The Country of Vekllei

This article is archived, and is no longer part of Vekllei canon.

There is no real distinction between the city of Vekllei and the state of Vekllei, at least internally. To them, the country and the city are the same, and the isolated population centres of Montre and Adouisneh are simply distant neighbourhoods. This is reflected in all manners of life — they are ethnically and culturally homogenous, patriotic, and largely uncompetitive. They are a single people numbering 20 million, living in the shadow of igneous monument and lush, fertile lands.

In the south, where warm winds from the Azores sweep across the beaches of black sand, the climate is temperate and a great many of Vekllei’s most renowned wonders are accessible. Geysers, the tectonic fault, volcanoes and hot springs are scattered across the outskirts of Vekllei.

Heading north, the cold weather thins large-leaf forests and it is here that her signature landscape is found in abundance — the ro, or flower-tundra, can be hundreds of kilometres wide and populated entirely by flowers, ringed by sharp mountains forced into peaks by the violent forces of the earth below. Vekllei has the most flowers per capita out of any country in the world.

On this map, which is cartoonish and exaggerated, you can see several landmarks — Vekllei’s largest volcano (Durtoneis, or Fire of the Earth), the expansive lava fields to the North, and Vekllei’s food basket, which runs between the ro highlands and the fault line. Only Vekllei’s massive glaciers, which give the country the cleanest drinking water in the world, are in permafrost.

Look at this —! Look at this place, where the horizon meets the sky without a stitch! Listen to the water, rich and sweet with soil, trickle through the ro. What a place this is… If she’d had any respect for God, she would have marvelled at the beauty of His ro. If she’d thought He was good and decent, she would have thanked Him for constructing such a place for her. But the truth of it, at least in her mind, was that God may be the creator, but the beauty of this ro is in the hands of humans, now. This place is the territory of Vekllei, in all her glory. If God should ever like to visit — and Tzipora very much hoped he would, because she had some things on her mind — he could apply for a visa at the bureau.

Vekllei people are generally unconcerned with the outside world. Their flag, the Red Standard, is a simple blank colour that means “Vekllei” in Vekllei Semaphore, a sublanguage of potenne, or physical Vekllei language. They also employ an International Standard in foreign arenas, including the U.N. and the Olympics.

This is a reupload (I took the previous post down to fix some mistakes in the image). If you have any questions, please let me know!