Gelatinous Cube

As long as it doesn't outgrow its hole it won't be able to harm me.

— Quote in the collection "Famous last words"

Gelatinous Cubes are a kind of mindless ooze that is most commonly found in old dungeons and ruins. They are cube shaped, hence the name, and are usually somewhere between 0.5-3 metres in size, although there are reports of ones as small as 0.2 and as large as 5 metres side to side. The upper and lower limits are not known.

These creatures are well known to be almost transparent, making them very difficult to spot when motionless. For this reason explorers commonly take pebbles with them in order to figure out if one is ahead in the dark corridors of dungeons. Common signs of the presence of a Gelatinous Cube is that the floors and walls are abnormally clean, or that there is a bunch of non-digestible items, such as swords, rocks, or armour floating in place.

They feed by engulfing creatures and then dissolving them. In order to engulf something they either wait motionless, waiting for something to run into them, or by slowly moving across the floor.

Exploitation

This staple of dungeons everywhere was never utilized until an adventuring party brought some back to the city from their travels where they released it in a nobles mansion as a prank. After a while it had found and fallen into a garbage chute where it had gotten stuck.

The servants were initially none the wiser and only noticed that something was wrong when the garbage container was empty three days in a row.

It didn't take long to figure out what was wrong, but when the noble wanted it gone he was persuaded by his servants to keep it. A few weeks later the demand for small Gelatinous Cubes went so high as to create a wave of adventurers who wanted a part of the rewards.

Scientific Name

Class 3 Ooze

Conservation Status

None