Welcome to another exciting installment of Spacemon, the tale of a Pokemon TRPG campaign! It is a sci-fi space epic played using the Pokemon Tabletop United (PTU) system and GMed by fellow TAY author DragonStorm247. You can get caught up on the entire Spacemon saga here!
The dim glow of the sparking electrical crystal formations along the walls bathed the underground chamber in an eerie, flickering light as the crew of the UAS Helix stood before the mysterious doorway once more. Alex felt small and insignificant in comparison to the massive stone doors that rose before her as she gazed up at them.
“This feels like the part where the really ominous music would start playing,” she commented on the creepy atmosphere of the moment. The girl suddenly found herself stricken with a strong sense of foreboding.
“Nonsense!” H exclaimed as he approached the doors. He and Shane each grabbed one of the doors and started pulling. Despite their obvious weight, the massive stone slabs appeared to float open rather easily, as if carried by some sort of current. Even as the pair released their grip on the doors, they continued to swing open on their own.
Once the doors came to a rest, Alex followed the rest of the crew across the threshold. They entered into a massive open cavern that stretched on for several miles in every direction. The cavern floor was covered in the rubble of crumbling buildings and towers— the ruined wreckage of a long forgotten city. Scattered across the ground lay the skeletons of the ancient denizens of this city.
“Woah,” Alex gasped as she took it all in. It felt like something out of an apocalyptic movie scene.
As Alex gazed out at this ruined cityscape, H crouched down beside a nearby skeleton to get a better look. “These appear to be Human remains.”
“Are you serious?” Alex asked him.
“I’ve seen enough bones. These are definitely human.”
“But how is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Dmitri said as he crouched beside another skeleton to take a look for himself. “But if I were to guess, these bodies have been here since before Humanity left Earth,” he continued after examining the bones for a moment. “They’re definitely not nearly as old as the ruins on Vandia, though. No skeletons could last that long.”
“That’s so weird,” Alex responded. “I thought all Humans came from Earth.”
“Apparently not,” H said. “Hmm … There seems to be a lot more of these crystal formations here,” the cyborg then observed, drawing attention to the electric crystals present here as well.
“I don‘t think it’s a coincidence,” said Dmitri, picking up a couple smaller crystals up off the ground and examining them. “These crystals don’t seem natural.” He moved them closer together and sparks started flying between them. He touched them together and they shattered in his hands in an explosion of electricity and shards of crystal. Dmitri let out a surprised shout at the sudden explosion in his hands, frantically flailing his arms around.
“Well, that was a pretty dumb idea,” Alex told him.
“I didn’t know they would blow up!” the Romanov exclaimed.
“Hmm … interesting,” said H.
“We should move on,” Morgan spoke up. “We need to find out what this place is.”
“Let’s go there!” Alex shouted, pointing at a large building in the center of the city. “That place looks important!”
“That’s actually a good idea,” Morgan agreed.
With their destination decided, the crew continued onward, moving deeper into the city and passing by more ruined buildings and the skeletons of Humans and Pokemon alike. The buildings appeared to have been battered by severe storms, the crumbling structures showing signs of water, wind, and lightning damage.
“Man, this place looks like Sharpedocane 6 …” Alex mumbled to herself as they walked along. She wondered what could have led to all this destruction.
Eventually, they arrived at the large building. Ruined as it was, it was an impressive structure. It was crumbling in many places, but a tall spire still stood at its center, tall and proud over the ruins surrounding it. Alex imagined that, at one point, this building was once an ornate palace that served as the seat of this civilization’s government.
Entering the structure, the crew was greeted with the sight of a mess of collapsing floors and walls and ruined staircases. “Everyone, be careful,” Morgan cautioned as they moved further in.
Alex found her attention drawn to several faded murals decorating the walls. They appeared to depict the planet, although the storms were noticeably absent.
“I’m guessing this wasn’t always a treacherously stormy world,” Shane said as he walked up behind Alex to look at the mural with her.
“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “I wonder what happened.”
“We should split up and explore this place,” Morgan suggested.
“Good idea,” Dmitri agreed.
They paired off into two groups, with Dmitri and Shane going off one way and Alex followed Morgan in another. H, meanwhile, went off to do his own thing.
Shane wandered the ruined hallways with Dmitri, navigating what remained of what was surely once an architectural marvel of its time. Now it was only a depressing and decrepit labyrinth of collapsed walls and ceilings. They explored the various rooms they came across, at least the ones that hadn’t completely caved in upon themselves, but didn’t find much other than more skeletons of the long dead.
