Original Celestica people and "Sinnoh people" (postgame spoilers)

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

According to Old Verse 5,

"Long and longer yet ago, Celestica was here. But folk and town alike, both did disappear. In time, came new folk sailing, sailing 'cross the sea, called by their love for Sinnoh, great and almighty. But diff'rent were the Sinnoh that each folk did hold dear, and bitter strife and angry war were always at the near. 'Celestica' they called themselves, the name not theirs to take. Yet claim it from the past they did, for tragic quarrel's sake. So once again did our name live, though all our people gone. But even if the name endures, its heart does not live on."

So this would mean that the Diamond and Pearl clans have no claim to call themselves Celestica and that it should only refer to the original clan. According to this, however, the originals are all gone...except then the author says "our name" and "our people", even in the same breath as claiming that they're all gone!

And to complicate things further, Volo claims that "the blood of the ancient Sinnoh people flows in my veins". Is he talking about the ancient Celestica people? Why call them Sinnoh when prior to this, that term has only been used to refer to the mistaken beliefs around Dialga and Palkia, and to the temple at the summit (well, and Kamado's line about perhaps it being more appropriate to call the region Sinnoh).

We're never told where the name "Sinnoh" came from, are we? Just that it's the name that Diamond and Pearl had for who they thought was Arceus, but who was really their respective split deity.

And Volo knows the name Arceus as well. He's the first person to tell it to you, at the campsite carving. Supposedly he's reading it off the carvings that are scattered around the region, so that means that everyone else just kinda...missed it? We know he's not making it up, that he's absolutely right about the name. So how does he know it and nobody else seems to.

Basically, when you get down to it, where does "Sinnoh" come from and is that the same as the Celestica people?

 

[Blood Red]

Celestica here seems to refer to a specific town, most likely the modern-day Eterna. The people of that specific town might also have been called 'Celestica', but the people of the region as a whole were most likely called the people of Sinnoh, named after the deity they worshipped as the creator of the world, i.e. Arceus. As for Volo and where he got that specific name, we don't really know. Heck, even the name 'Sinnoh' might not be from the past, and the original hero that's mentioned in the story multiple times could've been a time traveller. The game is really fond of its bootstrap paradoxes, after all, what with the DPPt protagonist helping shape the past of their own world.

The only thing we know for certain is that 'Arceus' itself isn't the proper name for the deity whose fragments occasionally show up as a Pokémon throughout the games. In the intro, it says 'Arceus' is just what the humans call it. For all we know, its proper name could be Sinnoh, or maybe it doesn't even have a proper name to begin with.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Oh gosh what if the original hero is just plain Alder instead of just looking like him? Geez that'd be wild.

Kamado uses "Celestica people" but it's unsure who he's talking about specifically.

 

[Blood Red]

Oh gosh what if the original hero is just plain Alder instead of just looking like him? Geez that'd be wild.

It's a very popular fan theory, though sadly unconfirmed (for now).

Kamado uses "Celestica people" but it's unsure who he's talking about specifically.

He was probably talking about the people who built the Celestica Ruins, i.e. the people of the town once called Celestica.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Possibly. Though Ancient Text 5 implies that the clans also call themselves that even though they don't have a connection to the original Celestica people.

 

[Hekym]

I have a lot of questions about this as well. I've been assuming that the Celestican people were the ones who built all the ruins. And not just in Hisui/Sinnoh, but the ruins of Alph as well (in both Gen 2 and 4 Johto). Who built the ruins in Hoenn and the associated ruins (the Embedded Tower) in Johto (Route 47, HG/SS only) is still kind of a mystery, especially as Hoenn ancients seemed to use a different script (Braille, both Gen 3 and 6).

I've really been fixated on the architecture. The clans all use wood for their construction, while the ruins are masonry. This isn't a trivial distinction, it suggests a totally different people altogether, and mirrors Japan's own heavy reliance on wood and rare use of stone (outside of foundations) until basically 1850. The implication is that Celesticans had very different technology and a different religion, and maybe came from and left for some other place too. (How did they get to Hisui if everyone else had to travel to get there, for example.) (Edit: That line in the quarry when Ingo mentions it's not clear if people cut the rock together with Pokemon, or the Pokemon worked alone, has some potentially sinister implications. Were the Celesticans the ones who enslaved Pokemon and used them as tools?)

It seems that the Celestica people have a very different relationship to Arceus, one that has granted them a lot of knowledge and the apparent assumption of a close relationship. I assume that Volo meant the people "of Sinnoh" ie, of Arceus, referring back to that supposed closer relationship to the deity. Clearly it does not work out that way-- Volo clearly assumed it would, and it led him to madness and disaster. This raises the question of whether the Celesticans have a problem with megalomania because of their beliefs, or some kind of predisposition to insanity. Did Arceus wipe them out deliberately, or did someone destroy them?

