I'm hoping to get back into uploading a bit more, so here's a surprise off-schedule video, which will hopefully become part of a new schedule. Based on the fact Aureliette says "when __we__ turned 14", it's likely the two were twins. While it's unclear exactly how ancient Astrologer culture is, their 14th birthday would likely have been quite far in the distant past though, with no way of knowing just how long the poor girls have been waiting.
Something easily missed is that reuniting the sisters unlocks a room with a sacrificial dagger. Probably this means they got their hearts cut out to produce glintstone.
@@Xandros999 The sacrificial dagger was used by sorcerers to imbue Primal Glintstones with their own souls, not seemingly for sacrificing others. We can see the utility of this with Sellen, who escapes captivity by convincing the player to remove her Primal Glintstone and place it in a new body. Placing their soul in a Primal Glintstone evidently causes their "death", but also seems to allow them to cheat it.
@@ZullietheWitch I think that's the first thing you think about when you examine the dagger, but it doesn't actually say that it allows them to cheat death, it says "and thus did they die" leaving it ambiguous as to who actually did the dying. With the proximity to the dead sisters I feel like it's not ambiguous and there's more to primal glintstones than immortality.
eel never sit right with me when looking at these things... they look more like earthworms, especially with that ring in the middle of their bodies, they retract more like worms. Even the thing they spit out is related to the ribbon worm. Maybe its just me, but also in the theme of death i think of worms and graves.
I still remember the first time i heared the Jellyfish talk and than it made "click" in my head. It shed a small tear when i summoned her and she finally reuinted with her sister. She was such a loayl comapion for me all the time, tanking hits and poisoning my enemys. I actually think resolving this quest should have either removed Aurelia as a Summon or give u a double Jellyfish summon to signal them being finally together.
@@Joel_Inosin Not sure about that one. There's some precedent for changing the behavior of spirit summons right from the start, with the rat summon increasing the amount of rats you get when you upgrade its level. Which is probably more complicated by comparison. This would basically just work as trading in one item for another (single jelly summon in exchange for dual jelly summon), with the only possible complication being keeping the upgrade level.
@@darthplagueis13 Solution: Simply just make this spirit ash special, and it is given to you already at max level/upgrade. I don't think someone potentially getting a "free max upgrade" spirit ash would be entirely game breaking, because the jellyfish isn't even the best.
I figured that I needed to summon the Jellyfish the moment I found the sister Jellyfish. When I got to the grave later, I had to take a moment because that was a hard hit. One of my favorite moments in the game.
It was the only time where I felt in Elden Ring the spark that made me fall in love with the old games. It makes me emotional in a way I no longer thought fromsoft could do. Such a beautiful, bittersweet moment where you understand everything important but nothing more, just a bite of pure humanity.
Also, fun fact! You can tell the sisters are astrologers because of their accents! They have a Welsh accent just like ranni, blaidd, iji, albus, pidia and most other characters connected to the carians/astrologers
Remember, spirit eels have a peculiar attack when they throw up some weird fiber-looking things? This is something that real-life sea cucumbers do. When they feel threatened, they basically puke out their intestines.
There just seems to be a running theme between death and water in ER. Godwyn also takes a fishy appearance, though part of that is evoking his essence as being like a rotting fish, swarming with flies.
While they are labeled as "eels," they might not actually be so. Jellyfish have 2 major stages in their life cycle, the medusa and the polyp. The spirit jellyfish would be the medusa stage, free roaming, and the spirit eel, if connected, looks like it would be the polyp stage, bound to the ground. I never made the cinnection between the spirit jellyfish and the spirit eels, but this video made me remember this neat little fun fact from college. Love your vids 👍
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. The eels are the rooted stage of jellyfish development, and the jellyfish are the free-swimming phase. That then leads to the question, "If eels are young jellies, why don't we see the eels in the base game?" I don't know the answer, but maybe it's because the removal of the Rune of Death and the sealing of the Lands of Shadow mean that all the eels out side of the Lands of Shadow have grown up and there are no newly dead spirits to crate new eels. Maybe?
How do you not make the connection? They're the same color of blue, they both turn the same color of red when you attack them or one of their nearby fellows, and they have the same drops.
@@ezachleewright2309I think most people won't attack them. It's like saying deer and hares must be related because they're both brown. Animals look like unrelated animals all the time
Ever since the DLC, I noticed that anything having to do with the "real of the dead" appears to have an oceanic theme. This about it: Mariners Spirit Eels Restless spirits turning into jellyfish (around grave yards or battle fields) Even Godwin himself turning into a weird mermaid creature Wherever death is involved, everything takes on these qualities. Seeing the afterlife as a type of ocean is probably why the previous civilization built giant sarcophagi in the likeness of boats to literally ferry the dead. Here's another interesting thing, the sarcophagus ships all bear a horned equine at the head, similar to Torrent. Torrent who is a spirit steep, and whose name can also mean 'stream', like a river. And what do revers do? Flow into the ocean.
Flowing water in Japanese culture is associated with ephemerality (and by proxy, life and death). Stagnant water, on the other hand, represents corruption and sickness. Sekiro is an excellent case study. The same symbolism is present in Elden Ring, hence ghosts being jellyfish/eels, the Lake of Rot being sealed by underground rivers, and Godwyn being a giant fish creature sitting in a stagnant lake.
@@wigglerrave4020 It's a safe bet that they're related. During the Ancestral Spirit fight, we see the creature consume other animal spirits to strengthen itself, so there's clearly a connection. There is the question of why Torrent doesn't exhibit "budding" horns like all the others, but that could be due to his connection with Miquella, making Torrent effectively ageless, even in spirit form.
I'm reminded of what's said at the end of the orphan of kos fight in Bloodborne, about how the sea is "accepting of all there is, and can be". Makes me wonder if it's a deliberate callback or not
Indeed, and not just a callback. After all the author is the same and both Elden Ring and Bloodborne share a lot about the connection between Afterlife, Cosmos and Water
@@ivyandalextogether I do read the lore but this person is talking about how it reminds them of blah blah blah and nothing really connects to said blah blah blah. There is no sea accepting of all there can be in Elden Ring.
The Jellyfish Sisters might be my favorite side story in Elden Ring. I used Aurelia my entire first playthrough whenever I could, I love jellyfish IRL so it was a perfect match. After reading her description, learning her name & small backstory, I was always on the lookout to see if you could actually bring her back to her home, it was the least I could do. When I realized you could summon her to be with Aureliette, I actually got emotional knowing I had actually succeeded to bring her home on my own and reuniting two lost souls back to each other after years of being apart... For there to actually be a happy ending when these side stories usually end in tragedy and sorrow was a nice change of pace.
