Well well. Here we are again.
As you might know by now, Lapeo is a fakemon region I’ve been picking at for the past couple years. If you want to know more, you can check out the tag linked up above! Or, if you like, you can easily peruse all the fakemon on this page. You might notice some new guys are on that page, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna be delving into with this post! It’s not a lot of them, I was hoping to do some more, but then this year just became very busy, and I haven’t had the time. But there will be another treat at the end… a sparkly treat, if you will.
I’m now at the point of Lapeo where I’ve got a pretty solid dex; a lot of bases are covered and a lot of my ideas have been spent. So now I’m in, I guess, the cleanup phase; taking note of any niches that still need to be filled, such as types I don’t have as many of, or more “story” mons that fit the loose narrative I’m also still working on. Types was the big one here; I tallied up all the types I had so far in Lapeo, and made note of which ones I was lacking in. Which turned out to be Fighting, Ice, Rock and Dragon. So… you’ll never guess what types I used here!
Let’s start with the only completely original designs in this set: Chalicoy and Gladithere. These two are both some tough Fighting types! Here’s their dex entries:
- Chalicoy (Grazing Pokemon): Chalicoy mostly keeps to itself, but will strike anything it deems a threat. It walks on its knuckles to avoid dulling its claws.
- Gladithere (Showman Pokemon): Gladithere love sparring with each other, so much so that it will often draw the attention of wild Pokemon all around to watch the spectacle.
These two are based on Chalicotherium, a very strange extinct mammal that was basically a cross between a gorilla and a horse. Oh, you thought modern horses are kinda freaky? Imagine if they shuffled around on their knuckles. Because instead of hooves they had giant claws. Sometimes I can’t believe these kinds of things existed. (It’s also funny how much this body plan kept happening; between Therizinosaurs, giant sloths and these guys, animals sure love to just Sit Around and Eat Leafs with Big Claws.) Gladithere also is clearly based on gladiators, mostly because of that helmet-mane look.
Next up is…. Eggs? Eggs! Can’t go wrong with some Baby Pokemon, right? And here we have the infamous Galarian fossil Pokemon. A lot of fakemon artists have already taken a crack (egg joke?) at designing what these mons would look like properly split up, and they all are fantastic. So much so that I don’t think I could add much more myself. So instead… I made them eggs.
- Zoltegg (Baby Pokemon): A young specimen of an Electric Pokemon. No adults have ever been found. It’s light and fast.
- Vishegg (Baby Pokemon): A young specimen of a Water Pokemon. No adults have ever been found. It has a strong bite.
- Arctoegg (Baby Pokemon): A young specimen of an Ice Pokemon. No adults have ever been found. It has flippers to swim in the Arctic sea.
- Dracoegg (Baby Pokemon): A young specimen of a Dragon Pokemon. No adults have ever been found. It has a strong spiny tail.
It’s silly, but this line was always meant to be silly (and I love it for that). I mean, I don’t even think Vish’s Dunkleosteus (and whatever Arcto is meant to be) came from those kinds of eggs. Clearly these guys evolve by combining them to become Dracovish, Arctozolt and whatnot. This does, however, open up the opportunity of getting brand new combos (Arctodraco and Zoltvish), which I might revisit. For now, enjoy the weird babies.
Next we have some… variants, I suppose. These guys I consider a little different, though–after all, we had regional forms in Alola and Galar, and convergents in Paldea, so Lapeo has its own unique thing that really doesn’t matter in the end because it’s just an excuse to design different forms: Similar/related species (term pending). This line and the next exist in tandem with the usual forms, as a species in the same family as the other, but not quite the same.
Here we have Basaura and Basaurus, who are a similar species to Amaura and Aurorus. They’re both Rock/Fighting types!
- Basaura (Volcanic Soil Pokemon): A species related to Amaura. Basaura are born in great clutches together, buried deep in the earth. This fuses into them as they grow, hardening their scales.
- Basaurus (Volcanic Soil Pokemon): A species related to Aurorus. Basaurus are tough, using their rocky fused spines to ward off enemies, and also push down trees in their way.
So Amaura and Aurorus were clearly based on the sauropod Amargasaurus, well known for its unique neck spines that still puzzle us today on whether or not it supported a sail. Well, we recently discovered a cousin of Amargasaurus that is equally as strange: Bajadasaurus. This fella also had neck spines, but they pointed forward. So I thought it was only apt to make a Bajadasaurus version of these two. I also heavily based these guys on basalt (which also gives them that similar ba prefix!), a volcanic rock form known for its big pillars, and often correlated with paleontology. I remember my local zoo’s dinosaur park having plenty of fake basalt pillars (we called them the “fries”), so in my brain I always associate them with dinosaurs.
Our last fakemon, and another related species, is Yutyrunt and Yutyrantrum! Both of them are Ice/Dragon types!
- Yutyrunt (Royal Heir Pokemon): A species related to Tyrunt. It uses its thick coat of feathers to shield itself from its cold environment.
- Yutyrantrum (Despot Pokemon): A species related to Tyrantrum. Called the King of the Ice, very few dare challenge its rule over its mountain home.
Now, I honestly thought I’d never touch Tyrunt and Tyrantrum. Because those two are just… perfect. They’re the absolute perfect tyrannosaur Pokemon. I could not improve, or change, anything about them. But then this idea popped in my head… and dammit, I had to try. While the originals are clearly going for good ol’ Tyrannosaurus, these two are based on Yutyrannus, a name you’re probably familiar with if you’ve hung around on this site long enough. Yutyrannus is famous for being a large (early) tyrannosaur with evidence of feathers. What a great way to give these kingly Pokemon their own kingly coats? I guess the only way to improve upon greatness is simply: make ’em fuzzier. (I don’t claim these designs to be improved I’m just kidding around, don’t hurt me Tyrantrum fans.)
Like I said, this batch was a way to start rounding out the dex. I still have some fossil mons I haven’t done anything to… though, honestly, it’s gonna be hard. Pokemon like Lileep and Kabutops are already so good, I don’t know what more can be played with. Though, I thought the same about Tyrantrum, and here we are. It’ll just maybe take me some more time, and research. Or maybe they’ll just be untouched. Not every fossil mon needs a makeover!!
Shinies
Finally, what’s better than a fakemon? A shiny fakemon, maybe? Well, I dunno, but people love shinies, and they’re so cemented into Pokemon design at this point that if you’re making fakemon, you generally also include the shiny colour variants. I have utterly failed at this so far, so time to rectify that. Without further ado, here are all the shinies in Lapeo!
Any of these guys you’d go shiny hunting for? I definitely wanna implement the shiny colours into the main page somehow, but I’m still trying to figure out how I can do that in a way that I like.
Anyhoo! I recently restocked the printed version of the Lapeo fakemon zine–it doesn’t include these new guys, though. I hope one day, once I have pretty much everything I want for this project, I’ll make a Complete Guide to the Lapeo Region. But that might be a while. So until then, there’s all my pages and posts here, and the physical book if you wanna hold it in your very hands.
Thanks for reading!
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