Monty and Morgion 013: Public Service Announcement

I'd like to do something a little different this week. Since I have a web forum frequented by quite a few disparate groups of people, I'm going to get political for a moment. If that doesn't rock your casbah, feel free to click out until next Wednesday, when those wacky gerbils will return.

Thank you for staying. I'm not an environmentalist -- I rend the flesh of beast and fowl for my meals -- but I have recently been enlightened as to a heinous act of multi-species extermination. We, as humans, have engaged in a number of extinction tragedies in our short history. Passenger pigeons, dodos, innumerable insect species...we step over "lesser" organisms on our way to the top of the food chain. Some animals are even hunted for sport, but poachers aside, even hunting has limits.

I'm talking about the Slimes. More generally the taxonomic class Refstodae, commonly known as the Ooziforms.

While the Ooziforms have always been regarded as either an inferior evolutionary product or a divine joke, it wasn't until the 1980's that the systematic destruction of Ooziforms began. With the introduction of cheap home computers and game consoles, the genre known as "role-playing games" needed a way to ease adventurers into high level tasks. Some chose a more mundane paradigm and populated their fields with rats and dragonflies. Some lifted their monsters from faerie myth and created Imps and Goblins to siege starting towns.

But the coldest, most despicable corporations saw a gold mine in the glut of Ooziforms. Within months they were rounded up into monster ranches and harvested for the simple silicon wonders of the 8 and 16-bit era.

Ooziforms are depicted as unilaterally Evil and prone to attacking wandering travelers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Further from the truth? Whatever. But in their natural habitats, Ooziforms are scavengers. They collect dead organic tissue and certain minerals through osmosis and chemically "digest" them to sustain the organism. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons states that Jellies are peaceful cleaners, although dangerous if provoked. They are not inherently Evil; they are as Neutral as any animal, and actually tend towards Good when given free reign. Ooziform species also form loose colonies to protect communal territory from other scavengers, despite their slow movement and almost complete lack of defensive capabilities.

Even more important, most Slimes and Jellies exhibit signs of rudimentary intelligence, somewhere slightly above a domesticated cat. If trained properly, they can run mazes, fetch items, and recognize as many as twenty separate humans. The oscillation and hue of the Ooziform conveys as much emotion as the tail or ears of a more common pet. They react favorably to harmonic tones, and indeed most Ooziform hunters use music as a lure. In laboratories some Jellies have even learned to produce sound by vibrating their bodies.

This, then, is my cause. I call for the immediate and unconditional release of all Ooziform life held in captivity. I call for their reintroduction into the wild, to once again sweep the detritus of nature from the earth. I ask that the senseless murder of intelligent amorphous animal life cease this very day. To this end I announce the formation of the Society for the Preservation of Ooziform Organisms in Gaming Ecosystems. Who will stand with me?

Show your support by visiting the S.P.O.O.G.E. store. Feel free to send other design ideas my way. Save the Slimes.