Archive of Our Own

Sources and Souls

All living beings in the world are Pokemon. There are smaller insects and creatures that did not evolve from their pre-Pokemon counterparts, such as butterflies, ladybugs, bees, and more. However, Pokemon are the only remaining fully-cognizant creatures, and there are two main factors that make up a Pokemon in its entirety - besides the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs. What makes a Pokemon a Pokemon is their Source and their Soul.

The original concept was created by DoomHuntly on ao3 (love him, please go show his stories support) and I expand upon it here. A Source is what gives a Pokemon their typing, their moveset, their weaknesses and resistances, and the abilities they naturally have that they can bring into the overworld. Pokemon have had Sources since the human era, though they haven’t had an official name during that time.

Next to that is a Soul, which is what gives a Pokemon life. Everything about each individual is stored in the Soul; the heart may keep them alive, the lungs may let them breathe, and the brain may let them think, but its the Soul that gives them the blessing to roam the Earth and see the world’s natural beauty. 

Names

There are two ways to refer to a Pokémon: their civilian name/species name and their true name. Most Pokémon follow the rules of human societies by being given a name upon birth. However, Pokemon in professional environments or Pokémon in tribes/certain cultures can choose to be referred to by their species name, either for their safety and privacy or due to cultural differences. There are many groups of Pokémon that are given a true name as a mark of maturity, alongside many that only reveal their true name to those they love/trust to showcase mutual respect.

The Rescue Team Federation & The Exploration and Expedition Federation

In the world of Pokemon, there are two types of groups who strive to keep the world a better place.

The first organization is the Exploration and Expedition Federation (EEF). This federation oversees the management of Guilds and Expedition Societies all across the world. Screening and approving Guildmasters, handling/managing the applications/documents of new recruits, supplying Exploration Kits for new Guild members, establishing and terminating Guilds when necessary; all of this is done by the EEF. Their job is not to get into politics in any form - they merely exist to ensure all Guild operations are running smoothly.

The EEF keeps records of all Guildmasters, Exploration Teams, and members of each Guild. Screening for each team is done by their respective Guildmaster/Leader - the EEF has no part in which teams are approved and which aren’t. To ensure that Guildmasters/Leaders aren’t playing favorites or hiring shady individuals, headquarters are set up in specific areas to perform routine safety and quality checks on every Guild/Society in their district; if an aspect of the Guild/Society or a Team within the Guild/Society doesn’t meet their standards, they have full authority to axe said aspect.

The second organization is the Rescue Team Federation (RTF). The Rescue Team Federation oversees the cataloging and approval of Rescue Teams. Pokemon looking to start a team must file paperwork that can be found in Pelipper Post Offices; this usually requires them to fill out all personal information for all teammates involved. The need for birth identification for those Pokemon is omitted since many Pokemon aren’t born in cities - the potential Rescue Team member must instead get exclusive permission from the nearest official mayor (or, if they want to work directly with another organization, said organization’s chief in command) in the form of a signed permission slip that proves the individual is real and are not forging their identity. After all of the paperwork is filled out, it is sent to the RTF headquarters by mail. If and when the request is approved, a letter of acceptance is sent back alongside an official explorer badge and explorer kit. The RTF keeps the registry and puts it in a filing system, where they can draw upon it at any time for any reason necessary, similar to the EEF. 

However, unlike the EEF, Rescue Teams do not have any higher authority watching their backs. They are allowed to operate when they want and where they want. The RTF does not monitor the performance of any team under their belt.

What are Guilds, Expedition Societies, and Rescue Teams?

Guilds and Expedition Societies fall under the same general umbrella, but differ in a few key aspects. A Guild’s main purpose is to rescue Pokemon, arrest outlaws, defeat villains, and aid citizens in tasks that require help. They also serve as disaster relief officials. An Expedition Society’s main purpose is to map the world, investigate landmarks, and explore any newly discovered Mystery Dungeons and/or ruins that pop onto their radar. Knowledge about a Mystery Dungeon’s general Pokemon diversity, climate, and hazards all come from the Expedition Society and their members. Guilds operate on a much larger scale compared to Expedition Societies, so each continent usually has 20 times the amount of the former than they do the latter.

