Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Chase the chickens!

Oh no! Ma Hardwick’s flock of prized chickens has escaped into the Shire at large! Come and help her catch them and put them back safely in their henhouse before they eat up all the seeds and RUIN EVERYTHING!

HOW THE GAME WILL WORK
-

• I will list the following places in which the chickens may be.
  - Write an RP post searching one location for the chickens, each round, and I’ll tell you what happens and what you find!
  - The winner will be the person who locates the most chickens.
  - The chickens will move around, so you can search the same location twice in a row
  - The maximum amount of chickens you can pick up in one go is three chickens, so feel free to search a location someone else has already searched that round… yeah don’t question me on this, maybe you did pick up eight chickens that one time, I don’t care
  - Occasionally areas will have penalty occurrences which you will have to RP out before searching again
  - Let’s not question geographical accuracy too much for this, k

RULES!

• please post in character, but all characters welcome. If you wish to RP as a canon character, please don’t choose someone that another RPer has already chosen to RP as in this game. First come first served. No minimum char count, you can post “Gandalf looked in the haystack” if you really want.
  - You may RP as many characters as you wish, but searching rules as below will apply
  - You may search one area every round or 48 hours, whichever comes sooner. Please bold the area you are searching in your post. Putting it at the top of your post is ideal.
  - I expect this game to be PG13 but just please content warn for anything particularly violent or adult within your post otherwise
  - Do not godmode anyone else. You may godmode the chickens, or anything I tell you that you find in the area.

AREAS

• - The duck pond
  - The potato fields
  - The mathom-house
  - The Green Dragon inn
  - The post office
  - The brewery
  - The Mill
  - The party field
  - The flower-beds
  - The milking shed
  - The dovecot
  - The apple trees
  - The strawberry fields
  - The bakery
  - The schoolyard
  - The haystack

“Mrs. Pumpkinberry, I don’t understand what we’re doing.” Jorgy complained, having been dragged out of his bed at the unnatural hour of eleven. He’d barely had time to have a small first breakfast, no second breakfast, and a cup of tea for a late elvensies before his neighbor and surrogate mother was pushing him out the door. It was Saturday and that was the day he and Jorgyferret stayed inside and made pillow forts. And yet, he was out here looking for, what was it Mrs. Pumpkinberry had said? Chickens? But neither Jorgy nor Mrs. Pumpkinberry owned any chickens.

It had to be a ploy of some kind. Yes, yes that had to be it. He yawned as she pulled him along, his waistcoat still half unbuttoned. Was it his birthday today? Surely not. Jorgy couldn’t remember when his birthday was, in actual fact, but he was quite certain it was not today, given that today was a pillow fort day not a party day (those were usually every second Monday). Maybe it was a chicken and pillow fort day? He would have to check his calendar, which he couldn’t do because he was off searching for chickens. Was today even Saturday? Jorgy was confusing himself.

If it was his birthday, Mrs. Pumpkinberry was doing a fantastic job of leading him on a merry chase. She knew how much he loved scavenger hunts.

He was still groggy and half asleep, but he could have sworn he heard some clucking or some tweeting or whatever sound it was that chickens made nearby in his…

Flower-Beds

The strawberry fields

Chickens. They were tasty but they were also Morgoth himself. Indeed the three brothers were quite certain that Sauron bread the fell beasts not from dragons but chickens. The attitudes matched and they smelled bad and they flipped around the same when you popped their heads off.

Indeed chickens were Morgoth and Hob Bob and Reginald the third were going to do everything they could to eat all the chickens. Starting by searching the strawberry patches where they could also rat strawberries while they were at it .

The last time Gellam had come to the Shire and ended up engaging in a hunt for someone's lost birds, it had been geese. The wood-elf was inclined to believe generally that geese were more evil-minded than chickens and had broken out deliberately and with malicious intent in mind. But it seemed that this particular group of chickens were an exceptionally hungry lot and bent on destroying someone's crop, and Gellam had also heard stories (though he had never seen it for himself) that chickens could skeletonize a mouse in under a minute when they felt like it and worked together. The birds of Mirkwood were distinctly less vicious and aggressive than chickens as a rule, it seemed, and Gellam began to wonder whether he might have misjudged geese a bit. No, no, that was all a ploy! He straightened his cap and resolved not to judge the chickens until they gave him a reason to. He would begin his search in the most logical of places for things to be lost: the haystack.

Gellam rolled about in the hay, savoring the sweet smell and soft (slightly prickly) comfort of the stack in which he found himself. It seemed an excellent place to take a nap, and napping was one of the Fool's favorite pastimes- but no sooner did he find himself beginning to drift off to sleep, than he also felt the hay beneath him start to drift downward- the stack was sliding! And was that the angry voice of a farmer coming to see who had ben messing up their haystack?! Gellam sprang out of the hay and tumbled to the ground, springing up again out of a neat shoulder roll, and took off at a spring before the farmer could see who had done the deed. Chickens, right! He was supposed to be finding chickens. Next, Gellam decided to take a look in another place where if at least there weren't chickens, there would be consolation: the brewery.

