Cail is actually quite the interesting character in my verse.
You see, not only do we have the fairly classic fanon of him knowing Wes, there's also the fun part where he knows Nascour as well. It started out fairly innocent too - they were both rebellious teens looking for a fun night out in Pyrite Town, with Cail living in the area to this day and Nascour coming over on Metang/Metagross after escaping from his family home near Phenac City. The two boys would chat and even engage in some experimental flirting and fooling around. To this day, Nascour will often go and say hi to Cail when he's in or near Pyrite.
What Cail never knew, however, is that Nascour has since become one of Cipher's leaders. It's even possible that Cail knows things like Miror B. being secretly backed by more powerful people from Nascour, being fed random tidbits of information that Cipher wants out there (no, of course they want nobody to find out about Evice and Greevil, but Nascour is mentioned pretty openly by Cipher people; he's the boss that people are supposed to learn about as both a threat and misdirection).
Cail isn't stupid. He would've eventually noticed that other criminals run and hide whenever Nascour is in town - if aura manipulation didn't keep him nice and comfortable in the realm of guilelessness. For the longest time, he remained entirely unaware that he was "friends" with a very dangerous person and invited in evil that was far beyond the mere pranks and shenanigans he gets up to. Nascour saw no benefit in revealing the truth, thinking that one day a good opportunity would surely present itself, and he would use trust rather than fear to deal with Cail until the time comes.
The details of what happened between Cail and Wes aren't set in stone. But they were close. And Cail had and still has strong feelings for Wes. Once he found out about that, Nascour rejoiced - in fact, he was much more delighted by Cail's attachment to Wes than anything pertaining to himself. Because such emotions could be twisted and then used. Turning love and affection into obsession and jealousy, an easy task with Rui in the picture.
It may be that Cail accidentally or even knowingly leaked information to Cipher, due to promises that were made to him. It may be that he learned who Nascour really was during this time and cooperated only out of fear. It may be that he risked his own safety and well-being by trying to mislead Cipher and/or warn Wes. None of that is set in stone either.
But this is basically what's going on with Cail and what past ficlets featuring him have been referencing.
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Out of universe, it's quite likely that Orre's name was derived from "ore". But I have a fun headcanon regarding the linguistics in-universe.
You see, in my verse, "Orre" actually evolved from "Aura" (also a reference to the Spanish localization). That's what it was called during the time period now referred to as Ancient Orre.
Now, as some of you may know, my main source of inspiration for Ancient Orre is Ancient Rome, due to the colosseum ruins and all. Correspondingly, my main source of inspiration for the Ancient Orrean language is Latin.
In Ancient Orrean, "aura" had a double meaning. It was used both like Latin "aurum" (gold) and "aura" as we know it today, the latter of which evolved from its original meaning of aroma and odor (borrowed from Latin "aura" which means breeze or air) to the more "vibe" kind of thing we mostly associate it with in modern day English. The reason why Ancient Orrean "aura" meant both gold and, well, aura is that, in this language, it was conceptualized as meaning some kind of richness or wealth, with gold as one of the most precious materials being the "outwards" riches in your possession and aura being a manifestation of the "inwards" riches that come from your soul - also quite a precious thing.
Both meanings of the word became central to Ancient Orre's identity due to its reputation for being rich in precious metals and minerals and its proud tradition of training psychics, and so Aura became its name first and then later Orre.
Just like aura was originally borrowed from Latin in our world, it would then be the case that aura in the Pokémon world is a very rare and possibly the only example of an Ancient Orrean word being borrowed and continuing to be used in modern day language.
~
Bonus lore: This is the kind of thing only few people can tell you in modern day Orre, examples being Dakim if he thinks you're worthy of sharing insight into his culture with, Nascour if he ever feels like sharing the old lore he learned, which is never, and Ardos after about three glasses of ridiculously expensive alcoholic beverages, because he wants to show you how much he knows.
What if there's this superstitious belief in other regions of the Pokémon world that yellow/orange/red eyes are so common in Orre because the people there mingled with demons.
