Mono Mondays: Religious Neighbors
On Mondays, we like to support our resident artist, Mono! They're an up-and-coming scribbler of things dark and weird, and we consider ourselves lucky to have leeched onto— er, formed a mutually beneficial relationship with them. You can watch Mono hard at work creating various pieces on their YouTube channel. For those who don't feel like watching digital paint getting splashed around, we'll be showcasing a different piece of theirs right here every Monday.
This week, Mono has decided that the "angels" from last week must have inspired some kind of religion. And of course, that religion features slimes in some fashion.
According to Mono, the people near the forest have figured out that there is some tenuous connection between the angelic flowers of The Whispering Woods and the most magically powerful slimes. And there is: the flowers are made by a Slime King, as a sort of mildly benevolent security system. Unfortunately, while people have noticed the "mildly benevolent" part, they've assumed a much higher power is in play.
Broadly speaking, people fall into three categories. The first category, mostly on the eastern side of the forest, tends to interact with the smarter slimes directly and has simply assumed that the slime hierarchy keeps going up until you reach some sort of slime god. They've also noticed that some of those people who most faithfully worship said god actually receive some sort of blessing, and the blessed have organized themselves into a similar hierarchy, with Slime Bishops at the top. Per Mono, the blessings are real, but they are the result of much lower slimes taking a liking to certain people. Just as slimes and dragons like to trade magical benefits, slimes will gift their favorite people with magical benefits. People erroneously assumed this was part of the Slime God's plan and ran with it. The result is somewhat similar to people befriending cats, discovering said cats will hunt rodents, and deciding the cats were sent from some sort of cat god to protect them from disease.
The second category has a slightly different take. They've noted the similarity of the angels to the slimes, concluded that all magical creatures must have some sort of core, and from there made an intuitive leap that the entire planet is the core of some kind of celestial slime, one of primordial power. This religious movement tends to dominate in the western areas, where slimes themselves are fewer, and the more rural areas practice harmony with nature. The idea that we are all part of one large, amorphous, invisible creature, of unknowable shape, is somehow soothing.
The third category is made up of fanatics. People of the other two categories will occasionally decide that they should behave more like slimes, which is fine when they latch on to one of the more virtuous aspects of slimes. It becomes less fine when they instead decide they must consume as slimes consume, and these folks tend to be both violent and gluttonous.
Each of these religious beliefs has some element of truth to it, though none have the full picture. You're free to pick your favorite and run with it.