Professor Hawthorn
Professor Conroy Hawthorn is a Pokémon professor in charge of the paleontology and paleoecology department of the Unovan Museum of Natural History in Castelia City.
Background
A paleobiologist and geneticist currently working at the Unovan Museum of Natural History (UMNH), he has mostly focused his energies on researching ways to reconstruct paleoenvironments for fossil Pokémon and thus improve their care standards. He spearheaded the digs at the Sturgess Shales north of Angela, which contained some of the oldest Pokémon fossils known to science, with some coming from taxa that has yet to be formally described.
One of his students was Thomas Petersen, who he described as "brilliant and very friendly, but amazingly scatterbrained, not too unlike myself." He wrote him a very generous recommendation letter to the Geographic Society, which has him on as a regular. He is considered an oddball among professors as he had a brief stint as a nudist.
Due to a complicated issue early in his career, he ended up occasionally transforming into a Charizard, which he has usually kept a secret from everyone except his daughter and late wife. This once got into a conflict with Arachna-Guy back before he could control it, who managed to calm him down long enough to be told to "flee upstate and not bother anyone." After realizing that the new clothes he bought at this shop from a funny salesman named Bartleby managed to not tear up when he transforms, he later claims that he has become a cosplayer, a hobby he eventually tried out for real.
Family History
He is a scion of the de Aubépine family, a minor noble house in Unova who traced their ancestry to an ennobled knight from the [Hundred Years War], Sieur Guiscard de Aubépine, who had claimed to have fought under the rallying banner of the Undying Knight. He had once been married to a woman named Audrey, who died of cancer some time not too long ago. Although the death heaved on him and their daughter Stephanie greatly, he had tried to move on through online dating.
His daughter usually studies in Angela but does come back home periodically.
Personality
Much like one of his students, he is a brilliant scientist and maintains a skeptical but open-minded view of the world. He had helped pioneer the development of de-extinction since the 1990s and his insights in paleoecology have proved invaluable to the care and training of recently cloned extinct Pokémon.
He uses his Pokéform extensively in training his Pokémon. Most people dismiss it as him using an immersive cosplay to interact with Pokémon better.
Besides his interest in paleontology, he is an avid amateur historian and archeologist and is good friends with people from the anthropology department.
Career History
Besides heading a department at UMNH he has also worked closely with the Devon Company throughout his career. He began is professional career with Devon's R&D division, then moved to Pokefutures from 1998 to 2002. He eventually left that company, citing multiple ethics violations, including one experiment regarding Shadow Curses that went horribly wrong. Currently, he mainly serves as an guest advisor for the Devon Company, officially focusing on his work in UMNH.
Hawthorn's Pokémon
Trivia
- He is based on Curt Connors/The Lizard from the Spider-Man franchise. The charizard transformation was chosen both for alliteration with the source material and to make him more formidable.
- His Pokémon are mainly fossils and overall comprise his theme of "the past":
- Meaghan is based on Megatron II from Beast Wars: Transformers
- Chris is named for actor Chris Pratt and has behavioral cues from various characters played by him, including Owen Grady from Jurassic World and Peter Quill/Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy
- Robbie is named for Robbie Drummond, who currently voices the cartoon versions of Spider-Man.
- Cammy is named for Cammy from the Street Fighter games.
- Cammy and Robbie were revived from fossils (an anorith and a kabuto in the process of laying eggs, respectively). Chris and Meaghan, however, are second-generation Fossil Pokemon conceived and raised entirely in the 21st Century.
- Robbie's batch of clones include Tommy's kabuto, Shinji.
- Sieur Guiscard returns from the dead as a honedge and has lived with his descendants ever since.
