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Trails of Tera Steel (Kiseki-inspired Pokemon Academy Quest)

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NMS said:
Heck, back in Legends Arceus, the Diamond and Pearl clans were feuding because they didn't even know Dialga and Palkia were separate pokemon.
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They didn't think they were the same so much as they only thought one of them existed at all and they used the same name for them.

KnownParadox said:
Honestly, it seems like Sinnoh has the least known legendaries in-universe in the entire series. Nobody knows about the Lake Trio, Dialga and Palkia are thought to be the same being in the modern day and used to be called Almighty Sinnoh, Giratina is a total unknown, and Arceus is even more hidden than that.
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The main five are known to scholars at least. To quote Cynthia on the Celestic town mural:

"This cave painting...It's always been described this way. The light in the center represents either Dialga or Palkia appearing at the Spear Pillar. The three lights around it were thought to be Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf. May I continue? But, then, I realized that there may be another way of interpreting this. Could this triangle of lights actually represent a different trio? Could they be Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina instead? And the large light at their center. Does it represent something else? Could it be what created this world of ours?
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Props to the Diamond and Pearl Clans. Who apparently claimed the name Celestica so well that archeologists would confuse original Celestica murals for Diamond or Pearl Clan stuff. They're not sure which, but they're pretty sure the mural was made by one of the two.

NMS said:
Weren't the existence of the Z-dogs covered up by a government conspiracy?
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I didn't play Sw/Sh, but as I understand it the mistakes weren't due to a conspiracy so much as due to the abyss of history. Three thousand years is a long time. More than time enough for "Sword dog and Shield dog who worked with two youths" to become "The sword and shield of the two heroes" in a way that people would understand to refer to dogs instead of a literal sword and shield. And then for that understanding to fade into obscurity and for people to take the metaphor literally and believe they actually just had a sword and a shield.

Also, very apt for Trails that the Darkest Day and the Ultimate Weapon firing both happened three thousand years ago. Gotta love simultaneous but technically unrelated terrible catastrophies.
 
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Nerdorama said:
Hang on. Is Leaf nicknaming a very self-aware nerd here or is Erika's mom named Rika? Because either way it's hilarious.

I'm also extremely fucking terrified of how Trails and When They Cry references are going to harmonize if "Rika" is her older female relative.
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Rika is a canon character from Scarlet and Violet, and a member of the region's Elite Four.
 
LunaticPanda said:
I didn't play Sw/Sh, but as I understand it the mistakes weren't due to a conspiracy so much as due to the abyss of history. Three thousand years is a long time. More than time enough for "Sword dog and Shield dog who worked with two youths" to become "The sword and shield of the two heroes" in a way that people would understand to refer to dogs instead of a literal sword and shield. And then for that understanding to fade into obscurity and for people to take the metaphor literally and believe they actually just had a sword and a shield.
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No, it was an actual conspiracy. Like the post game is two noble assholes causing trouble because you uncovered the truth. They even go so far as to get an undercover agent to become the new professor's assistant and sabotage her.
 
Tempera said:
Rika is a canon character from Scarlet and Violet, and a member of the region's Elite Four.
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That opens up a few other possibilities that are also terrifying and funny. Maybe if we get a Nemona bond event we can get more details on if it's the same Rika.

EDIT: Actually, let's unpack this for speculation. If this is entirely the Pokémon character, with the name similarity to Erika Furudo's......originator's originator? Tulpa grandparent? is just a funny coincidence to confuse me specifically, that would imply that Erika has a connection to a member of the Elite Four, which would stand in for the "backer" in the "you're gonna go far kid" background, and tie her in to the political subplot since we've thus far been speculating that the Paldea Elite Four are in some form or another La Primera Geeta's personal enforcers. Very interesting possibilities there, especially since judging by her personality, Erika Furuwada just wants to publish science papers and climb Mariana like a tree, and any connection to politics is probably either through social ties or an ill-considered sponsorship deal.
 
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[X] Plan: You're Gonna Need A Montage (Montage!)
-[X] You Can't Run from a Trainer Battle
-[X] Advanced BATTLE
-[X] Roland:
-[X] Manuel
 
NMS said:
No, it was an actual conspiracy. Like the post game is two noble assholes causing trouble because you uncovered the truth. They even go so far as to get an undercover agent to become the new professor's assistant and sabotage her.
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I figured they were just entitled assholes who refused to accept something contrary to what they already believed.

Though honestly, It's hard to think about them. Every time I do I am forced to remember they are actually called Sordward and Shielbert. I swear, the first time I read those names I thought they were joking names for the player character. And then I looked them up and I saw the hair and good lord what the fuck are they even!?

