You know when two random thoughts merge together in your head?
“Gelatinous cubes scour dungeon passages in silent, predictable patterns, leaving perfectly clean paths in their wake. They consume living tissue while leaving bones and other materials undissolved. A gelatinous cube is all but transparent, making it hard to spot until it attacks. A cube that is well fed can be easier to spot, since its victims' bones, coins, and other objects can be seen suspended inside the creature.”
--- Monster Manual (5th Edition) 2014
“An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary ("os" is "bone" in Latin[1]). The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than possible in coffins. The practice is sometimes known as grave recycling.”
Because that post a while back about the Paris catacombs had me thinking about ossuaries, and gelatinous cubes are just forever in the back of my brain, because they were the first D&D monster to ever make an impression on me, and I will love them forever.
But. Putting those two thoughts together. Gelatinous cubes consume leaving tissue and leave the bones behind. And ossuaries are used to save on storage space for the dead by stripping them to the bone so they take up less space. Among other reasons. So in a D&D world, I wonder if anyone, any town or settlement, ever … you know. Made use of the one in the cause of the other?
Imagine a town whose funerary rites involve giving the dead into the care of the oozes to strip them down so that their bones can be retrieved and safely interred.
(There’s elements of Sky Burials here as well, but the ethos is somewhat different. Although perhaps it is a symbiotic relationship with the oozes, and it is considered virtuous to give them sustenance when you have no more use for your body anymore).
I’m just thinking as well, in a D&D world, as well as storage issues, there’s also necromancy issues. There’s that other fun post going around about a necromancer trying to get the most mileage out of a single corpse by raising all the different parts of it separately, like they’re going for a recycling trophy. Ossuaries might be a thing because a) you’re reducing the number of useable parts of the body for necromancers to take advantage of, and b) potentially smaller storage spaces mean more defences.
One of the things I’ve always thought, worldbuilding-wise, is that in a world where necromancy is a thing, surely people would start setting up defences against it. Gentle Repose, as a spell, feels like it would see hella use. Also, you should be able to tie Gentle Repose to a location. Glyphs and wards holding that spell over an area. Things in this hallowed area do not rise.
Which. Ossuaries. Keeping more of the dead inside safer spaces.
That aside, though. Going back to the gelatinous cubes. Although, actually, another random thought that occurred in this sidetrack, does Gentle Repose interfere with digestion? All it says is that the target is protected from decay. Does dissolving gently in acid count as decay, or is it more active than that? Because if it does interfere with digestion, then the time the body is with the oozes is the time of most vulnerability, necromantically speaking.
I just. I kind of enjoy the idea of a settlement with a symbiotic relationship with the nearby ooze population. For reasons of disease prevention, decay prevention, storage space, protection from necromancy, protection from cannibalism, whatever you please. They’ve evolved a culture where funerary rites involve allowing the body to be stripped to bone by the oozes, after which the bones are retrieved and laid to hallowed rest inside the protected ossuaries.
The oozes are honoured and protected. Kept fed even outside of the funerary rites. Considered holy creatures that help protect the dead.
Do the oozes respond to this? Are these oozes more intelligent than others, capable of interacting intelligently with this process, or are they simply something like domesticated? Are they actually holy, as in the god of the dead actually watches over them and considers them its creatures?
Are they sometimes a danger to the settlement if they’re not intelligent or fully domesticated? Or, on the flipside, if they are intelligent, are they capable of malice? (I’m thinking about our frustrated necromancer over here, looking for someone to help them out, or people who want to murder someone and get cooperation to hurriedly get rid of the body).
Is there an opening here for plasmoid grave clerics? Heh.
I just really love oozes, you know? Gelatinous cubes. But I think part of the reason is that oozes, of all D&D creatures, really do feel ecological. They feel like a creature that has a genuine niche inside a magical ecological system. They’re part of a cycle of life and decay, the living hoovers of the world.
Also, the aesthetic for this settlement is just pretty cool now. Ossuaries, oozes, sanctified skeletons. Sky burials, the cycle of life and death.
Sometimes random thoughts just smash together inside your head, you know?
