islandshore | 52 - video/action for travelmates;

[Here we have Riku. Or more specifically, we have Riku and a book. When he looks at the camera, it's with a soft chuckle. Then he starts reading off the page.]

A young man, callow and foolish in innocence came to own a sword. With it, he smote Pokémon, which gave sustenance, with carefree abandon. Those not taken as food, he discarded with no afterthought. The following year, no Pokémon appeared. Larders grew bare.

Just let that sink in for a second. A sword. Killing and eating Pokémon. Still with me?

[Then he'll continue.]

The young man, seeking the missing Pokémon, journeyed afar. Long did he search, and far and wide, too, until one did he find.

Asked he, "Why do you hide?" To which the Pokémon replied...

"If you bear your sword to bring harm upon us, with claws and fangs, we will exact a toll. From your kind, we will take our toll, for it must be done. Done it must be, and for it, I apologize."

To the skies, the young man shouted his dismay. "In having found the sword I have lost so much. Gorged with power, I grew blind to Pokémon being alive. I will never fall savage again. This sword I denounce and forsake. I plead for forgiveness, for I was but a fool."

So saying, the young man hurled the sword to the ground, snapping it. Seeing this, the Pokémon disappeared to a place beyond seeing.

[Riku snaps the book shut, placing it down. Afterwards, he shifts into a more comfortable position, arms folded over his chest.]

So, ignoring the obvious anti weapons message here, this story's pretty interesting. It's an old legend from the Sinnoh region, and if it holds any truth, it means that the people in this world used to use real weapons and actually hunted Pokémon. Plus, when you look at stuff like Skarmory's Pokédex entry, you see bits about forging swords from their feathers. You gotta wonder why they stopped and why they're so paranoid about people defending themselves.

You think it's because people abused that power?

[Either way, he's glad he swung by the library. Sometimes they actually do have interesting reads.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Nightsiders. There's probably a reason most of the known universe doesn't want much to do with them.

She nods, thoughtful this time as she considers the best way to explain one of her home universe's less explainable races.]

It is, but I guess that's just how Nightsiders think. They spend their entire youth trying to eat their siblings to be one of the few to grow up and reach sentience, and then they spend their adulthood doing it only a little more metaphorically. They basically destroyed their homeworld and now they're stuck living as refugees on worlds that really don't want them there.

It's really kind of sad, when you think about it.

Wait a sec. They destroyed their whole world?

[Okay, so the idea's not too farfetched for Riku, having heard that his home gets trashed in the future. Still, this just keeps getting grimmer and grimmer.]

So, I take it that their childhoods kind of color their overall lifestyles. Guess it can't be avoided, but sheesh. I'd hate to end up in their shoes.

Well, the world is still there, but it's not very nice. They didn't really believe in things like conservation or avoiding pollution. That sort of thing.

The worst part is that the rest of the universe tends to judge them for it instead of thinking that they might be just as much a product of where they came from as all of us are.

Maybe that's the real moral of all of the stories.

Huh. So it's not so much gone as it is a wasteland... Still, that's rough. Can't say I envy them.

[If anything, there's a hidden environmental PSA buried under all that.]

And if there's one thing I can say, it's that there's always some circumstantial reason behind everything. You've gotta consider nurture alongside nature.

[Her entire universe is not-so-slowly becoming something of a cross between an environmental PSA and a cautionary tale of the dangers of genetic engineering. Fun place.]

Exactly! That's what I've always said, but most people are too busy judging what's on the outside to bother with anything else. The only other person I know who tries is a monk, and a Magog.

I'm Trance, by the way. It's really nice to meet you. [Someone who actually bothers to look below the surface once in a while, that is.]

Hey, same here. It's not every day I hear stories from other worlds... even if yours was kinda on the dark side. And since we're getting on a first-name basis, just call me Riku.

[There's a pause before he adds:]

So, what's a Magog?

[All these terms he's never heard of. How could he possibly refuse asking?]

Not mine, just the same universe. My world's really pretty bright. It's nice there. ... Kind of like here, actually, just minus the pokemon.

[She will happily tell him just about anything he could ever want to know, and probably more besides. She loves sharing knowledge. Information is practically the building blocks of the universe, after all.]

Magog are hard to explain. They're like really horrible, evil, carnivorous teddy bears. Except it's just how they're made, so it's not entirely their fault that they're horrible and scary, but they still are. [Most of the people she's met here have been from some version and time on Earth, so she thinks really hard for a good comparison.] They're like locusts! Except with people.

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