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Slime

2020-06-26T17:09:51Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 3rd/3.5 Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

* Acid Blob: A smaller slime that moves by bouncing around and likes to hunt in packs. They can corrode metal.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly. They came back in 4th edition, renamed to bone collector, and classified as an undead ooze.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage. It came back again in 4th edition, now classified as an undead ooze, but lost its unique mechanics.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

* Blood Amniote: ''Another'' monster made of blood. It is classified as an undead but has all the traits of an ooze. It is a huge mass of blood with the faces of people it has killed that makes people it touches expel their blood through their skin and it splits in two when it drains enough blood. They also came back in 4th edition as an undead ooze.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

* Spirit Ooze: An ooze formed from bits of insubstantial undead. They can hover and after hitting an enemy with their main attack become harder to damage and can shift by one square for one turn.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2020-06-26T16:57:10Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 3rd/3.5 Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

* Acid Blob: A smaller slime that moves by bouncing around and likes to hunt in packs. They can corrode metal.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly. They came back in 4th edition, renamed to bone collector, and classified as an undead.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage. It came back again in 4th edition, now classified as an undead ooze, but lost its unique mechanics.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

* Blood Amniote: ''Another'' monster made of blood. It is classified as an undead but has all the traits of an ooze. It is a huge mass of blood with the faces of people it has killed that makes people it touches expel their blood through their skin and it splits in two when it drains enough blood. They also came back in 4th edition as an undead ooze.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

* Spirit Ooze: An ooze formed from bits of insubstantial undead. They can hover and after hitting an enemy with their main attack become harder to damage and can shift by one square for one turn.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2020-06-26T16:38:44Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 3rd/3.5 Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

* Acid Blob: A smaller slime that moves by bouncing around and likes to hunt in packs. They can corrode metal.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly. They came back in 4th edition, renamed to bone collector, and classified as an undead.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage. It came back again in 4th edition, now classified as an undead ooze, but lost its unique mechanics.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

* Spirit Ooze: An ooze formed from bits of insubstantial undead. They can hover and after hitting an enemy with their main attack become harder to damage and can shift by one square for one turn.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2020-06-26T16:36:36Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 3rd/3.5 Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

* Acid Blob: A smaller slime that moves by bouncing around and likes to hunt in packs. They can corrode metal.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly. They came back in 4th edition, renamed to bone collector, and classified as an undead.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

* Spirit Ooze: An ooze formed from bits of insubstantial undead. They can hover and after hitting an enemy with their main attack become harder to damage and can shift by one square for one turn.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2020-06-26T16:34:46Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 4th Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

* Acid Blob: A smaller slime that moves by bouncing around and likes to hunt in packs. They can corrode metal.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

* Spirit Ooze: An ooze formed from bits of insubstantial undead. They can hover and after hitting an enemy with their main attack become harder to damage and can shift by one square for one turn.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2020-06-26T16:30:32Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 4th Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

* Acid Blob: A smaller slime that moves by bouncing around and likes to hunt in packs. They can corrode metal.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

* Spirit Ooze: An ooze formed from bits of insubstantial undead.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Elder Evil

2020-06-26T15:05:01Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: Redirected page to Elder Evils

#REDIRECT [[Elder Evils]]

Beyond Countless Doorways

2020-06-26T15:04:02Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* Outtakes */

'''Beyond Countless Doorways''' is a splatbook for [[White Wolf]] under its Malhavoc / Sword and Sorcery Studios d20 imprint, so [[Dungeons & Dragons]] 3rd edition compatible. Two co-authors were [[Monte Cook]] and Colin McComb, with Ray Vallese as (co)editor (with Sue W Cook) and r k post drawing the cover. Wolfgang Baur also contributed. [[Bruce Cordell]] chipped in with some playtesting, among others you've likely heard of, like Eric Mona.

''BCD'' is deeply indebted to [[Planescape]] and, indeed, the authors all billed it as "a Planescape reunion". Because the [[Wizards of the Coast]] exiles were and are all close friends, but not friends with WotC's legal department, this one has plenty of crossover with other S&S Studio work like the ''Creature Collection'' and with [[Chris Pramas]]' work over at Green Ronin; but it tiptoes around copyrighted WotC content like the thri-kreen (which will become obvious).

''BCD'' is, further, a followup to Monte Cook's ''[[Eldritch Might]]'' series, especially the third one concerning the high-magic Nexus. This led to some [[skub]] when the blurb touted "dozens of new monsters, NPCs, feats, and magic items", and readers counted only one new feat which was restricted to one plane, at that. But really, we're here for the fluff not for the crunch. For those interested in Eldritch Might: the Nexus connects to Curnorost, the Maze, Palpatur, Tevaeral, and Yragon. As in ''BEM3'', the planes are on the Moorcock Multiverse model, not (say) on a Great Wheel of "alignment".

The difference between "demiplane" and "planet" is not well explored here. Many of these sites are vanilla, with the physical laws we'd expect. Suppose we leave that to the philosophers.

=Contents=
Because /tg/ loves you and wants you to be happy, we're going to list every chapter here with due fair-use summarising.
==Chapter 1: The Countless Worlds.==
The Introduction. Also details several of the in-between worlds: the Celestial River which is sort-of Styx/MilkyWay, the Nexus carried over from ''EM3'', the Ethereal Sea which combines Astral and Aethereal planes, and the Underland which is the dungeon-to-combine-all-dungeons. We'll be reading about other nexi as we go along, like the Round Road and arguably Carrigmoor too once that gets fixed.

==Chapter 2: Avidarel, The Sundered Star.==
Dead sun, [[Nightshade]]s roaming its corpse, and a magical mafia staking out an abandoned tower. Not without hope for rebirth, though.

==Chapter 3: Carrigmoor.==
Another RECKT world, here rubble-bits orbiting their old planet's core. The largest asteroid has a domed city on it, gating out to other planes. The world can't be patched back together but maybe the city's commerce and soul can.

==Chapter 4: Curnorost, Realm of Dead Angels.==
Angel sheol. If you're any sort of believer in Divine Justice, you'll consider that angels deserve better than this - assuming they have free will at all.

==Chapter 5: The Crystal Roads of Deluer.==
It's a network of nexi spanning thin air. But it's considered an Elemental Earth plane: because the nexi are asteroids just ''stuffed'' with gems and minerals. A fat greedy xorn got here first so you're not easily going to steal much of it.

==Chapter 6: Dendri (Expansion 11).==
Battle of the Bugs, as an [[aranea]] planet gets invaded by [[formians]]. The ant-men are looking to other planes, where the aranea just want left alone; so we're on the side of Chaos here. How Moorcockian. There's lolz to be had from this one's piss-poor design: one portal leads to Shregeye, a water plane, and we're to believe that an insectoid race THAT BREATHES THROUGH ITS SKIN would want any part of that. Come on Vallese, you're the editor, ''edit'' this shit.

==Chapter 7: Faraenyl.==
Fey realms, sort of an Elvish Ireland. At least, on the surface. Dig deeper, though...

==Chapter 8: The Burning Shadows of Kin-Li’in.==
An abyssal plane of fire and ice, probably tapered at the bottom where the last demon prince's palace was. ''Was'', we say: the late prince ate a paladin's holy sword in recent memory, so it's all (even) more chaotic than usual. There's a semisentient golem here which could take on that prince's life-essence... or an angel's. On the minus side... there's a special sort of snake-demon here, the Terrorite; and your own shadow could rise against you.

==Chapter 9: The Lizard Kingdoms.==
It's Dino World!! widely agreed, for instance at the Piazza forum, to be Wolfgang Baur's entry here. He'd spent more time world-building this one than the others did theirs. He'd probably hoped to submit it for mainline D&D, because (widely noted) the intelligent psionic ankhegs are clear standins for thri-kreen. What Wolfgang hadn't done was to pick up ''any'' dino book published after 1985, given that even in the early 2000s we knew they were birdlike. The artist was even lazier: his biology classes begin and end with ''Playboy'', as he prints a lizard goddess with some shapely perky mammary-glands high on her chest. Large insects here, too - leaving us to ask, what's the oxygen content here? Who cares; just enjoy the experience of scurrying around large sentient lizard feet and trying not to get et.

==Chapter 10: The Maze.==
It's adventurer carnival. Ladies! Gentlemen! Step right up and try your luck in any of these planewalking tunnels, you might win a treasure. Turns out that it's all run by demons. Sadly there's no map but there ''is'' an illustration taken from an angle. Maybe with some mathematics you could reverse-engineer a map from that.

==Chapter 11: Mountains of the Five Winds.==
Law versus chaos at its most [[METAL]] - or, more exactly, prog-rock. Some moron Piped open The Gates Of Dawn, and it's all gone early Pink Floyd down in here (seriously, it's referenced). Except in the mountains where they called in help from ultra-[[Mechanus]].

==Chapter 12: Ouno, the Storm Realm.==
Adventures on the high seas and we mean high ABOVE the seas, between airbourne islands of "floatstone". Oh, and the sea is acid. And sentient, possibly divine.

==Chapter 13: Palpatur.==
Cronenberg Gaia became a battleground in the [[Blood War]] - Malmargus v. Hell-Well - and is now picking up the pieces. Strangely it was already peopled by [[tieflings]] hinting that this wasn't the first rodeo. This hosts the book's one Feat - moulding the "bioleche", the planet's living blood - and also features fiendish weapons of war, which you may add to those in [[Hellbound: The Blood War]].

==Chapter 14: Sleeping God’s Soul.==
... to its friends. Everyone else calls it the Quietitude. As with Faraenyl, scratch the surface and see the clockwork.

==Chapter 15: The Ten Courts of Hell.==
The Hindu-Buddhist hells of Yama.

==Chapter 16: Tevaeral, Magic’s Last Stand.==
Perhaps inspired by Averoigne at the end of [[X2: Castle Amber]]. Magic is possible, but illegal. Magic is also moribund because there's only one dragon left there. A Manichaean cult is rooting out the last vestiges.

==Chapter 17: Venomheart, Haven of the Sleep Pirates.==
There's not much here; in fact, very little animal life that wasn't imported. There is, however, a big coastal fortress where - now - the pirate ship Neverest is docked. The pirates steal sleep and sell it to bad men in other planes, several of which are detailed here.

==Chapter 18: The Violet.==
The weirdest and maybe most original plane; this has no gravity, limited magic and is on Wonky Time. You get from place to place by the jungly vines growing every which-a'-way. It's a great place to store powerful magic that you don't want loose.

==Chapter 19: The Primal Gardens of Yragon.==
Planet of the Apes, if the apes (grahlus) were infected by some intelligence-enhancing spore. The grahlus go out to other planes and raid 'em.

==Chapter 20: Through the Looking Glass.==
Parallel worlds. Not so different a chapter as Jeff Grubb already got us in the first edition Manual of the Planes but hey.

=Outtakes=
In ''Game Trade Magazine'' 55 (September 2004), Monte Cook posted a world that didn't make the cut for this book: '''Xiun'''. ''BCD'' did give us a summary: physical attacks don't work on Xiun. Not even magical weapons, except for Tlorei Sticks. Spells and psi will work, however. So Xiun is the un-Violet. And if you don't have magic, you're getting [[rape]]d. It's Monte paradise!!

Further, there's a theory of Conjunction mooted in the introduction; but that theory isn't propagated through the planes here. We're often left asking, what's the difference between a "conjunction" and accessibility through permanent portals. Carrigmoor has such portals to several planes. So does Dendri (which admittedly was the worst-edited chapter). Those links are not considered conjunctional. To illustrate actual conjunction, Monte (back then) offered a free PDF "True Conjunction With Karlectash". Here, an energy-plane hostile to life conjoins a standard vanilla plane, with ''[[Elder Evil]]'' apocalyptic results.

[[Category: Planescape]]
[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]]

Fantasy Armor

2020-06-26T14:19:54Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* The Main Source of Skub */ Not a good example of irony. Replacing with derp.

{{skub}}
{{Promotions}}

'''Fantasy armor''' has a long and noble tradition of [[awesome]]ness, [[Derp|awe-inspiring]] [[FAIL|stupidity]], and [[skub|lively debates]]. Many kind of fantastic armor, such as sexy bear skin speedos, chain mail bikinis, massive codpieces, ridiculously massive suits of plate mail, armor made of gold or even gems, and other overly elaborate forms of armor are all standard equipment for adventuring parties. Threads dedicated to fabulous and ridiculous armors are a common sight on /tg/, and discussions regarding people's favorite type of armor are also a common way to pass the time, [[cancer|although doing so has a risk of starting an ugly political debate over issues best not discussed on this page]].

Most agree that even the most over-the-top armor designs aren't a huge problem for anything other than historically accurate settings, and in terms of the [[crunch]] it simply doesn't matter, as the stats and the design do not need to be linked in any way - after all, the key word is "fantasy".

==Common Types==
As you may see with the images to the side, fantasy doesn't need its armor to be logically sound. Due to this, armor design is usually done more to appease the eye than the mind. Thus, armor design and usage that tends to be over-the-top usually leans on the following styles:

===Living Fortress===
The character is so excessively armored with large pieces of armor that you must wonder how they can even walk unassisted without falling over. Usually done to give characters a stoic and/or intimidating look. Issues such as avoiding heatstroke and being unable to use a toilet in that armor are usually sidestepped in fiction, but then those issues are [[Magical Realm|almost]] never addressed in fiction anyway. In real-life these drawbacks were trade offs for the protection the armor offered, and the armor itself can't be put on or removed by the person wearing it without someone else helping - in practice it's usually one of the jobs of a squire. To avoid heatstroke, the wearer had to drink and minimize activity where possible, and as for the toilet problem since the armor can't be properly removed without help, there was a flap at the back - otherwise the squire would have to clean it afterwards.

===Bare Minimum===
Not an armor type, so much as a lack thereof. Characters in this style typically wear just enough to keep them from being classified as naked (think "Red Sonja" and you'll get the idea). Traditionally given to characters who favor speed over protection (or fanservice, depending on the setting), it is also sometimes given to those who use some kind of supernatural protection against damage to supplement their armor or simply happen to be so good at withstanding/dodging attacks that they don't normally need to worry about being hurt in the first place. The average magic user is a good example of this, given that the traditional wizard robes are just natural fiber clothing and aren't usually much better in terms of their protective value (enchantments and other forms of magical protection notwithstanding). One popular example is Conan being depicted wearing only boots, a loincloth and a belt. This look originated from artwork of Conan by renowned artist Frank Frazetta. Frazetta himself depicted Conan this way because he liked drawing the human body and put that personal preference in his art style (which is why men and women in his art tend to be scantily clad whenever possible).

It should be noted that the "almost naked female armor" is not actually as common as one might expect. The worst offenders are usually fantasy pinups and JRPGs (and in the latter case, often applies to both men and women); for actual tabletop RPGs and most western-developed videogames, they're actually somewhat uncommon in recent years in due to, among other things, the backlash, the practical objections, the widespread mockery, and most probably importantly due to shame instincts kicking in as it dawns on the artists and writers that more women are playing this stuff (as such, the nakedness is usually either made more "artistic", or more effort is used in "justifying" it in-universe).

===Flash to the Extreme===
The character's armor is excessively decorated and designed in an over-the-top manner (ranging from bright colors to it being encrusted in precious gems and metals) that they basically scream: "walking target" and/or "mobile treasure chest" when out into the field. Usually given to the upper hierarchy of a setting to denote either their position or wealth. [[Chaos Space Marine|Large spikes]] count as an "evil" version of this; while they can make a villain look intimidating, they'd also be getting in the way, either poking yourself or your allies ''constantly''.

===Style over Substance===
The character's armor includes elements that reduce its practicality in favor of looking flashy or appealing. Such features are found almost entirely on female armor and includes high heels, contoured breastplates, no clear means of fastening it together, thigh-high boots, and a lack of padding. Then again, one can easily point to countless real-world examples of the above-mentioned traits (Yes, even heels - riding a horse with stirrups is much easier wearing boots with heels), but most of the time were usually reserved for ceremonial armor or just not totally optimized for combat (because even the best armor available for one age would have been outstripped and improved upon in design in later years).

===Fear Me===
The character's armor is specially designed to intimidate their enemies, either by just looking menacing or realizing what the armor is, is enough to inspire dread. This is typically reserved for villains, who will dress all evil-like to intimidate their foes and cement their position as a, or ''the'', big bad. The good guys sometimes use this style, as an attempt to show his allies and the enemy he means business. This can take a variety of forms, such as:
*Dreadful armor - simply designed to intimidate foes while looking dignified. They make take the shape of beings feared throughout the setting, like dragons, wolves, angelic/daemonic warriors, or what else have you. While sometimes they're adorned with iconography that their enemies would fear.

*Eldritch abomination - armor that looks like something H.P Lovecraft would make. Such style incorporates features that are designed to either disgust or horrify the enemy [[Chaos Space Marines|at the mere thought that something like them could exist.]] Typically used by big bads, who either have armor writhing like its alive or have fused with their armor like its their second skin.

*Armored hedgehog - covered in big sharp spikes. Some armors in this school have so many spikes that wearing them in real life would run the genuine risk of impaling oneself. Sometimes the user is even portrayed as using the spikes themselves as a weapon.

*The Faceless - some very intimidating primary villains wear helmets which completely obscure their face. This usually indicates to the viewer what it does to characters - this person is not to be fucked with. For some reason villains with full face protection tend to be very dangerous. They got so strong because they [[Reasonable Marines|wore helmets]] long enough to not get killed before [[Level|levelling up]] a lot.

===What are these "ergonomics"===

One thing should be emphasized about real world armor: It's already bloody uncomfortable to wear an at least 20 pound (or 10 kg) over shirt (which is about what the very lightest armor will weigh), never mind fight in such a thing. Padding was absolutely required for even the most basic of armor (most cutting weapons can do double duty as (expensive) clubs), and that's just the first obvious problem you'll have when fielding armor (and, in fact, there was and is a non-trivial amount of armor that was ''nothing but'' padding (go look up the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson Gambeson] if you don't believe us; D&D calls it "padded armor" and undervalues it because game balance)). Padding, needless to say, is hard to move around in. The Ergonomics of Real World armor was (and remains to this day) very important, as a result of these and other factors.

Fantasy armor frequently ignores such considerations as "weight", "flexibility", "range of motion", "chafing", "padding", and "comfort", among other considerations, with exceptions being people who wear armor that shows a lot of skin (which sorta defeats the point of armor, but there you go) or where magic compensates for ergonomics or function (e.g.; a metal bikini enchanted to protect its wearer). This is also ignoring the tendency for almost everybody to walk around without any kind of helmet.

== The Main Source of Skub ==

Female armor is the main source of [[skub]] when Armor is discussed. Three points are probably indisputable:

# The forces that produce cheesecake outfits in Real Life probably exist in your game world.
# The realities of combat also probably exist in your game world, which directly counteracts #1.
# The armor worn by women in Fantasy Art veers strongly towards the cheesecake side of the line.
# In the real world, there were actual suits of armor that had some ''very'' goofy looking codpieces; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_of_Ferdinand_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor here's one famous example].
# In the real world, practical armor is fairly unisex - breasts just don't get as much in the way as you might expect, particularly once you start adding the necessary padding. Depending on the size of the breasts, at least.
* [[Skub|Yes, we know that's five points, when we said three are indisputable. Which three of the above five are indisputable is widely disputed.]]

(For example, point number two is dependent on how much of a roleplayer vs. [[rollplaying|rollplayer]] you are. You wouldn't care much about how well armor covers you if it's +3 defense regardless of hit location. You'll also have people argue that artistic license is more important than adherence to reality when it comes to fiction, since it's not supposed to be a literal interpretation of reality anyway, but by that point you're entering a philosophical debate.)

Beyond those few points, expect to see nothing but a sea of bullshit, and maybe a few well meaning but absolutely wrong "Best Practices" suggestions.

==="Breast"plate a.k.a. "Boobplate"===
A somewhat specific case of "Female Armor skub" is a breastplate that has boobs on it, for use by female users who want to advertise their femaleness. There are a metric shitload of arguments centering around just this one specific variant of fantasy armor; the main somewhat objective complaint being that most such designs create an obvious weakness in the armor: you create an inward curve to drive the blow '''towards''' the center of the wearer's chest, rather than an outward curve which drives the blow '''away''' from the center of the chest. But from there, we rapidly enter the sea of skub and bullshit, without even the thin veneer of the "Best Practices" suggestions.

== A Mild Digression about Ceremonial Armor ==

In Real Life, armor was usually divided into practical and Ceremonial armor. Practical armor was intended to be used (protect a guy from that spear or knife in the middle of a melee). Ceremonial armor was intended to look good. This resulted in occasional wild differences between the two, such as the ridiculous codpieces mentioned above.

Fantasy armor is usually inspired by the Ceremonial armor, as that's what was usually put into artistic depictions.

== The Warhammer Line ==

As a side note, if your armor is as or more ridiculous than Warhammer's (either [[Warhammer 40,000|40k]] or [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Fantasy]]), expect to be mocked. Yes, this means you, generic anime-inspired MMORPG, and you, [[That Guy]] who uses a screenshot from said MMORPG as his character portrait.

==See Also==
*[[Helmet]]
*[[Armor]]
*[[Pauldrons]]

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
File:Skelerotic Warrior.png|It separates, AND supports!
File:Bikini-Armor-Cosplay.jpg|This armor protects the most vital parts of the body.
File:Megnets.jpg|Perfectly safe, proven by practical evidence.
File:Glamour armor.jpg| Fantasy armor is known to reveal Fabulous Secret Powers to its wearer.
File:Armour of Bulk.png|[[Centurion Squad|The Centurion armored suit]]. An armor system where [[Derp|the guy wearing powered armor wears another powered armor suit on top of it]]. At least the title is correct.
</gallery></center>

[[Category:Meme]]

The Elder Scrolls

2020-06-26T07:36:09Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* Mer (Elves) */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:Crabomancy.jpg|300px|thumb|right|During the Oblivion Crisis, the Dunmer of House Redoran revived a whole city, Ald'ruhn, which was made out of shell of the Great Skar to fight on their side, as a Giant Friendly Crab. This series is hardcore like that. They still lost.]]
'''The Elder Scrolls''' is a [[video game|vidya]] series, and the setting of five main games and a number of spinoffs. Despite being a vidja, it is considered a type II game.

/tg/ also has a [[Scrollhammer|40k/WHFB hack named Scrollhammer]], [[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition|Infinity hack 2nd edition]], and a number of pen and paper games (notably [[Morrowind PNP]] and the [[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG|UESRPG]]) set in [[The Elder Scrolls]] universe.

Its canon is notoriously unstable and intentionally 'postmodern'. Long story short: imagine every canon clusterfuck 40K has ever experienced, only there are no editions to draw a neat line between lore changes. And on at least one occasion, time has been known to break in order to allow simultaneous mutually exclusive outcomes. You know how in 40K everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true? Here, nothing is canon and everything is true, especially when it contradicts itself, so histories are intentionally interpretive and unreliable.

==Setting==
[[File:Elder_Scrolls_Cosmology.jpg|400px|thumb|right|An approximation of the cosmology of the Elder Scrolls. Not shown: mindfucks.]]
The games mainly take place in Tamriel, a continent consisting of nine separate lands. After being [[Anal Circumference|buttfucked]] by the [[Eldar|Ayleid]] for several centuries, humanity rises up and overthrow their elven overlords, and took control themselves. Then, a few thousand years later, a man named [[God-Emperor|Tiber]] [[Alpharius|Septim]] steps up and leads his armies to [[Great Crusade|conquer all of Tamriel to found the Third Empire of Cyrodiil]]. But instead of exterminating all the elves and beast races, they were allowed to co-exist with the other races and a time of prosperity began, ending with the death of Emperor [[Star Trek|Jean-Luc Picard the 7th]], and [[Khorne|Mehrunes Dagon]] then began to fuck his way from [[Warp|Oblivion]] into Tamriel, starting a chain of events that resulted in him being kicked back into hell by the Emperor's lost son, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Sean Bean]].

