#( allies. ) messmer's army

[pyrefication]

tag dump

[drenched-in-sunlight]

I contemplated a lot whether to reblog that post because i think most of it was wrong, but the addition is so great and refute pretty much everything while raising some amazing points so if i could reblog only the addition without the original posts i would.

It’s just funny to me how every time i see ppl “here are Marika’s crimes” they list like 50% is what she actually did, and the other 50% are things that either was during Radagon time (when Marika couldn’t even have a proper statue that depict her as being the one in control), done by some other guys, or after she got strung up inside the Erdtree. Y’know, literally impaled and knocked out cold ?

The ritual sword and shield talisman (which depict sword and shield of Crucible Knights too btw) pointed at Radagon’s face to say by his time, all ritual combats in honour of the Erdtree had died out, but in LoS it was maintained and Messmer even had a talisman of Godfrey in his castle. A talisman depicting Godfrey accepting the duty to be his Mother’s Lord. Without wavering.

The ritual combat is just another thing that will remind people of the first Elden Lord’s devotion to his Goddess, which would do Radagon no good. so that, along with the Crucible Knights, gotta go.

All this just show how by Radagon’s time, the Golden Order’s ideal no longer reflects the Erdtree’s - another testament at how far from each other his and Marika’s will have diverged.

Also, i really like the fact that the Zamor and Ice Dragons allied with Marika to fight the Fire Giants who had chased them from their home, because to me that means at the start of her age, Marika was extending her help to people who needed it (with ulterior motives, yes).

Her age wasn’t built in a vacuum. She was a healer Godling with no offensive spells, Messmer’s health just got a bit better, Godfrey with all the implications in SoTe, was probably just a simple bear hunter? What on earth those 3 could even do in a land where the Hornsent royalty reigned supreme?

Go somewhere else, recruit as many people and make as many alliances as they could. I have no doubt the world under the Hornsent was a violent one (hell, it still is now, every time i went into a Gaol i want to go back and smack the Hornsent inquisitors a few more times). And for a new God to appear, and instead of stuffing people into jars, delivering Death, entrapping their followers into watching over some flame for eternity, running away and leaving their Lord to get backstabbed by a tyrant, this new God… healed people? Big shock!

So of course people would flock to Godfrey’s banner, believing in a Goddess that could barely fight, but soothed away all of their pain and sorrow. Sounds fucking familiar isn’t it.

Btw, why do people like to invent a bunch of authority and power for Marika then at the same breath will say whatever her kids do is to… spite her and show kindness to the oppressed?

So she is an all-powerful tyrant that could kill whoever she dislikes, and by some ppl’s standards she dislikes literally everyone in Lands Between (💀), but Godwyn could just befriend a dragon and spread a cult about them within the Capital, Messmer could have an albinauric as his Commander (to command an army that she paid wads of cash to and bless them with her hammer’s power???), Miquella and Malenia could go their merry way and build a whole ass tree castle (where is the fund. Where is the fund) and she couldn’t do anything to stop them? Even though those actions directly affect the strength of her army? What?

I swear i can’t even see other people’s Marika as Marika. Because their Marika sounds dumb as hell and a doormat too. Like what is this???? 💀 do you think i sacrificed my back and wrist to draw Elden Ring characters as beautiful as possible, so they could go be devote to someone like the Marika some of y’all envision? The bar was on the floor for you but not for me.

[blasphemousclaw]

when do you think rykard became praetor of volcano manor? was it during radagon’s marriage to marika, or while he and rennala were still together? the abductor virgins in the fort of reprimand are making me Think.

the Fort of Reprimand abductor virgins are also making me Think… I think Rykard must have been responsible for them, which has some major timeline implications?

I did float the idea that the abductor virgins were actually creations of Messmer’s army that Rykard simply adopted later, but if this were the case, then I think we’d expect to see more of them scattered through the shadow lands. But we only see the two at the Fort of Reprimand, which is a place of torture and punishment — which is what Rykard is in charge of. Also, they have the Ghiza’s Wheel attachment, which was created by Inquisitor Ghiza, who specifically worked for Rykard. So it seems like the abductors were torture devices primarily used at Volcano Manor, and these two were given to the Fort of Reprimand because they had need of torture devices (which I explained in detail here).

So how does this affect our timeline? I think the crusade had to have begun while Radagon and Rennala were still together because 1. Rellana leaving to help Messmer implies that Caria and the Erdtree were already allies at this time, and 2. Rennala cut her hair and gave it to her sister to remember her by, which implies she wasn’t post-Radagon egg-crazy. For Rykard to have provided abductor virgins to the crusade, he would need to have already been established as praetor… so either he already was praetor by the time the crusade started, OR he became praetor while the crusade was going on, and the Fort of Reprimand was established well into the crusade (but this depends on if it was possible to get into the shadow lands at this time).

Before the DLC, I thought it would make the most sense if Rykard nepo-babied himself to praetorship because his father was Elden Lord, but now I’m leaning towards him seeking out the position while his parents were still together in Liurnia? I think it’s still totally in character for him to do this for a few reasons related to his upbringing: Rykard seemingly does not stand to inherit any power from his mother; Ranni is referred to as his younger sister in the Japanese dialogue, and yet she is her mother’s heir and not Rykard or Radahn… I think only women inherit power in the Carian royal family, because we only ever see princesses and queens mentioned? Rykard I think was always ambitious and sought to distinguish himself, so in order to achieve this, his best bet would be striking out on his own in Altus rather than staying at home in Liurnia… and though Rykard’s mother is the queen of Liurnia and his father is a mere champion of the Erdtree, I think Radagon’s reputation would still be enough to gain him influence in Altus (Radagon was important enough that his marriage to Rennala brought the two nations together after all!).