Which in their eyes also explains the crime rate. Because, you see, Orreans are just "bad people".
Because the state of the region could never have anything to do with it being drained of its natural resources for profit and then left to rot by the international community who is quietly looking away while criminal gangs tear what's left of Orre apart like crows and vultures feasting on roadkill -
Basically: Ho-Oh's Sacred Fire comes in two forms.
Ho-Oh can use it as a standard fire type attack, the result of which is simply what we see in the games.
The other way it can use it, however, is as a sort cleansing fire. When Ho-Oh does this, the Sacred Fire will do no harm to any living being that is "pure of heart". At least that's what the legends say - reality is a lot more complex. For example someone who has done bad things before and bettered themselves or who is mostly a good person deep down or who has genuinely good intentions will also not be harmed/be only slightly harmed by it. If this Sacred Fire does harm to a living being - for whatever reason - the "burn" experienced by it is also less physical and more on a spiritual level (= the cleansing part). Correspondingly, the intensity also varies; in extreme cases, you would wish that you got incinerated instead.
Due to this, this other form of Sacred Fire is seen as a sort of judgement or "morality check" by the people of Orre. It has also led to the - not always entirely accurate - belief that Ho-Oh uses it to test those it encounters.
~
Those coming here from my fic "Ascent" may wonder why Ho-oh used Sacred Fire against Eldes after it had already decided to see him, which, as Somek points out, is a positive judgement of his character in itself, considering how Ho-Oh deciding to appear to humans is always a big deal. Well, you see, we get Eldes' perspective on this, and due to his limitations and biases he's not interpreting it entirely correctly. Narrators aren't always reliable, after all.
Eldes assumes that he's being judged because he's feeling guilty about various things he did, from putting his Pokémon through a lot to his involvement in Cipher to some personal issues that might just fall under the umbrella of moral OCD.
Ho-Oh, however, used Sacred Fire on him more for his sake than its own. As mentioned previously, it had already decided that Eldes is a good (enough) person. But by having him go through the visceral experience of being hit with Sacred Fire and seeing that it didn't harm him, Ho-Oh is not only showing Eldes that his own judgement of himself is not quite accurate, it's also giving him undeniable proof of it. It's giving him something he can remember and cling to in the future whenever he doubts himself.
No, Eldes hasn't fully understood this yet. But he will, at least by the ending of XD or some time after. And even before that, this experience did serve as a shield or talisman of sorts. Because if Eldes had continued to think of himself as no longer a good person, perhaps even evil or irredeemable as time goes on, it might have gotten to a point where he would simply give up and give in. "Might as well do the bad things then."
But thanks to Ho-Oh, Eldes can - despite all of his doubts - think to himself, "I didn't take Ho-Oh's Sacred Fire to the face just for my insane family to force me to be someone I'm not." It helped him stick to his morals and to his true self, even when he felt utterly hopeless. And that was Ho-Oh's gift to him.
~
What about Ardos, you ask? Well. He began thinking of himself as an evil and fundamentally broken person years ago and has chosen to embrace that belief. Go figure.
So, here's the (abridged, summarized) story of Evice in my verse.
He was born into the Verich clan, at this point already an infamous Orrean crime family thanks to his grandma who was what you could in hindsight describe as the first Grand Mistress of Cipher and its founder, back when Cipher was still just another gang. Es Cade was his younger brother - I'm undecided if they just ended up looking very alike or if they were twins, mirroring Ardos and Eldes in my verse - and Greevil is his cousin.
Growing up, Evice was his grandmother's favorite. He had potential as a Trainer and the kind of personality and talents you'd need to become the quintessential Orrean mobster: A penchant for cruelty and violence from a young age, a general disregard for rules, laws and any authority not called grandma, ambition with a "healthy" level of greed, the ability to lie and deceive as well as being decisive, stubborn and hard to sway or influence. Evice learned to respect Greevil because he's similarly capable but never held any respect or much affection for Es Cade who was always the "weak link" of the third generation Verichs. In later years, Evice also became increasingly jealous and resentful of his brother because Es Cade was always the one people liked more.
