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This is basically the plot of Sekiro: Shadows die twice

necromancer princess who keeps the same knight around hundreds of years

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This is just Happy Souls but bad.

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Radagon is a himbo, this is known

*points at page in artbook* this is marika destroying the elden ring by hitting it with a hammer

*points at next page in artbook* this is radagon attempting to repair the elden ring by hitting it with a hammer again (hes a little stupid)

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I’m fully on board with the “she’s the Godslayer greatsword” theory tbh. It’s the same double helix spiral as the sacred relic sword and fingerslayer blade, both of which are made from corpses.

There’s also the theory that she could be Melina before her death, but I don’t think *necessarily* those have to be mutually exclusive

Theoretical timeline

GEQ & the Godskin inquisition prepare for a war against the gods.

Maliketh defeats the GEQ with death as his blade. Her body is burned.

the remaining Godskins take the burned corpse and reforge it into the Godslayer greatsword.

Because death is sealed within the black blade, the GEQ’s soul isn’t gone? Leaving her to eventually become Melina.

“Burned and bodiless” because she can’t return her soul to flesh when her flesh is currently a sword.

Idk if she IS Melina but I can see the timeline where it works out that way. (If these theories do overlap you’d imagine Melina would say something about you finding the sword, but you’d also think she’d say anything at all in the dlc but /shrug)

we popping the BIGGEST bottles when nightreign drops and the gloam-eyed queen lore DOESN'T happen!! but that won't stop anyone on reddit and youtube

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Do you think anyone ever questioned why Marika’s dress can quickly be pulled down into a skirt.

Is there a running conspiracy theory in the lands between that Marika really liked flashing people?

Is that why Marika’s Tits is an in-universe expletive?

It is a great detail that Radagon’s hammer is Marika’s Hammer. His skirt is Marika’s dress folded over. His Lord’s Crown is either Godfrey’s old one or just the same model? Imagine being the most powerful guy in the world without any custom drip to your name, fitted up in hand me downs like the youngest kid in a poor family

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Something I’ve been considering recently is Radagon as one of the poor bastards who ended up in whatever jar Marika was put in as a shaman before she emerged as whatever she was in the time between then and the divine gate.

Whether by personal willpower or whatever means, his personality was enough to remain dormant within Marika the Empyrean until she fully ascended.

Another theory is that the greater will created him to be her other half at the moment of Marika’s ascension. That he seems to come out of nowhere in the lore because he literally did.

Grace Given does a great breakdown of his character and how it reflects ideas in alchemy of the process of creating the perfect being. Marika is the relatively still and stable element, and Radagon, the active element that creates change- but without her, he has nothing to change. I don’t agree with everything the book proposes but they do a LOT of very in-depth analysis.

honestly i feel like radagon is actually the dude who’s most enigmatic in motivation. we don’t really know where he came from, and by all means being a descendant of giants should be loaded with implication. he joined with rennala and then he left her. we have like no idea how he might’ve felt about any of his kids bar miquella. he accomplished almost nothing by himself, and almost seems like more of a puppet/placeholder for marika and the golden order. he sure tried fixing the elden ring. but what’s he WANT

the golden order and a return to that, all likelihood. but why? just because he was a part of marika? how far does the separation go, because they clearly DO differ in motives at the end? what was the point of joining with rennala in the grand scheme, and how soon was this an idea? where did he come from and how did that propel him here??

we solved about marika and just about everyone else. let’s get ok radagon now chop chop

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I haven't seen the 'miquella is the reason mohg's cult is evil' before and the idea that someone can actually hold that position is truly baffling to me

My brother in the grace of gold it's a blood cult that exalts in suffering, and the formless mother came to Mohg long before he kidnapped Miquella. What can they possibly *mean* it's Miquella's fault the mohgwyn dynasty is unethical. That shit's been dedicated to the goddess of violence since day 1.

“even tho malenia knew that miquella’s behavior was wrong—“ are we sure that she even did. what gives us any indication that she didn’t also believe in him and his actions wholeheartedly, enough to sit there for however long just to wait for him and his return… come on guys. his ascension was like 50% all to save her from her own fate too. it’s not like she wouldn’t have her own reasons for wanting to see his success

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I've always felt Miquella's relationship with Malenia involved a charm, but not because Miquella wanted to control her, but because he wanted to protect her. Because he loved her more than anything else.

