Corphish and Crawdaunt

Corphish
The Ruffian Pokémon
Type: Water
Official Registration #: 341
Entry: Its hardy physiology enable it to thrive in a variety of environments, including heavily polluted lakes and streams. For this reason, Hoennian opinion about corphish tends to be divided. On the one hand, its abundance means that corphish are plentiful and easy to find and capture, as it can survive practically any form of water besides a pot of boiling broth. On the other, just because you’ve boiled the thing does not mean the corphish you’d caught from the river next to the power plant is edible.

Crawdaunt
The Rogue Pokémon
Type: Water/Dark
Official Registration #: 342
Entry: The evolved form of corphish, by battle experience. Said to be the modern-day relative of armaldo, crawdaunt similarly possess hefty bodies and large, heavy claws capable of doing massive amounts of damage to its enemies. However, unlike armaldo, crawdaunt do not have rocky hides that make physical attacks difficult. Rather, they have extremely foul tempers and may attack at the slightest provocation—such as, for example, the scent of tamato berries, one of the primary ingredients for the cocktail sauce normally served with cold shrimp.

Anorith and Armaldo

Anorith
The Old Shrimp Pokémon
Type: Rock/Bug
Official Registration #: 347
Entry: This ancient, shrimp-like pokémon swam at the bottom of the shallow Hoennian seas, where it is said it hunted for prey using its sharp claws. This theory is not entirely correct. Yes, it hunted for prey, but its fearsome, quick-witted prey happened to be algae and the waste byproducts of its fellow marine pokémon. The only reason why the pokédex phrases anorith’s dietary habits the way it does is either because this writer’s colleagues have only so much space to summarize a pokémon’s entire behavior or because “it hunts for prey” is a far more elegant term than “it feeds on pokémon droppings.”

Armaldo
The Plate Pokémon
Type: Rock/Bug
Official Registration #: 348
Entry: The evolved form of anorith, by battle experience. Armaldo are an ancient pokémon equipped with armor that can deflect practically anything, foot-long claws capable of punching through steel, and a body consisting of 150 pounds of pure muscle and rock. It is, in other words, a pokémon entirely designed to make you regret ever having enjoyed shrimp.

Lileep and Cradily

Lileep
The Sea Lily Pokémon
Type: Rock/Grass
Official Registration #: 345
Entry: This ancient pokémon thrived at the bottom of prehistoric oceans by anchoring itself to a rock and ensnaring prey with its flower-like tentacles. It became extinct over 100 million years ago, largely due to the fact that being a stationary marine pokémon in a region where one active legendary can evaporate the ocean by taking a leisurely stroll through the general vicinity was perhaps a bad evolutionary idea.

Cradily
The Barnacle Pokémon
Type: Rock/Grass
Official Registration #: 346
Entry: The evolved form of lileep, by battle experience. As a step up from its preevolved form, cradily developed both the ability to walk and the ability to do so on land. Although one would think this would enable it to survive past the Cretaceous Era, cradily’s extinction was largely due to two major issues. First, its body, which was heavy enough to anchor it to the ocean floor, was not very well-equipped for chasing down prey. Second and more importantly, it has been scientifically proven that it’s rather difficult to survive when your children die in a mass extinction.

The Weedle Line

Weedle
The Hairy Bug Pokémon
Type: Poison/Bug
Official Registration #: 13
Entry: Weedle uses its sensitive and prominent proboscis to locate and separate its favorite leaves to eat from its least favorite leaves. All weedle have very specific leaf preferences, as well as acute senses of smell in order to sort leaves on the forest floor based on these preferences. If anyone finds this at all strange or unusual, the writer would like to remind his audience that humanity’s own obsession with gardening has resulted in over 7500 different types of tomato, and if you use the wrong type for sauce, your sister who possesses far more culinary talents than you will ever have will ensure that you are painfully aware of what, precisely, each of those 7500 different varieties of tomato are for.

Kakuna
The Cocoon Pokémon
Type: Poison/Bug
Official Registration #: 14
Entry: The evolved form of weedle, by battle experience. In this stage of its evolutionary line, kakuna are strictly preparing for evolution and therefore remain nearly immobile. However, it is important to note that “nearly immobile” is not the same as “actually and completely immobile,” and should you accidentally stumble onto an entire tree covered with kakuna, said kakuna will extend their poison barbs through their shells in order to remind you of what that difference is.

