Pokemon Idea: Voltran

Because I'm not patient enough for you guys to stumble across it on Smogon, I've decided to introduce you right here to my first fully fleshed-out Pokémon concept - Voltran, the Thundercloud Pokémon.

(Note that this is based on my original ideas for Voltran; a few of the details have been altered. In particular, Lightning Surge's accuracy was buffed to 75% to mirror Magma Storm's accuracy buff in Generation V, and Intangibility now lowers all stats except for Accuracy and Evasion by 1 stage to prevent it from being too game-breaking. I have considered reducing Lightning Surge's power to something more reasonable, like 60, considering that it hits two to five times, but I decided against it because Voltran's entire theme is raw overwhelming power that can obliterate entire squadrons.)

Voltran

Thundercloud Pokémon
Type: Electric/Dark
Ability: Volt Absorb

Base Stats:

HP: 45
Attack: 40
Defense: 65
Special Attack: 160
Special Defense: 140
Speed: 140

Total: 600

EV Yield: 3 Sp. Atk EVs

Pokédex Entries: Voltran, the Thundercloud Pokémon.
When thunderclouds flash ominously, it's a sure sign that this Pokémon is lurking nearby, searching for living things to electrocute.
Its body is nearly intangible, so it's difficult to fight back against its attacks.  However, if caught off-guard, it is surprisingly fragile.
It enjoys converting its body into an electrical mist and engulfing an innocent victim, inflicting endless electric shocks upon its foe until the foe is no longer alive.
It is horiffically cruel by nature, and loves to torment living beings with electric shocks until the victim is dead.  
It was created by Cipher in order to allow them to control the world's weather, and subsequently conquer the world by ruthlessly assassinating the world's leaders by sending VOLTRAN to electrocute them.
It was created by Cipher's nefarious technology, as an extension of their Shadow Pokémon projects.  Because its body is intangible, it can effortlessly slip into even the most heavily defended fortress and proceed to ruthlessly slaughter those that Cipher wants eliminated.  
It is as of yet unknown if VOLTRAN is capable of kindness, or even of not desiring to murder everything before it.  However, it is rumored that the original VOLTRAN was redeemed as a result of falling in love with a HEATRAN belonging to the Trainer who Snagged it.

The Idea: I came up with the idea of Voltran on a car ride, when my mother and brother pointed out some nearby storm clouds that were flashing oddly.  The sky was flashing multiple times in relatively quick succession, then remaining dark for some time until another sequence of flashes.  Yet, no actual lightning bolts could be seen, suggesting that most of the electrical activity was within the clouds themselves, being discharged in pulses rather than streams.  Mom said something about how she had never seen thunderclouds behaving like that before.  Being of the imaginative sort, I ran through an idea in my head - what if the thunderclouds were behaving oddly because they were a sentient being; more specifically, a cloudlike bioweapon waiting for a chance - or an order - to strike?
The thundercloud beast, I figured, would have been created as a weapon by some evil organization to help them achieve their wicked goals.  I also decided that it must be a Pokémon because I was playing Pokémon at the time.  (Also, I was training a Heatran at the time, so I decided to have this new Pokémon be connected to it.  I also concieved another Pokémon - Frostran - to complete the Fire-Ice-Lightning trio.  Kind of like an analogue to the Legendary Birds and Legendary Beasts.  As for Voltran being Electric/Dark...  I wanted it to be a dual-type like Heatran, and I also wanted its typing to be unique, like Heatran's Fire/Steel combination.  I thought of Electric/Ghost, since Voltran, being a cloud, wouldn't really be tangible, but that combination was taken by Rotom, so I went with Electric/Dark instead.). So, who would create an evil gas cloud weapon to help them conquer the world?  Team Rocket came to mind, but they already tried making a bio-weapon - Mewtwo.  Mewtwo... was less than enthusiastic about cooperating with the guys who financed his creation.  So, Team Rocket wouldn't want to try such a scheme again.  Who else would want to try it?  Cipher, of course.

