Draco: Little bit of trivia for you guys. I seriously considered trying to have the Warriors in the Forsaken Lands speaking in Yordan. Er... as in, the runic language of Yorda (and her mother) from ICO. Which is Japanese that has been romanized and reversed, and then either (if I wanted to be #PaintingTheMedium because this is a written work) had about at third of its characters removed, most of them vowels, and been randomly spaced, or (if I gave my readers priority) worked out audibly and then typed phonetically so that you guys can read it properly. Like, for example, Goodbye in Yordan is spelled ARN OYS and pronounced aranoies, which is sayonara reversed and altered.

Still haven't figured out if nonomori follows the same rules or they pulled that one out of thin air because they just wanted something a little more flowery for You Were There.

I didn't cop out because of how much work it was gonna be. I copped out because, unlike ICO, I'm not gonna be providing translations*. The language isn't important. The language barrier - the fact that the Ranseans don't understand them - is the important part. But if you guys wanna know what the Warriors are saying, there's nothing stopping you from translating it yourselves (and you can PM me for confirmation). I can't ask you guys to try and translate Yordan manually. That would just be cruel. So instead, I took a language that is legally 'dead', and available on any online translator. I'm not gonna say which.

*If you've only played the original North American PS2 release, I pity you very much for your misfortune and strongly suggest you get the PS3 remaster.

Pokémon and protagonist © Nintendo. Character designs © Koei. Ransei © somewhere in the middle.


Ultra Kingdom - Forsaken Lands: Unknown Warriors

"Dixi prope maneat."

The words of the woman with the crossbow were accompanied by a beckoning motion, prompting Oichi to realize she was gradually falling a bit behind; she quickly closed the distance, Okuni and Gracia doing the same. The healer had insisted her companions not try to fight the Warriors they'd met on the snowy mountain; after some conversation in their language, they seemed to have decided to take the girls with them. The procession had the escorts at the fore, then the Ranseans, their Pokémon, and those of their escorts.

As they drew closer to the ravine, it became clear their trajectory would take them past it; in doing so, another pair of women with unfamiliar Pokémon approached... leading Mitsunari, Kiyomasa, Masanori, Bisharp, Haxorus, and Krookodile. The two parties intersected; as the escorts conversed, Oichi turned to the troublemakers and found Masanori looking heavily bruised. "What happened to you?"

"He tried to attack the one with the naginata," Mitsunari snarked, "what do you think happened to him?"

Okuni shook her head. "You didn't tell him to come quietly?"

"We did," Kiyomasa insisted. "But he didn't listen."

Gracia scoffed. "Not very clever," she told Masanori.

"Shud ub," Masanori muttered.

"Per veni nunc," the shield-bearer instructed, beckoning for them to follow again - and the procession resumed.

The sun was coming down by the time they neared their destination - Oichi quickly realized that deciding not to aggravate the towering Exeggutor atop the ravine meant she had failed to properly observe this place from a high vantage point, because there was a castle sitting behind the ravine, surrounded by rock. Another Warrior was approaching the castle ahead of them - and she was escorting Ranmaru and Kotarō, her Pokémon keeping an eye on Lucario and Zoroark.

The entourage's approach drew her attention; she looked relieved to see the other Warriors, and as they drew near the man with the claymore approached her. "Esne bene?"

"Bene sum," the woman replied assuringly. "Sed hoc est quod fecit territis ostentat." She beckoned to Kotarō with her katana.

"What did you do?" Oichi demanded.

"You said I couldn't bring my new Link back to Ransei," Kotarō retorted, "so I released him from it."

The woman with the rapier sheathed her weapon with a smirk. "Tibi vibretur missile furca iterum?"

That got a blush from Ranmaru's escort. "T-Tace." Her tone made it hard for Oichi to believe she'd said anything that wasn't along the lines of "Shut up."

Ranmaru shook his head. "Why are there Warriors in this place?" he wondered.

