Goodnight, Irene (A Delta Green NPC)

Nathan Rosario

It’s a bright, rainy morning in the mid-late Triassic, 230 million years ago and change. A Thursday, if anyone cares to crunch the numbers. The rainforests of Pangaea's southeastern hook teem with vibrant, noisy life; the Great Dying is twenty million years in the rearview mirror, and ever-opprotunistic evolution has spent the time filling every niche that can be filled.

In the rainforest, there is a library: a basalt labyrinth of honeycombed chambers and terraced pyramids, of aqueducts and canals and reservoirs and blocky monolithic structures that seem to have been carved out of the bones of mountains, or deposited there by visitors from afar. Here the whole course of Earth’s history is recorded on granite slabs and diamonite crystal.

Somewhere in the maze, a distant descendent of the Tully Monster crawls down a hallway on its one muscular foot. In one clawed hand, at the end of a rubbery green-brown tendril, it holds a slab of granite covered in minute crosshatched carvings. In the other it has a knobbly striped gourd, hollowed out and filled with some bright pink liquid, which it sips from by its feeding arm. The dangling tendrils of its cephalobrachia idly fiddle with a thin crystal stylus.

The conomorph is slow, but this doesn’t matter: there’s no rush when one has all the time in the world.

It emerges into an enormous vaulted chamber, slowly navigates through the maze of desks. Somewhere on the far side of the room, another researcher breaks the silence with a barrage of angry clicks and whistles; cynodont docents chatter and laugh as they scramble up the wall-shelves to the maintenance tunnels high above, stolen lunch in hand.

The conomorph reaches its stone desk and sets down its tablet and gourd. It has a window all to itself, gazing out over the city’s black stone, the emerald green of the rainforest, the hazy blue of the Tethys Ocean. The librarian fiddles with a device on the desktop, a lattice of silvery metal and crystal. Components with no apparent connection to each other spin and twist in total silence, smooth as water. A crystal diode pulses soft red.

The conomorph moves its vocal apparatus near the device.

**

230 million years in the future, Agent Roche has fucked up. He knows it, the rest of his cell knows it (well, knew it), and right about now his life expectancy is between one and three minutes depending on how long the fire door lasts. He’s got a dumb phone in one shaking hand and a .45 with three bullets left in the other.

He autodials the number at the top of his contact list and holds the phone to his ear. It rings once before he hears an automated response.

“The number you have reached is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”

He croaks out his code phrase.

“Hi, I was looking to get an estimate on an ant problem...”

Tinnitus peaks in his right ear, followed by a woman’s voice.

“Switchboard; what's the situation?”

**

Irene May Marshall was born in Baltimore in the fall of 1921. If there was a biopic on her life, there’d be some inspirational bullshit about how she was born into poverty but managed to work her way out by virtue of a sharp mind, determination, a 210 wpm typing speed and a memory like a bear trap; she’d tell you that the real reason she got offered a secretarial position with the US navy was because she was able to pass as white.

Three months after she cashed her first paycheck, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and her career solidified like Roman concrete: soldiers can be bought by the gross, commanding officers can be pulled hot and fresh from the West Point assembly line whenever you please, but a skilled plate-spinner is worth twice their weight in gold.

She crossed paths with P4 Division several times during the war, though she had no personal interaction with the unnatural until she was poached in 1947 and read-in to Delta Green.

It’s worth noting that her response to the Innsmouth report was a shrug.

**

The first lesson of the Cowboy Years was that Delta Green couldn’t sustain itself. Transitioning to clandestine cells could slow the collapse, but now that the organization had been severed from its keeping-shit-together apparatus and all its institutional knowledge had gone up in flames, information entropy and the grind of personnel loss would render the group an ineffectual band of reactionary domestic terrorists thrashing blindly against threats they didn’t understand and / or made up entirely on their own. Desperate plans were cooked up in bulk during the mad scramble for survival.

DG had learned about the Librarians during the war; the Japanese had unsuccessfully attempted to make contact, and P4 had inherited (stolen) enough of their research for DG to try again every few years to no success. Why the Librarians answered the door this time is known only to them.

Eventually, an agreement was hashed out:

1) The Librarians would call on Delta Green for occasional wetwork (in service, they said, of a future that was "mutually tolerable”) against unspecified enemies.

2) Delta Green would be permitted to send one member into the deep past, where they would serve as a research fellow and program coordinator from a position better suited to big pictures.

“One member” was something of a formality: from the beginning the Librarians had only showed interest in Irene. Leadership would have chosen her anyway, if she hadn’t volunteered.

**

Irene was half of the plan: the other half has become the backbone of modern Delta Green operations.

The ubiquitous burner phones that the organization relies on are useless for normal calls; they aren’t connected to any wireless network (and in fact, can’t be), but their SIM cards have been inscribed with the Sign of Chotha and this sends any calls made on them 230 million years into the past where Irene receives them with the device on her desk, where she’ll transfer the caller to their intended recipient. Most agents don’t realize that she exists, and those that do typically think she’s a member of one of the command cells.

There’s a mild cognitohazardous effect inherent in using a phone marked by the Sign of Chotha, but desperate times call for omnivorous measures. It does less psychological damage than using Twitter, anyway.

All of these phones are supplied - for the moment, at least - by an small electronics recycling company in Florida. Agents Jacobs and Chakramurti fudge the numbers a bit, take some junk phones for themselves, and spend a few all-nighters a year in hypergeometric trance. Then the cards are plugged in, and the phones are sent out to PO boxes and dead drops across the country for pickup by cell handlers. 

The phones are unremarkable, other than being old and typically in poor shape. Correctly identifying the Sign of Chotha would require pre-existing knowledge on the unnatural and an intact phone, though correctly identifying that something strange is going on will take very little thought at all: inquisitive agents will be told that the Program has leverage with the wireless companies to keep things secure.
 

