The Presbyterate

"Are you quite sure you want to know this?" Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"The Presbyterate is not the Continent, but it dominates it. The Presbyterate's genius is its extraordinary heterogeneity. Seventy-seven kingdoms – men, Beasts, stones, flowers – a hundred schools of war and a thousand schools of thought – but all united under the Presbyter's word. And behind the Presbyter, the College of Mortality."

The Presbyterate is a major power in the Elder Continent, ruling over its territory of the same name. Seventy-seven kingdoms answer to its banners.

None Shall Live A Thousand Years...

"In the Presbyterate, in the South, we're close to the Mountain and far from the Sun. So we could live forever, were that permitted. It isn't."

Thanks to the vitality of the Mountain of Light, the Presbyterate is known for its less-than-mortal populace. While Londoners get some of the benefits of proximity to Stone, the closer one is, the better, and as such the people of the Presbyterate are even more resilient. They can be killed several times over, live for centuries, or be sliced into mincemeat, and still recover with barely a headache. That being said, even they have a limit before they succumb to death like everyone else; belief in the afterlife is rare.

The Presbyterate's language, referred to as "the language of Adam," is described as one that "jangles like bells of bronze." In addition to this biblical tongue, certain Presbyterate Passphrases are composed of bits of English, Latin, and the Correspondence.

...Save The Powerful Few

""...each Presbyter is different, but each takes the identity of the last. Presbyters never truly die, even after a thousand years. At their 'deaths' they give up their names to join the College, who live nameless. The rebels who serve the Thief-of-Faces - they live faceless. I'm no friend to the College, you know that, but they have served our realm well - they are just...""

The Presbyter, or Prester, is the leader of the Presbyterate, elected and dismissed through a ceremony that would be very fatal on the Surface. After a Presbyter's term expires, they are sent to live nameless within the College of Mortality, the Presbyterate's backbone and authority on life and death, and their successor inherits their identity. There have been at least a thousand Presters. Both current and former Presters are incredibly immortal, though they can be overwhelmed by numbers.

The College of Mortality is particularly infamous for a certain decree: None shall live a thousand years. Not even the Presters themselves are exempt from this rule, but, as stated above, they do not truly die when their time is up. The Presbyterate Adventuress's father lived for twelve extra years, so the Presbyterate punished his transgression by forcing his children to live for only a hundred years. Anyone who lives longer than they should is ruthlessly hounded and arrested by the Presbyterate's powerful assassins, and in the words of the Bishop of St Fiacre's: "Death is the fist of the Presbyterate. One may not oppose death".

Nidah

"Miles and miles. Every grain of sand another jewel. And lush lawns, plashing waterfalls, succulent fruit, clear fountains, flowers, silver pagodas, palaces, temples, all rise shimmering from the painted oases. Nidah."

Nidah is the capital and central kingdom of the Presbyterate, located deep within the Elder Continent. The city is surrounded by seven massive basalt walls, and only its Persimmon Gate can serve as a point of entry. While the city is described as a paradise, gorgeously paved with gemstone roads, it is also located dangerously close to the Mountain of Light, and eye protection is required to avoid certain doom.

To reach Nidah by land, one must brave the following challenges, according to Isery of the Isle of Cats:

• The Desert of Eyes, "where eyes bloom in the sands. Their regard strips all pretence, reducing the traveller to a state of foetal self-loathing."
• The Listening Desert, "where earthquakes pursue the unwary."
• The Desert of Delights, "the touch of its sands is indescribably engrossing."

Within Nidah lies the College of Mortality: grim and grey on the outside, and heaven itself on the inside. And within the College lies a door to the Garden, where true immortality can be found.

The Kingdoms of the Presbyterate

"Drowned Mereid, though risen, was once a kingdom of the Presbyterate. Yet there are always seventy seven kingdoms, with neither interruption nor interregnum. Was another found and drafted into its place?"

The Presbyterate has seventy-seven kingdoms, yet we know of relatively few, with a handful more alluded to but never named. Those who venture beyond Adam's Way into the heart of the Continent will encounter wonders and dangers beyond anything they could ever imagine...

