The Journey Continues

La Fama

This world is inhabited by mysterious and fantastic creatures called Pokémon. Humans nowadays live in relative harmony with pokémon and eachother, this is an age of peace and prosperity where every individual and their pokémon partner are encouraged to follow their dreams. This, however, has not been true for all of History. People have weaponised pokémon to fight great wars, and pokémon on their own have been destructive forces of Nature. To this day, the potential lies in any single pokémon to easily wreck havoc, yet the calm tides of the world's oceans don't warrant any need to shake the ship. Nowhere else is the rise and fall of civilisations more apparent than the unassuming peninsula to the South of Kalos, where the region known as Paldea sits.

Paldea, where land ends and the seas begin. First settled by Celts many many thousands of years ago, they formed various small kingdoms in the region. Then, came the Pokéromans, who took over the whole area, along with many other regions like Galar and Kalos, forming a vast empire whose influence sticks with us to this day. A special commendation here has to be made for a tribe led by a man named Viriat, him and his Meowscarada held out the longest against the much superior imperial army using nothing but ruthless determination and guerilla tactics, laying the foundations for the culture that would come to define the nations that came to be here in the future. After the fall of the pokéromans, Visigoths came in, ruling for a short while before the Moors invaded across the Southern coast. They were a part of another great empire stretching from ocean to ocean, and brought with them the knowledge of the world privy at the time only to them and their sultans. The old kings of the peninsula took refuge in the mountains to the North, building their strength and biding their time to pull off something so impressive that despite its age now, it's gone down in History. Ms. Raifort, from Naranja Academy, calls it "La Reconquista."

From the swaths of land that were recovered from the Moors, various kingdoms were formed, each keeping a fragile alliance between themselves to continue the great reconquest. These were kingdoms led from historic cities like Levincia, Montenevera, and Medali, but one rose above the rest: Paldea, centered in Mesagoza. Bit by bit, Paldea went around incorporating the surrounding the surrounding kingdoms into its sphere of influence. See, Paldea in reality is as much of a unitied identity as it is an umbrella for the diverse groups of people within its borders, many still want to be free again to this day. Only one region saw a successful run on its own, albeit even now having fallen into Paldea's grasp: In the early days, as a reward for fighting in La Reconquista, a Kalosian man was granted a territory in the West of Paldea's realm, and his son decided to declare independence. Paldea contested it, of course, but the man's small military was somehow able to stand up to Paldea's, just as Viriat's army had done to the Pokéromans in those same valleys all those centuries before. This new region was called Luísa.

For millenia, Paldea and Luísa shared the peninsula, each going their separate but intertwined paths. There were times of cooperation, and times of war between the two, existing together on this corner of the continent. It all changed, though, when Luísans discovered how to build a boat capable of traversing the oceans. They ventured into the unknown, and found land that was only heard of before in hearsay from Moorish merchants. Navigators found their way across the Cape of Torments on the Southern tip of Africa, renaming it to the Cape of Good Hope. They found a sea route to the Indies. The Paldeans then did something historic: they put the Americas on the map. Paldea and Luísa split the world in 2 in the Treaty of Medali, each laying claim to one half of the planet. Paldea found thriving civilisations and brought them to ruin, Luísa explored every corner of the globe, making first contact with peoples of lands far distant from their own little continent, all the way from Tandor to Hoenn.

However, all things end. The glory of these 2 prosperous regions was soon cut short as Kalos and Galar became the great innovators of the continent, building their own, bigger colonial empires. Their decadence continued, losing grip on their overseas possessions one by one as their continental presence was gradually overshadowed by all their neighbours, once again turning them into the little peninsula at the corner of the world. It's here where the details get murky. 200 or so years after the decadence of Paldea and Luísa began, a great war broke out: a war to end all wars. In the crossfire, the Floette of a man today only known as AZ was killed, and he was driven into furious grief. AZ built the ultimate weapon, and with it he caused unquantifiable destruction. The war ushered the world into a dark age, the records from after this moment being scarce. Nobody quite knows what happened exactly to the countries involved in the war in the centuries that followed, regions including Galar, Kalos, Paldea, and the now-defunct Luísa. In truth, noone even truly knows what happened to the latter, how they were at some point somehow incorporated into Paldea, despite having resisted such attempts for hundreds of years before. If you were to ask Ms. Raifort about it, she would call it History's greatest question. Maybe they decayed and eventually fell, like the Pokéromans, but the circumstances are surely different: Luísa had already fallen much farther. "It seems obvious on the surface," Raifort would say, "but, well, I don't know if it's just a hunch, I certainly won't know until I find evidence for or against it, but I reckon that there's more to the collapse of Luísa than meets the eye. Only a chaotic series of events could wipe a region with so much History behind it off the map like that."

But if you look closely, the remnants can still be found. Paldea is a region of many sights, many peoples, and many adventures.

From the sunny beaches of Luísa... "Anda comigo para a rua, vém, aproveita essa vida que tens!"

To the fertile plateaus of Mesagoza... "¡Vamos, nos espera una nueva aventura!" 

The urban jungle of the former Cataluz region... "Hi ha tantes vistes a l'espera de ser experimentades!" 

To the snowcapped peaks of the Bask people... "Beraz, zatoz nirekin, laguna, sar gaitezen elkarrekin ezezagunean!"

Ghosts of Paldea's History still hold onto every vestige of their identity. This is the culture that unites the whole peninsula. Paldea is one and Paldea is many.

¿Qué voy a hacer?, je ne sais pas
¿Qué voy a hacer?, je ne sais plus
¿Qué voy a hacer?, je suis perdu

Welcome to Paldea, where the seas end and land begins.

Mi corazón, mi corazón.

POKÉMON SCARLET-ish

(the journey continues)

&__/----)

Yeah ok not very whelming for a whole ass week off right?

Look I've been very tired these past few days okay :/:/:/://:/:/:/  I am currently in that awkward phase between securing a new job and actually leaving the current one and it's somewhat mentally draining my main thoughts nowadays revolve around how much I can't wait to get out of here and not very much on pokémon fanfiction. I'm sure this will change at some point, but I will try harder from now on to not leave writing the week's chapter for literally the last few hours. I could actually progress the plot but I wanted to do this introduction chapter  and it has taken all the hours I'm willing to stay awake to get it pumped out before Saturday subjectively ends (it's 4am it's objectively definitely ended by now please bear with me).

Also since publishing the last chapter I've actually watched Pokémon Horizons and it's actually good??? I'm surprised too but holy moly okay, I guess Liko might appear in this book after all. Maybe. Probably, but I need to shoehorn her in somehow. I don't know when this will happen. It may happen before or after Ash and Serena meet, but probably before they kiss. I think. I don't know. All I know is I very much like Liko. And Friede. And Murdock. And Orion. And Mollie. And gramps. And the villains, honestly. And Anne. Next week I'll figure out whether or not I like Roy, but there's a good chance I will. Stay safe tri-state area.