Pokémon World Myth Encyclopedia

[Persephone]

This entry was commissioned by bronzonghittransplant on Thousand Roads.



Shaymin - Sinnoh

Overview

Shaymin are an extinct species of pokémon alleged to still live in Sinnoh. The Hisuian clans described them as being the spirits of gracidea trees and the heralds of spring. Shaymin were also psychopomps that could ferry the souls of the dead to the afterlife and then bring them back for reincarnation. While shaymin were not gods, they were still treated with reverence. The largest religious festival in Hisui was dedicated to them.

Early colonists occasionally reported seeing a Shaymin, although none were ever photographed. Over time sightings decreased in frequency before coming to an almost total halt. The scientific consensus is that shaymin were a real species that went extinct due to habitat loss shortly after the colonization of Sinnoh. Sightings have occasionally been reported in the last century. Shaymin have had a long history in the folklore of Sinnoh, first as harbingers of life and death and then as a cryptid rumored to still lurk somewhere in Sinnoh. Even if they are not necessarily gods, their folklore is interesting enough to warrant inclusion in this book.

Appearance

There are two variations on shaymin’s appearance. The first is a rodent-like pokémon that resembles togedemaru. A mat of grass grows from the back instead of quills. Other depictions describe these shaymin with pine needles growing from their back instead of grass, furthering the comparisons to togedemaru. A gracidea flower grows from somewhere on the head. The fur on the underside is usually described as being white.

The second variation more closely resembles a deer than a rodent. Their legs are thin and long. A mane of red gracideas rings the neck. These descriptions alternatively feature long white ears that are used for flight or actual wings on the back. These shaymin are usually not depicted as having moss on their back, although some artists include it. Mossy legs or grass-stained paws are more common instead.

These two forms are remarkably consistent. The same general shapes and colors are used from Celestica cave art to Galaxy Team field sketches. The names of the forms varies. The Hisuians preferred ‘night and day,’ or ‘dormant and awakened,’ for the rodent and deer forms, respectively. Galaxy Team biologists referred to them as ‘land and sky’ forms instead.

In Sinnish Mythology

Shaymin were the favored children of The Dread One, ruler of the Hisuian underworld. They were the only living beings he allowed to leave his domain. Despite being cute in appearance, shaymin were reapers of the dead and could be vicious if threatened. A shaymin’s attacks were described as actively corroding everything they touched. Buildings would be consumed by vines and torn down, metal armor would rust away to nothing, and even natural defenses would fracture and crumble. The life force they stole in these attacks would be transferred into the shaymin, making them all the more vibrant.

Shaymin were said to sleep inside of gracidea trees. Some legends even claim that shaymin’s spirit infused the trees and destroying one could kill the shaymin. However, doing so would ensure the shaymin would reap not only the person who felled it but their entire family and potentially their entire clan. The only way to halt the spread of the sin was to kill and bury the offender and his direct ancestors and descendants. A gracidea seed would be planted in the graveyard, fertilized by those who offended the shaymin. If the felling occurred unintentionally only the offender would need to be killed and buried. This is the only known clan ritual involving human sacrifice.

On warm, sunny days the shaymin would grow wings and play. Witnessing them playing was said to be a sign of good fortune so long as the shaymin did not notice you in turn. Drawing the attention of a shaymin was an omen of impending death. Offerings to the shaymin were not presented directly. Instead, they were left in Soonoo Flower Field at night when the shaymin were sleeping. The dormant form was what shaymin used in poor weather or when they were still resting after absorbing a soul.

At the end of the autumn, shaymin would gorge themselves on souls, especially those of plants. After they had consumed all they could they would return to the underworld to deposit the souls and greet their father. In the spring they would return with cleansed souls to be reincarnated, leading to a surge of life. Shaymin were feared, but their return was met with celebration as it meant that those who were lost had returned and the earth was about to become more hospitable to the hunter-gatherers of Hisui. Dying in winter, with the shaymin absent, was said to doom a soul to wandering the earth forever as a lingering ghost. Their return also meant that those who died were not lost to the cycle of rebirth.

Having a shaymin settle near a village in the early spring was seen as an omen of fertility. Conceiving a child near a newly returned shaymin was said to ensure success, as the newly returned soul needed a body to reincarnate into. Getting too close, however, could still risk the shaymin’s wrath.

Origins

Shaymin date back to the earliest Celestica art. Most of the information about the Celestica religion has been lost. What evidence we do have suggests that the Celestica heavily associated shaymin with the most ancient of gods, Arceus, Sinnoh, and Giratina. Shaymin depicted between humans and the high gods or shaymin performing rituals are common motifs. Shaymin were also frequently drawn over doorways leading into holy sites. It is believed that shaymin were threshold guardians that linked together the mortal world with the world of the gods. Very little in the way of actual mythology exists. Almost no evidence of Celestica settlement has been found in the far northeastern reaches of Sinnoh or in the Sonoo Flower Fields. These may have been sacred places that no one dared to enter.

The clans were also reluctant to settle in the areas. The odd priest would live there. Common people, and even clan leaders, rarely ventured out. They were considered among the holiest sites in Hisui alongside the peak of Mt. Tengan, Returning Cave, the Temples of Mind, and the Taishi no Dōkutsu.

The early Galaxy Team colonists occasionally reported encountering shaymin of both forms. They theorized that sky shaymin was the evolution of land shaymin, although the clans insisted that an individual shaymin could move freely between the two. They were documented as being common north of Jubilife in the Sonoo Flower Fields and along the northern reaches of Ultramarine Sound. Explorers constantly lamented the shaymin’s shyness as they would flee or hide the moment a camera appeared. One claimed to have captured a photograph only for the shaymin not to appear when the film was developed. Shaymin mostly avoided the colonists. As the Sonoo area was turned into farmland they reportedly abandoned the site altogether. The last credible sighting of shaymin was in 1889.

Worship

In the days of the Celestica and the clans, dedicated priests went to live with the shaymin. They resided alone in makeshift shelters and did their best not to have any permanent impacts on the environments. Shaymin’s priests tended to be highly eccentric hermits and mystics who claimed to hear the souls of the dead and speak with Sinnoh, Arceus, and Giratina. Even other priests gave the followers of shaymin a wide berth when they entered their settlements. Giratina had no priests. Religious matters related to the dead were handled by shaymin’s church. Every winter the priests would return to the clans and perform a ritual honoring that year’s dead. At the end of the winter the priests would perform an exorcism to help the winter dead move on. They would then gather offerings from the clans and bring them back to the meadow to present to the shaymin. Clan leaders were buried in the Sonoo Flower Fields so their bodies would fertilize the flowers and provide food to the shaymin.

The winter exorcism and gathering of offerings were modified by the Japanese colonists into the modern Gracidea Festival. The festival consists of two phases. The first is an evening festival consisting of speeches from government and religious officials, plays reenacting scenes from Japanese mythology, and a nighttime procession honoring the year’s dead. The next morning a street festival is held. Brightly colored pastries are commonly eaten, gracidea crowns are worn, and people are expected to express thanks to those they are grateful for. This is both a celebration of family and of young love, as teenagers and young adults will often use the festival to express their feelings towards a current or prospective partner.

The Gracidea Festival has become popular among the Japanese diaspora, as well as in areas containing a large number of Japanese people. In these areas the religious implications and the evening portion of the ceremony are sometimes omitted in favor of a more jubilant, secular festival. This version has become popular among all ethnicities in Alola and California, although people of Japanese descent usually still observe some variation of the evening rituals.

Shaymin’s last priest along the Ultramarine Sound died in 1905. The last priest in Sonoo died in 1926. Most Hisuian priests were persecuted by the Japanese government. The priests of shaymin were mostly left alone. What threat did a priest pose when everyone could see their gods were dead and gone? The clans did not replace the final priests due to a weakening of their religious and political power and the lack of shaymin to appease.

Today

Following the collapse of formal shaymin worship in 1926 and the rise in popularity of the Gracidea Festival throughout Japan, interest in the extinct species began to increase. Over the decades there have been many reported sightings of shaymin, including at least one blurry photograph. In 1934 the military governor of Sinnoh reported seeing a group of sky shaymin in the place now known as Flower Paradise. The emperor quickly declared it a national park. The land is still protected and entry is heavily restricted. The governor would later admit they made up the shaymin sighting to convince the government to establish a park there. Cryptozoologists and botanists still make pilgrimages to Sonoo and Flower Paradise in hopes of seeing a shaymin. Even if they do not glimpse a shaymin, they will still see some of the prettiest wildflowers in the world.

Researchers have attempted to replicate shaymin’s legendary decay attacks with ghost-types. They have had some success in having ghost types attack the concept of armor rather than a physical object. This actually led to the discovery of the offensive applications of the move curse. These researchers also made the first TMs for spite and perish song, further increasing their popularity. Researchers of grass-types have yet to have the same success. Frenzy plant can collapse some structures by rapidly burrowing into them, but it cannot produce the sort of conceptual decay that shaymin could allegedly cause. Whether shaymin were actually capable of crumbling walls, rotting wood, corroding armor, and shattering bone plates with a single attack remains disputed. It is a common motif in their folklore. However, this could simply be a metaphor for their role as a psychopomp. The colonists never documented these effects, but they also almost never saw shaymin fight. They were also unable to hold a captive specimen. Pokéballs failed to capture them. This was a common problem for powerful grass-types at the time and one that would not be easily solved until the popularization of metal and plastic pokéballs. These only became common after shaymin were already extinct.

Shaymin have become a popular symbol and plants in Asia. Multiple grass gyms have one as a mascot. Garden statues of shaymin are also popular, especially around gracidea trees. Gracidea trees have also become popular decorations in graveyards and other memorials due to their lingering connection to the psychopomps of Hisui.

In 2017 researchers at Kurogane University announced that they had uncovered multiple fossilized skeletons similar to togedemaru during a dig near Sonoo. They plan to attempt revival of the species, with a target dates of 2023 for the first partial revival and 2028 for the first fully organic specimen. The project has proven controversial, both for the usual reasons fossil revivals are controversial and because some members of the public insist that shaymin are not actually extinct. If shaymin are still around introducing genes from surrogates and populations long-gone could functionally end the species as it exists today.

 

[Persephone]

Miraidon - Paldea

And I saw the Lord of the Dead Earth floating above the barren ground. “What must we do to stop this?” I asked.

When the Iron Serpent turned and beheld me I was transfixed in sadness. “Can you outrun the land? Can the fish outswim the sea? The birds outfly the heavens? No. No more can you leave time.”

-Iter Aevum

Overview

Miraidon, The Iron Serpent, Automaton King, The End of All, was an ancient deity sporadically worshipped in the Paldean Empire. They were supposedly encountered in the Gran Caldera of Paldea during ritual pilgrimages. He and his brother, Koraidon, were the primary gods of the early empire, before being supplanted by The Levantine God in its later years. The details of both faiths were mostly lost to history with the rise of the Kalosian Empire and the Church of Life.

Books about the Caldera faith made their way to libraries in India and China, and a few eventually made their way back to Europe. Renaissance art sometimes depicted Miraidon or Koraidon. A handful of stories featuring the dragons would enter into the pop culture before gradually falling out of favor. Their popularity was revived once more following a nineteenth century expedition that purported to see Miraidon in the Gran Caldera.

Miraidon lies somewhere between the realm of a god and a cryptid. He has no active church, although he once did, and his existence is disputed. Whether he truly is a forgotten god, a sighting of Rayquaza, an extraordinarily rare and powerful pokémon, or just a hallucination given life by the public’s imagination may never be known.

Appearance

Miraidon was described in antiquity as a floating dragon. Iter Aevum, the main surviving text on Miraidon, describes him as having ‘royal’ scales, which likely meant purple, and being about ten feet in length. On his neck was a translucent pouch with a storm cloud inside. Lightning flowed from his head and body, striking anything that came close. His claws and tail were metallic. His eyes were like a sheet of metal with irises made of glowing ink. The irises appeared to be move around like ink flowing on a page or oil moving on top of water, forming new patterns as the creature emoted. His body apparently bore some resemblance to cyclizar.

Most depictions of Miraidon are based off of that in the Iter Aevum. In more rural areas the drawings that still remain, mostly on account of being drawn on cave walls too deep beneath the surface for priests of Xerneas to find them, vary a little more. Some are yellow and appear to be over one hundred feet long. Others walk on the ground. This is to be expected: Miraidon allegedly never left the Gran Caldera, and in rural areas where literacy was low the official accounts were bound to become distorted.

Renaissance art depictions, and most subsequent drawings, were heavily based on the Iter Aevum description.

In Paldean Mythology

The Gran Caldera of Paldea is constantly mired in storm clouds and only accessible through a handful of tunnels and narrow passes. In pre-imperial times it was regarded as either a cursed or holy place and avoided.

The Paldean emperors decided to send exploratory teams inside to see what was there. Different teams recorded drastically different visions of the local wildlife, their rulers, and even the lay of the land. Some reported that it was filled with monstrous creatures that resembled normal pokémon, just larger and more vicious. Their leader was Koraidon, The Winged King. Sometimes explorers would encounter a world that seemed to be made of automatons resembling normal pokémon. Their leader was Miraidon, The Iron Serpent.

Over time the legends were codified and a proper religious framework developed around them. At the center of Paldea was a portal to another world, the world of gods, spirits, and monsters. That world was constantly at war between the Winged King’s beasts and the Iron Serpent’s automatons. Time also moved differently so that every year outside could be centuries on the inside. Every time explorers entered the area under the Caldera the battle lines could have changed so that another faction ruled.

Neither dragon was viewed as good or evil. They were simply forces beyond human understanding or control. Both were sacrificed to in order to avoid their wrath as much as to court their blessings.

The main text on Miraidon, Iter Aevum, is the account of a priest who entered into the Gran Caldera and had a series of increasingly strange visions, culminating in seeing Miraidon and the end of the world.

Miraidon, in this account, comes from a world where humans cut down the forests, poisoned the waters, and made the land burn like a volcanic landscape. The remaining pokémon banded together to save the natural world from collapse at human hands. In retaliation the humans deployed their strongest spells and annihilated almost all of the world’s pokémon. Miraidon then called down a lightning storm that lasted seventy days and only ended when everything on the planet was dead. Miraidon then rebuilt the pokémon in the form of automatons.

