?Old favourites? time, is it?? Elminster
asked, draining his cocoa and reaching for
his pipe simultaneously with practiced ease.
?I know that ye folks that play at the sort o?
things that happen for  real  in the Realms
are overly fond of pitting yer characters
against witless giant amoebas! Just about
their style, eh??

I regarded him over the uplifted bottom
of my mug. ?Witless giant amoebas?? I
asked, with the proper amount of deference
in my tone.
?Ochre jellies, ye dolt!? Elminster shot
back, expelling puffs of green smoke like a
testy dragon. ?Ye just asked about ?em ?
don?t ye know anything to start with??

?They?re blobs, they ooze along looking
for food ? like adventurers ? and they?re
always hungry,? I offered. ?I hoped you?d
fill in the rest.?

? ?Course ye did! ?Course ye did!?
Elminster replied, drawing on his pipe.
?And,? he sighed (Ever see someone sigh
while drawing on a pipe? Spectacular!), ?I
suppose ? as usual ? ye?re right. Pay
attention, then ? and no questions,
mind, till the tale?s done.?

I did as I was told, and Elminster
related the tale of ?How Grymmar Held
the Pass?:

?Now, in the days when the Sea of Fallen
Stars was new to men, and the lands still
wild and unsettled, bands of lawless men
rose about scavenging and slaying and
pillaging. Kings were hard put to it to pay
and train fighting-men to guard themselves
to say nothing of their kingdoms. And whe
a king rode to war, it was likely to be with
another king, over some insult or spurned
daughter or an uncertain line on a map.
Kings did not spend time or men chasing
after a few brigands who would flee and
leave traps behind, or set an ambush, and
in the end melt away before searchers as
though they had never been ? until the
searchers turned their backs, of course.

?The King of Cormyr was one of these
monarchs, and a man with a problem. After
spending a hot summer fighting all across
his realm, from the Wyvernwater to
Eveningstar, he had few men indeed left to
call the Royal Host of Cormyr ? some
sixty-five stouthearts, to be exact. Then his
weary ears heard news of an incursion from
the east into Arabel, a merchant city too
precious to give up without a fight.

?This was bad enough in itself, but com-
pounding his plight were local cries rising in
Eveningstar about bandits on the roads
and a huge brigand army somewhere in the
mountains to the west. Nowadays, with the
great fortress of High Horn looming over
the west pass, such news would be of little
concern. But in these early days of Cor-
myr?s sovereignty, no such fortress existed
to impede the progress of enemies from the
west. Clearly, the king?s men could not be
in both places at once, and dividing the
force could mean failure for both halves.
But the king dared not disregard either
threat. He called his men together to give
them the facts of the matter and told them
to be ready to travel the following day.

?Later that evening the king called for
Grymmar, the oldest of his stalwarts, and
asked for the grizzled lieutenant?s counsel
on how to divide soldiery and supplies so as
to meet each threat. The king was surprised
to hear that Grymmar had formulated a
plan to deal with the brigands ? a plan for
which no soldiers would be needed, save
Grymmar himself and a couple of strong
men. The monarch gave his approval to the
plan and his blessing to Grymmar, supply-
ing him with documents that would enable
him to acquire the goods and services he
would need, and on the morrow the king
led his army eastward.

?Grymmar spent part of this first day
gathering supplies. With the king?s author-
ity to lend weight to his requests, he pro-
cured an unused stone coffin, placed within
it three grunting and squealing pigs, and
with the aid of his strong assistants loaded it
into a cart along with a barrel of pitch and
several torches. Then Grymmar and his
curious entourage set out ? not directly for
the pass, but on a northerly route to a place
not far from Eveningstar.

?Only days earlier, some of the king?s
men had cleaned out this place, an old
dwarf-delve that had served as a hiding
place for a group of bandits. A dozen ruffi-
ans there were in all, no trouble ? but
Grymmar and the others with him had all
taken a fright when, as they leaned on their
swords afterward in a deep and freshly
bloodied chamber, something moving and
shapeless and alive, ochre in color and
horribly hungry in motion, had oozed in
under the door.

? ?A flesh-eater! ? one of the warriors had
warned, and they all had backed away
hastily as the jellylike thing advanced. It
flowed over stone and corpse alike, and left
only bones and metal in its wake. The
soldiers circled toward the exit, rushed
through the doorway, slammed the portal,
and sealed the space between door and floor
with loose dirt.

?Now Grymmar made a return visit to
the bandit hold, and with the help of his
companions transported the contents of the
cart down into the chamber where the flesh-
eater was last seen. The coffin was set out,
its lid awry, and the men sat nearby inside a
circle of pitch they had smeared on the
floor. Fairly soon the flesh-eater appeared,
attracted by their presence, flowing eerily
along a wall. Grymmar set the ring of pitch
aflame, and the jelly shrank away from the
men and went for the pigs in the coffin.
When the thing was entirely inside the
coffin, the men leapt forward, put the lid
back in place, and sealed the container with
more of the pitch. Then they carried the
coffin back to the cart. Grymmar and one of
his helpers headed directly for High Horn
Pass, and the other man veered toward the
druids? grove in the forest to the south and
east of the pass.

