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Edited by OPALGARNET16 on Nov 5th 2022 at 12:57:08 PM

Hear ye, hear ye

Alright so, I've finally gotten around to announcing this year's Mon Census, counting mons from January 2021 to November 2022.

Instructions can be found here

Hey everyone! Just thought I'd let you know that I've finally posted a new chapter of PMD: Reflecting Balance!

As usual, it can be read over on Serebii forums, FF.net or AO3.

Oh, and once again, I'll remind you not to spoil certain plot points for those who haven't read up to Chapter 60 yet.

Two new profiles

So I've decided for better bookkeeping purposes on my end I've just up and made some toyhouse pages for my two new guys. Let me know whether this works or not!

Pat Chevalier

Kris Chevalier

Kinda Bringing This Back Up

It’s been, like, 18 months, but we never properly settled this in a D!Post or anything.

But, back in July of 2021, we talked about Hop in the Galar League, and what mascot Legendary he would bring.

At which point, the idea was brought up, that Zacian and Zamazenta could have picked Hop and the protagonist as a pair, rather than one over the other.

Thus, Hop would bring both Zacian and Zamazenta to Galar League matches.

Would this fly?

Name: Mr. Tenor (Real name: Bertrand "Bertie" Bill)

Age: 31

Gender: Male

Ethnicity: Caucasian (Galarian)

Appearance: A slimly built man with long black hair tied in a ponytail, a clean-shaven face, and sparkling brown eyes. He prefers business casual clothes with a piano key necktie.

Organization Ties: The School

Region of Origin: Galar, Motostoke

Backstory: Mr. Tenor is an irreverent, impish individual, with a fixation on manipulating those around him to satisfy his own desires. What passes for his personal philosophy is the idea that everything has an expiration date, so seizing the moment is always the right thing to do. This leads him into trouble just as often as it gives him fortune.

Born into humble means, Bertie (as he was known then) lived a quiet life until he came of age, after which he set off to travel as a self-styled independent entrepreneur. In other words, a swindler. Recently, he has gotten involved with a certain organisation, plying his services as a music professor which he claims is a cure-all for truancy and other forms of delinquency in students. Little does he know of the true nature of this organisation, or what they think he is promising them.

Mons:

Species: Chatot

Nickname: Empy

Gender: Female

Ability: Keen Eye

Personality/Bio: Empy is a Chatot who has little patience for the foibles of mankind, although she follows Mr. Tenor for her own reasons. She has a habit of repeating phrases she hears in contexts embarrassing to the original speaker. She and Mr. Tenor trade barbed words from time to time, but the two of them have a healthy respect for each other born of experience and mutual self-interest.

Species: Meowth (Galarian)

Nickname: Mezzo

Gender: Male

Ability: Pickup

Personality: Mezzo is an almost frighteningly calm Meowth, who very much loves getting petted. A foundling that Mr. Tenor discovered while travelling, he freely goes along with his trainer's schemes. When Mr. Tenor sits, one can usually find Mezzo resting on his lap.

The spoiler block is over! Huzzah!

There’s inevitably a ton of things that need hashing out in regards to handling the ins and outs of Scarlet and Violet, but there's one topic in particular that my brain has been churning about for weeks.

The Treasures of Ruin

So, one of the most intriguing (to me) things about Paldea was the lore around the Treasures of Ruin – Wo-Chien, Ting-Lu, Chien-Pao, and Chi-Yu. Four artifacts imbued with curses, constantly passing from poor fool to poor fool throughout history and bringing tragedy to whatever hands they touch.

Gee, that sounds familiar. Almost like we have a set just like them, just for Aurics.

In-game, the Treasures were each sealed away in a shrine and locked with eight stakes, which the protag can simply pluck out of the ground. It's explained that only someone with a pure heart can break the seal, but it's still awfully simple if any preteen with a hat and a destiny can get their hands on these calamities given physical form. So, obviously, the simple solution is that they're still sealed away.

But what if they're not?

