This is a draft copy of thematic information!
A collection of brief information covering the major aspects of the game’s theme, essentially well-known to any ‘morph that is still holding onto their sense of self and sanity.
Pokemorphs #
Pokemorphs are genetically engineering amalgrams of pokemon and human lineage. While their history has long since been covered by the sands of time, they are the dominant intelligent life underground. Standing between 4’ and 9’ in height, Pokemorphs are bipedal versions of their base pokemon, with the ability to speak, hands with dextrous fingers and thumbs, and attitude.
Pokemorphs do not breed true - except for Shiny Versions - and so the offspring of two pokemorphs may not match either parent (although this is rare and sometimes leads to rumors of cheating!). Pokemorph evolution has more to do with their state of mind, including family traditions. Everstones are fairly popular as accessories to prevent unwanted changes.
They do tend to wear clothing for both modesty and fashion, as well as enjoy many ways of enhancing their self-image including fur dyes, body paint, and tattooes.
More information can be found in Pokemorph Details.
The Underground #
The Underground is the collective name given to the large caves, tunnels, small caves, and the rest of the navigable area deep below the surface. Outside of larger caves that sport sunstones in the ceiling to provide a dim, but appreciated day/night cycle, the caves are dark, lit only via biolumencent mushrooms and the light created by both pokemorphs and their feral bethren. This makes any cave that does not have sunstones in the ceiling a hazard to traverse, and the only types that can do so without bringing their own light are DARK types. Of course, others can still use their sense of hearing or touch to make their way through, if unsteadily.
Rather then leafy green plants, almost all vegetation underground is based on mushrooms, alge and lichens. Mushrooms with heavy, wood-like structures are used in place of natural wood, and mushrooms also take the place of various ingrediants for cooking based on flavor profiles and texture. Generally, mushrooms only need access to dirt and water to grow, nutrients are oddly plentiful in soil created from the undeground’s floor layer. Lichen and Alge function as the main source of breathable, clean air, and it isn’t unknown for Lichens to be carried around as a good luck charm because of this.
Feral Pokemon do roam about, away from areas that have been ’tamed’ and built up, like wild beasts without their characteristic intelligence that they once had. Whether due to a reversion in their mental state or simply social isolation matters little when one wants to make you dinner.
The Underground also has a unique resource available - mystery dungeons. These ’temporary’ caves can defy time and space, leading to strange miniature worlds that can be used as places to get resources, ancient artifacts, or a heavy beating.
Food and Technology #
Food is mushroom, mostly. Canal City, with it’s vast sunstone collection on the ceiling, is one of the very few places where non-mushroom plants can be easily grown, providing a small, but exquisite addition of taste to the noble’s dinner tables. Leafy greans, vegetables and fruits are incredibly rare, even in this bread basket of a city state, and the flavors distilled from them can fetch a pretty high price. Plant based seasonings are also rare, but available more often as the risk of losing control of the crop is greatly diminished.
Someone, somewhere, has in fact managed to set up a way to form alcohol from Mushrooms.
In terms of technology, Canal City is the most advanced in terms of overall development, sporting a roughly 1910’s european level of technology including some basic use of electricity, running water through both gravity-fed aquaducts and pumping infrastucture, working sanitation, and there’s even the latest advancement of an elevator being shown as a technological marval. Power is produced via hydroelectic and geothermal means, although the latter is mostly imported via long cable from Basalt City.
Scrap Town, while lacking the understanding of what they possess, is a hodgepodge of technological scavenging taken from Mystery Dungeons and the oddly vertical cave system that earned the moniker. While more advanced technology is available, very few understand it, and those that can repair it are fewer still, leading to a lot of broken scrap when something fails to function after a time. This a little more post-modern of the mid-2010s America.
Oil is unavailable, but Mushrooms have been able to bring up the slack for some oil-based materials such as plastic. The dominant fossil fuel entering mainstream use is old fashioned coal.
Main Settlements #
There are three primary settlements in the game, with a number of smaller locations strewn between them.
Canal City #
“The Original City”, “The Bread Basket”, “The City of Legends”. Canal City is called many things depending on who you ask, and is both the oldest current city and the original place where pokemorphs once came to the underground. It is a fairly strict class-based heirachy with nobles at the top determining laws, a mercantil and judicator class that handle city affairs and trading, a working and trade class, and an underclass of dispossessed workers. Canal City is also the main source of water and food for all three main settlements, making money on the sale of these vital goods either above or below board.
It is also the largest cave in the underground, with Canal City proper taking up only a fraction of the cave’s space - providing amble space for fields for food growing or quite ‘countryside’-esque relaxing walks.
More information on Canal City can be found in the Canal City Details.
Scrap Town #
Scrap Town was where the failed rebellion against the Canal City Nobility ended up, after searching through a suitable place to set up shop in the underground. A much smaller cave in terms of floor acreage, the city makes up for it with extreme verticality. The upper roof is simiarly lined with Sunstones, but the height of the buildings that make up the city prevent even that dim light from reaching the ground level in most places.
The entire city is built out of the remains of some ancient building structures, made of concrete and steel, with wires and pipes still embedded in intact walls and more recently, run slap shod as expansions. One of the city’s strengths lies in a mysterious but fully independent electrical power supply that allows for artifacts and ancient techology to proliferate widely, even if no one can explain how it works or what to do if it ever breaks.
Socially, Scrap Town can be best likened to a Pirate City - both individual strength and the size of one’s gang provides for safety and security in the heirarchy here, and the only place to try to escape from this would be the underground tunnels where those that cannot compete or are not of worth to the gang leadership live.