Being Sean Bean meant he died in the process, and without an Emperor the Empire began to crumble. The Aldmeri Dominion (think Ayleid 2.0) sensed their weakness and began a war to subjugate the lesser races. The Empire only barely managed to stop them, and a tense cease-fire is currently in effect. The fluff of this series, unfortunately, suffers greatly from dissonance between written background and shown foreground due to all the shit mentioned in the intro.

There's also a bunch of other weird cosomology crap involved, but it's all kind of trippy and kind of in a grey area when it comes to canon. Don't think too much about it, unless you're into that. The setting works if you don't care for it, and it works if you do. The games themselves don't acknowledge the "deeper" lore outside some in-game books and a few references thrown in some main-story dialogue.

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If you ''do'' want to read on some of the (possibly) weirdest, at times incomprehensible, yet at times original without being ~~subversive because we can~~ lore ever written, click to open.
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'''Creation of the world'''

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD-Ufi1jGk Listen to this.] This is the main theme of Morrowind, the third game in the series. It also contains the history of the cosmology of The Elder Scrolls. Listen to it, because it's a damn fine tune. But as you listen to it, you might realise there are no spoken words in this music. So how can it tell the history of a setting? Well, sit that five-dollar ass of yours down before I make [[Tzeentch|change]].

Long ago there was an entity who had fallen deeply in love, but his brother loved the same person, so he out of jealousy killed his loved one. That brought such distress to him that he fell into a coma of sorts, he "hid in a sun" and started dreaming. Thus he became The Godhead. From his dreams sprung Anu and Padomay, Stasis and Change. These "brothers" (the term used in the loosest sense here, solely on being related but different forces) accidentally created Nir, Grey maybe, personification of creation itself. But Padomay grew jealous of the relationship between Anu and Nir and out of spite decided to break her. Nir was killed and Creation was shattered, maimed for ever. Anu then fought Padomay and they were cast out of time forever, even though they still exist and will always exist as long as there is Order and Chaos. You might have thought to yourself, "Didn't that happen twice?", yes it did. Everything in the Dream mimics original Godhead and his mind, everything comes from it. In this case Anu was avatar of the Dreamer while Padomay represented Godheads brother and Nir their shared love. Same scenario of two mirror brothers, one being force of Stasis, The King and one being force of Change, The Rebel always repeats. The souls or core concepts of Anu and Padomay on which all of creation runs are called, Anui-El (IS) and Sithis (IS NOT).

Eventually from endless energies and "blood" of Anu and Padomay came the Et'ada (Et'ada means original spirit, while Ada means just generally any spirit), each representing different idea and concepts. Et'ada tended to categorize themselves with Anu or Padomay. Auri-El, Kyne and other Et'ada who lean more towards Order are Anuic while more chaotic ones like Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal are more Padomaic. Later after creation of realms those who were Anuic became Aedra, which means "our ancestor" in Ehlnofex, because Aedra took part in creation of the world we usually visit in TES games, while those Padomaic spirits who did not take part in creation and created their own solo realms became Daedra, which translates to "not our ancestor" (though that was not always the case, Jyggalag for example is a Daedra, but he is clearly Anuicly aligned.)

In the Dawn Era, time, in the shape of Akatosh (Ara, Auriel, Auri-El Tosh'Raka, AKHAT; take your pick), was non-linear. It flowed freely wherever it wanted, without direction, form of shape. In this temporal soup floated the souls of the proto-Mer. Think pea soup, except with millions of Ada of all sorts instead of peas. Time, in this form, was a single point. It was called the Ur-Tower, Ada-Mantia. Except it was not really a point or a tower, but more of a sound.

''Bom. (0:00 to 0:01 of the song)''

The Et'Ada saw it, and it was good. Except for one. A being born from Padomay who wanted no name, but eventually came to be first known as Lorkhan (LKHAN, Shor, Sep, Shezarr, maybe even Shepard). Having little interest with the rest of the Et'Ada's activities, or more likely inactivity, he spent his time wandering the Aurbis (all of existence), eventually coming to the very edge. He saw the universe, shaped like a wheel with eight spokes. Then he looked at the wheel from another perspective, and it looked like a Tower, a perfect line. An I.

"I."

This was his first word, and he would never, ever forget it. He understood everything right then and there, all of creation and its true nature was revealed to him.

Wanting to share this revelation with the other Ada but knowing that none of them would be able to comprehend it as they were, he came up with a plan for a creation and showed it to Magnus, The Grand Architect. Magnus went along with the plan and recruited the help of the Et'ada that we know as Aedra today: Akatosh, Dibella, Julianos, Kynareth, Mara, Stendarr, Zenithar and many other lesser spirits that you probably never heard of to serve as the basis of their creation. Except that they did not know this last part, Lorkhan had fooled them. Their divinity was drained into the creation, or re-creation of long shattered Nir, Nirn was born. When they discovered they were tricked the Et'Ada were [[RAGE|not amused]]. Magnus buggered off into infinity along with his servants, tearing through the edge of Mundus and creating The Sun and The Stars in the process...yeah, everything you see in sky is a giant non euclidean portal to realm of infinite energy, the original crib of Et'ada, The Aetherius. Others gave Lorkhan his due: [[RIP AND TEAR|Trinimac tore his heart out and Auriel(Elven aspect of Akatosh) shot it out over the sea]], where it landed in a spot and created a crater that would gain the moniker "Red Mountain". The halves of Lorkhan's body became the moons Masser and Secunda, [[Emperor|the last visible remnants of a corpse god.]] But this was [[just as planned]], throughout the whole thing the Heart of Lorkhan was laughing at them like a maniac, because Red Mountain was Red Tower, the second Tower, and the beat of his heart would be added to the sound of Akatosh. His Heart would become the prison for The Dragon God of Time.

''Bom bom. (0:01 to 0:07 of the song)''

This completely, utterly and irrevocably buttfucked spacetime. Because there now was a second point in existence, time could no longer flow anywhere it wanted and had to flow from Akatosh to Lorkhan. With time becoming linear, Nirn could start to grow. Aedra were drained and "dying", so they had to reproduce, create worshipers or someone that could sustain them. Slowly Ehlnofey, the "Earth Bones", Ada of all forms and shapes, some descendants of crazy reproduction, started popping up. Some created simple truths and laws for Nirn, for example gravity, others reproduced more, creating less energized spirits that slowly stabilized in different ways, slowly becoming mortal. They are ancestors of Humans (Men) and Elves (Mer). These Ehlnofey fortified their borders from the chaos outside, hid their pocket of calm, and attempted to live on as before. Other Ehlnofey arrived on Nirn scattered amid the confused jumble of the shattered worlds, wandering and finding each other over the years. Eventually, the wandering Ehlnofey found the hidden land of Old Ehlnofey, and were amazed and happy to find their kin and a comfy place, built by them. The wandering Ehlnofey expected to be welcomed into the peaceful realm, but the Old Ehlnofey being arrogant douchebags, refused to accept their kin. Anywho, war broke out between them and raged across the whole of Nirn and sunk large part of planet in ocean. Old Ehlofney (the asshole ones), who primarly lived in Tamriel, became Elves (gee, you didn't expect that, did you?), while their kin on other continents became Humans (Yokudans, Atmorans and Akaviri/Tsaesci).

''Bom bom. (0:07 to 0:39 of the song)''

The Mer, one of the first to mortalize were not [[RAGE|not pleased]] by this. They blamed Lorkhan for their predicament, naming him the Doom Drum, bringer of mortality, death and the herald of all misfortune. But they made the best out of the situation, and the races of Mer prospered. New Towers came into existence, one by one: Walk-Brass Tower, White-Gold Tower, Snow-Throat Tower, Crystal-Like-Law, Orchalc, Khajit and Tree-Sap.

''Bom bom. (0:39 to 1:19 of the song)''

But, as time went on (something new back then), more and more happened. New peoples stood up. Empires were founded and fell. The races of Men were discovered, the beast races prospered, and the Empires of Men were founded.

''Bom bom. (1:19 to 1:42 of the song)''

Yet nothing is eternal. The Thalmor, the ruling faction of the High Elves, desires nothing less than the destruction of the Doom Drum and all of creation so time once again becomes non-linear, mortality would get destroyed and they could return their eternal soup-floating. Removing Lorkhan would stop the music of existence, and everything once again becomes singular.

''Bom bom. Bom. (1:42 to 1:55 of the song)''

And then... silence.

'''On the importance of Towers'''

For every Tower there is a Stone, an artifact that can be used to activate or deactivate a Tower. For Ada-Mantia Tower this is the Moment of Creation itself (making it rather difficult to obtain), for Red Tower this is the Heart of Lorkhan and for White-Gold Tower this is the Amulet of Kings. The Towers serve many purpose besides keeping [[Homestuck|spacetime]] from becoming a massive alinear clusterfuck. What is this? Well, it's easier for you to do it yourself that for me to explain. Make yourself a print of the map of Tamriel further down on this page. Then get yourself a pin board and a black, a red, two brown, three white, and two green tacks. Put the map against the pinboard and do the following:

*Put the white tacks through the map in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil, the Throat of the World slightly south-east of Whiterun in Skyrim, and Crystal Tower in the Summerset Isles (northern part, west of King's Watch). (White-Gold, Snow-Throat and Crystal-Like-Law)
*Put the green tacks in Yokuda (exact location unknown) and in Valenwood (somewhere in the middle). (Orchalc and Tree-Sap)
*Put the brown tacks in Daggerfall (southernmost tip of High Rock) and in Elsweyr (again in the middle). (Walk-Brass and Khajiit)
*Put the red tack in the middle of Vvardenfell in Morrowind. (Red)
*Put the black tack on the little island deep in the Iliac Bay near High Rock. (Ata-Mantia)

That's the locations of the Towers that keep time flowing. All's fine and dandy with those holding the world together, right? Wrong! Some have been destroyed or deactivated over the course of time; three times, this was done by the player. [[Fail|Whoops]]. Remove the following:

*Red Tower (deactivated in Morrowind by you)
*White-Gold Tower (deactivated in Oblivion by you)
*Crystal Tower (destroyed in Oblivion by the Daedra)
*Khajiit Tower (Their leader, the Mane was killed, likely assassinated by Thalmor. S/He was also known as the Mane Moon which appeared when Secunda and Masser overlap)
*Tree-Sap Tower (both located in Thalmor territory, likely deactivated)
*Orichalc Tower (destroyed along with Yokuda)

Snow-Throat Tower is very much active (but damaged), but its Stone is an unknown cave. Walk-Brass Tower is very much active, but somehow it is "besieging reality well into the Fifth Era", meaning that it's in the future yet somehow active. Which is not a bad thing, since [[Titans_40k|Walk-Brass tower is a fuckhueg robot]] that has a nasty habit of fucking Time so hard it breaks. So yeah, the only things standing between Tamriel and the primordial time-grog are a mountain and one of the [[Void Dragon]]'s action figures. Unless, of course, Akavir and\or Pyandonea would be revealed to host their own Towers, which is likely since certain prominent rulers of both lands somehow managed to achieve godhood, something that Towers are very helpful at.

Removing the Tower-Tacks has another side effect: the veil between [[Materium|Nirn]] and [[Warp|Oblivion]] becomes thinner. At the time of Oblivion it had even grown so thin that the Daedra could slip into this realm on their own accord. So your actions in Morrowind partially caused the Oblivion Crisis. [[Fail|Way to go, champ.]] And what happens if you remove all the tacks? Right, your map falls off the pin board, Mundus falls into Oblivion.

Thalmor, who often claim the need to deactivate all Towers, don't really need that. Their main goal is the biggest and newest anchor of existence, Talos (essentially Lorkhan 2.0), hence why they try to ban his worship so hard and unmake him. Thalmor want him and all of mankind to be gone, believing their extermination necessary to unmake the Mundus.

'''How to Break your Dragon (Or Jump Your Shark)'''

You might have heard the phrase "Dragon Break" (both words capitalized) a few times. Simply put, this means cock-slapping Time so hard it breaks and becomes non-linear for a while. But not just any cock-slap, oh no. This is the hard part: Imagine a dick if you will. A really big dick (no, this does not make you [[gay]] <s>unless you imagine balls touching</s>). So big in fact, that even Long Dick Johnson would say "That's a big fucking dick". Right, you see it? The biggest fucking dick your feeble mind could comprehend? Good.

Now, imagine if you will, Time. How you do this is up to you: [[Doctor Who|causality, a linear progression of cause and effect]], floaty magic thingies, [[Tallarn|sand]], a clock, perhaps even a more anthropomorphic presentation in the shape of a [[loli]] or a cute [[monstergirl]]. Right. Now take the dick and slap Time in the face. Cockslap it so hard that time itself just outright breaks and loses its linearity. This is a Dragon Break. The name itself is derived from the notion that the Linearity of Time is Akatosh, who is a dragon. Hence if you break time, you "Break the Dragon". While inside a Dragon Break time is perceived to pass normally, but when one exits it might appear that a lot more or less time than you observed has passed in the rest of the world.

The first known Dragon Break occurred near the end of the Dragon War, where a trio of [[Vikings|Nords]] confronted Alduin the World-Eater, First-Born and Aspect of Akatosh that personifies the End of Time (meaning that somehow he was [[Wat|his own father]]), the leader of the [[dragon]]s. The Nords created a localized Dragon Break to fling Alduin into the future so that he wasn't their problem anymore. Mind you, they had no idea where the stuff they shunted was actually going; they just knew it disappeared things, and decided that making Alduin someone else's problem was as good as killing him, essentially causing (or at least amplifying) all the problems in the 4th Era out of laziness. [[Eldrad|What a bunch of dicks.]]

The second known Dragon Break happened during the Battle of Red Mountain, where the First Council of the [[Elf|Chimer]] went to war with the [[Dwarves|Dwemer]]. The Dwemer were working on a giant golem they called Numidium. However, it had one minor design flaw: every time someone pushed the "ON" switch it fucked the dragon right up the butt, no lube. This allowed for the multiple truths on the events that transpired on Red Mountain: Ayem, Seht and Vehk stood by their friend Nerevar as he succumbed to his wounds. Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vivec murdered their Hortator (war-leader) Nerevar. Ayem Seht Vehk = Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec = ALMSIVI. Everything is true, nothing is correct.

The third suspected Dragon Break occurred during the time of the Alessian Empire, when Saint Alessia freed Man from the slavery of their Mer rulers (think of her as a booby [[Sigmar]]). A cult of the Alessian Order known as Marukhati, lead by monkey man Marukh. wanted to exorcise the aspects of Auriel from Akatosh, basically substracting the Elf from the Dragon. This is said to have resulted in a thousand-and-eight year Dragon Break and might have resulted in creating more Dragon aspects than just Auri-El and Akatosh. But some claim that this was little more than [[Administratum|a fuckup of the scholars and historians of the time]].

The fourth known Dragon Break took place when [[Emperor|Tiber Septim]] unleashed Numidium on the Khajiit of Elsweyr. This included the subjugation of Elsweyr, Valenwood and eventually the Summerset Isles. Tiber Septim threatened to activate it again and have it wreck the Aldmeri Dominion, but they liked their assholes to only be violated by one another, so they too stood down. It has been recorded that Numidium was then used to destroy hostile royal families to replace them with the Emperor's puppets, likely by having it step on them.

The fifth and currently final known Dragon Break occurred during the events of Daggerfall, where it was turned on in the Iliac Bay. But because of the nature of Numidium fucking space-time a new lovehole when it activates (hence, "turned on"), a number of the states in the region obtained the "FUCK EVERYTHING" button of Numidium and pressed it at the same time. Two days of hilarity later, everyone conquered one another until the Empire ended as top dog and everyone swore fealty to the Empire. Because of the events surrounding the activation of the Dragon Break, Numidium disappeared and fell into the future, where it still stands as Walk-Brass Tower.

When the Dragon Breaks happen, Akatosh deploys the Jill to fix time so that everything does not fall apart. These minute-menders (akin to angels) tend to take the form of great wyrms who fly around and fix the little bits of time with the power of their Voice (i.e.: they shout at holes in space-time until they bitch down). If this sounds familiar to you... it is! Jills are female Dragons, while Drakes are the male ones; Dragons can't really reproduce and are born of Time/Akatosh, but it's more of a conceptual thing, with Jills having the concept of healing while Drakes have the concept of Domination. So yeah, Dragons you kill, fight, kill and soul-rob to increase your own unholy power are actually servants and minor aspects of Akatosh. So in other words, [[Adeptus Evangelion|you have been killing the heralds of a new era]].

...Or at least ''you would be if they were actually doing what they were supposed to do'' - as it turns out, some time before that first Dragon Break Alduin, who is also aspect of Akatosh himself decided that he would rather rule over the broken bits of time himself, and the dragons are bound to obey him without question. It's not certain if he did it because he knew that he wouldn't get to eat the world this time around or if he just felt like ruling the world instead of resetting it. So all of reality is increasingly fucked and the only beings who can fix it stopped giving a shit a long time ago. Gods plotting against themselves is fairly common in TES since most of the Gods are broken and crazy with tons of split personalities.

There is also the whole issue of Aka-Tusk, or simply Aka. Apparently all the Dragon Aspects of time at one point or another were Great Dragon God of Time known as Aka-Tusk, but got broken and shed millions of times, maybe even before the Marukhati Dragonbreak. We may never know because Dragonbreaks are usually at least partially retroactive.

And then there is the whole issue of Akatosh and Lorkhan being one being and Akatosh being trapped in Heart of Lorkhan literally. This timey wimey bullshit is really getting out of hand.

'''CHIM: Or "You took HOW MUCH LSD!?'''

[[File:Chim explained.png|300px|thumb|right|CHIM. It's sort of like this.]]
That muffled explosion you just heard was caused by a number of people exploding out of sheer [[rage]]. Sit tight, because this shit is meta wrapped in an enigma inside a mindfuck.

In Morrowind you can find a series of books titled the 36 Sermons of Vivec. If you pick them up and read them at face value they might appear as parts of a religious text, filled with metaphors, truths twisted throughout the ages, and copious amounts of [[Anal Circumference|buttfucking]] (no, seriously). In these books you will find several references to CHIM, The Tower, and The Ruling King. Now, early on in the books Vivec is shown as the teacher of Lord Indoril Nerevar (more on him below), yet Nerevar does not understand the lessons. Because he was not the intended student. Instead, these lessons were meant for you. Not only for your player character, but for ''you'', the player. For if one attains CHIM, one's physical form becomes a mere avatar of the self.

But now you may wonder, what the Charles fucking Dickens *is* CHIM?

Imagine if you will, a great wheel with eight spokes. The wheel is everything that exists: Aurbis. The hub is Nirn, the world that the series takes place on. The spokes are the Aedra, the <s>Nine</s> Eight Divines. The space between the spokes is Oblivion, where the Daedra reside. Mundus encompasses both Nirn, its moons and the realms of the Aedra. Now, if you were to turn the wheel 90 degrees, you'd be looking at the rim of the wheel so it resembles I (as in, the thin side of a disk). This is the Tower, the Secret of Aurbis, holder of the secret. CHIM. The wheel is the entire universe. Outside there exist only two forces: Anu and Padhome, stasis and change. Think a great void filled with only two bubbles: there where these bubbles touch exists the wheel. Now, the Tower is not something physical, but an ideal. Something that can be attained, conquered, stolen. For one to reside within the tower, is to know the truth of all that is. This was the revelation of Lorkhan's that made him want to create Nirn.

This truth is that everything is a dream. The supreme power in TES is the Godhead, the unknown creator of all. Everything, Aurbis, Anu, and Padomay - all created in the dreams of the Godhead. Attaining CHIM is to know this, the relentless alien terror that is God and your place in it. Everything you know, are and do is but a dream. Now, if you discover this one of two things can happen. The most common one is to realize you do and don't exist at the same time: you lose your individuality (you zero-sum) and become one with the dreamer, the Godhead, and you disappear in the proverbial puff of logic. The second option is the rare one: to realize that you are part of the Godhead, you *are* the Godhead. If everything is an extension of the same thing, and that the thing can reshape reality with a thought, being a dreamer within the dream.

If you thought that shit was meta, just you wait. The principles behind CHIM can be taken further to mean that the Godhead and its dreams are a metaphor for the computer running the game and the game itself. In-universe the metaphor of the godhead and being awake within the dream is needed to prevent characters who realize this from zero-summing out of existence at the resulting paradox. It can be inferred that a character who achieves CHIM essentially gains access to the console and the Construction Set. Talos used the Construction Set to retcon Cyrodiil from a jungle land into a generic European fantasy land (Talos has a terrible imagination). Vivec gave himself levitation abilities by using the console to erase the texture file for his chair (no seriously). Whether or not the player achieves CHIM varies. Generally when a player becomes fully immersed in the game, they do not have CHIM. However, a player who gets fed up of getting bugged by cliff racers every five seconds and installs a mod that removes them from the game is using CHIM. They are remembering that the world they are in is a game and altering it as they see fit. Exploits, mods, console commands, etc can all be explained in-universe as the player character achieving CHIM and using it to reshape reality or bend its rules... or all of that could be stupid speculation.

Meta as FUCK.

You can go deeper than that and find Amaranth though, but that is whole another level of [[mindfuck]].

'''It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine'''

We've mentioned a few times that the world of Nirn is slowing being destroyed by a few reasons. In a normal fantasy setting, this would be a terrible thing, and the hero must try and stop it; however, the Elder Scrolls isn't a normal fantasy setting. One of the dragons, Paarthurnax, mentions that when the world ends, Alduin, the first born of Akatosh, will/might simply recreate it, thus returning it to the point of creation. Granted he also states liking the current one is a good enough reason to fight Alduin (''that and the fact that Alduin is an absolute prick who would rather rule over the broken remains of the old one instead of actually doing his job'').

This is due to the Kalpic nature of Nirn; Kalpa is the time span from Convention to the end of the world, one turn of a wheel. Eventually, Alduin The World Eater grows in size and literally eats the world, turns the Kalpa like a wheel and everything resets back to the Convention, the moment when Heart of Lorkhan was torn out, time became linear. From that point on things can go differently in different Kalpas; for example, according to Seven Flights of Aldudagga, one Kalpa had Molag Bal as its ruler and Dreughs as the supreme race. That being said, it is possible to end the Kalpic cycle and destroy shit for good, hence what the Thalmor are trying to do. They also believe that this will make them Ada (Spirit/God) again.

In essence, the world might be ending, few care and fewer understand, and Elder Scrolls lore is more complicated than trying to keep track of the number of penises [[Slaanesh]] has at the moment.

'''Seriously?'''

Remember way at the beginning of this page, we said that how crazy the Elder Scrolls series is depends on if you take an ex-writer's blogposts as gospel? Well, if you don't, and only trust what you see in-game, it looks a bit like this.

The Godhead almost certainly doesn't exist. Neither does CHIM. Only two in-game sources claim it does; one is a colossal liar and the other is shown to be wrong about absolutely everything that comes out of his mouth. They're both bugfuck nuts and they both end up dead at your hands. The big historical event allegedly caused by CHIM could easily not have been. At least two alternate theories have been suggested: either the event never actually took place and was the result of a [[skub|transcription error]], which is boring, or the White-Gold Tower did it on its own after humans booted the elves from the Imperial City and moved in, which is not. Speaking of, the Tower thing is definitely true, because the plot of Oblivion is, broadly, that the bad guy shut one down and tore reality a new asshole. The Dragonbreak is an empirical event that happens within living memory; in Oblivion you can read the Imperial report on what the fuck happened in the last one, and you can see one happen in Skyrim. The kalpa thing is definitely happening, and you hear as much directly from the mouth of a time-spirit who knew Alduin personally. You meet Pelinal Whitestrake's ghost in a DLC questline, and he doesn't ''seem'' to be a robot, or even remotely crazy.

