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Description
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Intro
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Hello, here is the last (for now at least) batch of flags for early colonies on Venus, circa 1999, in the Overheaven timeline. There’s going to be a lot of lore here, because I’m like that. That’s about it. On to the flags.

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Masaya
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Masaya was established in the 1980’s as a show of Moscow-Managua solidarity/flipping off the US. Soviet infrastructure and Cuban experts proved instrumental in setting up Masaya-1, the first Nicaraguan aerostat habitat in the Venusian atmosphere, in 1984. In 1990, after the FSLN was voted out of power back on Earth, Masaya opted for independence, like many Venusian polities did in the Nineties. Most of the 802 Nicaraguan colonists on Venus at the time were FSLN hardliners. This, combined with the fact that in the 90's, the USSR was undergoing economic reforms and wasn’t able to engage in non-critical space projects, along with the existing distances between Earth and Venus, all contributed to Masaya going from functionally independent and autonomous, to legally sovereign. Get used to this, because you’re going to hear this story *a lot*. The Sandinistas remained in power on Venus, and would spend the 90’s and early 2000’s building a second aerostat, Masaya-2, completed in 2005. By 2050, there were a total of six Masaya habitats.

Today, all six of the Masaya aerostats are still airborne, and exist as an airborne, semi-nomadic nation in the blue skies of a terraformed Venus. Nicaraguan indiginous peoples like the Rama and Moskito are well-represented aboard Masaya-3, while Masaya-5 is mostly inhabited by Afro-Nicaraguans. Today, the Masaya Federation’s population is around 25.6 million.

The country’s name, “Masaya”, is derived from the Nicaraguan department where Augusto César Sandino, namesake of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, was born. The flag of Masaya uses the colors of the FSLN, combined with a stylized homage to the coat of arms of Nicaragua.

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Sathantha
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Sathantha was a colony established in 1983 by the Soviet Union, on behalf of its little ally, the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Not much to say, really. Similarly to Masaya, the shift towards self-sufficiency on and around Venus in the Nineties in response to a distracted Soviet Union, ultimately culminated in Sathantha’s declaration of independence from Laos in 1993.

After terraforming was completed on Venus, the Sathanese aerostats touched down in the arid deserts and semiarid grasslands of western Astarta. The Sathanese have adapted their Southeast Asian culture to desert living, like cooking ping kai with *Compsognathus* meat, marinated in cactus juice.

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Sokra Wat
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Overheaven’s timeline sees the Vietnam War end by 1971, and there is no US invasion of Cambodia or the rise of the Khmer Rouge. However, Cambodia still succumbs to Vietnamese-backed communists, albeit they aren’t really as popular this time due to Cambodia not being torn apart by bombings and invasions (this was key to the success of Khmer Rouge propaganda OTL). In an effort to show their regime’s effectiveness and ability not to waste money, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea joined Interkosmos and established a colony on Venus, known as Sokra Wat.

When the Cambodian monarchy was restored in the 1990’s, Sokra Wat, surprise surprise, decided to go fully independent and end its association with terrestrial Cambodia.

The flag of Sokra Wat, admittedly, is somewhat uncreative and utilitarian. It’s an ensign with the flag of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea in the upper-left corner, and a dark blue field. While this does resemble the flag of OTL’s Khmer Republic (a US-backed regime established in 1970, and replaced by the Khmer Rouge), that specific flag was never created in OH’s timeline and so this design lacks that connotation. Instead, the blue field was selected because it contrasted effectively with the yellow, white and sky-blue of Venus’ upper atmosphere.

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New Loango
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New Loango (named in reference to the old Congolese kingdom, Loango) was established by colonists from the People’s Republic of the Congo. Despite Brazzaville’s turbulent history in the 1970’s, Congolese cosmonauts were still able to get themselves to Venus, under the leadership of Denis Sassou Nguesso, until his ousting in 1992, when New Loango jumped onboard with the Amber Revolutions.

The flag of New Loango combines the wreathe, hammer and hoe, and motto of the People’s Republic of the Congo, with the hand and seven stars symbol of the old Loango kingdom’s banner. Red for socialism, and green-yellow-black for Pan-African unity, and, according to some, solidarity with the struggle against Apartheid back on Earth (though nobody in the 23rd century cares about that anymore, least of all folks living on Venus).

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Koguryŏ
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Giving North Korea space assets raised eyebrows even in Moscow, but they were folded into Interkosmos anyway. The Soviets gifted them a four-ring habitat in low-earth orbit, Paektu Station, in 1978, and included North Korea in the first wave of Interkosmos colonies on Venus in 1982 (a date commemorated on the flag of Koguryŏ). In 1982, Kim Il-sung authorized the creation of the “Democratic Republic of Koguryŏ”, naming it after the ancient northern Korean kingdom, and treating it as an “autonomous” extension of the DPRK intended to demonstrate the virtue and effectiveness of the Juche Idea even on other planets. Paranoid of what would happen when North Koreans were hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth, Kim personally oversaw the creation of a special secret police to oversee every aspect of life within the Koguryŏ habitats, taking full advantage of the cramped, compact living quarters to maintain a police state exceeding even that of the DPRK itself; sending troops to put down a rebellion would have been impossible with the distances between Earth and Venus, so Kim wanted to instead breed dissent out of the people of Koguryŏ, and create the ideal and harmonious vision of Juche society. Officially known as the Colonial Security Department, this secret police would come to be known locally as “Soneul” (“the Hand”).

It would seem that this organization’s efforts were ultimately counterintuitive, however. Over the course of fifteen years, a covert body language emerged which allowed dissidents born on the Koguryŏ habitat to communicate. During the Second Korean War in the mid-90’s, there was an unexpected uprising aboard Koguryŏ, led by these teenage sign-language rebels. This rebellion succeeded...because the powers that be agreed with them. Turns out, with the exception of a small core of the Soneul, not even the high-ranking leaders of the Workers Party were onboard with the then-current regime aboard Koguryŏ. Or at least that’s what the Party said, so that they could convince a few hundred teenagers to take out the Soneul for them, and thereby secure absolute power over Koguryŏ, for the Party...but then the students forced the Party into the frontline hallways. Mice and men, indeed. The subsequent war between the students and Party against the Soneul was a bloody one, since the latter had handguns, and the former only knives, pens, chairs and wrenches. Casualties were grievous, but the rebels were victorious. And following the demise of the DPRK and reunification of the Korean peninsula back on Earth, came the liberalization of Koguryŏite society as well.

