Prophetic Banner

The Prophetic Banner is the first and universal Banner of Vaestism, the black-white standard that marks by its supernatural octad the apotheosis of the Prophet at the Battle of the Holy Storm in 1428, which claims the allegiance of all Vesnites by the law of First Prostration. Its Standard-Bearer, vacant since 1926 in the Desecration of the Prophecy, is the Universal Prophet, who is the rightful religious head of all Vaestdom; its Debates are the Prophetic Debates, and in the absence of a Prophet, the right to guard the Banner is exercised by the Interrex of the Prysostaic Council. Its Banner-Shrine is the Banner-Shrine of the Companions, located within the vast Prysostaic Citadel. Aside from serving as the civil emblem of Prysostea itself, an honoured replica of the Banner is found in virtually every School in the world, and as a Banner it is given a primacy of respect above all others.

The right of First Prostration renders all Vesnites not explicitly placed under any intermediate jurisdiction immediately subject to the Prophetic throne, so that areas organised under Vaestic governance without any explicit claim by a territorial and imperial Banner default to the purview of the Prophetic Banner. Such regions thus function as interordinate 'neutral zones' within the Vaestic sphere, a situation that notably applies to Domradovid Joriscia, formally a polcovodate immediately subject to the Prophetic Banner; New Issenov, officially a Prophetic marshalate in Serania Major; and the captaincy of the Tide Schools of northern Serania Minor. These maintain autonomous governments that are directly dependent on the Sacred Prophecy, which are nonetheless distinct from the strip of 'Prysostea' in Outer Joriscia itself, and not therefore ordinarily administered by the Prysostaic Council.

On a smaller scale, a number of individual mokyklos throughout Vaestdom are privileged as immediately subject to the Prophetic Banner, such as the great fortress-School of Ezheras in southern Zemay, and many of the Schools of Argah. In practice the Prysostaia has in modern times generally allowed certain concessions to territorial authority in these Schools, so that the privilege of immediacy cannot, for example, be abused by fugitives as it sometimes was historically. Missionary Schools in non-Vesnite territories also typically fall under the Prophetic Banner owing to its general oversight of missionary activity, though these are usually in practice sponsored by one or the other Vaestic Power.

Clergy who assume offices at the Prysostaia are said to be released to the Prophetic Banner. In general this means that their home states no longer exercise any form of jurisdiction over them, though the Congress of Molot in 1983 for the first time established a number of explicitly representative positions on the Prysostaic Council itself, meaning that these Scholars exercise their office there only as delegates of their respective Banners and may subsequently be recalled. Various quirks have historically characterised the exercise of the immediate jurisdiction of the Prophetic Banner. Until the Purity Council of 1855 it was an accepted if rather reticently applied principle of zaconic law that those who laid foot within ten thousand paces of the Prysostaic Rock were permitted to render themselves free of any intermediate Standard-Bearer and immediately subject to the Prophet, apparently in imitation of the Vesnites of old—quite irrelevant in the Neritsovid era, but a matter of some speculation following the emergence of an autonomous Prysostaia in 1756.