Weekly Flag Challenge: Discussion & Entries

President Joseph Smith
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

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Deadline extended to 1st August because I was completely preoccupied with watching the Olympics that night.

If there are any other issues with the challenge, feel free to let me know.

Thanks, @Transparent Blue , here it is! :3

FLAG CHALLENGE #252: The Rekindled Flame

They had tried to conquer us. They had desecrated our shrines, enslaved our people and sought to force their deviant ways upon us. For centuries we had waited; hid in the mountains, jungles and forests, sharpening our claws for the day we take back our freedom. And when the heavens saw us strong enough, it granted us victory over our oppressors. Now we walk free again, a legacy restored, one where our faith and lineage shines brighter than ever.

We are the rekindled flame.
  • Design a flag for a country that is predominantly made up of an extinct or existing minority religion, or an extinct or current minority branch or sect of an existing religion.
    • Religions
      • Extinct: e.g. Manichaeans, Norse Paganism, Aztec religion etc
      • Existing: e.g. Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Yazidism, Druze etc
    • Branches
      • Extinct: e.g. Cathar (Christianity), Bogomils (Christianity), Zurvanism (Zoroastrianism) etc
      • Existing: Samaritans (Judaism), Old Catholics (Christianity), Anabaptists (Christianity)
    • Sects or Schools
      • Extinct: e.g. Qarmatians (Shi'ite Islam), Khajirites (Khajirite/Ibadi Islam)
      • Existing: e.g. Nizaris (Shi'ite Islam), Ruthenian Catholics (Eastern Catholic Christianity)
  • Countries based on a currently thriving religion, branch or sect that was once predominant in the area do not count (e.g. Sunni Muslim Andalusia, Christian Orthodox Anatolia). Rule may be revised depending on responses.
  • Countries based on a religion, branch or sect that is currently predominant in at least one modern country do not count. (e.g. Ibadi Islam, Orthodox Judaism)
  • Optional: The religious group or sect may be tied to a specific ethnicity (e.g. Yazidis, Mandaeans, etc)
  • All existing flag challenge rules apply. Kindly refer to the link and quote below.
Submissions Open: Now
Submissions Close: Sun, 25th July, 1st August, 2021, 9:00pm (GMT+8) - Extended

RULES
 
Apologies for the roughness:

The Salvation Army of the True Christ (lo Hòst Salvant do Christo Ver) is a radical sect of Cathars who have control over much of the rural south of Aquitaine during the current civil war. Their stated aim is a state covering the natural borders of the True Christians (lis Christians Vers) [1] and beyond; including the neighbouring Republicha Septimana, which includes a large Cathar minority, and Cathar-friendly Asturia.

The flag is a traditional white Cathar banner but bordered in red representative of the blood spilled to uphold the True Christian Faith.

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[1] True Christians being the autonym of the Cathars
 
Sorry for the delay! Congratulations to @Born in the USSA ! We look forward to your challenge! Here's your guide!

View attachment 668356

Yazidistan, officially the Radiant Sultanate of Yazidistan, is a theodemocracy located in western Asia between Byzantium, the Arabian Caliphate and the Persian Empire. The heartland of the Yezidi religion, the nation has for much of its history remained closed to its neighbors owing to widespread ethnoreligious tension at this junction of major religions. With their unique faith system decried as heretical or even satanic by Christian and Muslim sects throughout history the Yazidi ethnoreligious group organized early on to repel incursions from hostile neighbors, creating a tightly knit and well defended nation state in the sixteenth century that has persisted to the present. Historically ruled by a an absolute monarch who also serves as head of the faith, the nation chose to modernize its institutions in the nineteenth century, eventually establishing a representative republic organized along the theodemocratic principles pioneered but never implemented by President Joseph Smith.

