Last time,

So now I can climb up the ghost tower and actually get attacked!

It’s working!

…what exactly is it doing?

So, the Silph scope is showing what’s “really” there, behind, say, the illusion it was generating? The gastly in the anime was all about generating illusions, so that’s probably the idea. But what we’re left with is a ball of gas and dust, and the type of ghost/poison, which isn’t actually answering anything about what this thing actually is. If it were just gas, then it wouldn’t be a ghost type.

What it seems to me is going on is that there’s something pulling together an insubstantial body of gases, then layering the illusion on top. Remove the illusion and you see what there is of a physical form, but that form isn’t necessarily quite the same thing as the underlying force holding it together.

Why the revelation that behind the illusion is a mysterious hazy thing with eyes and fangs suddenly makes your pokemon willing to attack is really unclear, particularly when the scope is presumably something you look through, so unless you’re stopping to hold it in front of your pokemon, what they see remains the same.

Also, why did Giovanni want this? As we’ll see, his people don’t seem to be having any problem with dealing with the ghosts. And why did Silph invent it? What’s up with all that?

Or it could just suffocate them for good. I mean, if it’s knocking you out by surrounding you with whatever gas makes up its body, it’s presumably depriving you of oxygen. Considering how dark some pokedex entries get, this isn’t even a stretch.

Anyway. Unfortunately, my bag is full and there’s lots of items, so I need to go dump things.

Key items remain in your pack, which can be a problem with how limited the space is but I never minded myself. You may recall one of my rantings about Pokemon Black involved a point where I didn’t get to run around with a key item but instead had to give it right back to its rightful owner. Sacrilege.

Let’s do a quick recap while we’re here at the pokemon center.

The latter two conversations support the accepted theory of what’s going on here – Team Rocket is taking the skulls of cubone for money. But the recurring statement about cubone’s mother is she died trying to escape Team Rocket, not defending her child. There may be an implicit connection there – she could have been trying to escape because of what would have happened to her child, although it’s odd how people put it…

Unless one of the other theories is correct.

Remember that kangaskhan Giovanni had? They’re basically bear-kangaroos, famed for protecting their offspring. Weird he’d have such a maternal pokemon.

The theory goes that what happened here was a kangaskhan died escaping Team Rocket. Its baby survived and became a cubone. This explains a lot about the weirdness of cubone being an entire species of orphans. You’ll notice most of the NPCs don’t refer to a marowak escaping, they just repeat that it was “cubone’s mother”, and they’re talking as if there’s a single cubone rather than it being a natural species. Also, apparently the original names for the two were “orphan” and “guardian” which make it sound like they were a one-off for this particular story.

(This being a fandom theory, there’s extremely complex variants of this all based on speculation that seem to be the modern day version of the old ridiculously complex cheats.)

Comparing the sprites, they do seem rather similar, and in the first gen, marowak also have very similar spines on their back. If you look at marowak as being the corpse of a kangaskhan…

At some point, this idea seems to have been discarded, although it’s not clear when – Gary is the only one to talk as if marowak are an established pokemon, but there are cubone owned by random trainers in Rock Tunnel. Later generations removed the spines and changed the body type in general a great deal, so there’s no longer any real connection between the two. They also made cubone breedable, which doesn’t make the slightest sense no matter how you look at it.

While I’m fond of the line we currrently have for their messed-up creepy potential (sometimes people complain that it doesn’t make sense cubone would hang out around the body long enough for the body to rot down to bleached bones so it could grab a skull. People. Obviously it eats its mom’s corpse first, then takes the bones from the stripped carcass and sets out to hunt.), the idea of marowak as a zombie also has its appeal.

Gary may also hold the clue about what’s currently going on – he says he can’t find any marowak, just cubone, and adds, “I doubt there are any left!” And we’re told it’s the skull cubone wear that’s valuable. In other words, you would kill the adults for the skulls, not their children.

Also, earlier one NPC mentioned that they thought the upset ghosts were the pokemon Team Rocket killed, which means it’s more than one – although who knows, they could be mistaken. The rest of the ghosts don’t seem to be linked to a particular pokemon, so perhaps the marowak just got the rest of the place all riled up.

And that’s the sort of conversation you get in the spooky ghost tower. Not much is getting cleared up here.

Looking back, I’m sort of surprised it seems like a lot of their nonsense sounds were transliterated instead of being turned into something more American. I wonder if it’s because these sort of cultural references were more normalized for people working in games even though otherwise this kind of media was pretty rare back then.

Like that’ll hold up in court.

That certainly seems like it’s a statement from the ghost.

Still don’t get why this matters.

I mean, so it changed from being an unknown ghost to being a ghost called gastly. All we’ve accomplished is figuring out which ghost they are, and since this is the first generation, there’s only one line of ghosts all of which have the same types.

Little late for that.