Mantling deserves special mention, even though it hasn't been mentioned anywhere else on the page. Basically, by adopting the mannerisms and vestments of something else, you become that something else. In a word: [[awesome|apotheosis]]. You mantle a daedric prince at the end of Shivering Isles, and use your new divine powers to kick the ass of another daedric prince. Have we mentioned that these games are really, really good and you should play them? SI also added the caveat that whatever you're mantling has to be either dead or gone in a big way for you to pull it off, and you're basically filling in its place in the universe.
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==Gods, Deities and other important people==
Most of the Gods in The Elder Scrolls are Et'Ada, the "original spirits" that came from the interplay of Anu and Padomay. These spirits later depending on their alignment with creation got categorized into Aedra and Daedra, if you took part in creation of Nirn you are Aedra, if you were egotistic dick and went to Oblivion to make your small shitty realm, you are Daedra.

===Aedra===
The Aedra (Our ancestors in Aldmeris) are Et'Ada of Anuic origin. Many of them took part in the creation of Nirn, during which they "died", their essences fused together into Mundus. As such they do not have "physical" forms like the Daedra have. Yet their spirits live on in Nirn: as the Gods of the world they live in every part of it. While not as "focused" as their Daedric counterparts they are more widespread, worshiped and give their blessings and artifacts more freely than the Daedra, plus they have control over one realm that everyone wants to have - Nirn.

Eight of the Aedra are worshipped in Tamriel as the Eight Divines (along with the human god-hero Tiber Septim, aka. Talos, to make the more assonant Nine Divines), a fusion of the old Nordic pantheon and the Aedra worshipped by the Ayleids:
*'''Akatosh''': Also known as Auri-El to the Altmer and the father of the dragons, the chief deity of the Eight and the top god of the Cyrodiilic Empire as he represents duty, legitimacy, endurance and obedience (but his different identities also have additional roles. Akatosh proper is the god of time, but Auri-El is the god of the sun, which it is worth noting can be used as a timekeeping device. All the other gods also work like this, as Divinity in this setting is ''weird''). His artifacts are Auriel's Bow, and Auriel's Shield, which have completely different powers depending which game you are playing. In the Skyrim Dawnguard DLC, the bow infuses arrows fired from it with the power of the sun to do more damage to the undead, and the Shield can absorb energy from attacks it blocks and release it as wave similar to the Unrelenting Force shout.
*'''Arkay''': Lord of the Wheel of Life, master of life and death, burials and funeral rites. Arkay's priests are some of the fiercest necromancer hunters around, as those foul practices are an affront to their god.
*'''Dibella''': Goddess of beauty, affection and the carnal and sexual aspects of love, as well as art and music. Effectively Nirn's equivalent of Aphrodite. She teaches that, "No matter the seed, if the shoot is nurtured with love, will not the flower be beautiful?" Oh boy. Her artifact is the Brush of Truepaint, which can turn a canvas into a portal to a world made of paint that the artist creates with their imagination.
*'''Julianos''': God of wisdom and logic; literature, lore, history and contradiction are the domains of Julianos. Though Magnus is the god of magic, many wizards worship Julianos. The scholarly Bretons also hold a particular reverence for him. Monastic orders dedicated to Julianos are the keepers of the Elder Scrolls.
*'''Kynareth''': Goddess of heavens, winds and the elements. Known as Kyne among the Nords and the widow of Shor. It is said that Kyne gifted men with the Thu'um so they could harness the power of dragons and save themselves from Akatosh's errant children. Her artifact is the Lord's Mail, a cuirass that grants its wearer healing, magicka absorption, and the ability to cure their self of poison.
*'''Mara''': Goddess of agriculture, compassion, fertility, and the more romantic aspects of love. She is the one deity that is recognised by every culture on Tamriel. Among the Nords, Mara is Kyne's handmaiden and Shor's bit on the side. Among the Altmer, Bosmer and Bretons, Mara is the wife of Akatosh/Auri-El. Among the now extinct Kothringi of Black Marsh, Mara was just one of three aspects to an older Mother goddess with Kynareth and Dibella as the other two aspects. As said above, Divinity in this setting is ''weird''. Whatever the case, weddings in Tamriel are overseen by priests of Mara.
*'''Stendarr''': God of mercy, charity and justice. Apologist of men and patron deity of the Imperial Legion and many Breton knightly orders. Stendarr welcomes heretics, the afflicted, hopeless and forgotten just as readily as his devout followers. However his mercy ends at the enemies of mortals, the abhorrent and unnatural. Stendarr's priests are often hunters of lesser Daedra, lycanthropes, vampires and undead. Real bro-tier god overall. His artifact is Stendarr's Hammer, a hammer that increases the user's stamina and does incredible damage, but is also very fragile and far too heavy for a mortal to use.
*'''Zenithar''': God of honest work and commerce. The "almighty dollar" taken to the end conclusion. Very strong ties to the people of Cyrodiil, and many in High Rock and Hammerfell too.
*'''Talos''': NOT actually an Aedra, but worth mentioning as he is often placed among the other Eight. Talos, known in life as Tiber Septim and Ysmir to the Nords, is the greatest god-hero of mankind. He conquered all of Tamriel and ushered in the Third Empire of Cyrodiil at the end of the Second Era. When he died, his spirit supposedly ascended to godhood (and a quest in Oblivion lends support to this). As of the Fourth Era, Talos worship is banned in the Empire as per the terms of the White-Gold Concordat made with the Dominion, because the idea of a man becoming a god pisses the stupid sparkly prisses off to no end. That, and it is also likely that Talos is helping to hold the world together, and the Thalmor know this and want to starve him of worship, effectively destroying all Nirn to regain the divinity Lorkhan is said to have stolen from them. Fucking elves.

The Altmer also worship, or at least acknowledge, other Aedra that don't belong to the Eight Divines above, but are worshipped in most elven lands, these being:
*'''Jephre''': The god of songs and forests and the spirit of Now, also called Y'ffre. He was one of the first spirits to become Ehlnofey, or Earth Bones, and set in place the rules of nature and life on Nirn. The Bosmer consider him their main god and he's the reason they're carnivores and cannibals.
*'''Lorkhan''': The Creator-Trickster-Tester god present in every races mythology. Known alternatively as Lorkhaj, Shor, Sheor, Sep, or Shezarr, every single version goes the same way: creation happens, other spirits and gods get pissed at him, he's bound, he's killed/torn to pieces/separated from his divine center and forced to wander the earth. His heart landed in Red Mountain, and was destroyed in Morrowind, and some say that his corpse became the two moons of Nirn.
*'''Magnus''': The god of magic and the supposed architect of creation. When he realized what he made, he ran the fuck away, ripping a hole through creation to Aetherius, with this hole becoming the sun. Some part of him got caught in creation though, becoming the force of magic. He also had a host of assistants called the Magna-Ge, who ripped similiar holes in creation when running away, these becoming the stars. Very little lore exists about the Magna-Ge, and believe us [https://www.imperial-library.info/content/magne-ge-pantheon it reads like a mushroom trip.] His associated artifact is the Staff of Magnus, which has the power to drain magicka, and possibly the Eye of Magnus, a mysterious floating orb of incredible power whose purpose is unclear, though may have been one of the tools Magnus used to create the world.
*'''Phynaster''': An Ancestor-God of the Altmer, though some Bretons also worship him, who taught them how to live another 100 years by using a shorter walking stride.
*'''Syrabane''': Another Ancestor-God of the Altmer, who aided men in destroying the Sload kingdom of Thras. Often called the Apprentice's God, as the younger members of the Mage's Guild worship him.
*'''Trinimac''': The warrior god of the ancient Aldmer, who lead armies against the men. He eventually got eaten by Boethiah and became Malacath (more below).
*'''Xarxes''': The scribe to Auri-El, and the god of ancestry and secret knowledge. He made his wife Oghma ([[Oghma|no, not that one]]) from his [[Wat|favorite moments in history]].

===Daedra===
"Not Our Ancestors" in Aldmeris and "Our stronger, better ancestors" in Dunmeris, the Daedra (singular: Daedroth, not to be confused with the crocodile-like Daedra called Daedroth) are the Et'Ada who did not partake in the creation of the world. Because they didn't quasi-suicide themselves to pour their essence into the world, their power is both more focused, but their power on Nirn is more limited compared to their Aedric counterparts. As such their powers are limited to the likes of curses and artifacts, and can only walk the realm in forms that severely limit their powers.

Daedric Princes instead have their own singular realms, the Realms of Oblivion. A Daedric Prince is Omnipotent within their realm, because it is part of them and their mind. Their own realms are made out of them, similar to how Nirn is made out of Aedra; the Daedra are still fully alive and have much greater control over their own realm, but the tradeoff is that each realm is pretty small. Despite serving as the setting's "devils" (in that the word Daedra pretty much means Devil), they are not all completely evil. They range from "hates undead" and "wants to hunt dangerous game" to "prince of destruction" and "king of [[rape]]". Even if they are benevolent at times, the Daedra are not to be trifled with and are very dangerous.

* '''Azura:''' The Daedra associated with periods of change, twilight in particular, and magic and prophecy. Allegedly Nocturnal's sister, and one of the few Daedra not to be considered evil, though she is intensely prideful and easily aggravated, treating the Dunmer with a character not unlike how old testament Yahweh treated the 12 tribes of Israel. Azura is worshipped by the Dunmer and Khajit, though she had a mutual hatred for the Dwemer. Her realm of Oblivion is Moonshadow, a beautiful place of silver cities, gardens, and perpetual twilight. Her artifact is Azura's Star, an item which can hold the souls of living creatures. If this sounds like the soul gem items found across the series, it is, but Azura's Star is a max capacity soul gem they doesn't get consumed upon use, and is thus reusable.
* '''Boethiah:''' The Daedra associated with deceit, ambition, treachery, competition and sedition. Goes hand in hand with Mephala and is basically her louder sibling. Despite sounding like some kind of fucked up noble, Boethiah often takes the appearance of a patrician warrior (can be female, but usually male), and they enjoy inflicting mayhem and bloodshed on mortals. Regarded by the Dunmer, either through worship or hatred, and some versions of their origin tale has all sorts of scholarly pursuits emerging from their teachings. Their realm is Attribution's Share (also known as Snake Mount), a place of [[Tzeentch|labyrinthine policies and betrayals]]. Their artifacts are Goldbrand, a high end katana, and the Ebony Mail, high end armor that cause poison damage to those around the wearer.
*'''Clavicus Vile:''' The Daedra associated with wishes and pacts. He's the asshole genie who ensures that all the wishes and pacts are twisted so he comes out on top, usually while gaining the soul of the one foolish enough to deal with him. He appears as a jovial fellow with horns sprouting from his forehead, and is usually accompanied by '''Barbas''', a dog who holds half of Clavicus' power. His realm is the Fields of Regret, which, despite its name, is a tranquil countryside, dotted with cities of glass and ornate buildings. His artifact is the Masque of Clavicus Vile, which makes its wearer more popular and likeable.
*'''Hermaeus Mora:''' The Daedra associated with fate and forbidden knowledge. Supposedly the sibling of Mephala, he seeks gather and obtain as much knowledge as possible. He often appears as a collection of eyes, tentacles, and pincers. [[Call of Cthulhu|Proper Lovecraftian motherfucker]]. His realm is Apocrypha, an endless library filled with and made from books of forbidden knowledge, with seas of ink and tentacles. His artifacts are the Black Books, which transport their reader to Apocrypha and can grant access to forbidden knowledge, and the Oghma Infinium, a tome that can allow one to achieve near-demigod level abilities.
*'''Hircine:''' The Daedra associated with hunting and therianthropes. He created the many werebeasts that exist in Tamriel, and claims their souls upon death. He appears either as an animal or a man, with the horns of a deer, unless he appears as deer. His realm is the Hunting Grounds, a realm of dense woodlands and vast grasslands, inhabited by daedra, beasts, and therianthropes, where werebears and Nords hunt by day, and Hircine along with a pack of werewolves hunts by night. His artifacts are the Saviour's Hide, a hide cuirass that makes the wearer more resistant to magic, and the Ring of Hircine, a ring that allows one to transform into a werewolf, if not already a lycanthrope, and lycanthropes to control their transformations.
*'''Malacath:''' The Daedra associated with orcs, [[goblin]]s, [[ogre]]s, curses, and outcasts. ''Definitely'' a good daedra if you happen to be an Orc, but to other races he's benign at the best of times (altohugh he's never outright malevolent to the degree of Molag or Mehrunes). He technically is not a daedric prince (and the other daedric princes don't count him as one of them, which is fitting for a patron of outcasts) because his origin makes him an aedra, but he often is counted as a daedric prince because he rules over a realm of Oblivion. Originally he was '''Trinimac''', one of the ancestor sprits of the Altmer, who was eaten by Boethiah and then shat out as Malacath, though he says the story is too literal minded, and there are those who say that Trinimac and Malacath are two separate deities. He appears a muscular orc wielding a heavy weapon. His realm is Ashpit, a realm of dust and ash, dotted with palaces of smoke and gardens, where levitation and magical breathing are necessary to survive. His artifacts are the Scourge, a mace that banishes all daedra that make contact with it, and Volendrung, a Dwemer made warhammer.
*'''Mehrunes Dagon:''' The Deadra associated with destruction, revolution, change, ambition, and energy. One of the more evil daedra, of whom little is known, and the antagonist of ''Battlespire'' and ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion|Oblivion]]''. He appears as red-skinned giant with four arms, carrying a two-headed axe. His realm is the Deadlands (no, not [[Deadlands|that one]]), a realm of scorched, volcanic islands and ruined structures amidst a sea of lava, with hostile life living on the islands. He once was a good guy before a curse was put on him by Alduin for interfering with his devouring of the world. His artifact is Mehrunes' Razor, a dagger that has a [[Vorpal Sword| small chance of instantly killing whatever it cuts]].
*'''Mephala:''' The Daedra associated with spiders, webs, [[Tzeentch|lies, secrets, plots]] and murder. Sibling to Hermaeus Mora, the Dunmer worship her as one of the "Good Daedra", with her having taught them the arts of stealth and assassination. The Morag Tong, the assassin's guild in Morrowind, worships her through murder. She often appears as female of some form, but sometimes appears as a male. Her realm is the Spiral Skein, a wheel-shaped realm, with her palace in the middle, and the space between the "spokes" dedicated to one of eight sins. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti, a ring that makes its wearer faster and harder to detect, and the Ebony Blade, a life-leeching katana.
*'''Meridia:''' The Daedra asssociated with light and the energies of living things, and one of the few non-evil Daedric Princes. She was originally believed to have been one of the Magna-Ge, the spirits that followed Magnus to Aetherius, but was cast out for consorting with daedra, eventually creating her realm by bending and shaping the light of the sun. She hates all undead with a passion, and usually rewards those who destroy them. She either appears as an orb of light, or a blonde-haired woman in a gown. Despite all this, she generally does not command popular worship due to her haughty, bitter and aloof manner, stemming from her exile from the magna-ge. The last time she threw her support behind a mortal race She made the mistake of being the patron of the Heartland High Elves of Cyrodil, who were into human slavery and were generally tyrants. They ended up being near exterminated. There are hints in the lore that Molag Bal is obsessed with her and caused her fall from heaven. Her realm is the Colored Rooms, a cross between a coral reef and a field of floating stones, strewn with colorful trails of dust/clouds. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti and the Dawnbringer, a sword that burns the undead and upon killing them makes them explode.
*'''Molag Bal:''' The Daedra associated with domination, enslavement, rape, and vampires. Quite inarguably the most evil of the Daedric Princes, as he simply desires to harvest souls of mortals by inciting strife and discord among them. He also created the first vampire by raping a Nedic woman. He appears as a monstrous being of varying appearance, but usually has horns and hooves. His realm is Coldharbour, which is an apocalyptic and desolate reflection of Nirn where the air is freezing, every wall is smeared with blood and shit and there are charnal houses and slave pens as far as the eye can see. His artifact is the Mace of Molag Bal, a mace that drains the energies of those it hits and traps their souls upon death. Main antagonist of both the original game and Elder Scrolls Online, with Mehrunes Dagon basically stealing his invasion plans. Seriously Mehrunes invades Nirn in the same ways in the same order.
*'''Namira:''' The Daedra associated with ancient darkness, revulsion, and cannibals. Not much is known of her, other than she's associated with anything revolting, and her followers prefer to live in dark and squalid conditions. Her realm is the Scuttling Void, of which nothing is really known about. Her artifact is the Ring of Namira, a ring that boosts one health after cannibalizing a corpse, or reflects damage back onto the wearer's attacker.
*'''Nocturnal:''' The Daedra associated with darkness, night, luck and thieves. Most thieves in Tamriel revere her to some degree, for obvious reasons, and the Thieves Guild reveres her as their patron. She appears often as a dark-haired woman in a hooded gown, accompanied by ravens. Her realm is Evergloam, a realm in perpetual twilight, consisting of a primary plane and constantly shifting pocket planes. Her artifacts are the Skeleton Key, a key/lockpick that can open anything from locks to portals to one's hidden potential, the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, a cowl that hides the wearer's true identity and makes him a better thief, and the Bow of Shadows, a bow that can turn its wielder invisible.
*'''Peryite:''' [[Nurgle]]'s less-jovial cousin, this is the Daedra associated with tasks, pestilence, and natural order. Peryite is considered one of the weakest Daedric Princes (not that ''any'' daedric prince can be called "weak" by mortal standards), and is charged with keeping the lower realms of Oblivion and the lesser daedra in line. He often appears as a green, four-legged dragon, but sometimes appears as ghostly apparitions of vermin. His realm is The Pits, which resembles Deadlands in its landscape. His artifact is the Spellbreaker, a shield that can reflect magic.
*'''Sanguine:''' Basically just a less-rapey or /d/isgusting [[Slaanesh]]. The Daedra associated with hedonism, debauchery, indulgence, and revelry. He's often depicted on seals and signs of brothels and whorehouses. He appears as a portly dremora, with a bottle in one hand and a whore in another. His realms are the Myriad Realms of Revelry, countless pocket realms that are fashioned to meet the needs and demands of its visitors. His artifact is the Sanguine Rose, a rose-shaped staff/staff-sized rose that summons a dremora to fight for its owner.
*'''Sheogorath:''' Everyone's favorite, this is the lolrandom [[Chaotic Stupid]] Daedra associated with madness and creativity. There are many stories and legends about him, like how he invented music from [[Rip and tear|the body parts of a woman he killed]] and how he trolled everyone of the other Daedric Princes at various points. He appears as an elderly, fine-dressed gentleman with a cane. His realm is the Shivering Isles, a landmass surrounded by islands that's divided in two, to represent both shades of madness. His artifact is the Wabbajack, a staff that does something completely random when used. He is distinguishable from other daedra by the fact that, Old Sheogorath was basically a result of bipolar disorder of Jyggalag and new Sheogorath is actually human. The Hero of Kvatch from TES: Oblivion was named new Sheogorath by grateful Jyggalag once his curse was lifted, and going by Sheogorath's dialogue in Skyrim as well as him fondly remembering his other adventures back then, this event is canon.
**'''Jyggalag:''' The [[Lawful Stupid]] Daedra associated with logic, order, and deduction. Originally, he was the most powerful of the Daedric Princes, but the others cursed him to become Sheogorath, who represented everything he hated. The curse did allow him to return at the end of every era, leading the event known as the "Grey March" and obliterating Shivering Isles only to revert back to Sheogorath and start over again. This seemingly neverending cycle of torment finally ended, when Sheogorath managed to lure Hero of Kvatch to the Shivering Isles and successfully train him for his future duties and prepare him for the Grey March. By the end of the Shivering Isles expansion, Jyggalag is defeated by the Protagonist, thus finally lifting the curse. He then heads off to parts unknown, but not before naming Hero of Kvatch "New Sheogorath". He has yet to make a reappearance in the games despite his DLC being canon. He appears a as a giant, gray knight wielding a sword.
*'''Vaermina:''' The Daedra associated with dreams and nightmares. One of the more evil daedra, with some saying that torture also belongs to her sphere of influence. She appears as an old woman in a robe, wielding a staff. Her realm is Quagmire, a nightmarish realm where Vaermina draws the minds of mortals, collecting their memories and leavings nightmares in return. Her artifact is the Skull of Corruption, a staff that creates a clone of the target, who then attacks the target.

===Other Divinities===
Et'Ada and other gods that don't belong to either group also exist. Some of the more important ones being:

*'''Alduin:''' The firstborn of Akatosh and his destroyer aspect, who most believed was just the Nordic version of Akatosh. His job is to bring about the end of the current kalpa so that the next one may begin, but by the time of Skyrim, he's decided to just rule over the world. You defeat him at the end of Skyrim, but unlike any other dragon his soul is ''not'' absorbed by the dragonborn, leaving many believing he'll return one day to do his job properly.
*'''All-Maker:''' The god of the Skaal and the source of all life, the Skaal believe that when you die you go to him, and he reincarnates you as new being. Oneness, or harmony, with nature is important, as the Skaal draw their magical powers from it and it pleases the All-Maker. Opposing him is '''The Adversary''', a many aspected god who torments and tests the Skaal.
*'''Dagoth Ur:''' The main antagonist of Morrowind, he was once the trusted advisor of Nerevar until he experimented with the Heart of Lorkhan and managed to draw power from it. By the events of the game he is properly batshit loopy with divinity, and also without question the most dangerous thing on Nirn because he exists within a terrifying middle-ground between CHIM, Zero Sum and Amaranth - he has godlike power because of his awarness of Anu's dream but cannot maintain his individuality or fade into the Dream, so his broken, traumatised mind is being slowly imprinted on the dream of Anu. Nevertheless, he seemingly dies by the hand of Nerevar's reincarnation after you sever his connection to the heart. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPAuvfqocFY Affable and almost as infinitely quotable as Sheogorath.]
*'''The Ideal Masters:''' Once mortal spellcasters during the Merethic era, they forsook their mortality and physical forms to become beings of pure soul energy. In the process however, they found they had become filled with a terrible hunger for souls. The Ideal Masters are the source of all soul gems, and of the arts of soul-trapping, and therefore enchantment. Their private realm within Oblivion, the Soul Cairn, is where ''every'' soul that is ever trapped in a Soul Gem goes. They rarely bother manifesting at all, though a few gigantic crystals in the Cairn channel their influence and their hunger. Their name comes from their belief that, by removing mortal souls from the cycle of rebirth and trapping them in eternal undeath, they are ultimately granting all beings eternal peace... and there is a small amount of evidence to support this. Despite all this, they aren't really ambitious, and they even helped the hero of ''Battlespire'' because they were tired of Mehrunes Dagon driving across their lawn on the way to the mortal world.
*'''Mannimarco:''' An old and powerful Altmer [[necromancer]] and [[lich]], supposedly [[Vecna|became the god of necromancy after the events of Daggerfall and returns as the main antagonist]] for the Mages Guild questline in Oblivion.
*'''The Tribunal:''' Also known as the Almsivi, they were originally three Chimer, the predecessors of Dunmer, Almalexia, Sotha Sil, and Vivec, and counselors to Nerevar, who also stole their powers from the Heart of Lorkhan, and promptly ruled over the Dunmer from early/mid First Era to the end of the Third Era. Almalexia eventually went insane and killed Sotha Sil, the Nerevarine killed her, and Vivec got dragged to Oblivion during the events of Oblivion. Without the influence of the Tribunal, the Red Mountain erupted and Morrowind promptly went to shit.
*'''Tsun:''' The Nordic god of trials against adversity and Shor's shield-thane, he died fighting against foreign (read: elven) gods and was then assigned to be the guardian of the whalebone bridge leading to the Hall of Valor in Sovngarde. You get fight him for your right to enter the hall in Skyrim.

