Adventures in Helnith: Assault on the Town of Ash (OoC)

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I still do have some pressing questions though. What are Team Bandra's actual (or stated) goals? Does anyone know?

As far as the war, how did it start? What is team Bandra's stated goals?

Short answer: they are out to take over Helnith. There is more to it than that, but some of it you’re going to have to wait until you meet the rest of the group for, as while the party has discovered it, it isn’t general knowledge.

Through Emilia, Less will know that

Spoiler: Less

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Triple B is Selene Icharias, the League Champion, and her fiancée died not long before the whole mess started. Emilia at least thought the two were connected, though it had seemed to her at the time that Selene was dealing with his death as well as anyone could. The ‘start a team of bad guys, conquer the region’ bit was very unexpected.

What other changes have they caused? From the looks of it, maybe some destroyed towns, made barren wastelands, and caused a bunch of rain elsewhere? Anything else?

That’s the bulk of it: they’re taking over towns, killing people who oppose them, and they’re mucking around with the local Legendary Pokémon. That last caused Salerdia’s absence for the last five years, which in turn caused the region to die off (she’s back now, but the damage doesn’t go away overnight) – for example the area around Siltis Village used to be grassy, and wild Pokémon in Helnith are rarer than in other regions.

The dimensional rifts opening at regular intervals predates Bandra, and is none of their doing.

Do they have non-pokemon based forces?

I’m not sure what you mean by this. They have a little more in the way of hardware than the rest of Helnith does (a few helicopters, vehicles, some tech that their opponents either don’t have or refuse to use).

What forces actually stand in opposition? Are there any regular organized forces left who oppose them?

Spoiler: Forces Opposing Bandra

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Aside from the party, there is the Starlight Squad, but they suffered a serious defeat not long ago – kicked out of Stardust City, chased through the Shrine of Light, retreated all the way to Ternai Town only for Bandra Officer Darrin to attack as soon as they started striking back. Their leader was killed – rumor has it by one of the Squad - and of his three lieutenants, one of them was lost during the aforementioned striking back, and the Squad is split between the other two. Subsequent finger-pointing and distrust mean that’s not likely to change without some outside intervention.

Beyond that, the Gym Leaders of the towns that have them are protecting their towns as best they can, Dream (and Emilia when she was around) is running interference, and Salerdia was spotted about three weeks ago.

In theory the Ranger Union is also opposed to Team Bandra, but in practice they're spread too thin to be useful as an organization; most of the region's police forces being wiped out means they're covering those in addition to their own duties.

What do they do when they take over a town or some other kind of territory?

Kill everyone who opposes them, hang the bodies of the people they killed in public places as a warning to others, take whatever they want, generally oppress the population and act like they own the place. That sort of thing.

I know that's a lot of questions. Apologies. I make no promises that I won't have more later.

That’s okay, every time I give you more info I keep having to apply the mental filter ‘but did we hear this from a Legendary Pokémon, in another dimension, or from some other source that would not be available to the average Helnith citizen?’ so don’t be surprised if I chime in with extra details later, either!

Bandra has the Radio Tower, and the newspaper is mostly only in circulation in Skybreak City due to heightened security there, so news doesn’t travel well.

I have a couple things in mind for Pinklady to do now hers and Mark's meal and intros are over - reading up about Cosmas in her dex and contacting Mina - but also, since she's in the same location as the new folks, just later in the day, I'd like to wait a bit for their catch-up to possibly interact with them just after the meal.

Sounds good!