The unnamed author of Iter Aevum believed that the Gran Caldera was a vast world where everything that had, is, could, and will occur was happening simultaneously. Time and causality had no meaning. The universe ebbed and flowed like the sea.

Koraidon rose from nothing and fell. Humans rose and fell. Eventually Miraidon, too, would fall and leave behind a barren earth. Koraidon and Miraidon ruled at the high and low tides of time, the ends of the universe. Whichever way time flowed, one would be the beginning of the world and the other it’s end.

Scholars are divided on what the meaning of the Iter Aevum means. It may have been a criticism of imperial ambition and a call for a more naturalistic lifestyle. The purple scales and iron hide of Miraidon may have been a metaphor for the emperors with their purple capes and steel armor. However, Miraidon is not the destroyer of the pokémon in the story. Some scholars have argued that Iter Aevum is fundamentally a conservative tale praising the need of a strong emperor to keep the masses in check, enforce divine law and prevent the world from coming to ruin. His war with Miraidon was really about the ongoing fight with nomadic tribes that relied on their raw strength and bonds with local pokémon to fight the Paldeans superior tactics and technology.

The book may have simply been the visions of a man losing his sanity in a place that was hostile to human life. Later explorers would describe similar experiences of creeping madness.

From 1500 CE to 1650 CE Miraidon featured in a number of chivalric romances. In these accounts he was simply a strange and powerful dragon guarding the realm of the fairies under the Gran Caldera. Knights wishing to gain the favor of the fairy courts or even take one as a wife would have to defeat the iron dragon. This made a measure of sense as a dragon made of cold iron could realistically oppress an entire kingdom of fairies and would be a worthy foe for a legendary hero. In most versions of the tale the dragon was insurmountable by strength alone and required trickery to down. The victorious knight would pretend to surrender and give Miraidon an offering of food. The food was either poisoned or contained a sharp spike that killed the dragon when eaten.

Worship

Both dragons were regularly sacrificed to through offerings of livestock and precious gems. Koraidon’s offerings were metal and were collected by the empire from across the land to be taken to the Gran Caldera. There history of emperors skimming from these offerings as old as the offerings themselves.

It was believed that savage Koraidon could bring strength in the hunt and war while clever Miraidon could help smiths and mages. Miraidon, because of his domains and coloration, became associated with the wealthy and the nobility. Koraidon was associated with the commoners and military. The choice of red or blue robes became political in the Imperial Court, as populists and generals would set themselves apart from the old, often corrupt noble families through their attire. On at least three occasions slave revolts or popular uprisings ended in the Temple of Miraidon being looted or burned.

The Temple of Miraidon was destroyed for the final time in 214 AD when a devout follower of the Levantine God ascended to the throne and ordered all remaining pagan structures destroyed. A new temple dedicated to the Levantine God was erected on the site. It, too, would be destroyed when the Kalosians arrived and destroyed all monuments that offended their faith.

While many of the grand temples of the day were made of marble, The Temple of Miraidon was made of gilded concrete. The largest building in the complex was filled with fountains and eternally burning torches. The engineering methods used for both have been lost to time. This was the public temple where nobility came to pay their respects to the god. Commoners were usually banned from the temple under the belief that only Miraidon’s chosen could enter his sanctum.

At the back of the site were more functional structures, a hearth and forge. The empire’s greatest mages, mathematicians, and smiths lived and worked at the site to create new spells, inventions, and weapons. They had a second gate so that they would never be seen by the nobility. Practitioners of the arts sacred to Miraidon would often offer their own offerings of wine, coal, or food directly into the flames of hearths or forges.

Origins

The Gran Caldera has long been a source of mystery. It is extremely difficult to access and many expeditions into it never return. Those that do return are often insane. It should not be surprising that legends about the caldera would take hold.

Depictions of Miraidon are somewhat consistent, but this is not proof of their existence. Explorers would be aware of the reports of those who came before them. In the throes of insanity they may have hallucinated about what they expected to see. Indeed, almost all of those who claimed to have met Miraidon emphasized they did so in visions and not face-to-face.

Some scholars have suggested that Miraidon was inspired by Rayquaza. The Sky Dragon is often associated with weather and is a serpentine, flying creature. Miraidon’s original description as having ‘royal’ scales could have referred more to Rayquaza’s presence than their color. Several ancient civilizations regarded Rayquaza as a sky god at the heart of their pantheon. The only particularly unusual attributes that separate Miraidon from Rayquaza are the size and description of the eyes. Rayquaza is far larger than Miraidon has been described as. They also possess fairly normal eyes. These discrepancies could still be attributed to a hallucinating writer. Perhaps the first explorer’s ‘vision’ was inspired by Rayquaza and later descriptions were inspired by the ones who came before, each slightly embellishing or altering the story until a distinct creature emerged.

Some theorists have speculated that Miraidon is from another dimension. Some places that were held in ancient myths to be gateways to other worlds have since been discovered to contain portals to Ultra Space. The Lake of the Sunne and Altar of the Moone are sacred places in Alola where the dimensional veil is particularly thin. The strange pokémon sometimes described could be Ultra Beasts. If so they would be far more similar to terrestrial life than most ultra beasts are, simply being larger or mechanical versions of existing pokémon.

Today

In 1870 a government-sponsored expedition entered the Gran Caldera for the first time in centuries. The Church of Life had long forbidden entry as it was a potential resting place of Yveltal, or at least a place warped by her. More cynical historians have suggested that Church leadership was aware of the legends of Koraidon and Miraidon and did not want to risk explorers bringing back their own tales of other gods.

The weakening of the Church’s power and the closure of all other colonial frontiers led to a change in policy. The Paldeans hoped to discover new worlds to conquer, or at least resources to harvest, in order to facilitate a new golden age. Instead the research team came back describing a misty hollow filled with aggressive mineral pokémon that resembled extant species. One explorer even drew a sketch of Miraidon and a fragmented account of a conversation, although he could not remember doing so the next day.

The Violet Book, as the expedition’s preliminarily report came to be known, became a best seller and helped inspire the science fiction of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. The Paldean government was disappointed there were no human inhabitants or apparent mineral wealth to be found. Whatever was in the caldera was guarded by exceptionally strong pokémon. Formal expeditions were discontinued, although a number of explorers would attempt to enter themselves. They usually did not return.

The Gran Caldera remains a popular subject among conspiracy theorists, cryptid hunters, and tabloid writers. The rampant, and often entirely unfounded, speculation has intensified following a series of preliminary investigations into the site in 2002 by the Naranja School for Girls and Uva School For Boys that led to the discovery of terrastalization. However, mounting deaths and mental breakdowns among the researchers led to the discontinuation of the exploratory missions in 2005.

Whether Miraidon truly exists remains unknown. The Naranja-Uva explorers never mentioned seeing either Koraidon or Miraidon, just strong and unfamiliar organic, spectral and mineral pokémon. No living specimens were ever retrieved.

 

[Persephone]

Celebi – Johto
Elle, em, ey, oh.
—Celebi, 988 A.D.

Overview

Celebi, Voice of the Forest, Fatemaker, Oracle of Ubame, is a goddess of fertility, forests, seasons, time, and fate popular in the Ubame region of Johto. She is the primary goddess of the region and a relatively popular goddess throughout Johto, although she was more or less unknown outside of it.

Celebi is notable for her outsized role in Johtonian philosophy. She is the Fatemaker, capable of traversing time like humans do space, altering or observing events as she sees fit. There has been a centuries-long debate among Johtonian theologists as to whether or not there is a point to praying to Celebi for relief or blessings, as any intervention she is inclined to make would have already happened. Should, instead, the comfortable pray that their comforts are not taken away? Is there any justice in a goddess who can punish people for transgressions or reward them for actions that subsequently are made to have never happened at all?

The average worshipper’s views on Celebi mostly avoid this complexity. People make offerings to her or go on pilgrimages to her shrine if they value her domains or seek her counsel. She, in turn, will act as she pleases. Celebi is known for her fickle nature and odd sense of humor, with some of her jokes only making sense decades or even centuries after the fact.

In the 19th Century, Celebi made the jump from Johtonian theology and philosophy to European science fiction. As the concept of time travel became more popular in literature, interest in Celebi naturally increased.

Appearance

Celebi is usually depicted as a small winged humanoid with a proportionally large head, green skin and hair, two green antennae, large blue eyes, and gossamer wings. She is most commonly described as being between one and two feet tall. On occasion she has been described as possessing purple skin and hair instead of green. This Celebi has supposedly claimed to be an entirely different entity than the green Celebi, although they both share the name Celebi. It is unclear whether or not this is a joke.

Different artists vary in how humanoid they depict Celebi. In the Alph era Celebi was drawn as almost entirely inhuman, having more resemblance to a beedrill than a human woman. These early depictions were also far more likely to depict Celebi as being red or purple. In the Enju Era Celebi worship reached its peak. The goddess was depicted as being almost entirely humanoid, just with faintly green skin, large wings, and a somewhat above average stature. Modern accounts typically land in the middle, typically describing Celebi as a fairy that somewhere between a plant, insect, and person.

In Johtonian Mythology

Most Celebi stories center on her role as the Oracle of Ubame. In this capacity Celebi is said to have frequently appeared before her worshippers to listen to their pleas and provide assistance of variable quality. She was always noted to have a bizarre sense of humor and a certain detachment from humanity. When the last king of Alph appeared before Celebi to offer advice on saving the kingdom, all the goddess would tell him is that the ruins he left behind would be a tourist attraction centuries in the future. She once gave the solemn Prophecy of the Bastard King. Shoguns and emperors fought a war over it that lasted forty years, ended several polities, and left the land in the throes of famine. Centuries later the prophecy would be revealed to be the plot summary of a popular American television series. The showrunners had been entirely unaware of the prophecy they were fulfilling. In the seventh century she made a series of statements about someone with a ‘galaxy brain.’ It was believed this prophecy had been fulfilled by the Galaxy Corporation until the term became popular Galarian internet slang. It remains unclear who she was talking about.

Celebi is also known for her unusual anachronistic gifts to her worshippers, including providing one hero with what was probably a six-shot revolver. The smithing technology of the time was unable to produce more bullets and after the ammunition was exhausted her gift was rendered useless. She is also believed to have provided ancient priests and warriors with a motorcycle and a laptop, both of which were also useless once they ran out of fuel and charge. None of her gifts, no matter how futuristic, have ever inspired meaningful technological progress. These gifts have also led to a theory in astrobiology, The Celebi Gifts conjecture, that we have not been approached by benevolent extraterrestrial civilizations because there is nothing they could give us from their current technology that we could support with our current scientific knowledge and supply chains.

Celebi has made it clear to multiple supplicants that she does not care much for humanity. She sees herself primarily as a goddess of forests and the broader ecosystem. Humans tend to destroy the things she actually cares about. This has not stopped humans from trying to earn her favor, or at least avoid her wrath. On occasion she obliges. Once every few decades she is even unambiguously helpful. Her priests have noted that she is sympathetic to the congenitally sick, gardeners, hermits, scholars, and storytellers. She is said to be particularly fond of comedians. In one imperial-era story she offered immortality to anyone who could make her laugh. One court jester succeeded with a joke that has been lost to history. Celebi kept her word. It is said that the man lived for centuries without aging before disappearing after the fall of the empire.

The association between her time travel and knowledge of the future and association with the forest naturally led to Celebi being regarded as a goddess of seasons and agriculture. In Alph and Old Enju it was believed that Celebi personally moved time with her flight, progressing the world through eras of decay and renewal. It was said that at the end of the universe Celebi would die and sprout anew to usher in a new cycle. This was long believed to have been revealed by Celebi herself. In 1922 she allegedly told a state-sponsored priest of Ho-Oh that she did not have the power to move time, only move through it. This was part of the justification used to remove many of Celebi’s festivals from the official imperial calendar and dramatically scale back her priesthood, which had long been based around rebellious Ubame. Many of her worshippers doubt the validity of this revelation, although Celebi herself has never denied it, with the possible exception of the first revelation thousands of years ago.

Celebi has also given conflicting answers as to how much control she has over the timeline. She has given different answers to different philosophers, and for a time one of the most heated debates in theology regarded the influence of Celebi over time and its philosophical ramifications. One scholar was told that Celebi had absolute control over the timeline and had already changed everything to the state that maximized happiness for all life over the run of the universe. She would not change anything because that would only introduce more suffering to the world. A king was told that she could alter time on a whim, changing events so that empires never existed and great men were never born. Sometimes she let one person remember everything. They would then have to keep quiet about the upheaval of their world lest they be seen as a lunatic. A priest was told that there were as many branches of time as there were stories and that all were equally true. She had already made the choices that led to the past, but she could be persuaded to change the future. In 1821 she allegedly told a worshipper that she intentionally gave conflicting accounts because she found the resulting theological debates to be hilarious, and that she hadn’t even told any of them the right answer.

Celebi has occasionally gifted the power of foresight to her followers, usually at a great cost or with heavy limitations. One oracle gained powerful precognition at the cost of her language abilities, making her unable to understand others or communicate with them beyond simple pictograms and art. The shogun Masaru was granted precognition for half of a year. Upon losing the ability he went mad and tried to burn down Sprout Tower in vengeance. Celebi threatened to alter the timeline so that humanity never figured out how to harness fire. The shogun was undeterred and his guards killed him before Celebi made good on her threat.

