anonabsolxwolf
replied to your post “The Nincada Line”
How is that “luckily” though?
When a ghost-type devours your soul, it’s presumed that you cease to exist in as painless a method possible, unlike when a ghost-type leads you to a hellish ghost world (as with dusknoir and the drifloon line) or when any other pokémon eviscerates and devours you physically.
The pokémon world is a wondrous place, is it not?
Nincada
The Trainee Pokémon
Type: Bug/Ground
Official Registration #: 290
Entry: For most of its life, this larval pokémon hatches and lives underground, where it feeds on nutrient-rich roots in preparation for its evolution. However, because of its primarily subterranean lifestyle, the species is also largely blind, relying on sensory information transmitted to its antennae to navigate. Needless to say, removing one from its native habitat to study it in a well-lit, above-ground laboratory is … perhaps not the best of ideas, no.
Ninjask
The Ninja Pokémon
Type: Bug/Flying
Official Registration #: 291
Entry: The evolved form of nincada, by battle experience. Ninjask is known for two things. First, its speed: it moves at a lightning-fast pace, sometimes even to a point where it becomes too fast to observe by the human eye. Second, it’s a stubborn and proud pokémon and will happily express its displeasure with a command by crying loudly, at volumes that could damage a human’s hearing. In other words, ninjask is better known as “that one pokémon you may be tempted to train due to its competitive, speed-based abilities, except you will very likely regret attempting to train it due to everything else about it.”
Shedinja
The Shed Pokémon
Type: Bug/Ghost
Official Registration #: 292
Entry: The husk of a nincada, left behind upon its evolution. Despite being made of a thin chitin, this terrifying pokémon possesses an ability that renders it invulnerable to everything but fire, ghost, dark, and flying elemental abilities, as well as indirect attacks. Additionally, it does not apparently possess a soul, and perhaps because of this, the strange forces that animate it are said to suck in the souls of anyone who looks into the cavity on its back. Luckily, whenever sending this pokémon out to battle—given the amount of time it may take for an opponent to defeat your shedinja, as well as the position of your pokémon relative to you during a match—staring directly into the hole that will suck out your spirit is nigh inevitable.
Drifloon
The Balloon Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Flying
Official Registration #: 425
Entry: A small, balloon-like pokémon first discovered in the mountains of Sinnoh. This potentially dangerous pokémon is well-aware of its cute, balloon-like appearance, as it uses this to its advantage when hunting its meal of choice: the souls of children. When it spots a potential victim, drifloon floats close and offers one of its string-like appendages for the child to take. In theory, the next step would be that the drifloon lifts the child and carries them away from their home, but considering the fact that the average toddler weighs ten times (at minimum) as much as the average drifloon, what typically happens instead is that the drifloon is dragged away from its natural habitat and presented to understandably horrified parents. (This is why most drifloon who survive in the wilderness feed on a supplemental diet of berries and dreams.)
Drifblim
The Blimp Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Flying
Official Registration #: 426
Entry: The evolved form of drifloon, by battle experience. Upon evolution, this blimp-like pokémon loses its desire to hunt. Rather, it adopts a more easy-going personality and has been known to befriend both people and pokémon very willingly. Moreover, drifblim gain an increase in strength, which, combined with drifblim’s more docile nature, tends to lead trainers into believing this pokémon would be an ideal candidate to teach the Fly technique to. However, it should also be noted that although drifblim can support the weight of a fully grown human being, it cannot control where it goes once airborne or how long it remains in the air, which is to say that drifblim is really the only ideal candidate to teach Fly to if one does not mind spending a week to go from Hearthome City to Canalave by way of Sunyshore and Oreburgh … somehow.
