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Vale's culture is probably the closest thing to 'normal' any settlement in Sehto can call itself, culturally speaking. They have the laid-back attitude of a culture imbued with seafaring microculture and at large tend to judge people by merit of their actions rather than any prejudice they may have toward them. They're also quite allergic to the notion of letting anyone sleeping in the streets and consider it some of the worst possible punishment a human can bear, to the point where they'd rather see their worst personal enemy take shelter in their garage than they'd accept them sleeping under open skies. This is presumably owed to the storms Vale is known to get caught in.

Unfortunately, this attitude means that they are easily taken advantage of, in that they may not know a surreal scheme to exploit them until it's too late. In other words, it's quite easy to be a thief passing through Vale, providing you can keep up certain pretenses enough to get people to help you by letting them into their house proper (rather than just any shed, or directions to the nearest hotel).

The people in Vale get along best with the people in Kzye City and Pyu Ivvi. Other cultures are rejected either for seeming too detached from reality in their relaxation (Kethi City) or for possessing more energy than any Vale inhabitant is likely to want to handle (Nightclaw and Togi especially).

Of all settlements, Vale may easily be the most welcoming and encouraging toward general sciences.

• Yarver Bakema is originally from Pyu Ivvi, but is the gym leader of Vale now.
• Tove Zipporah is originally from here, despite being in Pyu Ivvi now.

Collected from Arsaga:

To make a long story short, after half an hour of galloping through the night on her own Rapidash, Nikki's arrived in the twinkling sea of lights that is Vale, nestled as it is against the bizarrely crafted landscape immediately around Roaring Hollow.

And so, with the harbour of Vale left behind, and the prospering city centre glinting in the absolute darkness behind her, bleeding light up into the otherwise clear night skies, she finds herself torn between finding a sheltered but even spot between the jagged rocks of the hithero landscape and knock on one of the doors of the fringe settlements.

Here, at the shoreline facing toward Roaring Hollow, the houses are scattered few and far between, though still clustered in groups every once in a while. A lone house sits like a dim beacon on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the city, no immediate way to it visible, though it adds considerably to the mood of this alien area. A few speckles of warm light show a cluster of five houses toward the south corner of the current peninsula she's striding along, strung out in a curve around the end of a paved road leading to Vale's centre. They look fairly comfortable - neither like a villa nor shack, perhaps houses of small families… potentially friendly people.

The night is surprisingly warm - the breeze drifting in from the seas brings that warmth, pulling the residual warmth stored by the waters over the course of the day from the waves, an effect most people from elsewhere in Sehto would find strange. Kethi, ocean town as it is, does not get nighttime sea-sourced winds, so it's a strange - if not unknown - sensation to Nikki, too.

The house has a simple button, a black type-written 'Nobuyuki' in a rectangular, plastic-covered label belonging to it. A vertical, evenly glowing neon lamp illuminates the white wall immediately above it, casting enough light to make the text easily legible. The ring tone seems to be fairly generic - and as she waits, she inspects the roof. It's a pale green tiled roof, suiting the sea-side feel of the area. It looks simple, but in a modern fashion - truly, every house of this lot can probably be described in some way as 'simple but modern', but it only really occurs to her now. After a while, the door opens a hand's breadth, and a man in his mid-forties with darkly tanned skin glances out at her. “…yes?” he asks, clearly bewildered by her appearance.

The person looks at her with a sliver of suspicion, but mostly a genuine worry, before exhaling audibly to say: “Don't you know it's dangerous to ask strangers for their hospitality?” He frowns, staring at her without a hint of condescending qualities in his demeanour - it's like he's reciting something he learnt long ago, frowning merely at her helplessness. His shoulders sag slightly. “I'm sorry, we have guests over…” he says, then, grinding the words out as though not liking having to speak them, his glance drifting sideways. “Perhaps try Mr. Zelenka? He lives by himself,” he gestures to the neighbouring house. “And even though it ought to be worth at most a grain of salt, Miss, we do trust him. He's a scientist type of bloke.”

The outside of the following house is lit with an interesting skewed uplight set below its bell - just a button, no label associated with it, in a stylised variant of the shape of a bell - flooding light up the entirety of the house's front wall, a milky glass half-bowl set around the actual bulb for decoration, catching the light so it seems to have its own luminescence.

It's a longer way through the streets of Vale, the landscape of houses becoming more and more reminiscent of a village rather than a city of the size of Vale - until they finally reach a lip of rock nestled amongst hill-side houses. Devi leads them around the site, showing an entry into the vaguely dome-shaped cluster… and, sure enough, there is Rhaptor, his arms tied back against a thin pillar of rock.

Right now, having noticed that they need Bubble to cross Roaring Hollow - or at least some scuba gear of their own - they're stalking towards the generously large pokémon gym of Vale, which's exterior design reminds somewhat of a mosque.

The building's front doors are made of glass, sliding open with only the softest hiss of shifting air, revealing a fairly bright interior with a corridor leading off to their left, and one to their right, as well as one right before them leading to something that looks like an elevator shaft. The corners of the blocks framed by these pathways are cut into a triangular space each, with the space to their left occupied by lush, decorative greenery, and a reception desk to their right, occupied by a young lady with a bizarrely vertical, white-blond hairstyle and a silver piercing in her left brow, both which somehow manage not to clash with her formal, pale violet suit. She's typing as they arrive, and slows as she raises her gaze to the visitors. “Can I help you?”

The receptionist seems to consider it quietly for a moment, before shaking her head. “I don't see how we could help you - even if we gave you the hidden machine Bubble as a gesture of good will rather than as trophy of battle, its a labyrinthine place. You should get yourselves a guide. Mr. Bakema would surely help you, but he is, simply, not here today. I would summon him for you if I could - it's not like I don't believe you.” Her tone is earnest, polite and steady throughout her speech.

As the first rays of sunshine struggle past the horizon, the streets of Vale are still mostly empty, though the sounds of activity drift like whispers up from the shoreline.

A small pack of children cross their path, chasing a ball - but basically minding their own business, other than a brief glance up at Devi and her companions, only to wide-eyed-ly glance away as the lady glares at them with unexpected malice. Still, it's a sign of life in otherwise basically abandonned streets. They'd fill once the sun properly claimed its spot in the sky, of course. Either way, they reach the gym, and with that same dangerous energy she often wields, Devi pushes into the reception 'hall', the corridor crossroads.