Bullywug
Bullywugs are a primitive race of frog-like humanoids found throughout the bogs and marshes of Toril, the self-proclaimed lords of the swamp. Savage and self-destructive, the bullywugs regularly tamper with forces beyond their understanding, threatening the safety of others and their own brutish, noisome, and wet lives.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Bullywugs are amphibious humanoids with webbed digits that stand between 4 to 7 feet and weigh between 100 to 300 pounds.
Their hides are smooth and reasonably tough, with mottled coloration ranging from emerald or olive green, yellow, brown, and gray. Bullywug skin is chameleon-like, so if they remained motionless in swampy terrain, they will shift through different hues and shades of their normal color range to match their surroundings. The creatures are noxious to be around, for they carry with them the rancid reek of the bog.
The huge heads of bullywugs resemble those of frogs, with big, bulbous eyes, wide mouths, and long, flicking tongues. Said tongues are barely capable of navigating a stunted variant of Common, and they typically speak in thick, sloppy accents.
Biological Traits
Bullywugs can deliver powerful bites and are creatures of notable athleticism. The amphibians are strong swimmers able to move rapidly under the water, even when weighed down by things like armor or shields. Despite being slow on land, with or without objects encumbering them, bullywugs can hop as fast as they can run (and possibly faster), leaping 20 to 30 feet forward or 10 to 15 feet high in a single bound.
A bullywug's camouflage protects them both from regular sight and from infravision since their body temperature changes along with their coloration to better blend with their surroundings.
Some bullywugs, known as croakers, are flabby and weak compared to their kin, but able to belch up clouds of fetid, poisonous gas as they make their loud croaks.
They have adapted for easy movement among the trees, with soft, suction-cupped fingers, and have no difficultly moving through mud and wetlands on their webbed feet. Bullywugs have to routinely soak their entire bodies to keep their skin moist, at least three times a day with an average waterskin's worth of water. If unable to regularly hydrate, they will slowly weaken and die, hence why bullywugs fear dry heat and areas with little standing water.
Genetics and Reproduction
Bullywugs reproduce by laying eggs in water, with females laying up to 500 at a time in a communal breeding pond.
The eggs have a gestation period of around 10 days, after which tadpoles hatch.
Growth Rate & Stages
Bullywug eggs would be watched over by the collective tribe while in the breeding pond. The non-intelligent spawn that hatch resemble large tadpoles and will feed upon insects and small amphibians (including each other) until they are large enough to leave the breeding pool, usually after about six to eight weeks. Following their emergence, the juvenile bullywugs are forced to fend for themselves, with nothing to rely upon but luck and their own strength against their larger kin. Unfortunately for them, this brutal "parenting" means that less than one percent of bullywugs reached adulthood. Adulthood is reached at about 10 years, though they will not reach full growth until 15 years.
Ecology and Habitats
Bullywugs preferr to inhabit dark, dank places isolated far from human beings, wet locations like rainforests, damp caves, swamps, meres, or virtually any other warm but shady region with abundant water.
Most bullywugs live out in the open, with loose territorial boundaries that they inefficiently enforce, though intruders often end up killed and eaten. They reportedly have no sense of privacy or personal space, and when they do have specific living spaces (such as huts) they are not known to be assigned to specific areas.
Bullywugs sleep in a frog-like fashion, burying themselves up to the eyes in pits of mud. At night, they are known to crowd on top of each other until everyone in that group was squeezed in, with multiple piles of bullywugs visible throughout their sleeping grounds.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Bullywugs are mainly carnivorous and prefer a diet of meat. They live primarily off of fish and any other game (being skilled hunters and fisherman) and will supplement a diet of fruit and insects with flesh whenever possible.
A particular point of interest regarding bullywugs is that they are irresistibly drawn to liquor. After consuming large quantities, they will begin to convulse, helplessly falling prone on the ground for several minutes. The contractions end with the bullywugs either dying or lapsing into a deep coma, depending on the amount of the alcohol consumed. Large-scale bullywug attacks have become increasingly rare in the lands surrounding territories where settlements keep a barrel or two of ale on hand and loosely secured during earlier raids.
Behaviour
Environmental Hazards
Bullywugs are foul inhabitants of the natural world both in smell and company; constantly hungry savages often completely lacking in higher emotions and feelings. Unlike many other creatures of the wild, bullywugs either don't understand or don't care about the effect they have on their own ecosystems. They hunt and kill for sport without the intelligence or discrimination to allow environmental recovery, and so systematically deplete the natural resources of their own habitats.
Rather than fill any ecological niche, these habits make bullywugs a disruption and threat to the fragile balance they themselves rely upon, and after exhausting other food sources, they will either move on to greener pastures or turn to cannibalism (although some are cannibals by choice). While they don't permanently poison the land like the undead, the effects of bullywugs leave due to their reckless practices is nothing short of disastrous for a few years, as they strip acres of land bare and leave behind a despoiled morass of mud, a mere echo of a once fertile swamp.
