The Quest for the Legends

May's Dad: How did your Meganium die?

May's dad: It… it was an accident. We were in a battle against this Typhlosion, and we were desperate to win, and… it's painful to remember.

Mark: What sparked your interest for legendary Pokémon? Also, how have your opinions on legendaries changed during your journey?

Mark: I dunno. I've just always found them pretty fascinating.

Sandslash: Have you ever had interest in taking part in a Pokéathlon or any other kind of event?

Sandslash: Maybe. I've never tried it before.

Gyarados: Do you prefer to be in your Pokéball or out of it, in the water.

Gyarados: I'd rather be out of it, but being in the ball isn't bad. It's just… stasis, where you feel fine but you can't do anything.

Gyarados (Again): Why did you eat those kids? They could have saved you!
Mew: Who was the last Destroyer?

Gyarados: I ate them because I was hungry and they were too temptingly close.

Mew: Who was the last Destroyer?

Mew: …I do not know. The Destroyer has always been a mystery.

May: Do you, in any way, blame yourself for Taylor's… (Passing? Moving on? Trip to Kindly Old Man Simmons's Farm? Sentence to the Great Metaphorical Illegal Cloning Facility in the sky?)death?

May: …

Alan: Do you, in any way, blame May for Taylor's Untimely passing to Kindly Old Man Simmons's Great Metaphorical Illegal Cloning Facility in the Sky?

Alan: Well, right now I don't even really know what happened.

Chaletwo: What was the Dragon who survived supposed to do then?

Chaletwo: I didn't think it that far at the time. As I keep saying, young and stupid.

Mitch and Sparky:Have you ever had the misfortune of a HUMAN dying in front of you and you couldn't do a thing about it?

Mitch: All too often. Poisons claim many lives even after the victims are taken to me.

Sparky: I was there when my mother died. It always sits with you; it's a very surreal experience.

Mitch and Sparky (again): If you were told that your town would be starved by earthquakes and pestilence assuming you don't give up your Gym and Pokémon to some random ten year old who was completely unqualified for the job, would you do it?

Mitch: Depends on who was telling me that and why.

Sparky: I think I'd assume they were playing a practical joke until proven otherwise.

Ms. Grodski: Were you glad when Mark left on his Pokémon Journey?

Mrs. Grodski: I'm glad to be rid of him, but I can't say I'm glad his parents let him on the journey. When will he learn if they just give in to him?

Molzapart: What evidence do you have to prove that you're not the Destroyer, hmm?

Molzapart: Evidence? Why would I be trying to stop the War if I were the Destroyer? That theory is nonsense from the ground up.

Chaletwo: Same as above.

Chaletwo: What? That's ridiculous. I'm trying to stop the War. I'm not the one that needs to present evidence here. When you produce baseless conjecture like that, the burden of proof is on you.

Mew: Same as above.

Mew. …I suppose there is no such evidence. But I am not the Destroyer.

Nurse Joy: When you see an injured / dead Pokemon, does it make you feel worse than seeing an injured / dead human?

Nurse Joy of Stormy Town: Well, I suppose there is a sense of responsibility when there's a Pokémon, since keeping them healthy is my job, but injured or dead humans are no laughing matter either.

Sparky: What's the weirdest thing anyone's ever ordered at your restaurant. Besides, of course, a Scyther ordering a bowl of beer.

Sparky: Usually people just order things off the menu, so I can't say there has been anything particularly weird, can I?


Phew.

The Talking Cheese, for future reference, yes, that was way too many questions, but I answered them anyway because I felt like it. Please don't ask so many questions again, and don't just ask a boatload of questions because you're bored; I have better things to do with my time than sitting here answering questions if you don't actually care about the answer.

I love theories about the Destroyer. They make me cackle evilly and look forward to writing the end.

It's called the Destroyer because it's the destruction part of the trinity with the Creator and Preserver. That's sort of the whole point. Changing the Destroyer's name would destroy the parallel between them.

