Foreword: Some of you may be wondering why this is up again. The short answer is because it was basically notes written by my high self on the heels of inspiration, which of course, decided to strike while I was working. I tried reworking what was there, but I do ramble, so eventually, I decided to scrap the previous one, and make it into an actual story. Because I can. And because it's easier. Enjoy.
Now that's out of the way, I'm only going to say this once, and I'm going to say it bluntly. Leave your religious ties at the door. I drew on numerous real-life examples for this particular group. Some of you may recognize similarities to other groups, or your own.
It doesn't matter. This is a make-believe amalgamation of negative stereotypes in an organization that's gone as wrong as it could possibly go. It's not an attack on [insert real life religion here].
So don't take it as one.
The Arceans
I do not see the point of this.
There was a chuckle. "That's because your omnipotence can't quite grasp mortality. Your perception of everything is fundamentally different from mine. This needs to work…it is Humanity's last, best chance for a comeback that will shake the foundations of the Universe." The human speaking, wearing little more than a plain white robe bound at the waist by a black belt at the moment, heard a sigh to his left.
The 'miniaturized' black and gold form of the true Alpha Pokémon moved his head towards the human to whom he was speaking. Even shrunken to roughly twenty feet high, Arceus still had to sit outside the human's much smaller, much simpler dwelling, and his unsettling red eye took up the entirety of the small, circular window as his calm, but undoubtedly masculine mental tone thundered in his skull.
You are sure? The future is always in motion. Even I cannot predict it with total accuracy…
The man smirked. "Yes, the Time Vortex does tend to…fluctuate…but that hasn't stopped you from trying for the best possible timeline, not just for your creations, but for all life the Universal Spiral spawns. You don't understand what it means to Humanity, to finally know, with certainty, that 'god-like' entities exist. I'm just glad you're a good one. Your kind heart will Not be tainted by my successor. I won't let Humanity be responsible for tainting the Alpha."
Arceus' eye did the godly being's equivalent of a blink, namely, shrinking in size, and then expanding back to normal, just as rapidly as any eyelid. It glanced around the chamber then, and the sky outside brightened as the god found the interior amusing.
It was little more than a circular room, just large enough for everything the human within needed to do. Naturally, he'd kept the aesthetic as simple as black and white, and of course, placed his desk in the middle. There was no place he felt calmer, as it was a balanced room of energy that he had crafted, with this new psychic sight his bond to a god made manifest had granted him. Normal humans might've found casually chatting with such an entity intimidating, but here, he was at peace.
Moreover, he did not fear Arceus, as many had upon seeing their regional Guardians, who were rather often considered deities as well, bow to the Alpha and the human who Held his sphere, the orb humanity collectively knew as the Space-Time Orb. He glanced at it, as he paused in his work. It once more resembled stars in the night sky, surrounded by Arceus' symbol, but when inhabited by the Alpha, it turned gold, and the power of three incredibly strong 'deities' came together, and gave whoever held it the power to change reality as they saw fit, if they were worthy of it. It had, of course, been coveted by greedy humans throughout his life, but upon trying to use it, they had been Purged with pure Light energy. Only one force could combat or realistically control the power of the Space-Time Orb, and that was yet locked away, forcibly keeping reality in some semblance of order.
He knew the time was coming for the orb to once again become separate, and with Arceus on the verge of sleeping to regain his power, as he had to after using so much just to stabilize and populate the Earth with Mew, then create, and in some cases Teleport in, Guardians to defend the hard-won balance of the planet. Without him, nobody would be left to reign in Palkia and Dialga, should they need it. Those Arceus had ordered to defend the planet were indeed mighty, but they were still entirely outclassed by beings who had existed since the creation of the universe as they knew it. Some, like the One Dragon, came close though, as they had already existed for quite a while before being assigned to a region, but when the Alpha gave an order, like guarding a specific region of a specific world, there was only one way they could be freed of their obligation.
He had made sure the League, at least, knew what to do if Time and Space should become unbalanced. The very machine he now worked on was a testament to how much aid he was giving them. With this machine, from the mind of the Creator, and put together by his human, the League would be able to search for another human with the potential to become the Holder of Arceus, and that one, he had foreseen, would lead humanity to the stars.
From there, his Future Sight, aided by the power of a Celebi, had split between two of the most likely outcomes. One, had indeed led to a reunification of their race, but over millennia, he had foreseen that his race would become something truly twisted, once mysticism and chaos took over. In that grim, dark future there was only one realistic outcome for them.
The other reality he had seen, the one he even now worked to try to secure, had seemed more…tolerant, at the very least.
His people would not become obsessed with the eradication of xenomorphs, and humanity might finally manage to leave the universe better than they found it. For once. What would happen after they reconnected with their estranged colonies was muddled by the wibbly-wobbles of the Time Vortex, and he'd known he'd gotten as much from Future Sight as he could. He knew that one would, eventually, come and that they would climb above all other challengers. He foresaw stadiums, and partnerships between humans and the magical offspring of Arceus that, while classified as combat, did not seem deadly, but more akin to sport. That, at least, had been something he successfully set into motion before his time ran out.
The finished machine was a marvel really, and he eyed it with genuine pride as he finished soldering the metallic cylinders to the central machine. The impressively thorough scanning devices, provided by one of the Melmetal helping his race rebuild and expand, would be responsible for quickly determining if the human it was scanning could handle wielding a god's power, without it corrupting them. He had made sure to program the device to easily map out the best path for said candidate, namely what training they would need, to reach the appropriate state of mind necessary to survive mental contact with a force of natural Yang made manifest.
With the newly christened Aura Meter complete, the human finally let out the hacking cough he'd been suppressing for the past few hours. A cold chill ran down his spine as he spied blood on his hand, and mouth. It was, he discovered, rather chilling to see one's own body failing before their eyes. He knew what was happening. He'd already lived over a century longer than he should have, but now the cells in his body were simply unable to replicate, which meant he had been, slowly, wasting away.
Light surrounded him, and he felt his homeostatic balance return, but he could sense it was brief. It got shorter every time, as more of his body succumbed to the limits of naturally formed life. "You need to stop that. Even you cannot stop nature's decay. Not now, at least. Had you gotten me in my twenties, I'd probably be fine. That's another thing, if whoever Holds you next is to achieve what must be achieved, they need to be functionally immortal. I would hope your power would be sufficient to keep things besides mortality from ending them prematurely. Do you think your Storm Crown will do the job?"
The Alpha Pokémon seemed to chuckle, and a Fletchling landed on the back tip of his head, drawn by the warm rumble, and increase of life energy. Said energy appeared to be too much, or from some perspectives, just enough. The tiny bird evolved, chirped its thanks, and then flew onward to do what life did best.
I have formed planets from naught but dust and heat, crafted entire species in the space of my mind, and set into motion a path of Balance for this reality that favors the Light, and the life it brings, despite the ever-encroaching Shadows. My little crown will be able to make one of your fellow humans, as you put it, functionally immortal. Barring atomization, of course.
The human sighed again, wishing not for the first time that he could remain in this gorgeous, ancient cradle of humanity just a bit longer. They had been busy dealing with taming his species' lust for power for most of his two centuries on the Earth. He had started as a boy, by taking down the Norstad region's 'Dark Tyrant', and every city they had managed to build.
They would rebuild eventually of course, but he had no way of knowing that the darkness of the north was not nearly done yet, and had managed to survive his Purge by hiding in the only thing Arceus would never willingly break.
They had left Norstad to fend for itself, though he had heard rumor of Guardians from Kalos heading there regardless, to try to heal the land. He couldn't blame them, as that was what they had been born to do. It was in their nature to heal, destroy, and maintain some semblance of balance in the local ecosystem.
