Jellyfish

The Jellyfish is the name of what appears to be a ghostly ship that roams the oceans of Dadauar. It looks like a large sailing ship, with full rigging and a full crew, but as colorless and translucent as glass... or as water. Experienced sailors and scholars know that its shape is deceptive; though it bears the form of a ship, the Jellyfish is a living being, a deepling made from the substance of the Bathybius. As a deepling, it presumably serves somehow the purposes of its creator, the Bathybius, though the exact means by which it serves those purposes remains unknown.

Appearance

The Jellyfish appears like a large, full-rigged galleon, with four masts as well as hatches through which can be extended (seldom-used) oars. It is just over forty meters long and fifteen wide. The whole ship has the translucent appearance common to deeplings, looking as if it is itself made of congealed water (which, in a way, it is). It is said to look especially eerie when backlit by one of Dadauar's three moons, at which time it appears to glow with a spectral light.

Within the Jellyfish's hold, some opaque cargo can be seen. The Jellyfish doesn't carry food or provisions—its crew get their sustenance by other means—but it does hoard treasure it collects from its victims. At any given time, its hold probably contains coins and other valuables making up the equivalent of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

Crew

Although it is itself a conscious organism, and could make its way about the oceans without any aid, the sailors that crew the Jellyfish are real enough. They, too, however, are creatures of the Bathybius; to a man, the Jellyfish is crewed with deeplings and infected, and all of them share the ship's ghostly appearance. For the most part, the deeplings, who make up the majority of the Jellyfish's crew, seem to wear typical sailor's clothing, but the apparent clothing is in fact part of their forms. The few infected on the crew, on the other hand, unable to change shape to make false clothing out of their own substance, wear no clothing at all.

The crew is headed by a deepling named Captain Bartele—if he has another name, he has never revealed it. (Being a creation of the Bathybius, and not a genuine human raised in a family, it's entirely possible he doesn't have another name.) Other notable members include the first mate, Madame Taridi; the second mate, Oriem; the master helmsman, Gargek; the master gunner, Kelidia; and Muktel, the cabin boy. Kelidia and Muktel are infected; Gargek and the mates are deeplings, like most of the crew.

Behavior

The Jellyfish is mostly seen at night, and never within sight of shore; it seems to prowl the high seas in search of new victims. Because it's seen so much more often at night than at day, many sailors believe that during the day it usually travels underwater to the bottom of the sea to rendezvous with the Bathybius, transfer any captives to it for absorption, and receive new orders. This may be, but there are no reliable reports of anyone actually seeing the Jellyfish submerging, much less seeing it actually reach the Deepmind.

The Jellyfish is rightly feared because of its crew's tendency to capture people and either throw them to the Bathybius or turn them into infected. The Jellyfish does have cannons, and will use them to cripple victim ships, but not (intentionally) to kill the crew; it may not care much for the ship, but it will want the crew alive to infect or to cast to the Deepmind. Once the Jellyfish has some prey in its clutches, though, it may not exert itself overmuch to chase down the rest of the ship's complement, which leads some crews when meeting the "ghost ship" to resort to the desperate measure of throwing some of their members to it as a sacrifice to allow the rest to escape. (Those who are forcibly converted into infected are not impressed into the Jellyfish's crew; the ship's infected crewmen all claim to have undergone the conversion voluntarily.)

Many scholars find the ship's behavior surprising; the Bathybius is usually much more subtle in its methods, and in particular forcibly converting people into infected doesn't seem to follow its usual modus operandi. Because of this, they wonder whether the Jellyfish is really acting under the Deepmind's orders, or whether it is a rogue deepling that moves on its own initiative. Certainly, though, the Bathybius's goals are as complex as they are unfathomable, and it could just as easily be that it suits its purposes to have one agent using very different tactics from those of most of its minions.

Not all encounters with the Jellyfish result in attacks, however. Sometimes the captain instead chooses to parley, which typically leads to his offering to pay the crew of the other ship, or at least one or more of its members, a handsome fee to take on some job for them... with a promise of more after the task is completed. Most sailors are reluctant to accept such a deal, for fear that by doing what the Jellyfish wants they'll be abetting the mysterious schemes of the Bathybius, or at least of the Jellyfish if the two aren't in concert. Besides, the Jellyfish's payment no doubt takes the form of goods looted from previous victims, and even the least superstitious of sailors may find that idea distasteful. However, they have at least as much reason to be reluctant not to take the job, since turning it down is likely to mean an attack, since they'll be of no use to the Jellyfish in any other way.

It has, of course, occurred to some of those the Jellyfish approaches to take the initial fee but not follow through with their promises to the captain. This means losing the second half of the payment, of course, but that may be a minor consideration. This, though, is a dangerous ploy; the Jellyfish and its crew do not forgive betrayers, and the next time they meet the recreant, they will not be in such a mood to talk... and there will be a next time. The only possibility of such a double-dealer's avoiding the wrath of the Jellyfish is to never go to sea again... and even that doesn't always work, since by one means or another, the luckless soul usually ends up having to sail again despite his best intents, and when he does the Jellyfish will find him and have its vengeance.