Micronational Stamps

To close out our week of "micronational collectibles", we'll consider the postage stamp. While it isn't something that Slabovia has actively pursued, many micronations have their own stamps made.

Stamp from the Aerican Empire, given out at MicroCon 2025

A set of stamps commemorating the first four MicroCon events, created by West Who

An assortment of stamps from Obscurium

What's more, many micronations actually use their stamps in mail - as long as your envelope has the appropriate postage for the "macronation" it'll be passing through, it generally moves just fine through the postal services. The photo below includes envelopes I've received from (top to bottom) Angyalistan, West Who, Ruritania, Duckionary, and Obscurium

An assortment of micronational stamps that have moved through the macronational postal systems

This concludes this week's exploration of various micronational souvenirs I've collected over the years. Hopefully it's given you some idea of the creativity involved in creating and running a micronation!

Micronational Currency

Continuing with our theme of "micronational collectibles", another area that many micronations choose to explore is making their own currency. The picture below has representative examples from three different micronations, including Aigues-Mortes (top left), the Aerican Empire (bottom left and lower right), and Molossia (the poker chip, er, coin in the top right).

Examples of micronational currency

The Flamant from Aigues-Mortes is particularly interesting because it's a "legal" currency - due to a quirk of French banking laws, they were able to create a currency that's legal tender within the town of Aigues-Mortes, and is accepted by at least some merchants there.

The Molossian coin is a "5 valora" piece, the valora being somehow pegged to the price of Pilsbury cookie dough (yes, the stuff that comes in a tube).

You can't see the detail very well, but the blue coin from the Aerican Empire on the right is a 1.99 Bacon piece, Bacon being the name of the Emperor's cat. They print the coins in different sizes using a 3D printer, and the value of each coin is pegged to the amount of plastic filament used in making that particular coin.

Another example of bank notes comes from Karnia-Ruthenia - I picked these up at MicroCon 2025. They are relatively small (measuring 5x10 cm or 2x4 inches) but they feature very nice engraving!

Bank notes from Karnia-Ruthenia

Micronational Challenge Coins

This week, I'm focusing on several different micronational "trappings" (including challenge coins, currency, and stamps) that I've managed to build small collections of over the years - they might give you some idea about the depth and breadth of creativity that micronations can pursue.

Challenge coins aren't too common in the micronational world yet, but that's slowly starting to change. One of the elements in the "swag bag" at MicroCon 2025 was a challenge coin, in fact. Here's the ones I have collected in the last few years. This includes the aforementioned MicroCon 2025 coin from the Aerican Empire, one presented to me by Jordan Farmer, the former prime minister of Westarctica, and one from the Chief of Staff of Karnia-Ruthenia, as well as a commemorative coin I had made and distributed to signatories of the CHICAGO Agreement (see note below) and my personal challenge coin.

Top Row: MicroCon 2025, Prime Minister of Westarctica, Karnia-Ruthenia Chief of Staff
Bottom Row: CHICAGO Agreement commemorative coin, my personal challenge coin

Same coins as above, just flipped over!

NOTE: The CHICAGO Accord (or Agreement) is short for the Cyber Hostility Intervention Comprehensive Agreement Covering Offense. It's a treaty I drew up in conjunction with my talk at MicroCon 2023 (which was held near Chicago!) about cyber warfare and micronations. Effectively, signatories of the CHICAGO Accord promise not to engage in offensive cyber warfare against other micronations. A list of signatories of the CHICAGO Accord can be found here.

Edited to add: if you're wondering what the deal is with challenge coins, Howard Tayler wrote a pretty good guide on his Schlock Mercenary web comic some years ago.

What is a fons honorum and why is it important?

 Did you ever wonder how royal titles like "baron" or "lord" get granted, or how a chivalric order gets established? In this case, both questions have the same answer - the fons honorum, or (literally) "fount of honour".

The term fons honorum comes from Latin, and refers to an individual whose position grants them the right to confer titles on others and/or to establish chivalric orders. Typically, this is the sovereign ruler of a nation, such as a king or queen. Elected officials such as presidents and prime ministers are typically NOT considered to be a fons honorum.

A related but different concept is the military commission - in many military organizations, an officer carries a "commission" which is a formal document communicating the individual's authority to effectively act on behalf of the head of state in the command of others. In this case the head of state could be a president or prime minister, rather than just a sovereign. As an aside, this is also why enlisted military personnel such as sergeants and corporals are sometimes called NCM (non-commissioned members) or NCO (non-commissioned officers). Not to muddy the waters further, but in the US military a "warrant officer" has their position and authority granted by a warrant that's usually signed by the secretary of the respective service, rather than a commission signed by the president.