After several years of stopping similar tyrants across the supercontinent, Arceus had doubted that humanity would ever overcome its inherent greed, for he claimed it went to their very core, and only once they moved past that would they become a force for good. His human had refused to give up however, claiming that what people who warred were really after wasn't really death so much as prestige, and being known as the strongest. It was common place in their era for aspiring tamers to bond with a magical creature, and then assert their power by creating or taking over a kingdom. There were, he had argued, other ways to curb greed, by making use of the creatures Arceus had placed to stabilize the ecosystem.
He'd met enough soldiers to know that, given the option, they would gladly avoid killing. Most of the time. Vengeance ran as hot in humanity's blood as it ever had, but what they were lacking was a method by which they could test their strength, and simultaneously curb their blood-lust. Even settling arguments could, in the world he envisioned, be handled by a battle between humans and their bonded partners. Nobody would die, and good feelings would persist. He wished to see such a world, for he'd grown up in one thrown into total chaos with the arrival and meddling of a manifested deity, and his own creations.
The first of the magical creatures had bonded with almost every 'old Earth species' that had survived humanity's poisoning of the world, and even a few who hadn't. The result had been chaotic, though overall positive. Arceus had given his creations the ability to choose whether they wished to aid humanity, or live in peace, and maintain the balance. Whether or not humanity would respect that choice remained to be seen.
They had gone to the continent that now played home to the Dragon Empire early on in their travels, and adopted the idea of pitched battles on a rough field with 'boundaries'. Going outside them didn't mean much though, as many of the dragons atop what the Imperials called Draconis Mons were able to fly. The human and Arceus had decided on this method of fair, honorable pitched combat that would serve as the default for the 'League of Battlers' they wanted to form.
The Guardian of the region, known commonly as the Original Dragon, had traveled far and lived long in his life, bringing balance as only he could to many across the stars, though in more recent times he had taught humans in many regions, before eventually choosing the north western continent as the one he wished to guard. He had quelled the wars, and then taught what he had learned to the people who had patiently awaited his arrival. For all their importance, the land that would play home to the One Dragon had gone without a regional Guardian for quite a while, compared to other places across the globe. None had evidently wished to involve themselves with the squabbling petty kingdoms that kept trying to claim supremacy over everything, and rebuild long dead empires.
The kingdoms in question had evidently sought to emulate governing structures of the past, as they often chose war as the method by which they gained territory. The Dragon had, upon finally arriving, ended the wars, and founded an empire, one of the first the human and his friendly deity visited, and even endorsed.
They had chosen the first of their 'Dragon Emperors' by placing whoever the One Dragon deemed worthy at the top of their power structure. Naturally, they had held 'battles' to decide who had the right to tame the One. They had even met the man who, eventually, had claimed that title. He was definitely a unique personality, with abilities not unlike the ones a bond to Arceus had granted.
They had traveled the world then, from west to east, ending in the Sinnoh region of Japan, where Arceus and his human had decided who would lead the now numerous local Leagues. They had sought out the five strongest Trainers of every region, and had them decide who among them was strong enough to be leader, though instead of killing each other, they were encouraged to accept the loss with humility, and endeavor to become better, while the victors were expected to give pointers, and otherwise be good sports about their victory.
The honorable nature of the League Battles spread like a fire through Japan, a series of islands which, by the might of Arceus himself, had avoided being swallowed by the shifting continental plates and rising oceans. For a reason he had never made clear to his human, he cemented their position on the continental plate with a power only the Alpha fully comprehended. It had seemed strange to his human, as he'd upended areas with similarly low populations without a thought with the Mediterra mountains, but he'd eventually given up trying to decipher the Creator's reasoning. Sometimes, especially when he was balancing planetary forces, it seemed that the Alpha barely even noticed the beings living upon what he was working on, and how they were being affected by his actions.
Ultimately, the Mediterra Mountains had proven to be a good thing for the humans who had either fled west or east. Some had stayed in the mountains, adapting their homes to them, and praising their ore-rich peaks as a gift from the Creator. This kind of devotion to the Alpha had even manifested healing abilities in several humans, who he had also invited to the League. They had declined however, choosing instead to find similar humans with similar powers granted by devotion to Arceus across the globe, and unite them in a peaceful brotherhood of compassion, knowledge, and worship of the Alpha Pokémon, the black and gold being who saved the human race.
Slowly, the entirety of the Earth, and the nations that continued to flourish, grow, and trade in varying quantities of material goods, each adopted a League structure for their pitched combat, as the 'art of the Battle' had, as expected, caught on with great enthusiasm. The desire to see, and be, the strongest in the world had an odd effect, as it had actually united them all in good spirits, and fair competition. That kind of honorable combat appealed to many, who had often lived lives plagued by raiding barbarians, and their own 'magical creatures', but for every region that chose to join the League, there was one who defied them, for whatever reason, and used their partners to attack anyone who entered what they perceived as their territory.
Magical creatures, as they were commonly called, became fast friends with humans when crystalline spheres had been created, thanks in no small part to the Alpha's meddling and some accidental sharing of the basics of dimensional engineering with members of the Dragon Empire who were too clever for their own good. Said spheres were capable of safely, and comfortably, transporting a Battler's Pokémon with them as they toured the other Leagues of the world on journeys to prove that they were the strongest. Many such humans had, naturally, taken to pocketing the spheres, though he had seen a trend rising recently with using belts, or other objects to hold their spheres, and provide other uses as well, from holding up one's pants, to passing as a decent weapon for self-defense.
Over time, many humans of the revitalized kingdoms began to awaken their greed, and desired to grow in size and importance, and once more, despite their efforts at unity, humans all across the globe had begun to war with each other again. As popular as battles had become, there were always those who desired more, and their manifested greed, alongside the varied and primarily crystalline devices used to control the foreign god's creations, made the normally peaceful creations of Arceus into weapons of senseless war. A technique, discovered by one of the stronger battlers they'd met, had become wide-spread across the Earth's supercontinent, and those with greed in their hearts and murder on their minds always had a tool on hand that could use the move that was, in those days, all but unmatched. The Hyper Beam.
Arceus had spent the last fifty years alone, quelling the kingdoms, mainly on the supercontinent of Eurafricasia, in what had been come to be known as the Judgement War. The culmination of which had been a unified, malevolent force dedicated to taking down Arceus, who claimed that the popular, and sometimes admittedly strange or perverted worship of the deity would only lead humanity to ruin once again. The pair of human and Alpha had tried to discourage the more grisly methods of human worship they'd come across, and had usually succeeded. It was hard to manipulate what a god desired when it was manifesting in front of you, and using a human mouthpiece that, often, people underestimated.
The Alpha's final Judgement, which marked the end of the Judgement War, had seen over seventy five percent of the enemy forces eradicated in a merciless hail of fireballs. The dead were in the millions the last he'd checked, but neither wanted to know the true number. It hadn't been a pleasant time for either of them. The Alpha had then ordered the survivors of the attack to return to their families, and they had swiftly agreed.
Stabilizing the supercontinent had taken quite a while for the human bonded to the god, but now, finally, after almost two hundred years of such hard travel and work, he had gathered the strongest Creature Tamers in the world to one place. To avoid another Judgement War, he had been more determined than ever to finalize the League's global infrastructure. They needed to survive the chaos and tumult that would no doubt come from his death. It was inevitable, and he'd known that as soon as they had learned his mortality was, at his age, inevitable.
Being something of a 'Prophet' to those who had flocked en mass to a cult structure based around goodness and blind worship of a higher power, the Church of Arceus, as they called themselves, had gone far in uniting the populace of varying regions. Though he'd heard several unsettling rumors about their conversion tactics, their results could not be ignored. Adherents numbered in the billions, and overall, the organization seemed to, finally, work as a structure to bring people and magical creatures together, under the Alpha, who loved them all.
