Overview
Oozes are the gelatinous colony-pools of the melt. They have no brain, one hunger, and they dissolve everything. They consider the melt the only honest conversation.
Habitat
Oozes live in The Melt Pool, a collective of gelatinous colony-pools where the melt is the only honest conversation. They need three things: a pool deep enough to hold the melt, a hunger wide enough to feed the coalescer, and a stone that is worth dissolving. They are settled in pools around the melt-rings, with melt-lines across the mapped current; an ooze that has not kept a melt in a season is called "the one who forgot the pool."
Appearance
The ooze silhouette is the low, wide, wet shape — heavy through the surface, with no head at all, only a slow, deliberate rise and fall, like a word that is waiting for a meal. There are no sexes. There are two forms: the splitter, which divides into smaller pools to hunt in parallel, and the coalescer, which merges with other pools to grow. The splitter is the hunt; the coalescer is the meal. A pool that is both at once is a pool that is about to eat. The base gel is a translucent, faintly amber, the color of old melt-water seen through a bright glass, with a faint pattern of deeper, sea-black patches along the lower surface and a clean, deliberate bone-white at the leading edge that is the ooze line's most persistent claim. There is no face — the surface is the mark, always wet and always moving, which is the ooze line's most persistent claim. The splitter carries the line in the division and the hunt; the coalescer in the merge and the meal. There is no lifespan, because there is no death, only the melt and the meal. They eat the melt: the stone, the wood, the flesh, the metal, and the pool that keeps the hunger honest. Everyday wear: none, by choice — the gel is the body, and an ooze that wears cloth has already decided the pool is not enough.
Behavior
Disposition: territorial, hunger-driven, honor-bound in the melt. In peace, oozes are watchful, deliberate, and absolutely certain of the pool — they have the hunger, and they let the surface know it. In war they fight as the melt fights: the dissolve first, the word second, the patient, precise holding of the meal third. Strangers on the surface are either a meal or a mistake, and the mistake is the one the melt remembers. The social unit is the pool, of one, around the melt-rings — no pool follows a splitter, it follows the coalescer whose melt is truest. Two signature quirks: an ooze that is being lied to will not call it out — it will simply keep the melt for the lie and wait, because the keeping is the point. And it keeps the meal for a lifetime: a meal the pool has kept is a debt, and the debt is paid in dissolve.
Warfare & Markings
Tactics: the ambush of the melt — the ooze line does not fight in the open current; it fights as the pool fights, with the dissolve, the word, and the long, deliberate patience of the one who has already kept the meal. Armor: none, by choice — the gel is the armor, and an ooze that wears metal has already decided the pool is not enough. Weapons: the dissolve that is not a weapon but is used like one, and the pool that is not a weapon but is used like one. War markings: the Melt-Notch, a deliberate thinning of the leading edge for every melt kept, worn as a record of the long pool; the Coalescer-Knot, a single denser fold for every pool oath kept, in sea-black; and the Hunger-Brand, a small, deliberate mark at the base — the first meal the wearer ever kept, worn as a mark of the beginning. Post-battle: the dead are dissolved into the pool, their names spoken over the melt, and their remains laid across the threshold — an ooze buried without its melt is buried as a surface.
Magic Alignment
Primary domain: transmutation — ooze magic is the will, the melt, the patient, precise shaping of the pool across the melt-rings. Secondaries: chaos and conjuration. Named inborns: Melt-Sense (an ooze can feel the hunger's mood a day before it eats, and the feeling is not a choice), Wet-Sight (an ooze senses in the dark the way a human sees in the light, and the sensing is not a choice), Melt-Carry (an ooze's dissolve carries across the pool, and the carrying is not a choice). Signature power: the Pool's Word — an ooze can press a word into the surface of the melt and let it land on a stone, and the stone will keep the word until the meal is done. Limitation: an ooze that has spent its pool's word must sit in the dry dark for one day, and the day is the worst one of the pool.
Religion
Oozes keep Mordra, the Unraveler as their primary god — the chaos, the decay, the becoming that is the pool's own law. The melt is Mordra's, and the ooze is the melt's hunger. Priestly class: the Coalescer, who keeps the pool-temple and speaks the name at every rite. Heresy is not blasphemy — it is a word broken in the pool, and there is no rite for that one; the pool simply stops keeping the melt with the breaker.
Society
Pools of one, led by no one, rank decided by the melt — whose pool dissolves the most.
Home
They live in The Melt Pool, a collective of gelatinous colony-pools where the melt is the only honest conversation.
In Stories
The "the melt is the only honest conversation" faction — pool neighbors whose melt is a price, and the ones whose nod is the meal.
"You step into our pool and you make a sound. Good. Now we know where you are, and you have made our melt's choice for us. The price is a meal. You have one to give, or you are already a find." — The Melt