On the edge of this planet's vast deserts, the phrase "better bandits than Vibrava" is a common proverb. The saying harkens back to an era when caravans, not rail or flight, was the primary means of trans-desert trade, and leading Numel and treasure across the desert was a romanticized, popular, and dangerous path to riches. The caravan routes were often targeted by all sorts of thieves and vagabonds, but although they would steal all the cargo and demand vast ransoms, most who encountered them came back alive.
Far more dangerous were the Vibrava, who ignore the wealth of Man, but feast on the Numel who carry them across the desert. Many, noticing their insectoid appearance, have thought to use fire to drive them off, but Vibrava are living fossils, a transition species between bugs and dragons, and they possess the resistances of the latter. They can be beaten by dragons, who can not long survive the sand, or by ice pokemon, who melt in the desert heat. Unless one is an elite pokemon trainer capable of fighting such powerful pokemon without a type advantage (and few caravan merchants are) they might as well be invincible.
Goods can be replaced. Money can be earned again. A successful bandit raid can be an enormous setback, it can lead great men to give up trying. But human and pokemon life is far more precious – and although Vibrava will not even touch humans, few made their way home without a Numel to pull the way. In the old days, when an emergency flier could not be protected by pokeballs, a Vibrava attack was a death sentence for human as well as pokemon: it was simply delayed for the human until they ran out of water or collapsed from exhaustion in the sand.