As such, there are no religious barriers to voting or running for political office, with a balance achieved between a unicameral legislature that forges policy, an executive branch under a president to implement it, and a supreme court to rule on constitutional and religious questions. One innovation in the theodemocratic system is that the Sultan, as head of the faith, is able to override the legislature on certain matters through divine revelation. Despite this extraordinary veto, the Sultan has transitioned into a purely religious rather than political office over time, with the power rarely used and the monarch more often serving a ceremonial function as the nation's head of state.

With God in the Yazidi cosmology taking a remote position from creation, the flag of Yazidistan instead directly references the angel Melek Taus who was entrusted to manage it, with a seven-pointed gold star to represent divine emanation and the "Seven Mysteries" central to the faith, red to symbolize martyr's blood, and the combination of green, sky blue and indigo to suggest a peacock, an animal traditionally associated with Melek Taus and the nation more generally.
 
FLAG CHALLENGE 253: The Great White South

I'm nothing if not a slave to my passions and pet interests, so the challenge is to create the flag of an independent state or distinct culture nation in Antarctica- whether it's a native people or a colonization project or a corporate enclave is up to you, PODs are wide open. I'm posting this on Wednesday the eleventh and it'll close Wednesday the eighteenth at 10 PM Central Time. Don't forget the 600 by 1200 size limit!
 
Octantis (A-Project)

The founding of the first outright corporate state in the world in 2055 was the culmination of a joint venture between a handful of technology companies, material manufacturing companies, and a healthy following of willing donors. What began as a project to create an Antarctic test bed for various climate, housing, power, and other technologies was turned into a "corporatopia" focused on creating a template for sustainable society in the next millennium. Shareholders who had donated to the cause of creating Octantis were granted citizenship, and many responded to calls for work, slowly swelling the population of the state even as workers expanded the facilities that housed them and the various other aspects of society.

Octantis was able to begin exporting their technology and expertise to help other nations create similar installations, fine tuned for their climate and surroundings, to further pursue the goal of "greening" the world.

Before declaring itself an independent state, Octantis was known simply as the A-Project and used a corporate logo that was complicated and difficult to parse, being a conglomeration of the logos of participating corporations/institutions. In 2055, Octantis adopted Polaris Australis, otherwise known as Sigma Octantis, as it's icon, and at the same time, this flag was adopted for all uses. The new state was named Octantis.

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Commonwealth of the Antarctic
The Commonwealth (Comnäl Änhartis) is a semifeudal confederation of the settlements in the Stanley Isles principally derived from the original settlement on Rennishold.
The Commonwealth is lead by the Gyphnon appointed by the Council from among the settlement Chiefs. Civil governance in the state has a strong matriarchal bent deriving from the importance of women to growth in the settlements, all women automatically have a right to vote on the Council and additionally the right to choose the father of their next child (albeit from the approved list of those least related to them). The need for population maintenance and growth has also given the settlements a strong obsession with genealogical cleanliness.

A Brief History
The original documents have been lost but the accepted history of the Commonwealth is based on the founding of Rennieshold by the marooned ship of the first Gyphnon Rennie having survived what are now called the transportation storms. Rennie was due to become Gyphnon of the Falcon Land prior to encountering the storm and it was many years before he and his compatriots gave up hope of rescue and turned their settlement permanent, learning to live off the plentiful but unusual fish and the strange swimming birds named later as oroc.
Over the following decades other ships would arrive and the survivors added to them, these included the first women who inspired the first rebellion and established the laws against sexual slavery and woman led temporary marriages to produce offspring.
Over the next centuries the original Ha'Nglis speech would mostly give way to the Lå'Nglis, influenced by languages brought by other strandees, and further settlements would be founded.
Expeditions would eventually be sent to the more distant shorelines bringing back tales of weird beasts and odd ruins, suggesting that other people could be found oneday.

The Flag
The flag is suggested to be derived from that of Rennie and is commonly known as the Enzuun.
It bears the black and white oroc pattern with a single gold compass star to represent the hope of never getting lost again.
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