Gelatinous cube

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A gelatinous cube is a fictional monster originally created for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. It is a cube of mindless, gelatinous matter that slides from one place to another, absorbing everything in its path. Because of its obviously fantastic, non-realistic nature, the gelatinous cube is one of the most well-known monsters created especially for role-playing games. Although it is based upon famous fictional monsters (especially the movie The Blob), it exists primarily as a role-playing game monster, and not a monster taken from outside sources (such as many mythological monsters including the minotaur and dryad) and adapted to a role-playing setting.

Despite its popularity (or perhaps because of it), the gelatinous cube is also widely known as one of the sillier role-playing monsters. It is something of a commentary on the ubiquity of treasure-laden dungeons in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, as the cube is a creature specifically adapted to a dungeon ecosystem. 10 feet to the side, it travels through standard 10-foot by 10-foot dungeon corridors, cleaning up debris and redistributing treasure by excreting indigestible metal items.

Because of the cube's transparency, it may be mistaken for another monster or even not seen at all until it is very close.

Image:Mon33.gif In Castle of the Winds, a monster of this type was called a Gelatinous Glob. It was never described as being cube shaped, but its icon (right) had a distinct, cubic outline.

In the Star Trek original series episode 'The Devil in the Dark', there was a similar, blob-like creature called a Horta which melted paths through solid rock.

The film Wayne's World mentions a similar creature, a video game character known as Xantar, who "eats warriors in a medieval village", particularly succeptible to the fighting prowess of the village chieftan.

Also, in the virtual pet game Psypets, the gelatinous Cube is one of the many Monsters your pet can defeat.

References

Dragon #124 "Ecology of the Gelatinous Cube"