elementcollector1
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WARNING: Excessive amounts of technical writing. I tried to make it fun, but there's only so much I can do. Contains a few instances of strong language.
Anyway, I've been working on Project Pokedex to write extended articles on every Pokemon with regards to caretaking advice and biology, and one Pokemon in particular that interested me was Regice. Something about its Pokedex entries seemed a little too specific, a little more detail-oriented than most others. So I did some digging, and apparently Regice's entry was either written by a genius in meteorology and thermodynamics, or by an extremely lucky writer with a fondness for specific values.
I also ended up (somewhat) accidentally writing this like an episode of Game Theory, since even I couldn't bear to read all the boring math details without a few jokes to lighten the load. But, if you want to learn a lot about some very minor details of both Earth and the (canon) Pokemon world, you've come to the right place! So, without further ado, here's the thought piece I wrote and researched:
An interesting detail is hidden deep within Pokemon’s lore. Specifically, the Iceberg Pokemon Regice has some very interesting tidbits on its formation and history. To quote from the Pokedex entries for Regice (amalgamated into a more useful paragraph):
“Regice is a Legendary Pokemon whose body was made during an ice age. Its deep-frozen Antarctic ice body cannot be melted by fire or even by submerging it in molten lava, and maintains a constant temperature by cloaking itself with frigid air of approximately -200 degrees C. It is said to have slept in a glacier for thousands of years, and was imprisoned some time ago by humans.”
Ice at -200 degrees C may simply sound extremely cold, but there’s actually a very specific reference hidden here. Ice, you see, forms different crystal structures at different pressures and temperatures, named in a Roman system from ice-Ih (regular hexagonal ice that we see everywhere) all the way up to ice-XVI, each having different (and often very specific) formation requirements. However, one particular form stands out: Ice-XI is unusual for being one of the few exotic forms to (theoretically) be capable of forming naturally, at ambient pressure, at -200 degrees C (73 K). It is also theoretically the most stable configuration of ice-Ih, allowing it to form from regular ice if cooled to the correct temperatures.
However, the coldest temperature ever recorded on Planet Earth was about -89 degrees C, in the Antarctic in 1983 – extremely cold, cold enough even to freeze carbon dioxide in the air, but not quite enough to make everyone’s favorite mobile freezer. Things would undoubtedly be colder in an ice age, but not by too much – geological measurements estimate the ground temperature of Antarctic ice varied only by 15 degrees C over the past 800,000 years, meaning our best-case scenario lies around -104 degrees C. Better, but still not good enough.
However, an unexpected savior comes in the form of Regice’s Trio Master, Regigigas, whose Pokedex entries in its debut series Diamond/Pearl/Platinum were kind enough to give some additional details about Regice’s creation. To quote again:
“There is an enduring legend that states this Pokémon towed continents with ropes. It is said to have made Pokémon that look like itself from a special ice mountain, rocks, and magma.”
We can deduce that the mountain is Coronet, for obvious reasons – there are no named mountains in Hoenn, and while it is possible that Mt. Fuji or Mt. Silver could have been the source, Coronet is far closer to Regigigas’ temple in Snowpoint City. Second, Mt. Coronet has already been shown to be ‘special’ – its strange magnetic field is one of the few places in the Pokemon world that allows for certain evolutions to occur. In addition, it houses Spear Pillar, the (presumed) gateway and central interaction point between the Pokemon World and the dimensions of Time, Space, Distortion and Creation (as all four of the Original Quartet can meet the player at this location). Finally, Mt. Silver and Fuji share no special distinctions beyond being mountains above the permanent snow line (they have snow year-round).
Regice being made from mountain ice is actually very important, as it gives us another shot at getting down to the proper temperatures. As anyone who’s ever climbed a mountain knows, the temperature drops as altitude increases due to decreased air pressure. Think of it as a massive column of air – if you move upwards on the column, there’s less weight pushing down from above, and therefore less pressure. This allows air molecules to move around more freely, and have less average energy – the basis of our understanding of temperature.
However, actually calculating the height of Mt. Coronet is more difficult than previously thought. A prior calculation I did (arriving at 17 km) completely ignores the presence of the tropopause, an altitude limit that keeps temperature relatively constant above itself.
Fig. 1, some meteorological bullshit.
