PMD SYNTHETIC APOCALYPSE

The world has ended, and its ruins are full of Laserdiscs!

RULES

Grimbright setting.
Mysteries are optional, and the Mystery selection is custom: see here for this CYOA's Mysteries.
All writefags/artfags grant both the author's character and any included characters 1MP or PP each.
Type loss can only be taken once by dual-types. If you have one type, it cannot be taken at all.
Characters from previous PMD runs should take isekai.
Isekais cannot have comprehensive knowledge of how to repair and use advanced tech. They can recognize it, but not its purpose nor its inner workings.
Humans do not exist in any capacity. Pokémon don't know what humans are, either, and human isekais will have their memories scrambled so that they don't initially know that they were once human.
Please check the rentry's "Mythical Asterisks" section before making a Mythical, esp. a Jirachi, Celebi, or Victini.
The following abilities cost 3 MP to replace: Defeatist, Emergency Exit, Klutz, Slow Start, Stall, Truant, Wimp Out
Friendship Evolutions are counted as "evolving under level 20," but you must writefag the evolution for the discount to apply.
Canon Megas only.

The CYOA itself can be found here!

Lore Basics

• The main location of this mp is The City, but travel outside of it is feasible (if dangerous). All new characters will start either in or near The City.
  • This city has been here for hundreds of years. Anyone from before the apocalypse who was teleported here would assume it's only been 5 or 10 years since the world ended.
  • It seems to be the only city in the world, or at least on this continent, because even people from far-off places just call it "The City."
• The park is a safe haven, akin to a small village, that houses the longest-lasting settlement of Pokémon in The City.
  • The settlement is super new: barely a year old.
  • Basically the only organized town or village in a week's worth of walking, and the only one to have lasted longer than six months in The City itself.
  • The settlement hasn't got a name yet; everyone just calls it "The Park." (Feel free to contribute a name yourself! If it catches on, I'll add it here.)
• The apocalypse was so long ago that nobody remembers anything about it and most people have stopped caring about it. The newest generations have forgotten that there was an apocalypse at all.
• Advanced tech is just called "relics" or "antiques."
  • 1980s level.
  • Only found in dungeons.
  • Almost all of it is beyond repair, but some very skilled mon could theoretically figure out how they work if they dedicate a lot of study to it.
  • Most tech is the standard PMD level of weird not-Medieval agrarian fantasy.
• Wild Pokémon are just the equivalent of feral animals. They aren't sentient at all.
  • They can be found outside of dungeons, but become unnaturally aggressive inside of them.
• Humans do not exist in any capacity. Pokémon don't know what humans are, and the concept cannot be explained to them. The best chance you'll get is maybe showing them some dilapidated action figure and proclaiming yourself of its species, but the Pokémon will still assume that you could evolve and use moves and such.
  • The common man will assume a vague idea of "precursors" that built most of The City. They will not immediately assume a separate species built anything there, and most will attribute things to Pokémon.
  • Isekai'd humans would have their memories scrambled. They might understand intuitively that they weren't always a Pokémon, and they might recognize a human when they see one, but they wouldn't remember what a human is or what human society was specifically like.
  • Keep this quote in mind as a rule of thumb: "Never finding actual Humans, but occasionally finding something that may have once been Human- reincarnated or otherwise."
• Historians are quite rare. They're seen as very nonessential and somewhat prone to flights of fancy, and only the most peaceful settlements have ever had any. The Park has given way to a few proper historians, but they're mostly seen as entertainment more than true scholars.
  • Most historians researching the idea of a different species are taken even less seriously than most. It's a niche subject that's barely touched on.
  • For an idea of how rare I mean: there are maybe 20 historians total in the entire city. There are even fewer outside of it.
• The Guard's guild building is adjacent to some fairgrounds.
  • Its receptionist is a Unovan Lilligant.
  • These fairgrounds have their own request board, alongside the guild's usual board outside the building.

Map (of The City):

Build List

What's this? Someone's left a half-functioning relic just laying around here...

NPC List

NPCs aren't meant to be played. They're static characters, meant to serve as background fodder for writefags. They don't gain points.

Here's a Tiermaker for all existing PCs and NPCs.

Writefags

Relationship Charts

Ganjamelia

https://rentry.org/xkighkk5

Apollo and Diana

https://rentry.org/pmd_relations

Anne Tenna

https://rentry.org/PMDProfessorTennaChart

Prompts

Which dungeon does your character want to explore first?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95866775

Explorers, are you part of The Guard or a separate, undefined Guild?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95871235

What's a move you wish you could learn but are unable to for whatever reason?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95873428

Pokechads, pokepost you[r] pokethemes!

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/5874274

Pokechads, if you have a home what does it look like?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95878263

Pokechads, what do you do to unwind after a rescue mission?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95883469

Pokechads, do you worship any deities?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95898757

Pokechads, how much pro bono work do you do if any? For those morally challenged Pokemon, do you ever commit foul deeds just for the act?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95910215

Pokechads, how would your build be at a rambunctious party?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95912733

If you had to choose another non-Legendary species to be, which would you pick?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95945112

Anons always clamor on about ships, but what are characters' actual opinions on love as concept? Both platonic and romantic forms.

