Welcome to Hamster Highlight, a column where we take a common or classic trope and take it for a new spin. In keeping with our philosophy of Offbeat Encounters, we provide a few ideas on ways you could use these variant critters in your campaign. Take our ideas or leave ’em, but we’re sure you’ll enjoy ‘em. Of course, you may see these items reappear in other MGSHP products . . .
THE SUCKING GOD
Gelatinous cubes get a short shrift. Sure, they’re slow, unintelligent, and are really easy to hit, but it’s foolish to write them off so easily. Try to imagine running into one in real life: it’s a humungous slab of hostile jelly, almost invisible, and full of acid. Just touching one can melt the very flesh from your bones, and agony awaits any creature unlucky enough to be engulfed by one.
But what happens if a cube gets smart? What happens if it gains a rudimentary intelligence and grows larger? Its acid becomes more powerful, its pseudopods more cohesive? What if it adapts to its environment and starts releasing a scentless pheromone that causes creatures to come to it, instead of having to hunt for its food? Could one of these things actually prove challenging to a high-level party?
You bet it could. And the Sucking God is an example of one such elder gelatinous cube.
Using the Sucking God
- A dungeon room has exactly the dimensions of the cube, which fills the space. Both doors to this room open outward. Unable to leave the space but possessed of an insatiable hunger, the Sucking God entices even creatures who see it to become engulfed within reach.
- Trapped on the Ethereal Plane, the Sucking God proves a nasty surprise for any creature that happens to pop over for a visit.
- A gelatinous cube with another movement option could be scary indeed: imagine if the Sucking God could fly, and simply descend upon adventurers at an inopportune time (is there ever an “opportune time” to be dissolves in acid)?
- Any monster known to value toughness over strategy – kobolds, goblins, even ogres or hill giants – could easily turn to the Sucking God for protection. Kobold traps and misdirection could lead adventurers right into the gigantic cube, and such creatures might even worship the creature as an actual deity!
Available as a free PDF download at DriveThruRPG