Fortunately, because temperature is a nebulous concept at the best of times, and because of a few aforementioned details, a few tricks play to our favor. For starters, Regice is specifically stated to be made of Antarctic ice, meaning Mt. Coronet may not have originated in the exact spot it’s currently at. This is possible because Regigigas is capable of towing continents into place, and because Regice is visually composed of ice with a bluish hue – namely, blue ice, found in Antarctica where snow is densified and packed into airless ice, taking on a blue hue only due to sheer thickness (water, as we know, is also blue in color due to the O-H bond in the molecule absorbing light more efficiently in other parts of the spectrum). The note about Regice’s ice being from Antarctica and from an ice age (plenty of time for compaction) supports this very strongly.
So how high do we have to get to get down to -200 degrees C, at the top of a mountain, in the middle of an ice age, localized entirely in your kitchen? Thankfully, people have crunched the numbers on this. On average, the temperature drops something like -9.84 degrees C every kilometer (before you reach the tropopause, at which point the temperature drop roughly stops, as shown above). Taking our base temperature of -104 degrees C and this number, we get a total mountain height (above sea level) of about 9.7536 km. This is actually very realistic! For reference, the peak of Mt. Everest is about 8.848 km above sea level, and the estimated total height of Mauna Kea (the actual tallest mountain in the world, if more than half of it wasn’t underwater) is about 9.966 km.
From there, we can derive a few more interesting things. It turns out (from a very rough observation) that the maximum mountain height on different planets is roughly linearly proportional to their gravitational acceleration, as shown by the data below.
Fig. 2, lord help me I’m back on my bullshit.
Why is this? As best I can tell, it's something to do with the compressive strength of the bulk materials making up the mountain. The mass of the rock multiplied by the value of gravity gives a certain weight, which when considering the area of the mountain gives a certain pressure. This pressure, if the mountain is too tall, would exceed the compressive strength of the rock underneath it, causing the mountain to collapse under its own weight unless below that height limit.
The equation relating maximum mountain height to planetary gravity can then be used to find the gravity in the Pokemon world, which comes out to something like 9.35 m/s^2, extremely close to our value of 9.81 m/s^2. It might even be that gravity is the exact same, as all this takes place under the assumption that Coronet is the tallest mountain when that might not quite be the case.
This also raises logistical questions – namely, how in the Distortion World did the protagonists of Diamond, Pearl and Platinum manage to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest at ten years old and not suffer from hypoxia, severe frostbite, and other natural consequences of such a harsh environment? Well, for starters, Mt. Coronet’s current height is likely not the same as its original height. Keep in mind that it only had to be that tall during the ice age in which Regice’s ice was formed, and Regigigas moved it later to its current location. Towing a continent with ropes begs the question of how one moves a continent to begin with, and it can be presumed that Regigigas simply sped up existing plate tectonics with the use of a massive amount of strength (seriously, the amount of force it must take to move an entire tectonic plate is best reserved for another document). However, for the purposes of the story we’re telling, it’s fairly safe to say that Regigigas moved the plate containing Mt. Coronet (or the plate boundary containing Coronet, as we don’t know specifics) to a more temperate location than the Antarctic. It may well be that Coronet lost considerable height in the process, bringing it down to a more reasonable altitude and allowing small children to summit it without much difficulty.
There are also some other interesting things to consider about Regice. Its height is completely inconsistent with its weight – scaling a 3D model, one finds that Regice’s total volume is around 0.75 m^3 and that its density is therefore somewhere around 0.2333 g/cm^3 – nowhere near regular ice’s density of 0.9340 g/cm^3 at -180 degrees C or ice-XI’s recorded value of 0.91 g/cm^3 (which, unfortunately, is one of the higher-density ice crystal forms). In addition, microscopic air voids that lower the density of regular ice (and give it its characteristic milky translucent color) cannot be the answer here, as we previously determined that Regice was made of densified blue ice that owes its color to a lack of trapped air. In fact, if we do the same for Regirock and Registeel, we find the same result – their weight is completely inconsistent with their volume and stated material. Regirock is made of natural rock, so unless there’s a natural rock out there with a density significantly less than pumice, why the discrepancy? Registeel's Pokedex entry gives us a possible answer – a hollow cavity within its body could explain the lesser weight, being replaced by air, vacuum or something else entirely. But the crystals that compose Regice appear roughly monocrystalline – and why would there be a hollow cavity in any of the three to begin with? Doing some rough calculations, we can find that in order for a hollow cavity to exist within Regice’s body, the cavity would have to comprise nearly 75% of Regice’s volume to bring its weight down to the correct number assuming the standard density of ice-XI as the bulk material density. This cavity, modeled as a cube, would be about 82.3 cm (32.4”) to a side, which is certainly possible to hide in the main body of Regice due to its bulky construction. But… why would it be there to begin with? Was that some important detail when Regigigas made the Legendary Golems, to include a hollow cavity within each of them?
