Chapter 1, in which the stage is set

At the time, I had already found a fair few human artefacts, and had been recognised by the University for one of the biggest finds in recent times. However, many artefacts I found were by chance, while walking through nature, and through the passage of time, most relics had been degraded beyond recognition. Mystery Dungeons were well known for bending the rules of space and time, so I had hoped to find artefacts of better quality, less tarnished by time.

Unfortunately, only exploration teams affiliated with the Exploration Guild were permitted to explore Mystery Dungeons, and despite their impressive feats, I don’t trust them to recognise human artefacts, nor retrieve them. I’d say this was why research on humanity was so slow at the time — no historian had dared explore a Mystery Dungeon themselves. With the amount of broken and battered curios we’d found outside of them, many did not believe it necessary to explore a Dungeon itself. Given the quality of everything we’d found, I thought differently.

The Guild had recently started a new program, allowing individuals to follow teams on missions, for up to five days, such that they may learn how Dungeon exploration works, so of course, I picked it up. I’d been assigned to a relatively new team, by the name of Team Bravado. Today was the third day of my apprenticeship.

After waking up and eating a quick breakfast of two apples and an Oran berry, I was nearly ready to start the day. On my way out, I passed by my research room. As could be expected, the walls were lined with a variety of books, with aged pages, covered in dirt, grime, and the like. Of the books that still had ink, many were smudged, and even more simply torn to shreds. Of course, humanity is believed to have gone extinct thousands of years ago; the state of these books was to be expected, yet it made research involving them all the more infuriating.

The language was comprised of glyphs surprisingly similar to the elusive Pokémon known as Unown. As such, the language was named, to no one’s surprise, Unown. Unlike common language glyphs nowadays, every Unown glyph is not associated with a sound, but rather, associated to a word “component,“ in a sense. It’s not quite so simple as having a glyph per sound, but close enough.

The other contents of the room were more diverse. You see, my biggest contribution to history was the discovery of some of humanity’s constructions. Many other contraptions had already been found by historians: odd collections of gears, likely timepieces; huge machines of moving parts, likely for transport; and many more, whose purposes weren’t clear-cut, but predictable enough.

What made my discovery special was finding several relics with seemingly no purpose. I’d linked them to humans. They were odd lumps of metal and plastic, sometimes with glass, apparently having no properties whatsoever. They had no moving parts, nor did they seem to open up to contain anything. They’d held odd words on their surfaces, most likely their names, such as “iPhone.“ I was the first to find them in well enough condition that they still had Unown on them, which is why this discovery was credited to me.

Stranger still were the two hollow contraptions: spherical, with a white underside, and a metal circle in front. They were different, however — one had a red top, and the other had a blue top, with red stripes. The circle on the front, despite clearly being intended to be pressed, did nothing, and when pried open, it seemed to be attached to a contraption, with, again, seemingly no purpose. They’d also held mysterious codes: the first, “PB-2481070,“ and the second, “GB-1571587.“

The single biggest mystery regarding humanity is their disappearance. Although we’d found many artefacts, no one had found any major human dwellings. There were no buildings, nor relic hotspots, that might indicate where humans had lived — though the literature that we had translated told us they were not nomadic.

As I passed the room, I headed into the bathroom to quickly check if my fur was properly groomed. The Meowstic in the mirror stared back with the usual intense yellow eyes, as I quickly combed my head tuft. On my way out, I grabbed my black cloak, clasped it around my neck, then took a nearly empty pack, holding only a notebook devoid of notes. On my first two days with Team Bravado, I had found nothing. I hoped to rectify that today.

After a short walk, I’d encountered a good friend on my way to the Guild, Quil, a Smeargle. Many in town knew him for tending the only local bar, by the name of “Our Story,“ but many more knew him for his incredible storytelling, hence the name of the bar. He’d collect people’s tales in the bar — from things as mundane as a person’s afternoon, to some of the incredible recent accomplishments of the Guild, and everything in between — and he’d weave those stories into wonderful narrative experiences. Most Pokémon would find themselves at the front of the bar, listening to his newest creation, few willing to pass up the opportunity.

