A Cockatrice is a bygone creature.
Overview[]
- And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and
- the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den.
- — Isaiah 11:8
Legendry[]
Amidst the desert's shifting sands, there lived a serpent most foul, whose breath and gaze killed many a valiant warrior. It slithered into tents to poison children at play and chased crocodiles from riverbeds in pursuit of their eggs. The people called it basilisk. Its legends spread across the Middle East, and from it came the cockatrice.
Evil of the most malignant kind lurked in the basilisk's heart. Such a vile soul could not merely die but sought out a new host through which to continue its fetid practices. During the dark days of the Djinni Plague, when evil spirits fed on the land, the basilisk spawned 39 times, each time creating another like itself. Together they created a great desert, and 10,000 men died before them. Finally, the great courage of warriors, the Arts of scared wizardry and the favor of Allah (Blessed is He!) brought an end to the plague.
The great rooster, bearer of the sun and messenger of God's will and mercy, was blessed with the power to overcome the creature. In time, the crowing of a cock signaled the death of a basilisk, and the people rejoiced. Each day, the great rooster went forth as the sun rose, searching for the evil serpents. His crow held his victim like stone, and there the blessed light of Allah turned the monster to ash. Thus, when the last of the basilisks heard the cock's crow, it froze. Knowing that its blasphemous pleasures were at an end, it pleaded with its underworld gods for mercy.
The aphotic powers saw what transpired and understood the basilisk's despair. They granted the creature one last chance to strike so that it could eat the cock. So blessed, the basilisk writhed and squirmed on the ground. The movements enticed the hungry rooster, and he sought his morning meal. But, like all gifts granted by the Adversary, its blessing did not prove as fortuitous as the basilisk hoped. The basilisk's writhing exhausted him. The cock, too clever to stand still, pecked and poked at his meal, evading viperous tail and poisonous breath until the basilisk's blood thickened like pitch on the earth.
Yet vengeance was the Evil One's. As the cock consumed the basilisk, so the basilisk's soul consumed the cock. In one horrible moment, the creature's body was transformed, and the great rooster, corrupted, changed to suit his new soul. This was the cockatrice born.
Description[]
Basilisks roamed Libya in ancient times. Foot-long snakes whose bite, tail and look could kill, the creatures scoured the land. A basilisk's breath scorched plants and burst rocks, creating the Libyan desert. With each man, woman or child it victimized, the creature's evil reputation grew. Only two enemies threatened the basilisk: The weasel could overcome it with its stench and bite, and the rooster could paralyze it with its dawn-bringing crow.
An ill-fated cock ate the last known basilisk long ago. Crawling away into the weeds, the doomed bird transformed to suit the soul it now bore. The newly born cockatrice could kill with a glance or with vaporous breath, and it could strike with the poison that oozed from its snakelike tail.
Unmitigated malice lurks in the heart of a cockatrice, and its venom has no antidote. The poison boils through veins and sears flesh. When this vile brew reaches the heart of brain, the victim dies. Until then, he falls into spasms and screams in torment, his eyes wide and white. Even after Death drapes his merciful veil across the victims, the body twitches and flails, thrashing with seizures and turmoil within..
All cockatrice are neuters, neither male nor female. The cockatrice reproduces by stinging a mundane rooster. When one does so, the venom pools in the cock's body and forms an egg, which the bird then lays from the pits of its bowels.
As magic faded from the world, the cockatrice began to choose hosts for its offspring with less care. Although the abomination still prefers to find rooster to bear its eggs, it has been known to sting other animals - even humans - with its egg-spawning barb. While the egg grows in the victim's body, the host becomes quite ill. Once the egg is laid (often through the bowels, but sometimes through other orifices or even fresh wounds), the host returns to health. However, it is tainted forever after, stained by its incubation of evil and haunted by terrible dreams. If, by bad fortune, the egg bursts inside its host, the poisonous embryo spills throughout the body. No mortal fate could be worse than that agony....
Extremely territorial, the cockatrice guards its chosen host with a vengeance, just as the rooster guards its hens. Once hatched, a cockatrice seeks out dark, damp, subterranean places. Nocturnal, it abhors the sun, though sunlight does nothing more than irritate it.
