animism setting

The basic idea is that animist spirits can be found in everything. People, animals, plants, inanimate objects are all tied to spirits. These spirits manifest in, of course, the 18 elemental types of Pokemon. While animal-like Pokemon most readily take on active and conscious roles in the world and have spirits to match, particularly strong spirits that find themselves invested in plants or objects can become Pokemon as well, and that's why there are Pokemon such as Oddish, Klink (yes the tech level is high enough for this, about mid-19th century in the most advanced parts of the setting, though generally lower elsewhere), etc. Somewhat inspirted by Shinto and religious shrines in general, spirits that coalesce in a certain plot of land can give rise to legendary Pokemon. Now, these aren't gods per se. They simply have older and more powerful spirits, and they are often limited by their land and domain in what they can do. They also require great belief and worship to maintain their power, which is because...

Humans, however, are inherently different on a spiritual level and have no sense of Type, unlike Pokemon. Instead, the collective human spirit serves as sort of a wellspring of inspiration for Pokemon spirits, though this fact is rarely known or understood in the world. What this means is that as human civilization advances, creates, and discovers, more Pokemon come into being. Klink didn't exist until industrial ideas took greater hold in the human consciousness, for example. Human belief and imagination seems to define the bounds of what spirits can turn into Pokemon in the world. This difference in spirits is also why Pokemon can be captured in Apricorn Balls (Poke Balls don't exist) while humans cannot. My current idea with Apricorns is that their trees are saplings of a tree of life/yggdrasil type entity, but that isn't really set yet.

Pokémon don't tend to come into existence in small batches either. They tend to appear in large events comprising a number of species typically equal to a generation in the handheld games (Gee how convenient!). As a result, there is a dedicated library city within the world that sends out adventurers to catalog all the new species when they appear. However, this isn't always easy...

Another consequence of the nature of reality is that the world is only really stable around large human settlements and otherwise is in a state of flux. To be more clear, in a given general area, the same forest might always exist, and certain landmarks within that forest such as a particular large and ancient tree or an outcropping of rock covered in vines. These persist because of human memory and imagination. They have names and labels, and they are kept stable as long as people know of them. All the other area of the forest? It may as well be a brand new forest each time someone enters, with an ever-changing landscape that varies from week to week or even day to day for the more remote areas of the world. It's possible to learn to navigate through the world flux with training or with innate mystical powers, and that skill is often valued for merchants and others who need to do a lot of traveling. Otherwise, people head for the known landmarks and pray.

The default campaign premise will center around a human community who deals with Ghost Types a lot, with those being special in particular due to the fact that they're the only known instance of humans becoming spiritually or categorically equivalent, so to speak, to Pokemon. Particular human personalities and thoughts aren't preserved upon death, but it's theorized (and correctly so) that the spirits inhabiting humans become Ghost Type spirits and animate various objects, plants, or animals themselves. The community in question is well-respected because a tradition of ancestor worship is something I intend to write into the setting, and they're seen as keepers of a tradition that is closely tied to that notion. As a coming of age dealie in this community, youth are given a ghost Pokemon and set off into the world to solve people's problems relating to Pokemon and spirits in general. It's much like Mushishi, if you're familiar with that anime/manga.