Eventually, the pair found their way to what appeared to be some sort of armory— or what was left of an armory. The walls that remained standing were lined with spears and swords, most broken but some still mostly intact. Many more weapons lay on the ground, scattered in the rubble. Their blades were carved from the same electric crystals they had seen everywhere since arriving on Messina.
“Cool,” said Dmitri, picking up a rather large sword from the ground. Aside from a few chips on the blade, it was fully intact. Dmitri held the weapon up to get a better look at it, then gave it a few swings. “I think I’ll keep this.”
“I don’t think you’ll get much practical use out of that,” Shane told his crewmate.
“But it looks cool,” Dmitri said. “I can put it on my wall.”
Shane shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Digging through the rubble himself, Shane uncovered an electric crystal dagger. Brushing it off, he notices it has some sort of inscription carved into it, but it is written in some script unlike any Human language he had seen before.
Deciding to take a souvenir as well, Shane pocketed the dagger, then followed Dmitri out of the room. There was plenty more exploring to do.
Morgan had so many questions burning in her mind as she moved through the ruins of the ancient building. What was this place? How did it come to exist? Who were the people who lived here? Where had they come from? What happened to them? Her cybernetic eye recorded everything she saw. She would certainly spend hours pouring over the video footage when they got back to the ship
Alex, meanwhile, trailed along behind her. The girl gazed around in wonderment at everything as they passed, often stopping or wandering off whenever something caught her fancy. Morgan had to keep reminding her to stay close and keep out of danger.
The pair soon came across what Morgan guessed was some sort of council chamber or situation room. The skeletons of seemingly important government officials sat as they died, hunched over the table, deliberating over what appeared to be documents and technical schematics of some kind.
Delicately, Morgan attempted to examine whatever it was the skeletons had been looking at, taking care not to touch anything for fear of damaging it. From what she could guess, it seemed as if these officials had been discussing the electric crystals and their uses as a power source, but she couldn’t say for certain.
Looking back up, Morgan noticed Alex reaching out to one of the skeletons at the table. “Wait—” she tried to tell her, but it was too late.
The Sinai girl poked the skeleton, causing it to fall over. The ancient bones crumbled into dust as they hit the ground. “Oops …” she said, fanning the dust cloud away from her face with her hand.
“Don’t do that!” Morgan berated the girl.
“Sorry,” she replied sheepishly, casting her gaze down at the floor.
“This stuff is very delicate,” Morgan said, taking on a softer, but still stern tone. “Don’t fool around in here.”
“I didn’t know that would happen!”
Morgan sighed. “Just … be more careful, okay? Now, come on, let’s see what else we can find out about this place.”
H stood outside the ruined structure, gazing up at the spire that still stood tall over the rest of the crumbled building. The cyborg had taken a brief look around the interior of the place, but exploring further seemed a waste of time. He was more interested in the exterior. Though the inside of the building was in a sad state of decay, the outside walls remained intact.
Approaching one of the walls again, the cyborg exclaimed it closely. The stonework appeared to be reinforced with metal plating, which explained why it had withstood the test of time for longer. Surely, it could take his weight as well. Placing one foot against the wall, H magnetized it to the metal surface. His strong cybernetic legs supporting him, he began walking up the side of the building.
The cyborg had barely taken a few steps when he heard Morgan shout at him. “H, stop it! Do you want to bring the whole place down?!”
Glancing back down, H saw her and Alex standing near the entrance. “By scaling the most structurally sound part of the building?” he called back to his quarrelsome crewmate. “I’d be more likely to bring the building down trying to navigate the mess of broken stairs inside.”
Ignoring Morgan’s foolish concerns, H continued to climb, moving quickly up the side of the building. As he moved up toward the higher floors, the cyborg noticed increasingly more lightning rods and other anti-storm measures in place. Gazing up to the spire again once he reached the roof, he realized that it was similarly adorned. He guessed that the builders of this city progressively built up protective layers around the buildings as the planet gradually became more inhospitable.
The lingering question remained, though. What had caused this world to become so inhospitable in the first place?
It was shortly after they had exited the ruined palace that Alex and Morgan were rejoined by Dmitri and Shane, the pair having finished their own exploration of the structure. Dmitri had an old sword made from the electric crystal material that he was happy to show off, and Shane had a similarly crafted dagger as well.
“Wow, this is so cool!” Alex said as she looked the weapons over.
Morgan seemed less impressed, but nonetheless interested.
“So where’s H?” Dmitri eventually asked.
“Up there,” Alex answered, pointing to the roof of the building.
“That seems … dangerous,” Shane commented.
“That’s what I said,” Morgan chimed in. “Whatever. Did you two find anything else?”
“Not really,” Shane told her. “What about you?”