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95959651

If you could travel through time, what moment or time period would be first on your list?

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95978304

Prompt Compilations

Compilations of prompts answered by one or two specific characters at a time. Typically not anchored to the original prompt posts, hence their own sections.

Anne Tenna

https://rentry.org/PMDProfessorTennaPrompts

Dusty

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95947124

Team Stinger (Gligger and Skop)

https://desuarchive.org/tg/post/95950711

Dungeon Reports (written from the POV of an Explorer from The City):

Bottomless Lake

• A rather small lake that seems to descend into nothingness.
• Some speculate that it used to be a sea, but dried up after the apocalypse caused most of it to mysteriously vanish.
• Past floor 3 it becomes nearly impossible to see without some kind of night-vision.
• Overrun with Poison, Water, and Dark types.

Bygone Market

• An indoor marketplace! It's much bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.
• Reports have claimed there to be entire restaurants, groceries, and parks in here. Someone even claims to have seen a smaller version of the Overgrown Ruins once. Very mysterious.
• Mostly contains Normal, Psychic, and Ghost types.

Chemical Compound

• Insanely noxious. Some kind of accident clearly happened here.
• Its layout seems vaguely similar to Tyrantrum Terrace at first, but quickly spirals into confusing sections revolving around giant contraptions, enormous spheres painted with an unfamiliar night sky, and murals of Stone Edge Summit painted on the walls.
• Mostly Ground, Poison, and Steel types. Very aggressive, even moreso than standard wild Pokémon. Be very careful here!

Diamond Caves

• A very strange cave formation lined with wooden archways.
• Parts of it have caved in, and still more are at risk of doing so.
• The lower you go, the more the walls become lined with clusters of various gems. Tread carefully!
• Overwhelmingly Rock type, with a few Flying and Steel types as well. The Roggenrola line is especially dominant.

Electric Arcade

• Named for its vaulted roof and the strange arches that pervade the place. Said arches often house mundane relics or light fixtures, often fancy torches, that seem rather out of place compared to everything else in the dungeon.
• You can't put the torch's fires out even if you try, and some rooms can be completely destroyed by severing their fixtures from the arches holding them up.
• All of the walls are lined with strange screens and contraptions. Some Pokémon claim to have seen similar contraptions in the Bygone Market.
• Overrun with Fire, Electric, and Steel types. Some Psychic types too.

Grimy Ghettos

• A very unique dungeon. It doesn't look like a dungeon at first glance, and it doesn't seem to have any floors, but you can only leave it through an Escape Orb so it clearly has to be a dungeon.
• A lot of sentient Pokémon seem to actually live here, or at least try living here, but the area is so riddled with crime that it's very hard to settle. Explorers are often actively targeted for their Escape Orbs.
• Relatively low-level if you somehow manage to avoid the organized gangs and violent sentient population.
• The feral population mostly seems composed of Bug, Dark, and Fighting types. The sentient population is a roll of the dice.

Labyrinthine Suburbs

• Not so much a Mystery Dungeon as an endless maze. Seems to be naturally labyrinthian.
• Wild Pokémon don't live here and the layout doesn't change, it's just... very hard to navigate.
• Easily the most unnerving part of the city: this is clearly where those who came before us used to live.

Neverending Tower

• Endless misery.
• Very few Pokémon have even managed to clear the inner circle of the city, so barely anyone knows what the tower at the center of it is like.
• Of the few reports we have, it seems to consist entirely of fully-evolved Pokémon with no real type bias.
• Nobody has found any items there, nor relics, and one report mentioned the items they brought with them being half as effective as normal. The writer's Escape Orb only managed to teleport himself out, for instance, leaving his partner behind.

Overgrown Ruins

• An especially strange dungeon that doesn't seem to have ever had much functional purpose.
• It's rather fun to traverse, with its large metal roads and carts being great highlights for Explorers lucky enough to find them intact, but its purpose is a total mystery.
• Mostly consists of Fairy, Flying, and Grass types.
  • Some wayward Bug and Normal types on the earlier floors, neither of which are serious causes for concern.

Shocking Cistern

• A giant reservoir of water with strange indents in its walls.
• Explorers lucky enough to reach the lower floors have reported grass and serious overgrowth near the bottom, and it's speculated that this dungeon might end up becoming a big Grass-type attraction someday.
• Lots of Electric and Water types, with some Grass and Fighting types as well.
  • The Fighting types are exclusive to the earliest floors.

Spooky Station

• Littered with endless steel poles going nowhere, giant ladders atop strange wheeled contraptions, and extremely bright fabric scraps all around.
• Ghost types love this dungeon, and especially love possessing everything inside of it. Be alert.
• Ghost types are abundant, with some Normal and Fire types on the earlier floors.