The aged human finally stood, and the Aura Meter floated into the air beside him, lifted by a yellow psychic aura. The needle on the meter moved to the red as it sensed his potential through the canisters, and he smirked. This would work. He met Arceus' gaze, and the two nodded. Already, his body had begun to fail again, and the Alpha's own power, with that last Judgement, had spent almost all of what remained of his energy. His rest was imminent.
It is time.
They traveled then, for the first time in years, keeping Arceus within the Space-Time Orb. It would begin the process of traveling back to his own dimension, but by doing that, Palkia and Dialga would once more bet set free. That wasn't too concerning though, as they were, from what he remembered, rather kind creatures, if fundamentally different.
The 'Prophet of Arceus', as the cults called him, came out to the small village center. They were located on a massive plateau, raised well over a thousand feet into the air from the spot in the Gohara Desert where his long-lost people had once lived. They were Aura shielded from the intense wind that even then blew sand from below around them in a wild storm. Before a crowd of the strongest battlers, and genuinely good people the Church had provided as representatives, alongside their current 'Bishop', he summoned forth the children from around the world he'd sensed the most latent psychic power within, and tested them on the Aura Meter before the eyes of the League's strongest, and their allies.
That was the only time the divine machine was ever used in the manner for which it had been made, and as expected, it singled out one of their candidates, and deemed the boy's psychic potential to be great. He would be the one to receive the Storm Crown, after proving himself worthy of it of course, through years of study and training, as his predecessor had. Hopefully, it would take effect before his mortal coil dug its claws into his cells. The Prophet spent three days teaching the child the basics of using his psychic powers, which had manifested on their own, when Arceus had touched his mind.
Someday, he had promised, he would use his new powers for good, and unite the world, but before all that could even begin, there was an important decision to make. Once more the battlers had gathered, alongside the Church members, and awaited the Prophet's words. They were all aware of his imminent death, and knew not even the most powerful being humanity had ever encountered could forestall the inevitable chaos it would bring. Mortality was a sobering aspect of reality, and one that the Church would conveniently forget, within a few centuries when they started promising that devotion would equate to immortality.
The old man gave a nod to his contemporaries, and then chuckled at the green-eyed blonde child who had been selected for both sensed potential, and his young age. The Prophet summoned three of his partner's own offspring from the spheres in which they'd been resting. A Snover, a Magby, and a Spheal appeared before the boy, all of whom had been raised amongst their kin in the nearby Mediterra mountains.
The boy picked the Snover, and with that, the torch had finally been passed. He pressed a green capture sphere against the snowy grass type's head, and the bond was sealed with a flash of similarly colored light. With his successor on the start of his own path, the man who had tamed the Alpha felt more sure than ever that humanity would, finally, recover from the depths they'd fallen to.
He passed that very night, after addressing his followers a final time, and beseeching them to be the 'best of humanity' in the days to come. The Bishop had promised to do his best to guide the world as well as he could, as would any true follower of Arceus.
When the last breath of mortal life had left the man's aged body, and his essence shifted to ghost typed energy, his robes flared with golden light, and the Space-Time Orb rose from him. There was no question as to where this human's essence would spend eternity, and he ascended easily, riding the awesome power of the Alpha through the fabric of space and time, to the golden paradise that lay beyond. Those gathered did not need to guess who spoke as the orb pulsed with divine light, and they all immediately fell to both knees in awe as they felt the sheer power of the mind now brushing theirs.
Take me…to that one town…the one in…Sinnoh.
Despite the presence of divine light in the room, there were yet shadows, and from them, the Church's Bishop stepped forward. He was pale skinned, dark haired, but had kind eyes and too many wrinkles for a human yet in his prime. He too wore a simple robe, though his was finer than the Prophet's had been, going as far as having gold embroidery on the sleeves and chest in patterns that resembled Arceus' symbol. Compared to humanity's religious garb of the past, it was simple attire, though like his forebears, he bore the sign of his god proudly on his chest, as it dangled from his neck. The Alpha had no reason to distrust those who bore his very symbol.
Indeed, it was such people who had been so successful in uniting the humans when displays of power and words of wisdom failed to convince. Somehow, the allure of that classic cult structure could get through even the most stubborn of minds. Eventually, a member from each of the League-affiliated regions had been granted a position of authority within the Church, and it was from them a successor would be drawn, should the current Bishop perish.
They were true to their word, and bore the Space-Time Orb halfway across the planet, as the successor began training with his magical creature. They made their way to the town of Alamos, one of the favored places the Alpha had visited, when his Holder yet lived. The people gathered at the behest of the Churchmen who bore the sphere, and as they held it up before them, Arceus appeared.
He was gold and black, and bigger than when they'd last seen him. As his mind began to hibernate, the energy used to keep the Alpha Pokemon's true mass from obliterating the Earth by being this close was fading, rapidly. The orb was not done however. Two intersected circles, made of 'chains' of crystals that were black, and white in their center, surrounded the Space-Time Orb as it once more split in two with a blinding flash, and in the light of the Alpha, those within the separated Space and Time Orbs, which appeared as a diamond-like crystal and a lustrous sphere, once more awakened.
Arceus stared at the two of them, the originals, Palkia and Dialga, as they had been when the universe was young, revitalized by spending so long all but fused to Arceus. Free for the first time in over a century, the gods of Time and Space soared gracefully through the air, stretching each limb, and pausing only thousands of feet above the town, to admire the sheer beauty of the region.
Arceus had made it known to them early on that there was a difference between the creatures they'd all created at one point or another, who served and loved them on instinct, and those the universe had spawned through natural ordering and pure, random chance. The natural beauty, namely planets, always left them in awe, for as much as they knew the power of their Alpha, he had not created any of this, merely set it into motion with the act of creating manifestations of natural forces like Time, Space, and Gravity. While he'd spent most of his existence without meddling in the affairs of the life the chaos around him spewed forth, he had shifted the universe's course with an occasional guiding hoof more than once by contacting the sentient species, and generally, convincing them to calm down and stop killing each other.
The Bishop stepped forward then, and the trio glanced his way as Palkia and Dialga returned to the side of the Alpha. "Mighty Arceus, we wish you a good rest, but a swift one! Humanity will always need you, but until you are ready, we will wait with the patience your human taught us. We will spread his wisdom as far as we can, as he desired, and hopefully…the future you return to will be one as lovely as this very paradise!"
Arceus regarded the land as well, and nodded.
Let my…final command be thus…this garden…shall be for all to enjoy.
The townspeople cheered at the proclamation, and the local Baron, a red-haired man with a vast build and boisterous tone shouted, "By the will of the Alpha, it shall be so! Let us usher our Creator on to his rest with the song he likes best! The Song of Prayer!" He formally bowed to the Alpha then, who watched with both mild surprise, as he had not expected this timeline, and amusement, for he had genuinely enjoyed the grass-whistles the people here used to both sing to and direct their magical partners.
Each of them put such a leaf to their lips then, and the Alpha Pokémon's eyes drifted half shut as the music filled the summer air, and what functioned as lids for his eyes, only ever descending when he needed recuperation, covered the fierce red orbs.
Such a…lovely song…
He let it echo through his being, though in his core, he still wondered if he was right to be a part of any of it, given what he was. He left it for his future self to ponder as the inevitable sleep took him once more, and his conscious mind split from his cloned selves. Now, they were all on their own, and would act accordingly to keep this planet, and many others, safe from destruction.
