#There are 24 named ruins in Elden Ring...does each one represent a year from 1994 to 2017?

[miirshroom]

The Age of Wood and the Winds of Change

In Elden Ring the "Ruins" type structures are some of the most enigmatic to me. I have recently found an in-game strategy for reading the environment that may help shed more light on what they're all about, but first I have some thoughts that I want to record. This is a post about intersectionality between Elden Ring and other FromSoft games, using meta information to delve into the hidden distant past.

I was going through the Woodfolk ruins because I had some cleaning up to do there and found something that sparked a thought:

From the vantage point at the Altus Bloom behind this Wormface boss there is an optical illusion of a twister in a doorframe of the nearby ruins. That this can be seen from the location of an item that can be interacted with is important - the environment designers deliberately placed something in this spot to draw attention. The appearance of the twister recalls to me a theory proposed by another person on Reddit that Farum Azula was once located above the Woodfolk ruins and was picked up by the twister and moved around. But more importantly I realized that the last time that I spent a significant amount of time in this area I had not thought to look for hints in my spreadsheet.

Intro to The Spreadsheet

I don't think I've discussed on tumblr my FromSoft spreadsheet. The basics is that it's where I collect various date-based information that corresponds to the release days of various FromSoft games. It has sortof been evolving over time into the present monstrosity. First I started with the astrological zodiac, because I noticed some astrology trends in Elden Ring itself, and reading the synopses of Armored Core games there are enough hints to piece together an astrological timeline across the games. There is confirmation of this in ACV where you fight through the zodiac as enemies. Then I had the idea to search for whether anyone had noticed a zodiac trend in Sekiro and as it turns out 8 of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals are represented - and once again they match to release years of Armored Core games including matching elements (i.e. 3 visible Folding Screen Monkeys matches to 3 AC games in the year of the Wood Monkey - 2004). In fact, 2004 is practically a convergence point for all of the weird meta stuff that traces back to it.

Sometime later I saw a post where someone was speculating about numerology in Elden Ring and learned that numerology has ties to tarot. Coincidentally, the major arcana has 22 entries when "The Fool" is counted twice as both 0 and 22, which is exactly the span of time between Eternal Ring (2000) and Elden Ring (2022). So I added that to the spreadsheet, where 2004 is "the Emperor" and 2005 is "the Hierophant". And when anomalies started converging on 2004, I noticed that April 1, 2004 (April Fool's Day) provides a unique opportunity to set up a second lagging-behind tarot track. And it also happens to fall within the Gemini era of AC games, so it's the ideal time for an imposter zodiac to split off as well. Silent Line: Armored Core (2003) is about the discovery of a second underground twin city. Armored Core: Nexus sees the short-lived emergence of a new corporation who had uncovered an ancient superweapon - a spin on Gemini's trait of "communication between the surface and the underworld". This seems to create the headache that is AC games following the "false" but flashy Western Zodiac while the vibes-based vedic astrology continues to be expressed subtly, but lagging behind as it does in the regular calendar year. I have guessed that this is where twin cities Nokron and Nokstella enter the picture in Elden Ring - and their development of the mimic tear.

And what ties this all off nicely is that FromSoft axed 14 game franchises by the end of 2004. With the benefit of hindsight it can be seen that only two (2) game franchises were receiving new entries both before and after 2004: Armored Core and the newly acquired Tenchu. There was a deliberate change in direction this year.

At some point I had a thought to check the moon phase for every game FromSoft has ever released (in my defense - they really like referencing the moon), and found exactly 4 dates that they had ever released a game on either a new moon or full moon. Three of these dates are in 2004. The single instance in another year is Forever Kingdom on June 21st, 2001 - the date of a solar eclipse. The same eclipse occurred in 2020 without a single release from FromSoft directly - only Demon's Souls remake by Bluepoint. The Shadow of the Erdtree is scheduled for June 21, 2024. Applying a bit of math, this should be the year of the 20th major arcana "Judgement", which was in 2020 on the main track.

