Hey Bill, I just hatched a baby Cubone. He’s happy and healthy, and my Umbreon has decided that she is his mother. Here’s the thing, though: he has a skull helmet and a bone club, and I have no idea where they came from. His father belongs to a friend of mine and is alive, and his mother is my Ditto, who is also fine. So where did these bones come from? Thanks.

Ah, yes. The age-old question.

You see, the bit about a cubone’s skull and club coming from its deceased mother is actually quite misleading: this only occurs with certain wild cubone, particularly those native to notorious grave sites or extreme environments (which is to say, most wild cubone habitats). In these cases, it’s nearly guaranteed that the mother will die shortly after evolving, mating, and giving birth to a single young, as male marowak are typically solitary, and the environment is often too harsh for a mother to defend on her own. The young, meanwhile, may have a chance to make it to maturity by not only toughening themselves through digging out their first armor and weapon but also by virtue of being small enough to take cover from their worst predators. (Note that I say first armor and weapon. We’ll get to that in a moment.) Even then, cubone are notoriously rare in the wild for exactly this reason.

On the other hand, tame and captive-bred cubone are an entirely different story. Naturally, human homes and breeding centers are far, far safer for a pokémon, and because of this, there’s virtually no reason for a cubone to dig out its own mother’s skull. For this reason, cubone that fail to acquire a helmet and club, if left alone long enough (typically overnight), will simply advance to what most wild cubone will do once they outgrow their “baby skulls,” as it were: calcify their own. That is to say, your cubone essentially made his own as quickly as he could by mixing a special substance he secretes from his head with pieces of his own eggshell, dirt, or other debris until it became a skull-like helmet.

As for his club, that’s a bit … less appealing, I’m afraid. It’s likely a stick or other long object, certainly, but in order to calcify it properly, your cubone very likely had to, well, regurgitate that same substance onto it. Luckily, you can replace these with ordinary bones or even rawhide as he grows so he doesn’t have to do that repeatedly.

Anon with the fear of fairy-types here; I ended up having a pretty long talk with my girlfriend, and she was actually really understanding? We decided to go see an earlier matinee, then got takeout for dinner and ate in the park while her clefable and my cubone got to know each other. Your suggestion about having him as a buffer was great; I’m still working up to a one-on-one meeting, but seeing how well our pokemon played together made me think things will work out.

Dreadfully belated reply, but this is excellent to hear! Keep working, anonymous, and may your relationship with both your girlfriend and her clefable be filled with happiness.

Cubone and Marowak please!

bills-pokedex:

Strange that I’ve never covered this line. They’re truly fascinating pokémon. As they say, coming right up, anonymous!

Cubone
The Lonely Pokémon
Type: Ground
Official Registration #: 104
Entry: Because young cubone are both weak and the favored prey of many pokémon in its native mountains and cave systems, its marowak mother will almost always sacrifice herself to protect her child early in life. As part of its mourning process, the orphaned cubone, sometimes with the help of the rest of its community, will give its mother a funeral, complete with the ritualistic extraction of her skull and one of her femurs. These bones will then become the cubone’s armor and will serve to protect it throughout its life. Either because of the fact that it always carries around a reminder of its mother or because the experience of losing her early in life has scarred it for life, the cubone will never fully heal from the trauma. In fact, the lines that appear to be cracks along the eye sockets of its skull helmet are not cracks but rather stains left by the tears it constantly sheds. The author really has nothing else to add to this entry; he just wanted to inform his readers that those are tear tracks. You’re welcome.

Marowak
The Bone Keeper Pokémon
Type: Ground
Official Registration #: 105
Entry: The evolved form of cubone, by battle experience. Even after evolution, marowak do not find relief from the traumas they had experienced. Instead, evolution brings about the boost in power and confidence that they need to train harder and master the use of bones as melee weapons. Once mastering their style, they collect more bones to add to their armory. No one is quite certain where marowak gets these bones. Some say they excavate them from marowak graveyards. Others who are well aware of the fact that marowak evolve from cubone who had been forced to bury their mothers simply stare at the first group of people in quiet, unbelieving horror while silently praying that marowak just happen upon the remains of other dead pokémon.

