- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well I want to become a Colour Grade Ranger.
Together we can combine and become Captain Planet.
Trails of Tera Steel (Kiseki-inspired Pokemon Academy Quest)
- Thread starter ArvisPresley
- Start date
Together we can combine and become Captain Planet.
- Pronouns
- She/They
And here we go, the part of the thread where I started questioning our choices.
But first, I'm going to skip down to the supplementary post of the battle log to pick out some things I think are interesting:
First of all, anyone who wants to game out Pokémon battles should read the Major Battle Rules Informational, bearing in mind this battle ran without the "1.2" changes that it inspired.
But some notes on things that aren't in the rules post:
-The difference between Badge 0 and Badge 1 is a 10% increase in damage dealt and a 10% decrease in damage received for the higher-badge Mon. According to the rules post, this will increase as badge levels do. Sunny also had an extra 100 HP on us, which is what kept him standing after our really good Shadow Sneak.
-Initiative is important not only for move priority, but because winning it carries forward half the margin of success to the Effect Roll (this is in the rules post but I'm pointing it out double because this means initiative is huge, and Roland's style as a speedy attacker should hopefully play into this, and it makes this quest's version of Quick Attack an amazing setup move, synergizing well with his wide variety of moves that buff his init or debuff the opponent's.)
-There's also not really any way to boost initiative except temporarily from Moves or, I assume, some Abilities.
-Effect Roll itself is super important because it's a damage multiplier, and a DC 20 check to activate secondary effects. Fortunately this is the one roll where Trainer SKLL matters directly, and we leveled ours up since this fight. All our secondaries now have a 65% chance of proccing, which is good because none of them did on their 60% chance in this fight.
-The biggest thing here, though, is this: while Ghost types are no longer outright immune to Normal and Fighting (instead taking 0.25x damage), Roland can use his reaction to turn Intangible and negate moves that aren't super effective against Ghost anyway. It's a nerf vs. the games, but it's still a very useful tool to have to prevent nasty secondary effects like Fake Out's (which would have negated our Reaction move anyway).
-Also we totally could have won if we'd won initiative on the last round or ever beaten Nemona on an Effect Roll.
Anyway, back to what's really important
High school popularity contests.
So I make a point to point out when Mariana's panic attacks are triggered by Pokémon battles, but it's obviously not just that - it's really any case of being given responsibility by others that we can fail at. Training, even in losing battles, doesn't directly cause us problems - it's a coping mechanism that we can dissociate through. Choosing to do dangerous things or go to work or study doesn't either. It's only when we could (not necessarily are, but could) disappoint another, which I think is a big clue to the root of Mariana's issues, and Mariana, notably, refuses to make a choice for the sake of her own mental health when it means going against someone else's implied expectations.
This is a healthy enough combat philosophy being deployed in a very unhealthy way. We're going to see it again later but it seems like a mantra for staying functional through a dissociative episode more than anything right now.
Arvis does make frequent mention of the possibility of Pokémon dying or being seriously injured. Just remember that these are friendly matches of little critters doing the equivalent of MMA with world-shaping magical energy, and that when we get into plot battles, they're not going to be so friendly.
(They're also still unlikely to be lethal, frankly, given the amount of punishment both Pokémon and Zemurian Humans take on a regular basis, but it's a plot point that can come up.)
Also Mariana gets full marks for remembering that her Pokémon are people, partners, and family, but zero marks for remembering what the point of the Journey is for the trainer. We're somehow the inverse of the stereotypical Pokémon bad guy. It's still not a great outlook.
Nemona remains the only person in PokéSpain to speak a single word of Spanish. Also she's never going to stop being her cheerful friendly self and we're not going to see it as anything but an insult for a long while.
This Azula rocket jump move here is leading into an example of a "custom move" which I'm sure we'll see more of in the future, and is the first example of many of Nemona employing lateral thinking like using offensive moves for traversal. As long as we're chasing her anyway, we'd do well to learn from her ability to make use of all of a Pokémon's abilities, which we've at least started doing instinctively with using Quick Attack for dodging and traversal narratively.