Frillish
The Floating Pokémon
Type: Water/Ghost
Official Registration #: 592
Entry: This mysterious, jellyfish-like pokémon floats close to the surface of warm seas. When in close proximity to its prey—which consists of anything with a large enough reservoir of life force, humans included and especially—they reach up with their veil-like tentacles, paralyze their target with poison, and drag their stunned victims into the depths of the ocean. For this reason, in Unova, this pokémon is feared as a highly dangerous predator. However, in Johto, where local stories involve seabirds that generate hurricanes with a slight flap of their wings, this pokémon is prized as something that’s highly delicious when brined, dried, and served with vegetables and a little bit of vinegar.
Jellicent
The Floating Pokémon
Type: Water/Ghost
Official Registration #: 593
Entry: The evolved form of frillish, by battle experience. It is said that ships that wander into jellicent territory are doomed to be sunk, with all hands on deck lost. This is true in Unova, but ships from more eastern regions have been far luckier. Research has gone into why this might be, but the author already has a pretty solid theory: misplaced retribution over the fact that some of us brine, dry, and serve their preevolved forms with vegetables and a little bit of vinegar.
Yamask
The Spirit Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 562
Entry: A ghost-type pokémon prevalent in the graveyards and ruins of Unova. It is said that yamask are the restless spirits of those close to pokémon, transformed for eternity into pokémon forms. The mask they carry, then, are the faces they once possessed, which are their final token of their lives as humans, as well as a constant reminder of their eternal curse. Then again, yamask can also communicate with other pokémon and wield pokémon powers, so … the author, for one, could probably deal with eternal damnation to the moral plane and the existential horror involved with the loss of identity.
Cofagrigus
The Coffin Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 563
Entry: The evolved form of yamask, by battle experience. Upon evolution, yamask take up residence within a golden, coffin-like shell. From this shell, they reach out with their four ghostly arms to snatch up hapless wanderers and graverobbers and pull them into their bodies. This is just one thing cofagrigus is famous for. The other thing popularly known about this pokémon is the fact that whoever named it clearly did so with the conscious intent of creating a massive headache for those of us who deal with adult content filter systems … such as, say, for example, administrators of digital transportation systems.
Gastly
The Gas Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Poison
Official Registration #: 92
Entry: A spectral pokémon most prevalent in graveyards and pokémon burial sites throughout Kanto, Johto, and Sinnoh. Contrary to popular belief, gastly are not the souls of deceased pokémon. Rather, they spawn naturally through either breeding or, in sites that host high volumes of cremation, a mixture of smoke, ash, the noxious gases of decomposition, and a pokémon’s final burst of auric energy. The gases that comprise a gastly’s body are, as mentioned a moment ago, highly noxious to a human and may induce a state of lightheadedness and euphoria shortly before suffocation. Some humans keep gastly who are trained to envelope a human but release them the moment they arrive at the edge of unconsciousness, all expressly for the high induced by this pokémon … not that the author would know anything about this, of course.
Haunter
The Gas Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Poison
Official Registration #: 93
Entry: The evolved form of gastly, by battle experience. Like its evolutionary predecessor, haunter’s body is comprised entirely of concentrated, noxious gases. However, these gases are compressed to the point where they hover just at the edge of their liquid state, enabling haunter to have a more tangible form than gastly. Additionally, as the inner materials of its form are compressed to the point where they begin to condense, haunter also has the ability to “touch,” as well as the ability to inflict the paralytic effects of its composition by touch. Thus, when the pokédex informs you that being touched by this pokémon’s hand causes a victim to experience unrelenting shuddering or that being licked by this pokémon’s gaseous tongue results in a full-body paralysis, rest assured that there is an entirely scientific explanation behind all of this which is rooted in equally comforting levels of chemistry.
Gengar
The Shadow Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Poison
Official Registration #: 94
Entry: The evolved form of haunter, via trading. This spectral pokémon possesses the ability to pass into the shadows of living beings, where it waits until nightfall to suck away their life energies and body heat. Not much else is known about gengar, unfortunately, except for one other note: should you ever attempt to study this with the two most capable researchers you know short of Professor Oak, never attempt to study it by inviting it to perform any of its other abilities unless you have not, within the past half an hour, consumed more whiskey than is reasonable for a professional. It apparently also has the ability to possess humans and the tendency to be creative in its interpretations of requests.
