Pokémon
Pokémon made up a large portion of the fauna that made the region of Lanorae their home. While many of them might have been mistaken for natural animals, they were in actuality elemental creatures with a wide range of intelligence and sapience. All pokémon possessed fantastical powers that were not demonstrated by real animals, and most of those abilities were directly tied to the elemental energies they could harness.
Evolution
Many pokémon were capable of a metamorphic process that was colloquially known as evolution. Initially, it was believed the process of evolution was entirely representative of the life stage of a pokémon in their natural life cycle, but later studies revealed that the connection was a coincidence more than a direct causation. Evolution was instead caused by the absorption of natural elemental energies and was a direct response to a pokémon growing in power. Thus, it was simply more common for older pokémon to be in their more advanced forms.
When a pokémon was born, they always emerged as the least-developed stage of their line, but they could rapidly develop when exposed to high quantities of elemental energy. However, experiments in this process revealed that the result was a very inexperienced creature that did not have a full mastery of their most rudimentary abilities, thus they were considered highly unstable and dangerous.
Pokémon could choose to forgo evolution entirely if they preferred whatever stage they were in through the process of expelling excess elemental energy.
