Concept Art/Writing

Slimeling Race Theming.

A brightly colored, semi translucent, humanoid shape approaches. Possessed of limbs and a half stumbling-half sliding gate the creature nears. As fear grips you, a hole in what appears to be its head, invisible when closed, slowly widens and utters a single word in a broken, questioning tone. “Fri—ends?”

Either a being consumed by a mother slime (see backstory elements) and reborn with no memories, or a mother slime itself that became fascinated by human(s) and permanently transformed to emulate them, the slimeling at first takes the vague appearance of a genderless human formed out of semi translucent colorful goo, but continues to change throughout its lifetime. As the slime grows in intelligence (corresponds to max hit points), so too does the definition of its form, face growing the sensory organs one might expect it to have and potentially the approximation of hair in a single wavy mass or collection of thick tendrils, as well as its body developing more features. While there are no definitive rules for how quickly the intelligence and form of a sliming develop, it is up to the player; At 12-14 health, a sliming should be well into its second stage of development.

As you enter the village square, weary from your travels, you see the outline of a woman in the distance. Lit by the glow of the morning sun, she appears almost red herself, but as you come closer you realize that might not be so far from the truth as you thought. Uniformly colored, a wide smile plastered on “her” face neath the unarticulated mass that had seemed its hair at first, a few tendrils trailing at its edges, what stood before you certainly couldn’t be considered human. You marvel at how what may be seen as clothes at first are actually translucent folds of the creature’s skin intrigued, but not threatened, by the creatures absurd appearance. Suddenly a high cheerful voice interrupts your reverie. “You look tired fat-man, follow me to inn!?”.

While a slime so developed can be more easily accepted into society than it would in its early primordial form, it still may come as a surprise to those that are unfamiliar with slimelings except from rumor (not uncommon as they’re frequency outside of areas with settlements close to slime spawning grounds is low). An even more developed slime, though it generally takes significantly more hp to get to that point, can be nearly indistinguishable from a human being in the right circumstances.

In a lavish manor, dimly lit so that little besides the expensive smelling incense heavy in the air communicated its opulence, you are led to a small room that at least reminds you of a study (for what it really is you cant be sure in such shadowy splendor). As you take the room in, you hear someone clear their throat, turning you see a woman clad in brilliant silk, its loose rippling layers merely suggesting the form which they contained; like a waterfall over the statue of a lady. “I see you’ve arrived senator Hawthorne, please, do make yourself at home”. As you find yourself a seat you cant help but drink in every detail of her. Her clothes are rich, her face powdered, the tresses of her hair look almost lacquered with silken sheen, but something about the image was somehow… off nonetheless. “Your reputation for hospitality precedes you lady Violet and your offer is most welcome” you say giving a seated bow I, “I would have at least pretended to be abashed at accepting it if not for the way age has worn down my poor old knees”. She gave a tinkling laugh at that, and some the hairs closer to her scalp, perhaps a slightly different color than the rest, moved a little more vibrantly than the motion required. “Ah yes, the ravages of time have been kinder to me, but I fear even I feel my age at times”, he wondered privately at how one clearly so young could make such a statement and sound sincere, “but enough small talk, to business, I hear you’re the man to speak to about this business in Renfor”. You clear your throat, “ahem, yes I see my reputation precedes me as well, however I must ask, it is customary for the petitioner to come before the official in a more, well, official setting and while I am grateful to be received in such splendor, what was the need for our meeting to occur outside my offices?”. “It’s my health I fear,” she sighed wistfully, “I can still remember a time I could be out in full view of the sun and not occasion more than a glance from passersby, but I’ve been in my current state for so long that those memories can only be viewed through a muddled haze. To be seen in public now only reminds of how much I’ve lost”. You perhaps would have wondered again at how she could speak with such a world weary tone at such a prime age, but the way her skin glistened, seemed less powdered, more inflamed caught your attention more. Now that she had mentioned her ill health the signs must have become more obvious to you, why as the conversation continued she began to look almost incorporeal to you, as if she might fade away even now.

As the slimeling develops, it can control its body to appear even more human, though still somewhat colorful and translucent, and can wear real clothes without slowly dissolving them. It can even wear a wig to disguise its hair and makeup to provide the color of skin, for around an hour before it is absorbed into the slime at any rate. The life span of a slimeling can be up to five hundred years before it starts to break apart. The effective lifespan of one that was transformed from a human tends to be much shorter, however.

Golem Race Theming.

Brought to life from a solid material, clay typically, sculpted or in some other way formed into the shape of a person and the power of a word, golems exist with one central purpose.

Dominating the dusty chamber with its solemn presence, a hulking figure stands before you. The statue could at first be mistaken for something more, and indeed when you entered the room you felt a thrill of fear at the sight of the ungainly silhouette, though the misshapen form of a man was more whimsical than grotesque on second glance, as modeled after a child’s drawing. Its eyes were empty sockets, hollow pits one larger than the other but each large enough to fit your entire fist. It’s nose a featureless lump that widened and pushed further out of the face along its length, by relatively large amounts initially, then less less further down along it’s length. Its mouth was a simple, almost imperceptibly curved line, and its round straight arms ended in hands whose fingers were only delineated from each other by shallow indentations in the sculpture’s surface. As you continued your work clearing out the room, no one quite knew what it had been originally but the last owners had used it for storage, you grew more comfortable with the figure, sometimes even leaning against its rounded, reverse hourglass torso. More comfortable that is, until you reached for a particular item in the store room. As you do so, with a muted sound like that of stone scraping against stone, the statues head slowly turns.

They have some autonomy in how they perform their tasks but are subject to the command of their makers until some great change, a conflict between the word that gave them life and their orders, an internal conflict in whatever level of conscious the golem possesses, or the death of their maker for example, frees them from this burden, though their initial purpose is never truly forgotten. Thusly it is unclear if they have emotions, as none have been made with the task of expressing emotions in mind

As the form turns to face you, the fear you once felt at its presence returns tenfold, and you fall back away from the object you had reached to pick up. Your voice quavers as you cry out “what are you!?”, and to your shock, the being replies. “Golem, keeper, servant carved in stone, guarding what remains of its carvers once with others, now alone”. Its head turns to its former resting place as you retreat from the item. “What are you human”? It asks. Not sure what answer it could want from you besides what it had already offered, and still in disbelief at the situation in its entirety you simply respond with, “I… don’t know”. “I do, an intruder, into my makers home, all the others urns were taken but his remains left to atone. Make, haste, make haste, your breaths you must not waste, for if you linger here much longer they’ll be the last you’ve ever known”.

It is tradition to end the life of a golem after its purpose is served, because of this, they were once created using a word in some language that could be altered to mean/become the word for death. In extreme cases, the language of the starting word is not that of the final one, in order to make the alteration easier. it is said that the original golems initial word was truth, though the languages that were used for its beginning and ending have not survived the rigors of time. In more recent years, creators have simply taken to taking a hammer to their creations upon completion of the assigned task, and leaving the trouble of wordplay aside entirely.

“To ask for proof is fair, and If you wish, just ask the air, the remains of all that guarded here, linger as dust there, after I laid them to rest - their charges gone, now only I am left.” You flee.