While Guilds and Expedition Societies usually have strict rules, codes of conduct, and limit the types of missions a Pokemon can do according to their rank regardless of their battle experience, they also provide a boost in reputation and are well-known to citizens. Citizens know that Guild members are always there to help and therefore favor them.

Rescue Teams operate on their own accord. Rescue Teams normally set up a ‘base’ within a town or a settlement and fulfill requests provided by that populous’ citizens. Wild settlements, villages, tribal settlements, and towns without Guilds usually erect ‘request boards’ and post missions onto them for Rescue Teams to fulfill; Pelliper post offices can also have mission requests mailed to them at any time, where they can either be delivered directly to a nearby rescue team or put on a request board.

Rescue Teams have more freedom in choosing where they settle, what missions they take, and who they associate with. However, Rescue Teams have to work hard in order to build up their reputation, as the only way for them to grow and become favored is through word of mouth. Rescue Teams also don’t get the same provisions that Guild members do, such as food, bedding, a location to stay, and money to start out with; that all has to be supplied by those who form the team themselves.

Guild Members, Expedition Society Members, and Rescue Team Members all receive a badge to signal their certification.

Government

The world of Pokemon’s government is very simple. Instead of an overarching government that rules entire continents, each major settlement has an elected representative who serves as that settlement’s mayor. There are other officials who are elected alongside the mayor, such as an advisory council, a treasurer, a peacemaker (someone who negotiates and reasons with nearby settlements, be it an official town or a village in the wild), and a headmaster (in charge of managing judicial documents; a headmaster has their own team as well). 

In other words, every settlement acts as its own city-state.

As stated earlier, each city-state elects its leaders in an electoral vote. If any citizens feel that their government body is doing a bad job at keeping the citizens happy/secure, citizens have the right to call for a vote that will determine if the current elected officials keep their positions or leave. Citizens also have the right to overthrow any officials who are actively ruining their quality of life.

Villages and wild settlements usually elect a tribal leader or someone else with a duty along the same lines; depending on the culture, the leader can go by many different names and can be assigned many different jobs.

Guilds have the additional responsibility of watching over towns that have no Guild for any reason, be it budgetary or because they don’t want their town to become a hub for explorers. While Rescue Teams normally flock toward those towns and handle missions there, there is still a letter route in each town’s post office that delivers requests straight to their respective Guild. 

Types of Pokemon - Living situations

Pokemon fall into different categories of living depending on where they live, how they live, and the lifestyle they choose to follow. 

Pokemon who live in cities and work jobs for money are called Domestic Pokemon. 

Pokemon who live in villages, tribes, or other outside forms of settlement are called Wild Pokemon.

Pokemon who have no home and simply wander the world as a traveler (be it as a merchant, adventurer, or some other career) have no designated name, but are usually referred to as Nomadic Pokemon or Wandering Pokemon. 

Pokemon who spawn in Mystery Dungeons are called Feral Pokemon. 

Pokemon who are raised in a lone environment and operate solely on instincts, usually with little cognitive function outside of that (but they can still be tamed and domesticated over time), are called Semi-Feral Pokemon. These Pokémon are most akin to wild animals/wild Pokémon in the human era.

How Mystery Dungeons work

Mystery Dungeons are anomalies to the Pokemon world, even if they have been studied a hundred times over. A dungeon forms on its own accord, though researchers have an abundance of evidence to prove that it has to do with an overabundance of Source energy converging into a single spot. Even so, Mystery Dungeons are made purely of Source energy, no matter how it came to be.

Each Dungeon is naturally infused into the land it surrounds, either as something as mundane as a cave or something as extravagant as a rocky arch - in both extremes, it still blends in. When one enters a Dungeon, they are immediately transported into a ‘gap in space time’ that generates terrain as the occupant progresses - depending on the theme of the area the Dungeon spawned in, a Dungeon’s floor layout, hazards, feral Pokemon, encompassing structure, and the materials each floor is made out of can differ drastically (for example, a Dungeon that spawns in a meadow will have a flowery aesthetic with grass Pokemon, while a cave near the beach will have a beach-like aesthetic with water Pokemon). Each Dungeon is structured as a limited maze with halls and large rooms; to progress, the occupant must locate a stairway, which will automatically warp them to the next floor.

