On the Throgs and the Rumors They Inspire
There are nights in the Valemire when laughter echoes through the reeds, though no man is laughing. It is low, wet, and broken, as though the swamp itself had found a joke it refused to share. That sound is the first sign of Throgs nearby, and by the time you hear it, they already know where you are.
My first meeting with them was not a clash of arms but a theft. I camped near Saltmarsh Reach with a low fire, and before dawn my satchel had vanished. In its place lay a heap of river stones and a shard of green glass. I had been robbed, yes, but also paid—or so they thought. This is their way: hunger, obsession, and barter all tangled together until one cannot tell which is which.
Their Form
Throgs are squat creatures, though to call them “creatures” alone misses the mark. They are folk of a sort, but folk whose manners are shaped by muck and water, by hunger and damp. Rarely more than four feet in height, thick of limb, crouched more often than upright.
Their skins are uneven — slick and wet like a frog’s on one, warty and ridged like bark on the next. Their colors match the Mire: greens drowned in silt, greys streaked with clay, mottled browns that blend with rotwood and stone.
The heads are broad and flat, mouths far too wide for comfort. Inside are ranks of crooked, snaggled teeth, fit for grubs and roots, but no less dangerous for a human arm. Their eyes bulge wide, reflecting torchlight or moonlight in a way that unsettles even the seasoned. It is an animal’s gaze, but with something disturbingly deliberate behind it.
Hands and feet are long-fingered, half-webbed, perfect for clinging to slick roots or scrabbling up a mud bank. Their tracks look like the prints of children — but dragged, elongated, warped.
Still, it is not their looks alone that set them apart. It is the way they move. They linger in stillness until the moment of action, and then they are all sudden splash and lunge. Half-comical to behold, until they drag down a mule in the water or a man from his cart.
Warrens
Wherever land and water contest one another, the Throgs settle. Reedbeds, drowned farmsteads, hollowed tree roots, collapsed watchtowers. They seem drawn to places abandoned by others — not merely to scavenge, but to claim.
A Throg warren is known first by its stink: mildew, fish guts, fungus, and the copper tang of old blood. Step closer and you will see reed mats woven into crude walls, charms of bone and shell rattling from branches, and glowing fungi smeared in childlike patterns across stone.
At the heart of every warren lies the hoard. It is never coin alone — though coin is welcome enough — but any object that shines. Glass, polished shells, broken mirrors, scraps of beaten copper. They croak and clamber over these piles as though stars had fallen into their swamp. Mixed into these heaps are always bones. Beasts, livestock, and sometimes men.
Habits of the Pack
A lone Throg is rare and pitiful. They are pack folk, bound to one another by constant squabble and crude hierarchy. A band numbers six to a dozen, but in the deeper Mire they gather in great swarms, croaking in chorus around ruins and drowned trees.
Their nature is scavenger first, raider second, hunter last. They will trail a caravan for days, robbing it piece by piece, waiting for someone to falter. A mule cut loose here, a satchel snatched there. They are cautious, but persistence is its own weapon.
When forced to fight, they fight dirty. Ambush from reeds, swarms from shadows. Crude spears of bone, stones slung with reeds, puffcaps that burst into choking clouds. Their mimicry is notorious: a child’s wail, a woman’s laugh, a trader calling in the dark. Always imperfect, but close enough to stir the heart and pull the unwary a step too far.
Dominance among them is brutal. The largest rules until drowned or beaten, at which point another takes his place without question. I once saw a leader pressed beneath the muck until bubbles ceased, then dragged into the reeds. By the next day the victor had painted himself in glowing fungus and croaked commands that the others obeyed as law.
Fungus and Flesh
If the Throgs have a god, it is fungus. Their warrens drip with it, their bodies carry it, their blood seems to nourish it.
I have seen Throgs with faint green light pulsing in their veins, as if colonies had taken root beneath their skins. I have fought one whose blistered hide burst into a choking puff when cut. Before raids, many smear themselves with luminescent pulp, crude masks of wet light across their bulging eyes and wide mouths.
They do not name fungi or distinguish them as scholars do. To them, fungus is not study but substance: food, shelter, weapon, and lamp all at once. They eat it raw, burn it in clumps for smoke, hurl puffcaps as weapons, daub themselves with its flesh as sign and ward.
One might say fungus is not their tool but their partner. Perhaps even their parent.
Beliefs and Rites
Fire is terror to them. They scatter before open flame, croaking in panic. But cold light — the moons, glow-fungi, glass — they adore. They croak to the moons as if they are lanterns lit for their sake. Their hoards of bright objects are not trophies of greed, but shrines of protection.
When a Throg dies, the body is pressed into water. Always water, always mud. Never earth, never air. They croak low until the corpse sinks, then leave it to vanish into silt. This is no fear of drowning; it is return. To them, water is both womb and grave, the cycle complete.
What they fear most is not drowning, but dryness. Fire, drought, stone halls with no damp — these are their true dooms. A Throg without water cracks, croaks in agony, and dies. To them, the dry world is death absolute.
Their Place Among Others
Farmers curse them. Fishermen spit when they speak of them. Traders mutter prayers when roads vanish into reeds.
Yet the Throgs endure, and so too must everyone else endure them. They can be bribed with beads, mirrors, trinkets. Mercenaries sometimes hire them as fodder, though betrayal is never far. In ruins, their presence is expected. In fact, a ruin without Throgs is often feared more than one with them, for it suggests something worse has taken their place.
No serious man speaks of exterminating them. It is not possible. They are too numerous, too stubborn, too perfectly fitted to muck and root. “The swamp itself breeds them,” one hunter told me, “the same way it breeds flies.”
Theories
Theories are endless. Some say they are the swamp’s children, shaped from mud and hunger. Others that they were once men or Veylen, consumed by the Root until changed beyond recall. A priest of the Hollow Spire swore to me that the Throgs are the Root’s laughter given legs.
I cannot prove or disprove any of this. But I have watched them long enough to know that whatever they are, they are not an accident. They are as much a part of the Valemire as mist, mud, and spore.
Reflection
The Throgs are not noble. They are not wise. They are hunger with hands, persistence with teeth. They mock, they steal, they drown their dead, and they endure.
I have tried to hate them, but hate is wasted on inevitability. They are as the tide, as rot, as the cough of the swamp itself.
A farmer once told me that when the Throgs vanish, the Valemire will be dead. I believe him. For as long as this land breathes, it will croak its cruel laughter through the reeds — and that laughter will have a body, and a wide mouth full of crooked teeth.