** 

Using Irene in Your Games

Irene serves as both an in-universe explanation for something typically handwaved at the table, and as a potential hook into scenarios involving the yithians, their Library, Tsan-Chan, Zothique, Moss Covered Arrowhead, Hy(per)borea, etc.

The existence of a magically secure line of communication is, no doubt, a convenient solution to a lot of Delta Green's problems. But it does make easy fodder for the development of new and novel problems. Delta Green's communications under Irene are reliable and secure, but they are also centralized and specialized. If one of the components breaks, it could sink the entire operation.

Irene Marshall,  Switchboard Operator & Program Lynchpin

• Appearance: In the few surviving photos of Irene, she’s a grim-faced woman with short brown hair and glasses. That body died in 1971.

• Manner: Direct. Practical. Professional. Detached. Doesn’t mix work and private life. Always looking at the bigger picture. Serves as the first bearer of bad news.

• Wants: The continued survival of humanity. Aiding Delta Green is just the most convenient way to do that at the moment, or so she justifies it to herself. She’s playing a long game that does not necessarily align with the national interests of the Program or conform to their beliefs about how the universe works.

• Secrets: 
• In speaking with the other researcher-abductees, Irene is starting to piece together a picture of the Yith-Tindalos time war, the mechanics of universes and timelines, and the many pasts and futures of earth. If she went off script and starting slipping in her own objectives to agents' briefings, she might be able to trigger a timeline split before being noticed by DG or the Librarians.
• Her son, now in his 70s, has cultivated an expansive conspiratorial ecosystem to explain his mother’s sudden death. He is, by accident, dangerously close to stumbling onto a Delta Green operation (GOLDPAN) that A) did not destroy the vector and B) has been entirely lost by modern DG. 

What Irene Can Do

• Transfer calls between any phones marked with the Sign of Chotha. (The phone isn’t technically necessary, but it’s a convenient foci.) Calls must be temporally linear and have a tendency to lose connection after a minute or two due to limited bandwidth. 
• Forcibly sever the connection to a specific device by undoing the Sign of Chotha. This is typically requested by agents about to be compromised, or by Irene herself when she notices any unusual activity.

Calls require an appropriate pass phrase to be transferred: Irene will report any violations up the chain, and will do a bit of character acting to get info out of whoever’s making the unauthorized call (typically as the spouse of the agent, who is thrown under the bus as a drug dealer or domestic terrorist.)

I'll let y'all come up with the code phrases on your own, but they will contain, at minimum:

• Transfer to each fellow cell members
• Transfer to the cell handler
• Transfer to adjacent cell's point-of-contact
  
• Emergency transfer to a command cell
• Emergency intelligence dump

Irene is unlikely to actually answer the call unless it's on an emergency line.

What Irene Can’t Do

• Provide detailed information on unnatural threats - the Librarians greatly limit the archives access of their abductees, and punish even minor infractions with expulsion and memory-wipe. Irene either doesn't know, or isn't able to tell agents directly.
• Send calls out of chronology or back in time - she technically could do this, so long as certain events remain stable, but even in those specific use-cases Irene can't fucking stand time travel.

 

Ways This Can Go Terribly Wrong

• MAJESTIC / March Tech discovers and reverse-engineers the Sign of Chotha.
• A glitch in the ritual triggers a cascading Cell-type scenario.
  
• The Librarians decide that the terms of the agreement have been fulfilled and will not be renewed.
•  Irene is ejected from the Library for accessing the forbidden sectors.
• A Hound manages to pierce the Library's defenses.
• A Flying Polyp breaks out of the containment wing.
• The Sign of Chotha inadvertantly attracts a threat no one saw coming.
• Someone tries taking their phone through a Tillenghast Resonator.
• Atlantean Time Police raid the Library (got a tip about potential liao smuggling) 
• Agents Jacobs and Chakramurti are burned and have to go to ground / are killed. 
• An ENGLISH-Class time loop scenario occurs.
• A researcher-abductee breaks under acclimatization strain and gets a hold of a lightning gun.
• Irene gets fed up with A-Cell and tells them to go fuck themselves.

 

**

Agent Roche manages to leave a panicked 14-second message with his handler before his organs go out for some fresh air. She gets up from dinner (mid-grade Italian, colleague's 60th birthday), feigning an upset stomach, heads to the bathroom, and calls N-Cell. 

Irene runs a tendril over a crystal bulb. 

N-Cell's handler gets a brief message about a package that got delivered to the wrong address again, sends a call out to Agent Horn. 

Irene prods at a glittering cluster of metallic pustules. 

Agent Horn cuts off what had been a nice night with his girlfriend, puts on his jacket, and heads out into the cold to the green box, where he very carefully picks up an Amazon shipping box containing a lot of bundled up white-t-shirts, crumpled magazines, and a poorly-taxidermied coyote. He loads it in his 2005 CRV and starts driving out towards the handoff point.

Irene inscribes a summary of the Battle of Midway on a slab of granite with a stylus of liquid silver.

The poorly-taxidermied coyote claims no more victims tonight.

Dan Plays Games 7

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

I'm trying to get better at actually finishing games I own instead of just buying new ones. I am not very successful thus far.

 

Pyrene

My feelings are complicated on this one. On the whole, the game is fun; I like the aesthetics and its roots in Basque folklore, but something in the roguelite gameplay loop and the difficulty curve is a little borked.

Every area has a spread of cards - enemies, items, yourself - and you move yourself around defeating enemies until you clear the area, repeat across 3-5 biomes. New characters are unlocked as you progress through the story, new items and abilities are unlocked by upgrading buildings in the village or completing “do X thing Y times” objectives. So far so good. You can make some disgustingly overpowered builds, which is always a plus.

The issue I kept running into was that the story locks your progress behind character-specific runs - you unlock a new character, and then have to complete a run as them to progress. Using anyone else will only get you more upgrade materials for the village. This shakes out with you spending more time playing as characters you don’t like / are having trouble with rather than characters you do, though there are thankfully a lot of difficulty adjustments that you can toggle on and off as you see fit.

