Anuran Tadpoles are the tribe’s young, spawned in great numbers from the Matron’s back and destined, if they survive, to harden into the Anurans that plague the Mirewoods. They begin aquatic and legless, left to fester in the shallows until hunger drives them to motion. Smaller than their elders, yet no less unsettling, they already show the tribe’s defining blasphemy: mouths too large for their bodies, and teeth that are disturbingly human in shape.

They lurk in the mangrove and in stagnant pools, half-buried in silt, waiting for anything living to come close enough to be mistaken for an offering. Nets have been torn. Arms have been lost. They bite through hemp with alarming ease, and do not release readily once they have found flesh.

With time they undergo a brutal, rudimentary metamorphosis. Legs emerge and their tail reduces, though it often remains in some form.