20 Eleint, 1493
ā§Castle Gate
mid-morning
Now, math ain’t exactly my strong suit, but even I know that 12 huts with 6 frog people ain’t great odds. With that in mind, we decided to move right on past their little area and that’s how we spotted a couple of buildings that looked different. They was longer than the huts and, well, less gross too. From that spot, we could see that castle, now to our south. It had a moat around it, but I gotta be honest, who needs a moat in the middle of a dang swamp? Anywho, there was a gate, but we had to get closer to see if it was wide open or if they’d battened down the hatches.
Kalama spotted some frogs hiding around the portcullis and pointed out that the gates didn’t even look like they could be closed anymore, so old and damaged they were. Excited to finally check these little buggers out, I was rearing and ready to take point with my good buddy monk, Lhel. T-Bone brought up the rear with our “squishier” caster friends smack dab in the middle, for safety.
Okay, so first of all, it turned out these weren’t the same frog things that T-Bone saw earlier, so that’s kinda sad. Nope, these were just really big frogs. Anyway, they may be short little things, but boy oh howdy can they make a ruckus! I swear I’ll be hearing those deafening croaks in my dreams for weeks.
Now, seeing as how this was our first time running into these things, I took it upon myself to attempt negotiations with them. With a breath so deep that my armor dug into my chest a bit, I made my best attempt to speak the language of their people, um, I think. They did not respond to me, no matter how loud I said “ribbit”.
T-Bone said, “Knock it off!” and tossed a rock. I’m pretty sure he meant to throw it at the frogs for all their loud croaking, but it hit me! It ain’t his fault though, he’s great with a knife, can’t expect him to be great at every dang thing.
Right about that time is when we noticed that a frog was trying to eat Lhel. This monk gets into the weirdest situations that I ever seen. Then some spears came outta nowhere, but not a-one of them hit us, clattering against the portcullis instead. I finally got my eye on like 10 frogmen! Gotta be honest, I’m kinda glad they weren’t some kinda were-frog things. Nope, they were like regular frogs that were real big and walked upright like a person. Sadly, we had to kill him and the rest of the frogs. I really thought they were cute little things.
Well, I did like them anyway, until that last one just reached on up and tossed a backpack at us right before he died. You are not even going to believe me when I tell you what happened next. This weird one-eyed pumpkin thing floated right on up outta that bag. That’s not even the craziest part, it had tentacles! What kinda pumpkin has an eye and tentacles? Well, it tried to poison us by exploding. That does not seem like a very effective fighting tactic, but what do I know about how a pumpkin thinks?