If you're playing it as a normal roguelite with the normal cycle of “do run, return home, upgrade, go back out”, you’ll run out of things to upgrade long before you reach the end of the story thanks to playing and losing as characters you don't like; the last village upgrades are locked behind beating said story (and are postgame challenge stuff anyway), so the back half / third of the game just doesn’t really have any meaningful metaprogression unless you’ve been moving through the story faster than you can unlock things.

But then again, I really liked the last character in the story mode so I can't even say that it ended on a bad note. It's got flaws, but I still hit credits on it and enjoyed my time with it. Not being a forever game with endless depth is okay.

Pokerogue

This is a dangerous game if you have an addictive personality. The gameplay loop is that tight.

It's a basic framework: you draft a team, and then try and survive 200 waves of increasing difficulty It's simple superficially, but in shifting Pokemon to a roguelite gameplay structure, all of the weird gribbly background stuff that only matters to competitive players suddenly becomes both important and fun. It’s downright miraculous, and it’s such a dead fucking simple change.

When you catch or hatch a pokemon for the first time, its lowest evolution is made available as a starter. For every duplicate you catch or hatch, any new natures, abilities, IVs or egg moves are added to the gestalt. Using / catching / hatching a ‘mon gets you candies that you can use to unlock passive abilities (in addition to the normal ability), reduce point costs (you have a budget of 10 points for your starting party) or buy eggs (which have better odds of getting you a shiny or a rare egg move)

And then you can pick and choose what you want to start with.

Bolded for emphasis. In a normal Pokemon game making a specific build is an exercise in psychopathic tedium and monster eugenics, and it doesn’t matter whatsoever unless you are playing competitively. This bypasses all of that and lets you unlock new options just by engaging with the basic premise; after so long, there is finally a game where catching them all is actually a fun part of the gameplay loop. Even the egg gacha mechanics are fun, because you will regularly be surprised with a helpful egg move, a new shiny, or a hidden ability that you can then start building around; You're always making progress on something. (Again, part of the addiction loop. But it is still very satisfying.)

My one major issue is that the first two areas are always the same, and tend to get pretty boring even when you have a solid fighting type to clean house. The secondary issue is that once you start getting a team settled down, the grind becomes a lot more apparent. But when you're on a good run, man does it feel good to put on a podcast and grind out a couple dozen waves.

 (I have a Houndour with some truly obscene type coverage via egg moves, I love my walking nuke hellhound son.)

Spiritfarer (Revisit; original review 2023)

I started up a fresh Spiritfarer save after our cat Peaches died back in March (three cats in three years, folks. It’s been bad) and have been chipping away at it since then. It was the game I needed. Probably needed it anyway just considering the state of the world. Death has been on my mind a lot, of late.

In a media landscape that is so obsessed with death and so gleeful in its depictions of doling it out, Spiritfarer stands out as an anomaly. There are lots of good depictions of mythic Death out there, but very few of the part that comes before. The dying part, the winding down, the knowing and the dreadful waiting. Pratchett’s witches get it, no surprise there, but it’s a pretty barren landscape elsewise.

And then Spiritfarer sails in, with its music and its animation and its color and its warmth and joy and brushes with the transcendent, and it gives you the job of preparing spirits for their final departure. It invokes what is probably one of the oldest and strongest fantasies in humanity: the good death. Of going out with dignity, without regret, with all affairs in order, in the company of loved ones.

Very, very few people get that luxury. Have ever gotten that luxury. Most of humanity has died in pain, in terror, alone, without warning. If you’re lucky, you get to say goodbye.

And then Spiritfarer sails in and says “Maybe it doesn’t have to be like that”, and the effect is something like a glimpse of the elves on their way to the Grey Havens.

The gameplay loop is smoother the second time through, when I know what I’m doing, though I am reaching the point where many of the issues that got me to stop cropped up. Let’s see if I can play smarter. The biggest issue so far is if you drop the loop: Say you forgot something (easy to do in this game). You missed a passenger for a while, or you kept one around longer than you needed to. It’s entirely possible to get yourself trapped in a resource bottleneck where your only way to progress is through this One Specific Thing, and you’re stuck essentially going in circles until you accomplish the One Specific Thing and the game opens back up a bit. I started feeling it this run through around the same point as I did the first time; things can really start to fizzle out around the 50% mark. I’m going to push through, because I do want to see this through to the end, but it is a pretty sizable flaw in an otherwise flawless experience. The defect in the Claw of the Conciliator.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for dropping the game in frustration after hitting one of those scenarios. But beyond that, I think Spiritfarer is one of those very rare works of art where the world is better - if only by a small amount -  for its existence. 

Path of Achra (Revisit)

Got back into this for a while. I’ve come to appreciate how, since the main gameplay loop is just “attempt to get to the end, and then do it again but slightly harder” nearly all of the achievements are based around getting to the end of the game with one of the 80-some prestige classes - it’s a small but welcome encouragement to vary up how you play the game. Makes it something of a puzzle, even: can you make a build that fulfills X requirements that can survive a run? This can cause frustration when you have a great build that still ends up getting absolutely bodied right at the end, but them’s the breaks.

The dev is working on a tactics rpg set in the same world, which I am very excited for. The guy knows the best lore is to just say cryptic, cool-sounding shit and let people’s imagination do the rest. More of that is always welcome.

Sorry We’re Closed (Addendum)

Serves me right for giving it a writeup when I was still very early on in the game.

You know how I said that it’s doing some very interesting things with the themes of love and how it changes people? About that: Sorry, We’re Closed operates on fairy-tale morality and logic. You are going to be given binary dialog choices (of the sort where the choice you make and what the character actually says are entirely different things) with no room given for nuance, circumstance, or anything remotely resembling how people would react to these things in the real world. I didn’t realize this until I was already getting frustrated with the story: Yes, game, I am agreeing with you that love can be a profound driver of personal change and growth: no, I don’t think that love is going to save the character who feeds people into an industrial meat grinder in front of a live studio audience.

