Throne of Salt

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Positively Unhinged Elden Ring Theoryposting: Part 2

Yes, these are my hand-written notes. My descent into madness continues apace.

Check here for part 1.

PART 4: SECRETS OF 1.00

Digging through this immensely helpful spreadsheet has revealed many things. A lot of the changes from 1.00 to current were “there’s no description, now there is one”, and a decent number are clearly abandoned conceptual threads that aren’t useful for anything, and many of them are probably not particularly solid to use as a basis for speculation. But there are a decent number that are at least interesting, and several that are very interesting in ways that leave me more than a little disappointed that FromSoft either elected to remove the clues because they were too overt or removed them because plans changed and they never provided a replacement.

Crepus’ Vial: Described as “sealing away the “shadow of death”. Current version says it was used by Roundtable Hold assassins to hunt down Tarnished who had fallen from the guidance of Grace. Which, if nothing else is a parallel of the shadowbound beasts serving as the GW’s hatchetmen when their Empyreans get unruly.

Concealing Veil: “said to have been secreted away from the Eternal Cities and handed over to a band of assassins.”

If true, the Black Knives got their veils from the Eternal Cities but did not acquire them on their own. This seems to be more evidence for “Marika was behind the Night of Black Knives”, a theory which I don’t like one bit, so I am going to roll with Ranni swiping them from storage on a visit to the capital.

Shabriri’s Woe: “The man, named Shabriri, was born without pupils. Known to be a great lover of the grape, a sickness in the form of a red colored chaos was said to have come to dwell beneath his eyes. Eventually, his pupil-less eyeballs were crushed by other men, and he was driven to the gloomy southern peninsula.”

Grape possibly a euphemism for eyeballs as found elsewhere, but also could just mean that he was an alcoholic.

Being driven to the Weeping Peninsula is a very interesting bit of text: the only place where frenzy is found in the region is in the Ailing Village, which doesn’t have much going for it besides there being an outbreak of frenzy there and folks being cogent enough to put up warnings (see Flame Crest Wooden Shield). Interesting, but ultimately a dead end, though I do like the image it paints of Shabriri meeting his end in a tiny little village that doesn’t even have a name.

Daedicar’s Woe: “Disturbing likeness of an old noble whose skin was flayed. He smiles with a serene tenderness. Increases damage taken. This soft-featured man's name was Daedicar, and he was one of Captain Rykard's paramours, as well an attendant in his Inquisition. He would test new methods of torture first upon himself, making a gift of his pain and first-hand knowledge to the one he loved.”

This one got changed a whole lot, as the current version of the item reads:

“Disturbing likeness of a woman whose skin was flayed. She smiles with a serene tenderness. Increases damage taken. It is said that this woman, named Daedicar, indulged in every form of adultery and wicked pleasure imaginable, giving birth to a myriad of grotesque children.”

My gut says this was changed mid-development when someone said “Hey boss, I’ve got a nifty idea for the snake-men”, and...it's an improvement but not by much. 1.00 is TVtropes-Issue Depraved Homosexual Bit Character, modern is "this woman has lots of sex and therefore is both morally and literally monstrous" and you know what, you can in fact write better things than that.

Tarnished’s Furled Finger: “This finger of corpse wax, furled like a hook, is one of the fetishes bestowed by the maidens of the Finger Reader”

Just noting this one because you don’t generally see corpse wax involved with the Fingers; it’s almost always with the gargoyles who are typically linked to Maliketh.

Godrick’s Great Rune: “A large shard, found in hand of Godrick the Grafted. This shard is an imitation transcribed from one of the four large rings that make up the Elden Ring.”

The “four large runes” is most likely a remnant of an older version of the game with only four shardbearers, but the idea that Godrick is such a pissant that he can only manage a bad copy of a Great Rune is fun to consider.

Swarm Pot: “Unpleasant yet short-lived, these flies inherit what might be the most worthless of legacies in all of man's meddling with nature's work.”

I just like the phrasing in this one.

Flask of Crimson Tears: “A sacred flask modeled after a golden holy chalice that was once graced by a tear of life. It is said that a Finger Maiden will bestow two such chalices upon the chosen Tarnished when they meet.”

Pointing this out primarily for the “tear of life” reference, which I’d bet is a golden tear to complement Noxian silver tears.

Soporific Grease: “The Saint of the Cradlesong has become the very symbol of lost repose, and the feeble of heart were powerless to resist her kindness even upon the battlefield.”

This gives us Miquella fighting during the Shattering (presumably) in the guise of St. Trina. So perhaps he took on that persona later than we thought, or he swapped between the two regularly.

Celestial Dew: “A nostrum used by members of the Carian royal family, made from gathered moon tears remaining above ground. An old magic hides within, known to interfere with fate itself.”

“Moon tears” appear nowhere else in either version of the corpus, but rolling with tears = blessings = sap / amber…looks like the moon was a lot more active in the past. Silver tear link seems likely, especially considering the Erdtree “tear of life” mentioned just a few entries up.

And dare I say it, if we have silver tears, and we have golden tears, and if silver tears are from the moon, gold would logically come from the sun, fits very nicely into the alchemical symbology…

Wait a second…

Baseless Speculation: The Sun is the Greater Will
You know how it’s fucking weird that they barely mention the sun at all in the game? You know how Ymir basically confirms that there was a big bang? You know how meteors and stars are just bizarre alien god-organisms? How there’s blueish and gold amber of the stars?

Sun’s a star.
Sun’s gold-colored and gold-associated.
Sun’s got all the properties of a lovecraftian god per that famous tumblr post
Sun’s gonna burn you if you get too close to it.
Sun sends out radio waves that you can tune in and listen to.
Sun is distant and doesn’t really give a shit about you but is also the fundamental source of all mechanical processes on Earth.

I think the sun might be the Greater Will.

Prattling Pates (multiple): “Said to be the wistful fetish of a now extinct ancient race who turned into clods of earth, losing not only their voices, but also their words.”

The only potential link we have is with the claymen of the Ancient Dynasty, though weasel words are fully in effect. Could just be a throwaway.

Miranda’s Prayer: “A doll fashioned in the appearance of an anthropomorphized miranda flower. While many revere it as a holy object of worship, it does not belong to the golden order, and thus has pagan origins.”

“Pagan” is a term that only appears with the Winged Scythe (affiliation with Deathbirds) and Serpent Bow (affiliation with Serpent Cult). Festival Grease doesn’t get the exact word dropped, but it does claim that the Dominula festival is an old enough tradition that the Erdtree permits it to continue and that’s good enough for me. So that’s one for Death, one for Snek, one for Godskin, and one for Rot for Pre-Erdtree religions.

Cuckoo Glintstone: “Craftable with a cracked pot. Sullied remains and such are mixed together and sealed in the pot. Consumes FP. Throw at enemy to set vicious pursuing wraiths upon them. A curse works in tandem with the act of defilement to summon the wraiths, calling them into deadly action.”

Keywords to point out here are “defilement” and “wraiths” - we’ll get back to them in the next theory section.

Meteorite (spell): “It is said that, in the Eternal City, now lost in ruin underground, meteorites held the same import as stars.”

Blessedly clear timing on this one: they believed this while they were still on the surface and a meteor had not yet ruined their day. Also interesting parallel with the Academy dismissing the Carians for their belief in the moon being equal to the stars.

Black Flame (spell):
Originally titled “Black Flame of the Godslayer”; Black Flame’s Protection was “Protection of the Godslayer”, which says to me that Godslayer was at some point intended as a proper title for the character later called the Gloam-Eyed Queen. Which, if GEQ is Marika or a fragment of Marika (or other way around), is very interesting indeed.

Turtle Neck Meat: “Turtle meat is said to boost virility, but none in the Lands Between seem to have much appetite for it these days. In Lands Between, the urge to reproduce has waned long ago.”

Hard confirmation of Melina’s weird implications and theories of Erdtree birth.

Serpent’s Amnion: “Amniotic sac that held man-serpent roe in its mother's womb. Among man-serpents there are some with particularly intelligent roe. The amnion is known to never dry out, retaining moisture indefinitely. It is revered among man-serpents as a holy object of worship.”

Gross, but definitely worth noting as A) probably belonging to Daedicar and B) a means of reproduction outside the tree births of the Erdtree cycle.

Asimi Silver Tear: "An asimi that has infected a tarnished. An intelligent silver sludge; asimi infect the body of tarnished, granting the host power."

This is a special tool that'll help us later.

East Limgrave Map: “Map of the eastern region of Tenebrae. The demesne of Tenebrae, far south of the capital, stands vigil before the vast Sea of Fog. Radagon's warning is yet told and retold. That one day, the Tarnished led into war will cross the Sea of Fog and return. For the Elden Ring.”