As we hear from Sage Gowry and Millicent, when Malenia bloomed the flower of scarlet aeonia in caelid, she shed her pride, among other things- very much like miquella's crosses in the land of shadow, where he shed things like his doubt. Like she was shedding her bonds and flesh to become a god- but she just couldn't shed her loyalty to Miquella.

I think Miquella charmed Malenia so that there would be one tiny thing he could be 100% sure she could hold onto, no matter what happened. That no matter how bad it got, there would be a part of her she couldn't shed. The scarlet rot would not consume her utterly, would not make her into the true goddess of rot. That she would still be Malenia, inside.

Malenia is known, from her great rune, by her unconquerable determination- I think it is a testament both to her very real loyalty to him, but also to miquella's magic, that their combined wills were stronger than that of an outer god- perhaps even stronger than the Greater Will itself.

I love them both, honestly. They're incredibly fascinating characters, and I really wish Malenia got more focus in the DLC than she did.

(Also, minor personal theory: Malenia's Empyrean Shadow likely was at the battle of aeonia, and had about 5 solid seconds of 'wait, what's she doi- oh fuck' before they suffered a fatal dose of 'existed within 10 miles of Scarlet Aeonia')

“even tho malenia knew that miquella’s behavior was wrong—“ are we sure that she even did. what gives us any indication that she didn’t also believe in him and his actions wholeheartedly, enough to sit there for however long just to wait for him and his return… come on guys. his ascension was like 50% all to save her from her own fate too. it’s not like she wouldn’t have her own reasons for wanting to see his success

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I think more games ought to give you a dedicated hater. I really enjoyed the Iguazu experience in AC6. It was on sight every time. This is how it should always be.

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Genuinely it's one of the nicest features of Owlcat's CRPGs. I went into this game knowing next to nothing about 40k, and while some things flew over my head, I never felt TOTALLY lost.

The fact that the game tells you "hey, you can hover over highlighted words to learn more about them" and then this is the first highlighted entry it gives you - that's wild. This is peak storytelling. It immediately sets up the precedent that not everything you will be told is the truth. That's fantastic. What do you mean. What else are you not telling me

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Real and true. I think this is what Lies of P got that most souls-like clones don't- each lies of P boss walks up to you and asks you a very simple question. "Have you figured out (game mechanic or fundemental) yet?"

And if the answer is yes, you get to beat the boss in like, 4-5 tries.

If it's no, you're going to be fighting that boss until the answer is yes.

Every boss has its own little trick, and figuring out what that trick is and how to deal with it is absolutely key to excelling at Lies of P's gameplay.

(For example, the tutorial boss's question is 'have you figured out that big enemies are generally bad at getting you out from under them yet' and the boss after that's is 'have you learned to parry yet')

You can really tell Neowiz did their homework on what made Dark Souls good, and learned to iterate on that formula in a satisfying way.

i'm always somewhat fascinated that the "soulslike" genre has garnered such a reputation for a strict focus on dueling complex bosses in a big empty room that when fans of the genre finally try their hand at demon's souls or dark souls or, hell, even bloodborne, they seem disgusted that most of the boss encounters are actually designed around fun little gimmicks because, well, these are adventure RPGs. part of the wonder of these games was being thrown up against a boss that might teleport down an infinite corridor while slinging projectiles at you. it was cool and unique, actually, even if it wasn't necessarily as hard or badass as these "love letters" (that honestly are all starting to just lean back into hack'n'slash anyway) purport to be an identifying feature. a true soulslike is about being a confused lil knight or wizzer up against some goofy guys and gals

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This is why we need the mad spirits from dark souls 3 back. Purest chaos.

Am I here to help you with the enemies? Am I here to bathe in your blood? You'll just have to find out :) (It's both)

Invaders should have the freedom to be as whimsical or terrifying as they please.

How it is now:

Terrifying — the animal dares to fight back. Look at this creature growling and snapping her teeth. Easy to put down unless the coop fucks up bad.

Whimsical — the court jester threw herself at our mercy and decided to entertain us with a performance to earn being spared. Let her dance.

How it fucking should be:

Terrifying — ok everyone stay calm she's sprinting right at us. Does anyone here know how to PvP? No? Oh fuck oh shit we gotta get the fuck out. Oh fuck.