Going back to the topic at hand, i.e. the fons honorum, it is possible to delegate the authority - in Slabovia's case, I granted the Baron of Mars (AKA my chancellor) and his household the authority to create and grant a household honour, and I understand that they are now designing it. I also granted my queen-consort, Queen Lynne, the authority to name individuals to her "Queen-Consort's Fellowship", an honour she has granted numerous times over the last eight years.

The Queen-Consort's Fellowship medal

To sum up, a ruling sovereign is the fons honorum, or fount of honour, for the nation they rule. As such, yes, I have the power to elevate someone to the nobility - I could, for example, proclaim someone to be the Baron of Barrie or the Count of Cabbagetown, and such a title would be valid within the confines and the context of Slabovia. Whether that could get you any perks, such as a discount at your local drycleaners, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Oh, and before anyone asks.. No, I will not elevate you to the peerage (or knight you) just because you asked. Such honours are bestowed for a reason, and giving them out like candy would cheapen them.

Administrative Announcements

 For the last couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with blogging more frequently, taking advantage of the ability to schedule posts for future publication. Going forward, I'm going to try to post three times a week on Blogger, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Ideally I'll have the posts queued up beforehand so they will auto-post at 7am on the days in question. And, if I've done it right (using "If This Then That" or IFTTT), then such postings should trigger a corresponding post over on my Facebook profile. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll also link my Bluesky account to update when the blog does.

And hopefully I can keep coming up with enough content for that schedule... Regardless, I will NEVER use generative artificial intelligence systems to write my posts for me. I have used it for generating pictures, including the centre-piece of the KOALA patch as previously discussed, because I'm a crappy artist, but the writing here is all mine.

Oh, I also have a Linktree now - you can find it here. (https://linktr.ee/KingGeorge2.0) As I evolve my social media presence I'll make sure to keep the Linktree updated.

I'm of two minds about Twitter (or X or whatever): on the one hand, it's still got over 600 million users, and at least a third of those are active, but on the other hand I left it for some good reasons, and it seems to have gotten worse since I left, not better (based on news reporting about the antics of Grok, the Twitter AI, anyway). I'll have to consider this some more.

New unit, new uniform (same king)

 I wore a new uniform for the diplomatic reception on the Friday night at MicroCon, as can be seen in the picture below. It represents the public debut of our new military unit, the King's Own Airborne Llama Artillery, or KOALA for short.

Dress uniform for KOALA, the King's Own Airborne Llama Artillery.
(My chancellor, Rankin, is visible on the right side of the photo.
And someone fuzzy is in the background?)

KOALA is actually based on two different historical facts - or, at least, one fact and a rumour. First, the rumour:  according to my father, our family might have been descended from a famous US military officer, who revolutionized the use of artillery in the Mexican-American war by realizing you didn't actually need to unhitch the horses to fire. (As I always say, as a bonus, it made the horses run a lot faster, too!) Second, a few years ago I learned about "zamburak", which were camel-mounted artillery pieces. 

The name of the unit is also based on historical precedents, between "horse artillery" units such as the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and units like the "Queen's Own Rifles". So KOALA is sort of a mashup of the two, with "airborne" thrown in for good measure.

So, since llamas are the national animals of Slabovia, I thought, could we do the same thing but with llamas? And then, to make them our "rapid response" unit, we could make them airborne!

The only thing keeping the unit from "going live" is a lack of airborne-qualified llamas. 

Oh, and yes, that's the head of a stuffed llama poking out of the holster - when anyone asked if it was loaded, I replied, "Yes, he's been drinking all day, he's QUITE loaded at this point." The llama was given to me by Zar Antonov of Obscuria in a parcel he sent me earlier this year. I put it in the holster because I wanted to make it quite clear that there was nothing more, um, pistol-like in said holster, just in case anyone got "twitchy". 

Another shot of the KOALA uniform, with Molossian President Kevin Baugh for scale.

Oh, and KOALA has a "Unit Crest" as well! I came up with idea for the overall design, and Chancellor Rankin was kind enough to help me realize my vision, because curved text can be a royal pain if you don't have the right image editing software! I did use Generative AI to come up with the "Koala bear with a gun" in the center of the piece, because I am spectacularly bad at drawing.

The crest for KOALA.

Panel Discussion from MicroCon 2025

 In addition to my own talk at MicroCon 2025, I also took part in a panel discussion called "The Show Must Go Wrong", together with the hosts of MicroCon 2015 (His Excellency Kevin Baugh and his wife Adrienne), MicroCon 2017 (HRH Princess Julianna representing Ruritania), and MicroCon 2022 (Grand Duke Travis McHenry of Westarctica).

The panel discussion is a bit long (the video's about 42 minutes long) but it was good fun.

You can watch it here.