As a goddess of time Celebi has demonstrated the ability to rewind mental, physical, and spiritual afflictions. Credible sources have claimed she fixed the children of Ho-Oh when they were corrupted into shadow pokémon. One of her most popular legends is the story of Asagao, a child born with a degenerative disease who pled to Celebi for a longer lifespan. All the goddess could do was rewind her illness, making her healthier for a time. The girl continued to sicken, going back to Celebi every few years to repeat the process. Celebi agreed to restore her health and youth indefinitely as long as she never ate from the of a cheri tree. She wandered the earth for centuries, never progressing past childhood, before returning to Ubame for the final time. Asagao lamented to Celebi that the world had lost its wonder, that humans never seemed to change, only play out the same stories on grander scales, and that there were only so many forests, only so many waterfalls, only so many mountains she could see before they lost their grandeur. She had eaten every fruit so many times that the flavor ceased to mean anything. She had been a queen and a pauper, a saint and a murderess, a soldier, a priest, a scholar, a merchant, a philosopher, and a storyteller. She had been everything, done everything, experienced everything there was. She was lonely, tired of watching the people she loved die over and over again, and she wanted her monotonous existence to stop. Celebi went silent for a long time before apologizing to the woman for inflicting this upon her. That she knew this would happen and healed her anyway, just because she wanted someone to finally understand her own existence. Asagao experienced the flavor of a fruit that was entirely new to her before passing on. Celebi remains.

Worship

There are two major temples devoted to Celebi in Japan and a third in Orre. Each have their own order of priests. Her main temple is the Ubame Shrine, deep in the heart of the forest she calls home. The shrine is open to the public but somewhat difficult to access, limiting the number of pilgrims who visit. Pilgrims are expected to either pass by in silence or song, respecting the goddess or trying to entertain her. Offerings of metal or stone are traditionally buried near her offer or thrown into the pond behind it. Offerings of food are usually given to nearby pokémon, with some left in a small box on the alter. Drawings or writings on paper are typically given to a priest to display on the perimeter fence. The alter itself is several centuries old and fairly modest, only being a two-story wooden structure. Her priests say that Celebi has repeatedly declined offers to expand it.

Her more prominent alter in Japan is Madatsubomi Tower in Kikyo City. The tower is built around a colossal bellsprout whose roots stretch beneath most of the modern city. The bellsprout is said to have been a friend of Asagao offered immortality by Celebi. The grass-type continues to grow taller and the tower is expanded around it as it grows. The center of the tower lacks a roof so that light and water can reach the plant inside. The rest is a wooden and brick structure containing over two hundred statues, murals, and other works of art that have been donated to the goddess over the years. The priests at Madatsubomi are known for their permissive attitude towards battling in certain areas of the tower. They believe it is their duty to help the next generation of warriors grow. These fights take place in rooms with brick walls and floors and strong attacks are prohibited.

Celebi’s third most prominent temple is located in Agate Village in Orre. Celebi is said to have made many appearances around the mission in the 18th Century. It is said that she healed the sick, gave youth to the elderly, and allowed plants to flourish in the middle of the desert. In exchange she asked the residents to maintain her story and shrine as they would be important in years to come. This paid off in the 21st Century when she assisted in restoring the region’s shadow pokémon. Her priesthood remains active in case the shrine will still be needed in the future.

Celebi’s main festivals are the Festival of the Bright Lotus in the spring and the Festival of Seasons in the autumn. The Festival of the Bright Lotus is marked by the nobles of the region providing offerings to Celebi. During the winter they commission artists to come up with visual art and poetry written in calligraphy to present to the goddess. At the end of winter the nobles and a few performers make a voyage to Ubame or Madatsubomi to present the artwork and calligraphy to Celebi and read poems aloud before departing. It is believed that particularly fine artwork will bribe Celebi into ending the winter sooner than she otherwise would have. The peasants typically celebrated when the first edible plants sprouted in the forest by having a small feast with soups and salads made from the plants. Festivals would be held in the town square complete with poetry readings and plays.

The Festival of Seasons is held in the autumn to express gratitude to Celebi. It is characterized by large feasts, canning competitions, and parades. The parade ends at the local shrine to Celebi where offerings of fruit would be presented to the goddess. Any forest pokémon not scared away by the parade would be allowed to eat the offerings.

The Festival of the Bright Lotus has largely been replaced by the Gracidea Festival. It is still celebrated in parts of Johto, but it was intentionally suppressed by the Imperial government to weaken the Ubame region politically. If Celebi cared she made no grand statement saying so. Her priesthood was largely controlled by the imperial government at the time and revelations supposedly made to her priests must be viewed with some skepticism.

The Festival of Seasons remains popular in Johto and was never as heavily restricted. There were attempts to link it to Ho-Oh in the Meiji Era, but the public never really embraced the effort. Ho-Oh was always tied more closely to craftsmen and urban areas than farmers and the countryside. Attempting to supplant Celebi with Ho-Oh were seen as being politically charged and a symbol of the central government’s tyranny. The imperial government found that the syncretization inflamed resistant rather than stifling it and the attempt was gradually abandoned. As a mostly secular harvest festival the Festival of Seasons was useful for showcasing the country’s abundance and keeping the masses entertained.

Origins

Different scriptures describe different origins for Celebi. It is possible that she did say all of them herself. The goddess has never cared particularly much about consistency, especially when discussing herself. In the most popular account she was a child of Ho-Oh and Lugia destined to inherit rulership of the heavens. She avoids this prophecy by dying and resetting the universe whenever it would be fulfilled. In another account she sprouted from the seeds of the first plant and will wither and die with the last. She is the collective will of the flora manifested into a corporeal form. Finally, Celebi has claimed that she simply became aware at the end of the universe and has spent the rest of her life moving forwards and backwards, trying to figure out where she came from and why time came to an end. She stated that she still does not know the answer to either question.

Celebi is first mentioned in hieroglyphs and artwork from the 4th Century BC. Her popularity rose and fell with Alph. In the centuries between the fall of Alph and rise of the Enju Shogunate she was rarely depicted in art or mentioned in surviving records outside of the Ubame region. When she was referenced it was often as the goddess of an ancient cult based in the forest. Most of Celebi’s scriptures and her oracles come from the Enju era as she made many appearances at her shrines and held dozens of recorded dialogues with the priests, politicians, and philosophers of the era. When the shogunate collapsed and war raged across the land, the goddess largely disappeared. Decades would pass between sightings of her.

The consistency of Celebi’s depictions across time and space as well as the sheer number of alleged encounters suggests that she is almost certainly real. She has appeared to crowds of up to thirty people at a time in the modern era, although no recordings exist. People who attempted to record her have reported that their phone disappeared and the entire model seems to have been wiped from the timeline. Whether this is an elaborate prank or a sign of divine power is impossible to tell without extensive psychic testing. None of the alleged witnesses have consented to this.

Today

H.G. Wells allegedly met Celebi on a trip to Ubame. She reportedly spent most of the conversation talking about an artist who had not yet been born who adapted his work into a medium that did not yet exist and concluded by saying that he would die on March 24, 1905. Wells did not die on this date — Jules Verne did. In hindsight it appears as if Celebi was discussing Orson Welles’ infamous radio play adaptation of the novel.

Over the following decades Celebi was a recurring character in science fiction literature, often facilitating time travel plots or showing up as a deux ex machina to resolve them. One of her most well-known depiction in the west was in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a book where a war veteran hallucinates an encounter with the goddess during a psychotic break. She takes him through time, slowly convincing him that nothing can be changed and there is no point in trying. He returns to earth to preach her gospel before being assassinated, something he does nothing to stop as there would be no point. The book is in part a satire of those who claim it is impossible to stop wars or other tragedies and that no single person could make a difference.

Another famous depiction is in Victor Raymond’s And Babel Fell, a postmodernist work heavily featuring Celebi. The story’s setting and the characters in it randomly and repeatedly change throughout the novel, apparently through Celebi’s tinkering. They are unable to remember their past lives and spend the novel stumbling through new configurations, often acting in ways entirely contrary to their past selves because of a small change in their past. The point of the novel is that we are all creatures of circumstance. The only thing separating us from our most hated enemies is our body, the world around us, and the largely random events that occur as a result of their interplay.

Celebi remains popular in Johto. She was never particularly popular in the rest of Japan but what little worship she had was heavily suppressed over the last two centuries. She is now more well known as a literary character than a goddess with her own worshippers and a religious tradition stretching back over two thousand years. Her interventions in Orre have given her a small following in the United States, although the Church of Life’s dominance in Orre and the surrounding regions have prevented the cult from growing too large. Some young ex-members have embraced Celebi worship as a form of rebellion. Their religious traditions are often eclectic and have little resemblance to those practiced in Johto.

 

[Persephone]

This entry was commissioned by @bronzonghittransplant

Heavily, heavily inspired by Seven After by @kintsugi


Kyurem (Unova)

“If you seek kindness, if you seek warmth, then find Truth and her Hero.

If you seek justice, if you seek power, then find Ideals and his Hero.

There is nothing here but memory and oblivion. If you seek these, enter.”

-Engraved on the gates of Full Court

Overview

Kyurem, The Holy Corpse, The Null Dragon, The Wise One, rested for centuries at the bottom of the Giant Chasm. They emerged in 2012 in an apparent attempt to end the world before being defeated and forced to rest. Now they rest again in their old temple. Kyurem’s rampage was not nearly as destructive as that of Kyogre and Groudon just weeks prior. It still was part of a marked shift in theology worldwide. Modern religion often emphasized the inherent goodness of the gods. If their power was mentioned at all it was to assure worshippers that their prayers could be answered. Kyurem answered one man’s prayers and killed thousands. The gods of Hoenn left hundreds of thousands dead in their wake.

After the invention of electricity, modern medicine, and the mass-produced pokéball, humanity had nothing to fear but themselves. With the conclusion of the Cold War most people stopped fearing even that. In the 2010s humans had to contend once more with the reality that there were beings with both the power to wipe countries off the map in a matter of days and the inclination to do so. In the decade since there have been a number of reactions to this. Some have drifted away from polytheistic faiths towards the Church of Life or other general purpose gods, suddenly afraid of what was once a source of comfort and inspiration. Others have worshipped the local gods with more fervor than before in an attempt to gain their favor, or at least stave off their wrath. Governments have brought back or increased state-sponsored offerings to local gods in public while plotting ways to defeat or contain them in private.

Kyurem has become the subject of considerable theological and public policy debate in recent years. How does a society react when one of their gods tries to destroy them? Can beings that powerful be meaningfully punished or imprisoned? Would it be wise to do so? Should a secular state be involved in the appeasement of any gods? Should the worship of gods that turn on humanity be prohibited or encouraged? In many ways these questions skirt around the main problem that Kyurem raised: there are forces in the world more powerful than any government. Most of humanity had forgotten this. The United States government had become accustomed to being the world’s sole superpower, capable of exerting their power anywhere on the planet without meaningful opposition. Now that same government must reckon with a force sleeping less than thirty miles from their largest city that they cannot control.

It is not our place to answer the questions Kyurem’s rampage raised. Instead, we shall present our readers with the folklore and history behind the dragon and let them come to their own conclusions.

Appearance

Kyurem is a bipedal dragon roughly ten feet tall at the shoulder. The arms are comparatively small on the body and their body shape is remarkably similar to that of a tyrantrum. Their body is primarily slate gray. Ice encases most of the head and tail. Wings that appear to be made entirely of ice extend from the back, although Kyurem has not demonstrated the ability to fly like their siblings. During the later stages of Kyurem’s rampage they appeared to shift to a more upright posture. Their arms grew longer and one turned black. The wings grew smaller and one turned black as well while the other still appeared to be made of ice. Kyurem’s tail extended, turned black, and shifted to a shape more similar to that of their siblings’ tails. It has been rumored that this occurred after Kyurem consumed Zekrom and began returning to the form of The Starchild. Neither the government nor the league have ever confirmed these rumors.

In Unovan drawings Kyurem was often drawn as far larger than they actually are. The details are also heavily stylized. This makes sense as the only people who viewed Kyurem would have seen them distorted by thick layers of ice.

Most powerful deities inevitably end up depicted in human form. This has historically not been the case with The Starchild and her successors. Zekrom and Reshiram typically appeared at least once every century and Kyurem could be viewed by anyone who dared to trek through the Giant Chasm and enter Full Court.

There is some debate over Kyurem’s proper gender. Most scholars and priests contend that Kyurem should be addressed in a gender-neutral fashion, as The Starchild’s femininity and masculinity were poured into Reshiram and Zekrom, respectively, leaving nothing behind for Kyurem. Others use female pronouns as The Starchild was typically seen as female and Reshiram and Zekrom are supposedly equal, meaning the balance would be female. Kawisenhawe has used both. An Iroquois account of a conversation between the Clan Mothers and Kawisenhawe has the latter calling Kyurem female, but also saying that the dragon did not particularly care one way or another.

In Unovan Mythology

In ancient times a meteorite crashed approximately two dozen miles northeast of what is now downtown Castelia. The meteorite began to crack like an egg and from it a mighty dragon emerged. She grew quickly in size and power until she had defeated even the mightiest of tribes. Dragons are not prone to worship, but even they began to worship the fallen dragon, referred to as The Starchild. The Five Nations and the Dragon Clans followed suit. Even the Norse and Malian immigrants acknowledged The Starchild’s preeminence. The Starchild preferred to stay near the place where she had landed. Over time she worked to fully undo the damage caused by her arrival. She was seen as a wise and benevolent figure. She accepted sacrifices of livestock but did not take kindly to human sacrifice. The hydreigon would also bring her some of their kills. In exchange The Starchild would provide advice to anyone who sought her out and mediate disputes.

The Starchild intervened to help The Harbor Queen unify the Five Nations, the dragon tribes, and the Norse and bring peace to a wartorn nation. One legend says that she gave The Harbor Queen her gift of translation so that there would be one person who could understand everyone and rule justly. However, this legend arose centuries after The Harbor Queen’s Death. Temples from the early kingdom prominently feature Meloetta, the other goddess believed to have blessed the royal line. It is also possible, and perhaps even probable, that The Harbor Queen was simply a psychic bloodliner as the result of a mutation. If The Starchild’s children have commented on the subject their answer has not been recorded.

There was a crisis of succession roughly two centuries after The Harbor Queen’s ascension. The Heromani Queen was assassinated alongside her eldest daughter, Skanawati. At the time there was an ongoing civil war between an ever-shifting set of alliances between the five nations, the dragon tribes, the Norse, and even a few pokémon species. The assassins were members of the dragon tribes who were temporarily allied with the kingdom. Their leader decided to switch sides and use her troops’ access to the imperial palace to strike while the royal guard felt secure, far from the front lines. Their mother’s death unexpectedly left the younger siblings, twins, to take the throne. The Heronami Queen had refused to clarify which one would inherit the throne in the event their elder sister could not as she was afraid the loser would assassinate the other. Her lady in waiting was the only survivor of the assassination that knew her decision. Her dislike of the elder twin was also well known.

