Memory Toad

Memory Toads, Thanal Maraskin - "Copying Frogs" to the Doppelgangers, are a large (c. 20cm) species of toad native to the delta of the Thanali river. They have never been truly domesticated per se, but given a constant supply of food are relatively docile and tame. They are best known for their ability to "memorise" and repeat relatively long phrases (two to three hundred words are common, reliable reports exist of toads able to memorise a thousand words). While they have no understanding of what they are "saying" and are incapable of breaking a phrase into constituent parts - that is to say they cannot start half way through their phrase - they are used extensively by the Church as "living books" in order to teach the mostly illiterate population. Many Orthodoxers have a pet memory toad trained to recite the precepts (although it should be noted that lacking sentience they are not capable of creating Veneration no matter how flawlessly they repeat them.)

Lifecycle and training

Memory toads follow a relatively typical toad lifespan. Tadpoles hatch a couple of weeks after fertilisation and grow into toadlets about three months after that. The average lifespan is around a decade. They are at their easiest to train in the first few months of adulthood, training is accomplished by repeating the phrase while feeding them a favoured treat. It is technically possible to train a toad out of its memorised phrase and into another one but given the difficulty of that feat compared with the relative ease of breeding and training a new one this is rarely done.
When provided with a supply of slugs, worms and other insects, memory toads are quite simple to breed in captivity and many larger temples will have a spawning pool somewhere on their property.

In Society

Pre-Diarchy

Little is know of doppelganger culture prior to the conquest of Dus A Thanal but it is widely suspected that the toads were used as the focus of a ritual by the Doppelgangers. "Thanai Kireset" - usually translated as "doppelganger honour", a measure of prestige and authority in doppelganger culture - could be gained in many ways but one seems to have been skill at training the toads. Individuals would arrange showings to demonstrate they had trained a toad to repeat an especially long or intricate passage, or perhaps to show how quickly one could be retrained.

Post-Diarchy

As mentioned, memory toads play an important role in ensuring unanimous knowledge of the precepts and are used extensively by the Church for this purpose. Scribes, sages and other knowledge workers also use them as aide-memoires and many archives and libraries will have a toad trained to recite the catalogue. Toads trained to recite a series of landmarks or directions also play a not inconsiderable role in cross-Karadic-Sea trade given the necessity of precise navigation and lack of corresponding precise maps.

Messenger Frogs and the Tale of Timmy's Taties

There is a persistant rumour/belief that Memory Toads will, under some circumstances, carry a message to a specific person. It is vanishingly rare to find someone this has happened to, but most residents of Dus A Thanal will have encountered someone in a tavern whose cousin's husband served on a ship with someone this happened to. The exact mechanism for persuading a toad to carry and repeat a message varies from purported story to purported story but a few factors are always true:

1. Toads will not take sides in any conflict, no matter how trivial, and so will not carry messages that benefit one person at the expense of another
2. Toads will rarely carry messages of high emotional significance
3. Toads will only carry messages that both the sender and recipient initially consider trivial but that later events will reveal to be of crucial importance.

Given this last fact, it is widely recommended that if a message is received by a toad (assuming, of course, that there is any truth in these rumours) it is best to act on it at once.
These is a common children's singing game, played at all levels of Dus A Thanal society based around the purported ability of memory toads to carry messages. The first player begins by singing the, relatively standard although variations exist, lines:
"Stop what you're doing
Now, everyone listen to me
I'm going to tell you about
A toad, some tatties and Timmy (sung as Tim-MEE)

See Timmy had some spuds
He had them in a barn
Then up hopped a little toad
And he croaked out this yarn"

Other players then take it in turns to to add two verses, following the same rhythm and rhyme scheme, continuing the tale of the message the toad brough to Timmy, what was so important about them that the toad was willing to carry a message and the events that followed.