Ubep

The Most Serene Republic of Ubep lies in its glorious fecundity on the oil-caressed shores of the Caspian Sea, or, by the reckoning of certain Janerosian cartographers, the shore of "Lake Constantine."

Membership in the region of Woe Unto Us has brought Ubep into alliance with the sprawling imperial power New Pandemonia, the smaller, neurotic Janerosis, and the perpetual annoyance of Vengeful Clowns.

The Ubu people are noted for driving the Mongols away in 1322 with, according to legend, their body odor. In 1957, after several decades of Nationalist agitation, the Soviet Union let the Ubu SSR secede. A struggle in the following years centered on breaking all ties with the Soviet Union, though Krushchev expressed some measure of relief to have Ubep off his hands.

Dr. Puat Hokz.un (1888-1968) and Dr. Narga Tam-Bôtxal (1891-1962) are remembered as heroes of the 1961 "Revolution."

Hokz.un's death in 1968 threatened to put the country back on friendly terms with the Soviets. The Ubu Communist Party cell in Num-Poki, led by former campus radicals Gogit Omonia (1937-) and Narga Txorkulag (1938-), engineered the assassination of the moderate who had been appointed as the new Prime Minister (No Kapurgol, 1920-1968), though his associates drove the Omonia/Txorkulag cadre into the foothills along with their "Grey Guards."

The tide of the Civil War turned when the citizens of the major cities revolted in 1971 due to boredom. From 1972 Omonia has been President-for-Life.

An Ubu meal might consist of a couple rounds of bagbag (toast) spread thick with gun-bolp (elderberry jam) and then some tukturgi (horse cheese) and a txaktamuk (blood pudding) covered with raw egg.