The younger twin ascended the throne and immediately became controversial for offering to parlay with the dragon tribes and other factions in an effort to broker a more permanent peace. The ongoing civil war had lasted nearly thirty years and stemmed from growing resentments towards the crown as the kings and queens of Unova were accused of favoritism towards their parents tribes. The new king argued that the only way to avoid the problem was to transition away from a monarchy and towards a grand council composed of representatives from self-governing tribes who came together to solve common issues.

The older twin was furious. War had raged for thirty years. The dragon tribes had killed his mother and sister and were about to be given everything they wanted as a result. Behind closed doors he argued that the only way to end the war was to crush all of the factions beneath a single centralized government so that none had the power to rebel whenever they had a petty grievance. In the end he was sent by his brother to the front lines when the dragon tribes main force marched on the castle. He ended up repelling the assault and earning the respect of the soldiers. He then turned around and marched on his brother, whom he accused of being an illegitimate king only coronated because of a servant’s grudge.

Before blood could be spilled, The Starchild arrived. She heard both sides and came to a judgment. What exactly her judgment was has been lost to time. Regardless, neither of the siblings found it acceptable and they instead challenged each other to single combat in front of her. This caused The Starchild a great deal of distress, so much so, in fact, that it literally tore her in two. Her ambition, dominance, and the disposition of a ruler split into Reshiram; her yearning for peace and fairness as well as her kindness and empathy split into Zekrom.

The Starchild’s mind and spirit left the body and emerged as fully formed dragons. The body still remained, empty, devoid of the warmth and energy that once powered it. Instead, there was only a great emptiness and her caution and indecision, traits that neither of the warrior dragons were birthed from. The remnant, now calling themself Kyurem, quickly began to freeze over everything near them. They were an incomplete, soulless being incapable of regulating their own divine power.

The youngest daughter of The Heronami Queen, Kawisenhawe, had been too young to be considered eligible for the throne at the time. As the war continued and more of Unova was charred by her brothers and their dragons or frozen by the soulless Kyurem, she grew determined to end the conflict. First she approached her brothers, separately and together, and pleaded for them to stop. Neither listened. Kawisenhawe came to believe that she was incapable of changing their minds and stopping the war as she was. What was a girl against the power of the dragons’ gods? She made up her mind and went to claim a dragon of her own.

Kawisenhawe went to Kyurem with only her stoutland at her side. In time even the pokémon froze to death in the extreme cold and she continued alone, on foot, with increasingly severe frostbite. She was on death’s door when she finally met The Starchild’s corpse. The dying girl and the soulless dragon spoke for a time. In the end the girl moved Kyurem and the two made a bargain. Kawisenhawe agreed to be fused to Kyurem and lend the dragon her soul. In exchange, she would be the voice of Kyurem and live an unending life. Kyurem fused themselves with Kawisenhawe and the girl ceased to die, for now she shared the blood and body of an ice dragon. Her soul allowed Kyurem to fully control their own divinity and stop the snowstorm engulfing Unova. The two retreated to Full Court, a chamber where The Starchild received representatives of every tribe of human and pokémon, and barricaded themselves inside. Kyurem was better able to control themself, but their nature as a god of ice and void led them to freeze the canyon around Full Court.

Kyurem technically upheld their end of the bargain to Kawisenhawe, although not in a way that she would have appreciated. Her body still continued to age until even Kyurem’s ice and divine blood could not preserve her any longer. The dragon, through Kawisenhawe, commanded that another girl be brought before him, the wisest and worthiest child of the clans. When the clans presented them with their choice, Kyurem cast aside Kawisenhawe and merged with the new girl. She inherited the memories and name of Kawisenhawe, and every girl after her inherited the combined memories of every Kawisenhawe before her. Kyurem’s voice is still named Kawisenhawe and will not answer to any name she held before she merged with the dragon. The unbroken lineage of Kawisenhawe continued until 2012. Kyurem’s new priestess has claimed not to have the memories of Kawisenhawe.

Kyurem has a long memory, the wisdom of an ancient goddess, and a human soul. They can also see visions of the future. This made Kyurem, and by extension Kawisenhawe, the favored oracle of Unova. Clan leaders and anyone able to brave the treacherous weather and strong pokémon of Full Court went to seek the guidance of Kawisenhawe, oracle of Kyurem, in the frozen chamber. For their part, Kyurem froze themself under a block of ice so thick even they would struggle to break it. This served as a symbol of their vow of neutrality and ultimate prophecy and promise. If humans and pokémon could come together and set aside their differences, if peace reigned for one thousand years and the world was in harmony, then Kyurem would reemerge and reunite with their siblings, forming the complete Starchild once more. However, if the world proved to be beyond hope and neither truth nor ideals persisted, if the seas themselves turned to poison and spiderwebs cracked the earth, Kyurem would reemerge to freeze the world in judgment so that something better would emerge from the thawing ice.

Historically, the guards of Full Court have been the Swords of Justice. The Swords are a quartet of pokémon said to have been elevated to godhood by Kyurem in exchange for proving their bravery by challenging the dragon to single combat and emerging alive. The four survivors were assigned the task of protecting Kawisenhawe and escorting pilgrims out of the Chasm if they had been injured on the way in.

Worship

The main form of sacrifice to Kyurem was in the form of new Kawisenhawes. Once every century another young girl from the Five Nations or the dragon tribes would need to be sacrificed to the dragon. It is unknown whether the ethnicity requirement was imposed by Kawisenhawe or Kyurem, or even where it came from in the first place, but it has been adhered to for centuries nonetheless. Kawisenhawe served as Kyurem’s voice and chief priestess. She was always locked into place by ice and scaly tendrils, unable to move at all. Kyurem, distorted by a thick layer of ice, loomed beneath her. Kawisenhawe was consulted for everything from romantic advice to military strategies and visions of the future. Anyone who could survive the trek down the chasm was entitled to an audience with Kawisenhawe, and Kawisenhawe always provided an answer. Whether this was out of loneliness or religious obligation remains unclear. At least one Kawisenhawe was asked but never provided a direct answer. This is true for almost all questions of a personal nature asked to Kawisenhawe. Perhaps Kawisenhawe answered these questions when her replacement asked, but these moments were always private. We can only speculate as to what the girls said to each other.

Kyurem was officially neutral in all political matters. However, Kawisenhawe often tacitly spoke against the Galarian colonizers and in favor of the Five Nations, dragon tribes, and pokémon. These messages were usually couched in vague, metaphorical language that gave her plausible deniability. Some scholars have argued that Kawisenhawe retained a level of independence from Kyurem and these messages were ways to test the limits of the commands she had been given without breaking them outright.

Aside from the centennial human sacrifice, Kyurem did not request offerings of any kind. Sometimes hydreigon have been observed hauling particularly impressive kills into the Giant Chasm. This may be the result of an arrangement between the species and Kyurem. How the dragon, sealed away beneath the ice, would even eat the offerings is another question entirely. No evidence of the kills has ever been documented in Full Court. One scholar has suggested that the hydreigon eat the kill in front of Kyurem, either as a means of showing their hunting prowess or of taunting the dragon in hopes of luring them out and heralding the end of human civilization.

Origins

Kyurem’s origins are far better documented than that of almost any other deity in this book. There is a layer of debris in the soil of Unova believed to correspond with The Starchild’s arrival. Carbon dating suggests she arrived in approximately 300 BCE.

The historiography of The War of Kings is fraught. Some events may be mere legend but tax records and archeological evidence suggests that there were many civil wars in Unova around the time, that The Heronami Queen reigned until approximately 1215 CE, and that the civil war ultimately came to center on a conflict between two kings. The war ended in the collapse of The Kingdom of Unova, the destruction of most of central Unova, including the old capitol, and a century of lawlessness. Records from this time are scarce as literacy rates plummeted in the era of collapse. The Malians arrived just as Unova was beginning to pull itself back together. By this point Reshiram and Zekrom were already dormant once more, Kyurem rested in Full Court, and the original Kawisenhawe had died.

Most of the legends regarding Kyurem were also well established and documented by the Malians. These included the prophecy regarding Kyurem’s emergence.

Today

Kyurem worship had declined dramatically after the subjugation of the Five Nations and their removal from modern Unova. The final Kawisenhawe was illegally smuggled into Full Court in 2011 as the Unovan legislature had banned voluntary human sacrifice for any purpose in 1994. Her father and three others were subsequently sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to commit child abuse and human sacrifice.

Fewer people than ever were consulting Kawisenhawe as well. The Unovan government had posted armed guards at the gates of Full Court since 1891 in order to prevent indigenous people from using the oracle to obtain information damaging to the United States or trying to awaken Kyurem. All visitors were prohibited following the installation of the final Kawisenhawe in hopes of deterring future generations from sacrificing another girl. The Swords of Justice strongly opposed this decision and dispersed the guard before being defeated by Chris Foster, a then-rising trainer who would go on to be recognized as the world’s strongest.

On August 17, 2012, Ghetsis Gropius and the Plasma Liberation Front stormed Giant Chasm, killed the guards, and persuaded Kyurem to emerge and destroy Unova. Kawisenhawe was killed in the process, apparently by Ghetsis. For the next eight days Kyurem battled the Swords of Justice and Reshiram and Zekrom in Giant Chasm. A blizzard engulfed most of the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions, stretching west to Ohio, south to Virginia, and north to Ontario and Quebec. Thousands died across the region, although the storm’s slow spread meant that most of the area could be evacuated before the blizzard arrived. Almost all crops growing in the region were killed by the unseasonal blizzard.

Kyurem was eventually defeated and sealed themself away in Full Court once again. By the end of the year the Swords escorted a new child down to become Kawisenhawe, although she claims not to have the memories of her predecessors. She further claims that Kyurem is not speaking to her and only agreed to merge in order to use her soul to stabilize their power. Travel to see her has been legal since 2016, although with no ancestral memory and Kyurem not providing visions of the future there is little reason to do so.

State-sponsored offerings of meat were brough to Full Court for a short period in 2015, before Kyurem’s priestess asked that the practice be discontinued. The offerings were enormously controversial as the families of the dead often saw them as the dragon being rewarded for their rampage. Some politicians and activists have called for the strongest trainers in the world to be brought together to kill or capture Kyurem, something that neither Reshiram nor Zekrom allowed in 2012. Chris Foster has expressed interest in the idea, but says he will not do so without the approval of the Unovan government. Both Unova and the United States have been reluctant to provoke the dragon and ensure another blizzard.

For now Kyurem simply waits. Perhaps they will emerge again to judge the world or reform The Starchild. They have not revealed whether that prophecy has been fulfilled or merely delayed. They have said almost nothing at all since their defeat.

Ghetsis Gropius and most of the leadership of the Plasma Liberation Front have subsequently been captured and executed. Thousands of Plasma Liberation Front foot soldiers have been arrested and imprisoned, although most have subsequently been released.

 

[Persephone]

Latias and Latios - Hoenn

“All dreams are but another reality. Carve this in your heart so you might not forget.”
-The First Prophet, Yume to Yogen

Overview

Latias and latios, Lords and Ladies of the Mist, The Eon Dragons, The Grasping, The Restraining, The Emanations of the Great Dreamer, are one or more species of dragons native to the islands southeast of Japan. They have fantastical abilities, even by the standards of dragon. Light manipulation and supersonic flight have been confirmed. Sensory and memory bonding are often alleged by those who claim to have encountered one. It is highly probable they are telekinetic. Other abilities such as hydrokinesis, advanced engineering knowledge, dream reading, and soul manipulation have been alleged infrequently and may be more rooted in mysticism and tall tales than reality. There is very little information on the species as they are nervous dragons and unwilling to appear before researchers, much less cooperate with their studies.

There has long been a religion or cult centered around worship of the dragons known as The Dreaming. Its adherents briefly gained control of all of Hoenn and most of Honshu before collapsing. Today the faith is mostly confined to minor islands such as the autonomous prefecture of Altomare.

Appearance

Satellite imagery has managed to confirm that latias and latios are streamlined dragons with arms and a set of wings, but no apparent legs. They are believed to spend almost all of their lives airborne. Latios have blue or purple feathers covering almost their entire body save the neck and face, while latias have red or purple feathers. Recovered feathers have a very high silica content and are nearly translucent. They are also sharp to the touch. The origin of the apparent blue, red, or purple coloration is unknown. There may be colored scales under the translucent wings. Individuals may also add on the apparent coloring through photokinesis is even when no one is watching. There is every indication that latias and latios have human comparable intelligence. The behaviors of highly intelligent species are often difficult to explain or predict.

The satellite imagery more or less matches early descriptions of the species, although The Third Prophet was adamant that a slightly different design be used, one with ridges in the middle of the wings and legs instead of arms. He also believed that there were no visual differences between the sexes.

The Dreaming believe that latias often take the form of human women to associate with mankind. Latios occasionally follow them in human guise. These forms are often drawn as having braids styled in such a way that they appear as ridges. Details vary beyond this. The Yume to Yogen is light on visual description of the dragons human guises, only describing a latias as taking on a slight form with light hair. A latios is described appearing as a large and stern human. Art tends to depict latias as having brown hair and red, pink, or amber eyes and latios as having very dark hair and blue or grey eyes. This is more a form of artistic shorthand more than an accurate depiction of all possible forms the dragons could take.

The Sixth Prophet was an artist who often drew latias or latios as the hands or tongues of an incomprehensible being looming beneath the sea or behind a cloud, marked primarily by the paint running together. The hidden, unnamed controller was only properly drawn once as a vaguely avian figure covered in eyes with blood and water streaming off of it. The latias and latios, stylized like body parts, are connected by golden or black chains to the figure.

