dispatches-from-the-lorecord

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Mad glitch magiscience, ft. Larry

[26th June, 2018]

{Kel:}

Let me elaborate on that one. Yes on the Beta Gold, we had brothers Satoshi and Koji, one normal and the other a powerful psychic. But I don't think something overly bad happened to them.  But there were people WHO DID tried to experiment. That was my Green Series, which I still want to pick up.  As you know that's the origin of Larry, we had actually before Larry another host called Jack T. and recently another one called B. B. Both Jack T. and B. B.  were part of the same organization, both had an INCON (Bulbasaur) with them as their starter (although B. B. had a Charmander first before being recaptured, called FFFFF, so of course it might be connected to Effie the White from Moemon) and both died the same way, opening the Oak Parcel.

So my current standing on Larry is that he used the labs investigation to summon unto himself Democracy and Order (godly power, later confirmed with him picking CRUST) and then summoned the Voices, so he gained both OUR power and the power to control our movements, and finally when he was also going to die by the Parcel, he made a deal with one of the Outsiders (Glitches) and gain their powers by sacrificing poor Torto.

But everything comes with a price and Green's tale is the quest of Larry to build up his powers.

And trying to be stopped by the Four Buddah's which ultimately failed.

{Haji:}

@Kelcyus oh I know about your Green series. I enjoyed it~! But what I meant was the brothers were part of the initial testing back when all of the regions were still one nation. Then when the war ended, there was no need for these "super soldiers" so it ended. In government records anyway. There was probably still some interest though and underground works like with Larry and his friends but I have Green after HG so its been yeeeaaars. Or at least long enough for Larry to have been raised in that environment

{Denne:}

ooh this is cool! i think green was my favorite sidegame i've been here for (i didn't do intermissions back in the age of BABA :BORT: ). larry definitely feels pretty power-hungry to me,  considering how much he kind of punched reality in the face

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

The psychics of Kanto and the big bad Empire

[26th of June, 2018]

{Haji:}

Well this one came up pretty recently, but Kelcyus mentioned that the Gold / Silver beta map showed that it was originally going to be ALL of Poke-Japan and not just regions of it, and in my timeline, all of the regions were once part of the greater (Ranseian?) Nation i.e. why they all have the National Dex, but after The Great War that predates TPP:Red, all the regions broke off and function as smaller independent countries even though they still call themselves "regions" since despite having all their independent governments, they still share a sort of cultural identity that hasn't gone away.

This new bit of info, if true (I need to look over a play session) would potentially place the G/S Beta BEFORE Red and take place during said war with our short-lived Hosts being part of the Empire's shady experimentation with Psychics and the potential of Psychic energy as a means to manipulate matter (Satoshi, I think that was his name? was prone to levitation iirc.)

Said experiments come up in canon what with the study of Mewtwo's creation being in the process before Giovanni would have taken over (if going by the movie canon, he still took advantage of the work later) and little things like with the Kadabra Boy (from it's dex entry) and Sabrina's Gen I outfits reflecting a sort of Rocket heritage even though she brings up she hates battling and is held in the center of a long maze, possibly because her powers were considered too dangerous but they did a "test run" with her utter annihilation of the former Saffron Gym.

{Jukebox108 | JukeBiscuit:}

hmmm, experimentation on hosts is an idea that i haven't gotten too into, but i like that it could be a distinction between hosts and lost hosts 😄

{Haji:}

well it may have actually been the other way around, where the kids were experimented on and accidentally attracted the Voices. Which is when the researchers' hold on them went askew cause we took off with them for parts unknown MingLee

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

The fossil gods definitely don‘t actually look like pokemon

[26 June, 2018]

{Kel:}

On another lore point.

I think we never really control the gods themselves when we have the Fossil Pokemon, but rather ASPECTS of them. As in Lard Helix and Lord Crust being the aspects of Consumption of Helix and Dome. Lady Helix in X being its femenine aspect. Lord Luvs, the loving aspect of Dome, etc.

{Romanoff Blitzer:}

As I see it, the Pokémon bodies are sock puppets that the gods use to interact with the world.

{Denne:}

that's basically how i feel about it too actually, and is how i'm writing it in The Very Short Story That Still Takes Me Forever To Write

and even things like the canon legendaries i guess. it would be weird if i caught giratina and now it's in the pc and that's just it. like, How

{JukeBiscuit:}

See I've always felt that the Pokemon bodies are more like the projections that they feel most comfortable with

So Helix is definitely an eldritch being of chaos, but also is definitely most comfortable existing on our plane of existence as an omanyte

{Denne:}

i feel like they theoretically COULD take different physical forms, it would just be weird

{JukeBiscuit:}

Exactly!

{Denne:}

maybe the babiest fossil gods (like, sail/jaw) aren't as opinionated about it yet but the rest...

{JukeBiscuit:}

Mitz and I have a whole, 2 year-long backstory that we've been passing back and forth that's basically a fossil god origin story

I do feel that armor and skull probs fluctuate the most

Like, they were both huge birds for a while, and duking it out sky-wise

A couple hundred thousand years or so

{Denne:}

i haven't decided what i think about armor/skull much yet

and i'd love to hear that origin story :o

i kinda feel like the sinnoh fossils get kinda outshone in their own domains because dialga/palkia take up all the attention. poor guys

{JukeBiscuit:}

Rip skull and armor :BibleThump:

{Haji:}

I agree. I feel like the gods not only have a true form on the Higher Plane we never see, but can also be in multiple places at once by splitting their essences so only a fraction of their power will manifest.

I was going to explain / toy with the concept in my R.Plat series but it was one if the aspects I worried was a step too weird as it had little in-stream / in-canon events to support it.

{Denne:}

it makes sense to me! gods are weird anyway and i like writing about that

oh thinking about it i'm also attached to rotom!giratina so giratina's one example of being more Flexible about things like physically existing

which is partly because a) rotom!giratina seems way more chill than vanilla giratina, what a cool dude and b) the distortion world is just kinda like that

one of the things i'm working on right now is basically "giratina writes a book explaining the lore for newcomers to the universe" and i...realize my giratina characterization is weird but it makes em so fun to write

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Evan and OLDEN were always connected

[June 27, 2018]

{Romanoff Blitzer:}

One day, during one of OLDEN's many attempts to enter the world, the world suddenly absorbed a few bytes of OLDEN's soul: "ECBB9CBB1CBA9CB682807CB78200336F0231ACB37CD03391ACD03". OLDEN shook in pain and rage as the fragment was ripped from it, and it cursed the world for taking it from OLDEN.

This fragment found itself in the womb of a woman. The woman may or may not have already been pregnant. From this birth came Evan.

Evan has a special connection to OLDEN, being essentially a part of OLDEN itself. Evan has powerful latent glitch powers, and can occasionally hear OLDEN's thoughts. OLDEN exploited this connection to reveal itself to Evan.

Helix, seeing into the future, would make prophecies about Evan. These prophecies refer to him as the "Oldenborn," a trainer with the body of a mortal and a fragment of the soul of OLDEN, whose destiny it is to defeat the evil god and allow the glitches to be accepted by the world. These prophecies state that the Oldenborn would be constantly tempted by OLDEN to give in to it, allowing OLDEN to reabsorb the Oldenborn and regain the part of its soul that lied in them. 

-An excerpt from a document I have on my computer.

{Mitzi:}

oooh anicrys

{JukeBiscuit:}

Oh hell yeah I'm into this

I like the implication that Evan was already previously disposed to glitchiness, and his journey aggravated that condition

Would it be a condition?

Something like that

{Denne:}

ooh i'm a fan

{Haji:}

Funny enough, I had a whole side-story for AnniCystal but hardly have any HCs for Evan himself so I am loving this train of thought he had a connection to Olden to begin with o3o

{Kel:}

Oh I like that.

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Wizards love the magikarp treatment

[June 28, 2018]

{Kel:}

Also I'm having this thing that the Sorcerers have a strange predilection for Magikarp Transformations. Like Magikarp are the classic frogs.

Like Baba was transformed into a girl by Sho the Red, Cyan was transmutated into a Karp by that Old Green Wizard (Disguised Larry Time Travel?... Is there any lore on that guy?) and of course Edna was transformed into a Karp

{Denne:}

if anyone's gonna time travel it's probably larry :Kappa:

that's strangely appropriate because i've been headcanoning that larry becomes sho, so maybe he thought it would be ironic? from what i remember the guy in prism seemed more helpful though (and severely overestimated the voices' ability to do precise mazes) but i need to go back to that part of the vods i guess :Kappa:

{Haji:}

To be honest, the frogs of the Pokeverse are all badasses, so a carp seems like its be more of a logical punishment :MingLee:

{Denne:}

aw i love karp

i can see why that might not be the default tho. i just love em

{Haji:}

I personally still follow the hc of Sho being a corrupted Abe, but with him out of the way post-Baba there was a bit of a power vacuum which Larry, being quite adept himself, quickly took out the competition to take place as Sorcerer. Abe still has Glitchmancy, but its to a small degree compared to what he had under Olden

And Magicarp are luff, but I'd assume getting turned into something that has no limbs, no real attack moves, and a high enough durability that all you can do is endure the beatings, sounds like a pretty rough life. Which... Is kinda true considering Gyarados entries say how they pent up all the pain and rage and finally unleash it on the world after they evolved |D;

{Denne:}

ooh i like the idea of sho as abe too

the messed up vermilion in bronze really woke up a couple plotbunnies for the idea of a messed up post-bad-end glitch!abe, although i don't think bronze is necessarily a post-bad-end scenario

it's just my aesthetic

and poor magikarp :( when team galactic drained that one lake i was so sad. I Want To Hold A Fish

{Haji:}

I do toooo ;o;

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Time to meet the rest of the Gauntlet kids!

