User:Arsonal/Prester

Prester (プレステール) is a fictional world that serves as the setting for the Japanese animated television series Last Exile.

Background
The world of Prester is divided up into two lands - Anatoray and Disith - and the only way of reaching one from the other is to cross the Grand Stream. Disith is all but completely undescribed within the series – all that is truly known of it is that due to a rapidly falling temperature akin to an ice age, its people are attempting to evacuate to Anatoray. It is Anatoray that serves as the primary setting of Last Exile. It is a monarchy, and its citizens have few complaints of its leadership. It is an arid, mountainous land well into its Industrial Revolution – steel and steam engines are common. Though it is plagued by drought, it is thus able to survive due to relatively well-developed water purification technology – though most settle for potable but obviously dirty groundwater. However, First Water (the purest available in Anatoray, what modern society would call common filtered drinking water) is still not beyond the means of most - they simply treat it as an extravagant commodity. Also, due to the presence of an ore known as Claudia, it is currently experiencing a Golden Age of Aviation in the form of heavier-than-air craft known as Vanships. As Anatoray's mountainous terrain is too dynamic for rail transport, these have become quite prevalent. Gas-lit beacons dot the landscape, and aerial refueling stations extend the range of Vanships across the land.

As the series starts, it is difficult to understand how the two lands of Anatoray and Disith can only be traveled between by flying high into the sky, entering the Grand Stream, and flying through a bottle-like hurricane out to the other side. In the last episode, when the great vessel Exile is finally found and used to dissipate the Grand Stream, we see that the planet itself is actually two smaller planets joined together into an hourglass shape, with each world facing the other. Once the skies are clear, anyone standing on the surface of either land can look up and faintly see the landscape of the other.

This is what the phrase written on the book at the beginning of every episode means: λαστ εξιλε ιν τηε βοττλε "last exile in the bottle" The phrase is written in Greek letters, like all other text in the series, and refers to the fact that Prester is a world shaped like a bottle, or an hourglass. It has a narrow portion in the very middle, which is filled with the Grand Stream until the last episode, and it widens out at either end, and these ends contain the miniature planets that come to be called Anatoray and Disith.

The only time Prester is truly shown in this form is on the last episode when the cast looks out from the deck of Exile and sees Prester from outer space. Up until that point, the writers and art directors of the series had been playfully toying with revealing that fact by spreading the hourglass shape all over the series on various maps, icons, artwork, and royal emblems.

In the series, during the 11th episode, the character Alister uses a sextant to plot her position according to the stars. This is when she utters the phrase, "The stars have become unreliable." She is referring to the slow, spinning motion that the enormous hourglass-shaped world of Prester is making in the heavens, giving the stars an erratic pattern across the sky when viewed from Anatoray.

Grand Stream
The Grand Stream is an air current, continually rushing 120-knot(140 mph) storm that circles the center of the hour-glass shaped planet of Prester. The torrential storm always rages in the high altitudes of the skies of both Anatoray and Disith and is thought all but impassible – even giant capital ships must follow paths of relatively calm air current. If even a skilled pilot attempts to go into the torrents he has a great risk of getting lost, crashing, or being destroyed by the large hulking form of the Exile. Throughout the series, most believe attempting the crossing in a Vanship to be tantamount to suicide.

Exile (ship)
Exile is a massive interstellar transport ship that originated on Earth and brought people to the world of Prester. Revealed in the middle of the Last Exile series, it was seen as a mysterious object throughout the early part of the series. Activated by a poem, known as The Mysterion, it has no allegiances to any of the three nations: Anatoray, Disith, and The Guild. The actual ship features no defense from attack, using a Biogenic Circulating Claudia reactor for power, but the protective cocoon that covers it is perhaps the most deadly to be found on Prester. The defense consists of a near-impenetrable cocoon, which contains massive metallic tentacles, which are strong enough to breach the armor of any ship in the world of Prester. It is also extremely aggressive, attacking anything that comes within its perception, regardless of who owns or pilots the ship. The defense will only cease from attacking if it senses a person with the activation gene on board of a craft.

The Mysteria
The Mysteria (singular Mysterion) are the key to opening Exile. They are a set of four questions and responses which, when spoken aloud near Exile, will cause it to transform into its true form. Each one of these questions was entrusted to one of four noble Guild houses. The houses of Dagobert, Hamilton, and Bassanius had been purged by House Eraclea. Only special individuals of these houses &mdash; such as Alvis Hamilton &mdash; can speak the answers to the Mysteria. The power generated by these individuals while they are in their Mysterion trance causes them to shine like spotlights and has remarkable effects on their surroundings &mdash; small flames will flare into bonfires, complex machinery (particularly Claudia engines) will overload, and all visible atmosphere will begin to swirl around the speaker like a low-powered hurricane.