#also i almost wrote ''when he's not showing everyone his cradily'' but it sounded SUPER sus

[im-captain-basch]

Enki, your rock-type gym leader for the Pokemon Trainer AU

I would have had him drawn far earlier on if I'd been more confident.

Enki has two loves: fossil pokemon, and being able to show people how cool revived fossil pokemon are. Oh, and history and archaeology, he supposes. Nacrene City's resident eccentric rock expert rightly also has an abundance of knowledge about the Unova region, and is willing to tell anyone whatever they may want to know in much more detail than they might care for. It's believed he tries to impart on trainers the knowledge that, if trained correctly, any pokemon has the ability to be powerful in their own rights... at least, that's what people assume he's trying to get accros.

Enki is a native Unovan but also has heritage from Paldea and Alola. If you see him in the Nacrene City Museum and he's not showing everyone his archeops, it's not uncommon to find him explaining history to young children.

His team consists of:

Sealie (Cradily, female, Impish nature)

Selen (Lunatone, Relaxed nature)

Helio (Solrock, Serious nature)

Ignus (Crustle, male, Mild nature)

Ateria (Archeops, female, Sassy nature)

Quartz (Gigalith, female, Jolly nature)

Some additional fun facts:

-There are several characters that can be his trainer basis, but the most notable ones are Gym Leader Lenora and the Fossil Maniac trainer class. His outfit is both a rough estimate of what I figure an archaeology-core aesthetic outfit would look like as well as Rick O'Connell from The Mummy.

-In case the name doesn't give it away: Enki is supposed to be Inka-Dinka-Doo from the DKC cartoon. His name here is derived from Enkidu, a figure of legend in The Epic of Gilgamesh, who from my research is one of his name inspirations for the show as well. (I could be wrong; feel free to correct me if I am.)

-Enki was almost part of the Elite 4, fitting into the theme of it due to how many of the mishaps in the cartoon could have been avoided if Inka had just explained himself. I couldn't decide for myself who of the two characters it should have been, so the final member was chosen through Twitter poll by their typing. Rock lost.

-Unlike a few other characters I have and will be introducing at some point, I actually have had a rough non-statue form for Inka since the dawn of time pretty much. All I really did between his current gijinka design and this one other than the clothes is shorten his hair.

-Although history and fossils are his chief loves, he's also quite fond of board games and has a massive collection of them. His favorite is a copy of the very first edition of Trivial Pursuit.

-Someone once brought an oddly-shapped rock into the museum to see what kind it was as they were having trouble identifying it. Enki took it, licked it, and properly identified it as a fragment of a Rare Bone.

-He and Skurvy once fist-fought in a fast food restaurant's parking lot at 2 am over whether rock-types or water-types were better. It ended in a draw. They didn't even order anything.