Positively Unhinged Elden Ring Theoryposting: Part 3

Following up from my previous posts (Part 1, part 2) , I'm headed back into the realm of my own observations.

 

PART 5: GET THIS SHIT OUT OF MY DRAFT DOC

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Observation: Wraiths, Vengeful Spirits, and Hexes

This is just one of those weird minor things where the pieces have fit together somewhat nicely (how about that for a change?)

“Wraith” is used only three times in the corpus, in the descriptions of the Omen Bairn, Regal Omen Bairn, and the Wraith Calling Bell. It’s the last of these that provides us with a definition:

Wraith Calling Bell: “Wraiths are said to be the vengeful spirits of those who died when cursed.”

Which tracks so far, with the other two items summoning the spirits of Omen infants.

If I search the corpus for “vengeful spirits”, we get a few additional hits:

• The Rancorcall and Ancient Death Rancor spells
• The Rancor Slash, Familial Rancor and Rancor Shot weapon arts
• The Rancor Pots
• The Horned Bairn

Extra note, the Braided Cord Rope item draws a comparison / contrast between “vengeful spirits” and “watchful spirits”. Watchful spirits are only elsewhere mentioned in the spell “Watchful Spirit”, which is also called a “guardian spirit”, a title shared with the Horned Warrior Ashes. 

“Rancor” shows up in two additional odd contexts, the spell Rykard’s Rancor, and the item Innard Meat.

Rykard’s Rancor: “These spirits manifest from the rancor of heroes who met a violent end. The lord granted them an audience, whereupon they were welcomed by the maw of the great serpent—and within the serpent's bowels, they became the lord's kin.”

Innard Meat: “Scraps of flesh for filling great jars. Rancorous spirits cling to the pinkish-red, twitching meat.”

These aren’t related to curses necessarily, but seem to just be people who have died in horrible ways.

An “ancient death hex” is mentioned a few times:

Rancorcall: “Once thought lost, this ancient death hex was rediscovered by the necromancer Garris.”

Ancient Death Rancor:  “They are cinders of the ancient death hex, raked from the fires of ghostflame by Deathbirds.”

So at least this hex originates with the followers of the Deathbirds. Which makes sense if we look at the Branchsword Talismans.

Red-feathered Branchsword: "The heart sings when one draws close to death, and a glorious end awaits those who cling so tenaciously to life."

Blue-feathered Branchsword: "The heart sings when one draws close to death, and thus does one cling so tenaciously to life—to render up a death worth offering."

Which we can combine with

Rancor Pot: “In times of old, the dead were burned with ghostflame, and from those cinders arose vengeful spirits.”

And that says to me that these ancient hexes utilize the angry spirits of those killed in some sort of ritual sacrifice (to the Deathbirds?) during the Ghostflame Era.

This then overlaps with what we know of red glintstone sorcery, which is described as "similar to hex magic" in the Staff of the Guilty description and dependent on human sacrifices. Same with Rykard rediscovering Gelmir hex magic (human sacrifice to the Serpent).

A couple other hex mentions of note.

Hefty Furnace Pot:  “Imbued with a hex of the furnace[...]The furnace's flame burns away both body and soul. When impurity is thus expunged, one calls it cleansing.”

Bloodfiend Hexer’s Ashes: “This spirit conducts bloodboon rituals with a sacred spear, casts bloodflame hexes, and takes a singular pleasure in letting the blood of foes. Long ago, a subjugated tribe discovered a twisted deity amongst the ravages of war, and they were transformed into bloodfiends. The mother of truth was their savior.”

Inquisitor Ashes: "One of the inquisitors casts a tower hex to heal HP, while the hex of the other boosts her own attack power."

Bone Bow: "A medium for spirit-calling, and a product of the ancient hexing arts of the tower."

Not much on their own, but considering how frequent this sort of thing crops up across cultural and magical regimes it's looking like "magical power from death" is a universal of the setting.

 

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Observation: Two Anchor Rings

Godrick and Morgott’s Great Runes are described as the central and lower anchor runes of the Elden Ring. Which would imply the existence of an upper anchor. Marika would be the natural assumption, as head of the entire thing, the Keter of our Great Rune sefirot.

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Theory: Capital-N Night is the whole unity of the celestial bodies prior to development of glintstone sorcery

We know that a big part of the Caria-Academy rivalry is over whether the moon or the stars is more important to sorcery. The few references we get to capital-N Night, and the lightless void of the Greater Will, feel like older versions of the religion. The Carians and Academics are the people arguing over if Jesus is one substance or two, and to get to that stage of bullshit you have to have at least a little time to develop things away from first principles. Naturally, those principles began with the Astrologers, prior to calling down glintstone.

