We have to cater to the people who have birds as pets, right? But there’s the issue of them flying away or what if someone else’s cat tries to eat them… We needed a bird that was big enough to be seen and could at least…sorta…fight back. Which is how we ended up on chickens. They fit inside of the main character (MC)’s saddlebag, but also can be carried or walk alongside them. Roosters are available in every district, and they aren’t a pet players can tame so they’ll have to pay the adoption fees for one. (They can’t exactly live in the wild, and taking someone else’s rooster is stealing.)

Independent and protective, roosters are a good replacement for a guard dog. Their feathers come in a beautiful array of colors. Assume, of course, that with our roosters, the spurs have been cut so they aren’t fighting roosters, though those beaks and feet can still hurt if they get into trouble. Rather than specific breeds, we are going by the color of plumage or interesting quirks for our roosters, since they come in a wide variety. With a few exceptions.

With chickens and roosters, there’s always going to be some option that we missed, but we try to cover the basics. We had a starting grouping of colors, from blonde to red to brown to black and mixes of different colors. Unlike dogs or cats and future other pets that we’ll get to, the roosters will occasionally have true-red, blue-green, or similar bright colors that let them really stand out in a crowd.

While not a “normal” pet to those from the city or suburb, roosters are familiar to a rural setting and therefore make perfect sense in Astranar. Will players invite this colorful feather duster into their homes? If they aren’t quite to their liking, well, maybe their barnyard companion next week will be more their speed.