D&D 5E What, exactly, does a Mimic look like in its natural state?

[Elderbrain]

Has TSR, WOTC, or anybody else ever produced a picture of what the Mimic looks like when it is not imitating a treasure chest (or whatever)? It's described as "amorphous", but that doesn't help picture it much. Pictures of it as a chest usually give it teeth and a tongue, presumably to show it in mid-transformation from a chest to its natural form. So I assume it's got a mouth in its natural state? What else - legs? Or is it more of a ooze like critter?

 

[Paraxis]

I always thought of it as a lump of sculpture clay with a mouth, that doesn't feel comfortable in it's natural state so always mimics things if it can.

Some resources for more information.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)

Piazo did a write up on them in a book called Dungeon Denizens Revisited for Pathfinder.
Here is what they say.
In its natural form, the mimic combines the qualities of the anglerfish, the rock octopus, and the scorpion: translucent, chitinous plates shift freely around the hulking frame of a distended mass of pale tentacles and eyes, all supported by the strength of a clear, trunk-like pseudopod. Thick gelatin holds the mass together, acting as blood, digestive system, and skin all at once.


There is also an article in an old Dragon Magazine issue #75, Ecology of the Mimic by Ed Greenwood.
Here is a small excerpt
Mimic is naturally gray in hue, with a smooth, very hard outer skin that gives it the stone-like appearance. The pigmented liquid, brownish in color (often revealed to adventurers when a mimic is wounded in battle), is held within the body in large, muscular organs that serve as both bags and pumps. When these organs are squeezed by the contraction of the cavity wall muscles, they squirt their contents rapidly (within 1 round) into the outer skin layer, filling many capillaries that lie just beneath the skin surface. These capillaries then stand out, brownish and wrinkled, in a pattern resembling wood grain.
Reversing the process, from the wood- grain appearance to the natural state, requires a sort of external contortion; a mimic appears to wriggle and twist all as it empties its capillaries of the liquid.

 

[Minigiant]

It's natural form looks like a sack of gold with teeth. Mimics are such troll monsters that even in their natural form, it's tricking you into shoving your hand in it's mouth.

 

[steeldragons]

A gazebo, obviously.

 

[Celebrim]

Nothing.

 

[BoldItalic]

They don't look like anything. You can't see them at all in their natural state because they twist the space-time continuum into an infinite regress as they try to imitate themselves imitating themselves and light, very sensibly in my view, avoids going anywhere near them.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

They look like chests with teeth, eyes and tentacle-like legs. Most of the time, when adventurers encounter such chests, they're waking a sleeping mimic.

 

[Evenglare]

I imagine they look like ditto from pokemon.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Snot.

More accurately, a brown-ish pudding-like blob.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

that's a good question, and one I never considered.

I once had a PC befriend one (through telepathy) and it was his breast plate and would make tools when he needed them... it was kind of cool, but we never thought to ask what it's 'normal' look was...