[February 3, 2023, third part of this conversation]

{Krizste:}

quick rapid fire me the other crazy kids

{Haji:}

N / Nia I'd feel awkward doing a rapid fire for because I only really know my lore for them 😂

But a few things of note:

- She's sometimes called "The Wurm Queen" because early on we had like three notable Wurmple before settling on one that became a Dustox and made it to the Hall of Fame

- Her relationship with Norman is usually portrayed as pretty friendly. This incarnation of him is awkward and doesn't know how to dad, but that's okay because she's such a nature girl she doesn't come home often either. They care but... They're just friends.

- In BB2 because of the mod, all of the Hoenn leaders showed up like you guys saw in Volt White 2. There were jokes that as leader of the region, she probably brought them all with her to help with whatever is going on in BB2.

Some lore has her as literally N since it's her name so she's able to talk to Pokemon and is seriously a Disney princess but much like N, that doesn't mean she won't kick ass if she sees Pokemon being abused.

Her Aggron was named ATM and is sometimes portrayed as a literal machine 😂

Also like with N we seemed to change our team after every town but around Slateport is when we started to stabilize. Possibly because Team Aqua made it clear she needed a set team to take on these guys as her usual "whatever is in the area works" tactic wasn't good for dealing with serious criminals

This sometimes causes her to butt heads with Izzy.

Isabelle Bow aka Ice has a few interpretations for her

All of them have her being a studious and relatively serious young lady though. She's very no nonsense to a point where the main joke with her is her post game team had Giratina, Dialga and Arceus and she totally doesn't believe in gods (despite accidentally creating one in the form of God Fish)

So different lore branches

- The bow aspect made her a contest star and she'll be happy to show that frilly girly girls can still beat your ass.

- A big part of her skepticism is because she works as a paranormal investigator and is out to prove none of this hocus pocus actually exists

- A member of the Interpol on Galactic's trail. Undercover name is Ice while her rival Diamond is more of a friendly fellow agent keeping each other up to speed and up to snuff because these space men are no joke.

- .... Possibly all of the above are true with her being a paranormal investigator who does contests between projects and was recently enlisted by the Interpol to help due to her expertise on disbanding cults if she can just prove Cyrus and this whole 'new world order" is a fraud

The blonde hair in her design came up because the last Animal Crossing game had just been released and people made the connection to the adorable dog secretary Isabel. Combine that with the meme of Isabel and the Doom Guy are friends and she occasionally goes into the Doom world to hunt and stress relief and welp :tppWowee:

Didn't help that we had a Torterra named BFG

Which could be Big Friendly Giant, but also had some portrayals that the tree on its back is a BIG FREAKIN GUN 😂

{Mitzi:}

yes, yes, i should be in bed. quick personal gauntlet kid characterisations:

red: obsessive antisocial glitchmancer/hacker who discovered his original timeline self started an apocalypse cult at age 10 and has never been quite the same since. is exactly as Like That as red and abe, but don’t tell him that

dipper: just wanted to look at plants and it all got a bit out of hand. token sane guy, probably the closest they have to a leader, poor kid

n: n. smiles serenely, befriends eldritch abominations, obeys no law of god or man, possibly immortal. extremely good at wrecking everything while remaining kind and enthusiastic throughout

izzy: discovered she lived in a lovecraft short story and immediately started investing in legendaries. won’t back down, won’t take no for an answer, won’t admit she might not actually be able to do something

reese: flamboyant dresses, acting stardom, and also maybe some plot if she absolutely has to. fought iris purely to steal her dress

esther: look she’s 9. likes hats and (association) football, is friends with an eldritch horror but that’s basically the most unusual thing about her. gonna grow up into an absolutely terrifying adult though, no question

BONUS:

team release the fossil gods: n, esther (kinda)

team do not release the impossibly ancient lovecraftian deities, they will literally destroy the world: red, izzy (when she doesn’t have more pressing things to worry about)

team please stop fighting: dipper

team you literally could not pay me to care about this: reese

{Krizste:}

{Haji:}

But yeah, so the longer version with Reese is Red0 is trying to be edgy and chaotic and darkness and stuff, Reese is literally a natural. Not even trying. S/he ignores the plot in favor of whatever has caught their interest at the time, which ended up being the first (?) Unova host to 100% the PokeStar Studios.

- Also the game did something weird where we got Darkrai to appear before the post game and it became our ace for that run.

- Reese loved fashion and bright lights, I think they'd get along with Yuu in the worst ways possible. Reese doesn't do explosions though, but would probably enjoy the flair if running the catwalk with pyrotechnics.

- There were questions about the relationship with Darkrai, whether Reese was being puppeted for dark purposes or if Reese was the bad influence and now Darkrai is a big name director making some of the worst movies but we love them anyway. Either way, we think the other hosts may have shown up in the post game because Reese was perceived as a threat whether they actually are or not.

{Krizste:}

{Mitzi:}

HOW BAD EACH GAUNTLET KID WOULD BE TO FIGHT, FROM MOST SURVIVABLE TO LEAST:

reese: a lot more collected than her gender presentation would imply, and if you did actually manage to piss her off her immediate recourse would be mean girls bullshit. if you do get into a pokemon battle with her, beware: her signature strategy is cheese

esther: her being friends with a fossil god comes up less often than you might think, she prefers to fight her own battles. if you do manage to hurt her badly enough though, there is that small omnipresent all-but-omnipotent sentient-piece-of-the-universe wrinkle to worry about

izzy: big jump here. izzy’s hobby is strat-o-matic-ing battles with universe-devouring lovecraftian monsters, cross her and you’re basically doomed. best you can hope for is register as an insignificant enough threat she’ll forget you exist after dealing with you

red: look the thing about glitchmancers is that they’re only moderately in control of their crazy powers at the best of times, and sometimes red will even admit that. he’ll either ignore you or make you wish you’d never been born, and you’ll probably not know which is which until all your insides have been swapped with chewing gum

n: oh god. n is even harder to piss off than reese but makes up for that by being (1) an ambiguously human unaging immortal of unclear origin and powers with friends in some very high places and (2) completely unpredictable in every possible way. n follows n rules, n does whatever they want, and n’s been known to bring regions to their knees. i’m honestly not sure what they’re capable of, but i’m sure it’s Bad

dipper: is he hiding some sort of secret rage mode superpower or angsty superpowered dark side? nah. dipper is exactly as kind-hearted and harmless as he appears, a true sunshine boy. you’d have to be a real tool to even think about hurting him

you know who agrees with me about this assessment?

the other gauntlet kids

{Haji:}

The question seems to imply you've already pissed them off, so for me it goes Esther, N, Red0, Dippy, Reese, Izzy. But as you said, the problem with some of these is they aren't so quick to attack. Esther is more likely to get in a fight than Reese, but the image of Dippy being the worst one to upset is because the others will all jump you is amazing 😂

I still find it hilarious with Dippy too because I'm sure most Trainers would look at the squad and go "Go for the tree hugger! He's the weak link!" And then Dippy has a fucking bear and steel giant and other things they probably weren't expecting a simple botanist to have :OMEGALUL:

YOU COME FOR THE TREES, YOU DEAL WITH THE FOREST

Oh and I will note in the branching lore for Reese to save on future confusion, some will say girl, some will say guy so decide your own pronouns. Reese may actually not have any

Or all

That's just a very Reese thing to do

{Krizste:}

reese pronown officially Thon

:^>

{Haji:}

I think I actually remember us joking at one point about Reese trying to physically hold all the pronouns. 😂

{Krizste:}

reese going to abooth with pronown stickers/badges and taking them all and decroating a hat wit hit like roark

{Tranzi:}

i was just thinking of reese as a drag queen but this interpretation is funny so i accept this :Keepo:

{Haji:}

I have him as a drag queen in my head :tppPika:

{Tranzi:}

when reese discovered the beautiful world of nounpronouns it was the time when darkrai actually tried to use dark void on its own owner to prevent world from a catastrophe

:Keepo:

{Mitzi:}

… i generally think of reese as a she/her gay man, but thinking about it yeah, she probably doesn’t give much of a shit

her gender is ✨gorgeous✨

{Tranzi:}

her gender sparkles so much that lil'd is crying in his french corner

:tppWait:

{Haji:}

Oh! Actual last thing I'll say about Reese

The run kinda soured towards the end because in order to beat the game, we had to be the Gauntlet PWT where the devs brought the previous four kids back. ... In a gauntlet... With boosted levels and items... And some "interesting" abilities for the Red and Crystal mons since they didn't have them. And no healing in between. This went on for days(? Certainly felt like it) until we had run out of other stuff to do to cool off from the frustration of losing and most were ready for this to be over with. We even traded in for a Landurus grinded to 100 and still couldn't win. Finally chat got mad enough to go into democracy mode to use healing items and I think we stayed in demo to fight too. Because we knew it could be done but it was so precise that it seemed like one wrong input could cost the whole thing which couldn't be done with the crowd we had for this. And then when we FINALLY win, the devs had put in the original gauntlet with the S1 kids for us to fight as well. I like to think Reese was so pissed by this point they just steamrolled it.

Hilariously, I actually hc that after this experience at the PWT, Reese was so mad at the others after the GKids found out Reese wasn't the world ending threat they thought, (HE was trying to stop THEM), they weren't on speaking terms for years. Reese has been living in Kalos under the name Diantha for some time by the time Esther came around

D has been well acquainted with this sparkle bun for some time now

{Mitzi:}

oh did we mention that reese is diantha? (in gauntlet y, anyway)

reese is diantha

{Haji:}

That was coming up when we got to Esther stories XD

I mean, that's just my hc, but going back to earlier when I said Wikstrom had Red0's team, Diantha had Reese's. Drasna had Izzy, Seibold had Dippy's, and Malva had N's

Some say just go with the game explanation where the E4 got to borrow them, some say the GKids came in during the post game, but like I said, me and a few others like to think the Diantha we see throughout the game was Reese all along

I missed a lot of X so I'll let others explain. A few key points though

- Esther being into sports came up from the Amie mini games iirc. This was the first time we had enough control to legitimately play them.

