World

The world of pokemon (simply referred to as the pokemon world or earth, for simplicity’s sake) is the general, overall setting that most of the story takes place in (excluding Ultra Arc).

Home to humans and over 1,000 different species of pokemon, the landmasses of the world are divided into two different continents – known colloquially as the Eastern Continent and the Western Continent. On these continents, land is politically drawn into sections known as ‘regions’. Though in present day traveling between regions is extremely easy and many are welcoming to outsiders, this wasn’t always the case.

Because as the world has grown, it’s suffered various growing pains as people and pokemon spread and interacted more and more. But thankfully, peace is widespread thanks to the work people and pokemon do together… and when the occasional bad actor tries to upset this, they’re quickly shut down.

Pokemon

The creatures known as pokemon are defined by their shared common trait – that the basis of their life and power is derived from an energy known as Infinity Energy. Aside from that, however… pokemon come in all shapes and sizes! Some are naturally born, some are created when infinity energy interacts with inanimate objects, some are experiments, some are revived souls… as long as the basis of their soul consists of infinity energy, it is a pokemon.

Because of this diversity, it’s expected that pokemon have extremely diverse ranges of intelligence, skills, and abilities. While some operate on hive-like collectives, others have been known to completely integrate into human society. And while life spans also vary wildly, many pokemon are capable of living for at least 100 years or more if natural threats are eliminated – due to the power of infinity energy.

Humans

While there’s much debate about how humans came to the pokemon world amongst its scientists, the truth is quite strange!

Created in her own image, humans originated in Ultra Space as a creation of The Skymother, the goddess of that dimension. When she fell in love with Arceus, she gave humans to their dimension as a gift. And while the history has been completely lost to time and legend, this explains the fundamental difference between the biology of pokemon and humans.

The energy that a human soul consists of is known as Life Energy, and is much less potent than infinity energy. Because of this, humans tend to look similar and have similar ranges of abilities and intelligence. But in their case, uniformity came to an advantage – humans were able to collectively team up with pokemon and successfully cohabitate and grow across thousands of years thanks to their universal abilities.

To some, pokemon are pets. Others, they’re companions, assistants, family, or comrades. One thing is certain – though they may not be quite the same, the bond between pokemon and human is what keeps unity and balance intact.

Notable changes from canon

General:

Obligatory This Game Is Dark!™ warning. In its origins Pokeau was (and still is, to an extent) a way to cope with things, so themes not present in pokemon are in Pokeau. Namely death, violence, grief, and intensified criminal activity.
also double disclaimer while pokeau might contain these i promise i try not to overdo it – (almost) everyone ends up happy in the end dw
Pokemon mostly stay true to how they are in canon, though there are albino and melanistic pokemon in addition to shinies – but that’s it.

Lore:

Canalave library is dead to me and thrown entirely out of the window because humans came from Ultra Space here.
Actually I’m gonna be real I just threw a bunch of random pokedex entries that imply certain lore about certain pokemon completely out. I pretend I do not see it.
Certain timeline events, notably the burning of the tin tower, take place at different times.
If something happened in canon and it’s never mentioned or at a wrong time, there’s a 99% chance it’s because I forgot.
Ultra space is a mess. Don’t worry about it.
Gigantamax and dynamax have been retconned and worked into the system of mega evolution. I… also accidentally retconned Z-moves because keeping track of all these gimmicks is a pain.

World:

Sinnoh and Hoenn are not exclusively based off of Japan.
Any canon gameverse maps have been thrown out the window also.
Spin-off locations do not exist; sorry Orre!
I imagine both towns and routes to be much larger.
Regional pokedexes aren’t fully true to the games.

Character:

Many character ages are altered/fluid – many of the protags are around 15 instead of 10, and certain characters age significantly over the course of the timeline (the biggest example being Cynthia who goes from like 18 to 90 years old)
The main protags (i.e. Hilbert, Hilda, May, Dawn, etc.) do not exist and instead are replaced by their region’s corresponding protag, save for certain cases. Pokeau was and still is a retelling of the region’s plot, and the protags replace that role.
My characterization is based primarily off of gameverse, as I do not care for Pokeani or Pokespe.

Western continent ;

Unova

Kalos

Galar

Paldea

Alola

Eastern continent ;

Kanto

Johto

Hoenn

Sinnoh

Hoenn

A region situated on a volcanic island, said to be the cradle of many of the modern world's workings. Despite its small size, the region is home to vastly varying environments and pokemon, as well as people from all walks of life.

More about Hoenn