Spotted another thing here. We Tera Ghosted to improve our attack, and almost got Sunny thanks to a good damage roll. But going Tera Dragon would have been the better option for absorbing the hit from Flame Charge and then Knock Off. This is down to us voting for offense over attrition, mind, but ultimately I think that choice was down to six of one, half a dozen of the other, especially since I think due to the way Arvis did order of operations we still tanked the Flame Charge with our Dragon-type resistances.
Combat Link Go!
Both times we've used this it's been mechanically simultaneous with Terastalization. I wonder if that's meaningful or just an artifact of battles being so short that we have to pull out both our "trump cards" at the same time. The fact that the ARCUS is what holds our Tera Orb is pretty good evidence for the former, really...
But then this indicates they're distinct actions, and that Terastilization happened after the Link started, so maybe I'm full of shit.
Appropriate that Arvis posted our next battle against Nemona while I was writing this, and Roland came to a simpler version of the same conclusion as me - Nemona simply has stronger Pokémon and more experience battling with them, and we are unlikely to ever close that gap entirely.
As for the rest of the fight and the fallout...listen, Roland did great, Mariana did great, it's simply not possible to win every fight. That's just how life is. But we're going to be dealing with that little ~theme~ for the rest of the Quest, so I'm going to skip ahead to how we're actually dealing with it in the moment.
So this is a particularly insidious kind of anxiety that I think most of us have likely experienced at one point or another - it certainly hit me square in the maladaptive brain things. The spiral of being ashamed, then being ashamed of being ashamed, such that it's impossible to escape the loop of negative feelings toward yourself, is...I don't know the formal psychiatric name for it, but it's distressingly common among people I know personally. All I can say is that thank god that Mariana picked up "verbalizing her internal monologue" as a symptom of her bigger panic spirals or else we might not ever open up to anyone without being forced into talk therapy.
Also you probably shouldn't slap people to break them out of a panic attack but I can't really blame Erika for trying.
Also I'm glad that Erika is doing what she can to support us, including stomping on her own tendency toward logorrheic insults. She should probably touch some grass though. No need to go all Low-Tier God as a hypothetical threat.
Not that it stops her from getting busted by the toddler. Also, the fucking Vegeta robot likes us, and I think that as much as anything demonstrates we're an admirable person.
Let's rapid-fire most of the rest of the Round Robin.
This is what a defensive strategy would have look liked, I think, Terastilizing to focus on maxing resistances and minning vulnerabilities. Statistically a Swablu shouldn't have lost here, but Jacinto got unlucky (part 1 of 8) and Atticus managed a good attrition play.
Effortless power and good priorities. Is...is the child soldier more mentally stable than we are?
Quotes out of order to condense commentary on Legend of the Golden Witch here, since our POV of the fight got interrupted by talking to Roland and Nemona.
I think this is the first example we see (in our second-person POV) of other people using their Combat Links (do we have a different technical term for that? ...I'm gonna keep using Combat Links anyway). This is also a good character demonstration of Theodora and Elise through battling styles. Elise is fairly straightforward - she's aggressive, attacking when she should defend, which is a suitable plan for a Honedge with No Guard, but I suspect that since she's literally psychically wielding Rin like she's holding a sword, this is an artifact of her training as a swordswoman - severely incomplete training, if it parallels Rean's, too emotionally perturbed by backstory and circumstances to move past a beginner level of the Eight Leaves One Blade School...for now. Someone's going to have to help Elise address her self-worth issues, and we lack a fellow student of the blade like ToCS's Laura to forcibly call her out, so it'll fall to someone else who's seen her in action and she tr--ah crap it's gonna be us.
Theodora, though...she doesn't fight like a Trails character (other than fire and Burn spam, something both Rean and Alisa have a knack for in ToCS1). She fights like her faceclaim - specifically, Beatrice, the Golden and Endless Witch.
Allow me to explain.
In Pokémon, and in most shounen anime, battles and combat are treated not as violence per se, but as a form of communication. You express yourself through how you fight, your opponent ideally reciprocates, and what is, on the surface, some dudes doing karate and laser beams at each other becomes a moral debate, or a friendly conversation, or (particularly in the case of Pokémon Gym Battles) a kind of interview to determine a protagonist's qualifications. Battle is Conversation.