Besides, the Destroyer isn't even "something which destroys" except in a very indirect sense, and since absolutely nothing is known about the Destroyer except that it's something that drains the power of the legendaries and causes the War of the Legends, "the Destroyer" is in fact probably the least obvious name you can give it without making assumptions out of nowhere; I mean, I'd consider "the Power-Drainer" or "the War-Causing One" far worse.

Mew: The Destroyer drains all of the power of all the legendaries before the War begins. The power they have to fight with is distributed evenly between them.

Mew: Then how could you have possibly won? Wouldn't the legendaries with higher defense and attack stats have the upper hand?

What part of "evenly distributed" is not getting through? o_O In game terms, every legendary during the War would have double the average of all of the legendaries' Attack, double the average of all the legendaries' Defense, and so on. If anything, Mew has an inherent advantage, because Mew can learn an unusually great number of moves, and those are not affected by the redistribution of the power.

You will know what/who the Destroyer is by the end of the fic, yes.

Okay, so remember the worldbuilding articles I was talking about doing a while ago? Well, I've finished at least a rough draft of the first one, on the subject of power (including the Destroyer's power draining). Before I put it up properly, I figured I might as well see if you think this is completely confusing or if I left out something important or if you think something should be expanded on. So basically, feedback, please?

I'm especially iffy on the capitalizing-Power thing. It seems horribly cheesy and awkward but before I did that it was kind of confusing when I then started talking about the power of the Creator which is not actually power as such. Dunno what to do with it.


The concept of power is pretty central to the Quest for the Legends, being integral to the main plot and often discussed. However, it's an awfully vague term by itself, and while the details don't in themselves have much bearing on the story, I might as well shed some light on just what power actually is in the Quest for the Legends universe. For the sake of clarity, in this article I will capitalize the QftL power as Power to make a distinction between it and the way we normally use the word, but don't expect it to be capitalized in the fic.

Fundamentally, Power is simply the thing that allows Pokémon to do all the seemingly supernatural things they do. It's not an arbitrary measurement or observational concept, but an actual physical quantity - a rather abstract one, but still a well-defined single phenomenon. Think of it as a currency of sorts: you have some set amount of Power, and then there are various feats you use that Power to achieve. Different Pokémon possess both different physical amounts of Power and have different means of using the Power available to them, but fundamentally, this same quantity of Power is at work whether you're Mew levitating, Bulbasaur conjuring leaves out of thin air, Entei creating a soul gem, or Arceus causing the Big Bang - the difference is just the amount that each one requires and which Pokémon are capable of using their Power in that way. Legendary Power is the same thing as ordinary Pokémon's Power, but they have more of it and frequently more means of using it than other Pokémon.

Most actual Pokémon moves employ Power to achieve things that would otherwise be impossible or extremely difficult, though Pokémon can also fight without Power using simple physical force (the Mystery Dungeon games' standard attack that doesn't use PP would be an example of that). Power is also involved in Pokémon's quick healing and resilience. Humans generally don't have Power, though human psychics and so on do exist and use this same abstract quantity of Power to do what they do.

After Power has been 'spent', it is recovered naturally. Under normal circumstances, the recovery is fairly quick and complete, i.e. the Pokémon returns easily to the same quantity of Power it had before, with no permanent loss or adverse effects. If a very large amount of Power is used, this process is both simply slower and needs to recover more Power for a full recovery, so the maximum recovery time can be quite long. Food and drink, as well as manmade healing items, can speed up the process considerably, however.

Power can be lent and borrowed, but as Chaletwo mentions in chapter 52, Power is always partly tied to the true "owner"'s soul, in the sense that as long as the soul remains, it has a limited amount of control over that Power. This allows a Pokémon that has given another Power to take it back without physically being close to the current bearer of that Power. A body is always needed to actually do anything with Power, however, and when a body dies, all Power stored in that body is lost - hence the need for Entei and Suicune to transfer most of their Power to other Pokémon first in order for the soul gem plan to work.

