Free City of Flunderberg

Free City of Flunderberg Freistadt Flunderberg (Alemannisch)
Flag Coat of arms
Location	Flunderberg within Dolchland.
Capital	Flunderberg
Official languages	Alemannisch
Demonym(s)	Flunderberger
Government
Legislature	Council of Burghers
Constituent State of Dolchland
• Founded 997	Granted Free Charter 1314
Population
• Estimate	328,881
Driving side	left

Flunderberg, officially The Free City of Flunderberg is a constituent semi-independent state of Dolchland located on the southwestern coast. Flunderberg, like other Free Cities of Dolchland, enjoys equal status under the law as the other states of Dolchland do, despite consisting only of a large city and its surrounding smaller communities. Flunderberg, however, is the largest of the Free Cities in land area, and incorporates the smaller communities of Rattelsdorf, Hochplatz and Grunplatz, which are administered identically to Flunderberg proper. The city is ruled by a council of 14 Burghers, headed by a president, the Burgermeister Meisterburger. This office's unusual name reflects its origin: the original 14 councilors could not agree on the title of Town Mayor or Master Citizen, and so in the absence of a tiebreaking vote the two proposals were conjoined into the unusual title used by the city's ruler ever since.

History

According to archaeological evidence, settlement in the area of the modern city of Flunderberg may have begun as early as the 10th century BCE, although the city itself only appears in tax rolls by the name of Flunderberg in the year 997 CE. An apocryphal story of the city's founding relates that its founder, disgruntled serf Jörg Sprave, absconded from his lord's manor to a rocky, windswept plateau by the sea. Sprave created a mock city of paper, mud and wood and resided within it for a year and a day, surviving by fishing for flounder in the shallow waters of the nearby bay, and when this time had passed he was able to claim the ancient right of freedom from serfdom as a city resident. Whatever the case may be, Flunderberg from its founding has remained a state dominated by the urban bourgeois and the guilds of artisan freemen, rather than an aristocracy, as is typical of other states of Dolchland. In 1314, the city was granted Free Charter and brought into the fold as an electorate in its own right; this charter was given by Emperor Klaus Wurvenia in return for the burghers of the town extending him massive lines of credit for his wars against the Cerisers.