What Ho, Frog Demons

Holing up in a converted New Hampshire barn has me fiercly procrasti-tasking around finishing the manuscript for Misty Isles of the Eld (all the while with Luka Rejec working like a machine to produce an inspired round of self-directed illustrations) and skipping ahead to the last and final stretch adventure coming out of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes project, What Ho, Frog Demons, a sandbox that pulls together a number of smaller adventure sites around the Dunes and Marlinko into a tidy little (and slottable in a home campaign) package.

The dreaded Frog Demon Temple (an intensely deadly and traperrific smallish dungeon with an extradimensional backdoor), the manor of the Beet God, and an outline of the backhills dungeon-infested town of Bad Rajetz will all have a turn after having been game to the hilt in my own campaign.

But here's a Wodehousian teaser of the set-up for the first scenario.

Jevo and I

“Nasty business with the Lord-Surveyor, Jevo. What.”

“If you say, Pan Vostvr.”

“I mean look at the face of it, old chum. Man writes an apologia titled A Corelands Defense of The Absolute Necessity of Frog Demons. I mean that is just asking for it, isn't it? One doesn't just casually stroll into salon stating 'you know frog demons, there is a warty race worth putting on the show about' and not expect to get stuck in.”

“Quite right, sir.”

“Still disappearing outright on the first high official visit to the borderlands in 76 years, that's a rum show and in Marlinko of all places with a temple so near. A frog demon temple of all things. Perfectly dreadful. One must do something about that kind of msvavo [Pahr slang roughly meaning “outrage/tragedy/funny bit”]. Now, Jevo, I know you have a bit of a thing when it comes to my embossed half-plate but I must have it for this adventure, what.”

“The one with the leering satyr face and protruding man-breasts, Pan Vostvr?”

“You will come around to it, Jevo.”

“I don't believe I will, sir.”

---

Ropucha Rigygtzenacht, Surveyor-Lord of Canton Departments Both Hilly and Forested, has announced that he will be conducting an official inspection and tour of both Marlinko and Ostrovo cantons. In the Cantons he is, of course,  more famously known as “The Garrulous Grease Toad,” a nickname attributed to him due to both his bulbous oily countenance and the famous, eccentric apologia he penned “Feuerundflammen: A Corelands Defense of The Absolute Necessity of Frog Demons.” Locals are shocked at the news, it has after all been almost 76 years since an Overking-appointed cantonal high official has actually set foot in the borderlands.  Beyond his official duties the grandee is said to be offering “sizable bounties for items of magic” including 5,000 gold suns for a “certain staff” (details available upon inquiry).