oky ghost chickens and it’s so fucking stupid.

So they found the Dooms of Tomorrow in B29 and after some experimentation determined that the Annihilation Beams were specifically triggered by creatures passing by rather than having a physical trigger that could be interacted with. Their first plan to disarm the hazards ended with the inventor’s construct companion getting Annihilation Beam’d into lots of tiny little pieces, so they decided to buy some chickens and lob them in. They were hit with beams of pure tsunami, inferno, earthquake, monster, and undead. First two were pretty easy, I went with falling debris for the third, big godzilla hand for the fourth, and void energy for the last. Gonna be real with you, the description is “From Monster” and I just don’t know how that works as a beam.

The thing is, quite apart from the ethical issue of throwing a defenseless animal into something called an annihilation beam, the whole campaign explicitly revolves around a spooky lighthouse that makes undead. I’ve been more subtley referencing it through various random encounters, but the first big event of the story is the lighthouse shooting a giant beam of light that creates undead where it lands. And there are a bunch of haunts and undead inside. Like there’s basically a sign over the entrance saying “Undead made here”. So now the chickens’ ghosts need revenge on their murderers.

Honestly, no idea where I’m gonna go with this, but I’ve made tokens for an undead ghost chicken and a kaiju ghost chicken, so I’ll give them some nightmares next time they go to sleep and see where that takes us.

    • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      6 months ago

      How about the chickens make noises (as chickens are wont to do) that attract nearby monsters and undead? The PCs can’t kill them because they are ghosts/undead, so they have to perform some weird burial rite (or something) to allow the chickens to go to the chicken afterlife.

      • take_five_seconds [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        9·
        6 months ago

        That could be fun to do too! Though I’d hate it if Prof. Owl prepped a super cool kaiju chicken token and never got to use it. Maybe after the rites they turn into Ultra Mega Chicken? Hm.

        • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          6 months ago

          Maybe after the rites they turn into Ultra Mega Chicken? Hm.

          Yes! party-sicko

          In fact, make the DC check based on the number of chickens, and multiple failures summon Kaijucco.

          EDIT: Ghost chickens attract living chickens, annihilation beam turns them into more ghost chickens, and the DC check increases sicko-jammin

      • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        Burial rites normally work on ghosts in the system, but won’t here due to Spooky Ghost Lighthouse ^™ shenanigans - I am taking the idea to attract other monsters though, that’s exactly the type of harassment I’m thinking about

    • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      8·
      6 months ago

      I regret to inform you that you’ve given me terrible ideas and now my players are going to have to endure literally months of random harrassment by ghost chickens. I probably should have looked at the ghost rules first, because the optional abilities made it really easy to turn some ghost commoner statblocks into ghost chickens with abilities appropriate to their deaths.

      Going off recent sessions, I expect it’ll be the session after next that I introduce the idea of ghost chickens with a fun inconsequential combat where they try to attack a flightly Kurrru that runs through a wall after a couple of rounds, to everyone’s delight and entertainment. Then I can start a slow burn guerrilla warfare campaign filled with ambushes, hit and run attacks, and disturbed sleep for about 2 levels, before a final showdown with the mechanically Huge Skiaknorth with Telekinetic Assault reflavoured into chickens accompanied by the other 4 chooks when the party have to gather the magic doohickeys to open the ghost door.
      Of course, opening the ghost door with the magic doohickeys unleashes the BBEG ghost, who uses similar tactics to harrass the party through the later levels, which is basically ideal because that means the ghost chickens aren’t a stupid joke, they’re foreshadowing.