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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