Maybe they were indeed locked away at some point, but they were released from their prisons. Or perhaps they were never successfully locked away in the first place. Either way, the Treasures being circulated in the modern day makes for some very fun plot hooks.

But how come the four Pokemon aren't just strolling around causing catastrophe in their wake constantly?

I came up with a potential explanation in the spoiler channel a while back. Canonically, the "bodies" of the Treasures are in fact only elemental constructs – the real physical forms are the artifacts themselves. A vessel, two halves of a broken sword, four prayer beads, and a set of 108 92 (confirmed via model rip) wooden tablets. The interesting thing is that, except for the vessel, each "artifact" comes in multiple pieces. Raifort even notes that the four beads of Chi-Yu may have been worn separately by four different individuals – so my solution is, knocking out a Treasure makes it lose its physical form, and separating the pieces prevents it from reforming. The vessel of Ting-Lu being only one piece complicates things, but it is visibly cracked, so perhaps it shatters when defeated, and when the fragments are brought together, Ting-Lu's earth control mends it as it takes form again.

But it would be too easy to keep them contained if they were totally powerless while separated, wouldn't it? They're living curses, after all. So perhaps holding a single piece inspires the emotion it was formed around. The Vessel of Ruin was given life through fear, so those who hold a piece of the cauldron feel unplaceable dread creeping up through them. The Beads of Ruin were given life through envy, so envy fuels the heart of a single bead's wearer. The Tablets of Ruin have grudges engraved upon them, so a holder's grudges crawl up from the depths of their soul. And the Sword of Ruin came to life through hatred, and so the wielder of the blade feels wrath boiling beneath their skin. Holding more or less of a full artifact affects how grievously they affect the holder's judgment – holding only one Tablet of Ruin out of a total of 108 would be far less jarring of a change than finding the hilt of the Sword of Ruin, but finding 50 tablets all at the same time would be much more cause for concern. And of course, these cursed beings want to reform – they'll always influence their holders to seek out their remaining parts, because why wouldn't they?

(As a side bit, I'm very fond of the idea that Chien-Pao's Sword of Ruin is the very same blade upon which the Vow was sworn – the swordsman was said to have thrown the sword to the ground and snapped it in two, after all. But I'm entirely okay with that just being a bit of headcanon :P)

Anyway, the reason I brewed this whole idea is because – if this passes – I have Ideas™ that involve one of my characters getting a piece of a Treasure of Ruin, specifically one of the four beads of Chi-Yu. If not, I can work without it, I just think it would make for some very fun storytelling~

So, thoughts? Concerns?

Edited by BittersweetNSour on Dec 19th 2022 at 9:39:17 AM

Ruin

I this idea as long as like,

-they're still treated as how Legendaries usually are under our rules and no one person monopolizes all four of them.

-Also unlike the Auric Artifacts it should be possible for them to attain their true forms

-I'm like 50/50 on the Vow thing - seems like something that would be rumored in-universe without it ever being confirmed weither or not it's true

-Overall I like the idea of them echoing the Auric artifacts a lot so long as like they're not just... Auric Artifacts But Again, if you get what I mean

I have my own ideas both of my own and to pass on on the behalf of the mods but it is fuck o clock in the morning and I need to get home and sleep

Oh yeah like, I had this idea with the understanding that, like — they attain their true forms by having their pieces brought together again, but also any individual person managing to collect all of said pieces of a Treasure is (in-universe) a bad thing that needs to be dealt with in a timely manner.

All in all, the hope is that this will actually be a bit more accessible than the Auric Artifacts, and simultaneously a bit more in line with it being a Pokemon RP. Aura's fun as hell to work with, but this is something not tied to the Auric Spectrum and therefore any character could potentially get wrapped up in it, and the outcome is A Pokemon Shows Up (And That's Terrifying)

Also, re: the Vow thing, I do like the "rumor" option, and it's not unreasonable to assume that Chien-Pao might invoke the Vow story in conversation for the sake of a juicy monologue ;P

Yeah, I like those addenums a lot!

