Corpsefeathers
Type
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Threat Level
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Active Status
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Other Names
Corpsebirds, Bonebirds, Drybirds

Description:
Corpsefeathers are a bit of a general name given to a bunch of different types of birds found around the Appalachian Mountains, though nowadays they’re found pretty much everywhere the Society operates. These birds got their name from two details about them, both pretty significant.

First off, the things are skeletons. Skeletons of a bunch of different types of birds. Nobody really knows what holds their bones together, but it’s thought that it’s the same thing that makes them. It’s also unknown how they fly with no actual feathers, they just have the shafts there. Even though they can live for as long as they’re not smashed up, they never get yellow like regular bones do. They’re always as white as chalk, no matter what. Even if they get covered in some kind of liquid that would normally stain on contact, it just rolls off of them and doesn’t stick. They can also still make calls like regular birds, even though they don’t have any muscle to make the noise. The usually only make calls when they’re in danger, they rattle their bones other times. They seem to be able to communicate with each other with their rattles, but if they can actually understand each other they don’t show it much. They’ll sit there and rattle at each other for hours if you let them. They can be any type of bird, but they’re most commonly smaller birds like cardinals and bluejays.

The other part of their namesake is how they always look for corpses. They’ll look around for hours and hours, but they do give up after a while. If they find something dead, they’ll perch on it and rattle their bones. It’s unknown why they do this, and they’ll do it for as long as they’re allowed to.they also like to open and close the dead’s eyelids and mouths, if they have one. They don’t seem to really care about dead plants, going after all the dead animals and people. If whatever they’re perched on has clothes on, they’ll go through their pockets if they have them. They don’t take anything out, and if whatever was in the pocket comes out they’ll try to put it back in. Some corpsefeathers try to peck at the corpses, but their beaks just bounce off and their head falls off.

These things refuse to die. They can fall apart and come back together as many times as their bones remain intact, and most methods of damage do not work on them. Fire, acid, gas, none of it works. They can only really be hurt by blunt force, which crushes up their bones and makes them fall apart. Their bones naturally come back together, and if they can they’ll try to run away after being hit. They’re real fragile too, so try to be careful unless you’re trying to destroy one. If you don’t break all the bones, all the broken ones will come back the next morning like nothing happened. The broken bones will still be nearby, and new ones will replace them.

The Society has taken to taming these critters whenever we can get our hands on them, just so we don’t have them flying off into the nearest town and gaining too much attention. They tend to stick to their forests, but sometimes get a little adventurous and get too close to a town. They’re real useful for seeing if something’s actually dead, you can set them off and they’ll come right back if you’ve trained them good enough. They’ll come back rattling real loud, and that means whatever you’ve been tracking dropped dead. They have an uncanny ability to tell if something’s dead, never seen one be wrong. We’ve even taught them to follow orders, but they can’t really do a whole lot besides getting a pen or something like that.

Background:
Not a whole lot is known about how these things came to be. All we know is what we were told by a man who’s evidently been tending to these things for years. He says there’s certain parts of forests that, when you take the egg of a bird into, it transforms the egg into a corpsefeather egg. The egg still takes the normal amount of time to hatch, but instead of hatching, the eggshells just collapse into dust around them. They still can’t fly until they’d normally be able to as a bird, and still grow like the bird normally would, just without skin or meat or anything. We’ve done a few tests with different types of eggs in these areas, and sure enough, they work. Besides of how they are made, we don’t know why it happens.

Location and Population:
There are thousands of these things in captivity alone. Because of how easy they are to tame, we usually just grab them and take them back to a sanctuary when we see them. We’re not sure about how many there are in the wild, but you don’t see them as much as you would have before. With Society intervention, we’ve taken down their wild numbers significantly.

They’re found wild around the Appalachian mountains, where most of their forests are found. These forests are most common in the states nearest to the mountain range, like West Virginia and Tennessee. If you see a forest that’s covered in fog and hear bones rattling, you’re in corpsefeather territory.

Hunting or Procurement Methods:
Once you hear the bones rattling, just look around. When you see it, just find something dead, like a rat. Toss that somewhere nearby, and they’ll be there before you know it. After that, you can just grab its head while it’s distracted and pocket it. The body will run around for a second, before calming down and walking over to you. Put the head back on it’s spine, and then grab it by the back. It won’t even move. After that, you can just carry it or put it in your pocket if it’s small enough. Take it to a sanctuary or back to one of its forests. If you really want to keep the critter you just caught, you’ll have to go through the same adoption process as usual. After that, you can just use small animals to train it, which can be done in a week or two if you’re good.

Encounter Records:
There have been so many encounters with these things, we’d be here all day if we went over all of them. We’ll put down some special ones here when they’re reported.

Additional Notes:
Stop making more of these things. There’s already too many of them.

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