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BANFOURS, ARCH DUKE OF. Best known for being the first to bombard Ambergris with cannon fire. He ruled Ambergris for exactly 21 days. While sitting at a sidewalk cafe, surrounded by his bodyguards, a waiter casually walked up behind him and slit his throat. There appears to have been no particular motivation for the assassination except for the usual engrained Ambergrisian dislike of foreigner interlopers. See also: Occupation, The.
BANKER WARRIORS. This sect, comprising the most feared of Trillian’s followers, grew out of the predations of highway robbery. Due to the rise of the merchant classes, large quantities of money had to be physically moved from one city to another. Generally, a banker’s representative accompanied this transfer. Early transfers met with disaster. After years of robberies and payoffs to avoid robberies, the position of banker’s representative evolved from paper-pusher to hardened veteran of weapons’ training. By the time Trillian rose to power through the Ambergrisian banking system, the banker representatives had become a powerful, feared security force. Trillian himself named them the Banker Warriors and used them to consolidate his hold over Ambergris. Also influential in repelling attacks by the Kalif. Eventually assimilated into the Ambergris Defense Force, at which time women were excluded from participation. Several of these women (including the noted strategist Rebecca Gort, munitions expert Kathleen Lynch, and fencing master Susan Dickerson) founded their own chain of banks, bought several other businesses, and moved to Morrow, where they became the core of the most feared security force on the continent. The Ambergris Defense Force, on the other hand, perished to the last man during the Kalif’s invasion. See also: Frankwrithe & Lewden; Gort, Marmey; Kalif, The; Occupation, The; Trillian, The Great Banker.
BEDLAM ROVERS. A southern ethnic group, known for living on house boats and incorporated at an early date into the Saphant Empire. These mystics thrived after the collapse of the empire, adopting their nomadic aquatic life to the River Moth and turning their seasonal perambulations into a lucrative business.
Cloaking their mysterious religious tendencies in a veneer of the rational and scientific, the Rovers have developed a reputation as experts on madness and cast themselves in the role of “psychiatrists,” much to the dismay of the mental health establishment in Ambergris. The Rovers’ riverboats, topped with a multitude of light blue flags and crowded with mentally unstable customers, usually arrive in Ambergris for a fresh batch of patients the week after the Festival of the Freshwater Squid. See also: Festival of the Freshwater Squid, The; Saphant Empire, The.
BENDER, VOSS. A composer of operas, requiems, and minor rhymes, who, for a period of time, transcended his status as a cultural icon to become a politician and the unoffi cial ruler of Ambergris. His suspicious death spawned a civil war between the Greens, his most fanatical followers, and the Reds, his most fervent enemies. Famous for his defiant speech to the merchant barons during which he exclaimed, “Art always transforms money!” His many operas include The Tragedy of John & Sophia, The King Under ground,Hymns for the Dead, Wilted As the Flower Lay, and his masterpiece, Trillian. Bender wrote an autobiography, Memoirs of a Composer, which contains more information on his early life. See also: Greens; Midnight for Munfroe; Nunk, Autarch of; Reds.
BIBBLE, MAXWELL. The owner of a restaurant supply business who changed careers at age 35 to become an art critic. Bibble’s specialty was deep psychological profiles of artists based solely on their artwork. Best known for his misguided and fatuous attempts to identifyMartinLake as a member of a squid cult. For a time, Bibble was one of the most influential of the critics associated with the New Art movement, although he was unpopular with most New Artists. However, he died in poverty, using copies of his reviews to feed a fire during one of Ambergris’ freak cold spells. The sculptor William Blaze took a plaster cast of Bibble’s body, pasted his reviews on the outside of the cast, and exhibited the piece as “The Exhaustion of Criticism”—thereby reviving interest in Bibble’s writings. See also: New Art, The.
BLGKKYDKS, HECKIRA. A Haragck military officer today best known for his oil paintings of remote landscapes. He often painted during campaigns and thus the paintings also have historical significance. The night before the Haragck amphibious assault on Ambergris, he completed preliminary sketches for a piece he intended to call “The Sack of Ambergris.” During the ensuing rout, these sketches came into the possession of the Ambergris navy. For 20 years they were displayed at theMorhaimMuseum, but the trader Michael Hoegbotton found them so compelling that, after the Haragck had largely faded as a political/cultural force, he paid Blgkkydks to live in Ambergris for a year to complete the actual painting. Poverty-stricken, the old general reluctantly agreed, but fell so in love with Ambergris that he lived out his remaining years there. He eventually became a fixture ofAlbumuth Boulevard, his craggy visage and rickety easel noted on tourist maps of the period. See also: Grnnck, Haragck Khan;MorhaimMuseum.
BORGES BOOKSTORE. The oldest purveyor of printed words in Ambergris, thrice during its long history burned to the ground. Founded by and named after the Nicean brothers Bormund and Gestrand Kubtek, the Borges Bookstore has served many political and social functions over the years. During the conflict between the Reds and the Greens, Bender sympathizers hid in its basement. Before Festivals, patrons can book “reading slots” along its shelves, for it is well known that the gray caps will not pass the threshold. The westerner Kamal Bakar witnessed the third fire, set by looters during the 300th Festival of the Freshwater Squid, one of the worst in memory: “The sky was darkened by the smoke from the books; burned pages floated up into the air and fluttered back down again like a black snowfall all over the city. Those who caught a sheet could feel the heat and fleetingly read what had the strange appearance of a black-and-white dagguereotype. Once the heat had dissipated, the pages crumbled away between our fingers.” See also: Albumuth Boulevard; Bender, Voss; Burning Leaves; Festival of the Freshwater Squid; Greens; Reds.
BRUEGHEL, MICHAEL. John Manzikert’s nemesis eventually united the islands of the Aan despite several times coming close to total defeat. During his 50 years of rule, Brueghel not only annihilated the Kalif’s troops in three historic naval battles, forever relegating the Kalif’s ambitions to the continent, but also established an oligarchic form of government that served the Aan well for the next three generations. Perhaps his greatest achievement was to collect the remnants of the Saphant Empire under his aegis, preserving scientific and cultural advances that would otherwise have been lost. In later years, descendents of Brueghel, calling themselves Brueghelites, would seize large portions of the River Moth to the south of Ambergris and threaten Ambergrisian autonomy. See also: Calabrian Calendar; Kalif, The; Saltwater Buzzard; Saphant Empire, The.
BUBBABAUNCE, BARON. The real name of the circus performer “Bauble.” See also: Hellatose & Bauble; Kodfan, M.; Madnok, Frederick.
BURNING LEAVES. A controversial arts journal, known for publishing macabre, disturbing fictions and illustrations. Published by the Borges Bookstore until the editors printed their infamous Black Tract, which included a perverse “map” of Voss Bender’s naked body, diagramming the various worth of different parts and with short-short stories written about each part (most infamous: Sporlender’s “Tree with Nuts”). Since then, the journal has been funded entirely by advertising and newsstand sales. Burning Leaves published the first works by such future luminaries as Louis Verden, Nicholas Sporlender,MartinLake, and Janice Shriek, as well as the obscene mechanical diagrams of the eccentric inventor known simply as Porfal. The premiere issue featured Corvid Quork’s short story “The Madness of Bird Masks.” See also: Bender, Voss; Borges Bookstore; Sporlender, Nicholas.