Pokéhistory: Pastoria City

A few weeks ago I made a blog about the Pokéhistory of Pewter City. While I was supposed to do Cerulean next, I couldn’t be bothered, so I’m doing Pastoria City instead. Because it has more interesting history. By the way, some of this is made up. Making that clear.

The Pastoria Great Marsh was originally the Sinnoh Great Marsh, as there was no town around it. People still came to the marsh for the rare Pokémon found there, but Pastoria City wasn’t built until years later, when an innovative young man named Myer decided to form a business handling the Great Marsh. And with the birth of the business came the birth of the city. Originally, people disproved of Myer’s idea, because they suspected he was only a money-hungry person, but Myer wanted to help people catch more Pokémon, and get good trainers for those Pokémon. Most of the money he received went to the preservation of the marsh, anyways.

Myer wasn’t a Pokémon trainer, but after living in Pastoria for a few years, he caught his first Pokémon in the Great Marsh: a Croagunk. A gym had just been built, but there was no leader, so it was pretty useless to the regional Pokémon League. Myer took the role of leader, and the gym became a Poison-type specialist. Croagunk was Myer’s signature Pokémon, but had a Skorupi as well. The gym was a popular success, and Myer mostly abandoned his Marsh business, leaving it to his employees.

Years after that, word got out about a young boy who would often go out into the Great Marsh and instead of using mud or bait to capture them, he would WRESTLE them until they were weak enough to catch.

Word got out quickly about this, and the boy, Wake, came to Myer’s gym to earn the Fen Badge. Wake quickly ploughed through Myer’s Pokémon with a Quagsire, and won. After Wake had gone on to challenge all the other gyms in Sinnoh, he lost in the league.

He came back to Pastoria, his hometown, and challenged Myer for the position as gym leader. Myer declined, as Wake specialised in Water-type Pokémon, while Pastoria was a Poison-type gym. Wake made a compromise that if he won, Pastoria Gym would become a Water-type specialist, but if Myer won, the gym would stay as it is. After the battle, Wake came out victorious. The gym changed to a water-type gym, and Myer retired.

In honour of Myer and his Croagunk, it was decided that an annual Croagunk festival would be held. Croagunk became Pastoria’s mascot, and a board was erected where tourists could place there head to look like a Croagunk. Myer was one of the judges at the annual festival, until he died on the fifth anniversary of the festival.

It is said that Myer’s Croagunk laments the loss of his trainer, and retreated to the Great Marsh. Every time a person pokes their head through the board, his Croagunk comes out, disappointed that it is not Myer who poked his head through the window.