Save Our Snorunts!

There exists an old superstition that Snorunts bring luck and good fortune to those that treasure them. "Look into a rich man's past, and you will find a Snorunt there," is something you might hear from older relatives to explain why some of us enjoy more fortune than others.

Well. It turns out those old people are right. Up to a point, at least.

Whether they actually bring good or bad luck themselves or if there is some luck-giving entity that is just very concerned with Snorunt Treatment is something that can be discussed at length, but the fact remains that how you treat a Snorunt can definitely affect your luck in life.

And normally, characters would get to experience it for themselves starting in the first few days of January... but in 2025, something seems to be wrong. Where are the Snorunts...?

What's going on?

Rather than the normal swarm of Snorunts long-time characters may have come to expect, the Snorunts that come stumbling into town this time are... well, okay, they're always shivering. But they're also sneezing! And they're definitely not their normal, perky, mischievous little selves - they seem downright fatigued. A lot of them haven't even made it into towns, hence the small numbers.

On top of that, they're accompanied by a number of equally miserable Glalies and Froslass; it seems like all these ice Pokemon have come down with an unfortunate new strain of Pokerus! It's no joke, let me tell you: you haven't seen a sneeze until you've seen a Glalie full-body sneeze.

The Snorunts really aren't up to bestowing fortunes intentionally, at least not at the moment...

Uh oh. Can we help?

You sure can! The Nurse Joys are on the case, but there are too many Snorunts for them to handle this alone. They're asking for volunteers.

How your characters help is up to you, but here are some ideas if you'd like inspiration!

Bring sick Pokemon from out in the wild to Pokemon Centers.

Courier medicine over to field treatment locations. But careful to keep the medicine warm, it's ruined if it freezes!

Help sew masks for Glalies to cough into - human-sized masks just won't cut it.

Find lumps of pure ice for feeding Snorunt.

Make big batches of Pokemon-safe cough drops (or big batches of food for the nurses and helpers!)

Provide enrichment for a bedridden Froslass: find little easy things for them to freeze, that they can manage even when fatigued ~~so they don't try to freeze the nurses~~.

Sanitize medical equipment by heating it! But careful to do it slowly with anything made of glass... it gets cold being used on these Ice Pokemon.

A log will be going up for this plot on January 6th!

What was that about "intentionally"?

Over the course of January, characters will be struck randomly by mild bursts of good and bad luck. More often bad.

Fortunately, these bursts don't seem to last as long as a true Snorunt fortune, only a few hours at most. But there's nothing stopping your character from getting struck several times in a row...

For these short bursts, you're welcome to decide the effects for yourself! General guidelines: stick to game mechanics for this one, nothing like being able to catch an extra shiny.

What about the character-specific Snorunt fortunes? Are they still happening?

In an effort to encourage and reward activity, this years' custom Snorunt fortunes are going to be a reward for plot participation!

Don't worry, the requirements aren't very intense - aside from the usual description of how your character will interact with the Snorunt, we'd like to see a link to a thread related to the plot, with at least 3 comments from your character. (It doesn't need to be on the event log - you're perfectly welcome to make your own post!)

Please respond with those two things to this mod comment - you can submit as early as you'd like, and submissions will stay open until February 7th. Fortunes will be given out starting in the last week of January.

ICly, the Snorunts (and Glalies and Froslass) will recover around the end of the month and promptly get up to their usual shenanigans - but with a particular eye toward the people who helped them. Unfortunately, they may have a grudge toward medical attention they didn't enjoy, and they're as fickle as usual...

Fortunes will affect characters through the month of February rather than January.

Anything else?

Anyone who participates in the plot can choose to have their character's Pokemon get infected with this strain of Pokerus.

Unfortunately for any infected Pokemon, while they won't be as badly affected as the Snorunts, they'll still be miserable and full of sneezes for a week. They won't be up to battling (or leveling up) at all. But once they've recovered, they'll have two weeks where they're unusually full of vigor, and can level up to twice as fast as usual!

That's two weeks with up to 10 levels a week rather than 5 - or a whopping 16 levels rather than 8, for Trainers.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Snorunts know when someone is trying to avoid their attentions... but Keith's help during the outbreak does count for something! So this time they will look upon his intentional neutral behavior actually neutrally. Keith will be receiving ??? Luck in February!

Objects Keith is looking for throughout the month of February will often be... weirdly swapped around? Sometimes this is annoying - if he's looking for something around his home, he'll often find something else in its place, and have to go track down that object's original location to find what he actually needed. Sometimes this is actually kind of nice and helpful - if Keith goes shopping this month, he might find objects that are normally not available in the area have been swapped in, albeit in exchange for whatever he was trying to get. (How did that Sweet get here, aren't those only available in Pallet Town? What about that TM, that's all the way from over in Cherrygrove!)

Sometimes, however, this is downright alarming - perhaps Keith will find that one of his Pokeballs has swapped with another otherworlder trainer's, and have terrible flashbacks to Silph Co's server outage. But if this does happen... Weirdly, whether Keith manages to get his Pokemon back or keeps whatever got swapped, both of these Pokemon will have learned one random TM move they did not already know. Mysterious!

(Please stick all unlearned TM moves the Pokemon can learn into this randomizer to determine what move they get! You may do Pokemon swaps with as many other players as you'd like, but this TM effect will only apply to the first swap that you do.)

Snorunt Fortunes 2025...?