The bullywugs are not unaware of this phenomenon, the difference in environment before and after they entered being so noticeable that even they view their own presence as "off" somehow. This sense of something being wrong manifests as paranoia, the sense that everything is out to get them somehow, although this feeling is not exactly untrue.
Swamp Lords
Bullywugs are, appropriately enough, bullies, and often their greatest joy comes from lording over trespassers in their domains. They believe themselves to be the true lords of the swamp and behave as such, being known to laze and loaf even as others worked. They prize coins, jewels, and other treasures, although as individuals they lack the same kind of greed and megalomania found in marauders like orcs. Infighting within the same group almost never occurs, though some suggest this is due to a lack of brainpower rather than malice. Regardless of the truth of that idea, bullywugs are easily confused, the smartest of them normally being of about average human intelligence.
Despite their tendencies towards chaotic and evil behavior, bullywugs are capable of adopting other behaviors. They often remain individualistic, but sometimes shed their more despicable traits when trying to find a place in the outside world. Curiosity can drive them to explore, and those that meet success are the ones that learn to work with and rely on others, with most stray bullywugs being neutral and, on rare occasion, creatures of good.
Combat
Bullywugs reserve their natural methods of defense (biting and to a lesser extent their pitiful "claws") for foes that get too close to them, preferring to wield weapons whenever possible. Most are barely able to wield more than a simple stone weapon, so they stuck to spears and other sharp, piercing weapons that can be poked out of the water. They normally leap when in melee, since by springing through the air they increase the odds of hitting their foes, and when holding an impaling weapon, their strikes are twice as lethal. This makes long weapons especially important, since they compensate for their slow speed when running and their exposed state when jumping.
Bullywugs also wear crude armor and don shields when available despite these things slowing them down when underwater, trying to equip themselves with at least leather armor as a point of pride. This highlights an oddity when it comes to bullywugs: their illogical approach to battle. Bullywugs are fierce, aggressive creatures known to display fanatical loyalty to their tribes, and yet have little stomach for protracted fighting, which combined with their lacking minds makes them somewhat unpredictable as far as combat goes. Bullywugs are just as likely to fight to the death no matter how obviously doomed they are as they are to run for the hills after only a few of them fall, melting away into the swamp even if they easily could have won.
Bullywugs do not favor fair fights, and are skilled in the construction and use of nets and snares. They prefer to fight in or near water, and given their camouflage and ability to suddenly spring into action, they are adept ambushers. Bullywugs are emboldened by superior numbers and always try to overwhelm the enemy by surrounding them. They hate humans and attack adventurers on sight whenever their own groups are larger, but against serious threats, they normally leave in search of easier prey.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Bullywug society is savage, primitive, and tribal, one of the most petty-minded and mindlessly destructive of all humanoid organizations. Bullywugs have learned to cooperate for the sake of mutual survival and hunting, but murder is still one of the two primary methods for getting ahead. The killing of one's rivals has to be performed secretly however, since bullywugs who witlessly do away with their opposition are likely to be executed by others. Bullywug politics are typically more "subtle" than killing whoever is in front on the social ladder.
Aside from their gods, bullywugs only ever show respect to their leaders, for their organized (or at least semi-organized) societies are socially fascist and so tyrannical as to be totalitarian. Absolute authority is vested to subleaders led by a male chieftain, a self-styled lord of the muck who will treat all his subjects as possessions and freely kill (and eat if he chooses) his followers if they do not instantly follow his whims. Only when the previous leader is too old to rule will the next dominant male kill and usurp (and possibly consume) him.
This foul aristocracy forms the basis of bullywug "etiquette", both amongst themselves and outsiders. Bullywugs introduce themselves with grand titles while groveling and kowtowing before their superiors, ceaselessly competing to win their favor. It is in this sycophantic competition that the bullywug love of hoarding of treasure becomes important despite its lack of actual use in their societal system. For instead of killing each other, bullywugs can advance by finding treasures and trinkets (including magical items) to present to their lord as tokens of deference or loyalty.
This is the key reason that bullywugs raid caravans and settlements, obtaining baubles and knickknacks to impress and win over their masters. Even if this succeeds and a bullywug gets into the good graces of their leaders, the careless abuse and neglect that they so commonly show their own property invariably means that the fine items they acquire would become broken and dirty, leading the bullywug lord to invariably demand even more. Capturing intruders is favorable to just killing them because they could be dragged before the bullywug kings and their queens and forced to beg for mercy.