==Races==
[[File:Tamriel.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Tamriel, shown alongside the now sunken islands of Yokuda, the original home of the Redguards, and Pyandonea, a land inhabited by the Maormer, sea elves.]]
The first two Elder Scrolls games had eight playable races; the three after that added Imperials and Orcs as playable races. There's also a ton of unplayable races as well, but UESP can explain them better than us.

The races of Tamriel are generally divided into three categories; the races of Men are the various ethnicities of [[human]], the Mer races are the different species of [[elf]], and the [[Beastmen]] are explained as "where the fuck did these dudes come from?"

===Men===
*'''Akaviri/Tsaesci:''' Fantasy Japanese. Not directly presented in game, but their spirits may be seen in certain missions. Left a significant mark in imperial history, as Akaviri invaders were on a mission of search of Dragonborn, which turned out to be founder of the second Empire, Reman. They swore allegiance to him and served as elite guard of his descendants. These names are interchangeably used, but some sources imply that Akaviri and Tsaesci are actually different group of people, with Tsaesci being snake like, even naga, perhaps. As for how is it possible to have snek humans, well, dwarves and orks and most bizarrely, some imply that Khajiit are simply a subspecies of elves here, so just roll with this. One source suggests the human Akaviri were "devoured" by the Tsaesci but whether that means they were literally all [[Vore|eaten]] or simply enslaved or culturally assimiliated is anyone's guess.
*'''Bretons:''' Best described as [[Half-Elf|half-elves]] from [[Bretonnia]] with a hint of French-ness. Probably the least badass of the humans here (which is all relative - many great heroes throughout Tamriel's history were Bretons including several of Cyrodiil's Emperors) but they are still the most gifted with magic because of their elf blood. They even get a magic resistance out of the deal. True to the French stereotype, they're great cooks but also a bit snobby. Their home province of High Rock isn't even a united kingdom, but rather a [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|patchwork quilt of petty kingdoms, embroiled in political conflict]] and usually only tangentially aligned with the Empire at the best of times.
**'''Reachmen:''' Tribal people of Breton descent native to The Reach. Used to rule a bunch of petty kingdoms in the area before being subjugated by the Alessian Empire first, and later by Tiber Septim. By the Fourth Era they tried to take the Reach again but Ulfric Stormcloak put a stop to that in the now infamous "Markarth Incident" that gave rise to the Stormcloak Rebellion. Now split between those trying to just live their lives in peace, and the Forsworn, raiders who went back to the old ways of using fur and hide armor, weapons of stone, bone, and wood, and worshipping the Daedra and venerating hagravens (witches who gave their humanity to become powerful spellcasters).
*'''Imperials:''' Also known as the "Cyrodiilics", the Imperials are a civilised and cosmopolitan people, more or less Roman in culture (but in very early lore they were actually Mesoamerican, and their ancestors the Nedes were ancient Chinese). Like practically all humans in fantasy settings, they're average at nearly everything, control the world, and are kind of boring compared to everyone else. They've forged three continent-spanning empires in their history, and the first time involved a time-bending magical giant robot. They've also in the past had a space race with the Altmer to colonise Masser and Secunda. Yes, really. Surprisingly, for most of the Third Era, most Emperors were not Imperials, but Bretons.
*'''Nedes:''' The progenitors of Nords, Imperials, and Bretons. Came to Tamriel after their homeland of Atmora begun to freeze over and eventually settled into what would be the Hammerfell region. When the Redguards came from the west, they enslaved and exterminated the Nedes, and adopted much of their customs, language, and religion.
*'''Nords:''' Basically [[Norsca|manly as all hell, magic and elf-hating not-Vikings from the frozen land of Skyrim]]. Tend to be very very badass because they have to live in an inhospitable hellhole with bears, sabre-tooth cats, trolls, giants, big nopey frost spiders the size of bears and they also fought and killed all the dragons in the past. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Their ancestors, the Atmorans, nearly exterminated the entire Snow Elf race with just five hundred warriors despite being basically cavemen with no understanding of agriculture or the written language, going up against a iron age civilisation with magic]]. The Nords then fell in line behind a badass named King Vrage the Gifted and went full [[Genghis motherfucking Khan]] on Tamriel, conquering a vast empire that fell apart when his grandson Borgas died and Skyrim fell into a succession crisis. Not much happened afterwards - the Nords fought, won and lost a few wars against the Dwemer, the Akaviri and themselves until Tiber Septim rocked up and folded them into his Third empire.
**'''Skaal:''' Nords native to Solstheim. Split between those trying to live like the Nords of olden times (read: fighting, drinking, and hunting like there's no tomorrow), and those living in harmony with nature and worshipping the All-Maker through it.
*'''Redguard:''' Fantasy Moors/Africans. Skilled warriors hailing from the sunken islands of Yokuda (the sinking of which they were the apparent cause by their warriors overusing a forbidden sword technique that let them split atoms), and the only guys to have invented gunpowder. Redguards are some of the greatest sailors in Tamriel, and they tend to scorn magic due to religious taboos against necromancy and their many past wars with the magic-proficient Bretons. This dislike fades over time and by the 4th era, Destruction and Restoration magic have obtained widespread acceptance due to their straightforwardness. Interestingly, ''Daggerfall'' has a reference Redguards seem to have "cannons" on their naval ships.

===Mer (Elves)===
*'''Altmer ([[High Elves]]):''' Every stereotype of Elves being narcissistic pricks, amplified a hundredfold. As of the Fourth Era, their home of Summerset Isle (now Alinor) is governed by the Thalmor, who are out to unravel all creation because they believe mortality was a cruel trick played on them by the gods of Men (and no, this belief is not just some quirk of the Thalmor, the ancient Aldmer believed this as well). [[Nazi|They even practice eugenics, wear long black coats and kill any undesirable progeny]]. It is suggested that they don't even have names among themselves, they just assign each other a long number that sounds like a name to human ears. Nearly every Altmer is either a [[Wizard]] or a magical warrior.
*'''Ayleids (Heartland High Elves):''' An offshoot race from the Aldmer, the ancestors of the Altmer. Notable for being the original founders of the Imperial City and the founders of the first empire in Tamriel. Also notable for worshipping the Daedra and torturing their Nedic slaves in nightmare fuel ways for shits and giggles ([[Slaanesh|like skinning runaways alive, making gardens and sculptures out of their guts and bones, setting human children on fire, that kind of thing]]). If the Imperials are Romans then the Ayleids were the Etruscan kings who ruled Rome prior to the founding of the Roman Republic. They were driven to extinction by the Nedes after the Alessian Slave Rebellion, and their ruins dotting Cyrodiil are the only remaining sign of their existence.
*'''Bosmer ([[Wood Elves]]):''' Wood Elves in the [[Dwarf Fortress]] sense, only not quite as insane. They are some of the greatest archers in Tamriel and they have a long history of warring with the Khajiit. They also happen to be cannibals because of an ancient pact they made with the forest god Y'ffre (basically said forest god won't let them eat vegetation, so they can't afford to let ''any'' meat go to waste). So they are the total opposite of the stereotype of elves being vegans. Through this pact they can also turn themselves into monsters, though this trick is only used when the existence of Valenwood itself is threatened. They also have no understanding of woodworking and they brew alcohol from the fermented flesh of their dead enemies. Hardcore. (As a note on the cannibalism thing, you don't actually have to worry about getting shanked and eaten by every wood elf you <s>meat</s> meet, it's just their standard means of dealing with dead bodies.)
*'''Dunmer ([[Dark Elves]]):''' Elves with a blue-grey tint to their skin who got cursed by their Daedric patron for complex reasons. Their culture is a bizarre mish-mash of China, Japan, Mongolia, ancient Mesopotamia and the Biblical Israelites, with northern English accents (and a distinct gravelly voice for the men). They primarily worship the Daedra along with the Tribunal, three mortals who ascended to godhood by tapping into the Heart of Lorkhan. Since they joined the Empire by treaty instead of by conquest, their homeland of Morrowind has many unique laws, including [[Inquisitors]] and (till the tail end of the 3rd Era) legalized slavery. Highly supremacist and xenophobic, the Fourth Era has bitten them in the arse hard as most of Morrowind was devastated by volcanic eruption and their Argonian slaves have occupied what's left, leaving most surviving Dunmer as unwelcome refugees. How the mighty have fallen.
*'''Dwemer ([[Dwarves|Deep Elves]]):''' Elves who lived in the northern mountain ranges, they were the most advanced race to have existed, having figured steampower, created soul gem-powered automata, and Tonal Architecture, the manipulation of sound to alter reality. Even though they are for all intents and purposes dwarves, they were actually human-sized - they were called dwarves by a race of giants native to Tamriel who are now lost to history. A very strong contender for the single most badass race in Tamriellic history, besides the early Nords and the modern Argonians. Their belief system was terrifyingly alien even to the other inhabitants of the continent, arrogant and dogmatic, hated and dreaded by every other race they met. They were [[Fedora Masters RPG|atheists]] in a world where the existence of the gods is *indisputable fact*, which should tell you all you need to know about how crazy (and also kind of badass) they were. They all disappeared after they activated the Numidium, a massive golem powered by the Heart of Lorkhan, except for one who was exploring outer realms. There are multiple theories to explain their disappearance: they became the armoured skin of Numidium or the metaphysical concept of "is not" itself, ascended to another plane outside of Aetherius where not even Vivec can sense them, sent themselves forward in time, or just their attempt at reforging themselves into gods went wrong at the "reduce ourselves to base elements" part of the process and they all went "Poof!" as a result. There is a wizard in Skyrim who claims to have met some Dwemer while travelling the other planes, but who knows if he is telling the truth or not.
*'''Falmer ([[Snow Elves]]):''' Pale-haired and skinned elves originally native to Skyrim, they got their asses kicked so hard by the Atmorans they went into hiding, with other going to the Dwemer for shelter. What the Dwemer didn't tell them was part of the deal was shelter meant being enslaved by them and forced to subsist on toxic fungi that made them all blind. Several generations of this diet and other factors eventually turned them into blind, noseless, [[/b/|hunchbacked, barely-sentient subterranean degenerates]]. A small number of Falmer did escape being wiped out by the Atmorans or enslaved by the Dwemer in an isolated part of Skyrim, until one of them ended up becoming a [[Vampire]] and went crazy with anger at being cut off from his god and killed all of the others except for his brother. After the player kills him in the Dawnguard DLC, his brother may be the last remaining uncorrupted Falmer in existence (unless there are any other Falmer who found good hiding places).
*'''Orsimer ([[Orcs]]):''' Also known as the "Pariah Elves", descended from a race of Elves who got screwed over due to Daedric faggotry. Most Orsimer live assimilated into other cultures or in destitute and isolated strongholds, akin to native reservations, far out in the wilderness. Every time they have tried to build a new city-state in High Rock, Orsinium, the Bretons or Redguards came and knocked it over and as of the Fourth Era, Orsinium exists somewhere in the Skyrim-Hammerfell border. Also, the Nords only wish they could be as hardcore warriors as the Orcs, which means the two races have something of an odd friendship. They live short, brutal lives in conflict with nature and the other races, making them rock-solid tough. They are also brilliant armoursmiths. Worth noting is the fact that at the time of the very first game, Orcs [[/pol/|''weren't even considered PEOPLE'']] by Tamrielic culture, but by the time of Oblivion nobody would think twice about walking into a shop to find that it was run by an orc anymore than they would a shopkeeper of any of the above races.

===Beastmen===
[[File:Khajiit Family.jpg|300px|thumb|right|A family of Khajiit. Given how these things work it is very possible that the housecat that the catgirl is holding is the father of the tiger in the back. TES is weird like that.]]
*'''Argonians:''' A race of warm-blooded lizard people, well-spoken and skilled as both warriors and mages. Have a weird connection to semi-sentient trees called Hist where they may or may not be gene-engineered super soldiers enslaved by said Hist trees. Also, they actually start life as perfectly ordinary lizards that only gain sapience and humanoid shape upon eating the sap of said trees. Despite being weirdos and the targets of discrimination, they have an unbreakable hold on their homeland: Tiber Septim never truly conquered Black Marsh, he just barely conquered some of the border towns and called it a win and apparently the Argonians didn't care enough to contest it; and during the Oblivion Crisis, the Dremora were eventually forced to close the gates [[awesome|because the Argonians were sending invading armies through them]]. Apparently they are masters of Vietcong-style jungle warfare and invading Black Marsh is as big a military mistake as challenging Britain to a naval war or invading Russia in the winter, as the province is a veritable [[Catachan|green hell where every blade of grass conceals an angry lizardman just waiting to spear you to death or drag you under the mud and drown you, if your feet or eyes don't rot first]].
*'''[[Catfolk|Khajiit]]:''' Technically related to Elves, but hard to tell by looking because they have many different forms that are determined at birth by the waxing and waning of Masser and Secunda: some Khajiit look like the Bosmer, some like furries, some look like housecats except they can talk and use magic, and some get to be completely badass horse-sized tigers, named Battlecats by the Imperials. They are skilled desert raiders, merchants and farmers. Their culture is basically the Romani. Their prime export is Moon Sugar, a substance that can be best described as [[Doomrider|magical cocaine made from crystallised moonlight]]. Like Argonians, they are a prime target for racism.

==Games==
Though several spinoffs were made, when referring to "The Elder Scrolls" only the five central games are being referred to.

===The Elder Scrolls I: Arena===
Jagar Tharn, the Imperial Battlemage and trusted servant of the Emperor Uriel Septim VII turns evil, locks the Emperor inside Oblivion, and takes over Tamriel. His apprentice Ria Silmane discovered this and told the player, so Tharn killed the former and imprisoned the latter. Yet Silmane persisted, and helped the player escape prison and revealed how Tharn could be destroyed: by recovering the eight parts of the Staff of Chaos from all over the empire. The player succeeds, kills Tharn, returns the Emperor and all is well. This was the only game where the player could visit all of Tamriel.

===The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall===
The player, a personal friend of the Emperor, is sent to the city of Daggerfall, High Rock to investigate a haunting by the ghost of the former king. Things quickly get out of hand when you discover the Numidium, a massive golem used by Tiber Septim to gain control over Tamriel. There are several mutually exclusive endings possible; canon opted to [[what|make them all happen]] in an event called the Warp in the West, a Dragon Break, which is a specific type of event where divine fuckery causes [[FATAL|time and space to take it up the ass hard]].

===The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind===
[[File:Morrowind.jpg|300px|thumb|right|If you can explain at least 75% of what's going on on this image, you are a true fan.]]
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind}}
Morrowind ships the player to the island of Vvardenfell, in the Dunmer province of Morrowind, where you are to report to the [[Snowflame|perpetually shirtless crackhead]] called Caius Cossades to investigate a [[Cultist-Chan|cult]] that is growing rapidly in size. This cult is revealed to be the doings of the Sixth House, a clan of Dunmer that was destroyed after its leader, Lord Voryn Dagoth, rebelled against Lord Indoril Nerevar, the leader of the war against the Dwemer. Nerevar died shortly afterwards (though it is unclear if he died from the wounds Dagoth inflicted on him, or that his advisors, the Tribunal, murdered their lord so they could use the tools of the Dwemer to grant themselves near-divinity), and the Tribunal took over as the god-kings of the Dunmer.

There was only one problem: Dagoth wasn't actually dead, and he granted himself near-divinity too. He's also completely insane because mortal minds simply were not meant to handle that kind of power, and now he is using a divine disease to influence the dreams of a bunch of Dunmer nationalists, transforming them into horrifying humanoid cephalopods hellbent on driving the Empire and all the other races out of Morrowind.

You take the role of Nerevar's incarnation, and long story short you kill Dagoth, properly this time. However two of the Tribunal lie dead and the last one sacrificed his divinity to help the Nerevarine. Things in Morrowind do not get better after this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ow5lGFju1c Here is a great review about the game. Every N'wah in existence worth their salt must watch it.]

===The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion===
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion}}
You play as a nobody prisoner rotting in a cell in the Imperial City in the waning years of the Third Era. You catch a break when Emperor <s>Patrick Stewart</s> Uriel Septim VII pays a visit to your cell because his escape tunnel happens to be in with you (it's chalked up to fate or a bureaucratic error). Turns out his heirs have been assassinated, and despite the best efforts of you and Cyrodiil's Finest, the Emprah gets shanked too. Before he does however, he entrusts you with the Amulet of Kings and tells you to go look for the Emperor's last son, a bastard child named Martin (who is voiced by Sean Bean) who is also being sought out by an apocalyptic cult of Mehrunes Dagon led by the last known child of the Camoran Dynasty, the family who had ruled over man for years before St. Alesseia came and slapped their shit down.

By the events of the ending, Mehrunes Dagon's attempted invasion has been thwarted and Tamriel has been saved from a truly horrifying outcome, but Martin is dead and the Septim Empire is officially left without an heir. Things in Tamriel do not get better after this.

It was the first big-name RPG to appear on seventh generation consoles, and made the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 work for their money.

===The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim===
[[File:Song of Skyrim.jpg|500px|thumb|Dat Nord Frost Resistance]]
Also known as the Volsunga Saga: The Game, chronologically set 201 years after Oblivion. It's been a long time and a lot has happened. Basically the Empire went to shit. A faction of Altmer supremacists named the Thalmor took over the Summerset Isles and seceded, also annexing Valenwood and turning Elsweyr into a client state. Morrowind got properly fucked because the Red Mountain erupted and the northern half of the country was left uninhabitable, the Argonians invaded the southern half as payback for years of slavery, and what isn't run by vengeful ex-slave lizards or covered in burning ash is in the midst of a political vacuum caused by the collapse of the pro-Imperial House Hlaalu. Then the newly-christened Aldmeri Dominion declared war on the Empire and even sacked the Imperial City. The Imperial Legion drove them out at great cost but the Emperor, Titus Mede II, was forced to sign a ceasefire with several punitive terms including a ban on Talos worship and giving up parts of Hammerfell. These terms (especially the Talos ban) were... [[Rage|controversial]] to say the least; Hammerfell, fed up with the fuckery of the elves and the Empire at this point, kicked them both out and declared independence. Between this and their handling of the Oblivion Crisis and the Red Mountain eruption, many people within the Empire began seeing it as weak and ineffectual, selling out the non-Cyrodiilic peoples to save their own sorry hides. But for now, an uneasy cold war exists between the two empires and everybody knows Round 2 is just around the corner.

You're a prisoner, but in a shocking turn of events, this time you're actually told WHY this time! Turns out you crossed the damn border illegally, you filthy alien - of course if you are a Nord then it's just chalked up an asshole Imperial officer who doesn't want to deal with paperwork and just sends you to the block along with everyone else. See, at this point the Imperial authorities in Skyrim are very uneasy because there is a civil war going on, between the pro-Imperial ''de facto'' High Queen Elisif the Fair, and the eponymous forces of Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak, a former Legion soldier turned Nord warlord who took umbridge to the terms of the ceasefire with the Dominion and now wants to drive out the Empire and claim the throne (so he is basically the Nord version of Robert the Bruce, even down to the controversial murder of a noble puppet that has made him effectively an outlaw king; he is also quite awesomely voiced by Vladimir Kulich). Just mere moments before the frosty-looking bloke with the big axe gives you a discount haircut, a giant dragon god named Alduin the World Eater (Nidhogg with a touch of Jörmundgandr) decides to introduce himself to the world after being banished for ages and begins fucking up the town, giving you, Ulfric and his men a chance to escape. In truth Alduin is there for YOU - you end up learning that you're the legendary Dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon who can basically do any of the cool shit a real dragon can do (besides flying), leaving you to solve the mystery of why the mysterious dragons are returning and find a way to stop Alduin from eating the world. And possibly also end the civil war by leading either side to victory, leading to either an independent new Skyrim (Stormcloaks win) or a reinvigorated Empire that holds on to its most vital province and has a key figure of the dragonblood once again, leaving it in the best state it has been in decades (Imperials win).

===The Elder Scrolls Online===
TES: the MMORPG. Early on it suffered from growing pains and problems, but after surviving the hate and becoming only buy to play, it became a rather nice game. It is set in the Second Era, 800 years before Oblivion and a full millennium before Skyrim. Tamriel is currently locked in a mêlée à trois between three fragile alliances all vying for the Imperial throne - the Ebonheart Pact (Nords, Dunmer and Argonians), the Aldmeri Dominion (Altmer, Bosmer and Khajiit) and the Daggerfall Covenant (Bretons, Redguards and Orcs). You can also play Imperials if you upgraded your account to the Imperial Edition, they are a neutral party in the war. Meanwhile behind the scenes Molag Bal is scheming to meld Mundus with his nightmare realm Coldharbour and enslave all the mortal races. Someone oughta stop that shit, right?

===The Elder Scrolls VI===
Announced at E3 2018, the game was confirmed to be in production. The trailer shows a mountainous eastern or western coast with some stone ruins. Bethesda has been completely silent on it and the simultaneously announced Starfield since their announcements, leading to many claiming vaporware.

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<center>
<gallery>
image:Lel.jpg
image:N'wahs with attitude.jpg
image:1402853718622.jpg
image:Averagedayatbeth.png|This is depressingly true.
image:Tribunal_awaken.jpg|[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Almsivi!]]
image:Kobold romance diary by Weaver.jpg|An average day for a TES protagonist.
</gallery>
</center>

==See also==
*[http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, the definitive wiki for the series.]
*[[Scrollhammer]]: if the Elder Scrolls and Warhammer had a bastard son, it would probably be like this.
*[[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition]]: If Elder Scrolls and Infinity had a bastard son.
*[[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG]]: A pen and paper [[RPG]] currently dead because Seht decided to take a break, but he's back now. Core 3E is pretty polished with many supplements actively being worked on and released by various anons.
*[[Savage Worlds]]: For which fanmade Elder Scrolls rules exist.

[[Category:Video Games]]

The Elder Scrolls

2020-06-26T07:15:24Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* Daedra */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:Crabomancy.jpg|300px|thumb|right|During the Oblivion Crisis, the Dunmer of House Redoran revived a whole city, Ald'ruhn, which was made out of shell of the Great Skar to fight on their side, as a Giant Friendly Crab. This series is hardcore like that. They still lost.]]
'''The Elder Scrolls''' is a [[video game|vidya]] series, and the setting of five main games and a number of spinoffs. Despite being a vidja, it is considered a type II game.

/tg/ also has a [[Scrollhammer|40k/WHFB hack named Scrollhammer]], [[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition|Infinity hack 2nd edition]], and a number of pen and paper games (notably [[Morrowind PNP]] and the [[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG|UESRPG]]) set in [[The Elder Scrolls]] universe.

Its canon is notoriously unstable and intentionally 'postmodern'. Long story short: imagine every canon clusterfuck 40K has ever experienced, only there are no editions to draw a neat line between lore changes. And on at least one occasion, time has been known to break in order to allow simultaneous mutually exclusive outcomes. You know how in 40K everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true? Here, nothing is canon and everything is true, especially when it contradicts itself, so histories are intentionally interpretive and unreliable.

==Setting==
[[File:Elder_Scrolls_Cosmology.jpg|400px|thumb|right|An approximation of the cosmology of the Elder Scrolls. Not shown: mindfucks.]]
The games mainly take place in Tamriel, a continent consisting of nine separate lands. After being [[Anal Circumference|buttfucked]] by the [[Eldar|Ayleid]] for several centuries, humanity rises up and overthrow their elven overlords, and took control themselves. Then, a few thousand years later, a man named [[God-Emperor|Tiber]] [[Alpharius|Septim]] steps up and leads his armies to [[Great Crusade|conquer all of Tamriel to found the Third Empire of Cyrodiil]]. But instead of exterminating all the elves and beast races, they were allowed to co-exist with the other races and a time of prosperity began, ending with the death of Emperor [[Star Trek|Jean-Luc Picard the 7th]], and [[Khorne|Mehrunes Dagon]] then began to fuck his way from [[Warp|Oblivion]] into Tamriel, starting a chain of events that resulted in him being kicked back into hell by the Emperor's lost son, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Sean Bean]].

