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