Not So Superfast Jellyfish

I now have an underwater mount in Chimeraland, although it's not exactly what I was expecting. It's called a "Pelagia", which sounded vaguely familiar. I knew the adjective, "pelagic", meaning "of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea" but I had no idea of the derivation, so I did a bit of research.

There was a saint known variously as Pelagia of Antioch, Pelagia the Penitent, and Pelagia the Harlot, who "died as a result of extreme asceticism, which had emaciated her to the point she could no longer be recognized." She'd also been living as a monk and her gender was only revealed after her death. It's all on Wikipedia if you want the full story. There are are also two more saints called Pelagia, Pelagia the Virgin and Pelagia of Tarsus, some of whom may have been the same person. Hagiography is confusing.

However many Pelagias there may have been, none of them seem to have much to do with oceans or the sea and I couldn't spot any connection whatsoever to my new mount. I don't know why I even mentioned them, to be honest.

I did eventually track down the the true source of the name. It's much less mythical. Purely scientific, in fact: "Pelagia is a genus of jellyfish in the family Pelagiidae." I probably should have led with that.

The upshot is, I'm riding a giant jellyfish. It was a little odd to begin with but I soon got used to it. I only captured it by chance. I was doing some crystal-gathering in the shallows and a couple of very low-level jellyfish floated past. I took a shot at one, expecting to kill it outright but my crossbow bolts didn't quite finish it off. The capture symbol appeared so I got out my bubble gun and suddenly there I was, proud owner of a jellyfish embryo in an egg.

I ported straight home to hatch it, then back to try it out. Long-distance transport in Chimeraland is instantaneous, free and unlimited, the only drawback being it tends to drop you on top of a tower about a hundred meters tall. Then again, there's no falling damage as far as I can tell, so it's barely an inconvenience.

I made the mistake of summoning my jellyfish on the beach. Unsurprisingly, jellyfish can't walk. I guess I was lucky it didn't just die on the spot. I dismissed it and waded into the surf then resummoned it. That worked better but jellyfish also move very, very slowly in shallow water.

Third time lucky, eh? I Dived under the water and swam down a ways, then called it again. Much better, although I have to say jellyfish don't exactly zip along at any depth.

The ocean floor dropped off extremely sharply just a few meters from the shore. Holding my breath, even though the timer is very generous, I'd have had no hope of diving to the bottom. I couldn't even see the bottom. 

Mounted on my jellyfish, all my breathing problems went away. So long as you're riding an underwater mount you have no breath meter at all. If you dismount, as you have to do to mine or gather, your normal breath counter begins ticking down from full, giving you plenty of time to do whatever you need to do. If you should feel you need more time, all you have to do is remount and your breath meter goes back to full again.

The whole process feels intuitive and comfortable. Within a couple of minutes it was as if i'd been doing it for years. I dove down. The water was dark. All I could see were fish. They were everywhere, shoals of them, bright, glowing, beautiful. 

Here and there were much larger specimens, ones you could kill if you wanted or capture if you were lucky. I let them be and kept on going down, into the dark.

And then, suddenly, it wasn't dark any more. Beyond a certain depth, everything just explodes into color, luminous, shimmering, glorious. Coral arches, gently waving anemones, grasslike fronds... and fish. Everwhere, fish.

It felt like being inside a vast aquarium. I spent a long time just exploring and yet I covered hardly any distance on the map. Movement doesn't feel slow but distance is hard to judge when you're clinging to a pink jellyfish bigger than a horse.

As underwater experiences in mmorpgs go, I'd rate it somewhere near the top. I think Guild Wars 2 sets the gold standard, even though ArenaNet have never done as much with their exceptionally beautiful seas and oceans as they could, but Chimeraland underwater will do just fine.

Now all I need is a sleeker, faster mount so I can explore at something speedier than a gentle drift. I have my on a shark. I killed a Great White while I was exploring but sadly no egg dropped. Even if I do net a baby shark, though, I won't be giving up my Pelagia. 

Sometimes it's nice to just drift.