Wo-Chien is a snail-like Pokémon comprising a dark-green mossy form covered in dead green and yellow leaves. Two pairs of long, curling vines form its eyestalks, which contain eyes with green eyelids, orange sclerae, and pale greenish pupils. A long row of wooden tablets curled around its backside forms its shell. Wooden tablets were once used as a writing medium in the East during ancient times, although the inscriptions written on the particular set forming Wo-Chien's shell have become too faded to be read.
Like the other Treasures of Ruin, Wo-Chien's true form is the row of wooden writing tablets forming its shell, having been given life by the grudges of the person punished for writing the evil deeds of the former Paldean Empire's king on them long ago — while its body is a form it has constructed using its control over plant matter. Wo-Chien is able to drain the life force of vegetations in a wide area around it, causing entire forests and fields to instantly become barren. It is known as the Tablets of Ruin.
Wo-Chien and the other Treasures of Ruin are the only known Pokémon capable of learning the move Ruination. Wo-Chien is also the only known Pokémon that can have Tablets of Ruin as an Ability.
- Wo-Chien has the highest base Special Defense stat of all Grass-type and Dark-type Pokémon.
- Wo-Chien and the other Treasures of Ruin are the first Pokémon whose base stats were adjusted via a patch to the game.
- Wo-Chien is the only member of the Treasures of Ruin that was given life by a specific individual's emotion rather than the emotions of humanity in general.
- Wo-Chien's in-game model has 92 tablets in total. In one of its animations, the tablets spiral out from under the plants that are comprised by its body, and all 92 can be seen at the peak of this animation.
Origin
Wo-Chien may be modeled after the decollate snail, predatory land snails native to the Mediterranean whose shells are blunt and conical. Wo-Chien's shell is constructed from slips, narrow strips of bamboo or wood used as writing media in China prior to the introduction of paper.
Wo-Chien's origins may reference the Chinese phrase 罄竹難書 / 罄竹难书 qìng zhú nán shū, an idiom referring to sins that are so innumerable that using all the bamboo would not make enough tablets to record them.
Wo-Chien's National Pokédex number and the fact that its body is composed out of a medium for writing may allude to One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales and stories. One of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights, namely Aladdin, opens in China.
Name origin
Wo-Chien may be a combination of 蝸 / 蜗 wō (Chinese for snail) and 簡 / 简 jiǎn (Chinese for bamboo slips). The name is formatted in Wade–Giles, a romanization system used in the Anglosphere for most of the 20th century.
Chionjen may be a combination of 蟲 / 虫 chóng (Chinese for bug) and 簡 / 简 jiǎn (Chinese for bamboo slips).