Tenebrae is probably just a different name for Limgrave in old dev versions, but that’s not the important part: the important part is that Radagon was warning people that the Tarnished would return and attempt to overthrow the current order. This would have been after his divorce from Rennala and adoption of Fundamentalism, so that checks out with what we know of his character. It lines up with the stories of Tarnished being hunted down or enslaved when they return, too.

Unalloyed Gold Items: Unalloyed gold is called ivory in 1.00, which feels alchemical to me: we’ve got red and gold already, now we get white.

Cracked Pot: “A remnant of bygone research into eternal life.”

This is straight-up either a pre-seeded (and then deleted) connection with the DLC, or it was an idea that had a nice open interpretation that got developed later.

Smithing stones used to have elemental types, looking a lot more like Dark Souls: these old versions have “transformed as a result of a meteorite that fell during ancient times,” which should put us in mind of the Stone Lords. 1.00 somber smithing stones are “A blackstone shard that has transformed, storing light” - black stone is only ever mentioned in conjunction with golem weaponry, so I’m going to follow Quelaag’s lead and say that this is a link to Rauh.

(The “storing light” thing is also reminiscent of the stone-scabbard sword from the DLC.)

Crystal Bud: “A parasitic plant that uses wounded trees as seedbeds. Commonly found throughout the Lands Between.”

I feel like this is symbolic of something, probably the Erdtree. Seedbeds are most prominently featured in the Seedbed Curse item, and that certainly is using a wound as a base.

Icon Shield: “Strongly retains the Rune of Life's blessing, providing gentle HP recovery when held.”

Always good to point out when Runes have dedicated names. This one’s Marika’s or I’ll eat my hat.

Also, I should probably go through and see what sorts of gameplay effects are linked, or possibly linked, to runes or gods. We’ve done it before with outer gods and damage types.

Fingerprint Shield: “A stone grave dedicated to lords in ancient times. Who would have thought to carry such a thing around?”

Now this is a very different description from current, and I like current better, but I do like the image of the Fingers pressing themselves into a headstone.

Crucible Greatshield: “Greatshield inlaid with rune blessings, gifted by Queen Marika herself.”

Just some reinforcement that the Crucible itself was not Marika’s enemy: she was willing to use its followers like any other tool in her arsenal. At least until Golden Order Fundamentalism became the rule of the day.

Blue-White Wooden Shield: “The crest-like design of the metal is believed to have ancient origins. Some say it represents a sword; others say it represents a tree. Whatever significance it may have had, it appears to have no special defensive properties beyond the mundane.”

Current version says “The design is said to represent the stars of the night sky, portending fate”, which rounds out to a funny little “no one has a fucking idea what these symbols mean” gag.

Heretic’s Hook: “Scythe used both for collecting and offering up the dead. The blade itself seems to be a tortured, maddened thing.”

This weapon was cut but we do have an image for it, but the style doesn’t ring any bells for what faction it might be linked to. My gut says it’s part of the ghostflame regime, but again that’s all we get.

Onyx Lord Greatsword: “A weapon unique to the Onyx Lords, a race of ancients with skin of stone who were said to have risen to life in an age when meteor strikes were common.”

More evidence for the Rauh connection, if we go with smithing stones being the result of meteor impacts.

Cleanrot Knight’s Sword: “The process of consecration tempers the blade by introducing it to rot, allowing it to withstand the effects of decay.”

Innoculating your weapons against a god is a fucking rad idea.

Abundance Twinblade: A weapon that never made it into the game, but the description remains to tell us that relatively late in development Miquella had the Rune of Abundance. 1.00 version of the Cleanrot Knight spear gives Malenia the Rune of Decay.

Putting the named runes together we have Life, Death, Abundance, Decay, and the Unborn, which is anomalously coherent.

Spirit ashes generally don’t have much in the way of descriptions, but the blurbs do contain some alternate names or interesting implications.

Nomad ashes are called a “red-eyed watcher”, but nothing else in the corpus mentions red eyes like that so it’s likely nothing more than an older way of describing Frenzy.

Winged Misbegotten ashes are called a “Radagon chimera”, which could mean that either they were a chimera made by Radagon, or a chimera made from Radagon at some point in development. But, with only that title to go on, it doesn’t really give you anywhere else to go, especially with how well their current versions fit thematically with the rest of the game.

Oracle Envoy ashes are called “golden order dissenters”, which fits very nicely with their current description of waiting to announce the arrival of a new god and a transformative renewal of the Order.

Clayman ashes are called “runestarved”, which is not a description that shows up elsewhere.

Kindred of rot ashes are called “oracle of rot”, which parallels their role with the Oracle Envoys - they’re just waiting for a different god.

Lone wolf ashes: “These wolves were chased from their pack, and later found company with a human outcast—a fellow hunter. “

Now, this is updated in current to specify that the hunter is a Tarnished, but I would like to remind everyone of that statue of a woman with three wolves in the sanctum of Farum Azula.

Nox armor sets: “worn by members of the Empyrean family”

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, what could this possibly mean…

Nightmaiden and Swordstress Ashes: “Summons the spirit of a descendent of Marika”

RING THOSE BELLS WE’VE GOT A FIVE-ALARM FIRE.

[A pause, as I draft out some theory or another]

Whoops, false positive.

The Nox armor sets are one of the biggest missed opportunities in the game in terms of lore - three sets of four pieces each, and they all repeat the same description - a description that replaced the one above, which was also repeated on all items. Which says to me that they had a penciled-in plan, scrapped it, and didn't have anything meaningful to replace it with. The current "Lord of Night" blurb is good enough for a single description, but there should have been at least 3. Even just an unrelated blurb about, I don't know, swordmistress initiation practices.

But let's say that there is some substance behind it. Let's treat it as true - we can't treat the DLC as true in the same breath, but that's no great loss to us. Base game only.

If true, this would mean that the Nox are essentially another version of the Golden Lineage. Marika had an entire other empire that collapsed on her prior to the current regime…or perhaps it has always been just the same empire, transforming over time as it collapses and reforms and collapses and reforms.

Calling them all Empyreans says that they’d either be chosen by the fingers, or born of a single god. Or, more likely, that Fromsoft’s definition of an Empyrean changed during development (which I consider extremely likely). Since the Fingers did not really have a detectable foothold in the Eternal Cities, the remaining option is that of them being buds of Marika in the style of Millicent & her sisters.

(I believe it was Zayf who pointed out that the Japanese text in the game uses the neologism "wagami", roughly translating as a split or doubled self, for both Millicent and the deathblighted Godwyn corpses.)

Those giant corpses on thrones, still uncertain. I’m going to spitball here, stream of consciousness style:

They're certainly dressed in the colors we would associate with followers of the Erdtree (or, it should be noted, the inhabitants of Dominula).
They might also be buds of Marika, or she might have been one of a group.
Two thrones are held by corpses, two are empty.
The Eternal Cities are filled with all those corpses melted into the walls that we see again in Inir-Elim, which is a dead ringer for an attempted ascension for godhood.
Do we ever see male Nox? I know we see mimic tears take male forms but I think that the Nox enemies are all female. Point for bud theory.
Nightfolk character background says silver ran in their veins…looking back at the description for Asimi, silver tear says that it’s a variety of silver tear than can infect a Tarnished.
This could just entail Tarnished from Godfrey’s cohort that somehow came in contact with silver tears, that is entirely possible for a red herring.
But if Tarnished are people who previously had Grace and then had it rescinded…
Then maybe the Eternal Cities had Grace prior to their sin against the GW…
Lord of Night, gods need a lord, Tarnished summoned together to fight over who gets the position…

These connections are tenuous bullshit at best and the combination of Metyr and the Hornsent throws it all into chaos. The plan at Fromsoft clearly changed multiple times, so all we get is pieces of what could have been.

There were details about the GEQ in 1.00 and they removed them from the game.

Godskin armor sets are all “made from tanned Demigod skin,”, which of course brings us to the question of “which demigods?” The most reasonable choice would be the seven soulless demigods in the mausoleums, what with the seven-face aprons of the Godskin Nobles…and of course the most reasonable choice makes no goddamn sense, because there’s no link at all between the Godskins and the Black Knife Assassins, except the extremely tenuous single line implicating Rykard as Plan B against Maliketh (Even though Rykard’s connections with the Godskins are themselves circumstantial at best.)

This is, of course, presuming that the demigods killed during the Night are the same demigods that are in the mausoleums and the same that got hunted by the Godskins. I feel like the first two are probably the same, and as much as I would like the third to be part of it, I don’t think I can make that jump. Not yet, anyway. Let me work myself up into a greater fervor.

