Humans and Pokémon are colonising Mars, but good people aren't the only ones with their eyes on this new world.
The first spaceflight of the Ares program launched 49 years ago. So far, the red planet hasn't been kind. Without spacesuits, few Pokémon...
⚠️ Spoiler alert! These notes should be read after the story ⚠️
These are the general author's notes on this story, covering things like the map of Mars, real world equivalents of places and any science behind the story (or lack of it).
The map of Mars
My map of the Pokémon world's Mars is basically an inverted version of the real Mars. In the real world, some of Mars' features like Olympus Mons (the biggest volcano in the solar system) are named after features on Earth, so I named some features after places on the Pokémon world's Earth. Mt. Coronet bears similarities to Mt. Olympus and it must be the Pokémon world's most important mountain since it leads to the Hall of Origin, so the Pokémon world equivalent of Olympus Mons is Mt. Coronet.
Other places, like the Olivine Canyon and Iron Craters, are named after minerals found on Mars.
Like the real Mars, I was going to use Latin names at first, but I know very little about Latin and I thought it might get confusing.
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The Split Hero prophecy
If you've read Pokémon: Out of the Woods, you've already heard me going on about how the Volo Twist shocked me. I also got in to why he's like that – and if there could be a decent person underneath it – in that story, because whilst his methods were destructive, wanting to create a better world isn't a bad thing. He mentions a sad past in the game, which may not have been anything extreme, but I assume it was because something must have pushed him to such extremes. I also think it's clear that he's mentally ill.
I came up with a backstory in which his mum died, his dad abandoned him and Cogita, his grandma, distanced herself, so he was left alone with just his Togepi in the wilderness. I then came up with this prophecy in which Arceus chose a Celestica person to bear the burden of representing the coexistence of good and evil in humanity and, eventually, choosing one or the other. His sacrifice on Mt. Coronet was him choosing good and the cue for Arceus to create a new world. Then he finally gets his happy ending and a piece of Arceus. I think he deserves it!
Religion
Arceus is worshipped because it's canonically the god of the Pokémon world. Some people believe in Arceus, but don't consider it a god. Others don't believe in it at all. As I did in Out of the Woods, I've used 'churches' because there's a cathedral in Hearthome City. Since that's referred to as the 'foreign building,' there are also 'temples' in other regions. There are obviously similarities to religions in real life just because of the nature of religion, but I don't intend to comment on any particular religion or lack of one.
The Ultra Forest
The people and town referred to in the Ultra Forest are based on the fact that there are people (Kartenvoys) there in the game. It's possible that they're people from Earth who relocated to the Ultra Forest to practice kendo and training Kartana – and that they're old men because there are no young people – but I think it's more likely that there's a whole town and community there.
