After the overthrow of the Forty-Tyrants-and-One-Tyrant, the authors of Zgoran-Veldrik (by which was meant, in the parlance of that realm, all those who wrote words upon things that had not previously had words written on them) girded themselves in the expectation of the censorious statutes that inevitably follow such an overturning. The neighboring duchy of Kviničy had been converted to a democracy the year before, and it was reported that more tract-writers had been liberated of their heads than actual politicians, on the line of reasoning that the politicians were mostly just following orders (no one’s orders in particular, but it was generally assumed that they were all at various times following each other’s orders), whereas the tract-writers, if they so chose, could have led peaceful and pleasant lives composing rhymes for greeting cards and shaving cream advertisements.