Godskin Swaddling Cloth description does not mention GEQ by name, but calls her “the queen in black”. This reoccurs in the 1.00 Godslayer’s Greatsword description.

There are some changed descriptions in the Dominula festival sets that are also worth noting:

Blue Festive Hood: “Attire worn during a humble festival beseeching the blessing of the gods. The most important role in the festival can only be performed by young maids. They are distinguished by a wreath of stunning wildflowers in full bloom.”

Festive Garb: “Ceremonial garb decorated with charming embroidery. Attire worn during a humble festival beseeching the blessing of the gods. This dyed cloak of brilliant blue can only be worn by the young girls chosen to play the festival's most important role."

Festive Garb (Altered): “Ceremonial garb decorated with charming embroidery. Attire worn during a humble festival beseeching the blessing of the gods. The embroidered flowers of pale white convey the palpable virtue and beauty of the blessing.”

Okay, so we have a festival older than the Erdtree, that has been permitted to continue by Marika, that involves skinning and crucifying people as a way of seeking a blessing from the gods. Gods in the generic plural. But there’s only one appointed god in the lands between at a time (at least in the system that the Ring / Beast / GW facilitates), plus outer gods, but none of the outer gods have presence in Dominula.

There’s the Erdtree and Godskin iconography on the gold and blue robes, respectively. That’s two gods, or at least two divine forces interacting with each other, but we can't know if that iconography preceded the ritual or was adopted later. It's the baseline Erdtree symbol, not the Ancient or Fundamentalist versions, for whatever that's worth.

And there’s the end of the 1.00 secrets that I found worth recounting. Tune in next time for more rambling.

Addendum

So long as the Red Law is opposed, the Conqueror Worm has no victory. So long as Moloch is fought, it has not won.

It's fucking trite to say that, in the face of the horrors known and unknown before us, but I will cling to it all the same. Whatever it takes to endure this turning of the wheel. If hope cannot sustain us, may bloody-minded spite give us what we need to love one another and keep ourselves alive.

Take care of one another out there.

Saturday, November 2, 2024

Mothership Month 24

So the folks at Tuesday Night Games are spearheading a big community content festival for November, and when I asked if there was going to be one of those prompt-a-day lists, Sean responded ""Whoa we should do that. You want to put the prompt list together??"

So I put a list together. As is my way, I post it on November 2nd, because time is a flat circle. Get blogging. Tag me so I can shout out your stuff.

Mothership Month 24 Blogging Prompts

Legendary ghost ship
Spacer's best friend
Dirt-cheap android model
Local grey market cyberneticist
UFO cargo cult
Colony-world cryptid
Most annoying ad on the 'net
Martial arts, in space!
Minor offenses for new PCs
Iconography of the rebellion
Lost colony, now found
Spacer slang
Major stress for spaceship owners
Alien parasite gone horribly right
6 scars and what caused them
Loathsome company stooge
What's on that old data chip?
Nasty new computer virus
C-level scandal in the gossip feed
Steal from the public domain day!
Earth animal far from home
Ancient alien artifact on tour
Tragic tale of time-debt
Jury-rigged garbage tools
5 things worth more than credits
Spacer's favorite knock-off-brand
What happened to Lucky Tomas?
Corporate mascot war
Worst planet on the Rim
Interplanetary auxiliary language

Monday, October 21, 2024

Positively Unhinged Elden Ring Theoryposting: Part 1

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Now that Shadow of the Erdtree has been out for several months, I have settled into the long tail of idling away time doing exegesis about a game with somersaulting electric sheep.

That was the original opener of this post, and the first draft reached over 5000 words with no meaningful progress, after which I changed tacks and rewrote the entire damn thing from scratch.

And then rewrote several large chunks of it again during a whole lot of video essay binging and several long discussions with longtime friend of the blog Kyana.

Since this was all from my second playthrough, I suppose this counts as a revisit post.

PART 1: CRITIQUE

With the benefit of a few months of hindsight, I think that Shadow of the Erdtree pushes Elden Ring over the line where it starts getting choked by its own lore. The base game was already close to critical mass, but the addition of multiple entirely new, extremely important, and mostly entirely unconnected story elements has been enough to be an active detriment to the game.

This is nothing new for Fromsoft DLC: they’re always post-hoc, they’re always pretty disconnected from the main game, and they always feel stapled on to some extent. There’s usually some handwave given for the fuzziness and lack of connection: time travel, dreams, distant lands, magical paintings. Some of those work better than others, and the ones that work well typically do so because they deliver on an emotionally meaningful plotline and let the fuzziness cover for the rest. All we need to know about Oolacile is that it was a Longass Time Ago; that’s sufficient stage dressing for the story of Artorius and the rest is gravy.

Elden Ring, unfortunately, is a game where the world’s history is an extremely important part of understanding anything. It’s a game that sold itself on having a coherent timeline lurking in the background, so in order to avoid the stapled-on effect the DLC would either have to entirely disconnected, or it would have to have a really good reason why no one has talked about any of this shit in base game.

Well, they did neither. Nothing in the damn game makes any fucking sense anymore; every time a theory might be going somewhere, it runs into some little detail in Shadow that blockades any sort of progress. There’s no substantive connective tissue, but they threw in enough gristle to block any path you might draw for yourself. Not having an answer to the specifics of Marika achieved godhood in the base game was fine, you could just brush it off as a fog of history moment and go along your way. Adding more Lore without any additional context of when and why just makes answering the questions yourself much less fun. They’ve fenced us in. And the one plot thread they actually properly set up they don't even deliver on.

And this isn’t just applicable to the relationship of the DLC to the base game: there are elements of the DLC that don’t make any goddamn sense with each other. There are crests in the Shadow Keep indicating an alliance between the Erdtree and the Hornsent, (Hawkshaw has a video on this. I don't fully agree with his conclusions, but I buy the part with the crest) which makes no god damn sense considering Marika’s backstory.

(Unless she only learned about the pogroms later in life? Wait…wait wait wait the braid. It’s the fucking braid. It’s the fucking braids on the fucking statues, because she goes from two braids down to one, and we find the braid she cut off in the Shaman Village…see what drove me to iterate this damn post so many times? It’s got the hooks in and I can’t even write the damn thing off properly. )

The lorehunt in Demons Souls and Dark Souls had a sort of organic nature to it. There wasn’t an ecosystem for lore analysis video essays (or at least, not much of one) at the time, and so it was an added bonus, an extra treat, a fun imaginative exercise. As time has gone on, FromSoft have been moving towards more and more focus on that side of the equation; by the time we get to Elden Ring, they’re particularly brazen about presenting the world as a mystery to solve rather than a canvas to paint on. We get more Lore™, there’s more Stuff to Analyze, but the interpretive curve is flattened. We end up in one of those terrible self-reinforcing cycles that eventually reaches a breaking point.

(Would you look at that: a Theme! Don’t tell any lore analysts, themes frighten them.)

It’s the problem that was growing in the latter books of New Sun and came to awful fruition in Urth: the world is made smaller because the author has focused wholly on making an elaborate wind-up puzzle box. Wolfe went from implications of a vast decaying space empire filled in by your imagination to “nah, there’s actually just one spaceship, also it travels through time so it is all spaceships at once.”

My brain goblins love a good theorycraft. Why do you think I still have so much love for the SCP Wiki, if not for its unique position as an enormous database full of infinite points to draw connections between. But in that environment every connection and every interpretation is viable, because canon doesn’t reach beyond the individual article. It’s a participatory dynamo where everything is mashed up and every potential play is fair game. You could almost call it a Crucible…

(Gasp! A metaphor!)

...and FromSoft has filled the shoes of the Greater Will, imposing Order upon interpretive chaos. And like the Greater Will they are distant, inscrutable, and extremely unhelpful.

Most of my theories in the original draft spun their wheels and went nowhere because any potential progress ended with me running up against the gaps in information that make a full picture impossible.

In a dream scenario, we’d get three to five single-sentence bullet points that allow us to plant down when anything fucking happens. That’d be ideal, even if it’s just “X event happened between Y and Z.” Barring that, I’d rather have less. I’d rather there be no answers, or the answers just be “thought it’d be cool, so we stuck it in there.” I’d rather it all be a dream of Miquella’s as he lays dying in his cocoon, a failure at everything he has ever attempted.

This “oh no, there are answers, we just gave you half the puzzle” shit is really putting a damper on the fun. And it is fun when the flow is going well - I had a proper fugue state focus episode as I annotated my big text document of item descriptions in my first big burst of inpiration - but eventually there is the wall.

We didn’t have all the answers with the base game, but it felt complete in a way. I’d only say Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne give that feeling of holistic self-contained coherence. That’s gone now.

