Ah, rey. Where would I be with RPs if you weren't around to ask all the entertaining questions that make me consider rewrites?
What does being a Legend Hunter entail? I'm picturing me with one or many trusted Pokemon of mine, travelling the land, asking villagers or citizens for lore and myths that would help me pinpoint and locate the legendary I'm after. Explain to the potential players exactly why their role in this RP will be so much fun! Is there any other activity that I will/should be doing as a Legend Hunter?
What do you do as a Legend Hunter? Well, you hunt Legends! Wait, that's not descriptive enough.
Well, that's still the basic job description - you do indeed travel the world with your faithful Pokémon (tell you more about that later), following whatever trail you can to get just that little bit closer to a Legendary Pokémon - although it's not as if you can only have one Legendary quarry or even a specific one. As for what else you do? Well, sometimes the trail runs dry does it not? When it does, Legend Hunters tend to bide their time questing in a more traditional fashion - and it is not even uncommon for some Legend Hunters to band together in search of a Legendary; After all, a Legendary Pokémon chooses a Hunter it is willing to follow, not the other way around and if a Legendary chooses one of the Hunters in a group, it's not like the others are going to be in any position to argue it without a Legendary Pokémon of their own.
In other words...
What process do we follow, in order to find the legendary of our liking, IF that is allowed? The way I understand it, this isn't quite a sandbox RP (as we are called by Lucius to hunt a particular legendary), yet has the properties of one, what with the wide world with the many nations and an abundant amount of legendaries to hunt.
Which makes me wonder: If this is indeed a sandbox RP, and doesn't have that much of a linear plot, does that mean that the players will be separated so they may go to the nations where their favorite and target legendary is hiding? And if it's the other way around, if there is a bit of a linear plot to direct the story, how, where and when will we each be able to capture the legendary we've set our sights on?
The opening with Lucius is a starter a launching pad that gets the players together and on the same page. From that point, it's mostly the players' call as to how they go after their Legendaries. I'll be releasing information about the Legendaries, lores and hints as the RP goes on and it's actually up to the players how they go about it. Say for example I keep dropping hints that Lugia is resting at the bottom of the Arypian Sea or that Groudon is a part of the Eryllian landscape. (Just examples, may not be the case) - it's up to the players if they then go grab a boat and chase after Lugia in the sea, gear up to head into the desert after Groudon or go looking for leads on other Legendary Pokémon. Of course, to anyone interested, remember what I said earlier - a Legendary pokémon chooses you, not the other way around - you have to also consider the nature of the 'mon and present yourself as the kind of person that mon would ally itself to.
Consider it this way: There is a plot, and there are points at which I'll call all of the players together to do one thing or another that advances that plot, however there is a lot of down-time also in which the players are free to hunt on their own terms.
What is our social standing as Legend Hunters? It may depend on the nation we're currently in, I suppose, or it may not - perhaps Legend Hunters are globally celebrated as heroes or globally scorned as greedy, solitary and power-hungry Pokemon trainers.
As you quite rightly guessed, it does make a difference where you are and who you're talking to. Generally, leaders of lands do not like Legend Hunters. They see them as threats, given they seek power, unless you are of course officially aligned to them. Beyond that, it is down to the individual's disposition. Soldiers, regular adventurers and the like idolise and even aspire to Legend Hunters, since they usually lack the stones to take on a life like it themselves. Regular people might fear what you would do with that Legendary and any religious folk might object to you prodding around their ancient artifacts. Of course, it is commonly known that Legend Hunters are either some of the toughest warriors in all of Dyale - or delude themselves that they are - so some may even seek to make use of you. The opinions on Legend Hunting, as with anything in real life are hotly divided.