• Nidah is considered the central and ruling kingdom of the Presbyterate.
• Caution is the City of Beasts, home to a hundred different tongues.
• Arbor is split between dream and reality, and full of roses.
• Vesture is a kingdom of silkweavers - and the spiders that produce their silk.
• Huz is perhaps more of a hive than a kingdom.
• The people of Skite have lost their immortality privileges - and their ability to heal from their wounds at all.
• Cline is a kingdom of snails, whose inhabitants have all grown spiraling shells.
• Rimer is a city beyond Caution.
• Ossuary, the Hidden Nation, worships Stone with intricate maps made of bone.
• The Court of the Wakeful Eye is a princedom of tigers that swears fealty to the Presbyterate, but may have lost its status as one of the 77 officially designated kingdoms.
• Grandinia has been consumed entirely by fungus, but somehow it lives on.
• Ixander had close contact with the Third City, but is no longer recorded and may no longer exist.
• The drowned island of Mereid was once a Presbyterate kingdom.
• Verdigris is described as a "hollow nation," and is said to have been ruled by Nicator.

It is not clear whether the city of Varchas is also a Kingdom of the Presbyterate, but its people embark on pilgrimage to the Mountain of Light.

Influence Abroad

"The Mithridate Office fabricates misleading stories about the Continent, in order to confuse foreigners. To this end, they often employ foreigners."

The Mithridate Office is a branch of the Presbyterate that fabricates false stories of the Elder Continent to confound and mystify foreigners; hilariously, they often employ foreigners themselves for this very purpose. Their workers, Mithridites, pay their clients in a currency called Formulum. There are known branches in Apis Meet and London. The branch in London on Surcease Street, staffed almost entirely by London natives, has been known to lure unsuspecting Londoners into becoming hired mercenaries on Presbyterate warships, like the Delight. This Office also frequently hires pirate ships from Gaider's Mourn to zail under their flag and enforce their will.

A former director of the Mithridate Office apparently chose to retire to the faraway Shepherd Isles, and may be responsible for the inhabitants' fondness for telling tall tales.

The Order Vespertine, a powerful group of Knife-and-Candle players, based their traditions and fighting techniques on the Presbyterate's traditions and rites.

THE PRESTER SAITH

• No Man Shall Live a Thousand Years
• She Who Commands The Principle Of Victory May Feast On Its Spoil (The Privilege of Victory)
• She Who Hath Become A Tyrant May Be Toppled To Dine Upon The Ashes (The Edict of Policraticus)
• She Who Rules in Deed, Rules in Law (The Doctrine of Eminence)
• You shall harm no thing that flies, for they carry with them the airs of the Garden. No bee, no bird, no bat. Only to my servants is it given to hunt them, and that only for my table. Yet I am generous: all shall feast.
• The Thief-of-Faces shall not be suffered to return to the Garden, nor its chattels, nor its children. It has taken from us that which is precious and returned only lies and empty fires. It shall be locked in a prison of flint, and it shall know no light.
• When I die, yet shall I not die. The hour of my death shall be chosen, yet no man shall choose it. I am eternal, and yet my reign in circumscrib'd by law and Fate. I will feast at my funeral, and my child shall be my cup-bearer.
• In the Garden is the Design; in the Garden occurred the Ascents; in the Garden were selected the Shames. Therefore none shall enter it without that they be blinded with thorns and bound with the Three Oaths. And should any seek to alter the Design or repeat the Ascent or uncover the Shames, they shall be given to the Wax-Wind.
• None shall set foot in Nidah save he that was born there. He who violates this law shall be cast into the deepest deep, and always forsaken.
• Every Planet In Fixed and Solitary Orbit: intrigue between nations is forbidden.

One of the Three Oaths

"...that my word shall bind me. My promise shall outlast my flesh, and the very flesh of the world. Even when I am dust it will bind me, with red gold and a wind of wounds. If I break it, let my crown burn. Let my flesh run like wax. Let me hunger, and let nothing sate my hunger except my own skin and the marrow of my bones..."

Historical and Cultural Inspirations

Since the early days of Christianity, "presbyter" has been a term for its clergy, specifically for a senior member or elder. This term (which comes from Greek) is also the origin of the word "priest," with which it is synonymous in English. In modern times, the collective - "college" - of Catholic priests is referred to as the "presbyterium," "presbytery," or - ah, there we are - "presbyterate."

The Presbyterate takes heavy inspiration from the medieval legend of Prester John, which was a primary driving factor behind European exploration of the Old World. Prester John was said to have been a Nestorian (Eastern Christian) king who ruled a vast and splendid kingdom somewhere in Asia. Much of this legend was inspired by early Christian missionaries' travels to places like India, but it was fueled further by a (definitely forged) letter to the Byzantine emperor in 1165 that supposedly came from Prester John (Presbyter Ioannes) and described the marvels of his kingdom.