Bullywug royals are sneering and demanding, donning robes of leather, rough cloth, and marsh plants even as most bullywugs wore no clothes. Through bribery and flattery they can be convinced to release their captive audience, but not before trying to impress them with the majesty of their realm and the grandeur of their treasures. Despite claims of being the masters of the marshes, bullywugs recognize their adverse environmental influence and perceive themselves negatively because of it, and that attitude extends to the bullywug lords. Behind their pretensions to nobility and fanciful posturing is a deep inferiority complex, a desperate desire for legitimacy in the eyes of outsiders as beings worthy of not only fear, but respect.
Bullywugs normally appear in groups somewhere between ten to eighty individuals, although they travel in their tribal groups in numbers somewhere below fifty. A grouping of four bullywugs is known as a "pad", a pair of pads is called a "float", and between two to six floats is a "pond". Bullywug bands always have large leaders, with communities of thirty or more possessing five subleaders and groups of sixty or more having a great chieftain and five subchieftans.
Civilization and Culture
Major Language Groups and Dialects
The more intelligent bullywugs can speak a fractured form of Common with limited vocabulary, but they have a primitive language of their own. The bullywug tongue consists of a series of croaks, staccato notes, and clicks, and though crude, it allows them to communicate over large distances, spreading news quickly across the swamps.
Common Myths and Legends
Shamans are common among the bullywugs, with as many as ten percent of those in a community having access to divine magic. However, the greater number of bullywug priests come at the cost of their individual quality; they have access to only three kinds of magic, spells taken from their divine domains (typically from Chaos, Evil or Water), inflict spells, and summoning spells, the latter being culturally favored. Bullywug clerics are infamous, in fact, for their powerful yet unpredictable summonings, having made a religious fetish out of calling creatures that might or might not stay within their control.
In any case, bullywug religion is not based on their past, at least not in any objectively verifiable way. They have only the most primitive of origin myths that ignore anything outside their own limited perceptions of their lives and environments. Often they claim to have been created by ancient primordials rather than deities. The only power exclusive to the bullywugs is Ramenos, a god (or possibly primordial) of intoxication, rest, and decline. Even so, the bullywugs have no creation myth involving Ramenos, and even those who follow him don't necessarily have anything more than the shallowest understanding.
Ramenos has no clerics, only shamans, and those shamans are both crude and weak. They have no duties save for helping the leaders of the tribe (to whom they are often related) and to regularly take plant-based alkaloids to become intoxicated. Conversely, Ramenos gives practically no aid, sending neither omens nor avatars unless someone conducts a ritual at one of his ancient temples. Given his utter lack of support and seeming indifference to his own increasing irrelevance, it is questionable if Ramenos is even still alive (with many not even being sure if he existed in the first place).
Regardless of if Ramenos created them or not, bullywugs worship a host of noxious "gods" (some of which aren't even close to being divine), and much of their spiritual understanding is flawed. For example, the cruelest of bullywugs believe that by creating legacies of savage violence for themselves, they might one day be reborn as slaadi. When bullywug tribes come across a froghemoth, they will treat the monstrosity as a divine being and try to coax it into their den by communicating basic ideas and offering it food. These froghemoths might only eat a few bullywugs before following the others and can then be "tamed" with the bullywugs giving it a comfortable lair and food as tribute, while fanatically protecting it and any young froghemoth while it matured (which is fortunate considering that froghemoths have a tendency to eat their offspring.
Bullywugs are also known to worship such vile entities as Dagon, the Great Old One Ghaunadaur, or the ancient goddess of darkness Shar, although that doesn't mean they do so in any official capacity. In reported cases, their "religion" is known to be personally manufactured, self-taught, and based on the individual desires and goals of the devotee. Even those that can actually use divine magic might have just assembled a hodgepodge of confused dogma; combining anything from strange hallucinogens, imagined lore, borrowed iconography, and copied elements of mysticism without actual understanding of that entity's tenets.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Bullywugs have difficulties allying with other beings, but when they do, it was universally with the foul and the feral. While there is no open hostility between the two, lizardfolk rarely associate with them, and bullywugs are known to boss them around if given the chance. The sahuagin hold them in contempt and occasionally raid their lairs out of hateful malice before eating captives alive.
While most bullywugs hate humans and most humans (and other humanoids) fear and hate them in return, bullywugs will readily serve wicked masters, even human ones. Those that grow accustomed to working with others and seeing others of different races consistently pass, at the very least don't attack on sight.
Bullywugs love nothing more than lording over those who trespass on their territories. Their warriors attempt to capture intruders rather than simply slaying them. Captives are dragged before the king or queen — a bullywug of unusually large size — and forced to beg for mercy. Bribes, treasure, and flattery can trick the bullywug ruler into letting its captives go, but not before it tries to impress its “guests” with the majesty of its treasure and its realm. Struck with a deep inferiority complex, bullywug lords fancy themselves as kings and queens, but desperately crave the fear and respect of outsiders.
5 to 6 ft
240 lbs
Skin: greens, yellow, brown, and gray
Comments