𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚! 🐸 African Clawed Frogs! African Clawed Frogs, like all their family, are toothless, tongueless, and totally aquatic! Using their sense of smell and touch, they swim and lunge after food - which, as scavengers, can be almost anything living, dying, dead, or decaying. They are originally from ponds and rivers in Sub-Saharan Africa, but they can be quite invasive in other regions due to their adaptability. These frogs will lay their eggs whenever and wherever the conditions allow them to, traveling to other sources of water during damp conditions and borrowing into the mud during dry patches. They are known to survive for 15 years in the wild and upwards of 25-30 in captivity, shedding their own skin and eating it every season. Females are much larger and rounder than the males, and both communicate in trills during the mating season. Both possess large claws on their back feet, giving them their descriptive name. Clawed Frogs are notably more cannabilistic than many other species. The tadpoles are filter feeders who consume plankton, and adult frogs do not shy away from eating these tadpoles. This system helps Clawed Frogs to survive in places where there are very little food sources.  Brought to you by Tod & Froggë: A Cozy RPG! Check out the Kickstarter to play your very own frog or toad today ✨💚🐸
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𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚! 🐸 Common Midwife ToadThe most notable feature of the Midwife Toad (Alytes obstetricans) is no doubt its parental strategy. To reproduce, females lay eggs wrapped in sticky strands, which the male collects and wraps around his back legs. He can carry up to 3 clutches in this way (up to 150 eggs!), where he keeps them moist for 3-8 weeks. When the eggs are about to hatch, he releases them in some calm, shallow water, where they hatch into tadpoles. They will develop for several months, and may even overwinter as very large tadpoles! When feeling threatened, Alytes obstetricans inflates itself to look bigger, and may even rear on all limbs, raise its rear, lower its head, and close its eyes in a threatening posture. What a striking pose! They like to live in sunny areas within 1600ft of water, and are often found in hills, rocky areas, woods, parks, gardens, quarries, and cultivated land. It hides during the day and emerges at dusk, foraging during the night for invertebrates and carrion. In the winter it digs itself a burrow and hibernates until spring beckons with the return of warm temperatures.  If you like frogs, check out the Tod & Froggë Cozy RPG on Kickstarter today! 💚🐸
𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚! 🐸 Fire-Bellied Toad!Bombina bombina, commonly called the European Fire-bellied Toad, is a medium sized frog with warty backs and red-and-black mottled bellies. When threatened, they lift up their arms or flip themselves over to reveal their red coloration, trying to warn predators that they are toxic and bad to eat. There’s actually a fun German word for this, Unkenreflex! Their preferred habitats are lowland ponds and marshes without too much woody vegetation, though they’ll also make do with lake edges in reed beds or floodplains, monching on small invertebrates. When it gets cold in the winter, they hibernate by burrowing into dirt or a rotting log and entering a state of torpor. In breeding season, females lay 15-40 eggs, which will hatch in about a week. The tadpoles will develop for about a month, turning into 1.5" small adults which will eventually grow to be about 2-2.25" long.  𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚! 🐸 Tailed Frogs Aschaphus (a genus containing only two species, truei and montanus) is the only genus in a very primitive family of frogs. They’re known for the visible ‘tail’ in adulthood, making them a very unique frog. That ‘tail’, however, is only seen in male frogs, and is an extension of their cloaca. That’s right folks, these frogs have internal fertilization, making them quite unique amphibians! In addition, they retain extra vertebra as well as residual tail-wagging muscles, despite not having actual tails as mature adults. Ascaphids can’t vocalize - no cute frog peeping here - and are incredibly small, only 1"-2" as adults. They also secrete a series of antimicrobial peptides called ascaphins through their skin, which helps them fight bacteria such as E. coli, and shares minimal genetic characteristics with other frog peptides. Tailed frogs prefer cold, fast-moving streams with cobblestone bottoms, and are mostly aquatic. Their tadpoles take 1-4 years to metamorphose, and eat algae, desmids, and conifer pollen. They have a unique mouth sucker that lets them grab onto rocks, helping them stay secure in fast waters.  If you like frogs, check out the Tod & Froggë Cozy RPG on Kickstarter today! 💚🐸
𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚! 🐸 Western Spadefoot Toad! Spea hammondii is an American Spadefoot Toad which lives in localized (but widespread) populations in grassland, scrub, chaparral, and occasional woodland environments across California and northern Mexico. They are nocturnal and prefer to be active during the wet season or days of especial humidity and moisture. Like many amphibians, they are facing large amounts of habitat loss due to human activity and development. The average livespan of Spea hammondii is about 12 years, though they reach maturity at 3. They lay their eggs in puddles, and it is a race for tadpoles to turn into frogs before the puddles dry up. The eggs can hatch after 15 hours, and the tadpoles develop into fully fledged toads in up to 13 days - one of the fastest metamorphosis of any frog!  If you like frogs, check out the Tod & Froggë Cozy RPG on Kickstarter today! 💚🐸
So 98% of my creative output that gets shown to others is Aketi based (fantasy universe/world), and while I do explore some traditionally scifi concepts in it... sometimes you just wanna play with armored dudes in space with flamethrowers and mech suits. To scratch that Starcraft itch, I have the Dyson Project. It's still a burgeoning concept that I'm building on here and there over time, mostly expressed through miniatures rn, but it does have lore behind it and tonight for some reason I want to ramble about it! Without further ado~  Dyson Marine miniature The Dyson Project is a group of humans who are attempting to secure, repair, and stabilize an old derelict Dyson swarm* in order to prepare it for the arrival of a desperate population of humans cut off from larger networks, running out of power and supplies. However, this Dyson swarm has all sorts of problems... not all of which are mechanical. Various entities have also made themselves a place in the Dyson swarm platform. Some may be other travelers or refugees, wary but open to diplomacy or alliance, but many are actively hostile - scrappers stripping old technology and parts, infestations of vermin species, or even whispers of those long gone that haunt the walls.
 Some time ago, a friend asked me if I had any ideas on an interesting villain. One thing led to another, and I ended up writing a whole story about him. What follows is a story about how a man in a chaotic world lost and gained so much, and how he set the stage for rising heroes.
 A couple of months ago I played in a fabulous oneshot run by @KerriSmith2012 over on twitter, and it was amazing fun! Before the game I had written some material for my character Rika, a raptor druid who could shapeshift into a humanoid. The game was fantastic, the characters were super interesting, and it's both a lot of fun and a really interesting story with some surprising twists! Below you can find the short story written for Rika's backstory - it does have big spoilers for the first episode of The Orb of Arwick (linked here for your convenience), so be forewarned!  The Glorious Skeleton Revolution Well I've finally done it, this year with the help of a lovely writing buddy I've decided to go for it and put all the effort I can into NaNoWriMo 2021! It will be my first attempt at it, which will be tough but interesting. Even if I don't finish in time, I still am quite happy with the skills I'm learning in plotting and time management!
My project premise is as such: "A skeleton goes out to overthrow his boss the disco necromancer and redistribute the dungeon treasure amongst the masses by adventuring and gathering support amongst his fellow minions, and discovers some things along the way… like the many atrocities of mayonnaise." The goal is to write a super amusing and somewhat satirical story set in a fantasy world, referencing things across the entirety of geekdom and parodying some common fantasy/d&d tropes. Ultimately if it's fun and silly to read, it's a success! NaNoWriMo is all about writing 50,000 words within the thirty days of November. Wish me luck! ...Otherwise known as Things To Expect From This Blog.Like many kobolds, the Trenchcoat Kobold is a meandering soul who is prone to rambling on a wide variety of topics, some quite meaningful and others decidedly not.
Discussions and musings on D&D, astrobiology, trees, sticks, good sticks to engage in duels with, cats, animals in general, nostalgic video games, worldbuilding, books, tangents into hieroglyphics, tabletop gaming, the many qualities of chocolate, and other such random nerdy things are very likely and possibly even expected, so consider yourself forewarned, brave adventurers. Go forth and tell great stories! ~Celeste Belmont |
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