In my headcanon, ordinary spirits remain in worm or jellyfish like forms since those were the first animals to have nervous systems and thus maybe a 'soul'. The body changed with evolution, but the shape of the soul remained the same
Finding the bloody Primal Glintstone Blade after Aureliette drops the seal was a chilling moment. While some Glintstone sorcerers place their souls into Primal Glintstones, we know from Sellen's quest that they need to hijack the bodies of others for full effect. Thus, Aurelia and Aureliette might have been sacrificed for the sake of body-stealing mages. Even Aurelia's soul might have been devalued afterward, dragged/traded around for ages. "Seeing the stars" is also foreboding in this context, since the Astrologer settlement itself should have no problem observing the stars in the night sky. Perhaps the ancient astrologers could travel into the night sky itself akin to Ranni's plans, or go on a pilgrimage (if not move to) Liurnia. However, considering Ymir's line "May you join the glimmering stars above[,]" and his hidden intention that the Tarnished apparently be killed by Metyr, "seeing the stars" might itself refer to some kind of sacrifice, and the Astrologer twins may have only been killed prematurely or for an alternative purpose. In fact, if there were still Astrologers on the Mountaintops of the Giants contemporaneous with Raya Lucaria's existence, the Astrologers may have participated in the Graven-School experiments found at the Albinauric Rise. While it's on a lower plateau of the mountain, the Consecrated Snowfield, there might have been a path before the Grand Lift of Rold was apparently built by the Golden Order. Sellen also mentions that her goal is that "we, fallen children of the stars, might beam with brilliance once again." Furthermore, Sellen describes Lusat as "nigh a child of the stars, such is his body now..." Adding in how the Graven-School and Graven-Mass Talismans describe the practice of "collecting sorcerers to fashion them into the seeds of stars[,]" this might have been what was originally intended for Aurelia and Aureliette, whether they realized what "seeing the stars" entailed or were raised to not question it. Those poor kids went through a lot, and considering that the Dark Moon appears to be a black hole, the stars can seemingly oppress people a la the Starlight Shards potions, and Fallingstar Beasts exist, even traversing the stars as Spirit Jellyfish could be hazardous. As a final note, in the Japanese text, the sisters are named Clara and Clarisse. These names can both mean "bright", which might relate to Glintstone's Japanese name of "Brightstone." That would mean there's no possible overlap with the Golden Order, considering that "aurum" is Latin for "gold" and there's the Auriza Hero's Grave on the Altus Plateau. Thanks for another interesting video, Zullie! It's nice to see overlap between the main game and the DLC, as well as details in the main game not being neglected even with the DLC out.
Jellyfish Shield: The head of a spirit jellyfish, commonly found floating above sacred ground throughout the Lands Between, wielded without modification as a shield. Consider the parallel of the lands between being in the light of the erdtree and the land of shadow being in, well, it's shadow; and the jellyfish floating above the "sacred" land, and the eels being anchored to it; and there's your strongest hint to why lingering souls end up in different forms. The land of shadow is not sacred ground because it is not within the purview of the golden order.
Actually great theory. Marika's Order was only "Deathless" because she shoved it all somewhere hidden. Kind of like that one European country that has a law against dying there, because there's simply too many graves.
Fantastic read. Also cool that they are not entirely separate as aquatic inspired beings, since jellyfish are rooted to the ground in their early stage of life.
There is a notable farming location for Trina's flowers (allowing infinite sleep crafting materials) at the Apostate Derelict church, the place where you deliver Latenna so she can save the albinaurics or whatever that quest was about. There's also a huge cluster of Trina's flowers there. You can kill the jellyfish around there (which respawn) to get as many flowers as you want legitimately. Lore implications? Or just a useful farm? Hard to say. Death can certainly be compared to sleep in a poetic sense.
I think that the garden eel form being stuck in the ground represents them being stuck in the land of the living, being unable to truly pass away like the jellyfish can. Maybe because the Land of Shadow got completely cut off from the rest of the world and therefore is stuck in a sort of limbo. Another example of this theory could be the rotting shipwrecks.
This is why the Age of the Duskborn is the best ending, as the king of the dead you can have all the funny ghost worms and ghost jellyfish as you want!
Mf you have to watch a lady give birth to a corpse’s baby to get that. For every 1 ghost there’s like 28 rotting piles of living meat and deathroot that are gonna inhabit the Duskborn world. Not worth.
I would be for this if the ending didn't have those buzzing white gnats everywhere. I just can't abide swarms of small annoying bugs. It's a deal breaker.
Another potential connection between spirit eels and spirit jellies could be jellyfish polyps. During the jellyfish life cycle, the jellyfish forms a sedentary almost plantlike structure anchored to the ground, which grows little rows of disks. These disks eventually fragment off, becoming new jellyfish, with the polyp serving as a factory for more. Maybe something similar is happening with the eels?
it's a nice detail that the jellyfish girl, likely an astrologer has a welsh accent, which ingame is the accent of the Liurnians. It's a nice little detail reinforcing that the astrologers are the ancestors of the Liurnians/Glintstone users
2:02 I always felt bad cause those tombstones make me giggle, seems so odd to write a sad regret on a tombstone. Why not Here lies "Aurelia and Aureliettee, now free to see the stars" or something. Its like that episode of Beavis and Butt-Head where he sees his tombstone and it says "Here Lies Beavis. He Never Scored".
I do like the thematic conistency to portray the aftermath and souls as aquatic or water-themed, which also builds on the idea that the Erdtree literally absorbs the Dead, bc trees not only suck nutrients from the soil but also water, making therefore out of a soul literal soil as a result
Between those, the lampreys, the wyrms, apparently the red bear with bear communion, and so and on, it might be quicker to list which enemy Did Not used to be human
Unlike some Fromsoftware games which are just mostly depressing endings. I'm happy Elden Ring has some bittersweet beautiful moments, like reuninting two sisters who never got to see the stars together when they were alive.
See, I assumed, the Spirit Eels were the souls of the suffering. Uh.. now, Lemme explain: I always figured the Spirit Jellyfish were always the Souls of Children. You don't see them often near piles of adult corpses, but you do see them in places it makes sense for a lot of kids to die (Dark, I know). But like, look at where the Jellyfish are in Castle Morne. They're back behind the castle, next to several buildings with no doors, but windows placed where you can fit... smaller... people through. Those buildings are right next to the Kennels/jails for several Beastmen, and you get the darker picture, that these buildings were never MEANT to be accessed normally, but are places to throw unwanted/useless Beastmen Children. Thus, Jellyfish are only in that spot. My Theory on that is that the Jellyfish shape is amorphous due to the Children not knowing what they want to be or know what they are. Meanwhile, every Ghost or Spirit we see in Eldin Ring are typically in their adult forms. Now what does this mean about the Spirit Eels? Well, Much like the Children, they lost their forms they had while living. But not because they didn't truly know about their lives. No, they are all crushed up into stalks, strike by vomitting their insides, and hide more often than not. These are people who were tortured to death, either by Mesmer or by the Hornsent before, losing the thoughts of what they were as they were crushed under heel for not being blessed by Gold or the Crucible before. They don't want to remember what they've been through, they forget what their bodies became. They instead hide underground as much as possible.