"Aaand now you don't get to mock me about the Dark-type Zigzagoon," Oichi insisted.

The woman with the naginata cleared her throat audibly, getting their attention. "Per veni nunc," she insisted, beckoning for the Ranseans to follow them inside.

As they stepped in, everyone came to an abrupt halt. It was one thing to have environment analogous to the places in Ransei where wild Pokémon gathered - it was another entirely to have this place, which hadn't seemed terribly familiar from the exterior but was unmistakeable from the inside.

"This is a Ransean castle," Okuni exclaimed.

"More than that," Gracia insisted. "It looks like the one from the Guzzlord's world."

Kotarō glanced around. "This layout... you're right. What in Distortion...?"

With a sigh, the woman with the katana sheathed her sword. "Ibo ut Nagamasa Dominus," she told the others. Then, turning to her Pokémon; "Sustinete hic et vigilate eos." As her Link nodded, she started off, leaving the other Warriors to turn their attention on the Ranseans.

Oichi took a deep breath, hoping to try and figure out how to communicate with these Warriors. "Um... You guys have any ideas on how to-?"

"Nothing," Ranmaru insisted.

"You could... try charades," Gracia suggested warily.

"That leaves way too much room for misinterpretation," Okuni observed, "and with the language barrier there's no way to confirm things."

"What about drawing pictures?" Gracia asked.

Ranmaru hummed. "That... could work. If we're careful..."

"Excuse me," Oichi prompted, drawing the Warriors' attention. "Um..." Hooking her staff in the crook of her arm, she raised a hand before her and poised the other like she was holding a pen, making a scribbling motion.

The woman with the crossbow nodded. "Hic opperiri."

She departed quickly, coming back in short order with a large stack of paper and a few pens. Oichi accepted them gratefully, making a short bow with a muttering of "Thank you." The floor in this entrance hall was carpeted; the shield-bearer set his battle plate down to serve as a writing surface, and Oichi knelt down, set a sheet against it, and grabbed one of the pens.

Okuni stopped her. "With respect, Lady Oichi," she prompted, "I'm not a hundred percent sure you can draw well enough to make that work."

"...Fine, then," Oichi muttered, not totally appreciating Okuni's judgement but not disagreeing either. She handed Okuni the pen. "See if you can ask them what they plan to do to us."

With a nod, Okuni started drawing; she wasn't being super-detailed, but when she was finished, the figure that she had drawn was recognizably herself. She surrounded it with question marks and handed it to the woman with the naginata.

The Warriors all looked over the drawing before turning to her with expressions of confusion.

"It doesn't matter how well you draw if you're not making your point clear," Gracia reprimanded. "Like..."

She reached up and grabbed the drawing back, picking up another pen and drawing arrows going through the question marks. At the end of one, she drew a generic humanoid figure holding a parasol behind the bars of a cage; at another, two such figures had swords crossed; at a third, the figure with the parasol was walking out a door. After a moment, she glanced at Oichi, who nodded warily; then, at the end of a fourth arrow, she drew the figure with the parasol having its head cut off with an axe.

As she handed the drawing to the Warriors again, Oichi turned to Kotarō. "If they try to execute us, you have my permission to get violent."

"Ha..."

The Warriors recoiled at the image; the woman with the rapier knelt and seized a pen before setting the drawing down. Oichi breathed a sigh of relief when she drew an X over the beheaded figure, then scribbled over it furiously.

"Don't get my hopes up like that," Kotarō reprimanded.

Arrows were drawn to point the cage, crossed-swords, and departure to the same point; then the Warrior drew a shape like a classic crown, as one might use to denote king or queen on a two-dimensional chess board.

"They answer to a Warlord," Gracia realized. "They're waiting for his judgement.

Okuni glanced up at the Warriors for a moment. "Not quite Ransean, then," she mused. "You're only supposed to defend a castle with six Warriors."

