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Description
The Exalted Pokémon
"According to legend, SAIKOUDA was the first creature to display selfless heroism. Everything bathed by its light was said to be renewed and rescued, even from the brink of total destruction."
"As it travels through the stratosphere, the glow of its wings seems to turn night into day, dispelling evil as it passes by. When it is seen in flight, it is a sign to all that salvation is near."

Type: Light/Fairy
Height: 25'
Weight: 1500 lbs
Ability: Absolution*
Evolution: Does not evolve (Legendary).
Egg Groups: Undiscovered

Basis: The Garuda, a godly bird in Hindu mythology; the Simurgh, a benevolent bird-like creature in Iranian mythology; spacecraft; crossbows; flying mecha.
Etymology: SAIKOU ("highest" in Japanese)+GarUDA

Moves Learned: Disarming Voice, Healing Rites**, Extrasensory, Flash Cannon, Light Screen, Hyper Voice, Dazzling Gleam, Imprison, Extreme Speed, Future Sight, Hyper Beam, Outrage, Super Laser**, and starting moves Purging Whiteness***, Cosmic Power, Dash Attack**, and Heal Pulse.
Notable Other Moves: Notable TMs/HMs include Calm Mind, Sunny Day, Taunt, Protect, Roost, Psychic, Reflect, Flamethrower, Rock Tomb, Aerial Ace, Overheat, Steel Wing, Focus Blast, Energy Ball, Charge Beam, Acrobatics, Smart Strike, Fly, and U-turn. Notable tutor moves are Defog, Block, Recycle, Signal Beam, Magic Coat, Magic Room, and Skill Swap.

Base Stats:
HP: 100
Attack: 100
Defense: 140
Sp.Atk: 100
Sp.Def: 140
Speed: 100
TOTAL: 680

* For more information on the Light type and the italicized moves listed, check out the updated guide !

* Absolution: When the user is on the field, all Pokémon are cured of and immune to status effects.
[Note: When the user enters the field, all Pokémon on the field will be cured of any status conditions afflicting them before then. As long as the user is on the field, any moves that only inflict status effects will fail, and any damaging moves that inflict status effects as a secondary effect will only deal damage.]

*** Purging Whiteness
Category: Special
Type: Light
Power: 110
PP: 5
Accuracy: 80% (Note: Accuracy for all affected Pokémon is calculated as though the attack was targeting each foe individually.)
The user unleashes a burst of tremendously destructive light. This also cleanses the battlefield and all stat buffs and debuffs.
[Note: All Pokémon affected by this moves on the field will have their stat modifiers changed to 0. All terrain hazards, barrier or decoy moves like Substitute or Protect, and weather conditions not bought about by the abilities of any Pokémon also present are also removed.]

EXALTED ORB : "A radiant orb used to summon SAIKOUDA. It enhances the power of Light and Fairy moves."

Shiny

**********

The Exalted One rises, her outstretched wings like the light of the sun itself. She is Saikouda, the harbinger of renewal and glory of creation. Bow before her or be smited! SQUAWK!!

Saikouda is, as can be guessed from the flavor, the cover legendary of Pokémon Zenith. The creation process of her and her counterpart was actually surprisingly difficult, because I had to make sure that they were not just big, powerful Pokémon without meaning - I had to give them visible symbolism. My original plan with the cover legends was based on Marduk and Tiamat, one of the oldest known creation myths in the history of human civilization, in part because I have a depiction of Tiamat as a planned character for one of my other writing projects. The plan was to base the Marduk 'mon off a futuristic mecha and the Tiamat one on a kaiju like Godzilla. However, as I started thinking more and more about the Sundo region's basis on Indonesia, the baseline concepts for the two cover legends began changing to something more appropriate for the region. Ultimately, when the version names and general plot became largely solidified, I noted that the words "Zenith" and "Nadir", aside from being poetic opposites, also have meanings that could be worked into the legendary designs - "highest" and "lowest", respectively. For the Zenith cover legendary in particular, this meant something angelic and heavenly, and due to the sky association, I went with a bird-like design, specifically looking to two avian divine beings as the basis for it.

