The AI for the Spirit Jellyfish is labeled "Reikurage", which naturally just means "Spirit Jellyfish", but it shows that there's seemingly a consistent naming scheme between them.
Worth pointing out too that there's an official Elden Ring Twitch emote of them called 'SpiritEel' so it's not just the internal data calling them that.
im thinking they are somehow related to the stone worms close to the gaols, they too are non hostile till provoked and also have an exploding varient and lest we forget human eyes
@@Shadowth117 Speaking of official content, I recall a promotional Tweet before the DLC's release mentioning contact with the moon and stars in the Lands of Shadow while using an image of these "Spirit Eels."
I feel like those legs are 100% one of the developers just having a giggle. They make it, see it has arms, give it legs and show some people. Everyone has a chuckle and agree to keep it like that since they're underground.
Yeah, the legs are likely not canon. Since this is a boundary break sorta deal. You NEVER see them in game. Now, Elden Beast, on the other hand.... That one canonically has legs. (And they're cursed....)
I also like it, because it fits into FromSoft's general philosophy of allowing players to miss things in their games. It's a reality of the world that there's no intended way to view, but to FromSoft, that's totally okay - that's very poetic to me. And yet, players *did* find a way to view it anyway, turning it into another secret that the community can discover and share with each other. Fuck I love FromSoft's design philosophy
It would be interesting if the Lands Between was actually the land of the dead, and the dead can't swim because of the association between water and death. Perhaps the dead are _supposed_ to sink to a watery grave, but _someone_ decided to raise up an island so that the dead could live on. This gets even more interesting when you consider the concept of death _within_ the Lands Between, and the contrast between things like Erdtree burial and ghostflame cremation. Neither Erdtree burial nor ghostflame cremation seem to have any connection to water or the sea, and yet Those Who Live in Death _do_ seem to have such a connection, via the Tibia Mariners and Godwyn.
When i first saw a few of them at Gravesite Plains being friendly, i cheered "YES! The woooo worms are friends!" Then later on when i ran into some red ones trying to kill me, i cried out. "NOOOO! Why woo friends, why?!" I still haven't killed one yet. No idea if they even drop any resource.
At first when I saw them in the beginning of the dlc I thought they were adorable but as soon as they turned hostile in Charos hidden grove I was for some reason freaked out by them. They turned terrifying with that GIANT red head
"The Eels turn red when hostile, though only partially, looking almost like a gummy worm." We're one specification of "a sour gummy worm" away from this just being a Zullie Twitter post.
You actually predicted it lol, just a few minutes after you commented this Zullie posted about how she wishes we got these guys instead of the Elden Ring peach Troli rings
I honestly hate the fact that they made a limited run candy collectible and sent it out to a bunch of streamers like it's some sort of promotion. It really serves no purpose, it doesn't hype up elden ring (which doesn't need any more hype) and doesn't let us spend money. Just like ... Why bother? In
@@UmbraDiSol It wasn't a limited run candy, it's just peach rings with elden ring marketing on them, they are the exact same as normal ass peach rings. Imagine getting actually upset about some peach flavored sweets.
i notice that most of the time they only become red if provoked, but when i find them already aggressive, its usually in a circular formation around a turtle, like they are protecting it.
@@kahlzun The notes people leave behind do not allow for just any words, only a subset of developer-added ones to choose from. Turtle is not in the list, but dog is (because of attacking dog monsters, most likely, so players can warn each other about ambushes). So people used "dog" as the closest animal word choice when choosing to leave messages about the turtles.
Something I noticed, the big groups of pre-hostile eels are usually accompanied one of the old horned turtles. Plus the two-headed turtle talisman, which is found alongside hostile. eels aswell.
i also noticed that in at least one place youll find a single turtle surrounded by non-hostile eels, and if you attack the turtle they will all immediately turn hostile
@@TheSergio1021scarlet rot is its own separate system, focused more around rot into rebirth. Those who embrace the rot are often reborn from it, their form changing as they are broken down and renewed. So, they don’t exactly die. Those who do not embrace it sorta live on as violent husks, as we see from Radahn. Im unsure if you have to be special like Millicent to undergo this rebirth, but given Romina, maybe anyway can embrace it and be reborn?
Interestingly, they have five fingers on their hands, which is often regarded in-game as the sign of possessing the pinnacle of intellect. Could they have more going on than we give them credit for?
