Jellyfish World

The other morning, I took a walk in the hot June sun along the sea wall by the Firth of Tay, close to where it meets the sea. The breeze smelled of salt and summer. The occasional jogger ran past, sweating and gasping under the deep blue sky; seals, out on the water, watched them go by with lazy curiosity. 

I looked out over the edge of the footpath into waters that were deep and calm. The surface of the Firth was placid, undulating softly, like that of a lake. But down below strong currents must have been moving, because I suddenly saw a long line of jellyfish, close to the surface, being rapidly swept downstream as though on an invisible highway. Each was no bigger than my hand, spread out from tip of thumb to tip of little finger - most were completely pale, though others were lurid blue or purple. At times they bobbed to the surface and breached it like little globules of shining resin or gel; at others they dipped down into the murk with wafted motions of their frilly skirts, like coquettish ghosts, or ghosts of coquettes. The only constancy to their movement was their passage ever onwards out to sea.

Among these dainty jellies swam many thousands of tiny fish, coloured almost exactly like the surface of the water and at first visible only as many minute flickering motions that were too rapid and purposive to be ripples or eddies. But if one paused for a moment to observe from above, as though a bird, one soon saw them in their multitude - dancing among each other and their jellyfish consorts with effortless movements, and occasionally revealing their underbellies to the sun in sudden flashes of silver or pale blue. 

This procession passed by me for a mile or more, sweeping gracefully onwards, dancing by the grasping tendrils of the forest of seaweed that grew forth from the sea wall. And I was reminded again of the virtues of Small Worldism: the doctrine that entire campaign worlds can often be envisaged simply by carefully scrutinising the minutiae of the landscape around oneself.

I imagined that these creatures were not floating on a mere firth but on a great ocean, and that the jellyfish were each miles wide. I imagined that each harboured a multitude of inhabitants - settlements, fortresses, citadels, palaces - and that among and between this dancing throng of mighty underwater demigod-islands there was trade, war, travel, adventure. 

I imagined that the dense thatching of sea weed that hung by the side of the sea wall was as commensurately large and dense as the jellyfish and the body of water they swam in, and that it harboured monsters, mystery, hidden wonders, entire civilisations of submarine beings. 

I imagined that the fish which swarmed about were themselves leviathans - sharks, whales, marlin, tuna, kingfish, flying fish, manta rays, sunfish, eels - and that their power and hunger could be harnessed by rare and gifted sorcerers or psionicists. 

And I imagined that all it would take to enter that world would be for a brave RPG designer to jump in, take the plunge, and report back with his findings. But then I remembered I had a train to catch, and a fry-up waiting for me at the hotel before I departed, so I turned back and went for breakfast and wrote this note on my phone, instead.