Seeing as Professor Oak shows up at the end of the game to congratulate Red on becoming Champion... it was the perfect opportunity to unleash his insanity upon readers again. :)

Return to Lynwood, Chapter 10

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10

The trip to the old keep would take two and a half days from here, but they would be far from boring ones, Isengrim thought as they began their march through the forest. The Haunted Woods was full of wild beauty, and the company couldn’t be beat. The only things dampening his mood were the curse, Connor’s struggles, and the nagging fear that someone or something might have found the staff by now. After all, it had been nearly fifteen years since that keep was destroyed—more than enough time for looters to comb through the ruins.

But he tried not to let that get him down. After all, the air was cool and clean, the trees were aflame in autumn colours, and he and his party chatted and sang as they went. Lexora was quite good company, and the secondhand shopkeeper had a great deal of secondhand stories from her father about his globetrotting business exploits.

Isengrim was fascinated with everything Mr. Fitchet had seen and done in places like Shenkuu and Krawk Island. Someday he would have to figure out a way to travel over Neopia more widely without causing too much trouble. The fact that he still had business ties to quite a few individuals on the wrong side of the law had made his dealings with other kingdoms complicated, and lately the fact had begun to set less and less well with him. He thought that when he returned home, he should devote some time to trying to figure out a solution.

 

 I feel bad for Blue, honestly. He seems to spend most of his time waiting around for Red to show up. Who knows how long he had to sit in that Champion's room bored out of his mind.

 Agatha's line when you challenge her is a really intriguing bit of character development... that never gets brought up again. Also she's nowhere to be seen in Gen II which takes place three years after Gen I. I dunno, maybe she and Oak got married and she realized there's more to life than Pokemon battles?

 More doodling, this time for a My Little Pony fanfic I've been working on (which explains last month's geek rant). 

This is a concept design for the evil version of mirror-universe King Sombra, as the fic is a follow-up to the MLP:FiM graphic novel storyline “Reflections”. That story arc revolves around an alternate-universe Equestria where moral alignments are reversed, meaning that universe’s versions of Celestia and Luna are evil while King Sombra is good. Regular Celestia finds her way into this universe during her studies under Starswirl the Bearded, and she and Mirror-Sombra strike up a relationship that is severed when Mirror-Sombra absorbs the evil inside Mirror-Celestia and Mirror-Luna to prevent them from trying to take over regular Equestria. Celestia is also forced to seal the passageway between the universes to prevent them from becoming inextricably entangled.

 

 If you see somebody bothering with Victory Road, do you even need to ask that question?

My friend Ashley Hall is moving on from Museum of the Rockies and won't be co-hosting Virtual Fossil Fridays anymore! I'm sure Maggie Jo will continue to do a wonderful job hosting, but I'm going to miss seeing Ashley every week too. I drew her a couple of things to express my appreciation for everything she's done for science outreach at MOR during her time there.

She asked me to draw a picture of her riding a Parasaurolophus (her favorite dino), so I had to remember a lot of things I forgot about horseback riding from when I would go to visit my equestrian aunt as a kid. (Horses kinda terrify me with their extreme jumpiness and their ability to sense your lack of confidence. Carnivores are more my speed.) I also included her cat Samhain because I always look for excuses to include cats in things. :)

 

And then I drew her as an actual Parasaurolophus because why not. She used to work at the Page Museum at Rancho La Brea*, so I drew her with Smilodon, one of the tar pits' iconic species. Love that place. I hope I get to visit it again someday.

Thanks for everything, Ashley! I'm secretly hoping she organizes another chapter of Virtual Fossil Fridays in her new location. Double the paleontology, double the fun!

*For those not in the know, "la brea" is literally Spanish for "the tar". So when you say "La Brea Tar Pits" you are saying "the the tar tar pits". Let's be less cavalier with our linguistics, shall we?

This message has been paid for by the Coalition Against Tautological Place Names.