~~~ Royal Archive ~~~
Year 821
Slime-Craft Guild
- Selena
Arcadia Eoghan -
Slimes have been around as long as we have been alive. According
to the oral traditions of our people, the land was once a vibrant
place full of so many different plants and animals a single person
could never count them all. The sun rose every morning to a cacophony
of bird calls, beasts with hooves and horns ran wild, and the hills
were covered in trees as far as the eye could see.
Today
the landscape is barren. The grass that we so carefully seed in our
cities has all but died out, with only the toughest kinds remaining.
Some of the plants and fungi have taken on distinct slime-related
qualities that deters the wild slimelins from eating them. Larger
slimes used to dominate the landscape, but with our efforts at
hunting and destroying their spawning pools the local flora is slowly
returning to its natural state.
This overview details the
general life cycle of a slime. Normal slimes go through three phases:
Slimelin, Aberration, and Pool.
All slimes appear to
follow this general pattern. The sheer variety of types makes this
hard to classify, as some aberrations will mutate further in their
life multiple times. Specific types will be discussed in detail in
their own papers.
Young slimes, or Slimelins, are strange
creatures that inhabit the world on a small scale. They are found
hiding in crevasses, caves, or anywhere that a sufficiently small
creature can hide. They are often seen eating bits of plants or
fungi, or anything else that they can possibly get their bodies
around.
Slimelins are scavengers, bottom feeders, and
occasionally predators. They seem to absorb anything that was once
living. Some have been seen eating tree roots, dirt, or even small
rocks. The less digestible material is left remarkably clean near the
place it was found.
Slimelins and insects appear to use
each other as sport. Insects will instinctively attack a slimelin on
sight. The most successful insects have hard outer armor with spikes
or horns that can successfully pierce the bouncy outer skin of their
prey. Less successful insects are swallowed whole by the small round
creatures, disappearing into the inner gel of the slime over the
course of a day.
The body of these creatures are composed
of two major parts: A tough outer skin and an inner gel.
The
outer skin seems to act both as a protective layer and as a muscle.
It defines both the shape of the creature and acts as its first and
only line of defense. It contracts or expands as a whole. The skin
becomes pliable and hard when removed from the rest of the body.
The
inner layer is a gooey substance that somewhat resembles tree sap. It
forms a thick gel where food is broken down and energy stored for
later.
All slimelins are very resilient. Their bodies are
elastic; they can compress, expand, or bend themselves into odd
shapes at will. They can absorb blows across their entire body,
bouncing around somewhat uncontrollably in the worst case scenario.
This lets them roll around, use their entire body as a battering ram,
or survive seemingly impossible falls.
When a slimelin
absorbs enough food to grow beyond its bounds, it heads back to its
home pool to start the next phase of its life. Many young slimes will
wander very far from their home
The slimelin throws itself
into the pool. The outer skin is shed and re-absorbed by the pool.
The gel grows hard and smooth, forming itself into a core. Part of
the pool is absorbed and grows into a fully fleshed out abomination.
The pool is thought to be similar to the center of an egg, with the
slimelin reconstituting itself into a new form at the end.
The
process is usually the same but varies in time; on average, it takes
a week. Some species have been known to complete the cycle in two
days, while others take an entire month to gestate. When the slime
re-emerges into the world it has grown new features: a face, an
individualized body that has distinct parts, and a much higher
intelligence.
The newly formed core of the Slime functions
at the brain of the creature, storing memories and controlling the
body. If the core is removed the body remains motionless and quickly
decomposes into a thick, viscous mucus. The core can survive roughly
a month if left alone or exposed to the elements. It can survive much
longer if fed, usually through a solution of sugar water. Storing a
core inside liquid slime is not recommended as the core will
reconstitute as a creature.
New adult slimes will resemble
the slime from which their pool was made. They will constantly change
to fit their surroundings and seem to possess an intelligence that
exceeds that of other known animals. Many slimes will mimic a
familiar sight in the environment, such as a plant or another
creature. No slimes have been spotted mimicking humans, but we
suspect it will only be a matter of time.
The exact
behavior of particular types of slimes is beyond the scope of this
article; every variant seems to have its own peculiarities and
interests in how they see the world. Some seem to embody elements or
other ideas, such as water and the wind itself.
At first,
we thought that pools were the result of a large amount of corpses
piled into a hole. Now we know that it is a sort of end of life stage
for the species. It is not yet known what dictates that a slime turn
into a pool, but they are never found close to one another. It is
currently thought that pools are similar to a bee hive or a bird
nest, and that the entire local area will be claimed as a territory
of a single slime.
No active slimes have been observed to
turn into pools. The only known transition was found by chance in the
year 818 after a Tinker had found a particularly large slime midway
through its metamorphosis. No slimes were observed in the area for
100 days before or after the pool was found. We suspect that the area
had not been claimed yet, but the means of claiming a territory are
not yet known.
The half-formed pool was burned 100 days
after it was found. No slimes have been sighted in the area since.
The only conclusion we can draw is that the area has been marked as a
territory somehow. Unlike other burned pools, this area is still
devoid of the creatures. More study needs to be done on this
phenomenon to understand it better.
This concludes the
overview on the life cycle of slimes. More information will be added
as our understanding of these creatures grows.
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