So even though it seems like Rykard probably became praetor before Radagon was Elden Lord he’s still basically a nepo baby

[bricko-mcfisto]

It's time for some more Elden Ring posting! This time I'm going to be discussing the timeline of when the past events of the game's DLC took place and based on what I've seen of other people's speculation I might actually have a hot take.

Obviously, spoilers under the cut.

So a lot of people are talking about how they think Messmer's crusade was really early into the timeline. I've even see people claim that Messmer must have been responsible for killing the giants (which is particularly absurd as we know categorically know that was Godfrey) and I have to question why.

Everything we can find indicates Messmer is a child of Radagon and Marika, everything about his allies and soldiers indicates this was after peace was made with Liurnia. One of Messmer's closest allies, Commander Gaius was a rival to Radahn growing up, specifically they were rivals in their youth. What did Gaius go to the land of shadow however many centuries later to lead Messmer's men long after the war had been won?

Not to mention the presence of the Carian royal family, Renalla's sister, carian knights in full "modern" Carian armor with the same knighted trolls as Caria wielded and even members of the Lazuli Conspectus who were a sect within Raya Lucaria!

Is it maybe a bit weird that Renalla's sister had a thing for the son of Renalla's ex? Yeah but is it weirder than some of the other familial relations in this game? Not really.

It's strongly implied that Messmer's war with the hornsent was brutal and fast, as in he came in with an extremely well organized, extremely powerful army, the kind of thing Marika would need an extremely solid foundation to build upon, as in a full fledged functioning nation with a solid supply base. I think the most likely thing is that Marika actually waited, she bided her time and either ignored or played nice with the Hornsent until she had the resources and power to wage a fast and brutal crusade.

The Shadow Realm Rune (3) states: "The soldiers who joined the crusade were rewarded with grace aplenty."

Marika had the means to hand out grace, to hand out runes, like candy she was throwing her huge godly wealth around. Speaking of Liurnia that's important too because I feel some people might point out that the lands of shadow were more than likely part of the lands between before being forcibly separated and transformed into the land of shadow, so what about all that time that the Hornsent would have been neighbors to Leyndell?

Well that's why I bring up Liurnia, a literal neighboring nation that Marika also had to wage war against, which didn't work out that well and she instead had to have Radagon sue for peace. Does the almighty crusade that devastated the Hornsent really sound like something she was capable of doing at a point in time when she didn't even have the resources and might to conquer Liurnia?

An important thing we have to remember about any video game of this style is that the world isn't to scale. The game world we traipse across on Torrent is nowhere near as big as the Lands Between would be in any movie or book where they're not limited by needing to make things navigable by the player in a reasonable time. The Hornsent were at best a neighbor that Marika acted indifferently or coldly towards. Maybe relations were actually pretty tense because of how she treated Omens assuming the Hornsent even knew about that.

Either way given the sheer scale of the invasion, the presence of both Gaius and Carian nobility, Raya Lucaria scholars, and that Messmer's most likely lineage is Radagon, and the sheer amount of "grace" and resources Marika had to throw at this crusade, it seems clear that this was after the war with Liurnia, when Marika's power was at its height and there were no other threats anywhere around Leyndell to distract her from pursuing her grudge.

[frescopino]

I don't believe the gold to be a charm, but rather the grace she accepted by marrying Radagon becoming Marika's ally. When Ranni summons that illusion of her she just portrays her as she was before marrying Radagon, the sorceress whose armies fought the Erdtree's advance to a standstill not once, but twice. It's not that taking the egg away would make her insane, she already went insane when Radagon left, and possibly when the child the egg represents died.

By the time Radagon left her half her kids were already closer to the Erdtree than to Caria, with Rykard being an inquisitor and Radahn a general, and even Ranni had a throne in front of the Erdtree. That they all decided, in some way, to follow their father might point to her not being a good mother, but that's a bit of a trend with all parents in Elden Ring. I really love your art, but let's not forget that Marika abandoned Messmer to an endless crusade and locked up two of her children in the sewers.

doing Rennala’s fight again and I feel like I’m going insane because in phase 1 her eyes are golden, but in phase 2 in the illusion Ranni conjures of her, her eyes are their original teal blue. it’s not hard to put two and two together that the egg bewitched her and made her deep in that slumber state. So what drives me up the wall is… why on earth none of her kids help her … ? or why are there no item description even hint at them trying to help their Mother out of that state? or just items suggesting a close tie between them in general ?

I don’t think being locked up in a library enchanted by an egg is doing her any favour. This isn’t even the same as Marika’s situation where none of her kids know she’s locked up inside the Erdtree to even come for her, I’m pretty sure all 3 Carian kids know Rennala’s current state.

Is it because she’d go insane if they take away the egg? Is it because they want her to remain in that state and out of their way? Ranni stated she’d not let Rennala’s slumber be disturbed… is it because the only other option is an even worse fate ??? Is it out of protection for her or something else ???? I mean it’s a pretty popular fanon that Ranni must have hated Radagon, but all the stuffs she did later on… lowkey adds to Radagon’s favour through and through ? Keeping Rennala in that state, killing Godwyn who is the only support Marika has left after Godfrey and Messmer are taken away from her, like… ???

And I’m not even wondering all of these because I think Ranni is secretly evil or self-serving (& even if she turned out to be so… it’s fine!), it’s just things are not adding up and I’ve got ppl asking why I don’t really draw the Carian side often and … this is why? Since I already figure out the motivation and story that make sense to me on Marika & her G + M kids… the fact that I don’t really get the R kids at all results in me having no idea how to portray them in my art? Because I don’t really buy into the popular “oh they all love each other and much more wholesome than the Erdtree side” take at all …(and tbh my hot take for the past 2 years or so is that I don’t think Rennala is a good mother, and after the DLC… a good sister at all. But it is what it is)