Spiral Quarry

• A regular-looking quarry that spirals, and spirals, and spirals, and spirals... very dizzying.
• It's extremely easy to get lost, despite having a constant view of the sky and everything around this dungeon (even on its deepest floors!), so it's recommended that you only ever visit this place with multiple Escape Orbs in tow.
• Ground, Rock, Fighting, and Psychic types tend to call this place their home.

Stone Edge Summit

• Freezing cold and very sheer.
• Strictly for experienced explorers and very foolhardy Pokémon.
• This enormous mountain is surrounded by dense forest and finds its home on the outskirts of The City. It's a very long trek away from any kind of civilization and very unforgiving.
• Frequently plagued by rock slides, avalanches, and all manner of bad weather.
• Nobody has ever reached the top before. The highest floor that's been reached is Floor 42, at which point the explorers were forced to leave. Beyond that point, it becomes very hard for normal Pokémon to breathe.
• Dragon and Ice types are everywhere on its higher floors, but the lower floors have more Ghost, Grass, and Rock types.

Tyrantrum Terrace

• This giant structure, around the same size as Chemical Compound, has a huge mural of what looks like a Tyrantrum on the front.
• Giant skeletons of Tyrantrum-like creatures have also been reported inside, as well as skeletons that seem to resemble Starly, Mightyena, Wooloo, and more.
• There are more relics here than in other dungeons, but they seem to be of far lower technical complexity. Most do not seem to have much practical use.
• Ground, Grass, Ghost, and Normal types seem to call the Terrace home.

Custom Mysteries

• The Endless Tower: This city is centered around a neverending tower. Even flying Pokemon thousands of feet in the air are unable to see its roof, nor anything through its windows, and there are theories floating around that this building's roof doesn't actually exist, and it goes all the way up to heaven. Most teams who've gone in have never come out-- all the survivors fearmonger about fully evolved, hyper-aggressive monsters that can wipe out entire teams with one attack. The tall towers around it seem to house nearly as-dangerous beasts, and the entire city seems to warp around this one destination. You're determined to take this dungeon on at some point in your life, and most of your training revolves around trying to get through it.
• Underground Labyrinth: While exploring the endless suburbs of the east, someone managed to find an entrance to a series of abandoned underground tunnels. They stretch throughout the city, but they're indescribably filthy. There are talks of cleaning the tunnels out to use as transportation, housing, or training grounds. Some troublemakers are trying to claim the entire network as their own territory. All four of these groups are fighting over who gets to do what, but nobody's gone out of their way to fully traverse these tunnels. Any one of these groups would pay handsomely for an accurate map of the place, and you're determined to get your hands on one before anyone else.
• Those Who Came Before: You are not alone in this world. At least, you weren't always. All around this city are artifacts of the beforetimes: signs in an alien language, small figures made of an unknown material that seem to resemble discolored Machokes or Hitmonchan, dead contraptions that house cozy seats and seem to have windows on every side of them... you want to get to the bottom of this. You don't know how, exactly, but you'll figure out some way to determine what happened to this lost civilization.

Mythical Asterisks

Celebi

• Cannot travel back to a time before the apocalypse, nor the apocalypse itself. The furthest back a Celebi can go is ten years after the apocalypse.
• Cannot mess with the timeline. Time travel is purely observational.

Jirachi

• Cannot fulfill wishes that require the apocalypse to be undone.
• Cannot divulge how the apocalypse happened through wishes.
• Cannot wish a Legendary Pokemon into existence.
• It does not enter a 1000 year slumber once all its wishes are used up; it just takes 1000 years for its wish tags to replenish.

Deoxys

• Can switch between forms at will. Does not need a meteorite.

Shaymin

• Can switch between forms at will. Does not need a super special flower.

Victini

• Can't actually grant immediate victory. It's mostly just an urban legend. It does seem to grant better luck when it's around, though...

Genesect

• Type Drives can be found in Mystery Dungeons. Your Genesect can start either with no Type Drives at all or one Type Drive of a specific type. It's up to you!

Hoopa

• Cannot transport things across universes. Its rings act solely as teleportation for the world you currently inhabit.
• Can switch between forms at will. Does not need a dinky old bottle.

Solgaleo and Lunala

• Dusk Mane/Dawn Wings are not Solgaleo or Lunala forms. They cannot be taken as part of Myths and Legends, as Myths and Legends explicitly forbids playing as Necrozma. This is a canon thing, not an addition to the mp, I'm just adding it here as a convenient disclaimer since it's very easy to confuse.
• Cannot open Ultra Wormholes to other universes. Ultra Wormholes instead act as teleportation across the immediate galaxy onto any available surface.
• Solgaleo and Lunala's entire family line can breathe in space, but cannot impart this ability unto others. It is up to you not to kill your friends when making use of their abilities. Be cautious!

Melmetal

• Cannot Gigantamax.