You make a lot of cool custom shots... so that's why I'm inclined to ask why I can't figure out how you made the visual at 3:45 and if I missed some horrible little secret in a deep area.
I made a Spirit Eel 200x bigger, removed its glow, placed it in the water beside the Cerulean Coast, lowered the FOV of the camera and pulled it way back, creating a dense layer of fog between the eel and the camera. Originally I wanted to show one of the eels under the water, but as you may notice if you look closely at 00:09, the way the material for the eels is set up to enable their transparency evidently conflicts with the transparency of water, so any part of the eel that would be visible underwater is just invisible instead.
@@ZullietheWitch Classic shader issues, thank you. I wasn't sure because of how much higher fidelity the model was, I guess the glow or scale obscures it.
Another aspect is that proves that different creatures have different spirit forms is in Castle Morne, right before the Leonine Misbegotten boss fight. There are Spirit Jellyfish there but they're noticeably darker and seemingly warped. This may indicate these weren't human souls but those of Misbegotten, being the primary victims there. If that's the case, there's some correlation between one's physical appearance and the form they take upon death.
I absolutely love this channel. I didn't even play that much elden ring but I love these lore videos. Amazing aesthetic, excellent video/content length, a real depth of knowledge and investigation is evident, and the random tiny details that the From Software team included are getting the praise and recognition they deserve. I especially love when a video has some "mistakes. Because it means we get another video to watch, and it feels like breaking news of real investigative journalism. This is the only channel I will ever have the notification for
I think that the fact that in the lands between the spirits are jellyfish, while in the shadows the spirits are these earthworm looking eels makes sense. Due to the erdtree and the cycle of deathless life, touching the ground as seen in many catacombs would signify rebirth. Therefore in the lands between the eels may not have been successful into becoming spirits. Thus, in the lands between the only way for the spirits to fully manifest were in forms of floating jellyfish, something that doesnt touch the ground and make contact with the erdtree roots. Also the eels of the lands of shadow can not move away from where they are rooted, while the Jellys are constantly floating around. Perhaps this may signify how in the Land of Shadows, death is an actual event where the spirits would manifest on and be fully connected to what ever dyed in that exact location, while in the lands between as death is cut off from the world the spirits once manifested, have no real place to go.
I actually had a similar thought the other day after watching Dandadan. It said in the show that spirits of the dead turn into sea life to make it easier to cross the river to the afterlife. Maybe some inspiration is being drawn from that, since death in Elden Ring is somewhat associated with water.
The image of the eels all pointing upwards made me think of plants growing towards the sunlight. It's like the eels are trying to reach out to the living world again, stretching their bodies from the ground. They're not plants, so that might not be the reason, but that thought just came to my head.
It's likely they drift to and anchor in the Land of Shadows. But more likely, I imagine they emerged there from water. That may be in some way part of correlation with the Tibia Mariners. But perhaps noting the spirit eels drop Grave Glovewart may be a more valuable insight. The telling of their existence from mainly catacombs could suggest that spirit eels were of the souls who came through from the catacombs.
I just noticed that the spirit jellyfish tentacles are basically the elements that make up the 'tail' of the moon prescence and perhaps the same elements that make up the red 'arms' on the blasphemous blade.
Given that they're rooted to the ground, it makes sense that the spirit eels are probably spirits bound to the location where they died or were killed.
I like to think that unlike jellyfish spirit, the eel's symbolize shackle or convinment. They are unable to reach the sky and bound to the land for some reason, might explain why they always gazing through the sky. . This is also suit the theme of land of shadow where everyone is trapped and locked in different realm and cannot escape
The first time I found the other sister and I saw what this all was I was streaming, I got so emotional I had to stop my stream. Every single play through of Elden Ring I’ve done, a dozen or so, I reunite the sisters and every single time it gets me right in the feels.
My braindead inner lore for it was Jellyfish are lost souls of children that can't move on but also can't be reborn into the Erdtree from it's burial and rebirth cycle. When I got to the shadow realm, I read the worm ghosts as lost souls completely abandoned by Marika and the Erdtree's cycle of rebirth, forever lost in it's shadow "where all manners of death wash up ... only to be suppressed"
something that just came to mind, what if the spirit jellyfish are souls of followers of the golden order (or that lived in the land covered by the erdtree in general), while the spirit eels are the souls of hornsent, it would explain their existing only in the realm of shadow while still having the jellyfish also make sense EDIT: by the golden order i meant people who inhabit the lands between, i just couldn't phrase it at the moment of commenting
Why would they be associated with the golden order or erdtree? Those people when they die get erdtree burials, stuffed into the roots in the catacombs. They don't get buried in traditional tombs or cemeteries.
@@Jetsetlemming i thought about that but remember, there's spirit summons like luthel or kristoff that explain erdtree burial was considered an honor or only for people who were DEEMED "worthy" (like say the nobles of leyndell) and of course i was also referring to the rest of inhabitants of the lands between (the omens, the misbegotten, the astrologers, glintstone sorcerers, etc..) can turn into spirit jellyfishes as well EDIT: because think about it, where do we find the most amounts of spirit jellyfish (castle morne, Liurnia, the mountaintops, the consecrated snowfield and behind the church where you finish Latenna's questline) all of them are places with people who wouldn't be seen as worthy of erdtree burial by the golden order's followers
I think this is just what dead hornsent look like as ghosts. Remember, the hornsent NPC has a facemask made up of dead worms, and the spirit eels represent worms a lot with their body halved by a thickened part. With the hornsent being so obsessed with spirits this would explain why the mask is important: its a simbol of their spirits. This would also explain why most spririt eels appear on the hornsent burial grounds on the cerulean coast.
Probably significant that all the spirit jellyfish and spirit eels are far from normal erdtree burial practices, attached to mass graves and battlefields and traditional graveyards instead. They might be another form of "those who live in death," people removed from the cycle of erdtree rebirth and thus becoming some new kind of life. If people can be reborn from trees, why CAN'T they be reborn as jellyfish? Makes perfect sense to me. The aquatic theming is also probably tied to how Godwyn got all mermaidy, too.
Hell, you could go even farther by taking the erdtree roots more literally, because what do roots do? Absorb water. When people die in the Elden Ring universe they turn aquatic, either to get drank by a big tree or becoming some other form of life.
This makes me hope if we get a DLC we get to go to the Lands Between's Ocean. Where the spirits and the dead drift to and fro. With the skies above us being the shifting waves. Walking on the ocean beds surface. Maybe even get Godwyn lore people have been asking for.
This whole small quest really made me wish they did more stuff like this with all the spirit ashes, or at least more of them. That's why my favorite ashes, and the only ones I bother to use, are Aurelia, Latenna, and the sisters from the DLC. The quests made them feel much more personal than the majority of the other ashes. (Honorable mention to the stone imps that are friends with each other).
As the lands of shadow are hidden away, buried so to speak, it felt fitting that the aquatic spirits are not jellyfish floating right under the surface but bottom feeders stuck in the ocean floor. They may reflect a spiritual depth and with it lack of light.
