Octovexillology, as its name suggests, is the study of octagonal flags (even though it is technically the study of eight flags). Although the term is fairly generic, it actually refers to a particular type of “flag” which, instead of being a cloth rectangle, is instead a wooden octagon. The origin and evolution of such flags is highly important to its creation, and so we will use this article to laying the groundwork as to how these flags came to be.
In later articles, we will discuss what those flags are in concrete terms, and also what they mean when they start being put together.
With the existence of society, several things are inevitable. These are the existence of groups; the desire to note the existence of such groups; and eventually, as writing is invented, the desire to graphically identify these groups. Such is the case, the desire for graphical group identification device is thus a natural consequence.
On Earth such a desire is in modern times resolved by the use of flags. These are typically rectangular cloth objects that can be hung at very high locations permitting visibility from a long distance at least as long as the wind holds. These come from a rich history of European art known as heraldry, which come with it a particular language that is difficult to express but nevertheless learnable by any human and therefore can brought upon by the rest of the world. However, even on Earth, the desire for group identification devices is too universal for just one civilisation to cover and so there are far more than one way to make these devices.
So when it comes to creating a world that is nominally unrelated to such cultures, it would seem unusual for the peoples of this world to also use a rectangular cloth flag for the usage of a graphical group identification device. It would seem more natural for them to have evolved a different solution, one that has overlapping but different needs. The idea of an ovecs is derived from such an expectation, where we have left some ideas the same from Earth but tweaked small parameters so that the outcome is distinct but nevertheless recognisable. It should be reasonably expected that, should the proverbial butterfly’s wings flapped just that slightly differently, Earth itself might have ended up with these flags.
Furthermore, explaining the history of such a process in this world should inspire the reader who also builds worlds to consider this as an additional dimension as to their While a lot of the details in this series of documents is motivated by the ideas that language-oriented worldbuilding generally spawns, the result should be easy enough to enjoy for anyone of any discipline.
To fully appreciate the setting, we first need to briefly describe the world that surrounds the flags, and how this would have changed things. We will make some reference to the Drsk grammar here, as there is rather a lot of overlap of material between the grammar and this document, and this series of articles is to some extent spun off from that book as it has become somewhat too long and tangential to the main topic. However, it is not necessary to have read the Drsk grammar to any level in order to understand this article.