Another thing Evice greatly resented was the lack of Pokémon and opportunities for Trainers in Orre. This planted the first seeds of his desire to change his home region - by force and at the detriment of others, if necessary. Though for the time being, there was little he could do, and he had to access Pokémon through import or theft like everyone else in Orre.
As his grandmother grew older, she trained Evice to be her successor and eventually let him take over, though she remained in the background and he followed her orders till the day she died - begrudgingly at times, but he never worked up the courage to truly challenge her. One might even say she's one of few people in Evice's life that he actually liked.
He did well in the crime business, and his personal ambitions resulted in good progress for Cipher as well. It was due to his "hard work" that a "rivalry" with young Officer (at the time) Sherles formed, though Evice never respected Sherles and was always too far ahead of him to view it as such.
But it still wasn't enough for Evice. He didn't want to be a boss, he wanted to be the boss and change and control his environment according to his desires. When he shared his vision of growing Cipher until it was powerful enough to take over with his grandmother while she was still alive, she told him that he would need greater power for this - and that he should go "find the shadows". He learned of Shadow Pokémon from her.
Things escalated further on the family front when one day a Kalosian Trainer and diplomat arrived in Phenac City, and Evice found that he fancied her. As did his brother. Whom she immediately liked more. In fact, she ended up marrying him later on and they had little Nascour together. Evice hated everything about this and was just quietly coping and seething at the fact that a silver-haired, red-eyed child now existed, one that he could only pretend in his fantasy was his and that seemed to taunt him with the resemblance. One whose mother hated him and even beat him in a Pokémon battle once. It was his last loss for decades until Wes happened.
With his ego thoroughly bruised after his failed attempt at wooing a woman, Evice went on long journeys to attempt to find either wild Pokémon or even Shadow Pokémon out in the desert. Maybe they were just hiding, he thought. But no matter how thoroughly he searched, the land was dead and there was little to nothing - though what he did find was hidden "poison", toxic minerals in the ground, that had turned a few unfortunate Pokémon into shadows naturally.
Evice then learned that he was, in fact, not immune to being poisoned and got very sick. This was when his eyes blackened, making his family fear that he would lose his vision, but miraculously, he didn't - and eventually, he also recovered. Unbeknownst to most, he had become partially shadowed, and it made an already bad person worse.
When Greevil lost his wife, Evice took advantage of his despair and need for support to convince him to agree to merge his mining company with Cipher, setting the development from mere gang to powerful crime syndicate in motion. He also took advantage of his sister-in-law's secret plan to leave Orre with little Nascour - she had noticed Cipher's activities and was beginning to worry - to drive her away but kept the child, threatening to hurt them if "the boy" didn't stay with the family he "belonged" to. And last but not least, Evice eventually made the decision to kill his own brother to swap places, so he (Evice) could steal both Es Cade's identity and his son and pretend to be dead, throwing Sherles and all his other enemies off his trail and grooming Nascour to become a mob boss and his puppet.
In the following years, Evice directed Nascour to systematically dismantle, wipe out and subjugate Orre's other gangs. And no, he didn't treat his nephew well, the details of which I won't be discussing in this post. There has never been any love between them, and after what Evice has done, there never will be.
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So what I currently have in mind for Justy as a sort of general role to fill in my verse is that he's in this grey zone that many people in Orre would realistically find themselves in, where they knowingly or unknowingly collaborated with or supported Cipher at some point in their lives.
If we look at Colosseum, we see that Cipher was influencing and even controlling several of the major settlements in Orre, forcing people into compliance on top of that if necessary (for example Duking). My friends and I have been theorizing that Cipher likely played an important role as a relatively stable employer too, possibly also offering benefits and various perks people couldn't access elsewhere (they certainly seem to have more funding than the police lol).
As for Justy, he appears to be a fairly young man who has managed to be a professional Pokémon Trainer. I imagine that this is a dream for many Pokémon Trainers in Orre, but usually they have to pursue other careers (often criminal) because Orre has no league; contrast this with for example Galar where Pokémon battles seem to be treated like a professional sport. This begs the question: How did Justy manage to make a career out of battling and how did he end up in charge of the Pre Gym?