You know, The stars are heavily linked to water, the sea, water animals, and dead things. That makes me thing of how Godwyn's soulless body is turning into a tentacled fish. Maybe it's trying to join the stars to truly be dead?
3:10 perhaps the eels are like predators on the jellyfish. And the Shadow World is sort of like a tide pool where dead souls accumulate, swirling around, for the eels to feed on.
One thing I noticed is that the jellyfish float, they are free from the ground. If they so chose, they could see the stars. The eels, on the other hand, are anchored to the ground. Perhaps they will never see the stars.
Maybe I'm reaching but the Jellyfish in the lands between hover above the ground freely and can even leave to see the stars, while the eels in the realm of shadow are tethered the ground stretching towards the the sky like they're trying to escape but can't.
The spirits now being eels might be an indicator of the spirits having sunk to the bottom kinda, like jellyfish can swim wherever, even in open sea and the surface of the water, but these eels are stuck to the bottom, as far down as it goes, maybe this represents more time passing or maybe a sort of stagnation (we know from soft loves stagnation), so that the spirits went from freely floating through the air to getting stuck in the ground.
It's because eels are bottom-dwellers/bottom-feeders, so the souls take on that form in the Land of Shadow, "below" the Lands Between. Jellyfish float around higher up :) Yes, the sea in Elden Ring is not literal; it represents what you cross between mortal life and the Lands Between. So the hauntings resembling sea creatures works for this.
It is interesting how both the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow seem to relate spirits, specifically, to the ocean-- while they feel distinct, it's impossible to ignore the fact that there is *some* connection between death and the sea, and the creatures that inhabit it. Eels and Jellyfish and the Lord of Death's fish-like appearance, and many more hints that there is *something* about death that makes a person leave the guise of a land-walking animal and assume that of a swimming one.
3:09 maybe the difference is because the outer force each soul follows. The Jellyfish are untethered because they follow the stars, while the land eels are tethered to the earth because they follow the crucible.
Whether there's a specific lore reason for it or not, there's a really interesting pattern of nautical/death imagery (Tibia Mariner, coffin ships, Godwyn's merman form, etc.). It feels like the sea separating the Lands Between from the larger world has a metaphysical component to it.
Where the jellyfish are "free" spirits, the eels are sedentary, or "rooted" of their own will, sitting inside the earth. This reminds me of the golden order, how they are rooted in their ideals.
With how the hair (or tendril) looking things on them seem to float unnaturally and their affinity for water in the lands between it's possible that they may be the spirits of the drowned. Those tufts do seem to move as though they're underwater
The spirit eels always looked to me a bit like tube worms, idk why. Jellyfish and tube worms are also, interestingly, among the oldest and most primordial types of marine life.
I really hope From does some sort of aquatic themed game. They've been hinting at large bodies of water being very important and spooky for ages. Kos and the fishing villages` whole deal in BB, the Cathedral of the Deep in DS3, the spirit aquatic creatures in Elden Ring. I'm probably missing loads, but you get the point.
I'm hoping to get back into uploading a bit more, so here's a surprise off-schedule video, which will hopefully become part of a new schedule.
Based on the fact Aureliette says "when __we__ turned 14", it's likely the two were twins. While it's unclear exactly how ancient Astrologer culture is, their 14th birthday would likely have been quite far in the distant past though, with no way of knowing just how long the poor girls have been waiting.
Something easily missed is that reuniting the sisters unlocks a room with a sacrificial dagger. Probably this means they got their hearts cut out to produce glintstone.
@@ZullietheWitch I've always loved your choice of OST..today you hit it out of the park
@@Xandros999 The sacrificial dagger was used by sorcerers to imbue Primal Glintstones with their own souls, not seemingly for sacrificing others. We can see the utility of this with Sellen, who escapes captivity by convincing the player to remove her Primal Glintstone and place it in a new body. Placing their soul in a Primal Glintstone evidently causes their "death", but also seems to allow them to cheat it.
@@ZullietheWitch I think that's the first thing you think about when you examine the dagger, but it doesn't actually say that it allows them to cheat death, it says "and thus did they die" leaving it ambiguous as to who actually did the dying.
With the proximity to the dead sisters I feel like it's not ambiguous and there's more to primal glintstones than immortality.
eel never sit right with me when looking at these things... they look more like earthworms, especially with that ring in the middle of their bodies, they retract more like worms. Even the thing they spit out is related to the ribbon worm. Maybe its just me, but also in the theme of death i think of worms and graves.
0:42 - that shot of Roderika holding a tiny jellyfish is really nice - "Can I offer you a nice jellyfish in these trying times?"
So anyway, I started tuning
the jellyfish holding the chest was cool too
I could HEAR her saying that.
"It's a little version of Aurelia, Allan, I want you to have it."
@@AT7outof10 “Uhhhh… I don’t want this…”
"Here lie Aurelia and Aureliette, who never saw the stars"
It always hurts
Reuniting them is one of the best endings NPC's ever get in souls games.
I throw the night maiden fog to the graves to cover them with stars 🥹
You didnt have to hit me with that bud.
"Here lies Beavis. He never scored"
at least they actually saw the stars in the end
I still remember the first time i heared the Jellyfish talk and than it made "click" in my head. It shed a small tear when i summoned her and she finally reuinted with her sister. She was such a loayl comapion for me all the time, tanking hits and poisoning my enemys. I actually think resolving this quest should have either removed Aurelia as a Summon or give u a double Jellyfish summon to signal them being finally together.
After this quest if I'm using her, I'll stop. Feels appropriate.
They probably didn't have the system or idea available at the time, but clearly someone thought similar because they made the swordhands of night.
@@Joel_Inosin Not sure about that one. There's some precedent for changing the behavior of spirit summons right from the start, with the rat summon increasing the amount of rats you get when you upgrade its level. Which is probably more complicated by comparison.
This would basically just work as trading in one item for another (single jelly summon in exchange for dual jelly summon), with the only possible complication being keeping the upgrade level.
double jellyfish would be of nice effectiveness longer into the game :)
@@darthplagueis13 Solution: Simply just make this spirit ash special, and it is given to you already at max level/upgrade. I don't think someone potentially getting a "free max upgrade" spirit ash would be entirely game breaking, because the jellyfish isn't even the best.
Me figuring out to summon the jellyfish for her sister might be my favorite personal discovery of Elden Ring
After I did that, I couldn't use that Spirit Ash anymore. I felt like I'd be tearing the sisters from each other again.
I used the Jellyfish my entire first playthrough and it made that discovery feel all the more impactful. May they float among the stars
I figured that I needed to summon the Jellyfish the moment I found the sister Jellyfish. When I got to the grave later, I had to take a moment because that was a hard hit. One of my favorite moments in the game.
I left a message by it when I first found it out, made sure to save it and lock it, even though it never got a lot of votes.
@@FFKonoko What was the message?
