Gelatinous cube
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| Dungeons & Dragons creature | |
|---|---|
| Gelatinous cube | |
| Alignment | Neutral |
| Type | Ooze |
| Source books | |
| First appearance | Monster Manual, 1st Edition (1977) |
| Image | Wizards.com image |
| Stats | OGL stats |
A gelatinous cube is a fictional monster from the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. It is a ten-foot cube of transparent gelatin, which is able to absorb organic matter.
Contents |
[edit] Creative origins
Because of its obviously fantastic, unrealistic nature, the gelatinous cube is one of the most well-known monsters created especially for role-playing games. Although it resembles other fictional monsters, it is an invention of Gary Gygax, and first appeared in the Monster Manual (1977)[1], rather than being lifted from outside sources and adapted to a roleplaying setting, as were many mythological monsters like the minotaur and dryad.
Like the flumph, the gelatinous cube is commonly considered one of the sillier role-playing game monsters. Being a cube that is a perfect ten feet on each side, it is specifically and perfectly adapted to its native environment, the standard, 10-foot (3.0 m) by 10-foot (3.0 m) dungeon corridors which were ubiquitous in the earliest Dungeons & Dragons modules, particularly the randomly-generated ones created using the rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Its existence is also something of a commentary on the ubiquity of treasure-laden dungeons in the roleplaying universe itself.
[edit] Ecology
A gelatinous cube looks like a transparent ooze of mindless, gelatinous matter in the shape of a cube.
A gelatinous cube slides through dungeon corridors, absorbing everything in its path, digesting everything organic and secreting non-digestible matter in its wake. Contact with its exterior can result in a paralyzing electric shock, after which the cube will proceed to slowly digest its stunned and helpless prey.
Reproduction is through a form of asexual 'budding', in which a smaller, stub cube is left behind in a side corridor to grow into full-sized cubes, although these stub cubes run the risk of being absorbed by their own parent on its next trip down the corridor. Scholars have determined that juvenile gelatinous cubes grow to fit their own natural environment, adapting their exterior proportions to the size of the corridors they most commonly sweep.
Gelatinous cubes typically live underground. Some legends whisper of monstrous, "legendary" gelatinous cubes in the deep and secret places beneath the earth that have grown to several hundred thousand cubic feet of volume.
[edit] Alignment
Gelatinous cubes, being mindless, are always neutral.
[edit] In other media
- In Ultima I a gelatinous cube is commonly encountered in the dungeon levels.
- In Castle of the Winds there is a "gelatinous glob."
- In the virtual pet game Psypets, the gelatinous cube is one of the many monsters the player's pet can defeat.
- On the Neopets website, there are jelly blobs named "gelatinous non-cubes."
- Gelatinous cubes are one of the many types of monsters in NetHack.
- The ASCII based game Moria features a treasure rich gelatinous cube.
- On the Giga Pets handheld games, Gelatinous cubes are one of the many food items.
- In the massively multiplayer online game Dofus, the Jellies' Peninsula and Jellith Dimension are devoted to cube shaped Jelly monsters of various flavors and colors.
- In one episode of the absurdist comic Bob the Angry Flower the title character's marketing pitch is nearly ruined by a gelatinous cube which repeatedly yells "Cube!" as it attempts to consume him. After this episode the author Stephen Notley received a number of messages from D&D players who had incorporated cubes which yelled "Cube!" into their games.[2]
- Gelatinous cubes occur both in Everquest and Everquest 2.
- In the 1992 movie Wayne's World, arcade owner Noah Vanderhoff talks about a fictional game in which a gelatinous cube consumes villages.
[edit] References
- Greenwood, Ed. "The Ecology of the Gelatinous Cube." Dragon Magazine #124 (TSR, 1987).
- Gygax, Gary. Monster Manual (TSR, 1977).
- Williams, Skip, Jonathan Tweet, and Monte Cook. Monster Manual (Wizards of the Coast, 2000).
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Monster Manual
- ^ Notley, Stephen. Everybody Loves Jello. Retrieved on 2007-02-19.
[edit] External links
- The gelatinous cube in Neverwinter Nights
