Incredibly Unfascinating Facts From The World Of Vexacious Sims 3 Vexillology (Part Two): The Eastlands Controversy

The Nilxisdomini was created by a series of acquisitions and land creation projects by the teenage multi-Simoleon squillionaire Nilxis, who got rich from investing in the Bitsimoleon ‘bubble’ incident of 2012.

By accident.

A combination of hitting the wrong button on his keyboard whilst shopping online and browser glitches redirecting him through multiple screens to a Bitsimoleon website – and then selling it all immediately again trying desperately to get his ‘lost’ money back before his mum found out – not only did he avoid being part being part of the crash which wiped billions off the values of Bitsimoleon portfolios, leaving global speculators in ruins, but it resulted in Nilxis being just about the only person on the planet other than the scammers to ever make any money from it.

And it all happened in sixty seconds.

The crash brought the Hisimuladol government to the brink of bankruptcy.

After finding that there was nothing Nilxis could be arrested for and his assets sequestrated (the traditional moving the goalposts method employed by governments the world over – not merely the Hisimish government – to cover up having screwed up big time and getting their money back), they offered secretly to make him Duke of the Costa Sol and for it to become a tax-free autonomous dependency within Hisimula – in return for a interest free loan enough to get the country back on its uppers.

Unfortunately for the Hisimish government, Nilxis’ history classes in school at that time just happened to centre on the rather long list of wealthy Hisimish merchants and bankers who over five centuries of Hisimula’s ‘Golden Age’ were offered similar terms – only to find themselves later arrested without warning on fraudulent charges of conspiring to overthrown the crown, government and Jacoban church of all Hisimula, etc, etc, tried and executed in double-quick time, and their assets – as traitors – being forfeit to the state.

Which was all rather too convenient sounding for Nilxis’ liking. To say nothing of ominous.

After Nilxis send his formal declination of their terms (‘buen intento, cul d’olla!’ ), the Hisimish government realised their only way out was by agreeing to sell their nation in its entirity to Nilxis (the island of Hisimoles – containing Barcelona, Emporda and Costa Sol – along with its remaining dependency the Isla Kalooni (Sa Pineda – although within Hisimish territorial waters – did not exist then as we know it today, but was part of a later land reclamation and expansion engineering project).

To understandable general uproar from the population at this highly undemocratic takeover of their country, which anyone familiar with Hisimula’s history of despotic monarches and bloodthirsty dictators would have realised this was a bit of a raw nerve.

To which the new head of state Nilxis responded by immediately having the entire of the government promptly arrested the next day for gross negligence – the charge being no responsible government carrying out proper due diligence would ever have gotten itself into such a mess that it had to sell the entire country to one of its own schoolboys, and indeed something no Hisimiard would have ever voted for.

To general laughter from the population at how the previous government had been so easily pwned.

The rest as they say is history, and the gently expanding Nilxisdomini is regarded as the textbook example of how nation states can be taken over by private enterprise whilst respecting their customs and traditions.

There was, however, one well known blip:

The Eastlands Controversy

Flags have on occasion been the subject of contention and controversy, and no more so than in the territory of Eastlands.

Eastlands (إيستلان or iistlandiz ) was a part of The Golden Sultanate (الأرض الشرقي or Al’Alard Alsharqiai) which ruled over Simharia (northern Simafrica) and parts of Europa for a millenia, and which used the same flag throughout its territories, of the crescent moon of Simla combined with the plumbob of all Simkind.

However, upon the final disintegration of the empire by the end of the Second Simsworld War, with most of it being placed under United Nations of the Sims mandate, a new flag was put in place in the Eastlands area (see above), which acknowledged in it the largest minority group – the Yehusim or Yahsims (the worshippers of Yehu or Yah, ie. Watcher) – after much pressure to do so. This caused outrage amongst the majority Mulsims, the largest group within the old empire.

(Mulsims is derived from the ancient Simerian word ‘mul’ – meaning ‘star’. Ancient Mulsims travelled largely by night using the stars in order to navigate across burning hot and largely landmark devoid terrain.)

To understand why, one must appreciate one of the underlying resentments they had with the very empire (and the prestige that came with it) whose destruction they mourned.