The Backstory: Cipher has twice attempted to conquer the world with "Shadow Pokémon" - Pokémon that they had tortured to the point of "sealing the door to their hearts", which means that the torture suppressed the emotions of these Pokémon entirely.  This means that the Shadow Pokémon were heartless combat machines that would obey their owners utterly, doing ANYTHING their Trainers commanded them to.  Like, say, attacking other Trainers.  On their second attempt, they even went and took it a step further with one of their Pokémon (Lugia), corrupting it to the point where its tainted heart was reflected in its physical appearance - AND it was virtually impossible to purify.
On both attempts, Cipher was stopped by a hero who used a Snag Machine to steal their Shadow Pokémon and then treat said Pokemon with love and care, eventually re-opening their hearts and returning them to their pre-Shadow state.  Even Cipher's ultimate weapon - XD-001, the aforementioned Lugia - was purified through the use of Dr. Krane's Purification System (though the system did need to be turned to maximum power in order to achieve that.)  The former Shadow Pokémon were only too happy to help their new Trainers bring down their former masters, and these brave young heroes ultimately brought Cipher to its knees.  (The first two rises and falls of Cipher are chronicled in Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD.)  Of course, it is quite difficult to bring down a large organization in its entirety.  It is entirely possible that Cipher could survive and recover over a long period of time, and eventually get back to their old tricks.  Having failed with XD-001, though, they would have to take further action to prevent the purification of their next wave of Shadow Pokémon.  Which is when they would get the idea of creating a new Pokémon from scratch.  If their Shadow Pokémon literally had NO existence prior to their existence as Shadow Pokémon, it would be impossible for them to be purified.  Essentially, Cipher reasoned that if a door to a Pokemon's heart had ALWAYS been shut, then it couldn't be opened because the Pokémon had never really had emotions to begin with.  However, they also figured that they couldn't just use this idea on Pokémon eggs without testing it first - for all they knew, they could be foiled by ancestral memories or something of that sort.  So, they would design a new Pokemon from scratch, like Team Rocket did with Mewtwo, as their superweapon and protoype for their neo-Shadow Pokémon.  In the meantime, they would also generate a new wave of Shadow Pokémon using their old methods, to act as backup troops for their new project.  And unlike Mewtwo, their new superweapon - being a Shadow Pokémon - would be completely loyal to them.
Because they wanted their new superweapon to be, well, a superweapon, only a Legendary Pokémon would do.  (Sort of like how XD-001 was a Lugia.). However, if Cipher just rehashed the Mewtwo concept, every Trainer out there would quickly bring out their Dark, Ghost, and Bug type Pokémon to counter it - after all, at this point, Mewtwo was quite well-known, and people knew that Mewtwo was a Psychic-type and precisely how Psychic-types could be countered.  So, Cipher decided to base their creation off of another Pokémon - specifically, Heatran, the guardian of Stark Mountain.  However, while Heatran wasn't QUITE as well-known as Mewtwo, it was still a fairly well-known Pokémon.  So, Cipher decided to only use Heatran as an aesthetic basis - their creation would be similar, but it would be tied to an entirely different element, so as to avoid sharing the same weaknesses.  And since electricity is so vital to the modern world, they decided that their superweapon would be a being made of electricity.  (Sure, it shared a weakness to Ground-type moves, but not quite as badly as Heatran would.)  As Heatran embodied volcanoes, Cipher's new superweapon would embody thunderclouds.  This superweapon would be able to absorb and manipulate electricity freely, allowing Cipher to practically paralyze society!  And, as a bonus, their superweapon would be able to easily reach the world's leaders and extinguish them before they even knew what was going on, leaving Cipher to take charge!  This superweapon would also be designed to be malicious, so it would never even BEGIN to question its orders.  Furthermore, this malice would make it a Dark-type, rendering Mewtwo all but helpless against it...  Well, except for the fact that Mewtwo can learn Aura Sphere.  So, as a final kick in the rear to Team Rocket (and all the other criminal leagues out there,) Cipher would design their new superweapon to be even faster and stronger than Mewtwo - able to destroy anything in its way before they could so much as blink!!!
Using their Shadow Pokémon technology, Cipher somehow managed to find, capture, and corrupt a Heatran (they also discovered a Frostran, and captured that, too.)  They also went out of their way to gather up Pokémon who could counter Ground, Bug, and Fighting types, just in case anybody would be able to figure out the weaknesses of the superweapon they were about to create.  Cipher then somehow captured a thundercloud and brought this raw electrical energy back to their labs, where they used Heatran and Frostran as a mold to form the captured thundercloud into a living Pokémon - a Pokémon that was a Shadow Pokémon from the moment it first gained life.  And thus, Voltran was born.