In Umineko: When They Cry, by contrast, Conversation is Battle. The whole framework of...about half the story at least is effectively a conversation (translated, frequently, into bizarre and improbably anime battles) between the antagonist, Beatrice, and the protagonist, Battler, allegedly about the former determining just what in the god damn hell happened to him and his family on the weekend of October 4-6, 1986, with Beatrice antagonizing by claiming true knowledge of the events, but also claiming that she is a witch who killed off the whole family by magic. (How are they having this conversation? Go read it.) What's actually happening, though, without getting into detailed spoilers, is that Beatrice, rather than trying to convince Battler through rhetorical argument, is trying to get him to think, to ask questions, and to figure out who she really is. The conversation-battle is a duel of logic between two people, one of whom refuses to so much as explicitly communicate what she wants out of it and is trying to provoke her interlocutor into figuring it out. This manifests in (frequently commented-upon in-text) refusal to just 'finish off' her rhetorical opponent, a tendency for repetitive baiting and logical traps to try and get ideas through his thick skull, and generally just not playing to win, but to draw a reaction.
All that is to say: I think Theodora is doing the same thing here, and will continue to do so both socially and in battles with Elise. She's trying to draw something out, to see something, to get Elise to bring something to the table that she hasn't yet. And she's not going to be satisfied until she sees it.
And I think at this point, I can give Arvis something that I promised him a fair bit ago:
Game Master Arvis, I submit the following Blue Truth: Theodora and Elise knew each other at some point in the past before coming to Mesagoza. Theodora remembers, but Elise does not.
Anyway that was my autistic fixation for today (read Umineko), so let's get back to Mariana being Krillin.
We don't like the negative self-talk, and it's definitely bad. But I am glad that Mariana cares for her partners, and her partner(s) care back. If you're going to be stupid about an inferiority complex, centering it around your friends' happiness is...still bad, but it's unlikely to morph into what I was originally worried about here and going full Kieran.
...I just did a big rant about Umineko I'm not gonna summarize the plot of two DLCs. Go read his bulbapedia page if you want spoilers.
Anyway, here's Nemona's fixation. She carries with her her canon charm point of being absolutely incapable of reading the room, but her advice is sound, and if nothing else, fixating on her is giving us a goldmine of tips that we should follow (taking into account our own Pokémon's strengths and weaknesses) if we want to train on a competitive level. We already did the whole "quick attack spam" in subsequent updates and "focus on speed training" is basically how Dreepy evolves in this universe, so good tips, Nemona.
Also I want to point out that Roland is a couple of months old and took on an opponent who had already been training at first Badge level for a while with a plausible chance of winning. In his first combat. I'm almost as proud of him as he is of himself.
Anyway onto Ostia vs. Nemona. Kid's definitely out for blood from the start, this wombo-combo of a super-effective probably-complex STAB move would have obliterated any normal Chimchar instantly. Of course, even putting aside that Sunny is no normal Chimchar, Nemona could have weaseled out of it completely by Terastilizing to Flying, but...she didn't. Whether to justify Ostia's Nat 20 roll or just because she wanted to test the limitations of her flying Flame Charge. She ends up losing, which ultimately proves that Argy, roided-up science experiment that he probably is, can equal a professionally-trained fighter with a (pre-Terastal) Type advantage, or at least overwhelm it fast enough that even Nemona doesn't come up with a counter (this time).
Nemona obliterating the rest of the class isn't too interesting, I'm just calling out the kind of horseshit she gets up to with no four-move limit.
Also that Erika is the most unlucky bitch in the universe. She'd have probably won (narratively; this was down to dice rolls) if she'd fought Sunny any earlier. Rock isn't a great Type but it can sure as hell shut down aggressive Fire-types.
Erika and Ostia's reports are useful but can be summarized in "overthinking tactical fighter" and "has the power and the money of an Evil Team (or a lady who really wants to be an Evil Team) backing them".
