Scouting the area
I honestly don't know why I was expecting anything else as all information pointed out that Orre was practically economically cripple. Almost all of it's food was imported and it had no exports at all so the little bit of money in the region tended to stay with individuals rather than circulating freely. Besides that money was practically hemorrhaging from the place as the general stores had to import potions and other essential goods as this region had horrible healthcare. Orre was one of the only regions that both the Joy and Jenny completely stayed out of and it showed.-
The entire region relied on this sort of master-disciple style medical practice where each town had a single doctor who was also usually quite old and their two or three learning disciples. Even worse was that since the region wasn't connected to the pokenet these doctors knowledge was most of the time quite outdated. In other words death from injury was way more common in this region than most places in the world. There was a trade off though in the form of the true many generational natives of this place being practically cockroaches in how hard to kill they were.-
Darwin would be astounded to witness such clear signs of human evolution I'm sure. All in all I'd say my first impression of Orre wasn't the best. There was only two buildings worth noting in Gateon after some exploration of the town. The first was a large rusty red building designed to look like a Krabby that was aptly named "The Krabby club" and reminded me of a stand up comedy club as it had a stage and seats to watch the shows. It was also the premier seafood restaurant in the area which was a relief because being so close to the sea and yet not serving seafood would be a huge waste.-
I wasn't all that impressed with the food since it was quite lacking in creativity and flavor. Considering the scarcity of vegetation in the region though I was willing to give it a pass since it was certainly not terrible by any means, just bland. Thanks to me spending "so much" money in the place the owner was more than happy to fill me in on some info that I would need to operate in the region. For example I came to know about the second noteworthy place in Gateon, the machine parts shop.-
It was a place run by an old man named Makan and his grandson Perr and was filled with damaged machine parts of both good and bad quality. It was basically a junkyard condensed into a single building that you could go to in order to purchase tech or machine parts if you were willing to dig for them. Both the grandfather and grandson were mechanically inclined and could build nearly anything if they had the parts for it.-
"You're a new face, musta come in on that ship eh?" the old man asked when I entered the shop. "That's right, the owner of the Krabby club told me you were the person to talk to about getting a PDA." I said not wanting to waste either of our time. The old man seemed to appreciate that "Bout time one of you foreigners had the common sense to know that business always comes first in Orre, we can chat about other stuff afterwards. Anyway information's spot on as I am the only person in town that sells the things, not much demand for them usually but every now and again we get you outsiders who want one." He said.-
Digging around under the counter for a bit he took out a surprisingly high tech looking item. It appeared sort of like a smaller version of a tablet that was made entirely of metal but opened up to show an antenna, camera, wide screen and even external adapter port and cable. The device was a bit cumbersome and didn't look great by any means but it clearly served it's purpose well if my information was correct. What I knew of the region said this was the go to method of communication within the region.-
"I sell it to ya for two thousand poke, that's not up for negotiation either." the old man said and I nodded before counting out the money and handing it over. "Pleasure doing business with ya lad, device already has my contact in it in case you need anything mechanical taken care of or even just some local information. Don't go thinking to much on it though that's just standard service for any outsiders that by from me." he said gruffly and I just chuckled and left with a wave.-
'Alright that's two objectives taken care of and a third partially done.' I thought as I checked the quest. The PDA objective was ready to turn in and once I used the Hub token the lodging objective will also be done. Finally the objective to get a contact in each of the five major locations had changed from zero out of five to one out of five. Apparently the old man counted as one for Gateon port which worked for me just fine. Seeing this I only needed to scout out the regions population to grasp the overall situation and get my base of operations set up.-
I took out my new device and powered it on which it did with a audible hum and the screen came to life. 'Email, map, personal logs, interface and reminders.' I thought as I read over the options presented to me with this device. It was not actually not all that bad compared to the pokenav I had gotten used to using. The method of communication was less useful compared to the Devon corp product and didn't have access to the pokenet which sucked quite a bit but otherwise would suffice for what I needed it to do in the region.-
Walking over to the docks I found the woman Mr. stone had left in charge of his branch over here and left her my PDA's email contact before releasing Rune and having him take me up into the air. The locals looked amazed when I released him and in awe when we flew off into the desert of the region. I needed to find a good spot to set up my base with the Hub token and I couldn't think of a better option than to simply fly over the region until I spotted a good area.-
Sand , stone, desert plants and more sand, that was what I saw as we flew over the desert but what I didn't see was any signs or pokemon or even the pokemon themselves. I'm not talking about in just a small area either but for miles at a time as we flew over the desert at high speed. Eventually though I spotted a small oasis that had some grasses and palm trees somehow around it and had Rune land before checking the map on my PDA. I was pretty far removed from any of the towns but was nearly smack dab in the center of the desert which was perfect for me.