That jellyfish quest is about the most beautiful and wholesome (if bittersweet) quest line to ever grace a FromSoft game.
Shit crushed me
It was the only time where I felt in Elden Ring the spark that made me fall in love with the old games. It makes me emotional in a way I no longer thought fromsoft could do. Such a beautiful, bittersweet moment where you understand everything important but nothing more, just a bite of pure humanity.
That's Lucatiel for me but can't deny it really hurts
@@DarkyHippieLucatiel‘s quest line was tough … beautiful but also tough to stomach. Reminiscent of the Siegmeyer quest line from Dark Souls as well.
@@CapraDaAlbaRegia Finding the Minor Erdtree + Golden Braid in Shaman Village was like this.
Also, fun fact! You can tell the sisters are astrologers because of their accents! They have a Welsh accent just like ranni, blaidd, iji, albus, pidia and most other characters connected to the carians/astrologers
Remember, spirit eels have a peculiar attack when they throw up some weird fiber-looking things? This is something that real-life sea cucumbers do. When they feel threatened, they basically puke out their intestines.
same
A fact that's referenced in the Alolan pokemon Pyukumuku
That's what I did to the guy that tried to mug me when I went to Costco last week
Relatable
There just seems to be a running theme between death and water in ER. Godwyn also takes a fishy appearance, though part of that is evoking his essence as being like a rotting fish, swarming with flies.
"Why is it always friend?"
While they are labeled as "eels," they might not actually be so. Jellyfish have 2 major stages in their life cycle, the medusa and the polyp. The spirit jellyfish would be the medusa stage, free roaming, and the spirit eel, if connected, looks like it would be the polyp stage, bound to the ground.
I never made the cinnection between the spirit jellyfish and the spirit eels, but this video made me remember this neat little fun fact from college. Love your vids 👍
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. The eels are the rooted stage of jellyfish development, and the jellyfish are the free-swimming phase. That then leads to the question, "If eels are young jellies, why don't we see the eels in the base game?" I don't know the answer, but maybe it's because the removal of the Rune of Death and the sealing of the Lands of Shadow mean that all the eels out side of the Lands of Shadow have grown up and there are no newly dead spirits to crate new eels. Maybe?
There's also a jellyfish that's biologically immortal because it can reverse back to the polyp stage indefinitely.
@@acherontiaatropos6048 Turritopsis dohrnii. Really fascinating creatures.
How do you not make the connection? They're the same color of blue, they both turn the same color of red when you attack them or one of their nearby fellows, and they have the same drops.
@@ezachleewright2309I think most people won't attack them. It's like saying deer and hares must be related because they're both brown. Animals look like unrelated animals all the time
Ever since the DLC, I noticed that anything having to do with the "real of the dead" appears to have an oceanic theme. This about it:
Mariners
Spirit Eels
Restless spirits turning into jellyfish (around grave yards or battle fields)
Even Godwin himself turning into a weird mermaid creature
Wherever death is involved, everything takes on these qualities. Seeing the afterlife as a type of ocean is probably why the previous civilization built giant sarcophagi in the likeness of boats to literally ferry the dead. Here's another interesting thing, the sarcophagus ships all bear a horned equine at the head, similar to Torrent. Torrent who is a spirit steep, and whose name can also mean 'stream', like a river. And what do revers do? Flow into the ocean.
There is a theory that Torrent is a lesser Ancestor Spirit, by the way. How do you think Ancestor Spirits relate to this?
I think those are actually bulls on the stone coffin ships, and we see similar bull imagery at the Mohgwyn Palace.
I’d watch Tarnished Archaeologist’s videos on the stone boats, it’s likely they were used to survive a flood of lava and they show up on murals.
Flowing water in Japanese culture is associated with ephemerality (and by proxy, life and death). Stagnant water, on the other hand, represents corruption and sickness. Sekiro is an excellent case study.
The same symbolism is present in Elden Ring, hence ghosts being jellyfish/eels, the Lake of Rot being sealed by underground rivers, and Godwyn being a giant fish creature sitting in a stagnant lake.
@@wigglerrave4020 It's a safe bet that they're related. During the Ancestral Spirit fight, we see the creature consume other animal spirits to strengthen itself, so there's clearly a connection. There is the question of why Torrent doesn't exhibit "budding" horns like all the others, but that could be due to his connection with Miquella, making Torrent effectively ageless, even in spirit form.
I'm reminded of what's said at the end of the orphan of kos fight in Bloodborne, about how the sea is "accepting of all there is, and can be". Makes me wonder if it's a deliberate callback or not
Indeed, and not just a callback. After all the author is the same and both Elden Ring and Bloodborne share a lot about the connection between Afterlife, Cosmos and Water
Elden Ring fans when the lore they pulled out of thin air could be a callback to Fartenshitsouls 4: 🤯
@@Thumb_shvt vp lil bro
Never bothered to read the lore for any of these games huh @Thumb_
@@ivyandalextogether I do read the lore but this person is talking about how it reminds them of blah blah blah and nothing really connects to said blah blah blah. There is no sea accepting of all there can be in Elden Ring.
The Eels are friends... But temperamental...
"Gee, I sure hope I don't embarrass myself at this secretive, high society masquerade."
The other guests: 0:19
"take off your clothes tarnished, or we will take them off of you"
Zora's domain by night is my favorite Zelda's ost, thank you ❤
Thank you kindly! You're a champion!
The Jellyfish Sisters might be my favorite side story in Elden Ring. I used Aurelia my entire first playthrough whenever I could, I love jellyfish IRL so it was a perfect match. After reading her description, learning her name & small backstory, I was always on the lookout to see if you could actually bring her back to her home, it was the least I could do. When I realized you could summon her to be with Aureliette, I actually got emotional knowing I had actually succeeded to bring her home on my own and reuniting two lost souls back to each other after years of being apart...
For there to actually be a happy ending when these side stories usually end in tragedy and sorrow was a nice change of pace.
Wish we could've had something similar to that with Curseblade Labirinth and Meera. 😭
You can't parry these feels
You can't pump VIG for tanking these feels, either...
Even the fingerprint Shield can't stop the feels
In my headcanon, ordinary spirits remain in worm or jellyfish like forms since those were the first animals to have nervous systems and thus maybe a 'soul'. The body changed with evolution, but the shape of the soul remained the same
Every play-through the main mission is to reunite the sisters, everything else is secondary.
Yep. I never do a playthrough without it. Really tugs at your heartstrings and you get a nice gesture out of it.
I wonder if it's a speedrun category yet...
I uninstalled the game and didn't unite them because ahhh tired
@@Michael-cb3uw *Point down*
@@Michael-cb3uw Lowly Tarnished. Playing as a Lord. I command thee REUNITE THEM! For I am the lord of all that is wholesome
Finding the bloody Primal Glintstone Blade after Aureliette drops the seal was a chilling moment. While some Glintstone sorcerers place their souls into Primal Glintstones, we know from Sellen's quest that they need to hijack the bodies of others for full effect. Thus, Aurelia and Aureliette might have been sacrificed for the sake of body-stealing mages. Even Aurelia's soul might have been devalued afterward, dragged/traded around for ages.