I also want to know how (other than a Nat 20) we beat Ostia. I suppose weakness to both Ghost and Dark moves played in there - using Shadow Sneak to play keep away while dealing damage would've done it (Quick Attack spam would not). Also probably helped that neither of us could Terastilize (by normal ScarVi rules anyway - you need to recharge the Tera Orb after using it once) and so Argy couldn't use that to cover their weaknesses.
Or that assessment could be completely wrong lol. Yeah Steel typing is great against a Carbink. Defensively. But without a Steel-type move, or any super-effective moves, actually, it's not gonna chew through that bulk.
Honestly, it's kind of funny, but skimming Dragapult's canonical learnset, Cornelia is kind of a hard counter to Roland lol. Only our ghost moves even hit her normally...but at least he has Infiltrator to ignore screens I guess.
I really don't think we need to be talking about career options other than "Pokémon Master" until we clear out this fixation one way or another, gang.
Says you. Democracy clearly disagrees.
(Ignoring this has been and will continue to be a terrible idea).
Jasmine is definitely the Disney Princess of the Johto gym leaders. ...not that she resembles Princess Jasmine per se, but you know what I mean.
She pays us with a lot of League Points, actually. For all being President is a pain on the AP, Leaf is probably going to put us through our TM and Gym Deposit budget for the year.
:<
Pretty woman, don't walk on by
Pretty woman, don't make me cry
So, Mela, first new character we've met this update. She, like Atticus (and Eri, Giacomo, and the thus far unmet Ortega) is a founding member and admin of Team Star in Scarlet/Violet, specializing in the Fire type and being the only one with the standard mix of brash violence you expect from and """evil""" Team. While we're back in Team Star's backstory in the Quest, it seems Mela has made her backstory shift from cutesy style (which got her picked on) to punk. Good to see she's got her natural bent for being kind to fellow outsiders (and cute Pokémon like Roland and presumably the academy Charcadets).
Not much else to say here until we see where the Team Star plot is headed (if anywhere), but "Mela" is Italian for "apple" (although it might also be a more-feminine-sounding-to-English-speakers version of her Japanese name, Meloco, which is short for the Spanish word for peach). I don't think we've gotten a last name here yet.
Mariana is based, btw. This is a bit slummier than even the working-class parts of Heimdallr, although I'm sure those exist in ToCS, you just don't happen to go there.
As per what I've been doing, I'll go over the votes we didn't take at the end here, then pick up with the ones we did in the next deep dive.
So the obvious joke here is Remy the Rat, hero of Pixar's Ratatouille, since it can cook. Alolan Rattata is a regional form of Rattata that's generally considered a mildly buffed form of the ubiquitous Route 1 mon, and I have no doubt that this hypothetical fellow was in the top percentage of Rattatas generally. It was the most basic but also most immediately useful choice of the three here, being a relatively strong Pokémon by level who just needed some rest, and might have got us two 2-badge Pokémon before FE1 if we'd gone this route. However, I'd bet he'd be a bit of a cost center (unless that would have synergized with cooking club) since as noted Alolan Rattata need a lot of food, and Hustle is an ability that's great 80% of the time and awful 20% of the time. This is also the option that might have tied directly into the FE1 main plot, unless there's more than one poaching ring operating around here...
Surprisingly not the one of the three who wanted to murder us, Shuppet is...well, in the games, it's terrible, but Arvis rebalances everything anyway. What this one would have been was another Ghost, and another Pokémon that was just "born" and needs a lot of training and attention, similar to Roland when we first picked him up in the prologue. Probably the result of a toy being abandoned because its owners' family was fucking murdered, (god I hope it would have been a malevolent toy spirit and not an actual dead baby), this would be a lead in to Paldea's organized crime problems. Which based on other developments since, might be related to the rest of the planet's organized crime problems.
Also had Mega potential. That's neat.
Also I do want to say that I'm very glad for the implication that Mary would save the abandoned or wounded Pokémon no matter what it was, and we were simply voting on which one existed. Our girl has a heroine's heart, protagonist or not.
I'm sure this is fine.
