Maat Mons
2022-02-21, 05:25 PM
I had a dream featuring a monster that struck me as interesting.
It was a sort of slime or ooze with a basic intellect. A hive-mind, actually, shared amongst, at least, all contiguously-connected ooze, and maybe also different patches that were near to each other. The dream left some details ambiguous.
One thing that differentiated it from D&D oozes is that it was very slow. It was basically impossible for the stuff to catch live prey without utilizing the environment. One tactic it liked to employ was to wait in hiding for a creature to enter someplace with limited exits, then to cover over all the exits.
The stuff was impervious to normal damage (bludgeoning, piecing, and slashing). That would just reshape it or, at worst, divide it into multiple parts. Neither of which hindered it in the least. People mostly needed use fire against it, which it feared intensely. Presumably, other "energy types" would work too, but only fire showed up in the dream.
Additionally, attacking the stuff with unarmed strikes or natural weapons was basically handing it a victory, because getting in contact with a living creature was its goal all along. Once it touched something, it could kind of "infect" it, like a disease.
Once an animal was sealed in, the ooze could, in principle just wait for it to die and eat the corpse. It certainly had a slow enough metabolism that it could afford to be that patient. But it usually tried to get things done faster by growing across the walls and floor, and reaching tendrils at its prey.
It also liked to inhabit terrain that could serve as natural "traps," living at the bottom of pits and crevices that things might fall into. It was smart enough to make good use of terrain, but not smart enough to modify the terrain for its own purposes. Not even when it was infecting animals or humans.
When the ooze got far enough along in infecting an individual, it migrated to the brain, and could control it, cordyceps-style. Infected individuals cooperated with each other and with nearby patches of ooze. Ultimately, when the host had been digested, the infesting ooze would merge back up with the ooze in the environment anyway.
The infected ooze-zombies could infect new people by touching them, as long as it was an ooze-covered bit that did the touching. But the ooze-zombies were just as likely to drive prey towards nearby patches of ooze. As I said, all the ooze cooperated. In particular, the ooze-zombies could try to drive prey towards a location where the ooze had a nice trap or ambush set up.
It was a sort of slime or ooze with a basic intellect. A hive-mind, actually, shared amongst, at least, all contiguously-connected ooze, and maybe also different patches that were near to each other. The dream left some details ambiguous.
One thing that differentiated it from D&D oozes is that it was very slow. It was basically impossible for the stuff to catch live prey without utilizing the environment. One tactic it liked to employ was to wait in hiding for a creature to enter someplace with limited exits, then to cover over all the exits.
The stuff was impervious to normal damage (bludgeoning, piecing, and slashing). That would just reshape it or, at worst, divide it into multiple parts. Neither of which hindered it in the least. People mostly needed use fire against it, which it feared intensely. Presumably, other "energy types" would work too, but only fire showed up in the dream.
Additionally, attacking the stuff with unarmed strikes or natural weapons was basically handing it a victory, because getting in contact with a living creature was its goal all along. Once it touched something, it could kind of "infect" it, like a disease.
Once an animal was sealed in, the ooze could, in principle just wait for it to die and eat the corpse. It certainly had a slow enough metabolism that it could afford to be that patient. But it usually tried to get things done faster by growing across the walls and floor, and reaching tendrils at its prey.
It also liked to inhabit terrain that could serve as natural "traps," living at the bottom of pits and crevices that things might fall into. It was smart enough to make good use of terrain, but not smart enough to modify the terrain for its own purposes. Not even when it was infecting animals or humans.
When the ooze got far enough along in infecting an individual, it migrated to the brain, and could control it, cordyceps-style. Infected individuals cooperated with each other and with nearby patches of ooze. Ultimately, when the host had been digested, the infesting ooze would merge back up with the ooze in the environment anyway.
The infected ooze-zombies could infect new people by touching them, as long as it was an ooze-covered bit that did the touching. But the ooze-zombies were just as likely to drive prey towards nearby patches of ooze. As I said, all the ooze cooperated. In particular, the ooze-zombies could try to drive prey towards a location where the ooze had a nice trap or ambush set up.