Toll Free Sheep
They sneak up on you when you're alone, when you're vulnerable - when you take a few steps out of the campfire's circle of light to relieve yourself, when you're on watch by yourself and everyone else is asleep. When you've just gotten back from town and you're waiting on everyone else to return. Don't ever be alone. It won't stop them, but it helps.
You might see one from a distance, on its way to torment some other lost soul. It'll look just like a regular sheep from 100 paces out, but the closer it gets - you'll see it's wrong. The wool isn't natural. It's miles and miles of tightly coiled analog phone chord. Your character won't know what that is, but they'll be able to tell the wool is wrong immediately. If they touch it, they'll be slightly disturbed by the feel of the plastic coating on the wires.
The head is an old rotary telephone complete with cradle receiver. The wire of the sheep's body connects to the receiver and they can be easily unravelled, but this kills the sheep.
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The Toll Free Sheep pose no more physical danger than a regular sheep, probably even less so because they lack animal instincts and aggression, but they do trade in a more insidious pain - shame and guilt.
You'll be approached by a sheep and it will begin to ring. You have to answer - the other party won't hang up and terminate the call. They're insistent. They want to talk.
You could kill the sheep, it's not that hard. They'll fight back, but only with as much ferocity as a mundane sheep, and while that's nothing to laugh at, it wouldn't last long against a sharpened sword and heavy maul.
The ringing will grow louder the longer you refuse to answer. No one outside the immediate area seems to hear it - the point of the Toll Free Sheep is not to draw attention to the characters and have something come ambush them because of the noise. As the sheep's head rings, the receiver shakes in the cradle and the shaking becomes more violent as the volume increases. At some point, DMs should consider having the receiver shake itself off the cradle completely and fall to the ground where the conversation can begin or have the ringing cause damage once it's reached a certain volume - the sheep must be dealt with; answer it, kill it, run from it.
Once the character picks up the receiver they'll hear the voice of someone they know, someone they love and care about. It could be anyone, as long as it isn't someone from the party they're with. They could be living, they could be dead - dead might even be better.
The caller starts lamenting your actions, saying they raised you so well or you were such a good friend to them and you used to be so nice, so good - they don't know what happened. They'll talk about your recent conquests and heroic deeds as if they're dirty shameful things no civilized person should be doing and they'll wonder why you're like this now. What's wrong with you? You were raised right, three squares a day, your own room which was no small ask in the poor town you grew up in they'll have you know, your mother and father stayed married your whole life and your father never took the rod to you, not once. It doesn't matter if none of that is true - the caller will say it anyway. This is the narrative they believe. The story they've told themselves. You're the bad guy here, not them.
They'll cry the heavy, forlorn sobs of anguish of mother's whose children have killed themselves, or become addicted to drugs and stolen from the family to pay for their next fix. The whole time they're talking, but you can't respond. You can, but they can't hear you. You're just listening in, because the caller is talking to someone else. They might be responding, but you can't hear that side of the conversation.
This just continues on for as long as your character can stand to listen; an endless diatribe about what the caller views as your failures. They wished so much more for you, why couldn't you have married that nice girl from the village, why are you down in a hole desecrating graves like a monster?
The Toll Free Sheep don't have much point. They're just meant to be a slightly unsettling, weird encounter to throw at your party. You might want to be careful using them if any of your players have had particularly traumatic childhoods or were raised by narcissists. Narrating the phone call might hit too close to home for some of your players.
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