Battenburg
“Ach! Mine Throaten”
Battenburg is a town somewhere in Germany in Hessianland which is, oh, right about the middle. It is divided into the yellow quarter, the pink quarter, the yellow quarter and the pink quarter. The few people that live there are employed by Battenburg Ltd., a large scale bakery operation that produces all sorts of fancy namby-pamby tea cakes. These cakes are exported all over the world and are best enjoyed by wimps drinking tea. Naturally the very best tea is stolen from East India Trading Company ships by pirates. However if supplies of jacked tea are limited, then it may also be enjoyed with unjacked tea but with far less satisfaction to the wimps, and the pirates... but I digress.
Battenburg Family[edit]
Battenburg was founded by the Battenburg family of Essex. The Battenburg family takes its name from the ancient skilled labor of insect exterminators. Clearly Battenburg is a mispronounciation of the term "Batting Bugs". Archeological evidence suggests that early Essexans used large wooden clubs bats to completly clobber insect bug infestations in the home. An unfortunate truth of the time is that often a call to the exterminator precipitated a call the the carpenter. Still despite being in an unprofitable business, what with all the repair costs, the Battenburgs became a powerful family within the Royal Bug Mashers Guild of Eastern England. This stature within the Exterminiation community allowed them to extort untold wealth. Examination of The Battenburg Family Exteriminators Company records shows that they may have been the very ones who introduced the cockroach to the British Isles. Thereby ensuring a need for extermination services and the employment of future generations.
Impact of the war on the Battenburgs[edit]
The Battenburg Family Exterminators Company was quite successful up until 1942 when a German bomb fell on their head office during the war. In retaliation the Battenburg Family quietly sold all their interests in the extermination business to Rochester-Alabaster. Incidentally this move allowed R-A to create the Rochester-Alabaster Insect Department, which later grew into the mega-corporation RAID, makers of fine poison. By 1945 with the war ending the Battenburg family had moved all of its assets which had included a wealth of solid gold bars, to German territory, and quietly moved into a town formerly occupied by some people who had mysteriously turned up dead. They quickly setup shop building a tea-cake factory. No one questioned their actions at the time as they were creating new jobs in an otherwise completely obliterated German economy.
Battenburg Golden Age[edit]
By 1962 it was clear that the Battenburgs had become entrenched in Hessianland. They build schools, churches, hospitals and more to support the needs of the growing community around their tea cake factory. Secretly they built up an army of Hessian Mercenaries, which they have been known to rent out from time to time to supplement the Family income. Occassionaly the Hessian Mercenaries would sack a town in nearby France to obtain wine and cheese. Oddly they have never encountered any resistance.
Rise to Power[edit]
In march of 1974 the Battenburg family had determined they had reached full fighting strength, and mustered all their forces and marched on the Bundestag in Berlin demanding to be taken to their leader. Upon learning that Adolf Hitler had died choking on a piece of Battenburg cake (another fine product of Battenburg Ltd.) as a whole the family broke out into a chorus of "Battenburg Cakes Taste Mighty Fine." To this day it is sung at company picnics and family reunions. This incident also lead to the famous ad campaign, "Battenburg cakes, the last thing you'll ever eat."
Shortly after completing the song, the Hessian mercenaries opened fire and gunned down the entire Bundestag and quickly set up a puppet government in its place. To this day Battenburg remains the Fortress Capital, and seat of all political power within Germany.