Cockatrice

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Cockatrice

(Creature)

2E1E

Common

Small

Beast

Level

3

Images of cockatrices

Source: Monster Core, pg(s). 66

Legacy 2E: cockatrices had the

N

trait in Bestiary 66.

Type

Magical beast

CR

3

Environment

Temperate plains

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Images of cockatrices

Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 48

Ⅰ

Ⅱ

Cockatrices are bat-winged, serpent tailed, roosters with a petrifying bite.

Appearance

A cockatrice looks much like a featherless, sickly and starved version of its avian counterpart, the chicken, with a scaly lizard-like tail and clawed bat-like wings. Male cockatrices, like roosters, uniquely have wattles and combs. The average cockatrice is about two feet tall, 4 feet long, and weighs about five pounds.

Abilities

Cockatrices can see in the dark. They are immune to petrification, and they can fly.

A Cockatrices beak produces a primal magical toxin that causes the quick calcification of flesh that accelerates with additional pecks. This calcification can be shaken off, but the stiffness may hinder the victim, with incomplete calcification could go away after a few minutes, or every 24 hours if completely petrified but at a risk of becoming permanently petrified.

Habitat and ecology

Cockatrice Typically roam near garbage pits and hillside dumps when looking for prey, and can natural habitat in plains, forests and human sewers, living of Vermin and scraps of waste. Their lairs are scattered with fragmented remains of creatures like lizards, insects and people. Their most preferred delicacy is consuming freshly calcified flesh that is still warm, eating by breaking off pieces. Cockatrices seem incapable of eating stone they did not petrify themselves.

Cockatrice lairs often littered with gear of victims, and "cockatrice rocks", prized and high selling stones that are perfectly polished within their crop. Cloth and Leather rarely survives as they are turned into nesting while metal objects are left alone as cockatrice can't fit them in their gullet.

Cockatrices will absentmindedly cluck, giving themselves long away to smart prey, and will make a rooster like crow when angry.

In the cockatrice's mythical origin in human folktales, the first of its kind emerged from an egg laid by a cockerel rooster and incubated by a toad on a dung hill. This similar origin myth, a snake's egg incubated by a rooster instead, weasels and ferrets immune to their perfection, and eating the flesh they petrify, have some believe that basilisks and cockatrices are closer related creatures then gorgons who can eat any kind of stone, but not unpetrified organic material. It is theorized that the rooster in the basilisk origin story could had been a cockatrice invading a snake's den, their is a undiscovered properties between chickens, toads, and serpents, or they shares a common ancestor that came from the First World, which may also include the plated python gorgon based on its superficial resemblance to the royal basilisk.

Modern cockatrices spawn in filthy dens crowded with dozens of the beasts. Their petrifying beaks keep many larger predators at bay, though males (who vastly outnumber females) sometimes encounter humanoids while scouting for new dens. cockatrices have great fecundity, with flocks having a dozen members, with only a few females. Males often fight, driving off the weakest as the outcasts begin searching for a new lair, fight with other flock and is the source of solitary cockatrice encounters.

While many more powerful creatures fear the cockatrice's attack, weasels and ferrets are immune, and sometimes sneak into cockatrice lairs to consume their eggs and young. Roosters infuriate cockatrices, and the magical beasts are as likely to irrationally fight them as flee from them.

Society

Some individuals considered brave or foolish use cockatrices as pets or guard animals.

In Golarion

Cockatrices are known to be found across the vast Whistling Plains that lie east of Galt and Taldor and to the north of Qadira.

Cyclopes are known to occasionally domesticate cockatrices as meat animals. While cockatrices are normally too dangerous to be kept as efficient livestock, the cyclopes' oracular powers allow them to avoid the dangers of their livestocks' petrifying bites, and the cockatrices' quick breeding cycles suit the ravenous one-eyed giants.

References

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.