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horizonandstar · 2 years ago

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okok so! heres the entirety of the pmd au plot that ive got planned! got a bit carried away and tried to communicate across certain scenes that i had in mind

i should probably start off by saying that the setting is in pmd explorers, but way in the future. there are slight references to a human hero but they're all off-hand comments

it starts off with the mc being an absol and a bit of expository dialogue: what they're about to do, why, and a slight bit of backstory

I pace around the entrance to the mystery dungeon. Concealed Ruins, they called it; there's *danger* beneath. Of course there is, they all said, a mystery dungeon is never without danger.

But this is different. I feel it beneath my paws, lurking underground.

The locals will laugh me out if I tell them to evacuate. They've seen me, the absol with too keen a sense of disaster. I don't sense disasters, I sense mishaps. A child losing their toy, an argument happening on the other side of town, I sense it all.

And they're sick of me trying to help.

"I'm not an explorer, or a rescuer." I pace around the cave's entrance, stalling for a bit more time.

"I have no reason to be here. It's not my first time in a mystery dungeon--" I like to travel, and walking my way in and out of these dungeons has become secondhand-- "but... I need to gather evidence. There's a disaster waiting to happen, and nobody will take me seriously if I don't bring back proof."

so you play the game, and there's probably like a few tutorials just in case this is someone's first pmd game. eventually you get all the way to the bottom/a certain floor, where you fight a whismur boss fight

there's dialogue if you lose LOL. you get ejected all the way back to outside of the dungeon, where absol expresses frustration and notes that the disaster is still present, so they go back in

any further defeats will have the same line of dialogue where absol says something along the line of: "Still there...", in reference to the disaster, and goes back in the dungeon again

after winning that fight, a sort of cave in happens as rocks start falling, and absol runs away to not get crushed. it also opens up a completely new section of the mystery dungeon, and that is where we meet eclipse!

The sense of disaster overwhelms me. It's in the air, choking the air out from my lungs. I can't pinpoint it, it's everywhere all around me. I'm in the heart of the disaster waiting to happen.

A pokemon! They're hurt, and who knows how long they've been here. It's not safe to be incapacitated in mystery dungeons, and it's especially not safe here with the disaster-to-be.

"Hey," I poke them with a paw. They don't stir, and I try again. "Wake up! It's not safe here."

I don't know what pokemon they are. A small, quadrupel furred pokemon, lying on the rocky ground. They don't weigh enough for me to struggle holding them by their scruff, and I turn tail, seeking a way out. They need medical attention as soon as possible.

eclipse wakes up really soon after being found by absol, or he wakes up after doing like 1-2 floors. after the 2 of them interacting, they team up to leave the dungeon. this is when eclipse gets added to the team, and the player first plays with 2 pokemon in a team

in my notes, i did entertain the idea of a mini boss fight with eclipse. hes just immediately aggressive upon waking up, and with the type and level advantage, it should be an easy enough to win against eclipse. regardless of whether you win or lose, the game proceeds as normal, only with a few changed lines of dialogue

My small passenger begins to stir. I set them down gently on the floor, and brace myself for any eventual panic. They open their eyes, taking in their surroundings. Their fur stands on end, defensive, as I see them realize where they are.

I quietly wince when I feel the full force of their panic.

"You're awake." I keep my distance. "Do you know why you were here?"

They startle. Yellow eyes stare at me in confusion. "Who are you?" they growl.

It's important to stay calm and collected, especially in situations like these. Yet even after all these years, I'm not used to wading through the panic of others to ground myself. I feel the need to bolt, run away and never look back.

"I'm Absol," I say, "What pokemon are you? I've never someone like you before."

That seems to abate some of their panic. They blink incredulously at you, then look down at their paws. They look back up at you. "Is this some sort of joke? What happened to my body?"

That... was not the expected response. "Are you not a pokemon?"

The presence of a human-turned-pokemon would certainly explain the disaster sense that seems to follow them. I hadn't been expecting a human hero, but history repeats itself; the appearance of heroes like this always prelude a great disaster.

"No," they respond.

I feel both my own panic and elation. I wasn't *wrong*, there really was about to be a disaster! But it's a disaster I have to help the human solve, and I'm just about an awful companion to take with on a world-changing adventure.

Then their next words has me freezing.

"I'm an animatronic. A robot," they clarify.

Animatronic isn't a word I'm familiar with, but robot is.

This is unprecedented, and I don't know what's going to happen.

