Pet Mod - Generation X - The Next Chapter (Region 4: Brunica) [Slate 2: Generational Gimmick] (2024)

"According to legend, it mercilessly preys on the souls of those with darkness in their hearts. In battle, it would stand tall as a mountain to strike fear in its opponents, before savaging them with its deadly bite."
"It's said that this brutal Pokémon drinks the life force right out of its prey, allowing it to heal itself or unleash tremendous destructive power. In some myths, it devours its downed adversary in one gulp."

Name: Nidheleim (Nidhogg, Norse dragon of the underworld + Helheim, the realm of the damned)
Counterpart: Vhrallgyra
Height: 12'2"
Weight: 350 lbs
Stats: 105 HP/105 ATK/120 DEF/145 SP ATK/120 SP DEF/75 SPD = 670
Typing: Dragon/Dark
Abilities: Dread Eater

Movepool (Level-Up): Dragon Breath (1), Bite (1), Snarl (1), Acid Spray (1), Dragon Pulse (6), Leech Life (10), Venoshock (13), Dark Pulse (18), Dragon Dance (22), Mega Drain (25), Jaw Lock (30), Sludge Bomb (34), Giga Drain (37), Night Daze (42), Ravaging Vortex* (46), Outrage (49)

Role:
Wherever Nidheleim goes, destruction and chaos are certain to follow. This hulking beast is quite slow, sure, but why outrun your foes when nuking them from afar works just as well? Few are the special Dark-type moves out there, but they're far from useless in this case, especially with that frankly ridiculous Special Attack stat. Your best bets at Dark STAB are Night Daze for the accuracy drop and Dark Pulse for the sake of reliability. Dragon STAB of course comes in the form of Draco Meteor, but if you want something without recoil, its signature move, Ravaging Vortex, is a decent standby as well, especially when paired with its unique ability - the more strength it leeches from its opposition, the weaker its foes become! Coverage includes Fire, Electric, Grass, Poison, and Ground-type moves of various effectiveness, and you can certainly run either Fire Blast or Sludge Wave as an insurance measure against Fairy-types which are resistant at the minimum to both STAB options, along with surprising Ice-types with the former if it can get the drop on them. Its slow speed, high defense and rather decent special defense (Fairy-types notwithstanding) also allow for an easier time wading through enemy fire, though if it absolutely needs to heal up, it's important to remember that Draining Kiss is a special attack, making it more viable than Drain Punch despite lacking STAB, though Giga Drain isn't a bad idea either if you find yourself up against something weak to Grass. Be aware though that its Speed and physical Attack are basically its dump stats, which can come back to bite it in the tail if it isn't careful - that double-weakness to Fairy is no fun at all.

Design:
A vicious, brutal reptilian Pokémon with a somewhat Gen-I feel to it, this predatory beast looks like a cross between a vintage carnivorous tail-dragging theropod, a monitor lizard, and a Scandinavian dragon like you'd find on the front of a Viking longship. It has a relatively long yet thick torso and an even longer tapering tail, its large hind legs and its smaller grasping arms both resembling Charizard's, with three claws each; it can move on either four legs or two depending on which works better, looking for all the world like a colossal, monstrous serpent with arms and legs. When reared up, it drags its tail along the ground while holding its spine diagonally, retrosaur-style. It has a medium-length, serpentine but muscular neck and a large head with huge and powerful, beaked jaws full of fangs, somewhat resembling that of Aerodactyl but with a shorter, broader snout and two large saber fangs on the upper jaw that remain visible when the mouth is shut. Its horns are shaped like those of Tauros, and are set on a dome-shaped headplate suggesting an erroneously horned pop-culture Viking helmet. Patches of large, diamond-shaped, overlapping scales are visible upon its sides, neck, and upper limbs, but the belly is ridged like Dragonite's, while the upper surface sports a row of segmented armor plates all the way down the neck, back, and tail as well as plates like pauldrons on each shoulder with horns of their own like on the head. It also has a row of jagged maple-leaf fins like Gyarados running down the back from the forehead to just after the shoulders, and a matching fin on the end of the tail; smaller fins are also visible on the sides of its forearms and on either side of its head like frilly ears. These fins glow a brilliant purple, Godzilla-style, as it uses its special attacks, implying that it channels its power through it. It is primarily dark bluish gray in color with brass-colored armor, and its belly and lower jaw are light gray, while its fins are the same red shade as on Charmeleon's body but tipped with brick red; the shiny inverses this by having red scales along with brick-red armor and light orange belly/jaw, but dark blue fur tufts tipped with black. For both color palettes, the eyes are a fierce lime green with vertical slits for pupils, its teeth, horns, and talons are a very light gray, and its snakey forked tongue is a dull pink.

This design is modified from another entry I subbed to the same mod that its version counterpart made its debut in, and was originally based on the Azhdaha, a dragon from Persian mythology which is said to be vicious and destructive like a European dragon, but has an appearance more an Asian dragon. As the prompt for the slate it was subbed to was for a Fighting-type special attacker, I referenced the Iranian form of wrestling to inform the overall design, as it is heavily ritualized and based largely on display with body contact being done only in the climactic match. Its being either quadrupedal or bipedal as it sees fit is also based on monitor lizards (whose generic name Varanus is derived from the Arabic waral, meaning "lizard beast") rearing up on their hind legs, as well as fighting like wrestlers when they clash over mates and territory. I decided not to reinvent the wheel role-wise when bringing it over to this submission, as a special attacker made a good contrast to Vhrallgyra being more physically inclined, but I did have to make the basis completely different, so I went instead with

from Norse myth and leaned into his habit of eating the souls of the damned rather than his more well-known shtick of chewing the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil. Since the special attacker role translated into breath weapon spam, it only made sense for me to toss in some influence from Godzilla and his many imitators as well - I imagine this Legendary lurking deep underground when dormant, only to awake once in a (very long) while when it has to feed, devastating the very land itself as it does.