Anyway next time it's ya girl Espurr.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Supposedly the district Machias is from (Ost District) would be considered the slummy part of town, but since his Dad rose to power the quality of life there has improved enough. You want the Real Slums you gotta go to
Well, either that or Ostia is very good at acting. I mean... Renne Faceclaim.
On the other side, CHRM of 7 so who can be sure!
KnownParadox
Not a sphere
- Location
- Canada
We'd need five to be a true Captain Planet, but we've got Just Go Home as seen below for a fourth, and I guess there could be a hypothetical fifth person here who'd go for joining the
You know, just going home to the Highlands is probably a valid career choice. Train with Old Man Jenkins and his surviving 6th-7th Badge level crew while they're still alive and able, manage the areas pokemon and tribes, heck, I can see it being a sort of roundabout way to get back into Paldean politics as a whole. We did say the Redheaded Barbarian build was the Genghis Khan build for a reason. Eventually become so powerful and connected that when the Plot comes with its politics, intrigue, and conspiracies come they come to us, because we're the obvious head of the Highlands.
Lucky we got Renne as early as we did then, I bet being able to make barriers will help a lot in not dying. Some mobster thinks he's slick and orders his Raticate to attack us? Bam! Runs face first into a barrier and an angry Renne, instead of us getting caught by surprise and losing a leg or throat.
I wonder what sort of combinations we could get. Flamethrower + Will'O'Wisp to get ghost flames? Thunder Fang + Infestation to get electrified bug missiles?
- Pronouns
- She/They
I was gonna shout out Downtown Crossbell (right down to the [pocket] monster infestation of an abandoned building) but then I looked at my word count. Also true that the reason the Ost District is as nice and homey as it is is Local Boy Done Good Governor Carl Regnitz. Thank Aidios he didn't have to go the more historical route of establishing a parallel local government through organized crime and instead politically allied himself to...Osborne. Welp.
I'd love to try and combine a beam attack with dragon pulse. Just something real quick as a suprise attack with stab
StattStatt
Supplier of suspenders for your disbelief
- Location
- On one of your shoulders
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I tried to think of a custom move for Roland and maybe even Renne, but then for some reason my mind started going in the direction of "Renne and Roland bonding by Renne using Telekenesis to toss Roland around at high speeds since he likes it when Mariana does it." I dunno, it's almost 2am I should probably sleep now
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think you've invented Psychic type Dragon Darts.
For some reason the first thought to come to my mind for a "beam attack" as Aurora Beam.
Just, the ultimate "Screw You" to Dragon Types, 4x Effectiveness loaded into one attack.
Immediately give lance violent flashbacks LMAO
- Location
- Plato's Cave
I do want to try and dive into the Nails plotline and whatever's going on there before committing to any sort of long-term life goal, if only because I think that's a good enough goal for us right now - it'll take us through 5th/6th badge in terms of development, and the hypothetical political/danger-level implications of it means that it'll probably tie into other things pretty well. Plus I think going back home and seeing friends/family again to talk with them would be good before making any strong decisions.
Anyway, I'm not sure if "head of the Highlands" is something we'd see in a while, given one of the students we didn't choose to meet at the train station in favor of the gender-neutral blorbo that is Ostia.
So there's definitely a ruling political organization to the Highlands that we aren't a part of, so I think that sort of title would take a fair bit of work and time on our end, plausibly too much to be within the scope of the quest. It's still an interesting goal, I agree, and I'd probably vote for it over any of the others that have come up, but I think we're going to have to come the other side of the politics we're going to be exposed to first.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well, in fairness to the idea, the Highlands appear to be a tribal confederation, so even leading the Ganzorig clan would de factor give us regional importance. And that's assuming Eri doesn't take a gap year suplexing fools in the wilderness.
That said, in my extensive semi-compulsive re-reading I've come around to the conclusion that we really don't need to be looking at a career path that doesn't start with "high tier professional Pokémon League battler" until we deal with our thing about Nemona. We're not gonna catch the sun as a Ranger or a Knight. Now, if we charge up the badge ranks ASAP and inevitably lose to Nemona at Conference next year, I imagine a lot of options will open up...