- Had Sail, which even if some other others had fossils, this was a first for TPP so there's some depictions that Esther may be an Acolyte (like Red is to Helix). Sail is an interesting god because it's usually said to be in charge of relationships; friends, family, lovers, meetings and partings, it's no surprise given how many friends Esther has either. Between the in-game group you travel with and the GKids asking her to join, she's pretty popular.

- notably we have a Ducklet named Fucklet and some tease that Esther doesn't know what that means, others say she totally swears up a storm surprising people given her age.

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

The final battle of Gauntlet Crystal has a lot of fun lore

[February 2, 2023, second part of this conversation]

{Sol:}

I don't look back fondly on my GC fic

like, at all :Kappa: I was a shit writer back then

but I'm slightly entertained by how I handled the Mt. Silver confrontation

I think I remember it also being the most fun part of writing the fic for me

{Haji:}

Aww but I enjoyed those :tppAYAYA:

{Sol:}

like I still remember "how do I explain OG Red's party? well..... the Pal Park exists, doesn't it."

and then just came up with the idea of having it be bullshit summoning because leftover voice powers

which I think really added to the final boss feel lol

still looking back at anything before the final 2 chapters makes me instantly cringe

{Krizste:}

reading my own writing regardless of how good/ i genuinely like it/ etcit makes me uncomfort..

you can see that with many of my earlier comics, they have no dialogue

the idea of g.red being a red vessil or red reborn is cool as

like, in a way that it want like that

liek being just some kid baring vauge likedness to a Ledgend(tm) while growing up in a cult space. wit hnothing special about him

but then people make it happen

{Haji:}

Found [the start of the second Red battle]

Also this conversation which is still hilarious 😂

{Mitzi:}

i remember reddo’s team wasn’t even healed for, like, the initial battle

{Sol:}

I'm still so mad I missed this

the chat reaction was HYSTERICAL

everyone celebrating after a day of trying to beat Redo, and then M4 is just like OH YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE :MingLee:

legit the fucking funniest shit

{Trollkitten:}

That reminds me of the exact moment in Anni Crystal when we witnessed Evan beating Lance for the first time... we were announced as the Champion... and then Lance threw us a curveball by saying that there's another Champion to fight... and then Azure appeared on the screen

I was literally dancing around my room

Later on I gave the devs a moderate chewing out for letting us believe Azure was dead, but that's another story

{Krizste:}

'no fucking way :Jebaited: '

hahaha

{Sol:}

HAHAHAHAHA

{Newbie:}

"why do i hear boss music still?"

{Krizste:}

why is the boss music getting more intense?

{Mitzi:}

red’s gotta be on, like, the bottom 5 hosts i’d want to suddenly pop into existence behind me for a battle

{Sol:}

tfw my 2nd phase is a downgrade in difficulty

{Krizste:}

like the final battle in sv?

:Kappa:

{Sol:}

true.....

{Newbie:}

host powercreep 😦

{Sol:}

I just like how "only on TPP" the Mt. Silver twist was

Azure was neat but any hack could've pulled that stunt

{Trollkitten:}

Well, to be fair, it hit different for TPP because we were all experiencing the game at the same time and were all producing lore and headcanons and such, so we all got the reveal at the same time and it felt that much more special because we were NOT expecting that

{Sol:}

yeah I know

{Krizste:}

what would [Red0′s] glitch possession look like? the vertical bars from supposed drowning?

were there more glitches?

i need to know for science :Kappa:

{Sol:}

uhhh considering the MissingNo. in his party there was a lot of item duplication :Kappa:

{Krizste:}

:Kappa: wow bottomless goods, that sounds like a fun one

the joke of 'place all your stuff in the tray' and then he... places..... all the stuf...

the stuf...

the red thing was def something

(was not there, clealry )

but its easy to see,its ya ledgend man himself-

but also

ya just beat up ya previous hostman

no sprite changes, no cutsceane

ya accedentalyl talk to him again

get a rematch

but then its not a rematch

{Sol:}

:HYPERRACC:

{Krizste:}

its an absulte fliparound gitpunch from the left

even tho u and him are standing right there

the relisation point is so late in it... the hostmans got the same name, only when the mon comes out its a big frikken woah

{Sol:}

it's da redster

....2?????

{Krizste:}

red: the redvenge, the.. redcoming...

{Trollkitten:}

The Reddening

The RetREDing

{Krizste:}

you think your red isnt red? think aga-

{Haji:}

@Krizste Well one idea [about how Red0′s glitch possession would look] floating around at the time is... Complicated 😂

{Krizste:}

armoured with//.... rhydons?

innnnnnnnnterestingor

whatever it is

[squints]

{Haji:}

It's a pair of Rapidash heads

Lemme see...

{Mitzi:}

the assmodeus armour, or somesuch. terderrer’s, i think.

{Haji:}

So the concept started as this

Led to this

From this

And when Wikstrom had Red's team in GX and the other E4 got the teams of the Gauntlet kids we all knew it was just a model thing to get around host cameos

Which led to this

{Krizste:}

Ah, tis the joys of creation

{Haji:}

Development :VoHiYo:

{Krizste:}

the asmodius red is... shirtless? :

:^o

{Haji:}

Rereading the passage in the fic, I think it's supposed to be Mewtwo so it looks bare

Mewtwo chest plate kind of thing

{Krizste:}

i thaught mewtwo jjust has its peccs out

:^>

{Haji:}

Oh yeah. Dippy is totally questioning his life choices right now after being forced to fight this thing. Sorry, I should say Dippy has long been questioning the Voices' choices and may not know if he can win, just hopefully not die 8D;;

Because seriously, this is what happened to the last host with our "help" 😂

And sifting through memories, came across this again. :tppAYAYA:

-snort- oh no, I just had the image of N introducing herself to the pair and RedO being a little leery of adults (because just about every adult he knows has been fairly shitty and wanting to befriend him is usually because they want something) and then she brings out Gavvy and RedO's like curious and creeps over to get a better look. See? Friendly. And Dippy explains how it's actually a relative of Vileplume so maybe RedO should let Blank out. 83

{Krizste:}

wouldnt dippy get worried about himself when seeing this?

what if they fuck him up too?

{Haji:}

I'd think so

Because he wins, and then what? What happens when they're through with him? Thankfully nothing.

He's kind of the same man of the group keeping the crazy of the other GKids in line

I have this adorable hc that after rescuing Red0, Dippy got him into garden therapy and in later years, Red0 runs a small farm with his Pokemon. :tppAYAYA:

{Krizste:}

oh sweet my gardener red pin fits!

{Haji:}

Yes XD

{Tranzi:}

gauntlet red is a gardener kid who never got to experience the voices like og red did and this is why he's mentally stable and not permanently nonverbal ;-;

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Rivals? Rivals! (Plus some stuff about Vu)

[February 3, 2023]

{Haji:}

Who are all the prominent Rivals you can think of?

{ARAlpha:}

Do Parker and Dolly/Barbara count since they were each other's rivals?

But also Blue in the original run was seen as a follower of Dome, making him an indirect ally of Bill

{Haji:}

I personally am not counting rival hosts because they have their own long storyline

I know of

- Blue (the last obstacle for Red. Staunch Domeist. May be the same one with Abe.)

- Brendan T. Birch (the survivor / keeps an eye on A-Chan)

- Pearl (Fellow gambler and on the run with Napoleon. May be the same one from R.Plat)

- 4 (The Glitch Hunter after Aoooo)

- N (Gazillion crowns and often shipped with Jimmy)

- Shauna (often shipped with D)

- Wally (some lore about being a Bill clone)

- Greens (Both Moemon and Touhoumon had a Green but Touhoumon's was a girl. Moemon Green was a huge jerk calling Athena rat face and was part of the problem in a system that had Moemon as second-class citizens)

- Raijin (Brendan of Alpha Sapphire. Real music snob who liked classical and dismissive of Nina's DJ-ing. / Possibly onto her about being an Aqua and ready to get her deported if he can catch proof)

- Azure (oh Azure where to begin?)

- Mura (Wizard angry that Paul is a natural talent at magic when he's been studying and Paul would rather go into business)

- Hau (I don't know if Sun got any but Waning Moon had lost host lore as Quips)

- R. Hurt (Fellow doctor with Alek. May or may not be corrupt)

- Trevor (Team Flare Admin), Tierno (Team Flare Grunt) Shauna (Heir to Mega Evolution Guru) Calem (Trying to find who he wants to be, I think he ended up as a Punk)

- Rocket (Still mostly Silver but his ties to Team Rocket are more obvious. Tends to be more ruthless as well)

- Blue (Red0 was always told to keep away from him by the Cult, but he's honestly just worried about him)

- Alaija (baby... Reluctantly ends up helping Dippy and more open about his family issues)

- Cedric Diamond (Glitch on the reader gave us his name, close friend of Izzy / may be a fellow paranormal agent)

- Yang (Reese is ignoring the plot, sees himself as the hero)

- May (Yandere for Ebnert, nearly destroys the world when he rejects her)

- ChereN and Chili (Mars' rivals. Both are concerned about Cilan being head of Plasma)

- Hugh (Glitch Hunter having conflict about hurting Forrest)

{ARAlpha:}

Okay, well you already covered the rivals in way more detail, so I might not be much help here, lol

{Newbie:}

There's also Logan from RTHE, who is the "hero" of the story yet killed one of Quotes's pokemon with self-destruct :Kappa:

I'm not sure if there's any prominent lore surrounding Logan in the original TriHard Emerald

{Haji:}

Oh that's right! He hates her for being a gang member, right ?