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Observation: So Many Types of Fire

• Ghostflame: "burns death", whatever that means; generates spirit ashes
  
• Giantsflame: Capable of burning down the Erdtree
  
• Blackflame: Probably Giantsflame + Destined Death
  
• Flame of Frenzy: Can burn away everything, including spirits.
  
• Messmer’s Flame: Properties questionable, can definitely fuck up magical trees.
  

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Speculation: The Stone Lords are connected to Rauh

• We know Alabaster and Onyx Lords were created from members of an ancient civilization that were transformed by close contact with a meteorite impact.
• The Meteoric Ore Blade is supposedly designed for use against “lifeforms born of falling stars” - which would be either Stone Lords, Fallingstar Beasts, or Astels.
• The priests of the Ancient Dynasty had meteorite-shard spears
• Ancient Meteoric Ore Greatsword was apparently an arrowhead in the “old gods’ arsenal”, and explains jack shit else what the fuck. Gotta be those Giant-Giants.
  
• “Starcallers” are those who search for and harvest meteor fragments
• Astel fell as a meteorite in Operation Fuck This Eternal City In Particular and hit Farum Azula on the way down.
• Stone-Sheathed Sword can turn into Sword of Light/Darkness at altars in the Ruins of Rauh. Black and white, alabaster and onyx.
• Demi-humans are more easily affected by lures and aggro pull items when humans are immune
• The Lords of Stone are the ones who know gravity and meteor magic specifically, so I have seen it theorized that they are responsible for calling down Astel to destroy the Eternal City.
• TA and his heavy impact theory: some manner of meteor impact liquified a large chunk of the surface and buried the “builder stratum” (probably rauh) and the Old Giants (titans, old gods)
• TA, cont.: Elden John as a noah+moses figure, knowing that the Flood was coming, building the stone coffin-ships (TA suggests only 3 survived, the rest died and rotted, became putrescense. But those 3 might be just artistic license)
• Probably Metyr what did it as the “first star to fall”, maybe the elden beast?

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Observation: Passive Effect Associations

• Rune of Life / Erdtree / Golden Order / Marika: Passive HP regen 
• Destined Death / Rune of Death / GEQ: HP drain
  
• Dominula villagers : Extra rune gain
  
• Godrick's Great Rune: Increases all stats
• Radahn's Great Rune: Increases HP, FP, Stamina
• Rykard's Great Rune: Recover health on killing enemies
• Ranni's Great Rune: ????
  
• Malenia's Great Rune: Bloodborne-style health recovery
• Miquella's Great Rune: Resists influence of mental influence 
• Rune of the Unborn: ????
  
• Morgott's Great Rune:  Greatly increased HP
• Mohg's Great Rune: Recover health when a summon or enemy makes a kill

Using the power of PATTERN SEEKING BRAIN, I end up with this (asterisks mark reconstruction)

Nothing substantial enough to say "I think this is aligned with what they were aiming for", but an interesting series of coincidences all the same.

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Observation: "Death of the Demigods"

Maliketh’s epithet “death of the demigods” is weird because he didn't kill any of them, and all of them presumably died after he was locked in Farum Azula. I am presuming it is a “if any of them are going to die, Maliketh is going to be the one to do it,” sort of thing, which makes sense and adds a fun bit of "even the ordinary people know that if shit pops off he's going to come out on top." Which would imply that he had the Rune of Death for a bit before he got sealed away. The other option would be that there were demigods before the current crop and he killed those ones and the title carried over.

But that's if it's an epithet. If it is a literal meaning of his name, then I can only assume that he was given it by the Fingers as a direct threat to Marika, which is definitely in line with the one other Shadowbound Beast we know of. Toe the party line, or Blaidd / Maliketh will kill you and all of your associates.

 

PART 6: TOTAL BULLSHIT

Everything below is extra true. No theories here, just straight facts. The basics were written prior to the Nightreign announcement, which as you will see later is evidence of some minor gift of prophecy.

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Interpretive Lens: Principle of Transposition

FromSoft’s love of returning to the well is so strong that material - concepts, characters, places, events, connections and so on - may be transposed between games as one sees fit for purposes of theorizing, fanfiction, and all-around silliness. We might also call this the Patches Principle.

