FLAG CHALLENGE 253: The Great White South
Here's the poll for my Antarctica flag challenge! It's a bit after 2 as I post this and I'll keep the poll up until 10 Central Monday evening.
Here's the poll for my Antarctica flag challenge! It's a bit after 2 as I post this and I'll keep the poll up until 10 Central Monday evening.
Entry 1:
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.
Entry 2:
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.