Your Players are on yet another step of their quest – they need to find an object to help them on their way. The forgotten amulet of a great cleric hidden in an ancient and run-down abbey. Records of a noble’s lineage in a disused keep that will prove their right to the throne. A blade that one of your Players needs in order to fulfill a promise made to a dying parent.

As they approach, they see something unsettling: statues. People in various poses – fighting, running, falling.

Screaming. Lots of those.

Some of the statues look quite new, while others have been worn down by time and the elements.

It is clear very quickly that this isn’t a strange, avant-garde art installation. It’s a hunting ground.

And they have walked right into the middle of it.

The creatures that patrol this place are strange, chickenlike things. They strut out of the underbrush, their eyes mad and wild. They have filthy feathers sticking out in all directions, a long serpentine tail, and wings that seem far too large and webbed for a creature of its size. There’s one, which seems perfectly easy to handle. And then another. And then more. They advance, slowly and relentlessly. But not attacking.

Herding.

These are the Cockatrices, and on their own, they’re not really all that threatening to a Party that knows what it’s doing. A single Cockatrice has as many as 35 HP and an AC of 11. Easy to hit, especially if you hit it from a distance to avoid the petrification effect of its bite.

A group of Cockatrices is a little more threatening, of course, in the way that a group of any small monstrosities would be. And even if they do manage to get a Player, and the Player manages to fail two fairly reasonable Constitution Saving Throws in a row, they’ll only be turned to stone for 24 hours. The other Party members should be able to finish off these weird creatures and then be there when the player finally comes out of their unfortunate state.

Of course, the creatures in the Statue Garden have been there far longer than 24 hours.

Because the Cockatrices are not the greatest threat here. That particular credit belongs to a creature that is new in the 2024 Monster Manual, one that greatly changes how these creatures work.

The Cockatrice Regent is a much larger, more difficult creature to take on, even for a higher-level party, with as many as 208 HP and a more challenging AC of 15. Its mere existence implies an entire ecological niche that these things might occupy. With it as the center of this nightmare zone, it keeps smaller Cockatrices as its patrollers or flock, watching its territory and bringing food to the Regent.

You see, in thinking about Cockatrices, I was wondering why there’s a 24-hour limit on the normal petrification. My take on it is that petrification is a means of brief preservation – they petrify a mouse or a snake or something like that, drag it back to their lair, and wait for it to revive before they eat it, alive and wriggling. So, should your Cockatrice manage to successfully petrify one of your Players, it might try to drag them away unsuccessfully as they’re not really used to dealing with something so big.

But if something particularly large should wander in to the territory, it is the Regent who can take it down. You see, while it still needs to be in melee in order to effect its petrification, it has a particularly effective way of dealing with those who might try to attack it from afar. Your Rogue may try to hide and pepper the Regent with arrows, or the Wizard may decide that standing in the background and lobbing Magic Missiles at it is an excellent tactic. And against any other enemy, it would be.

The Regent, however, can react to an attack by lashing out at it with pure, mad force, and this reaction has a range of 120 feet. So your Rogue or your Wizard had best be prepared for a counterattack as the determination and fury of the Cockatrice Regent hits them hard out of revenge.

It is also worth noting that, should the Regent get into melee with one of your Players and bite them, the petrification effect is still on the table. But unlike the mundane Cockatrice, those petrified by the Regent are turned to stone indefinitely.

With all of this, you have an excellent and terrifying combat encounter ready to put between your Players and the McGuffin they came for. But what else can we do with this to make your world stranger and more threatening? The Regent and its flock aren’t just combat encounters – they’re proof that petrification changes everything it touches.

Imagine this: there’s been a rash of abductions recently. People are vanishing, and there are no clues as to their disappearance except for a little stone dust and some vile-looking feathers. A ring of kidnappers has been using a trained Cockatrice to petrify their victims, making it easier to take them away and transport them to their lair. Or a more elegant crew of kidnappers might make use of Cockatrice venom to cause less chaos when the deed needs to be done. A poisoned meal might be the last thing a wealthy noble eats before he suddenly blinks and finds himself in a dank bandit cave. And every 24 hours that payment doesn’t come is another blink. And another. And another.

And, for what it’s worth, it’s probably easier to chisel a finger off a statue than to cut it off a living, screaming person.

There might even be a scenario where your Players might choose to use Cockatrice venom to temporarily Petrify themselves. An impending environmental hazard, like a sandstorm or a roving cloud of toxic air can’t be fought, but it can be waited out.

In the worst case, they might use the venom of a Regent instead. Perhaps one of the Players is wrestling with an illness – the weird aquatic transformation of an Aboleth, the feral wildness of a Werewolf, the bloodthirst of a Vampire. Your Party might not be able to help them now, but….

Until they find a cure, they can just store the Player in a basement under a sheet somewhere. When the cure is found or the curse is lifted, it’ll be a quick Greater Restoration and the problem is solved.

This opens up some other possibilities. Your Party has been contracted to acquire a statue from a collector – a statue of a man, well-crafted and lifelike. They need to deliver it undamaged, and the fee is very impressive. As the adventure goes on, they can discover that this statue is not just a statue. It is the ancestor of their patron, someone with knowledge of the past that they need.

You might even have people who contract your Party to acquire venom from a Cockatrice Regent for this exact reason. They want to, after a fashion, live forever. To wait out the politics and threats of the era in the hopes that the future will be a better place. And this brings up new questions about time and life, and why one should choose to endure hardship when it could be just… skipped.

Somewhere there might be a different statue garden. Not one created by a flock of mad, monstrous chickens but by humans with terrifying minds and intentions.

Either way, your Players should know what they’re getting into. And, as they make their way through, maybe they’ll feel some pity for those adventurers who looked at these strange, unnerving creatures and thought, “It’s just a chicken.”