ZNURG

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. For the sake of convenience, the province of Znurg is referred to by the name of its chief city. When Entharion the Wise united the city-states to form the nation of Quendor, Znurg was one of seven-and-a-half provinces to enter the union (the others being Galepath, Mareilon, Quendor, Vriminax, Bozbar, Frobozz, and Borphee).

In 456 GUE, when Bozbo Throckrod II, claimant to the throne, realized that it would be near impossible to wage a successful military conflict, instead turned to the most powerful weapon in his arsenal for economic warfare. He ordered the immediate halt of all zucchini shipments to the capital and the other provinces under Harmonious Fzort's control. In response to this outrage, Harmonious sent royal troops into Znurg in 459, ordering seizure of the latest batch of zucchini shipments. It has often been suggested that Bizboz’s unquenchable hatred of zucchini led him to direct his first tentative magical experiments towards the unfortunate plant, experiments that supposedly culminated in the horrible zucchini blights of the 460s and 470s. Regardless, the zucchini crop for the next four seasons, from 460 to 463, were ruined by a blight in Bozbar and Vriminax.

In 464, this famine led Quendor to increase shipments of zucchini to those provinces at the expense of the coastal regions. By 465 Mareilon marched against Frobozz to force the freeing of the zucchini route through Znurg to the coast. Harmonious ordered the Galepath militia to provide reinforcements, but Galepath refused to respond. Unbeknown to Harmonious, but the entire city of Galepath was infested by a rebellion of yipples which were freed by Dundor of Vriminax in 466.

Znurg marched on Quendor in 468 GUE, in order to seize the last remaining zucchini fields. By 470, every non-coastal province was seized by Znurg, before facing military stalemate with the coastal provinces. In attempt to thwart this standstill, Znurg withheld zucchini shipments to the coast. The Zucchini blight spread over the next two years (471-2), destroying the last of Quendor’s crop. The devastating famine that resulted in the east led Fzort to summon a final offensive against the western provinces in 472.

By 474 the entire countryside was in a state of exhaustion and collapse. The population losses inflicted by the ongoing famine was devastating indeed. City and provincial records in Bozbar, the region that had suffered longest throughout the entire affair, record a population drop of an astounding 70% in just under ten years. This pathetic state of affairs was in clear evidence throughout the entire duration of the upcoming conference at Znurg.

The king himself left the security of Largoneth for the first time during the length of the war to Znurg. Despite the sense of urgency produced by the impact of the continuing famine, the proceedings of the peace conference rapidly degenerated into near anarchy as terms were dictated against Harmonious. The delegates sent to represent the rebel provinces, clearly feeling that they held the upper hand, retreated into a series of private meetings to decide upon their demands. When they emerged from seclusion nearly a week later, the impatient Harmonious and his fellow delegates were ready to accept nearly anything. The result was 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 from the sarcastic terseness of the declaration that the assembly was already heartily sick of the long war and its unexpected side effects, but they were nevertheless holding true to two chief ideas, the first being that the royal government had no right to dictate zucchini trade routes to the outlying provinces, and the second being that the newly realized Peggleboz League would remain separate and distinct, constituting an authority to which the royal crown could lay no claim.

At the time of Zilbo III's removal from power in 660 GUE, the provinces were divided along rather arbitrary and outdated boundary lines that had not been altered since the time of Entharion. In that same year, Pseudo-Duncanthrax raised a tremendous army to wage a systematic conquest of the neighboring kingdoms. He 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. 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 Galepath, Mareilon, Quendor, Znurg, Vriminax, Bozbar, and Frobozz 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.

Although the confederacy of the provincial system dissolved at the fall of the Empire in 883 and many of the city-states reverted back to their former independence as in the days prior to Entharion, it is unknown what became of Znurg. No references are made of this province at either the Conference of Quendor nor any other moment in history to follow. It may be possible that the city-states Vriminax and Quendor absorbed Znurg into their territories when they occupied the western half of the former Frobozz Province in 884.