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Long ago, three tribes lived in harmony in the world. The Espers, fantastically long-lived and with godlike powers, the humans, with their creativity and imagination, and the Cetra, who were hybrids of both. For centuries harmony reigned, though the Espers held incredible power, they never lorded it over people, or demanded worship as gods. Eventually, however, some humans came to covet the power of Espers. They amassed wealth and used this to raise armies and take power over other people. At first the Espers didn't want to interfere, the most mighty human armies of that time couldn't hope to hurt them. Unable to take the power of the espers, the human rulers instead turned against the Cetra. With technological weapons such as ballistae and catapaults, they instigated great wars against the Cetra, and killed hundreds. The peaceful cetra were almost too scared to fight back, unwilling to use their amazing magical powers against sentient beings. Eventually the jealous hatred of humans infected younger Cetra, though, and they began a mighty war that tore cities asunder and killed millions.
The Espers, horrified by what was happening, but unwilling to use their powers to lord it over other intelligent beings, decided to flee to a magical realm in a pocket dimension of their own creation. Little did they know, their own exit from the world would greatly disrupt it's lifestream; the connection to the source of magic in the universe, and greatly weaken the Cetra. The humans showed no mercy to the Cetra who had begun the war against them, and soon turned on the rest. The few Cetra not killed went into deep hiding, forming hidden communities where they pretended to be human. In time, most of them forgot who they even were, and had children with humans - which diluted what remained of their power.
Now it is the year 2000. Humanity has developed technology further - replaced the bow with the gun, the cart with the car and the slate with the computer. After devastating, industrial wars between human kingdoms, the nation of Midgar has come to rule the entire world. Midgar had long since got rid of it's kings - old-fashioned aristocrats taxing tenant-farmers could not compete with the earning power of global technology corporations. The hyper-wealthy Shinra corporation bought out all of it's competitors, and eventually even it's own government. Under the guise of "doing away with dusty old tradtions", the Midgardian royal family were swept away and the president of the Shinra corporation assumed exclusive power.
Since the last war against Doma in 1996, Shinra has had no competition, and has only tightened it's grip on power. The people are heavily taxed, but fed with enough bread and circuses to keep them loyal. Most have no idea the ancient world of Cetra and Espers ever existed. Nor do they beleive harmonious existence, with the world's bounty shared between all, to be desirable or even possible. But a few rebels remain. A group of magic scholars, radicals and liberals banded together in the city of Cosmo Canyon, on the eve of Doma's fall, and created The Returners - a group dedicated to the overthrow of Shinra, and all governments - to create a peaceful world "without authority"; an an-archy!
Even most of the Returners think the Cetra were just an extinct race of humans with slightly more magic power, whom racist propaganda has blown out of proportion. They see the Espers as allegorical stories, legends and religious messages. Such beings couldn't have really ever existed, could they?
Out in the town of Narshe, a barely-loyal holdout that Shinra regularly has to pacify, a routine military operation is about to go disastrously wrong - and blow the bloody doors off the gates of history...
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