Over the course of the 21st century, Koguryŏ expanded, built more aerostats and actively contributed to the effort to terraform Venus. At the end of that process, most of the Koguryŏ aerostats settled in the cold-temperate polar regions of Venus’ northern continent, Ishtar, where they gently touched down and formed the basis for Koguryŏ City. Despite its fairly abusive colonial relationship with the bygone DPRK, Koguryŏ has very much clung on to a lot of the cultural trappings of the old North Korean regime - the murals, the uniforms, the taste in architecture, and one can even find old North Korean flags flying around Koguryŏ City.

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Zuhara
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Considering how spacy the man was in general, perhaps it’s not surprising that Muammar Gaddafi wanted Libyans in orbit (one could almost say…Space JAMahiriya. I’m sorry). However, the Mad Colonel’s ambitions went beyond low or even high orbit.

Established in 1986, the “People’s Jamahiriya of Zuhara” (Arabic for “bright one”, a reference to Venus) was made possible by Soviet spacecraft ferrying Libyan colonists from Earth orbit to Venus orbit, but Gaddafi insisted upon sending the cosmonauts into orbit on his own, via the Libyan People’s Space City, outside of Sirte (needless to say, the mere existence of Gaddafi’s rocket range kept many at NATO up at night *Gaddafi trollface intensifies*). He also insisted on having his own flesh and blood run Zuhara. In a characteristically Gaddafi move, he sent his 11-year-old son, Hannibal Gadaffi, to Venus, to eventually become its supreme leader when he turned 27, the age of his father at the time he took over Libya. Until he grew old enough to run Zuhara, the colony would be run by a council of trusted military officers from Gaddafi’s tribe. Gaddafi’s reasoning was that he was the greatest, leadership ability was genetic, and therefore the only way to run a Venusian space colony would be to have a mini-Gaddafi running the show. The Soviets were presented with this idea, gave it a brief, perplexed stare, shrugged and handed Gaddafi the paperwork anyway.

Against all odds, Gadaffi’s gaudily-decorated aerostat colonies on Venus (three were built, Zuhara-1, Zuhara-2 and Zuhara-3) worked out throughout the late 80’s and the 1990’s. Throughout his youth, Hannibal Gadaffi was groomed to eventually become “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution”, becoming a bit of a child star. Beginning in the mid-90’s, however, the Provisional Colonial Command Council (that group of military officers I mentioned earlier) started to grow wary about 2002, and their inevitable loss of power. In 2001, they attempted to assassinate “Prince Hannibal”, while he was on a diplomatic visit to Niobe, the capital of the KVR. The failed attempt prompted a brief civil war within Zuhara, in which the KVR intervened, siding with Hannibal and his supporters against the officers and the military.

Fast forward to 2285, and Hannibal’s descendants rule as the constitutional monarchs of Zuhara. The revolutionary-populist iconography and language of the Gadaffi regime (collapsed in 2003, after military intervention by the European Federation) has become the imagery of the Gadaffi Dynasty of Zuhara. The Jamahiriya - the “state of the masses” - now honors its Brotherly (or Sisterly) Leader as the “traditional ruler” of Zuhara.

And as for the flag, we have a simple green banner with the Libyan coat of arms. That’s about it,

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New America
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Not satisfied with propping up East Bloc and Moscow-aligned countries on Venus, the Soviets decided to just troll the US by slapping together a bunch of American expats and putting out the call to far-left elements within the US, offering them a chance to leave behind the reactionary binds of capitalist American culture, and build the dream of “New America” on Venus, away from those who would say “it would never work”. This included a sizable number of CPUSA members, former Weathermen, a smattering of Black Panthers (including Huey Newton and Angela Davis), radical feminists, American expatriates living in the Soviet Union and other communist bloc countries...and the entirety of the People’s Temple, including Jim Jones himself.

In 1979, the People’s Temple community of Jonestown, Guyana successfully negotiated their exodus to the Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets were just looking for a quick propaganda victory (“Hah! So what if a few Germans jump over the Berlin Wall! We just scored a thousand Americans!”). However, Jones’ heterodox Christian preaching, cult of personality and weapons-grade sexual appetite, was something Moscow would have preferred not to bother with. Jones sensed how unwelcome he was, and reasoned rather quickly that he had been used as a prop by the Soviets. Unsure if he or his cult would last long, he preached that so long as the Earth remained in the grip of the capitalist Antichrist, the future of the “spiritual revolution” would need to continue far, far away. And that’s how Jim Jones arrived on Venus.

Not many of these pioneers were necessarily cut out for life on a giant balloon floating hundreds of miles above Hell atop acidic clouds, but they made it work. Philosophically, New America was easily the most libertarian-minded of the early Venusian polities, perhaps because (like the Pilgrim Fathers before them), they preserved some of the cultural memes from the “evil” society they wanted to escape from. New America’s idealistic commitment to free expression, while far from perfect, differed greatly from the more authoritarian norms of the early Venusian polities, and this along with many other aspects of the colony, drew odd looks from more orthodox Marxist ideologues on Venus. New America remained the most democratic of the commie colonists on Venus, even with Jim Jones running around the aerostat. Though in fairness, his attempts to subvert and take over the colony were thwarted when, in 1989, “the world’s only heterosexual man” (an actual claim Jim Jones made about himself, OTL) had sex with the wrong woman and died of blood loss from a very embarrassing corner of his body. They waited three days for him to rise from the grave, but to no avail.