{Newbie:}

Yep

Super self-righteous

Had some pretty smothering parents, got the old gym leader before Norman fired when his parents sued the guy for child endangerment. And also Quotes stole his college fund

{Haji:}

I had fun with Rocket in my summary having 🎵 Rocket Man 🎵 come up whenever he showed up but that's just me 😂

{AIpha:}

How could I forget Quotes robbing Logan's house, I had a headcanon that Vu didn't approve, but Quotes stole a bottle of milk from the fridge to bribe the cat

{Newbie:}

bribe the cat

Lmao

{Krizste:}

i remember doing abhiwg (burning red) as kinda a goof. get all up in ya space for the giggles.

worlds makin no sence but the mans just livin wimsy. maybe he keeps bugging kay bc kay is clealy investigating it

{Haji:}

That would make sense ☺️

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

What Gauntlet Red looks like, and how the glitches kicked him in the face

[February 2, 2023]

{Krizste:}

anyone know of any arts/ visual design things for gauntlet red?

oh yeah theres that white hat i uded on the pin

{Tranzi:}

From what I know, he just wears lots of white stuff. The sprite on Run Status got changed to something else a bit ago but it used to be exactly what I said.

{Krizste:}

yeaah i found a whit sprite of his

i def referenced that for his pin bc i gave him a white hat.

was confused where the hat came from since his current runbar sprite has a red hat, lol

{Tranzi:}

I think we were gaslit by that sprite change.

{Krizste:}

uhohgvcftcrrcghvhgvt

white hat red doesnt exist. white hat red is a figment of your imagination

reds always have red hats, you fool

'what about ceecee?'

ceecee doesnt exist

fool

'waht about-'

no reds have green hats, you fool, green hats are luigis

{Tranzi:}

Oh no.

{Krizste:}

or pepes

{Haji:}

I mean, I drew one for him but I think most have him in a white vest instead

like so

Okay I'm spamming at this point, but I forgot about this piece and it's cool

Also this may be hard to see but due to Kelcyus deleting their account, the bottom row has the gauntlet kids

{Krizste:}

ehes worn both black and white! stunning lad

@Haji is yours meant to look like hes wearing lipstick? cus i dig it

{Haji:}

Knowing him? Very well could be :tppWowee:

{Krizste:}

tis but the nature of nature!

coolkid

..i dont really like my pin of him..

oihyvgctrfy

hes got the hairbanana before pk got the hair banana

{Haji:}

Ooh~

{Krizste:}

got metal tiped workgloves or gardening gloves. he has gardener vibes

lo

his flat cap was a mistake, my brain was farting so bad when drawing his hat, i wrangled with it so much (within the speedy time i was trying to get though these)

but its cute

g.red if he wasnt in a cult right here

garnening boy

would b good friends with dippy

{Haji:}

So one of the things about Gauntlet Red is there's two main branches of lore. 1) that this is a reset timeline and Red has a chance to change things. 2) The kid isn't even named "Red", he's grown up in the Cult of Helix and was told he was going to be the next Red and bring the second coming of Lord Helix and whatnot and somewhere along the line, he said fuck dat shit. He was one of those kids who went off the deep end into full rebel nature after getting away from the church to a dangerous point

{Sol:}

in my lore the latter angle led to straight up possession :Keepo:

{Haji:}

At the end, we were given free time to do Glitchmancy (there had been a patch in place before HoF) and we're told the game would either end when the timer ran out or we crashed the game.

.... We crashed the game :tppWowee:

{Trollkitten:}

I think this was inevitable for us

Just like it was inevitable that AshGrey was going to be massively derailed by chat

{Mitzi:}

they gave chat a challenge. what did they expect to happen

{Haji:}

And yeah, as Sol said, that was one idea to what happened after the crash. Red was checking out the glitches off the coast of Cinnabar, we ran into a wild Tentacool and I think the crash was caused by our Ditto, but I'm not sure. Either way, lore said he either lost out to the glitch and got possessed / corrupted or he drowned. Possession seemed WAY more likely when we did the Mt. Silver battle in Crystal where we fought Red0 and then suddenly he got replaced by original Red so Dippy had to take on both of them

{Sol:}

Cooltrainer is one of the most volatile things in Gen 1

it was inevitable :Kappa:

{Krizste:}

corruption ehh?- wow it just went white huh

just frikkin caput

{Haji:}

Yup! Just like that, he was gone :tppSpinarak:

{Krizste:}

just leavbing screancap here bc boy does this come and go like capow

{Mitzi:}

gen 1 ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Who’s Kahuna Moon’s dad?

[February 7, 2023]

{Haji:}

So I forgot that since I don't have Anabel Lillie as part of Aether, that makes the tree relatively easy due to the break.

But then part of me is like "should I be mean?"

@Newbie do you have an idea for who Moon's father is?

Because I like the idea these two are half sibs unknowingly

{Newbie:}

uhhhh

i wish tbh

Trendyverse is like... gone from the internet so like

i just barely scrounged up the info about Anabel being her mom in the first place

{Haji:}

Makes sense.

I kinda wondered if it was Looker given the shared lore in Stars. Would be tragic if it was Phyco considering he's the one who got rid of her in the first place :AceScum:

But that's actually not important right now, just curious :tppLUL:

{Newbie:}

i have a crack theory that Phyco is actually Dulse's dad based on some of the flavor text from Star :Keepo:

{Haji:}

I have that too :tppPika:

So the tentative thought, which again seems terrible and I know sets me up for a whole can of worms with the tree is if Chief Anabel was Lillie and Nigel's daughter since her memory loss wasn't from falling through gateways in Stars, it's because the URS mind wiped her (as they tend to do apparently)

...But then that connects to Faba line, connects to Lillie line, connects to Flordelis line :NotLikeRowlet:

Which is what I was afraid of originally before I realized the change with Anabel Lillie saved all that

Otherwise here's this so far? (Hope I did the link right)

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Server storytime: Memories of Bronze, and also boats

[February 13-14, 2023]

{Brespawn:}

What's the Forbidden 9th badge in Bronze? :tppS:

{Newbie:}

yeah, what's this about dummied out kanto in bronze?

{Denne:}

so i can't explain this very well because i wasn't uhhhh There for a lot of the run and i have very bad memory, but basically bronze was a gold hack and Pieces of kanto were still accessible which we abused to go fight sabrina

i dont remember HOW we got into kanto but pieces of it got very fucked up

{Tranzi}

i believe you still could casually enter it but most gyms were purposefully blocked

and going in some areas would result in softlocks

{Denne:}

saffron was pretty normal but here's vermilion for example. and we went on the anne Multiple times which was a softlock and made my glitch brain very happy. depicted: talking to our evil twin (?) and going to hell (??).

(disclaimer of Video Contains A Couple People Who Are Banned For Various Reasons lol. tpp)

{Newbie:}

...i see poor fifer was misgendered

{Denne:}

also while this missingno is an official fakemon it was pretty cool that the kid with a glitch friend went spelunking in glitch worl

bronze was a short run (like, it could even keep up with modern standards) and i'm sad i missed lots of it but i loved this part it was so cool to me

{Sol:}

enter the boat

die with the boat

{Brespawn:}

:DewfonBoat:

{Tranzi:}

this is where liji died the first time

:tppWait:

{Denne:}

i love that TPP's Very Bad Luck With Going To Hell On Boats was an established thing years before the meme. anicrys -> this -> trihard emerald -> THEN dewfon becomes a thing. ⛴

{Haji:}

Yes :Jebaited:

Also looking at my poorly made summary we always had access to Kanto just not the full map

Had to go to Oak's lab to get the Pokedex because we're a new Trainer and that's just what Trainers do

I think legit we could go as far as Cerulean and then the game was supposed to block us off?? But tiles didn't line right so we slipped by anyway and got to explore wrecked Kanto iirc

Which of course is where we find hell ship

{Sol:}

you can expand that list further actually

don't forget Burning Red

where we found the TM Case crash on the SS Anne

{Denne:}

burning red 💖

{Sol:}

TPP really just has a bad history with boats huh :Kappa:

when you think about it the fact the whole joke around Dewfon was the fact that nothing bad was ever going to happen

maybe Dewfon was the redemption arc :Kappa:

{Newbie:}

...when it's all laid out like this, why on earth didn't something like dewfon become a thing earlier

{Sol:}

the thing with Dewfon is that it happened because of a very weird user who was only around for basically just Sirius

it wasn't actual wide-spread paranoia of a softlock, it was one continuous typo turned copypasta turned ascended meme

{Trollkitten:}

I think TPP's first boat incident was in FireRed where we joked about Alice going on the 'nice boat' with our at-the-time arch-nemesis Bill

{Haji:}

Oh that's right!

So in Fire Red and Leaf Green, the early Sevii Islands are optional. Bill shows up at Cinnabar Island and asks for help, which you can no to. If you say yes though, I think you're stuck out there until you complete the first three island quest.

And iirc just like with elevators, chat kept A spamming the sailor at the dock so it was like "Now One Island, no Three Island, now Two Island, wait Three Island" without ever making it out of the port. :tppLUL:

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Colress’ seasons-long scheme to get one up on RR vs Reese’s absolute refusal to be involved in any plot, go!

[February 7, 2023]

{Haji:}

So tldr Rainbow Rockets got Colress seriously messed up. It's not the only reason, but one does have to wonder how a guy who told Ghetsis to his face how much he hated him and possibly systematically tried to murder him ends up working for the guy again.

And the answer boils down to r e v e n g e

But like I said, that's painting things way too simple. Looking at my timeline and family trees a lot happened between Ultra Sun and Gauntlet Red and a big part of that is Colress' fault. He is keenly aware of this and every attempt to "remedy a grave miscalculation" has only seemed to make things worse.

So Ultra Sun being our vanilla run, the RR episode happened and members were scattered around the world but that started off trouble with things like Soul Silver we see Rockets looking for their lost leader, by Dual Red and Blue oh look they found him. The Archie and Maxie from Flora are more nutso than usual because they're the "this totally worked before..." pair from RR too. So on and so forth.