I feel extremely torn about the notion of Celestican heritage. Cogita seems to be full-blooded, but it seems that Volo has a more distant relationship to the lineage. And then there's the issue of Cynthia and her grandmother; her bloodline appears to be mixed as well as Professor Carolina doesn't share physical traits with Cogita or Volo. We see a similar appearance in Lusamine as well, but with differences as well. So how much of the bloodline do modern day lookalike characters have, and how much does everyone else have? Skill with Pokemon and fascination with history is not limited to these characters, (and Zinnia's egomania reminds me a lot of Volo.) Did they just mix in with everyone else, spreading their physical traits far and wide? Is the nuttiness just an unlucky coincidence for Volo's case, based on something he experienced but didn't tell us?

 

[Pokefan_1987]

My guess is that Cynthia's Grandmother is the last person with either Cogita or Celestica heritage in her and thats why she still guards Celestic town.

It's just the majority of the Celestica lineage and family trees and their creation has been forgotten and most of it wasn't properly documented and probably kept secret?

As for statues around Sinnoh? some of them might have been scattered from their sacred spots and thats why their locations is inconsistent in Modern Sinnoh.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

I feel extremely torn about the notion of Celestican heritage. Cogita seems to be full-blooded, but it seems that Volo has a more distant relationship to the lineage. And then there's the issue of Cynthia and her grandmother; her bloodline appears to be mixed as well as Professor Carolina doesn't share physical traits with Cogita or Volo. We see a similar appearance in Lusamine as well, but with differences as well.

To be fair, Cynthia's grandmother only ever had a generic sprite in the games. Everything else, including her name in the anime, is made up to envision her as more of an individual.

Where is the appearance with Lusamine other than being blonde? Lusamine even has green eyes while Cynthia, Volo, and Cogita all have grey eyes.

 

[Pokemon Fan]

According to Old Verse 5,

So this would mean that the Diamond and Pearl clans have no claim to call themselves Celestica and that it should only refer to the original clan. According to this, however, the originals are all gone...except then the author says "our name" and "our people", even in the same breath as claiming that they're all gone!

And to complicate things further, Volo claims that "the blood of the ancient Sinnoh people flows in my veins". Is he talking about the ancient Celestica people? Why call them Sinnoh when prior to this, that term has only been used to refer to the mistaken beliefs around Dialga and Palkia, and to the temple at the summit (well, and Kamado's line about perhaps it being more appropriate to call the region Sinnoh).

We're never told where the name "Sinnoh" came from, are we? Just that it's the name that Diamond and Pearl had for who they thought was Arceus, but who was really their respective split deity.

And Volo knows the name Arceus as well. He's the first person to tell it to you, at the campsite carving. Supposedly he's reading it off the carvings that are scattered around the region, so that means that everyone else just kinda...missed it? We know he's not making it up, that he's absolutely right about the name. So how does he know it and nobody else seems to.

Basically, when you get down to it, where does "Sinnoh" come from and is that the same as the Celestica people?

Recall that Cogita also knows the name, and states the name "Arceus" dates back to the time of the ancient people of Sinnoh as well, about one or two thousand years before the game's events. I took it to mean that Arceus was simply another name it was known by.

As for how the Old Verse isn't contradicting itself, I think it is referring to the culture and civilization disappearing, rather than their people literally all dying out. After all, another Old Verse clarifies how their civilization fell, implying that something happened to cause Arceus to leave them (the light of Arceus that shone upon them being gone, and people abandoning the region in despair and to search for it, until none remained in Hisui except for pokemon), some time after the time of the Ancient Hero and the building of the Temple of Sinnoh.

Thus the ancient Sinnoh people ceased to be a distinct people, integrating with other cultures and societies in other regions, in effect disappearing. Yet, their bloodlines still remained, resulting in people like Volo. Their myths and legends continued to be told as well, in particular their stories of Almighty Sinnoh. These stories inspired the founders of the Diamond and Pearl clans to travel to Hisui, where they saw and mistook Dialga and Palkia respectively for Almighty Sinnoh/Arceus (as Cogita explained).

Cogita is a special case, given the implications that she is the author of the Old Verses, and has through some supernatural means lived at least since the time of the founding of the Diamond and Pearl clans (though she is not old enough to have been around in the time of the Celestica civilization and the Ancient Hero's exploits, as the Old Verses do not refer to these things as things the author saw, but rather things they heard about that happened long before their time).

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

That makes sense, that the culture itself may be gone but the bloodline lives on.