I love this card. But where the hell did they come from?

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Gelatinous Cube

Splinter - Draykh-Nahka, Anumün, Khymeria and spreading...

Class - Stoic Tank

Size - Although they come in many different sizes, these strange gelatinous lifeforms always take a cube shape. They can be small enough to fit into a handbag (ruining the handbag for certain), a fact which has allowed the cubes to be transported easily to new Splinters at the hands of foolish smugglers. Since it grows as it absorbs organic matter, a Gelatinous Cube can grow to be the size of a barn in the right conditions (a bloody battlefield, for example). The growth happens right before your eyes, and the only way to reduce the size of the Jelly is by lopping chunks off of it. Once it loses its cube form, the Jelly sheds (in messy, sticky fashion) an appropriate amount of itself to find its next polished cube form. Don’t get any on you.

Lifespan - It can be chopped to pieces, but it will just keep coming at you in smaller and smaller cubes. It can be defeated in battle or destroyed temporarily, but whether or not it can be killed is up for debate among Gloridax scholars. The most popular school of thought is that the Gelatinous Cubes have a core, a master brain somewhere that controls them all. If the Gloridax can locate and destroy the master brain, it is hoped that the Jelly will be done for good.

Weapon - For all its power and the chaos it has spread, the Jelly does not actually attack its victims. Instead it slowly closes in, allowing the target to attack its faces repeatedly. These attacks rarely have any effect on the integrity of the Cube. When a warrior slips into the Jelly, or when a soldier falls on the battlefield, the Jelly begins the quick and incredible process of absorbing the matter. The dead are simply drawn into the Jelly, almost like a magnet, where they are… converted into energy in mere moments. Since the translucence of the Jelly makes it perfect as a viewing window, the whole process is quite ghastly from an onlooker’s perspective. The living take a bit longer to be converted to energy once inside the Cube. A few victims have been pulled from the Jelly before it could eat them. All of them fought with everything they had to get back into the Cube. They said it was “where they needed to be.”

Habitat - Gelatinous Cubes have been spotted now in three Splinters, and their main goal seems to be spreading throughout the world. They do not react to hot or cold; they simply slide along the ground at a slow and steady pace. It is not believed that the Gelatinous Cubes can swim.

Diet - A Gelatinous Cube absorbs whatever and whenever it can, but it’s difficult to say whether or not that is how it eats. Cubes have been proven to have wandered across vast fields and deserts, sometimes for weeks on end with nothing to absorb, and they just keep going. This is why it is believed that there is a master power source for the Jelly. When they don’t eat, they simply don’t grow. When a Cube eats something that it can’t digest, it just sorts it out and leaves the object behind as it slides along.

Allies - Summoners have discovered that a single Gelatinous Cube constitutes a single monster in tournament battle, and that summoning one is fairly simple. Now each Splinter has their own version of the Jelly that, when properly controlled, can prove useful at Mount Mox. The Cubes themselves are allied only with each other; they clearly have some kind of extra-sensory connection with which they can communicate complex thoughts and strategies.

Enemies - In an open field in the shadow of Anumün’s Seed Mountains, one day a large, traveling Gelatinous Cube crossed the path of a huge blob of the bizarre Creeping Ooze that had been spreading through the Splinters. Although neither creature has any discernible intelligence, they instantly despised one another. The instinctive hatred between the Jelly and the Ooze was so strong and sudden that they each took off in opposite directions. So far, the two monstrous substances are merely repelled by one another, but there is no telling when their conflict will become messy.

Work - If the Gelatinous Cubes are performing a job, the job is still a secret to everyone in the Splinterlands. At this point, their dual purpose seems to be Expand and Absorb.

Pastimes - It is not widely known, but Gelatinous Cubes can change into a multitude of different colors, usually to camouflage themselves. Sometimes they can be sneaked up on and seen changing into different colors for their own amusement, but they have to be absolutely certain they are alone. Cubes have even been spotted in groups, combining light with rhythm in what have been described as light symphonies.

History - Very few people in the Splinterlands know the truth about the why the Cubes fell. Most in Draykh-Nahka remember the hailstorm. They had been instructed to stay indoors throughout the hailstorm, for the people of the Dragon Splinter are unfamiliar with hail. They have heard stories of the shard storms of Azmare, with blades and shafts of ice that can slice and chop a person into meat. But with a hailstorm in the Oasis, the residents of Centrum had no idea what to expect.

The unknown truth of the night of the hailstorm is that it was called down by a secret ritual. The ceremony was a grotesque rite of the moons, orchestrated by the vile Lunta Kalna, a cult of darkness and a pox on glory. The ritual, of which I will spare you the abhorrent details, called forth the powers of rain, wind and hail. The third came in force, with the power to destroy shingles and birdhouses, but also brought strong new magic from a new realm.

The Cubes started small, but they could absorb things many times larger than themselves, so they quickly grew to be larger than the critters that scurry and the beasts that graze. Once people realized what the Jelly could do, they began attacking it, which only caused the number of Cubes in the land to multiply. What are the Gelatinous Cubes made of? Where do they come from? We may never know.

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@ChrisRoberts and @CarrieAllen

https://www.splinterlore.com/