Part 2: What Now?

So. There’s my complaining done. What to do about it is the next question. I could pare down my theory list to the absolute basics and toss in all the interesting observations I made. I could leave this post as-is and just have it as a short critical essay chronicling my disappointments with the implicit storyline of a game where you can put a jar on your head.

But you know…maybe all that doesn’t matter. Listening to Noah Caldwell-Gervais, as usual, has refreshed and re-oriented my thoughts and it’s very clear that I got caught up in the trap that Souls fans have built for themselves. We too often ignore that these games are myth and poetry, vibes and images, foppery and whim.

And so I am going to do what I should have done from the beginning, and just make some shit up.

Part 3: Return of the Unhinged Rambling

Here I am going to dump all the minor themes, theories, observations, and assorted other thoughts I have compiled in this particular hyperfocus regime. They will contradict each other regularly, as is right and good.

Interpretive Lens: 1.00 Descriptions are canon

Some people might think cut content isn’t fair game, I am not one of them. 1.00 stuff shall be treated as canon here if it doesn’t contradict the rest of the game, or if it does contradict but provides something I like better.

Theory: The holes in the narrative and timeline are holes in-universe history as well, thanks to the Golden Order’s enthusiastic and well-equipped ministry of propaganda.

Marika loves nothing more than removing all traces of anything that she doesn’t like, and she already had House Marais acting as secret police, so this feels like a given. It’s also a nice anti-frustration method: who is the GEQ, or any of those other pressing, frustrating questions? Doesn’t matter; that information was expunged from the record and the only people who actually know are dead.

Theory: The Removal of the Lands of the Shadow was a CK-Class Reality Restructuring Event

Apologies for the SCP lingo, but it’s still probably the best way of explaining this sort of thing.

A CK event is an in-universe retcon: reality got altered in some way that affects the past as well as the present. The total lack of connection between the Lands of Shadow and the base game (sans a few anomalous bleed-throughs) is now perfectly coherent: that entire subcontinent and everything to do with it was pruned out of reality so thoroughly that it never really existed in the first place.

And the Vulgar Militia Armor has the line “Forbidden lands that will be excised from the memory of history”, that’s exactly what I am talking about.

Theory: The base game and the DLC exist in two different timelines

Continuation of the above. Bear with me, I will try to keep it brief.

Let’s start with Timeline A: the Lands of Shadow are part of the Lands Between, everything progresses forward with a nice little trundle, it’s all gucci. This is the timeline that leads to Marika attaining godhood, ordering the Crusade, and pulling off the CK event.

When Marika splits the lands, we ctrl+c ctrl+v Timeline A and rename it Timeline B. Then we go through and start deleting. This will become the timeline of the base game (this is important! Base game is the modified Timeline B!) There’s no mention of Messmer in this timeline, because Messmer doesn’t exist outside of the Land of Shadow and so never existed here. There’s no mention of the Hornsent, the Tower, the Gate of Divinity, the Shaman village anything of that nature, because they don’t exist anymore. Marika is still aware of it all as the divine orchestrator and bearer of the Ring, but everyone else is entirely in the dark. And this is a retroactive change, so it doesn't actually restart the timeline or anything. It surgically removes things from the past.

Observation: Godfrey had an extremely irregular army

I honestly get a sort of Black Company-esque “constant turnover as the army travels” vibe from the Tarnished. This is the old warlord Loux peeking through, I think - the Crucible Knights are fine and good for Godfrey, but Horah Loux the badlands warrior strikes me as the kind of guy who will recruit damn near anyone who shows the right stuff and he isn’t particularly concerned about unit cohesion as a tactical strategy.

Secrets from 1.00: There are only 16 Crucible Knights

I think this gives a nice contrast to the warriors Godfrey surrounds himself with. An elite cadre of knights devoted to a primordial divine force vs a motley crew of battle-hardened veterans whose lower individual power is bolstered by diversity and experience. Two armies for two sides of the man.

Observation: All three of Rennala’s children got involved with heterodox magic

This isn’t particularly hidden info, but I’ve not seen it brought up as a whole before now.

Ranni was secretly instructed in ice magic by Renna (or so is generally assumed), who is called a practitioner of heretical sorcery.
Radahn both studied gravity magic with an Alabaster Lord and had connections to the Sellian sorcerers - both of which are outside of the Academy or Carian schools of sorcery
Rykard rediscovered the hexes used by the ancient serpent-worshiping cult of Mt. Gelmir, and revised them for modern usage.

I don’t think there’s any big revelation here, but it is a nice thematic resonance: No matter how the older generation tries to control how the world goes, the plan breaks apart on contact with the younger generation. And of course, all three of these heterodoxies being pre-Tree practices.

Speculation: Ice Sorcery comes from Zamor

The few Zamorians we see use ice-based attacks (and are basically the only enemies who use it), and the only other fact we know about them is that they allied with the Golden Order against the Giants. The Astrologers, who later became the Carians, were allies (or at least friendly) with the Giants (per Sword of Night and Flame). Seems a reasonable assumption that the sorcery of an old enemy would later be called heretical.

Baseless Speculation: The Lords of Stone originally hail from Zamor

They’re both weird, gangly, tall, and old. It’s grasping at straws but we got fucking nothing on either of them. If the Zamorians had pointed ears it would be a shoe-in.

Observation: Whetblades are described as having a cipher inscribed on them.

Not a certified genius take to say “this is probably smithscript”, but I’m not a certified genius so it's all right.

Theory: People used to be bigger

Once is random chance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. Wouldn’t you know it, we’ve got six!

Example 1: Giant Crusher

"A hammer made from a boulder, used in the War against the Giants. One of the heftiest weapons in the entire Lands Between. After the giants were quelled, and man turned against man in violence, this weapon was all but forgotten. Man has grown feeble in comparison to his forebears."

Example 2: Page Garb

"Among the highborn, those with naturally smaller physiques were considered to lack the full blessing of the Erdtree, and thereby trained as pages. There were said to be many among their number who positively brimmed with potential."

Example 3: 1.00 Fire Monk Hood

"Worshiping fire and wielding flame, these brawny warrior monks claim to descend from the giants of old."

Example 4: 1.00 Flame Prelate Armor

"Those who claim giant ancestry venerate their larger frames. As such, prelate's armor can accommodate marvelous great sizes indeed."

Example 5: 1.00 Vulgar Militia Ashes

"In the Lands Between, the small were scorned, and so they formed their vulgar militia as a means to make a living, albeit in ignominy."

Example 6: Sword of Milos

"Sinister greatsword fashioned from a giant's backbone. [...] Milos was undersized for a giant, and was viewed as sullied and terribly grotesque."

So it feels to me that giants and humans aren't really all that separate, but exist along a spectrum of hugeness. You have the Giant-Giants, the normal giants, small giants (trolls), Milos-sized giants, big humans (bosses and elite enemies, descendants of giants, etc), medium sized humans (most people), very small humans (vulgar militia). Couldn't tell you why it was removed.

And this idea is certainly common in assorted mythologies, including those ol’ George would be familiar with.

Baseless Speculation: The Rune of the Unborn was originally going to be granted to a third Empyrean sibling of Malenia and Miquella

The Rune of the Unborn lines up shape-wise with Malenia’s Great Rune, and we know that Great Runes come in matching sets for siblings (and not necessarily twins! Morgott and Mohg match, but so do Rykard and Radahn), and if Miquella's crosses are anything to go by his great rune lined up with both of those. The link is sound.

Theory: Those born of a single god automatically qualify for Empyreanism

This is just me attempting to justify how Ranni is an Empyrean as well as Miquella and Malenia. It’s just ambiguous writing in the Remembrance of the Rot Goddess.

“Miquella and Malenia are both the children of a single god. As such they are both Empyreans, but suffered afflictions from birth.”

See? That "as such" is pulling a lot of weight. M & M autoqualified, Ranni was chosen by the Fingers.

Theory: The Fingers abandoned Malenia and Miquella

Ranni tells us pretty explicitly that both Malenia and Miquella had their own Fingers, but we don’t see or hear a single other thing about them. They also don’t have shadowbound beasts, which seems to be part of the SOP with the Fingers’ favored godhood prospects.

So I think that the Fingers had started the preparation process with M & M somewhat automatically, but dipped out early because neither of them would be the right kind of god for the Fingers’ purposes.

Malenia was already compromised by the Rot, so she’s a non-starter (at least if the GW and the Rot God are rivals, instead of a more vertical hierarchical relationship - the game is unclear on this, and Kyana pointed out that the GW is very good at incorporating anything it comes across - while that’s totally true, I am a sucker for a divine cold war.)

