Monster Mondays began as a series of posts inspired by James Jacobs’ 10 goblin facts written for Pathfinder. Now, I’m creating new lore, encounters, unique NPCs and more for creatures in the Monster Manual. The goal is to provide habits, scene-setting tools, encounter hooks, and more variety, especially for monsters that don’t get quite as much love as dragons, beholders, mind flayers, and liches.
It’s time for more Dungeons & Dragons chicanery. This time I’ve brewed up 12 lore hooks to flesh out oozes in your campaign world. These slimy creeps drip through dungeons, cleaning up all the foulness leftover from battles and occasionally ambushing adventurers for a quick snack.
Oozes in General
- Some cultures consume portions of still-living oozes, often in rituals associated with coming of age or assuming leadership roles. This can be quite dangerous, and such rituals are prone to deadly outcomes.
- Though most alchemists privately disagree, a common folk belief is that oozes are spawned from poorly brewed or spoiled potions and elixirs. Alchemists leave this belief to flourish as it keeps children and fools from intruding in their labs, protecting their projects and the dangerous reagents they use.
- Alchemists have their own superstitions surrounding oozes. There are those that theorize that oozes can never truly die and that every ooze is merely a fragment of a great ooze, a primordial being that was somehow splintered into many parts. Some alchemists seek a fabled ritual that would allow them to combine oozes into more potent forms, the ultimate ooze pictured as a sort of living philosopher’s stone.
Black Puddings
- Black puddings are said to taste strongly of blood and fetid meat.
- Potent wizards and nobles that can afford such a wizard’s services may deploy a black pudding as an assassin, sending the ooze into an adversary’s lair and retrieving it once no trace of said adversary is left.
- Black puddings are said to exhibit a rare swarming behavior akin to locusts, causing whole cities to be wiped out in mere hours.
Gelatinous Cubes
- Those who have dared to eat them claim that gelatinous cubes have a very faint, minty flavor.
- Rarely, gelatinous cubes have been employed to clean city streets under the careful supervision of a mage. This practice, while effective, is quite dangerous if locals are not advised of the cube’s movement patterns.
- Some cultures that dwell in close proximity to a gelatinous cube population revere them as a sort of living symbol of the afterlife, leaving their dead to be devoured by the cubes and sometimes even praying to the cubes as a sort of collective ancestral figure.
Gray Oozes
- Ooze connoisseurs say that no two gray oozes taste alike. Their flavors depend, in part, on the stone in their habitat, and gastronomes theorize that a gray ooze with a curated diet could be dehydrated and turned into a potent seasoning.
- Gray oozes are a particularly problematic pest for cities, hiding in plain sight and attacking children and pets. Cities with a gray ooze problem seek out specialized hunters who combine hunting techniques with the knowledge of masons and architects to help them find and kill the oozes.
- Thought to be more fable than fact, there are rumors of a wizard’s fortress made entirely of gray ooze, perhaps even a singular entity tamed and shaped into a living lair that can devour intruders.
Ochre Jellies
- The smell and flavor of an ochre jelly is said to resemble that of rotting citrus fruit.
- Hags sometimes use ochre jellies as guards, feeding them just enough to keep them close by, often hidden beneath a hag’s lair or in swampy terrain where the jelly might blend in with the mud.
- Some claim that ochre jellies are the remains of cursed folk deprived of muscle and bone. There are tales of jellies seemingly playing with the remains of their victims as if trying to adhere to the bones of the dead and take on humanoid form.
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