Bill, I’ve been hearing certain rumors from one of my more…. ‘creative’ friends about the Unova government doing something to the Tympole line and similar Pokémon. Do you know anything abiut that?

There are several different conspiracy theories about Unova being completely unable to leave its species of frog-like pokémon alone. Could you be more specific?

(Is it the one about chemical testing affecting tympole sexuality? The one in which Unova is attempting to synthesize hallucinogens from tympole’s poisonous mucus again? Or something else?)

The Tympole Line

Tympole
The Tadpole Pokémon
Type: Water
Official Registration #: 535
Entry: As a note for future reference and therefore of more use to the author himself than his readers, when this tadpole-like pokémon vibrates its cheeks, it often emits a sound wave designed to warn other tympole of danger at a frequency imperceptible to humans. You, of course, already know this. What you may have forgotten by the time you consult this entry again is the fact that if you can hear a tympole’s vibrations, this is not a sign that your hearing has gotten inhumanly sharp but instead that the tympole feels that your presence is just enough of a threat to warrant summoning an army of seismitoad.

Palpitoad
The Vibration Pokémon
Type: Water/Ground
Official Registration #: 536
Entry: The evolved form of tympole, by battle experience. There is an old wives’ tale in Unova that states that touching a palpitoad’s bumps will cause a human to break out in warts. This is resoundingly not true; however, some subspecies can secrete liquids from their bumps that irritates human skin. Of course, this is less important than the fact that palpitoad vibrate these bumps at such a high frequency that when said bumps come in contact with water or earth, they can generate massive waves or mild earthquakes, respectively, but to be fair, having poison shoot out from these vibrating bumps shortly before contact with water or the ground would just be adding insult to injury—quite literally, even.

Seismitoad
The Vibration Pokémon
Type: Water/Ground
Official Registration #: 537
Entry: The evolved form of palpitoad, by battle experience. This large, frog-like pokémon is very much the culmination of its previous evolutionary stages. It possesses bumps that can vibrate, these vibrations can trigger waves or earthquakes, and, most importantly, it shoots poison from glands within these bumps to paralyze prey. It’s just that many of these abilities are much stronger than they were in seismitoad’s previous stages, and it’s very willing to use all of them in tandem with six other seismitoad to protect the tympole and palpitoad one happens to be studying.