"Seeing the stars" is also foreboding in this context, since the Astrologer settlement itself should have no problem observing the stars in the night sky. Perhaps the ancient astrologers could travel into the night sky itself akin to Ranni's plans, or go on a pilgrimage (if not move to) Liurnia.
However, considering Ymir's line "May you join the glimmering stars above[,]" and his hidden intention that the Tarnished apparently be killed by Metyr, "seeing the stars" might itself refer to some kind of sacrifice, and the Astrologer twins may have only been killed prematurely or for an alternative purpose.
In fact, if there were still Astrologers on the Mountaintops of the Giants contemporaneous with Raya Lucaria's existence, the Astrologers may have participated in the Graven-School experiments found at the Albinauric Rise. While it's on a lower plateau of the mountain, the Consecrated Snowfield, there might have been a path before the Grand Lift of Rold was apparently built by the Golden Order.
Sellen also mentions that her goal is that "we, fallen children of the stars, might beam with brilliance once again." Furthermore, Sellen describes Lusat as "nigh a child of the stars, such is his body now..." Adding in how the Graven-School and Graven-Mass Talismans describe the practice of "collecting sorcerers to fashion them into the seeds of stars[,]" this might have been what was originally intended for Aurelia and Aureliette, whether they realized what "seeing the stars" entailed or were raised to not question it.
Those poor kids went through a lot, and considering that the Dark Moon appears to be a black hole, the stars can seemingly oppress people a la the Starlight Shards potions, and Fallingstar Beasts exist, even traversing the stars as Spirit Jellyfish could be hazardous.
As a final note, in the Japanese text, the sisters are named Clara and Clarisse. These names can both mean "bright", which might relate to Glintstone's Japanese name of "Brightstone." That would mean there's no possible overlap with the Golden Order, considering that "aurum" is Latin for "gold" and there's the Auriza Hero's Grave on the Altus Plateau.
Thanks for another interesting video, Zullie! It's nice to see overlap between the main game and the DLC, as well as details in the main game not being neglected even with the DLC out.
You threw a whole new perspective on the lore at me. Good stuff dude, damn
@@salmonan9814 Thanks! I appreciate it.
Jellyfish could be spirits of children, and Eels could be spirits of sailors, whose bodies drifted to shores.
3:05 mister eel please hide your arms and legs you are scaring the children
nooo i love his little feet!
Jellyfish Shield:
The head of a spirit jellyfish, commonly found floating above sacred ground throughout the Lands Between, wielded without modification as a shield.
Consider the parallel of the lands between being in the light of the erdtree and the land of shadow being in, well, it's shadow; and the jellyfish floating above the "sacred" land, and the eels being anchored to it; and there's your strongest hint to why lingering souls end up in different forms. The land of shadow is not sacred ground because it is not within the purview of the golden order.
Actually great theory. Marika's Order was only "Deathless" because she shoved it all somewhere hidden. Kind of like that one European country that has a law against dying there, because there's simply too many graves.
@@Pyron420 Disneyland isn't a European country.
@@Pyron420 There's an island in far north Norway which is where you're thinking of I believe
Fantastic read. Also cool that they are not entirely separate as aquatic inspired beings, since jellyfish are rooted to the ground in their early stage of life.
Kinda makes me wish we got something like a great whip in the dlc just made of the wiggly lil lad.
Wonderful song choice for this video. It fits so well.
There is a notable farming location for Trina's flowers (allowing infinite sleep crafting materials) at the Apostate Derelict church, the place where you deliver Latenna so she can save the albinaurics or whatever that quest was about. There's also a huge cluster of Trina's flowers there. You can kill the jellyfish around there (which respawn) to get as many flowers as you want legitimately.
Lore implications? Or just a useful farm? Hard to say. Death can certainly be compared to sleep in a poetic sense.
Terrible day to rain...
But it's not raining.
@@51LV3RW1N6 It's raining........... you just.......you can't see
I think that the garden eel form being stuck in the ground represents them being stuck in the land of the living, being unable to truly pass away like the jellyfish can.
Maybe because the Land of Shadow got completely cut off from the rest of the world and therefore is stuck in a sort of limbo.
Another example of this theory could be the rotting shipwrecks.
A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea, accepting of all that there was and can be...
This is why the Age of the Duskborn is the best ending, as the king of the dead you can have all the funny ghost worms and ghost jellyfish as you want!
I want ghost hippos!!
I liked it too but then I realized by going the age of duskborn route basilisks will become most of the lands wildlife.....so nope
Mf you have to watch a lady give birth to a corpse’s baby to get that. For every 1 ghost there’s like 28 rotting piles of living meat and deathroot that are gonna inhabit the Duskborn world. Not worth.
I would be for this if the ending didn't have those buzzing white gnats everywhere. I just can't abide swarms of small annoying bugs. It's a deal breaker.
Age of the Duskborn in my eyes was essentially the Dark Souls ending. Resulting in the curse of the undead.
Another potential connection between spirit eels and spirit jellies could be jellyfish polyps. During the jellyfish life cycle, the jellyfish forms a sedentary almost plantlike structure anchored to the ground, which grows little rows of disks. These disks eventually fragment off, becoming new jellyfish, with the polyp serving as a factory for more. Maybe something similar is happening with the eels?
🤯 I think you’re onto something with that
"The answer is surprisingly simple"
"The player isnt meant to find a definitive answer"
This feels like cheating
it's a nice detail that the jellyfish girl, likely an astrologer has a welsh accent, which ingame is the accent of the Liurnians. It's a nice little detail reinforcing that the astrologers are the ancestors of the Liurnians/Glintstone users
2:02 I always felt bad cause those tombstones make me giggle, seems so odd to write a sad regret on a tombstone. Why not Here lies "Aurelia and Aureliettee, now free to see the stars" or something. Its like that episode of Beavis and Butt-Head where he sees his tombstone and it says "Here Lies Beavis. He Never Scored".
These people ain't very jolly, considering their circumstances
Forbidden gummy worm
U never get the music wrong for your videos botw ost peak! Great video
I do like the thematic conistency to portray the aftermath and souls as aquatic or water-themed, which also builds on the idea that the Erdtree literally absorbs the Dead, bc trees not only suck nutrients from the soil but also water, making therefore out of a soul literal soil as a result
Zora’s Domain was a fantastic pick for the music of this video.
The eels fall into the same club with the jellyfish, I refuse to attack them even if they attack first.
That last line was very elegantly said, love all your videos! Thank you so much for all of them
I absolutely love every video you have with soras domain, night playing in the background
Never played the game but always love to watch your lore.
From an old-timer game lore-lover... THANKS!
Between those, the lampreys, the wyrms, apparently the red bear with bear communion, and so and on, it might be quicker to list which enemy Did Not used to be human
could the lands between, be an afterlife?
