Encyclopedia MOTHER: Advent Desert

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[1989: pp. 80–83]

[2003: pp. 84–87]

14. ADVENT DESERT

• Area: 49,746 m² (about 31 mi²)
• Pop.: 1
• Avg. Temp.: 41℃ (105.8℉)

[Photo: A vast desert wasteland stretching as far as the eye can see. Caption below:]

▲The desert is a land of men's adventure and romance. That can be said even of Advent. One wonders how many men never returned home.

[Jump links coming soon.]

Advent Desert

The Singing Cactus

Sightseeing Flights

Advent Desert Map

The Tank

EVENT CHECK POINT

Advent Desert

A scorcher zone reaching temperatures

of 57℃ at midday

Before World War I, it was feared as unexplored territory. Little wonder, as the temperature difference in the span of a single day is intense, reaching 57℃ [134.6℉] at midday only to drop to 25℃ below zero [-13℉] at the gray of morning. At an annual rainfall of a mere 50 mm [about 2"] (Tokyo, by the way, ranges from 1000 to 1500 mm [about 39.4" to about 59.1"]), it's a desert zone that repels living things.

Perhaps because of the harsh climate conditions, there's an old tradition in the area that says this spot sees the return of Christ once every thousand years, where He then undergoes the trials of Resurrection¹. It's taught that this is how it came to be called, since time out of mind, the Advent (Earthly descent of a god) Desert. As there used to be a lot of Latter-day Saints in the area, there's also a theory that it's faith that has prevented the development of this land, faith that the desert shall not be sullied by human hands, until the Day of Resurrection when Christ shall turn this desert into sacred ground and come again.

But during World War I, there came the first murmurings among the Air Force pilots who had flown over this desert, murmurings of something that looked like archeological ruins. The very instant the war was over, the competition among the veterans to be the first to the ruins was taken to cutthroat, Gold Rush-like extremes. Some came in biplanes. It's even said that others came here having made off with tanks (never mind where they might have gotten their hands on them), tanks which saw victory in battle against General Rommel. There were even those who tried to prevent further raids by laying land mines in the area around the ruins, and that should tell you just how outrageous this competition got.

However, this Ransackers' Rush yielded them no returns, and in just under a year the desert was once again, well, deserted. There were ransackers who came along afterward, not knowing when to quit, but they disappeared by ones and twos into the sandstorms, and no one knows for sure how many came back out again. Nowadays, visitors to the desert amount to the occasional fanciful tourist with dreams of long-lost days of gilded adventure.

The Singing Cactus

There's a great big cactus area in the

northwest part of the desert

The railroad that passes to the south of the desert gets suspended from time to time. It takes time to restore operations, and I expect you'll understand why the moment you take your first step into this land. Walk for one hour during the day out here and your throat will get parched, and your vision will start to get blurry.

If you want things that come and go, all you'll get are the thorny tumbleweeds blown about by the sandstorms. If you want something to happen upon, you'll get no more than the stumps of the trees felled by the ransackers, with no shade to give. If you want plant life, all you'll get are the cacti that seem to mock visitors to this land.

Now, if you were to try to talk to these cacti, you may be picking up on the true spirit behind your journey.

[Photo: The stumps of chopped-down trees. This may be Kingston Plains, Michigan.²]

▲A thicket of tree stumps: where the warriors used to dream.³

[Photo: A group of cacti silhouetted against a twilit sky.]

▲There's no theory that says a cactus will sing a song. But if you listen carefully during a twilight like this one...

Sightseeing Flights

A yellow biplane and a tank are a

sight for sore adventurers' eyes

You'll want to be careful: in a world of sand, sand and more sand, your everyday senses of time and space are bound to go haywire. There are a lot of times where, just like getting caught in a mountain blizzard, you may think you're making a straight line eastward, but you're actually going in circles. I wouldn't exactly say you need to learn mapping the way sea navigators do it, but I want you to at least learn ways to pinpoint your location using a map and the placement of the sun. It won't be long before, worn out from all the hot sand and sandstorms (and following the theory that "every desert has an oasis"), you'll begin to see a mirage of green and blue. 

At the oasis, you'll be greeted by a worn-out biplane and a half-broken tank. Beside these is a tent, out of which the figure of an old World War I pilot will come dragging his feet. He is, of course, one of the surviving ruins-ransackers who didn't know when to quit. With an eye toward getting the occasional visitor to his oasis, he invites tourists on a sightseeing flight on his old clunker of a biplane. Rumor has it he spends all day every day secretly digging up buried articles from the ruins, on an income where he just barely scrapes by. But you can see, by how cheap his flight tickets are, and the way he's dressed, that the little thing we call time stopped moving for him the moment he set his foot in the desert.