In 2285, the People’s Temple is still around, and they still revere Jones, but over the last two centuries or so, the Temple’s ideology has matured and evolved, while retaining most of its Christian-socialist teachings, and regarding their journey from Earth and the United States as one from the Egypt of a doomed Earth, across the Sinai of Outer Space, to socialist Zion amid the clouds of Venus, and eventually the revolutionized Eden of the Yellow Planet’s surface, post-terraforming. While “Templism” is the largest single percentage of New America’s religious demographics, one does not have to look hard to find other out-there gurus and religious movements among New Americans on 23rd century Venus, from dinosaur-riding hippy-tribes to vaguely-racist black sun-worshippers. This, alongside oddly-nostalgic diners, banjos, burgers and drive-in theaters, decorative communist murals and flags, all alongside the tropical weather and GMO dinosaurs that roam the surface of Venus, under a crescent sun...New America has some strange energy to it in 2285.

Anyway, the flag of the PRNA features thirteen blue and white horizontal stripes, symbolizing the “new direction” of the colony. The red field with the white CPUSA symbol represents...well, communism.

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1871
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So, the Soviets invited some Americans to Venus. Might as well invite some Frenchmen, too. Also, some left-leaning Quebecois radicals.

The colony’s unusual name is a reference to the Paris Commune of 1871. Like their fellow “Token Westerners” in New America, the people of 1871 are rather unlike the rest of the Venusian polities, though in a different way. Almost *because* they’re French, 1871’s history has been extremely turbulent due to a long series of internal philosophical disagreements.

Visiting the modern city-state of 1871 in the modern era (post-terraforming, 1871’s aerostat touched down on the shores of Hippolyta), one will find police in somewhat familiar olive drab uniforms standing on street corners and no shortage of red banners. But also surrealist augspace, virspace and meatspace installations serving as vehicles for the most esoteric of philosophical performance art. It’s so strange that even the performers and writers don’t even remember what the terms mean anymore, and radical left-wing discourse has devolved into a profitable form of vaguely-spiritual apolitical theater, which forms the basis of 1871’s 23rd century tourist economy. A society founded by idealists has turned into a niche avant-garde arthouse tourist trap.

As for the flag of 1871, officially, the Socialist Republic’s constitution doesn’t lay out any official symbolism, explicitly saying that the meaning of the flag’s iconography is to be left to subjective interpretation. *But ignoring that*, red is for socialism, “1871” because that’s the name, and a sea shell as a reference to Venus (in Greek myth, Aphrodite was born from a clamshell).

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Al-Aqsa
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The Palestinian Republic of Al-Aqsa is certainly one of the stranger stories of Venusian colonization.

Palestinians in space was not a completely unusual prospect in the late 70’s, what with the USSR leasing an orbital laboratory to the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1979. But the PLO was not involved in the colonization of Venus. Instead, a group of Palestinian communists studying in Moscow created the Palestinian Society for the Colonization of Venus (PSCV) in 1978. In 1979, one of their members (through a borderline-comedic series of events) was able to pitch the PSCV’s vision to the directors of Interkosmos, who were interested in countering American-backed plans by Israel to establish colonies on Mars and Mercury. Now the PSCV just needed enough Palestinians to sign on to peopling a toxic, hot nightmare world sixty-seven million miles from fresh air and cheap water.

While a small number of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank were on board, most who signed on actually came from Nicaragua, Syria and Chile. And as a result, the rinky-dink aerostat Al-Aqsa (Arabic for “The Farthest”) had a bilingual Arab population mostly made up of Spanish-speaking Christians, with a ruling political faction made up of Muslim, Arabic-speaking communists. The PSCV would remain as the de facto ruling party of Al-Aqsa until 2005, when multi-party democratic elections began after a bloodless revolution, in part a response to the PSCV’s ill-conceived attempts at “Arabization”. Al-Aqsa was technically the first totally independent polity on Venus, though like New America and 1871, it was more or less a puppet state of the USSR/KVR.

When the East German colony on Venus, Neudresden, declared its “complete and permanent” independence from Earth following the “capitalist conquest of the GDR” in 1989, it touched off the “Amber Revolutions” on Venus, which included a number of other Venusian colonies who felt that ties with their Terran motherlands were becoming untenable or undesirable, due to the end of the Cold War back on Earth. Al-Aqsa’s choice to declare independence in 1990 is often included in discussions about the Amber Revolutions, but in truth, it wasn’t severing itself from Earth because while it had ties to Palestine and Nicaragua, in truth it was a nation entirely of the Yellow Planet, and like Neudresden and all the others, it had decided to embrace this. Ten years can do a lot to people, when they’re tens of millions of miles from Earth.

Anyways. We’re here for flags. Not much to say about Al-Aqsa’s flag, really. It’s the Palestinian flag, plus a yellow crescent and “Palestine” written in Arabic calligraphy; it’s Palestine conquering the Yellow Planet for the glory of the Palestinian people, or the Yelloe Planet sustaining the Palestinian people and giving them a home. That’s about it.

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Eshtar
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While stopping short of political union, as a gesture of Arab unity, the Ba’athist regimes of Baghdad and Damascus did most of their space operations together, combining their assets to explore and exploit space together. Culminating in the advent of Babylon Space City, and the (controversial) construction of the Babylon Gun satellite launch system, devised by Canadian mad scientist, Gerald Bull. Without the Iranian Revolution and with Tehran still an American ally in this timeline (the Pahlavi monarchy makes last-minute reforms and Khomeini dies falling down a flight of stairs), Moscow put aside their prior anxieties around Iraqi-Syrian cooperation, to bolster their position in the region against the pro-Western alliance of Israel and Iran, which meant appealing to the Iraqi-Syrian axis. Which meant including them in Interkosmos.

