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Encounter: Oobling
🕑 Added 2023-04-05 22:59:19 +0000 UTC" Few stranger creatures are to be found than the Ooblings, seemingly alien to the ecosystem yet still a part of it. Small and gelatinous, these brave and curious molluscs keep to dark and wet environments, seldom letting themselves be caught under direct sunlight. Their bodies are composed of a thick, transparent jelly, seemingly devoid of internal organs save for their two dark, pearly eyes. They scurry around on six little legs, their body covered from their rabbitlike ears to the tip of their fat tail in a smooth mantel ringed with a wavy frilled edge like an aquatic seaslug- possibly their closest relative. Ooblings are not aquatic or even amphibious, as even though they are adept little swimmers they avoid bodies of water if possible, doubly so if it is brackish or saline, as salt seems to make them ill when absorbed. They much prefer to explore the leafy jungle floor or the damp recesses of caves in small packs, hunting for food with their six feelers (as indeed the two "ears" appear to be, being two sensitive lobes of the mantel and not organs for hearing, although they do angle towards nearby sounds as if they possibly could hear.)
Ooblings are most notable not for their physiology, but for their biology. Oobling bodies are comprised of a living, firm sort of jelly, but unlike elementals or other similar such beings that use their powerful Auo to hold their shape and move their bodies, Ooblings have no Auo whatsoever. Unlike most if not all life in our world, which perpetuates through the creation and absorption of Auo'rha, Ooblings seem to neither require nor produce the energy of life, and it is arguable if they are even "alive" in the same sense. Ooblings eat anything they can forage or catch, and their bodies transform those organic substances directly into more Oobling jelly, with the entirety of their meal's Auo'rha discarded as waste. In all the years of studying these strange creatures (and the many variations and different forms they take) it has become a reasonable assumption that these soft creatures are not native to our world, yet no further answers as to their origins and how they came to be so fundamentally different from anything else have presented themselves.
Of equal note in regards to the Ooblings, and indeed the most relevant to those who encounter them in the wild, is their method of reproduction. Ooblings have been seen to eat themselves fat before splitting into two smaller, fully formed versions of themselves, but a much more common method involves the adoption of a host. Oobling packs will often set out in search of a larger creature, preferably of the warm-blooded sort, and convince that creature (either through presenting themselves as helpless prey to a would-be predator in search of an easy meal, or in the case of a speaking creature, displaying an unusual level of disarming friendliness and willingness to please) to put or allow the Ooblings to enter their body. Whether being swallowed or allowed entrance through another orifice seems ultimately to not matter, but Ooblings seem to prefer the relative safety of the reproductive tract or anus to potentially hazardous teeth and stomach acids. Once they are safely stowed away within their host, a remarkable exception to their unique biology takes place, and they begin to feed like a parasite from the Auo of their host- a nearly unnoticeable amount- and begin to increase their mass. Occasionally, they will use their quite versatile gelatinous bodies to stimulate their host from within to coax additional generation of Auo'hra, often to the host's pleasure and satisfaction, and then will enter a resting state of a few hours to complete their growth.
Once this resting state has completed, the Ooblings will attempt to exit the body of the host, leaving a considerable amount of Oobling slime behind in the host's stomach/intestines/womb to act as a spawning body. This spawning body will spend the next day or so creating and ejecting proto-ooblings, nicknamed Ooblets, comprised of a single pearl- like eye or nucleus surrounded by a small gob of oob jelly, capable of rolling and squirming out of the host on its own before scooting away to relative safety with the goal of rejoining with its "siblings" to combine into brand-new Ooblings.
Despite the potential horror of being turned into a spawning host for an innocent little creature such as the Oobling, they are relatively harmless. They pose no danger to their host, asking a near unnoticeable amount of Auo'rha in exchange for an unusual two day's time and a considerable amount of (admittedly quite pleasant tasting and very nutritious) oob jelly. If encountered in the wild, these friendly little fellows can brighten your day, but don't make the mistake of being too accommodating or taking one home or you may be in for more than you bargained for. "
-from the field journal of Nags-Like-Fly, party cartographer
" If I find ANY of you smuggling one of these things into camp or trying to adopt it as party mascot, I'm going to force it down your throat. Then, maybe you'll learn to believe me when I say we can't afford to be weighed down in the middle of a critical quest! "
-captioned quote by Casta, party bladewield and self-appointed night watch, beside a full-page illustration by journal owner that depicts the party's bladewield in a compromising position, surrounded by a pile of what appear to be fresh ooblets