Between this and Necrozma stuff leading from US to RUM (another error of judgement, he gave Roark the fusers after witnessing the capture. Did he tell anyone? No. Because it was interesting at least until it became personal. Not that he knew Roark was in there, just seeing what Necrozma was capable of) he's finally starting to realize this isn't just bad, but the apocalyptic stuff people built the -cough- "Vault White" to escape from is becoming tangibly real. And worse, one of those being RUM seems to be breeding more "monsters" so to speak with the new and much more organized under Grimsley RR have started making their move in the global takeover during the chaos.

There's still previous RR floating around but people like Cyrus and Ghetsis are smart enough to play the long game unlike some of their more impatient allies who've already been taken out. But this time, Colress is plotting while also waiting because the long game is fun in a way

So then we get to Gauntlet and it seems the professors have been planning for this too. Could blame the cycle, but it could be they've also been given the heads up by someone with more intimate knowledge on the situation in creating The Dex. This cursed thing that seems to have a life of its own as it grows and changes with each new host, absorbing information on multiple journeys in a relatively short period while the professors sit back in mild horror to realize every kid who's touched this thing has been put in danger. Before you could say it's just coincidence that Dex holders are Chosen first who happened to be setting out and need a dex for the road. Here its a debate if somehow giving someone the Dex ends up drawing the Voices to it. Especially since again, this Dex is uh.... Warped. And it's the same one each time. :tppS:

(fun note: Elm wants nothing to do with this, and while he's glad Dippy turned out okay, he's still going to be over here judging the others for encouraging this.)

{Trollkitten:}

And then you have Reese, who doesn't get the Pokedex and thus his title of Main Character gets pushed onto his rival instead

{Haji:}

Yeah. :Jebaited:

{Trollkitten:}

...to be honest, I think his rival was the better choice regardless

{Haji:}

Which brings us to Reese...

Actually back up for those who don't know.

So in Gauntlet, as implied, part of the gimmick was that we were supposed to be able to transfer all of our catches from game to game. Something went wrong in Platinum where this screwed us over in the Nation Dex (because we technically already had one?) And then further broke when it didn't work at all in Blazed Black 2 so we joked that our rival must have taken off with it since Bianca offered both Reese and Yang a Dex when they got their Pokemon iirc

I would say this is where things get weird, but we're way past that point :tppLUL:

So at the beginning of Blazed Black and Volt White (or maybe just the sequels. I haven't checked in a while) with Juniper showing up for the introduction but then saying this may look like Juniper but it's Drayano using her to say welcome

{Newbie:}

it is in fact a thing with Blaze Black and Volt White 1, yes

{Haji:}

In my lore, Yang was the one who received the mystery pack saying he got a letter and a device saying it could help him in his personal desire to go after Team Plasma. He showed it to Reese and they both got sucked into the device where they've been in stasis in Dream World for like five years or something before they wake up to find the world has gotten weird. Like it's had its soul sucked out of it and somehow they're the only ones who were spared. Or at least until they start finding others who are "awake" enough to realize things aren't right. Yang thinks they're inside the device since that's the last thing he remembers and Reese is all like... Cool. Then Yang can go be protag and he'll just hang back and play side kick while checking out all the features. :3

Meeting Colress doesn't set off any warning flags, but Colress is quick to pick up that Reese has the Voices and after his "trial run" with Aqua to take out Ghetsis, Colress is careful and curious to study both boys as things play out. It's obvious by the time Frigate happens that Reese is the better fighter of the two and Colress is both bitter and delighted to utilize this weapon to fulfill destiny and whatnot because that's what Chosen do~~ EXCEPT REESE WON'T DO IT

This confrontation is somehow simultaneously going exactly to plan and not going to plan at all filled with a lot of "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU" "NO, HOW DARE YOU!" emotions as Colress has found out how to spur Reese into action. The same way he finally got into action. Make it personal.

Yang has no idea what he's caught up in |D;;;

He's lucky he didn't get killed

Honestly, only reason he's not dead is because Nia showed up

{TrollKitten:}

I imagine that in Colress's position, I'd be frustrated too

{Haji:}

Colress was the ~mysterious benefactor ~ Yang signed up with, Colress has legit planned on going after Lana and Grimsley himself if he had the power to do so, but he ends up infiltrating Team Plasma to try to get the boys to go after them by pursuing him. Is this a bad idea? If course. Colress is aware he's full of bad ideas by this point but in this case it's worth it if only to get the intended result

And he is obsessed with power and can't decide if Reese is only so strong because of the Voices or if it's because the love for his friends and teammates (despite the calls to get rid of some of them) fuels him to only get stronger.

But with all of the collected Chosen in the area at once, this can't fail right? :pogsire:

I mean... He's right in that Grimsley is destroyed and the RR is officially dead in the water, but now we have the problem of these power houses turning on each other. It all works out but sheesh

At least by the time Gauntlet X comes around, the world isn't "fixed" but it's in a far better state than it had been

Honestly not sure if the Colress of Volt White 2 Redux is at all related to this one, but if he is he's at least had the chance to breathe a while and enjoy having his family back after Stars released everyone from their own accidental prison. This Ghetsis isn't RR, but miiiiight be the disgraced gym leader from RW2. Colress is just curious more than anything, but I still honestly think these two are new by that point. (Or unrelated timeline shenanigans because so close to Scarlet and Violet) :tppLUL:

But yeah! Reese is not at all happy about being someone's pawn and ready to go Void on anyone in the manipulation game between Colress and the RR

(and by that I mean Dark Void)

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Guess who’s pulling the strings behind RV+? That’s right, it’s Kahuna Moon!

[January 30, 2023]

{Haji:}

- Raifort is Kahuna Moon

- Terra is / was Turo

- Turo didn't go through the time machine (Sada however was probably pushed at some point). Moon was one of the assistants in the Tera Project as the usage of the strange crystals to create desires could benefit her. Gets pissed when the professor used it for his own selfish desires and eventually builds an AI so he doesn't need anyone else to help. Moon used Dialga to destroy him. … Dialga may not be able to go against her, but may still have something to do with Terra being in the present.

- World being destroyed by time ripples paradoxes, Moon has no reason to intervene since this is what she wanted.

- She joins the school under a fake name with vast knowledge of events she proooobably shouldn't know about (BUT HISTORY) and keeps a close eye on things with Tulio. The Voices don't seem aware of her though, so she lays low and watches fireworks.

- Terra bails on school altogether and joins Team Star until just before Violet events when things are getting weird and she gets flustered at watching things continue to get worse when they could totally do… something right?

- Gets out into the world and finds it to be a lot harder than she thought.

- Events of the game, she starts to learn to rely on other people even if she's kind of become the leader of the Area Zero group. Despite the others, the AI somehow seems determined that only Terra can fix this. Likely because of its ties to Turo, it views her as the only one able to stop the mess he started.

-Moon is pissed to see the machine stopped even if she doesn't understand how or why yet. Goes back to Area Zero herself and sets off a second wave of the Randomizer.

- "Raifort" is starting to realize the truth when Terra starts coming to class more often. The Voices… if they're involved they could ruin everything. She had a new mission for the young genius then.

- Should not have awoken the Treasures of Ruin. Now the Creation Trio and Arceus are roaming Area Zero.

- More waves, more problems. Terra may have been alerted to the fact she's not the only host who's investigating the region but what are they supposed to do when reality itself seems to be unraveling?

- Raifort reveals she's doing all this to destroy this world just as hers was destroyed long ago. If she can't fix hers, if the Voices won't help, then she'll make them suffer the same fate!

- Rises up in the shoulders of a Regigas, harbinger of The End

{Trollkitten:}

So Kahuna Moon/Raifort is the villain behind the glitchfuckery of Paldea. Possibly the destruction of the entire world... which makes me curious as to how the anniversary run ties into all of this. Will it be the first step into a somehow remade universe, or the last bastion of existence after reality folds in on itself and goes poof?

{Brespawn:}

Yeah I'm curious to see what's gonna happen next :BegWan:

With light there is darkness, with darkness there is light.

{Haji:}

No idea. Right now we need to see how this is going to end

{Trollkitten:}

Yeah. Although even if we do manage to get those final Pokemon for our Pokedex, how could that possibly stop what's already been set into motion? Are we collecting these mons to save them from the deteriorating universe?

...you know what? That's my new headcanon. Terra is bent on collecting as many species as possible from Paldea to preserve them. Modern-day Noah

And this is one heck of a flood

Also, on the note of Turo's 'global warming' mons, I'm wondering if the fact that in Paldea car engines have achieved sentience and the ability to reproduce themselves had anything to do with climate change

This occurred to me because we are currently being mobbed by Revavroom

Or we were a few seconds ago

{Haji:}

Pffffffhahaha would make sense actually

{Trollkitten:}

I am reminded of the scene from Luca where the titular character imagines a herd of wild Vespas

{Newbie:}

yesssss i knew there would be a way to slip Moon in somewhere. i love all of this :BegWan:

brb i'm off to draw raifort!moon :Kappa:

{Haji:}

I BLAME YOU! Raifort's design having a bunch of Alola accessories is not helping :tppLUL:

{Trollkitten:}

Isn't one of her accessories Lunala?

{Newbie:}

another one is a marshadow hairpin

lunala belt buckle and articuno necklace

{Trollkitten:}

Articuno could well be the deity of the ice mentioned in Alolan Ninetales' dex entry that allegedly lives where Alolan Ninetales lives

Dex entry from Pokemon Sword:

> A deity resides in the snowy mountains where this Pokémon lives. In ancient times, it was worshiped as that deity's incarnation.

