Note: You must have at least six Elemental Spirit Guardians to attempt this sidequest...although you need that many just to get this far...

It's as the rumors said: Ryuu Village is naught but a ghost town, lacking even ghost Pokemon. It's as if the entire town simply vanished.

But...there has to be some kind of an explanation, right? Looking through the old yellowed journals, diaries, and newspapers, none of which date after June 3rd, 1873, you start to wonder.

The reality is that there's nothing there. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, they say, and while there's plenty of ashes and dust...all that tells you is that no one's been around in over a century, and you already knew that much.

Frustrated, you slam the door of the cabin you most recently searched hard enough that it nearly falls off its hinges. You are quickly running out of houses to search - Ryuu was hardly a big village even in its prime - and you still haven't found anything. This is proving to be nothing but a big waste of time.

As you approach the edge of town, however, you spot a young woman in her late teens or early twenties standing in front of a makeshift shrine at the base of Draco Volcano. You edge closer to get a better look, crunching a dead leaf underfoot in the process.

She turns toward you...her eyes are a piercing orangish red, narrowed at you. "You are...?"

"Umm..."

"Ah, a trainer. Strange that you'd come to Ryuu Village of all places. There's nothing here, you know."

"I've noticed. Why are you here, then?"

"...Curiosity. How much do you know about what happened to this town?" At your blank look, she says, "I'm...an archaeologist of sorts. Ryuu is very interesting to me." She pauses. "My name is...well. You may call me Eve.

"For many centuries, Ryuu Village was a subsistence farming community. That means they lived off of their crops, basically. Only grew enough to feed themselves. That way, they didn't put much strain on the land. They were a proud and happy people, if not the most numerous. And few people ever came this way because the roads were in bad repair, when they existed, and the journey is so long between this and the nearest town...

"But that was for the best. The town was small but tight-knit. They shared in many joys and few tragedies, mostly because Arceus protected them. They worshiped it, and in return, it gave them rain in the midst of droughts and sun to end their floods. It was paradise.

"For a while, anyway. In the late 1800s, the government began a short-lived, expensive program of road improvement throughout the region, though many of the roads built have since deteriorated to their original state or worse. But with it came an influx of tourists who wanted to sightsee in Ryuu. It brought plenty of new revenue in, of course, but it also brought a lot of attention to the village, much of which was bad.

"The regional government was threatened by Arceus and the powers it held, and so they sent a team of trainers as agents to seal it away. Of course, the people of Ryuu were justifiably angered by this.

"Their religion was deemed a threat to the region. Most of the Arjin - the people of Arceus, the people of Ryuu - were summarily executed. Those who weren't had to flee for their lives. Many ran to other regions, changed their names, and tried to start over, but most failed to regain what they had.

"There are no records of the genocide anywhere. To the world at large, it's as if the village just suddenly ceased to exist."

A heavy silence falls. It feels much the way it did before you met Eve. "Well, anyway, there's still a lot I don't know about the culture of Ryuu. I wonder if the volcano has any clues...it's been inactive for at least thirty years now, and many Pokemon have taken residence in the caverns inside. It's possible that one of them picked something important up for a nest, or because it was shiny..."

Eve looks uncomfortable. "Umm. I suppose I could use whatever help I could get..."