Basically, it is my belief that Elden Ring has a built in Augmented Reality Game component that can be uncovered by paying attention to what the writers pulled as inspiration from past games. Such as a past Age of Wood that correlates directly to the era of the Woodfolk Ruins. See below screenshots for what this data collection looks like for the years of 2004 and 2005, which were the years of the Wood Monkey and Wood Rooster:

Twisters and the Winds of Change

"The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning" - Wheel of Time Book 1: The Eye of the World

Following the trail of the Wood Rooster led me to discover that I am missing yet another column of data. I was on a wiki binge about the exact sequence of events at the end of WWII and from an article on the Potsdam Agreement I noted that Potsdam is on the Havel River. "Havel the Rock" is a character in Dark Souls who I was certain was inspired by Taurus because of his rocky, mountain-like design, and hoof-like feet and proximity to the Taurus demon. But actually looking at the name "Havel" it's a Gaul word that means "rooster", which would fit him to the year of the Rooster. And indeed his helmet resembles a cock's comb. But that made no sense for the spreadsheet - there is nothing "Taurus" about the year of the Wood Rooster in terms of the AC game matchup and there is no year of the Earth Rooster within the history of FromSoft. So failing all other options I turned to tarot. I knew very little about tarot before this little project, and did not realize that there is also zodiac tied to tarot suits. And sure enough, the zodiac attached to The Hierophant is Taurus. Strengthening the association, this is also probably why Havel's backstory has him as being a Bishop - the Heirophant is otherwise known as "the High Priest". Havel is known to hate the magic of Seath the Scaleless - I wonder if this hints that Seath is the Magician of the 2nd tarot track...

Some key art for Havel the Rock

So why was I looking at the Potsdam Agreement? The last game of 2004 was Metal Wolf Chaos. Of all of the games in their extensive library, FromSoft chose to bring back this game in response to popular demand. And of all of the dates to release a bombastic game about an over-the-top American President carelessly using weapons of mass destruction they chose August 6, 2019 - anniversary of the day that an atomic weapon was first detonated over Japan. I don't believe in coincidences when it comes to the release dates of FromSoft games, at least not in the past few years. Bloodborne: The Old Hunter's DLC released on November 24, 2015 - the birthday of Carlo Collodi, author of Pinnochio. This DLC sees the appearance of Lady Maria in the flesh, after previously meeting a doll fashioned in her image in the base game. I can only imagine that the developers of Lies of P sussed out some part of what FromSoft is up to and used it for their own Bloodborne-inspired game. Pinnochio is an impudent boy made of wood, perhaps what might be described as a Wood Monkey even. And once again, the Armored Core series pulls through in confirming that yes, FromSoft did have Pinnochio in their back pocket dating far earlier than you'd think. In Armored Core 2 (2000) and Armored Core 2: Another Age (2001) the corporation Balena has an "inside weapon" part called Puppet which "fires a dummy for enemy radar". Baleen is an archaic word for whale, from French - as in the whale that swallows the wooden puppet. The worm face in the Woodfolk ruins is not actually looking directly at the Minor Erdtree - it is looking at the pine tree in front of the tree. Pinocchio means "pine eye".

The 3 corporations of the AC2 generation. Zio Matrix I think to have the strongest ties to astrology, because Mars is the planet ruler of both Scorpio and Aries. Emeraude will be discussed below

As an observation of how this ripples forwards, 2024 is the Year of the Wood Dragon.

We're still a few meanders away from my point about the twister. In Metal Wolf Chaos, the president of the United States of America Michael Wilson has a lady on the coms named "Jodi". A charming gal who talks in his head and tells him what to blow up next on this whirlwind of destruction. I think it's a perfectly fitting origin for Marika ('murica) and her loyal shadow the Metal Wolf Maliketh. It's strange, isn't it, that Maliketh and Gurranq are the same, but displaced in time? Well, Metal Wolf Chaos (2004) exists beyond time trapped on the ancient device of Xbox Japan. Metal Wolf Chaos XD (2019) is much closer to the present, hence Gurranq's presence in the Bestial Sanctum. And maybe take a look at the white haired protagonist of Tenchu Dark Shadow (2006) - was not Marika's only use for her shadow as a place to keep Destined Death? I don't really think it matters if FromSoft always had the meta-narrative in mind when they picked up the Tenchu series or if this is a new lens applied with hindsight - it fits on the timeline.

Is it a weak connection that they both have white hair and hold sword in reverse grip and are Shadows? Maybe so, but I will grasp these straws

But Michael Wilson and Jodi are imposters - they are mimics of something older. That's what everything about the Gemini twins and the Wood Monkey and the new April Fool's Tarot are hinting at. Even on a surface level, it's a self-parody of the Armored Core format. And so the search continues with Armored Core (1997) where the major corporations are "Chrome" and "Murakumo Millenium" (murakumo means "a gathering of clouds"). The game has 29 template emblems, some of them generic and some silly and some obtuse, and the one that is most relevant for this train of thought is "Comet Judy". The name Judy being a very close corruption of Jodi. There are 3 leading candidates for what this emblem could be a reference to:

The Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (彗星) - a Japanese WWII dive bomber with a name meaning "Comet" but which the Western Allied reporting name was "Judy". A Suisei plane was used by 3 men in one of the final kamikaze ("divine wind") attacks by Japan in the hours after surrender on August 15, 1945.