If anything, they're related to the spirit jellyfish, who are explicitly souls of the dead that didn't make it to the erdtree. It's possible that these little dudes are ghosts turned nature spirits, with the scadutree not granting them the death of their souls.
@@Dinoman972 there's also the only Dragon with five fingers in the game, Placidusax THE ELDEN LORD, A DRAGON CHOSEN BY THE GREATER WILL that possesses five fingers.
@@ButterDawgDawgWitDaBudda All ancient dragons have at least five fingers, six if you count the extra talons on their wrists. Not that it matters because my comment was about the fingers' ties to intelligence, not to the Greater Will specifically.
@@ButterDawgDawgWitDaBudda The Greater Will seems to be a more recent contender in the Lands Between, so Placidusax's vacant elder god doesn't seem to be the same one the Golden Order likes to tote around
Considering the death/ocean link, the face also resembles part of a sailing ship's rigging, the triple deadeye. On a shipwreck, the rope rots away, and the deadeyes resemble round, 3-dot faces staring up from the deck.
Based on their shape and sometimes explosive tendencies, I assumed that they were the "unbound" form of the rock caterpillars, the ones that hang out around gaols.
If I remember correctly, there isn't much lore for the stone worms either, leaving them as much of a mystery as these worms. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a pattern with these spirit worms in terms of where they hang out, unlike the stone worms, which typically hang out around gaols.
It seems like there are tons of aquatic references in this game IMO. If you view the lands between as a isolated location, like a reef aquarium for example, tons of things start to line up. The Erdtree resembles a giant acropora coral, that when kept to close to other old or dying acropora's will grow over them and take there old skeletal structure as their own. Tons of rocks in Caelid look like smooth round bone, similar to different calcium base rocks and coral skeletons. Speaking of Caelid, the scarlot rot has a massive resemblance IMO to what is referred to as Red Slime algae in the hobby or Cyanobacteria. A type of nuisance bacteria that will grow aggressively over corals, sand, less mobile invertebrates and basically smother them to death. It grows in places where there is to much nutrient load and low water flow and will spread so quickly that you can miss viewing your aquarium for a few days and suddenly be overrun with the stuff. Renna is a jellyfish. Crabs everywhere. The elden beast looks like a nudibranch on steroids. Crayfish are nasty. Anyway. Just something i noticed when i first played the game and my mind went in all sorts of directions with it. Fun stuff.
these guys look straight out of Studio Ghibli, and i LOVE IT. the strange hairs make for such a wierd creature, and the swelling head makes them all the creepier.
I hope we get a Miyazaki² collaboration one day (by which I mean Fromsoft's Hidetaka Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki), be it a game, an animation film or both
Given Elden Ring's consistent alchemical themes it's worth pointing out the resemblance of their faces to the "caput mortuum" (literally "dead head") in alchemical symbols. It was used to indicate a useless substance left over after an alchemical operation. Given that all sorts of dead wash up in the Land's of Shadow, maybe they represent something like spiritual run-off?
I was on this kick for a while, but it doesn't really explain much about them or fit in with their placements all over. Could be related still, but seems unlikely
I thought those simply were the roots of each finger we see in the ruins (and maybe the one in the main game too) would explain why their mother is here, they "grow" from underground.
sometihng i appreciate about Fromsoft games is that despite the reputation, they dont really feel the need to make "everything" hostile. there are creatures that are weird looking, but are just there, not normally aggressive towards the player. It helps this sense that, despite the feeling, this is not a world that exclusively exists to antagonise you.
Modern video games are extremely hesitant to make "pointless" content for the sake of worldbuilding or atmosphere, so I'm always happy when developers actually still do it. One example being enemies that don't drop anything and seemingly don't have any purpose besides just existing in the world.
Like the one messmer soldier right after you fight the golden hippo, his two buddies attack but he just stays there, sitting down unless you attack him first. He's aware you're there he will actively look at you when you're near, but I guess he really just doesn't get paid enough to deal with this shit so he can't be bothered xD
They seem weirdly similar to the Evergoal Rock Snakes, including the shape, swinging attacks, and explosions. I wonder if the people who designed the constructs were from the Land of Shadow and were inspired by the spirit eels.