Being Sean Bean meant he died in the process, and without an Emperor the Empire began to crumble. The Aldmeri Dominion (think Ayleid 2.0) sensed their weakness and began a war to subjugate the lesser races. The Empire only barely managed to stop them, and a tense cease-fire is currently in effect. The fluff of this series, unfortunately, suffers greatly from dissonance between written background and shown foreground due to all the shit mentioned in the intro.

There's also a bunch of other weird cosomology crap involved, but it's all kind of trippy and kind of in a grey area when it comes to canon. Don't think too much about it, unless you're into that. The setting works if you don't care for it, and it works if you do. The games themselves don't acknowledge the "deeper" lore outside some in-game books and a few references thrown in some main-story dialogue.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
If you ''do'' want to read on some of the (possibly) weirdest, at times incomprehensible, yet at times original without being ~~subversive because we can~~ lore ever written, click to open.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''Creation of the world'''

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD-Ufi1jGk Listen to this.] This is the main theme of Morrowind, the third game in the series. It also contains the history of the cosmology of The Elder Scrolls. Listen to it, because it's a damn fine tune. But as you listen to it, you might realise there are no spoken words in this music. So how can it tell the history of a setting? Well, sit that five-dollar ass of yours down before I make [[Tzeentch|change]].

Long ago there was an entity who had fallen deeply in love, but his brother loved the same person, so he out of jealousy killed his loved one. That brought such distress to him that he fell into a coma of sorts, he "hid in a sun" and started dreaming. Thus he became The Godhead. From his dreams sprung Anu and Padomay, Stasis and Change. These "brothers" (the term used in the loosest sense here, solely on being related but different forces) accidentally created Nir, Grey maybe, personification of creation itself. But Padomay grew jealous of the relationship between Anu and Nir and out of spite decided to break her. Nir was killed and Creation was shattered, maimed for ever. Anu then fought Padomay and they were cast out of time forever, even though they still exist and will always exist as long as there is Order and Chaos. You might have thought to yourself, "Didn't that happen twice?", yes it did. Everything in the Dream mimics original Godhead and his mind, everything comes from it. In this case Anu was avatar of the Dreamer while Padomay represented Godheads brother and Nir their shared love. Same scenario of two mirror brothers, one being force of Stasis, The King and one being force of Change, The Rebel always repeats. The souls or core concepts of Anu and Padomay on which all of creation runs are called, Anui-El (IS) and Sithis (IS NOT).

Eventually from endless energies and "blood" of Anu and Padomay came the Et'ada (Et'ada means original spirit, while Ada means just generally any spirit), each representing different idea and concepts. Et'ada tended to categorize themselves with Anu or Padomay. Auri-El, Kyne and other Et'ada who lean more towards Order are Anuic while more chaotic ones like Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal are more Padomaic. Later after creation of realms those who were Anuic became Aedra, which means "our ancestor" in Ehlnofex, because Aedra took part in creation of the world we usually visit in TES games, while those Padomaic spirits who did not take part in creation and created their own solo realms became Daedra, which translates to "not our ancestor" (though that was not always the case, Jyggalag for example is a Daedra, but he is clearly Anuicly aligned.)

In the Dawn Era, time, in the shape of Akatosh (Ara, Auriel, Auri-El Tosh'Raka, AKHAT; take your pick), was non-linear. It flowed freely wherever it wanted, without direction, form of shape. In this temporal soup floated the souls of the proto-Mer. Think pea soup, except with millions of Ada of all sorts instead of peas. Time, in this form, was a single point. It was called the Ur-Tower, Ada-Mantia. Except it was not really a point or a tower, but more of a sound.

''Bom. (0:00 to 0:01 of the song)''

The Et'Ada saw it, and it was good. Except for one. A being born from Padomay who wanted no name, but eventually came to be first known as Lorkhan (LKHAN, Shor, Sep, Shezarr, maybe even Shepard). Having little interest with the rest of the Et'Ada's activities, or more likely inactivity, he spent his time wandering the Aurbis (all of existence), eventually coming to the very edge. He saw the universe, shaped like a wheel with eight spokes. Then he looked at the wheel from another perspective, and it looked like a Tower, a perfect line. An I.

"I."

This was his first word, and he would never, ever forget it. He understood everything right then and there, all of creation and its true nature was revealed to him.

Wanting to share this revelation with the other Ada but knowing that none of them would be able to comprehend it as they were, he came up with a plan for a creation and showed it to Magnus, The Grand Architect. Magnus went along with the plan and recruited the help of the Et'ada that we know as Aedra today: Akatosh, Dibella, Julianos, Kynareth, Mara, Stendarr, Zenithar and many other lesser spirits that you probably never heard of to serve as the basis of their creation. Except that they did not know this last part, Lorkhan had fooled them. Their divinity was drained into the creation, or re-creation of long shattered Nir, Nirn was born. When they discovered they were tricked the Et'Ada were [[RAGE|not amused]]. Magnus buggered off into infinity along with his servants, tearing through the edge of Mundus and creating The Sun and The Stars in the process...yeah, everything you see in sky is a giant non euclidean portal to realm of infinite energy, the original crib of Et'ada, The Aetherius. Others gave Lorkhan his due: [[RIP AND TEAR|Trinimac tore his heart out and Auriel(Elven aspect of Akatosh) shot it out over the sea]], where it landed in a spot and created a crater that would gain the moniker "Red Mountain". The halves of Lorkhan's body became the moons Masser and Secunda, [[Emperor|the last visible remnants of a corpse god.]] But this was [[just as planned]], throughout the whole thing the Heart of Lorkhan was laughing at them like a maniac, because Red Mountain was Red Tower, the second Tower, and the beat of his heart would be added to the sound of Akatosh. His Heart would become the prison for The Dragon God of Time.

''Bom bom. (0:01 to 0:07 of the song)''

This completely, utterly and irrevocably buttfucked spacetime. Because there now was a second point in existence, time could no longer flow anywhere it wanted and had to flow from Akatosh to Lorkhan. With time becoming linear, Nirn could start to grow. Aedra were drained and "dying", so they had to reproduce, create worshipers or someone that could sustain them. Slowly Ehlnofey, the "Earth Bones", Ada of all forms and shapes, some descendants of crazy reproduction, started popping up. Some created simple truths and laws for Nirn, for example gravity, others reproduced more, creating less energized spirits that slowly stabilized in different ways, slowly becoming mortal. They are ancestors of Humans (Men) and Elves (Mer). These Ehlnofey fortified their borders from the chaos outside, hid their pocket of calm, and attempted to live on as before. Other Ehlnofey arrived on Nirn scattered amid the confused jumble of the shattered worlds, wandering and finding each other over the years. Eventually, the wandering Ehlnofey found the hidden land of Old Ehlnofey, and were amazed and happy to find their kin and a comfy place, built by them. The wandering Ehlnofey expected to be welcomed into the peaceful realm, but the Old Ehlnofey being arrogant douchebags, refused to accept their kin. Anywho, war broke out between them and raged across the whole of Nirn and sunk large part of planet in ocean. Old Ehlofney (the asshole ones), who primarly lived in Tamriel, became Elves (gee, you didn't expect that, did you?), while their kin on other continents became Humans (Yokudans, Atmorans and Akaviri/Tsaesci).

''Bom bom. (0:07 to 0:39 of the song)''

The Mer, one of the first to mortalize were not [[RAGE|not pleased]] by this. They blamed Lorkhan for their predicament, naming him the Doom Drum, bringer of mortality, death and the herald of all misfortune. But they made the best out of the situation, and the races of Mer prospered. New Towers came into existence, one by one: Walk-Brass Tower, White-Gold Tower, Snow-Throat Tower, Crystal-Like-Law, Orchalc, Khajit and Tree-Sap.

''Bom bom. (0:39 to 1:19 of the song)''

But, as time went on (something new back then), more and more happened. New peoples stood up. Empires were founded and fell. The races of Men were discovered, the beast races prospered, and the Empires of Men were founded.

''Bom bom. (1:19 to 1:42 of the song)''

Yet nothing is eternal. The Thalmor, the ruling faction of the High Elves, desires nothing less than the destruction of the Doom Drum and all of creation so time once again becomes non-linear, mortality would get destroyed and they could return their eternal soup-floating. Removing Lorkhan would stop the music of existence, and everything once again becomes singular.

''Bom bom. Bom. (1:42 to 1:55 of the song)''

And then... silence.

'''On the importance of Towers'''

For every Tower there is a Stone, an artifact that can be used to activate or deactivate a Tower. For Ada-Mantia Tower this is the Moment of Creation itself (making it rather difficult to obtain), for Red Tower this is the Heart of Lorkhan and for White-Gold Tower this is the Amulet of Kings. The Towers serve many purpose besides keeping [[Homestuck|spacetime]] from becoming a massive alinear clusterfuck. What is this? Well, it's easier for you to do it yourself that for me to explain. Make yourself a print of the map of Tamriel further down on this page. Then get yourself a pin board and a black, a red, two brown, three white, and two green tacks. Put the map against the pinboard and do the following:

*Put the white tacks through the map in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil, the Throat of the World slightly south-east of Whiterun in Skyrim, and Crystal Tower in the Summerset Isles (northern part, west of King's Watch). (White-Gold, Snow-Throat and Crystal-Like-Law)
*Put the green tacks in Yokuda (exact location unknown) and in Valenwood (somewhere in the middle). (Orchalc and Tree-Sap)
*Put the brown tacks in Daggerfall (southernmost tip of High Rock) and in Elsweyr (again in the middle). (Walk-Brass and Khajiit)
*Put the red tack in the middle of Vvardenfell in Morrowind. (Red)
*Put the black tack on the little island deep in the Iliac Bay near High Rock. (Ata-Mantia)

That's the locations of the Towers that keep time flowing. All's fine and dandy with those holding the world together, right? Wrong! Some have been destroyed or deactivated over the course of time; three times, this was done by the player. [[Fail|Whoops]]. Remove the following:

*Red Tower (deactivated in Morrowind by you)
*White-Gold Tower (deactivated in Oblivion by you)
*Crystal Tower (destroyed in Oblivion by the Daedra)
*Khajiit Tower (Their leader, the Mane was killed, likely assassinated by Thalmor. S/He was also known as the Mane Moon which appeared when Secunda and Masser overlap)
*Tree-Sap Tower (both located in Thalmor territory, likely deactivated)
*Orichalc Tower (destroyed along with Yokuda)

Snow-Throat Tower is very much active (but damaged), but its Stone is an unknown cave. Walk-Brass Tower is very much active, but somehow it is "besieging reality well into the Fifth Era", meaning that it's in the future yet somehow active. Which is not a bad thing, since [[Titans_40k|Walk-Brass tower is a fuckhueg robot]] that has a nasty habit of fucking Time so hard it breaks. So yeah, the only things standing between Tamriel and the primordial time-grog are a mountain and one of the [[Void Dragon]]'s action figures. Unless, of course, Akavir and\or Pyandonea would be revealed to host their own Towers, which is likely since certain prominent rulers of both lands somehow managed to achieve godhood, something that Towers are very helpful at.

Removing the Tower-Tacks has another side effect: the veil between [[Materium|Nirn]] and [[Warp|Oblivion]] becomes thinner. At the time of Oblivion it had even grown so thin that the Daedra could slip into this realm on their own accord. So your actions in Morrowind partially caused the Oblivion Crisis. [[Fail|Way to go, champ.]] And what happens if you remove all the tacks? Right, your map falls off the pin board, Mundus falls into Oblivion.

Thalmor, who often claim the need to deactivate all Towers, don't really need that. Their main goal is the biggest and newest anchor of existence, Talos (essentially Lorkhan 2.0), hence why they try to ban his worship so hard and unmake him. Thalmor want him and all of mankind to be gone, believing their extermination necessary to unmake the Mundus.

'''How to Break your Dragon (Or Jump Your Shark)'''

You might have heard the phrase "Dragon Break" (both words capitalized) a few times. Simply put, this means cock-slapping Time so hard it breaks and becomes non-linear for a while. But not just any cock-slap, oh no. This is the hard part: Imagine a dick if you will. A really big dick (no, this does not make you [[gay]] <s>unless you imagine balls touching</s>). So big in fact, that even Long Dick Johnson would say "That's a big fucking dick". Right, you see it? The biggest fucking dick your feeble mind could comprehend? Good.

Now, imagine if you will, Time. How you do this is up to you: [[Doctor Who|causality, a linear progression of cause and effect]], floaty magic thingies, [[Tallarn|sand]], a clock, perhaps even a more anthropomorphic presentation in the shape of a [[loli]] or a cute [[monstergirl]]. Right. Now take the dick and slap Time in the face. Cockslap it so hard that time itself just outright breaks and loses its linearity. This is a Dragon Break. The name itself is derived from the notion that the Linearity of Time is Akatosh, who is a dragon. Hence if you break time, you "Break the Dragon". While inside a Dragon Break time is perceived to pass normally, but when one exits it might appear that a lot more or less time than you observed has passed in the rest of the world.

The first known Dragon Break occurred near the end of the Dragon War, where a trio of [[Vikings|Nords]] confronted Alduin the World-Eater, First-Born and Aspect of Akatosh that personifies the End of Time (meaning that somehow he was [[Wat|his own father]]), the leader of the [[dragon]]s. The Nords created a localized Dragon Break to fling Alduin into the future so that he wasn't their problem anymore. Mind you, they had no idea where the stuff they shunted was actually going; they just knew it disappeared things, and decided that making Alduin someone else's problem was as good as killing him, essentially causing (or at least amplifying) all the problems in the 4th Era out of laziness. [[Eldrad|What a bunch of dicks.]]

The second known Dragon Break happened during the Battle of Red Mountain, where the First Council of the [[Elf|Chimer]] went to war with the [[Dwarves|Dwemer]]. The Dwemer were working on a giant golem they called Numidium. However, it had one minor design flaw: every time someone pushed the "ON" switch it fucked the dragon right up the butt, no lube. This allowed for the multiple truths on the events that transpired on Red Mountain: Ayem, Seht and Vehk stood by their friend Nerevar as he succumbed to his wounds. Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vivec murdered their Hortator (war-leader) Nerevar. Ayem Seht Vehk = Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec = ALMSIVI. Everything is true, nothing is correct.

The third suspected Dragon Break occurred during the time of the Alessian Empire, when Saint Alessia freed Man from the slavery of their Mer rulers (think of her as a booby [[Sigmar]]). A cult of the Alessian Order known as Marukhati, lead by monkey man Marukh. wanted to exorcise the aspects of Auriel from Akatosh, basically substracting the Elf from the Dragon. This is said to have resulted in a thousand-and-eight year Dragon Break and might have resulted in creating more Dragon aspects than just Auri-El and Akatosh. But some claim that this was little more than [[Administratum|a fuckup of the scholars and historians of the time]].

The fourth known Dragon Break took place when [[Emperor|Tiber Septim]] unleashed Numidium on the Khajiit of Elsweyr. This included the subjugation of Elsweyr, Valenwood and eventually the Summerset Isles. Tiber Septim threatened to activate it again and have it wreck the Aldmeri Dominion, but they liked their assholes to only be violated by one another, so they too stood down. It has been recorded that Numidium was then used to destroy hostile royal families to replace them with the Emperor's puppets, likely by having it step on them.

The fifth and currently final known Dragon Break occurred during the events of Daggerfall, where it was turned on in the Iliac Bay. But because of the nature of Numidium fucking space-time a new lovehole when it activates (hence, "turned on"), a number of the states in the region obtained the "FUCK EVERYTHING" button of Numidium and pressed it at the same time. Two days of hilarity later, everyone conquered one another until the Empire ended as top dog and everyone swore fealty to the Empire. Because of the events surrounding the activation of the Dragon Break, Numidium disappeared and fell into the future, where it still stands as Walk-Brass Tower.

When the Dragon Breaks happen, Akatosh deploys the Jill to fix time so that everything does not fall apart. These minute-menders (akin to angels) tend to take the form of great wyrms who fly around and fix the little bits of time with the power of their Voice (i.e.: they shout at holes in space-time until they bitch down). If this sounds familiar to you... it is! Jills are female Dragons, while Drakes are the male ones; Dragons can't really reproduce and are born of Time/Akatosh, but it's more of a conceptual thing, with Jills having the concept of healing while Drakes have the concept of Domination. So yeah, Dragons you kill, fight, kill and soul-rob to increase your own unholy power are actually servants and minor aspects of Akatosh. So in other words, [[Adeptus Evangelion|you have been killing the heralds of a new era]].

...Or at least ''you would be if they were actually doing what they were supposed to do'' - as it turns out, some time before that first Dragon Break Alduin, who is also aspect of Akatosh himself decided that he would rather rule over the broken bits of time himself, and the dragons are bound to obey him without question. It's not certain if he did it because he knew that he wouldn't get to eat the world this time around or if he just felt like ruling the world instead of resetting it. So all of reality is increasingly fucked and the only beings who can fix it stopped giving a shit a long time ago. Gods plotting against themselves is fairly common in TES since most of the Gods are broken and crazy with tons of split personalities.

There is also the whole issue of Aka-Tusk, or simply Aka. Apparently all the Dragon Aspects of time at one point or another were Great Dragon God of Time known as Aka-Tusk, but got broken and shed millions of times, maybe even before the Marukhati Dragonbreak. We may never know because Dragonbreaks are usually at least partially retroactive.

And then there is the whole issue of Akatosh and Lorkhan being one being and Akatosh being trapped in Heart of Lorkhan literally. This timey wimey bullshit is really getting out of hand.

'''CHIM: Or "You took HOW MUCH LSD!?'''

[[File:Chim explained.png|300px|thumb|right|CHIM. It's sort of like this.]]
That muffled explosion you just heard was caused by a number of people exploding out of sheer [[rage]]. Sit tight, because this shit is meta wrapped in an enigma inside a mindfuck.

In Morrowind you can find a series of books titled the 36 Sermons of Vivec. If you pick them up and read them at face value they might appear as parts of a religious text, filled with metaphors, truths twisted throughout the ages, and copious amounts of [[Anal Circumference|buttfucking]] (no, seriously). In these books you will find several references to CHIM, The Tower, and The Ruling King. Now, early on in the books Vivec is shown as the teacher of Lord Indoril Nerevar (more on him below), yet Nerevar does not understand the lessons. Because he was not the intended student. Instead, these lessons were meant for you. Not only for your player character, but for ''you'', the player. For if one attains CHIM, one's physical form becomes a mere avatar of the self.

But now you may wonder, what the Charles fucking Dickens *is* CHIM?

Imagine if you will, a great wheel with eight spokes. The wheel is everything that exists: Aurbis. The hub is Nirn, the world that the series takes place on. The spokes are the Aedra, the <s>Nine</s> Eight Divines. The space between the spokes is Oblivion, where the Daedra reside. Mundus encompasses both Nirn, its moons and the realms of the Aedra. Now, if you were to turn the wheel 90 degrees, you'd be looking at the rim of the wheel so it resembles I (as in, the thin side of a disk). This is the Tower, the Secret of Aurbis, holder of the secret. CHIM. The wheel is the entire universe. Outside there exist only two forces: Anu and Padhome, stasis and change. Think a great void filled with only two bubbles: there where these bubbles touch exists the wheel. Now, the Tower is not something physical, but an ideal. Something that can be attained, conquered, stolen. For one to reside within the tower, is to know the truth of all that is. This was the revelation of Lorkhan's that made him want to create Nirn.

This truth is that everything is a dream. The supreme power in TES is the Godhead, the unknown creator of all. Everything, Aurbis, Anu, and Padomay - all created in the dreams of the Godhead. Attaining CHIM is to know this, the relentless alien terror that is God and your place in it. Everything you know, are and do is but a dream. Now, if you discover this one of two things can happen. The most common one is to realize you do and don't exist at the same time: you lose your individuality (you zero-sum) and become one with the dreamer, the Godhead, and you disappear in the proverbial puff of logic. The second option is the rare one: to realize that you are part of the Godhead, you *are* the Godhead. If everything is an extension of the same thing, and that the thing can reshape reality with a thought, being a dreamer within the dream.

If you thought that shit was meta, just you wait. The principles behind CHIM can be taken further to mean that the Godhead and its dreams are a metaphor for the computer running the game and the game itself. In-universe the metaphor of the godhead and being awake within the dream is needed to prevent characters who realize this from zero-summing out of existence at the resulting paradox. It can be inferred that a character who achieves CHIM essentially gains access to the console and the Construction Set. Talos used the Construction Set to retcon Cyrodiil from a jungle land into a generic European fantasy land (Talos has a terrible imagination). Vivec gave himself levitation abilities by using the console to erase the texture file for his chair (no seriously). Whether or not the player achieves CHIM varies. Generally when a player becomes fully immersed in the game, they do not have CHIM. However, a player who gets fed up of getting bugged by cliff racers every five seconds and installs a mod that removes them from the game is using CHIM. They are remembering that the world they are in is a game and altering it as they see fit. Exploits, mods, console commands, etc can all be explained in-universe as the player character achieving CHIM and using it to reshape reality or bend its rules... or all of that could be stupid speculation.

Meta as FUCK.

You can go deeper than that and find Amaranth though, but that is whole another level of [[mindfuck]].

'''It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine'''

We've mentioned a few times that the world of Nirn is slowing being destroyed by a few reasons. In a normal fantasy setting, this would be a terrible thing, and the hero must try and stop it; however, the Elder Scrolls isn't a normal fantasy setting. One of the dragons, Paarthurnax, mentions that when the world ends, Alduin, the first born of Akatosh, will/might simply recreate it, thus returning it to the point of creation. Granted he also states liking the current one is a good enough reason to fight Alduin (''that and the fact that Alduin is an absolute prick who would rather rule over the broken remains of the old one instead of actually doing his job'').

This is due to the Kalpic nature of Nirn; Kalpa is the time span from Convention to the end of the world, one turn of a wheel. Eventually, Alduin The World Eater grows in size and literally eats the world, turns the Kalpa like a wheel and everything resets back to the Convention, the moment when Heart of Lorkhan was torn out, time became linear. From that point on things can go differently in different Kalpas; for example, according to Seven Flights of Aldudagga, one Kalpa had Molag Bal as its ruler and Dreughs as the supreme race. That being said, it is possible to end the Kalpic cycle and destroy shit for good, hence what the Thalmor are trying to do. They also believe that this will make them Ada (Spirit/God) again.

In essence, the world might be ending, few care and fewer understand, and Elder Scrolls lore is more complicated than trying to keep track of the number of penises [[Slaanesh]] has at the moment.

'''Seriously?'''

Remember way at the beginning of this page, we said that how crazy the Elder Scrolls series is depends on if you take an ex-writer's blogposts as gospel? Well, if you don't, and only trust what you see in-game, it looks a bit like this.

The Godhead almost certainly doesn't exist. Neither does CHIM. Only two in-game sources claim it does; one is a colossal liar and the other is shown to be wrong about absolutely everything that comes out of his mouth. They're both bugfuck nuts and they both end up dead at your hands. The big historical event allegedly caused by CHIM could easily not have been. At least two alternate theories have been suggested: either the event never actually took place and was the result of a [[skub|transcription error]], which is boring, or the White-Gold Tower did it on its own after humans booted the elves from the Imperial City and moved in, which is not. Speaking of, the Tower thing is definitely true, because the plot of Oblivion is, broadly, that the bad guy shut one down and tore reality a new asshole. The Dragonbreak is an empirical event that happens within living memory; in Oblivion you can read the Imperial report on what the fuck happened in the last one, and you can see one happen in Skyrim. The kalpa thing is definitely happening, and you hear as much directly from the mouth of a time-spirit who knew Alduin personally. You meet Pelinal Whitestrake's ghost in a DLC questline, and he doesn't ''seem'' to be a robot, or even remotely crazy.

