Green slime (Dungeons & Dragons)

Infobox D&D creature
name=Green slime
alignment=Neutral
type=Hazard
subtype=
source=
first=In the "Dungeons & Dragons" fantasy role-playing game, the green slime is an ooze, a category of monster. It is more akin to a plant than an animal. It is a horrible, fetid growth, resembling a bright green, sticky, wet moss which grows on the walls and ceilings of caves, sewers, dungeons, mines, and the like.

The description of various "genera" and "species" of corrosive mineral oozes encountered by unwary miners underground, that can eat unnoticed through skin and flesh to the bone, date back at least to the works of Georg Agricola. [cite web|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=qNOB-vcob88C&pg=PA215&lpg=PA215&dq=agricola+corrosive&source=web&ots=RVYDsOa_dr&sig=kKL7TTmV1ZoF72ejiGyG8bbwLfc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result|title=De Natura Fossilium|author=Georg Agricola|pages=214-215] [cite web|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=oWoChuYV2GUC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=agricola+corrosive&source=web&ots=mHGbaGLgwh&sig=2I99jILqEJKUQmySgxmGoUPT22c&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA113,M1|title=De Re Metallica|author=Herbert Clark Hoover (commentary)|page=114] Some of these might have been inspired by cavers' contacts with peculiar lifeforms in caves with a high hydrogen sulfide and sulfuric acid content which are even more corrosive than the environments they inhabit, such as the "snottites", "red goo", and "green slime" encountered in the real-world Cueva de Villa Luz. [cite web|url=http://www.caveslime.org/analytic_research_villaLuz.html|title=Project: Cueva de Villa Luz (Cueva de las Sardinas)]

Characteristics and habits

The green slime is notably different from other oozes. Being a growth, it is fixed to one place and cannot move or attack. For the most part, it is forced to feed off of vegetable, organic or metallic substances in an underground wall. If it grows on a ceiling, however, it can sense if someone passes below, and drops onto them. Living creatures touched by a green slime eventually turn into green slime themselves. Green slime is vulnerable to light, heat, frost, and "cure disease" spells.

Green slimes are mindless and cannot speak. As such, they are regarded as neutral in alignment.

A green slime will regrow if even the tiniest residue remains, and can germinate to form a full sized ooze again years later. In the "Dungeons & Dragons" universe, huge colonies of green slime exist deep beneath the earth.

References