Frogs

Description:
Frog tribe are the native people of the appropriately named frog swamp.

Appearance
Frog tribesman have light brown skin with black hair and eyes. Their average height is around 165cm for male and 150cm for female. Their distinct characteristics are puffy cheeks and thick thighs. These characteristics however, are not caused by genetics but due to their way of life. Their thick thighs are caused by their traditional sport or martial arts, the frog dance, which emphasize using their leg in jump bursts to propel themselves in fighting. Their puffy cheeks are caused by their consumption of various poisonous insects and other substances both as delicacy and also to produce poison.

The frog faction member are generally more lean than the toad faction due to them more focused on poison than strength. Another characteristic that can be used to tell them apart is their skin condition with the frog faction having moist and smoother skin while the toad faction having dry, coarse and often warty skin.

Ability
Frog tribesman have a natural talent that give them stronger thighs, ability to tolerate and secrete poison they consume and also marksmanship using crossbows.

Society:
Frog tribe is led by a chief selected every 5 years without any limitation of how may times a person can be elected into that position. Below the chief are the representatives from the frog and toad faction and also the commonfolk. The society is focused on hunting and thus hunters have a high position in their society.

Liopis
Hunters of the frog tribe are called liopis and use poison and crossbows in their hunt. Any member of the frog tribe can become a liopis as long they passed the education and training needed to become one. Training began usually at age 15 and involve basic education in the basic hunting knowledge, poison making and operating a crossbow. After 3 years of training, if they passed, they can choose to become a member of either the frog or toad faction for further specialization. After they pick a faction, each person will be assigned as a cadet to a liopis and started an internship under their tutelage. Cadets can take the hunters exam to become a full-fledged liopis after their tutor gave them their permission.

Liopis are highly sought after by any hunting party because of their reliability to give ranged support in hunting. Liopis from frog faction are preferred because they can take down beasts without damaging them too much and also because their poison provided much wider range of applicability. Even so, liopis from frog faction are far fewer in number than toad faction because of the difficulty in becoming one. Liopis of the toad faction relied on brute strength and use heavier crossbows to take down beasts.

Frog Crossbow
Crossbow of the frog tribe diverge greatly from person to person because a frog's crossbow is a reflection of the user's personality and is customized and optimized by the user itself. Generally, a crossbow can be divided into 4 parts which are:

1. Driver: Driver, as the name implies, is the part which power the crossbow to propel a bolt. Driver can be powered by torsion, bow, spring and generally anything that can store and release kinetic energy. To transfer kinetic energy to a bolt then the crossbow will usually use a stiff rope or string to achieve the most efficient energy transfer.

2. Body: The body serves as a place which all other component assembled upon. The length of the body is dictated by the draw length and in other time, the draw length is dictated by the body instead.

3. Trigger: Trigger functions as both holding and releasing mechanism for the crossbow. Due to the rather complex design and manufacturing process of the component, this part is the part which most crossbows do not differ.

4. Addition:

-Driver rod: This rod is used as a surrogate for bolts and enable the crossbow to be used as a melee weapon. A liopis will usually carry one of this rod as a last resort in case he ran out of bolts. Driver rod will be made for a permanent use and thus need to be hard and flexible yet remain lightweight for efficient energy transfer. The rod is usually tipped with a spear point but the tip can be changed or removed completely to allow the crossbow to shoot other projectiles instead.

-Scope: Allow the user to see greater distance

-Winch: Allow the user to be able to draw heavier drivers

-Compound wheel: Allow the crossbow to have longer draw length while retaining the same draw weight, greatly increasing its effectiveness.

-Foothold: Allow the user to hold the crossbow on the ground using their feet to help in drawing the string.

Even though a lot of the components is affected by moisture and humidity, the frog tribe is still able to use their crossbow in their swampy homeland. This is because the frog tribe coated their crossbow with a special concoction which protected them from the elements.

Commonfolk
Commonfolk of the frog tribe occupy any other job other than becoming liopis. This include being an insect farmer, poison and potion brewer, merchant, scribe and other administrative position.

Food
Food from frog tribe mainly consisted of insects as their source of protein and grains that grow in the swamp as their source of carbohydrate. Mushrooms are also used as another popular side dish.

Insect Cultivation
Frog tribe farm insect for two major purpose, sustenance and source of poison. Insect farms that are intended for sustenance is kept at the dry portion of the village and in fact kept as far away as possible from farms intended for poison. This is not only done for obvious safety reasons that may arise if somehow they got mixed up but also to preserve food source for poisonous insect. Sustenance farms itself take form of several barns with rows and rows of racks with trays for breeding and growing insect. Farming insect for sustenance itself is really quite easy because they'll basically eat any plant or garbage that are thrown at them. Farmer will just need to regularly feed them and control their population because too many will cause them to eat each other while leaving none will stop their life cycle. Generally, a farmer will harvest each tray and leaving about 1 in 100 to continue the cycle. Poison farming on the other hand, require more delicate approach. Area dedicated to poison farms are kept on the wet side far from the village with the area itself may be about more than 5 times the size of the settlement and are run by the frog faction. The frog faction has a complete map of every tree, island, grass patch and other places that poisonous insect may live and what kind that live there. They make sure that every habitat is well balanced by controlled harvesting. Harvesting too may insect and they will have to be reintroduced but leaving too few may cause them to eat away their habitat and starve them in the future.

Relationship:
Frog tribe's greatest ally is the wolves because they share a very long history working together as hunter tribes. Their history can be traced as far as the legend of the pathfinders with a member of the frog tribe becoming a member of the hunting party led by a member of the wolf tribe in opening paths in finding other isolated tribes. The wolves also provided a stable market for products from the frog tribe, mainly potions, poisons and crossbows. Other than the wolves, frogs also worked well with the salamanders due to their common characteristic and also their thirst in inventing and innovating.

Frog Dance:
Frog dance is a martial art of the frog tribe that focuses on wrestling. Frog dance itself was primarily used as a mean to show off physical capabilities of liopis to attract potential mate. There are no rules during the dance and it is only over when a liopis is knocked unconscious or surrendered. The participants usually take off their clothing other than their loincloth to give as much advantage as wearing clothes will provide more things for opponent to grab and also hinder the effect of mucus secreted by skin to make it harder for opponent to grab. Because the intention of the dance is to show off, as long as the dance is interesting and able to demonstrate the physical prowess of the liopis, winning or losing doesn't really matter.