Episode 21: Wizard Duel

The trivia machines in Blaine's Gym always say that you want to get the trivia questions right so you can "preserve your Pokémon for the Gym Leader" by not fighting trainers. Obviously, you can just leave, heal, and come back, which makes this not actually matter at all. Just for fun though, I decided I would play by the Gym's rules this time, and not heal at all throughout the entire Gym while still fighting every single trainer and the Gym Leader in one go. Obviuosly I still wanted to read the trivia dialogue though. After everything in the Mansion, I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any dialogue about this dude.

The first question was quite simple: "Cupeedle evolves into Velociflea?" Technically there's a stage in the middle there, but I assumed that didn't count for this, and I was correct, the answer was Yes. From here though, the questions and the dialogue of the trainers shifts into talking about the "Four Holy Regents", which seem to be the group of Beasts that was mentioned in the Mansion Diaries. "Sivak the Black Dragon wanted to be free from entropy, so he betrayed the other three Holy Regents. They say he was so ashamed over what he had done, that he hid away from them, forever." Seems like the lab might be tied into this whole situation too, with the suspicious mention of "entropy" here.

The next question even expounds upon this: "Does our soul resurrection technology work on humans?" I said Yes to this one, since I didn't want to look like an idiot if that was the answer, but it is in fact No. As a matter of fact, "Velid was trying to find out how to make humans like us immortal! That's why he spent so much of this life looking for the Four Holy Regents."

While he did call one or more of the regents "GOD" in all caps in one of the diary entries, the answer to "The Four Holy Regents did NOT create this world?" was Yes. Real dick move to make this a double negative, by the way, especially since it would have to be a guess either way. "Nobody really knows what the FOUR REGENTS are...", and the Robber trainer for this question doesn't even seem to think they're real. You're a criminal, dude, I thought you'd love cons.

"Is Velid NOT over two hundred years old?" follows up that last double negative question. He is, evidently, so the answer here is No. "Velid used to be an alchemist, a man of both science and magic!" He "devoted his life to helping others with his research, but then he saw... Something. And legends say he was never the same, after that." That seems to me like an odd way to describe an alchemist, but I guess I see the vision.

"Is Velid one of the very last wizards alive today?" He is, but I wonder if we'll ever meet a second one in the Elite Four or anything. This is further Wizard lore after Neputail, which I wasn't really expecting but makes me wonder how much of this setting's worldbuilding has been sketched out. Is there a rich lore document that the devs maintain, or is this just all off the cuff? Either way is cool, honestly. If there is a lore document, I really want to see if it includes anything on this last question:

"Do you believe that Hell isn't real?" I said Yes, assuming that would be wrong, but the wording of the question is very poor. It should really just say "Is Hell real?", since as-written it's asking me what my belief is. If it is True that I believe Hell isn't real, answering Yes should be correct whether or not it's actually real, because that's not what the question asked. This is the only bad part about Star Beasts. Everything else is perfect but I would change this one thing. But it is pretty entertaining comedic timing to get this question wrong and then have this NPC walk up and say "Hell is real." After the battle, she mentions that every once and awhile Velid will wake up screaming in the middle of the night about the things he saw, but none of the gym trainers can do anything to help him. This does make me wonder where Velid and the rest of these people sleep and what their relationship is, but it's a cute detail to mention stuff like this that suggests these NPCs having life outside where we see them here.

If not for all of this stuff in the rest of the gym, I'd assume Velid's gimmick about being a Wizard was just for show. He says he's going to "make our Star Beasts disappear!" and all that. But even his title is "MANCER" so it sure seems like he's the real deal.

Our team wasn't beaten up too much, but we had a couple Beasts at half health going into this. Rocky Dan was pretty well beat up since his Earthquakes were carrying me through most of the gym trainers, but he was able to do well against Verbeden, which was Velid's lead. I can almost guarantee you don't remember what Verbeden is, so I'll share an extra image just this once.

After taking out Verbeden, Rocky Dan wanted to learn Explosion. At this point I had gone through the entire Fire gym without using Rock Throw even once, and I was fairly convinced I was never going to actually want to use it again. So I figured, what the hell, let's get Explosion in here. If for no other reason than I wanted to see if it had a new animation like Selfdestruct did. With this low of health, I figured I should just use it right now anyways, and his next Beast seemed like as good of a target as any.

Beourgeist went down to Zorotl easily, since I was preserving him with full health in the back this whole time. A Level 47 Nocean is his ace Beast, and I was no longer laboring under the assumption that it resisted Water, so even without super effective damage Zorotl easily won this final 1v1.

Velid comments that he "likes our style" and bestows unto us the PyroBadge, as well as the TM for Fire Blast. He mentions that it's the ultimate Fire technique, but oddly mentions to not "waste it on a Water Star Beast!" Does that imply there's a bunch of Water types that learn it? Upon doing some research this is actually the same dialogue Blaine gives you after he gives you the TM, so I actually have no clue what they were getting at there.

Well, with 7 out of 8 badges claimed, there's only one last Gym to conquer. How funny would it be if Lucian isn't even the Gym Leader there and it's just some other person. In case you're wondering, I don't have any plans right now to go out and hunt for these legends, assuming they're in the same spots as the birds and Mewtwo, but if there's interest I might do some sort of bonus episode later. Let me know in the comments if you want to see that.

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