?By the time Grymmar reached the pass
at sunset of the following day, he could see
the bandits in the distance, approaching
from the other direction. He and his cohort
unloaded the coffin, storing it under a ledge
where it would not be detected in the dark-
ness, and watched from an elevated hiding
place as the brigands made camp in the pass
itself ? an expanse of land broad and flat
enough to house all of their tents at once,
although they had to keep rather close
quarters.

?Then the druids arrived in the dark of
night, responding to the summons of their
king as conveyed by Grymmar?s helper, and
it was time to put the last stage of the plan
into action. Grymmar crept back down to
the coffin, scraped away the pitch, and
loosened the lid. At the same time, the
druids began their enchantments. Massive,
threatening clouds formed in the sky above
the pass, and before too long the air was
rent with driving rain, booming thunder,
and crackling bolts of lightning. The ban-
dits were protected from the elements inside
their tents, and they slept unafraid, but
tent-cloth could not keep them safe from the
real danger.

?To this day, some folk still tell of how the
druids saved Eveningstar by bringing down
the awesome storm that decimated the
brigand army and forced the survivors to
turn back. But others know better, for they
have heard the real tale. The storm abated
after a time, and at first light the next
morning when Grymmar and the druids
looked down upon the bandits? campsite,
they saw scores of flesh-eaters ? born of the
lightning strikes ? and dozens of corpses,
many of them already nothing more than
skeletons. The few bandits fortunate enough
to escape death from the jellies now could
see the carnage that had been wrought
during the night, and they ran for their lives
back the way they had come. . . .

?. . . And that was how Grymmar held
the pass.?
 
 

At this point Elminster sat back and re-
ignited his pipe, satisfied with the way he
had told the story. I thanked him ? and
indeed it was a good tale ? and then set
about quizzing him as to the practical (to
adventurers) details of the ochre jelly.
Elminster related the following information,
much of it drawn from the  Bestiary  of
Hlammech the Naturalist:

An ochre jelly is amorphous in form,
having an outer elastic ?skin? or bag of
tough, translucent cells, ochre in color.
Inside the skin is a large mass of fluid ? the
main bulk of the creature. This fluid is
thick, soupy stuff ? stabbing an ochre jelly
won?t cause the stuff to drain away quickly,
like the way a wineskin loses its contents if
punctured; fluid will ooze from the wound
until excess skin cells (produced from the
cellulose the creature devours, and carried
around in little globules inside the fluid)
arrive to ?patch the leak.? In this fashion,
an ochre jelly can heal any wound it suffers
from an edged weapon within 5-12 rounds
(d8 + 4). A wound from a blunt weapon is
more traumatic, rupturing a greater num-
ber of skin cells and taking 11-20 (d10 + 10)
turns to close. In either case, the hit points
lost when the wound was suffered are re-
gained when it is healed.

Because of its construction, an ochre jelly
can squeeze through any crack large enough
to permit a thin ?wafer? of skin cells (both
sides) and internal fluids to pass ? about
an inch in width is required for an average-
sized jelly. The creature?s movement rate is
only 1? when it compresses itself to travel
through an opening smaller than the jelly?s
normal thickness. When at rest and under
normal conditions, an average-sized ochre
jelly is 3 to 6 inches thick and occupies a
surface area equivalent to a 6? -diameter
circle; however, the term ?at rest? is theo-
retical in this case, because an ochre jelly
never stops moving except to devour prey.
When it moves, it does so by extending one
or more pseudopods of skin and fluid, be-
coming elongated in the direction of move-
ment, and setting up a rippling motion that
enables it to ?slosh? forward by means of
inertia.

Ochre jellies can adhere readily to walls,
ceilings, glass, and so forth ? they do not
seem affected by water, wine, oil, grease,
and the like, and have never been observed
to slip ? but their grip on surfaces is not
strong enough to enable them to pull open
chests, armor, closed doors, etc., and they
can be readily scraped or shoved off of a
surface by a creature of at least average
strength.

The creatures are non-intelligent and
have no visual organs as we know them.
They can detect heat, vibrations, and the
scents of organic substances, and will move
in the direction from where these stimuli
come (in the order given; ochre jellies ap-
parently ?prefer? live humans or animals as
prey, but can ?smell? wood or plant
growth, or corpses, if no live creatures are
in the vicinity). They can sense the heat of a
torch flame at a range of 500 feet, and the
body heat of a living animal from 100 feet
away; their sensitivity to vibrations (such as
those caused by footsteps) or scents has a
range of at least 500 feet, and often much
farther depending on the severity of the
vibration or the intensity of the odor; for
instance, an ochre jelly can detect a troglo-
dyte, by its scent, from several hundred
yards away.