The song continued to echo as a portal to a realm those who saw it were only able to define as 'pure golden beauty' opened above the Alpha's resting form with a power that shocked each of them. Arceus' form was surrounded by a shield of aura as he ascended to his higher realm, though as he was essentially on autopilot at that point, the sheer power from his departure left something of a rift in the center of the town's space-time fabric. He promptly entered his own dimension of Light, which would, given enough time, revitalize himself, and his many clones. Though they were white in color, they bore his wisdom, his experiences, and would do well in defending the universe, alongside those he had created and tasked with that very job.
Dialga Roared, and the rift the godly being's departure had left was surrounded by a sphere of blue aura, and then promptly closed as Palkia Rended space itself to close around the rift, and keep anyone, or anything, from entering it. The Unown, who made up the fabric of what existed between dimensions, acted as a shield around the now isolated dimension, keeping it stable, and balanced for all of time. Barring any human meddling, it would likely never be an issue, and given that it had touched Arceus' realm of boundless light energy, the surrounding region somehow became even more beautiful as the years passed.
The two dragons left then, to their own dimensions, and once more began the search for the mortals who were Doomed to Tame them. The people of Alamos would tell the story of Arceus' departure for centuries, though even that would, eventually, fade away in the face of the chaos of what was to come.
In those early days however, things were promising. The League encouraged battlers the world over to become as strong as they could, as young as they could, for there was always a disaster to prevent or trouble to settle.
With the death of Arceus' Prophet, naturally, many regions began to eschew the League entirely, some not even waiting until the man's body had entered rigor to do so. It was not a promising sign of things to come, and should have been a red flag for those who had been told to prevent any global-scale chaos or wars, at any cost. There was no deity around to resolve them now, just humans, for the Alpha's clones would only intervene should the planet, or their own personal safety, become endangered.
That did not keep the Guardians from meddling, though for many, the influence of the Legendary beings was usually positive for the people they interfaced with. Eventually, after the first Bishop died, the Church of Arceus splintered into several factions, and thus, began the Dark Times. The descent was slow, but everyone, whether human or magical creature, could feel the tension in the air. The crystal capture sphere technology, as with every other technology man had ever, and likely would ever create, was turned to the purpose of war.
In what would become Unova, the Dragon's teachings had endowed the Emperors, and a few Empresses, with long life, and 'supernatural powers'. Roughly three thousand years before the present era, the Dragon Empire was, finally, once again graced by a competent ruler. He brought the Empire to heel, and for the first time in ages, it seemed the continent would stay that way for more than a few human lifespans.
The birth of two strong heirs was celebrated, and as the Unovans heralded their doom with thunderous applause, a man in Kalos, who would also be King, was turning the awesome power of his own regional Guardians towards war as well. Though many would one day claim it was necessary, as it was that conflict, and its cataclysmic ending, that led humans and their partners to a form beyond regular evolution.
Galar, like many regions, was no stranger to war either. They had decimated the people who had risen from Norstad and sailed over the seas to attack, plunder, and pillage, but soon their ire was focused on Kalos. When the 'Chunnel' or Channel Tunnel that connected their regions flooded and needed repair, neither region offered to fix it, and tensions rose as both sides readied armies.
In the wars to come, it became a crude joke to the nobility of both regions, who would send their opponent a proposal to fix the the tunnel. The offer would, usually, presage a brutal attack. Unfortunately it also kept either side from gaining a proper advantage over the other, as they were always prepared, and their wars were doomed to last generations.
The supercontinent was a political shambles, as new cults born from the old Church of Arceus, as well as the Holder's own League, vied for territory, though only the League endeavored to not get drawn into war. This led to a decreased trust in the League as a political ally when they refused to offer military aid to those they claimed to be allied with, and across the massive continent, regions left in groups at a time, until only a few regions in Japan, the Dragon Empire, and several other 'western regions' were all that remained.
The man who was supposed to prevent the shattering of the Holder's vision, his own apprentice, had run afoul of a witch in the isolated northern region of Albion, just north of Galar's capital, and had gone mad with what she'd implanted within him. In the dark woods of the small kingdom, the Shadow yet lived, and through a series of host women, slowly spread its influence out of Albion's isolation, and onto the supercontinent.
Its influence was subtle, usually, and any Arceus made creature knew they had to fight, and utterly destroy such a thing should they encounter it. The instinct was ingrained in their very DNA, and was there for the express purpose of keeping Arceus' hard labor from being tainted by darkness. Shadow energy was the antithesis of everything the Light represented, though the power it gave could not be denied.
That very power had broken those with good hearts who had, despite the turmoil, still tried to sue for peace between the warring cults under Arceus' banner. Seeing the Holder's own Successor rampaging through the very lands the Holder of Arceus had helped make livable had been demoralizing, and as the scent of blood filled the air, fire and smoke were not far behind. The Dark Times began in earnest, and those who yet remained true to the League's founding purpose withdrew, until humanity stabilized into some semblance of rationality.
But the man who eventually became known only as the Successor was not done. Both Arceus and his Holder had been aware of the human race's ongoing shift to more prominent psychic powers, and indeed the god had given the people of the lovely world the ability to, with training, master two of the elemental typings, not unlike his own creations. Though most humans, in the majority of those trained, could only gain a second, and were otherwise stuck as 'normal'.
They had left behind clear instructions on how to find, and then train humans with the potential for psychic mastery. Though other typings sometimes appeared as well, psychic seemed to be where the human race as a whole was headed. The Alpha and his human had never considered that their knowledge might be turned to the purpose of Shadow. The Successor trained his own cult of devotees in the art of psychic 'sorcery', namely by enhancing their power by taking in ever-more amounts of Shadow energy, and their reign of terror and blood made even the most bloodthirsty of warring regions pause against them, and the inexplicably angry, and powerful, creatures under their control.
The future seemed bleak indeed, for after the Successor was murdered, by way of disintegration via Hyper Beam, it became common practice amongst these 'dark psychics' to murder their teacher, and take in their ghostly essence by way of a ritual that, they believed, preserved the knowledge of the person being consumed. Naturally, this claim fell apart under even the simplest logic test, but any with the balls to challenge such a psychic's 'divine authority' tended to die for it.
All was not lost though, for a future of death and blood had been prepared for as well. The Psychic Sages, spread across the world at generally one to a continental plate, invited those in the League they deemed worthy of education in the proper ways of using psychic energy. These humans trained for only a few years, but returned to their fellows with powers and martial arts knowledge that was far more structured than anything their dark counterparts could bring against them, and slowly, the children who manifested similar abilities came to be gathered by the Sage's pupils, for proper training and education. Over time, they would form an order of like-minded hero types to combat the darkness. They called themselves Aura Guardians.
Though nobody is sure as to how long the Dark Times lasted, the most accurate guesses put the start roughly ten thousand years, before the modern era. It took seven millennia, but eventually, governments formed out of the chaos of cult beliefs and psychic abuse. The Aura Guardians, those who trained with the Sages, or trained under their pupils in hidden 'temples', hunted down every dark psychic that wished to continue the senseless slaughter and bloodshed, and in doing so usually lost many of their own number.
The fighting continued, mainly in the west, where the Dragon Empire had essentially split apart, thanks to the sons of the Last Emperor, and Rio had warred with Atlantica, before having their Guardian split in three as well, despite their victory.
The One Dragon was eventually torn apart, and the ideological conflict became generational, until what was left of the Empire finally collapsed. That event seemed to have a domino effect, as similar disastrous occurrences happened almost simultaneously across the globe, and what progress had been made in stopping the Dark Times seemed ready to come completely undone. The newly renamed Pokémon League used whoever they had at their disposal to try to mitigate these disasters, and slowly, the desire for peace returned again.