Unlike some Fromsoftware games which are just mostly depressing endings. I'm happy Elden Ring has some bittersweet beautiful moments, like reuninting two sisters who never got to see the stars together when they were alive.
See, I assumed, the Spirit Eels were the souls of the suffering. Uh.. now, Lemme explain:
I always figured the Spirit Jellyfish were always the Souls of Children. You don't see them often near piles of adult corpses, but you do see them in places it makes sense for a lot of kids to die (Dark, I know). But like, look at where the Jellyfish are in Castle Morne. They're back behind the castle, next to several buildings with no doors, but windows placed where you can fit... smaller... people through. Those buildings are right next to the Kennels/jails for several Beastmen, and you get the darker picture, that these buildings were never MEANT to be accessed normally, but are places to throw unwanted/useless Beastmen Children. Thus, Jellyfish are only in that spot.
My Theory on that is that the Jellyfish shape is amorphous due to the Children not knowing what they want to be or know what they are. Meanwhile, every Ghost or Spirit we see in Eldin Ring are typically in their adult forms.
Now what does this mean about the Spirit Eels? Well, Much like the Children, they lost their forms they had while living. But not because they didn't truly know about their lives. No, they are all crushed up into stalks, strike by vomitting their insides, and hide more often than not. These are people who were tortured to death, either by Mesmer or by the Hornsent before, losing the thoughts of what they were as they were crushed under heel for not being blessed by Gold or the Crucible before. They don't want to remember what they've been through, they forget what their bodies became. They instead hide underground as much as possible.
The jellyfish quest is definitely the one and only time a souls game quest ever had a sort-of happy ending.
You make a lot of cool custom shots... so that's why I'm inclined to ask why I can't figure out how you made the visual at 3:45 and if I missed some horrible little secret in a deep area.
I made a Spirit Eel 200x bigger, removed its glow, placed it in the water beside the Cerulean Coast, lowered the FOV of the camera and pulled it way back, creating a dense layer of fog between the eel and the camera. Originally I wanted to show one of the eels under the water, but as you may notice if you look closely at 00:09, the way the material for the eels is set up to enable their transparency evidently conflicts with the transparency of water, so any part of the eel that would be visible underwater is just invisible instead.
@@ZullietheWitch Classic shader issues, thank you. I wasn't sure because of how much higher fidelity the model was, I guess the glow or scale obscures it.
"but like the sea, the specifics get murkier the deeper they are" Hold up, her writing is this fire?
Aurelia aurita is one of the most often met jellyfish species, they are common in the Mediterranean and not only.
I always like these vids whenever they show up. and the choice of LOZ music is always just right for the topic.
Spirit Eels be eternally pogging
Another aspect is that proves that different creatures have different spirit forms is in Castle Morne, right before the Leonine Misbegotten boss fight. There are Spirit Jellyfish there but they're noticeably darker and seemingly warped. This may indicate these weren't human souls but those of Misbegotten, being the primary victims there. If that's the case, there's some correlation between one's physical appearance and the form they take upon death.
I love these little guys, they're eely good
Great choice of music for this. Zora's domain ties in nicely to the aquatic theme
I absolutely love this channel. I didn't even play that much elden ring but I love these lore videos. Amazing aesthetic, excellent video/content length, a real depth of knowledge and investigation is evident, and the random tiny details that the From Software team included are getting the praise and recognition they deserve.
I especially love when a video has some "mistakes. Because it means we get another video to watch, and it feels like breaking news of real investigative journalism.
This is the only channel I will ever have the notification for
One of the most calming, soothing, and serene videos of yours to date 💖
That's some soothing music.
Zelda BOTW Zora Domain
dude, the jellyfish quest just breaks my heart to pieces then reunites it whole knowing you got the sisters back together.
I think that the fact that in the lands between the spirits are jellyfish, while in the shadows the spirits are these earthworm looking eels makes sense. Due to the erdtree and the cycle of deathless life, touching the ground as seen in many catacombs would signify rebirth. Therefore in the lands between the eels may not have been successful into becoming spirits. Thus, in the lands between the only way for the spirits to fully manifest were in forms of floating jellyfish, something that doesnt touch the ground and make contact with the erdtree roots. Also the eels of the lands of shadow can not move away from where they are rooted, while the Jellys are constantly floating around. Perhaps this may signify how in the Land of Shadows, death is an actual event where the spirits would manifest on and be fully connected to what ever dyed in that exact location, while in the lands between as death is cut off from the world the spirits once manifested, have no real place to go.
0:38 that shot of Roderika with tiny jellyfish is really nice :D
Never heard this OST before, its like a warm hug! :😄
its from the Zelda series. Zoras Domain or something.
botw: zora's domain. its the theme home of fish-like people!
I actually had a similar thought the other day after watching Dandadan. It said in the show that spirits of the dead turn into sea life to make it easier to cross the river to the afterlife. Maybe some inspiration is being drawn from that, since death in Elden Ring is somewhat associated with water.
The image of the eels all pointing upwards made me think of plants growing towards the sunlight. It's like the eels are trying to reach out to the living world again, stretching their bodies from the ground. They're not plants, so that might not be the reason, but that thought just came to my head.
The fact that they both glow red when angered is noteworthy, too.
I really wish completing Aurelia's quest would upgrade her summon to have both her and her sister
Are there any jellyfish in the land of shadow? Perhaps it's a matter of where they died.
It's likely they drift to and anchor in the Land of Shadows. But more likely, I imagine they emerged there from water. That may be in some way part of correlation with the Tibia Mariners. But perhaps noting the spirit eels drop Grave Glovewart may be a more valuable insight. The telling of their existence from mainly catacombs could suggest that spirit eels were of the souls who came through from the catacombs.
I just noticed that the spirit jellyfish tentacles are basically the elements that make up the 'tail' of the moon prescence and perhaps the same elements that make up the red 'arms' on the blasphemous blade.
Given that they're rooted to the ground, it makes sense that the spirit eels are probably spirits bound to the location where they died or were killed.
I like to think that unlike jellyfish spirit, the eel's symbolize shackle or convinment. They are unable to reach the sky and bound to the land for some reason, might explain why they always gazing through the sky.
.
This is also suit the theme of land of shadow where everyone is trapped and locked in different realm and cannot escape
The first time I found the other sister and I saw what this all was I was streaming, I got so emotional I had to stop my stream.
Every single play through of Elden Ring I’ve done, a dozen or so, I reunite the sisters and every single time it gets me right in the feels.