“We found some old documents,” Morgan said. “I think they were using these crystals as a power source,” she continued, motioning to a chain of the formations leading away from the building. “I took footage of everything. I can show you when we get back to the Helix.”
“Maybe we can find out more if we find a museum or library in this city,” Dmitri suggested.
“You’re welcome to look, but I don’t think it will be easy,” Morgan said.
“Well I’m going to try,” Dmitri said before walking off.
“In the meantime, I want to see where this leads,” Shane then said, motioning to the crystal chain Morgan had pointed out. He began to follow it, and Morgan went with him. Not wanting to be left behind, Alex trailed after them.
The trio followed the chain of electrical crystals for a while and soon arrived at an open plaza area surrounding a large crystal formation not too far from the ruined palace.
“What is this, some kind of power generation site?” Shane pondered aloud.
“Maybe?” Alex said. Looking back at the chain they had followed, she noticed that it did kind of look like a power line.
“I don’t think this would be very safe to touch,” Morgan observed, looking up at the large crystal formation. Sparks of energy occasionally flared off of it.
“It would be a good idea to take it back to the ship and analyze it, though,” Shane said.
As the two began discussing the logistics of transporting such a large crystal formation back to the ship, Alex wandered off a little, kicking rocks around out of boredom. Spotting some movement in the distance, she looked back over to the ruined palace and saw H running down the side of the spire with a pair of extendo-legs. He reached the roof of the remaining structure quickly due to his giant strides, then leapt off with a flip. A pogostick then popped out of his belly to break his fall. The cyborg bounded back up and landed on the ground feet first. Alex’s jaw dropped a little as she stared in confusion at what she had witnessed.
H soon joined the group at the plaza and Dmitri met up with them soo after.
“Find your library?” Shane asked Dmitri.
“No, but I did find some other interesting things,” Dmitri answered.
“And my exploration was enlightening as well,” H chimed in.
Sharing their findings, the crew began to piece together the fate of this city. From what they were able to guess, this civilization relied on the energy crystals for power and, in their hunger for more power, inflicted irreversible consequences to the planet, fueling the massive storms that were a byproduct of the crystals. Eventually, they created an apocalyptic storm that wiped them out.
“I’ve seen this movie before,” Alex said.
“This is all speculation anyway,” Morgan said. “We should talk to Gilgamesh. Maybe he knows something about this.
“We must gather samples of these crystals before we leave!” H exclaimed.
Each of the members of the crew gathered up some of the smaller crystals, and H had them help load some larger ones onto his Rhyhorn’s back, then they began the trek back to the surface.
Gilgamesh was waiting for the crew when they returned. “Well that was a city,” Shane said to the monk as they approached him. “Like a … dead city.”
“Interesting,” Gilgamesh replied.
“There were hundreds of Human bodies in there,” Morgan added.
“Human? That’s interesting … How old was this city?”
“Our guess is only a few thousand years,” Dmitri told him. “It died a lot more recently than the ruins on Vandia, but definitely before the Arks landed.”
“Hmm …” The look on Gilgamesh’s face gave Alex the impression that this made sense to him even though she still really couldn’t wrap her head around the idea. “It would appear that … Earth was not the only garden world.”
“Garden world?” Alex asked.
“Yes … the Garden of Eden. The Trees of Life and Knowledge … There was more than one.”
“Multiple trees, multiple planets,” said H. “Wouldn’t that mean the decisions could be different? We could have intelligent Pokemon and intelligent Pokemon would solve my problems.”
“No,” Alex said bluntly. She had heard the stories of creation many times as she grew up and knew that what H was suggesting was completely preposterous.
“Unlikely,” Gilgamesh told H. “Humans are those that ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Pokemon are those that ate from the Tree of Life.”
“But that would mean Humans and Pokemon were one and the same at some point,” H replied.
“It would seem so.”
“Which means they can be combined once more!”
“I would doubt it,” Gilgamesh told the cyborg. “What existed before was neither Human nor Pokemon. With neither Knowledge or Power, they were simply blank slates.”
“Alright … So what is a garden world anyway?” H asked.
“It would be a world that Humans and Pokemon grew up on together,” Gilgamesh explained. “Earth was not the only one.”
“Is this a garden world?” Dmitri asked.
“It would appear to be so,” Gilgamesh answered, motioning his hand toward the massive storm brewing in the sky. “But it seems, more often than not, Humans find ways to destroy themselves. Earth was a rare … and lucky case.”
“Wait,” Alex said as she tried to process everything that was being said. “Wouldn’t this mean that the Angels were also Humans?”