He was also incredibly resourceful and creative with his storytelling. Many times, Pokémon would find themselves at Our Story with various scraps of papers, assorted items, and the like, that they’d found around town. Yet these items were too cryptic to be left behind: near unreadable messages, cypher codes, broken tools, unrecognisable objects. And when people brought those to the bar, oftentimes a collection of items fit together very nicely, telling a story from context clues. It was always incredible to see the community of the town come together to uncover Quil’s latest mystery. I imagine Quil himself planted most of these, and knew how to improvise when unexpected items showed up — but that was all the better. No one really knew what the next story entailed.

He had noticed me approaching.

“Ohoho! Nice seeing you this morning, Ida!“ he said.

“Good morning to you too,“ I replied.

“How’s life been treating you recently, mmm?“

“Well enough. Haven’t had much luck in Mystery Dungeons thus far, but surely something comes up sooner or later.” He nodded encouragingly. “You?“

“Same old, same old. I will say, though, I’ve got something brewing, and I think it’s going to be right up your alley, hehe~,“ he said, with a light smile.

He knew most people in town well enough to make that promise with confidence. After all, one must know their audience to be a successful storyteller.

“Can’t wait. Maybe we’ll speak more later tonight — I’ll be late otherwise.“

“Sounds good, sounds good. Seeya!“

And with a wave of the paw, I’d left further towards the town square.

The Guild was in the center of Verdant Town, but I lived near the outskirts. Although it made for a long walk, I hadn’t needed to visit the center of town too often before now, and the quiet I’d had at my home was most helpful when I took the time to clean artefacts or attempt to translate the contents of a book.

Various dwellings lined the sides of the cobbled path as I headed towards the Guild. Most dwellings were simple constructions, made of wood, and covered by a thatch, with some of the bigger holes between planks sealed by grass types’ abilities. Some of the richer Pokémon, or those who were passionate about home keeping would spend a bit more on something more personalised, though these were few and far between. I’d found most of them to be a bit too tacky for my tastes; Quil’s book-house had always bothered me.

As I got closer to the center of the town, the buildings shifted more from dwellings to a marketplace, which was much more colourful. This nexus of commerce was formed of stalls, tents, tables covered in merchandise and whatever advertisements might catch one’s eye. Various vendors were selling their wares, ranging from exploration gear, to various materials, to regular groceries, or even some small luxuries. Others could be seen selling services, such as construction, cleaning, and more. Kecleon’s Market, a very generalist store, garnered the most customers, usually. Although it was often cheaper to find dedicated sellers, the Kecleon brothers seemed to have anything and everything, and most didn’t mind an uptick in pricing for the convenience.

At the center of it all stood the Exploration Guild, or, at least, Verdant Town’s branch of the Guild. The Guild’s building was the most expansive in all of Verdant Town, and it was clear they’d spared no expense. It was one of the few buildings with metal supports, and they’d even built a second floor. It was also painted blue, with yellow highlights around its edges. Various depictions of the Guild’s badges throughout history on the front of the building had also been painted. The badge had gone from being merely a simple circular pin, to a hexagonal gold badge with blue feathered wings coming out of the side.

I took a couple of steps into the building, to quickly be greeted by an overtly energetic Shinx.

“She’s here, SHE’S HERE!“ shouted Arc, now running circles around me.

“Please shut up,“ came the exasperated reply from Elm, a Snivy.

The other two members of the team, Amber the Breloom and Nivas the Sneasel stepped up behind the others.

The members of Team Bravado were fairly interesting. Arc and Elm seemed to always be at odds; Arc, forever upbeat, Elm, forever annoyed. Amber, the team leader, was fairly down to earth, and did his best to ensure that the team worked smoothly, without a hitch, while Nivas was clearly only along for the ride — he’d agree with anything and everything, and held no strong convictions one way or the other.

They all wore assorted scarves, pinned by their badges. Arc and Elm wore yellow, while Amber and Nivas wore light blue. Most Guild members wore scarves, in fact — cloth could be woven with traces of seeds and berries, to grant a little help to its wearer. Of course, this process was not easy, so usually scarves were produced, such that most Pokémon could wear them, and thus enjoy their benefits.