Saikouda's name is partly taken from the Garuda, which I have used as a basis for a fakemon design once before , but only superficially - which is not doing the folkloric significance of this creature anything even close to justice! It is the divine steed of Vishnu, one of the most important gods in Hinduism, as well as a protective figure in general, being said to ward off evil. It is a part of state insignia in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and (of most relevance here) Indonesia - in the latter, it's often shown as being golden, which matches the gold accents of Saikouda has on her. It's also depicted as being an enemy of snakes and dragons, which plays into the dichotomy between Saikouda herself and the Nadir cover legend (which I'll reveal soon enough, don't worry). So it's only fitting to have a Garuda-based legendary for an Indonesia-inspired region, but why is it said to be female? The Garuda, after all, is commonly shown as male. Well, that's because of the OTHER divine flyer I mixed into the design, the Persian Simurgh. Said to be the ruler of birds in Middle-Eastern lore, it has the body of a peacock, the head of a dog, and the feet of a lion, and (at least according to Iranian legend) is always female and suckles her young. Wikipedia says she's also an enemy of snakes like the Garuda, but that has a big [citation needed] flag so I'm not sure if it's entirely accurate. Still, I worked enough traits of the Simurgh into the design that for a while I even considered the name being "Simurkou", combining "Simurgh" with Japanese "Saikou", "highest"; in the end, though, I figured a name with more relevance to Southeast Asian myth fit better, although the simurgh aspects remain in the design nonetheless.

Because my Light-type legendaries have a sci-fi/futuristic aesthetic to them, I also took the machine-like aspect of my original plan for the "heroic" cover legend and added it in for this one, giving her a look like an animalistic mecha a la Voltron. I actually had to redo this one after completing a previous draft, though - originally the design wasn't as streamlined and had these big back fins with rocket jets on them, but that looked really clunky and overdesigned, so I went back and completely redid it. I thought about making the wings into rocket jets themselves a la Monster Hunter's Valstrax, but then I hit upon the much better idea to make the wings look like they were made of hard light or plasma, and applied that to the tail as well. That made the design really pop, especially after I added the special effects on GIMP (this was my first attempt at a fakemon colored using that program). Overall, I have to say that I'm really happy with the way this one turned out, and certainly find it worthy of gracing the hypothetical box cover of Pokémon Zenith.

As with Reshiram, Xerneas, and Solgaleo before her, Saikouda has a base stat total of 680, as is the custom for boxart legendaries. I wanted her to have a more defensive stat spread, though, so I decided to make both Defense stats a whopping 140, comparable to the highest individual stat numbers for each cover legendary concerned - 3 higher than Solgaleo's 137 HP and Attack, 9 higher than Xerneas' 131 Atk. and Sp. Atk, and 10 lower than Reshiram's 150 Sp. Atk. The 100 Speed is just a smidge higher than Solgaleo's 97, Reshiram's 90, and Xerneas' 99, and for the rest of the stats I simply split the remaining 300 points into 100 each, meaning that her offensive stats aren't unusable. Still, Saikouda is rather tanky as cover legends go, with quite a few defensive options in her movepool to make her even harder to kill.

Speaking of the movepool, the level-up moveset was cobbled together from several other cover legends with a focus on light and life. Reshiram provided Extrasensory (for sensing evil) and Imprison (for containing it); Xerneas offered Heal Pulse (granting aid to the fallen in battle), Light Screen (protecting allies), and Outrage (divine fury; Reshiram gets this one too); Solgaleo lent Flash Cannon, Morning Sun, and Solar Beam (to go with the light theme) as well as Wide Guard (another protective move), and finally Arceus, Saikouda's mythic benefactor, lent Cosmic Power (as part of the sci-fi aesthetic), Hyper Voice (the voice of judgement), Extreme Speed (i.e. traveling at the speed of light), Future Sight (to go with Extrasensory), and Hyper Beam (another light-based move). The total number of moves, of course, was intended to be 17, the same as Solgaleo and Reshiram, so added in some actual Light-type moves, namely Dash Attack to go with Extreme Speed, Healing Rites to accompany Heal Pulse, Super Laser to match Hyper Beam, and of course her signature move, Purging Whiteness. Add in Dazzling Gleam to go with the existing light-based attacks and there you have it, a level-up movepool befitting Saikouda's lore!

