Lava Ooze

The lava ooze is generally to be found deep in areas with plentiful volcanic ability, as well as any of the warmer outer dimensions. While oozes generally feed on flesh, the lava ooze subsists on minerals, with any minerals with a melting point higher than its body being excreted. Because of this, the lava ooze is relatively non-aggressive. However, they are able to sense especially rich minerals, meaning that those wearing armour or precious stones may find themselves targets. But it's not that big a threat, since you can just amble away from the ooze. They are slow.

Me and Joe went to NYC recently and during our stay there I started doodling some oozes in my sketchbook. I've always found the ooze monster type really difficult to draw. Well, difficult to draw in an interesting way. There's only so many ways you can draw a blob. But I've recently been seeing a lot of really interesting sea slugs and I started using them as inspiration. I know most oozes are supposed to be kinda amorphous, blind, blobbity blobby blobs, but I kinda went for a half barnacle half snail thing here.

We fought a little pack of these guys in our current campaign. We mostly ran away from them. We've been running away from a lot of creatures.

It's honestly kinda fun to flee.

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Gelatinous Cube (& Happy 300th Post!)

Gelatinous cubes are a subset of oozes which share the remarkable tendency to settle comfortably into a cuboid shape at rest. While this might seem a uselessly bizarre trait, wizarding opinion speculates that the creatures may have thus evolved to comfortably exist in the man-made structures of abandoned underground structures such as crypts and dungeons. Here they simply "occupy" a cube of space, stretching wall to wall and waiting, spider-like, for prey to stumble upon them, whereupon they absorb and devour it.

Of course, the particular danger inherent in gelatinous cubes is their near-transparency when not feeding. For new adventurers, a seemingly vacant corridor can quickly go from being a symbol of brief merciful respite ("oh, thank goodness there are no hobgoblins here!") to one of  flesh-eating protoplasmic death ("it's eating our cleric!!!! And then it's going to eat me!!!! OH MY GOOOOOOD" etc etc).


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So, happy 300th post, everyone! We decided to go for something classically D&D-ish with this one, and as we're always pretty short on Oozes (an amorphous blob of goo is actually pretty hard to make into an interesting drawing, huh) I thought I'd go for one of the more famously silly variations on the creature type. Gelatinous cubes have become pretty iconic among the fanbase (usually depicted with the traditional skull or somesuch floating within), confirming their awkward charm. I don't know the true origin of the creature but part of me suspects that the thing was an inspired by-product of trying to codify an ooze within a system with a grid-based ruleset. They make undeniably great corridor-filling deathtraps, but consider hanging one silently from a ceiling, then dropping it on your unsuspecting party!

Also featured in this particular image is a hapless Razor Boar, which some among you may remember as Blanca's very first image for the blog way back in 2010. Drawing this I actually felt pretty sorry for the little fella. Getting eaten by an ooze is probably not a good way to go, as evinced by the 1988 remake of the classic horror/sci-fi B-movie The Blob (warning, very gory!) and, to a more comical extent, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (superbly reviewed here by the guys over at Redlettermedia).

Anyway, thanks to everyone who continues to follow us, we appreciate it. We're nearing completion on the second book now, it should be out in the later half of this year, so keep your eyes peeled for more news on that. Obviously thanks to Blanca, too - I feel a bit of a sham filling in for our 300th post when it's mostly Blanca's efforts that have kept the blog going over the years. Here's to 300 more!

- Joe

Summoning Ooze

Common Oozes are difficult enough creatures to fight; alien in form and movement, often with a host of  more unpleasant qualities to substitute for the effectiveness of teeth and claws - with the Summoning Ooze the problem is compounded somewhat.

Possibly the result of a summoning spell physically manifesting, a Summoning Ooze is a gelatinous mass threaded through with glyphs of calling and binding which swim in chaotic patterns, summoning random creatures which materialise to serve the creature's bidding.

I feel a bit tired of digital painting so here's something a little more on the "graphic" end of the spectrum again. I got a little way into animating this guy (I love animating abstract blobby shapes swirling around) but I thought for the sake of speed for now I'll just post the image. Oozes are, as always, tricky to give some character to - for this guy I went for a weird anemone-style shape, like a many-armed head on a stalk (even if it's obscured a bit by all the stuff going on around it). Make sense to you guys?

