ASOIAI Outline

Here are the major adventure beats for you, as a GM, to assess whether you’re interested in running this scenario before you commit time to reading all of it and to better follow along during your first read.

Background

• The adventure is set at a former hot spring resort, where the hot springs went cold because mining and other nearby industrial activities drove away the Fire Pokemon living in the caves under the resort. Now, the resort is mainly visited by field researchers, beginning Trainers looking for a place to practice their wilderness survival skills, and people who want to escape modern life for a while.
• However, poachers have been active in the area recently. They’ve hunted Alolan Vulpix, angering the Alolan Ninetales that lives on the mountain, and also killed several Lapras at a nearby lake that are known for their bedazzling jewel-encrusted shells which have healing properties when ground up.
• A researcher who has studied and befriended the Lapras intervened, drawing on a Power Spot in the lake and causing a fatally wounded Lapras to Gigantamax—this is the source of the supernatural blizzard engulfing the mountain.
• While the Lapras killed most of the poachers, one escaped and found his way back to the resort where he’s now laying low and hiding with a cache of Lapras gems.
• The Lapras’s Gigantamaxed form is persisting longer than normal, which has been driving it into a crazed state, and it will only revert if it is forcibly depowered—by defeating it in battle. However, once it reverts, if a healing concoction prepared from the other Lapras’ gems is not quickly administered, it will die. As long as it remains in its Gigantamax form though—and it shows no signs of reverting on its own—the supernatural blizzard will continue to trap all those on the mountain.

Game Scenario

• The players begin the adventure on their way to the resort and are caught in a blizzard. After overcoming some environmental challenges and befriending some wild Pokemon along the way, they reach the main road to the resort and fight a pair of Galarian Farfetch’d that appear to be hallucinating. These Farfetch’d belong to the poacher hiding at the resort and are suffering persistent effects from the Lapras’s enchanting song. Once defeated, they snap back to their normal selves and will try to lead the players to the resort.
• The party arrives at the resort and is welcomed inside by its few inhabitants. While resting, they will likely hear from the NPCs at the resort about various problems that threaten the resort during the sudden storm. A supply shipment was due to arrive in the next few days, but they got confirmation before the storm knocked out cell coverage that it wouldn’t make it on time.
  • Another group of travelers had made their way here but had gone out hiking during the morning, before the blizzard hit. They haven’t come back, and everyone is understandably worried.
    • Lost in the Frost: This side quest will take the party to the caves under and around the resort, where they find the lost travelers trapped behind a cave-in. Rescuing them will give the party access to a Coalossal who can help them explore areas of extreme cold.
  • A few guests at the resort fell ill, and the resort doctor has run out of medicine to treat them. There’s a local medicinal herb called Queen’s Comb that can be used to improvise a treatment in a pinch, but someone would have to go out to get it.
    • Leaf it to Wooloo: This side quest will take the PCs through the deep forests around the resort and to an old graveyard and abandoned village, where the herb can be found nearby, guarded by greedy Ghost-Type Pokemon.
  • The resort has to burn fuel much more quickly than normal to withstand the blizzard’s cold, and they’re running low with the scheduled resupply now cancelled. There is supposedly more fuel kept in emergency storage at an abandoned part of the old resort.
    • Tanks for Sharing: This side quest takes the players to a dried out lakebed where they can meet a paleontologist studying the fossil Pokemon of the area. Recovering the fuel extends the number of days they have before the resort runs out of fuel for heat.
  • Cell coverage is totally knocked out on the mountain, and there’s no way to repair the cell tower here. However, the NPCs at the resort think that an inactive Ranger outpost up higher on the mountain might still have a working transmitter to get a message to the outside world, find out if anyone out there has figured out what’s up with the storm, and probably find useful supplies to bring back.
    • Snow Signal: This side quest takes the players further up the mountain through a path guarded by a vengeful Alolan Ninetales that will harass and trick them from a safe distance. After defeating it, bypassing it somehow, or convincing it that they are not the same as the poachers who killed its young, they can find an outpost stocked with supplies, make a call to the outside world, and get a vantage point on the whole resort area.
  • After the first night of the adventure passes, the party will wake up to the news that some wild Pokemon had broken into the resort and made off with some supplies. The NPCs at the resort are worried they’ll come back for more the next night.
    • The Hills Have Mimes: By the morning, the tracks leading to the raiding Pokemon’s hideaway are covered by fresh snow, but if the players stay up late, they can encounter and fight off the raiders—a group of Stonjourners, then follow them where they find an oppressive Mr. Rime and a group of related Pokemon is forcing the Stonjourner to offer them tribute during the storm. Stopping the raids lets the players recover any Supply Items that were stolen and maintains their options for morning resupplies.
• The players can make headway into the main plot in a few ways:
  • At the transmission tower, anyone they call can tell them there’s an eye in the storm set at the lake a fair distance from the resort.
  • If given a few days to recover and then explore on their own, the rescued lost travelers will have mapped out the shape of the storm and formed a guess that the lake is the source.
  • Winning the respect of the Polteageist at the graveyard will let the players have a sip of its tea, which will give them a vision of the Gigantamax Lapras and what happened with the poachers.
  • If the players are truly stuck, the GM can insert a scene at any location where the party discovers the frozen corpse of a poacher with information that implicates the poacher hiding at the resort. A confrontation with him can provide more or less the full story on the storm.
• The lake lies past a valley that normally has bridges running across it. But of course the blizzard knocked out all the bridges, and the players must find another way across. Luckily for them, there’s a group of Eiscue and Mawile who have taken advantage of the storm to create an ice factory and hold a snow festival nearby, and with the proper coaxing (trading items obtained through other quests), they can be convinced to create a series of ice bridges across the valley.
• Past the valley, the players will run into a scientist at a small research outpost a short distance from the lake who will explain everything that happened with the poachers and that they caused the Lapras to Gigantamax. The scientist wants someone to bring back gems the poachers took from the Lapras shells as well as medicinal herbs to create a healing concoction for the Lapras before someone goes to battle it.
• If the players haven’t already, they’ll have to confront the poacher hiding at the resort, take their gems, find the medicinal herbs, and have them turned into a medicine for treating the Lapras. In return, the scientist will teach the players how to resist the Lapras’s siren song and lead them to the lake for a final battle—the players can go into the fight without completing this step, but their disregard for the Lapras’s life will make the battle more difficult for them.

In addition to the main quest and side quests above, several small exploration events are outlined that a GM can drop into most locations in the adventure as needed to give the players something to pursue or to spice up a session hitting a lull.