Lastly, and the question most of you were probably asking this whole time, how does Regice not melt when encased in lava, or just melt over time to begin with? Frankly, I have no idea. There’s not even a theoretical framework to support such a lack of heat transfer through ice of any type, so I quite honestly have to pull the ‘it’s magic’ card on this one. Specifically, Ice-type magic. A copout, I know, but I can’t think of any other viable answer at the moment.
This timeline of events also raises questions about the nature of the Sinnoh region. It’s stated that Arceus created the Sinnoh region, and Coronet is clearly an important place to the Alpha Pokemon – but then, why did Regigigas have to bring it over from Antarctica? It’s never been said exactly how Arceus created Sinnoh, so it could well have been a ‘commission’ or order given to Regigigas, who simply did the heavy lifting. It’s also stated in lore discovered in the Hoenn region (both in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire) that the people who worshipped Regigigas (and presumably created the Snowpoint Temple to seal it away in fear of its power) ‘owed it all’, meaning that Regigigas saved them from an event that would have presumably caused their extinction. What that event is is uncertain – a food drought, a tectonics-related problem, or something else entirely – but what is still more interesting is the timeline of events that follows afterwards. For a time, Regigigas was clearly worshipped – but that changed when the people began to fear its power, conspiring to seal it away. They did the same for its creations, Regirock, Regice and Registeel – but why in Hoenn, so far away from the Snowpoint Temple? In Pokemon Platinum, the Golems can be found if one has an event-only Regigigas in certain tombs around Sinnoh – but is this canon, considering these areas didn’t exist in Diamond and Pearl, or just a way to shoehorn the Golems into Platinum (much like certain other Legendaries appear outside their debut regions)? Could the Golems have chased the people all the way to Hoenn, seeking revenge for the imprisonment of their master, or were they taken there to prevent Regigigas from reawakening, as it does when the player confronts it with the three in their party? The latter may be a stretch, as possessing the three Golems doesn’t actually directly awaken Regigigas – it simply allows the woman guarding the temple to let you in. In addition, the anime shows multiple times that Regigigas can wake up simply from outside stimuli, heedless of the presence or lack thereof of its own Golems near it. Either way, why the sudden shift in treatment of Regigigas and its kind by the people that formerly worshipped it? Some clues may be left in their messages, as they sealed the Golems (and presumably Regigigas) away in the hope that one day they could be tamed by someone strong enough to control their power.
There is some support for the theory that the former Sinnoans (is that the right word?) fled southward, whether pursued by the Golems or carrying them as cargo. The Sinjoh Ruins exist because a grouo of people from Sinnoh met up with a group of people from the Ruins of Alph (home of the Unown), and decided to create a temple honoring the Original Quartet together. There are no references to the Golems or Regigigas anywhere in the Sinjoh Ruins, however, which is for obvious reasons in gameplay terms (the theme of the area being more about the Creation Quartet and Unown, not the Golems) but may imply a more interesting story reason – that at this time, the people fleeing from Sinnoh had stopped worshipping the Golems and wanted little more to do with them.
It’s been widely theorized that the first four regions of the Pokemon world (and corresponding games) all take place on the same continental landmass, shaped roughly like Japan. This would place Sinnoh as the Hokkaido region, the northmost point, and Hoenn as the Kyushu region, the southernmost point, with Kanto and Johto corresponding to Kanto and the southern-facing portion of Chubu respectively. Taking into account the distance between Sinnoh and Hoenn, then, it could well be that the people from Sinnoh only stopped fleeing when they could go no further, and only then planned to imprison the Golems rather than run from them. Alternatively, they might have planned to imprison the Golems as far from their master as possible, to lessen the chances of someone accidentally reawakening all four. These people either lacked boats or the means to transport the Golems across water, as otherwise they would have fled to other regions to escape the Golems (who would all be unable to cross water – Regice would trap itself in its own ice, Regirock would simply be weathered to nothing, and Registeel would presumably sink to the bottom of the ocean and be unable to climb out). This might be evidenced by the presence of Regigigas and the Golems in Unova in the Black 2/White 2 games, if we believe each regional game series represents an alternate timeline, as in that version of events they may have failed to contain Regigigas and subsequently fled the continent altogether). Either way, this would be a fascinating part of Pokemon world history.
