Tripkee

Tripkee
Grippli

(Creature)

2E1E

Common

Small

Tripkee

Humanoid

Level

Varies

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

Tripkee

Images of tripkees

Source: The Mwangi Expanse, pg(s). 118

Type

Humanoid
(grippli)

CR

By class level

Environment

Warm forests or marshes

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

Tripkee

Images of tripkees

Source: Bestiary 2, pg(s). 149

Tripkees are amphibian humanoids who closely resemble tree frogs in appearance. Watchful and reclusive by nature, their societies thrive from their wardenship of the arboreal wilderness of the Mwangi Expanse. Misconceptions often label tripkees as a primitive people due to their reliance on simple tools and cunning, overlooking their ability to shape the land into secluded orchards and hidden causeways that allow them to live peacefully and prosperously.

Appearance

Mother Bogwynne, a tripkee.

Tripkees resemble humanoid tree frogs, featuring oversized eyes, large mouths, and slender physiques. They stand just over 2 feet in height within 3 years of hatching, and can climb remarkably well thanks to the strong grip of their large toes. Their colorful skin is well-suited for camouflage in their home environments—jungle dwelling groups often have green or brown colorations, while those living by wetlands might have more varied coloration, such as orange or blue. They typically weigh just over 30 pounds.

Adventurers

Many tripkees come from wildernesses and other remote regions with backgrounds as hunters, nomads, or scouts. Urban tripkee may use their natural talents to become animal whisperers, bounty hunters, or herbalists, with some taking diplomatic roles such as emissaries to maintain healthy relations with other peoples. Their profound connection to nature makes them excellent druids and rangers. Musical traditions practiced by tripkees can become strong foundations for bards, while their natural agility and perceptiveness can also make them capable clerics, monks, or rogues.

Ecology

Tripkees reproduce via egg laying, and a newly hatched tripkee takes about three years to mature to adulthood. Unless they meet a violent end, which considering the dangerous environments they inhabit is very possible, tripkees can reach 60 years of age, with some exceptions living as long as a century. They typically hunt and eat giant insects as well as a variety of fruit. Some tripkees of certain heritages can develop physical traits such as toxic skin, film-covered toes for climbing, or particularly long tongues.

Habitat and society

Most tripkees hail from the Kaava Lands, a large peninsula in the Mwangi Expanse teeming with jungles. Throughout the Kaava wilderness, they have created a number of secluded societies that carefully tailor the environment into landscapes made suitable for their domestic needs, such as channeled spillways for fishing or tactfully arranged foliage for hunting game.

Despite their reclusive nature, they normally trade with neighboring societies for metals and gemstones that they cannot obtain themselves. While some might speak Common tongues, among their own kind they speak their own language called Tripkee.

One of the most sacred roles among some tripkee tribes is that of the fiend keeper, a type of medium who serves as a vessel to keep evil spirits from causing any further harm to the tribe. Once infused with this evil spirit, the fiend keeper then undertakes a variety of good deeds to try and cleanse the spiritual stain of the dark entity within. The fiend keeper can sometimes use the blasphemous power of these evil spirits for their own good end. This role is passed down from generation to generation within the tribe.

On Golarion

Tripkees are common in Garund, especially in the Mwangi Expanse and the Sodden Lands. With the rise of the Angazhan-worshipping charau-ka across the Expanse and the steadying increase of colonial pressure, most of the tripkee tribes have migrated westward toward the Sodden Lands and many dwell in the Kaava Lands. Within the Inner Sea region they seldom live outside of western Garund, with a few enclaves in the Verduran Forest that live in close cooperation with the Wildwood druids.

Tripkees also live in the Valashmai Jungle of Tian Xia. It is from the ruins that dot these deadly jungles that researchers have gleaned accounts of the tripkee ancestry's origin—they were supposedly imported to Golarion from across the stars.

Tripkees of Valashmai exhibit a disproportionate strength for their small size that can be partially attributed to their war painters, who apply mystical pigments to their fellow warriors.

References

Paizo referred to tripkees as gripplis until the publication of Tian Xia World Guide.

Paizo published an article about tripkees on pages 8–11 of Blood of the Beast.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.