ruler is known as a Pash (Lu-Tze, the History Monk, once had to make sure one of them choked on a fishbone). It is often used as a generic third-world country, as in "Eat your dinner, there are starving children in Muntab who'd be glad to have that!" It is more or less on the border between the continent of Klatch and the Unnamed Continent, and is located more or less rimwards of Borogravia. Muntab is known to be eager to emerge as a dominant nation in the modern world, and is suspected to have ambitions to conquer the hubward nations, most notably Borogravia. As a result, it figures into the famous political problem, the Muntab Question – most often quoted as "Where's Muntab?", but in serious political discussion is more likely to concern the sides on which the more developed nations would fall in a war between Muntab and Borogravia. Muntab is very likely one of the nations in the Alliance that Borogravia is fighting in the novel Monstrous Regiment. Muntab's calendar counts down; no-one really knows why, but it's probably NOT a good idea to stay there to see for oneself what happens when the count reaches zero. Nothing is known of Istanzia, although it is a state big enough to send an Ambassador to Ankh-Morpork for Commander Vimes to frighten: when in The Fifth Elephant the Istanzian forces were reported to be making repeated armed incursions across the Slipnir River, Vimes's offer to arrange for the Istanzian Ambassador to "...go home in an ambulance" resulted in the Istanzian forces pulling back so far that they were "...nearly in the next country." At some point, Istanzia was controlled by Omnia (Small Gods), but it can be assumed they have gained personal jurisdiction. The Tezumen Empire is a jungle civilisation in the darkest depths of Howondaland that resembles the Aztecs. They are renowned as the most pessimistic and angst-ridden culture on the Disc; their writing is engraved on giant slabs of stone rather than more conveniently written on paper. Large discs of precisely-carved stone with holes in the middle are used for almost every imaginable purpose except making wheels, a technology which they have not yet discovered. Before the events in Eric, they worshiped the "feathered boa" Quezovercoatl, a parody of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl, who was a junior demon who supplanted the previous Tezumen god, a stick; after