Feral Pokemon were touched on before, but it is best to elaborate on them here. Mystery Dungeons are constructed solely on Source energy, and Source energy is half of what makes a Pokemon a Pokemon. The amount of Source energy is so strong that it can manifest into different Pokemon that share the same Source, such as a Source of Rock Typing or one of Fire Typing spawning Rock types and Fire types respectively, sometimes including brethren types (Rock and Ground are brethren types, for example, with Fire sometimes being lumped in there). Feral Pokemon are purely instinctual - they cannot be reasoned with, talked to, or calmed down. The only way to subdue a Feral Pokemon is to either knock it out or kill it; when a Feral is killed, their Source energy extinguishes, causing their body to dissolve as nothing can hold it together.

As stated before, each and every Mystery Dungeon spawns loot to collect, feral Pokemon to fight, traps to activate, and secrets to find, the quantity and quality of which differs between Dungeons (usually based on difficulty and location). Usually, the higher up one goes in floor count, the better the loot and the stronger the Ferals inside. Many Mystery Dungeons contain an ‘end room’, in which the occupant either encounters a Boss Altar or a Reward Room. A Boss Altar summons an Alpha Feral Pokemon that the occupant must fight, and sometimes an Alpha Feral can call upon allies. A Reward Room is a simple room with treasure chests inside, where the occupant can collect their goodies and leave.

Items can be brought out of Mystery Dungeons, with the only exception being Emeras. Items that can blend in to the outside world, such as all types of seeds, stat-boosting scarves/held items, and stat-granding artefacts all work outside of Mystery Dungeons (However, the seeds are unable to be regrown, and must be stocked from repeated trips into Mystery Dungeons). Items that do not fall into this category, such as orbs, looplets, and wands only exist inside Mystery Dungeons, and will serve no function outside of them. 

The era of humans - Technology and Infrastructure

While the details are muddy, the main cause for human extinction is told to be a result of greed, nuclear conflict, and endless wars that ultimately led to their demise. Pokemon were able to adapt to the rapidly changing environments more than humans, meaning that they could survive without much consequence. However, as a result of this war, much of the human’s knowledge and devices had been lost; Pokemon were capable, but humans were on another level of ingenuity. Items as mundane as Pokeballs and cars to structures as complex as skyscrapers were all vanquished in an instant, but remains and relics of that time were found by Pokemon later on in the world’s timeline.

Technology in the PMD world is a mixed bag. Thanks to the power of specific types and Dungeon-borne items, many human devices were able to be crudely replicated, such as using a Fire Gem to power a heater and a Nevermeltice to construct a food cooling unit. Some were created from the ground up, such as telescopes and steam trains. Pokemon also have sewage systems, including running water, a working bathroom, and working showers. In very special cases, some developments exceeded the might of humans - Guild Badges have been infused with Psychic Type energy to naturally respond to the desires of whoever owns it, for example, meaning that if a user wants to connect to their Guild network/radio frequency, they can do so by projecting that need onto the badge itself.

However, there are many aspects where Pokemon cannot rebuild what was lost back then. Complex machinery such as airplanes, computers, TV’s, and gaming consoles do not exist at all. Space exploration is impossible since no Pokemon knows how to construct or run a satellite. Mail travel is exclusively done by Water Types and Flying Types, and the most advanced boat in the world is a paddlewheel ferry. Electricity is not used to power homes, since most electrically-charged devices require the use of an Electric-type Pokemon. Lightbulbs do exist, as do items like generators, but they’re mostly reserved for higher-end establishments due to - as said before - the need for Electic type Pokemon. Instead, Pokemon keep their homes lit with oil lamps, lava lamps, lanterns, and sometimes candleflames.

Cities and towns are usually constructed in a way that resembles late 1800’s to early 1900’s european civilizations with whimsical toppings to them. Since I do not have many examples of canon PMD towns, I will also include photographs of the types of irl settlements I am talking about and say that the line that most towns/cities in the PMD world settles on is in between those examples.

