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.

Early Piwahrian texts indicate that ancient Ubiaks were frequently rounded up and empressed into slavery. Ubu legend referrs only to a "horde of foreign interlopers who oppressed the True People, ate nothing but copious amounts of goat, and spat out their own teeth when they rotted away." Current ideology has tended to equate these people with the interloping forces of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union/Russian Federation.

Veneration of ancient chieftaness Lady Ka has been developed into a kind of Nationalist cult since the early 20th century at least; more recently it has been tied in with the People's Dialectic Cult of Succession of Prominent Ubu Females and the Cult of the Two Nargas.

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.

The Mid 2000's ushered in a period of chaos. A split vote within the council on a UN resoultion led to the declaration of a ceremonial Civil War; New Pandemonia and Janerosis, sitting menacingly on Ubep's borders, willingly sent troops in as a sort of sacrifice; Janerosis was declared the winner and several endorsements were awarded in the aftermath; these were removed in the wake of the Ubu-Clown-Janerosian War and the subsequent Great International War of "Pwnage" (internazional punaz.egankter)--ostensibly an "emergency provision" to restore stability to the region.

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.