The chicken state

[Dragon Elite]

SO, here I present you a question:
What would a chicken town do, trade with etc.
I am going to use this in a game.

[Ashtagon]

Other than cross roads?

I think we need a few more details to work with

[Dragon Elite]

Stuff like they must have traded with eggs, because they produce them.

[DracoDei]

I am actually very good a this sort of thing I think, but I am depressed these days, so you MAY have to PM me to remind me to post on this thread...

As your information currently stands I need more information before I can start talking very much:
Do they have manipulative enough wings to use tools?
Are they the same size as real chickens?
Racial ability score modifiers?
How hard is it to tell one from a regular chicken?

[Ouranos]

An entire. CITY. Of Chocobos. That are intelligent. And speak. They trade FEATHERS as currency (because eggs is insanely barbaric, would you trade your own kids or fetuses as money?) and since they obviously don't have the opposable thumb (chicken fingers anyone?!) we'd have to come up with a way to handle that.

[Jokasti]

And the city would obviously be a crossroads....

[DracoDei]

(because eggs is insanely barbaric, would you trade your own kids or fetuses as money?)

Yes, but most eggs AREN'T fertilized... the closest human equivalent would be if someone had a legitimate reason to be willing to pay for used tampons.
Certainly a FOREIGN concept, but not necessarily barbaric... of course, in a medieval society it might take magic to tell the fertilized ones from the non with enough certainty for a hen to feel comfortable about it, what with most people being married and trying to have as many children as possible due to infant mortality and cultural norms and etc... depends how gritty your fantasy is.

Their feet MIGHT be prehensile, or maybe they have an integrated society where they do the stuff that uses strength or land-speed, and have humanoids to do the manipulation... maybe even slaves???

[urkthegurk]

Without more information, this is really a difficult question to answer. If they are basically feathery people, then you can choose whatever economy you want. Why not use money? Eggs are breakable, and everyone has feathers. So what, we use leaves in our economy because we're related to monkeys? This is boring, and I shall not address it.

If they're chickens, then they don't have an economy. They have rape and racism, and they have to worry about the entire society being carted off in a big truck and eaten. Also, everyone is the same age.

So, that's a weird world, and it becomes even more disturbing when you ramp up their IQ and let them talk. Although, most farmed chickens would never learn to speak more than a few words, since they only live a few years, and have no parents.

Outside of the Factories, the chickens live a noble, short, and carefree life in the woodlots and fields. It would be very difficult to round up intelligent chickens, those things go very fast when they want to. And they can fly, if they haven't had their wings clipped recently, and a lot better than you'd think. Some chickens live free, but live on a family farm, which is usually run by humans or by a coalition of animals. Chickens make poor politicians, but half-decent kings and despots.

Still lots of rape, though. The roosters are more chivalrous than their factory-farmed conterparts, but since the law of the Chicken relies on the just rule of one Head Cockerel, and since that role goes to the strongest of the males, it is a society both of violence and extreme male privilege. Hens are only given respect when they are broody, and in some cases, not even then. In the past, chickens underwent complex mating rituals and displays, and while the roosters still formed harems, they were much more respectful of the right and wishes of the ladies.

Some roosters, however, are merely chauvinistic. They rely on their masculine charms and their elaborate wing-dances to win the hearts of the ladies. These charmers take levels in aristocrat and rogue, and maximize diplomacy, dance and bluff as skills.

In mixed flocks, chickens do not fair so well. Turkeys are huge, but dimwitted and slow. Geese are agressive and controlling, and they especially hate the posturing of the Cockerels. Ducks cannot be bothered with politics, and think chickens are best when ignored. Chickens, as noted before, are also quite racist, preferring company of chickens that look like them. This is probably an offshoot of their tendency to form close family ties: siblings spend much of their time together, sometimes even mother the same brood, and even when they don't get along, they treat family with some respect.

That's all I got. I didn't provide stats for these chickens. I imagine it would be unfeasible to play a chicken in a party of regular adventurers. Some chickens, though, have a noble spirit, and lack very little in courage. They sharpen their spurs and polish their beaks, and sally forth to do battle against the forces of darkness. Preferably not in the dark, actually, because they can't see in the dark very well. When the dark comes, it is prudent to hide in a tree. 'Don't fight darkness on its own ground' is a common chicken aphorism. Many chickens also adventure to free their brethren from bondage.

That really is all I got now.

[The Demented One]

No one, not even chicken people, are going to be using feathers as a currency. Pretty much every form of currency in the world has been either practical (cows, food, etc. under a barter system), scarce (gold and silver under a mercantilistic system) or backed by a major authority (the U.S. dollar), or something else that The Demented One is too eurocentric too have considered (those giant stone wheels, for instance). Feathers ain't any of those.

[Cespenar]

But dislodged feathers could be scarce in a chicken community. They are painful to remove off of yourself if you choose to, and a featherless chicken would lose all his dignity, not to mention he will freeze in the coming winter. So, taking that into account, the main supplier of the economy would be dead chickens, and if you couple it with some law enforcement (by the hens, obviously), it practically acts like inheritance, since only the family members would get the feathers of a dead chicken.

[DracoDei]

you obviously have no idea how many shed whiskers a moderately sharp-eyed and alert individual such as myself can collect off of housecats... ok so like 5 over the years, but still... feathers are harder to lose than whiskers.

[Dragon Elite]

Wow. That's a lot of stuff.
So, chickens molt every single winter, and replace all their feathers. I know because my chickens are molting. There fore, it would be not so scarce, but have sudden influxes. However, gold had a couple of the same influxes, and didn't stop getting used.

[Ouranos]

Well, they don't have to be just like real world chickens.

[urkthegurk]

Possibly, some chickens have magical feathers. Regular feathers are of course useless, except for counterfeiting. But all chicken magic could revolve around their magical feathers, which young pullets would inherit and add to their wings. It would be the perfect high-level currency (+5 magic swords, anyone?) but make a tinsy bit of sense. Probably they would have some sort of printed currency too, but it would be on the feather standard.

Actually, you still couldn't have a feather standard unless you had a way to accurately determine a feather's magical worth. How would you do that?

[Debihuman]

Are these sentient chickens? What size are they?

Debby

[Dragon Elite]

A wizard gave the chickens permanent detect magic?
High level wizard chickens?

[TabletopNuke]

Savage Species has rules for anthropomorphic animal characters. With that format, chickens would be small, have no racial hit dice, and a level adjustment no higher than +1.

There is a myth (Chinese, I think) that silkie chickens (yes, that's spelled correctly) were descended from phoenixes. Perhaps your chickens have a similar origin myth, and seek to return the race it it's previous glory. Or they could revere a deity of the harvest and master of beasts, (actually an ancient farmer who raised the chickens' ancestors), passing the stories of his deeds from one generation to the next by word of beak.

Maybe the chickens are divided into clans by breed. The buckeyes have a long standing blood feud with the leghorns, and the silkies try to stay out of the way.