Why should we hunt with Lucius? We're Legend Hunters, not mercenaries, and if I was a Legend Hunter, I would be out hunting on my own, money would be the least of my worries, not to mention I would see no point in helping someone else gain a legendary, especially if I'm after that legendary. Of course, this is a subjective view, but this is the kind of character I'm picturing as a Legend Hunter, and I wouldn't want him to be forced into this, nor would I have him changed so he would cooperate. (still, it IS too early to be thinking of character ideas)
Like I say, it's not uncommon for Legend Hunting parties to exist. Some lesser Legendaries can even be taken on directly by many common pokémon, lessening the risk should the Legend choose none of you. If it is of course the Hunter's disposition to be antagonistic to other Hunters, that is something I can work with the player on to find why they'd want to go to Cail.
Furthermore, Lucius is commonly known to be one of the most thorough lorekeepers of Legendaries - although he makes his money in his businesses, he spends it on getting servants and researchers in all corners of the world finding new information and feeding it all right back to him - there is a library in his manor that is rumored to have lore on almost every Legendary Pokémon to ever exist - and there are other rewards than monetary ones, don't you know?
Alright, time for the setting. I haven't played Pokemon Conquest and know next to nothing about it except from the very obvious shape of the land they based it on, so if you are basing the RP on Pokemon Conquest, you had best let us in on some basic information that will help us picture the whole thing more clearly. You have allowed gun powder - what about PokeBalls? Potions and other modern technology? I assume those are to be left out of this one. If PokeBalls don't exist, how exactly are we to catch the Legendaries, or any Pokemon for that matter?
Flat-out modern technology doesn't exist, although I'm looking for ways to allow Mewtwo and Genesect despite their clear technologically-based origins.
Yes, that includes Pokéballs. What does that mean in regards to catching pokémon? You don't. I should explain that in Conquest, you form a Link - that is a bond with a pokémon and it simply follows you around - and it isn't much different in Dyale. Whether you gave it a show of strength, saved it from other wilds, showed it kindness or similar, you did something that made the pokémon want to follow you around. Of course, this is far easier to do to a weak, young pokémon than a prouder, stronger, older one - which means most hunters still have to go through the starting out weak thing.
I was hesitant to mention Pokémon Conquest, to be fair. It's where I got the idea and for a time, I was even going to include Ransei as an area within Dyale until I just realised I was really short on knowledge about Feudal Japan, unlike absolutely everyone else. For the most part, I would like people, until I've got information about the continents specifically put down to paper at least to imagine the lands as their historical inspiration... which brings me nicely to the last bit, I think.
I feel like I have to warn you about mixing a great number of ages into a single continent. I get that it's enticing to replicate great historical times in a story, but some of the ages you mentioned have a gap of two thousand years between them in the real world. The realism of your continuity would be absolutely destroyed in my eyes if those coexisted in a setting because you squeezed them in, somehow. The problem is not just the ages, but geography as well; I think it would be impossible for places so extremely diverse to coexist in a single continent, next to each other. Then again, it's fiction, so limits can be pushed, but I will say that I'd much rather have few of the ages of intrigue mixed in the setting rather than an extravagant amount.
Well, on the geography side of things, remember that Dyale isn't a small place. If I were to put it in a scale against the real world, I'd say you're looking at about the area including all of Europe, out into Asia as far as India and Africa as far south as about Mali and Niger. Cail, the smallest nation in Dyale is the size of Ransei on its own. I would like to think that is lots of room for many cultures to exist.
However, on a reflection, I do see that the gap is a little too wide for certain, or at the very least, Eryllia is simply too far behind the times. So, to keep roughly the same inspiration but give them a technological edge, I've decided to advance Eryllia to an approximation of Ptolemaic Egypt, which puts it in about the same technological frame as Selium and Arypia. The remaining time gap is covered by the mysticality of the land. Where people have advanced their interests in technology, many have become jaded and stopped caring or believing in the mysticality of their land, whilst conversely, those who carry on the mysticality in their lands, often either believe they do not need technological advance or have simply abused the need to move forward, creating the large technological gaps you can still see.