Elden Ring Lore - Tumblr Posts

Fia is a Tarnished called to grace without having first experienced death, which may be something of a rarity. Melina tells us some of Marika's words across 2 different churches, the Third Church and the Church of Pilgrimage:

My Lord, and thy warriors. I divest each of thee of thy grace. With thine eyes dimmed, ye will be driven from the Lands Between. Ye will wage war in a land afar, where ye will live, and die.

Then, after thy death, I will give back what I once claimed. Return to the Lands Between, wage war, and brandish the Elden Ring. Grow strong in the face of death. Warriors of my lord. Lord Godfrey.

That indicates that Tarnished get their Grace back only after dying. The opening cinematic does a little to corroborate this. Hoarah Loux is impaled by arrows, the Dung Eater is being hung, and Gideon Ofnir is in his casket. Goldmask is a little more ambiguous, but given the others are dead, and the way he's sort of splayed out on the ground with his prayer book and other items in disarray around him, it seems like he could have fallen dead abruptly.

Fia is the only one that is unambiguously alive. She is sitting up, actively looking at the sight of Grace, and she tells us she was exiled from home for seeing it. So it's very interesting that she is very devoted to and at peace with death, when she may be one of the few Tarnished to never have died to begin with.

Alright I have this theory about Miquella, Malenia and Trina that I need to float out there.

When we find her, Malenia specifically states that she was dreaming. She has in fact been dreaming.

I dreamt for so long. My flesh was dull gold... and my blood, rotted. Corpse after corpse, left in my wake as I awaited his return. ... Heed my words. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat.

It's hard to say whether or not Malenia was in communication with Miquella via dreams. I do think there's some meat to the theory that she split herself, however, very much the way Miquella and Marika did.

Malenia budded off daughters in Aeonia, and I think that in the same way Trina represents Miquella's love and Radagon might be Marika's sense of loyalty, Millicent could literally be Malenia's dignity.

There is something I must return to Malenia. The will that was once her own. The dignity, the sense of self, that allowed her to resist the call of the scarlet rot. The pride she abandoned, to meet Radahn's measure.

-Millicent

Considering how relatively willingly Malenia bloomed for us, I have to wonder if she did indeed literally lose her restraint.

And she had so many splits.

By the time we get to her, Malenia has rotted the entire Haligtree and she seems to be a hollow shell of herself, repeating who she is and what she stands for like a mantra until we make her desperate. She is frozen in time as that woman who bloomed in Caelid, I think, just a fragment made of raw determination to win at any cost.

It's also notable that the Scarlet Rot isn't just painful, it might actively cause nightmares.

Everything is as you said. Since inserting the needle, the scarlet rot has ceased to writhe. Even the nightmares have abated...

-Millicent

Malenia might've been experiencing Rot-induced nightmares for a few hundred years until we got to her.

Miquella's textual motivation for moving proverbial mountains all throughout his life was curing his sister. While he struggled to uproot it at the source, they did find several stopgap treatments: wearing Miquella's unalloyed gold, which conferred a limited amount of his own immunity onto the bearer; and the Sword Saint's flowing water techniques.

I think Trina, as Miquella's love and an aspect of his own affinity for forgetfulness/oblivion, might've become the saint of sleep specifically out of Miquella's urge to soothe his sister's unquiet dreams. She eventually expanded and gained more autonomy, moving on to the Cleanrot Knights, then the merchants and albinaurics. It's hard to say when the albinaurics were brought to her attention, but I think Miquella had a lot of dealings with Ranni, Rykard, and maybe even Iji.

(Side note: could the mirrorhelm have made Iji immune to Miquella's charm?)

Torrent's whistle in particular is delicate goldwork that I think is heavily implied to be Miquella's handiwork. Of the smiths and engineers in-game, I think Miquella's skill at making outright automail had to take at least some inspiration from Rykard's machinery, and a lot of the weapons associated with the Haligtree take inspiration from Carian weaponry. The Miquellan Knight's sword is basically a Carian sword with the glintstone switched out for Haligtree bloodstone amber. Why is that?

(Additional side note: I think Loretta might've been Radahn's teacher in the art of horsemanship and archery, considering she's the only other Carian character heavily associated with horses and archery. It'd provide a good reason for why her albinauric identity was a huge secret. And, once Radahn left for Sellia to learn gravity magic/get a new mentor, that gave her the free time she would need to champion the albinaurics and investigate the Haligtree.)

Either way, Trina would have had front row seats to the treatment of the albinaurics as servants and worse, and there's a chance that that was when she had her first encounter with the Flame of Frenzy.

Miquella's approach to excising gods was scientific, but I think Trina attacked the problem from an ideological angle. It's actually a pretty good idea, since the gods in Elden Ring seem to be ideologies made physical. Frenzy is despair- so those afflicted with Frenzy must be given hope, and they were given a "holy land" in the form of the Haligtree. And we can in fact still find their hope in the Apostate Derelict, Philia's promise of being able to birth albinaurics, in very close proximity to the largest amount of Trina's Lilies in the game.

Tl;dr: I think Trina is a saint of sleep specifically because Malenia was afflicted by Rot-nightmares, and Miquella wanted so badly to help her that he budded off an aspect of himself that could.

Wonderful lore post. I've never seen a breakdown of or, or heard some of these theories, i.e. removal of death = creation of outer gods.

Elden Ring Sigils and Color Theory

Elden Ring magic sigils sorted by color. Long post about their lore, meanings of certain colors and what it can reveal about the story of Elden Ring under the cut.

Keep reading

Just recommending a youtuber i really like. Don' t forget to follow him if you like his content.

Ancestor Spirit | Boss Designs of Elden Ring #9

What does it mean when half the world above worships a corpse-eating tree, demigods use corpses as self-decoration, tombs litter the land and a tribe of ancestor worshipers seem to revere the concept of decay and rot itself? It means we might have a Theme™ on our hands.

Let's discuss.

"Messmer is Miquella" this "Messmer is Melina" that, we all know who Messmer *really* is

Spoiler warning for some aspects of Elden Ring and it’s dlc.

I’ve been playing through Elden ring and watching lore videos as well as discussing with other fans about the lore and I noticed something very interesting.

Many people know that Miquella wanted Radhan as his consort but Radhan resisted his spell and thus Malenia was sent after him.

But I’ve not heard much mention of Miquellas plans for Godwyn.

Miquella wanted to use the eclipse in order to have Godwyn’s soul placed into Mohg’s body but seeing as the eclipse never happened he likely went for Radhan.

What I want to make note of however is that Radhan froze the stars and thus fate itself. By freezing the stars the eclipse could never happen.

My theory is that Radhan had frozen the stars in order to prevent the eclipse and thus either inhibit Miquella’s plans or perhaps to save Godwyn from Miquella. I can’t find anything on interactions between Godwyn and Radhan so I can’t tell why he would want to save him but Miquella’s opposition to the erdtree and also sending Malenia to kill him may have influenced him freezing the stars.

It’s a pretty loose theory but I think it’s quite interesting.