User:Noxigar/OtherCharactersAsideFromNamineAndNoxigar/Chernabog

My first character was even before Noxigar.

He was a Pokemon Trainer named Chernabog, eventually given the full name of Chernabog Garland. He was originally just supposed to be a Hoennite Bug-type Pokemon Champion, who got that way from knocking everyone down with a Shedinja. As Generation III happened to be my favourite generation for the games, anime, and other Pokemon incarnations, I had mostly made Chernabog with Generation III in mind. Generation IV happened, and Chernabog had to be changed drastically. In fact, rather than become Pokemon Champion and have to sit in one place throughout a story, I decided to have him instead be a Pokemon Coordinator. This worked out, for the most part, and made me actually think of my characters' 'mon's movepools outside of "What hits the hardest at any given moment." Then, Generation V happened, and I got invested in the Nuzlocke Forums. Given how the only Nuzlocke Comics I actually like belonged to Pettyartist, I wasn't sure what had hit me in 2010-2011. Still, I remembered having made Chernabog Garland for a tabletop homebrew experience which used Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 as the template.

It was known as Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, and it was a complete and utter disaster.

My first Pokemon Tabletop Adventures session was convenient. The campaign did not have a Pokemon Coordinator in it, so I went in with Chernabog Garland in mind. I had to give him a surname, and then once I was done with that I had to make my sheet. I remembered he had Constitution for a dump stat and powered up on Charisma, so I surmised he would have played like a Bard, Sorceror, or caster-Paladin in Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 proper. I had to pick starter Pokemon, so I picked out a Bulbasaur in spite of the fact we were in Sinnoh for this campaign. I was told I didn't have to pick a conventional starter; so, I grabbed a Ralts as well for a starter, because that's what Wally effectively did. My homages to Generation III were more honed, and I managed to make something out of the character.

The campaign was known as PTA Temp 2. The first PTA Temp game played out differently, presumably having hit Kanto and Johto. The plot involved Team Rocket somehow growing large in those two regions and deciding to move in on Sinnoh turf. I did not realize Giovanni grew a brain, and did not take the Team Rocket plot seriously. I felt I couldn't, because it was Team Rocket and not someone more high-quality. Still, the PTA Temp 2 campaign was actually a bit of where Chernabog Garland began. Both my 'mons were Level 5 per the instructions of the GM. I decided to go with them both, since they needed to be leveled up to catch up quickly with the others.

The GM had a Level 45 Poliwrath and a ruthless Team Rocket admin (who bore no name, unfortunately). The thing about Pokemon Tabletop Adventures was that trainers could become targets for Pokemon attacks. If the trainers died, I wasn't sure what happened to the trainer's Pokemon, although I imagine they wouldn't last long either dependent on many factors at the time. Pokemon could also actually die, if they had negative HP greater than, or equal to, their base HP. Chernabog Garland survived a DynamicPunch, as a Level 1 Pokemon Trainer whose mind had been read prior to the attack, with 1 HP remaining. This had been after confusion damage as well, although the DynamicPunch hurt something fierce.

I had not put too much stock into Chernabog's personality. Given how ruthless the GM was, and how insanely critical I was of setting alterations and the fact we seemed railroaded into a really atrocious Team Rocket plot - what isn't atrocious and has Team Rocket heavily involved, though? At any rate, during downtime in Eterna City I tried to give my character some personality, but was met with GM railroading. Of course, the first time the GM railroaded me would have been unintentional Player v. Player Combat. I had learned of a Heracross whose trainer was raped by said Heracross, while she was covered in scrap. The Heracross and the trainer made up somehow, although it was not explained well at all. Chernabog wanted to take the Heracross on his own, so his Pokemon wouldn't die. Before I could get a Megahorn through my guts, though, the other Player tried to talk me out of it. It took, since the Player understood where I was coming from. Still, the GM railroaded me by having my Ralts teleport me away from the Heracross, before the other Player was able to effectively convince me of anything.