"This world seems to end without room for any other kingdoms," Ranmaru argued, "I don't think Warrior's honour is a priority."

"Fair."

After a moment, the shield's owner picked up another sheet of paper and took the pen from the naginata carrier. He drew a few quick shapes that Oichi realized were her staff, Okuni's parasol, Mitsunari's fan, Masanori's kanabo, and Kiyomasa's scythe-spear. Then he drew a vague twisting shape, upon which he drew what were more recognizably a mountain and cave, and what might have been a floating rock. He encircled the weapons and drew an arrow pointing them to the area he'd drawn before writing a question mark over the arrow.

"He's asking how we got here," Ranmaru observed as the Warrior turned the image towards them.

Oichi turned to Okuni. "Draw the gate."

Okuni moved the paper towards herself, drawing two nested circles and joining them with a rounded grid before having the grid lines grow jagged as they extended past the outermost ring; then she drew an arrow pointing the gate towards the weapons.

The Warriors regarded the image for a moment and started.

"They recognize it?" Ranmaru realized.

Footsteps from nearby drew everyone's attention; the Warrior with the katana had returned, and following her was a man dressed in a long jacket of deep red, wearing a headband. On the fore of the headband was a strange shape; it looked like someone had tried to give a stylized sun the arc of a crescent moon. On seeing the Ranseans standing there, he started; Oichi, Okuni, and Gracia got to their feet as he turned to the Warrior who had fetched him. "Vos sunt non ludens loqui."

"Nagamasa Dominus!" The man with the claymore seized the drawing and approached the newcomer - who Oichi suspected was the Warlord. "Nos sunt communicando cum imaginibus."

He handed the the Warlord the image; the Warlord regarded it for a moment and gasped. "Per Caecos Unus..."

Oichi cleared her throat audibly to get the Warriors' attention; the Warlord turned to them, lowering the drawing. The woman with the crossbow spoke; "Non intellego linguam nostram. Et quod loqui linguis sit nescimus."

The Warlord nodded, stepping towards the shield and kneeling down. He seized a paper and drew a crown, surrounding it with question marks before turning it towards them. "Dux quis est in vobis?" he asked, tapping the crown.

"He's asking which of us is the Warlord," Kotarō observed.

"That would be you," Okuni observed, beckoning to Oichi.

The castle's Warlord got to his feet. "Veni mecum." He held a hand towards her.

"He wants me to go with him," Oichi mused. She nodded to him "Alright."

Gracia grabbed her arm. "Wait," she insisted. "I want to come, too."

"Why?"

The Nixtormer dropped her voice to a whisper. "He knows about the gate. Maybe he knows about the Cosmog too. If he knows what to do about the Cosmoem, I want to be there."

"...Okay, fair enough." Oichi turned to the others. "Stay here," she instructed. "See if you can't ask them what their Pokémon are called."

+x+x+x+

The Warlord led Oichi, Gracia, and Full through the castle - which, as the others had mentioned, was indeed of the same layout as the castle in the Guzzlord's ruin. However, there was a hallway of sorts behind a door that had been blocked off by far too much rubble to be cleared off; it was a rather long hallway, at that.

Eventually, they came to a large door; the Warlord opened it, revealing it led outside. They were contained in the stone formations surrounding the castle, yet Oichi was surprised to see it was surprisingly verdant - and there was a massive pool of water that, on closer inspection, was scattered with seaweed, coral, and barnacles, and bottomed with sand. It was almost as large as the lake at the base of the ravine; the waters nearest the castle were about neck height, and further off, so deep that Oichi couldn't even see the floor of the basin.

"This is... an artificial basin," Oichi realized.

"A what?" Gracia asked.

"It's meant to simulate the environment of the sea," Oichi explained. "A habitat of sorts for oceanic Pokémon that would suffer if they were limited to, like, lakes or something."

"How come we don't have any of these in Ransei?" Gracia asked.