Now that we have a dolphinmon I can finally do my long wanted Ecco miniarc. Anyway:

The Four Perils of Paldea

I kinda wanted to do things with the stakes so I'd rather not just write them out, even if I haven't fully formed exactly what form said plans would take, but anyway:

@The Sword of Ruin and the Veilstone Myth: If we were going with multiple Chien-Pao entities running around then I'd be okay with one of them being formed from the blade from the Veilstone myth, or we get a direct confirmation later, but as it is right now with just one of each the Treasures of Ruin are a bit too closely linked to whatever the China region is supposed to be (Based on the Four Perils of Chinese mythology, have Chinese names that stick out amongst the rest of the Paldeamons and the current Dex in general, were given to the King of Paldea by a merchant hailing from "the East" instead of naming a Japanese region directly, etc) at the moment for there to it to mesh with me.

Maybe some pieces of each Treasure were locked away via Stakes 'N Shrines so as to prevent them from ever fully forming? As an extension, perhaps at one point every piece used to be shut away separately in some way — not necessarily one shrine per each individual Tablet of Ruin, but kept apart in other ways so as to prevent the Fated Preteen from simply scavenger-hunting their way to horrible power.

(Speaking of, side request — if the stakes are there to be pulled, I'd like to ask that stake-pulling be a collaborative thing rather than just one single PC.)

Edited by BittersweetNSour on Dec 18th 2022 at 11:11:20 AM

Depending on how we handle it, I might have plans for Finn wanting to unleash Chien-Pao and ending up possessed by the swords but am agreeable to different ways of handling things!

Okay so, there are some things about these games like a single academy depicted, Area Zero. Based on some things we talked over in the mod chat when we were talking about the spoilerblock lowering we had this in mind for some of those:

The Academy is named "Naranja y Uva Academy" and has two houses for the different versions.

Given that there's still stuff we don't know about Area Zero that looks like it might be detailed in DLC or such, we might wanna keep it off limits for now like the Academy rules, perhaps as a result of the story of Scarlet and Violet having happened

Edited by CorvusAtrox on Dec 18th 2022 at 8:25:11 AM

Treasures of Ruin

I don't have a stake in this one, as it were.

Version differences

Seems fine to me.

Area Zero

Works fine to me. At some point we should probably hash out paradox Pokémon training.

And Another Thing

So, as everyone is probably aware by now, the heavens have smiled upon us and granted us a Dunsparce evolution. I was wondering if it would be plausible for Pef to be the one behind discovering the evolution/the evolution conditions.

And Another, Much Sillier Thing

I've heard that there is a lot of complicated stuff around the box legends. That said, is there a plausible reality where they have some connection to the Moon Civ? I think it would be funny if there were multiple species of legendary dragons that inexplicably look like human vehicles living on the moon.

I am down with this though I admit my preference is slightly for "Oh yeah, I discovered this a while back and have Currently gotten my findings together" if you wanted to touch on it in the present but I can work with whatevs

Likewise a fan of this idea

Edited by CorvusAtrox on Dec 18th 2022 at 10:53:15 AM

Dudunsparce

Yeah, my plan was more or less that pef, who is frequently offscreen doing whatever, has at some point evolved some of the legion. When someone asks why she didn't mention it she gets very offended that they didn't read her blog posts on the subject.

Oh in full support of both sparce and Moon Vehicle Population

I am absolutely in favor of Pef discovering the evolution conditions for Dudunsparce. Since the species does occur in the wild, it probably doesn't make much sense for her to discover the First Dudunsparce Ever (not Ever), but figuring out what triggers the evolution in trainer-viable conditions is something fairly reasonable. It would save us from having to figure out how Larry got his while the protag was doing their gym challenge, if we just assume he caught it already evolved. (Or, said evo discovery could be backdated a bit if it's really necessary oh that was covered by your blog post thing lmao)

As for Moon Civ Motorlizards, it's absurd and I absolutely love the idea, let's go for it

Edited by BittersweetNSour on Dec 18th 2022 at 11:59:50 AM

Give me space lizards

However the box legends are treated in the WAAPT-verse, including any connections to this civilization on the moon, I will attempt to adhere to whatever the community decides. One question that comes to my mind, though, is how Cyclizar will be treated. Will they be off-limits in all circumstances, restricted solely to NPC characters and background references, or will PC characters be permitted to have any Cyclizar as transportation or battle partners?