In Hoennese Mythology

The old surviving traditions about latias and latios come from the dragon tribes of Hoenn, particularly the inland clans. In Dr. Simon Ruthkay’s groundbreaking text, Anthropology of the Dragon Tribes, he describes their views of latias and latios.

Long ago the beasts of water and flame were sealed away by The Guardian of the Skies and Queen of the Dragons, Rayquaza. She knew that simply locking them away would cause their anger and resentment to grow and make their next clash all the more destructive. As a compromise she let them insert their dreaming consciousness into the bodies of dragons. They are forbidden from entering their old domains and must now float above the earth and sea, never landing upon it.

They describe the dragons as being kind, by dragon standards, and willing to help doomed sailors find their way to shore. They are associated with the mist, although the clansmen were unsure whether they created it or simply hid inside of it. The inland tribes believe that a stranger met in the most should be treated with the utmost respect lest they be one of the dragons in disguise. Anyone who ventured to the island in the heart of the mist was condemned to death, either by the dragons themselves or by the tribe for upsetting such ancient forces. There are relatively few myths surrounding either, but especially latios. The dragons have always been secretive and difficult to detect due to their photokinesis and affinity for mist. The inland dragon tribes described latias as being strange women who would ask riddles and questions. Should their questions be properly answered, they might convey a boon. Latios were described as enforcers of hospitality. Breaches of decorum and sacred hospitality could be punished by a swift end.

The coastal dragon tribes of Hoenn may have held the same beliefs. Regardless, there was a schism around 700 C.E. after the arrival of The First Prophet. He was a psychic bloodliner who claimed to be the child of a latias and a human woman. The First Prophet outlined the principles of a religion centered more around latias, latios, and The Great Dreamer behind them rather than Rayquaza. The dragon tribes ultimately split over the question of who to worship.

According to The First Prophet, all of the universe is the dream of a being of unimaginable power and sophistication. Humans are unaware of this. The pokémon are living lucid dreams capable of altering the fabric of reality in any way they wished. Latias and latios are manifestations of the unconscious mind of The Great Dreamer. Latias are the childish, irresponsible impulses reaching deeper into the dream. Latios are the firm hand of reason trying to pull The Great Dreamer back to the waking world to fulfill their duties. It is then the goal of humanity to spread tranquility and virtue through the world to help The Great Dreamer awakens. When this occurs all of the scattered fragments of their mind will reunite and every human, pokémon, plant, and animal will be unified as one being with a singular purpose, perfectly in harmony. The First Prophet urged pacifism, vegetarianism, and a constant evaluation of oneself and the world around them.

The religion would dramatically depart from its roots within two centuries. There were nine subsequent prophets, all of whom claimed to be the child of a latias. Each added deeper revelations to the previous prophet’s words, claiming that humanity was not yet ready to hear the truth at the time the previous prophet lived. The nine revelations are compiled in the Yume to Yogen, the sacred text of The Dreaming. The Third Prophet brought the most direct change to the view of latias and latios themselves. In his words the great dream is the unconscious desire of the universe trying to assess whether it is good or evil and if it should continue its existence. Latias, and women in general, are manifestations of the naive, curious, and inherently impure desires of The Great Dreamer. Latios, and men in general, exist to guide their mates back to reason and virtue.

Latias having a child with humans is the polluting of divinity with incarnations of sin and ignorance. The resulting child was simultaneously the most aware of humans and a sign of terrible sin in the universe. Such a child could only be born when the universe’s vices far outweighed its virtues and even the latias lost sight of their true nature. The resulting child was a way to balance the dream by becoming a great moral leader and guiding humanity back towards moral purity.

Worship

The inland dragon tribes of Hoenn do not offer tribute to The Eon Dragons. They simply treat anyone met in the mist or at sea with the utmost respect and avoid the islands the dragons call home.

The Dreaming has seven prophets, each of whom added a revelation to the Yume to Yogen.

The First Prophet emphasized the importance of written language, libraries, introspection, education, and meditation. He wished to advance humanity to a higher state of being through religious and academic enlightenment, as well as by making peace with the natural world. Many of Hoenn’s oldest cities were founded during or shortly after his lifetime. Tokusane is still home to some of Japan’s finest universities, one of which claims The First Prophet as their founder. Mysticism, while important to priests, was largely deemphasized for the masses in this period. Latias and latios were worshipped during festivals at the changing of the seasons. Their temples were still only small shrines at a village’s school or libraries at holy sites.

The Second Prophet lived about fifty years after the death of The First Prophet. She added an evangelical bent to the religion, arguing that harmony could be spread fastest by actively converting adjacent peoples to the enlightened practices of The Dreaming. While the church’s first army was established in her life, the prophet herself cared more for healing than battle and is known to have traveled across Hoenn alone and on foot while curing and cataloguing to diseases. She is still a widely beloved figure in Hoenn. Even at the faith’s nadir there are still often statues of her or small shrines to latias in hospitals and graveyards.

The Third Prophet was born in 982 C.E. during a period of decline in Tokusane. He began to emphasize mysticism and the primacy of the faith. Outsiders were no longer allowed to study at church-operated schools or even to be admitted at church-operated hospitals. The text of his revelation was long limited to a new, insular order of priests who were in charge of legal and spiritual matters in the increasingly theocratic Holy State of Tokusane. Taxes were paid directly to the church and were used to build lavish temples in which sacrifices of livestock were performed.

The Fourth Prophet was born during the life of The Third Prophet but only rose to prominence after his predecessor’s death. The Fourth Prophet reversed some of the harsher changes of his predecessor, likely to ease the threat of popular revolt at a time when the remaining nations of Hoenn were testing the frontier. The Fourth Prophet’s revelation is about dealing with physical and spiritual adversity. He conquered the remainder of Hoenn and even invaded Honshu, although his forces were ultimately forced to retreat. They would go on to establish a naval base at Altomare. The site was officially chosen because it was there The Fourth Prophet had protected two children from heathen attackers. The children then revealed themselves to be a latias and latios and vowed to protect the city built there. The island’s natural defenses, deep harbor, and strategic location also provided reasons to build a naval fortress there. The navy he built to invade Honshu would turn into a merchant marine fleet that established with China, Korea, Indonesia, India, and even East Africa.

Another century would pass without a prophet. The naval supremacy of the theocracy would allow them to dominate trade with Honshu and even let them establish trading ties across the Pacific to the Incan Empire. The trade of spices and silver let Minamo become a fantastically wealthy state capable of funding bigger and more sophisticated navies, furthering trade and increasing wealth even further. The Dreaming had also become closely linked to the guilds. The most extravagant of projects were built on Altomare, now a major fortress and trading center. Altomare was emphasized both to taunt Kanto and Johto with the wealth of The Dreaming and encourage conversion and to keep up an elaborate ruse. The Holy State maintained that all of their silver and gold and exotic pokémon came from Honshu. They constantly patrolled the seas around Honshu to keep other nations from entering. A handful of vassal states even had fake mines constructed and opulent palaces and temples full of silver and gold ornamentation constructed to keep up the illusion for the few ambassadors and adventurers who set foot on Honshu. The path to The Americas, and even their existence, was a closely guarded secret. Only the most devout sailors would be permitted to make the trip across the Pacific. This was designed to protect the source of their wealth and prevent foreign competition. The Holy State’s contact with the Inca were kept as minimal as possible while still facilitating trade. No colonies or even permanent trading towns were constructed. The scarce interactions and excellent doctors of The Holy State also reduced the flow of disease between the continents.

The Fifth Prophet was born 1164 C.E. She declared that it was time to convert the entire world to the faith of The Dreaming. She ultimately conquered Honshu, Korea, Taiwan, and portions of China in a span of six years. Her reign, and revelation, are the shortest. Her revelation emphasizes discipline and self-denial. She was also the only Prophet married to another Prophet, born in 1197. After his wife’s assignation in 1206, The Sixth Prophet’s sanity may have begun to deteriorate. He killed every inhabitant of every city his wife’s assassin had ever lived in. He then declared that the only true way to bring peace to The Great Dreamer was to wake him through bloodshed. Almost every crime was punishable by death and basic freedoms were deprived of everyone other than soldiers and their wives. Human sacrifice was briefly practiced. The trade of spices and silver were banned to prevent debauchery and all sailors with knowledge of the Americas were killed. The Sixth Prophet’s descent into madness meant that most of his kingdom, even Hoenn, was in open rebellion by the time the Mongols swept in. By the time of his death The Dreaming only held on to Altomare, a heavily fortified fortress city on an island. The faith continued to be practiced in much of coastal Hoenn, just without any ties to the elders in Altomare.

The Seventh Prophet lived from 1470 C.E. to 1564 C.E. and spent most of her life improving the engineering of the isolated island state, further improving its fortifications, repairing and improving temples to The Eon Dragons, converting the marshlands into arable fields, improving fishing vessels, and making hydroponic gardens to feed the people. Her revelation is essentially an almanac outlining farming and building practices and advice for running a household or business. She is believed to have had very little involvement with the faith she was nominally at the head of.

The Eighth Prophet was born in 1691 C.E. He spent most of his life trying to simplify the doctrine of the faith and writing an epic novel about The Fourth Prophet, whose memories he claimed to have inherited. In 1723 he departed on a ship towards an unknown destination far to the north of Altomare. He was never heard from again.

Today

The Ninth Prophet was a recluse who was only acknowledged after her death. Her revelation emphasizes the wickedness of humanity and the need to purge the entire species, or at least the vast majority of them, to bring peace to The Great Dreamer’s soul. Her works were publicized by The Tenth Prophet, born in 1901 C.E., and with a similar disposition to his bloodier predecessors. He proved himself a distinguished mercenary abroad before returning to Altomare, convincing the church elders of his parentage, and training an elite squad of soldiers and commanders. He saw the Japanese emperor’s war as a good way to bring about mass death and allied with him. Church soldiers were responsible for many of the greatest atrocities in the war. The Tenth Prophet ordered his troops to routinely provoke fights with other nations in hopes of dragging as many countries into the war as possible and maximizing carnage. The Japanese army itself eventually stormed Altomare and executed The Tenth Prophet to keep him from making the war more difficult for them than it had to be. Altomare has since been a secular, semiautonomous prefecture patrolled by Japanese and American soldiers.

In Hoenn latias and latios are still popular among craftsmen, doctors, and scholars. It is common for them to have small statues of the eon dragons in their home and recite brief prayers to them at the start of a work day. Before The Tenth Prophet there were even several well-attended and well-funded temples throughout the islands where people would come to meditate when they were stuck with a problem they could not find their way out of. The Eon Dragons were seen as the clever guides of last resort, the kind of parents that would produce brilliant educators, doctors, generals, artists, engineers, and novelists. The faith’s popularity has dramatically declined after its repression in the early Meiji Era and being associated with an omnicidal war criminal. It is now more common to see edited versions of the Yume to Yogen than the full ten volume collection. Most editions keep the revelations of the First, Second, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Prophets while excluding the more mystical and militaristic ones. The Nanpō Islands and the waters around them are a protected wildlife preserve. Entry is illegal.

Origins

Western scientists long believed that latios and latias did not exist. Latias were dismissed as blaziken seen at an odd angle or from a distance. Latios were believed to be gyarados, another blue (pseudo) dragon that can float and change the weather. The depictions in Hoennese art were dismissed as the sightings of the mad or the tall tales of sailors. During the American occupation of Japan naval ships routinely sailed by the Nanpō islands without seeing anything.

In 1953 a spy plane flying over the islands was assailed by an invisible creature flying faster than the aircraft at high altitudes. Satellite images later revealed an island full of blue and red dragons similar to the traditional descriptions. As a test a drone was flown around the island while a satellite watched overhead. The dragons seemed to disappear as the drone approached before one destroyed it. The dragons’ invisibility was almost immediately dropped. Scientific expeditions to the island are prohibited by the Japanese government. The few explorers who have attempted to set foot on the island have seen nothing, experienced horrific hallucinations, or never returned.

In 1979 a layer of fog blanketed the entire island. It has not lifted since. Scientists speculate that a latias or latios disguised as a human or rendering itself invisible may have found out about the satellite monitoring. There is some debate as to whether the dragons constitute one or two species as they have never been observed mating. It has also not been proven that latias can have children with humans. Cremation has been traditional within The Dreaming since the days of The First Prophet. The Tenth Prophet’s body was broken out of the morgue and destroyed before a proper autopsy could be performed.

 

[Persephone]

This entry was commissioned by Tapirs10.

Groudon (Hoenn)

“We have always molded the world to our will. Agriculture, deforestation, urbanization: what else can you call these? My proposal is simple. Our species will continue doing what it has always done. Our innovation, our drive to conquer the limits nature has imposed upon us, these are not to be feared. They will carry us into an era of prosperity the likes of which has never been seen before.”
-Dr. Seiji Matsubusa, Geoengineering in the Third Millenium

Overview

Groudon, The Flesh of The Earth, The Unceasing Flame, The End of Our Age, was a fairly minor god in Hoennian folklore and mythology. He was most notable as an agricultural god in the mountainous regions of Hoenn and as an example of The Slain Earth-Giant. Cultures on five of the six inhabited continents spoke of the chief god, usually a sky god, slaying a primordial giant and using its corpse to build the world. Groudon was not the most famous of this archetype. He was not even the primary god of fire and magma in Japan. Most of his notoriety came from a very loose adaptation of his myths in mid-century Japanese cinema.

On February 15th, 2012, Groudon and his counterpart, The Blood of The Seas, Kyogre, met in Rune City, Hoenn. Groudon summoned earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and heat waves in an attempt to defeat his rival. The two killed over 180,000 people and leveled much of Hoenn’s infrastructure before Rayquaza intervened and drove the two back into slumber. They still wait beneath the surface, very much alive, waiting for someone to awaken them again. The two may not even be aware of the destruction caused as it was not their primary goal: every high-level analysis of the incident has concluded that the two titans were far more concerned with killing each other than anything else.

Interest in mythology soared after the attack as a fearful world sought to learn what obscure myths might kill them next. Aqua-dan and The Magma Organization have had scores of imitators, some of whom did successfully capture or at least provoke an extraordinarily powerful pokémon. Legendary pokémon were increasingly regarded as major security threats to be treated with more fear than reverence. Governments the world over have repeatedly assured the public that they are developing countermeasures for extremely powerful pokémon.

