Guardians

'The Guardians' are the colloquial name for a group of four immense structures located across the Miato region. Wrought by the ancient, advanced civilization that once called the Miato Region its home through unknown techniques now impossible to recreate, the Guardians are not so much 'buildings' as they are vast semi-living bio-mechanical constructs, said to serve multiple observation and regulation functions in an ancient system rooted throughout the entire region – with some records claiming they also have a certain "stabilizing" function on the region at large. While there are numerous records of the Guardians' existence, general purpose and the loose cardinal directions where they once stood – enough to verify that they at least existed at some point – the structures themselves appear to have either been concealed in some way or to have ceased existing following the disappearance of their makers, and any more detailed information about them was extremely scarce – which may indicate such information was privileged, or intentionally expunged in order to protect the constructs from interference.

The Guardians remained undisturbed for many years hence – until the sudden reactivation of an ancient pyramid-like structure in the vicinity of Topaz City after thousands of years of dormancy. Investigation of the site revealed the structure functioned as a system hub and a fail-safe for the Guardians, intended to activate in case the system requires reactivation or re-calibration, and containing detailed instructions as for the actions required and interface devices – akin, perhaps, to backup modules – required to initialize the process.

The Guardians are each associated with a separate direction, element and season – affecting their location, construction, predominant elemental energy alignments and myriad functions within the greater system. Their exteriors take the form of great beasts, blending elements of their immediate environment and the quasi-living stone common in the works of their creators – a marble-like substance, warm to the touch, and streaked with luminous veins of energy that appear to flow just under the surface of the material itself. Their internal structure – predominantly composed of the same marble-like substance – is fairly complex and labyrinthine, shaped into flowing organic curves, and is believed to constantly grow and change in subtle ways – with the complexifying inner-structure serving a function akin to the formation of new neural connections and the fading of others. There are, however, a few fixed pathways through each Guardian – presumably ones maintaining heavily-conserved functions, or ones intended for the rare occasion a human would need to access the heart of the system. These paths often require the adjustment and redirection of elemental energy flows in specific – and at times, rather puzzling – ways to navigate, varying greatly by the nature of the Guardian. Furthermore, wild Pokémon live within the Guardians and appear to share a symbiotic relationship with the constructs, serving a variety of purposes within the system itself.

Each Guardian contains a "Heart Chamber" which serves as an internal central monitoring and control station for the Guardian and its "Heart Glyph" – the construct's very core, which may be interfaced with and manipulated utilizing appropriate interface modules. These chambers are replete with elemental energies, and are designed to amplify and modulate these energies per each specific Guardian's particular attributes. Owing to their significance, these chambers are not without their protectors – unauthorized personnel attempting to access the Glyph will soon find themselves forced to contend with a powerful protector Pokémon – chosen to match the chamber's attributes and empowered by the elemental attributes of the chamber itself and internal systems that provide it with further tactical advantages.