The Arab Republic of Eshtar on Venus was established as a potential (or rather, wholly idealistic) model for eventual Iraqi-Syrian unity (Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein’s teenage girl egos notwithstanding). The aerostat, Eshtar, was governed by two men, known as Consul, who would be appointed by the Syrian and Iraqi Ba’ath Parties back on Earth. As you know, “day one” self-sufficiency every often meant de facto political autonomy for offworld colonies, but the Ba’athists were fairly insistent upon making sure they were in full control of the situation on Venus. This actually lasted quite a while, so it was a worthwhile investment, but following the collapse of Ba’athism in Syria and Iraq in 2012, and the creation of the Fertile Crescent Union, Eshtar was left independent, and reformed its system so that consuls were elected by the people of Eshtar. The flag was kept, mostly out of nostalgia. Nostalgia works on Venus.

Confusingly, when the aerostats of Venus began lowering down to the surface as the atmosphere started to thin out over the course of the 21st century, Eshtar settled down in northern Artemida, rather than the northern continent, Ishtar; Arabic-speakers on Venus who say “Eshtar” therefore must clarify between “Eshtar alqara” (“Eshtar the continent”) and “Eshtar albalad” (“Eshtar the country”).

Eshtar’s flag features two Pan-Arab tricolors framing two five-pointed green stars (one for Iraqis, one for Syrians) and a green Star of Ishtar, a symbol of the ancient Sumerian goddess, Inanna, who is associated with Venus.

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Djassi
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When you think of nations colonizing space, Guinea-Bissau doesn’t immediately spring to mind, does it? But with a little help from your friends (or rather, comrades), even a little guy can dream big.

Djassi was named after Guinea-Bissau’s revolutionary hero, Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral...or rather, his *nom de guerre*, Abel Djassi. The man died in 1973, but after his brother and their organization, the PAIGC, came to power in 1974, they jumped into this whole space game by participating in the Soviet-sponsored Uhuru orbital laboratory project (alongside cosmonauts from Angola, Ethiopia, Congo and Mozambique) in 1978, as part of the Interkosmos program. In the early 1980’s, socialist states in Africa were brought to Venus as well, to set up aerostat colonies in the heavenly skies above the hellish surface, and Guinea-Bissau was among them.

Djassi, like many African colonies on Venus, was originally built on idealism, but was confronted by grim realities in the late 80’s and 1990’s. While Guinea-Bissau was unstable throughout the 1980’s, the civil war in the 90’s was what broke them off Earth.

As for the flag...ah yes, the flag. That’s why I’m writing this. Light blue for the Venusian upper atmosphere, yellow for the sulfuric clouds beneath, a black star for the African proletariat/the people of Djassi, and a red line between the star and the hell-clouds below, representing socialist ingenuity and perseverance keeping Djassi afloat and safe from the hazards of living on Venus.

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Numidia
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Hammaguir Space Center in Hammaguir, Abadla District, was originally built by the French, abandoned in the 60’s, brought back online by the Algerian government in the early 80’s. Given Cold War fears of missile bases in a Soviet-friendly country (Gadaffi shooting crap into orbit was bad enough), NATO lowkey made it clear that any Soviet military presence at the launch site would not be tolerated. In fairness, the Algerians used Hammaguir for peaceful missions into orbit, but they did get technical assistance from the Warsaw Pact.

Algeria insisted on sending their astronauts and colonists into orbit on their own, and though the voyage to Venus itself was something only the Soviets could pull off, the Algerians were also very keen on having the affairs of their colonies (organized as the Democratic Republic of Numidia) were their own. This tradition of independence persists among the Numidian people in 2285.

Anyway. FLAG. The symbolism of the flag of Numidia is similar to that of Sokra Wat; a large green field was selected because it sticks out very effectively amid yellow clouds. The star and crescent symbol of the original Algerian flag, meanwhile, now incorporates the traditional symbol for Venus.

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New Belfast
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The smallest of all the original colonies on Venus, New Belfast’s original population was a mere 84 people, all of them Irish nationalists associated with the Irish National Liberation Army, the Irish People’s Liberation Organization and disaffected left-wingers within the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The dream was for New Belfast to be the “toe on Venus” for a united (and presumably socialist) Ireland; perhaps this was learning to fly before learning to walk, but what would one expect of the Irish colonizing space? Even as most of the colonies on Venus broke away from Earth in the 1990’s, New Belfast remained in the awkward position of representing a united Ireland on Earth that was waiting for its “motherland” to come into existence. However, like I said earlier, the distance between planets is a helluva drug. Some go crazy after being seperated from the planet their ancestors were meant to live on, most simply come to identify with their new home (like an orphan bonding with its adoptive mother), and the children born on Venus, who learned of Earth through film reels and, if they were lucky, VHS tapes, had at best a fascination with the Blue Planet as a far-off and exotic location, but little heartfelt connection to it. This was true of every colony on Venus, and New Belfast was no exception. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was simply a lame excuse for them to make it official: “screw the Six Counties, we’ll make an even better Eire on Venus, with blackjack and hookers!”.

Anyway, flag symbolism time! We have the Starry Plough (a yellow plough with a sword for a coulter and seven silver stars), a prominent symbol for Irish socialists and republicans. Red for socialism. Green field for that vast united Ireland that didn’t really happen the way New Belfast planned.

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Jinyun
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And lastly, we have the Democratic Republic of Jinyun. No, this isn’t the PRC colonizing Venus. Quite the opposite.

While China was able to establish colonies in Earth orbit, on the moon, and was even able to reach the asteroid belt and establish small colonies on Mercury, China failed to gain substantive footholds on Venus *or* Mars. The Sino-Soviet Split kept China out of the USSR’s good graces, so more or less just to fuck with Beijing, Moscow convinced communist dissidents living in exile in the USSR to join the “Jinyun Program”. Combined with Soviet citizens of Chinese descent, this was effectively a puppet state of the KVR/USSR. In 1999, Jinyun was a single small aerostat in the skies above Venus. In 2285, Jinyun (“gold cloud”) is a small, but very technologically-advanced little country on the terraformed surface of Venus.

The flag references the Five Races Under One Union banner of the original Republic of China (red for Han, yellow for Manchus, white for Hui, black for Tibetans, blue for Mongols), includes the Chinese characters for the colony’s name, and a yellow star for socialism.