These guys are so amazing. They really stand out to me as some of the coolest critters FS has ever designed. I think their popularity hinges on a lot of overlapping factors: They are cute and funny but also somehow suit the serious world of Elden Ring. They are thematically rich and provide calming atmospheric vibes amid a tense game. I think the fact that they succeed so well without lore shows that lore, in some sense, is "clothing" for the real essence of what FS offers. Lore may make certain things intriguing or engaging or add an additional level of interest, but when it comes down to it, the thematic poetry and masterful sense of area and mood, together with remarkable gameplay, is what makes FS really shine out.
Going with the association with the sea btw, I noticed the waves around Cerulean Coast at least, only move inwards towards land, which fits the plaque nearby that says “all manner of dead” eventually wash up along the Cerulean coast. The most prominent being whatever culture with the bull-headed god sent barges of their dead en masse, which ended up washing up along the coast and forming quite a bit of the mass of the coast itself.
Thanks Zullie. I love listening to your videos in the background while I play videogames. ...And then realizing that I can't do that, and pausing the game for a short and fascinating primer on something unexpected.
Considering their relationship to death, I think it lends more credence to the theory that Charo's Hidden Grave and the Cerulean Coast together represent the shape of the twinbird, since a lot of them can be found there.
In both ancient greek and celtic mythos, water was often a gateway into the otherworld/underworld by traveling under or across it, so I can see why the design team made the choice of jellyfish and eels.
I wonder if they're also inspired by Will 'o Wisp type legends, especially the Hitodama of japan. Literally the first direct quote from a historical source mentioning on the Hitodama Wikipedia page describes "the complete blueness of a Hitodama", and they are most certainly a bright blue color. Both are spirits commonly found around graveyards and burial sites, and based off the Spirit Jellyfish in the base game, these spirits are very likely genuine souls of the dead. And anecdotally at least, my first few times encountering them, it was the "strange glow in the woods" that led me to go investigate them. Which that was only even more pronounced when I found some naturally hostile ones, and i seriously though i saw a random field of floating red lights in the distance before i got a good view of them. That curiosity led me to go investigate, exactly like how Will 'o Wisps are said to lure in unsuspecting people.
Garden Eels come further out their boroughs when defecating, so all these spirit eels are pooping blue stuff into the air. Furthermore, Ribbon Worms can expel a large membrane from their mouths, which I believe to be the inspiration for the 'feeding' mechanism the Spirit Worms show.
@@badluckbrian46 I always considered dark souls a survival horror rpg, but the two thing that terrorized me the most were the clam monster and the bloody moving tree…
I always assumed these things were similar to the rock caterpillars in the main game that signaled there was a gaol nearby, so I figured these things roughly pointed to the gaol dungeons. If they do, they dont do a great job.
@@NinjablazerZero1 Right, but they're different types of gaols. They're just dungeons - not the equivalent of the base game gaols that act as *only* mini boss fights.
They’re also really interesting in that they’re the only enemy I know of that drains your stamina if you get wrapped up in their sea cucumber attack. No stamina means no more attacking, and no rolling away to safety
I love these silly little dudes, especially those stupid arms😭😭 Also one thing I'm curious about is how tall the Scadutree is, and how it would look like next to the Erdtree
I've always seen The Lands Between as a sort of "Interstice" type space. This is supported by the original name for it "Riftlands". I think TLB lies beyond the edges of the normal world's map and between the rest of the world and TLB there lies a River Styx-esque ocean full of marine spirit animals. Beings from the "other side" can come in on big fancy coffin boats and normal travellers can occasionally slip through the fog and get there too.
@@verniy_6595 Most people don't think about it at all and the Interstice is a thing in...wait for.... Berserk that's a ven diagram overlap of astral and physical planes so....
My girlfriend made an interesting point while we were playing the DLC. The giant coffin ships also kind of help explain how the normal human-sized coffins can be used as transport between areas, how they usually seem to have floated down underground rivers, etc. Travel by coffin just seems to be a thing.
I love how Elden Ring has its own little Spirit Ecology. Very little of it is explained, but it doesn't really need explaining. You can feel how the cycle of life and death perpetuates in many different, multilayered ways.
