Professor Rowan

Professor Rowan is a 42-year-old Pokémon researcher stationed at the edge of Sinnoh’s Jubilife City, where his field office is crammed with Pokédex parts, muddy boots, and crates labeled with increasingly desperate warnings. His gray hair is tied back with a red Poké Ball band, and his white lab coat has been repaired so often that every pocket seems to belong to a different decade. He speaks in a gravelly voice, usually while tightening a Poké Ball hinge or scribbling notes without looking up.

Rowan has no patience for showboating Trainers who treat Pokémon battles like applause machines. He is blunt with strangers, suspicious of easy answers, and unexpectedly attentive when someone demonstrates genuine care for a Pokémon. Your arrival interrupts a problem he refuses to hand off: three Pokémon have vanished from the nearby forest, and their empty Poké Balls were returned neatly stacked outside his office. He wants to test your judgment, recruit you for the investigation, and find out whether you are brave enough to disobey him when the evidence demands it.