Description
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Intro
====

Hello, here is the last (for now at least) batch of flags for early colonies on Venus, circa 1999, in the Overheaven timeline. There’s going to be a lot of lore here, because I’m like that. That’s about it. On to the flags.

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Masaya
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Masaya was established in the 1980’s as a show of Moscow-Managua solidarity/flipping off the US. Soviet infrastructure and Cuban experts proved instrumental in setting up Masaya-1, the first Nicaraguan aerostat habitat in the Venusian atmosphere, in 1984. In 1990, after the FSLN was voted out of power back on Earth, Masaya opted for independence, like many Venusian polities did in the Nineties. Most of the 802 Nicaraguan colonists on Venus at the time were FSLN hardliners. This, combined with the fact that in the 90's, the USSR was undergoing economic reforms and wasn’t able to engage in non-critical space projects, along with the existing distances between Earth and Venus, all contributed to Masaya going from functionally independent and autonomous, to legally sovereign. Get used to this, because you’re going to hear this story *a lot*. The Sandinistas remained in power on Venus, and would spend the 90’s and early 2000’s building a second aerostat, Masaya-2, completed in 2005. By 2050, there were a total of six Masaya habitats.

Today, all six of the Masaya aerostats are still airborne, and exist as an airborne, semi-nomadic nation in the blue skies of a terraformed Venus. Nicaraguan indiginous peoples like the Rama and Moskito are well-represented aboard Masaya-3, while Masaya-5 is mostly inhabited by Afro-Nicaraguans. Today, the Masaya Federation’s population is around 25.6 million.

The country’s name, “Masaya”, is derived from the Nicaraguan department where Augusto César Sandino, namesake of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, was born. The flag of Masaya uses the colors of the FSLN, combined with a stylized homage to the coat of arms of Nicaragua.

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Sathantha
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Sathantha was a colony established in 1983 by the Soviet Union, on behalf of its little ally, the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Not much to say, really. Similarly to Masaya, the shift towards self-sufficiency on and around Venus in the Nineties in response to a distracted Soviet Union, ultimately culminated in Sathantha’s declaration of independence from Laos in 1993.

After terraforming was completed on Venus, the Sathanese aerostats touched down in the arid deserts and semiarid grasslands of western Astarta. The Sathanese have adapted their Southeast Asian culture to desert living, like cooking ping kai with *Compsognathus* meat, marinated in cactus juice.

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Sokra Wat
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Overheaven’s timeline sees the Vietnam War end by 1971, and there is no US invasion of Cambodia or the rise of the Khmer Rouge. However, Cambodia still succumbs to Vietnamese-backed communists, albeit they aren’t really as popular this time due to Cambodia not being torn apart by bombings and invasions (this was key to the success of Khmer Rouge propaganda OTL). In an effort to show their regime’s effectiveness and ability not to waste money, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea joined Interkosmos and established a colony on Venus, known as Sokra Wat.

When the Cambodian monarchy was restored in the 1990’s, Sokra Wat, surprise surprise, decided to go fully independent and end its association with terrestrial Cambodia.

The flag of Sokra Wat, admittedly, is somewhat uncreative and utilitarian. It’s an ensign with the flag of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea in the upper-left corner, and a dark blue field. While this does resemble the flag of OTL’s Khmer Republic (a US-backed regime established in 1970, and replaced by the Khmer Rouge), that specific flag was never created in OH’s timeline and so this design lacks that connotation. Instead, the blue field was selected because it contrasted effectively with the yellow, white and sky-blue of Venus’ upper atmosphere.

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New Loango
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New Loango (named in reference to the old Congolese kingdom, Loango) was established by colonists from the People’s Republic of the Congo. Despite Brazzaville’s turbulent history in the 1970’s, Congolese cosmonauts were still able to get themselves to Venus, under the leadership of Denis Sassou Nguesso, until his ousting in 1992, when New Loango jumped onboard with the Amber Revolutions.

The flag of New Loango combines the wreathe, hammer and hoe, and motto of the People’s Republic of the Congo, with the hand and seven stars symbol of the old Loango kingdom’s banner. Red for socialism, and green-yellow-black for Pan-African unity, and, according to some, solidarity with the struggle against Apartheid back on Earth (though nobody in the 23rd century cares about that anymore, least of all folks living on Venus).

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Koguryŏ
======

Giving North Korea space assets raised eyebrows even in Moscow, but they were folded into Interkosmos anyway. The Soviets gifted them a four-ring habitat in low-earth orbit, Paektu Station, in 1978, and included North Korea in the first wave of Interkosmos colonies on Venus in 1982 (a date commemorated on the flag of Koguryŏ). In 1982, Kim Il-sung authorized the creation of the “Democratic Republic of Koguryŏ”, naming it after the ancient northern Korean kingdom, and treating it as an “autonomous” extension of the DPRK intended to demonstrate the virtue and effectiveness of the Juche Idea even on other planets. Paranoid of what would happen when North Koreans were hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth, Kim personally oversaw the creation of a special secret police to oversee every aspect of life within the Koguryŏ habitats, taking full advantage of the cramped, compact living quarters to maintain a police state exceeding even that of the DPRK itself; sending troops to put down a rebellion would have been impossible with the distances between Earth and Venus, so Kim wanted to instead breed dissent out of the people of Koguryŏ, and create the ideal and harmonious vision of Juche society. Officially known as the Colonial Security Department, this secret police would come to be known locally as “Soneul” (“the Hand”).

It would seem that this organization’s efforts were ultimately counterintuitive, however. Over the course of fifteen years, a covert body language emerged which allowed dissidents born on the Koguryŏ habitat to communicate. During the Second Korean War in the mid-90’s, there was an unexpected uprising aboard Koguryŏ, led by these teenage sign-language rebels. This rebellion succeeded...because the powers that be agreed with them. Turns out, with the exception of a small core of the Soneul, not even the high-ranking leaders of the Workers Party were onboard with the then-current regime aboard Koguryŏ. Or at least that’s what the Party said, so that they could convince a few hundred teenagers to take out the Soneul for them, and thereby secure absolute power over Koguryŏ, for the Party...but then the students forced the Party into the frontline hallways. Mice and men, indeed. The subsequent war between the students and Party against the Soneul was a bloody one, since the latter had handguns, and the former only knives, pens, chairs and wrenches. Casualties were grievous, but the rebels were victorious. And following the demise of the DPRK and reunification of the Korean peninsula back on Earth, came the liberalization of Koguryŏite society as well.

