Welcome to the world of Final Fantasy 7. I'm not going to do much in this segment... just talk a bit about the origin of Forgotten Messiah and perhaps wax poetic for a bit. I have been contemplating doing a story based on an Final Fantasy game for a long time. Starting with Final Fantasy II for the SNES and Final Fantasy Legend for the Gameboy, each game I have played in this series has been like a gripping novel, an interactive tour-de-force which spans empires and cities, the lives of kings and peasants, the struggle of good and evil across the backdrop of a truly fantastic and beautiful world. Betrayed along with Cecil as Kain once again falls victim to Golbez's control... saddened along with Celes after the world is ripped apart, when she feels she is the only one of her party left and throws herself from the high cliff of her small island, after seeing her grandfather die... angry and helpless along with Cloud as Sephiroth sets his town ablaze, murders his parents and unleashes all hell upon the world... these are the joys and sorrows of playing the Final Fantasy series. Reading several very good stories written in the universe of Final Fantasy inspired me to finally try my own hand at literature set in the game world, and this story is the first result. It's scary how fast it's come together... I began work on it on the 14th of November, and as of today, the 19th of November when this first part goes up, I've written a little over 140 pages and over 65000 words of a saga which grips me as much as the game itself did when I played through it.
I've been writing for quite some time, beginning seriously when I was only 10. In the nine years since that time, I've progressed from simple, fun stories written in all caps to more complex, involved sagas with numerous intersecting plotlines and all sorts of characters, both good and evil. Continuing to write is really what's helped me hone my technique, and before I began this story I had one novel and a plethora of other short stories under my belt. I feel that I improve just a bit with everything I do, and am always striving to become better. My writing usually progresses in one of two ways--first, I sit down with a vauge idea of what I want to do and the words just flow, the story writing itself, twisting and turning through some unknown guidance deep in my unconsious, seeming to know where it is going long before I do. This is the type of writing I enjoy the most, and what, for the most part, the writing of Forgotten Messiah has been. The other type of writing, of course, is the slower kind, the forced kind, where you have to stop for a second and think, and ask yourself "What the hell am I going to do here?" Not that Forgotten Messiah was devoid of this... in fact, there were several instances in it's development where I had absolutely no idea of how I was going to resolve something when I wrote it, and had to hash it out in my head for an hour or so to get the facts straight. But the story is nearly complete as I type this, and I am very pleased with what has come from my frenzied, unfocused typing in the past few days... it is a story that I feel does justice to the whole mythos and character set presented in Final Fantasy 7. I'm glad I didn't mess up too bad. ;)
This story was originally hosted on my home page at Geocities, but thanks to the great guys at Square Net, who consented to host it, I feel it will reach a lot more people like me, who love the game. (And, of course, it is nice to be hosted on a site that actually loads up during the day. ;)
There will, of course, be the occasional typo. Spell check cannot catch everything. Just as often as I read over a passage I've written and think in wonder "Where did this stuff come from?", I read over a passage and find myself thinking "How the hell did THAT word get in there?". I believe that I've caught most of the errors in the story that you are about to read--but I'm not perfect, and it is very hard to proof-read your own writing, as one tends to skim and not notice things that are glaringly obvious to an unbiased reader. If you see some error in logic or spelling that you feel totally destroys the whole sense of continuity or otherwise damages your enjoyment of the story, it is possible to get it fixed. However, I just wrote this story, and I don't run the site, so I'm no longer the person to talk to about fixing any typos. However, Andrew K is the guy in charge of the Fan Fic section at Square Net, so you should contact him about anything relating to the format or spelling on the page that you feel needs fixing. I've done my best to fix it up as best as possible, but we are none of us perfect. ;)
Regarding continuity with the game itself--I played through the entire game and enjoyed every minute of it, but it's possible I might misremember some small detail which you may find annoying. For instance, how many stories tall IS the Shinra building? I remember it being 70, but someone else told me it might have been 72. 69, maybe? Heh. Also, not everyone who plays through the game does everything the same--whenever possible, I've tried to keep events were not fully explained or rigidly set out as vague as necessary to avoid confusing someone who experienced the game in a different way. I believe my play through of the game was pretty average (although everyone I know complains that I didn't use enough materia and loved my Nail Bat too much... but that's just them, with their measly 3000 hp Cloud who would easily be whupped by my lightly magiced but heavily armored 9999 hp monster and his Nail Bat)... ahem. I digress. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I've done my best to keep everything regarding past events in the game as close to the experience of the average gamer as humanly possible, but as I've said before, we're none of us perfect. ;)
Regarding the two different resolution settings--you will notice that I used the preformatted text tag of html to format this story, which may seem strange to some of you. However, although using a paragraph command can be very nice for fitting text into whatever size window it is viewed in, it also destroys the spacing that is necessary to make a long story readable. I'm of the old school that believes in putting two spaces after every sentance and one after every comma... this makes the sentance structure far easier to see and the story far easier to read. The paragraph tag destroys that spacing (it is, of course, not in this part, now is it? ;) and so I went with preformatted text instead. I believe the story looks best at 800 x 600, but for those of you without fancy video cards the 640 x 480 version is also here, and not shabby at all. ;) The only different between the two is the size of the text.
So, I think I've ranted on enough. You've already waded through the legal mumbo jumbo on the front page, and I'm flattered that you took the time to actually read a bit about the creation of this story and my thoughts regarding it's content. So now, I'm going to jump the hell off my soap box and let you get on with the story. Please feel free to send comments about the story or bend my ear about anything else by clicking here.
I really enjoyed writing this story, and reading it through once it was complete. I hope you will enjoy it as well.
Copyright November 1997
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Continue on to Chapter 1, 640 x 480 rendition.
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