Mantling deserves special mention, even though it hasn't been mentioned anywhere else on the page. Basically, by adopting the mannerisms and vestments of something else, you become that something else. In a word: [[awesome|apotheosis]]. You mantle a daedric prince at the end of Shivering Isles, and use your new divine powers to kick the ass of another daedric prince. Have we mentioned that these games are really, really good and you should play them? SI also added the caveat that whatever you're mantling has to be either dead or gone in a big way for you to pull it off, and you're basically filling in its place in the universe.
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==Gods, Deities and other important people==
Most of the Gods in The Elder Scrolls are Et'Ada, the "original spirits" that came from the interplay of Anu and Padomay. These spirits later depending on their alignment with creation got categorized into Aedra and Daedra, if you took part in creation of Nirn you are Aedra, if you were egotistic dick and went to Oblivion to make your small shitty realm, you are Daedra.

===Aedra===
The Aedra (Our ancestors in Aldmeris) are Et'Ada of Anuic origin. Many of them took part in the creation of Nirn, during which they "died", their essences fused together into Mundus. As such they do not have "physical" forms like the Daedra have. Yet their spirits live on in Nirn: as the Gods of the world they live in every part of it. While not as "focused" as their Daedric counterparts they are more widespread, worshiped and give their blessings and artifacts more freely than the Daedra, plus they have control over one realm that everyone wants to have - Nirn.

Eight of the Aedra are worshipped in Tamriel as the Eight Divines (along with the human god-hero Tiber Septim, aka. Talos, to make the more assonant Nine Divines), a fusion of the old Nordic pantheon and the Aedra worshipped by the Ayleids:
*'''Akatosh''': Also known as Auri-El to the Altmer and the father of the dragons, the chief deity of the Eight and the top god of the Cyrodiilic Empire as he represents duty, legitimacy, endurance and obedience (but his different identities also have additional roles. Akatosh proper is the god of time, but Auri-El is the god of the sun, which it is worth noting can be used as a timekeeping device. All the other gods also work like this, as Divinity in this setting is ''weird''). His artifacts are Auriel's Bow, and Auriel's Shield, which have completely different powers depending which game you are playing. In the Skyrim Dawnguard DLC, the bow infuses arrows fired from it with the power of the sun to do more damage to the undead, and the Shield can absorb energy from attacks it blocks and release it as wave similar to the Unrelenting Force shout.
*'''Arkay''': Lord of the Wheel of Life, master of life and death, burials and funeral rites. Arkay's priests are some of the fiercest necromancer hunters around, as those foul practices are an affront to their god.
*'''Dibella''': Goddess of beauty, affection and the carnal and sexual aspects of love, as well as art and music. Effectively Nirn's equivalent of Aphrodite. She teaches that, "No matter the seed, if the shoot is nurtured with love, will not the flower be beautiful?" Oh boy. Her artifact is the Brush of Truepaint, which can turn a canvas into a portal to a world made of paint that the artist creates with their imagination.
*'''Julianos''': God of wisdom and logic; literature, lore, history and contradiction are the domains of Julianos. Though Magnus is the god of magic, many wizards worship Julianos. The scholarly Bretons also hold a particular reverence for him. Monastic orders dedicated to Julianos are the keepers of the Elder Scrolls.
*'''Kynareth''': Goddess of heavens, winds and the elements. Known as Kyne among the Nords and the widow of Shor. It is said that Kyne gifted men with the Thu'um so they could harness the power of dragons and save themselves from Akatosh's errant children. Her artifact is the Lord's Mail, a cuirass that grants its wearer healing, magicka absorption, and the ability to cure their self of poison.
*'''Mara''': Goddess of agriculture, compassion, fertility, and the more romantic aspects of love. She is the one deity that is recognised by every culture on Tamriel. Among the Nords, Mara is Kyne's handmaiden and Shor's bit on the side. Among the Altmer, Bosmer and Bretons, Mara is the wife of Akatosh/Auri-El. Among the now extinct Kothringi of Black Marsh, Mara was just one of three aspects to an older Mother goddess with Kynareth and Dibella as the other two aspects. As said above, Divinity in this setting is ''weird''. Whatever the case, weddings in Tamriel are overseen by priests of Mara.
*'''Stendarr''': God of mercy, charity and justice. Apologist of men and patron deity of the Imperial Legion and many Breton knightly orders. Stendarr welcomes heretics, the afflicted, hopeless and forgotten just as readily as his devout followers. However his mercy ends at the enemies of mortals, the abhorrent and unnatural. Stendarr's priests are often hunters of lesser Daedra, lycanthropes, vampires and undead. Real bro-tier god overall. His artifact is Stendarr's Hammer, a hammer that increases the user's stamina and does incredible damage, but is also very fragile and far too heavy for a mortal to use.
*'''Zenithar''': God of honest work and commerce. The "almighty dollar" taken to the end conclusion. Very strong ties to the people of Cyrodiil, and many in High Rock and Hammerfell too.
*'''Talos''': NOT actually an Aedra, but worth mentioning as he is often placed among the other Eight. Talos, known in life as Tiber Septim and Ysmir to the Nords, is the greatest god-hero of mankind. He conquered all of Tamriel and ushered in the Third Empire of Cyrodiil at the end of the Second Era. When he died, his spirit supposedly ascended to godhood (and a quest in Oblivion lends support to this). As of the Fourth Era, Talos worship is banned in the Empire as per the terms of the White-Gold Concordat made with the Dominion, because the idea of a man becoming a god pisses the stupid sparkly prisses off to no end. That, and it is also likely that Talos is helping to hold the world together, and the Thalmor know this and want to starve him of worship, effectively destroying all Nirn to regain the divinity Lorkhan is said to have stolen from them. Fucking elves.

The Altmer also worship, or at least acknowledge, other Aedra that don't belong to the Eight Divines above, but are worshipped in most elven lands, these being:
*'''Jephre''': The god of songs and forests and the spirit of Now, also called Y'ffre. He was one of the first spirits to become Ehlnofey, or Earth Bones, and set in place the rules of nature and life on Nirn. The Bosmer consider him their main god and he's the reason they're carnivores and cannibals.
*'''Lorkhan''': The Creator-Trickster-Tester god present in every races mythology. Known alternatively as Lorkhaj, Shor, Sheor, Sep, or Shezarr, every single version goes the same way: creation happens, other spirits and gods get pissed at him, he's bound, he's killed/torn to pieces/separated from his divine center and forced to wander the earth. His heart landed in Red Mountain, and was destroyed in Morrowind, and some say that his corpse became the two moons of Nirn.
*'''Magnus''': The god of magic and the supposed architect of creation. When he realized what he made, he ran the fuck away, ripping a hole through creation to Aetherius, with this hole becoming the sun. Some part of him got caught in creation though, becoming the force of magic. He also had a host of assistants called the Magna-Ge, who ripped similiar holes in creation when running away, these becoming the stars. Very little lore exists about the Magna-Ge, and believe us [https://www.imperial-library.info/content/magne-ge-pantheon it reads like a mushroom trip.] His associated artifact is the Staff of Magnus, which has the power to drain magicka, and possibly the Eye of Magnus, a mysterious floating orb of incredible power whose purpose is unclear, though may have been one of the tools Magnus used to create the world.
*'''Phynaster''': An Ancestor-God of the Altmer, though some Bretons also worship him, who taught them how to live another 100 years by using a shorter walking stride.
*'''Syrabane''': Another Ancestor-God of the Altmer, who aided men in destroying the Sload kingdom of Thras. Often called the Apprentice's God, as the younger members of the Mage's Guild worship him.
*'''Trinimac''': The warrior god of the ancient Aldmer, who lead armies against the men. He eventually got eaten by Boethiah and became Malacath (more below).
*'''Xarxes''': The scribe to Auri-El, and the god of ancestry and secret knowledge. He made his wife Oghma ([[Oghma|no, not that one]]) from his [[Wat|favorite moments in history]].

===Daedra===
"Not Our Ancestors" in Aldmeris and "Our stronger, better ancestors" in Dunmeris, the Daedra (singular: Daedroth, not to be confused with the crocodile-like Daedra called Daedroth) are the Et'Ada who did not partake in the creation of the world. Because they didn't quasi-suicide themselves to pour their essence into the world, their power is both more focused, but their power on Nirn is more limited compared to their Aedric counterparts. As such their powers are limited to the likes of curses and artifacts, and can only walk the realm in forms that severely limit their powers.

Daedric Princes instead have their own singular realms, the Realms of Oblivion. A Daedric Prince is Omnipotent within their realm, because it is part of them and their mind. Their own realms are made out of them, similar to how Nirn is made out of Aedra; the Daedra are still fully alive and have much greater control over their own realm, but the tradeoff is that each realm is pretty small. Despite serving as the setting's "devils" (in that the word Daedra pretty much means Devil), they are not all completely evil. They range from "hates undead" and "wants to hunt dangerous game" to "prince of destruction" and "king of [[rape]]". Even if they are benevolent at times, the Daedra are not to be trifled with and are very dangerous.

* '''Azura:''' The Daedra associated with periods of change, twilight in particular, and magic and prophecy. Allegedly Nocturnal's sister, and one of the few Daedra not to be considered evil, though she is intensely prideful and easily aggravated, treating the Dunmer with a character not unlike how old testament Yahweh treated the 12 tribes of Israel. Azura is worshipped by the Dunmer and Khajit, though she had a mutual hatred for the Dwemer. Her realm of Oblivion is Moonshadow, a beautiful place of silver cities, gardens, and perpetual twilight. Her artifact is Azura's Star, an item which can hold the souls of living creatures. If this sounds like the soul gem items found across the series, it is, but Azura's Star is a max capacity soul gem they doesn't get consumed upon use, and is thus reusable.
* '''Boethiah:''' The Daedra associated with deceit, ambition, treachery, competition and sedition. Goes hand in hand with Mephala and is basically her louder sibling. Despite sounding like some kind of fucked up noble, Boethiah often takes the appearance of a patrician warrior (can be female, but usually male), and they enjoy inflicting mayhem and bloodshed on mortals. Regarded by the Dunmer, either through worship or hatred, and some versions of their origin tale has all sorts of scholarly pursuits emerging from their teachings. Their realm is Attribution's Share (also known as Snake Mount), a place of [[Tzeentch|labyrinthine policies and betrayals]]. Their artifacts are Goldbrand, a high end katana, and the Ebony Mail, high end armor that cause poison damage to those around the wearer.
*'''Clavicus Vile:''' The Daedra associated with wishes and pacts. He's the asshole genie who ensures that all the wishes and pacts are twisted so he comes out on top, usually while gaining the soul of the one foolish enough to deal with him. He appears as a jovial fellow with horns sprouting from his forehead, and is usually accompanied by '''Barbas''', a dog who holds half of Clavicus' power. His realm is the Fields of Regret, which, despite its name, is a tranquil countryside, dotted with cities of glass and ornate buildings. His artifact is the Masque of Clavicus Vile, which makes its wearer more popular and likeable.
*'''Hermaeus Mora:''' The Daedra associated with fate and forbidden knowledge. Supposedly the sibling of Mephala, he seeks gather and obtain as much knowledge as possible. He often appears as a collection of eyes, tentacles, and pincers. [[Call of Cthulhu|Proper Lovecraftian motherfucker]]. His realm is Apocrypha, an endless library filled with and made from books of forbidden knowledge, with seas of ink and tentacles. His artifacts are the Black Books, which transport their reader to Apocrypha and can grant access to forbidden knowledge, and the Oghma Infinium, a tome that can allow one to achieve near-demigod level abilities.
*'''Hircine:''' The Daedra associated with hunting and therianthropes. He created the many werebeasts that exist in Tamriel, and claims their souls upon death. He appears either as an animal or a man, with the horns of a deer, unless he appears as deer. His realm is the Hunting Grounds, a realm of dense woodlands and vast grasslands, inhabited by daedra, beasts, and therianthropes, where werebears and Nords hunt by day, and Hircine along with a pack of werewolves hunts by night. His artifacts are the Saviour's Hide, a hide cuirass that makes the wearer more resistant to magic, and the Ring of Hircine, a ring that allows one to transform into a werewolf, if not already a lycanthrope, and lycanthropes to control their transformations.
*'''Malacath:''' The Daedra associated with orcs, [[goblin]]s, [[ogre]]s, curses, and outcasts. ''Definitely'' a good daedra if you happen to be an Orc, but to other races he's benign at the best of times (altohugh he's never outright malevolent to the degree of Molag or Mehrunes). He technically is not a daedric prince (and the other daedric princes don't count him as one of them, which is fitting for a patron of outcasts) because his origin makes him an aedra, but he often is counted as a daedric prince because he rules over a realm of Oblivion. Originally he was '''Trinimac''', one of the ancestor sprits of the Altmer, who was eaten by Boethiah and then shat out as Malacath, though he says the story is too literal minded, and there are those who say that Trinimac and Malacath are two separate deities. He appears a muscular orc wielding a heavy weapon. His realm is Ashpit, a realm of dust and ash, dotted with palaces of smoke and gardens, where levitation and magical breathing are necessary to survive. His artifacts are the Scourge, a mace that banishes all daedra that make contact with it, and Volendrung, a Dwemer made warhammer.
*'''Mehrunes Dagon:''' The Deadra associated with destruction, revolution, change, ambition, and energy. One of the more evil daedra, of whom little is known, and the antagonist of ''Battlespire'' and ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion|Oblivion]]''. He appears as red-skinned giant with four arms, carrying a two-headed axe. His realm is the Deadlands (no, not [[Deadlands|that one]]), a realm of scorched, volcanic islands and ruined structures amidst a sea of lava, with hostile life living on the islands. He once was a good guy before a curse was put on him by Alduin for interfering with his devouring of the world. His artifact is Mehrunes' Razor, a dagger that has a [[Vorpal Sword| small chance of instantly killing whatever it cuts]].
*'''Mephala:''' The Daedra associated with spiders, webs, [[Tzeentch|lies, secrets, plots]] and murder. Sibling to Hermaeus Mora, the Dunmer worship her as one of the "Good Daedra", with her having taught them the arts of stealth and assassination. The Morag Tong, the assassin's guild in Morrowind, worships her through murder. She often appears as female of some form, but sometimes appears as a male. Her realm is the Spiral Skein, a wheel-shaped realm, with her palace in the middle, and the space between the "spokes" dedicated to one of eight sins. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti, a ring that makes its wearer faster and harder to detect, and the Ebony Blade, a life-leeching katana.
*'''Meridia:''' The Daedra asssociated with light and the energies of living things, and one of the few non-evil Daedric Princes. She was originally believed to have been one of the Magna-Ge, the spirits that followed Magnus to Aetherius, but was cast out for consorting with daedra, eventually creating her realm by bending and shaping the light of the sun. She hates all undead with a passion, and usually rewards those who destroy them. She either appears as an orb of light, or a blonde-haired woman in a gown. Despite all this, she generally does not command popular worship due to her haughty, bitter and aloof manner, stemming from her exile from the magna-ge. The last time she threw her support behind a mortal race She made the mistake of being the patron of the Heartland High Elves of Cyrodil, who were into human slavery and were generally tyrants. They ended up being near exterminated. There are hints in the lore that Molag Bal is obsessed with her and caused her fall from heaven. Her realm is the Colored Rooms, a cross between a coral reef and a field of floating stones, strewn with colorful trails of dust/clouds. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti and the Dawnbringer, a sword that burns the undead and upon killing them makes them explode.
*'''Molag Bal:''' The Daedra associated with domination, enslavement, rape, and vampires. Quite inarguably the most evil of the Daedric Princes, as he simply desires to harvest souls of mortals by inciting strife and discord among them. He also created the first vampire by raping a Nedic woman. He appears as a monstrous being of varying appearance, but usually has horns and hooves. His realm is Coldharbour, which is an apocalyptic and desolate reflection of Nirn where the air is freezing, every wall is smeared with blood and shit and there are charnal houses and slave pens as far as the eye can see. His artifact is the Mace of Molag Bal, a mace that drains the energies of those it hits and traps their souls upon death. Main antagonist of both the original game and Elder Scrolls Online, with Mehrunes Dagon basically stealing his invasion plans. Seriously Mehrunes invades Nirn in the same ways in the same order.
*'''Namira:''' The Daedra associated with ancient darkness, revulsion, and cannibals. Not much is known of her, other than she's associated with anything revolting, and her followers prefer to live in dark and squalid conditions. Her realm is the Scuttling Void, of which nothing is really known about. Her artifact is the Ring of Namira, a ring that boosts one health after cannibalizing a corpse, or reflects damage back onto the wearer's attacker.
*'''Nocturnal:''' The Daedra associated with darkness, night, luck and thieves. Most thieves in Tamriel revere her to some degree, for obvious reasons, and the Thieves Guild reveres her as their patron. She appears often as a dark-haired woman in a hooded gown, accompanied by ravens. Her realm is Evergloam, a realm in perpetual twilight, consisting of a primary plane and constantly shifting pocket planes. Her artifacts are the Skeleton Key, a key/lockpick that can open anything from locks to portals to one's hidden potential, the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, a cowl that hides the wearer's true identity and makes him a better thief, and the Bow of Shadows, a bow that can turn its wielder invisible.
*'''Peryite:''' [[Nurgle]]'s less-jovial cousin, this is the Daedra associated with tasks, pestilence, and natural order. Peryite is considered one of the weakest Daedric Princes (not that ''any'' daedric prince can be called "weak" by mortal standards), and is charged with keeping the lower realms of Oblivion and the lesser daedra in line. He often appears as a green, four-legged dragon, but sometimes appears as ghostly apparitions of vermin. His realm is The Pits, which resembles Deadlands in its landscape. His artifact is the Spellbreaker, a shield that can reflect magic.
*'''Sanguine:''' Basically just a less-rapey or /d/isgusting [[Slaanesh]]. The Daedra associated with hedonism, debauchery, indulgence, and revelry. He's often depicted on seals and signs of brothels and whorehouses. He appears as a portly dremora, with a bottle in one hand and a whore in another. His realms are the Myriad Realms of Revelry, countless pocket realms that are fashioned to meet the needs and demands of its visitors. His artifact is the Sanguine Rose, a rose-shaped staff/staff-sized rose that summons a dremora to fight for its owner.
*'''Sheogorath:''' Everyone's favorite, this is the lolrandom [[Chaotic Stupid]] Daedra associated with madness and creativity. There are many stories and legends about him, like how he invented music from [[Rip and tear|the body parts of a woman he killed]] and how he trolled everyone of the other Daedric Princes at various points. He appears as an elderly, fine-dressed gentleman with a cane. His realm is the Shivering Isles, a landmass surrounded by islands that's divided in two, to represent both shades of madness. His artifact is the Wabbajack, a staff that does something completely random when used. He is distinguishable from other daedra by the fact that, Old Sheogorath was basically a result of bipolar disorder of Jyggalag and new Sheogorath is actually human. The Hero of Kvatch from TES: Oblivion was named new Sheogorath by grateful Jyggalag once his curse was lifted, and going by Sheogorath's dialogue in Skyrim as well as him fondly remembering his other adventures back then, this event is canon.
**'''Jyggalag:''' The [[Lawful Stupid]] Daedra associated with logic, order, and deduction. Originally, he was the most powerful of the Daedric Princes, but the others cursed him to become Sheogorath, who represented everything he hated. The curse did allow him to return at the end of every era, leading the event known as the "Grey March" and obliterating Shivering Isles only to revert back to Sheogorath and start over again. This seemingly neverending cycle of torment finally ended, when Sheogorath managed to lure Hero of Kvatch to the Shivering Isles and successfully train him for his future duties and prepare him for the Grey March. By the end of the Shivering Isles expansion, Jyggalag is defeated by the Protagonist, thus finally lifting the curse. He then heads off to parts unknown, but not before naming Hero of Kvatch "New Sheogorath". He has yet to make a reappearance in the games despite his DLC being canon. He appears a as a giant, gray knight wielding a sword.
*'''Vaermina:''' The Daedra associated with dreams and nightmares. One of the more evil daedra, with some saying that torture also belongs to her sphere of influence. She appears as an old woman in a robe, wielding a staff. Her realm is Quagmire, a nightmarish realm where Vaermina draws the minds of mortals, collecting their memories and leavings nightmares in return. Her artifact is the Skull of Corruption, a staff that creates a clone of the target, who then attacks the target.

===Other Divinities===
Et'Ada and other gods that don't belong to either group also exist. Some of the more important ones being:

*'''Alduin:''' The firstborn of Akatosh and his destroyer aspect, who most believed was just the Nordic version of Akatosh. His job is to bring about the end of the current kalpa so that the next one may begin, but by the time of Skyrim, he's decided to just rule over the world. You defeat him at the end of Skyrim, but unlike any other dragon his soul is ''not'' absorbed by the dragonborn, leaving many believing he'll return one day to do his job properly.
*'''All-Maker:''' The god of the Skaal and the source of all life, the Skaal believe that when you die you go to him, and he reincarnates you as new being. Oneness, or harmony, with nature is important, as the Skaal draw their magical powers from it and it pleases the All-Maker. Opposing him is '''The Adversary''', a many aspected god who torments and tests the Skaal.
*'''Dagoth Ur:''' The main antagonist of Morrowind, he was once the trusted advisor of Nerevar until he experimented with the Heart of Lorkhan and managed to draw power from it. By the events of the game he is properly batshit loopy with divinity, and also without question the most dangerous thing on Nirn because he exists within a terrifying middle-ground between CHIM, Zero Sum and Amaranth - he has godlike power because of his awarness of Anu's dream but cannot maintain his individuality or fade into the Dream, so his broken, traumatised mind is being slowly imprinted on the dream of Anu. Nevertheless, he seemingly dies by the hand of Nerevar's reincarnation after you sever his connection to the heart. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPAuvfqocFY Affable and almost as infinitely quotable as Sheogorath.]
*'''The Ideal Masters:''' Once mortal spellcasters during the Merethic era, they forsook their mortality and physical forms to become beings of pure soul energy. In the process however, they found they had become filled with a terrible hunger for souls. The Ideal Masters are the source of all soul gems, and of the arts of soul-trapping, and therefore enchantment. Their private realm within Oblivion, the Soul Cairn, is where ''every'' soul that is ever trapped in a Soul Gem goes. They rarely bother manifesting at all, though a few gigantic crystals in the Cairn channel their influence and their hunger. Their name comes from their belief that, by removing mortal souls from the cycle of rebirth and trapping them in eternal undeath, they are ultimately granting all beings eternal peace... and there is a small amount of evidence to support this. Despite all this, they aren't really ambitious, and they even helped the hero of ''Battlespire'' because they were tired of Mehrunes Dagon driving across their lawn on the way to the mortal world.
*'''Mannimarco:''' An old and powerful Altmer [[necromancer]] and [[lich]], supposedly [[Vecna|became the god of necromancy after the events of Daggerfall and returns as the main antagonist]] for the Mages Guild questline in Oblivion.
*'''The Tribunal:''' Also known as the Almsivi, they were originally three Chimer, the predecessors of Dunmer, Almalexia, Sotha Sil, and Vivec, and counselors to Nerevar, who also stole their powers from the Heart of Lorkhan, and promptly ruled over the Dunmer from early/mid First Era to the end of the Third Era. Almalexia eventually went insane and killed Sotha Sil, the Nerevarine killed her, and Vivec got dragged to Oblivion during the events of Oblivion. Without the influence of the Tribunal, the Red Mountain erupted and Morrowind promptly went to shit.
*'''Tsun:''' The Nordic god of trials against adversity and Shor's shield-thane, he died fighting against foreign (read: elven) gods and was then assigned to be the guardian of the whalebone bridge leading to the Hall of Valor in Sovngarde. You get fight him for your right to enter the hall in Skyrim.

==Races==
[[File:Tamriel.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Tamriel, shown alongside the now sunken islands of Yokuda, the original home of the Redguards, and Pyandonea, a land inhabited by the Maormer, sea elves.]]
The first two Elder Scrolls games had eight playable races; the three after that added Imperials and Orcs as playable races. There's also a ton of unplayable races as well, but UESP can explain them better than us.