Over the course of the 21st century, Koguryŏ expanded, built more aerostats and actively contributed to the effort to terraform Venus. At the end of that process, most of the Koguryŏ aerostats settled in the cold-temperate polar regions of Venus’ northern continent, Ishtar, where they gently touched down and formed the basis for Koguryŏ City. Despite its fairly abusive colonial relationship with the bygone DPRK, Koguryŏ has very much clung on to a lot of the cultural trappings of the old North Korean regime - the murals, the uniforms, the taste in architecture, and one can even find old North Korean flags flying around Koguryŏ City.

=====
Zuhara
=====

Considering how spacy the man was in general, perhaps it’s not surprising that Muammar Gaddafi wanted Libyans in orbit (one could almost say…Space JAMahiriya. I’m sorry). However, the Mad Colonel’s ambitions went beyond low or even high orbit.

Established in 1986, the “People’s Jamahiriya of Zuhara” (Arabic for “bright one”, a reference to Venus) was made possible by Soviet spacecraft ferrying Libyan colonists from Earth orbit to Venus orbit, but Gaddafi insisted upon sending the cosmonauts into orbit on his own, via the Libyan People’s Space City, outside of Sirte (needless to say, the mere existence of Gaddafi’s rocket range kept many at NATO up at night *Gaddafi trollface intensifies*). He also insisted on having his own flesh and blood run Zuhara. In a characteristically Gaddafi move, he sent his 11-year-old son, Hannibal Gadaffi, to Venus, to eventually become its supreme leader when he turned 27, the age of his father at the time he took over Libya. Until he grew old enough to run Zuhara, the colony would be run by a council of trusted military officers from Gaddafi’s tribe. Gaddafi’s reasoning was that he was the greatest, leadership ability was genetic, and therefore the only way to run a Venusian space colony would be to have a mini-Gaddafi running the show. The Soviets were presented with this idea, gave it a brief, perplexed stare, shrugged and handed Gaddafi the paperwork anyway.

Against all odds, Gadaffi’s gaudily-decorated aerostat colonies on Venus (three were built, Zuhara-1, Zuhara-2 and Zuhara-3) worked out throughout the late 80’s and the 1990’s. Throughout his youth, Hannibal Gadaffi was groomed to eventually become “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution”, becoming a bit of a child star. Beginning in the mid-90’s, however, the Provisional Colonial Command Council (that group of military officers I mentioned earlier) started to grow wary about 2002, and their inevitable loss of power. In 2001, they attempted to assassinate “Prince Hannibal”, while he was on a diplomatic visit to Niobe, the capital of the KVR. The failed attempt prompted a brief civil war within Zuhara, in which the KVR intervened, siding with Hannibal and his supporters against the officers and the military.

Fast forward to 2285, and Hannibal’s descendants rule as the constitutional monarchs of Zuhara. The revolutionary-populist iconography and language of the Gadaffi regime (collapsed in 2003, after military intervention by the European Federation) has become the imagery of the Gadaffi Dynasty of Zuhara. The Jamahiriya - the “state of the masses” - now honors its Brotherly (or Sisterly) Leader as the “traditional ruler” of Zuhara.

And as for the flag, we have a simple green banner with the Libyan coat of arms. That’s about it,

=========
New America
=========

Not satisfied with propping up East Bloc and Moscow-aligned countries on Venus, the Soviets decided to just troll the US by slapping together a bunch of American expats and putting out the call to far-left elements within the US, offering them a chance to leave behind the reactionary binds of capitalist American culture, and build the dream of “New America” on Venus, away from those who would say “it would never work”. This included a sizable number of CPUSA members, former Weathermen, a smattering of Black Panthers (including Huey Newton and Angela Davis), radical feminists, American expatriates living in the Soviet Union and other communist bloc countries...and the entirety of the People’s Temple, including Jim Jones himself.

In 1979, the People’s Temple community of Jonestown, Guyana successfully negotiated their exodus to the Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets were just looking for a quick propaganda victory (“Hah! So what if a few Germans jump over the Berlin Wall! We just scored a thousand Americans!”). However, Jones’ heterodox Christian preaching, cult of personality and weapons-grade sexual appetite, was something Moscow would have preferred not to bother with. Jones sensed how unwelcome he was, and reasoned rather quickly that he had been used as a prop by the Soviets. Unsure if he or his cult would last long, he preached that so long as the Earth remained in the grip of the capitalist Antichrist, the future of the “spiritual revolution” would need to continue far, far away. And that’s how Jim Jones arrived on Venus.

Not many of these pioneers were necessarily cut out for life on a giant balloon floating hundreds of miles above Hell atop acidic clouds, but they made it work. Philosophically, New America was easily the most libertarian-minded of the early Venusian polities, perhaps because (like the Pilgrim Fathers before them), they preserved some of the cultural memes from the “evil” society they wanted to escape from. New America’s idealistic commitment to free expression, while far from perfect, differed greatly from the more authoritarian norms of the early Venusian polities, and this along with many other aspects of the colony, drew odd looks from more orthodox Marxist ideologues on Venus. New America remained the most democratic of the commie colonists on Venus, even with Jim Jones running around the aerostat. Though in fairness, his attempts to subvert and take over the colony were thwarted when, in 1989, “the world’s only heterosexual man” (an actual claim Jim Jones made about himself, OTL) had sex with the wrong woman and died of blood loss from a very embarrassing corner of his body. They waited three days for him to rise from the grave, but to no avail.