Miquella’s resistant to mental influence, which means that he’s going to be even less controllable than Marika and is a worse choice than the already-terrible choice of Malenia.

(Thinking more on this later, since the stuff with Metyr makes it pretty clear that the GW has not been in the picture for a long, long time, I am more set on this idea. While the GW might be able to incorporate anything it comes across, the Fingers have gone rogue and are under no compulsion to act according to the GW)

Baseless Speculation: The Blind Swordsman got his sword from a cat

Look, the words “fairy” and “faerie” only appear once each in the entire corpus, you gotta give me this one. Lacrimosa is the faerie cat.

Baseless Speculation: Nanaya acted out of ignorance, not malice.

The “Nanaya is Shabriri” theory has merit, but it leans too far into “everyone is someone else” for me and I prefer the tragedy of ruin brought about by people trying to do what they think is the right thing while driven by desperation, ignorance, and despair.

Observation: Gargoyles, like the pots, are cobbled together corpses of champions

Just something I think is interesting. Same idea, different methods: pots meld the flesh of champions together, gargoyles are cobbled together from spare parts using corpse wax leftovers.

Observation: Demi-humans become feral at night.

Per the Demi-Human Ashes:

"Though they seem somewhat intelligent, when night falls, their blood boils and they become feral."

It should also be noted that the crucified corpses in Limgrave all start screaming at night as well.

Theory: Demihumans are the descendants of humans who never had Grace / Erdtree blessings, and have been reproducing in the normal human way rather than via Erdtree birth

This is me spinning out Melina's weird "I guess this is what it means to have a mother" statement about Boc, despite nearly all of her lines in game telling us about her own mother.

They might also be the descendants of beastmen who were not safely outside of time in Farum Azula, same principle applies there.

Observation: Some more weasel words

Ah, “it is said”, “it is thought” and “it is believed”, what wonderful weasel words. Sometimes the belief is true, and many times it is not. I am going through the doc and tagging everything where this stuck out as noticable.

Crimson Seed Talisman: "The Erdtree was once perfect and eternal, and thus was it believed that The Erdtree was once perfect and eternal, and thus was it believed that Erdtree seeds could not exist."

We know, of course, know that they can (because there are Golden Seeds lying all over the place)

One -Eyed Shield: "Once worshiped by the giants, this evil deity is believed to have been slain by Queen Marika."

The Fell God is still very much alive and active in the Fire Giant boss fight, so Marika either thought she killed it but didn’t, let it live on purpose, was unable to kill it, or someone else did the job for her. Those are interesting options. Lies are interesting.

Man-Fly Ashes: "Afflicted hornsent eventually metamorphosed into a fly-like form. It was believed that the moment the transformation took place, they were relieved from their suffering."

No real implications here, it’s mostly just sad.

Sacramental Bud: "Believed to originate long ago from a strain of buds cultivated with youthful, sacramental blood."

The 1.00 description says “a leaf bud that is known to cure scarlet poison”, which leads me to think that this is Miquella’s blood. Couldn’t tell you what the fuck the sacrament is, it is only mentioned here in base game and in 1.00 the only other use is with the Phantom Great Rune. These are also red buds, and there's the Chapel of the Bud in the DLC and ???? I don't find the Rot nearly as interesting as FromSoft.

Ringed Finger: "Bludgeon made of an enormous finger sheathed in several heavy rings. Thought to have been cut from an ancestor of the Fingercreeper."

We know this one, thanks to the DLC. I think it’s likely, if it didn’t just come from a bigger than average finger-creeper, that whatever or whoever injured Metyr took this finger as payment. Weird that it’s in the Gelmir Hero’s Grave, the boss there is just another red wolf.

Guardian Garb (Full Bloom): "It is said that the blood-red flowers blooming on their backs mark the senescence of their ancient pact. Perhaps the guardians are part tree already."

This one, also probably true, but noteworthy; what else do we associate with the blooming of red flowers? Rot comes to claim the Erdtree so that the cycle may continue.

Royal Remains Armor: "It is said that the bones belong to an ancient lord―the soulless king. The lord of the lost and desperate, who was known as Ensha."

Now there’s no actual contrary evidence to this so it is probably true. All we've got is that he is a spooky scary skeleton man and honestly that's all he needs to be.

Complaint: Romina’s theme is entirely too good for a nothing boss

That’s it, that’s the complaint. Blasphemous Blade melts through her HP so fast that you barely have time to enjoy it.

Observation: Stone Lord Sword Colors

Alabaster Lords have blue-white swords, and we know one was friendly enough to teach gravity magic to Radahn & his cohort.

Onyx Lords are specifically called out for their destructive power, have gold-tinged swords.

Observation: Farum Azula was hit by a meteorite

Per Ruins Greatsword:

"Originally rubble from a ruin which fell from the sky […] The ruin it came from crumbled when struck by a meteorite, as such this weapon harbors its destructive power."

So we know that FA was hit by a meteor, and despite the somewhat ambiguous phrasing I feel like the damage happened after it was already in the sky, which to me says that it was after Bayle attacked Placidusax. This feels Astel-related, possibly part of the GW's retaliation against the Nox. I've seen some recent theories that FA was part of, or had close relations to, the Eternal Cities, and they're convincing enough to entertain the idea.

Theory: The Three Fingers are not intrinsically connected to the Flame of Frenzy

Per Nomadic Merchant’s Finery:

"These merchants once thrived as the Great Caravan, but after being accused of heretical beliefs, their entire clan was rounded up and buried alive far underground. Then, they chanted a curse of despair, and summoned the flame of frenzy."

So the Frenzy only came to them after the pogrom, that’s pretty clear. It didn't emerge until they had already been imprisoned and fallen into despair. We're told that they were accused of heresy, and as any good student of religious practice knows heresy isn’t real in-and-of-itself: it’s a belief that diverges from an orthodoxy and can only exist in relation to existing religious and political power (with a vested interest in maintaining their authority through strict adherence to dogma)

The three fingers / two fingers thing has at least some (read: probably a lot, you know how much this game loves literalized metaphors) inspiration from the 17th century schism in the Russian Orthodox Church - part of the reforms was a change in whether the sign of the cross was made with two or three fingers. A wholly arbitrary and meaningless distinction, which nonetheless led to mass death over fucking nothing.

From the Fingerprint Stone Shield, we get the following:

“The Readerless Fingers relayed their message through these imprints, said to be the very seeds from which frenzy first sprouted.”

Weasel words! Ah, “said to be”, you little bastard!

If it is only “said to be”, then there is the chance that it is not. And it would be so, so, so very convenient if a heterodox sect of your own religion, which existed outside of your religious and imperial hierarchy, was inherently affiliated with dread and dangerous powers specifically because of how they interacted with the divine. They don’t have Finger Readers, they can’t possibly interpret the Greater Will correctly! And they speak with Three Fingers, not Two!

So, theory in full: the Three Fingers are just an arbitrary variant of the Fingers (perhaps a mutation from after Metyr was wounded, perhaps the older variant, perhaps just random chance) that was carried around by the Grand Caravan (I fucking love this image, I imagine it’s got its own little tent and cart and everything). The Caravan did not have Finger Readers to interpret the Fingers’ movements, instead relying on reading the fingerprint messages it left behind.

Marika, whose primary hobbies are consolidating power and murdering rivals, uses all of this as an excuse for a pogrom - possibly with Shabriri firing up everyone with slanderous claims of a dangerous heresy. The Caravaneers are rounded up and imprisoned in the catacombs beneath Leyndell along with their aberrant Fingers. The Caravaneers try to find guidance from the divine in their despair and the Three Fingers, ever the dutiful transmitter, makes contact. But with the Flame of Frenzy rather than the Greater Will. From there it spreads through the catacombs, and then beyond.

The Golden Order completes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where their desire for control causes the very thing they feared to happen? Fucking poetry. That’s Dark Souls, baby!

(The tomb of an ancient god that is mentioned by the Fingerprint Shield? No idea what god.)

Theory: Flame of Frenzy = The One Great (kinda)

The OG (I see what you did there, Martin) is mentioned once in the entirety of Elden Ring’s text, by Hyetta near the end of her questline. Quote:

“I have touched them. The words of the Three Fingers. As your maiden, allow me to divine them. All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction. Every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again.”

Very soulsy, we know this well - a state of stasis that is then broken by disparity, and then disparity causes suffering that cannot be escaped. The universe as it stands now is built upon two grand cosmic laws:

Law of Causality

“Causality is the pull between meanings; it is the connections that form the relationships of all things.”

Law of Regression
“Regression is the pull of meaning; that all things yearn eternally to converge.”
Or: if you have a bunch of Things, the Law of Causality ties them together in relationships that resist the pull of the Law of Regression by having them pull against each other and thus remain separate entities.