- Joe

Conflagration Ooze

Conflagration oozes are one of those things where people aren't sure whether they're a magical creation, a natural accident or some kind of mean joke. The fire inside the ooze is an especially painful toxin. Physical contact with the ooze causes the toxin to burn and seep though the skin and causes both fire and Constitution damage. Most oozes are mindless creatures, but this particular ooze (essentially roiling flame barely kept contained by a thin membrane) has malevolent intelligence behind it.

They're as smart as humans, and show strategy when hunting, immobilizing victims with their spell-like abilities before consuming them. Some of them are even imbued with hellish power (called Infernal Conflagrations Oozes), which albeit not more intelligent, are much more deadly.

Arcane Ooze

You know what's hard to design? Oozes. There's only so many ways you can try to design an amoeba. Still, this is a sight better than that catastrophe under the title of Reekmurk. Eegh. I should really redo that particular image.

Some people have a lot of complaints about D&D being really caster-biased. Wizards and such are really squishy early game, when in later levels they gain powers of deific proportions, leaving combat-based classes in the dust. Well, for the sake of balance in the game, you have to break out the occasional mage-killer. The kinda monster where you totally aren't targeting the caster; it just likes to eat magic. If you didn't want to get eaten by a giant magic-eating lime jelly maybe you shoulda rolled a rogue.

This fella's shown up a couple of times now. He doesn't seem to be a very good wizard. I should probably give him a name. Rinceko? Orkwind? I'm sure I'll think of something.

Living Blasphemy

Many mysteries surrond the true nature of magic, despite the devotion of extensive resources to its study. One such mystery has been observed to occur in circumstances where high-level spellcasters have (perhaps carelessly) overextended their powers in the casting of a particularly potent spell; over time, the spell can develop in complexity and potency, divorcing itself entirely from its caster and eventually gaining a sort of sentience of its own.

One spell which is lamentably capable of this transformation is the Blasphemy curse. A seventh-level spell favoured by clerics of dark deities such as Nerull or Vecna, Blasphemy affects an area, afflicting all within its boundaries with conditions ranging from dizzied confusion to paralysis or painful death. In the case we see here, a particularly powerful instance of the spell has become sentient, appearing as a twisting, globular pillar of darkness, creeping towards you. Despite its sentience the creature is devoid of any proper intelligence, desiring only death and pain - whoever is struck by its roiling branches suffers the full extent of the spell's original effects.

Sorry for all the delayed posts from me lately, work has been pretty busy for the last few weeks (in addition to me being sort of ill and my computer packing in again). Oh well! I am attempting to catch up.

I do like the idea of sentient spells, I think it's an idea worth applying to more magical abilities. Living Cone of Cold, anyone? I sort of imagine it would be quite cute. Although, if you're feeling brave there are some slightly more epic opportunities if you know where to look.

Reekmurk

The Reekmurk is one of serveral kinds of water-dwelling oozes. They are normally found in underwater caverns in the depths of frigid arctic oceans, but tectonic movement will release them from their normal home and force them to the surface. It is a formless black shape, not unlike a cloud of ink or oil slick, with thin tendrils spreading out. It's practically invisible in the darkness. It's size means it can easily take down ships, its acidic body burning through wood and its foul poisonous vapours weakening life. This creature is weak to sunlight, which can kill it or drive it back to the depths from which it came.


The ooze is an iconic Dungeons and Dragons creature that we've been kind of avoiding. All oozes are pretty much the same thing; a mindless, destructive blob. They vary little in appearance, save for colour and mild size differentes. The best known one is the Gelatinous Cube, which is exactly what is says on the tin. Of course they all have different abilities, but at the end of the day you're still looking at a blob.

But then again I suppose the challenge in illustrating an ooze is to show it in action.

Void Ooze

Creatures of the "Ooze" type are often physically primitive - posessing little in the way of defined organs and rarely maintaining a constant form for any period of time, their bodies are simple, gelatinous masses of chaotic magical tissue.

Void Oozes have no specific origin but "occur" naturally across the planes. They are manifestations of negative energy, the anti-life force which is tapped by magic users such as necromancers who use it to power their spells. As such, a Void Ooze is often found in areas devoid of life, occasionally accompanied by smaller undead who are drawn to the negative magics it excretes as a dark penumbra.

This week's theme was designed to pose a challenge - how do you make a drawing of a formless blob interesting? I enjoyed drawing the Void Ooze, as its appearance bears no small resemblance to a certain Flying Spaghetti Monster. Lighting in in a suitably "negative" way was also fun.