I needed the lore so badly, I've been calling them "the little tube guys" the whole time because I didn't know their actual name. Thank you so much they make me so happy
What was it Vaati said, creatures of the lands between are afraid of Zullie running around with a tape measure stretching them out and measuring them? I guess its the Eels turn now. I always thought they were worm/kodama because of the earthworm like segment on their bodies. So, sea cucumber, kodama, eel, earthworm? Cool.
Who else can imagine a scadutree growing on a sunken island, now that we know los was underwater, or maybe it grew there once los came to surface level
@@MitridatedCarbon first of all these eel-like spirit creatures mostly grow underwater. Secondly, and the most strong reason is that, those ships that we see was sunken during naval wars and after that long time the bottom level of sea had surfaced. There is actually no better explanation as to why we see so many ships above ground on cerulean coast or atleast that part of the land of shadow was underwater some centuries ago.
@@hyp0782 The ships actually seem to be massive coffins that washed up against the Cerulean Coast. Left to drift until they finally ran aground on the coastline in the place where all Death "washes up." The evidence for this is the spirit flowers they leave behind on them that you can find while going through the Fissure. They don't really look like they were EVER manned, you know? They honestly just kinda look like the massive hearse carriages that are pulled by enslaved giants. That being said, perhaps you're being a bit too literal in your theory. The Land of Shadows seems to have been removed from the Lands Between, so what if instead of having been *literally* underwater, we're currently underwater in a spiritual sense? A deeper layer than the jellyfish, considering these creatures resemble tube worms and other stuff you may find in the very deep ocean's floors. Something for you to use for your theory, I guess. ^^
One thing I recall happening-I tried defeating all of the eels in one pond (surrounding a turtle, which I also took out). Upon defeating the last one, I got a Ghost Glovewort 8, I think? What with Glovewort generally being found in catacombs, that also ties together the aquatic / death themes.
Interesting that with all the aquatic themes being tied to the concept of Death, even the Land of Shadow itself has been replaced by a central sea in the Lands Between. I wonder if the stone coffin-ships came from though. Were they sent from the Lands Between? Nothing is explained on that matter, and I don't reacall the bull statues built into the coffins appearing anywhere in the base game. Also the only shorelines on the continent are present in Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula (which is really an island), and in Wailing Dunes in Caelid, neither of which connects to the cetral sea at all
Spirit noodle, grows in length when you approach it, gets aroused, turns red, its head swells in size, and it attacks with a spume of white threads. Sure Miyazaki.
Always knew there was something related with the undead with them. They are very often seen as paired, like lovers, if not they're always in numbers, thinking they just were the commoners of the area where they are. They just stick there as gummy-like worms, acting as much as they could from their past lives. According to Zullie they share the same japanese AI name, so you make the parallel betwen the spirit jellyfishes of the base game and that, and you can know for certain they were people before sticking to the values of life of their past.
They also seem to be modelled to look like Worms, with the thick "band" at the upper third of their body making me see a similarity to earthworms. Regardless, they both disgust and intrigue me, feeling like a blend between an ambivalent apparition and a wretched thing.
One second. I see a huge comparison in the texture of them, and the "tubes" in the mother of fingers area. From my eyes it looks almost identical. Just something I find strange
The first ones of them that i found were around a mausoleum boss, so i thought they were similar to those ball pillars around the evergaols in the main game. But then i found them elsewhere too and was stumped again. Thanks for shedding some light on them
Literally as soon as I saw one of these silly little guys I thought they looked like the Kodama from Princess Mononoké. I've been calling them the "Kodama Worms" my entire playthrough lol 💜
The Elden beast fight also turns the arena into a giant sea, the Elden beast emerges like a giant whale, and Marika/Radagon’s corpse gets plunged into the water to be remade as a sword.
“Funny little guys” has easily become my favorite trope in media lately. No big reason, no massive complex lore or background, just a weird lil fella chilling out. You go little guy.
i’d just like to say I appreciate you lore digging for us and giving us videos so often, I understand that you might still be a bit sad about your cat but you’ve been keeping it up. Thank you
That one shot where you had the jellyfish and the eels hanging out together looked so perfectly peaceful. 1000/10 would start a new playthrough just to get to their secret little graveyard and stay there forever.
I adore how many of Elden Ring's creatures are just silly lil weirdos, just funky lil guys. This game is not afraid to be both silly, colorful, and gorgeous while also having an insanely cruel and bleak world that you can do so little to improve and I love that so much.
