Species Profile: Slube

Physical Characteristics

Slubes are gastropods. Like how humans can see our relatives in monkeys and gorillas, slubes are relatives of slugs. Slubes are bigger and more athletic than slugs though, rather like how humans are with gorillas, except the opposite of that. Then again, it’s no contest with slugs, but gorillas? Oh geeze.

Slubes are bright yellow with long, thin, tube-shaped bodies, an average height of 1.8 meters but with the tail the average length is 2.1 meters. They have oval heads with two big eyes sitting on top, and round, toothless snouts protrude outward. Their arms are rather noodly, and they have no visible waists. At the bottom end of the torso a slube’s body widens into a round tail that spreads out on the ground for support. The tail is also the method of locomotion, and some use it for defense.

Now let’s go into the inward characteristics. It may start getting gross, oh boy!! As mentioned, slubes have no teeth, but their throats have a layer of slime that slides most things ingested easily. Yes, that’s right, slubes don’t have to chew their food. And they have slimy throats. Yay! They have no bones, but instead a more cartilage-like substance throughout their body called kotli makes them flexible and squishy.

So far we’ve used the terms slimy and squishy* and established slubes don’t chew their food. WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT SEXUAL CHARACTERISTICS!! Wow nobody?? I can wait ten years. This is the internet. In a decade someone will read this and then send me an email asking for intricate details.

Okay but seriously, I’ll just briefly go over the egg cycle or something. Slube eggs actually remain in the female’s tail for most of the cycle; this would be equivalent to human fetuses being in the legs/feet, so not surprisingly, during this time the slube has difficulty moving. In the final stage, the egg usually pops out and hatches within a few hours.

Slubes reach maturity around age 20 and have an average lifespan of about 80 years, with deterioration of the body beginning around 70.

History and Culture

As is mentioned in Slubes, slubes come from an island called Flaeneath that was ravaged in a war thousands of years ago. They left the island and arrived on Hackney, where they formed a settlement, Nottle, which remained small by many slubes going to live in nearby, more diverse settlements.

Regarding the planet Mintop as a whole, the slube is almost completely ignored. Outside of Hackney and the nearby Interp, slubes are not even a footnote in the history and culture of the planet. Even on Interp they are few and far between, and there they have a reputation for being simple and primitive, though it’s a bias with little grounded in reality.

*Oh, yeah, and slubes aren’t slimy on the outside like slugs. They’re really quite smooth! Look, I’m just trying to say that they’re not gross on the outside. They’re gross on the inside, sure, but so is every living creature. EVERY. LIVING. CREATURE.