An "A" for Quastolia

Earlier this year, I shared some maps from my "imaginary country", Quastolia. In addition, I re-created the flag of Quastolia, that has become my unofficial logo:

The other day, while browsing through my collection of Quastolian artifacts, I came across a school project about Quastolia! I remember this. It must have been my ninth-grade English class. I don't know what the assignment was... I'm sure the assignment was NOT to create an imaginary country, but my teacher OK'd a report about Quastolia for credit. I turned in a 19-page document that included:

• maps (of course)
• government structure
• voting process done online by computer (in 1975!)
• courts and judicial system
• military structure
• population
• monetary system
• major religions

The cover of the report was decorated with this flag:



What an archaeological find! I had forgotten that this was the original flag of Quastolia. The flag with the eight-pointed Star of Quas came later, after the royal restoration. Note the Tolkienesque alphabet used in the lettering at the three points of the triangle. They were the characters in our language for "A", "C" and "Q", for Aqceyquas... the land founded by Aq, Ceygol and Quas.

Needless to say, my teacher was impressed. She gave me an "A", with these comments:

What can I say! After 16 years of teaching, this is the first time I have ever read anything so creative and different. You gave it considerable thought. Would like you to explain this to class.

Scribbled below her comments was my answer: "No way!"

For someone who had tought school for 16 years, she showed very little understanding of adolescents. If I were to stand up in front of my class and explain to them all about the imaginary country in my back yard, populated by ants, I would be guaranteed to get my ass kicked outside the building after school...

Quastolia - The Later Years

Quastolia - The Early Years
Quastolia - The Middle Years

Eventually, Bill and I found developing our "ant countries" within the existing geography of our hometowns to be too constricting. All we could do was redraw borders in between the existing lakes and rivers. Fortunately for us, a strange spatial-temporal rift descended upon Aqceyquas, and after the dust settled, we found ourselves in a new world.

A section of a map of the new world by Bill:


The surviving residents of Quastolia and Ceygolia began the careful exploration of our new world, cleverly called "Neworld". We also conveniently dropped the notion of ants and other insects as our citizens, and proceeded to world building like our favorite fantasy and science fiction writers.

Somewhere along the line, the reconstituted nation of Quastolia became known as the Protected United Kingdom of Quastolia, with its unfortunate acronym, "PUKQ". I assume my teenaged sense of humor found that amusing.

Two of my maps of the PUKQ:




Development of our "ant countries" continued on and off throughout high school and our first year of college, whenever we felt the urge to draw a map, or write a history or heroic saga. Later, when playing Dungeons & Dragons, it was very easy for me to create a new world for use as Dungeon Master.

Another of Bill's maps. He was always a better artist:

Quastolia - The Middle Years

In an earlier post I described the origins of Quastolia. Our "ant countries" started out in our back yards, but soon after that, Bill and I expanded the geography to include more than just our home neighborhoods. Both Quastolia and Ceygolia grew to encompass most of our small towns (Bill lived in the next town to the north of mine).

A political map:


A tophographic map of sorts:


A little of both:


We continued to develop extensive economic and cultural histories for our kingdoms. The region in which our kingdoms resided was known as Aqceyquas, named after the three brothers that founded the first three kingdoms: Aq, Ceygol and Quas. Very bad epic poetry tells the story of the birth of the brothers. Their mother was the goddess Utipia. There was a falling out between Aq and his brothers, becoming a source of conflict throught the region's history. I won't bore you with the rest.

A map of Aqceyquas by Bill:


Once again, you can see the strong influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in our mapmaking, especially for Bill, who was always a better artist than me.

To the right is a satelite image of Aqceyquas. Here's your challenge: I haven't named my hometown, but in other posts I have left plenty of clues as to where I am from. Can you locate Aqceyquas?

Offer your answers in the comments.

Story continued: Quastolia - The Later Years

Quastolia - The Early Years

I promised Tony, the creator of Alphistia, that I would post some maps from my "geofictional project", Quastolia:

I have loved maps for as long as I can remember. I'm pretty sure that the first map I drew of my neighborhood was in an attempt to chart the most efficient path for Trick-or-Treat on Halloween. I had often pretended that imaginary kingdoms existed right outside my door...

However, it wasn't until Junior High School, when I overheard my friends John and Bill discussing "Ceygolia" and "Aqua Region". I was able to pry out of them that these were the names of their "ant countries." These were countries in their back yard, and the tiny insects were their citizens. They had already begun drawing maps and developing their "ant country" economies. I wanted in. By the next time I saw them, I had already devised a name for my country, drawn my first map, and designed a flag.

The flag of what was first called "Outer Quastolia" appears to have violated Rule #2 of Josh Parson's Rules of Flag design (Do not put a picture of anything on your flag, especially weapons!). However, I have always been rather proud of it this design.

In the beginning, the Kingdom of Outer Quastolia was ruled by a usurper wizard, but King James was soon restored and Outer and Inner Quastolia were reunited. Here you see a map of Quastolia. At the time it consisted of my yard. The house was the capital. By the time this map was drawn, several of the neighbors homes had also been incorporated into the kingdom. General Tip, our black Labrador Retriever, was the Minister of Defense. Peace and glory were restored.



Bill Williams had already created the Kingdom of Ceygolia.



You can see that we were both heavily influenced the J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and played many games with spelling our friends (and enemies) names backwards to create place names in our world.



Bill and I went on to create extensive histories, flags and maps for neighboring countries were designed, and whenever Quastolia or Ceygolia needed to go to war, we just went out and stomped a few ant hills.

Eventually, we broadened the scope of our "ant countries".

Story continued:
Quastolia - The Middle Years