It is said that on dark winter nights in Unova, the snow itself turns into an enemy. From mountains to building overhangs on snow-covered roads, anywhere the icicles hang, the winter weather ceases to be a force of nature and becomes a vengeful spirit, pelting unhappy travelers with snow and hail until they barely escape with their lives, or are found dead in a snowdrift when it melts.

There is truth in these rumors, but the culprits are not otherworldly spirits, but a well-attested and very much living species of pokemon: Vanillish. These pokemon can manipulate water molecules to become nearly invisible above their icicle lower half, and when visibility is already poor from darkness and snowstorms, they easily pass undetected by human eyes. These pokemon are not malicious, at least not towards humans; although they react to movement, they will call off their attacks once it becomes clear that they are fighting not prey pokemon, but weary human travelers.

Tales of humans found dead in snow can not be reliably traced back to the Vanillish, and can be cautiously ascribed to genuine freak storms and the exaggerations of campfire folktales. If Vanillish played any role in these deaths at all, it was as powerless bystanders, for these pokemon have no arms, no capacity to heal others, and do not truly control the weather, only disguise their attacks as storms. The most any Vanillish can do is freeze predators, and this is something many of them accomplish, but hypothermia is the most typical cause of death, so this can do nothing more than buy rescuers time.