Pine City Info

[Sirenapples]

Located just below the highest part of the mountains, Pine City is the settlement closest to the Rift. While all may seem peaceful in this out of the way wannabe tourist city, there’s danger. Aside from social tensions, the night is no-man’s land. Big predators come out when the sun goes down: whether it be a noctowl or a liepard, it’s not recommended to stay outside without at least two strong, large pokemon for defense. Even then, reports of multiple pokemon ganging up on a foolhardy visitor isn’t uncommon; they don’t even make the front page anymore.

There is a monument for lost tourists, though. It’s a white-wood building with onyx plates inscribed with the names of lost people; two walls are currently entirely filled. The room’s as big as a standard home is.

Due to the city’s height and how wet it is, it’s prone to being covered in foggy “clouds” in all but the hottest parts of the day. When it isn’t cloud, though, it’s either miserable and muggy or raining delightfully warm natural showers.

Most days follow a simple weather pattern: clear before dawn, dewfall at dawn, cloud cover until nine o’clock, bright sunlight until three o’clock, a light hour long rain shower, a humid afternoon, a cool evening, and the a clear night. Seasonal weather can change this a bit. It’s driest during winter and wettest during summer, with late fall being storm season.

Despite being on a rain forest covered mountain, Pine City is highly fertile, making it prime farmland. Tropical fruits and vegetables absolutely thrive here, as does rice. While the land here is often steeply inclined with the roads designed to zigzag so as to submit to this fact, farmland often flattens the land and forms cliffs to separate fields.

On to the tourist appeals!

Due to how wet and rainy it is, and the plentiful trees just outside the few skyscrapers the city boats, ziplining and leaf-skiing down mudslides are a common pastimes. Ziplining is actually common in the city, as well; skyscrapers tend to have these on their fourth floor as a quick way to get to another building--it’s especially common on the edges of town, when people don’t want to go down to the ground at night. A word of warning concerning mud sliding: mudslides often in shallow ponds. The danger isn’t in drowning, but in swallowing parasites. If your character didn’t grow up in Pine City or a vaccinate themselves well before such, there’s a high chance that getting any of this water in them through their nose, mouth, eyes, or even an open wound will result in them ending up very sick. Pokemon are likely suffer from this as well, unless they’re immune to poison or can otherwise burn a parasite or simply don’t present a good host (steel and rock types, for example).

Back on the subject of nighttime predators. To avoid danger, the suburbs of the city is actually a long expanse of trees. There’s no postal system due to this. Everyone has to use the post office in town. The trees used for housing are well taken care of. It’s actually a crime to harm these trees. Families often invest in a plot of land and try to grow as many trees as closely together as they can in order to provide more support for the huge homes extended families share. For the simple reason that there’s limited trees useful for living in, all business are in the main part of town. Also, these homes are less likely to be swept away in the occasional summer landslides.

Of worthy note is a small casino in town. It’s main appeal, however, is not the small time air-races it indulges in--it’s the good luck items they sell. Whether or not they’re any good is up for debate. Most tourists who buy they report less street harassment; it’s likely due to the fact that these same tourists are looked upon favorably by all merchants. If a sucker will buy a fake charm, they’re good for the economy of Pine City. As such, they’re valued customers. It’d be such a shame to harm a valued customer.

Most citizens have mixed feelings about Hotel Monte. Known around the region for their annual fighting type championship that anyone from a newbie, street fighting human to a professionally trained and carefully raised machamp can enter, the hotel specializes in catering to those who have come to train their mind and body. Outside of the championship, those who are curious about aura or simply improving their spirit-body connection often rest here after training themselves in the jungle’s plentiful waterfalls.

For trainers, there is but one appeal in Pine City.

The grass type association is not a gym, but it has plenty of grass type enthusiasts. Due to the steep land of Pine City, vegetation is incredibly important. The deeper the roots of a plant, the more valuable they are. Grass type pokemon are used to encourage other plants to grow by pollinating them and sensing when they need this and that.

Travelers with grass types are encouraged to allow them to mingle with native grass types in order to exchange pollen or even produce eggs to further cultivate the life saving vegetation of the area. It saves lives as, the more trees there are, the less often landslides occur.

Like any city, Pine City has its problems. They come from two main sources: the native people and the steppe farmers.

The steppe farmers are the most obvious problem. Despite knowing that the land requires a certain amount of vegetation, especially the higher one goes, they’re always pushing for more land for their personal uses. The rangers and forest conservationists have thus far kept them from wrecking the landscape in pursuit of a few more dollars, but time can only tell whether the demands for food around the region will finally give the steppe farmers the backing they need to expand.

The native people of Pine City are hard to tell from outsiders. The only points worth noting are their tattoos and short hair. To them, long hair is childish. They’re fighting people, brawling right along side their pokemon; long hair is a liability. To them, weaklings are worthless. Rumor has it that they’re all really the children of hybrids--while representatives for the group as a whole have denied this, many youths of the group smugly use this as a point to claim they’ll do horrible things to non-natives come the new moon or full moon (they don’t even have their story straight). Blood tests have proven that the vast majority are pure human; about the same percent of their population is hybrid or has hybrid ancestry as does the general population of Noxis.

At any rate, the natives dislike non-natives getting stomping all over their homeland. Some of them feel that the Rift taking trainers is nature siding with them--they’ve lived here for longer; they don’t get trapped or caught. That being said, the natives own the rights to most of the housing. Most trees are on land rented from native people. As such, the Pine people can come across as rich snobs rather than impatient.

… oh yeah, the final issue the natives take with outsiders. Every now and then, a person who’s gone missing will show up outside of town. Dead. The body is normally surrounded in their own blood, completely and utterly maimed to the point where DNA testing is require to tell who it was. The natives are typically blamed for this as they’re so hostile towards outsiders. However, the natives are a warrior people--a dead opponent makes a pitiful sparring partner.

Many people who live in Pine City assume it’s a sick, highly intelligent pokemon who takes pleasure in scaring the hell out of everyone in the city. Rangers have tried targeting and patrolling for whatever it is, but it simply doesn’t appear whenever they do. For this reason, they assume it’s a very high leveled psychic type or a ground type who can sense where others are upon the land.

Whatever the case, some also think this beast could be responsible for the land’s fertility. What rainforest is this fertile, anyway, when it has so much plant life? They say the beast takes life to give life… a human for plants.

~Mane