As noted above, Saikouda is quite a tanky fellow with a combination of amazing defenses, a solid defensive type combination , and the speed and power to turn the tables in case things get dicey. Her signature ability, Absolution, was actually changed up from the original draft - originally it forbade changes to stat modifiers, but when I looked up what "absolution" actually means - removal of sin, essentially - I changed it to removing any and all status effects and keeping them from occurring. So it's bye-bye to Will O' Wisp, Toxic, and Thunder Wave! In fact, a lot of her moves are obviously geared towards support, including Wide Guard, Heal Pulse, Healing Rites, Light Screen, and from the TM/HM and tutor list, Taunt, Roost, Reflect, U-turn, Block, Magic Coat, Magic Room, and Skill Swap. Whew! That's a lot, but knowing her, it's to be expected. In case of emergency, though, she's got a lot of attacking moves as well - though surprisingly, she doesn't get the strongest moves available outside of her signature that offer STAB with her type combo, so she has to make do with Dazzling Gleam and Dash Attack; luckily, she has plenty of coverage options - Psychic, Fire, Rock, Flying, Steel, Fighting, Grass, Electric, and even Bug are all available to her as attacking types (and incidentally, Fire takes out all three of the types she is weak to...). If you REALLY want to make an impression, though, Purging Whiteness is where it's at: it not only deals tremendous damage to all other Pokémon (including allies if they don't dodge - be careful!), but destroys absolutely everything on the field. EVERYTHING. Stealth Rock, Toxic Spikes, Protect, weather, even natural objects... You name it, it's a goner. It's like Defog and Boomburst had a terrifying all-destroying baby together! I also transplanted the "remove all stat modifiers" effect originally planned for her ability to this attack, just to be thorough, so by using this move you'd be hitting what's basically an atomic reset button. You only have just a few tries at it, though, so be sure your foe isn't resistant to Light before unleashing it on everything in sight! In short, Saikouda is versatile, sturdy, and OP as all get out, but don't get carried away. You never know if the Exalted One's divine wrath will end up being directed at you as well!

I've also got the Maligned One up and ready to go, but I'll need to finish up the info for him first and, like with Saikouda, that's gonna take quite a bit of research while I'm away from work-related matters. Still, he'll be up tomorrow at the earliest, and definitely sometime this week!

Pokémon © Nintendo
SAIKOUDA is mine!

Description
The Exalted Pokémon
"According to legend, SAIKOUDA was the first creature to display selfless heroism. Everything bathed by its light was said to be renewed and rescued, even from the brink of total destruction."
"As it travels through the stratosphere, the glow of its wings seems to turn night into day, dispelling evil as it passes by. When it is seen in flight, it is a sign to all that salvation is near."

Type: Light/Fairy
Height: 25'
Weight: 1500 lbs
Ability: Absolution*
Evolution: Does not evolve (Legendary).
Egg Groups: Undiscovered

Basis: The Garuda, a godly bird in Hindu mythology; the Simurgh, a benevolent bird-like creature in Iranian mythology; spacecraft; crossbows; flying mecha.
Etymology: SAIKOU ("highest" in Japanese)+GarUDA

Moves Learned: Disarming Voice, Healing Rites**, Extrasensory, Flash Cannon, Light Screen, Hyper Voice, Dazzling Gleam, Imprison, Extreme Speed, Future Sight, Hyper Beam, Outrage, Super Laser**, and starting moves Purging Whiteness***, Cosmic Power, Dash Attack**, and Heal Pulse.
Notable Other Moves: Notable TMs/HMs include Calm Mind, Sunny Day, Taunt, Protect, Roost, Psychic, Reflect, Flamethrower, Rock Tomb, Aerial Ace, Overheat, Steel Wing, Focus Blast, Energy Ball, Charge Beam, Acrobatics, Smart Strike, Fly, and U-turn. Notable tutor moves are Defog, Block, Recycle, Signal Beam, Magic Coat, Magic Room, and Skill Swap.

Base Stats:
HP: 100
Attack: 100
Defense: 140
Sp.Atk: 100
Sp.Def: 140
Speed: 100
TOTAL: 680

* For more information on the Light type and the italicized moves listed, check out the updated guide !

* Absolution: When the user is on the field, all Pokémon are cured of and immune to status effects.
[Note: When the user enters the field, all Pokémon on the field will be cured of any status conditions afflicting them before then. As long as the user is on the field, any moves that only inflict status effects will fail, and any damaging moves that inflict status effects as a secondary effect will only deal damage.]