“Perhaps,” said Gilgamesh. “That much is … unclear. If what you have said about this city is true, then this world was … seeded long after the time of the Angels. Were the Angels also Humans? I cannot say. What I do know is that this world seems to be from around the same time as Earth. The only difference between us and them is that we made it off. It would seem their hunger for Power was too great … and it consumed them.”
“Or we just got lucky,” said H.
“Possibly.”
“If these people didn’t make it off this world, then why have we found ruins on other planets, including a star map that led us here?” Dmitri asked.
“I cannot say for sure,” Gilgamesh stated. “But my guess would be they were left behind by who or whatever seeded the Gardens.”
“And that would be …?” Alex asked.
“The Gardener of Eden, of course.”
“Who the hell is the Gardener of Eden?!” Dmitri blurted out.
“We do not know … but I recently acquired information that … may shed light.”
“What sort of information?”
“A location.”
“Why did you come here and not go there?” Morgan asked.
“Because … I am not sure I want to find out,” Gilgamesh answered, his voice taking on a troubled tone.
“Well I sure as hell know that I do,” Morgan told him.”
“Very well … I will transmit the coordinates to you.”
“Alright,” said Dmitri. “Before we go, did you get anywhere with those drawings I asked about?”
“I am afraid that these are markings from one of the Mirrored Temples,” Gilgamesh told him. “I would advise caution if you wish to continue on this path,” he continued, looking from Dmitri to Alex. Then, turning to the group as a whole, the monk said, “I wish you all luck on your journey.”
Dmitri was glad to return to the Helix. While Gilgamesh had helped provide him and his crewmates with some of the answers they were looking for, Dmitri felt as if he now had more questions than before after exploring the ruins beyond the door. At this point, he just wanted some time to relax and process things.
“Have fun in the creepy lightning cave?” Minerva asked as the crew slowly assembled on the bridge to discuss their next move.
“We found lots of pretty rocks,” Dmitri joked, referencing the electric crystals they had collected.
“Ooo. Rocks. You didn’t bring me any?”
Suddenly, H walked past carrying a pile of the sparking electric crystals.
“Oh … Those are, uh, definitely some pretty rocks you got there,” the pilot said sarcastically.
“And they explode!” Alex added.
“The perfect thing to store on a ship!” Minerva quipped. “I’m thinking next to the engines?”
“So how about we get off this puddle now?” Dmitri suggested.
“I’d like nothing more,” Minerva replied. “Where to, boss?”
“Let’s just get back to the gate for now,” Dmitri said.
Minerva nodded, then fired up the engines and took off. The Helix broke through the thick cloud cover of Messina and flew back into the cold vacuum of space.
Session Notes: And thus we’ve reached the five and a half hour mark. Still got over two and a half hours to get through, but that’s for Chapter 8. After that grueling gym battle, we needed some nice, relaxing RP. Other Humans … That I did not see coming, but looking back, it makes sense … kind of. I get that feeling a lot in this game. The clues are there, but we don’t see them until after the shit goes down!
Now we’ve got more leads to chase! We’ve got the Mirrored Temple, the coordinates related to the Gardener of Eden, and we still have that Dr. Armstrong lead. The consensus amongst the players seems to be to go after the Mirrored Temple lead first.
The highlight for this chunk of the session was when Gilgamesh mentioned the “Gardener of Eden.” Dmitri’s player, Random-Roaming-Robot, just blurted out “Who the hell is the Gardener of Eden!?” almost instantly and we all started cracking up. Listening to the recording for this part was painful due to how loud we were laughing. Good times.
Update 10/27/21: This was a chapter that needed a lot of work. The original exploration of the ruined city was all one scene that jumped around to various perspectives and it just needed an overhaul. In order to make it so that every scene sticks with a consistent perspective character while still conveying all the same information, I broke it up into five different scenes. I picked the perspective characters for each based on who was present for each part and whose thoughts and observations were most present in the original version or could only be seen from one perspective, such as when H went up the building. From there, I added extra descriptions and dialogue as necessary to flesh each scene out a bit, and I did the same for the other original scenes in the chapter. Other than that, I applied the usual past tense conversion and grammar fixes to everything and also tweaked some details here and there to be consistent with lore that has since been established.
That does it for this chapter. As always the Spacemon gang and I will be monitoring the comments to foster discussion and answer any questions. Feel free to give feedback and critiques of the writing so I can improve it for the future, or just leave a comment with what you think about what went down in this chapter or what you think might happen next! You can also revisit past chapters, check out the rest of the Spacemon saga, join the Spacemon Discord server, or like our Facebook page to stay updated on all things Spacemon! Click here for the next exciting installment of Spacemon!
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