The First Voltran's Story: Unfortunately for Cipher, their activities were discovered and investigated by Linus Dawn, who then alerted the Heroes' League.  Having played a role in Cipher's first two defeats, Luigifan was well aware of how they operated, and so he went to Dr. Krane to acquire a Snag Machine.  With that Snag Machine, Luigifan and the Heroes' League battled Cipher - which turned out to be led by Evice again (he escaped from prison shortly after being arrested) - and Snagged some Shadow Pokémon, including Voltran.  Evice, just before escaping, laughed and said that Voltran would be impossible to purify - furthermore, despite Voltran having been Snagged from Cipher, Evice speculated that it would never be loyal to Luigifan, and would most likely murder the Heroes' League in their sleep.  Sure enough, Luigifan made no progress in trying to purify Voltran for the rest of the day.  Luigifan had to set his Heatran (nicknamed Bunsen) to keep watch over Voltran and keep it from carrying out Evice's threat.  That night, Voltran DID try to turn on the Heroes' League, but was held back by Bunsen, who got into a brief scuffle with it.  In the battle, Bunsen showcased its elemental power and defensive strength (it has a Bold nature).  This, combined with Voltran's innate connection to Heatran as a species, made an impression on Voltran... further cemented by the fact that Bunsen is male and this Voltran is female.  (No points for guessing where this is going.)  Over the next couple of days, Luigifan managed to completely purify Voltran, much to his surprise.  When he asked Flyz to help him figure out how this happened, Flyz ended up laughing like crazy, and upon further questioning, suggested that Luigifan leave Bunsen and Voltran in the Day Care together (much to Bunsen's shock.)  Currently, Cipher is working on a new secret weapon to compensate for this loss...

Stats: Being intangible, Voltran is naturally very quick and oriented to Special attacks, but its physical strength is SORELY lacking, and it also doesn't have much in the way of Hit Points (it barely exists on the physical plane, so it wouldn't take much for its existence to be disrupted.)  I couldn't really decide which defense stat would be the high one - intangibility would suggest that Voltran would virtually ignore physical blows and be vulnerable to stuff that affects it on a more elemental level (i.e. special attacks,) but on the other hand, its nature as an elemental being would suggest that Voltran would resist spiritual attacks and be more fragile against physical blows (due to lacking much in the way of physical protection.)  I eventually chose to go with emphasizing Special Defense over Defense (even though a reverse Snorlax WOULD be interesting) because I figured that Voltran would be SO reliant on its intangibility to protect it from physical attacks (I decided to make the intangibility thing a move instead, as Voltran usually goes around being condensed into its quasi-physical form) that it would focus more on protecting itself from special attacks; furthermore, it would be highly reliant on its speed and special power to avoid being hit.  All this means that Voltran would be heavily caught off-guard by physical attacks that could manage to strike it.
Cipher designed Voltran to one-up Mewtwo, so its Special Attack and Speed are SUPPOSED to be that ludicrously high.  Sure, the base stat total isn't as strong as Mewtwo's, but that's not terribly important when it's wrecking foes left and right (look at how popular Alakazam is!!!  Though, Mewtwo is essentially Alakazam on steroids...)
Ability: Like Heatran, Voltran's ability lets it absorb moves of its own element without being injured.  However, Voltran is healed by electricity rather than being boosted by it.  (Because it's basically a thundercloud made into a Pokémon, it made more sense for Voltran to be healed by electricity than to be strengthened by it, which is why it has Volt Absorb instead of Motor Drive, even though Motor Drive is closer to Flash Fire.)
Moves: Voltran's moveset is similar to Heatran's, except that it emphasizes Electric and Dark moves over Fire and Steel moves.  (For example, Voltran gets Thunder Fang instead of Fire Fang.)  Voltran's signature move, Lightning Surge, is an Electric-type Special-category move with 95 base power that strikes 2 to 5 times - combined with Voltran's monstrous Special Attack (and a STAB boost), this is downright frightening.  Thankfully, its accuracy is fairly low - a mere 70, just like Magma Storm.  Still, it's probably a REALLY good idea to use a Ground-type Pokémon against Voltran!  Voltran also has access to Dark Storm, a Dark-type, Special-category move with a base power of 120 and an accuracy of 80 (other Pokémon capable of learning this move would include Mewtwo, Darkrai, Giratina, and Mismagius, among others.)  Furthermore, Voltran is among the few Pokémon with access to Intangibility, a Ghost-type, Other-category move that grants the user nigh-immunity to all physical attacks, albeit at the cost of some Speed and HP.  Broken?  Perhaps it is.  But then again, Voltran was built to be the ultimate Shadow Pokémon - of COURSE it would be horrifyingly strong!!!