Under fairy-tale logic, with everything and everyone heightened to an operatic dreamscape where nothing and no one is actually real, maybe it works. I don’t know. You have a woman who was dumped three years ago and still has a framed photo of her ex on the wall, being stalked/cursed by a demon that feeds people (that it kidnaps and attempts to force into romantic relationships in order to fill the hole left behind from the absence of God) into an industrial meat grinder, and everyone else in the side stories is heightened levels of dysfunctional - and your choices are only ever “yes this is fine, carry on” and “I am going to destroy this person’s life.” There’s never an option to put your foot down and say “I think you can make it work, but you two need to sit down and sort your shit out and I am not qualified to help you”.

It’s one of those cases where I would rather not have any narrative choice at all, rather than be forced into choices that I don’t want to take.

If I decide to continue with this, I will probably have further addenda.

Ender Magnolia

Like its predecessor, Ender Magnolia is a dang solid Metroidvania. Looks good, sounds good, plays good, I 100%ed it (admittedly, this wasn’t very hard) and I never 100% games. It’s not going to win any awards for breaking new ground and revolutionizing the genre, but there’s nothing wrong with playing the hits sometimes. 

Time Wasters

Fun little bullet heaven game where you zip around in a little spaceship. Good if you want something that doesn’t require a lot of brain power to play. You’ll get more bang for your buck from Vampire Survivors, but I don’t think anything actually does so that’s not much of a mark against it. You'll probably run out of steam relatively quickly, but it's fun for as long as it keeps your interest.

ENA: Dream BBQ

The natural evolution of the series is here: a new ENA video, but interactive. Does it make a shit-lick of sense? Maybe. Do I care that I don’t understand it? Also no. It’s free and it captures one specific Vibe that is just otherwise impossible to capture. Dream logic is damn hard to properly invoke and even harder to sustain, so keeping it going for an hour and a half (give or take) of playtime (this is the first episode of ???) is an achievement. If you enjoy ENA, this is more ENA.

Also, since Mike had asked me on discord if I had any utterly deranged lore ramblings about ENA to tide folks over until Nightreign, here’s what I’ve got: I’m sticking with a theory that this is some sort of hyper-immersive VR (to use Orion’s Arm terminology, a virch) setup that is slowly decaying due to unknowable outside circumstances, and none of the inhabitants truly realize it. Some of them clearly know that something has gone wrong, but I don’t think they know why. Environments / regions are going offline, people are losing their identities / selfs and becoming NPC-like subroutines, so on and so forth. ENA herself, I think, is a user who has somehow managed to accumulate or create a gestalt personality (we’ve seen at least three of them: Red/Yellow, Blue, and Grey) that’s taken on its own life outside of and potentially suppressing the original.

Gods vs Horrors (Release build)

Same as it was in the demo, now with more gods and relics and a lightweight unlock system. Still love the design of the pantheons - each is visually distinct (since all art is black, white, and one primary color) and each has a dedicated playstyle that you can build around / hybridize. It feels fantastic to fall into a disgustingly overpowered build. All that is good.

The bad is that the game absolutely needs some rebalancing and some more content. While I've been able to clear the 10 tiers for the first boss, the difficulty dramatically spikes on the second and third bosses way outpace any benefit the progression might be able to give you. Like with Pyrene, the pace of unlocks is out of whack with the difficulty (even factoring in the occasional disgustingly overpowered build), so you will end up unlocking stuff well before you have reached the endgame (or even the midgame, honestly) - to this day, I don't think anyone has beaten Binding of Isaac for how to pace roguelite progression.

Really hoping this one gets more support later on down the road. All the pieces are there, they just need more time in the oven.

 

Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut

I'd played this last year, but I completely forgot to add it to a roundup for reasons I cannot begin to fathom (spoilers, it's ADHD), so here is a long-overdue review of the game as I return to play through all the new material that got added since I last touched it.

**

There is a point in Slay the Princess where the clever twists on the visual novel format and the joy of Jonathan Sims talking to himself fade into the background for a moment, and the only way to describe the experience is 'transcendent'.  It's an encounter with La Revacholiere. No other way, no better way to describe it. You'll know when you get there.

And it's not a one-off, either. You'll find that place again. Don't play too much of it at once. Let those moments live somewhere in your soul and return when you feel the pull again.

 

Promise Mascot Agency

It's an open world mascot management sim yakuza crime drama made by the people behind Paradise Killer and it is a certified banger. A great game for weird people. I fell in love with it instantly, in a way that's honestly hard to quantify. Saying "I like the vibes" is a disservice, because vibes are vague feelings about aesthetics: the vibes are immaculate, but hand in hand with the vibes it's just fucking fun. It feels good to play. It feels good to drive your truck around a run-down backwater town and talk to people. It feels good watching the agency expand and the numbers go up. 

The pitch is that you're playing as Michi, "the Janitor". You fucked up and lost the family 12 billion yen. So the boss lady exiles you to a shitty depressed town in the middle of nowhere to take over a failing mascot agency operating out of a roach-infested love motel. Your partner in business / crime is a mascot (who are actual beings, not humans in suits) named Pinkie☆ (the star is part of her name) who is a giant severed finger with a face on it and has had it up to here with just about everything and is disappointed that you didn't need her to go bury a body in the woods. You need to make a shitload of money and clean up this run down town.

Two little things that stuck out to me: one is possibly the only funny version of "ha ha, the goofy cartoon animal is obsessed with porn" (because he immediately follows it with "I'm an advocate for responsible usage and want to start a streaming service where everyone is paid fairly for their work"), the other is the exchange teacher from London whose voice actress I would bet dollars to donuts had done the same at some point (which I think is very cool. Loads of media overlook the complexities and texture of how people speak so I always like shouting it out when there's a case of "folks cared about this". Like how the Chow family in Sinners all have southern Delta accents like the rest of the cast and that establishes that they're second or third generation immigrants without ever saying it directly.)

