The Quest for the Legends

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.

The capitalization of Power doesn't really bother me here, but if you think it's kind of iffy you could replace it with a different word… like uhumm, aptitude or something. (No, I totally didn't just check an online thesaurus.)

I really like your definition, though; I never really thought about how Pokémon magically did everything they did, and this seems pretty logical. The Destroyer's powers make sense with this definition/concept, too.

I think you covered all the main points in both sections in a logical fashion. The whole thing is easy to follow and nothing seems to be especially contradictory or nonsensical.

Power sounds like the standard fantasy explanation of magic. Since it's a specific thing like magic and is inherently different from "the way we normally use the word", as you put it, I think it's fine to capitalize it. Additionally, the use of the word power creates a stronger relation to the term used in-game, Power Points, which I find interesting.

I don't suppose it would feel particularly different without the capitalization, but I sort of like the weight it lends it. Besides that, this is the Pokemon world and they seem to use capitalization quite a bit more frequently than we do.

"Abilities" is a reasonable alternative for the power of the Creator. Or possibly you could get away with pluralizing the word power, or saying something closer to skills.

There are just a couple of minor things that you might consider altering;

Does the Creator really create new life out of nothing? Doesn't it at least take energy, if nothing else? Possibly justified since they are the Creator, after all, and I don't think the difference really has much effect on the story as a whole, but I tend to feel a bit iffy on the concept of something-out-of-nothing.

Isn't there something you can add to the formula so that it's slightly more accurate? Something along the lines of "it's like this so long as x is less than y and then take away z and divide by the number of Legendaries." I haven't really gotten into advanced mathematics, but I think we've done equations where the numbers can start going backward again.

Finally, why is the section on the Destroyer the only part with a header? You might say something like "Now, what the Destroyer does…" or "It follows that…" for a better transition, but there are no other headers and the switch between topics seemed perfectly natural on its own, so suddenly reading a line in bold is a bit jarring. If it isn't like that in the actual article, it's probably fine.

The whole thing feels pretty well thought out and I've been wondering about that last paragraph in particular. It's great that you put so much work into your stories.

Does the Creator really create new life out of nothing? Doesn't it at least take energy, if nothing else? Possibly justified since they are the Creator, after all, and I don't think the difference really has much effect on the story as a whole, but I tend to feel a bit iffy on the concept of something-out-of-nothing.

Like any other supernatural move, the Creator's power uses Power, if that's what you mean by energy. It's just like any other Pokémon move theat creates something out of nothing, really, like a small Squirtle blasting several tons of water that it obviously couldn't have been storing within its body the whole time.

Isn't there something you can add to the formula so that it's slightly more accurate? Something along the lines of "it's like this so long as x is less than y and then take away z and divide by the number of Legendaries." I haven't really gotten into advanced mathematics, but I think we've done equations where the numbers can start going backward again.

Huh? The problem is just that the function has a limit of zero, meaning according to the formula, the power of the legendaries continues to drain, but is never quite gone. The point is that the Destroyer's pulse is sent out sometime when their power is for all intents and purposes nonexistent, even though it's not technically zero. It's not really a problem with the formula so much as with the assumption that the Destroyer drains them completely dry before the War starts. I could probably make the description clearer about that, though.

Finally, why is the section on the Destroyer the only part with a header? You might say something like "Now, what the Destroyer does…" or "It follows that…" for a better transition, but there are no other headers and the switch between topics seemed perfectly natural on its own, so suddenly reading a line in bold is a bit jarring. If it isn't like that in the actual article, it's probably fine.

Mm, I guess. It's pretty much its own subsection, though; I could almost split it up into a whole other worldbuilding article, but since these topics are so closely related, that seems a little silly.

You could have just said "the ability of the Creator", you know.

But the word "ability" also means something else. I originally used that, but it seemed to potentially imply it was an actual ability like Levitate.