History didn't teach me this.

aaaand then they leave the cave, absol insists on getting eclipse to a medic, and then the day's over!

eclipse stays with absol because he has nowhere to go, and absol tries their best to get him accustomed to life as a pokemon

i did add name lore, which is that pokemon only use their personal names with people theyre close to. its not rare for some pokemon to want others to call them by their personal name, but everyone defaults to species name

which is why eclipse has to tell a lot of people that he has no idea what he is, and that he goes by his personal name in public

absol... im not sure? theres several choices i could let the player choose, but i think what i wouldve defaulted to is that everyone uses the player's chosen name for absol. i think i wouldve also allowed ths option of only having eclipse use their name, or that everyone calls them absol

absol and eclipse do jobs from the bulletin board, like in pmd rescue team. cutscenes after every day complete is just the 2 of them talking about eclipse's situation, what the pokemon world is like, and absol telling him why they were in the dungeon and the whole disaster thing they sensed

absol also explains that the disaster they sense seem to follow eclipse as well as appearing in that little cave they found him in, so there's 2 areas of disaster that they sense. they can't tell if those 2 are connected, or if it's just coincidence

either way, not a good sign for eclipse to be followed by that

"I'm an absol," I say, "We're a species known for sensing disasters before they happen. Our sudden appearance is usually a bad omen."

"And your name is Absol."

I hear the hidden question. "Not quite. You lived in a time where the people there were either humans or robots, and you tell each other apart with your own unique name.

"Here, there are many species of pokemon that knowing someome's name is often unneccessary. We introduce ourself as our species. People call me Absol, because that is what I am.

"Calling someone by their name can come across as... what's the word? Intimate, but not quite. You wouldn't hear scandalous rumours over the use of a name. Oh! I got the word. It can come across as too friendly, or too personal, if you use someone's name. It tends to be reserved for close friends and family.

"Of course, there's pokemon out there who would rather use their name than be called by their species. You would be one of them, though not by choice."

Eclipse nods. He's a pokemon--*robot* of little words, as I've come to find out.

"Is that correct?" I ask meekly, "The part where humans only use names for each other. None of you went around calling someone Human, did you?"

"We didn't," he confirms.

You've got about a million more questions to ask him. The era of humans and the species itself are so under-documented that their existence used to be a simple myth. You don't even know what they look like, let alone have any sort of clue to go off on. It's not like anyone asked a human-turned hero about it and wrote it down for posterity.

But you keep your mouth shut. You don't want to scare him away with your relentless questions, and you don't want to talk all over him and leave no room for him to speak either.

eventually, absol gets used to the looming sense of disaster following eclipse and sometimes uses it to know where he is

until they find that same sense of disaster isn't following eclipse anymore, it's everywhere

they can't pinpoint its location at all, and it makes them noticeably more nervous than usual

eventually, during one of the jobs theyre doing from the bulletin board, they somehow come across this little deino (hihi! anyone remember that post i made asking for people's favourite pokemon? they wouldve been in the guild or as a citizen of treasure town) and rescue and escort the deino back home

except it turns out the deino is the little sibling of someone who works at wigglytuff's guild (it's still here in the future), and absol and eclipse get the opportunity to do a test and see if they get to join the guild

the test would be going through a dojo. no matter if you win or fail, you still join the guild, because the overseers still deemed it good enough, but failing nets you less rewards. a speedrun strat for this would to just die on the first floor tbh

yay! now they're in the guild as an official rescue team! wigglytuff guild these days support both rescue and exploration teams, though the latter don't tend to be present in the guild and instead are someplace far off

guild members i had:

guildmaster altaria

idk what chatot's role is called, but it's filled by pachirisu now

chimecho's team services are provided by chinchou

croagunk's swap services is run by litwick

their treasurer and accountant is a hydreigon named sasuke. because i was making a sasuke from accounting joke. this is deino's older sibling!

the cook is a ditto, who is actually my favourite oc but imported! we all know them from thatls as the doctor though. they also clean and everything by transforming into a mincinno

dugtrio's job of updating job postings is done by linoone. gotta go fast

and then i had 2 rescue teams working in the guild!

team daybreak, with espeon and typhlosion. it's my pmd1 hero and partner, except i removed the whole human aspect

team bird, with torchic, piplup, and rowlet. hehe birb

and i had 3 non-guild teams too. 1 is my pmd:eos team, another was just. ingo and emmet. and the last was an eevee and vulpix team after someone commented that they like eevee and vulpix!

except for victini, every suggested pokemon is a citizen of treasure town. banette works at the bank though

anyways. HI. i remember when i saw victini in the replies and started SWEATING like. HELLO. I WAS ALREADY PLANNING TO ADD VICTINI. THE VICTINI IS PLOT IMPORTANT

so eventually. actually, heres a screenshot of my notes from the docs

i wasnt entirely too sure on what happened around this part! i had plans for absol and eclipse to meet azelf, mesprit, and uxie in that order + any other pokemon that might come in between those meetings

OH YEAH as all of this is happening, the guild gets reports of mystery dungeons becoming even more dangerous

meeting with azelf is unhelpful. after a boss fight, idk they didnt appreciate being woken up or something, they more or less cant give any info to help with absol's disaster problem or with eclipse's zorua body situation. just went "ive got respect for your willpower to go thru all this bs to reach me"

eventually, the guild gets the report that people are becoming feral and/or impulsive in a murder-y way. they just try to maul others

mesprit also attacks absol and eclipse immediately, because they were instantly freaked out by absol and eclipses emotions. thats what they believe, and what they tell to absol and eclipse, but its not the full truth

it is partly the intensity of the emotions, which seems to enough to freak out a being of emotion like them. but its also partly the source of the intensifier