Anyway: game fucking good, it's on sale at the moment and even if it wasn't it's 20 bucks and that is absolute highway robbery for the quality you'll be getting.

 

 

Positively Unhinged Elden Ring Theoryposting: Part 5

 Previous posts: (Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). 

Let's get this show back on the road.

Part 9: Last Call Before Nightreign 

Turns out the announcement of Nightreign stopped my positively unhinged theoryposting dead in its tracks. I had been drafting a Big Finale Post where I presented my Grand Unified Headcanon, but there’s not much fun in that knowing that in a short time I’m going to be hit with a series of curveballs from left field that throw everything into total chaos. (The inevitability of FromSoft DLC / sequels)

But with release nearly upon us, I’m going to round up the straggling theories and observations I’ve had that don’t fit into the Big Finale Post, just so I can clean out the draft dog a bit and stop having all these words sitting there menacingly.

**

Observation: The incantation sigils for Messmer & Frenzy look similar

I can’t believe I didn’t catch this until recently. Three pronged fire on both of them, with the Flame of Frenzy predictably looking more ragged and not having a boundary circle. Which would make Messmer’s flame the un-frenzied version of the Frenzied Flame, something chaotic but still controlled. The sigils for Giant and Two Finger incantations are just boundary circles (ie, “things you contain other things in”), with the Giant sigil being more solid (looks like the forge seen from above, as fitting for masters of the flame.) and the Two Fingers being in light-cipher script they use to communicate with humans.

Messmer’s sigil has a thick outside border like the Giants (with less decoration), with a double-helix or braid inside the ring (vs the Tengwar-like scribbles of Finger sigils). This feels like a combination of methods, and it looks like the Celtic knot pattern in the Erdtree sigil.

Of course, you know what also makes a nice circle? Mythologically potent serpents. The serpent that is currently inside Messmer and nibbling on his flame.

It also brings up a question of which came first: is Messmer’s sigil representative of Flame of Frenzy that has been bound, or is the Flame of Frenzy actually a variant of whatever Messmer inherited? Something that’s been supercharged by despair like oxygen fuels an ordinary fire? Is there really just the one Fire that has speciated into multiple forms?

**

Correction: Maybe Not A Brownshirt

In my last post, I did a lot of theorizing based on the idea that Messmer was basically leading his own brownshirt death squads and either threatened or was going to commit a coup. I still like this reading, though Kyana and several other commenters have pointed out that not only is there the line about him leading the crusade “on his mother’s wishes”, but a lot of his voicelines seem almost bored with it all. Like his heart really isn’t in it. He says “Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death in Messmer’s Flame” like he’s reading off a script.

Which makes me think that maybe this was a punishment detail for him. He might still have been building his own personal death squads back in Leyndell and / or tried to burn down the Erdtree, but he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of hatred for the people he's fighting.

Which is seemingly countered immediately by the literal walking warcrimes he had as part of his forces and the whole “committing genocide and sticking heads on pikes” thing. So if he wasn’t “yeah let’s go kill hornsent” and was really doing it on Marika’s wishes, the game is drastically understating the extent of how psychologically broken this man is.

That item description indicates that he took the carrot. I think it’s safe to assume that Marika had a stick ready and waiting for her wayward red-headed step-son if he didn’t cooperate.

**

Observation: There’s something missing from the Beast incantation sigil

It’s an empty oval with claw marks, as if something inside was gouged out of it. Which is a bit odd, as it would imply that a beast was responsible for clawing out whatever they had at their spiritual center. The Ring is a likely candidate for what was lost.

That there are three claw marks there is probably nothing important at all and doesn’t mean anything.

**

Theory: The Scadutree is the real Erdtree

• Looks burnt? Check.
• In a location where the ash would fall on Leyndell? Probably check.
• A secret Marika would want hidden? Check.
• Oozing golden sap? Check.
• Sap which may or may not be the blood of the sun? Not checked but I believe it.
• Conveniently near the apparent physical location of the Crucible? Check.

I do not have a meaningful argument beyond vibes and implications but it feels right. Scadutree is real Erdtree, which was planted on top of the Crucible in order to control and regulate it, and it might have also eaten the sun and this probably established the Golden Order.

Because the sun is associated with death. The sun is barely mentioned in the game but nearly every damn time it crops up, it is associated with death.

• The eclipsed sun is described as protector of the “soulless demigods” in the mausoleums, where it (the eclipse) keeps Destined Death at Bay.
• But, importantly, the sun is not currently eclipsed, so the mausoleums are walking around to prevent them from being consumed by deathroot.
• An eclipse was part of Miquella’s plan to resurrect Godwyn so he could die a true death (and potentially return his soul to him?)
• Death becomes unstuck at night (crucified bodies re-animated and start screaming)

I’m going to stick a pin in this: “Sun seems affiliated with Destined Death  (and possibly the Gloam-Eyed Queen) and prevents spirits from being re-embodied (ie,  the dead remain soulless / cannot have spirits put back into them) - these might be one and the same. Does Destined Death destroy the spirit as well as the body? We know the Flame of Frenzy does that…

(Aside, Death Flare skill drops the phrase “lusterless sun”)

As for demihumans going mad at night, despite all their connections with the Carians and all their magic being sorcery… I think this calls for my Sun = Greater Will theory.

Greater Will gave intelligence to the beasts, intelligence that they have been steadily losing over time  with the loss of the sun’s radiance (ie, what was once given out by the sun directly is now Marika’s to pick and choose with) and which they fully lose when the sun is no longer visible. The sun has lost its luster, the beasts have lost their intelligence, it’s like poetry it fucking rhymes.

And if Scadutree = real Erdtree and Erdtree blessings / sap = golden tears / sun-blood…

Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.

**

Observation: Possible timing of the Gloam-Eyed Queen Dustup.

In a moment of brief coherence of the whole GEQ charade (damn you Miyazaki and Martin both), the description for the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince contains the following line:

“The Golden Order was created by confining Destined Death.”

