ROPER

ROPER

"Ropers inhabit subterranean caverns. They prey upon all forms of creatures, but humans are their favorite form of food. These monsters can stand upright in order to resemble a pillar or stalagmite or flatten themselves to full length upon the floor so as to look like nothing more than a hump. The roper has six strands of strong, sticky rope-like excretion which it can shoot from 2'-5'."

"This yellowish gray monster appears to be a mass of foul, festering corruption. The roper is cigar-shaped, about 9' long, with a diameter of some 3'."

Gary Gygax, Monster Manual I

We had two really obscure creatures to start off with so I thought I'd do a really solid classic for the third. The roper goes wayyyyyy back to the Strategic Review newsletter Vol.1 #2, 1975. It's stats are given and there's a generic "monsters" illustration (uncredited) but none of the roper specifically. 

We get the first official illustration of a roper in the Blackmoor supplement the same year. Tracy Lesch provides the illustration along with his design for a mindflayer! But the most commonly thought of illustration of a roper from early D&D is from the Monster Manual I by David Sutherland III. 

Speaking of Monster Manual I, a cover detail (also by David Sutherland III) shows a roper clinging to the ceiling of a cave like a stalactite with two eyes stacked vertically. This design characteristic was dropped but I wonder if it's the inspiration for the otyugh's stacked eyes?  Of course, like many of these creatures, my first encounter with the roper was through the TSR toy line. The roper was one of my least favorites, it was bendy and looked more like a bug than a festering pile of corruption. The box illustration by Steve Bisette is cool though. 

At it's heart, the roper is a mimic. While it can make itself look like a lot of things, it is almost always depicted in D&D art like a camouflaged stalactite or stalactite. 

As a bonus here's a very suggestive illustration from Dragon Magazine #232 by Lorelle Ahlstrom. It shows a female adventurer being menaced by three ropers that look....um....very......well, they are about to get chopped so maybe it's not as misogynistic as it looks?

Tomorrow we get back into the obscure with a truly strange one eyed wonder.