Bastonia is a fictional European country, created by J. Sebastian Perry for the Descartes Daily News series of podcasts. It is located on the fictional St. Sebastian Archipelago, 50 miles to the southwest of the British Isles. Its capital city is St. Sebastian City. The island with the fewest inhabitants is Simon Island, with only one town, Descartes (population 64).

History

Bastonia was discovered in 603 AD by Sebastianus Sepremius (or St. Sebastian). It was called St-Sebastonia for more than three hundred years, when Sovereign Simon Blackstone shortened the name to "Bastonia" in 943.

Languages

Regional languages include Bastonian, Simlish, English, French, and Japanese, though some German and Italian is spoken on the northern islands.

Bastonian

Bastonian is a variant of Latin. St. Sebastian only spoke Latin, so when he founded St-Sebastonia, he ordered it to become the official language. After St. Sebastian died in 687, few of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants spoke Latin. They had to guess at what the Latin form of their words were. This fractured Latin became Bastonian.

English

English was brought to Bastonia in 1546 by English explorer, Sir Byron Flagstaff. In recent years, English has overshadowed Bastonian as the most highly-spoken language in Bastonia.

French

French was brought over to Bastonia in 1583 by French explorers, Jean-Pierre Delacours and Claude Louis Asquieux. The language has become the second-most widely-spoken language in the country.

Japanese

Japanese was introduced to Bastonia in 1901, when Japanese photojournalist Satoru Yoshimura sparked the Great Japanese Immigration period. Most Japanese preferred English over their native language, so Japanese is not spoken much of anywhere except Miyamoto and Yoshimoto Islands.

Simlish

Simlish (originally "Simonish") was created in 1940 by the Simon Island militia as a code language. It was used mostly to relay messages to other islands' militias during World War II. Code talkers would send messages via radio. In 1945, the Nazis managed to get hold of a copy of the Simonish code book, so the militias were forced to abandon it and create another language (which was not necessary, as the Axis Powers surrendered to the Allies the very next day). After the war, Simonish was rediscovered by Corporal Nigel Berkshire when he was cleaning out a file cabinet at Simon Island Militia HQ. He changed its name to "SIMish" ("SIM" meaning "Simon Island Militia"), added a few words and phrases, and began teaching people how to use it. The name "Simlish" came when journalist Aleksandr Romanovsky misspelled it in a St. Sebastian Times article. It is contrary to popular belief, the Bastonian Simlish and the Simlish used in The Sims have only the name in common. Bastonian Simlish is comprised of anagrams and acronyms whereas the Simlish from The Sims is generally regarded as baseless gibberish.

Technology

Bastonia is widely considered to be the technological capital of the world. There is an island on the easternmost edge of the archipelago, called Cyrus Atoll, whose only building is a University of Bastonia laboratory where experiments in computer programming, robotics, and meteorology are conducted.

Computer Programming

Several programming languages have been developed in Bastonia. One such language is the Universally-Applied Programming Language (or UAPL). UAPL is an all-purpose dialect which combines BASIC, C , and HTML. UAPL is the most versatile of computer languages, as it the programming format is largely based on XML. Also, Bastonians were the first to successfully create a web programming language (called Networked Files Programming Language, or NFPL). This language eventually evolved into a primitive form of HTML.

Robotics

Bastonia and ASIMO

Robotics has always been a point of interest with Bastonian scientists. In 2000, shortly after the release of Honda's ASIMO, Professor Kellen Nigel Radcliffe, Sr. developed a way to affordably mass-produce complex computer-controlled mechanical equipment, such as robots. After building the machine and borrowing an ASIMO robot, Prof. Radcliffe successfully reverse-engineered it and fed the specifications into his machine's computer. Twelve hours later, a nearly exact replica of ASIMO was created. Despite finding this method to be most practical, Honda did not desire to commercially produce ASIMO robots.