Nivas was the one holding the team’s bag — a regular knapsack, clasped with a recreation of the Guild’s badge. Although the Guild provided little to their teams, they ensured that every team would be at least ready to start on their first day, and that meant providing starting supplies, in a bag. Most teams kept their bags, as reminders of their first adventure. Team Bravado’s bag held all of their supplies — many Oran berries, a handful of Pecha and Cheri berries, many seeds of varying properties, a handful of Orbs, and the ever-important Escape Orb.

“Ready to go?“ asked Amber. “We’ve already taken care of restocking our supplies, all that’s left is picking a mission.“

“I’m good,“ I answered.

“Let’s get this over with,“ sighed Elm.

“LET’S GO!“ said Arc.

Arc hopped on excitedly ahead of us, as we padded deeper into the Guild. Inside, we found the main hall, which took up most of the building. There were teams preparing for their missions, as well as Guild employees sorting missions and handing out assigned missions to the better teams. The hall was also connected to several rooms — most of which were merely desks for Pokémon to submit requests or Guild candidatures. The second floor was also nothing special — only empty bedrooms should the need arise. These were typically used for resting wounded guests, oft travellers rescued from dungeons.

However, most Pokémon were here only to have a look at the mission board, at the center of the room.

The huge board went up to the ceiling, and included most postings on it, the least important stowed away in some drawer, ready to be pinned, should room be made for them. Though missions had varying degrees of specificity, the Guild ensured that all missions were easily sorted, by assigning difficulty ratings to each mission before posting it. Difficulties were calculated on a variety of factors, though typically the deciding one was the destination Dungeon. Almost all missions had a difficulty rating. The few exceptions were written on red paper, to indicate urgency — there was no time to waste by calculating the difficulty. Although urgent missions were typically deferred to hand-picked teams, sometimes the Guild found itself short-staffed, and would post one to the board.

Team Bravado picked missions by finding a handful of interesting ones, then voting which one the team wanted to do. Ties would be resolved by Amber’s vote, as team leader. As such, I left the others to pick a mission on their own — I’d had no particular favourites.

“Hmm, retrieving a necklace in Dark Depths? …sounds interesting,“ commented Elm.

“Oooh! I wanna escort a Clefairy through Pink Plains!“ said Arc, enthusiastic as ever.

“Surveying the Blighted Bog? Might not be too bad,“ added Nivas.

With our three missions before us, Amber and I were left to cast the deciding votes. They were all of the same difficulty rating of D. Team Bravado weren’t particularly full of themselves, unlike other small teams. They knew that D was the best they could manage for now, so they stuck to that.

Mission difficulty was sorted with the usage of the first few glyphs of the Unown alphabet, those being A, B, C, D, and E, going from hardest to easiest. Once a mission reached an A ranking, the Guild also added one to five stars to the difficulty. The reason they did this, rather than picking more letters, was because so few teams could work at that difficulty — it was hard for the Guild employees, who didn’t do regular Dungeon diving, to properly assess those. Thus, the A represented an incredibly difficult mission, and the stars indicated an estimation of the degree of said difficulty, typically inaccurate.

As for the Dungeons themselves: usually, Mystery Dungeons were named with alliteration with respect to the dominant type found in the dungeon. I’d imagine when naming the first few Dungeons, by coincidence, they’d followed this pattern, so they’d later chosen to keep it up. It was fun to see the names of Mystery Dungeons, and it was quite practical too.

Of the three we’d picked, we had Dark types, Fairy types, and Poison types. All three were reasonable, with no huge strengths and weaknesses to be considered, with the exception of Dark types. As a Psychic type, I’d be essentially useless.

However, I was not looking for easy explorations, I was looking for relics. And that made the decision quite easy.

“Anything you like?“ he asked.

“I don’t think we’ve been underground yet,“ I mentioned.

“Are you sure? Pink Plains might be easier.“

“I can take the supply bag, if you want,“ I countered.

“Dark Depths it is, then.“

“Awwww, why’s it always have to be the caves?“ complained Arc. “There’s no space to run in there!“

“Eh, it’s not that bad,“ replied Nivas.

And on that note, we’d left to Dark Depths, where I’d soon find the single most important book of my career.