As a number of the larger Mulsim tribes posed a challenge to the Golden Sultanate, in order to prevent corruption on tribal lines, the Golden Sultanate’s civil service and judiciary were largely run by those taken at a young age from the Yahsims, Jabobans, Peterans, in fact everyone who wasn’t or their family wasn’t a Mulsim.

This was seen as a pragmatic counterbalance in an empire where some tribal chiefs were as powerful in their own right as some independent states outside of the empire – indeed, one of the reasons Sultans had so many wives was in order to keep each of them sweet the heirs to the throne would be obliged to marry one from at least each of the major houses when they came of age.

However, the Yahsims in turn objected to a flag in the traditional colour of all Mulsims.

This led to a new temporary flag.

Which nobody liked either, and which sparked a prolonged period of bitter fighting and the occasional civil war or ten as a millenia’s worth of old scores gave birth in a very short space of time to a whole load of new ones.

By the 21st century, the Eastlands territory was one of the Simworld’s great basketcases – in stark contrast to the prosperity of other former parts of the Golden Sultanate, especially Al-Simhara under the control of the Simgurus.

Tiring of what seemed to be an endless moneypit, the United Nations of the Sims agreed to hand over control of the territory for §1 to the emergent Nilxisdomini., which introduced a new flag which it was felt would make everyone happy as it harked back to the old Golden Sultanate flag.

The Yahsims objected to their symbol no longer being on the flag. The Mulsims objected to Nilxis’s symbol now being on it, as if Eastlands was now merely part of ‘the Nilxis’ empire’ – even though the place was now too dystopic and broke to be anything else.

In order to keep the peace, Nilxis hired an outside creative team from Simcity to come up with ideas for a new flag that would please everybody.

The Mulsims objected to the Yahsims star being inside their ‘moon space’. The Yahsims objected to it looking like it was being dominated over by the Mulsims moon. Both objected to the Globus de Nilxis being on it at all.

At this point, the United Nations of the Sims intervened – forgetting the very reason they’d sold off Eastlands in the first place was their utter cackhandedness in looking after it – and insisted that a list of potential choices be put to a national referendum, with the final winner being determined by single transferable vote.

It should be noted that by this time, due to the civil wars mentioned earlier, the population of Eastlands was one of the youngest on Simearth, which explained what happened next …

One design which managed to make its way onto the ballot, ostensibly created by a design team in Copacabana, claimed to have merged the Mulsim moon with interconnecting lines at the outermost points of the Yahsims star to create a brand new ‘unity’ symbol which their market research had shown would be acceptable to all.

Forgetting the hilarity caused by the flag of the Manihikki Fleet of the Nornities, the U.N.S. pressed ahead with the ballot, and to everyone’s horror the above design won, which the rest of the world pointed out to great merriment looked more symbolically like the Eastlands Pacman having to eat the Nilxisdomini power pill in order to escape the ghosts of its own past.

After only six months, and after Eastlands diplomatic staff globally realised other nations were not making ‘waka waka waka’ noises at them in imitation of a zeitgeist trending Simafrican salutation, the new flag was binned at great expense and as per the competition’s rules, the design team was paid §1 million compensation for lost royalties from the projected flag’s first year of merchandise sales as the winning entry (on top of the §100 000 prize earned by the winning design).

The new one was imposed by a new exasperated Nilxis, and the topic has never been raised again, to everyone’s relief.

Subsequent research by psephologists discovered that the vast majority of those voting in favour of the ‘Pacman’ design were in the 16-25 age group, who were fed up with all the argybargy over a flag (especially when it came to blows …), and that there had been an organised tactical voting campaign organised from abroad for people to vote for it ‘for the lulz!’

It was also later discovered that the design team in Copacabana owned the website which orchestrated the tactical vote campaign, that its headquarters in Copacabana had never existed except as a P. O. Box, and that someone claimed to have overheard in a Boroughsburg bar someone talking about ‘making a fortune from getting the commission to create a national flag that is so awful and embarrassing it couldn’t possibly be used!’

To this day, Strawberry Rotten has denied all involvement in the affair – usually with a knowing smirk.