Perhaps this stems from the same arrogance as Matsubusa and his ilk, that we can defeat or control even the embodiment of the world we live on.

Appearance

Groudon’s depictions in early temple mosaics show a mountain-sized beast with brown or black skin. These are his smaller depictions. Other artists depicted him as being the rough size and shape of Hoenn itself, with the Mishiru peninsula being his legs and the eastern peninsulas being either his head and arm or just his head with open jaws. Sometimes Hoenn was only his head and the rest of his body was submerged beneath the waves.

In post-war Japanese cinema Groudon was reimagined as a giant, bipedal, black lizard that controlled heat, fire, and radiation. The level of realism depended on the budget for the stuntman’s costume in the film.

Groudon is bipedal with an arched back and a wide tail resting behind him on the ground. The core of his body seems to be white-hot magma with plates of red and black scales cooling on the surface. In time a fully solid body may have developed. Some have posited that the groudon observed was a mere avatar of a much larger being, potentially one that is the size of Hoenn or even larger. The physical form was more of an illusion akin to substitute. This is supported by Groudon’s apparent ability to restore up to 40% of his body in moments after it was blasted off by a particularly powerful attack. Kyogre, in turn, demonstrated an ability to dissolve into water and reform from it without lasting damage.

In Hoennese Mythology

Religious sects in Hoenn have always been split over one fundamental question: is our collective existence actually real or simply an illusion? The side that rejected a physical, permanent reality has always been dismissive of Groudon’s existence. He has been far more important in the physical reality sects.

These sects believe that at the beginning of creation Groudon and Kyogre warred endlessly. Their fight was put to an end by Rayquaza slaying both. She formed Groudon’s flesh into the land and Kyogre’s blood into the seas. She herself provided the breath of the world and allowed life to flourish. In time, however, the souls of Groudon and Kyogre stirred and waged war once more. Kyogre won the battle before being slain by Rayquaza once more. Almost all life perished during the brief struggle. In the new age there was far more water than land. Life rebounded and civilization rose once more. Then the primordial gods woke and clashed, tearing civilization apart once more. Groudon won this fight and there was more land than water in the third era. The cycle continued hundreds of times as worlds of water alternated with worlds of earth. The current era, the 984th, began with Kyogre’s victory. It would end when the titans reemerged and ended human civilization. Groudon would expand the land and be slain. Civilization would someday reemerge only to be destroyed by Kyogre.

Groudon does not appear in any stories outside of the Hoennese origin myth. He was not a particularly prominent or important god. He was not a character in the myths of Hoenn so much as a force of nature that simply was. There was no stopping him. He would someday end the current era and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Some scholars theorized that Groudon and Kyogre were representations of the inevitability of death or the wanton destruction of a natural disaster.

Worship

Groudon was not widely worshipped in Hoenn. He still had regional cults. These cults mostly agreed that he would someday awaken and kill almost all humans, but in the meantime his sleeping soul could be appealed to in order to end droughts, improve crop yields, and stave off volcanic eruptions. Ritual sacrifices of livestock were thrown into Hell’s Chimney to feed the god. Human sacrifices may have occurred but were very rare, likely limited to the terminally ill and convicts sentenced to death. They may not have occurred at all. In any event there is no reliable evidence of any occurring in the last three centuries. Most alleged sacrifices either have no evidence to support them or were probably suicides.

There were two holy sites to Groudon. Hell’s Chimney was considered to be the resting place of his body. This is where most sacrifices were made and the place where his cults were the strongest. Gurandopaya was said to be where Kyogre and Groudon fought at the end of the last age. It was believed that the souls of the titans rested on the mountain. A temple and graveyard was constructed there to honor all those who perished at the end of the 983rd age. The temple was maintained by the priests of Rayquaza but was also seen as a sacred place by the cults of Groudon and Kyogre.

Today

Groudon has always been a symbol of a fiery apocalypse. This took on new symbolic importance in postwar Japan. A series of films centered around Groudon being awakened by nuclear testing and attempting to end the world. The first film had a decidedly somber tone and focused on mankind’s path towards self-destruction, an end as inevitable as Groudon’s rise. The film even posited that Groudon was not a physical entity so much as an ancient prophecy of nuclear annihilation wiping out civilization. The prophets had no context for what they saw and attributed it to the work of an external monster rather than the true horrors of manmade weapons. The film ends with humanity descending into infighting rather than uniting to ward off Groudon. The titan stops to watch in confusion before venturing back under the earth’s surface. In the film’s final lines a character played by the director posits that Groudon realized that he was not needed: humanity would end the current age without him having to lift a finger.

Future installments would center on Groudon returning and playing a more heroic role in fights with various other gods and monsters. The films were increasingly lighthearted. The change in tone was explained by Groudon befriending human children and fighting for him as he waited on Kyogre to awaken. Until then he saw no need to destroy humanity and would instead fight to protect them.

The Magma Organization emerged in 2002 as a collective of scientists interested in the possibility of using controlled volcanic eruptions to expand the available land in the densest metropolitan areas in Japan. Another proposed application was to use the volcanic ash harvested from remote eruptions to fertilize soils and increase the food independence of Japan. Internationally ash redistribution could allow for revitalizing depleted soils and potentially growing crops in the desert. Down the line volcanic eruptions could create new landmasses for refugee resettlement or dim sunlight to reduce the effects of industrial greenhouse gas pollution.

The organization was widely written off as deeply unserious in both popular and scientific media. Still, they retained some relevance through the extensive funding from their founder’s own personal fortune and a hedge fund manager interested in using the organization’s research to inspire more practical inventions. They later gained positive media attention by hiring mercenaries and forming their own security corps to fight Aqua-dan, the yakuza, and petty criminals.

The Magma Organization ultimately shifted research towards awakening and controlling Groudon for use as a terraforming engine, and to negate Aqua-dan’s pursuit of Kyogre. Under the guise of countering Aqua-dan’s assault, The Magma Organization stole an artifact tied to Groudon from Gurandopaya and moved something from Hell’s Chimney to Rune City, where they awakened Groudon and set him on the newly awakened Kyogre. Few details about what Aqua-dan and The Magma Organization stole or where those artifacts currently are have been released.

This escalated Kyogre’s behavior from torrential rain across Hoenn to the cataclysm that would nearly destroy the region. Rune City was lost to the waves when the caldera it was built upon collapsed, nearby cities built on coral reefs or mangrove swamps were washed away, and the eruption of Hell’s Chimney nearly destroyed the communities around it. Earthquakes, heat waves, and flooding damaged every city in the region. The clash ended when Rayquaza descended to the ruins of Rune City and drove the beasts back underground. The Japanese government claims to know their locations based on sonar and seismic readings but has refused to disclose any more information.

Dr. Matsubusa insisted on his innocence and fought his conviction through years of appeals. His attempts were unsuccessful. Japan unbanned the death penalty until Magma’s founder had been executed and then promptly prohibited it once more. Even years after the disaster Magma has its defenders. The remaining proponents of geoengineering insist that they could have controlled Groudon if Kyogre had not also been awakened. Others defend the spirit of the organization but not their exact methods. Modern geoengineering advocates prefer purely technological solutions to ones involving powerful pokémon. Some far-right activists contend that Dr. Matsubusa’s more extreme actions were justified by his fight against anarchists and criminals. Had he not awakened Groudon then Aqua-dan would have drowned the world unopposed, just as they had intended. Most of Magma’s defenders live outside of Japan. Polling after the disaster consistently shows that Magma has a 0 to 3% favorability rating.

Groudon still sleeps. He could still be reawakened. His location is unknown, but his presence still looms large: one recent study showed that anxiety spikes tremendously in Japan following even minor earthquakes, a phenomenon not observed elsewhere in the world.

Origins

Groudon is real. That much is no longer disputed. What is less clear is how humans learned about him. Now that scientists know what a clash between Kyogre and Groudon looks like, they have attempted to find evidence of past events. Geological records show that the most recent clash likely occurred around 14 million years ago. Homo sapiens had not yet evolved. How, then, did humans learn about something so ancient with so much accuracy? Moreover, how did cultures as far flung as the Norse and the Mexica end up with similar stories? Are Ymir and Cipactli just other names of Groudon? Or are there separate monsters of similar power resting beneath other continents? The majority view among anthropologists is that at least Cipactli is another name for Groudon given the Mexica’s insistence that Rayquaza was the one to slay him. However, the Mexica have no equivalent for Kyogre.

The leading theory at present is that the pokémon of Hoenn, and potentially the rest of the planet, remembered the clash. Its effects would have been felt on a planetary scale. The event may even have separated Japan from mainland Asia. Psychic-types or human elementals may have then relayed these stories to the newly settled humans. These humans, in turn, passed the legends down to their children. The accuracy with which the story was preserved is still very odd for a myth based on events from over ten million years in the past. Even the longest lived of rock-type pokémon were unlikely to have been around long enough to tell humans. This means that either long-lived pokémon have their own oral traditions repeated with minimal deviation across many generations or that there are pokémon far older than previously imagined. Either outcome would revolutionize the field of pokémon studies.

 

[tomatorade]

Hmmm, certainly a different tone to the pokedex entries. It’s like the history notes version of them. Definitely a sensible choice for some very spooky mythological figures. And the different sections are quite a bit different to match.

Broadly, this is one of those instances where leading with some classic fantasy novel-esque intro quotes really works. They’re very open ended and mysterious, especially considering I first decided to read my spooky boy darkrai’s entry.

Darkrai

Hell yeah that’s what I like to see. Based anarchist darkrai. Very edgy but I expected nothing less. Darkrai’s always seemed like a fun exercise in some character designer’s head to see how anime edgy they could go while still being pg and I love them for that. Obviously less pg here. Blood did not take long to come into play lol.

I love the idea of different depictions of deities. It’s very true to mythology in general. I know the greeks in particular were all writing a collective fanfic about their gods, complete with shipping wars and writing their least favorites as horny weirdos. Lots of strange stuff.

Anyways, human darkrai and monster darkrai feel very intuitive, but I’ve never thought about a bird darkrai. It makes sense as the yin to cresselia’s swan-thingy she’s got going on, but I admit to not being able to see it. He would also probably swim like a drenched towel tbh.

And then we get into the superstitious aspects. I love that I immediately get the sense that, from a scientific perspective, darkrai would’ve been an explanation for those who died unexpectedly in their sleep. It’s a clever little thing that assumes who’s written these entries.

You snuck a short story in there, you sneaky sausage. And it’s heartwarming >:(.

Very cute, though. Definitely a classical sort of interpretation.

I think what interests me most in this section is the final interpretation of him as the god of obsessive dreams. Once again, it feels like the justifications of the ruling class. Though in this case, for the behavior of drug addicts and revolutionaries and other undesirables. I think this is my favourite of the depictions, even if it has no story attached to it. Often fanfic darkrais turn into nightmare machines by incident and sad emo boys otherwise, but I like the idea of him as a malevolent trickster god.

Also the start of the worship section seems unintentionally directed at the fanfic depictions lol. Is he evil or not? Oh, cresselia’s a heartless monster now? Since when? Can’t they just be friends/spurned lovers?

And finally we get to based cult worship darkrai. Hell yeah, homosexuality. Definitely makes a lot of sense considering real-world satanism is mostly just chill, counterculture bake sales and cool statues of goats and whatever else they do. Darkrai makes so much sense as that forgotten counterculture god. Even in canon, he’s a little off to the side and out of view. Mostly, all of this has me wonder about the broader world these depictions live in. Your details portray it as very real word adjacent, but I don’t know how connected thi is to your other work (which I should read eventually).

Origins essentially confirms what I suspected. The science nerds are at it again, explaining things so they aren’t fun anymore. I did enjoy the added context, though. There’s something very appealing about somebody explaining their own invented science and history that I can’t get enough of.

And finally, gay nightclub darkrai. Sorry ladies, he’s too sexy I can’t help myself.

Latios and Latias

Ah, my other boy (and the other one).

The overview is a lot more substantial here. Noticeably different in tone as well. Also some real, confirmed sightings to this one. I jumped into this on the darkrai one so I thought this might all be myths and legends but it seemsI was wrong. Also, ‘advanced engineering knowledge is certainly out of place between hydrokinesis and dream reading lol.

I’m always happy to see Altomare acknowledged in Lati lore. I do not acknowledge it at all in my own, but secretly respect it. It’s got a cool venice vibe going for it, at least.

The appearance section is mostly what I expected from osmosising fanon lore. There’s a lot more interesting terminology to learn here surrounding the dreaming and sixth prophet which caught my attention.

Then there’s an unexpected turn at the end. Reminds me of the gen Z obsession with biblically accurate angels combined with some eldrich strangeness. There’s an interesting connection with hands. A sort of right and left pairing. I dunno, I find myself speculating.

And here I thought this would be more scientific explanations, but we get another fascinating myth surrounding the dragon tribes. I’m glad this follows in the less-vanilla vein of the dreaming. Partly because it’s very original, partly because I’m loving the way these entries are structured into very believable religions, complete with obvious narrative fumbles like a line of prophets who just so happen to know a bit more than the previous. And, of course, ingrained misogyny. Classic lol.

I did find myself skimming the worship section a little tbh. Mostly it’s not really my thing. Departs a little too much into religious history for my tastes, although it does read well and follow with the mythology as far as I understood.

For some reason I only just realised that this takes place in a version of the real world. As I read about the Americas, funny enough. I know I’ve seen japan mentioned a couple times, but that didn’t register because I’m uncultured. I’ve always had mixed feelings on this sort of alternate history/real-world fantasy sort of thing. Mostly, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief and can’t stop thinking about the logistics of these fantasy elements existing in our world. I dunno, this is more a neutral comment than a critical one, but I can’t deny that it distracted me once I noticed.

Spotted a reference to beta latias lol. That thing’s wacky tbh.

All in all, very good. There’s a lot of details to pick over here so I may return to do some further readthroughs.