Beedrill
The Poison Bee Pokémon
Type: Poison/Bug
Official Registration #: 15
Entry: The evolved form of kakuna, by battle experience. Quite obviously, training a weedle to its beedrill stage takes a lot of determination and audacity. This is not only because the kakuna stage is nearly immobile, therefore requiring a trainer to exert the patience needed to help their kakuna cultivate the experience required for evolution, but also because the resulting beedrill is a fiercely territorial and aggressive creature armed with three potently venomous stingers each measuring a foot long. Trainers who wish to keep beedrill are highly advised to keep healthy stocks of antidotes, pecha berries, and whatever they feel would be best to sedate a three-foot-tall bee that can fly at one’s face at violently high speeds.

The Litwick Line

Litwick
The Candle Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Fire
Official Registration #: 607
Entry: Litwick are known for two things. First, they exclusively inhabit old mansions and other stately buildings. Second, they feed on the life force of those who mistake its cute smile, its candle-like appearance, and its eagerness to help for an actual attempt to lead lost travelers to safety. Due to both of these facts at once, litwick encounters are among the highest causes of death for anyone who has seen the film Beauty and the Beast in recent years.

Lampent
The Lamp Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Fire
Official Registration #: 608
Entry: The evolved form of litwick, by battle experience. More benevolent compared to the other members of its evolutionary line, lampent do not prey on the living but rather wander the streets of populated areas and feed on the dead. For this reason, lampent are popular to keep within the house as wards against evil spirits, but it should be kept in mind that this also means that lampent are rather tasteless gifts for the elderly. (For this reason, lampent are extremely popular gifts for the elderly in their home region of Unova.)

Chandelure
The Luring Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Fire
Official Registration #: 609
Entry: The evolved form of lampent, by exposure to dusk stone. While not necessarily any more docile or benevolent than its previous forms, chandelure are not known for actively hunting down prey. Instead, they lures prey into their flames by maneuvering their arms in hypnotic loops, and once prey is ensnared, chandelure passively allow their fire to consume the prey whole. Fifty years ago, Unovan children liked to “help” chandelure out by making a game out of attempting to get as close to one’s flames as possible without being burned, resulting in massive numbers of children being burned alive by this pokémon. The only thing that stopped these numbers from climbing any higher were newly enacted evolution stone control laws, put in place not because of the massive amounts of childhood deaths to pokémon that evolve by dusk stone but instead because the Unovan government realized exactly how much money they could make off state-controlled sales of evolution stones. There are groups in Unova who vehemently oppose such laws, less because of the state’s apparent disregard for children and more because of their personal right to own evolution stones, and if any of this sounds horrific, the writer would like to remind you that he’s speaking of the Unova region, so this should come as no surprise to anyone.

The Starly Line

Starly
The Starling Pokémon
Type: Normal/Flying
Official Registration #: 396
Entry: Starly, one of the most common pokémon in the Sinnoh region, are known for traveling in giant flocks and generating storm-grade gusts of wind. Thus, despite being less than a foot tall, new trainers should be warned that it is a very wise idea to exercise extreme caution when seeing one starly on its own. That starly is by no means alone, and a trainer that mistakes it for being so stands a very good chance of being enveloped in a hurricane of extremely angry relatives.

Staravia
The Starling Pokémon
Type: Normal/Flying
Official Registration #: 397
Entry: The evolved form of starly, by battle experience. Upon evolution, staravia are known to form flocks of their own that are considerably smaller than starly flocks yet also sizable in their own right and consisting of extremely loyal flock members. When separated, staravia are known to cry loudly to gain the attention of its flock mates, so should you spot a staravia on its own and should that staravia spot you and begin crying loudly, it would be best to run very, very quickly in the opposite direction.

Staraptor
The Predator Pokémon
Type: Normal/Flying
Official Registration #: 398
Entry: The evolved form of staravia, by battle experience. Curiously, evolution spurs staraptor to leave their flocks and live completely on their own. Vicious and tenacious hunters, staraptor thrive by picking off and carrying small pokémon to their nests in the craggy Mt. Coronet, where they can consume said pokémon without interference from other staraptor. Also curiously, staraptor are not particularly fastidious when it comes to choosing prey, and this, perhaps, explains why starly and staravia travel in large and extremely loyal flocks.

Skrelp and Dragalge

Skrelp
The Mock Kelp Pokémon
Type: Poison/Water
Official Registration #: 690
Entry: Its colorization, leaf-like appendages, and propensity to travel in large groups makes skrelp nearly indistinguishable from rotting kelp in the calmer, shallower waters of coastal regions. Additionally, both of the possible natural abilities for this species involve poisoning on contact, and as such, it is both understandable and not uncommon for beaches to shut down upon the sighting of a skrelp forest. Yet interestingly enough, Kalos, the region with the highest population of skrelp, is also home to the most nudist beaches in the world, which should say a thing or few about the Kalosean natives.