Enya has dialogue that is basically that verbatim. Which on its own is not much, but it gives us a pin on the board:  

Golden Order founding = defeat of Godskins and GEQ by Maliketh.

Which means that the GEQ vs Maliketh fight could not happen any later than Radagon’s return to Leyndell, since you can’t have Golden Order Fundamentalism if there’s no Golden Order.

But if I am onto something with the previous section, there might be an addendum.

Golden Order founding = defeat of Godskins and GEQ by Maliketh as part of a greater plan to steal the Sun/Greater Will’s power via the Erdtree

Tree would likely have already been extant at this point, but I don’t know if it would have happened before, during, or after Marika’s ascension to godhood. We can say with reasonable confidence that she was doling out sap blessings prior to cutting away the Land of Shadow (the big collection bowl being the most direct sign)

**

Observation: Marika’s choice of exile for Maliketh

I don’t think that’s where the GEQ was located when she was defeated. I think his exile was a combination of practicality (“outside of time” is about as sealed away as you can possibly get) with some small measure of kindness. Maybe. As close as Marika at the height of her power would have. As one of the beastmen, Farum Azula would have been Maliketh’s home. Whether or not he took any comfort in being stuck in the perpetually-crumbling ruins of the city that was once his own, I couldn’t tell you.

**

Immediate Retraction: Was Maliketh actually exiled, or was he hiding?

Off the cuff on this one.

• Marika has a big spear of destined death through her body, indicating that she was attacked by either Maliketh or the GEQ
• Malieketh, like Blaidd, was assigned to an Empyrean by the Fingers to ensure compliance.
• Marika going rogue and breaking the Ring would be more than sufficient reason for the Fingers to give Maliketh a kill order. (Note: I think this would also apply to attempting to kill Metyr, or removing the Rune of Death from the Ring. Or attempting to devour the sun.)
• Maliketh was clearly not able to finish the job, since Marika-Radagon is still alive when we find them.

Putting it all together: I think that Maliketh had enough loyalty to Marika to prevent him from killing her. Gearing punishment from the Fingers/Will, he bolted from the scene and hid himself somewhere that his half-mad self still recognized as safe (his old home of Farum Azula)

No, I do not know how the outside of time thing works for this, nor do I have any meaningful insight into the nature of Marika’s betrayal or what Maliketh is referring to when he asks non-present Marika why she “relinquished” something.

**

Theory: Destined Death causes petrification

Building on the above, Marika’s body is basically entirely stonelike when we meet her, and she has a big ol’ red spear sticking out of her. Destined Death deals damage over time, its lesser deathblight form grows long pointy objects out of you, put together I’m feeling more confident in the previous theory. Given the extent of the damage, it’s certainly been a while since it happened, but who knows how long that would be.

Hold on… if this is true and Maliketh is the one who delivered the wound, it would mean that Maliketh had Destined Death already in his possession: the GEQ would already have been defeated and the Golden Order already established. That would cross out “Erdtree eating the sun” as a trigger, leaving us with attempted killing of Metyr or breaking the Ring (unless eating the sun and assassinating Metyr were happening simultaneously, which makes a whole lot of sense. If you’re trying to take out the Boss Man, you have to also take out the second in command before they can organize a counter)

If it was the GEQ who delivered the wound, that would necessitate that she and Marika were different people (at least at this stage), she had the Rune of Death in her possession, and Maliketh was acting to protect Marika. That would align more with Marika betraying him; he saves her life, and then she uses him as a disposable vessel for Destined Death.

Wait, wouldn’t removing the Rune of Death necessitate Marika having godhood (and thus possession of and control over the Ring)?

I’m at an impasse: there are two versions I can reconstruct, both of which seem equally likely but incompatible due to the ramifications.

Right at this moment, I am leaning towards

1. GEQ = Marika prior to removal of the Rune of Death; an Empyrean selected by the Fingers as the next candidate for godhood.
2. GEQ goes off-script and attempts to coup the Fingers by trying to assassinate Metyr and using the Erdtree to eat the sun.
3. Maliketh is activated; he wounds but does not kill GEQ
4. Option A) Maliketh does not have Destined Death at this time
5. Option B) Marika splitting off from the GEQ and removing the Rune of Death happens simultaneously with all of this. Like we’re talking a difference of minutes. Potentially even Maliketh straight up taking it out of her hands in a blind rage and stabbing her with it
• Actually that’s a banger of an image, I’m keeping that.
6. Marika betrays Maliketh’s loyalty / mercy by foisting the newly-separated Rune of Death onto him and exiling him to the ass-end of nowhere.

I do not know where the Gate of Divinity comes into play in this theory. I am presuming it would happen shortly or even immediately before, but there is nothing nada jack shit on the GEQ, godskins, or Maliketh in the DLC so who the fuck knows. I will use explicitly bad archaeological methodology and say that the absence of direct evidence can be filled with whatever I god damn feel like.

**

Headcanon: Godfrey’s Caelid campaign

I like the idea of Caelid being a patchwork of minor states that was never conquered by a single party. A new castle and a new warlord on every new hill. Technically they were loyal to Leyndell but Godfrey was probably running cleanup operations against rebellious lords for years afterwards. Definitely feels like a place where empires go to bleed out and die. A reading not really supported in the text, but it feels appropriate.

**

Observation: The Flame Gradient

I have once again only recently observed something potentially significant: The different kinds of fire have colors that can be arranged on a gradient, which I have listed here as primary-secondary color.

• Frenzied Flame - Bright yellow-orange
• Giant’s Flame - Bright red-orange
• Black Flame - Bright black-white
• Messmer’s Flame - Deep red-crimson
• Ghostflame - Washed-out light-dark
  

The outlier is St. Trina’s flame, which is a pale purple; off the top of the dome I think it’s Ghostflame that’s been imbued with Trina’s toxin / nectar, I don't know how it counts here.

 

The question now becomes "what order do these go in, and what does that say about the relationship?"