 

[Persephone]

Jirachi (Hoenn)

“In the ancient days Jirachi had to admire the stars from afar. The heavens had to reach down to him. Now, with his inspiration and guidance, man shall reach up to the heavens.”
-Mikoto Inoue, Director of the Japanese Space Agency

Overview

Jirachi, The Grand Dreamer, Wish Maker, and Protector of Fauns, is a minor deity revered under different names throughout East Asia.

They are largely separate from the main gods of the Asian pantheons and can be easily slotted into the fringes. Comet festivals honoring Jirachi are remain popular in China, and Korea, Japan, even as the worship of other gods has declined. This is in part because they are tied more to a specific festival than to religious dogma. Some scholars have argued that Jirachi is better viewed as the mascot of a largely secular holiday than a religious figure.

Appearance

Jirachi is most commonly depicted as a short figure wearing golden robes. He has black or gold eyes with a third eye on the torso. Jirachi’s headdress consists of three golden points, each holding a blue ribbon at the end. These ribbons, known as wish tags, are at the heart of many Jirachi stories.

In older depictions Jirachi was a beautiful male human with delicate features and elaborate robes. The third eye was placed on the head, chest, and abdomen seemingly at random. The headdress was made of silk and gold.

Modern depictions emphasize Jirachi as more of a pokémon, or even a cutesy mascot. The head is wide with unnaturally large black eyes. The headdress is fused to the head and consists of golden points like those on a stylized star. The torso is often smaller than the head with a closed third eye. A golden cape hangs behind the pokémon. Full robes would hide the third eye.

This depiction aligns better with the other fey-like deities of Japan such as Celebi, Manaphy, and Mew. It may also be influenced by Victini, an American god with the ability to issue prophecies and grant some wishes, albeit with more of an emphasis on war and sports.

In Hoennese Mythology

Thousands of years ago in the Valley of Fauns, an artisan was born by the name of Jirachi. He was incredibly skilled with the loom and made brilliant tapestries depicting the night sky. The clothes he wove were the finest in Japan and he was moved into the home of the local king to be his household’s personal tailor. Many women tried to win his heart, but he never paid them any mind. Every night he could be found staring up at the star, looking for inspiration.

Traveling those same stars was a goddess of immense power and radiant light. She roams the entire universe to share her light and solve the problems of those she encounters, but the universe is vast. In her efforts to help everyone she cannot help anyone for very long. Earth is allotted seven days in her presence every thousand years.

When the goddess arrived in the skies of Earth, she saw Jirachi weaving a tapestry and was taken by the beauty of both his art and his person. She instantly formed a human disguise and went down to meet with him. Jirachi was also instantly smitten with the goddess’s kindness and radiant beauty.



For six days the two courted each other. Then the goddess revealed her true self and offered to take Jirachi with him into the heavens. Jirachi declined for he loved the Earth and the humans he had met. Instead, he requested a wish from the goddess. He asked that he be allowed to greet her every time she returned. In the meantime he would collect the hopes and dreams of humanity and present them to her when she returned. The goddess agreed and granted the man immortality. However, her power wanes when she is far away and Jirachi turns to stone and falls into a deep sleep to preserve his life. During this time he travels the world of dreams, helping people where he can and gathering wishes to present to the goddess upon her return.

The name of the goddess varies by region. On Honshu she was syncretized with Ho-Oh. The Hisuians knew her as Almighty Sinnoh. The Chinese as Nüwa. In Hoenn she is unnamed, as her true name is in a language from twenty-six thousand stars away.

In other depictions, Jirachi appears to have their own ability to grant wishes. In the story of Masoko a young woman from what is now Kanazumi ventures across the entirety of Hoenn to plead to Jirachi to end a drought. She sings to him a tale of her sorrow and the will of her people to survive. She receives no reaction from the stone Jirachi is sleeping in. However, she returns home to find her town had a miraculous harvest despite the drought.

After stories of Darkrai spread across Japan following the conquest of Hisui, Jirachi was intentionally syncretized with Cresselia as his archenemy who kept dreams happy and free from his corrupting influence.

This is a rather novel interpretation. In the past Jirachi had been viewed as an oracle who revealed possibilities in dreams and daydreams. Good visions were a reminder that the world could be improved by concerted action. Bad visions were warnings of what would come if wickedness was allowed to prevail.

In most stories Jirachi is merely a plot device that gives a prophecy or grants a wish, setting the story in motion. Most of his prophecies were given in the form of dreams, although some stories involve the protagonist meeting Jirachi while he is awake and receiving advice directly from him.

Stories of Jirachi as the Wish Maker have been common for centuries as it provides either a goal for a hero to reach for or a way to allow for a story’s premise without much narrative justification. Wishes granted range from mastery of the arts to wealth, love, and power to mystical powers. It is a common narrative convention that those who encounter Jirachi while he is awake and treat him with kindness shall be allowed to write one wish on each wish tag. Those wishes shall be granted.

One epic hero, Masaharu of Kotoki, wished for and received a blade capable of killing even the gods themselves. After killing a dark god that had demanded his sister as a sacrifice, Masahuru was granted godhood by the dark god’s brother. He started as a benevolent deity, until the day Masahuru found his sword stolen. Suddenly paranoid of being killed, Masahuru began demanding town leaders sacrifice their daughters to him until they could find the thief. In time a boy who has lost his sister found the blade resting in a river, disguised himself as a sacrifice sent to Masahuru, and used his own blade to kill him.

There is another tale of a boy who met Jirachi. He thought about wishing to be the greatest swordsman in the land. Then he realized he could achieve this himself if only he trained hard enough. However, he did not have enough money for a sword. Then he remembered that Jirachi himself had once won his fortune making beautiful art. He considered wishing to be a skilled artist before realizing that with practice he could do that too. He left having made no wishes as there was nothing Jirachi could grant him that he could not grant himself.

Unlike Hoopa, Jirachi almost never distorts a wish in the stories about him. People often find that their wishes do not bring them happiness. But he did give them exactly what they thought they wanted.

Jirachi is often used as a way to explain a villain’s extraordinary powers, as it allows a villain to be established without making a major god their patron or suggesting they rose to power through their own virtues.

Worship

Jirachi’s main temple is in Hoenn’s Valley of Fauns. Most Japanese sources agree that Jirachi sleeps within the valley. The valley itself is a national preserve with access severely limited. At the center of the valley is a shrine to Jirachi where the pokémon sleeps. Photographs of the shrine surfaced in 2003. The photographer claimed to have snuck into the valley and taken the pictures there. The images show a large white stone with a stylized eye drawn on it surrounded by massive spires of quarts. Stairs lead up to an altar before the stone. The authenticity of the images is disputed. The Japanese government claims they are forgeries but also arrested and tried two people for trespassing in a national preserve.

There are smaller shrines in most major cities. These are often placed around parks, art museums, or science centers. Jirachi shrines typically consist of a large slab of white marble with an altar for placing offerings. There are few priests dedicated specifically to Jirachi. Most shrines are looked after by the priests to other gods or even just volunteers from the community.

For most of the year Jirachi’s worship is limited to the creative and the desperate. In addition to being the Wish Maker, Jirachi is also a deity linked to space, science, the arts, dreams, and madness. Jirachi is said to bring forth ideas from the collective human unconsciousness and help humans make them real. This can take the form of strokes of inspiration, newfound resolve, visions, or wishes.

Jirachi is the principal deity of comet festivals. Every year in East Asia, thousands of festivals are held in Jirachi’s honor. Wishes are written on pieces of rice paper and burned at Jirachi’s altar alongside offerings of fruit and fabric. Anything can be wished for, but it is traditional to wish for improvement in the arts or academics. The festival lasts for seven days. Aside from wish making, there are displays from local artisans, parades, and fireworks shows. Every 1,000 years, a millennium festival is held. These are the most important and extravagant of comet festivals and mark the return of the Millenium Comet and Jirachi’s awakening. It is believed that wishes granted during this festival, however outlandish, may be granted. In the year leading up to the festival it is common for public services to receive increased funding in the hopes of persuading citizens to earnestly wish for the emperor’s continued reign.

Origins

Jirachi myths are fairly consistent across East Asia but limited outside of the region. Research in the Valley of Fauns is limited by the Japanese government. Jirachi supposedly lived over four thousand years ago in a civilization advanced enough to have textile work and multicity states. This is plausible in Hoenn. Ceramics dating back to 2,500 BCE have been found in Hoenn. The Hoennese dragon tribes placed particular importance on meteors, comets, and the stars. The tribes never developed written language until it was introduced from China. Oral folklore from the tribes often contains outlandish stories mixed in with detailed recounting of lineages. It is of little value in determining Jirachi’s historicity. There is no evidence that textiles had been developed by the time of Jirachi’s supposed existence.

The Millenium Comet is real and is visible every 1,000 years. Until quite recently it was rare for civilizations to have accurate astronomical records dating back ten centuries. The Chinese knew of it by 300 BCE. Scholars described the comet and its unusual return period in Mesoamerica and Constantinople after its appearance in 681 CE.

It is plausible that the Hoennese dragon tribes, with their reverence for the cosmos, were able to match the comet with ancient oral stories. Even then it strains credulity that a tribe with no written language to be able to describe its return interval so accurately. It is more likely that the Millenium Comet was first described in China and then later used as the basis of a myth in Hoenn that spread throughout the East Asian world. The dragon tribes would have been quick to ascribe cosmological importance to the comet and, perhaps, link it to a strange geological site they had found.

Today

The Millenium Comet is due to return in 2681 CE. In the meantime, millions of people participate in comet festivals every year. The festivals are largely secular events dedicated to art and imagination.

Stories revolving around Jirachi’s role as the Wish Maker remain popular in fantasy stories, particularly those aimed at children, both as an inciting incident for the plot or as a justification for individual episodes or characters.

The Japanese space program’s asteroid and comet exploration program is named Jirachi. There is a prominent shrine to the god just outside of the agency’s headquarters in Hoenn.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, dropping in for a quick and dirty review of one of your serial works tonight. I debated a bit as to what story I wanted to go with, but I decided that I’d start out with dipping my toes into this one for something on the lighter side. So let’s just start things off with what you’ve got first chronologically:

Landorus – Unova

Spoiler

Look! Look what the children of men have wrought upon the earth! The scars of sand and blood! Were they to perish for their folly it would be a fitting end. Yet, by my mercy, seeds shall grow in the sandy soil, watered by the blood of kings and heroes. You shall be given a new earth.

May this one be treated with more care.

-The Journey of Ohserase

Ah, so Landorus’ mythology in Unova has something to do with him unborking things after the Taos barbecued things, huh? Or at least I kinda get that vibe from the “blood of kings and heroes” bit.

Overview

Landorus was the primary fertility goddess in Unovan mythology and folklore. She was known as the Driver of Storms, Savior of Unova, Guardian of the Fields, and The Earth Incarnate. For centuries she was the most commonly worshipped goddess in the Unovan pantheon. Even today, long after the pantheon fell out of favor, she still retains a strong base of devoted worshippers.

>she

I mean, I suppose that that makes sense given that fertility deities IRL were very commonly female, but I still did a double-take at that. Perhaps I should be less surprised given that Enamorous is a thing and explicitly takes after feminine motifs.

Kingdom-era Unova was a strange mixture of indigenous peoples, Scandanavian colonists, and, later on, merchants and explorers sent from the Kingdom of Mali. Landorus’ folklore was shaped from by this blend of different cultures’ earth god myths into a rather unique figure.

Oh right, your fic setting is basically straight-up “earth, but with Pokémon”. I suppose that this would make decent enough sense for explaining how Unova’s population in the present-day is visible multiethnic. Though I had a few small nitpicks regarding the phrasing of this section.

Appearance

Landorus is most often depicted as a humanoid figure with red, orange, or brown skin. A cloud or sandstorm usually obscures the legs. Before the Kingdom, the legs were usually depicted unobscured in art and idols. More often than not the legs ended in cat-like paws instead of proper feet. Sometimes the legs were coated in fur. The goddess usually has white hair. In more recent depictions landorus is almost always depicted with a scythe made of roots slung over the shoulder.

Ah, so explaining how the Incarnate Formes came to be in visual art. Though the “sans cloud” appearance feels like a decent enough guestimate for how they’d be based off their Therian Formes.

Before 500 A.D. landorus was usually depicted as male with white facial hair. This perception gradually began to shift until, by the time of the kingdom’s founding (1107 A.D.), landorus was almost exclusively known as a goddess. A brief resurgence in male depictions came after Africans arrived in the kingdom (c. 1350 A.D.) but this trend had died out by the seventeenth century.

Huh, wasn’t expecting that one, but I suppose that it’s on-brand for how dieties in pantheons have a way of evolving through the ages.

Theria, The Panther, is usually depicted as a stout quadruped with reddish skin, a root-like tail, and a mane of white hair

Huh. So its Therian Forme is just straight-up “Theria”, huh? Makes me wonder what the other three’s Therian Formes are called in this setting.

In Unovan Mythology

Landorus was the eldest of the three storm gods. Her brothers, toranadus and thundurus, loved to play games. However, as weather gods their playfulness was extremely destructive. After one lacrosse match nearly destroyed the people under them, landorus became fed up. She began to chase her brothers across the sky so that they would never settle in one place for too long. She left fertile earth in her wake as an apology for her brothers’ behavior.

Oh, so that’s how their wandering behavior is justified. Though it feels like a pretty fun take that makes a bit of sense under its own logic.

She is sometimes seen as a goddess of healing and medicine, in addition to fertility. In another myth a malevolent ghost poisoned the earth, air, and water of the world in order to punish the chieftain who ordered her execution. Landorus personally gathered and drank all the poison herself and became very sick. The phantom, horrified by the suffering of The Storm Driver, forfeited her own soul to heal the goddess. In another version of the story, Theria the Panther dies after ingesting the poison and is resurrected by The Starchild as Landorus, The Earth Incarnate and Driver of Storms.

>malevolent ghost

That one’s new to me. Is that based off of some sort of IRL myth? Or was this created wholesale for this entry?