The races of Tamriel are generally divided into three categories; the races of Men are the various ethnicities of [[human]], the Mer races are the different species of [[elf]], and the [[Beastmen]] are explained as "where the fuck did these dudes come from?"

===Men===
*'''Akaviri/Tsaesci:''' Fantasy Japanese. Not directly presented in game, but their spirits may be seen in certain missions. Left a significant mark in imperial history, as Akaviri invaders were on a mission of search of Dragonborn, which turned out to be founder of the second Empire, Reman. They swore allegiance to him and served as elite guard of his descendants. These names are interchangeably used, but some sources imply that Akaviri and Tsaesci are actually different group of people, with Tsaesci being snake like, even naga, perhaps. As for how is it possible to have snek humans, well, dwarves and orks and most bizarrely, some imply that Khajiit are simply a subspecies of elves here, so just roll with this. One source suggests the human Akaviri were "devoured" by the Tsaesci but whether that means they were literally all [[Vore|eaten]] or simply enslaved or culturally assimiliated is anyone's guess.
*'''Bretons:''' Best described as [[Half-Elf|half-elves]] from [[Bretonnia]] with a hint of French-ness. Probably the least badass of the humans here (which is all relative - many great heroes throughout Tamriel's history were Bretons including several of Cyrodiil's Emperors) but they are still the most gifted with magic because of their elf blood. They even get a magic resistance out of the deal. True to the French stereotype, they're great cooks but also a bit snobby. Their home province of High Rock isn't even a united kingdom, but rather a [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|patchwork quilt of petty kingdoms, embroiled in political conflict]] and usually only tangentially aligned with the Empire at the best of times.
**'''Reachmen:''' Tribal people of Breton descent native to The Reach. Used to rule a bunch of petty kingdoms in the area before being subjugated by the Alessian Empire first, and later by Tiber Septim. By the Fourth Era they tried to take the Reach again but Ulfric Stormcloak put a stop to that in the now infamous "Markarth Incident" that gave rise to the Stormcloak Rebellion. Now split between those trying to just live their lives in peace, and the Forsworn, raiders who went back to the old ways of using fur and hide armor, weapons of stone, bone, and wood, and worshipping the Daedra and venerating hagravens (witches who gave their humanity to become powerful spellcasters).
*'''Imperials:''' Also known as the "Cyrodiilics", the Imperials are a civilised and cosmopolitan people, more or less Roman in culture (but in very early lore they were actually Mesoamerican, and their ancestors the Nedes were ancient Chinese). Like practically all humans in fantasy settings, they're average at nearly everything, control the world, and are kind of boring compared to everyone else. They've forged three continent-spanning empires in their history, and the first time involved a time-bending magical giant robot. They've also in the past had a space race with the Altmer to colonise Masser and Secunda. Yes, really. Surprisingly, for most of the Third Era, most Emperors were not Imperials, but Bretons.
*'''Nedes:''' The progenitors of Nords, Imperials, and Bretons. Came to Tamriel after their homeland of Atmora begun to freeze over and eventually settled into what would be the Hammerfell region. When the Redguards came from the west, they enslaved and exterminated the Nedes, and adopted much of their customs, language, and religion.
*'''Nords:''' Basically [[Norsca|manly as all hell, magic and elf-hating not-Vikings from the frozen land of Skyrim]]. Tend to be very very badass because they have to live in an inhospitable hellhole with bears, sabre-tooth cats, trolls, giants, big nopey frost spiders the size of bears and they also fought and killed all the dragons in the past. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Their ancestors, the Atmorans, nearly exterminated the entire Snow Elf race with just five hundred warriors despite being basically cavemen with no understanding of agriculture or the written language, going up against a iron age civilisation with magic]]. The Nords then fell in line behind a badass named King Vrage the Gifted and went full [[Genghis motherfucking Khan]] on Tamriel, conquering a vast empire that fell apart when his grandson Borgas died and Skyrim fell into a succession crisis. Not much happened afterwards - the Nords fought, won and lost a few wars against the Dwemer, the Akaviri and themselves until Tiber Septim rocked up and folded them into his Third empire.
**'''Skaal:''' Nords native to Solstheim. Split between those trying to live like the Nords of olden times (read: fighting, drinking, and hunting like there's no tomorrow), and those living in harmony with nature and worshipping the All-Maker through it.
*'''Redguard:''' Fantasy Moors/Africans. Skilled warriors hailing from the sunken islands of Yokuda (the sinking of which they were the apparent cause by their warriors overusing a forbidden sword technique that let them split atoms), and the only guys to have invented gunpowder. Redguards are some of the greatest sailors in Tamriel, and they tend to scorn magic due to religious taboos against necromancy and their many past wars with the magic-proficient Bretons. This dislike fades over time and by the 4th era, Destruction and Restoration magic have obtained widespread acceptance due to their straightforwardness. Interestingly, ''Daggerfall'' has a reference Redguards seem to have "cannons" on their naval ships.

===Mer (Elves)===
*'''Altmer ([[High Elves]]):''' Every stereotype of Elves being narcissistic pricks, amplified a hundredfold. As of the Fourth Era, their home of Summerset Isle (now Alinor) is governed by the Thalmor, who are out to unravel all creation because they believe mortality was a cruel trick played on them by the gods of Men (and no, this belief is not just some quirk of the Thalmor, the ancient Aldmer believed this as well). [[Nazi|They even practice eugenics, wear long black coats and kill any undesirable progeny]]. It is suggested that they don't even have names among themselves, they just assign each other a long number that sounds like a name to human ears. Nearly every Altmer is either a [[Wizard]] or a magical warrior.
*'''Ayleids (Heartland High Elves):''' An offshoot race from the Aldmer, the ancestors of the Altmer. Notable for being the original founders of the Imperial City and the founders of the first empire in Tamriel. Also notable for worshipping the Daedra and torturing their Nedic slaves in nightmare fuel ways for shits and giggles ([[Slaanesh|like skinning runaways alive, making gardens and sculptures out of their guts and bones, setting human children on fire, that kind of thing]]). If the Imperials are Romans then the Ayleids were the Etruscan kings who ruled Rome prior to the founding of the Roman Republic. They were driven to extinction by the Nedes after the Alessian Slave Rebellion, and their ruins dotting Cyrodiil are the only remaining sign of their existence.
*'''Bosmer ([[Wood Elves]]):''' Wood Elves in the [[Dwarf Fortress]] sense, only not quite as insane. They are some of the greatest archers in Tamriel and they have a long history of warring with the Khajiit. They also happen to be cannibals because of an ancient pact they made with the forest god Y'ffre (basically said forest god won't let them eat vegetation, so they can't afford to let ''any'' meat go to waste). Through this pact they can also turn themselves into monsters, though this trick is only used when the existence of Valenwood itself is threatened. They also have no understanding of woodworking and they brew alcohol from the fermented flesh of their dead enemies. Hardcore. (As a note on the cannibalism thing, you don't actually have to worry about getting shanked and eaten by every wood elf you <s>meat</s> meet, it's just their standard means of dealing with dead bodies.)
*'''Dunmer ([[Dark Elves]]):''' Elves with a blue-grey tint to their skin who got cursed by their Daedric patron for complex reasons. Their culture is a bizarre mish-mash of China, Japan, Mongolia, ancient Mesopotamia and the Biblical Israelites, with northern English accents (and a distinct gravelly voice for the men). They primarily worship the Daedra along with the Tribunal, three mortals who ascended to godhood by tapping into the Heart of Lorkhan. Since they joined the Empire by treaty instead of by conquest, their homeland of Morrowind has many unique laws, including [[Inquisitors]] and (till the tail end of the 3rd Era) legalized slavery. Highly supremacist and xenophobic, the Fourth Era has bitten them in the arse hard as most of Morrowind was devastated by volcanic eruption and their Argonian slaves have occupied what's left, leaving most surviving Dunmer as unwelcome refugees. How the mighty have fallen.
*'''Dwemer ([[Dwarves|Deep Elves]]):''' Elves who lived in the northern mountain ranges, they were the most advanced race to have existed, having figured steampower, created soul gem-powered automata, and Tonal Architecture, the manipulation of sound to alter reality. Even though they are for all intents and purposes dwarves, they were actually human-sized - they were called dwarves by a race of giants native to Tamriel who are now lost to history. A very strong contender for the single most badass race in Tamriellic history, besides the early Nords and the modern Argonians. Their belief system was terrifyingly alien even to the other inhabitants of the continent, arrogant and dogmatic, hated and dreaded by every other race they met. They were [[Fedora Masters RPG|atheists]] in a world where the existence of the gods is *indisputable fact*, which should tell you all you need to know about how crazy (and also kind of badass) they were. They all disappeared after they activated the Numidium, a massive golem powered by the Heart of Lorkhan, except for one who was exploring outer realms. There are multiple theories to explain their disappearance: they became the armoured skin of Numidium or the metaphysical concept of "is not" itself, ascended to another plane outside of Aetherius where not even Vivec can sense them, sent themselves forward in time, or just their attempt at reforging themselves into gods went wrong at the "reduce ourselves to base elements" part of the process and they all went "Poof!" as a result. There is a wizard in Skyrim who claims to have met some Dwemer while travelling the other planes, but who knows if he is telling the truth or not.
*'''Falmer ([[Snow Elves]]):''' Pale-haired and skinned elves originally native to Skyrim, they got their asses kicked so hard by the Atmorans they went into hiding, with other going to the Dwemer for shelter. What the Dwemer didn't tell them was part of the deal was shelter meant being enslaved by them and forced to subsist on toxic fungi that made them all blind. Several generations of this diet and other factors eventually turned them into blind, noseless, [[/b/|hunchbacked, barely-sentient subterranean degenerates]]. A small number of Falmer did escape being wiped out by the Atmorans or enslaved by the Dwemer in an isolated part of Skyrim, until one of them ended up becoming a [[Vampire]] and went crazy with anger at being cut off from his god and killed all of the others except for his brother. After the player kills him in the Dawnguard DLC, his brother may be the last remaining uncorrupted Falmer in existence (unless there are any other Falmer who found good hiding places).
*'''Orsimer ([[Orcs]]):''' Also known as the "Pariah Elves", descended from a race of Elves who got screwed over due to Daedric faggotry. Most Orsimer live assimilated into other cultures or in destitute and isolated strongholds, akin to native reservations, far out in the wilderness. Every time they have tried to build a new city-state in High Rock, Orsinium, the Bretons or Redguards came and knocked it over and as of the Fourth Era, Orsinium exists somewhere in the Skyrim-Hammerfell border. Also, the Nords only wish they could be as hardcore warriors as the Orcs, which means the two races have something of an odd friendship. They live short, brutal lives in conflict with nature and the other races, making them rock-solid tough. They are also brilliant armoursmiths. Worth noting is the fact that at the time of the very first game, Orcs [[/pol/|''weren't even considered PEOPLE'']] by Tamrielic culture, but by the time of Oblivion nobody would think twice about walking into a shop to find that it was run by an orc anymore than they would a shopkeeper of any of the above races.

===Beastmen===
[[File:Khajiit Family.jpg|300px|thumb|right|A family of Khajiit. Given how these things work it is very possible that the housecat that the catgirl is holding is the father of the tiger in the back. TES is weird like that.]]
*'''Argonians:''' A race of warm-blooded lizard people, well-spoken and skilled as both warriors and mages. Have a weird connection to semi-sentient trees called Hist where they may or may not be gene-engineered super soldiers enslaved by said Hist trees. Also, they actually start life as perfectly ordinary lizards that only gain sapience and humanoid shape upon eating the sap of said trees. Despite being weirdos and the targets of discrimination, they have an unbreakable hold on their homeland: Tiber Septim never truly conquered Black Marsh, he just barely conquered some of the border towns and called it a win and apparently the Argonians didn't care enough to contest it; and during the Oblivion Crisis, the Dremora were eventually forced to close the gates [[awesome|because the Argonians were sending invading armies through them]]. Apparently they are masters of Vietcong-style jungle warfare and invading Black Marsh is as big a military mistake as challenging Britain to a naval war or invading Russia in the winter, as the province is a veritable [[Catachan|green hell where every blade of grass conceals an angry lizardman just waiting to spear you to death or drag you under the mud and drown you, if your feet or eyes don't rot first]].
*'''[[Catfolk|Khajiit]]:''' Technically related to Elves, but hard to tell by looking because they have many different forms that are determined at birth by the waxing and waning of Masser and Secunda: some Khajiit look like the Bosmer, some like furries, some look like housecats except they can talk and use magic, and some get to be completely badass horse-sized tigers, named Battlecats by the Imperials. They are skilled desert raiders, merchants and farmers. Their culture is basically the Romani. Their prime export is Moon Sugar, a substance that can be best described as [[Doomrider|magical cocaine made from crystallised moonlight]]. Like Argonians, they are a prime target for racism.

==Games==
Though several spinoffs were made, when referring to "The Elder Scrolls" only the five central games are being referred to.

===The Elder Scrolls I: Arena===
Jagar Tharn, the Imperial Battlemage and trusted servant of the Emperor Uriel Septim VII turns evil, locks the Emperor inside Oblivion, and takes over Tamriel. His apprentice Ria Silmane discovered this and told the player, so Tharn killed the former and imprisoned the latter. Yet Silmane persisted, and helped the player escape prison and revealed how Tharn could be destroyed: by recovering the eight parts of the Staff of Chaos from all over the empire. The player succeeds, kills Tharn, returns the Emperor and all is well. This was the only game where the player could visit all of Tamriel.

===The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall===
The player, a personal friend of the Emperor, is sent to the city of Daggerfall, High Rock to investigate a haunting by the ghost of the former king. Things quickly get out of hand when you discover the Numidium, a massive golem used by Tiber Septim to gain control over Tamriel. There are several mutually exclusive endings possible; canon opted to [[what|make them all happen]] in an event called the Warp in the West, a Dragon Break, which is a specific type of event where divine fuckery causes [[FATAL|time and space to take it up the ass hard]].

===The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind===
[[File:Morrowind.jpg|300px|thumb|right|If you can explain at least 75% of what's going on on this image, you are a true fan.]]
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind}}
Morrowind ships the player to the island of Vvardenfell, in the Dunmer province of Morrowind, where you are to report to the [[Snowflame|perpetually shirtless crackhead]] called Caius Cossades to investigate a [[Cultist-Chan|cult]] that is growing rapidly in size. This cult is revealed to be the doings of the Sixth House, a clan of Dunmer that was destroyed after its leader, Lord Voryn Dagoth, rebelled against Lord Indoril Nerevar, the leader of the war against the Dwemer. Nerevar died shortly afterwards (though it is unclear if he died from the wounds Dagoth inflicted on him, or that his advisors, the Tribunal, murdered their lord so they could use the tools of the Dwemer to grant themselves near-divinity), and the Tribunal took over as the god-kings of the Dunmer.

There was only one problem: Dagoth wasn't actually dead, and he granted himself near-divinity too. He's also completely insane because mortal minds simply were not meant to handle that kind of power, and now he is using a divine disease to influence the dreams of a bunch of Dunmer nationalists, transforming them into horrifying humanoid cephalopods hellbent on driving the Empire and all the other races out of Morrowind.

You take the role of Nerevar's incarnation, and long story short you kill Dagoth, properly this time. However two of the Tribunal lie dead and the last one sacrificed his divinity to help the Nerevarine. Things in Morrowind do not get better after this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ow5lGFju1c Here is a great review about the game. Every N'wah in existence worth their salt must watch it.]

===The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion===
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion}}
You play as a nobody prisoner rotting in a cell in the Imperial City in the waning years of the Third Era. You catch a break when Emperor <s>Patrick Stewart</s> Uriel Septim VII pays a visit to your cell because his escape tunnel happens to be in with you (it's chalked up to fate or a bureaucratic error). Turns out his heirs have been assassinated, and despite the best efforts of you and Cyrodiil's Finest, the Emprah gets shanked too. Before he does however, he entrusts you with the Amulet of Kings and tells you to go look for the Emperor's last son, a bastard child named Martin (who is voiced by Sean Bean) who is also being sought out by an apocalyptic cult of Mehrunes Dagon led by the last known child of the Camoran Dynasty, the family who had ruled over man for years before St. Alesseia came and slapped their shit down.

By the events of the ending, Mehrunes Dagon's attempted invasion has been thwarted and Tamriel has been saved from a truly horrifying outcome, but Martin is dead and the Septim Empire is officially left without an heir. Things in Tamriel do not get better after this.

It was the first big-name RPG to appear on seventh generation consoles, and made the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 work for their money.

===The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim===
[[File:Song of Skyrim.jpg|500px|thumb|Dat Nord Frost Resistance]]
Also known as the Volsunga Saga: The Game, chronologically set 201 years after Oblivion. It's been a long time and a lot has happened. Basically the Empire went to shit. A faction of Altmer supremacists named the Thalmor took over the Summerset Isles and seceded, also annexing Valenwood and turning Elsweyr into a client state. Morrowind got properly fucked because the Red Mountain erupted and the northern half of the country was left uninhabitable, the Argonians invaded the southern half as payback for years of slavery, and what isn't run by vengeful ex-slave lizards or covered in burning ash is in the midst of a political vacuum caused by the collapse of the pro-Imperial House Hlaalu. Then the newly-christened Aldmeri Dominion declared war on the Empire and even sacked the Imperial City. The Imperial Legion drove them out at great cost but the Emperor, Titus Mede II, was forced to sign a ceasefire with several punitive terms including a ban on Talos worship and giving up parts of Hammerfell. These terms (especially the Talos ban) were... [[Rage|controversial]] to say the least; Hammerfell, fed up with the fuckery of the elves and the Empire at this point, kicked them both out and declared independence. Between this and their handling of the Oblivion Crisis and the Red Mountain eruption, many people within the Empire began seeing it as weak and ineffectual, selling out the non-Cyrodiilic peoples to save their own sorry hides. But for now, an uneasy cold war exists between the two empires and everybody knows Round 2 is just around the corner.

You're a prisoner, but in a shocking turn of events, this time you're actually told WHY this time! Turns out you crossed the damn border illegally, you filthy alien - of course if you are a Nord then it's just chalked up an asshole Imperial officer who doesn't want to deal with paperwork and just sends you to the block along with everyone else. See, at this point the Imperial authorities in Skyrim are very uneasy because there is a civil war going on, between the pro-Imperial ''de facto'' High Queen Elisif the Fair, and the eponymous forces of Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak, a former Legion soldier turned Nord warlord who took umbridge to the terms of the ceasefire with the Dominion and now wants to drive out the Empire and claim the throne (so he is basically the Nord version of Robert the Bruce, even down to the controversial murder of a noble puppet that has made him effectively an outlaw king; he is also quite awesomely voiced by Vladimir Kulich). Just mere moments before the frosty-looking bloke with the big axe gives you a discount haircut, a giant dragon god named Alduin the World Eater (Nidhogg with a touch of Jörmundgandr) decides to introduce himself to the world after being banished for ages and begins fucking up the town, giving you, Ulfric and his men a chance to escape. In truth Alduin is there for YOU - you end up learning that you're the legendary Dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon who can basically do any of the cool shit a real dragon can do (besides flying), leaving you to solve the mystery of why the mysterious dragons are returning and find a way to stop Alduin from eating the world. And possibly also end the civil war by leading either side to victory, leading to either an independent new Skyrim (Stormcloaks win) or a reinvigorated Empire that holds on to its most vital province and has a key figure of the dragonblood once again, leaving it in the best state it has been in decades (Imperials win).

===The Elder Scrolls Online===
TES: the MMORPG. Early on it suffered from growing pains and problems, but after surviving the hate and becoming only buy to play, it became a rather nice game. It is set in the Second Era, 800 years before Oblivion and a full millennium before Skyrim. Tamriel is currently locked in a mêlée à trois between three fragile alliances all vying for the Imperial throne - the Ebonheart Pact (Nords, Dunmer and Argonians), the Aldmeri Dominion (Altmer, Bosmer and Khajiit) and the Daggerfall Covenant (Bretons, Redguards and Orcs). You can also play Imperials if you upgraded your account to the Imperial Edition, they are a neutral party in the war. Meanwhile behind the scenes Molag Bal is scheming to meld Mundus with his nightmare realm Coldharbour and enslave all the mortal races. Someone oughta stop that shit, right?

===The Elder Scrolls VI===
Announced at E3 2018, the game was confirmed to be in production. The trailer shows a mountainous eastern or western coast with some stone ruins. Bethesda has been completely silent on it and the simultaneously announced Starfield since their announcements, leading to many claiming vaporware.

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<center>
<gallery>
image:Lel.jpg
image:N'wahs with attitude.jpg
image:1402853718622.jpg
image:Averagedayatbeth.png|This is depressingly true.
image:Tribunal_awaken.jpg|[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Almsivi!]]
image:Kobold romance diary by Weaver.jpg|An average day for a TES protagonist.
</gallery>
</center>

==See also==
*[http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, the definitive wiki for the series.]
*[[Scrollhammer]]: if the Elder Scrolls and Warhammer had a bastard son, it would probably be like this.
*[[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition]]: If Elder Scrolls and Infinity had a bastard son.
*[[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG]]: A pen and paper [[RPG]] currently dead because Seht decided to take a break, but he's back now. Core 3E is pretty polished with many supplements actively being worked on and released by various anons.
*[[Savage Worlds]]: For which fanmade Elder Scrolls rules exist.

[[Category:Video Games]]

Carceri

2020-06-26T06:57:04Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* Inhabitants */

{{Topquote|One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.|Franz Kafka}}

'''The Tarterian Depths of Carceri''' is a [[Alignment|Neutral Evil Chaotic]] [[Plane|Outer Plane]] part of the Great Wheel cosmology of [[Planescape]], and an abandoned plane in the [[Nentir_Vale|Points of Light]] setting of [[Dungeons and Dragons]]. It is a prison plane filled with treachery, despair and hatred, where existence is harsh and escape is all but impossible. It is here traitors go to after they die, their treason and hatred lingering after their deaths; as such the people of Carceri are not to be trusted. Carceri is based on a combination of Tartarus from Greek mythology and Dante's Divine Comedy.

==Layers of Carceri==
Carceri has six layers, each nested inside one another. The layers take shape of spheres of finite size, each linked to others of its own size stretching into infinity. This means that the second and beyond planes are physically linked to one another despite being fully encased in its above layer(s)(maybe each sphere is connected to another sphere via a tube that is fully encased in the corresponding tube for the above layer?). Despite this all layers have a red sky and light seems to come out of the orbs themselves, meaning that vision, while covered in something of a red tint and underlit, is normal on the plane.

===Orthrys===
The first layer of Carceri is reserved for [[High Lords of Terra|politicians and traitors of nations]]. It is a realm of vast bogs and quicksand, the few dry parts quickly climbing into steep mountains hosting a race of malevolent titans. This layer also contains the River Styx, which flows freely throughout the layer and serves as a possible exit out of the plane. The layer also hosts vast numbers of mosquitoes and petitioners who annoy travelers. While not a prime vacation spot, there are much worse places to be found on Carceri.

More hospitable is the Bastion of Last Hope, a fortress located in a mountain ridge. Here live all sorts of spies, forgers, fences, assassins, plastic surgeons and all kinds of other people of ill repute who can, for a price, aid a traveler. But beware the nature of the plane of traitors when dealing with the people here.

Less treacherous but no less dangerous are the titans of Mount Orthrys, who were banished to Carceri long ago. Their leader, Cronus (not to be mistaken for khronos, "time"), can impart visitors with his wisdom. But because he and his people have been imprisoned on Carceri for such an untold amount of time they can get [[Rage|upset]] with visitors who can come and go at their own leisure.

