Ethereal Forces: 0 Intelligence:
1 Precision: 1
Celestial Forces: 0 Will:
0 Perception:
1
Toughness/2 (the bloody things seem to shrug off
bullets, as any hunter will tell you.
They're always finding ducks with old gunshot wounds, believe it or
not.)
Body Hits: 6
Skills: Dodge/4, Fighting/4, Flying/6, Swimming/3
This is, like, you know, a duck. It quacks, swims, and flies. It pecks for a straight 2 Body Hits per
attack, presuming that you somehow annoy it enough. Ducks usually don't go looking for trouble, though. Indeed, the only reason why I'm even
bothering with this one is that, sometimes, trouble goes looking for them.
You see, once upon a time there was a Demon Prince
named - no, not Vapula - Kobal.
Yup, that's not much better, I know.
Anyway, once upon a time Kobal decided that it would be useful (and more
importantly, funny) to have natural weapons against the Host. For reasons best known to himself, he picked
ducks. So, he fiddled with their
genetics a tad.
Hey, Superiors can do that sort of thing: if you can
swallow them being able to make sentient creatures from scratch, then you can
swallow this.
Anyway, what he did was make them explosive. That's right: there are ducks out there that
explode for 4d6 damage when they come in contact with angel flesh (ducklings
explode for a mere 2d6). Sort of like a
matter/antimatter reaction, except without the entire vaporization of
continents and hard radiation thing.
OK, the analogy isn't perfect, but it gives you an idea.
There's only two problems: first, violently
exploding is usually not the most evolutionarily sound strategy for the members
of any given species, so there aren't that many ducks with this, and I use the
term very loosely, advantage. Second,
well, the experiment didn't go perfectly well: there's a roughly equivalent
number of ducks out there that violently explode when they touch demonic
flesh.
No, of course there's no way to tell which kind of
duck you have: you have to pick one up and test it. Every time that a celestial grabs a duck, roll 666: on a Divine
Intervention, you have a Demonic Duck Bomb and on an Infernal Intervention you
have an Angelic Duck Bomb. On any other
roll you simply have an annoyed duck.
Kyriotates should note that they are immune to this problem, but they
can't tell what kind of duck they're currently possessing, either. This can lead to awkwardness - and, of
course, dissonance. Those with the
Malakite of Creation or Scabbard Attunements should also note that all of this
means that technically all ducks can be seen as potential weapons.
Generally, celestials only go for the Duck Maneuver
when they have no other options: you never know. Angels tend not to use it, even then: it's just not nice. Of course, demons have no such scruples,
although they'll reach for a duckling first: less potential damage to your hand
and the critters are more aerodynamic to throw.
So, now you know why so many angels reluctantly keep a tennis racket around...