Since many of the stories that were confabulated into this legend over time came from the spread of Nestorianism in central Asia, this was also the reason that William of Rubruck was sent to Karakorum to seek an audience with the Mongol Empire - an event reimagined in The Silver Tree as the catalyst for the Fall of the Fourth City. There is a single nod to the legend of Prester John in Fallen London.

Several statements within "The Letter of Prester John" correlate with the imagery of the Elder Continent. Of interest:

If you truly wish to know the magnitude and excellence of our Highness and over what lands our power dominates, then know and believe without hesitation that I, Prester John, am lord of lords and surpass, in all riches which are under the heaven, in virtue and in power, all the kings of the wide world. Seventy-two kings are tributaries to us.

There is actually text in Sunless Sea that states there are 72 kingdoms in the Presbyterate, but this is corrected to 77 elsewhere in the game and in Fallen London. The implication is that originally this was a more direct reference, which was amended because Seven is the Number. In addition to expounding upon the virtues of his people and the abundance of gems and riches in his kingdom (both things that are mirrored in Presbyterate law and imagery), Prester John's letter also feeds into Christian immortality mythos, perhaps the defining feature of the Presbyterate. Some details of the following passage are echoed at the foot of the Mountain of Light and in the rivers that emanate from her wounds:

...the foot of Mount Olympus, from where a clear spring issues, containing all kinds of pleasant tastes. The taste however varies each hour [...] and flows out by a waterway for three days, not far from Paradise, from where Adam was expelled. If someone who has fasted for three days tastes of this spring, he will suffer no infirmity from that day on, and will always be as if he were thirty-two years old, however long he may live.

"Prester John" additionally assures that his palace will take care of all in need:

And that palace will have such a grace conferred to it by God that there no one will ever be hungry, no one will be sick, nor will anyone, being inside, die on that on which he has entered. And if anyone has the strongest hunger and is sick to the point of death, if he enters the palace and stays there for some time, he will leave satisfied, as if he might have eaten one hundred courses of food, and as a healthy as if he might have suffered no infirmities in his lifetime.

This is further reflected in Presbyterate propaganda, in statements like "The Prester's table is large; everyone in the world has a seat." and "Yet I am generous; all shall feast." Not to mention that the heavenly (but illusory) food served on the Delight makes the player character wonder "what miracles must appear at the Prester's own table." The relentless poaching of birds by His servants to adorn His banquet table certainly drives home the rest of the point about feeding the hungry.

Over time, as Europeans explored Asia and gained an understanding of its geography and political landscape, the exact location of Prester John's kingdom shifted. Theories began to arise that it was actually in Ethiopia or the New World, and as the possibilities dwindled, the promise of the great Christian king lost its meaning. When it came to the Americas, meanwhile, the legend of El Dorado took precedence as a motivator for exploration. Iberian explorers' motives for exploring and conquering the Americas were intrinsically Christian, but they stemmed more from the militant-missionary reasoning that drove the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquista; the legend of El Dorado lacked the same goal of Christian dominion, and instead used indigenous people's stories as fuel for greed and conquest. Thus, rather than El Dorado, the remainder of the Christian inspiration for the Presbyterate probably comes from scholarly attempts to locate the Garden of Eden.

While we don't usually go into discussion of the metatextual variety, there is a case for an exception here. Out-of-universe, all of these stories inspired the Presbyterate. But in-universe, considering the prescience of the Mithridate Office, it could be argued that the Presbyterate seems to be aware of these Christian legends, and has actively formed its image and propaganda to Londoners and other Europeans around these legends. The masked zailors of the Delight see the ship as being full of mythical treasures and foodstuffs, like nectar and ambrosia (which are Greek, but something a literate Londoner would know about). They see its captain as an image of a robed and haloed Christian saint, and even the Mountain itself as a fairly close reflection of Prester John's description of his kingdom as dripping in jewels.

Did the Presbyterate call themselves something else a long time ago, when a different image would have enticed the people of the Neath? Or was Prester John always real, his kingdoms a strange and eldritch mirror of Christian ideals lurking in the Neath? Of course the presence of the literal Garden of Eden within the Prester's domain points to the latter, these are still questions worth asking.