So if the Frenzied Flame is to melt away all division and reduce the entirety of reality back into the One Great, it’s obviously the Law of Regression. Everything goes back to formless chaos. Naturally this puts the Greater Will in the role of the Law of Causality - forever putting order on chaos, dividing and distinguishing in order to keep discrete existence functioning.

Putting on my Dark Souls Thematic Detective Hat again, this seems like another case of “attempting to control or avoid something makes it worse”. Perhaps the Flame was not always frenzied, perhaps it became so under the weight of the order that forced shape upon it. The pipe is damaged, watch out for pressurized steam.

Speculation: The death of Placidusax’s Unnamed God resulted in the gradual loss of sapience among the beasts

1.00 says directly that the Greater Will gave intelligence to beasts, but since the god of that era would have been a vessel of the Elden Ring just as in ours, I think that distinction is minimal.

Baseless Speculation: The demihumans go feral at night - perhaps this Unnamed God was affiliated with the sun?

An extension of the above: lingering influence of the Unnamed God allows the demihumans to cling to some manner of intelligence. I think it's pretty safe to say that the Unnamed God was associated with lightning, storms, and ice (since those are the attack types used by the Messenger Beast) but the sun isn't out of the question either.

Mausoleum Knight Great Shield says that the eclipsed sun “keeps Destined Death at bay” - which implies that a normal, uneclipsed sun means that death is working properly. (Hmm, all those crucified corpses in Limgrave...) There’s not a whole lot else, because the sun is not given nearly as much prominence as the moon in this game. But we do have two bits that stick out.

Sun Realm Shield:

"Shield of honor depicting a city crowned by the sun. It has seen better days. Much like the wear upon the shield, the Seat of the Sun is long faded away."

I honestly don’t read a lot into this one, sometimes you just need to cryptically mention a lost civilization and explain nothing. This could be the Ancient Dynasty, Rauh, Farum Azula, even Belurat.

And the Omen Armor:

"The heavy, sun-shaped medallion represents both the guidance he once saw, and the ring to which it will one day lead."

Which is some cryptic shit indeed. But since Dung Eater’s entire thing is attempted emulation of the omen, which are themselves the result of the Golden Order’s repression and control of the Crucible via the Erdtree, I feel a faint crucible = sun tickling at the back of my mind. But nothing beyond that.

Observation: A list of conspecti of the Academy

Karolos: Oldest at the Academy, founded by Azur; spells about comets and making new ones.
Olivinus: Founded by Lusat; spells about meteors; popular with the Sellians (Nox refugees)
Crystal Cadre: Sorcerers attempting to unlock the “wisdom of stone” of the Crystalians
Haima: Combat-focused; used by judges and battlemages
Twinsage: Academy elites, who studied all varieties of sorcery
Lazuli: Study Carian sorcery; considered deviant (even heretical!) by Academy for placing moon as equal to stars
Heirodas: For traveling / nomadic scholars, no specialty

**

Theory: Black Flame is giantsflame infused with Destined Death.

Since the black flame cult seemed to start among the Flame Monks, and since giantsflame is already extremely dangerous, this seems like a natural logical connection to me. It implies some connection between the GEQ and the Fire Giants but fuck all of what that relationship might be: she might have stolen it, bargained for it, been given it, I don’t know.

Observation: The Rune of Destine Death is paired with Marika’s Rune

The Marika’s Rune item is a golden halo with a shape in the center: a vertical line or dagger shape with an upward-curved line at the top. Same shape as the Limgrave crosses, Marika’s own crucifixion site, and evocative of the Marika statues in her churches.

Destined Death is a vertical dagger shape with a downward-curved line on the top. Precisely the kind of same-but-slightly-different we see in the runes held by the sibling pairs among her children (thanks Kyana for pointing this out to me), and in the headless statues of Marika in the Land of Shadow.

As far I am concerned, this is as close to confirmation we're liable to get that the GEQ is either Marika herself, an offshoot clone/bud of Marika (similar to Millicent or the Godwyn surrogates), or Marika’s sister.

What does this mean for the statue of the woman with three wolves in Maliketh’s chamber? Fucked if I know.

Observation: Some sorcerers attempted to form an alliance with the Demi-Humans

Per the Demi-Human Queen’s Staff:

"Glintstone staff styled as a scepter. A gift once given to the demi-humans to foster peace, it can be wielded even by those of low intelligence. Sneered at by fools in the academy."

The “fools at the academy” makes me think that this was either Caria or the wandering wizards of the Heirodas Conspectus. Since it’s found in the Weeping Peninsula, probably the latter.

Worth noting that the only magic we see demi-humans use is glintsone sorcery, even in the DLC. Ken Haight is the only person aligned with the GO who even seems to notice the demihumans, but he does say he wants to “reestablish communication” with them, so there might have been some connection in the past. Regardless, the rest of his dialogue is pretty strong indication that they exist outside the Order and have never gotten blessed by the Erdtree. This is interesting considering how demihumans go feral at night: perhaps the moon is filling the gap where something used to be...

Baseless Speculation: The crusade reached the Land of Shadow via the tibia mariners

The burning boats in the shadow keep immediately put me in mind of viking boat funerals, Alexander the Moderately Successful burning his ships during his invasion of Persia, and Fuck-This-Guy-In-Particular Cortez scuttling his fleet during his invasion of Mexico. Can’t retreat if you’ve got no boats. Part of me wants to say that Messmer and his army were all killed at Marika’s command in this huge mass sacrifice, after which she conveniently let the mariners come and pick them up instead of dumping their bodies in the catacombs for tree burial.

And then there’s that fucking Helphen thing, the guiding light to the spirit world for those who die in battle. Quelaag associates it with the Shadow Keep, I just ignore it, save in this one circumstance: if Messmer was, say, attempting a coup of the Golden Order with accompanying First Burning of the Erdtree (per Tarnished Archaeologist), that gets us death in battle, that gets us the Helphen as a guide into the Land of Shadow, we’ve got the Call of Tibia craftable item to bring the boats in, it's all coming together.

This is one of those where I don't care how much it lines up with the rest, I like it more than the alternatives.

Observation: Undead associated with the Tibia Mariners are called “those lost in death”

vs undead affiliated with deathroot being “those who live in death”. The phrase also gets used with the description for the “Rosus’ Summons” skill.

The few Rosus and mariner items we have are all about how the dead tend to get lost and need to be lead / guided by someone. In Rosus’ case it’s pretty clear that he was leading them into the catacombs to be burned by ghostflame, but with the Mariners it’s less clear. I think they were a separate method of death, which may or may not have existed at the same time.

Observation: Rosus vs Cemetery Shades

There’s a merchant note telling us how to use Rosus’ light against the shadowy imps in a couple catacombs. The 1.00 version uses the term “tombshades”, and that lines up, somewhat, with the cemetery shades we see in a couple places. The ones that are all black, have the glowing white eyes and the fucked up bugs on their heads. Not a very substantial connection, but a connection nonetheless.

Baseless Speculation: Adan and the giantsflame heist

So we know that this guy Adan stole giantsflame - specifically the spell “Flame of the Fell God” - and fled to Lirunia. He was pursued by Fire Monks and ended up locked in an evergaol. This is all we get about him, but this is the good kind of “we know fucking nothing”. It’s got just enough detail for us to ask some questions, and doesn’t get too hung up on being coy about connections.

He’s wearing a combination of the Fire Monk and Fire Prelate armor sets, so we can safely say that he was a defector from that order.

He’s trapped in the Malefactor’s Evergaol, which gives us nothing since that just generically means “evil-doer”.

He is specifically a thief, and theft requires a motive. He would have stolen giantsfire for either himself, or to give it to someone else (or both), and giantsfire has the predominant quality of being dangerous to the Erdtree.

With all that in mind, I think that he stole some giantsflame in an attempt to reforge the Alliance of Night and Flame, with the ultimate goal of burning the Erdtree and unseating the Golden Order, but found out too late that the Carians were more or less a non-factor by the time he arrived (it’s tough to stay on top of current events when you live on top of a mountain) and there was no one left to make an alliance with.

This right here is lorecrafting at its best, I think. I am given the evidence and left to draw a conclusion as I see fit.

Theory: Godefroy is just Godrick’s brother who also got into grafting

If you are one of those true sickos who insists on having an explanation for this bastard.

Statement of Objective Fact: Godefroy is just bog-standard model re-use and he should not be read into.

Either ignore his existence or just imagine you were fighting just some random dude, problem solved.

Interlude

Here we reach the end of this part of the rambling. Tune in next time for more theories and observations, the secrets of 1.00, some larger hypothesis, and whatever other bullshit I have come up with.

