#pikadon

Still from Love and Peace (2015)

[Today kicks off a whole week of theoretically Christmas themed content. First up, the main monster from Love and Peace, one of my favorite Christmas movies and one that is upsettingly difficult to get a hold of. Do you want a magical realism movie about anxiety, rock and roll, giant turtles and talking dolls with anxiety? Of course you do. The stats below do not fully reflect Pikadon's entire arc (no Santa Claus is involved, for example), but a way to convert it into a self-contained creature.

The word "pikadon" is postwar Japanese slang for an atomic explosion: pika for flash and don for bang. Pikadon in the movie gets that name because his owner overhears it on TV and decides "it sounds like a kaiju". Foreshadowing. If you want to drop those connotations, just call it a wishing turtle.

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Pikadon CR 11 CG Magical Beast This creature resembles a green pond turtle the size of a table. Its eyes are large and bright, and it chirps and coos in an endearing way.

Turtles are seen as figures of stability and longevity in many cultures. This expectation, combined by the latent wishcraft in people’s deepest desires, occasionally results in the creation of a pikadon, or wishing turtle. Pikadons are usually found in ponds, lakes and rivers associated with good fortune, whether they be in remote areas or in the heart of a bustling city. Pikadons are good hearted creatures that want to help people, especially people who feel trapped or hopeless. A pikadon will read that person’s desires (or just listen to them tell their woes) and translate it into a wish. Each wish gets wrapped up in the magic of song, and a pikadon sings a unique song for every wish made on it.

Of course, pikadons are not very smart. The wishes they grant can have wide reaching and unintended consequences based on how their benevolent but dim brains interpret them. In addition, wishers can get addicted to the power of having their dreams coming true and become corrupted by their sudden rise in fame or fortune. In that case, pikadons turn on their wishers, typically by wishing for an ironic comeuppance. If a corrupted wisher turns violent, or if someone tries to force a pikadon to grant a wish when it doesn’t want to, it can assume colossal size. Pikadons still aren’t particularly fast or aggressive when they’re the size of a building, but their sheer mass can still do quite a bit of damage.

Some pikadons get a case of wanderlust, and join a troop of adventurers for a time. Each of their wishing songs retains a trace of its previous magic, granting a pikadon the ability to support itself and its allies with song like a bard. Pikadons traveling with a party usually spread their wishes out among party members, granting each member a single wish before reserving wishes for people who the party comes across or for emergencies (like the deaths of party members). Pikadons do not like combat, and do not participate in physical violence unless pushed to the extreme. If a pikadon finds its life too stressful and exciting, it might choose to wish itself back into being a mundane turtle.

Pikadons can speak Common, but organizing their thoughts into coherent sentences requires some concentrating. Most of the time, they communicate in musical baby talk.