{Newbie:}

oh she also has tapu koko on her watch

yeah all signs point to alola huh

{Haji:}

Yuuuuup

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Amber pt 2: watching the fossil gods grow up

[January 16, 2023]

{Mitzi:}

long long ago, there was a beach

the sky was pale blue, the sun shining a tad fainter than now. the ocean was the same, deep, dark, almost black. the land was bare brown and red rock, still scarred by the passing of the ice. but for the waves, all was silent

right at the edge of the water stood three figures

the older one stood behind the younger two. they were scarred and weather-beaten, features sallow and dead. they looked almost stitched together, one might say if plants existed yet

the children were young, identical-if-slightly-inverted copies of each other. they squinted in the midday sun, their limbs dragging outside the embrace of the sea. from their… feet, let’s say, tiny crawling worms occasionally wiggled out onto the rock, squirming for a few moments, then dying

as always, they were holding hands. metaphorically

‘so what will you do now?’ the older one asked. it was the seventeenth thing they had said to the children, and the seventeenth thing they had ever said to anyone else

one of the children glanced back, and did the closest thing it could to a grin. fronds dangled limply down its body, a few with noticeable burn marks. ‘we’re going back down, of course! that’s where all our stuff is! right, other me?’

this last was addressed to the other child, covered in segments hardening in the sun. it scoffed. ‘obviously. there’s nothing up here except monsters and them. all the interesting things are further down.’

the concept of an insult was beyond all three of them. the older one was silent for a moment. ‘interesting things?’

the segmented child would have rolled its eyes had it eyes to roll. ‘our life. like this -’ it shook out the cracked ribbing across its front. ‘or those -’ it brushed the withered fronds on the other one. ‘except alive.’

and that, more than anything, made the older one freeze. ‘you have… more?’

the fronded child made a noise an awful lot like a snicker. ‘well, i’ve got more. i’m sure that by the time we get back down my things will have eaten all of the other one’s -’

‘they will not!’ shrieked the other one, and as it dragged its twin into the sea, the older one felt… something new

maybe there would be a world, after all

okay wow that got away from me AMBER TIME

last time we saw amber, they were waking up in the ruins of the biosphere they destroyed, dead gods haphazardly forced together until they… would you believe me if i said the best translation is ‘compiled’

this scene takes place… a long time after that. a billion and a half years, give or take

the scene also happens, what, five hundred million years before the present? amber is old

and for the first three-quarters of their life, they wandered the ice and the wastes left behind when it melted, waiting for… they didn’t even know

until it did

until bitty!helix and bitty!dome came screaming out of the black abyss

these two spent their first hundred million years or so underwater and a decent portion of the early part of that under ice. until circumstances/shenanigans/this huge terrifying god-killing mass of corruption chased them up into the distant light, amber had no idea they existed

and the first time they saw the twins, they were holding hands. metaphorically

they were aware of each other, they had always been aware of each other. they communicated and squabbled and competed, but for all that they didn’t fight, not really

their life grew up between them in a constant back-and-forth of adaptations and mutations. always changing, but resilient in that ability to change

competition - communication didn’t destroy their life. it made it stronger

in this blue world, thick with oxygen, with scarce resources and no real chance to build a proper interdependence - life had found a way

the fossil gods had found a way

here have a vocaloid song

that is… i have a lot of amber songs, but this is the one i put on the most

it’s about amber’s love for the fossil gods, and the world they created

first the deeps filled with life, then the open ocean, then the shallows. hand in metaphorical hand, root and claw stepped onto the land, and moss and fungi grew in their footprints

soon towering trees painted the whole planet green, and a thousand million living things, the likes wing and thorax’ world never had the energy to produce, filled the skies with sound

it’s beautiful. and so are its creators

don’t get amber wrong, despite everything they’re capable of the fossil gods are still complete idiots. amber’s had to stop them from getting into big dumb environment-ruining fights more times than they’ve lived years, usually by whacking the offenders until they desist

but no matter what they squabble over, they never fail to create

even when they got into a scrap so bad they caused the permian near-apocalypse - once amber had whacked them enough and they’d calmed down enough to realise what they’d done…

they fixed the atmosphere with green sulphur bacteria, and repopulated the planet with the aid of these new pokey-man things

they survived

the younger a fossil god is, the more complex their mind is, the better they are at abstract concepts. amber understands most of what helix and dome say, the majority of what root and claw say, some of what skull and armour say, and almost nothing of what cover and plume (or jaw and sail, for that matter) say

but amber can still see what they create. they can still see the ambition and creativity and love they put into everything they make

when, 66 million years ago, that love finally failed –

after the fossil gods were sealed, amber spent, like, four million years, frozen in place, thousand-yard-staring at nothing. the legendaries mostly tried to ignore them

as amber felt the fossil gods scream and writhe beneath the surface of reality, as they watched their blue world live on without them - a little smaller, a little weaker, a little less ambitious - all they could do was wonder if there had ever been any point to it at all

was that their fate? to destroy their creations, every single time?

… except

except the seal broke, and helix came roaring out of the structures beneath reality with its tentacles wrapped around a tiny, insignificant, void-touched mammal

soon after the fossil gods all got an object lesson in underestimating the monkeys, and after that, dome stared down the EMPTINESS gnawing at the edge of reality, and, for the first time in its life, chose to defend

by the time the fossil gods were gathered around a volcanic island chain in the reality they’d rebuilt together, casually snacking on ultra beasts and idly bickering over their favourite hosts, amber realised

the sun shone down, and the shallows were full of life. the fossil gods were part of the world again, able to shape it in concert with the living things they’d once ignored

but no more

how did it happen? look, amber has trouble with the concept of society, this is not their kind of question. all they can see is the elements that went into weaving it together - the pokémon, the humans, the voices

beneath a crystal-clear summer sky, amber began once again to follow the fossil gods to the light shining ahead

… is how amber would probably like the story to end, but unfortunately for them, i recently had a brainwave about how i could tie my fossil god stuff in with the glitches

and even before that, there’s, ah, certain bugs that need to be explained. some of them wear metal, some of them wear shards of shattering reality

because the unknown story of wing and thorax is far from unrelated to the long arcs of tpp, even the first one. next time on the fossil god rambles that never end, part 5: drive

(and OLDEN, and some other stuff too)

a brief epilogue:

the reason i call it the story unknown to all is that up to… fairly late in the tpp timeline, nobody except amber knows anything about it

this includes the fossil gods

helix and dome, see, never thought to ask. very simple beings, have trouble with theory of mind, don’t really tend to be concerned with the ‘whys’ of the world

root and claw probably would have thought to ask, if there weren’t all these incredibly more pressing things to worry about, ranging from asshole abyssals to experiments with the deccan traps. armour eventually came to the conclusion that if amber wanted to tell them they’d already have done so, after skull asked amber, once, and while amber was still processing the question got distracted by a jangly bug

cover and plume, now, they asked amber several times. intense curiosity about the world around them is kind of their thing!

it’s just…

cover: why’s it rain? what are stars? where did you come from? why did the big one yell at us? how many days have there been? is there anything beyond this planet? why aren’t there any trees with feathers?

amber, who lost track four words in: … er. no?

and jaw and sail… never really had the opportunity to try, alas

and then they got sealed, and then they got unsealed, and everyone was far too busy to ask probing questions

until… well. i’ll get to that next time part 5?!?!!??

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

The rarely-sighted non-complete-disaster Red

[January 29, 2023]

{Mitzi:}

anyway my current lore read on dolly and parker is that they’re yet another pair of cici/evan and xena/azure counterparts, but for once their life isn’t terrible

wholesome beans that finally get a happy ending

{Krizste:}

theyre just lil beans going around and probably selling choccies for charity or something without care.

{Mitzi:}

a world where evan’s kindness finally, finally survived

{Sol:}

Parker in the extremely small list of Reds that didn't have fucked up lives

{Krizste:}

(including official reds, even)

{Sol:}

who else is even in that list

Kay turned out pretty alright despite the whole street rat thing

he's also like, the most competent Gen 1 host by far lmfao

{Newbie:}

what about the RGB race host?

Barry or somehting

{Haji:}

Basil. Or Bee

{Newbie:}

that's it

{Mitzi:}

given how he treats his competitors, maybe not

{Newbie:}

...i see

{Sol:}

yeahhhhh

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Why the Old Amber is so weird, ft the Great Oxygen Catastrophe

[December 20, 2022]

{Mitzi:}

care for a story unknown to all?

the prequel to that fossil gods timeline i slapped together last month, the old amber’s backstory

and that epithet is accurate, because amber is old

they’re older than helix and dome, we’ve already established this. the timeline i already made goes back a billion and a quarter-ish years before the abyssals even emerged, and even then, amber was there

but the true beginning of their story lies even further back

at least three and a half billion years ago (bya), if not earlier

with the emergence of the first of the beings humanity would one day call fossil gods

wing, and thorax

(author’s note: i stole those names off another loremaker in 2016, my lore’s changed a lot since then and i’m debating changing them)

(i doubt there were wings or thoraxes in their world. it was a fundamentally alien place)

whatever their actual names were, the entities i’m just gonna keep tagging ‘wing’ and ‘thorax’ were created - as i said, at least 3.5 bya, probably earlier

trying to tie their timeline to irl evolution is… a bit iffy. i am making even more of this up than usual, and there’s just not many irl records that far back

their aspects were [stagnation/corruption], though i’ve occasionally gone back on forth on which god had which aspect. it’s wing=stagnation and thorax=corruption at the moment, but that could easily change

even for fossil gods, they were remarkably simple beings. helix and dome have trouble with the concept that sapients exist outside of the two of them, but wing and thorax were barely aware of themselves at all

it’s hard to tell if they even knew each other existed

fence horse created them to protect the newborn planet from the vicissitudes of the multiverse. initially, that’s all they were for

but, rather unexpectedly, they started playing with carbon and hydrogen and water vapour

and they began to create life

(now that i’m thinking about it it’s probably wing and thorax that changed the planet from a nightmare hellscape of lava plumes and boiling rock to a stable-ish tectonic-cycling landscape with, like, oceans and stuff)

the world wing and thorax created was… different

the skies were cloaked in a pale yellow methane haze, by day only barely pierced by the faint light of a young sun

rather than stars, the night sky was criss-crossed by vibrant electric-blue aurorae, the trails left by the dyad’s long [REDACTED] as they wrapped around the world

the oceans were tinged green with rust. there was no oxygen, and almost no energy from the sun

but still, there was life

irl that life was basically all, like, really basic bacteria, but this is pure fantasyland, so in wing and thorax’ world there was… more

with little sunlight to potentially fuel a food chain, the dyad raised vents up from the mantle, building islands of life around volcanic smokers that slowly crept across the land

it was… intricate. interconnected. the plants were purple and stank of sulphur, there was some very alien chemistry fuelling it all