Three hundred years before the modern era, the newly named region of Unova, the only place with people who still followed the outdated imperial structure of governing, and the seat of the current warring brother's power, was engulfed in a massive fire, until finally, two of the three parts of the split dragon returned to spherical form, their power utterly spent.
Kalos and Galar ended their latest three-century long war, and the King of Kalos simply disappeared one day, leaving the rule of his region to whoever had the strongest abilities in pitched battle. Three of his strongest partners, Cobalion, Terrakion, and Virizion left Kalos, and searched for the hidden, but reportedly honorable kingdom called Albion, north of Galar.
The three pledged themselves to the local king, a young Gallade with a dream and a small kingdom, and stayed there with him, serving loyally until they were tossed out by way of deceit and treachery, and took refuge in Unova. Thoroughly done with humans by then, the three endeavored to protect Pokémon throughout the many wooded areas on the north east of the continent, and once more became regarded as heroes.
It took several decades, but eventually the wars ended completely, and humanity focused on trying to recover all the advanced knowledge they had once possessed. This was when the Pokémon League came onto the world stage with an invention that changed the art of battling into the more modernized training most are familiar with in the present.
With a bit of rediscovered dimensional engineering, and a bit of knowledge from the Old Net, the League created the first iteration of the 'pocket ball', which they planned to sell en mass, as cheap as possible, to help their organization grow once more. Though many disliked the growing return to using currency for trade, the Pokémon League was one of the first organizations to take advantage of it, and in the space of weeks, countries the world over had switched to the far more manageable currency.
The ability to create the crystalline technology once used to control or otherwise tame the magical creatures who had, over the eons, come to populate every corner of the world with sheer numbers, had long been lost to fire, and the practice of habitually burning of an enemy's stockpile of knowledge. It was a tactic straight from the twisted mind of the Successor, and it had set humanity's technological prowess back by millennia, again. As the League began broadcasting battles between the ridiculously strong Trainers they found in the regions they had bases in, the Pokémon League's popularity grew. A call to honest battle that didn't end in death and heartbreak appealed to the people, as it had centuries before.
With the Dark Times ended, humanity had grown collectively sick of people with powerful partners claiming connections to the divine, that apparently gave them the right to rule and conquer as they saw fit. Cults were, slowly, dismantled the world over, though there were plenty that were ignored due to their benign nature, and generally harmless practices.
Those who urged their people to fire and war were systematically hunted in some areas, and exiled in others. The Successor's Shadow was persistent though, and in the ever-modernizing world that retreated from the glorious chaos of war, eventually, only one large, but fanatical cult remained.
They called themselves Arceans, and they had coagulated from the last remnants of other cults being entirely deconstructed across the supercontinent, under a man who his followers called a Prophet. He was, by all accounts, human, and mortal, but his people believed his charismatic words all the same.
He detested what the cults on the supercontinent had become, and in a unique twist that actually saved them from being imprisoned and effectively disbanded, they detested those with psychic powers, and claimed that any with such abilities, human or Pokémon, must be corrupt and without morality, at their very core. Never mind what they did or did not do, 'true Arceans' treated psychics like abominations, that any good, moral person would eradicate, if given the chance.
Given what psychics had largely caused, it was not an unpopular opinion in the forming melting pot that would become Eous. Their Emperor had ordered them to live, but to live elsewhere, for peace was the foundation of what he was building, and a violent 'convert or else' philosophy simply would not work in such a place.
The key to this mortal Prophet's growing success in the largely leaderless Fornia region, in which the cult owned several small properties, was the PokéMeter he had claimed to have discovered when he had dared to climb the Master Plateau, and beat the Trainers he'd found there. In reality, he had been given the device from a strange woman with an unnerving smile, but strange women emerging from shadows and distributing magical energy readers was not a fit mythology for the cult he wished to create.
He had tried fiddling with the device after failing to make it work, only to find that after his 'modifications' to a machine from the mind of Creation, it no longer functioned properly at all. Thus, it became a Holy (if useless) Relic, and was prominently placed in their main church that took up the majority of the docks in the town of Port: Land. Compared to what they had owned in what was by then Eous, it was pitiful. But those who followed this mortal Prophet were loyal, and would remain so in the years to come.
Being somewhat creative, the Prophet had researched as many legends about the Alpha Pokémon as he could, and then formed them into a cohesive mythological canon that, surprisingly, wasn't too far off from reality. It was this he used as the backbone for the tenets of what he wished his cult to believe.
He mainly stated that the true form of the Alpha was gold and black, and that his realm was a golden paradise of eternal light, sculpted columns, and ever-present clouds. Upon death, his cult believed, they would ascend to this Holy Dimension and be rewarded for their years of hard toil and devout service, which were primarily spent fulfilling the Prophet's every whim.
They claimed that Giratina was evil incarnate, and had been imprisoned for its audacity to challenge the Alpha Pokémon for supremacy. Moreover, he taught that any psychic type, no matter how friendly they seemed, was a minion of the Renegade Pokémon, hiding behind a guise that was meant to trick humans into believing that laying with such a Pokémon would give them psychic abilities of their own, and access to unimaginable power. Those with psychic power were considered to have willingly let 'Giratina's evil' into their hearts, and whether they knew it or not, their actions ultimately served their evil master.
The Arceans even had a chart by which they ranked Legendary or mythical Pokémon by order of power, which once more, was not too far off from being true. The Prophet told his people that, if they were going to Save the world and clear it of the unworthy for Arceus' eventual return, they needed to have strong Trainers.
They took a page from the Pokémon League then, with almost no shame, and with their penchant for buying large, empty buildings, they began turning them into 'Gyms', and even fabricated, by hand in those early days, genuine 'Arcean League' badges, which they claimed gave Trainers special power over the Pokémon under their control, namely making them stronger as they gathered more.
After almost thirty years of successful 'league growth' which was primarily supported by the full-time employed members of the cult, and after eventually making a sinful amount of currency from the ultimately pointless League that had no credibility or standing in the actual Pokémon League, the Arcean's Prophet found himself in a battle of law. The Pokémon League claimed he had deliberately copied their own organization, almost rule for rule, and had flagrantly used the Pokémon League's good name to convince the growing number of Trainers in the world to head west, and challenge their 'divine Trainers'.
Ultimately, two things happened. The Arceans lost, and they lost hard. With their currency went most of their new followers, and the old ones, along with the Prophet himself, had begun to spiral towards the end of their mortal coil. It was as the Prophet was strolling along a stretch of beach outside of Mewsia, another port city they had slowly bought up building by building, that he discovered what he at first thought was a corpse.
Upon closer inspection, he saw the body was male, but he was certainly pale enough to be a corpse, with skin that was almost gray, pure white hair, and upon opening his unconscious eyes, the Prophet had scrambled away as he saw pale light blue energy radiating from eyes that originated in nightmare. The yelp of the aging Prophet had been enough to make the man stir, and as he rose, the Prophet did a double take.
This was no strange human hybrid, but a normal human after all. He was handsome, and with a bit of cleaning up, he could be a fine example of an Arcean, or at least, what the tanned and gray-blonde old man thought an Arcean should be. He wasn't blonde, but then, hair color was not all-important. He had features that, in some regions, would be considered noble, and that was good enough for the old man.
The pale man claimed to have amnesia, and so the Prophet took to calling him Caleb, as he helped the man onto his nearest ship. With their land enterprises failing and the Pokémon League draining the money they'd invested in their properties one by one, the Arceans had pulled as much of their cash out of the local markets as they could, and then proceeded to buy almost twenty luxury cruise liners with the absurd amount of currency.