I think that, in order for an institution like the Pre Gym to have been created/to be maintained, the mayor of Phenac City is involved in this somehow. Yes, you can probably guess where this is going. I imagine that "Es Cade" - also known to us as dear old Evice, boss of Cipher - had a hand in allocating funds for the Pre Gym and a say in who gets to be its leader. The reasons why I suspect he would be interested in it aside from simply doing his mayor duties to keep up appearances are as follows:
Using the Pre Gym as a sort of talent scouting tool to find capable Pokémon Trainers that Cipher can then approach with an offer to join (for some thoughts regarding potential recruitment efforts, see also my meta on Wes and Nascour)
Using the fact that the Pre Gym doubles as an educational facility to spread pro-Cipher propaganda
The Pre Gym being a sort of first step to creating a Cipher-controlled Orrean Pokémon League (I mean, look at the Realgam Tower arc in Colosseum)
Possibly distributing Shadow Pokémon and/or gathering data in the future when Cipher's control of Orre has advanced to a point where they can influence Phenac City more openly
Therefore, my theory is that in order to be Pre Gym Leader, Justy had to cooperate. Not much, I don't think he was part of Cipher or anything, but he probably had to turn a blind eye occasionally. I also imagine that he wasn't necessarily fond of the current state of affairs, but this was his only option to make an actual career out of being a Pokémon Trainer.
And the reason why Justy uses evasion-based strats is that Orrean Trainers have no honor, making him a perfect example of his region.
So in a post a while back I was joking about what's going on with Evice and Es Cade according to my headcanons and what I said back then was... only half of that conspiracy, actually. But the whole thing - and I promise it's indeed all about the Verichs, bear with me - has been coming up in fics and been mentioned in headcanon posts, so it's time to provide the full context.
For now, I'll just briefly summarize the main points, might go into more depths about individual characters later.
In canon, we learn about Evice's/"Es Cade"'s grandfather who founded Phenac City and became the first mayor. So far so good
In my verse, this guy was also Greevil's grandfather. Greevil and Evice are cousins
Their grandmother, married to said mayor, was your typical Orrean gang leader. This is how the Verich family became this combination of rich and privileged people, politicians and mob bosses
Es Cade is - or rather was - a real person. He was Evice's younger brother, which explains how Evice can impersonate him so easily, as well as the physical resemblance
Nascour is Evice's nephew, and as you may guess already, Es Cade's son. Consequently, Ardos and Eldes are Nascour's (second) cousins
Es Cade died under mysterious circumstances when Nascour was still a child
Evice - who may or may not have had something to do with it - took the opportunity to essentially swap places with his dead brother. Nobody ever looked for Evice when Cipher rose to power because they thought he was dead, "Es Cade" was innocent and Nascour was doing everything
Because Nascour's mother wasn't in the picture by the time Es Cade died (more on that later), Evice took him in and raised him, essentially grooming him to be a mob boss so he can keep up his disguise while someone else handles the mob business
The rest of the family and a few members of Cipher are aware of Evice's real identity as well as Nascour being a decoy/puppet boss
Tldr: Everyone is a Verich and they've been plaguing Orre for four generations now
In my verse, it's not a new phenomenon that a select few people are born with a particular brand of psychic powers that has been known as aura reading since the days of Ancient Orre. But back in the day, there was also more to it. Here's the deeper lore; aside from Orre worldbuilding, there will also be Nascour lore, Rui lore and OC lore.
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.
Addendum: Michael's aura reader device can only detect the shadow aura of Shadow Pokémon. It is not capable of any of the other feats aura readers (the humans born with the ability) do instinctively or can learn. It would perhaps be able to detect a shadow human as well, at least while that person is in a state where the aura closely resembles the one a Shadow Pokémon would have (for example during Hyper/Reverse Mode). However, dadverse!Michael is a descendant of Nana Verich, meaning that even though he may not have inherited the ability himself, his potential future kids might. His device was made with the help of Rui.