Whimsical — phew lucky break this invader is actually silly about it. Thank fuck, what a nice red. Look at her go! *nervous laughter*

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Conceptual Caster Dedication rework

So, I have a lot of issues with caster dedications in general, but the main one that digs into me is that they're *fucking boring*, but also very powerful. Spend 3 feats to get up to 6th level spells? Incredibly powerful asset to any character who has mental scores worth a damn.

The issue is that's both INCREDIBLY strong, since it gets you access to scrolls up to 10th as soon as you spend the first feat, and since buffs are the strongest type of spell in 2e anyway, the drawbacks (you having lower spell attacks and save DCs) is pretty irrelevant. It's also boring as hell because the feats you take to do this don't do anything mechanical other than 'give spell slot at associated level'.

Additionally, free archetype is treated as so ubiquitous that it's considered the default level of play, which makes archetypes in general, and ESPECIALLY caster ones, much stronger, since they no longer require you to give up your standard class feats to take.

So, concept proposal:

Scrolls can only be used without a skill check up to your highest rank castable spell if it's from a dedication.

The feats to get spell ranks, and the 'breadth' feats that give you more slots are removed entirely, replaced with the following system:

When you first take a caster dedication, you get 2 cantrips and 1 first rank spell slot, and Trick Magic Item specifically for your spell list. So Wizard dedication gets you TMI for Arcane, for example.

For every subsequent feat you take from the dedication, you get a slot from a spell rank 1 higher, up to 6th. Once you have a 6th rank slot, your next feat gives you an additional 1st and 2nd rank slot, then 3rd and 4th, then 5th and 6th, capping the dedication out at 2 slots of each spell rank up to 6.

This would, though, require there be *good feats to take in these dedications*, which there usually aren't. Solving this, I feel, would require a larger rework to the ways caster class feats work in general, so it's a topic for another post.

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This same guy after a week back in society working retail: "I wonder if the forest will take me back."

guy who got lost for a thousand years in a mystic forest of fog voice: that reminds me of the time i got lost for a thousand years in a mystic forest of fog

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The absolute funniset thing about this comment is that there IS an ending quote where Kim calls you a centrist, he calls you a "True Blue Centrist" So he definitely wasn't as centrist as he thought.

disco elysium heritage post

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I think ultimately a fantasy army embraces gunpowder and its new technologies as quickly as is physically possible and rapidly becomes the dominant world power if they weren't already- unless they have some in-character reason to not do so.

The thing about a grenade vs a fireball is it takes a caster some good amount of time before they're ready to throw fireballs. Any jackass with opposable apendages can lob a grenade.

I think it'd be similar to the invention of the crossbow and the adoption it had in europe's armies at the time. It took a long time to train an archer to be any good, but a really good group of archers was a force unlike anything the world knew.

Crossbows, largely, put that kind of power in the hands of anyone who could lift one. They still needed training to aim, and to reload, but they were way easier to teach your soldiers to use than the intricacies of bow archery.

I fully believe any fantasy setting can become enhanced with the introduction of firearms and fully fleshing out how they would impact the culture around the setting.

Where was gunpowder discovered and eventually refined? Who created the first rudimentary firearms? Is the technology level currently at matchlocks or flintlocks, or even more advanced?

How do elves feel about having access to weapons that can actually shoot as far as they can see, but also frighten any animals that are nearby when it is used? Would most elves still favor bows, or would they embrace this new technology at the cost of their values, or would the matter be split down the middle?

Can healing magic easily treat gunshot wounds, or do new techniques need to be created to account for shrapnel and bullets that get embedded into the body?

Are guns rapidly becoming more popular in armies due to the relatively smaller amount of training required, or are they simply one of many tools in a fantasy armies arsenal? Is combat magic so pervasive that hand-grenades are seen as inferior to a simple fireball spell?

How do the firearms function and how are they reloaded? Are soldiers now expected to wear bandoliers draped in tiny gunpowder vials for fast reloading, or do they instead use cartridges and magazines instead?

How are other cultures and fantasy races modifying or creating their own firearms? Are halflings now never seen without tiny, concealable pistols on their persons? Are orcs creating their own portable shoulder cannons? Are gnome craftsmen regularly advancing firearm technology and selling it to the highest bidder?