Oichi shook her head. "Because oceanic Pokémon don't appear in Ransei," she insisted, "at least not where anyone is gonna run into them. No one in Ransei spends enough time at sea to seriously consider Linking with that kind of Pokémon. The closest we've got are, like, Lapras - they live in cold water, so they do just as well in Nixtorm as they would at the seafloor."

The Warlord stepped up to the edge of the water and knelt down; then he whistled four notes, in a high-low-high-low pattern. After a long moment, a sound echoed out of the water, playing those same four notes - a Pokémon's cry that Oichi did not recognize. The Warlord smiled, whistling the same pattern again, and that cry emerged again as a figure started to swim closer.

Gracia gasped in astonishment as it got near enough to make out - a small blue Pokémon with a pair of antennae-esque lengths from its head that flowed like hair. It surfaced with a leap, revealing its face - bright golden eyes, with yellow dot markings around each like eyelashes. A red shape was set into its torso, with another yellow dot below it; its rounded arms were longer than its body, yet lacked hands to give it any dexterity.

The Ranseans watched, amazed, as she leapt from the water; the Warlord held out his hands, catching her in her arms with a smile. "Veni, Manaphy."

"Papa!"

"Holy Gratitude..." Oichi covered her mouth with her hands. "That's... the Sea Princess?"

"I can die without regrets now," Gracia murmured, amazed at what she was seeing.

After a moment, the Sea Princess turned towards them. "Who?"

Oichi blinked. "You speak," she gasped. "You... speak our language?"

The Warlord glanced between them. "Vos intelligre?" He smiled, running a hand lightly over her hair. "Tu tamen plena est obrepserit."

The Sea Princess laughed, shaking her head. "Papa! Prohibere!" She turned to the Ranseans, beckoning to herself. "Manaphy."

"Is that your name?" Oichi asked. "Manaphy?"

She nodded. "Papa talk you?"

"He, um, no," Oichi admitted. "He tried, but..."

Manaphy nodded. "Come." She beckoned her close, holding out one arm. "Take."

Oichi blinked. "Take your hand?" She stepped forward, warily closing her fingers on Manaphy's arm. She raised her hand up, and then one of her hair-antennae circled around Oichi's fingers; the Warlord held out his free hand, and the other wrapped around him.

Then the bulbs on the end of each started to glow a faint pink, and the Warlord looked to Oichi. "Can you understand me now?"

"What the...?" Oichi was astonished.

The Warlord laughed. "What other secrets have you been hiding?" he teased Manaphy. It was a weird experience; she heard him speaking his own language, yet her mind understood what he was saying.

"Lady Oichi?" Gracia asked. "Are you understanding him?"

"Gracia, you've gotta see this." She turned to Manaphy. "Um, can you..."

Manaphy nodded. "Three," she assured her. "Hands take." Her hair uncurled from Oichi, and Gracia set her own hand on it as well before Manaphy encircled them both.

"I admit I never expected to have other Warriors come here," the Warlord observed. "My name is Nagamasa."

"I'm Gracia."

"Oichi."

Nagamasa nodded. "If I understood your picture right, you came here by ill fortune, just as we did?"

"Not exactly," Gracia admitted. "It's a lot longer story than- Wait, what do you mean as you did?"

"What is this place, anyways?" Oichi demanded.

"That is..." Nagama sighed. "...That is a very long story."


Draco: This is the first time I've had to write common Pokémon as unidentified. It's so weird.

Yeah, so, blatant self-indulgence with Nagamasa here. The Sea Princess is still absolutely precious to me. Kind of had to be inventive because the player characters are noticeably based on Azai (I mean, noticeable if you know who Azai is), so in order to avoid an #InUniverse #CelebrityParadox I kind of... perverted him into something else, and I apologize.

Ah-ah, ah-ah... Yeah, I seriously went and saw Frozen II twice while it was in theaters. That's never happened to me before. And I'm still not sorry.