What, exactly, is The Blob now?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

From a lore perspective, the slimes (formerly blobs) are now just another invader and not directly connected to The Blob. Slimes can still spawn from certain zombies, though, and prior discussions have referenced zeds being able to punch physics in the nuts due to micro infusions of Blob energy. So…

  1. What, exactly, is The Blob? Even if the character never knows, it’s good for the player to have an understanding. Is the Blob ‘just’ particles of XOE37? Is it unrelated, and just uses it as a tool like everything else (destabilizing sentients via mutation and Blob Psychosis)?
  2. Persuant to 1, what exactly are the Exodii and the other faction running from in terms of Blob Contamination? Again, XOE37? Zombies? Something else undefined?
  3. Finally, where do Zombies and Ferals fit into this? Are they the Blob’s minions? Are they just tools, or incidentals? And if Zeds are still motivated via slimes, where do they fit in? Servitor race? The ‘end state’ for things infected with XOE37? Both? That actually would make sense as to why anyone who knows what it is would run or try to fight it, if that’s what you get to look forward to is a black, gooey ecosystem.
2 Likes
2

  1. The blob is simply the name given to a vast cosmic “something” that inhabits multiple dimensions. It doesn’t find earth to be to hospitable to many of its other forms but the forms that it does take is a sort of spore form that infects the water table and can survive and multiply in normal earth life.

  2. Many of the other factions you see are immune or resistant to the blob for one reason or another. Triffids and mi-go have technology that is biological in nature so they can fine turn themselves against the blob. Mycus is probably innately immune do to their fungal nature. and the Exodii don’t have enough lore jet to explain. These other factions also aren’t running form the blob they just happen to be evidential arrivals that found earth hospitable.

  3. The blob has infected every single creature on earth which it can use as a tool for its own gain but the extent of what it can do is limited by the specific biology and level of control that the blob can establish over a creature. The blob is able to mutate certain species of invertebrates, fish and reptiles to far larger sizes than they normally would be but it is unable to turn them into zombies after they die (exception being sharks). The blob is also able to mutate all earth living creatures but this is in a far more limited capacity than zombies since the mutations can’t be fatal or to detrimental to the animal in question. The blob is able to turn mammals above a certain size (anything larger than a cat) into a zombie upon death provided that the corpse is relatively intact (having the head missing, the skin or several internal organs missing or there simply being to much overall damage to the corpse) for the blob to be able to resurrect it. The way it resurrects a corpse is by restarting the metabolic processes and manipulating the body into repairing itself while sending energy in from “elsewhere” to keep the body running and taking over some of the tasks of the body and manipulating it to keep it functioning despite fatal damage and organ failure. Since blob control is much greater in zombies and they have much more leeway in what mutations would be considered “fatal” (zombies don’t need to acquire food/digest anything, the blob can presumably partially or completely take over functions of organs and the blob can heal any damage that is done to the body) this means that the zombie can and does mutate to a far greater degree and mutate in a more targeted way since the blob is in active control and doesn’t have to hold back as much.

1 Like
3

OK, that clarifies nicely. It’s really more like a distributed AI than anything. So the slimes are part of the overall plan it has, whatever that is?

4

I figure that the blob don’t really have a plan beyond self-production, fitting in with their grey goo philosophy.

Mi-go basically seem to be looters/slavers, the mycus is the mycus and must grow, and the triffids are on vacation and want their vacation plots to be prime real-estate for them.

The slime, from my understanding, more or less ended up here due to transportation mishaps, and then the Skybreak basically dumped a large amount of them at once.

Now there are some other creatures. Hounds of Tindalos appear to be wild animals drawn by people who teleport, fitting with their lore. Shoggoth are unusual in that they only appear, thus far, in labs, but tend to have a large cohort of slimes of different sizes.

5
6

Not really no, player understanding of the setting is a sliding scale with many valid alternatives. Any replies you get in this thread are not part of the normal corpus of player knowledge.

You’re trying to dig into the design document, which is here: https://cataclysmdda.org/design-doc

7

OK, but the Doc doesn’t address the question that I have remaining. If the Design Doc is canon here, it specifies that XOE37 is responsible for zombie creation. Makes sense to me. Slimes are not referenced in the Design Doc, and commentary on the Discord and Discourse site have indicated that they are not ‘the Blob’, but are an unrelated species that happens to be here. OK, can accept that. However, zombie hollows still have the Blob Split death function (previously others had this as well, looks like it’s just the Hollows now as of the information under CDDA on GitHub). Is this XOE37 co-opting the slimes like it does other things? Or are slimes completely unrelated, and the Hollows’ death function was an oversight?

8

The decision to split slimes and blob into different factions was made a few months ago. before there was some ambiguity whether slims where blob or not. now we still have some leftovers from that time such as zombie hollows generating blobs upon death and slime globs being an component in mutagens recipe.

9

Ah, OK. That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

10

Wait, so are slimes still related to zombies then, or are they entirely seperate?

11

They are now entirely seperate.

12

i do have a personal question with amoebic mold which doesn’t seem to belong to any faction but are friendly with the blob?
Molds seems independent just like the gracken because they would run away from “scary” player.

13

Not sure if I entirely gel with the change, since I liked the idea of sentient alien parasitic slime that can mcguvyer its hosts.