In 2285, the People’s Temple is still around, and they still revere Jones, but over the last two centuries or so, the Temple’s ideology has matured and evolved, while retaining most of its Christian-socialist teachings, and regarding their journey from Earth and the United States as one from the Egypt of a doomed Earth, across the Sinai of Outer Space, to socialist Zion amid the clouds of Venus, and eventually the revolutionized Eden of the Yellow Planet’s surface, post-terraforming. While “Templism” is the largest single percentage of New America’s religious demographics, one does not have to look hard to find other out-there gurus and religious movements among New Americans on 23rd century Venus, from dinosaur-riding hippy-tribes to vaguely-racist black sun-worshippers. This, alongside oddly-nostalgic diners, banjos, burgers and drive-in theaters, decorative communist murals and flags, all alongside the tropical weather and GMO dinosaurs that roam the surface of Venus, under a crescent sun...New America has some strange energy to it in 2285.

Anyway, the flag of the PRNA features thirteen blue and white horizontal stripes, symbolizing the “new direction” of the colony. The red field with the white CPUSA symbol represents...well, communism.

====
1871
====

So, the Soviets invited some Americans to Venus. Might as well invite some Frenchmen, too. Also, some left-leaning Quebecois radicals.

The colony’s unusual name is a reference to the Paris Commune of 1871. Like their fellow “Token Westerners” in New America, the people of 1871 are rather unlike the rest of the Venusian polities, though in a different way. Almost *because* they’re French, 1871’s history has been extremely turbulent due to a long series of internal philosophical disagreements.

Visiting the modern city-state of 1871 in the modern era (post-terraforming, 1871’s aerostat touched down on the shores of Hippolyta), one will find police in somewhat familiar olive drab uniforms standing on street corners and no shortage of red banners. But also surrealist augspace, virspace and meatspace installations serving as vehicles for the most esoteric of philosophical performance art. It’s so strange that even the performers and writers don’t even remember what the terms mean anymore, and radical left-wing discourse has devolved into a profitable form of vaguely-spiritual apolitical theater, which forms the basis of 1871’s 23rd century tourist economy. A society founded by idealists has turned into a niche avant-garde arthouse tourist trap.

As for the flag of 1871, officially, the Socialist Republic’s constitution doesn’t lay out any official symbolism, explicitly saying that the meaning of the flag’s iconography is to be left to subjective interpretation. *But ignoring that*, red is for socialism, “1871” because that’s the name, and a sea shell as a reference to Venus (in Greek myth, Aphrodite was born from a clamshell).

======
Al-Aqsa
======

The Palestinian Republic of Al-Aqsa is certainly one of the stranger stories of Venusian colonization.

Palestinians in space was not a completely unusual prospect in the late 70’s, what with the USSR leasing an orbital laboratory to the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1979. But the PLO was not involved in the colonization of Venus. Instead, a group of Palestinian communists studying in Moscow created the Palestinian Society for the Colonization of Venus (PSCV) in 1978. In 1979, one of their members (through a borderline-comedic series of events) was able to pitch the PSCV’s vision to the directors of Interkosmos, who were interested in countering American-backed plans by Israel to establish colonies on Mars and Mercury. Now the PSCV just needed enough Palestinians to sign on to peopling a toxic, hot nightmare world sixty-seven million miles from fresh air and cheap water.

While a small number of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank were on board, most who signed on actually came from Nicaragua, Syria and Chile. And as a result, the rinky-dink aerostat Al-Aqsa (Arabic for “The Farthest”) had a bilingual Arab population mostly made up of Spanish-speaking Christians, with a ruling political faction made up of Muslim, Arabic-speaking communists. The PSCV would remain as the de facto ruling party of Al-Aqsa until 2005, when multi-party democratic elections began after a bloodless revolution, in part a response to the PSCV’s ill-conceived attempts at “Arabization”. Al-Aqsa was technically the first totally independent polity on Venus, though like New America and 1871, it was more or less a puppet state of the USSR/KVR.

When the East German colony on Venus, Neudresden, declared its “complete and permanent” independence from Earth following the “capitalist conquest of the GDR” in 1989, it touched off the “Amber Revolutions” on Venus, which included a number of other Venusian colonies who felt that ties with their Terran motherlands were becoming untenable or undesirable, due to the end of the Cold War back on Earth. Al-Aqsa’s choice to declare independence in 1990 is often included in discussions about the Amber Revolutions, but in truth, it wasn’t severing itself from Earth because while it had ties to Palestine and Nicaragua, in truth it was a nation entirely of the Yellow Planet, and like Neudresden and all the others, it had decided to embrace this. Ten years can do a lot to people, when they’re tens of millions of miles from Earth.

Anyways. We’re here for flags. Not much to say about Al-Aqsa’s flag, really. It’s the Palestinian flag, plus a yellow crescent and “Palestine” written in Arabic calligraphy; it’s Palestine conquering the Yellow Planet for the glory of the Palestinian people, or the Yelloe Planet sustaining the Palestinian people and giving them a home. That’s about it.

=====
Eshtar
=====

While stopping short of political union, as a gesture of Arab unity, the Ba’athist regimes of Baghdad and Damascus did most of their space operations together, combining their assets to explore and exploit space together. Culminating in the advent of Babylon Space City, and the (controversial) construction of the Babylon Gun satellite launch system, devised by Canadian mad scientist, Gerald Bull. Without the Iranian Revolution and with Tehran still an American ally in this timeline (the Pahlavi monarchy makes last-minute reforms and Khomeini dies falling down a flight of stairs), Moscow put aside their prior anxieties around Iraqi-Syrian cooperation, to bolster their position in the region against the pro-Western alliance of Israel and Iran, which meant appealing to the Iraqi-Syrian axis. Which meant including them in Interkosmos.