Anyway, I've been working on Project Pokedex to write extended articles on every Pokemon with regards to caretaking advice and biology, and one Pokemon in particular that interested me was Regice. Something about its Pokedex entries seemed a little too specific, a little more detail-oriented than most others. So I did some digging, and apparently Regice's entry was either written by a genius in meteorology and thermodynamics, or by an extremely lucky writer with a fondness for specific values.
I also ended up (somewhat) accidentally writing this like an episode of Game Theory, since even I couldn't bear to read all the boring math details without a few jokes to lighten the load. But, if you want to learn a lot about some very minor details of both Earth and the (canon) Pokemon world, you've come to the right place! So, without further ado, here's the thought piece I wrote and researched:
An interesting detail is hidden deep within Pokemon’s lore. Specifically, the Iceberg Pokemon Regice has some very interesting tidbits on its formation and history. To quote from the Pokedex entries for Regice (amalgamated into a more useful paragraph):
“Regice is a Legendary Pokemon whose body was made during an ice age. Its deep-frozen Antarctic ice body cannot be melted by fire or even by submerging it in molten lava, and maintains a constant temperature by cloaking itself with frigid air of approximately -200 degrees C. It is said to have slept in a glacier for thousands of years, and was imprisoned some time ago by humans.”
Ice at -200 degrees C may simply sound extremely cold, but there’s actually a very specific reference hidden here. Ice, you see, forms different crystal structures at different pressures and temperatures, named in a Roman system from ice-Ih (regular hexagonal ice that we see everywhere) all the way up to ice-XVI, each having different (and often very specific) formation requirements. However, one particular form stands out: Ice-XI is unusual for being one of the few exotic forms to (theoretically) be capable of forming naturally, at ambient pressure, at -200 degrees C (73 K). It is also theoretically the most stable configuration of ice-Ih, allowing it to form from regular ice if cooled to the correct temperatures.
However, the coldest temperature ever recorded on Planet Earth was about -89 degrees C, in the Antarctic in 1983 – extremely cold, cold enough even to freeze carbon dioxide in the air, but not quite enough to make everyone’s favorite mobile freezer. Things would undoubtedly be colder in an ice age, but not by too much – geological measurements estimate the ground temperature of Antarctic ice varied only by 15 degrees C over the past 800,000 years, meaning our best-case scenario lies around -104 degrees C. Better, but still not good enough.
However, an unexpected savior comes in the form of Regice’s Trio Master, Regigigas, whose Pokedex entries in its debut series Diamond/Pearl/Platinum were kind enough to give some additional details about Regice’s creation. To quote again:
“There is an enduring legend that states this Pokémon towed continents with ropes. It is said to have made Pokémon that look like itself from a special ice mountain, rocks, and magma.”
We can deduce that the mountain is Coronet, for obvious reasons – there are no named mountains in Hoenn, and while it is possible that Mt. Fuji or Mt. Silver could have been the source, Coronet is far closer to Regigigas’ temple in Snowpoint City. Second, Mt. Coronet has already been shown to be ‘special’ – its strange magnetic field is one of the few places in the Pokemon world that allows for certain evolutions to occur. In addition, it houses Spear Pillar, the (presumed) gateway and central interaction point between the Pokemon World and the dimensions of Time, Space, Distortion and Creation (as all four of the Original Quartet can meet the player at this location). Finally, Mt. Silver and Fuji share no special distinctions beyond being mountains above the permanent snow line (they have snow year-round).
Regice being made from mountain ice is actually very important, as it gives us another shot at getting down to the proper temperatures. As anyone who’s ever climbed a mountain knows, the temperature drops as altitude increases due to decreased air pressure. Think of it as a massive column of air – if you move upwards on the column, there’s less weight pushing down from above, and therefore less pressure. This allows air molecules to move around more freely, and have less average energy – the basis of our understanding of temperature.
However, actually calculating the height of Mt. Coronet is more difficult than previously thought. A prior calculation I did (arriving at 17 km) completely ignores the presence of the tropopause, an altitude limit that keeps temperature relatively constant above itself.
Fig. 1, some meteorological bullshit.