Interpretive Lens: The Adaptation Corollary

Elements transposed from one game to another will be adapted to fit the content of the host game; Transposition is one-way, and does not provide support for Grand Unified Theories.

Interpretive Lens: The Principle of Inaccuracy

The contents of the game are representative, not exact. Details not necessary to the story will be elided for it to function as a game.

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Godfrey = Gwyn

Not literally, of course, but as they both fulfill the role of father of a godly dynasty they are our prime centerpiece for this rabbithole of Transposition. Any traits, qualities, and connections of Gwyn that would be interesting to port to Godfrey shall hereby be ported over to Godfrey.

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The Golden Lineage demigods killed during the Night of the Black Knives and currently entombed in the wandering mausoleums are in fact Gwyn’s children, children-in-law, and grandchildren.

Specifically, this entails Gwynevere, Filianore, Oceiros, Lorian, Lothric, Ocelotte, and Rosaria.

Don't worry about the Nameless King and Gwyndolin, we'll get to them later.

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Godfrey maintained the Roundtable Hold separate from the Crucible Knights, both because he preferred it as a model for an army, and as an insurance policy in case things went south. 

Their numbers included:

• Knight Artorius -Tried to fight the Lord of the Abyss. It did not go well for him.
  
• Lord’s Blade CIaran - Personal bodyguard to Godwyn in his youth.
• Dragonslayer Ornstein - A veteran of the First Defense of Leyndell and champion of the Ancient Dragon Cult.
• Hawkeye Gough - A troll who turned against the giants during the War. 
• Gehrman and Maria - Hunters of starfallen beasts from a distant land.
• Havel the Rock - One of Godfrey's original band. Dragon War veteran. Went rogue after the Liurnian Wars because he was wanted nothing to do with a state that incorporated sorcery.
  
• Sir Alonne - A warrior from the Land of Reeds.
  

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Unsorted Bullshit

• Horah Loux’s uncle Lloyd was part of his original warband, and settled down as a prominent cleric of the Golden Order after the War with the Giants.
• Irithyll was a city of the ancient astrologers, though was barely inhabited by the time it was incorporated into the empire of the Eternal Cities. 
• Executioner Smough  was Marika’s chief executioner after the establishment of the Golden Order. Eventually joined the Fire Monks and became a Prelate, leaving the role of imperial carnifex to the lord of House Marais.
• High Lord Wolnir was the last of the primordial giants, and the only one to survive until Marika’s war.
• Nito ruled, though not as Elden Lord, in the days of the Deathbird rites.
• Seath the Scaleless was an advisor to Marika and Godfrey during the War with the Ancient Dragons. Godwyn acted against his council by extending friendship to Fortissax and ending the war peacefully.
• Seath later grew bored of Leyndell and commissioned a keep in Liurnia, devoting himself to study of the Crystalians.
• Storm Lord = Storm King, so Godfrey fought the Nameless King as his final enemy. (I FUCKING CALLED IT)
• Nameless King and Godwyn were twins
• Sen’s Fortress blocks the main way in to Gelmir from Leyndell: the siege was one of the bloodiest in the war. Snekmen!
• Gwyndolyn and Ranni have a complicated relationship - both devotees of the dark moon. Cooperation? Competition? Dual halves of an empyrean? A fosterage situation gone bad, which causes the Liurnian Wars?
• Gwyndolin survives the Night of Black Knives by either being conveniently outside Leyndell, in on the plot, or explicitly spared by Ranni.
• But then he gets eaten by Aldritch, a Golden Order Fundamentalist among Rykard's attendants who apostasized after reaching Gelmir and embraced the Black Flame cult, even managing to become a Godskin.
  
• The demihumans, long suffering under the oppression of Rauh, sought to make their own lord with the power of the Abyss: Manus was the result.
  
• Fillianore was married off to the Demihumans, rather than the pygmies.
•  All of the vague distant lands ever mentioned in the non-Sekiro souls games exist outside the Lands Between.
• The events of Sekiro, or events very similar to them, are occurring in the Land of Reeds
• Firekeepers are the old priestesses of the ghostflame, or perhaps the giantsflame, or maybe just the tree. TA's theory of Marika as emerging from an existing tree-worshiping priestess class obviously is connected here.
• The Noxians were in contact with the Moon Presence and had been used as hunters against its rivals. The Carians continued this agreement up through at least the Liurnian Wars.
• The Noxians created Rom the Vacuous Spider in a failed attempt to create the Lord of Night.
  