*** Purging Whiteness
Category: Special
Type: Light
Power: 110
PP: 5
Accuracy: 80% (Note: Accuracy for all affected Pokémon is calculated as though the attack was targeting each foe individually.)
The user unleashes a burst of tremendously destructive light. This also cleanses the battlefield and all stat buffs and debuffs.
[Note: All Pokémon affected by this moves on the field will have their stat modifiers changed to 0. All terrain hazards, barrier or decoy moves like Substitute or Protect, and weather conditions not bought about by the abilities of any Pokémon also present are also removed.]

EXALTED ORB : "A radiant orb used to summon SAIKOUDA. It enhances the power of Light and Fairy moves."

Shiny

**********

The Exalted One rises, her outstretched wings like the light of the sun itself. She is Saikouda, the harbinger of renewal and glory of creation. Bow before her or be smited! SQUAWK!!

Saikouda is, as can be guessed from the flavor, the cover legendary of Pokémon Zenith. The creation process of her and her counterpart was actually surprisingly difficult, because I had to make sure that they were not just big, powerful Pokémon without meaning - I had to give them visible symbolism. My original plan with the cover legends was based on Marduk and Tiamat, one of the oldest known creation myths in the history of human civilization, in part because I have a depiction of Tiamat as a planned character for one of my other writing projects. The plan was to base the Marduk 'mon off a futuristic mecha and the Tiamat one on a kaiju like Godzilla. However, as I started thinking more and more about the Sundo region's basis on Indonesia, the baseline concepts for the two cover legends began changing to something more appropriate for the region. Ultimately, when the version names and general plot became largely solidified, I noted that the words "Zenith" and "Nadir", aside from being poetic opposites, also have meanings that could be worked into the legendary designs - "highest" and "lowest", respectively. For the Zenith cover legendary in particular, this meant something angelic and heavenly, and due to the sky association, I went with a bird-like design, specifically looking to two avian divine beings as the basis for it.

Saikouda's name is partly taken from the Garuda, which I have used as a basis for a fakemon design once before , but only superficially - which is not doing the folkloric significance of this creature anything even close to justice! It is the divine steed of Vishnu, one of the most important gods in Hinduism, as well as a protective figure in general, being said to ward off evil. It is a part of state insignia in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and (of most relevance here) Indonesia - in the latter, it's often shown as being golden, which matches the gold accents of Saikouda has on her. It's also depicted as being an enemy of snakes and dragons, which plays into the dichotomy between Saikouda herself and the Nadir cover legend (which I'll reveal soon enough, don't worry). So it's only fitting to have a Garuda-based legendary for an Indonesia-inspired region, but why is it said to be female? The Garuda, after all, is commonly shown as male. Well, that's because of the OTHER divine flyer I mixed into the design, the Persian Simurgh. Said to be the ruler of birds in Middle-Eastern lore, it has the body of a peacock, the head of a dog, and the feet of a lion, and (at least according to Iranian legend) is always female and suckles her young. Wikipedia says she's also an enemy of snakes like the Garuda, but that has a big [citation needed] flag so I'm not sure if it's entirely accurate. Still, I worked enough traits of the Simurgh into the design that for a while I even considered the name being "Simurkou", combining "Simurgh" with Japanese "Saikou", "highest"; in the end, though, I figured a name with more relevance to Southeast Asian myth fit better, although the simurgh aspects remain in the design nonetheless.

Because my Light-type legendaries have a sci-fi/futuristic aesthetic to them, I also took the machine-like aspect of my original plan for the "heroic" cover legend and added it in for this one, giving her a look like an animalistic mecha a la Voltron. I actually had to redo this one after completing a previous draft, though - originally the design wasn't as streamlined and had these big back fins with rocket jets on them, but that looked really clunky and overdesigned, so I went back and completely redid it. I thought about making the wings into rocket jets themselves a la Monster Hunter's Valstrax, but then I hit upon the much better idea to make the wings look like they were made of hard light or plasma, and applied that to the tail as well. That made the design really pop, especially after I added the special effects on GIMP (this was my first attempt at a fakemon colored using that program). Overall, I have to say that I'm really happy with the way this one turned out, and certainly find it worthy of gracing the hypothetical box cover of Pokémon Zenith.