Dragalge
The Mock Kelp Pokémon
Type: Poison/Dragon
Official Registration #: 691
Entry: The evolved form of skrelp, by battle experience. Whereas skrelp possess milder venom and prefer to drift and allow prey to stumble across them, dragalge have the audacity to chase down ships and melt hulls via their highly acidic venom. Why this is so, no one quite knows, but it’s been the cause of an innumerable amount of shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean since the advent of maritime travel. Interestingly enough, the Great Britain, nation to the north of Kalos and the other French regions (and therefore home to the second largest skrelp and dragalge population in the world), is also home to a proud naval history. Said history involves one of the largest and longest-lasting navies ever created and, therefore, one of the largest totals of human life lost to dragalge ever counted. Between this and the Kalosean nudist beaches, it can be gathered that the human species is a strange and ultimately unreasonably stubborn thing with a fixation on defying nature.

Scyther and Scizor

Scyther
The Mantis Pokémon
Type: Bug/Flying
Official Registration #: 123
Entry: Contrary to popular belief, scyther are not inherently violent and easily enraged pokémon. They are, in actuality, extremely proud pokémon with a full range of emotions, including compassion. It just so happens that they have scythes for hands and the alien morality of an insectoid species, and these tend to get in the way of what human beings would define as “compassion.”

Scizor
The Pincer Pokémon
Type: Bug/Steel
Official Registration #: 212
Entry: The evolved form of scyther, via trading if the subject has had a metal coat applied to it. Upon evolution, scyther’s signature blades metamorphose into scizor’s pincers. One would think that an absence of a cutting edge along with the maturation induced by evolution would render scizor a safer pokémon to handle than its preevolved counterpart, but in actuality, it uses its pincers—now reinforced with a steel-like exoskeleton—to violently hammer anything into the ground, be it an enemy pokémon, a piece of machinery, or an innocently bystanding researcher who in no way provoked said scizor.

Riolu and Lucario

Riolu
The Emanation Pokémon
Type: Fighting
Official Registration #: 447
Entry: Riolu have the ability to read the emotions of others as well as communicate its own emotions via aura. Yet it is a fighting-type, the single most likely type to engage in physical combat and thus the most likely type to endure great physical injury. For this reason, the riolu’s empathic abilities may be among the most counterproductive powers among the pokémon kingdom. However, at the very least, it should be a comfort for riolu trainers to know that the state will typically pay for any service a Nurse Joy provides, including mental counseling as a result of being in close proximity to a fighting-type that translates its pain into horrific light patterns.

Lucario
The Aura Pokémon
Type: Fighting/Steel
Official Registration #: 448
Entry: The evolved form of riolu, in response to both levels of sunlight and closeness with its trainer. Well-trained lucario have the abilities to sense the aura of all living things, understand human speech, read the thoughts and emotions of those whose auras they sense, channel aura into projectiles and weapons, execute extraordinary feats of physical prowess, and roll over and play dead for biscuits. This is why lucario are the second most popular pokémon on any given video sharing website, next to the members of the skitty line.

Psyduck and Golduck

Psyduck
The Duck Pokémon
Type: Water
Official Registration #: 54
Entry: Whether or not psyduck may also be classified as a psychic-type has been a matter of intense debate for nearly twenty years. On the one hand, psyduck display virtually none of the classic defensive strengths and weaknesses of a psychic-type, thus defying the traditional requirements of the current classification system. On the other, psyduck also display extraordinary psychokinetic ability when under physical duress, and in any case, they don’t really display much in the way of defensive capabilities to begin with.

Golduck
The Duck Pokémon
Type: Water
Official Registration #: 55
Entry: The evolved form of psyduck, by battle experience. Much like its previous form, golduck are capable of performing incredible feats of telekinesis, especially under physical stress. However, unlike psyduck, golduck are capable of remembering such feats and summoning their psychic abilities at will. One would think this would result in an end to the scientific debate concerning whether or not the psyduck line are dual psychics, but it seems that researchers in Kanto were far more content to point to golduck’s predilection for swimming as proof that it is simply a water-type. This should also explain why those same researchers described gyarados as being water/flying, even though gyarados do not, in fact, possess any flying or wind-bending abilities whatsoever.