The PTA Temp 2 session did not go over too well after that. Since the GM was never around to give us plot, we kind of just stayed in Eterna City for the longest time ever. When the GM was there, all that resulted was a Butterfree and a Murkrow being caught to add on to the roster. It was nice to get those 'mons, although I still never got the chance to do a proper Pokemon Contest to get a ribbon. Unfortunately, I remembered why PTA Temp 2 was cancelled. It had been cancelled because the GM was butthurt that he lost a Pokemon Nuzlocke Speedrun Challenge for New Year's (what would mark the first day of 2011). He had called the Nuzlocke Forum mods Nazis, been exceptionally rude to the winner, and was ranting and raving in the PTA OOC IRC chat about how he should've won. In his bad temper, he declared PTA Temp 2 discontinued.

I tried to do a couple more PTA campaigns with entirely different characters, but they also did not last long for entirely different reasons. When everyone in the IRC chat got tired of Pokemon Tabletop Adventures and moved on to different systems, I had eventually moved away from everything related to the Nuzlocke Forums and related to Pokemon for a while, until August 2011 where I joined a Pokemon Text-RPG group known as OrangeIslands.Net. I tried to rebuild Chernabog Garland there, for the fictional regions they had made were interesting. It seemed like a replica of the Pokemon anime for a bit, but mechanically it was similar to the Pokemon games themselves. Despite the linearity of what happened where storywise, I found myself enjoying Chernabog Garland IV there. I had made him that way, as Generation V Pokemon had been technically my fourth generation of actually playing. With that in mind, I decided to write more about Chernabog for the longest time ever. My writing on there wasn't that great, but it had hope I wanted to flourish.

I unfortunately discovered that, while Contests existed, they were also closed. They also only recently returned, but I had not updated Chernabog Garland to reflect upon everything that I had been missing for a year-and-a-half, out-of-game time. I had actually left the Orange Islands community, as I lost my muse for Chernabog Garland upon the lack of a main reason for doing the games other than the generic "Be the Pokemon Champion." Admittedly, I could have just spinned the absence of active Contests as trying to motivate people by taking a position of power within the region which the Contests were closed from, which would be the region I was in at the time. Nonetheless, there existed other factors to my departure from OrangeIslands.

One of the other reasons had been my typical contrary nature. A lot of the other guys didn't like me, in a large part due to my own social awkwardness. What had exacerbated said social awkwardness was the Ishmadal Tournaments. Basically, the Ishmadal Tournaments were in the Ishmadal Kingdom. The sovereign of the Kingdom got bored, but noticed he had people he needed to still see him as an influential man. This influence meant having Pokemon Trainers from all around the world compete for prizes that were exceptionally rare. Usually, the Orange Islands admins either offered something exceptional and rare, or offered something that had never been present before in order to test its effects on the actual Pokemon world as a whole. Ishmadal Tournament III had been during 2012, and I was rooting for the trainer of a player I had feelings for. She did not win, in a large part due to horrible luck. While this would normally sit well with me, the victor of the match she lost was rubbing it in. The denizens of the OrangeIslands community often found reason to argue with each other, and the victor used his Admin priveleges to lord over this person I liked specifically. It was not very amusing to say the least, and rooting against this Admin in the Tournament turned out to not work. He ultimately ended up winning the whole thing, with a later part of the Tournament consisting of other players withdrawing in anti-climax, although admittedly a lot of them had things to do in general.

I had to wait until a year later to get my revenge on Ishmadal. There was a mission which allowed me to go there, and I used that mission to assassinate the King of Ishmadal. While Chernabog Garland went through the motions of killing the King of Ishmadal, and catching Pokemon from another Fakemon region otherwise hard to find in the region I would be in, everything seemed like it would go well. Unfortunately, I would find that without the King of Ishmadal, I had no immediate antagonists for my story. Such was a shame, and eventually school put a damper on me continuing to roleplay as Chernabog Garland. Another factor that happened was gradual disinterest in the Pokemon series as a whole, which made Chernabog more of a chore to write for. I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave the Pokemon fandom completely in 2013 or 2014, however. Still, I would effectively be a wanderer of sorts, until Contests got re-instated.

As of now, they had started re-imagining Contests a while after I stopped writing for Chernabog.