Prologue

Midgar. A massive city dominated by the Shinra Corporation, a powerful corporation that possessed control of nearly the entire known world. All because of a substance known as Mako, the lifeblood of the Shinra Corporation and of the planet.

Mako. The lifeblood of the planet itself, the origin from which all life came, and would return to again. Though few knew this at the time of its discovery, a discovery that in turn would change all life on the planet. With the discovery of Mako came the discovery of the vast founts of energy it possessed, energy that the Shinra Corporation was determined to harness and put to it’s own use. Eventually the Shinra did complete this task, generating electrical energy from the Mako thy had obtained and had been researching and experimenting upon for countless years. The break-through brought an increased demand for Mako energy, promising endless wealth to the Shinra and endless power. This sparked Shinra’s campaign to harvest Mako energy, with the use of special reactors that were created to reach down within the planet and suck the precious energy out from the very core of the planet. Such reactors were built throughout Midgar, but with increasing demands for Mako, the Shinra began to build reactors elsewhere, to drain more of the precious energy, obtaining more wealth and power than what was once thought believable.

Power though, leads to greed and greed then blossoms into corruption, and corruption blackens man’s hearts...

This massive loss of energy was slowly killing the planet, a death that also promised the doom of all other life.

Over the years since Mako’s discover, the Shinra began to hunger for more wealth, no longer satisfied with the profits which they had made off of processing Mako energy, so they sought another way to satisfy their greed and to make more wealth. The answer to this problem was then found in a substance known as materia, which the Shinra began to learn the process of creating. Materia was nothing more than a form of crystallized Mako, but with a very valuable and useful ability, the ability to give its user the power to command magic when properly equipped within slots in weapons and armor. The Shinra had learned to simulate the process to create materia by applying what they had learned from studying materia caves and fountains throughout the planet. The result from these experiments brought about the creation of several different types of materia: enhancing materia, spell materia, independent materia, command materia, and the rarest of all summon materia. Materia at first, was rare to obtain, due to how little was available, but soon enough Shinra mastered the technique of creating materia and it became widely available for purchase. So that after a time, certain kinds of materia became all but common, and all members of the Shinra army had at least two or three of the precious orbs, giving them an edge in battle with the powers of magic at their disposal.

Thus, the Shinra Corporation became the empire that it is known as today. An empire still hungry for more wealth and power, though there seemed no more left to gain, until the Shinra stumbled upon the legend of the ‘Promised Land’. A land of endless happiness and rich in Mako, which held the promise of more wealth and power for the Shinra to take. The problem though, was actually in finding this land that supposedly only existed in legend; there at first seemed no way to find the ‘Promised Land’, but all was not lost, for the legend also provided a means of finding it. A species known as the Ancients.

The Ancients, or Cetra, as they called themselves, were a race of people that could communicate with the planet and were said to have other abilities that made them superior to humans. This was the race that the Shinra needed, the only race able to find the ‘Promised Land’, so that all of the wealth and power found there could finally be theirs for the taking. The only problem now being the fact that the Ancients were a dead race, a race that had been destroyed long ago as they save the planet from a creature known as ‘The Terror from the Skies’. So the Shinra had set aside the idea, though never completely forgetting it.

Several years then had passed, when the president of the Shinra Corporation was informed of his leading scientist’s (a brilliant man known to all as Professor Gast) discovery in the Northern Continent. Professor Gast had dedicated his life to the study of the Ancients, and now he believed that he had actually found one of the Ancients, perfectly preserved for two thousand years in a block of ice. Gast named his discovery Jenova, the last of the Ancients.

Upon hearing this, the Shinra’s dream of finally finding, and possessing the ‘Promised Land’ now seemed a reality; they now had an Ancient, though dead, but not completely useless. Gast’s ideas now all seemed to be falling in place, ideas that could also benefit the Shinra army, which was suffering in the long and terrible war against Wutai. There simply had to be a way that both of Shinra’s needs could benefit from this new discovery, and Gast himself provided the answer.

Why not control destiny? Why not recreate an Ancient, better than before, and make them into the perfect soldier? Why not create a god?

The idea of such a thing was simply thrilling to say the least; they could create a god, something that was supposed to be impossible, but no longer seemed so. Now with Jenova and Mako’s enhancing power on life forms, the road to immortality, a breed of super humans, and power was now an open possibility of endless possibilities. A god among men, that would be Shinra’s to control, and everything that the Shinra ever desired finally would be theirs for the taking, and oh so much more.

So President Shinra gave his orders to Professor Gast, to gather himself a team of scientists to begin work on creation of the god; Shinra would provide the team of scientists with all the supplies and funding they needed for the project. Gast of course, accepted the offer, after all, this was a dream come true, his opportunity to rebirth the Ancient race and advance humanity’s evolution into a more divine state, all with this project. He would begin immediately in recruiting his team, so the project could begin as soon as possible.

A little over a month had passed when Gast had finally assembled his team of scientists, his prodigy, a man known as Professor Hojo, and Gast’s lab assistant, a young woman by the name of Lucrecia (who was also Professor Hojo’s wife). They would be the members of his team, and they would be the ones to help him achieve the creation of a god. Upon hearing that Gast had assembled his team, and was ready to begin the project, President Shinra arranged for the scientists to be housed in the Shinra Mansion (An old family residence of the Shinra, long since abandoned) in a small, remote mountain village called Nibelhiem. Here the scientists could do their jobs with little interference. Nibelhiem’s isolation made it the perfect choice, and the town had a small population of materia miners and technicians that worked at the reactor within the Nibel Mountains, so few people were ever around in the town by day, and those that were remained indifferent to the Shinra’s affairs. So the scientists, Jenova, and all supplies necessary for the project were shipped to Nibelhiem, as well as a small assurance that President Shinra felt was necessary for the scientists’ protection, a Turk.

It was a dreary and dark day, the skies of Midgar, now filled with pollution, hung overhead like a death shroud over the great city and its people. It had been a little over a year since the Jenova Project’s beginning, and already it all appeared to be futile. So far the project was a complete failure, subjects injected with Mako and Jenova cells had usually died, or underwent hideous mutation, not one specimen had shown any improvements or had lived very long. President Shinra had all but given up on the project, it appeared just to be a waste of time and money, he wanted to see results, results that the project was failing to produce. When all seemed completely hopeless though, and President Shinra considered ending the project, had news come to him that the project was a success. Professor Gast and Hojo had done it at last, they had created a new breed of human, they had created a god, a child by the name of Sephiroth.

A name that would soon be known to the entire world.

Contact Author: raziel969@yahoo.com