Cetra

Cetra
(セトラ, Setora?)
Background information
Physical distinctions	Humanoid
Notable technologies	Temple of the Ancients

We who are born of the planet, with her we speak. Her flesh we shape. Unto her promised land shall we one day return. By her loving grace and providence may we take our place in paradise.

A poem about the Cetra

For the Final Fantasy VIII location, see Centra

The Cetra, also known as the Ancients (古代種, Kodai-shu?), are people from an ancient civilization frequently mentioned in the Final Fantasy VII series, although few Ancients are actually depicted in the games. The Cetra look identical to regular humans, but are deeply spiritual in nature. According to Sephiroth, regular humans are former Cetra who forsook their migratory nature to form permanent settlements millennia ago. The Cetra's special trait, which appears to be genetically passed on through their family line, is to interact with the lifestream and the planet in what some call "talking to the planet".

Knowledge of Cetra is poor among the general public in the original continuity of Final Fantasy VII, with Barret Wallace asking if the term is "some kind of disease" when the party discusses it. In the remake project, the Cetra and their knowledge of the planet are better known by the wider population, with Barret stating that the Ancients are mentioned in planetology books as being the original stewards of the planet, able to commune with it. Additionally, the Shinra Building has a virtual reality presentation accessible to the general public that attempts to recreate what the Cetra civilization and culture may have looked like thousands of years prior to the events of the game, positing Shinra Electric Power Company as the spiritual successors of the Cetra to garner public support.

Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. (Skip section)

One of the world's first civilization, this race of people were capable of hearing the voice of the planet. Few records of them remain, and most information has been lost. They are still of great interest to Shinra, however.

Final Fantasy VII Remake loading screen

Shinra's vision of a Cetra using the planet's energy

The Cetra migrations were a planet-reverent pursuit of the fabled promised land, conducted by traveling and cultivating life. The Cetra could commune with the planet, an ability that regular humans lost once they gave up their close relationship with the planet in favor of leisure and convenience.

The Cetra could guide the flow of the planet's spiritual energy, this being the means by which they cultivated life on the planet's surface. The Crisis Core Complete Guide states that the Cetra opened up lifestream veins to make the land fertile; a demonstration of this power is shown at Aerith's house, as one of the few, or perhaps the only, place in Midgar where flowers and vegetation flourish in abundance.

The Temple of the Ancients.

The Cetra served as the planet's caretakers until their race was nearly reduced to extinction by an extraterrestrial shape-shifting entity. The alien arrived some 2,000 years before the events of Final Fantasy VII, crash-landing on the northern continent within a meteorite. The impact site became a massive crater that would come to be known as the North Crater, a wound to the planet that would not be healed for thousands of years.

The creature was telepathic, assuming the guises of the Cetra's departed loved ones by reading their memories and emotions. It manipulated many, with those taken victim being infected with a mutagenic virus implied to be genetic material from the parasitic life-form itself. A small band of Cetra mounted a final assault on the being they referred to as "the Calamity from the Sky", sealing its body at the alien's point of arrival, the North Crater.

Sometime after, the Gi tribe arrived on the planet. The Cetra were hostile towards them despite communicating with them. The Gi died and remained as lost souls unable to enter the lifestream and, after some time, the Cetra learned that these souls had created the black materia. The Cetra took the item to keep it from ever being used. The Cetra were undone when the humans slaughtered most of them out of jealous resentment, which the Cetra considered to have been a product of the Calamity's manipulations. The remaining Cetra went into hiding, with their numbers dwindling over the next two millennia.

Two thousand years later, the alien would be excavated by Shinra Electric Power Company scientist Professor Gast Faremis, who mistakenly identified it as a Cetra and named it "Jenova". The Cetra scriptures were later found, which revealed vague details about the promised land.

Ifalna was among the last known living pureblood Cetra. Her daughter, Aerith, is believed to have been the very last (though she is only half-Cetra, as her father was an ordinary human). After Sephiroth kills Aerith at the City of the Ancients while she is praying for Holy, the Cetra are believed to be extinct.

