Commander Gaster Cichlidae is a senior member of the World Wide Messenger Corps. He was born Gam Coloid due to his parentage, but he’s amassed enough fortune and savvy to transcend Gam allocation. Every Temple has an apartment for WWMC members and Gaster has his own private suite among those. He’s an Adventurer (with a capital “A”), a scientist (with a lower case “s”), and an entrepreneur (with no remarkable “e” implying one thing or the other). High level information delivery and procurement is his trade and currency.
Members of the WWMC number at most 30 and at their least, a handful. Their membership has a high turnover rate, as their job is inherently dangerous. Setting aside the political chicanery, they travel the planet at (what is for them) high speeds of 70 – 80 mph (120 kph) by using variable surface and submersible chariots pulled by pairs of giant sailfish.
Zipping across the surface of the ocean at 120kph is fine usually, but the action tends to resemble trolling to the very biggest of undersea creatures. And when the biggest of the big get scaled up in size appropriately, their brains start to gain merfolk level intelligence. Picking off a WWMC Charioteer would seem like an exciting challenge to a big Megalodon or Kraken or some-such. They could have bragging rights too. Seeing as their digestions are slow, if one of their shiver-mates questioned the validity of their claim that they actually caught one of these pesky charioteers, one would only have to hork a few times and cough up the ornate craft itself. For example:
(Hork!)
“See that there boys… that is a Temple Four model Messenger Chariot circa mid-last century. You can tell by the inlaid artwork on the sides and the build of the outrigging. Plus, as you can see, due to the lack of corrosion, and the finish on the metal planking, it’s made of carbon steel.”
(Rutherford Megalodon sniffs with pride as his friends gawk. )
“True he is, Temple Four got into forging carbon steel around 1978, you could smell it in their wake as they passed by. Ever since too.”
“Ooh, Ruthy, can you hork up the Mer’s uniform? Maybe we can figure out which one it was.”
“Sorry lads, it’s in there but it’s good and buried under a metric ton of mackerel. He wasn’t no veteran, tho. He handled his team like a noob. He was in-current and out of current pell-mell until his team got exhausted. Their reaction time was sluggish when I got ’em.”
“Ooh, you got the sailfish too?”
“Aye. Front-on. All of it in one go. Ickers stuck me good in the roof of me mouth too.” (Ahh!) “Th’ee tha? Th’ti’ got tha thcarth in thar. (Ahem) Still got the scars. Hurt like a bitch. They struggled for a couple hours and then went dead. Noob whined and pled for release.”
“And what’d you say?”
“I said ‘Nope.'”
“Aye, you gave him release alright.”
“Yar, if it had been Gaster Cichlidae or one of the upperclassmen in the corps, they woulda fought harder or come up with a halfway decent bargain to earn release. Plus ‘ee wouldn’ta been surfing like such a spazoid.”
“Ooh, catching that ornery Gaster Cichlidae would be epic.”
“You’d be a world-wide celebrity in the Kraken/Kaiju community.”
“Grr. I hate Gaster Cichlidae.”
“Hang on, if you want a poke at him so bad, ‘ee’s running between Temple’s Eleven, Eight, and Three for the next year and half.”
“Orcas say he’s got a thing for the Queen in Eleven.”
“And they say he’s got a thing for the King in Eight.”
“And the Prince and Princess in Number Three.”
“Sic.”
“Thing like what thing? A ding-a-ling thing? Like reproductive organs?”
“No. No. Just a generalized ‘thing.’ I mean, maybe? The Orcas wern’t specific.”
“Orcas are idiots.”
“Tasty, though.”
“Gaster won’t make a move without Balihaj giving the OK. She’s got his leash.”
“Still… Grr. Gaster Cichlidae.”
(All) “Gaster Cichlidae Grr-rr.”