The vitriolic creature lurks around farms and pastoral spirit Realms, plaguing magi in their sanctuaries and hidden places. A young cockatrice must range out and find its own den or challenge its sire for ownership of its birthplace. A hatchling has little chance of winning such a challenge until maturity, unless the reigning cockatrice is old and dying.
Despite its foul nature, a cockatrice rarely attacks unless it is corned or its territory is threatened. An intruder hears a sharp rattle-hiss warning; anyone who recognizes the sound should flee immediately. Like a snake, the cockatrice prefers to swallow its prey whole and digest it slowly. A hungry creature pecks at carrion, but only when it can find no other sustenance.
Much to mankind's chagrin, the cockatrice can speak. Its squawking voice is harsh and dissonant, and it gleefully profanes anyone or anything nearby. Scatological humor, multilingual insults, lewd innuendo, crudity and vitriol of all sorts are the preferred banter of cockatrices. The only benefit in speaking to them is that they never lie - though most would rather not know the truths a cockatrice is likely to tell! If the creature does not know the truth, it states so loudly and insults the questioner in the most foul ways.
Werewolves are familiar with cockatrices as spirits of poison and blight, Banes in the service of the Urge Wyrm of Hatred. One myth, told by the skin-changers, claims that the original cockatrice was one of Chimera's brood. The rude creature unwisely told its totem-mother something that ought not to have been spoken. Chimera cursed the cockatrice for its perversion of the spoken riddle, and the creature fled into the Wyrm's own coils out of spite.
Future Fate[]
The last public record of a cockatrice occurs in a Church document of births and deaths in Warsaw, dated 1587. Written by monks, the entry states that two young sisters died when exposed to the breath of a cockatrice in their cellar. The document calls for God to bless the girls' family and to keep it from the evil that takes innocents. Of course, the eventual disappearance of the cockatrice from mortal sight does not mean that the creatures are extinct - simply that they've been forced to hide from mankind because they're too dangerous to be allowed to live. In later days, these monsters can be found in Otherworldly places - unsettled Realms and rural Chantries the provide the cockatrice with hosts, food and warms places to hide.
Image[]
Strutting and pecking, slithering and swallowing, the cockatrice has a frightful appearance. When startled, it shakes ochre-yellow feathers and stretches its wide, thorny wings. The beast's bottom jaw unhinges, dropping to display the black interior of its beak. When clam, a cockatrice struts on its odd chicken legs - wrinkled and gray, dappled with spots like the hands of an old woman. Slithering out from its hind end, the cockatrice's tail has serpentine skin, shiny and smooth like liquid ebony and tipped with a poison-dripping hook. Eyes of centuries-old amber shine cold and wicked, darting this way and that. One look at a cockatrice is enough to make a person flee - or freeze in terror while the monster lays its eggs.
Making its lair, as it does, in foul, hidden places, the average cockatrice is invariably covered with dung or a greasy film of fat from its last meal, which makes it easy to smell well before it becomes visible. A cockatrice's strange build renders it clumsy, but the beast is no less dangerous for its lack of grace.
Roleplaying Hints[]
You are your own bird. If others don’t like it, they can fuck themselves — preferably with a sword. You won’t be told what to do by Saracens, whores, fops, blackguards, hermits, syphilitics, simpletons, dandies, Moors, buggers, lack-wits, wenches, scrofulous beast-men, leeches, troglodytes, lepers, princes or kings, and you haven’t the slightest intention of mitigating a single goddamned word for their timid little ears.
They won’t suffer you? There’s always room in the world for one more cockatrice….
Character Sheet[]
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The source of the mythical basilisk, "little king," was a Spitting Cobra.
- The cockatrice is used as a heraldic animal by the Malkavians during the Dark Ages.
- The first mention of the cockatrice comes from the John Wycliffe translation of the Bible (14th century). It was used in place of various Hebrew words for asp and adder in the Book of Isaiah.
References[]
- WOD: The Bygone Bestiary, p. 18-20
