The Lute of Infernal Funk (and Frank)
(An adventure in disco, despair, and deeply reluctant amphibians)

​No one asked Tamsin the Bard to perform.

That had never stopped her before.

She burst into the tavern like a glitter bomb with legs, wielding a gleaming, rune-scarred lute pulsing with dark energy and questionable rhythm.

“DO NOT PLAY THAT LUTE,” croaked Frank, a talking frog who lived in her satchel and had developed an ulcer entirely from stress and secondhand embarrassment.

“Too late!” she sang, plucking a single string.

The tavern went silent. The lights dimmed. A beat dropped so soul-piercingly funky it reanimated someone’s soup.

A dwarven patron began to disco involuntarily.

A cleric screamed.

Someone's wig levitated.

Frank peeked out, wide-eyed and exhausted. “You said you were going to use it responsibly.”

“I am!” Tamsin replied, her eyes glowing with chaotic glee as the cursed lute throbbed with the power of forgotten dance battles.

“You played it during a funeral.”

“They clapped!”

“They were trying to banish you.”

The lute let out a sinister wah-wahhh sound, summoning a spectral conga line.

Frank hopped onto the bar and addressed the increasingly horrified patrons.

“She found it in a crypt. It was sealed in a box. With seven locks. Labeled ‘DO NOT UNLEASH THE FUNK’. I told her not to open it. What did she say? ‘But what if it’s cursed in a sexy way?’”

Tamsin struck a chord so powerful that two paladins spontaneously developed sequins.

“Stop monologuing, Frank!” she shouted, spinning in a glittery circle. “I’m summoning the Boogie Djinn!”

Frank buried his face in his tiny hands. “I miss being a regular frog.”