This based off an idea for a fanfiction I never got round to writing and doubt I ever will. However, the plot and some characters I came up with it felt too good to just simply throw away, so I've decided to turn this into a roleplay, and together we can hopefully complete the story I never started and maybe even make it better than how I originally envisioned it.
The Story
Not far from Kalos, there is a small region by the name of Arkadia, very different from the other regions of the Pokemon World. While other places have focussed on the rapidly advancing technology, Arkadia prefers the simple life, a life where Man is one with nature, one with Pokemon. They use natural medicines instead of potions and antidotes, they have no Pokedex but instead keep track of the varying species of Pokemon through books and writing, and instead of using Pokeballs to capture Pokemon, they form friendships with them naturally and expect Pokemon to stay by their side out of loyalty and friendship, not the sense of duty that Pokeballs enforce.
At the centre of this region's philosophy is the Temple of Yggdrasil, dedicated to three Pokemon Xerneas, Yvelta and Zygarde, who represent the cycle of life through to death, and are believed to be embodiments of a greater entity known as Yggdrasil, a giant tree that not only holds the balance of their world but also thousands of others. That's right: the people of Arkadia believe in alternative dimensions and realities, very different from each other but similar in other ways, and it is Yggdrasil which connects them all. In the Temple, there is a statue of a tree that is meant to represent Yggdrasil, though it no more than simple model. However, at the centre of this statue is something far more precious, a large green jewel known as the Heart Of Zygarde. No one knows where it came from, but it is believed that it is connected to the legendary Pokemon Zygarde, who imposes order upon all realities. Therefore, the Heart is kept safe within the temple to ensure that reality will continue on smoothly.
However, one night, when all at the temple are asleep, a thief sneaks into the temple, steals the Heart and runs off with it. In his haste, he wakes up a few guards who chase after him. They chase him from the temple and into the forests that surround it. They chase him for a long time until he is cornered at the edge of cliff. Feeling trapped and full of spite, the thief decides that if they're going to catch him anyway, he might as well claim victory in another way and he drops the Heart of Zygarde off the cliff. When it hits the grounds it smashes into many pieces. The thief thinks he has claimed victory over his captors, but he doesn't realise that what he has done spells disaster for all the worlds. It is that point that reality slowly starts break apart and the thief is sucked into a vortex, a hole in reality, which sends him from his own world into another. And as he is transported, his own physical forms starts to change as he transforms from a man into a Pokemon...
Meanwhile, in another reality, a world inhabited completely by Pokemon, where humans are but the stuff of legends, many unusual natural phenomena have been occurring. Natural disasters such as tornadoes and earthquakes have been happening, causing pain for many. Some Pokemon have slowly been getting more and more violent and feral, attacking others for no apparent reason. Weirdest of all have been the appearance of Mystery Dungeons, strange areas which don't seem to work by the normal laws of nature. These are all effects caused by the Heart of Zygarde's destruction and the break down of order in all realities, but the Pokemon there don't know this yet. However, while they don't know what the cause of these disasters are, they are aware that something amiss. So, in order to combat this crisis, a young Braixen by the name of Willow (one of my characters) has taken it upon herself to create the Adventurer's Guild which is dedicated to helping Pokemon in need during these dark times. Their long term goal is to find out the cause of this disaster, but for now they are simply trying to help Pokemon on a case-by-case basis.
How This Roleplay Will Work
Your character - or at least one of them as you will be allowed to play multiple characters, but we'll get to that later - will be a Pokemon who has volunteered to join the Adventurer's Guild. Unlike in other Mystery Dungeon games, you will be not split into your own teams. This guild is not like Wigglytuff's Guild. Wigglytuff's Guild was a guild that had been running for a very long time, formed by experienced explorers. The Adventurer's Guild is not this at all. The "Guildmaster", Willow, is not super powerful nor experienced, she's a young and naive Pokemon who wants to do the right thing but actually has no idea what she is doing. The guild itself is also fairly new so it will have few members to begin with, all who are either well-meaning but unexperienced Pokemon or adventurers who have only gone solo up until now.
To begin with, the guild members will instead function as a single team, with Willow and her recruits heading out to various Mystery Dungeons depending on what jobs they get and they'll only be able to deal with one job at time. As more and more members join, Willow will be able to send multiple groups out to deal with jobs, but they won't be set teams, they'll just be groups formed of whoever wants to do a particular job the most, plus which characters would be best suited to said job. Willow herself will be a surprisingly active Guildmaster and will often go on jobs herself along with other Pokemon.
As well as playing heroic characters, I also expect some people to play villain characters or townsfolk NPCs. I myself will be playing Willow, multiple shopkeepers, and also the mysterious thief who has ended up in this world in Pokemon form. (That thief, by the way, is going to be a reoccurring villain.)
On the subject of human-turned-Pokemon character, I was originally planning it so the Thief would be the only human-turned-Pokemon character. However, due to someone else's character's backstory, I've decided to modify this. After all, since alternate dimensions are a big part of this roleplay, I will be allowing them, as well as Pokemon who have travelled from another universe into this one... though please keep it in moderation.
That's all I have to say for now, though I may think of other things to add if the actual roleplay is started. I hope I can get enough people interested in this idea because I think it will be pretty cool. I came up with this idea in hopes of making something similar to previous instalments of the Mystery Dungeon series, and I hope I can get a group of people together to make this roleplay a reality. It may be a little messy to begin with but I can imagine it being a whole lot of fun.
