The Challenge:
FLAG CHALLENGE 123: The Octopus's Garden
Design a flag (or flag equivalent) for an underwater polity.
This could be a human cousteauville, lost Lemurians, mernation, Deep One Outpost, Starfish Alien settlement, etc
The sky, er seabed, is your limit!
__________________
Vote for your favourite!
FLAG CHALLENGE 123: The Octopus's Garden
Design a flag (or flag equivalent) for an underwater polity.
This could be a human cousteauville, lost Lemurians, mernation, Deep One Outpost, Starfish Alien settlement, etc
The sky, er seabed, is your limit!
__________________
Vote for your favourite!
ONE said:The City of Miracles
"Far beneath the waves of the eastern Mediterranean lies an underwater city, long lost to history. To modern eyes it would appear to have been built and populated by a highly advanced race of people. Its high technology, in many cases indistinguishable from magic, certainly suggests as much. This is in stark contrast to the humans inhabiting it, however. They live simple lives, venerating the wonders of the city as if they were gifts from the gods rather than the fruits of advanced science. Indeed, they hardly seem to have a concept of science to begin with, and attempting to understand the "City of Miracles" is seen as offensive at best and blasphemous at worst.
If asked who built the city, the locals would likely answer "The Gods" without hesitation. If asked who "The Gods" are supposed to be, the local would not only be able to name all nine members of their pantheon, but also show you the Gods themselves. In each of the eight "arms" of the city, and right in the center of it, you can find a large white building. If you were to enter one of these buildings, you would find a large glass tank, filled with an unidentified liquid, housing an outlandish creature that can best be described as a large eye with eight white tentacles extending from it. It doesn't speak, and it doesn't even seem to be capable of thought. Nonetheless, any who enter these temples feel as if they're being watched. The beings only move to observe, and they only observe humans. All other animals are ignored entirely.
While the origins of the city will likely remain a mystery for the foreseeable future, the origins of the flag proudly displayed by the people inhabiting it becomes clear after touring it. A single eye, eight white tentacles protruding from it, forever observing those who would venerate it as a god."
TWO said:United States Oceanic Islands (USOI)
An underwater organized U.S. territory of approximately 750,000 residents, spread across four domed cities located on the seafloor.
The blue represents underwater life, the red represents the surface world and an the skies during an evening sunset, the wavy white stripe represents the bond between them. The star represents the cities themselves as a single entity and their unity with the U.S. as one of its territories.
And if you were wondering, I based it off of the North Star flag. Guilty as charged! ;-)
THREE said:Cousteauan Commonwealth of Aquanauts
The story...
One fateful afternoon in the 1950s, Jacques Cousteau was visited by Skippy the ASB. Skippy was in a cheeky mood and decided to give Jacques and his family a sheet of something he called "a few cheat codes to the Universe".
More than half a century has passed since then. Monsieur Cousteau and his relatives and faithful followers from all over the world reside in a polity they have dubbed the "Cousteauan Commonwealth of Aquanats". This is a new and very hi-tech underwater society, the attempted culmination of the old oceanographer's dream about a futuristic and jolly utopia beneath the waves.
As the Cold War era drew to a close, all major governments and maritime powers of the world still kept fuming about the upstart lanky Frenchman and his global undersea empire still evading the reach and pressure of the international community. Derided as a "latter day Captain Nemo", Cousteau became hated in official political circles and adored in the popular imagination of the world public, painted as a dashing and unwaveringly energetic antihero with a grand vision.
Nevertheless, despite the repeated implementation of state of the art life-extension technology, Cousteau Sr. is a tired old patriarch in the present of 2015. He formally abdicated the Manta Ray Throne, on which he sat as the first and founding Captain* since the Commonwealth's inception.
Though his son, the second Captain of the Commonwealth, has swore to carry on and uphold the traditions of the still young Aquanautic way of life, Jacques-Yves' somewhat dotty old plans of genetically modifying humans into "homo aquaticus" have been pretty much quietly dropped by this point.
And so, while the world looks on in confusion and shakes its fist at the stubbornly independent aquanauts, the peculiar oceanic empire keeps living its daily life, worrying little about the dramas of the landlubber world. It is a meritocratic but oddly rustic polity of seabed farmers and miners, oceanographers and divers, seabases and seasteads, submarines with biotic propulsion and defence advancements, surface ships powered solely by turbosails... and a polity of the ever-present ideology of Cousteauism, which can be boiled down to "the oceans are awesome, dude !".
* - "Emperor of All Oceans and Aquanauts" would be such an overly grandiose (if accurate) way of putting it...
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With apologies to Policenauts (it's hard to draw a Vitruvian Man graphic...).
And yeah, as far as the backstory is concerned, I'm going for the ah-sue route this week.
FOUR said:[FONT="]Empire of Snork
[FONT="]With the unexpected death of his father, mother, and sister, along with his uncle Dr Galeo Seaworthy, Allstar Seaworth went to live with his Uncle Dr Strangesnork Seaworthy. While not a happy childhood, Dr Strangesnork attempted to interest Allstar in science. As the years went on more Snorks were dying from an unknown cause. Allstar and Dr Strangesnork eventually discovered that the Snorks were dying from pollutants from the surface world. Dr Strangesnork's long buried megalomania began to surface. With the help of a special surface-suit he designed, the doctor sent Allstar to the surface world to investigate the cause of the pollutants.[/FONT]
[FONT="]What Allstar found was acres of berries being grown on large farms. On the shore of the ocean was a large factory in the shape of a large toadstool. Pipes lead from the building dumping blue and pink liquids into the ocean water. A shirtless blue man that looked something like a snork saw Allstar and called the alarm. Blue soldiers began to attack Allstar with berries and cupcakes. Fleeing back to the sea, Allstar informed his uncle and Governor Wellington Wetworth of the evil the surface dwellers were doing. Vengeance is sough upon the surface dwellers and the Snorks armed for war.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The war would last several years, but with the aid of a giant surface dweller and his orange feline, the Snorks conquered the blue surface dwellers. Thus begins the Empire of Snork, with Emperor Allstar Seaworthy the First. While ten years of his rule has been relatively calm, there are inklings of trouble from the deeper parts of the oceans. The rampaging hordes of Sea-Monkeys are encroaching on Snork territory. [/FONT]
[FONT="]War will be upon the Mighty Snork Empire once more. [/FONT]
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