A is for Amoebae

In the journals of many learned men and women, if few, there are observations of amphibious, jelly-like creatures called Amoebae, or Ameba, when encountered individually.

The shapeless “blob," as described by Saissa Denot in her Observations of a Cursed Swamp, can be seen on the edges of fouled, stagnate water in “the lowest parts of farmland and tree dammed creeks, the smell of manure after a rain or the rot of dead cows can often be a sign an ameba is not far. Tread carefully and recall your steps lest you trip in a hasty retreat."

Observed by many, the Ameba crawls slowly across rotting trees, leaves, and carcasses, leaving a slick wake behind it. Ameba have been seen as wide and as a tall man and larger. The Ameba moves by throwing a portion of its shapeless form ahead of it, stopping to consume whatever is beneath it at the moment.

Saissa writes, “...a beaver, covered in recent shavings, observed the Ameba for an hour. The beaver finally decided to move across the path of the Ameba. With a reaction that belied the Ameba's listless form a flat portion of its body was thrown forward and over the beaver, engulfing it fully. The struggle of the beaver was short. I observed in the end a beaver held suspended in the Ameba's shapeless form; mouth frozen in a silent scream, its eyes wide quickly dissolved to black holes."

Editor's Notes

Finding the right sort of encounters to set the mood of a game can be hard. Players will often not register a setting unless there is friction with that setting. Traveling through a forest is not just trails—game or otherwise—or roads. It might be under duress, pursued. This might mean tripping through the canopy or over fallen trees and running into low ground, stagnate water, and fauna: snakes and amoebae.

This is the friction that wakes up a table of players when on a journey through the woods.