Not far from Kalos, there is a small region by the name of Arkadia, very different from the other regions of the Pokemon World. While other places have focussed on the rapidly advancing technology, Arkadia prefers the simple life, a life where Man is one with nature, one with Pokemon. They use natural medicines instead of potions and antidotes, they have no Pokedex but instead keep track of the varying species of Pokemon through books and writing, and instead of using Pokeballs to capture Pokemon, they form friendships with them naturally and expect Pokemon to stay by their side out of loyalty and friendship, not the sense of duty that Pokeballs enforce.
At the centre of this region's philosophy is the Temple of Yggdrasil, dedicated to three Pokemon Xerneas, Yvelta and Zygarde, who represent the cycle of life through to death, and are believed to be embodiments of a greater entity known as Yggdrasil, a giant tree that not only holds the balance of their world but also thousands of others. That's right: the people of Arkadia believe in alternative dimensions and realities, very different from each other but similar in other ways, and it is Yggdrasil which connects them all. In the Temple, there is a statue of a tree that is meant to represent Yggdrasil, though it no more than simple model. However, at the centre of this statue is something far more precious, a large green jewel known as the Heart Of Zygarde. No one knows where it came from, but it is believed that it is connected to the legendary Pokemon Zygarde, who imposes order upon all realities. Therefore, the Heart is kept safe within the temple to ensure that reality will continue on smoothly.
However, one night, when all at the temple are asleep, a thief sneaks into the temple, steals the Heart and runs off with it. In his haste, he wakes up a few guards who chase after him. They chase him from the temple and into the forests that surround it. They chase him for a long time until he is cornered at the edge of cliff. Feeling trapped and full of spite, the thief decides that if they're going to catch him anyway, he might as well claim victory in another way and he drops the Heart of Zygarde off the cliff. When it hits the grounds it smashes into many pieces. The thief thinks he has claimed victory over his captors, but he doesn't realise that what he has done spells disaster for all the worlds. It is that point that reality slowly starts break apart and the thief is sucked into a vortex, a hole in reality, which sends him from his own world into another. And as he is transported, his own physical forms starts to change as he transforms from a man into a Pokemon...
Meanwhile, in another reality, a world inhabited completely by Pokemon, where humans are but the stuff of legends, many unusual natural phenomena have been occurring. Natural disasters such as tornadoes and earthquakes have been happening, causing pain for many. Some Pokemon have slowly been getting more and more violent and feral, attacking others for no apparent reason. Weirdest of all have been the appearance of Mystery Dungeons, strange areas which don't seem to work by the normal laws of nature. These are all effects caused by the Heart of Zygarde's destruction and the break down of order in all realities, but the Pokemon there don't know this yet. However, while they don't know what the cause of these disasters are, they are aware that something amiss. So, in order to combat this crisis, a young Braixen by the name of Willow (one of my characters) has taken it upon herself to create the Adventurer's Guild which is dedicated to helping Pokemon in need during these dark times. Their long term goal is to find out the cause of this disaster, but for now they are simply trying to help Pokemon on a case-by-case basis.
Your character - or at least one of them as you will be allowed to play multiple characters, but we'll get to that later - will be a Pokemon who has volunteered to join the Adventurer's Guild. Unlike in other Mystery Dungeon games, you will be not split into your own teams. This guild is not like Wigglytuff's Guild. Wigglytuff's Guild was a guild that had been running for a very long time, formed by experienced explorers. The Adventurer's Guild is not this at all. The "Guildmaster", Willow, is not super powerful nor experienced, she's a young and naive Pokemon who wants to do the right thing but actually has no idea what she is doing. The guild itself is also fairly new so it will have few members to begin with, all who are either well-meaning but unexperienced Pokemon or adventurers who have only gone solo up until now.
To begin with, the guild members will instead function as a single team, with Willow and her recruits heading out to various Mystery Dungeons depending on what jobs they get and they'll only be able to deal with one job at time. As more and more members join, Willow will be able to send multiple groups out to deal with jobs, but they won't be set teams, they'll just be groups formed of whoever wants to do a particular job the most, plus which characters would be best suited to said job. Willow herself will be a surprisingly active Guildmaster and will often go on jobs herself along with other Pokemon.
As well as playing heroic characters, I also expect some people to play villain characters or townsfolk NPCs. I myself will be playing Willow, multiple shopkeepers, and also the mysterious thief who has ended up in this world in Pokemon form. (That thief, by the way, is going to be a reoccurring villain.)
On the subject of human-turned-Pokemon character, I was originally planning it so the Thief would be the only human-turned-Pokemon character. However, due to someone else's character's backstory, I've decided to modify this. After all, since alternate dimensions are a big part of this roleplay, I will be allowing them, as well as Pokemon who have travelled from another universe into this one... though please keep it in moderation.
That's all I have to say for now, though I may think of other things to add if the actual roleplay is started. I hope I can get enough people interested in this idea because I think it will be pretty cool. I came up with this idea in hopes of making something similar to previous instalments of the Mystery Dungeon series, and I hope I can get a group of people together to make this roleplay a reality. It may be a little messy to begin with but I can imagine it being a whole lot of fun.