Sumondia

Sumondia is a vast, geographically diverse landmass and continent. Sumondia finds itself fairly isolated from the rest of the world, having a vast coastline which bounds the majority of the continent. The mountainous North of the continent is fairly densely inhabited, but the mountain range grows more impassable to the North, isolating Sumondia from the lands on the other side of the mountain range. The first settlers of Sumondia, miraculously, made their way through the mountains from the other side and named Sumondia after the land South of the Mountains.

Politics
Sumondia is governed entirely by The Pokémon League. The League is solely responsible for the spending of public money, construction projects, taxation, broadcasting, trade and the delivery of public services.

The majority of Sumondians respect the authority of the Pokémon League, due to the fact that generally they are transparent, efficient and un-corrupt. However, there are many Sumondians, from across the land who demand devolution. Despite the efforts of the League to see that every city, town and region is given the capital or services that they specifically require, people often feel neglected, that the League is out-of-touch and far away and that local government would be preferable, usually via a Gym Leader.

History
For many, many many years Sumondia remained sparsely populated, with Pokémon roaming freely across the land. Halflings and Gnomes lived in harmony in The Oldlands living and working with their Pokémon as well as raising modest settlements amongst the plains, forests and swamps there. Further south, in The Great Green Barrier, the Tabaxi and the Yuan-Ti fought viciously with one another. Every corner of the jungle bore evidence of their fighting, and this continues to this day. The rest of mainland Sumondia remained an untamed frontier, free from the settlements of humanoids, however the seas around Sumondia told a different story. Even pre-dating the Gnomes, Halflings and jungle races, the Tritons, an ancient race of aquatic humanoids, had created many settlements, tamed many Pokémon and established systems of government under the waves. Rarely venturing out of the water, their civilisation remained a mystery for many years, until they began to trade, live and battle with the people of Sumondia, after the mass settlement of the continent.

The expansion of Sumondia began when the First Settlers arrived from beyond the mountains to the North. Little is known or remembered about how or why the First Settlers arrived in Sumondia, likewise, since their arrival no one has been able to pass through the mountains to ascertain what is on the other side. The mountains are too tall and treacherous to climb, conditions too dangerous to fly over and impossible to access from where they meet the sea. It is truly a mystery as to how the First Settlers were even able to get to Sumondia. Legend states that their chances of survival were beginning to look slim, and many, many people had been lost along the way. Food was running scarce and the freezing, blizzard conditions of the mountain were taking their toll. That was until the legendary Pokémon Articuno appeared and led the settlers through the harshest of the mountains, until they reached the relative plateau of The Newlands. It was here that the first settlers established their first settlement in Sumondia, and named it Frostpeak City.

Adapting to the cold winds and snow of Frostpeak City, as well as trying to establish a civilisation from nothing caused many issue for the First Settlers. Discord was sown and the Settlers started to disband. The blame for the strife of Frostpeak City fell on the 'plane-touched' races (Aasimar, Genasi, Tiefling), easily scapegoated by their mysterious heritage, and they were ousted from the city and forced to descend the mountains of The Newlands. Some members of other races joined and they were known as The Exiles. The Exiles found themselves moving further south into Sumondia, taming the wild desert of The Frontierlands and establishing new settlements along the way. Not long after the expulsion of The Exiles, the population of Frostpeak City found themselves at odds once more. The unending blight of the freezing conditions of Frostpeak City proved too much for some of the settlers and they proposed to move their founding city to warmer climbs. This caused a bitter feud in the city and some settlers went West into the freezing forests of The Highlands. Their legend states that Moltres then led them through the forest to where the snowdrifts subsided and they established Gustwood City. Fighting and rivalry remained between the two cities for generations, and there is still much distrust and animosity between them today.

In the following years, the descendants of The Exiles and citizens of Frostpeak and Gustwood City pushed through Sumondia, establishing great cities such as Midway, Petylverd and Neaptide. Docks were also established in Esteelia City where Sumondia opened themselves up to nations across the waves. The Pokémon League was also established in its infancy, in The Highlands. The ferocious fighting in the Great Green Barrier was also quelled by the settlers and they found themselves mingling with the native Sumondians throughout The Greenlands and The Oldlands.

The Pokémon League gradually began to increase its influence in Sumondia as a beacon of governance, power and law. The tribal mindsets of certain races and cities began to melt away as the Pokémon League saw to nurture Sumondia as a whole, paying no attention to borders or historic feuds.

Geography
Sumondia is a hugely diverse geographical continent. It has been split into 7 regions due to geographic and political reasons. They are:

The Frontierlands

The Greenlands

The Highlands

The Islands

The Newlands

The Oldlands

The Tradelands

The Pokémon League dislike referring to Sumondia in terms of these regions as they perpetuate the historic differences which they see to endanger the unification of Sumondia.

The entire North of Sumondia is a plateau in the mountain range that makes Sumondia inaccessible from the North. Its high altitudes mean that strong winds are very common across The Highlands and The Newlands. The plateau ranges geographically from a moorland in the West, to dense coniferous forests, to a glacier before turning South East where the ice retreats and the landscape becomes craggy and spotting with glacial lakes. The plateau drops sharply and is only feasibly scalable in the far East where the slopes become shallower. At the base of these cliffs is a vast sandy desert, dispersed with rocky volcanic protrusions that border the desert to the South. The desert abates to the West where it becomes a savanna which become more lush and green to the South. The majority of Southern Sumondia is a vast grassland split by rivers, it becomes rocky to the East and becomes a dense rainforest to the West.

The Southeastern coast of Sumondia is very rocky and full of caves. Esteelia City has been built on said rocks, yet the ecosystem was altered as the entire city is plated in steel. The oceans of Sumondia can also be quite rocky with many protrusions being found on the coastal shelf near to the shore. To the East, The Islands refer to a large archipelago of relatively flat islands, compared to the West.

In the centre of Sumondia sits the Great Lake, which is a huge inland sea, bordered by many different ecosystems. The Pokémon League sits on the cliffs on the edge of the lake and the huge marble building extends from the plateau down to the lake surface. To the West of the lake is a marshland that extends further North still, where the topography ensures near constant rain on the marsh. The marshland abates to the south where it becomes a sparse forest peppered with many farmsteads, before joining the jungle on the Southwest corner of Sumondia.