(don’t ask me what i’m not a chemist)

also, almost no hard tissue in anything. no exoskeletons, no bone, no woody tissue

the entire biosphere was one single, carefully-arranged system. why would you need to defend yourself against your fellow life?

this is the world the corrupted legendaries i mentioned in the first instalment came from

they weren’t corrupted then, of course. they weren’t really ‘legendaries’ in the modern sense either, that kinda requires pokemon to exist

they were more like… keystones. single organisms that formed the linchpin of entire ecosystems, like the millions of bacteria that live in a human gut

it was a quiet, stable sort of world, but in its own way, it was beautiful

and then wing and thorax noticed each other

the thing that brought an end to the pre-photosynthesis geothermal world in real life was… circumstances surprisingly similar to the moss incident, actually. plants (well. cyanobacteria) figure out photosynthesis, plants start leaking that most toxic of gases, oxygen, into the atmosphere, literally everything else dies, global ice age, blah blah blah

here, though, it was the biggest god fight the world has ever seen

{Haji:}

:tppGiga: = Wing Thorax = :pikachuS:

{Mitzi:}

yeah pretty much

fossil god dyads are balances of equal and opposite forces, not just different but almost incomprehensible to each other

giving those forces sentience… may not have been the best idea

wing knew its entire life that there was something disrupting its careful creations, breaking everything it tried to set up the minute its back was turned

thorax knew its entire life that no matter how much it changed things, somehow some of it would always return to the way it was before, refusing to refresh with the rest of the world

as they matured, they slowly began to detect an intelligence behind this

maybe a younger, more complex pair of fossil gods would have been able to communicate about this, figure out a way of understanding each other, even work together

but wing and thorax were, even then, very very old, and very very simple

and after all, weren’t they made to attack that which was anathema to their very existence?

2.4-ish bya, they slowly began to notice each other

and then they started fighting

their battle lasted for millions of years

at first it was kind of amateur hour? these two barely-sapient eldritch abominations slowly figuring out what ‘conflict’ is through tossing rocks in each others’ general direction

but they got better, and nastier, and then they figured out they could refine oxygen out of the oceans

funfax: fire only works on planets where there’s oxygen in the atmosphere. if it wasn’t the oxygen itself that poisoned the biosphere, it was the raging firestorms it fuelled that killed literally everything

some ‘legendaries’ survived, mostly because thorax corrupted them hard enough they started eating, like, mathematical concepts instead of chemical products

there was also the occasional bedrock-scouring divine scuffle, but really it was mostly the oxygen

it seeped out of the battlefields into the atmosphere and the ocean, and wherever it went, the world died

that biosphere i was talking about earlier? completely gone. absolutely everything, from the greatest keystone to the tiniest bacterium, died

the world was scorched by fires and lanced by radiation, the oceans all but boiled away. the vents erupted into volcanoes, and ash rained for a million years

it didn’t stop until roughly two bya, approx 400 mya after it started

when wing and thorax, crawling exhausted through the devastation, finally, finally killed each other

their metaphorical talons pierced their metaphorical hearts at the exact same moment. the physical laws that made them up unraveled, their fractals wiped away

there was light, and an explosion, the last one of this dying world

and then the snow began to fall

eventually, even the fires died. the whole planet slowly froze

(i’m cadging the timeline a little here. irl the snow happened during, not after, the fight, but this is more ~dramatic)

the shambling monstrosities that had once been the bedrock on which whole ecosystems laid began to quietly break down

it seemed like the end

except

there were two survivors, for certain definitions of ‘survivor’

the first was the old amber

the reason i refer to amber as ‘they’ is that if they ever used a first person pronoun, it would be ‘we.’ they are the last remaining shards of wing and thorax, squished together into a new being by

huh the last couple of words in that message didn’t send. Weird

but yeah, amber is a zombie fusion fossil god. they’re not quite wingthorax, there’s still a lot of parts missing from the fusion for them to be complete

there’s more of wing than thorax in them, but that’s really just a coincidence. is why amber is so good at surviving things that even the fossil gods can’t take though

at first, they tried to create life. but they can’t. even if the entire world wasn’t dust and snow, they just don’t have the fine molecular control you need to properly do biochemistry

… amber spent a lot of their early existence bashing into mountains metaphorically begging for death, yeah

eventually, the ice went away, but the world was still dead. among slowly rotting glitch constructs and an empty blue sky, amber waited for the end to come

but. deep, deep, in the darkest depths of the oceans, there were other survivors

tiny scraps of biota, too deep for the oxygen to reach, clinging to the inside of a hydrothermal vent, living and breathing

it wasn’t much. barely anything, really. but in the end, it was enough

bitty!pre-separation!helixdome, crawling around the ocean floor for lack of anything else to do: hey what’s this

and that is the amber backstory! will i ever not be surprised by how long a thing i start ends up being

i’ll probably do a (hopefully) brief epilogue later. some stuff about how amber feels about the younger gods, and also drive

this isn’t… all of it (there’s parts of the story that are unknown to all because amber doesn’t see how they matter, and there’s parts of it that are unknown to all because amber absolutely refuses to let anyone even reference them) but it is the key bits of the backdrop to my fossil gods stuff

maybe now other people can also have amber feels

s/o to the entire history of the earth youtube channel, where i got most of the irl info i bolted this onto

- oh! a final note:

i call wing and thorax ‘fossil gods’, but they didn’t have fossils

no hard tissue, no need. in a world of soft-bodied planimals there’s nothing even there to fossilise, this totally makes sense as an explanation for why we don’t have fossils from this archaean-era complex life, don’t @ me

later fossil gods use their fossils as… anchors, into the physical world? they’re not the core of their being, extremely far from it, but they are the lens through which they interact with the higher layers of reality

wing and thorax, though? no fossils, no anchor. they more… seeped up into the physical world from below

which is partially why they cared much less about their creations than their younger siblings, which is partially why… yeah

(amber’s amber is more like… connective tissue between dead god body parts. i call them a zombie, but they’re more than a little frankenstein’s monster)

{Trollkitten:}

Basically Amber was Dracovish before Dracovish was Dracovish?

{Mitzi:}

yeah this is roughly the i-know-what-to-do-with-the-gen-8-fossils brainwave i had a few weeks back

like if dracovish fixed itself up into a mostly-functional organism with an ecosystem niche and everything out of sheer spite

cut forward ten thousand years and there’s just this half-fish half-dragon thing-that-should-not-be hanging around, and no one thinks it’s weird

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

More fossil gods and palaeontology, this time with dinosaurs and the near-end of the world

[November 16, 2022]

{Mitzi:}

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE COSMIC TODDLERS, PART 2: THE MESOZOIC

last time we left my eldritch abomination blorbos, the permian extinction had just happened

picture, if you will, a landscape that has seen no sun for millennia

the land is bare and covered is ash. the seas are turning to poison

almost everything is dead. whole phyla of plants and animals are just gone, their evolutionary lines wiped from all possible futures

it’s looked like things were over twice already, but each time another pulse came and even more things died

imagine, if you will, the thousands of miles of cooled volcanic runoff that set off this whole mess

imagine seven… figures, let’s go with that, overlooking the devastation

the current emotional states of our previously introduced characters, oldest to youngest, let’s go –

amber: … could’ve been worse tbh

helix: y’know i’m usually all for mass destruction and death, but this is a bit much even for me

dome: MY TRILOBIIIIIIIIIIIIIITES

root, out loud: CLEARLY none of this would have happened if those dratted hatchlings didn’t get in the way of our grand design

claw, mentally: wasn’t it you who started messing with the siberian traps?

and our youngest fossil gods, skull and armour, are being… thoughtful

(well, armour is. skull is not a thinking kind of rock)

but armour (who’s, like, cover and plume’s current age at this point, roughly) is all ‘YOU KNOW WHAT WE NEED TO DO’

‘WE NEED TO SET SOMETHING UP SO THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN AGAIN!’

‘MAYBE IF THERE WAS SOMEONE TO… PROTECT THE LAND AND THE SEA…’

‘THAT WAY WE COULD ALL MAKE WHATEVER WE WANT AND NOT WORRY ABOUT THE SUN GOING OUT!!!’

