"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.

If you'd like to sponsor your own monsters, read bonus monsters including monster girls and kaiju, or just help an unemployed writer out, check out the Creature Codex Patreon here!]

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.

Okay, but the problem, friend, is that I know you know a ton of stuff, so I'm scared I'm going to dispense a Fun Fact and you'll already know it. We'll give it a try, though. So Today You Learned about Cockaigne.

[This is Goya's take on it, in English titled "The Greasy Pole".]

So in medieval Europe, there was this utopian myth of a place called 'Cockaigne', which was basically like... a parody of paradise. Cheese rains from the sky, houses are made of sweets, shops were full of free stuff, fat geese wander around, and you could get sex wherever you wanted. There's no big animals, no predatory animals, and the rivers had milk and honey. On holidays, a young boy might try climbing up a greased-up pole to grab the ham at the top (hence Goya's painting).

...Freud would have a field day.

You might ask, "What the fudge?" but to a lot of people, mostly peasants, this supposedly sounded pretty amazing. No hard work all day, no animals you have to clean poop from, no nobles telling you what to do... you could just chill and eat whatever you wanted! Is that not a peasant's paradise?

[Bruegel the Elder's painting of Cockaigne.]

At least... that's the idea most people think of it as. This Atlas Obscura article points out that the most widely-known account of it, a medieval poem, seems oddly focused on the lives of monks in Cockaigne (who, like everyone else in this magical land, get to eat and have sex all the time), so they suggest that maybe it's not so much a peasant's paradise as much as that of new monks who regret their life choices, or assume that's what everyone would want.

I suspect it's not really a place anyone believed in, as much as a weird fantasy someone had one day. Regardless, it's inspired a few pieces of art, including this song called "Big Rock Candy Mountains" about a modern version for hobos in the US.

Also, I remember in The Rook by Daniel O'Malley (or it might be in the sequel?), it's mentioned that centuries past, the Checquy previously went to war with the "surprisingly belligerent inhabitants of Cockaigne".

Thanks for your patience anon! Ok, here’s the ideas I have, used some of the look of the live movie cuz I did like the designs for some of it but will be a completely different story, based somewhat on an old story concept I put together with my friend @im-fairly-whitty a few years ago.

I see it as starting out like your basic Nutcracker ballet story, it’s Christmas, Clara gets a nutcracker from her godfather Drosselmeyer, during the night the mice come in and the nutcracker comes to life to fight them. Mouse King doesn’t die though he gets away and Nutcracker is still a nutcracker and Clara goes with him to the magical candy land of Cockaigne, where there are peppermint trees and lemonade springs and gingerbread houses, usually sans witches. (Basically Barbie Nutcracker Movie set up a bit, but Clara goes as she wants to have an adventure/doesn’t feel appreciated at home, she’s running away.)

They travel thru the war torn candy land and meet the Sugarplum Fairy, the leader of the ‘human/human adjacent army against the—for lack of a better word— vermin army that has been besieging them. The army is made of mice and bugs and other unwanted creatures that over hundreds of years have eaten the magical food that makes up the land and gained sentience and anthropomorphic traits which brought them into conflict with the humans. They are looking for the Krakatuk Crown, a powerful object that could tip the scales of the war. The Sugarplum Fairy takes them to the ruler of Cockaigne, Princess Pirlipat, who says she is the Nutcracker’s fiancé and who wears a mask at all times, the result of a curse placed on her by the Mouse King’s predecessor. She sends them on a quest to find the crown and save the land. Clara and Nutcracker have to find it as the main quest, and along the way we would learn about the Nutcracker and Mouse King’s backstory:

Years ago the Princess Pirlipat was cursed by the Mouse Queen, in revenge for Pirlipat’s parents having caused the death of the Mouse Queen’s seven sons in the war. Pirlipat is cursed into a hideous form that she can only be released by if someone with a true hero’s heart manages to defeat the sorcererous Mouse Queen and places the Queen’s crown of her head. (The crown could be carved from a magical Krakatuk nut to reference the og story and it’s where the queen gets her magic from). The court magician, Herr Drosselmeyer, believes his nephew Andre could be the destined hero and brings him from Our World to Cockaigne.

Andre, who also wanted to escape his old life where he didn’t feel understood and be a hero, undertakes the task of attempting to gain the crown by infiltrating the vermin army, during time he makes friends with the Queen’s one remaining son, Alexander, and comes to see that the vermin army are actually just as ‘human’ as people are and haven’t been treated right. He feels conflicted about his quest, but still determines to steal the crown and be a hero, and maybe once he’s proved himself and married the princess he could start peace talks?

—But of course it all goes horribly wrong. The Mouse Queen ends up being killed, Pirlipat’s curse isnt lifted lifted due to Andre’s not having a true hero’s heart (valuing fame over decency) .The furious Pirlipat tells him she has no use for him now he’s failed, and she will take the crown and use it to destroy all the sentient vermin once and for all.

And Alexander, now king and literally haunted by his dead family’s ghosts (I wanted so bad to have 7 headed Mouse King but I don’t think it could viably by animated so vengeance driven ghost brothers driving him mad it is) swears vengeance on Andre, who in shame runs away, hiding the crown so it can’t be used for any more curses, using it only once to banish the memory of its location and the shameful events from his mind, turning him into a toy, something tossed about by someone else’s will, stagnant, stuck in his shame and guilt. He’s eventually found by his uncle Drosselmeyer in his exile andwhisked away from Cockaigne by his uncle to try and find a new hero to break his self imposed curse, which Drosselmeyer believed he had found in Clara, not because she was inherently destined, but because she had the heart to learn what needed to be learned to find the truth and grow as a person, and help Andre realize he could grow and make things right as well.

So basically the pair have to grow and realize a true hero means being compassionate and trying to understand those different from you, and doing what’s best for all, not just what will get you fame and glory, rediscover the truth of the Nutcracker’s memories and stop Pirlipat’s genocidal plans and save Alexander from his growing madness (the ghosts are very set on wiping out all the humans as well) and bring true peace to all the people of Cockaigne.

Ga je mee

Ga je mee

Naar Luilekkerland... 🩸

Corndemon!jaskier au

He lures lost/ mourning souls into the corn fields with his sweet song of Cockaigne, a land where evil doesn’t exist, sorrow is unheard of and wine and pleasure is plentiful.

(but issa trap yk yk)

Cockaigne (start at the beginning)

Chapter Seven (final chapter!)

Author: HollyShadow88 (futureofthemasses on tumblr, ShannCanWrite on twitter)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: None

Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC Sherlock)

Summary:

Cockaigne (n) \kä; ‘kān\ : an imaginary land of great luxury and ease

When John’s contacted by an old uni friend about problems in his new art exhibition, he doesn’t think it will be worth Sherlock’s time. After a glance of the crime scene, however, they’re both pulled into the project in ways John didn’t expect. Will a week of erotic performance art finally be enough to bring them together in the way they both secretly hope? (Spoiler: it’s a tropey fic, of course it will)

Chapter Summary:  Finally, John and Sherlock talk.