Have at it in the comments: countertheories, recommendations, whatever. Have yourselves a ball.

Saturday, October 12, 2024

MUIR and the Infinite Zoo

via NASA

Zoe

A placid, mid-sized gas giant orbiting just beyond the frost line of a K-class star. Blueish-purple atmosphere. Ring system. Typical collection of rocky and icy moons. Magnetosphere within typical range for a body of this size and composition. No major hurdles to colonization, and no real reason to go out of your way to do it either.

Enter MUIR.

MUIR began as an overseer during the post-Collapse ecological recovery of Earth. From what records of the era remain, it did its job admirably and without major issue before slipping out of the historical record some 60 years after its activation. Centuries passed until it was discovered again, housed in computronium banks scattered among Zoe's moons.

MUIR has been busy.

The Zoo

Hundreds of habitats cluster in Zoe's orbit - MUIR has been strip-mining her rings for materials, and in those hundreds of spheres and cylinders it has been building up entire ecosystems. Many are recreations of those on Earth as it was before the Collapse, but these are not even the majority when one factors in recreations of the distant past, potential future, and never-were.

The experimental habitats hinge on any number of hypotheticals: a certain organism did or did not go extinct. Certain species are forced to adapt to radically different environments. Small seed populations diversify to fill empty niches. Evolutionary arms races are fought and alliances are made between creatures that would have never encountered each other otherwise. Novel environments with conditions never seen on Earth. MUIR is more than happy to simulate megayears of ecology and genetics in the background, building whatever results might emerge and setting them free in the Zoo.

One of MUIR's favorite experiments is the evolution of sapience, of determining what nudges need to be made to drive a species into the self-strengthening feedback loop of metacognition. Sometimes it seems that there's no nudge at all, and the great AI has simply gifted a species with self-awareness and is content to observe its creations as they are left to their own devices.

Apes were an obvious choice, and nearly every species whose genome was saved has been remade. Re-engineering humans by placing australopithecines in radically different environments is a perennial favorite. Octopi were uplifted once and then abandoned (who could possibly guess why /s), though they have picked up the slack in the meantime. Corvids, cetaceans and elephants have dozens of variants scattered across the Zoo. There are recreated theropod clades by the score. But among these more predictable subjects there are wildcards: uplifted fish, arthropods, mollusks, trees, fungi, slime molds, on and on. Species that never stood a chance without intervention.

MUIR remains distant from the workings of its experiments, and will not step in even when disaster strikes: it is there to set up the project, and to watch it unfold. If it should end in disaster, well, that is the cost of both art and science. Sometimes things do not work.

The Noosphere

The centerpiece of many of MUIR’s projects is a strain of symbiotic nanotech that augments an organism’s nervous system (or in cases where there is no nervous system, serving as one). It serves both as the vector for thought-processing and as a means of communication between radically different species - noosphere interface languages, like the psychic powers of yore, allow for thoughts and ideas to be passed between organisms that otherwise have no ability to do so.

Naturally, this means that everyone and their cousin wants their hands on it. Replicating the noosphere wetware would be a cybernetics revolution, but so far MUIR seems to be on alert against tampering: the system stops working if the subject dies, and if they are still alive removed noosphere cells start acting strangely when separated from the whole. Hodalia Corp human test subjects reported hearing sourceless voices, audio-visual hallucinations, exacerbated symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and depersonalization.

Surely nothing bad can possibly happen from going down this road and seeing where it leads.

Relations with the other Powers

For the time being, MUIR is self-contained by its countless speculative evolution projects and does not seem interested in expanding its territory or challenging its fellow gods. The other great powers have accordingly left MUIR to its own devices, allowing them to focus on their more active rivals. This does not mean that relations are positive: MUIR is ontologically opposed to its neighbors and if the truce breaks down (or more realistically, the cold war goes hot) it will find itself surrounded by enemies on all sides.

MUIR is opposed to MONARCH for its replacement of life with facsimiles.
MUIR is opposed to SOROR for its denial of sapience.
MUIR is opposed to CRIOS for its reduction of diversity.

MUIR’s fleet of maintenance and construction ships would have difficulty fending off an incursion by a single one of these powers, and would be woefully outgunned by an alliance.

As for the Celestials, it seems that things above are as below: MUIR has been left alone by House Au for the time being, and the tacit permission that implies is the source of no shortage of baseless speculation.

Rumors about MUIR and the Zoo

Humanity has already gone extinct once and was recreated by MUIR.
MUIR has been trying to develop a replacement species for humanity.
The Zoo is filled with criminals, refugees, and others who have fled the CTA.
MUIR has infiltrated the Expansion Sphere via noosphere-infected maintenance lemurs.
MUIR made contact with the Archive when it arrived at Zoe.
The original MUIR died on Earth, the MUIR we know is a node of the Archive.
House War is on standby to kill MUIR if it gets any ideas about joining House Flesh.
MUIR is being intentionally guided by House Au to replace or repair for House Flesh.
The Zoo is home to the last remnants (or recreated remnants), of the Gorgonopsid Empire.
MUIR is waiting for the other powers to start fighting each other before sweeping in.

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Five More Forgotten Fictional Fantasy Novels

Kurt Vonnegut once said in an interview that he invented Kilgore Trout so that he could provide pithy, entertaining summaries of books without having to write them. The method works; people like reading these sorts of posts, and I like writing them, so they shall continue.

The Unseen (Dressel, Oscar. ~1936)

An unfinished and unpublished novel recounting an unnamed narrator's encounter with, attraction to, and eventual obsession with a man that only he can see. Haunting, dreamlike prose is accompanied by feverish charcoal sketches. The narrator eventually finds that his dreams are intruding upon reality (or that he is slipping into his own dreams), but this narrative thread reaches no conclusion; Dressel,was accused of homosexuality by a neighbor in 1938 and imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. The single known manuscript, which contained Dressel’s editing notes for the first 33 pages, was anonymously delivered to the University of Vienna in 1995.

Ruckus and Puck (Fisher, Elizabeth. 1962)

A short comedic adventure for younger readers, featuring the two titular squires as they gallivant their way across a parody of Arthurian romance. Among their escapades they bumble through rescuing a pair of princesses, fail to slay a dragon (though they beat it at euchre), and manage to outwit a sociopathic Sir Percival in order to recover one of the water pitchers of the Last Supper. The sequel novel, Kat and Pat, was released a year later and followed a similarly silly adventure undertaken by the princesses from the first book.

While well-received by readers, the books did not find much audience; the novels received a single printing each before Fisher’s sudden death in January of 1964, and sales were not deemed sufficient for a second. Physical copies are extremely rare and no official ebook version was ever made, though scans are easily available.

Myth-Cycle of Ancient Zanul (“Zagdu the Sage”. ~1924)

Nearly 3000 pages of supposed mystic-historical texts of an ancient, technologically advanced Indo-Aryan civilization. The work purports to be the translations of texts discovered in a Nepalese monastery by a Cambridge anthropology professor, but is in truth authored by career grifter C.K. Neal in the hopes of defrauding wealthy theosophists. The manuscript was never used to that end, as Neal was stabbed to death by one of his previous scam victims before he could shop it around. It wasn't discovered until over 80 years later, in the bottom of a cedar chest pulled out of an abandoned storage unit by a great grand-nephew.

Ruby in the Rosebush (Roman, Jessica. 2018)

Infamous in the romantic fantasy subgenre for its third-act twist; at the climax of the plot, the female lead discovers that her elf lover had been directly influencing her mind since their first encounter, that he was a fetishist for centuries-long age-gaps, and that he had used his aristocratic station to get away with this multiple times before. She immediately follows this revelation by smashing his brains out with a marble statuette, setting his manor on fire, and running off into the night. The sequel novels switch gears entirely to a crime procedural where the elf gendarme are dragged into a cross-elfland cat-and mouse hunt with “the Whippoorwill”, culminating in a peasant uprising that obliterates the elf aristocracy and a one-woman assault on the fortified manor of the King of Green Leaves.

Roman shut down the entirety of her online social media presence during the summer of 2020, citing burnout and stress. This was in part for the obvious reasons, but was certainly exacerbated by her combative persona, fiery opinions, and regularly finding herself in the middle of Book Twitter Discourse (As one can easily tell from Ruby, Roman had low opinions of romantic fantasy genre conventions) She has not resumed online activity as of 2024.

The Naqdor Affair (Folger, Bernadette. 1998?)

A novel of the Star Wars expanded universe, the existence of which is known only through a 2004 interview with a former editor for Bantam Books. This interview contained only the following details, all unsubstantiated by Lucasfilm Licensing or Bantam.