Hopefully you can kinda see what I am going for here. 

Nature

While Pokémon are the dominant species across the world, natural wildlife still does exist. However, due to both evolution and human influence, ONLY DOMESTICATED ANIMALS DESIGNED FOR BUTCHERING AND BREEDING EXIST. This includes chickens, cattle, sheep, goats, and more. Furthermore, insects such as bees and aquatic animals such as fish still exist as well. The circle of life is a very complex thing that cannot be maintained by Pokémon alone.

The roles of creatures such as snakes, wolves, and anything else that isn’t normally raised in a pasture have evolved into different species of Pokemon.

Gems

Pokemon are able to share some of the same quality of life features that humans do with the power of Type-Specific Gems (and similar items). Stacking Never-Melt Ice in a cooling unit works as a perfect substitute for a refrigerator. Ice Gems can power a cooling unit to act as a freezer. Fire Gems can be placed inside heat-conducting boxes to act as a makeshift microwave or can be placed underneath a thin steel surface in lieu of a stovetop (gas stoves also exist). Other gems have different practical uses, such as Dark Gems deflecting light to keep specific areas dark, Water Gems being used to keep something moist/wet, or Electric Gems acting as batteries.

How PMD game mechanics work

Pokémon do not level up, gain stats, or randomly learn moves. In order to achieve a level of strength suitable for specific jobs and to learn new moves, one has to train naturally and progress. It is entirely possible for an elderly Cyndaquil to only know Tackle and Leer if it never chooses to train a day in its life and learns no ™ moves. Age is not dictated by evolution, either.

Stat categories still exist. A move is still classified an attack or a special attack, and resiliences can be defined by defence and special defense. Speed only means movement speed. All of these categories tie into a Pokémon’s natural strength, agility, dexterity, resilience; by extension, stat distributions per Pokémon are still very much a thing, but it’s much less influential. A Pokémon like Machamp, who is a literal muscle man, will not instantly die if it is hit with a single Hydro Pump compared to withstanding 30 Brick Breaks. That would be like saying a buff human can take 100 punches to the face but dies when hit with a hose. With the Hydro Pump, it WILL take more damage, but the effects are much less severe unless there is an extreme gap in strength/technique.

All moves can be trained, perfected, and enhanced given time. Something like a Shuckle cannot suddenly become a god slayer, but if it trains for years on end to be a special attacker, the possibility is there. Many aspects of the body and mind can still be improved upon universally, even if there is a limitation depending on the species.

Moves are also capable of being morphed in special ways, be it through combining two moves together to make a new one or by infusing one move into a specialized item. One of my characters can control the direction of their Flamethrower using Psychic, and another can cover a stick with ice and launch it like a projectile using Iron Tail. 

Any move-boosting items, such as Ginseng, are like steroids (except they don’t shrink your balls). Drinks such as Iron, Protein, and Calcium are treated as supplements and help a Pokémon gain proficiency in one stat category. 

Items or techniques that relay information to a game player, such as something that tells you how many items are on the floor, are now instead depicted as a ‘mental probe’ projected to a Pokemon. For example, if a Pokémon has a technique that lets it find the stairs, it’ll feel as if it is being led in that direction by instinct rather than being immediately told by an imposing voice or witness it in a vision.

Type matchups are still a thing. Abilities work the same, too.

HP as a stat does not exist. It is instead told as ‘how much energy/vitality a Pokemon has’. 

All Pokémon who can evolve are capable of such without the need for some specific location. Sans Pokémon that evolve with an item, Pokémon usually reach the minimum requirement of evolution upon  finishing puberty and/or entering an age of maturity, which differs from species to species. After that, the reasoning for evolution depends on the Pokémon - some go through it peacefully, such as Cascoon, while others need their Super Saiyan transformation for it to work, like Monferno to Infernape.

Now here’s a list of all the Emeras in PMD because these and Looplets are wholly underrated and need to be used more. This is copied from Serebii.net, so all credit for this list goes to the people who slaved over originally making it.