so tough as to prevent grue penetration. When the small party descended into these tunnels, they encountered and defeated the grue by enchanting it with a FROTZ spell. Unable to escape, the grue was consumed by the light.
Enraged by the death of his pet, Pseudo-Duncanthrax encountered the intruders. Before any of them could assault him, he VAXUMed them all, forcing them to become adoring subjects. Now that they were all subjected, Pseudo-Duncanthrax opened the great crystal door, which was the entrance to the Great Underground Highway, with a touch of his wand. Esmerelda, who had been split from the rest of the party, dropped in from one of the chutes in the ceiling. Unable to stop her momentum, she knocked Pseudo-Duncanthrax over. A harsh word from him broke the VAXUM enchantment. The king tried to escape into the crystal room, but Esmerelda's cat Meezel dropped in from above and landed on his back. His cloak was torn off, but using his wand, he escaped through a hidden door that locked behind him and Drespo Molmocker, impersonator of Duncanthrax, slipped from the pages of history forever. A search of through Pseudo-Duncanthrax’s cloak revealed KATPI, VAXUM and PLASTO scrolls in the cloak (as well as a small key ring, bottle opener, 2 zorkmids, 1 zorkle, 4 lint balls). Shortly after this exposure, the true Duncanthrax was released from the VAXUM enchantment which had been placed upon him by Drespo, and rightfully restored to the throne of Quendor.
Although Duncanthrax himself continued the far-reaching projects that Drespo Molmocker began to their logical conclusion, it is likely that without Drespo’s short seizure of power, the entire course of the Flathead Dynasty would have been remarkably different, as well as his slightly less-bellicose character not being tarnished to full bellicosity by the violent wars of expansion commonly attributed to his name.