Misdreavus
The Screech Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 200
Entry: A small banshee pokémon native to the forests of Sinnoh and the mountains of Johto. Mischievous by nature, misdreavus enjoys sneaking up on humans and either playing pranks on them or startling them with their sob-like cries. Misdreavus then feed on the ensuing fear it generates through its necklace-like orbs. In centuries past, misdreavus were common in the Johto region, to the point where locals created elaborate myths concerning women whose heads would come and terrorize their villages as they slept to explain the origin of misdreavus infestations. This may seem a little silly in modern times, but considering this is the same region that believed in giant bellsprout and sentient umbrellas, this is possibly the most mundane pokémon-related folklore its people had come up with.
Mismagius
The Magical Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 429
Entry: The evolved form of misdreavus, by exposure to dark stone. Mismagius possess hypnotizing cries, which it uses to mesmerize prey. Chanting from just one of these pokémon may induce extremely realistic hallucinations—both terrifying and dreamlike—that can last for hours after the departure of the subject in question. Needless to say, mismagius tends to be a popular alternative to hallucinogens among the more open-minded youth and subcultures of the world … not that the author would know anything first-hand about that, as he most certainly has never engaged in anything mind-altering in college.
In recent years, thanks to the advancements made in both technology and human understanding of pokémon as a whole, there aren’t many reports of this occurring. Usually, you may have at most thirty-five reports a year of a ghost-type consuming a human’s life force, and many of these occur simply because the victim insisted on trespassing into territory where they didn’t belong. (Three reports last year occurred in Burned Tower, for example.)
In years past, however, that number varied. From the turn of last century (when researchers began archiving and analyzing reports, rather than relying simply on folk knowledge of the type) to the 1960s, the number decreased steadily due to a combination of current events of the time and growing understanding of the type. Then, thanks to the popularity of the horror genre, the trends spiked to hundreds of reports per year as teens caught ghost-types but failed to handle them properly or ventured into ghost territory to perform “occult rituals” out of boredom. The number finally dropped in the 1980s and continued to decrease in subsequent years, as teens realized also thanks to the horror genre that perhaps disturbing ghost-types is a terrible past-time to have.
Hold on now, anonymous. Which ghost-type, and for what reason? If you mean a member of the gastly line, I’m afraid I must decline either way.
Froslass if compensation is involved, however…
Golett
The Automaton Pokémon
Type: Ground/Ghost
Official Registration #: 622
Entry: A short, robotic pokémon that mainly inhabits the ruins of Unova and Kalos. Born from clay, this automaton pokémon is said to be an ancient form of technology whose power source is still not yet well-understood by modern researchers. As a word of advice, it is extremely unwise to attempt to harness this energy source, either as a battery or for research purposes. It’s not so much because this pokémon naturally learns a variety of punching moves that can easily render an offending human hospitalized as it is because there is only one place on a golett a person may be able to plug in a cord, and to make a long and very awkward story short, the ancient peoples of Unova and Kalos had similarly horrifying senses of humor.
Golurk
The Automaton Pokémon
Type: Ground/Ghost
Official Registration #: 623
Entry: The evolved form of golett, by battle experience. Everything about golett had been specifically designed, including all of the details concerning its evolution. Thus, it was possible for the ancient people of Unova and Kalos to begin by raising and gaining the loyalty of their golett, only to have it grow into a bulkier, far more powerful golurk that was specially designed to serve as their protector. Golurk by itself is gifted with a wide variety of powers, including the ability to fly at mach speeds, despite its design and bulk. Yet should anyone be inclined to question how golurk is capable of that kind of flight, the author would like to take the time to point out the lack of forum threads concerning whether or not Gligarman’s abilities according to the comic series make sense. (Spoiler alert? They do not. Fight me, Glifan823.)
The Pokédex According to Bill 