That said, in my extensive semi-compulsive re-reading I've come around to the conclusion that we really don't need to be looking at a career path that doesn't start with "high tier professional Pokémon League battler" until we deal with our thing about Nemona. We're not gonna catch the sun as a Ranger or a Knight. Now, if we charge up the badge ranks ASAP and inevitably lose to Nemona at Conference next year, I imagine a lot of options will open up...
- Location
- United Kingdom
Even the exploration option that has us looking into the Knights doesn't necessitate us actually joining them. I imagine the most we'll do in first year is continue the ranger work we've been doing on the side for money, and maybe doing something similar with the knights to dip our toes in?
If nothing else we might be able to poke them about the Ruin Stakes after we've talked to the Church, it's hard to imagine they don't already know about them.
EDIT: It would be neat if we ended up going Knight whilst Elise went Ranger.
If nothing else we might be able to poke them about the Ruin Stakes after we've talked to the Church, it's hard to imagine they don't already know about them.
EDIT: It would be neat if we ended up going Knight whilst Elise went Ranger.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yeah, more exploration is something we want to do regardless, I'm just not particularly interested in rushing the sorority.
I think first turn back from the FE is going to be library, Espurr, and...it's gotta be some kind of training action, surely. Depending on whom we pick up on the field exercise I think we want two two-badgers ASAP so we can theoretically go bother a second gym leader.
- Location
- United Kingdom
I kinda want the third action to be Ranger work focused on KNOW just to really eke out as much as we can from that trait (and give us some more money).
- Pronouns
- Any
I wonder how the rest of the cast will react if one of the field exercises inevitably going FUBAR leads to Mariana attempting to do her best impression of Senshi from Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon
That's a very funny image lmao
- Location
- Plato's Cave
I wonder how the rest of the cast will react if one of the field exercises inevitably going FUBAR leads to Mariana attempting to do her best impression of Senshi from Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon
Does Ostia really need more trauma like that? Really?
Hex
A Lingering Curse
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/They
The short answer? Yes.
The long answer? If Ostia is getting adopted by Mary then they should get used to it sooner rather than later, to be honest.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Potential Encounters per East Cortondo Biome
* next to a Pokemon's name signify that they require accomplishing a Mandatory/Optional Task to unlock their encounter
| Heights/Plateau | Ruins | Breadbasket | Forest |
| Nacli | Yamask | Smoliv | Deerling |
| Aron | Woobat | Fidough* | Pineco |
| Drilbur | Charcadet | Combee* | Shroodle |
| Pawniard* | Gimmighoul* | Fomantis* | Teddiursa* |
| Tinkatink* | Bronzor* | Applin* | Foongus* |
Last edited:
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, so Tinka's in the Heights/Plateau. That's good to know. But she's locked behind a task requirement.
Petition to grab an Applin if possible? I personally want Hydrapple, but we could also do that whole (unknowingly) romantic gift route.
- Location
- Earth
Honestly any of the Heights/Plateau pokemon look like they'd be a good fit. Charcadet would also be cool for the knight aesthetic.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yea, while the Tinkatink is there, I'd be more hyped for a Charcadet. Cool design, a Fire type to help with the early gyms, and evolves into either Psychic or Ghost (Two types we already have for themeing) in a way that probably involves a sidequest. And doesn't need unlocking, so we can try to grab one day 1 and if we don't roll it try again with more unlocks.
Nacil/Aron/Drilbur are also cool, bulky pokemon, for those wanting a wall to go with our speedster and psychic cannon.
Gimmighoul into Gholdengo is also a neat sidequest mon, but we do need something that's a ok battler to start if we want to push Gyms, which I think also rules out Applin.
Nacil/Aron/Drilbur are also cool, bulky pokemon, for those wanting a wall to go with our speedster and psychic cannon.
Gimmighoul into Gholdengo is also a neat sidequest mon, but we do need something that's a ok battler to start if we want to push Gyms, which I think also rules out Applin.
Last edited:
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Are you sure you want to give us a fully evolved pokemon this early?