Artist's commentary
Oh look, an actual background!
Hadn’t seen one of those in forever!
Oh well, on to the Poke’ description…
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They
may look like gentle giants from afar, but do not be fooled by their
‘goofy looks’, Hippowdon are massive Ground type Pokemon with a near
permanent bad attitude. They may not be one of the fastest Pokemon
around, but who needs speed when you’ve got the Sandstream ability so
powerful that it can immobilize your enemies to keep them from escaping
while the sand practically rips their flesh into ribbons?
Yes,
similar to Tyranitar, the Sandstorms produced by an angry Hippowdon is
enough to overpower and trap anything that happens to wander into its
territory, not only that, but the sheer weight of the sand once it
starts piling up is actually enough to snap bones.
Should the victim
not yet be dead from suffocation, they will surely die from being
attacked directly from the Hippowdon itself, should it still be angry
with you. Now that you’re practically trapped in the sand, it no longer
has to worry about chasing you down. It can literally just walk up to
you and finish you off with one or two well placed Crunch attacks.
This
brutal method of killing off intruding enemies is thought to originate
from female Hippowdons trying to protect their Hippopotas young.
predator Pokemon that are much faster than them such as Magmar,
Mightyena, Houndoom, Persian, Luxray, Ursaring and Zangoose and Absol
tend to have a thing for Hippopotas meat, as it is much easier to obtain
and it tastes great…
In order to retaliate against these
predators, the Hippowdon mothers will use this method to trap the
fleeing meat eater and allow its young to escape (Being Ground types
themselves, Hippopotas can actually 'swim’ through the sand to free
themselves, when the predator cannot). Death by Hippowdon bite is not
very pretty, though in most cases, females will just trap the predator,
and then both her and the young will run away to escape. And most of the
time the predator will either die of suffocation or starvation. very
rarely do they actually manage to free themselves from the sand and live
to hunt another day.