Cockentrice
"Cockentrice" © deviantArt user "FolliesofFoster", accessed at their gallery here
[One of my many other interests beyond monsters is food and food history. Food is something that tabletop RPGs take mostly for granted, despite being one of the prime driving forces of human society. So I'm going to be intermittently writing some monsters associated with food. First up is the cockentrice, an edible gaff from the Middle Ages, made by sewing a pig to a capon. I first learned about it through Tasting History, which did it as the featured dish for the 1st anniversary of the channel. The inspirations for this entry also include the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", the scene with the cow who wants to be eaten in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and a conversation I had with @monstersdownthepath about the horror manga Bio-Meat: Nectar. Since the realm of Cockaigne is said to have roast pigs walking around just asking to be carved up, these guys seemed like logical residents.
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Cockentrice CR ½ N Fey This strange little creature has the head and forelimbs of a pig, but the hindquarters of a plucked bird. Its eyes are bulging and red and its skin golden. Despite its bizarre appearance, it seems harmless, and smells of cooked meat.
The land of Cockaigne exists in the First World, a paradise of plenty to reward the faithful petitioners of the Eldest. Wine flows like water, the streets are paved with pastries, and fish jump out of lakes into fisherman's boats. One of the species native to this land is the cockentrice; a beast with the front half of a pig, the back half of a chicken and an insatiable desire to be eaten. Cockentrice flesh is essentially precooked, and smells and tastes like the best qualities of both its component beasts’ meat. They can speak, and usually speak in short clipped phrases such as “hello,” “please eat me,” “try a thigh” or “serve me with potatoes or dressing!” Cockentrices are obsessed with food, eating and cooking, and if allowed to will plan elaborate feasts, their own bodies being served as one of the courses. The act of eating a cockentrice is the trigger for its reproduction, and if a cockentrice is consumed, two more of the little beasts appear in the vicinity of their predecessor’s death site.
In the First World, this repeated cycle of consumption and spawning is constrained. Cockentrices can gorge themselves on the other magical comestibles of Cockaigne without worry, and periodic culls by more brutal fey prevent overpopulation. If one of these little critters finds itself on the Material Plane, however, their population can rapidly spiral out of control. Although a self-replenishing meat source may seem like a blessing, the quick reproductive rate of the cockentrice, combined with their own need for food, may result in the fey beasts being the only source of food in a region, as they eat all the rest of it, which only causes their numbers to spike even more rapidly. If cockentrices escape from captivity into the wild, they can collapse food chains, as they consume all plants in an area, starve out other herbivores and overwhelm predators with their sheer numbers. Lastly, they are omnivorous as both pigs and chickens are. Humanoids are by no means their preferred prey, but as food supplies dwindle, the cockentrices will turn on their usual consumers to keep their own bellies full.