 

Frenzied Flame is the most destructive, Ghostflame the least. All of them sans maybe Ghostflame are treated as an existential risk by the Order. Black Flame might be a combination of Giant's Flame or Ghost Flame with Destined Death. Ghostflame is cold, and is said to burn death. Messmer's sigil looks like the Flame of Frenzy contained by the methods of the Giants. Let's not forget Magma, Bloodflame, or Thorn sorceries (the first looks closer to Giant's flame, the latter to Messmer's.

 

If we're going alchemically, the ordering of the magnum opus is black > white > gold > red.

 

Will muse on this further.

 

**

 

Theory: The GEQ had her Grace rescinded

It’s all in the name, isn’t it? she’s the Gloam-Eyed Queen, not the Night-Eyed Queen. Gloam is twilight, when there’s no direct sunlight but it’s not fully dark yet. That sounds like an appropriate epithet for someone who had the Grace of the Greater Will taken away from them - the light is gone from her eyes, but not fully.

It’s unclear how much control the Fingers / Will have on who gets or loses grace. It’s always “Grace of Gold” or “grace of the Erdtree”, digging through the text doc I have reveals nothing as direct as “given Grace by the Two Fingers”. We know that they’re able to call the Tarnished back to the Lands, but that could just be re-activating or taking advantage of something that was once there: like having Grace and then losing it still leaves a backdoor. The GW abandons the demigods, but it doesn’t seem to strip them of Grace when it does so. On the other hand, Marika is wheeling and dealing Grace like a professional grifter, so it’s a safe bet to say that it’s something the bearer of the Elden Ring can just do.

Which would indicate that GEQ is a separate person and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

All right. Let’s reverse course and say that she was a separate person, and that she had Grace stripped from her by Marika. This would mean that:

1. She wasn’t originally called the Gloam-Eyed Queen (backed up, perhaps, by 1.00 calling her the Queen in Black.)
2.  Marika didn’t kill her when she presumably had the chance.

**

Observation: Marika & Radagon are blind

Considering that the shamans all seem to be blindfolded (and the Nox, for that matter), and their likely inspiration in an order of all-female blind mediums (check Zayf's video for details), I see no reason to believe that either of them could actually see.

 

You know who else was blind (at least in 1.00)? And who got their eyes removed (in both)? Shabriri.

 

Hyetta's blind, but she can see glimpses of the Flame of Frenzy all the same, just like like Shabriri.

 

Considering what I've said already about the sun, I think the Frenzied Flame and Greater Will might be less different than anyone might be letting on. Indeed, they might be the same thing. The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma (a gigantic nuclear furnace), but it is also the prime mover of all the interconnected systems of life on earth. Chaos and order.

 

Also worth nothing that the Briar Witches supposedly see the Blood Star in their blindness. Another facet from Frenzy, perhaps.

 

**

Theory: The Beast Eye = GEQ's eye (and probably Marika's)

It’s a stone eye with a purple aura, and the color alone would be enough for GEQ affiliation - the fact that Maliketh gives it to you it's described as “claw-marked” are a bonus. If Destined Death = petrification that’s yet another point in favor.

 

When we finally meet Marika, she's missing an eye and a large chunk of her head. And petrified. Almost as if someone violently gouged out her eye and attacked her with a weapon that can petrify people.

 

A problem emerges if we consider the scar- and sore-seal, though not an insurmountable one. Common belief is that these are Radagon / Marika's eyes, which were placed on their eyes by the Fingers / Greater will and removed for reasons. I don't know how much I believe that, no matter how appealing the core idea is, because why would the Fingers / Will use Marika / Radagon's runes? Not to mention that Messmer's sealed eye is clearly Marika's Rune, right there.

 

So with our two lonely lines of lore for the four items.

 

Scarseal: These seals represent the lifelong duty of those chosen by the gods.

 

Soreseal: Solemn duty weighs upon the one beholden; not unlike a gnawing curse from which there is no deliverance.

The vaguely defined gods in this place are probably Marika / Radagon, and the recipients of these seals are...probably not important. Randos who have been spared immediate execution and given a duty to fulfill. More useful is just the establishment that this is a thing Marika does regularly.

That the soreseals are yellow and oozing and only slightly less decayed than a Shabriri Grape is worth noting.

 

**

 

Theory: Serpent as agent of Law of Regression

Rykard / the Serpent are all about joining together into a singular whole – this is pinging strong on the Law of Regression sensor. Myth of the Serpent as world-devourer would indicate a cosmological role along the same lines, or at least a belief in said role. Perhaps something of a one-snake cosmic clean-up crew. The interacting systems of the world have become too unwieldy, they’ve fossilized, they’ve started breaking down: here comes the serpent to clean house and restart the process.

Specifically, though, what if its function is to roll in, kill the gods who have overstayed their welcome, and then prime the stage for a new cycle? It’s in line with Rykard’s devour the gods (togethaaaaaaaaah) thing. Rykard’s the one speaking, but the words might very well be the Serpent’s.

 

What if it offered the same deal to Marika? Join with me and we can devour the gods together and take their power. We’ve got a tree, we’ve got a Serpent, we’ve got offerings of divinity: that’s Eden, baby.

 Rykard feeds self to snake to facilitate devouring of the gods and starting a new lineage (since we know that the Serpent permits for a form of reproduction outside Erdtree rebirth (Or outside of what came before Erdtree rebirth, since we know that hasn't been around forever). And if Marika = GEQ, that's where we get the godskin nobles assimilating "inhuman physiology, not unlike the Crucible".

Nobles have a snake tail crucible-aspect, Apostles are stretchy longbois, it's like poetry it rhymes etc.
 

Also: Serpent shows up as part of the decoration Giants’ Forge and lives in a volcano. Both of these are places where things are known to (s)melt together into cohesive uniform masses.