The Destroyer

What the Destroyer does is to slowly drain the Power from the legendary Pokémon and make it his own (meaning that once lost, that Power is no longer tied to the soul of the legendary it originated from). The speed at which this happens is dependent on the "magnetism" between the Destroyer and the legendary in question, which in turn can be expressed as the legendary's current Power level multiplied by the Destroyer's current Power level: essentially, if you're mathematically inclined, it can be approximated by the formula L'(t) = -aL(t)D(t) where a is some unknown factor. If you're not, that basically means it starts out slow, then gets faster as the Destroyer becomes more powerful, then slows down again as the legendaries become comparatively weak.

If that formula were completely correct the draining would never actually end, but it does stop at a certain point and the Destroyer sends out a pulse of Power containing double the Power all the legendaries originally had. This Power is distributed evenly among all of the legendaries it finds - meaning they are all just about equal during the War - and the sudden rush of Power drives them into the madness that causes them to go on a wild rampage trying to kill each other. When the legendaries die in the War, their Power isn't simply lost, as it usually would, but instead somehow lingers behind and gathers in the final legendary, as well as granting it the power of the Creator ("power" - note the noncapitalization - is a somewhat misleading word here; it's more akin to an ordinary move than to Power) to create new life out of nothing. Then the cycle begins again.

In addition to draining the Power of the legendaries, the Destroyer also inhibits their normal Power recovery so that any Power that is spent cannot properly be recovered: the legendary's Power level goes down permanently rather than temporarily, hence the deal with Molzapart and Chaletwo trying to conserve their Power.

Does being in a closer proximity to the Destroyer speed up the process of their energy being absorbed?

No. Or at least not as far as Molzapart and Chaletwo know.

I went and put up the Power article under the new Worldbuilding Articles section. I ended up not capitalizing it, because it just bugged me, and reworded some other stuff. Again, if you have suggestions for stuff that ought to be touched on, speak up.

Unfortunately, nobody knows that. I can explain details of what the characters already basically know, but I can't go around telling you about things that are explicitly a mystery to everyone in the story.

Where in the world did you get the idea that Attack and Defense aren't power?

I replied to this in detail over on the Quest Blog.

Yes, all the legendary clones count (though Raitwo, being a Raichu clone and not a legendary one, is hardly relevant). However, it would be a bit hard for one of them to be the Destroyer, considering Rick didn't create them until a few years ago.

Does the Destroyer know it's the Destroyer? Because that could help bash a lot of theories (and spark new ones).

Nobody knows that, and I'm not telling you.

Also, how many Pokemon are exculsive to Ouen? It hardly seems likely that there's only Scorplack, Letal, Mutark and Monarking, plus in the Ask the Characters thread Mitch mentioned a large poisonous spider that I don't think was mentioned in the fic.

There's no definite number of Ouenian Pokémon. Generally, any fake Pokémon I create are assumed to be native to Ouen, so all the fake sprites I've made and so on technically also live in there somewhere, though they're unlikely to appear in the fic. There are also several other Pokémon I have a rough concept of but no images or details (including another unpleasant Ouenian Poison-type that gets a mention by Mitch waaaaay later on). I don't really keep count of them; it's not that many, but that doesn't mean I won't make up more later and pretend they were always there.

Yes, I know what you meant. I'm just not going to tell you the answer because you're not supposed to know everything about the Destroyer. One of the key mysteries in the story right now is the utter lack of information about the Destroyer, who or what he is or how he "works", and this is very deliberately so. Telling you this in particular wouldn't give away who the Destroyer is or ruin the plot, no, but it is information that you're simply not supposed to know. All I will tell you about the Destroyer, ever, is what Chaletwo knows, and if you try to ask me about something he has no idea about, you won't get a word. Sorry.

Do you think it is possible that Sandslash will ever become a vaguely interesting character for you? Will Sandslash probably only become vaguely interesting if he is released for some reason, lost, or mauled apart in a most fun-to-write manner? (or some alternative means of peril)

Who knows? I mean, he doesn't have anything particularly interesting planned, but the characters have surprised me before.

