Kalos: General Information

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Surrounded by sea and mountains, Kalos is a temperate, highly urbanized region. Its architecture tends towards traditional aesthetics, and towards breadth over height - even in the metropolis Lumiose, few buildings top six floors. Most of Kalos's cities, especially in the central part, are connected by well-maintained and safe routes, with proper wilderness to be found farther off the roads (or by taking shortcuts to more out of the way locations).

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Notable Locations

Vaniville Town: A small but surprisingly wealthy rural town. Despite its aging population, it is technically a growing town, as it's a somewhat popular spot for senior citizens to retire to. Notable only because our heroines are from here.

Aquacorde Town: A riverside town within half an hour's walk of Vaniville. If it weren't itself decidedly rural, Vaniville might be considered a suburb of Aquacorde. Notable only because it's on the way to Lumiose.

Santalune City: A town with a rustic flair, known for its friendly atmosphere. It is located near Santalune forest and home to a well-regarded pokémon trainer's school and the Santalune Gym.

Lumiose City: The largest city and center of Kalos in more ways than one, a dazzling metropolis built around four large avenues and a maze of smaller streets, plazas, and alleyways. The world-famous Prism Tower, which doubles as its local gym, overlooks the city from its central plaza. The region's largest contest hall is also situated here.
Within Kalos, Lumiose is well-known (and stereotyped) for its café culture and expensive fashion trends. The joke goes that in Lumiose, a sharp outfit can buy you more than money, not that you'll have much money left after buying the outfit.

Camphrier Town: An ancient town, possibly Kalos's oldest, near Lumiose, once known for the noble manor it was built around, now largely fallen into obscurity. These days, it is most notable for also being near Parfum Palace and derives much of its relevance from tourism.

Parfum Palace: A gigantic, exorbitantly fancy palace situated near Camphrier Town, built some three hundred years ago after a war with neighboring regions. One of Kalos's most popular tourist attractions, both international and domestic, hosting various extravagant events including regular contests.

Cyllage City: A city nestled between the cliffs and the sea, the second largest in Kalos. Home to the Cyllage Gym, it's considered a sort of all-purpose athlete's paradise, with bicycle racing tracks, a long seaside, and steep cliffs all within easy reach.

Ambrette Town: Located to the south of Cyllage, Ambrette Town used to be only a minor tourist spot for its aquarium (the largest in the region), a small contest hall, and relative proximity to Cyllage's beaches until several important archaeological discoveries were made in the mountains surrounding it. Nowadays, it is more known for these than for the aquarium.

Geosenge Town: A town to the north of Cyllage, built near mysterious ruins said to date back thousands of years. The menhir formations have puzzled archaeologists for as long as they have been known. The town is reported to have a peaceful, melancholic air. Its local contest hall is actually a big tent reminiscent of a circus.

Shalour City: Built around a beautiful bay, this city houses the Shalour Gym and a large beach resort. Its biggest tourist attraction aside from the beaches is the Tower of Mastery built on an island smack in the middle of the bay, which is closed to the public but a popular photo motif.

Coumarine City: An exclusive resort area built on a forested seaside cliff. More than any specific attractions, it is popular due to its clean air and city planning that emphasizes closeness to nature. Site of the Coumarine Gym.

Lumiose Badlands: Cut off from the sea by the plateau Coumarine City is built on, the Lumiose badlands are an expansive red clay plain between Coumarine and Lumiose. As the land is all but unusable for most purposes, it's covered by industrial districts and Kalos's central power plant, which is actually a complex consisting of multiple different plants, all exploiting renewable resources.

Laverre City: Kalos's second big center of fashion, known for unconventional, extravagant, or ethnic outfits. The city itself is larger than it gives the impression of being, with its abundance of single- or two-story buildings with wooden facades. The forests and swamp surrounding it seem perpetually coated in autumnal colors, giving the city a beatiful, ethereal air. Site of the Laverre Gym, Laverre Contest Hall, and the pokéball factory that supplies most of Kalos.

Dendemille Town: A rural town in the eastern mountains, with a surprisingly modern contest hall situated slightly outside the town proper. It is iconic for the imagery of windmills, alpine farming, and skiing.

Anistar City: A town famed for its mysterious crystalline sundial and beautiful sunsets, home to the Anistar Gym and several astronomical observatories. The zany rumors surrounding the sundial are too many to count, but people looking at it say they feel as if staring straight into space.

Couriway Town: A popular tourist location for its many majestic waterfalls and the contests held there. Its railway station is known for being way out of proportion to the town's size, being the region's second largest in one of Kalos's smaller towns.

Snowbelle City: Despite not being at a very high altitude, Snowbelle's temperatures hover around the freezing point year-round, and snowfall is common. Supposedly, the cold air flowing from the local gym is responsible for this.

Kiloude City: Kalos's southernmost city, considered an archetypal example of south Kalosian life. Despite not housing any gyms, several attractions like the Battle Maison, safari, and its own variant of contests make it a popular spot for trainers.