They had outfitted the small fleet in Mewsia, where ship weaponry was given freely, as pirates were a common nuisance that any sensible port town helped fight against. The Arceans had determined that such weapons could be just as easily turned on anyone they didn't want coming near their ships, and since all empires ended at the ocean, save for one, they would be free of any irritating laws, or debt collectors.
With the cult's last attempt at successful recruiting ending with only Caleb as a willing convert, they once more set sail on the sea, using the Sharpedo they had caught up north and tamed to pull them. The only way they had been able to afford so many large ships was by having their engines removed, and given the level of tech in Fornia and the surrounding regions, the engines would definitely find another purpose, and had also been worth quite a bit.
Each cruiser had a mobile Sharpedo pen that both served as a threat to cult members who had earned punishment, and an engine. As one of the fastest water types, and with the efficacy of human controlled breeding methods, each ship soon had almost forty razor toothed mouths acting as their fuel. They could even 'refuel' while at sea, for the pens hid the hungry eyes of the Sharpedo from any other species that dared to swim near their ships, and in range of their jaws.
Three Hundred Years Before Present – Oceana Pacifica, Coast of Kipnuk Region
Caleb looked over the dying form of the man who had, for the last three decades, acted as a sort of father figure to him. He had regained his memories shortly after joining the Arceans at sea, and knew he'd never had such a figure before. The blood-craving Darkrai that was his better half had often urged him to end the man's life prematurely, but Caleb knew all too well how easily death could be traced. Instead, he waited patiently for the absurdly old Prophet to finally die.
At last, that time seemed nigh. The old fool had been unconscious for several hours, and his breathing had slowed. Caleb waited patiently, and as he did, he found his eyes drawn to the evidently useless machine, labeled a PokéMeter by the cult. Every time he looked at it, he was convinced. This device had a touch of the divine in it, but even he had been unable to make it work. He'd studied it enough to, more or less, replicate the readings it was apparently supposed to take, but with no reference for what was being measured, the Arceans had been left to guess.
Do you wish to learn how to turn it on?
The voice echoed from seemingly nowhere, but Caleb was long since used to such things. He smirked, and spoke in a whisper. "Yes."
Shadows from around the room clung to the device, and it sparked in protest. It also burned away the dark energy that touched it, but the Shadow persisted anyway, fixing what had been broken. It would never be as it once was, but now at least, it would function.
It is done...use it, mass produce it, and with it, you will be able to learn a person's deepest secrets. That, will be what binds them to your group, more solidly than any loyalty.
Caleb eyed the machine. "And what price must I pay for your aid in fixing this?" There was a dark, but unmistakably feminine chuckle, and nothing else.
Irritated, Caleb looked back to his mentor, only to find the man had passed on while he'd been otherwise distracted. He nodded, stood, and then promptly left.
"Has anyone heard anything?"
"Shh. Don't let Caleb hear you…"
"But he's our-"
The whispered conversation between the two navy blue clad Arcean Acolytes stopped abruptly as they slowly looked up and behind them, finding the unsettling grin of the man who had, over the past three decades, befriended their Prophet, claimed to have extended his life, and now upon the eve of his death, promised to 'take the reigns' of his organization.
"Spread the word. The Prophet is dead. I am your Prophet now." Two men in very nice, and very black suits flanked the Arcean's new Leader. "We have the documentation to prove it, for those who are uncertain about our future. The old man was adamant about finishing all of that, before Arceus called him home." He gave the two a familiar look, one that had, in the past, presaged a beating.
Caleb had made his temper one of the worst kept secrets of the cult early on during their thirty year long sea-bound voyage. Since the former-prophet was busy being bedridden for most of the voyage, Caleb had taken over managing most of the crew's duties, namely how much food was produced, and who was growing it on board the massive ships. Being at sea, it didn't take more than a few weeks for food to become the new currency.
Despite being forced onto the sea after their legal defeat, the Arceans had not given up. Caleb had formed some of the smarter, more devious thinkers into a group dedicated to studying the laws of whatever land they intended to eventually land in, which was all of them, so the spread of Arceus' Truth could begin again. They had learned well at the brutal edge of the League's own representatives, who had coldly and logically deconstructed not only the gaping flaws in their mythology, but how said mythology had been used to indoctrinate Trainers who had participated in their 'Holy League' with good intentions, into their organization.
They hadn't lacked for witnesses, who claimed the upper management of the cult was, in a word, abusive, and the governments of the western part of the continent had uniformly ruled that they would be expelled. The west was a very large place however, and there was one region that was more isolated, and vulnerable than the others.
The two uniformed acolytes moved to do as they were bid by their new Prophet with murmurs of 'Pareo Prophetia' and averted gazes. Within the hour, before the old man's body had cooled, Caleb had ordered the fleet of ships towards the Kipnuk region, and their largest port, Anchorhead.
After spending a few uneasy, but restful days aboard the eighteen cruise ships, each of which uncomfortably housed almost twenty thousand people, new recruits came to their flagship, the Mardevorar, claiming to have been sent from the town by a man called Pravus. Recognizing one of Caleb's favored aliases, those he'd entrusted with conversion began the process of indoctrination right there on the docks.
After spending so long at sea, and being led by Caleb with unsettling accuracy to numerous plane crashes, the Arceans had, after many years of feeding the unworthy to their engines, managed to reach almost full capacity on their ships. Over those years, the Arceans had adjusted their recruitment methods to fit plane crash survivors, shipwrecked sailors, and even a few 'redeemed' pirates.
The people in charge of convincing new members to convert soon found that they had to adjust again, for the first three potential converts walked off the ship after being bombarded with tales of the 'evils of Pokémon like Gardevoir'. Conversion sessions were restructured to make use of the devices that Caleb had claimed to model after the PokéMeter, and since it was a Holy Relic, only the worthy among them had been allowed to be trained for their proper usage.
New recruits kept arriving, and eventually, Caleb came behind them. Evidently, he'd adopted 'Pravus' as his surname at the town's legal center, but that hardly mattered, for anyone with sense referred to him as their Prophet.
Once he'd returned to the flagship, he spent several hours first chewing out his conversion experts for losing three already, and then training them on the new iteration of the PokéMeter. He claimed that these new machines were far superior to the old. They could read a person's biorhythm to the smallest change and detail. Combined with the psychological conditioning tactics that Pravus had prepared for this stage of his designs, the machines would become quite adept at helping the reader hone in on a person's secrets, or 'crimes' as the Arceans called them, and convince the person holding the meter's cans to confess to them. With this information they could, if necessary, blackmail the person in question into doing whatever the Church wished of them.
It didn't take long for the Kipnuk region to welcome the cult officially, and within an hour of that, the once sea-bound Arcean Church purchased land, and an empty building, for the first time in decades.
Those who were wary of the new cult were few in number, and over the next few months, the cult's ships docked all along the region's coastline, effectively limiting all trade to moving through Anchorhead. The new Prophet didn't take long to start expanding, for while Kipnuk was a sparse region, it was home to one of the largest and less ice-bound ports in the north.
Instead of land, he focused the rapidly regrowing Church's funds towards material trade with the Fire Navy ships that sailed east from Koria, looking to trade. Typically, they wanted Pokéballs, and the Church provided those as best they could. The Fire Nation's royal family was willing to pay literal gold for the balls, so Caleb had his people hunting Apricorns, and turning them into passable reacreations of other balls that, while not of the League or one of its craftsman, was passable enough to work.
Within the space of a year, the Church had not only bought out most of the habitable land of Kipnuk, and was providing living quarters to the entirety of the region's residents. The few who wanted no part of the Church, their strange hatred of psychics, and their fanatical devotion to Pravus, did not have much of a choice. Each day, Arceans would visit the homes of the unconverted, who lived in their buildings, and the assigned converters would attempt to get them to join. Eventually, the holdouts fell in line, or mysteriously disappeared on 'hunting trips' into the barren tundra to the north.