**

Observation: A very important piece of cut dialog for Kale

[800054000] Ah, you, is it...
[800054010] Did you see? What they did to my ancestors?
[800054020] The whole clan, buried alive. Sick. Maddened. Husks of themselves.
[800054030] Have you heard their moans? They're hardly human anymore.
[800054040] They think we worship the Three Fingers? That we called the maddening sickness down upon them?
[800054050] Well. If that's what they expect from us, then that's what they shall get from us!
[800054060] The world of grace and its people should have been content to see us sink between the cracks.

Grain of salt for cut content, but this pretty firmly indicates:

• A) The Nomads did not worship the 3 Fingers 
• B) The Order believed the Nomads were responsible for the 3 Fingers’ subversion by Frenzy 
• C) That the Order believed it was worship of the 3 Fingers that brought the Frenzy (?????)

A & B are more support for my old theory back in Post 1 that that at some point the Three Fingers weren’t associated with the Flame of Frenzy at all. C is wholly speculative and is based entirely on syntax of cut dialogue.

 

This leads me to a secondary, and potentially larger point.

 

**

Theory: Shabriri's greatest crime isn't what we think

While lots of people claim that the genocide of the Nomads was brought around by Shabriri’s slander of them, I honestly don’t know if that would actually qualify him for the position of “most reviled man in all history” (per Howl of Shabriri); he’s repellent to us the audience because we have a better view of the big picture - we know that the Nomads were innocent - but the rest of Kale’s dialogue indicates that the Nomads were already held in generally low regard by the Golden Order. If the the Nomads were toting around a divergent set of Fingers and taking their messages directly (rather than relying on the Order-approved Finger-Readers for interpretation), it probably didn’t take much convincing for the Order to get behind a pogrom; even if Shabriri is the one responsible for starting the killing, the Golden Order would probably consider him a hero who uncovered a dangerous heresy in the nick of time.

A religious minority is accused of practicing heretical rites that pose both a material and spiritual threat to the established religious / political status quo; this should be extremely fucking familiar, because it’s the god-damn Satanic Panic. Pick an out-group, make an accusation, destroy people’s lives and suffer no consequences even when the accusation is proven to be false.

Remember, the Golden Order is an authoritarian theocracy: using spurious accusations to justify atrocities against religious and cultural minorities is practically the national sport.

And, importantly, Shabriri gets us a double (technically triple) instance of the “it is said” weasel-words:

Shabriri’s Woe: "It is said that the man, named Shabriri, had his eyes gouged out as punishment for the crime of slander, and, with time, the blight of the flame of frenzy came to dwell in the empty sockets."

Howl of Shabriri: "It is said that the sickness of the flame of frenzy began with Shabriri, the most reviled man in all history."

Shabriri’s Woe 1.00: “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.”

The only actual contradiction here is timing. In 1.00 he made contact with the Flame of Frenzy before having his eyes removed, and in main game he made contact afterwards.

So then: who was he slandering, to justify the removal of his eyes and hounding him to the dismal fringe of the empire? Was it even actually slander? Did frenzy-sickness actually begin with him, or is it merely a folk belief since Midra was written out of reality? And what did he do to make him the "most reviled man in all history?

 

Slander against a mistrusted religious minority wouldn't even qualify as slander, so I can only presume that he had slandered Marika / the Erdtree, the Golden Order. And, since those three interconnected things are the axis mundi of a brutally violent authoritarian theocracy run by a living god with a skin so thin she would rather rewrite reality than look even slightly not in total control of everything at all times, I'm going to make the bold claim that Shabriri was spitting straight facts.

 

Accusing your critics of slander is right there in the petty tyrant DARVO manual, after all. 

My thinking is that Shabriri was able to see the truth. Maybe it was because he was blind - we do love a blind prophet. He was able to see through the sham. I couldn't tell you what exactly he saw, (though it might be the same thing that Gideon saw), but I presume it had to do with Marika's dirty laundry and how the system is entirely broken and rotten to the core. That part's a work in progress.

 

But a bit of quote-unquote slander isn't enough to become "the most reviled man in all history." Not even Marika is that sensitive to criticism. But I think I know what would qualify - considering, of course, that history is written by the Golden Order.

 

Burning the Erdtree.

 

Because what's the one sane man to do? What's the one man who realizes that the ordering of the world is irrevocably broken? That the Erdtree ate the sun? That the balancing force of Destined Death was removed from reality? If there was anyone else, maybe they could have joined forces. Maybe there could have been a resistance. Marika's martial prowess is not as great as she lets on, a significant enough revolt might actually work.

 

But Shabriri is alone. They took his eyes, and yet he's the only one who can see; they call him a madman and a drunkard for it, but they say it because they're all blind.

 

Except Melina. Perhaps. A fragment of Marika split off so the god-empress could sequester a part of herself far away, where it could no longer trouble and humiliate her. A contingency plan in her plotting to free herself from the influence of the Fingers. The vessel of what she used to be: the Gloam-Eyed Queen in Black, godslayer. The hatchet-man who comes around when the powers-that-be have overstayed their welcome.

(Yes, I admit that this theory touches on "Marika was in on the plan all along!" , which I generally don't like. Needs more workshopping.)

So there's a conspiracy to burn the Tree, to set things right. They succeed at the burning but not the repairing. Maybe fixing things was never on the table. Souls games have never been ones where the restorationist fantasy wins the day.

The Tree is burned, but remains intact. Melina is dead in body. Perhaps Messmer was a player here as well, and this was the straw that sent him on the Crusade.

 

Wouldn't that just be perfect justification? Blame the burning on a mad prophet and hornsent saboteurs. Make a show of the traitorous son, too brow-beaten to protest his innocence. Make a show of magnanimity by letting him lead the crusade as penance. Send him off with legions of prisoners, highwaymen, brigands and raiders. Shower them with Grace so they might destroy those wretched hornsent who burned the Erdtree.

 

And then close the door to the Shadow Lands behind him, wipe it all from reality, and rewrite history. Now there is only this perfect, eternal, golden tree growing out of an old stump, and there always has been.