Pokémon League: The ultimate aim for serious pokémon trainers, the Kalos Pokémon League is a masterpiece of architecture secluded in the mountains. The matches broadcast from here are invariably watched across the whole region.

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Notable Personalities

The Pokémon League

As the world's most popular sport, league matches between gym leaders are broadcast to TVs across the region and constitute some of the most popular entertainment. The leaders, Elite Four, and champion of the Pokémon League are region-wide celebrities both in their capacity as battlers and in their "civilian" occupations. As is usually the case with celebrities, fandoms and all their associated vagaries are in full play.


Viola: Leader of the Santalune Gym and professional nature photographer. She's known to be personable and easygoing, causing some to call her the easiest gym leader to face (or, if they're looking for a fight with her fans, the weakest). She specializes in bug-type pokémon.


Clemont: A genius inventor and puzzle master of ambiguous age. The inventions seem to be more of a gimmick than for practical use, as they never seem to get marketed or patented. He specializes in electric types and hosts a popular quiz show from his gym in Prism Tower along with his little sister Bonnie.


Grant: Cyllage City's gym leader and a multidisciplinary athlete. As a handsome, athletic young man with a distinctive sense of fashion (yes, that hairdo is supposed to look like boulders), he's popular among the female audience and something of a "hate him or love him" figure otherwise. He specializes in rock types, and seems especially fond of prehistoric pokémon reanimated from fossils.


Korrina: The maybe youngest and definitely newest gym leader, Korrina took over the Shalour Gym from her grandfather only a year or two ago. She's a consummate rollerblader and martial artist. Specializes in fighting-type pokémon and supposedly spars with them personally.


Ramos: Leader of the Coumarine Gym and gardener. Ramos specializes, predictably, in grass-types and takes his theme a bit farther than the average - the whole gym is built around a massive tree, reputedly grown by the man himself. He has relatively few devoted fans, but a perhaps surprisingly large casual fandom, and you'd be hard pressed to find many who actively dislike the old man.


Valerie: Fairy-type specialist, fashion designer, former model, and leader of the Laverre Gym. Perhaps one of the most controversial leaders next to Grant, as the audience seems torn between her dazzling looks and flamboyance and her frankly kind of creepy attitude. As a case in point, her gym is styled after a doll house inside a hollowed-out tree and Valerie herself is fond of dressing up to resemble a pokémon.


Olympia: The enigmatic leader of Anistar Gym. She specializes in psychic types, speaks in riddles, and appears to have bona fide psychic powers herself. The interior of her gym resembles a starfield in which challengers tend to float freely, and may or may not be larger than the outside. The fandom is divided on whether she's a wicked cool real psychic, a charlatan, or really good with smoke and mirrors.


Wulfric: The burly Snowbelle leader is an ice-type specialist, but known as a passionate caretaker for pokémon of all types. Despite being one of the less notable leaders on quirk alone, his gentle giant image and solid fighting style gain him plenty of fans.


Wikstrom: Styling himself after a medieval knight, Wikstrom is the Elite Four member specializing in steel types. Both his speech and appearance give the impression of being displaced in time, dividing the audience into those who think he's cool and those who think he tries too hard.


Malva: Fashionable, attractive, and well-known for a spitfire attitude, Malva is to the male audience as Grant is to the female. As an Elite Four, she's a master fire-type trainer; outside the battling scene, she's the iconic presenter for holocaster news broadcasts, making her one of the best known trainers Kalos-wide.


Drasna: A dragon master from Sinnoh. She radiates a calm, unruffled attitude and a winning smile at all times, and is considered one of the region's most powerful people, both personally and as a trainer. Outside of her status as an Elite Four, though, little else is known about the Dragon Lady, as her fans nickname her.


Siebold: The Elite Four specializing in water-type pokémon. As a young man with a "handsome and brooding" image, the effects on his popularity are predictable. That aside, he's also a world-renowned chef and considers himself an artist, approaching battles and cuisine alike with a passion second to none.


Diantha: Champion of the Pokémon League and strongest trainer in Kalos. As the champion, she's actually challenged rarely outside of matches against the Elite Four or gym leaders for charity, but when one of her fights is on, the audience rating is staggering. When not being the champion, she is an international film star and close friend of several others on this list.

Other


Professor Augustine Sycamore: A well-known expert on pokémon and their relationships to people, and good friend of Diantha and Lysandre. Currently in the process of recruiting several young people who've completed primary education to help him catalogue pokémon and their native environments within Kalos.


Lysandre: Founder and head of Lysandre Labs and a famous inventor, Lysandre is credited with massively improving quality of life through his efforts to attain, as he puts it in interviews, "a beautiful world". A close friend of Professor Sycamore, he and Malva may or may not be an item depending on whether you believe the rumor mill.

     
The Battle Maison: Based in Kiloude City, the Battle Maison presents a venue for sanctioned pokémon battles not directly affiliated with the Pokémon League. It is run privately by four sisters (Nita, Evelyn, Dana, and Morgan) and has a much smaller and more regional, but quite devoted audience, owing in no small part to the sisters marketing themselves as essentially mascots.