As with Reshiram, Xerneas, and Solgaleo before her, Saikouda has a base stat total of 680, as is the custom for boxart legendaries. I wanted her to have a more defensive stat spread, though, so I decided to make both Defense stats a whopping 140, comparable to the highest individual stat numbers for each cover legendary concerned - 3 higher than Solgaleo's 137 HP and Attack, 9 higher than Xerneas' 131 Atk. and Sp. Atk, and 10 lower than Reshiram's 150 Sp. Atk. The 100 Speed is just a smidge higher than Solgaleo's 97, Reshiram's 90, and Xerneas' 99, and for the rest of the stats I simply split the remaining 300 points into 100 each, meaning that her offensive stats aren't unusable. Still, Saikouda is rather tanky as cover legends go, with quite a few defensive options in her movepool to make her even harder to kill.

Speaking of the movepool, the level-up moveset was cobbled together from several other cover legends with a focus on light and life. Reshiram provided Extrasensory (for sensing evil) and Imprison (for containing it); Xerneas offered Heal Pulse (granting aid to the fallen in battle), Light Screen (protecting allies), and Outrage (divine fury; Reshiram gets this one too); Solgaleo lent Flash Cannon, Morning Sun, and Solar Beam (to go with the light theme) as well as Wide Guard (another protective move), and finally Arceus, Saikouda's mythic benefactor, lent Cosmic Power (as part of the sci-fi aesthetic), Hyper Voice (the voice of judgement), Extreme Speed (i.e. traveling at the speed of light), Future Sight (to go with Extrasensory), and Hyper Beam (another light-based move). The total number of moves, of course, was intended to be 17, the same as Solgaleo and Reshiram, so added in some actual Light-type moves, namely Dash Attack to go with Extreme Speed, Healing Rites to accompany Heal Pulse, Super Laser to match Hyper Beam, and of course her signature move, Purging Whiteness. Add in Dazzling Gleam to go with the existing light-based attacks and there you have it, a level-up movepool befitting Saikouda's lore!

As noted above, Saikouda is quite a tanky fellow with a combination of amazing defenses, a solid defensive type combination , and the speed and power to turn the tables in case things get dicey. Her signature ability, Absolution, was actually changed up from the original draft - originally it forbade changes to stat modifiers, but when I looked up what "absolution" actually means - removal of sin, essentially - I changed it to removing any and all status effects and keeping them from occurring. So it's bye-bye to Will O' Wisp, Toxic, and Thunder Wave! In fact, a lot of her moves are obviously geared towards support, including Wide Guard, Heal Pulse, Healing Rites, Light Screen, and from the TM/HM and tutor list, Taunt, Roost, Reflect, U-turn, Block, Magic Coat, Magic Room, and Skill Swap. Whew! That's a lot, but knowing her, it's to be expected. In case of emergency, though, she's got a lot of attacking moves as well - though surprisingly, she doesn't get the strongest moves available outside of her signature that offer STAB with her type combo, so she has to make do with Dazzling Gleam and Dash Attack; luckily, she has plenty of coverage options - Psychic, Fire, Rock, Flying, Steel, Fighting, Grass, Electric, and even Bug are all available to her as attacking types (and incidentally, Fire takes out all three of the types she is weak to...). If you REALLY want to make an impression, though, Purging Whiteness is where it's at: it not only deals tremendous damage to all other Pokémon (including allies if they don't dodge - be careful!), but destroys absolutely everything on the field. EVERYTHING. Stealth Rock, Toxic Spikes, Protect, weather, even natural objects... You name it, it's a goner. It's like Defog and Boomburst had a terrifying all-destroying baby together! I also transplanted the "remove all stat modifiers" effect originally planned for her ability to this attack, just to be thorough, so by using this move you'd be hitting what's basically an atomic reset button. You only have just a few tries at it, though, so be sure your foe isn't resistant to Light before unleashing it on everything in sight! In short, Saikouda is versatile, sturdy, and OP as all get out, but don't get carried away. You never know if the Exalted One's divine wrath will end up being directed at you as well!

I've also got the Maligned One up and ready to go, but I'll need to finish up the info for him first and, like with Saikouda, that's gonna take quite a bit of research while I'm away from work-related matters. Still, he'll be up tomorrow at the earliest, and definitely sometime this week!

Pokémon © Nintendo
SAIKOUDA is mine!