This is what Wiki says:
Several hundred years before the anime series takes place, a colony ship named Exile carried the first colonists from Earth to Prester. Upon arrival and disembarking its passengers, it sealed itself in a cocoon, traveled to the bottleneck, and created the Grand Stream. It was programmed, if reactivated, to begin continually travelling back and forth between Earth and Prester, but until that time it was sealed away.
The organization called "The Guild," who presumably created Exile, had control of the weather and seasons on Prester, so they took over the sky (controlling it from their enormous airships), while the passengers began a new life on the ground. The Guild had four ruling families: the Eraclea family, the Dagobert family, the Hamilton family, and the Bassianus family. There were a few people infused with a special gene that made them the "Key to Exile." Each family was trusted with a short poem, called a "Mysterion." If all four Mysterion were spoken to someone who had the Key gene, and was within a mile of Exile, Exile would be released. Presumably, this was only to be used in case they needed to return to Earth for any reason.
Life went on peacefully for several hundred years. The Guild used Exile to control the weather and keep the peace. Though both countries were cut off from each other and only the Guild had the power to travel between the two, flocks of rainbirds began finding paths of relatively calm air through the Grand Stream that allowed them to cross.
Ten years before the anime takes place, Delphine Eraclea, the head of one of the Guild families, grew power-hungry and began killing off the members of the other three families, so she could assume control over the Guild. Only a few members escaped, and among them were the Keys to Exile. What Delphine Eraclea didn't understand was that without a Key to control Exile, the weather controller would malfunction. And the temperature on the Disith side began to cool down, and Anatoray began to heat up. But Delphine had become Maestro, and she did not care about that.
Disith was starting to freeze over, and its people realized that if they stayed there they were doomed. Then, Disith's leaders noticed that the flocks of rainbirds could travel between the two countries by finding small channels of calm air inside the Grand Stream, and they built a ship of their own and followed the birds through. But the people of Anatoray, who did not understand the Disith plight, did not allow Disith to colonize there. Disith's leaders, desperate, considered declaring war on Anatoray.
But the war was almost averted when a sect of the Anatoray government reconsidered. They dispatched four young vanship pilots, Hamilcar Valca, George Head, Alex Row and Alex's fiancé Euris, to bear a message of peace to Disith, and offer a compromise. They dared to take two vanships through the dreaded Grand Stream, using the same rainbird pattern.
But Maestro Delphine, who found the idea of a Disith-Anatoray alliance incompatible with her supremacy, decided to step in. Once the vanships were into the Grand Stream, she intercepted their route with her much larger Guild battleship, disrupting air flow and physically knocking the vanships around, sweeping them up in the current. Hamilcar, George and Euris were killed, but Alex Row managed to escape, catching a glimpse at the Exile, and the Maestro.
Disith never received the message of peace, and so they assumed that Anatoray had not reconsidered. They declared war on Anatoray. The ones in Anatoray who had reconsidered assumed that Disith had not, and so there were no options.
Delphine decided to step in and "help." She used the incredible technology of the Guild to create special warships for each country to use. But, fearing that the two countries might rise up against her, she made a special addendum to the ships: Each one would be powered by a special "Claudia Unit" located within the body of the ship. This Claudia unit would be unbreakable, and manned by several Guild soldiers, who with the push of a button could detach the unit from the ship, sending the Claudia unit (and the Guild soldiers inside it) up to safety, while sending the country's ship and its crew tumbling down to doom. This was primarily done if a ship was being shot down, but it could also be done if Delphine commanded it via radio.
And the war began, with the Guild carefully supervising.
Then, a resistance movement began. Alex Row stole an Anatoray warship, managed to recapture its Claudia unit, and converted it into a battleship, naming it the Silvana. He outfitted it with armor-piercing cannons that were capable of attacking a Guild warship, and recruited a small crew of mechanics and pilots that would help him fight the Guild. One of his recruits happened to be Sophia Forrester, the daughter of Anatoray's Emperor, who understood the threat that the Guild posed to the world. They learned that there was still one remaining person with the Key gene, a little girl from the Hamilton family named Alvis, and they developed a plan to rescue Alvis from Delphine, bring her into the Grand Stream where Exile was waiting, use Alvis to reawaken Exile, and destroy the Guild's power.
Ten years after that is when the anime takes place (see the Last Exile page for more details).
Once Exile was reactivated by Alvis, it dispersed the Grand Stream forever, restored the weather patterns to both countries (thus saving Prester's ecosystem on both sides) and began its pre-programmed behavior by continually travelling back and forth between the Earth and Prester.
http://www.myspace.com/elysium22
reply
share