• Three great stars fell upon the earth: Metyr the Mother of Fingers, Ebrietas the Daughter of the Cosmos, and Kos called Kosm.  
• I don't actually need to do anything with the Blacksmith God and titanite demons, you could just throw those in a Rauh forge as-is.
• The Witch of Izalith was a priestess of the Old Dynasty who lived among and learned pyromancy from the fire giants. As the War neared its end, she fell into a despair great enough to call on the Flame of Frenzy, which created yet another fucking type of fire, and also a shit-ton of demons.
• Either that or demons are hornsent tutelary deities that have gone bad.
  
• Quelaag's nest is down at the bottom of the Leyndell catacombs, where she does exactly what she does in Dark Souls. Quelaana's there too.
• Micolash is everyone's least favorite faculty member at the Academy of Raya Lucaria but the bastard got tenure somehow and then tried to commune with Outer Gods.
  

 

PART 8: FANFICTION TIME

Scholar’s Letter

A thick envelope, sealed with stamped wax and a green ribbon. The documents stuffed within are all composed by the same hand.

Gurlos -

Bad news and more bad news, I’m afraid. Marika is laughing at us from the grave.

The team sent to Castle Marais returned yesterday, and it seems they've found another dead end. The central keep collapsed years ago thanks to the sinking foundation, and all we are left with is a pile of rubble in the middle of a poisonous swamp overgrown with squirts and miranda flowers. If House Marais kept any of their records at home, they're lost, and I’m not going to risk any of our colleagues for a handful of sodden parchment.

Our excavation in the capital seems similarly futile. We’ve had to relocate the main camp three times now due to instability of the dunes. The ash is a merciless invader; It gets on everything, it gets into everything, we can only spare a few hours each day excavating before we’re all crippled by coughing fits.

As we expected, the majority of the documents we have found are barely better than lumps of charcoal. Despite this, we have managed to find a few surviving caches in the manors of the upper city, where by accidents of positioning and storage the texts were spared from the pyroclastic flow. Unfortunately, these scrolls and books are predominantly personal writings, business records, religious texts, and the entertainments of the idle rich. Our colleagues will have a wonderful time analyzing the cultural significance of it all, but it's not particularly helpful to us in the here and now.

We gravely underestimated both the enthusiasm of Marika’s ministry of propaganda and the scope of their influence over the rest of the Lands. Every single non-private text we have found has been stamped with the approval of House Marais and the Office of Publications, marking them as parrots of the official imperial history and useful primarily as kindling and toilet paper. The private texts rarely delve into matters of history or statecraft, and we can assume a chilling effect from the censor's passing shadow. I won't entirely rule out the truth from emerging, but that will require miraculous luck that we thus far have not had in our possession.

The site that we have been assuming (with caution) to be Marika's private residence has offered up a few curiosities: we have pulled five stone tablets from the ash, but the text is unfamiliar. The most reasonable hypothesis would be that they belong to a pre-Order civilization, but until we find matching inscriptions we can't begin to identify them. I've included a rubbing of one of the tablets with this letter; perhaps you've found something similar in the Tower settlement.

To round out the failures of this expedition, the teams we've sent into Liurnia and Limgrave have started reporting back to us as well.

The libraries of Raya Lucaria and the Carian manor still contain thousands of books in good condition, but we have no means of reading or understanding the sorcerer's ciphers used to write them. The best and brightest minds of that last generation were reduced to mindless infantilism under the care of Rennala, and while Rennala herself was closest to the events in question she is in no state to answer them and likely never will be.

Nephali Loux, now an old woman, arrived with the remnants of Godfrey’s army at the end of the age. She has been helpful in establishing the timeline since the Tarnished returned, but knows very little of anything that came before. But she is a gracious host to our Limgrave teams and so we have little room to complain.

Bishop Miriel appears to be our best lead so far: he is cooperative, an excellent interview subject, and has assisted us in the interpretation of the more obtuse religious texts. While part of the religious hierarchy of the Golden Order, he was unofficially assigned in perpetuity to the Church of Vows in Liurnia (as an enormous tortoise is extremely difficult to transport to and from the capital) and so received all his news of Leyndell second-hand. But this allowed him to serve as a direct eyewitness to the Liurnian Wars, and it will be in comparing his story to the official record that we will find any clues as to the truth if we are going to find any at all.

Lady Tanith of Ranah is not a viable interview subject.

This is the situation as it stands on our end of the inner sea, and I will keep you informed of any developments. I hope that your own team's investigations have borne more fruit than ours.

- Máelruba

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I think I have two more of these in the tank. For now anyways.

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