Basalt City #
Basalt City started as an offshoot colonization project from Canal City, originally financed by nobles that were looking to expand their influence. What they found, was a large cavern with easy access to underground magma rivers and enough high temperature metals in the walls to harness this heat energy to create geothermal power plants. Since then, Basalt City has slowly grown into it’s own independance while still having extremely tight relationships with the Canal City Nobility.
As industry has taken root in Canal City, Basalt City found a new use for the magma flows to sequestor pollution, and gets paid a tidy sum from both Canal City and Scrap Town in terms of getting rid of the worst kind of garbage they can’t figure out how to handle on their own. This has had a particular effect in concentrating the poisonous polluting effects in the city, making the whole cavern toxic outside of carefully filtered and maintained thoroughfares and buildings.
This also makes Basalt City a prime location for cladenstine meetings, as any surprise would have to breach the environmental protection after dealing with passive poison that has accumulated.
Factions #
The primary factions of the underground are the Canal City Nobility, the Scrap Town Rogues, The Guild, and The Mercenaries. While most pokemorphs are just trying to live their lives as they are, these factions rub against one another and form the main political forces.
Canal City Nobles #
They are better then the rest, and trace their lineage back to the original pokemorphs. Their main drive is control, and safe growth of the population. They believe in peace, but only their peace. It doesn’t help matters that not all noble families are as altruistic as they tend to seem from the outside, and some can be downright dismissive of anyone not from the deepest of bloods.
The Scrap Town Rogues #
Originally a rebellion group agains the Canal City Nobles, “The Rogues” function as a loose assortment of gangs that run the power structure of Scrap Town. With a ‘might makes right’ approach to governance, and personal responsibility and codes of ethics being at the forefront, they often times just appear to be a group of disorganized gangs masquerading as poltics. This i far from the truth, as only gang leaders that can learn to work together last for very long.
The Guild #
The Guild does missions requested by citizens for a price. Missions can include general labour, although most of them involve either saving/protecting a citizen or missions involving business in mystery dungeons. Individuals and teams are free to select missions as they please, but they must meet a monthly quota. Missions involving guild matters are always available if the right job isn’t available for a Pokemorph.
They have an entrance exam system that can be difficult, but recruitment guarantees food and shelter, making joining the guild very lucrative.
The guild is very popular with the common Pokemorph. Elite Pokemorphs wish to influence the guild to benefit their own affairs, often to little success. Despite this, the guild is funded by many of the more benevolent elites, many common Pokemorphs, a fee applied to income per mission, and the governments.
The guildmaster is a more symbolic position and is predominantly occupied with promoting the guild to potential funders. The deputy guildmaster is otherwise the practical leader of the guild, overseeing all administrative affairs.
They have a (fairly openly known) secret agenda of discovering the surface, which is otherwise a myth. They believe it is the only permanent solution for peace.
Independent Mercenaries #
There are Pokemorphs that will work for both Rogues and the Guild but are loyal to neither: independent mercenaries. Both the Guild and Rogue-morphs will sometimes hire them for more dangerous missions where extra manpower, although they don’t enjoy the literal benefits of being a full-time Guild employee nor favour for working for an influential crimelord, and both sides often have disdainful opinions of mercenaries.
There’s a few reasons some choose to work for both sides. Some find it the most reliable way to support oneself, or are out of options yet can’t embrace the guild or rogue morphs for one reason or the other. Independent Mercenaries are legally considered rogue morphs in Canal City but this is hardly enforced, as mercenaries rarely share the actual philosophy of Rogue Morphs.
(OOC Note: playing an independent mercenary character means you’ll have access to plot scenes for both Rogue-morphs and the Guild without requiring you to make two separate characters, although it is suggested you create two characters)
Mystery Dungeons #
Mystery Dungeons are unique distortions of space and time. Their geometries inside are very maze-like and confusing and changes every two weeks. They also drain the energy of those who enter them, causing them to go hungry faster than usual. However, most missions do not require Pokemorphs to go beyond the first 25% of the dungeon and it is very rare for Pokemorphs to reach the end of dungeons.
You can escape a dungeon by reaching the end of it, in which case an exit to the entrance will be found, or by backtracking out. However, unlike the games, Pokemorphs can not automatically escape after completing a mission, and no known mobile teleportation tools in the vein of escape orbs are known to exist.
Feral Pokemon appear in dungeons, which species depending on the location. They are deranged and usually violent. It is unknown what happens if one is brought outside a dungeon.
Items and the currency of the world, poke, can also be found in dungeons whenever a room is entered by anyone, although new items don’t seem to spawn for individuals until two days have passed. Most berries and seeds from the mainline games can be found as mushroom and spores respectively. TMs, wands, and orbs are considered human artifacts, and are currently disallowed to be used by the guild.
Human Artifacts #
Sometimes found in the depths of Mystery Dungeons or deep in uncharted caves, human artifacts can be discovered. Said artifacts can range from items slightly more advanced than current technology to bizarre and potentially dangerous equipment still in operation to junk. Human ruins can also be found left behind in the underground, some waiting to be discovered.
Human artifacts are incredibly taboo to the vast majority of Pokemorphs save for Rogue Pokemorphs. It is believed human “dark magic” is responsible for why Pokemorphs live underground, and there is a great fear that messing with human artifacts could lead to a calamity. Both cities outlaw any interaction with human magic, which has been punishable by death in the past.
However, cities look the other way on guild research into humans, believing it’s necessary to stay competitive with Rogue Morphs.
The Surface #
Many legends about the surface exist, many claiming about vast space, plentiful light, and bountiful food. These legends are often told as fairy tales, and many don’t believe it exists, although there is scant evidence it exists.