The Cetra, also known as "the Ancients," appeared to look identical to regular humans, but are deeply spiritual in nature. According to Sephiroth, regular humans were Cetra who forsook their migratory nature to form permanent settlements millenia ago.
The migrations of the Cetra were a Planet-reverent pursuit of the fabled Promised Land, one conducted by traveling from one area to another and cultivating life as they went. The Cetra had the unique ability to commune with the Planet, an ability which regular humans lost once they gave up their close relationship with the Planet in favor of leisure and convenience. Cetra also had the ability to guide the flow of the Planet's spiritual energy, this being the means by which they were able to cultivate life on the Planet's surface.
They were on the planet and long served as its caretakers until their race was nearly reduced to extinction by the extraterrestrial entity known as "Jenova." Jenova arrived on the Planet some 2000 years before, crashlanding on the northern continent within a meteorite. The impact site was a massive crater that would come to be known in later times as "the Northern Crater," a wound to the Planet that would not be healed even by the time of the game's beginning.
What was already a bad situation became all the worse once Jenova emerged from its impact site and approached the Cetra settlements, gleaning their memories and emotions from their minds and adopting the forms of their dead relatives in order to get close to them. It was then that it released a virus upon the Cetra (in actuality, its own cellular material), a substance that drove the Cetra mad and caused them to transform into monsters. A small band of unchanged Cetra united and mounted on a final assault on the being they referred to as "the Calamity from the Sky," surprisingly managing to defeat it and seal its body in the Planet at Jenova's point of arrival, the Northern Crater. Jenova itself would later be excavated by Shin-Ra Electric Power Company scientist Professor Gast and be mistakenly identified as a Cetra.
From Final Fantasy Wiki
 Flower Seller Aerith · Sun Oct 12, 2008 @ 02:48pm · 0 Comments |