A song called "St. Judy's Comet" which is a lullaby from father to son by Paul Simon (most famously from the musical duo Simon and Garfunkel), released on May 5, 1973.

Judy Garland - an actress who is most famous for playing Dorothy, a "good witch who fell from a star" in 1939's Wizard of Oz. Comets are not the same as shooting stars - that would be meteor fragments - but the actual art of the emblem does show a star.

Aside from Comet Judy I added 2 other emblems that are my favourites to make the embedded visual look better

The first two candidates will come up when you search "Comet Judy". And honestly, I would not count them out as being relevant in some manner (May 23 was the Japanese release date of Lost Kingdoms 2 in 2003 - and the ideal of a lost lullaby about a magical dreamland saint has some appeal there). The third only really makes sense with context clues. After all, there are dozens of Oz references in Elden Ring, and a handful here and there in Demon's Souls (the Twister-like shape of the Old Monk's Robe - perhaps a connection to think on between "Monk" and "Monkey") and Dark Souls (the "Homeward" miracle - good witches do "miracles", according to the 1939 film). They had to be inspired by something. And finally this is where the twister comes in. The one that picks up Dorothy's house and carries it off to Oz and a journey to find the wizard at the Emerald City. Another corporation of AC2 and AC2: Another Age is called "Emeraude", a French word meaning "Emerald". And after getting into the lore of the Wizard of Oz is when I start realizing that the twister can be a recurring phenomenon - The Wizard also arrived to the Land of Oz on a twister and it was through his influence that the Emerald City was constructed. Emeraude is a rival corporation to Balena - who is the corporation that manufactures the Moonlight laser sword in the AC2 generation of games. Luckily, following the guiding moonlight is where I find another solid point of comparison anchoring the Woodfolk Ruins twister to the years 2004-2005. Armored Core Nexus (2004) and Armored Core Nine Breaker (2005) are follow-ups to AC3. And in this generation of games the Moonlight laser sword is manufactured by the corporation "Mirage". As in Elden Ring's "Mirage Rise", which is found right next to the Woodfolk Ruins.

Here's another wrinkle to all this though. I know that the twister in the Woodfolk Ruins that I believe to be corresponding to Metal Wolf Chaos is not the first time a numen has fallen from a star/comet, or been carried in on the wind, or whatever. Both because of the pre-existence of the Emeraude Corporation, and because the name and context of Chelona's Rise tells the story of a witch who had a house dropped on her - and I think that Chelona's Rise pre-dates Mirage Rise by the nature of their puzzles. The question becomes: how many times before and after have the winds of change blown through, and when exactly were the other times? I think that there have been at least 4 twisters, as demonstrated by the 3 smaller twisters that can be seen accompanying timeless Farum Azula from the disconnected area through the Four Belfries "Crumbling Lands" portal. For the view of Farum Azula seen from the Isolated Divine Tower there is only one single twister seen spinning at the centre of the ruins - what possible meaning does this have?

The next lead that I have is Wyndham Ruins. Sometimes I'll idly do a "this day in history" kind of search for the various available dates. And it happens that July 10th is both the release date of the original Armored Core and the birthday of sci-fi writer John Wyndham, whose most famous work is The Chrysalids (as in how Roderika describes the Grafted Tarnished), and it's a story about a post-apocalyptic future where women are ostracized for giving birth to mutants. Wyndham also wrote The Day of the Triffids which is described as "After most people in the world are blinded by an apparent meteor shower, an aggressive species of plant starts killing people". And also The Midwitch Cuckoo "in which the women become pregnant by brood parasitic aliens". So, some interesting parallels there. For the Cuckoo in particular, this meshes with the knowledge that it's an old motif in the Lands Between - even the Moon of Nokstella has two cuckoos perched at the top of it.

Also notable that Wyndham Ruins is infested with deathroot. An aggressive species of plant that grows like a Cancer - which is one of the zodiac that spans across the "Age of Wood" according to my timeline project.