There not, as it turned out, chickens in Jorgy’s garden. Despite the fact that this was probably a good thing, Jorgy could not help but feel disappointed. He assumed that he could just waltz around being his typical Jorgian self and chickens would just flock to him like… chickens is too obvious a word here, geese, no not geese, pigeons, no, hmmm, doves, yes, he assumed the chickens would flock to him like doves. The structure of this narrative is rapidly losing any sort of cohesion. Suffice to say, Jorgy came upon his tulips thinking there might be chickens only to find that there were only tulips. He loved his tulips though, each of them had a name they’d shared with him and a personality. Sometimes he could just sit in his garden and carry on a conversation with his flowers until the sun went down. Some hobbits though that was odd, but they couldn’t talk to flowers so that was their loss.

Still, he heard the cheeping and the tweeting (or was it twittering) somewhere nearby. Mrs. Pumpkinberry had a smile on her face that suggested something vaguely mischievous, but upon being asked she mimed locking her lips and throwing away a key. She definitely knew where the chickens were. Where was the last place she looked before going silent? Ahhh! Jorgy couldn’t remember! Ahhh!

If he could hear them that must mean they were close, unless they were experts in throwing their clucking. Oh, oh no, what if they were experts and throwing their clucking? This is a very strange sentence, but it was a worry that suddenly Jorgy had. His foe was a clever one, despite being a chicken.

He decided he had better check…

The Potato Fields

Chickens and potatoes, potatoes and chickens. It made sense to Jorgy that there would be chickens amongst the potato plants. He couldn't articulate why it made sense to him beyond the reasoning that chicken and potatoes are very good together, but in the end it didn't matter all that much. What mattered was that he and Mrs. Pumpkinberry had found some! Two was a much greater number than the amount they previously had, zero, and Jorgy was quite sure he was well on the way to finding all the chickens in... the Shire? No that was too many. Hobbiton? Still too many. The neighborhood? Sure, Jorgy, sure. He wasn't sure what to do with the chickens now that he'd found them. He didn't want to throw them in a sack or something and carry them around like Johnny Appleseed, but how else was one supposed to carry chickens? He didn't have any cages with him, nor did Mrs. Pumpkinberry. For now, until he came up with a better idea, he would probably stay here and watch them do... whatever it was that chickens did during the day. Jorgy never paid much attention to chickens and what they did all day, he was sure he was going to be in for a great surprise! Oh! What if he made leashes for them like dogs? Surely that was a good idea. Sure, Jorgy, sure.

Staying in the Potato Fields

Oh dear, that Golden Hen Ale was... it was something, wasn't it? Gellam was normally the most strong-headed of drinkers, but the Hobbits had done something to that ale, he was sure of it, as he wandered aimlessly away from the brewery, hiccuping with delight. Perhaps the chickens had imbibed as well? Maybe that's why they were so good at hiding? The ducks would know.

(the duck pond)

Elanor Starsley

To get her mind off the older Hobbit boy that wanted nothing to do with Elanor after she nearly killed the Hobbit lass he is interested in, Elanor Starsley's elders suggest she try her hand at catching some chickens that have escaped Ma Hardwick.

"Who's Ma Hardwick, and why should I care?" the young lass pointed out.

"Because if you don't, there could be a much more severe punishment in store for you. You need to handle rejection better, and not try to take out anyone whom this older boy is interested in. He's much too old for you anyway. You were never this way when you lived in Bree, so what gives?"

She was right about one thing, Elanor wasn't this way in Bree, at least not about a boy. "Okay, I"ll give it a try." the young lass decided, since if she kept getting into trouble, her parents might want to send her back to Bree. Although she did miss it, she was glad they re-located to the Shire, since in Bree, Elanor always had to watch where she stepped, especially when she went to the Prancing Pony inn, since there were many Big Folk about. At least she didn't have to worry about that in the Shire, or at least not as much.

She spotted a chicken when she headed in the direction of the apple trees, since Elanor hadn't eaten in some time, and wondered if she could find any apples that happened to fall off one of the trees if one of the chickens started to peck it for whatever reason. "Perhaps they're hungry too." Elanor thought to herself, but do chickens even like apples?

The apple trees

They were doing horrible absolutely horrible not that it mattered they'd found a little nest with an egg in it and they were going to eat that egg. Yes they were. Of course they were then promptly chased by a very angry hobbit with a broom. And honestly they were already ready to fight god over garbage so they attacked the hobbit and scratched her up something terribly before going back to looking for eggs. No chickens. This one was chickens.

Searching the Milkshed

ALSO ALSOI found an egg

Istya had been working in the Strawberrystar Brewery for a few months now - and honestly, with not very much to do. She had been mostly helping the local pubs and not much else. So when she noticed Gellam once in the brewery's fields, she poked her head out and looked about in curiosity. She eventually figured out there was a 'find the chicken' game going on about her. Something to do! She could help her community with something a bit more productive for the time being.

The Bakery

So she went and spoke to her husband real quick before heading out the front door with her bonnet in her hand. As she got the bonnet over her head, she noticed something peculiar over at the local bakery. What was traveling along the fence going about the bakery? It looked rather small. Maybe a chicken? Maybe a fox? Hopefully not both.