Fortunately, because temperature is a nebulous concept at the best of times, and because of a few aforementioned details, a few tricks play to our favor. For starters, Regice is specifically stated to be made of Antarctic ice, meaning Mt. Coronet may not have originated in the exact spot it’s currently at. This is possible because Regigigas is capable of towing continents into place, and because Regice is visually composed of ice with a bluish hue – namely, blue ice, found in Antarctica where snow is densified and packed into airless ice, taking on a blue hue only due to sheer thickness (water, as we know, is also blue in color due to the O-H bond in the molecule absorbing light more efficiently in other parts of the spectrum). The note about Regice’s ice being from Antarctica and from an ice age (plenty of time for compaction) supports this very strongly.
So how high do we have to get to get down to -200 degrees C, at the top of a mountain, in the middle of an ice age, localized entirely in your kitchen? Thankfully, people have crunched the numbers on this. On average, the temperature drops something like -9.84 degrees C every kilometer (before you reach the tropopause, at which point the temperature drop roughly stops, as shown above). Taking our base temperature of -104 degrees C and this number, we get a total mountain height (above sea level) of about 9.7536 km. This is actually very realistic! For reference, the peak of Mt. Everest is about 8.848 km above sea level, and the estimated total height of Mauna Kea (the actual tallest mountain in the world, if more than half of it wasn’t underwater) is about 9.966 km.
From there, we can derive a few more interesting things. It turns out (from a very rough observation) that the maximum mountain height on different planets is roughly linearly proportional to their gravitational acceleration, as shown by the data below.
Fig. 2, lord help me I’m back on my bullshit.
Why is this? As best I can tell, it's something to do with the compressive strength of the bulk materials making up the mountain. The mass of the rock multiplied by the value of gravity gives a certain weight, which when considering the area of the mountain gives a certain pressure. This pressure, if the mountain is too tall, would exceed the compressive strength of the rock underneath it, causing the mountain to collapse under its own weight unless below that height limit.
The equation relating maximum mountain height to planetary gravity can then be used to find the gravity in the Pokemon world, which comes out to something like 9.35 m/s^2, extremely close to our value of 9.81 m/s^2. It might even be that gravity is the exact same, as all this takes place under the assumption that Coronet is the tallest mountain when that might not quite be the case.
This also raises logistical questions – namely, how in the Distortion World did the protagonists of Diamond, Pearl and Platinum manage to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest at ten years old and not suffer from hypoxia, severe frostbite, and other natural consequences of such a harsh environment? Well, for starters, Mt. Coronet’s current height is likely not the same as its original height. Keep in mind that it only had to be that tall during the ice age in which Regice’s ice was formed, and Regigigas moved it later to its current location. Towing a continent with ropes begs the question of how one moves a continent to begin with, and it can be presumed that Regigigas simply sped up existing plate tectonics with the use of a massive amount of strength (seriously, the amount of force it must take to move an entire tectonic plate is best reserved for another document). However, for the purposes of the story we’re telling, it’s fairly safe to say that Regigigas moved the plate containing Mt. Coronet (or the plate boundary containing Coronet, as we don’t know specifics) to a more temperate location than the Antarctic. It may well be that Coronet lost considerable height in the process, bringing it down to a more reasonable altitude and allowing small children to summit it without much difficulty.
There are also some other interesting things to consider about Regice. Its height is completely inconsistent with its weight – scaling a 3D model, one finds that Regice’s total volume is around 0.75 m^3 and that its density is therefore somewhere around 0.2333 g/cm^3 – nowhere near regular ice’s density of 0.9340 g/cm^3 at -180 degrees C or ice-XI’s recorded value of 0.91 g/cm^3 (which, unfortunately, is one of the higher-density ice crystal forms). In addition, microscopic air voids that lower the density of regular ice (and give it its characteristic milky translucent color) cannot be the answer here, as we previously determined that Regice was made of densified blue ice that owes its color to a lack of trapped air. In fact, if we do the same for Regirock and Registeel, we find the same result – their weight is completely inconsistent with their volume and stated material. Regirock is made of natural rock, so unless there’s a natural rock out there with a density significantly less than pumice, why the discrepancy? Registeel's Pokedex entry gives us a possible answer – a hollow cavity within its body could explain the lesser weight, being replaced by air, vacuum or something else entirely. But the crystals that compose Regice appear roughly monocrystalline – and why would there be a hollow cavity in any of the three to begin with? Doing some rough calculations, we can find that in order for a hollow cavity to exist within Regice’s body, the cavity would have to comprise nearly 75% of Regice’s volume to bring its weight down to the correct number assuming the standard density of ice-XI as the bulk material density. This cavity, modeled as a cube, would be about 82.3 cm (32.4”) to a side, which is certainly possible to hide in the main body of Regice due to its bulky construction. But… why would it be there to begin with? Was that some important detail when Regigigas made the Legendary Golems, to include a hollow cavity within each of them?
