Slime or Slime Mould, Jelly, Ooze and Pudding
There is this staple monster in RPG of all sorts - Slime. Monster in old DnD, low level enemy in various CRPGs and other fantasy video games. Predatory sludge traveling through the forests and dungeons, melting and eating adventurers all around. What is up with that?
Well, in real life slime moulds are a group of a few types of largely unrelated organisms. Most of them are microscopic but one family creates structures large enough to be visible by naked eye. And they are all these colourful moist growths that look kinda like fungi. Mexicans from Veracruz even gather and eat one species!
So when fantasy versions of slimes are colourful it can be based on reality. Interestingly they live in various biomes, from frozen Arctic to equatorial rainforests to deserts. But they tend to like forests and moist and a lot of dead plant matter the most, so encountering one in a forest is also very much real-life-like.
The similarities end somewhere here though. Slime molds tend to be small, more like fungus than a dog or a human. They also eat dead plant matter, rotting trees, bacteria. Some are parasitic on plants, can cause diseases of cabbage or potatoes. Which makes me think - if they became magically huge what would the eat? They don't really have senses as we know them, they react to chemical and mechanical signals from the environment. In fantasy they tend to attack with acid - and it seems a good idea, their modus operandi is - get close to food source and digest.
Slime moulds not only eat and grow, they sometimes stop and produce spores, creating these pretty fruiting bodies, like bells or dewdrops on strings so they can reproduce with other slime moulds. Some come in symbiotic relations with insects like flies which lay eggs on the mould, larvae feed on it and when grown fly away with spores on them.
Ideas:
- slimes shouldn't be active predators, I imagine them more like passive predators, lying in places and waiting for something to either touch it or potentially leave some chemical trace (smell?) so that slime would follow. I guess Grey Ooze was right.
- depending on their size they would have different attack strategies. I doubt acid works fast enough to kill a creature unless it is something that hurts the slime too, slime is very resilient to acids or whatever Alien franchise can sell you on. I would rather think of slimes as constrictors.
- large slimes just encounter any moving creature and flow on them with whole body. Their insides are slick and moist and would be hard to get out chocking the victim inside. Rest is just digestion. But they'd be rare, you gotta live long and be supported by a lot of magic to keep such size.
- smaller sized slimes could do similar thing, but instead of overflowing something they'd constrict movements first and then either let a thing to tire out and digest it slowly or try to quickly get over it and hope it will swallow or breathe the slime in - you get the idea.
- considering slimes are wet they'd live in shaded places, preferring forests and dungeons over open plains. I can see them slowly overtaking shaded valleys and stuff.
- slime fruiting bodies could be rare alchemical ingredients, they could be alluring, maybe spreading toxic spores so they reproduce AND provide food for young moulds.
- for the symbiotic relations you could make some species of giant insects to work with slime moulds, using their toxins or strangling/suffocating abilities to grant insect a chance to bite.
- why is it so common type of creature in wizards arsenal? Well, when you dabble in life creating magic I guess slime mould is simple enough organism that you don't need that much practice to make it.
In general I see encounters with slimes more like traps and environmental dangers than active predators and seekers. I don't like superacids, mechanics that destroy your equipment in a turn and stuff like that. I think grabbing and choking is more grounded and more scary, you get slowly immobilized by this orange blob and it crawls in your mouth and nose, spills in your ears and drives over your eyes as you slowly choke. You can feel it touching every centimeter of your skin. And even if your friends take it out - what's with the part that stuck in your stomach? And your lungs?
I also don't like the mechanic that makes the immune to damage besides fire or something. I don't think you cannot cut a chunk of it. I think the question is - would you try? Do you want to cut the slime that tightly hugs your companion? Do you want to try chopping on it while your dear friend is underneath?
You wander in a dark forest and sit on mossy boulder? Slime. You lean against a mossy tree? Slime. You step into this clear shallow puddle in a dungeon? Slime. There is this freaky orange splash on a cavern wall? You bet.
Also Gelatinous Cube is not a slime mould. It is a biological construct created by a wizard to clear a dungeon. More like shoggoth than slime mould. It fills the same niche in magiecosystem but it is different. Don't ask me to elaborate though, it's just vibes. Like with real slime moulds XD
Slime moulds could be fun enemies even in sci-fi settings! Make them grow on insides of spaceships or spread from meteorites! Maybe on some planets life never multicellular and they became Slime Worlds!
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxogastria