 IMAGE: another Peggleboz board |
Peggleboz, a popular game of jumping pegs, is named after its creator, Gustav Peggleboz who invented the game in the early fifth century. The board has 21 holes, 20 of them filled with pegs. The holes are arranged in a roughly triangular shape. There are four main rules for Peggleboz:
1. Pegs can only move by jumping another peg.
2. Pegs can only jump one peg per move.
3. Pegs jumped are removed.
4. Your goal is to end up with one peg in the starting hole.
This popular board game, originally designed (and still played) as nothing more than a single-player game of relaxation, the bored and overly-competitive Quendoran population soon turned it into something that its creator could never have foreseen. Highly popular were Peggleboz Speed Races, two players using two randomly arranged boards and racing to clear their board before the other player could beat them. All sorts of derivatives of this sport soon became immensely popular, from Round-Robin Peggleboz Wrestling to the highly amusing Siamese Twin version, wherein one brogmoid with two heads played on one board, against itself.
It has often been suggested that there was more to Peggleboz than met the eye. During his own lifetime he was often accused of attempting to enlist the forbidden forces of magic to cheat at his own game, and it has further been suggested that he put forth Peggleboz, along with so many other influential board games, in an attempt to disguise his real and more delicate magical interests. It is known for instance that Gustav was in close correspondence with Dinbar the Proto-Thaumaturge for nearly a decade, despite the fact that Dinbar himself had no interest in the Peggleboz game whatsoever.
By the time the 430s and 440s had come to pass, all of Quendor was caught in the grips of a Peggleboz frenzy, peggleboz championships and pick-up games often becoming the cause of spontaneous rioting, looting, and civil disturbances of all kinds. Elections and governmental appointments were settled over the peg board, and even a series of emissaries from the northlands to the court of Zilbo II was forced to sit through a round of formal competition before being allowed to depart. A formal league had been formed with the aim of holding annual all-Quendoran championships, and Gustav Peggleboz himself, winner year after shocking year, soon came to be seen as the most powerful and important man in all of Quendor outside of the royal family itself.
PEGGLEBOZ SHAPES HISTORY IN THE FIFTH CENTURY
In 451 GUE, Zilbo II finally passed away. His younger brother Bozbo was still alive, and more than willing to take the throne. Matters were complicated somewhat by the existence of Zilbo's daughter and only child, the Princess Arathena. Although no woman had ever ascended to the throne of Quendor, Zilbo himself had made no clear plans for who was to succeed him, and the princess herself had married into the Fzort clan, a powerful family that had been at the center of court intrigues since the time of Zylon the Aged. Harmonious Fzort, himself nothing more than a one-time royal advisor and grandson of Gladius Fzort, proceeded to claim the throne for himself on behalf of his young bride, Arathena. Legend has it that the two claimants to the throne met one day in Largoneth, and, unable to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution, decided to settle the whole affair over a two-person game of Peggleboz. Harmonious, himself already second seed in the all-Quendoran Peggleboz brackets, apparently beat Bozbo in record time. The angry Throckrod stormed out of Largoneth, crying foul play. Harmonious lost no time in proclaiming himself king where he would rule the kingdom for 26 years until 477.
Alarmed at the violent turn of events, Harmonious immediately began to take steps to curb the authority of his rivals. An official proclamation from the early spring of 452 GUE announced the unification of Peggleboz and State, expelling the game’s creator from the official league and stripping him of all peggleboz-related rights and naming Harmonious as the sole head of the only legitimate peggleboz league in all of Quendor. The resulting situation quickly deteriorated into a kingdom-wide peggleboz schism, Harmonious receiving recognition as Peggleboz Champion in the northern four provinces, and Peggleboz himself defeating Bozbo year after year to claim the supreme title throughout the 3 1/2 southern provinces through 455.
This awkward schism in the gaming world came to a violent political head in 456 when Gustav was raised, without royal approval, to the governorship of Mareilon Province. He promptly cut all ties with the royal court, announcing his province's secession from the Kingdom of Quendor and the resurrection of the ancient principality. A brief but bloody civil war ended in the execution of Peggleboz and a royal decree from Fzort naming himself as Quendor's Universal One-on-One Peggleboz Speed Champion.
Although the game of Peggleboz indirectly led to the Zucchini Wars, their conclusion ended with the immediate ratification of the Peggleboz Declaration, the bulk of which is reprinted below.
A
Declaration
by
the Representatives of the Free and Unconquered
Provinces of
Quendor,
Assembled in Congress at Znurg, 16 Augur
473.
We
the Frobbers of the United Provinces of Quendor
don't even think the following things are really worth mentioning: that
all
zucchinis are created equal, that they are endowed by the Implementors
with
certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life,
liberty, and
the possibility of being eaten in any province they damn well please.
That, to
frobnicate these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their
just powers from the Great Brogmoid and the longest sword they can get
their
hands on; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these
ends and attempts to unify the powers of peggleboz and state, it is the
right
of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to go home as soon as they
can.
It is clear that one of the primary products of this declaration was that the newly realized Peggleboz League would remain separate and distinct, constituting an authority to which the royal crown could lay no claim. Bozbo was declared heir apparent while Fzort was to pay reparations to all devastated provinces. On Jam 5th, the Treaty of Znurg was signed, which finally ended the Zucchini Wars. Harmonious on his part spent the next three years adhering to these principles in embarrassed and defeated silence, finally passing away unmourned some time in late 477.