When you say this, do you mean that literally no currently-existing character in the entire fic knows whether or not the Destroyer is aware of being the Destroyer, or just that nobody in terms of the main protagonists, as in Chaletwo, Mark, May, etc, knows that?

It means that Chaletwo, and thus by extension everyone who learned about the War from him, does not know that and as far as he knows nobody else does either (barring the tautological, i.e. that if the Destroyer knows he is the Destroyer, obviously he also knows that he knows he is the Destroyer).

For the purposes of questions about the Destroyer, the mechanics of the War or other important plot-related knowledge, I'm not the all-knowing author; I'm just somebody Chaletwo has explained this all to in detail. The completeness (and accuracy) of the information I can give out will reflect this.

Granted, it's not like I had the faintest idea what it was about when I started it. Heck, the Destroyer concept didn't even properly come about until the ILCOE, if I remember correctly, and even then it was a while before I figured out who the Destroyer actually was.

Though Dialga, Palkia, Giratina and Arceus have been stated to be uninvolved with the War of the Legends as they reside outside of our universe.

Okay, this is a slightly random question. I was reading the "Destroyer" thread and you mentioned that you haven't had it figured out from the beginning what it was.

I was just curious, about how long were you writing the story with the Destroyer idea before you figured out what it was actually going to be?

Depends on what you call 'with the Destroyer idea'. Originally the War of the Legends Just Happened. Then sometime while I was writing the ILCOE, some comment somebody made (asking about Chaletwo or something) made me respond with some vague cryptic stuff about how he was the Preserver, whereas Mew was the Creator, and hmm, who might the Destroyer be? This was a completely spur-of-the-moment thing and then I just thought it was a cool idea. Then for the longest time my ideas about the Destroyer were quite silly, and then I had other ideas which were more interesting but made no actual sense, and then sometime… probably 2006-7-ish? I finally figured it out and suddenly everything made sense.

Mark: if you caught lugia or articuno, would you ever just ride around on it trolling and saying "haters gonna hate"

Mark: …huh? o_O I doubt they'd let me do that.

chaletwo: are you sure the destroyer is not a pokemon on another planet?

Chaletwo: I have no idea. That would be handy if it were true and all, but it just sounds like science fiction to me. We have to assume something that's draining the power of the legendaries on this planet is probably also on this planet.

alan: what if a pokemon loves you too much in a… uh… yknow way

Alan: I… don't think that happens a lot. But if it did you'd just have to deal with it, like you'd deal with somebody else who likes you if you don't like them back. Talk about it and see if they can't get over it.

Chaletwo: Why don't you just not wait for the War of the Legends to begin, kill all the other Legendaries with your eyes, and then become the new Creator? (apart from plot reasons!)

Chaletwo: …are you serious? Is everybody this convinced I'm a giant jerkass who doesn't really care about stopping this thing?

And it wouldn't even work, besides. Remember how Mew is a true immortal and can't be killed except during the War? Remember how we don't know who the Destroyer is but he's probably also a true immortal? Remember how the War will happen if even one legendary is out there when it happens?

Chaletwo: What is your relationship, if any, with other Legendary pokemon?

Chaletwo: I'm vaguely acquainted with most of them. Mew I know well, Molzapart I'm friends with, most of the others I've talked to from time to time but don't know that well.

In class today, while learning about the Hindu 'gods', I noticed that the main ones are considered the Creator, Brahmah, the Preserver, Vishnu, and the Destroyer, Shiva.
Is this a coincidence at all? It just struck me as odd..

Nope. That whole idea was shamelessly lifted from Hindu mythology.

Granted, I didn't actually think of that until I noticed that Mew had created stuff, and Chaletwo was a guardian of life, and that totally meant it was the same and I should make somebody be the Destroyer, too.

If they do manage to stop the war of legends, would that mean someone else would have to recapture all the legendaries in 1000 years.

They don't know anything about that for sure because they know so little about the Destroyer and how he works, but to the best of their knowledge, yes.