[trombone noise] yeah did we figure it out now! its peepaw willy's fucked up purple virus, but so much time has passed that peepaw has passed on for real this time, and only the virus (and eclipse) is what remains in that burned down building

not only is it an emotion intensifier, it also makes people feral! the infected have a hard time staying lucid, is what i think the word is. when you space out really hard and its hard to think, but you still react to whatever's going on around you even if you're not aware, and you also have no idea you're in this state because you're not aware of anything and you can't really think at all

eclipse is resistant to the virus because it's not his first rodeo with this fucking thing. he still has his moments but he keeps it together pretty well

this then leads to uxie's encounter, who also has a boss fight because at that point uxie does NOT want those fucking things coming nearby

after defeating uxie's illusion, they use another illusion to talk with absol and eclipse

absol gets confirmation with the whole disaster thing: it is, in fact, the virus. they also get to learn that the source was from the area they found eclipse in, and excluding eclipse, they were patient zero

uxie does point them in the direction of a cure for this though

and then along the way, absol tries to murder eclipse. now its a boss fight! the player plays as eclipse, who now fights against the absol you built. the difficulty scales with how beefy you made their moveset and stats

assuming you didn't change absol's moveset to crapshit beforehand, this bossfight is meant to be fairly hard since eclipse has a dark type weakness to absol's stab moves

even after winning the fight, eclipse still brings absol with him on the journey to get to the cure because they need it

eventually, they meet the cure along the path to shaymin village: victini

after some dialogue from victini, the screen will do that flashing thing that happens before every boss battle, but then eclipse interrupts it, so there's no actual boss battle, just a fakeout

"WAIT!"

Victini pauses at his yell, the fire in their palms going out.

"My friend needs help," he glances behind him, at Absol. "They're sick. You have the cure."

"Let me look at them," Victini flutters over on tiny wings.

Absol snaps their jaws at Victini once they get close, hackles raised.

"It's okay," he presses his forehead against their arm. They relax against him. "Victini is here to help."

With Eclipse's help, Absol remains calm enough for Victini to get within arm's distance.

Victini holds Absol's face with both of their hands.

And their arms lights up.

And they set Absol on fire.

Eclipse pounces at Victini, but they fly up and around, standing on Absol's back.

"STOP!" Victini yells, "*This* is the cure you're looking for: I burn it out of them. If you break my concentration, I'll burn all of them to ashes."

yippee absol is back to normal and virus free

in my notes, absol was actually planned to stay virus infected like that for longer, and eclipse would temporarily partner up with a shaymin that they rescued before, which was a draft that i forgot to delete. originally, i was bouncing ideas around fof early game, and at some point it was shaymin instead of deino that they would rescue

however i don't like that idea anymore so absol gets virus cured now

the 2 of them learn that victini is very burnt out (pun not intended) from being a one man cure. victini wants to find a way to be able to easily give everyone their victory fire to cure everyone

so now its up to absol and eclipse to find a way to somehow store that fire. so they go back to the very first dungeon to loot the burned down remains of the pizzaplex

theres still missions and stuff to do, but its given by a shaymin instead since their base of operations is at the shaymin village instead of the guild

apparently there was going to be a bossfight with lugia or palkia. mainly to show that even legendaries are frenzied now. lugia was kind of a random pick, i think i chose it due to its psychic typing, but palkia's reasoning was that it could sense that eclipse is displaced in space and wants to send him back

yaaay and then they find a way somehow and distribute the cure. victini takes a giant break after all of this is done

i also had minor planned post game content. if you continue your save file, you see a few changes

the first is some missing pokemon from the guild and town. theyre just. dead. pachirisu is the guildmaster now

and then theres some sort of mini quest to recruit victini, that starts off with an invitation from victini to come to the shaymin village

there's also a manaphy-like plot where absol and eclipse look after this random child they found. the child is a cosmog they randomly found from a portal, so now they have to take care of this thing. at the end, you get to choose whether it evolved into solgaleo or lunala

and thats it! thats the entire planned plot of the pmd au!

thanks for reading all this way!

heres a little bonus of how far i got into drawing eclipse's portraits. god bless the people (credited in the sprite repository as baronessfaron and Emboarger) who drew the original zorua default portrait because i drew over that

oh that is tinier than i thought

i also had some leftovers in my notes back when i originally planned for the partner to be both sun and moon! however, i wasn't sure how to implement changing between the 2 in dungeons or even what the conditions should be for the switch, or if i really wanted a 3 pokemon team, so i just went with eclipse

oh yeahhh anyone want to hear about the plans i had for the pmd au now that im pretty sure im not going to make it because the thought of finishing and releasing the game made me panic too much

#atf au #i queue this post. because i finished writing this at such an awful time

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