Speaking of unrest, there’s all sorts of items scattered around, including a nugget. The most likely explanation for those is that I’m looting things trainers left on their pokemon’s graves.

You’re one of the dumber ones, I guess.

This seems to be the dialogue style for when ghosts are talking to you. Why would they want that, though? Met on their own they just insist you go away.

Sure you were.

At the time I was just really grateful for a place to heal. Even if your pokemon can take the hits, the fact most moves are normal type means that running out of PP is a real issue. But looking at it now…white magic? What the hell is going on here? Also, if you can make a magical safe zone, why couldn’t all of you protect yourself from possession?

It’s weird that somehow this is considered less terrifying than the ghost sprite. Those are just black things that want you to leave. This thing looks like its planning to eat your eyes.

You and everyone else except Ms. White Magic over there.

My best guess for what’s going on here is that channelers are normally aiming to be in sync with the local ghosts. Assuming they’re psychics, they’d be extra susceptible to ghosts according to the game’s intended narrative. So, when the ghosts get mad, they have all the defensive powers of wet tissue paper.  That’s why you and Gary can run around just fine while adults with training and experience are all possessed.

It should also be mentioned that the ghosts don’t seem to be aiming to harm the channelers, but rather possess them for a cause, which would support the idea that these people are normally meant to commune with the ghosts and it’s only the addition of Team Rocket driving the ghosts into a frenzy that’s caused the problem.

I find this particular exchange interesting. The intended reading is presumably that the ghost drained her blood and wants more, but considering how much blood is in you and how little can be taken before you go from “I feel weak” to “I am totally dead”, maybe she was already suffering from anemia and the ghost was trying to fix its host.

Like you don’t know.

While I like most of these exchanges, this one drives me mad. Why would you assume what “fell out” was hair? How often does hair “fall out”?

Hey, the pokemon here are all dead, they weren’t using it.

Except I guess the ghost types can use it. Hm, that’d be something to consider. If trainers leave stat boosters and rare candy as gifts to their dead pokemon, ghosts haunting the area might become unusually dangerous.

At L28, continuing the glorious trend of occasional high level pokemon.

I don’t think anything ever came of it, but I was always intrigued by the idea. Bizarre monsters slipping in through cracks in reality? Even better than ghosts.

You can also catch plenty of cubone here, should you so desire. Presumably that’s why trainers in Rock Tunnel have them.

Another staircase…

Without the Silph scope, the ghost will stop you here. Now, if you’re crazy you can skip the Silph scope, then cheat and use a pokedoll to end the battle, depriving yourself of exp as well as all the exp of the ghosts before now, plus what you get fighting Team Rocket. Why would you do that? Think of the exp!

Note, this doesn’t happen with any of the other ghosts. At the time, I assumed the scope had to work harder because this was an actual ghost. It flashes a bit…

And there we go.

You can’t catch it. This might be because it’s not a real marowak, although it’s odd that they’d specify dodging instead of the ball just not working. Or it might be that because the marowak is furious, it refuses to be caught, which implies other pokemon are more okay about it.

Or, going on the kangaskhan theory, it might be that this wasn’t originally intended to be a legal pokemon at all but rather a sprite like the bone kabutops and aerodactyl.

Violence continues to solve all my problems.

This sort of thing dissatisfied me a lot about the games and TV show. Being a trainer was always the solution, even when that seems wildly inappropriate for the situation.

Here’s something weird.

See, that’s what the ghost was guarding – Team Rocket grunts. Why is it there? How did they get past it? (…possibly just by walking, since the ghosts only attack if you have a Silph scope.) It seems as if the ghost is actually being used by Team Rocket to keep people out. And the other ghosts haven’t done anything either – they yell at you to leave, and they possess people on all the lower levels, but none of the guys here have been possessed or attacked.

Maybe that was the idea. Some ghost traditions have them bound to serve their murderers. That would also better explain why beating it frees it.

I…don’t know, really. I’m just going everywhere I can access.

Golbat’s sprite is freakish. How does that tongue even fit?

And he was never seen again.

Terrible stats, although at least it’s speedy. It’s weird because mew and mewtwo are both catlike, yet clearly the designers have nothing but disdain for the competencies of regular cats.

So…was that what this is about? Cubone’s mother was either useless or trying to escape because her child had been branded useless? There doesn’t seem to be a very clear explanation for what actually went down here.

Also, although this comes up a lot, it doesn’t make much sense to say they hate useless pokemon given how weak the pokemon they use in battle often are. They clearly don’t have very high standards.

…sure, why not.

Yes, but obviously there were also Team Rocket guys preventing you from ever leaving. Say thank you, dammit.

You didn’t do much of a job.

Which warps you to here.

Turns out the real answer was to beat it to death again.

See, it’s so much less creepy when you say it.

Well, that’s convenient!

And now to leave this place and never look back.