#Pokémon actually living with humans as their partners and equals has been a relatively recent thing in Galar if you couldn't tell haha

[legendofzacian]

If you can, can you talk about old Galarian art? I think the style and stories they use for it are very interesting

I think my abilities to talk about style, methods and specific influences are limited but I'll gladly analyze it from a historical perspective! I'll just pull up some of the pictures I have on my phone rn and ramble for a bit.

So this is a reconstruction of a carpet from about 1600 years ago, meaning it was actually not made by the people that would eventually found Galar as we know it. Before the Galarians came to this territorry several nordic tribes lived in the area. This carpet was made by the Scutu-Saxons but we actually don't know a lot about it for sure but it is remarkable for being the earliest depiction of Pokémon without humans.

One theory I read about is that this was part of an ensemble of carpets, all depicting different seasons, this one depicting spring, symbolised by the tree in the middle, a rookidee on top and herds of Mudsdale and Dubwool with their young travelling through the wild area. Now on to actual Galarian artists.

This was on a canvas in a shrine dedicated to Calyvax. It's around 1000 years old and meant to retell the story on how Calyvax first saved a human farm town from a fierce dragon pokémon.

In most iterations the story goes, that a dragon threatened to destroy the town if they didn't sacrifice three humans every year to it to devour. The townsfolk would follow this grim tradition for 333 years until one child decided to pray to Calyrex. But because only one child prayed Calyrex was too weak to finish the dragon off. In the end the entire town prayed and with that power Calyrex freed the town and banished the dragon forever.

Why is this Impdimp here? I don't actually know, it's probably just symbolic. It looks really off putting too because at this point the people who were working in scriptoriums and drawing for chapels are most likely spending their entire lives inside of the city walls and therefore might never see a pokémon up close and have to rely on second or third hand accounts and thus… human nose Impdimp.

This is also why it's hard to classify the dragon type as anything more specific. The language old Galarian stories use is not really one to one translateable to modern languages. They'd also call most dragon types "dragon", "wyvern", or "wyrm". So the dragon type might be an early form of Duraludon, this might be an ancestor of Duraludon or this might be a completely different dragon altogether, could be Charizard for all we know.

The next one is from a ~700 year old scripture cataloguing 100 species of pokemon, including the here depicted Rapidash. So kind of like a very old Pokédex (though more based on legend and hearsay than actual scientific findings).

This one's interesting to me because the actual text tells the supposedly real account of King Alfred IV forming a bond with a Rapidash. It was then tragically killed by his own soldiers who thought he was being ambushed. This one is interesting because of two things:

1) Even though worship of pokémon was already widespread, taking on pokémon as companions wasn't. Only certain pokémon were considered trustworthy and then only under certain circumstances. 2) Rulers would often depict themselves with or even as Rapidash because they were said to only show themselves to the most righteous and true of heart. So this story is probably completely fictional.

You'll probably see a print or replica of this one in any pub in Ballonlea, this is Johann Henry's 'Grimsnarl' (~550 years old). My friends at uni have told me that this painting is kind of notorious for spawning countless rumors at school. (Á la 'if you stare at this picture for 5 minutes straight a Grimsnarl will kill you in three days').

It's actually based on a story that paints the Grimsnarl as the good guy. A woman's home being haunted by ghost types, supposedly the ghosts of people who she lost or wronged. But then she decides to be kind to a little Impdimp, who grows to be a Grimsnarl who then could defend her when she was asleep.

This might be kind of a true story. The first recorded person with a true pokémon companion (meaning not just a pokémon to help with labor) in Ballonlea was actually a woman with a Grimsnarl. Her real name is sadly lost to time but I have heard her being called Adelaide, Adriana and Arianna. The rest of the tale of course, not really verifyable.