The Arab Republic of Eshtar on Venus was established as a potential (or rather, wholly idealistic) model for eventual Iraqi-Syrian unity (Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein’s teenage girl egos notwithstanding). The aerostat, Eshtar, was governed by two men, known as Consul, who would be appointed by the Syrian and Iraqi Ba’ath Parties back on Earth. As you know, “day one” self-sufficiency every often meant de facto political autonomy for offworld colonies, but the Ba’athists were fairly insistent upon making sure they were in full control of the situation on Venus. This actually lasted quite a while, so it was a worthwhile investment, but following the collapse of Ba’athism in Syria and Iraq in 2012, and the creation of the Fertile Crescent Union, Eshtar was left independent, and reformed its system so that consuls were elected by the people of Eshtar. The flag was kept, mostly out of nostalgia. Nostalgia works on Venus.

Confusingly, when the aerostats of Venus began lowering down to the surface as the atmosphere started to thin out over the course of the 21st century, Eshtar settled down in northern Artemida, rather than the northern continent, Ishtar; Arabic-speakers on Venus who say “Eshtar” therefore must clarify between “Eshtar alqara” (“Eshtar the continent”) and “Eshtar albalad” (“Eshtar the country”).

Eshtar’s flag features two Pan-Arab tricolors framing two five-pointed green stars (one for Iraqis, one for Syrians) and a green Star of Ishtar, a symbol of the ancient Sumerian goddess, Inanna, who is associated with Venus.

=====
Djassi
=====

When you think of nations colonizing space, Guinea-Bissau doesn’t immediately spring to mind, does it? But with a little help from your friends (or rather, comrades), even a little guy can dream big.

Djassi was named after Guinea-Bissau’s revolutionary hero, Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral...or rather, his *nom de guerre*, Abel Djassi. The man died in 1973, but after his brother and their organization, the PAIGC, came to power in 1974, they jumped into this whole space game by participating in the Soviet-sponsored Uhuru orbital laboratory project (alongside cosmonauts from Angola, Ethiopia, Congo and Mozambique) in 1978, as part of the Interkosmos program. In the early 1980’s, socialist states in Africa were brought to Venus as well, to set up aerostat colonies in the heavenly skies above the hellish surface, and Guinea-Bissau was among them.

Djassi, like many African colonies on Venus, was originally built on idealism, but was confronted by grim realities in the late 80’s and 1990’s. While Guinea-Bissau was unstable throughout the 1980’s, the civil war in the 90’s was what broke them off Earth.

As for the flag...ah yes, the flag. That’s why I’m writing this. Light blue for the Venusian upper atmosphere, yellow for the sulfuric clouds beneath, a black star for the African proletariat/the people of Djassi, and a red line between the star and the hell-clouds below, representing socialist ingenuity and perseverance keeping Djassi afloat and safe from the hazards of living on Venus.

======
Numidia
======

Hammaguir Space Center in Hammaguir, Abadla District, was originally built by the French, abandoned in the 60’s, brought back online by the Algerian government in the early 80’s. Given Cold War fears of missile bases in a Soviet-friendly country (Gadaffi shooting crap into orbit was bad enough), NATO lowkey made it clear that any Soviet military presence at the launch site would not be tolerated. In fairness, the Algerians used Hammaguir for peaceful missions into orbit, but they did get technical assistance from the Warsaw Pact.

Algeria insisted on sending their astronauts and colonists into orbit on their own, and though the voyage to Venus itself was something only the Soviets could pull off, the Algerians were also very keen on having the affairs of their colonies (organized as the Democratic Republic of Numidia) were their own. This tradition of independence persists among the Numidian people in 2285.

Anyway. FLAG. The symbolism of the flag of Numidia is similar to that of Sokra Wat; a large green field was selected because it sticks out very effectively amid yellow clouds. The star and crescent symbol of the original Algerian flag, meanwhile, now incorporates the traditional symbol for Venus.

========
New Belfast
========

The smallest of all the original colonies on Venus, New Belfast’s original population was a mere 84 people, all of them Irish nationalists associated with the Irish National Liberation Army, the Irish People’s Liberation Organization and disaffected left-wingers within the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The dream was for New Belfast to be the “toe on Venus” for a united (and presumably socialist) Ireland; perhaps this was learning to fly before learning to walk, but what would one expect of the Irish colonizing space? Even as most of the colonies on Venus broke away from Earth in the 1990’s, New Belfast remained in the awkward position of representing a united Ireland on Earth that was waiting for its “motherland” to come into existence. However, like I said earlier, the distance between planets is a helluva drug. Some go crazy after being seperated from the planet their ancestors were meant to live on, most simply come to identify with their new home (like an orphan bonding with its adoptive mother), and the children born on Venus, who learned of Earth through film reels and, if they were lucky, VHS tapes, had at best a fascination with the Blue Planet as a far-off and exotic location, but little heartfelt connection to it. This was true of every colony on Venus, and New Belfast was no exception. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was simply a lame excuse for them to make it official: “screw the Six Counties, we’ll make an even better Eire on Venus, with blackjack and hookers!”.

Anyway, flag symbolism time! We have the Starry Plough (a yellow plough with a sword for a coulter and seven silver stars), a prominent symbol for Irish socialists and republicans. Red for socialism. Green field for that vast united Ireland that didn’t really happen the way New Belfast planned.

=====
Jinyun
=====

And lastly, we have the Democratic Republic of Jinyun. No, this isn’t the PRC colonizing Venus. Quite the opposite.

While China was able to establish colonies in Earth orbit, on the moon, and was even able to reach the asteroid belt and establish small colonies on Mercury, China failed to gain substantive footholds on Venus *or* Mars. The Sino-Soviet Split kept China out of the USSR’s good graces, so more or less just to fuck with Beijing, Moscow convinced communist dissidents living in exile in the USSR to join the “Jinyun Program”. Combined with Soviet citizens of Chinese descent, this was effectively a puppet state of the KVR/USSR. In 1999, Jinyun was a single small aerostat in the skies above Venus. In 2285, Jinyun (“gold cloud”) is a small, but very technologically-advanced little country on the terraformed surface of Venus.

The flag references the Five Races Under One Union banner of the original Republic of China (red for Han, yellow for Manchus, white for Hui, black for Tibetans, blue for Mongols), includes the Chinese characters for the colony’s name, and a yellow star for socialism.