Slime Mold Lore

That's not a slime mold, my dear. That's a slime old.

Logging onto the Nethack server this afternoon, I was greeted with the new moon warning: Be careful. New moon tonight. Although the new moon doesn't do much of anything, besides increasing one's vulnerability to cockatrice attacks, it made me feel unlucky. Put me right off my game, that did. On level five, I got teleportitis from a nymph. In Minetown, I murdered a watchman while blind, and then I got my little dog, too. Then, without thinking, I committed an act of cannibalism, angered my God, and stole eight hundred zorkmids' worth of merchandise out of Asidonhopo's General Store. On level ten, a dog bit me (a sign of impending disaster, if ever there was one!)--and on level eleven, I got mobbed by a huge platoon of woodland elves. Game over, and I hadn't found a single slime mold.

Slime mold (n), according to Merriam-Webster: any of a group (Myxomycetes or Mycetozoa) of organisms usually held to be lower fungi but sometimes considered protozoans that exist vegetatively as mobile plasmodia and reproduce by spores.

Slime mold (n), Rat's Nest definition: An 'orrible veggey-fungey mass you get on your lawn, which looks a lot like dog vomit.

Slime mold (n), according to Roguelike game players: Incomprehensible secondary food-source, sometimes accorded a certain degree of affection, and even reverence. My, that was a yummy slime mold!

It was an extra challenge, in the days when that sort of thing was popular, to try and get through a game of Rogue without eating a single slime mold. You'd pick them up, but then you'd just save 'em in your pack (for luck, sort of thing), except then you'd be starving to death, and you'd have to eat one. And then you'd fall through a trapdoor to level 12, and a troll would have you for lunch. This, of course, would be a direct result of your having dined on the slime mold.

Some years later, the Rogue variants started coming out. Most of them still had slime molds in, and, because food wasn't so scarce, you had more chance of hanging onto them. A small cult following sprang up around the mold, even gaining a certain amount of mainstream (well, sort of) recognition by way of the fruitlist.

The fruitlist? Why, Fruit of the Day, of course. I, having heard about the slime mold reference, was a subscriber. Every day, they'd e-mail you a brief description of a fruit. Every day, that is, except that one glorious morning when it would be a slime mold. Someone on the fruitlist had been playing MAG (Mike's Adventure Game), an early Rogue variant, now largely forgotten. Maybe Mike himself was even a fruitlister--I can't remember.

At any rate, there it was, once every three hundred days or so. Slime mold: this is not a real fruit! I switched from Rogue, which I'd never managed to win, over to MAG. Saving my slime molds assiduously, I pulled off a victory. I left the Dungeons of Doom with a sackful of gems, the Amulet of Yendor, and more than thirty slime molds. I was jubilant, and immediately set forth to conquer the rest of the Roguelikes, especially those that had hung onto the slime mold tradition. In most of these games, you can name the fruit anything you want, by way of the configuration file, but I always leave it on the default setting. In certain versions of Angband, you can get special abilities by eating slime molds. ADOM, sadly, is slime mold free, although there are various moldmonsters which can be dispatched (and, if you feel so inclined, eaten).

The first time I won a game of Nethack, I did it with my bags of holding stuffed with more than a hundred slime molds. I've rarely managed to pull off an ADOM win without cheating (by making extra copies of my save files), and I attribute this directly to the lack of slime mold goodness. I've not played enough Angband to get around to winning, but the presence of slime molds fills me with confidence. One day, when I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time, I'll get in there and kick me some Angband arse.

I always think of the slime molds as alive, me. I envision them poking tiny fungoid heads out of my pack, cheering me on in little chirpy voices as I slash my way through the depths:

"Go, Socar! Show that banshee how it's done!"

"Watch out for the soldier ants!"

"Eek, blood!"

"Nooooooo, stop! Don't eat that!"

"Oops!"

"Pipipipipipipriiiiiiiiiiiiii!"

"Chirrrrrrrrrrrrzooooooom!"

"Veeveeveevee!"

"Slash 'em good!"

When I pull off a particularly glorious victory, the slime mold chorus cheers. When I'm vanquished ignominiously by a sewer rat, they jump all over my corpse, peeping disconsolately. In the Dungeons of Doom, baby, your slime mold is your best friend. Rings of slow digestion are tempered in the juice of a thousand slime molds, you know.

I think that's what I'll do next: try and finish a game of Angband with a thousand slime molds (or more). I'm picking Angband because it's supposed to be one of the longer Roguelike games. More chances for harvesting, see.

At any rate, I did write about slime molds, just like I said I was going to. Now that I look back on what I've written, I feel a right wally. Why did I think anyone would care about this stuff? Man, why'd I think I would even care? Christ, it's a one-rat dork convention, in here!

Tomorrow, bags of holding. (Just kidding.)