Standard fare Cyclizar are fairly common Pokemon, there's no particular restriction on them, it's just that there are also some that happen to live in space :P

Cyclizar

AFAIK Cyclizar, being the non-Paradox of the 'raidons, is literally just your standard every-day Pokemon. There shouldn't be any problems with them being treated as such.

Weird Times In Area Zero

Area Zero itself is probably best left untouched until some of the really big implications GF have made about its origins and traits are at least a little more defined, considering the fact that there might be a FUCKING MASSIVE EXTRATERRESTRIAL THING UNDER THERE on top of the weird and poorly defined nature of the Paradox Pokemon.

Meanwhile, I'm more along the lines that until Area Zero opens up, Paradox Pokemon are treated similarly to how we treated Ultra Beasts - dangerous, incomprehensible, and not beholden to normal Pokemon behavior. Now, as USUM came out, explaining the nature of U Bs and the dimensional shifts better, we went more lax on that. However, with Paradox right now, there is no telling what direction they're going to go in.

Edited by DuneTheWanderer on Dec 18th 2022 at 11:17:40 AM

Excellent, I am quite down for this then.

Since there's some discussion I figure that like, you're generally not going to Find them outside of Area Zero save the two Titans but I figure we'll eventually come up with some way so both the ones from Scarlet and Violet exist

Also speaking of stuff we can have, here's an idea for a new character I'm hoping to use in Paldea.

Name: Trill

Age: Mid-Teens

Gender: Not for me, Thanks

Ethnicity: Blasian (Black Kalosian/Kantonese specifically)

Appearance: Soft face with light freckling, medium brown skin, hair in a curly bob with one strand hanging down visibly, typically wears the Uva House School Uniform and a leather cap

Organizational Ties: Student at Naranja y Uva Academy, if that counts

Backstory: Growing up, Trill found that they had a love for adventure and wanted to set out on their own. Their parents were a bit more tradition minded than them and they had a desire to seek out their own path. This eventually led to Naranja y Uva Academy where they joined the Uva House in the STEM track due to more of a desire to look to the future over traditions. With the Independent Treasure Study Program, they hope to see some of Galar's sights and look for a treasure of their own, particularly interested in what they've heard of the Herba Mystica.

Team:

Species: Quaxly

Nickname: Quack Parade

Gender: Male

Ability: Torrent

Personality: Tries to be a suave gentleman and keep the team together as its starter, might be a bit of a flirt

Species: Squawkabilly (Blue)

Nickname: Showstopper

Gender: Female

Ability: Intimidate

Personality: Cool and collected greaser type who tries to represent her new "flock" with pride, has a bit of a mean streak

Edited by CorvusAtrox on Dec 18th 2022 at 11:26:28 AM

As the creator of the moon civ I am up for moon bike lizards

and 100% support Paradox mons being treated like Ultra Beasts

also Crow I love your new person

i have more later but i just woke up

Edited by Umbramatic on Dec 18th 2022 at 12:18:54 PM

OK so here is the first half of that "more later"

the stuff about the academy and Area Zero has already been addressed for me by others (I have multiple plans for Area Zero but given the pace at which I work these days I can wait) but there is one thing I am still wondering about

Tera Trouble

So how DO aberrant Tera types work in this RP? Do they NEED to be in dens or other ~special encounters~ like in-game or can Pokemon on rare occasions just have them? What should the rules on having rare Tera types be? What kind of Tera Types do deltas and shit have? It's itching at me, discuss.