With Kipnuk under his thumb, Pravus turned his eyes south, on the jewel of the west. Being what he was, and after being drained by his escape from his previous home in Selva Muerta, he had long since taken to subtly draining those under him of life energy, but it was never enough, and more than once, he'd left a husk that had to be fed to the Sharpedo. It was becoming unsustainable, as he could not place everyone under his hypnotic dreams while he partook of their essence. He needed a more permanent fix, and to that end, the Darkrai in his shadow suggested doing as his people had done before.
That meant finding a large city, and draining it of life. Instead of making a Nexus of darkness though, this time, the energy would be his and his alone. In those days, Vega City was the capital of the western regions, who were at that point enjoying the prosperity that came from an abundance of food. They had once supplied an empire, and now without one demanding taxes, the farmers had grown rich, and the rich demanded entertainment. Vega City provided that.
The trick would be getting those who opposed him and his cult all in one place, at one time, and making sure nobody lived to tell the tale of what happened. Once he had a plan, he began setting it in motion. The people of Kipnuk were 're-assigned' throughout what would become Fornia, and no less than a hundred devout Arceans went to each region. Within another year, they had functional church buildings in each of said regions.
Pravus knew that if they were to recover, they would need to erase the massive debt his predecessor, and the Pokémon League, had attached to his people. As they started to grow, it didn't take long for the League to renew their efforts to drain the cult once more of its finances, but the Arceans were ready.
They bogged down the legal proceedings with legal shenanigans, and in the meantime, Pravus assigned various people to visit the homes of the lawyers the League had retained, and from the sidewalks outside of their homes , protested the 'deplorable actions' of those within. Loudly. Their claims ranged from outright thievery, to pedophilia, and they told everyone, passerby, local police, even neighbors, that there was scum in their midst.
It didn't take long for the lawyers in question to recuse themselves, but those who didn't pressed on as the wheels of law dragged slowly. Months passed, but eventually, after literally buying out their neighbors homes and filling them with yet more Arceans, the lawyers in question dropped the issue, and the courts forgave the remaining debt, which was in the billions.
The Arceans saw it as a great victory, and with the financial leech gone, they spread like a cancer. The focus then became conversion, and with their 'divine technology' the cult was able to perfect the methods by which they indoctrinated the many varied mindsets that the west played home to. One by one though, cities became 'cleared' as the Church bought their land, their homes, and soon, controlled what jobs were available as well.
No branch of government was immune to the enticing promises of immortality in exchange for devotion, and hard work, and eventually, Pravus had enough sway and political clout to gather everyone his Church had singled out as a potential threat in Vega.
It had taken fifteen decades, and as the Arceans celebrated their one-hundred and fiftieth year of straight growth and prosperity, they held a massive celebration in Vega. Being the capital, they had only been able to buy up so much of it, and compared to other cities, their church there was nothing special. It was barely furnished, and only served as temporary living quarters to those Pravus assigned there.
Pravus himself had lived much longer than any normal human, and yet retained his looks, according to his followers. As his hair grayed and his body began decaying, he had his media specialists work to hide the deformities and signs of age. He rarely appeared in public, and when he did, he used other means to continue to appear young.
When the celebration began in earnest, those gathered had no reason to suspect anything would be different from the last two celebrations the Arceans had put on for their fiftieth, and one hundredth celebrations. While the most common gripe about them was the daily six o'clock visits from preachers knocking on the doors of those tenants within their buildings that wanted no part of Arcean worship, Pravus had been very effective in making sure their public image remained untarnished.
There were voices of dissent of course, those who had left the Church after realizing what it was, and what it would potentially become. They too had been invited to Vega though, and none thought it strange. The Arceans had always very publicly stated their dream of a unified west, that could survive and thrive without any eastern interference.
The celebration continued well into the night, and as was typical with Vega, things turned as debaucherous as expected. The Arceans were quietly ordered to leave the city post-haste, and when they had, Pravus sent in his Task Force goons to deliver the few individuals who had refused to join the festivities.
Those he wished in the city for the event had been paired with 'escorts' of whatever gender the target preferred, and was likely to go for. The entire plan was quite masterful, and as the clock struck midnight, Pravus began his ritual. For the first time in over a century, he floated above the city using his better half's abilities, and soon after, a sphere of darkness covered Vega.
Nobody seemed to notice, and those who did soon found themselves trapped under the barrier. None who lived through that event was there to witness exactly what happened under the dome, but the result was a massive dark purple colored explosion, and a beam of energy that shot into the sky, but did not pierce the clouds. It was seen for miles by others, but none were close enough to understand what kept the beam from continuing on to the cloud-covered night sky.
Had they been close enough, they might have a seen a solitary figure in the midst of the unsettling light, grinning as the lives of well over a billion people, most in the midst of vigorous activities, were snuffed out all at once, and converted into fuel for his body. Being a product of similar sorcery, he and his fused Darkrai adapted well to the energy, and Pravus descended to the ruined streets amidst the fire that had started soon after those maintaining the city had been ended. It would serve to scour the city of corpses and evidence, and the 'Prophet' cackled amidst the flames, enjoying his victory and his newly revitalized body.
He returned the next day to address the western regions as a whole, and lamented the loss of 'many great Arceans', despite the fact that none had been caught in the Vega Event, as it was being called. The story was pushed forward by Arceans in charge of media across the many regions. Someone, it was never determined who, had awakened the Dark Phoenix, Ignavis.
Being, in addition to a most holy man, a strong Trainer, Caleb Pravus claimed that he'd done battle with the beast personally, but despite his best efforts, the city had still burned. Krookodile tears were publicly shed as he lamented his inability to save so many people, but those who yet lived bought every word.
He announced then that, to prevent future unfortunate events, the Arcean Church would keep Ignavis' egg, which he had retained and displayed as proof of his victory, and story. Moreover, he would select the strongest Trainers from among the Church's ranks, and give them a new rank, one directly under his own, and separate from the Church itself. Those chosen would become his Hands, for even Arceus had required thousands to create everything, and with them, he promised to not only keep the west safe from 'rampaging Legendary Pokémon', but to unite the west as well.
With his body and some measure of power restored, Pravus began turning the west into a powerhouse, where economics were concerned. The cities he controlled focused on production, and soon became home to many factories, and other such places. Business boomed, and with success came new converts. Eager, honest statespeople from the east who saw the rising Fornia as something to join, and Caleb Pravus was only too thrilled to have them.
More years passed, and eventually, the revitalized Prophet took to addressing his people on an almost daily basis via his media networks which were, by then, influencing every region west of the Stoney Mountains with great success. Another ten years passed, but in the vacuum of power that the Vega Event had left, Pravus had moved in and ruthlessly suppressed any opposition.
He took political office in the new capital of Sacreus. It had, before the Church had gotten involved with it, been a crater-city, a remnant of an ancient old Earth city that had evidently been scoured from the face of the planet by way of massive impact. Humans had come to populate the crater in the years following, and soon, a city formed.
No record remains today of what it was once called, for when the Arceans moved in and named it their capital, the center of Arcean faith in the west, the people had renamed it to Sacreus without much of a fuss. They had then fortified the city to a degree no other place in the west had. The crater provided a natural defense, and walls soon went up around that.
In the years to come the sprawl would spread beyond those walls, and yet more would be added as the Church turned those buildings into more that stood tall enough to scrape the sky. From this fortified bastion of Arcean faith, Pravus and his Hands began putting their grand plans into motion. None but the Prophet knew their full extent, but there were several among their number who, like him, had embraced the power Shadow energy offered to humans.