Ochre jellies will move mindlessly toward
any stimulus, but will not voluntarily come
into direct contact with any stimulus (such
as a flame) that can damage them. In the
absence of any detectable stimulus, an ochre
jelly will continue to flow in the direction it
is heading until forced to turn or double
back on its path because of an obstacle;
Grymmar and his companions were bound
to eventually encounter the ochre jelly in
the closed-off chamber, because the creature
had nowhere else to go.

When an ochre jelly comes into contact
with any consumable (i.e., living or once-
living) substance, a number of one-way
valves in the creature?s skin surface will
open, and globules of the corrosive digestive
fluid inside will be expelled onto the prey.
This fluid seems to be a sort of acid-based
enzyme which first eats away and then
breaks down (by chemical reaction) the flesh
or cellulose. The ochre jelly then reabsorbs
the digestive fluid at the same time that it
ingests the nutrients, through a set of simi-
lar one-way valves that work in the opposite
direction. These valves are very selective,
only letting in the fluids that the ochre jelly
?intends? to absorb; the creatures have
been encountered in coastal salt waters, and
in order to subsist in such an environment,
they must be able to prevent the taking in
the water with which they are surrounded.

As so often happens with the unique body
fluids of certain mysterious creatures, the
acid-enzyme secreted by an ochre jelly
becomes inert if the creature is killed or the
fluid is somehow prevented from being
reabsorbed by the body. This neutralization
of the fluid takes place immediately upon
the death of an ochre jelly, or if the creature
is forced to abandon partially consumed
prey (which is why a victim?s flesh does not
continue to ?dissolve? if the jelly is killed or
pushed off). Similarly, the skin of an ochre
jelly loses its distinctive properties after the
creature is killed and cannot be salvaged for
any useful purpose.

An ochre jelly can and will instinctively
flow over or around its prey, enveloping it
so as to retain contact if the target moves or
struggles. If the creature is attached to a
wall or a ceiling, it can send out pseudopods
to contact something edible that is below or
beside it. Once having made contact in this
fashion, the jelly can detach itself from the
wall or ceiling and flow onto the victim.

An ochre jelly can be damaged by cold-
or fire-based attacks. Severe cold (freezing
temperature or lower) of a lasting nature
will further impair the creature, slowing its
movement rate to 2? and adding 2-5 rounds
to the time required for it to heal a wound,
since its internal fluids cannot flow as freely
to reach the affected area. (Note that a  cone
of cold  spell, to name one example, is not
cold ?of a lasting nature,? since the spell?s
duration is instantaneous.) Any single fire-
based attack that does damage equal to at
least one-quarter of the creature's maxi-
mum hit points will cause a wound that
takes 16-25 (d10 + 15) rounds to heal, and
for 4-7 rounds following the attack the ochre
jelly will lose 3 hit points per round as fluid
continues to leak from the wound. Fire
damage of less severity will take 11-20
rounds to heal, the same as for a blow with
a blunt weapon.

The sudden application of intense electri-
cal energy (such as a lightning bolt or magi-
cal or natural origin) does not damage an
ochre jelly; instead, this serves to increase
the creature?s metabolism and cause it to
divide immediately (within the round fol-
lowing the electrical contact) into a number
of smaller jellies, each identical to the origi-
nal creature in all respects except for size
and damage; they are capable of doing 2-6
(d4 + d2) points of damage per attack. The
number of ?offspring? created is usually
(75%) 2-4, but occasionally as many as 5-8
are produced. These smaller jellies will
grow into normal-sized creatures (doing the
usual 3-12 points of damage) within 1-3
months after the split occurred.

In rare instances, an ochre jelly will split
?voluntarily? into two equal-sized creatures
(each doing normal damage), but only
when the original creature is of huge size.
Ochre jellies grow slightly every time they
feed, but do not shrink when they go with-
out food ? and they can survive for several
weeks on little or no nourishment. No ex-
ample is known of an ochre jelly that died of
?old age?; perhaps they do not age (as we
understand the term), or perhaps they
decompose quickly when they die in this
manner, thus leaving no evidence of their
passing.

An ochre jelly cannot be poisoned or
intoxicated or otherwise adversely affected
by attacks with  purely  fluids (including acid
but not including flaming oil). It will absorb
all such fluids, ?walling? them into globules
surrounded by excess skin cells, suspending
them within its internal body fluid, and
holding them harmlessly until it is not feed-
ing on prey or involved in combat, where-
upon it will expel them through the same
openings that release its digestive fluid. A
physical attack upon a jelly that ruptures a
globule of this stored fluid may cause its
contents to squirt out at the attacker.
 

Astute students of biology will note that
ochre jellies are not precisely ?amoebas? as
we know them ? but when I mentioned
this to Elminster, he merely fixed me with a
cold eye and grunted, ?Hah! And what do
your scientists in this world know of  any-
thing??  And that is all I learned from him
about the ochre jelly.