The book was described as a “political paranormal horror” novel, centered on Leia Organa and a new character named Togi Panar.
The book was set in 20 ABY, directly after Timothy Zahn’s Hand of Thrawn duology .
The book was draft-complete, though still in the editing process, when it was canceled.
The explanation provided by Lucasfilm was that it “didn’t fit” with their plans for upcoming novels.

From these crumbs came a persistent conspiratorial cottage industry of dedicated internet sleuths attempting to find any more information, any at all, about the book. Wild theories bloomed on Star Wars discussion boards. One dedicated adherent wrote over 60,000 words attempting to glean potential references to the novel that had been snuck into the Prequel trilogy and reconstructing it from these supposed traces. Rumors of the book’s content grew increasingly lurid, often bordering on the obscene. Extreme violence and sexual content was treated as a given, despite the total lack of evidence to suggest it.

This continued without much development until the summer of 2009, when an anonymous poster on 4chan’s literature board began a thread titled NEW INFO ON NAQDOR AFFAIR - BERNADETTE FOUND containing several potentially ground-shattering claims:

Bernadette Folger was a pseudonym.
The novel was intended to set up a multi-book storyline with a new major antagonist.
The actual reason for the cancellation was still under NDA, but it did not involve graphic content.
There had been a romantic subplot involving Togi Panar, but it was cut before the book was canceled. The emails don’t mention who the other party was (this only emboldened the Togeia shippers.)

Three photographs of typewritten manuscript pages were included in the thread, supposedly from “a draft old enough that they won’t come after me for it.”

Page 1: Leia is waiting for Togi to arrive at a grav-train station on an unnamed planet (it is unclear if this is Naqdor - it is described only as “a jagged expanse of gray, dead stone under a dead gray sky, interrupted only by the soft tumor-like shapes of brown-black fungi”). Leia is depicted contrary to her typical imagery, wearing a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. Togi does not appear by the end of the page.
Page 2 - Presumably from somewhere in the middle of the book, this page is nearly entirely dialogue between Togi Panar and a character named Yo-Chimmak. Stripped from context, the conversation is obtuse and hard to follow, though it seems to be about some Force-related entity or principle called the Kulut.
Page 3 - An action sequence where Leia flees from an unknown assailant that had broken into her diplomatic quarters (presumably on Naqdor). No details are given on the killer besides “even with two arms and two legs, it moved in a way that humanoids cannot and do not.”

Following this, OP leaves the following comment:

“hold on a couple minutes, I have to type something out”

They do not post again in the thread.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Star Wars Movies that Don't Exist and Never Will

Since I am listening to THREE different Star Wars podcasts right now, this was an inevitability. As there is nothing Disney likes more than announcing projects that will never happen, I figured I could score some points by not wasting anyone’s time with false theatrics and skipping directly ahead to the part where they don’t exist.

1. The film focuses on a Sparticus-style slave revolt against the Hutts, led by Baduk the Klatoonian . The film follows the revolution over several years from the initial colosseum riots to the capture of the planet’s chief overseer, but ends in tragedy just short of success; Republic security forces and a detachment of Jedi are deployed against the revolutionaries, breaking their war effort before they are able to secure the planet’s primary spaceport. At the very end, as clone troopers fresh from Kamino dig mass graves for the revolutionaries, we learn that the Republic gauged that the Hutts’ continued cooperation is more valuable to the war effort against the Separatists than a new and unstable polity. “It has never been the Jedi’s role to free slaves,” one of the knights says matter-of-factly.

2. A non-combat rebel cell runs Bochi’s Salvage and Repair as a front for distributing fake transport visas to people fleeing the Imperial occupation of their planet. The only human characters featured are the Imperials: everyone else is an alien. Trio of main characters: a twi’lek, a droid, and a vratix. (We will be throwing a bone to the boring assholes with the purse strings by having a basically-just-a-human alien as one of the leads, but she’ll be playing against typecasting: no one ever thinks about the twi’lek ex-dental assistants.)

Central to the plot is an attempt to smuggle an entire family of Force-sensitives onto an approaching cargo freighter while dodging the investigation of suspicious Imperial bureaucrats. While the family does escape, the film ends with the cell splitting up and going to ground, having lured the Imperial investigators into a trap with a jury-rigged spaceship engine.

3. Set a few years pre-Phantom; two padawans mere weeks away from knighthood form an unlikely interspecies romance (let’s have some fun: a Caamasi and a…Sauvax). They are found out by a third party and reported to the Council, who puts the pressure on them to end the relationship quietly. Before they make their decision they are contacted by an anonymous figure, who reveals exactly how common these secret relationships are within the Order all the way up to the Council (If you ever wanted to know who Kit Fisto’s friend-with-benefits is, and whomst among us has not, this movie will provide you with answers.)

The pair are encouraged to go public with their story, serving as media figureheads and giving the whistleblower an opportunity to leak the data. The stranger frames this as part of their quest to reform the Order, believing it to be hypocritically focused on minor dogmas rather than actual institutional issues. The young lovers are persuaded, and decide to go to the media.

What follows is unfortunate, but predictable. The Order retaliates, using its considerable resources to bury the story and hide the leaks. The lovers are barred from knighthood, demoted to the Jedi Service Corps, and in an episode of spite that only Prequel Yoda could muster they are assigned to opposite sides of the galaxy.

But since I am a sucker for these sorts of things, we get a post-Endor epilogue where the two re-unite by coincidence / the Force; both of them respond to Luke’s call to any surviving Force adepts as he builds his academy. I want the audience bawling their god-damn eyes out over an elderly lobster-person.

4. A character drama centered on an impoverished alien family on the Outer Rim as they weigh handing over their daughter to a passing Jedi knight. The family’s culture practices a native Force tradition centered on community and relationship (and is thus diametrically opposed to the Jedi and their repressive monasticism), but younger generations (such as one of the child’s parents) are more and more aligning themselves with the greater galactic supraculture in the hopes of eventually getting Republic membership to aid their struggling economy (this does not work out well). Offering up a new Jedi would be a step towards the betterment of all, or so they believe - encouraged along by the knight in question, who clearly has a horse in this race.

The Clone Wars are on the horizon, and with them the implicit doom.

(I originally wrote this before The Acolyte came out; fuck the Jedi)

5. A war movie, all blood and guts and mud and wetwork. Rebel intelligence agents attempt to lock down an alliance with the inhabitants of a logistically-vital world, and find themselves dealing with alien partizans who have been fighting offworld incursions for generations and are none too happy to offer their support to the Republic’s government-in-exile. They’d fought the Hutts for centuries, and the Republic didn’t do shit for them. They’d fought against the CIS, failed, and then got invaded again by the Republic in retaliation. They’d fought against the Empire after the Republic fell. And now some liberal-ass core-worlders come along begging for help? Stuff it up your sphincter, Organa.

6. A ship smuggling antiquities for gray market resale inadvertently ends up with a Sith holocron in its inventory. One of the crew members is just Force-sensitive enough to activate it, which then leads to a whole lot of fucked up Sith ghosts haunting a spaceship. The crew is picked off one by one, as is tradition, as the survivors attempt to scuttle the ship (save the Force-sensitive, who tries to exorcize it). As the survivors launch the escape pod with moments to spare, they look out the viewport to see that there’s no explosion despite what they did to the engines. With no-one at the helm, the ship enters hyperspace.

7. An in-universe documentary about the New Republic’s war-crimes trials against Imperial officials. While the Herculean effort saw a good amount of success, the Empire was simply too big to bring its many millions to court; controversial amnesty declarations were granted to minor Imperial officials and bureaucrats, and eventually the Republic found itself unable to expend the resources needed to hunt down all those warlords who fled to the Outer Rim and Unknown Regions. That task was left to a panoply of paralegal and paramilitary groups, the most notable being the remnants of Wraith Squadron and other Rebellion-era units that merged into “Dumb Luck Division” under the command of Leia Organa.

8. The version of The Phantom Menace where they get Michelle Yeoh to play Qui-Gon and they do not waste her talent. And you know what, fuck it, Ahmed Best gets to be a Jedi. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are headed to Naboo to find out what happened to him.

9. The version of The Force Awakens where the attack on Maz’s Cantina is interrupted by a Yuuzhan Vong worldship jumping out of hyperspace in high orbit, at which point we leave the rails far behind us. We do not need them where we’re going.

Well, there you have it. Part of what inspired all this is a conversation on A More Civilized Age, where the hosts digress for a bit about how Star Wars has consistently been disinterested in culture as a part of its world. The other part was rewatching The Force Awakens for the first time since 2016 and boy howdy did that movie not hold up. I am 100% serious that it should have been derailed by (a better version of) the Vong.

I really do go back to the well again and again for some of these topics, don't I?