Lastly, and the question most of you were probably asking this whole time, how does Regice not melt when encased in lava, or just melt over time to begin with? Frankly, I have no idea. There’s not even a theoretical framework to support such a lack of heat transfer through ice of any type, so I quite honestly have to pull the ‘it’s magic’ card on this one. Specifically, Ice-type magic. A copout, I know, but I can’t think of any other viable answer at the moment.
This timeline of events also raises questions about the nature of the Sinnoh region. It’s stated that Arceus created the Sinnoh region, and Coronet is clearly an important place to the Alpha Pokemon – but then, why did Regigigas have to bring it over from Antarctica? It’s never been said exactly how Arceus created Sinnoh, so it could well have been a ‘commission’ or order given to Regigigas, who simply did the heavy lifting. It’s also stated in lore discovered in the Hoenn region (both in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire) that the people who worshipped Regigigas (and presumably created the Snowpoint Temple to seal it away in fear of its power) ‘owed it all’, meaning that Regigigas saved them from an event that would have presumably caused their extinction. What that event is is uncertain – a food drought, a tectonics-related problem, or something else entirely – but what is still more interesting is the timeline of events that follows afterwards. For a time, Regigigas was clearly worshipped – but that changed when the people began to fear its power, conspiring to seal it away. They did the same for its creations, Regirock, Regice and Registeel – but why in Hoenn, so far away from the Snowpoint Temple? In Pokemon Platinum, the Golems can be found if one has an event-only Regigigas in certain tombs around Sinnoh – but is this canon, considering these areas didn’t exist in Diamond and Pearl, or just a way to shoehorn the Golems into Platinum (much like certain other Legendaries appear outside their debut regions)? Could the Golems have chased the people all the way to Hoenn, seeking revenge for the imprisonment of their master, or were they taken there to prevent Regigigas from reawakening, as it does when the player confronts it with the three in their party? The latter may be a stretch, as possessing the three Golems doesn’t actually directly awaken Regigigas – it simply allows the woman guarding the temple to let you in. In addition, the anime shows multiple times that Regigigas can wake up simply from outside stimuli, heedless of the presence or lack thereof of its own Golems near it. Either way, why the sudden shift in treatment of Regigigas and its kind by the people that formerly worshipped it? Some clues may be left in their messages, as they sealed the Golems (and presumably Regigigas) away in the hope that one day they could be tamed by someone strong enough to control their power.
There is some support for the theory that the former Sinnoans (is that the right word?) fled southward, whether pursued by the Golems or carrying them as cargo. The Sinjoh Ruins exist because a grouo of people from Sinnoh met up with a group of people from the Ruins of Alph (home of the Unown), and decided to create a temple honoring the Original Quartet together. There are no references to the Golems or Regigigas anywhere in the Sinjoh Ruins, however, which is for obvious reasons in gameplay terms (the theme of the area being more about the Creation Quartet and Unown, not the Golems) but may imply a more interesting story reason – that at this time, the people fleeing from Sinnoh had stopped worshipping the Golems and wanted little more to do with them.
It’s been widely theorized that the first four regions of the Pokemon world (and corresponding games) all take place on the same continental landmass, shaped roughly like Japan. This would place Sinnoh as the Hokkaido region, the northmost point, and Hoenn as the Kyushu region, the southernmost point, with Kanto and Johto corresponding to Kanto and the southern-facing portion of Chubu respectively. Taking into account the distance between Sinnoh and Hoenn, then, it could well be that the people from Sinnoh only stopped fleeing when they could go no further, and only then planned to imprison the Golems rather than run from them. Alternatively, they might have planned to imprison the Golems as far from their master as possible, to lessen the chances of someone accidentally reawakening all four. These people either lacked boats or the means to transport the Golems across water, as otherwise they would have fled to other regions to escape the Golems (who would all be unable to cross water – Regice would trap itself in its own ice, Regirock would simply be weathered to nothing, and Registeel would presumably sink to the bottom of the ocean and be unable to climb out). This might be evidenced by the presence of Regigigas and the Golems in Unova in the Black 2/White 2 games, if we believe each regional game series represents an alternate timeline, as in that version of events they may have failed to contain Regigigas and subsequently fled the continent altogether). Either way, this would be a fascinating part of Pokemon world history.
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