Nerdorama said:
That opens up a few other possibilities that are also terrifying and funny. Maybe if we get a Nemona bond event we can get more details on if it's the same Rika.
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If it is Rika, and Rika already knew Erika, then either Erika's home is a lot less isolated than Emma's or Rika's the Vita standin.

Hopefully the former. Not sure the side of good could withstand every girl in Paldea teenaged and up joining the evil conspiracy (Every one of them. Even the straight ones. If it's Rika it's okay).
 
LunaticPanda said:
Hopefully the former. Not sure the side of good could withstand every girl in Paldea teenaged and up joining the evil conspiracy (Every one of them. Even the straight ones. If it's Rika it's okay).
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Honestly the number of lesbian thirst traps on the side of evil in Trails is already remarkably high. Rika being in there for some extra butch energy is just good strategy.
 
sheep-dodger said:
I know nothing about the trails side of the mashup, but from what's been presented so far the knightly orders are at least meant to uphold the empire and by extension the nobility that explicitly hates us for being of the wrong ethnicity. Maybe it is likely to go another way when the plot happens, but for me at least it's not particularly attractive to join the pro establishment side of things, considering that the empire is at this very moment among other things engaged in a military occupation.
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To be clear, this is basically the reasoning behind me saying that I didn't think knighthood was reasonably on the table - not because of any mechanical constraints, but because our background leaves us pretty strongly aligned with a political context that isn't friendly with knighthood. At best, maybe being knighthood-adjacent I guess.

That being said, if we do get a chance to go on an epic quest with a knight to seal away the legendaries, we should absolutely do that, it would rock.
 
Krika said:
To be clear, this is basically the reasoning behind me saying that I didn't think knighthood was reasonably on the table - not because of any mechanical constraints, but because our background leaves us pretty strongly aligned with a political context that isn't friendly with knighthood. At best, maybe being knighthood-adjacent I guess.
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Eh. Other people commented on this when I was writing that monster analysis post, but I think that even discounting all the relevant possible Trails connections, this assessment of the Orden de Verde misses a lot of context clues we've got in the thread so far. For one, Paldea is very specifically in the midst of a huge cultural rift between the landed nobility and more or less everyone else - and just because it's a knightly order doesn't make it automatically friendly with the nobles, nor automatically reactionary.

Second, the anti-Andosin racism present is tied to some pretty specific groups ("Nobles" and "Nationalists" in the trait) while otherwise just being the normal, if unfortunate, background noise of society, baked into structures and assumptions that haven't been updated since the middle ages. It's not any indication that this particular group is going to be specifically discriminatory.

Now, they could be, but third: while we're all pretty certain out-of-universe that the founding "Masked Maiden" the Order venerates is an adorable oni from Kitakami, in-universe, the Order's founder and her sponsor Rodrigo are both associated specifically with the Andosin Highlands. The Orden de Verde turning away an admirer or an applicant just because she was Andosin would be like an imaginary "Order of Lancelot" in England turning someone away because they were French. It'd be like if you made a club for gay wargamers in the US in honor of von Steuben and then said Germans aren't allowed to join. Someone might try, but they'd be rightly ridiculed as a hypocrite.

Also fourth the Andosin Highlands are probably the source of all these ladies' Ride Pokémon but we'll see how stupid ethnic Paldeans get about this if we pick the Manuel bonding action I guess.

Now I don't want to join the knights anyway but I'm just saying racism isn't the reason to avoid them.
 
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My main reason for not joining the knights is primarily that we're pretty busy ourself and I don't see us letting up on that, and that we're aiming for Champion rank and beating Nemona. I'm unsure how mixing being the Champion and being a Knight would go, schedule wise and politically.

Then again, a point on the pro-knight side would be that I bet these big hunks of chivalry would help us out if, say, we wanted to ensure that the four sealed gods stay sealed, and to fight them back to sleep if necessary. They do have a lot of fairy types.
 
[X] Plan: You're Gonna Need A Montage (Montage!)
-[X] You Can't Run from a Trainer Battle
-[X] Advanced BATTLE
-[X] Roland:
-[X] Manuel

I'd probably vote to get into a shopping spree but like, no idea what we'd buy. (Do we have pokéballs?) This one is alright enough for now, will change my vote later if needed maybe.
 
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If I was voting for that I'd be intending to get personal use healing items, repels, and maybe a held item or personal equipment for Mariana if one caught my eye. Can't use the latter in the gym battle but we're almost certainly going to be dealing with thieves and wild mons.
 
ArvisPresley said:
Adhoc vote count started by ArvisPresley on Mar 12, 2024 at 1:50 PM, finished with 127 posts and 37 votes.
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Will close in 12 Hours ish
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Do you wanna roll the trainer battle action now?
 
Adhoc vote count started by ArvisPresley on Mar 13, 2024 at 12:35 AM, finished with 157 posts and 41 votes.
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Vote Closed
 
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