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41. Mike the Rooster

We had a brief pause with Tillall, but now were back to the comic relief section of the list! Before I discuss Mike himself, I feel like I need to describe the circumstances that led to him joining the campaign. For a long time, we had Las Vegas as a major site for our field teams to investigate, and we finally managed to plan missions there in conjunction with Tokyo. We get to Vegas, and we ended the first session with a drunken party that led to our five playable characters in a Hangover-esque scenario where we had NO fucking clue what wed done the night before. One of us wound up stuck atop the space needle, one of us woke up married to the Queen of Spades, one of us woke up missing a daughter (with an unexplained replacement daughter), and one of us woke up having made a multimillion-dollar drug deal. Sorry Data, but waking up next to a bum is the most normal thing that happened to us.

For the rest of the time in Vegas, we were either trying to piece together what happened during our drunken stupor, trying to FIX what happened during our drunken stupor, or through almost every one of our varying storylines, we found ourselves recruited into an Oceans Eleven-style casino heist, trying to break into a Society vault to obtain a weapon of unimaginable power. We eventually broke in, got into a city-wide brawl between half a dozen factions, and eventually managed to escape by the skin of their teeth, while successfully establishing a drug connection for my characters unique product. Thats the basic overview, and I feel its important to understand, given that this entry is about a character called Mike the Rooster.

One of the steps we undertook in our heist was visiting a pawn shop to get supplies and weaponry for use in the heist itself. There were a LARGE number of cool items and unique supplies with interesting stats and effects, and hell, we even had the Stanley Cup that SOMEONE thought they could successfully steal. However, the store owner, who had commissioned us to rob the vault, told us that she would only loan out three or four items to aid in the heist. No problem: even if we couldnt get everything we wanted, the party had five members and we could largely each get an item that would help us in the long run. And thats when Scarlet mentioned the shops rooster mascot. Or maybe he wasnt a mascot and was just around.

One of our party members, Data 7, is a talking dog who is one of our two translators when it comes to interacting with animal NPCs. And he happened to be the point man (point dog?) in interacting with the store owner. So, when Scarlet introduced this rooster character, Data was intrigued. Now, I dont know if Scar intended on Mike the Rooster becoming a prominent part of the campaign, or if he was just there for flavor, but regardless of the intent, we ASSUMED he was important. Its kinda hilarious, thinking back on that scene, how were trying to portion out which items are most valuable for our characters, and then suddenly the subject is broached: Hey, should we use one of our four item slots to take this rooster? And the rest is history.

The whole point of the pawn shop was to equip us for a difficult mission and we believed that having a rooster in our party would be to the benefit of the heist. Were now about half a year later, and I cannot think of a single in-game benefit Mike the Rooster has added to our campaign (against Darkseid, not the CAMPAIGN campaign). Its ACTIVELY hilarious, how we debated and hemmed and hawed, and eventually chose to just burn a supply slot on a detrimental NPC.

You see, Mike is a very skittish character, to put it nicely. To put it less nicely, Mikes characterization is that of South Parks Tweak, compressed into the body of a flightless bird. Mike is constantly paranoid, and when communicating in text, hes in all caps; when communicating in voice, hes still in all caps. And Mike is terrified of EVERY little thing. It doesnt matter what the subject is; Mike will find a way to frantically cluck and perhaps even excite himself to the point of passing out. And what makes Mike even better is that hes one of those minor characters that hangs out with us a bit more, so every so often, Data will just pull Mike and be like Hey, what do you think, Mike? And suddenly we get a frantic cluck, claiming its too much pressure to suddenly be put on the spot for his opinion.

Mike is just such a random character, and his origins in the campaign are so hilarious in and of themselves (we wound up taking him on the heist, and he largely spent his time ensconced in Datas earwhich is the worst place for a creature with Mikes volume), that I cant help but love every appearance he makes. Weve got a lot of good animal characters, but Mike just makes for quality comic relief.

Hint for #40: Has a connection to Trish McKenzie.