But I want you to take him at his word and enjoy the flight. Not only will it prove a breath of fresh air on your hard journey, but it's also an ideal chance to get a glimpse of what's yet to come in your travels. Since the places you fly over will change depending on what course you pick, from familiar and beloved scenery to strange new lands, this is one ride that's sure to thrill you. "More haste, less speed" — I doubt there's any more need to tell you that this saying is the true essence of your journey. ...

[Photo: A yellow biplane. A reverse image search brings up a possible model: the Stolp-White WW-1 Der Jäger D.IX/69]

▲He didn't even sell it to a curator of aviation museums — at $150 grand!

 

---------Ticket Prices----------

Course A: $5.00

Course B: $10.00

Course C: $15.00

----------------------------------------

ADVENT DESERT MAP

To Thanksgiving

Cactus Cluster

Desert Oasis

Tree Stump Thicket

Desert Ruins

To Easter [this marker is mostly hidden by the book's crease.]

[Photo: A whole lot of desert sand. What looks like a weed pokes up out of the sand in the middle of the shot.]

▲In a world of sand, sand and more sand, even a corpse is a welcome sight. ...

The Tank

With ten flight Ticket Stubs,

you can ride the tank

Of course, a boy who loves adventures would know exactly how it feels to want to take the desert on foot. You're more suited to this journey than someone who'd consider taking the sightseeing plane to a forced landing near the ruins, at the east end of the desert.

But you're better off not ignoring the old man's goodwill in letting you ride the tank with ten hard-earned Ticket Stubs. At any rate there's no accounting for this guy — asking for ten stubs, when taking the plane four times with three people nets you twelve. If he were trying to pull a fast one on others, he wouldn't let that kind of flaw show through.

It's said he gained a number of victories in battle as an Air Force pilot in World War I, and postwar, embracing an unfulfilled dream, became what's now the desert's one and only resident. There's something to marvel at in the superiority of his technical skills, considering he took a broken, abandoned biplane and tank and has maintained them as living things down to this very day. Even if it's so you can see this specimen's rare talent for yourself, you can't deny the old man's invitation has charm.

Away from the oasis, right in the center of the desert, there remain traces of the biggest oasis, which in World War I became the ransackers' base of operations. The water there has long dried up, and only the stumps of the trees they felled remain to tell the tale of how merciless these men's dreams were.

Cross the desert northwardly and the sea will open up before you, beneath a precipice with a hundred-kilometer drop [about 62.1 miles]. With a length of several hundred kilometers, this cliff, as you'd imagine, is said to have been a protection for the desert against invasion by other races. "A lonely isle of the distant seas that floats upon land". Standing on this cliff, you'll see how this became the catchphrase of Advent Desert. "The End of the World". It was a place well-suited to be called that. Just as Los Angeles was once a land without angels, just as the Sinai Desert was the entryway to God after the crucifixion⁴, Advent Desert may now be the world's last remaining entryway to the Kingdom of God.

- Maji Kanto

真面完人

[Photo: A child poses atop a beat-up, rusty old tank.]

▲We can understand if you wouldn't feel like boarding a tank like this one, even if you were asked to.

 

[Photo: A seaside cliff.]

▲North of the desert is a several- hundred-kilometer-long cliff.

[Photo: More desert.]

▲There's a rumor that land mines are buried near the ruins.

EVENT CHECK POINT

In the desert, it's important that you visit each point indicated on the map as you proceed (however, the cactus's location isn't on there, so make sure you look reeeeally hard for it).

Also, make sure you get the guy to let you ride the tank. Without the tank, you won't be able to defeat the robot at the entrance to the ruins.

The Cactus Melody

[Screenshot dialogue box and caption:]

The cactus sang.

For some reason, it sang.

It continued to sing with.

emotion.

▲If you find an uncanny-looking cactus, CHECK it. For some reason it'll start to sing you a song.

 

 Get in the Tank!

[Screenshot dialogue box and caption:]

Collect ten of 'em and

you'll earn a ride in my

tank!

Hahaha! You sure seem happy

to hear that!

▲Collect ten Ticket Stubs from sightseeing flights and get the man to let you ride the tank.

Area's Main Enemies:

Gabilan, Titany, Spider, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, etc.

❏ Did you memorize the cactus melody?

❏ Did you collect Ticket Stubs and ride the tank?

¹ Thanks to The Lone Challenger for correcting/tweaking my wording here to better reflect the Japanese intent.

² According to a speculation from Biozilla.

³ A reference to a poem penned by Matsuo Bashou (松尾芭蕉) in The Narrow Road to the Deep North (奥の細道). The famous line is: 夏草や兵どもが夢の跡 (one translation, by Hiroaki Sato 佐藤紘彰, reads: "Summer grass: where the warriors used to dream.") To make a long story short, this basically means, all that's left here of old dreams of glory is overgrown summer grass (or in this case, tree stumps). More information and example translations here.

⁴ See note 1.

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