The most famous work of literature devoted to Landorus is The Journey of Ohserase, codified into its most recognizable version in 1632 A.D. The story begins after The War of Kings, where two brothers split The Starchild in two and clashed until the entire Kingdom was a barren wasteland no longer worth fighting for.

>The Starchild

Oh, so that’s what you called the Original Dragon in your continuity. Noted, then.

Landorus appeared before a young child, Ohserase, and entrusted her with a task. She was to obtain a flask of blood from the kings and the surviving generals of both armies. The blood was to be mixed and one drop placed in every field in Unova. Only then could the region be restored.

Rather than assassinate the King of Ideals, Ohserase simply told him her story and showed him the ruined world outside his palace. The king became ashamed of what he had brought about and ordered his own execution by strangulation so no blood would be wasted. His generals and advisors followed suit.

Ohserase:

The King of Truth refused to yield. In his rage he stabbed Ohserase for daring to suggest he should die. While his blade entered the girl’s body, she was unharmed. Instead, he keeled over from a stab wound that magically appeared in his chest. his blood was collected.

Well then. Though I suppose that one doesn’t just casually defy the gods without consequences.

After a second conflict where the remaining forces of the late King of Ideals rounded up and killed the generals and heroes of the Army of Truth, the blood was collected and mixed. With the remaining nobles and priests watching, a single drop was placed on a field.

Nothing happened.

Both how we got here and how it seemingly didn’t do anything.

The crowd became increasingly discontent. They even contemplating killing Ohserase for her part in the death of two monarchs. Just as the debate reached a fever pitch, landorus appeared. She scolded the masses for turning against her own priestess. She took the cask in her hands and shattered it. Only sand fell out. She then told the assembled leaders that the blood of warriors and kings would do nothing for the land’s prosperity. Revival could only come from gentle love and hard work. Landorus personally restored the fields of Unova before vanishing. The story ends by stating that landorus still waits in an old stone temple, holding out hope that she will never again have to heal a dying world.

Sure would’ve been a nice thing to tell this before killing off the Kings of Truth and Ideals and all those other people. Though… yeah, I suppose considering how much of a mess they made of things, that them dying wasn’t exactly a net negative.

Landorus is often depicted as goddess of rebirth and rebuilding. When disasters strike, she follows and attempts to make things whole. The disaster myth has long been central to her worship and perception, although the most popular version has varied with time. Before contact with Scandanavia, the most common myth of Theria the Panther revolved around the cat chasing their siblings across the earth.

Oh, so Landorus’ lore in BTverse is inherently syncretic, huh? That makes me wonder what Theria was originally based off of before it got mapped to Landorus.

Post-contact the story of the poisoned earth became more common. Anthropologists believe that there was a series of pandemics in the New World following the arrival of the first Old World colonists (c. 850 A.D.) and the diseases they brought with them. By the time that more extensive colonization efforts began, the indigenous population had mostly rebounded to its pre-pandemic level. This story was probably an attempt to explain the plagues.

The Journey of Ohserase did not become popular until well after The War of Kings (c. 1200 A.D.). There are no contemporary accounts of either king dying in the fashion described in the story. Indeed. there is substantial evidence that neither survived the war. The story’s popularity largely came about as the European and African population in Unova began to outnumber the natives in the area and as Iberian, Kalosian, and Galarian colonists established footholds in other parts of North America.

Ah yes, so the Kings essentially an heroed their people’s regional hegemony and allowed the outsiders to wind up pushing their way into local dominance. I mean, that definitely is on-brand with a few episodes of colonization in reality.

Around the same time as The Journey of Ohserase was put to the printing press for the first time, there was a revival in War of Kings stories among the indigenous inhabitants. The colonists, and especially the Europeans, were implicitly compared to selfish men who had torn a god and the world apart rather than make peace. In the period of Galarian rule, a governor tried to ban the book. In turn it only became more and more popular until the ban was rescinded. The incident fueled resentment among the Five Nations of the region and helped precipitate The War of Unovan Independence.

>Galarian rule

Oh, so British colonization also has an analogue in BTverse. Though wait, does that mean that all those mentions of ‘Iberia’ are pending an update to ‘Paldea’ one of these days? Since… yeah, Paldea basically is Iberia in Pokéworld, just (maybe) much less culturally diverse.

Worship

Landorus was a common household god. Worship was near-universal, especially in rural areas.

Yeah, no kidding when she was a fertility goddess.

Unusually for her significance, Landorus had no grand temples in Unova. The people of Miros Island claim that Landorus herself sometimes stopped by their humble shrine. This belief was widespread enough that at least some pilgrims went to the island as far back as The War of Kings.

Wait, ‘Miros Island’? I couldn’t find any hits for this on Bulbapedia or Wikipedia. Is this supposed to be Milos, the Greek Island? Or else what’s the story here?

The Mississippians did build grand mounds honoring their gods. All of these temples were seen as also honoring The Panther in her role as patron of mound-building. Recent excavations in Cahokia and the Ohio River Valley have found credible evidence that some Unovans took pilgrimages to these sites.

Damn, the ancient peoples in this world were certainly mobile. Though I suppose it makes sense with the number of easily rideable Pokémon scurrying around.

Most worship of Landorus was done in the home. Small figurines of either Theria the Panther or Landorus the Incarnate (or both) were common in Landorus-worshipping households. Small offerings of grain were presented to the figurine before being burned or buried in her honor. The idol was kept in a place of prominence near the entry of the home. When people entered the building they would acknowledge the goddess’s presence.

I’m actually curious as to if these rites were based off of any known ones from IRL fertility deities, since… yeah, this definitely sounds fairly believable in terms of how a pre-modern fertility deity might be venerated.

The harvest festival was devoted to landorus. She also received offerings in the planting festival, alongside the two rain gods. In times of crisis, Unovan kings made pilgrimages to The Earth’s Scar and The True King’s Castle to present offerings. Keeping with the goddess’s words, no blood was offered. Instead the king would prostrate himself in the sand and beg, sometimes for days on end, for The Storm Driver’s help.

Huh, so are those places that became what’s now Abundant Shrine? I certainly don’t recognize either of those two names, but I feel as if they should be familiar to me.

Origins

Landorus is a synthesis of different North American and African myths.

Her most direct inspiration is Theria the Panther. A big cat god was common in North American mythologies, especially in what is now the eastern portions of the United States and Canada. This god, referred to as Theria by the Turtle Island Nations, was almost always a storm god. The secondary attributes varied. Her role as a fertility goddess in the Five Nations is uncommon. She was the goddess of the hunt to the Huron. The Mississippians saw her as the goddess of mound-building and, by extension, civilization itself.

>referred to as Theria

I’m… assuming that that’s a gloss applied by Unovan colonists given that that’s a very Greek name in etymology instead of some word for ‘cougar’ in some Iroquoian language. Though meh, I won’t question it too hard, since it was a pain to find anything in terms of a language resource for them just from a casual Google.

The Scandanavian gods were more human-shaped than those of most of the North American pantheons. The transition to Landorus as a human-shaped goddess probably stems from these influences. She also resembles a djinn common in stories of the desert nomads, such as those that frequented the trade cities of Mali. In one legend from the region, a djinn grew concerned over a massive war. In a bid to bring peace he challenged all the armies to battle him. They did so and were soundly defeated. After extensive coordination to design new weapons and strategies, the combined armies came back and overpowered the djinn. In the process their leadership had grown accustomed to dealing with common challenges together and the war was settled.

Clever girl there.

Landorus also draws inspirations from The Flayed One, a common figure in Mesoamerican pantheons. The Flayed One is the god of maize and fertility. He peeled off his own skin to help fertilize the earth. Landorus’ red or orange color may have been influenced by these stories. Mesoamerican idols dating centuries before the Kingdom’s founding have been discovered in Unova, showing that direct religious influences were possible.

>drawing influence from Xipe Totec

So… were there also ritualized gladiatoral battles in some regions that venerated Landorus, too?

Today

There is no proof that either Landorus or Theria exist.

Though I suppose with how borked BTverse canonically is… yeah. I suppose I should not be shocked if a lot of otherwise canonical journeys never got off the ground.

Worship of The Guardian of the Fields remains common among the remaining members of The Five Nations. The Panther is still well-regarded among the moundbuilders, Huron, Cherokee and other nations of the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. Many white and black farmers still keep figurines of landorus in their homes for luck. Outside of these communities, belief in landorus and all polytheistic gods has declined in favor of The Church of Life and other monotheistic faiths.

Ah yes, I think that I have a feeling I know what the Church of Life is like:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvpLYZg5LO4

The Oscar-nominated film The Storm Driver recently led to a revival of interest in landorus. The movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by climate change and nuclear fallout. A young woman seems to receive a prophetic vision while severely dehydrated. In it landorus tells her how to save Unova. The girl fails to get the leaders of post-apocalyptic Unova to come with her. She sets out to The True King’s Castle on her own to beg for more guidance. At the end of the film she dies alone in the radioactive sands near the castle. Then an old hermit with a cane made of roots emerges from the ruins and buries the body.

Ah yes, so there’s nukes in BTverse. Boy, it just has all the problems to grapple with just like real life, huh?

Though I wonder if this movie actually pops up in BT at some point, since it feels like it’d be a neat little cameo.

Well, that was definitely a different experience. Like it is definitely built in mind with a pretty specific take on Pokéworld, but it feels very believable and fleshed-out as a backstory for how Landorus is seen in local mythology, along with neat little tie-ins of other bits of Unova’s mythos. Like I take it that this entry probably reads different after reading bits and pieces of Broken Things, but it was still fairly accessible coming into it with no knowledge of it beyond a general premise.

In terms of criticisms, beyond a couple of typos that I spotted here and there, I don’t really have any that don’t ultimately boil down to “my headcanon is different than yours”, which I don’t feel is worth bringing up. It might be worth updating the ‘Iberia’ references to ‘Paldea’ given that you have Galar as the explicit map to the UK in BT’s world, but eh. Considering what I know of its nations, ‘Iberia’ and ‘Paldea’ could very well just be direct synonyms to each other.

Good work @Persephone . I don’t know if I’ll be able to squeeze in another review from this series before RB5 ends, but I’m definitely interested in coming back at some point.

 

[kintsugi]

dropping in here for formal reviews for two of these, i do not think you will be surprised which two. the others are also bangers but I can only really offer so many rephrasings of "this is a banger" at a time

celebi
I really like the angle you take on this one--what's the take for a goddess whose domain can't be experienced by anyone else? What happens when you worship someone who can meaningfully wipe out your problems in an instant? I'm reminded of a lot of conversations I have about stories that open the multiverse or time travel bag without the intent to deal with it properly; what do you do now that the narrative stakes of your life are basically meaningless? And I also like that the answer that the text provides here is kinda "lmao not going to talk about that part."

The selection of mini-vignettes sprinkled around here are really neat. I tend to say that about all of the mini-vignettes so make of that what you like. The sci-fi renditions in pop culture also makes a lot of sense. In the context of Celebi specifically, I like how all of these take an anachronistic bent and are all kind of useless but make sense in hindsight/foresight/context--it does feel like a neat twist in the idea that prophecy is a point of view; it's just, in this case, the point of view is something that you can't really benefit from in your own lifetime. I take it the Prophecy of the Bastard King is Game of Thrones? lol. I also liked the bit with the revolver and laptops; it feels like a fun reference to the thought experiments about going back in time and changing the world with your big enormous future brain, except the answer is that unfortunately we rely way too much on others to be as self-sufficient as that idea implies. The Asagao myth is also a really nice one baked in there. I like the tone that it sets, and especially the apology Celebi offers at the end. The "Celebi remains" closer is powerful and stands out as a somewhat stylized sentence in a work that's specifically authored to be as agnostic and descriptive as possible.

The various renditions and worship methods for Celebi are cool! Love to see Orre and Sprout Tower get some mention. I think, for reasons I can't really explain, my favorite bit is the one describing her origin stories. Each of them sound plausible and metal as fuck, and also each of them are probably not true, because elemayoh. There's a nice little recurring backdrop of--so what's the point here anyway, what can be done with this--that I think happens a lot in these due to their nature of being apocryphal myths/legends, but I like the added context of time-travel induced nihilism. Are any of these the right one? I don't really know, but they're all really rad and I'm glad that you wrote this.

kyurem
Broadly speaking I think all your epigraphs are great, but this one is especially a banger. I'm kinda intrigued by the notion that Kyurem associated Truth with kindness, since that rarely seems to be the case in my experience--feels distinctly alien/atypical morality. Also the "Full Court" name is metal af.

This one is a ton of fun to read, for reasons I hope are obvious. This does feel a lot more like the Persephone-take on a lot of these things, the questions about what humanity would have to fear in the modern era being resolutely answered by "but it's still kaiju tho". I also think it's a fun answer to the core struggle this story's meta-author presumably faces--making it obvious what cultural relevance each of these gods may (or may not) have in society. Since Kekoa never looks his trauma in the eye it's easy to understate the exact destruction caused besides "shit that's bad", but there's something distinctly Worm in describing how the weird, frozen-winged ice dragon woke up and froze a city, a couple of other gods and some deer had to show up and try to make the best of it. And the Unovan response summaries remind me a lot of post 9/11 conversations where people realize their positions are a lot more vulnerable than they'd thought, luckily Unova seems to have gotten its act back together for that tho.

I'm always here for retellings of the Reshiram/Zekrom split of course. I'm also, of course, here for the ideas that aren't exactly "two american princes, don't ask why there are american princes or where they went, fought it out", so, hey, everyone wins.

I like the original Kawisenhawe story a lot--it's fun to go full circle there, since idk it does feel very Vaira and ultimately that's where I was pulling from to begin with. I also like the idea of the broken cycle, where things go back to the way they were but not really. The added detail that the Unovan government would bar entrance to the Full Court to prevent indigenous people from getting answers from Kyurem feels delightfully Persephone, it's so logical and steeped in historical precedent but it's so fucked. Got a huge kick out of the idea of hydreigon trying to taunt Kyurem with cool kills; and also how that paralleled with state-sanctioned meat offerings, that does really seem like a senate bill that'd get passed lol.

-

Solid pair of entries on these two--I'm obviously biased but I think they're banger.