(historical note: this kind of complex planning was heretofore unknown among the fossil gods)

(when an entity has no predators or selection pressures or anything to worry about except making things and getting in fights with their siblings, there is not a particular need for them to be smart)

so while the older fossil gods are getting into round 1(/a lot) of what is soon to be their perennial favourite argument, Whose Fault Was The Permian Extinction, and skull is off staring at lizards or something, armour begins to make Plans

{Haji:}

Now I'm imagining Armor ranting to him about the YOU KNOW WHAT WE SHOULD DO? and Skull isn't even paying attention as he's distracted by the scuttling (the skuttling kek) of a few nearby lizards and when Armor finishes, he looks over to realize Skull isn't there then looks further to see him chasing the lizards. RUN YOU TINY THINGS! HE SO BIG! BIG BOI! WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW? Armor would face palm if he knew that was a thing to show his disapproval yet. 😂

{Mitzi:}

the eventual fruit of these plans, after a few hundred thousand years and various degrees of siblingly meddling, are the first pokemon

i’ve talked before about how i think pokemon are closer to spirits than animals, little globs of magical energy that mimic the world around them

their job - well, your modern mon would phrase it as ‘keep the world in balance’ but the initial description was ‘clear up after the fossil gods’ messes’

root and claw previously experimented with giving animals magic, but they rapidly grew bored of it. armour is the first to systematise it

and yes, groudon, kyogre, and rayquaza’s first memories of existence are trying to revitalise the planet after the permian extinction

(seriously, it took like ten million years to climb out of that particular hole)

meanwhile, skull has continued to look at and occasionally poke lizards

in reaction to this poking, the lizards have started to grow

they start getting very big indeed

skull didn’t set out to create dinosaurs, you understand. skull doesn’t set out to do anything, that’s not how it rolls. it still thinks that where its early triassic experimentation ended up is, like, a million times cooler than armour’s

skull: OBVIOUSLY dinosaurs are cooler than rats than can shoot lasers

armour: EXCUSE YOU MAKING A RAT SHOOT A LASER IS FAR MORE TECHNICALLY IMPRESSIVE

aoooo: compromise. dinosaurs with lasers

skull:

armour:

both: eeeeeeeeeeeeeee

’smarter than the older fossil gods’ is not the same thing as smart

[Some time later] i return to you with maths

given the timeline i’ve already stated, it probably wouldn’t be that much of a leap to say that each pair of fossil gods come into being ~150 mya after the last one

helix and dome are 650 mya, soon after the end of the massively long globe-spanning ice age (and at the start of the relatively shorter globe-spanning ice age.) this is roughly when sponges start getting very interesting, a little bit before the ediacaran biota. part of me still wants to say this is a bit too late, but they spent their entire childhood in the deep-sea abysses, who’s to say

root and claw are ~500 mya, late cambrian, pretty much where they were already. skull and armour are ~350 mya, about 40 mya earlier than my original estimate

early carboniferous. that’s not early enough to have invented fish what breathe air and go on land, but it is early enough i can say it was probably them who went wild with it

claw was probably more interested in the giant insects. lotta giant insects in the carboniferous

skull and armour invented frogs, you heard it here first

and, cutting back to the mesozoic, cover and plume first showed up ~200 mya, which is where i wanted to put them anyway

that’s very, very early jurassic, right on the border with the triassic and just after yet another big dumb extinction event. the dinosaurs have become a thing, but their greatest hits aren’t quite there yet

armour’s pokemon system is, likewise… maybe not still setting up, but within living memory of the setting-up for at least the oldest legendaries

(side headcanon: there’s a lot of weather-trio-esque very old very powerful legendaries scattered across/under the planet. most of them have been snoozing since before humanity left the trees, and will probably still be snoozing long after humanity has gone extinct)

(assuming the maxies and archies of the world don’t get any more bright ideas, anyway)

(but i’m getting way ahead of myself)

cover and plume’s big ideas, respectively turtles and feathers, both first show up in the mid-jurassic

they are both fiddling with different kinds of reptiles because it is the mesozoic and everyone is fiddling with reptiles, except for dome, who spent the entire triassic sulking at the bottom of a hydrothermal vent and only returned to start aggressively spooting out crabs

(dome has had a thing about chordates ever since helix invented a fish with trilobite-cracking jaws)

{Haji:}

Dome: [Rises from the deep all ominous. The others are concerned] I GIVE YOU THIS! [Suddenly crabs] THAT IS ALL. [Sinks back into the abyss as waves of the creatures keep coming up the shore] :tppCult:

{Mitzi:}

dome: if i can’t have trilobites i’m just gonna turn everything into crabs

{Trollkitten:}

I wonder if Dome's crabs ever do crab raves

{Mitzi:}

it’s… probably plume specifically, though i have no doubt cover was constantly metaphorically peering over its shoulder, who starts really going in on the intelligence-heavy animal designs

cooperative hunting, information relays, stuff like that

thing about that, though. if you start making smart critters, eventually they (and, perhaps more importantly, the pokemon that mimic them) are gonna get smart enough to realise their world is effectively run by a bunch of feckless omnipotent maniacs who keep getting into stupid fights and kicking off horrible mass extinctions

and they’re gonna go hrmmmmmmmmmm

{Trollkitten:}

And this is how you get your Bills and Larrys

{Mitzi:}

which brings me to jaw and sail

our model would predict that jaw and sail are around ~50 mya old, early Eocene

our model cannot be correct, because it is a matter of iridium-coated fact that circa 66 mya, the fossil gods were sealed

yes, this corresponds to exactly what you’re thinking of. no, it wasn’t a meteor

{Haji:}

My first thought went to STREAMER USED JUDGEMENT :OMEGALUL:

{Mitzi:}

as if fence horse would ever be that helpful /rayquaza

it was more…

you can’t really put a date on the start of the war between the fossil gods. it was more something that evolved, something that no one noticed until suddenly it was everywhere

that time claw metaphorically stabbed root in the back, ruining a plan eons in the making, was less the day the war began and more the day amber realised the war had been ongoing for several million years

(when that moment was… i’d ballpark it around 100 mya, mid-cretaceous. that really is just a guess though)

after that point, though, things got steadily worse. as fossil gods grow older, they inevitably grow to hate their dyad partners, all the differences that once made them an effective team giving way to seething disgust

which only gives the younger dyads a reason to team up to protect themselves from their older, nastier siblings, throwing the differences between them into stark relief, and so the cycle continues on

by this point, the oldest, most powerful gods’ relationships have grown very toxic indeed

it’s not, like, all straight-up millennia-long eldritch abomination battles, though those do happen. those, amber can notice. those, amber can stop

but evolutionary arms races and subtle schemes, the kind of long manoeuvres deliberately designed to be hidden…

amber’s even worse at abstract thinking than helix and dome. they are not good at spotting that kind of thing

so the war gets worse. by the time amber realised it was happening, it was too late to stop

all they’d do is just join the war themselves

cover, hanging out with amber as it does some modifications on xerneas: hey you’ve seemed kinda down lately. and everyone else seems kinda mad

but the war does stop. it simmers for several geological ages, before abruptly erupting, would you look at that, 66 mya

the details of who started the chain reaction of fossil god shiftfights really don’t matter. what does is that things started trending… Permian

the sun is blocked out by ash, and literally everything is on fire

another mass extinction is inevitable. maybe even the end

but! that doesn’t end up happening. it’s bad, but it’s not as bad as the permian, or even the moss incident

the fossil god free-for-all stops because there are now beings specially charged with stopping that kind of thing from killing all life on the planet

and this is the point when they collectively decide to cut off the problem at its source

the sealing of the fossil gods was… an Event. almost every single sapient on the planet was involved, from the super-ancient pokemon down to a few enterprising dakotaraptors

it’s a whole story in its own right and i’m not getting into it here. i will note that, while the fossil gods were mostly too absorbed by their own petty bullshit to notice anything was happening until the seal roared to life, amber was moderately aware of what was going on and could probably have stopped it

but they didn’t. better this than the end of everything, again

(amber did not get sealed, for the record. they just had nothing to do for the next sixty million years, and so they did nothing)

bringing this all back to jaw and sail, i’m not entirely sure how the previously-established model ties into all this. my best guess is that fossil gods spend a relatively little while cooking before they start roaming around the planet causing problems, and jaw and sail were still forming when the seal slammed down

or possibly some of their older siblings yanked them out of their cocoon for… probably nothing good. either way, they have all sorts of fascinating psychological issues for a couple of babies

all the fossil gods do, really. being trapped in fathomless, unchanging, sensory-deprived darkness for what’s a considerable chunk of even their lifetimes was. not fun

it’s partially why post-sealing they almost behave themselves, relatively speaking

groudon: yeah i had the worst nightmare. our awful parents broke out of their seals and started trashing the world again

rayquaza:

rayquaza: uh

i imagine that most of the things the fossil gods were doing, fuelling evolution and managing continental drift and defending the tppverse from outsiders, got taken up by various legendaries while they were sealed

it went surprisingly well, though no one saw humanity coming

as for the story of how the cosmic toddlers stopped destroying everything in their path, how they went from trying to get the war started again except now everyone’s massively more unstable to building a world together with the beings they once barely deigned to notice…

well. you’ll have to read my [still-being-written] tpp timeline summary for that 😉

but yeah, sixty-six million years of endless unbroken lack of sensory input, and then the voices. that’s the most recent chapter of the fossil gods’ story

i might go into more depth on the sealing at some other point (to gush about cover if nothing else) but you know what story i’ve been alluding to for years but never actually described in any detail?

amber’s backstory

also known as the story unknown to all

also a sidenote: out of all the fossil gods’ signature projects that were ongoing circa the sealing, the only ones that survived the apocalypse were cover’s turtles and plume’s birds

you would not believe how smug those two get about that

ammonites? gone. trilobites? gone before they even existed (seriously dome still will not let that go.) crinoids are still around but they’re seriously diminished, radiodonts have been gone longer than trilobites, and the dinosaurs are obviously long dead

but turtles are fine, and birds are thriving

they are clearly better at this animal design thing than any of their siblings (some of claw’s bug experiments have done pretty well for themselves, but cover and plume magnanimously ignore that)

{Haji:}

Poor Claw :tppLUL:

{Newbie:}

rather curious where the gen8 fossils fit into this, if they do at all :RaccAttack:

{Mitzi:}

the gen 8 fossils are what happens when a wannabe colress who’s far less competent than she thinks she is attempts to mash random fossils she found together to make gods ex nihilo

(the actual answer is that i already had this schema in mind long before gen 8 and by the time we got there i’d already blown up the tppverse, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

{Newbie:}

fair enough :LUL:

man-made gods is an interesting concept tho...

{Mitzi:}

drive has entered the chat

idk, if gen 9 gives us a proper dyad, i might work that into the whole rebooted-multiverse lore i have going atm. otherwise, we’ve only been to galar once and that wasn’t even in the tppverse

fossil god lore kind of… trailed off after the first couple of seasons, which i am obviously very sad about

{Newbie:}

yeah...

{Mitzi:}

oh god

(not these idiots)

i just had an idea of something else i could do with the potential gen 9 fossils

it might even work with the gen 8 fossils if there are none in gen 9

to explain it properly i’d have to get into amber’s backstory, and as previously stated i don’t have the time to do that rn, but –

:wanders off into the distance, muttering about cara liss: