#ciph.hc

Yes, Evice is revealed to have been the big boss behind everything in the end, and so all of Nascour's presence in the story and setting him up as the big bad evil guy serves the plot twist. However, him being the one who is actually present and pulling the strings and running the operation while Evice is at least partially busy cosplaying as someone else makes him, as far as I'm concerned, the central character tasked with opposing Wes and Rui on a personal level. And Nascour does this better than Evice because 1) he's a Trainer using psychic offense like Wes (canon) and 2) he shares Rui's power and is essentially her evil counterpart by using it to lead the Shadow Pokémon project rather than stop it (my headcanon). He is a foil to both of them and opposes them not just on a general plot but also on a personal level, spiritually, ideologically, you name it.

It also makes for a more satisfying battle against him, I think. Naturally, I headcanon that Nascour has found ways to use his aura reading in battle, for example to predict his opponents or to issue non-verbal commands to at least his psychic types, using telepathy instead, which on top of it all makes it harder to tell what he is going to do. Especially for my bad ending verse it's vital that there is a damn good reason for Wes to possibly and justifiably lose this battle - which is that this is pretty damn unfair, if you think about it. And that's, of course, the entire point in Nascour doing this. He doesn't want to be fair. He wants to win and show people how little they can do against him. He was talking about domination and humiliation, for crying out loud.

But in canonverse, Wes wins. Why? I'm sure you would like to know how he prevails against an opponent who, depending on how you want to label it, either has a pretty significant advantage or straight up cheats. Well. You see, Wes isn't someone who is blinded by any sort of glitz, glamor or bravado. He's from the streets and from the desert, he knows the reality of Orre and its people, he has no sort of rose-colored glasses on or reverence for anything. Unlike many others who have - though understandably so - succumbed to fear and hopelessness, he sees Nascour for what he is: Just another criminal. Nothing more, nothing less. And even if Wes has to deal with Nascour knowing how he ticks and trying to read him and giving his Pokémon commands he can't hear, he can do two things. He can use experience and basic "what would a criminal like us do in this situation" to predict Nascour in turn. And he can break that very same character to surprise him.

For all of his powers and abilities, Nascour does not, cannot fully understand Wes at this point. He cannot comprehend how someone who is exactly like him, a criminal who deep inside of him still carries the traumatized, orphaned and abandoned boy he was, can choose compassion over revenge and helping others over helping himself. Someone who chooses to trust and help a stranger and make himself vulnerable over closing the door to his heart. Someone who chooses to be a hero for people who may never thank him or have anything to give him as compensation for his troubles. Someone who would rather sit in the desert sand with nothing but his beloved companions by his side rather than in a grand, fancy tower surrounded by riches.

After it had become known across the clans and tribes of Ancient Orre that these individuals existed and that it's a regularly occurring (albeit rare) phenomenon, an order of sorts was formed. Its purpose was to find young aura readers across the region or seek them out if one was discovered - conveniently, psychic abilities of any kind are among the many things that can be sensed in a person's aura - and train them, with the older and more experienced aura readers taking the younger under their wing and teaching them all they know. They would then make use of their abilities to discover threats as well as hurt Pokémon and people and help, heal and protect others. Their guardian deity of choice and legendary they revered especially was Celebi.

Such was the goal; of course, there were several instances of people with this power making use of it to take advantage of others, cause harm or seize power, in which case the other aura readers would deal with that threat too. As a result, the dogma of using these abilities for healing, defense and altruistic reasons only became even more emphasized, and Ancient Orrean culture considered it to be a sacred art that was treated with great reverence by the people - the expectation in turn being, naturally, that the aura readers would also treat it as something sacred and never abuse it. To do so was considered, depending on the severity of it, a disgrace to straight up abomination.

As Eldes would secretly tell Lily many, many years later, Shadow Pokémon are not an invention of Cipher. The rediscovery of the phenomenon and the development of reliable methods of shadowfication was more akin to awakening an ancient curse using science. But Shadow Pokémon had been seen before, and the process had been artificially replicated before by the alchemists of Ancient Orre; Cipher only needed Ein and his science because that old knowledge was lost, systematically eradicated time and time again after Shadow Pokémon appeared on the battlefields of Ancient Orre and the Order acted much like the snaggers of today, battling and defeating those who used Shadow Pokémon and subsequently liberating and purifying these Pokémon. This was also the reason why objects like the Relic Stone were created.

With the downfall of Ancient Orre, the Order was destroyed as well and much of its knowledge and teachings were lost. The traditional communities of Orre, mainly the elders of Agate Village and the volcanic tribe, saved what they could. They took it upon themselves to, even though they themselves often didn't possess the ability of aura reading, train any young aura readers that were discovered, hoping to at least help them understand what they were experiencing as they attempted to navigate life with this inherent psychic affinity, often confused and distraught by seeing and feelings things others could not. Naturally, they were also hoping to pass on the ideology of helping and healing others, if for nothing else at least to prevent abuse of such powers by appealing to their compassion for living things. However, with the gift of aura reading being already quite rare, the chaotic, desolate state of Orre and the lack of other, older aura readers looking for others like them, it cannot be overstated how few aura readers were found in the centuries following the downfall of Ancient Orre. It was a huge guessing game, based entirely on luck if the people around the young person in question being able to identify the signs and knowing where to go and who to talk to.

Roughly 100 years before the events of Colosseum, an aura reader would emerge as a prominent figure in Orrean history for the first time in centuries - though history will never remember her as such. Renata "Nana" Verich, a legendary Orrean smuggler, crime boss and later the founder of Cipher, was never discovered in her youth and, after learning what this strange gift she had was, chose to never reveal herself. After managing to unearth and steal some ancient records, she learned enough about her abilities to practice on her own and, knowing that there might be others like her who might finally realize what it was that she was doing and what had given her an edge over other gangs and gang bosses countless times, she developed an ability called aura shroud, allowing her to hide her aura and therefore conceal not only her emotions, but also her psychic abilities and her use of them.

(In the ancient days, it had been custom for aura readers to train and experiment with all sorts of ways in which their psychic powers could manifest, with each and every one of them having different affinities - for example, some were skilled in projecting their aura outwards and would develop telekinetic and shielding abilities and others were skilled in connecting their auras with other beings, studying bonds and how this could be used to positively manipulate and heal them.)

When Nana Verich passed away roughly 20 years before the events of Colosseum, not even her living family members (most of them at least) knew what she had been and why they had never been able to lie to her or hide anything from her. It added to her fearsome reputation and is one of many reasons Orrean criminals fear her to this day. Yet a few years before her death, Nana finally sensed someone like her: The so far last of her descendants, her great-grandson Nascour, had inherited her precious secret ability. This was the true reason why she, from that day onward, preferred him over everyone else in the family and chose him as her true successor. She did two things after realizing this: Making sure that Nascour's ability was discovered, encouraging Es Cade to take him to the elders of Agate Village to "help" with his "condition", and recording everything she knew, including her prized aura shroud technique she had perfected over decades, and hiding it away for Nascour to find once he was old enough. Which he did, roughly one decade later and years after her death, and he absorbed her teachings like a sponge - both the aura-related things and everything she knew about controlling the criminal scene. Since the Orre games have some Star Wars vibes about them: Think of it as Darth Nana's holocron and Nascour as her Sith apprentice.

You may have already guessed that Nana's use of aura reading completely ignored the notions of it being a sacred art and moral code the Order had once built around it. And you would be right. But if she has broken the old code, Nascour has completely shattered it. Willingly and knowingly stomping on it with both of his ballerina feet, actually.

When he was trained by the elders of Agate Village, he also learned everything he could. First what it was that he was experiencing, then how to regulate it, then how to make use of it in very basic ways. He was told that if he ever found a Shadow Pokémon or other sort of corruption or just any living being in pain, he was supposed to help and heal it. He was taught to meditate to balance himself, to separate the emotions he was absorbing from others from his own and other basic coping mechanisms for when he was overwhelmed. And he was just a little kid at the time, so he thought he wanted to help, and his previous issues of social contact and emotional regulation even saw improvement for a time.

But no amount of childish desire to be good, imposed on said child by adults around him, basic coping strategies and meditation could forever hold unresolved trauma and being severely abused by a certain family member (Evice) at bay. As he grew into a teenager and young adult, Nascour found that these teachings were failing him - and that he was angry. Angry at the world who demanded that he should help and protect others, but sent no one to help and protect him when he needed it the most - when his uncle killed his father and began to wear a dead man's identity like a new skin, taking possession of a defenseless and traumatized child and abusing and grooming him to serve his interests. This was also when Nascour finally found what Nana had left for him, giving him actual tools to help himself through control and violence, telling him how he was her favorite and he was the true successor and he was the one she wanted to be Grand Master one day. He felt supported. He felt loved. He immediately adopted her vision as his own and began holding her up as the one guardian angel kind of family member of his that was both on his side and strong enough to get him where he wanted to be, whereas Es Cade, as much as Nascour had loved his father, had been "weak". Too weak to stay alive for his son, too weak to keep his promise to never leave him.

And so, Nascour obeyed when Nana advised him to make sure he had learned everything he could from the elders of Agate Village, take any and all records they had and then make sure that nobody else could get their hands on it, to seize the ancient knowledge for their family alone. Sneaking out of the house whenever Evice wasn't home, he resumed his training, shamelessly used his developing skills in aura manipulation - that he had, once upon a time, only accidentally tapped into in an innocent, childish attempt to make his father love him more after his mother abandoned them - to make the elders trust him and, once he was sure he had gotten everything, erased their memories with the help of his psychic Pokémon and stole the records and objects they had kept safe for centuries. Fortunately, Nascour still lacked a bit of finesse; and so, while he succeeded in making the elders forget about him, covering his tracks and cutting Rui off from receiving the same training as he had once her abilities are discovered at the beginning of Colosseum, he failed to completely erase any and all knowledge that would later help Wes and Rui and, since he had never found a Shadow Pokémon by that point in time, never knew to take the stone tablet from Beluh.

And this is the state of aura readers in modern Orre. The Order which, drawing on the Star Wars comparison again, was kind of their version of the Jedi, has been completely wiped out, lots of knowledge is lost and what remained of their teachings has actively been erased. Its only remains are a dead mob boss, a living mob boss who has succumbed to hatred and a desire for revenge (essentially a fallen Jedi turned Sith lord), using his powers to dominate others and actively assist the making of Shadow Pokémon rather than purifying them, and a recently discovered, untrained aura reader relying on her inherent abilities and what she can make of them. What Rui has accomplished in the face of such adversity is more than admirable and a testament to her ingenuity, grit and strength of character and conviction; with Wes' help, she purified all shadows except one, that one being Nascour himself - whose condition she never knew, because he had the ability to hide it from her. And perhaps that is even for the better: Sensing the true presence of one who, due to extensive training and natural potential, is quite powerful in all things aura and has turned all of that power to almost complete darkness would be completely and utterly terrifying.