While the party can find the spiritual manifestations of some Cetra in the Temple of the Ancients in Final Fantasy VII, which take the form of creatures with bulbous purple bodies and long beards, Aerith explains that they are simply "spirit bodies" left aeons ago to protect the temple, having lost their true forms. They lack minds of their own and have lost their ability to speak, but can still communicate with Aerith.

The spiritual manifestations do not appear in this form in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Instead, Aerith can hear the Cetra's message through the lifestream itself and the party witnesses visions seemingly made manifest by the memories of the planet within the lifestream of the Cetra fighting to protect the planet from both Jenova and the black materia created by the Gi tribe. When Aerith heads to the City of the Ancients to pray with the white materia, she laments that she does not know how the Cetra used to pray to the planet and will never be able to learn it because she is the last of their kind, but uses her heart's wish to protect her friends as the message.

The Cetra live on spiritually in those descended to become normal humans who settled down from the Cetra's journey. The Republic of Junon once gathered as a multicultural nation of seafarers that sought to unite humanity in brotherhood before the rise of the Shinra Electric Power Company, and planetology continues to spread knowledge of the life of the planet and the lifestream even without the ability to communicate with the planet. Cloud and his allies' journey and the Jenova War can further be seen as continuing the battle of the future of Gaia against Shinra, Jenova, and her current chosen incarnation, Sephiroth, showing the stewardship and legacy of the Cetra into the present, while man's will to travel and explore can also be interpreted as instinctual heritage and need from their common roots.

Spoilers end here.

Behind the scenes

Concept art for the Cetra spirits found in the Temple of the Ancients.

In the initial plans for the Final Fantasy VII story, Cetra were different from how they ended up in the final version. Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega reveals that in the early story drafts, the Cetra, or Ancients, were an extinct race who were said to have written the Book of Jenova—scriptures detailing the unknown workings of the human brain—and the race who created materia.

According to legends, Ancients could use magic without materia and had an advanced magical civilization. It was believed that the race of regular people also existed at that time and that there were wide-ranging exchanges between them or that the non-magical people were made into slaves. Due to the belief that Ancients could use magic inherently, it was rumored that people who harbor supernatural abilities are their descendants.

In Final Fantasy VII remake project, the original concept of the Cetra scriptures returns, although it is no longer called "the Book of Jenova". It is revealed that the Cetra's ability to harness the power of the lifestream through natural underground mako reservoirs allowed them to create materia.

The Cetra manifestation seen in the original game at the Temple of the Ancients resembles a typical Black Mage, albeit with a long white beard. The spirits protecting the temple have long forgotten how to speak, but in an early development version, the spirit found in a room at the temple, who served as a vendor, spoke with an accent that sounded like from a rural Japanese area, saying "welcome" and "come again."

One possible reading of Cetra's story is that they are an alien race that migrates from planet to planet, supported by a line Sephiroth says during Cloud's flashback in the English version of the game: "This Planet originally belonged to the Cetra. Cetra was an itinerant race. They would migrate in, settle the Planet, then move on..." However, this line may be subject to translation issues and an ambiguity in translation between "land" and "Planet".

Elsewhere, the game's script states through Aerith that the Cetra were born on the planet of Final Fantasy VII: "The Cetra were born from the Planet, speak with the Planet, and unlock the Planet." Hoshi o Meguru Otome presents the act of "returning to the promised land" that Aerith describes as an allusion to the return to the lifestream, it being the promised land of the Cetra.

Gallery

Cetra civilization as imagined by Shinra in a presentation seen inside the Shinra Building.

A Cetra group accessing the lifestream.

Two Cetra.

A coastal dwelling.

Aerith finds Cetra scriptures in the Temple of the Ancients.

Etymology

[view · edit · purge]Cetra is an ancient stringed instrument, similar to a lyre.

The name may also derive from the Latin cetera, meaning "the others".