Marowak (Alola form)
The Bone Keeper Pokémon
Type: Fire/Ghost
Official Registration #: 105
Entry: The evolved form of cubone, by battle experience, at night, in the Alolan climate. Due to the abundance of its natural predators (that is, grass-types or pokémon that can learn grass-type moves) in Alola, cubone that evolve there take on an affinity for the fire type. Meanwhile, due to the spiritual energies associated with their bone clubs (which are said to not only have come from their mothers but also be possessed by their mothers’ vengeful spirits), they also gain an affinity for the ghost type, resulting in the distinctive fire/ghost Alolan marowak. In other words, with these two origins combined, Alolan marowak is one of the few evolutions to exist that was absolutely, completely born out of raw spite.

if alola is such a harsh environment for both cubone and marowak, then why is it that only marowak evolved to become a fire type

Alola isn’t so much a harsh environment as it is a different environment from the other regions where cubone and marowak thrive. More specifically, cubone are largely unaffected by their Alolan environment in all ways except the circumstances of their evolution. You see, most cubone have latent spiritual inclinations, possibly due to their natural passions and the lifelong sense of grief that tends to be inherent for their species. Under normal circumstances, however, they evolve into ground-types to anchor themselves more to the physical world, but upon death, even marowak are more inclined to release spiritual energy. (There was one such instance of a violent haunting at Pokémon Tower, caused by the spiritual energy released by a recently deceased marowak.)

The region of Alola, however, is saturated with a lot of spiritual energy itself, largely due to the presence of the tapu. While cubone are still born ground-types (as that’s their natural state of being, spiritual tendencies aside), they soak up the spiritual energies like a sponge. So in an environment that’s already high in that type of energy, a cubone will incorporate some of what they’ve soaked up into the only major physiological process they go through: evolution. Consequently, that energy drives them to gain the ghost element when they take the form of a marowak. This is why all cubone will evolve into an Alolan marowak, even if they were originally born in a completely different region.

As for why Alolan marowak gain the fire element as well, this may have to do with the vulnerability of a cubone during that physiological shift. As in, they’re already forcing themselves to change elements, so the normally tropical environment causes cubone to incorporate fire into the genetic makeup of their evolution. If, however, a cubone is raised primarily on the slopes of Mount Lanakila (a snow-covered part of Alola, where ice-types such as vulpix’s and sandshrew’s Alolan variations thrive), then the change becomes more of a conscious effort than a subconscious one; the extreme cold of Lanakila’s environment forces that cubone to adopt the fire element to cope.

I was wondering, what does Cubone look like without their mother’s skull? I’m assuming that not all Cubone inherit their mother’s skulls (particularly those breed in captivity since the breeders probably don’t kill the mothers so that the Cubone can have a skull). Are breed Cubone given a fake skull to wear?

That’s pretty much it, anonymous. In captivity, because real marowak skulls are considered to be inhumane, breeders simply give newborn cubone helmets made of synthetic bone, based on a generic cast available to all ground-type and cubone-specific breeders. This must be done because an actual cubone’s head is very soft at birth—almost soft as a human’s head—and because pokémon are often battle-ready at birth, not offering the cubone protection may be leaving it prone to brain damage.

For those curious, in the wild, the act of laying an egg and raising it to the point where it’s ready to hatch marks the end of a marowak’s lifecycle. Oftentimes, laying an egg itself severely weakens the marowak, and because male marowak are focus on protecting the female, the female marowak is left to protect the egg. Hatching, then, often distracts one parent or the other from their task, allowing one of marowak’s many predators to come in and kill the distracted parent. If neither parent is killed, then one parent—usually the mother—sacrifices itself to give their child a bone helmet.

As for what they look like underneath, they’re basically lizards, anonymous. Think of a tiny, orange, slightly rounder charizard head, and you’ll have a cubone.

Cubone and Marowak please!

Strange that I’ve never covered this line. They’re truly fascinating pokémon. As they say, coming right up, anonymous!

Cubone
The Lonely Pokémon
Type: Ground
Official Registration #: 104
Entry: Because young cubone are both weak and the favored prey of many pokémon in its native mountains and cave systems, its marowak mother will almost always sacrifice herself to protect her child early in life. As part of its mourning process, the orphaned cubone, sometimes with the help of the rest of its community, will give its mother a funeral, complete with the ritualistic extraction of her skull and one of her femurs. These bones will then become the cubone’s armor and will serve to protect it throughout its life. Either because of the fact that it always carries around a reminder of its mother or because the experience of losing her early in life has scarred it for life, the cubone will never fully heal from the trauma. In fact, the lines that appear to be cracks along the eye sockets of its skull helmet are not cracks but rather stains left by the tears it constantly sheds. The author really has nothing else to add to this entry; he just wanted to inform his readers that those are tear tracks. You’re welcome.

Marowak
The Bone Keeper Pokémon
Type: Ground
Official Registration #: 105
Entry: The evolved form of cubone, by battle experience. Even after evolution, marowak do not find relief from the traumas they had experienced. Instead, evolution brings about the boost in power and confidence that they need to train harder and master the use of bones as melee weapons. Once mastering their style, they collect more bones to add to their armory. No one is quite certain where marowak gets these bones. Some say they excavate them from marowak graveyards. Others who are well aware of the fact that marowak evolve from cubone who had been forced to bury their mothers simply stare at the first group of people in quiet, unbelieving horror while silently praying that marowak just happen upon the remains of other dead pokémon.