Every geneticist can remember their first slime. The crudest and simplest monsters to cultivate, these ambulatory, omnivorous tissue colonies have a staggering array of practical applications, widely utilized as cleaning solvents, food additives, exfoliating facial masks, paradermal necraphoid disruptors and occasionally hats.
Docile and only moderately corrosive in smaller volumes, slimes exhibit an exponential acceleration in metabolism as their biomass increases, necessitating more aggressive, even predatory feeding methods. Often called "blobs" or "globsters," massive enough slimes can make fiercely destructive but nearly uncontrollable biological weapons, feeding until their energy demands are no longer sustainable and their own overcrowded digestive cells dissolve them into smaller, more passive fragments.
Slimes can be cultured in a nearly limitless variety, with several distinct strains officially recognized by the Slime, Ooze and Jelly Cultivation Society:
Rotsnot - the most common distinguishable strain, Rotsnot is vivid green and highly viscous with a hot, briny odor. Its overactive digestive cells make it highly unstable, but moderately more destructive than conventional slimes.
Bugbile - a runny, green-yellow slime heavily saturated with ammonia, always seething with many small bubbles. Known to contract itself and burst upward in a wave or geyser, crashing down on prey.
Tarbabble - oily black, slow moving and rubbery, known for its incredible adhesiveness, tensile strength and acrid, burnt smell.
Jellydrop - a transparent, sweet smelling slime known to hold a dense, smoothly rounded shape. It has a tendency to split in two when it detects danger.
Crypt crud - this luminous yellow slime tends to spread far in a veiny lattice of pulsing channels. It seeks out decomposing materials first, but consumes them slowly, thickly infesting both inert and animate corpses.
Bogfire - a thickly veined, bioluminescent, red-orange jelly. Venomous, barbed microcilia inflict a prolonged burning rash.
Frogvomit - these intensely sour slimes retain lumps of partly digested matter in their slushy, chunky, multicolored matrix. With a slow digestive process, they attempt to simply smother prey by invading any available orifices.
Blarf - retaining waste matter and thick with bacteria, much of a Blarf's plasmodium is homogeneous to mammalian excrement, varying in consistency. Like the Frogvomit, it attempts to clog the airways of its prey.
Devil blood - a deep crimson, fast moving slime which travels in a winding stream and may crystallize its edges into needle-like shards. It tends to strike at prey in a snake-like manner.
Bloody gums - this wet, pink, putty-like slime sweats beads of a dark crimson, highly toxic gel. Ingestion or even close proximity may cause dizziness and cramping.
Rust pus - a reddish orange slime with a sponge-like plasmodium smelling strongly of vinegar. Rust pus are uninterested in most organic tissues, breaking down metals and minerals for sustenance.
Scabcurdle - a red and brown, blue-veined mush with a crusty, lumpy surface and a sharp copper odor. It feeds only on the blood and other bodily fluids of prey through its probing microtendrils, discarding the drained husk.
Baby guts - pinkish purple to sickly blue, its creased and folded mass resembles a jiggling heap of intestines. Able to "spit" thin streams of itself a considerable distance.
Headcheese - forms a pulsing, deeply wrinkled, green-gray gelatinous dome often likened to a crawling brain. It leaks a clear, odorless mucus with psychotropic effects.
Moldmush - with an irregularly lumpy, multicolored plasmodium, dense patches of cilia and dark, oozing secretions, a Moldmush is often likened to a heap of rotting fruit. Its matching odor causes sneezing fits.
Funk - a highly fluid, pure white slime with a large yellow nucleus, often compared to a "fried egg." A Funk's nucleus gives off a repellantly foul odor and may burst into a vile cloud of pungent vapor if punctured.
Wormroe - thick, gelatinous and deep red, forming many spherical globules with dark centers resembling a mass of eggs. It has a greater tendency than other slimes to split apart and re-form, sometimes breaking up into a swarm of individual beads.
Glumpuddle - thin and watery, with a deep grey-green coloration and clumps of denser greenish sludge. Easily mistaken for a pool of stagnant water, its chemical miasma causes drowsiness.
Mincemeat - a pulpy, translucent red-pink slime with white streaks, it tends to retain a large number of bone shards and teeth from its prey.
Hag milk - a chunky, off-white slime with blue mottling, it can spray a choking cloud of sour, white vapor made up of its own cells, which attack mucous membranes and slowly form larger plasmodia.
Contents copyright Jonathan Wojcik