QUENDOR (2)

This entry refers to the ancient city of Quendor in the Northlands. Before the formation of the Kingdom of Quendor by Entharion the Wise in 0 GUE, the lands that now make up ancient Frobozz were a wild and untamed wasteland, populated by all sorts of warring tribes and uncivilized lands--largely barbarized and highly dangerous.


ENTHARION THE WISE
By the time war had broken up between Galepath and Mareilon for the last time (circa 3 BE),  Entharion had risen to the position of bozbian praefect, the chief military commander of the city of Quendor. The early details of his life are still obscure, but it does seem that he was a native-born Quendoran. Barely past his twentieth year, Entharion’s rise to power had been surprisingly quick indeed, and it is hinted that he alienated some of the senior nobility of Quendor by his unwillingness to defer the important command positions to them.

The prince of Quendor hurried to make his traditional and tired declaration of absolute neutrality. By all reports, Entharion, who was too young to remember any of the previous conflicts, failed to understand why all of his compatriots seemed so bored by the entire affair. It seems clear from the king's later writings that he felt something important to be in the making. He did in fact spend several weeks trying to convince the prince to let him march; it did not seem to matter to him which side he was going to fight for, so much as it did that he actually got a chance to fight. By the end of the summer season, both of the warring parties had sent desperate messages to the prince of Quendor begging for military assistance. With the vague intention of solving the chaotic situation, Entharion's armies had begun to march. Although the founder of the Quendoran nation would insist until his dying day that he marched only on orders from his prince, no such orders have ever been found, and the prince's later actions do not support Entharion's claims.

Within a matter of weeks, Entharion's forces had made the relatively short march to the coastal areas in contention and had come in sight of the two warring camps. The scene as told by Froblivius is a chaotic one indeed. The forces of Galepath and Mareilon, upon seeing the approach of the new arrivals, both withdrew and regrouped their forces, expecting the Quendorans to join their camp and help in the fight against the other. Soon it became clear that neither was the case; Entharion ordered the bugle to sound, and his forces descended with an amazing fury upon the unsuspecting coastal armies, hacking them to bits. The battle lasted barely three hours, and the results were devastating. When the dust had settled, the princes of Galepath and Mareilon, both of whom had been at hand, were laying their arms at the feet of the victorious Entharion, acclaiming his sovereignty. At first, it seems, Entharion had no intention of violating his oath to the Quendoran prince. In a brief letter sent back to Quendor, he informed his overlord that peace had been found, and that both cities were prepared to recognize the suzerainty of Quendor.

Concerned that the situation on the coast might sink back into anarchy, Entharion stayed encamped near the Lonely Mountain, determined to keep an eye on the two defeated powers. For months and months the prince of Quendor stalled, reluctant to reply to his powerful praefect. Perhaps he feared that Entharion had become too powerful, and preferred to see him as far away from the center of power as possible. Whatever the truth may be, it was a full six months before Entharion received a reply: “I don't want those cities. Put them back where they belong. And don’t come home.” Annoyed at the tone of the message, and more than a little resistant to the idea of forsaking his easy conquests, Entharion decided to take matters into his own hands.

Entharion’s personal writings, although potentially very helpful, are in truth highly obscure. In fact, this one passage below degenerates from being unclear to downright unintelligible:
 

Nonetheless, Entharion abandoned his position in the Quendoran army receding into temporary isolation within what is today known as Egreth Forest. With his absence, the royal Quendoran army was recalled from the Lonely Mountain, thus relinquishing control over the two conquered city-states. Within a day of this repositioning of troops, Galepath and Mareilon, now bereaved of their watchmen, were once again drawing swords at one another.


THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF QUENDOR
When the year 0 GUE finally came around, Entharion managed to unite the warring kingdoms of Galepath and Mareilon and was exalted as the first king of the Entharion Dynasty. It was a glorious time. The new kingdom was named Quendor after Entharion’s city of origin. This region was named Largoneth. It was from this castle that he ruled for the entirety of his reign, and it would serve the as the capital of the kingdom for the duration of the Dynasty.

Although the names of the original provinces are long since lost to us, several pre-Flathead maps have survived that show the original provincial boundaries: Galepath, Mareilon, Quendor, Znurg, Vriminax, Bozbar and Borphee. The province surrounding the capital at Largoneth was referred to as Frobozz, although no record of a city by the same name has survived to the present day.


THE PROVINCES REORGANIZED
The Kingdom of Quendor at the time of Zilbo III's removal from power in 660 GUE 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 early 660s, Pseudo-Duncanthrax raised a tremendous army to wage a systematic conquest of the neighboring kingdoms.

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.


COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT UNDERGROUND EMPIRE
With the final collapse of the Great Underground Empire in 883 GUE, in the older provinces of the Westlands, the initial political evolution of the area was characterized by a surprising rebirth of the ancient city-states. Dating back over nine centuries from the ancient era before Entharion, the cities of Quendor, Galepath, Mareilon and Borphee all re-emerged as independent powers. Although Quendor would long remain a neutral power, and Borphee itself would soon be reabsorbed by the Quendoran Empire's successor state, Syovar’s Kingdom of Zork, Mareilon and Galepath were to enjoy several generations of independent power.


CONFERENCE OF QUENDOR
The beginning of the tenth century was marked by Syovar's plea for a unified Kingdom of Zork, which was considered by all leaders of the lands. He want to end the wars that had sapped the lives and resources of all, replacing it was peace so that all lands would be benefitted. The water-rich Antharia could irrigate the deserts of Kovalli in exchange for the Kovalli's secret insect-extermination spells that would cure Antharia's perennial locust plagues.

The leaders of all the lands, including Quendor, Vriminax, Kovalli, Kaldorn, Antharia, Galepath, Mareilon, had agreed to meet at the old city of Quendor in the northlands for the Conference of Quendor. The tremendous respect that they felt for Syovar made the conference possible. If everything went according to plan, the treaty would be signed proclaiming a union between the lands. As the conference approached, a truce between all the warring neighbors had been observed—but instead of working toward peace, the nations had merely used this time to build huge armies, poised to attack should the treaty not be signed. These included the army of Galepath, ready to amass on the Aragain border, and the armada of Mareilon, ready to block the Aragain harbors. Despite these tensions, the Treaty of Quendor was signed.

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SOURCE(S): Zork I (A History of the G.U.E.), Zork:Conquest at Quendor, The Lost City of Zork, A History of Quendor, misc info