The Horos region
One river, fifteen settlements, eight gyms, and the people who argue about where partnership ends.
In short
- Horos is an original region: a prosperous, ordinary country where people work beside their Pokemon.
- The Elv runs from a glacier under the Summit to the sea, and almost everything sits along it.
- Fifteen settlements, eight with a gym. Around eighty places between them, in twelve kinds of country.
- Nothing has gone wrong here. The arguments are about work, the wild, trade and what a Pokemon is.
The shape of it
The river rises in the high snow, cuts a gorge through the foothills past the salt town, crosses the farm plain, becomes a trading city where the forest river joins it, and reaches the sea at a port. Every trade in Horos ships on it, and the foreign Pokemon that came in on barges are densest where the barges stop: the port, the warehouse quarter, the delta, the spa gardens.
Around the river: the Great Forest and its old oaks, the steppe where the horses and the breeders are, a marsh of reed fens and peat, a coast of dunes and amber and chalk, the mountains with their mines and a monastery, a geothermal valley of fumaroles and hot springs, and the open sea with an island village. The Atlas shows all of it, and every place's page says what lives there.
The settlements
| Town | What it is | Gym |
|---|---|---|
| Terapagossa | the Academy town, where you start | |
| Applegarth | orchards and apiaries | |
| Grandchamp | the farm market | Normal |
| Fondaco | the river trading city, home of the League Stadium | Water |
| Almadía | timber and the Raftsmen's Guild | Grass |
| Greenwood | the Forest Wardens' village | |
| Monding | the port, the Institute and the Company's warehouses | Flying |
| Bernstein | amber cutters on the shore | |
| Isleta | an island fishing village | |
| Irrlicht | a causeway town in the fen | Ghost |
| Dehesa | the herders' and breeders' town on the steppe | |
| Warmbad | the spa town | Fire |
| Saltcote | the salt mine and the Miners' Guild | |
| Herrería | the mining city | Steel |
| Névé | the highland snow town | Ice |
The gyms are taken in that order on the natural path: Almadía, Grandchamp, Fondaco, Monding, Irrlicht, Warmbad, Herrería, Névé.
The people
Horos is organised by what people do, and every group is right about something.
- The League is the national sport: eight gym clubs with home crowds, colours and old rivalries. It runs the badge circuit and the stadium tournament. There is no Elite Four and no Champion.
- The Academy trains young trainers and issues the licence, which is admission to the League and nothing more.
- The guilds are the economy: the Miners' Guild in the mountains, the River Trading Company on the water and in most of the shops, the Farmers' Cooperative on the plain, the Raftsmen's Guild in the forest.
- The societies are knowledge, care and pastime: the Researchers at the Institute, the Forest Wardens, the Breeders' Society in Dehesa, the Chroniclers in the monastery, the Brotherhood of Healers who run every Pokemon Centre, and the Anglers' Society, who will give you a rod if you earn it.
Where two of these meet is where the quests are. The Felling sits between the timber yards and the protected forest; the Polders against the fen; the spoil tips beside the high pastures; a proposed dam at the Weir. None of them is a battle. Each is a place where two reasonable positions meet, and you will be asked to help one of them.
What is older
Under the fields and in the oldest chronicles are traces of something nobody alive remembers. One line of quests, starting with the gym leader at Irrlicht, follows it to the Old Trackway. It is the only legendary in Horos, and the region's oldest story.
Where to go first
The new-player path starts in Terapagossa. What to do next lays out the region in the order it opens.