My braindead inner lore for it was Jellyfish are lost souls of children that can't move on but also can't be reborn into the Erdtree from it's burial and rebirth cycle. When I got to the shadow realm, I read the worm ghosts as lost souls completely abandoned by Marika and the Erdtree's cycle of rebirth, forever lost in it's shadow "where all manners of death wash up ... only to be suppressed"
Y'know i forgot that they had limbs. --thanks-- _thanks_ for reminding me.
something that just came to mind, what if the spirit jellyfish are souls of followers of the golden order (or that lived in the land covered by the erdtree in general), while the spirit eels are the souls of hornsent, it would explain their existing only in the realm of shadow while still having the jellyfish also make sense
EDIT: by the golden order i meant people who inhabit the lands between, i just couldn't phrase it at the moment of commenting
Why would they be associated with the golden order or erdtree? Those people when they die get erdtree burials, stuffed into the roots in the catacombs. They don't get buried in traditional tombs or cemeteries.
@@Jetsetlemming i thought about that but remember, there's spirit summons like luthel or kristoff that explain erdtree burial was considered an honor or only for people who were DEEMED "worthy" (like say the nobles of leyndell) and of course i was also referring to the rest of inhabitants of the lands between (the omens, the misbegotten, the astrologers, glintstone sorcerers, etc..) can turn into spirit jellyfishes as well
EDIT: because think about it, where do we find the most amounts of spirit jellyfish (castle morne, Liurnia, the mountaintops, the consecrated snowfield and behind the church where you finish Latenna's questline) all of them are places with people who wouldn't be seen as worthy of erdtree burial by the golden order's followers
@@alanmartinez2122 right, so that's not followers of the golden order :P
Another similarity between the jellyfish and eels is that when the player attacks them, they start glowing red
I think this is just what dead hornsent look like as ghosts. Remember, the hornsent NPC has a facemask made up of dead worms, and the spirit eels represent worms a lot with their body halved by a thickened part. With the hornsent being so obsessed with spirits this would explain why the mask is important: its a simbol of their spirits. This would also explain why most spririt eels appear on the hornsent burial grounds on the cerulean coast.
Probably significant that all the spirit jellyfish and spirit eels are far from normal erdtree burial practices, attached to mass graves and battlefields and traditional graveyards instead. They might be another form of "those who live in death," people removed from the cycle of erdtree rebirth and thus becoming some new kind of life. If people can be reborn from trees, why CAN'T they be reborn as jellyfish? Makes perfect sense to me. The aquatic theming is also probably tied to how Godwyn got all mermaidy, too.
Hell, you could go even farther by taking the erdtree roots more literally, because what do roots do? Absorb water. When people die in the Elden Ring universe they turn aquatic, either to get drank by a big tree or becoming some other form of life.
This makes me hope if we get a DLC we get to go to the Lands Between's Ocean. Where the spirits and the dead drift to and fro.
With the skies above us being the shifting waves. Walking on the ocean beds surface. Maybe even get Godwyn lore people have been asking for.
This whole small quest really made me wish they did more stuff like this with all the spirit ashes, or at least more of them. That's why my favorite ashes, and the only ones I bother to use, are Aurelia, Latenna, and the sisters from the DLC. The quests made them feel much more personal than the majority of the other ashes. (Honorable mention to the stone imps that are friends with each other).
Wow I have never stopped and appreciated just how realistic the jellyfish move. Just give 'em another 2% and make 'em wa-uh...
As the lands of shadow are hidden away, buried so to speak, it felt fitting that the aquatic spirits are not jellyfish floating right under the surface but bottom feeders stuck in the ocean floor.
They may reflect a spiritual depth and with it lack of light.
You know, The stars are heavily linked to water, the sea, water animals, and dead things.
That makes me thing of how Godwyn's soulless body is turning into a tentacled fish. Maybe it's trying to join the stars to truly be dead?
3:10 perhaps the eels are like predators on the jellyfish. And the Shadow World is sort of like a tide pool where dead souls accumulate, swirling around, for the eels to feed on.
One thing I noticed is that the jellyfish float, they are free from the ground. If they so chose, they could see the stars. The eels, on the other hand, are anchored to the ground. Perhaps they will never see the stars.
they seem able to see just fine.
@@tsm688 But they can't GO there like the jellyfish. The jellyfish disappeared because they flew off up into the stars.
I loved this quest,reuniting the souls of the children was so nice,for a Fromsoft game.
I remember finding those ruins, hearing the spoken dialogue and being like "Wait....who's that?".
What the heck?! This isn't Vaati!
I wasn't prepared to cry!
I hope you're doing well, Zullie.
Maybe I'm reaching but the Jellyfish in the lands between hover above the ground freely and can even leave to see the stars, while the eels in the realm of shadow are tethered the ground stretching towards the the sky like they're trying to escape but can't.
Reuniting Aurelia with her sister made me so happy ^_^ Out of all the quests in Elden Ring, that was my most proud to complete.
The spirits now being eels might be an indicator of the spirits having sunk to the bottom kinda, like jellyfish can swim wherever, even in open sea and the surface of the water, but these eels are stuck to the bottom, as far down as it goes, maybe this represents more time passing or maybe a sort of stagnation (we know from soft loves stagnation), so that the spirits went from freely floating through the air to getting stuck in the ground.
It's because eels are bottom-dwellers/bottom-feeders, so the souls take on that form in the Land of Shadow, "below" the Lands Between. Jellyfish float around higher up :)
Yes, the sea in Elden Ring is not literal; it represents what you cross between mortal life and the Lands Between. So the hauntings resembling sea creatures works for this.
they're primarily used for carriage sales and events
It is interesting how both the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow seem to relate spirits, specifically, to the ocean-- while they feel distinct, it's impossible to ignore the fact that there is *some* connection between death and the sea, and the creatures that inhabit it. Eels and Jellyfish and the Lord of Death's fish-like appearance, and many more hints that there is *something* about death that makes a person leave the guise of a land-walking animal and assume that of a swimming one.
Typically, the body putrefied into liquid and melts away when it dies. Perhaps this is "returning to sea" symbolism?
3:09 maybe the difference is because the outer force each soul follows. The Jellyfish are untethered because they follow the stars, while the land eels are tethered to the earth because they follow the crucible.
Whether there's a specific lore reason for it or not, there's a really interesting pattern of nautical/death imagery (Tibia Mariner, coffin ships, Godwyn's merman form, etc.). It feels like the sea separating the Lands Between from the larger world has a metaphysical component to it.
Where the jellyfish are "free" spirits, the eels are sedentary, or "rooted" of their own will, sitting inside the earth. This reminds me of the golden order, how they are rooted in their ideals.
With how the hair (or tendril) looking things on them seem to float unnaturally and their affinity for water in the lands between it's possible that they may be the spirits of the drowned. Those tufts do seem to move as though they're underwater
They are the souls of Thomas and his friends.
The spirit eels always looked to me a bit like tube worms, idk why. Jellyfish and tube worms are also, interestingly, among the oldest and most primordial types of marine life.
That last shot of the big eel in the water looks straight out of a horror game
I really hope From does some sort of aquatic themed game. They've been hinting at large bodies of water being very important and spooky for ages. Kos and the fishing villages` whole deal in BB, the Cathedral of the Deep in DS3, the spirit aquatic creatures in Elden Ring. I'm probably missing loads, but you get the point.