Slime
Slimes are mostly-harmless critters that spend most of their time bouncing around the world, picking up and breaking down debris. They are one of the world’s natural cleaners as they are able to digest almost any material. Slime is also a very useful resource used by healers and potion-makers.
Despite their harmless nature, most Sentients have a natural phobia of them. It is unknown why people are so instinctively disturbed by the creatures, but this phobia has lead to many misconceptions about the nature of slimes. They are considered pests by many, even though they are cause no environmental damage, and aggressive over-hunting has lead to the extinction of many species of slime.
The easiest known way to kill a slime is to boil them. Otherwise, blending them will work with most subspecies (with a few exceptions, such as the venomous salt-water blue).
There are a little over 4,000 currently known species of slimes, though there used to be closer to 5,000 known species. The most common species of slimes are large, gelatinous blobs with no eyes or organs; though there are over 100 species of slimes with visible internal organs, 56 species with visible eyes, and 43 species with jellyfish-like stingers.
There are less than 200 poisonous species of slime; all of which are found near contaminated water sources. Many Sentients believe it is the slimes poisoning the water but it actually the water that causes the slimes to become toxic and not the other way around. In fact, it has been recently discovered that slimes are able to purify poisoned water by absorbing and digesting the toxins.
Slimes need moist environments to survive and if they dry they will shrivel and, if not disturbed during the process, they may petrify. Petrified slimes are able to be revived when soaked in clean water. This process can take up to a week with small slimes, and over a month with larger ones.
Slimes reproduce asexually. The larger a slime grows, the heavier they become and the more they struggle to leap around without leaving pieces of themselves behind. If these pieces are big enough they will come to life after a few days. Leaving bits of themselves behind causes no harm to the creature; it seems that slimes are healthiest when under a certain weight, and so it is perfectly acceptable to “harvest” slimes by cutting pieces off their bodies. Though, some alchemists have made the mistake of not blending collected slime and have had nasty shocks when their stocks come to life and leap away.
Slimes are also buoyant; they do not sink and instead float on the surface of water. It is relatively common to find slimes calmly floating around in lakes, ponds, or even in the middle of the ocean.