===Cathrys===
The overgrown layer of Cathrys contains two kinds of terrain: [[Death World|highly acidic jungles whose mere air can dissolve a person within minutes and grasslands with razor-sharp leaves who can cut a person to pieces if they are not careful to avoid them.]] It is an overall unpleasant place where [[Slaanesh|those who gave in to their base lusts and instincts are banished.]] The only reason one should travel to Cathrys is to visit the Apothecary of Sin, a place build above the forests of Cathrys where one can buy almost any kind of poison or acid from its [[apothecary]], the [[demon|glabrezu]] called Sinmaker. As long as he is paid he does not care what the customer buys, how much or what is done with his wares.

===Minethys===
The third layer is nothing but sand. Minethys is an endless desert of sand and sandstorms, blown up with such force that it could strip the flesh off a man's bones in hours. As such, its petitioners (once those who did not use their wealth to help others when they could) are forced to wear heavy cloth garments to avoid being torn apart and live in hand-dug pits in the sand who constantly need to be dug out to avoid being swept up by a tornado. One of the orbs holds the Sand Tombs of Payaratheon, a city long since devoured by the sand. Those times it is revealed adventurers often try to explore it, discovering all kinds of petrified undead and sand gorgons who swim through the sand. Overall, Minethys is not a pleasant place and should be avoided.

===Colothys===
The most inhospitable part of the fourth layer, Colothys, are its massive mountains and wide and deep canyons. Without some kind of flight or teleportation it is almost impossible to navigate given its narrow roads and few and far between bridges. Some trading routes exist, but they are long, perilous and slow to follow. Few things grow on this layer; those that do can be rather dangerous. An example of this is the Garden of Malice, which grows on a single orb. Despite looking beautiful with its many vines and flowers, the Garden is quite dangerous and will attempt to kill anything which comes too close. It is theorized that they're all under the control of [[Hive Mind|a single organism]] which seeks to spread its seed throughout all layers of the plane. Colothys hosts those whose lies brought harm onto others.

===Porphatys===
Unlike the two layers before it, Porphatys is very wet. The fifth layer is completely covered in acidic water that can quickly dissolve unwary travelers. As such its petitioners (those who refused to aid others when the opportunity to do so presented itself) cling to the small sandbars across the layer, promising anything to anyone who can take them away. It is advised to not listen to them, since they will [[Rogue|stab you in the back at the first chance they get]]. An interesting feature of the plane is the Ship of One Hundred, also called the White Caravel. It is a ghost ship of sorts that travels between the sandbars to pick up passengers along for its travels across the layer. The ship has no crew and is perfectly content with allowing its passengers along for its journey. What it does have is one hundred stone coffins (where it got its name from) on its lower deck. Nobody knows what they contain since every time one of the coffins is opened all passengers are devoured by some unknown disaster. As such people who know this story will leave the coffins alone and try to stop those who do try to open them.

===Agathys===
The final layer of Carceri is something of a curiousity. Consisting of only one sphere, a ball of black ice with red streaks. It is lethally cold on the sphere and its petitioners are frozen in the ice up to their lips. The foremost landmark on this layer is the Necromanteion, the citadel of the death god [[Nerull]]. Here his priests perform necromantic rituals and experiments on hundreds of onyx altars in service of their dark lord, and houses many artifacts of the Reaper.

==Inhabitants==
The main inhabitants of Carceri are the [[Demodand]]s, who serve as the jailers of Carceri's petitioners/prisoners. Since the plane is occationally used as staging grounds or battlefields for the [[Blood War]], all kinds of Fiends can be found here, including [[Tanar'ri]], [[Baatezu]] and [[Yugoloth]]. Other evil Outsiders can be found here as well. One notable creature is the [[Vaath]], a fiendish predator that slowly devours victims' organs while they are alive and conscious and uses telepathy to make everyone around it taste what it tastes, including the victim, just because they want to cause as much suffering as possible.

{{Template:OuterPlanes}}

Carceri

2020-06-26T06:55:28Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* Inhabitants */

{{Topquote|One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.|Franz Kafka}}

'''The Tarterian Depths of Carceri''' is a [[Alignment|Neutral Evil Chaotic]] [[Plane|Outer Plane]] part of the Great Wheel cosmology of [[Planescape]], and an abandoned plane in the [[Nentir_Vale|Points of Light]] setting of [[Dungeons and Dragons]]. It is a prison plane filled with treachery, despair and hatred, where existence is harsh and escape is all but impossible. It is here traitors go to after they die, their treason and hatred lingering after their deaths; as such the people of Carceri are not to be trusted. Carceri is based on a combination of Tartarus from Greek mythology and Dante's Divine Comedy.

==Layers of Carceri==
Carceri has six layers, each nested inside one another. The layers take shape of spheres of finite size, each linked to others of its own size stretching into infinity. This means that the second and beyond planes are physically linked to one another despite being fully encased in its above layer(s)(maybe each sphere is connected to another sphere via a tube that is fully encased in the corresponding tube for the above layer?). Despite this all layers have a red sky and light seems to come out of the orbs themselves, meaning that vision, while covered in something of a red tint and underlit, is normal on the plane.

===Orthrys===
The first layer of Carceri is reserved for [[High Lords of Terra|politicians and traitors of nations]]. It is a realm of vast bogs and quicksand, the few dry parts quickly climbing into steep mountains hosting a race of malevolent titans. This layer also contains the River Styx, which flows freely throughout the layer and serves as a possible exit out of the plane. The layer also hosts vast numbers of mosquitoes and petitioners who annoy travelers. While not a prime vacation spot, there are much worse places to be found on Carceri.

More hospitable is the Bastion of Last Hope, a fortress located in a mountain ridge. Here live all sorts of spies, forgers, fences, assassins, plastic surgeons and all kinds of other people of ill repute who can, for a price, aid a traveler. But beware the nature of the plane of traitors when dealing with the people here.

Less treacherous but no less dangerous are the titans of Mount Orthrys, who were banished to Carceri long ago. Their leader, Cronus (not to be mistaken for khronos, "time"), can impart visitors with his wisdom. But because he and his people have been imprisoned on Carceri for such an untold amount of time they can get [[Rage|upset]] with visitors who can come and go at their own leisure.

===Cathrys===
The overgrown layer of Cathrys contains two kinds of terrain: [[Death World|highly acidic jungles whose mere air can dissolve a person within minutes and grasslands with razor-sharp leaves who can cut a person to pieces if they are not careful to avoid them.]] It is an overall unpleasant place where [[Slaanesh|those who gave in to their base lusts and instincts are banished.]] The only reason one should travel to Cathrys is to visit the Apothecary of Sin, a place build above the forests of Cathrys where one can buy almost any kind of poison or acid from its [[apothecary]], the [[demon|glabrezu]] called Sinmaker. As long as he is paid he does not care what the customer buys, how much or what is done with his wares.

===Minethys===
The third layer is nothing but sand. Minethys is an endless desert of sand and sandstorms, blown up with such force that it could strip the flesh off a man's bones in hours. As such, its petitioners (once those who did not use their wealth to help others when they could) are forced to wear heavy cloth garments to avoid being torn apart and live in hand-dug pits in the sand who constantly need to be dug out to avoid being swept up by a tornado. One of the orbs holds the Sand Tombs of Payaratheon, a city long since devoured by the sand. Those times it is revealed adventurers often try to explore it, discovering all kinds of petrified undead and sand gorgons who swim through the sand. Overall, Minethys is not a pleasant place and should be avoided.

===Colothys===
The most inhospitable part of the fourth layer, Colothys, are its massive mountains and wide and deep canyons. Without some kind of flight or teleportation it is almost impossible to navigate given its narrow roads and few and far between bridges. Some trading routes exist, but they are long, perilous and slow to follow. Few things grow on this layer; those that do can be rather dangerous. An example of this is the Garden of Malice, which grows on a single orb. Despite looking beautiful with its many vines and flowers, the Garden is quite dangerous and will attempt to kill anything which comes too close. It is theorized that they're all under the control of [[Hive Mind|a single organism]] which seeks to spread its seed throughout all layers of the plane. Colothys hosts those whose lies brought harm onto others.

===Porphatys===
Unlike the two layers before it, Porphatys is very wet. The fifth layer is completely covered in acidic water that can quickly dissolve unwary travelers. As such its petitioners (those who refused to aid others when the opportunity to do so presented itself) cling to the small sandbars across the layer, promising anything to anyone who can take them away. It is advised to not listen to them, since they will [[Rogue|stab you in the back at the first chance they get]]. An interesting feature of the plane is the Ship of One Hundred, also called the White Caravel. It is a ghost ship of sorts that travels between the sandbars to pick up passengers along for its travels across the layer. The ship has no crew and is perfectly content with allowing its passengers along for its journey. What it does have is one hundred stone coffins (where it got its name from) on its lower deck. Nobody knows what they contain since every time one of the coffins is opened all passengers are devoured by some unknown disaster. As such people who know this story will leave the coffins alone and try to stop those who do try to open them.

===Agathys===
The final layer of Carceri is something of a curiousity. Consisting of only one sphere, a ball of black ice with red streaks. It is lethally cold on the sphere and its petitioners are frozen in the ice up to their lips. The foremost landmark on this layer is the Necromanteion, the citadel of the death god [[Nerull]]. Here his priests perform necromantic rituals and experiments on hundreds of onyx altars in service of their dark lord, and houses many artifacts of the Reaper.

==Inhabitants==
The main inhabitants of Carceri are the [[Demodand]]s, who serve as the jailers of Carceri's petitioners/prisoners. Since the plane is occationally used as staging grounds or battlefields for the [[Blood War]], all kinds of Fiends can be found here, including [[Tanar'ri]], [[Baatezu]] and [[Yugoloth]]. Other evil Outsiders can be found here as well. One notable creature is the [[Vaath]], a monster that slowly devours victims' organs while they are alive and conscious and uses telepathy to make everyone around it taste what it tastes, including the victim, just because they want to cause as much suffering as possible.

{{Template:OuterPlanes}}

Book of Vile Darkness

2020-06-26T03:53:00Z

2601:203:480:4C60:B03B:D46A:110:1605: /* 3e Splatbook */

[[File:Tzeentchondtmørke.PNG]]

'''The Book of Vile Darkness''' is a term from [[Dungeons & Dragons]] that can refer to either of two things; an in-game magical item, or a pair of [[Splatbook]]s that exist for [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition]] and [[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition]]. In case its edgy name didn't give it away, it's all about the EVIL side of things, with a goodly counterpart in the [[Book of Exalted Deeds]].

==The Magical Item==
The Book of Vile Darkness has shown up in multiple editions of D&D, and is essentially a compilation of notes and musings on the nature of evil by some of the most wicked and profane beings in the [[Multiverse]]; [[Vecna]] is usually described as one of the first editors to craft the Book of Vile Darkness. In general, it's of great use to an evil spellcaster (or at least a [[cleric]]), but is hazardous to the body, mind and soul of anyone who isn't evil.

==3e Splatbook==
Released for 3.0, the Book of Vile Darkness was a sourcebook on evil, containing a mixture of [[Wizards of the Coast|the authors']] personal musings on the nature of evil and how to use it in your games of [[Dungeons & Dragons]], either as adversaries for your party or by running an evil PC campaign yourself, and mechanical support for that goal in the form of new rules, equipment, systems, monsters, gods, etc.

The book is widely regarded as something of an eye-roller, as it handles its themes clumsily at best. It was, however, the original splatbook for 3e to feature many classic "villainous" monsters, such as [[Demon Prince]]s and [[Archdevil]]s. The book has some serious balance issues.

Some alternate options for bestow curse are presented. While most are pretty nasty social penalties and not really of note since the ''default'' options include "do nothing half the time", it also has "Target is rendered sterile." Since curses are relatively easy to remove (just cast the opposite spell), this tends to be an ''advantage'' to most [[Adventurers]]. The disease Festering Anger is also introduced which damages Constitution in exchange for an increase in Strength with no ceiling. It's as easy to break as ''healing the constitution damage'' (a mere second level spell, [[Archivist|or first if you know what you're doing]]). This can reach insane levels with Cancer Mage, a [[Prestige Class]] that doesn't take penalties from disease and was printed in '''the same exact book'''.

The first chapter is titled, simply '''The Nature of Evil''', and it talks a lot about what evil "is" in the context of D&D. It lists specific evil acts, details "evil" fetishes or addictions (with mechanical traits to add), lists several unique "vile gods" ([[Karaan]], [[Rallaster]], [[The Patient One]], [[Scahrossar]], [[The Xammux]], [[Yeathan]]), two new "vile" races ([[Vashar]], [[Jerren]]), and an overview on creating villains and malign sites, with examples of both.

The second chapter is dedicated to '''Variant Rules'''; possession, sacrifices, curses, diseases, "The Calling" (a justification for an evil creature to be mysteriously augmented by the powers of darkness), "Dark Chant" (an unholy litany that the undead can be used to hinder turning spells), "Dark Speech" (a system for a language of pure evil that can have mystical effects when uttered), using souls and liquid pain as power, creating hiveminds, the new mechanic of Vile Damage, a list of "evil weather" (violet rain, green fog, plague of nettles, rain of blood, rain of frogs/fish), and possible lingering effects of evil.

The third chapter is all about '''Evil Equipment'''; torture devices, execution equipment, trapped armor & equipment, alchemical & quasi-magial items, drugs, poisons, and evil material components for spellcasting. It's kind of weird to have execution equipment here; after all, lawful good societies execute people too, and Fiendish Codex 2 even listed performing an execution as a ''lawful'' act, not an evil one.

Chapter four is all about the '''Feats''', and needs little further explanation.

Chapter five is for '''[[Prestige Class]]es''', introducing myriad ways for beings to tap into greater power from unholy sources:
* [[Cancer Mage]]: A mystic who seeks to explore the magical powers in disease, spreading plague and pestilence as weapons.
* [[Demonologist]]: A [[Conjurer]] who has focused on the futile art of mastering and subjugating [[demon]]s.
* [[Diabolist]]: A malevolent spellcaster who barters their soul to the Nine Hells of [[Baator]], hoping to master infernal magics and ultimately become a powerful [[devil]] themselves.
* [[Fiendish Disciple]]: A servitor of a specific [[archdevil]], who gains unique powers depending on which of the Nine that they serve. In the book, this is treated as a set of separate (but thematically identical) prestige classes, representing disciples of [[Asmodeus]], [[Baalzebul]], [[Dispater]], [[Mammon]], and [[Mephistopheles]].
* [[Lifedrinker]]: A [[vampire]] who has learned to draw ever-greater magical power from the blood they ingest, imbuing themselves with pronounced spellcasting abilities.
* [[Mortal Hunter]]: A dark parody of the [[Ranger]], Mortal Hunters are fiends who have trained themselves specially to hunt down and assassinate mortals, allowing them to remove those who stand in the ways of their masters' plans.
* [[Soul Eater]]: A monster that has transformed itself into an abomination that devours the souls of living beings in order to fuel its own might.
* [[Demonic Thrall]]: The [[Abyss]]al counterpart to the Fiendish Disciple, a Demonic Thrall is a devout worshipper of a specific [[Demon Prince]] who gains powerful abilities in emulation of their master. Demon Princes granted thralls in this book consist of [[Demogorgon]], [[Graz'zt]], [[Juiblex]] and [[Orcus]].
* [[Ur-Priest]]: An arch-blasphemer who hates the gods so much that they learn methods of secretly leeching away divine power from them to serve their own needs.
* [[Vermin Lord]]: A mage who seeks to master the power that comes from controlling and communing with invertebrates; insects, arachnids, and all other squirming lowly beasts.
* [[Warrior of Darkness]]: A warrior who seeks to enhance their physical might by augmenting themselves with vile alchemical reagents and black magic rituals.

Chapter 6 is all about the '''Magic'''; new spells, new magic items, and new malevolent artifacts.

Chapter 7 is devoted to '''Lords of Evil''', covering several [[Archdevil]]s and [[Demon Prince]]s. It also briefly covers how to handle clerics sworn to a specific archfiend. The archfiends covered in this chapter are:
* [[Demogorgon]]
* [[Graz'zt]]
* [[Juiblex]]
* [[Orcus]]
* [[Yeenoghu]]
* [[Bel]]
* [[Dispater]]
* [[Mammon]]
* [[Belial]] and [[Fierna]]
* [[Levistus]]
* The Hag Countess
* [[Baalzebul]]
* [[Mephistopheles]]
* [[Asmodeus]]

Naturally, chapter 8 follows this up with an assortment of new wicked monsters:
* [[Demon]] (Mane, Rutterkin, Bar-lgura, Babau, Shadow Demon, Chasme)
* [[Devil]] (Kocrachon, Ghargatula)
* [[Eye of Fear and Flame]]
* [[Kython]] (Broodling, Juvenile, Adult, Impaler, Slaymaster, Slaugtherking) Not to be confused with [[Kyton]]s. Kythons are a race of monsters who were created by demons trapped on the material plane in an attempt to make more of themselves. They somewhat resemble xenomorphs.
{{Sick}}
* [[Vaath]]: An extremely sadistic fiendish reptile/insect creature from [[Carceri]]. It paralyzes prey and then uses the extendable second mouth on its head to dig into the prey's flesh and consume their organs, choosing to consume organ that won't kill the prey immediately, so that they will suffer as long as possible. [[Grimdark|While it is eating, it telepathically makes everybody nearby it taste whatever it tastes, including the victim.]]
* [[Vilewight]]: A more evil version of a wight with long claws and exposed intestines that have transformed into tendrils with mouths on them. They can fire beams of negative energy, infect people with a disease the makes you unable to see living things, drain energy, and transform people they kill into regular wights.
* Creature Templates: Bone< Corpse, Corrupted

Finally, it ends with an appendix discussing how to handle evil PCs, specifically addressing a singular evil PC, an evil party, and how to run an evil campaign.

==4e Splatbook==
Much like its 3e counterpart, 4e's Book of Vile Darkness was a sourcebook on evil in [[Dungeons & Dragons]], divided into two physical splatbooks. The DM's book is full of advice for DMs on how to use evil or to run evil campaigns, complete with monsters, cursed items and other foulness to use against players. The Player's book, in comparison, is all about new PC goodies for malevolent (or at least seriously antiheroic) PCs, including character themes and [[Paragon Path]]s.

The '''Dungeon Master's Book''' opens with the chapter ''Evil Unearthed''. Fairly brief, this describes the history of the in-game Book of Vile Darkness, and briefly touches upon the nature of evil - not by attempting to strictly define things as evil, as was the case in 3e, but more examining general traits of evil.

The second chapter is ''Evil Campaigns'', which covers all of the issues from a DM's perspective on creating evil adventurers and running campaigns that either feature them or which are directly evil in nature, including the tricky issue of "how do you motivate an evil PC" and "what do they actually want to do". It closes with two sample campaigns that, whilst perhaps not requiring truly evil PCs, do feature a theme of battling true evil and arguably requiring some moral ambiguity; War for Hell, in which the party becomes caught up in open civil war in Baator, and Hunger of the Nine-Tongued Worm, in which the party must battle the [[tsochar]] before they can unleash [[Mak Thuum Ngatha]] on the [[World Axis]].

Chapter three, ''Vile Encounters'', opens with a discussion on how to impress upon players that they are fighting truly evil forces. This then segues into a number of new "vile themed" terrain features, followed by mechanics for cursing players and several sample curses. It finishes up with unnatural and evil-touched plagues (resurrecting some from its 3e counterpart), and an assortment of vile-themed traps and hazards for dungeons.
* Vile Terrain: Agony Amplifier, Carnage Stone, Festering Corruption, Forgotten Soul, Green Fog, Hellfire, Larvae Pool, Lingering Evil
* Curses: Accumulated Years, Misery Eternal, Sentient Tumor, Tomb King's Wrath, Werewolf Lycanthropy
* Vile Diseases: Deathsong, Demon Fever, Faceless Hate, Melting Fury, Psychic Parasites, Scarlet Plague
* Vile Traps & Hazards: Crypt Thing, Death Mold, Far Realm Anomaly, Glyph of Changes, Iron Boot, Lunacy Mist, Mirror of Life Trapping, Rot Grub Pit, Symbol of Death

Chapter four gives its identity away with its title: ''Villains and Monsters''. The bulk of it is advice on how to create and run different kinds of villain for your D&D campaign. It follows it up with several new monster themes, for customizing monsters for a specific role, a couple of new beasties to boot, an d some sample villainous organizations.
* Monster Themes: Chaos Beast, Devotee of Darkness, Doomdreamer, Maenad, Moilian Dead, Slave to the Nine Hells
* Monsters: Fallen Angel (Winter, Sorrow, Death), [[Hordeling]], Wrath Devil, Nhagruul Dragonspawn, Filth Hag, [[Tsochar]] (Parasite, Wearer of Flesh, Worm Servant, Noble)
* Vile Organizations: Chosen of the Sun (mad fanatics who commit atrocities in pursuit of stamping out evil), Dark Brotherhood (cult of [[Tharizdun]] that believes "Good" is a cosmic mistake), Disciples of Nhagruul (guardians of the Book of Vile Darkness who seek to use it to unleash an apocalypse), Kargatane (a lich's secret police that seeks immortality through transformation into vampires), Servants of Xopos ([[Slaad]] cultists who seek to facilitate wide-spread infection of mortals with larval slaadi).

Chapter five, ''Dark Rewards'', is all about potential magic that stems from a place in the darker parts of the multiverse; cursed items, unholy blessings, and twisted magical items.
* Cursed Items: Berserk Weapon, Boot of Many Steps, Cloak of Poison, Cursed Weapon, Potion of Delusion
* Divine Boons: Asmodeus's Dread Authority, Bane's Battle Acumen, Gruumsh's Bloodthirsty Wrath, Lolth's Fickle Favor, Tharizdun's Madness Spiral, Tiamat's Insatiable Greed, Torog's Inescapable Suffering, Vecna's Dark Secret, Zehir's Shadow Cloak
* Sinister Items: Bracers of Suffering, Flesh-Eating Rod, Girdle of Skulls, Midnight Blade, Obsidian Wand, Ring of Domination, Serpentine Knife of Zannad, Skull of Terror

Finally, the book closes with its sixth chapter, ''The Vile Tome'', a mini-campaign in which the party crosses paths with the Book of Vile Darkness and is given a chance to disrupt it, or even destroy it. This chapter also features the mechanics for the Book of Vile Darkness as a 4e artifact.

The '''Player's Book''', unlike its DM's counterpart, is not broken into nice, neat chapters. Instead, it opens with an immediate introduction that discusses the realities of playing an evil PC from a player's perspective - in particular hammering the point that this is ''not'' an excuse for the player to be a dick to the rest of the players or to the DM. It then examines some evil adventuring party archetypes, followed by individual "villain protagonist" archetypes, and other tips on creating villain PCs from scratch.

The next segment examines the different Power Sources in a [[World Axis]] campaign - Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal, Psionic and Shadow - and these sources color the attitudes, behaviors, goals and desires of villainous PCs. This segment also expands the list of the [[Primal Spirits]] with the addition of Gnaw; the shunned and feared patron of scavengers, detrivores and vermin.

From here, the book presents several new villainous character themes; the Cultist, the Disgraced Noble, the Infernal Slave, the Reaver and the Vile Scholar.

Naturally, the next section is devoted to evil [[Paragon Path]]s, in the form of the Blood-Crazed Berserker, Contract Killer, Demonologist, Idol of Darkness and Vermin Lord, before ending with an [[Epic Destiny]], in the Exemplar of Evil.

It finishes its list of content with an assortment of new feats.

==Differences Between Versions==

As might be expected by the tonal differences between 3rd and 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons, the two Splatbooks are entirely different entities. The contrasts are so numerous, it could be argued that the two products are related by title much more than content. Without having to read both, though, a brief analysis could be thus:

* [[Monte Cook]] authored the 3rd edition book, and the imagery includes [[Promotions]] with approximately 7 female nipples throughout.

* Robert J. Schwalb wrote the 4th edition book, and it doesn't include Cancer Mages or any mentions of bestiality.

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