Today was the day! You could taste it, you could practically
smell it. Breakfast was a hurried affair as you quickly gathered all of your tools and materials. Food? Check. Water? Check. Spare pokeballs? Check. Your team? Check and double check. As you stood to get up from the table, you felt the Professor move up, and then lay a large hand on your shoulder.
"Don't get ahead of yourself kid. Keep your head and remember to
think before you do anything precipitous. I know you're excited to prove your Grandpa right, but don't do anything that'll let you tell him in person just yet, okay?"
Well, that was certainly a bucket of cold water over the head, metaphorically speaking. You took a deep breath, then nodded. You couldn't let your excitement lead you to do something stupid. This was only supposed to be the beginning after all...
You'd moved through the tunnels with purpose. You'd tried to take things at least a little slow, pausing at interesting looking protrusions, but your drive kept pushing you forward. You followed another downward-trending tunnel heading further north. Thanks to Ping's meticulous notations, you could see that you were moving closer to the area surrounding Agate Village, the place known as something of a home for retired badasses of sorts. At least one resident there had run the Gauntlet in its entirety from start to finish.
Then you picked up a musty smell that tore your thoughts away from overworld geography. Motioning for Sol to keep quiet, you turned off your headlamp. Immediately, otherwise so faint as to have been invisible due to the harsher light of the headlamp was a gentle purplish glow coming from around the bend ahead. Moving forward carefully, you eventually found a yourself gazing at a cavern that dwarfed all of those you'd found so far in your delving. The edges of the cavern were ringed in huge mushrooms that provided the glow you'd spotted, but at the center, suspended from the ceiling, was a constellation of Sunstones that had apparently been glued to the rock somehow, creating a huge spiraling pattern of solar light.
You have discovered the Mushroom Jungle cavern!
One of the most mysterious things about Sunstones was that the light they shed somehow synched with the local day/night cycle, shining brightly during the day even when underground, and then dimming during the night to a barely perceptible dull glow. This was probably what the grass types had been hunting Sunstones for. Even though they could be re-energized by exposure to real sunlight or the move Sunny Day, the stones couldn't cycle their energy infinitely. Eventually the crystal matrices that channeled the energy broke down and they crumbled to dust. They apparently made up at least part of the particulate for Stardust, along with Moonstones according to some studies.
That's when you spotted movement. Dozens of Hoppip drifting through the cave, with a handful of Skiploom and a singular Jumpluff leading the small... flock? Swarm? What
were a group of Hoppip called anyway? Either way it looked like the Skiploom and Jumpluff were the ones generating the wind to give the younger pokemon lift and allow them to float up high before drifting downwards; only to be caught in another updraft and sent spinning upwards again.
A rustling closer to hand had you turning to see where a few mushrooms were shaking slightly from something moving through them. As you watched they parted, and a wide-brimmed cap pushed its way through the stalks. Dark black eyes narrowed as the Breloom sized you up, one of it's long hind legs tapping slowly as if counting out a beat. Behind it you could barely make out the yellow and green spotted hides of a small cluster of Shroomish.
And then on the other side of the path you'd been following, you spotted another figure with long unnervingly thin limbs and a thick cap much like Breloom's. A Shiinotic, with numerous Morelull, an entire ring of them. The lanky figure of the evolved pokemon regarded you with an enigmatic smile, it's empty black eyes shaded beneath its cap and making it impossible to read any real emotion off of it.
Of course; this figured. With the central area of the cavern taken up by the more robust growing grass types, it meant that the mon that tended to feed on decomposition moved to the edges of the cave where the old and infirm would go to die, and where scrap wood and dead growth could be left to mulch. It also meant that the cavern had a guard force at the very edges that was composed of mon with potent chemical defenses along with powerful physical and special abilities.
There are a couple of ways to deal with this situation. You could try diplomacy of course and see if you can talk your way past the apparent guards. And with Sol, she may be able to vouch for you. Or you can try for combat. The Breloom and Shiinotic are probably rivals, the Breloom's weakness to the Fairy type countered by the Shiinotic's own vulnerability to the toxic spores and moves that Breloom could bring to bear. It would have left the two species oddly balanced against one another, and using one of the entryways into the cavern as a boundary for their territories meant that there were likely opportunities to fight against any wandering would-be marauders.to work out any aggressions.
But if you focused down on one group over the others it's also possible that the other group would seize the initiative to attack their rivals and expand their territory. Allowing for you to capture one of the mon being attacked.
So, what do you do?
[ ]Attack the Breloom and attempt to capture a Shroomish.
[ ]Attack the Shiinotic and attempt to capture a Morelull.
[ ]Try and talk your way in via diplomacy.
[ ](Special) Have Sol vouch for you, being a grass type and one that has more of her species in the cave it might allow for you to get through without needing to actually fight. May have other effects.
AN: No moratorium this time, pretty straightforward vote. Call it a 10 hour vote this time.