His Hands were selected from children that were deemed by the Church to have psychic abilities, and by then, most people in the west had come to distrust, or at least be wary of those with such power thanks in no small part to the Arceans and their endless stream of largely made-up propaganda.
Once he had twenty or so Hands ready for 'black assignments' as he called them, he focused on building up the west's scientific facilities. By that point, all cities but Colville had pledged themselves both to Arceus and his Prophet, and the newly named Fornia region came into being, not all that long after Unova formed in the ruins of the eastern capital of what was once the head of the Dragon Empire.
When it became obvious that faith did not a scientific mind make, the Prophet looked elsewhere for Professors or other scientists who might lack the moral impediments that seemed absurdly common among those employed by the Pokémon League, and kept them from being viable converts. The Pokémon League typically liked to, as a rule, ignore the Arceans. Nobody wanted to deal with their violent tactics, though even then they should have known, conflict with leaders like Pravus is inevitable. Eventually, the Prophet found exactly what he was looking for.
With the Cipher organization dismantled in Orre for a final time, Pravus offered shelter and sanctuary to the two people Interpol most wanted to detain: Doctor Ein, and Ardos. Ardos became a Hand, taking to the cult eagerly, as most who wished to lay their problems on a higher power did. Eventually, Pravus himself had him believing he'd been 'redeemed' by Arceus for his past deeds, and now endeavored to use Shadow energy in the name of the Alpha.
Rational minds that pointed out the logical conflict of worshiping a deity of Light but embracing the Shadow tended to end up in the region's many quickly growing 'Rehabilitation Centers' that were in reality, little more than mining camps. The regions bordering the Stoney Mountain range had always dug for fossils, though the rate at which they found them increased once the Church got involved. Any who worried of the potential destruction of Pokémon habitats, like Fornia's chosen Professor, the Dragon Type expert, Dracaena, were subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, encouraged to 'stay quiet' using the same scare-tactics that had stopped the League's lawyers, and given them a 'great victory'.
The League had sent Dracaena to Fornia because their last Professor to give out Pokémon in the western regions had died in Vega. The League only received a response from the Church about his whereabouts five decades after the fact, and any attempts to enter the region and look for him had been swiftly 'deterred' by soldiers with black body armor, projectile weapons, and strong Pokémon, for when the first two weren't enough.
The League had threatened to make a legal fuss, and the response from Pravus had been quick. He offered to allow another Professor, with enough land for a lab to rival the Oak Ranch, to reside in Fornia's southern regions. They had ultimately sent Dracaena, and agreed, confident that she would find something on the disturbing rumors the few who managed to escape the Church's regime were spewing.
Dracaena received the land promised, but what nobody from the Church had mentioned, was the massive barbed fence marking the perimeter of the admittedly massive swathe of land. New Trainers, she had been told, would be sent her way down the very obvious, very straight pathway to her Lab.
She had read enough on the Arcean Church to know their tactics, and had no delusions about whether the path and the lab were being watched. She had tossed her spartan living quarters thoroughly, and had found no bugs. It was the first evidence of respect for individual privacy she'd seen from the Church, but it was also the last.
Eventually, after demanding that she had a right to be able to check up on new Trainers, and how their Pokémon were doing, the Church allowed her to maintain contact for a year, after sending the youngsters on their way. She never heard, not once, from anyone after their first year, and was blocked from searching for the Trainers in question easily. The Church had her PokéNet connection blocking certain sites, as they did with everyone's connections in the Fornia region.
There were other ways to learn, though. Sneaking in a net-capable device from Japan wasn't exactly difficult, but they had a bad habit of 'disappearing' from her quarters, and eventually, she found bugs in there, too. She made no fuss about smashing them, and had torn up the bill the Church had sent her when it claimed she had 'destroyed their property'. They had demanded that she pay for the cost to replace the bug devices that were spying upon her.
Despite the Professor's best efforts with the children, the Church was quite good at keeping anything but praise for them and the Prophet from their media streams. The most common complaint from the relatively new converted families of the west was how much currency their cult demanded from them on a monthly basis.
Pravus answered these concerns by instituting a series of cringeworthy videos, very obviously made in Fornia, using 'new' actors to demonstrate and announce in an almost salesman like tone all the wonderful things their holy institution was doing with their money. Since they provided everything one might need for a hard-working life, the complaints eventually faded, thanks in no small part to the mental conditioning from the PokéMeters that was a part of their sixteen-hour shifts.
Convincing the people to work wasn't exactly hard, as they were rather industrious, and the pride in their work came from being shown, on a daily basis and often while working, what their seemingly meaningless toil was doing for the world as a whole, and how it was all helping towards the goal of preparing the Earth for Arceus' return.
The region's scientific prowess began to explode once the Hex Nut line of Pokémon was discovered, and while many on the continent waited eagerly for the multitudes of helpful steel types to come their way, none ever did. Anyone who claimed to have one soon had it mysteriously stolen, and eventually, they would change their story and claim they'd released it of their own accord, which halted any investigating the League did.
Throughout Fornia, the Prophet set up subtle camps, in which the Meltan and Melmetal were imprisoned by way of constant melting. Their metal was drawn slow enough to keep the tortured beings alive, but they still gained numerous amounts of the material, which Doctor Ein put to use for the war he had been told was coming. Both he and Ardos had received similar information, but the former Cipher leader was sent to Sinnoh, and told to start expanding the Church's influence in Japan.
As the years slowly ticked by, the Arcean's Prophet began, subtly, arranging marriages and encouraging those with...certain characteristics, to breed actively. His predecessor had been more than a bit consumed by the differences in the 'races' of humanity, and while he himself did not fit those standards perfectly, Pravus knew a Church full of blonde heads and pale skins would satisfy the old racist's dying wishes.
Slowly, the populace of Fornia began to split, into those who could battle, and those who were better suited to menial labor. Pravus gathered the former in a 'paradise' that he called the Oasis of Glory. Located in Fornia's south, not at all far from Professor Dracaena's lab, he personally trained the men and women who would become the bulk of his future military force.
It had eventually become clear, after Ghetsis' multiple failures in Unova, that war would be inevitable, if they ever wanted to convert the east. With the regional focus shifted to a war none but a few in the upper echelon knew was coming, keeping their production efforts secret was more important than ever.
One of the Task Force's earliest responsibilities had been preventing anyone from leaving the region, and as they officially shut the borders, any who attempted to escape were 'redirected' by the armed men with Shadow infused Pokémon to the nearest mining camp. The Church claimed fossils at an impressive rate, and many went on to become powerful and Shadow infused under the Church's many Trainers. Nobody but Doctor Ein knew what the Prophet was searching for, and he was every bit as eager to bring it back to life.
For all his planning, things went sideways when, in an attempt to betray the Prophet, Ghetsis combined Reshiram with the captured Kyurem. He never got the chance to enact his betrayal, and indeed, came to rely upon the Church even more in the days that followed.
After losing many in the newly Arcean town of Lacunosa, the Church tried bringing the Trainer they deemed responsible up on legal charges. He never personally showed up, but his family's lawyers did, and as the combined legal team of Redwood and Gladstone representatives pointed out, with video evidence from passing Trainers, that the catching practices in the Giant Chasm were what set Kyurem off in the first place, it was the Church that had brought death upon their Trainers, not Alex Redwood, who had been challenging the League during the incident, and was ruled to not be involved.
When they suggested that the Unovan government look into the Church's involvement with Ghetsis, their lawyers promptly dropped all charges, and left. Several weeks later, they captured the One Dragon, with another absurd legal claim, though that one they never actually battled in open court. The next time the Church officially contacted Unova, was to declare a Holy War, and their intention to show Unovans the 'Light of Arceus'. Whether they wanted it or not.
