#elden ring shadow of the erdree

[fantomette22]

I’m sure we’re gonna get a good surprise upon finally having the elden ring dlc. It took a lot of time compared to others dlc but there’s probably good reasons! (It’s probably HUGE)

But also i know the other fromsoftware games with their dlcs already out when i played them so it’s going to be quite crazy for everyone to have all this expension the universe/ characters/ lore etc. I cannot wait i hope they talk about the important lore characters mentioned in items description 🤭 (they lovee to do that for Artorias/ Ludwig etc)

Also i would like Malenia’s teacher and Godwyn (and Grandsax) as a boss

As for lore… oh too many things x) cannot wait!

[asleepinawell]

May chaos take the world!

[antarcticlemonade]

"Be grateful for Sir Messmer's mercy, had I found thee first there would be no remains left to honor."

Messmer and Hoslow after the rebellion

[likes-words-and-shrimp]

Spoiler Elden Ring DLC talk but gosh the second half of the Promised Consort boss music is really so beautiful. Might be one of my new favorite themes from the game. It's even more beautiful when you're not fighting for your life just to get in one little jab for a .02 second opening and trying to avoid forever attacks and a blinding light show that will take down half your health bar. Thank you for your heavenly singing, but my Tarnished is screaming in pain as I die once again...

[soloavengers]

ELDEN RING DLC SERVING FR FR

[xamiipholia]

My favorite moment in SOTE

Spoilers for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree after the jump.

—————————————————————————

Okay so the whole dlc, for me at least, was honestly peak (yes, including THAT boss, it was great, fight me) but finding the Shaman Village was honestly such an absolutely perfect example of why a story like Elden Ring can only be told interactively. You’ve spent all of this time witnessing a world absolutely devastated by the meddling of careless gods, fanaticism, and the wars caused by the pursuit of power. You walk through ancient battlefields, through ruins that were already decaying centuries before you ever arrived. Deep time radiates out and touches the present in a world that can never truly heal because death has been removed.

And then, in the Land of Shadow, you find the Shaman Village. As soon as I saw the small Erdtree and the stripped down chords of the Elden Beast theme started playing, which iirc was just called ‘Marika’ during development, I knew immediately what had happened here.

On a meta level I think the music is pretty brilliant. In a game about the cyclical history and the violence of the pursuit of power, you have to have already gone through the whole ruthless, bloody cycle and fought the Elden Beast for this music to REALLY land. That’s some great meta-narrative stuff.

Elden Ring often juxtaposes beauty with horror - the majesty of Leyndell against the terrifying power of Marika and the Golden Order. The beautiful grace of the Elden Beast against the eldritch, unknowable abyssal power that birthed it. Malenia and ALL that she represents.

So you get to this beautiful, abandoned place, bathed in soft gold, detaching it from the rest of the Land of Shadow. Unlike the rest of the ruins you find, there are no signs of war and death - no graves, no discarded swords, no blood long-ago-dried, no undead. Just a field of flowers and a deep, longing sadness. You find the Minor Erdree and the Golden Braid which, together with the horror that you find in the ruins of Bonny Village, allow you to piece together the truth that this beautiful place, now scoured of the violence that happened here, is the source of everything that you have seen in The Lands Between. This is where the evil happened.

There is no forgiving what Marika has done, but the framing of her character shifts entirely. I would bet that at least some of this is part of GRRM’s original lore because it fits SO well with the themes that he writes about. Before all of this Marika was just… a person. She had a quiet, peaceful home, family, and a people that she loved.

And then she was alone. Her people were massacred and mutilated in death for the religious rituals of the Hornsent.

Shaman Village rests on the cliffs above the impact crater of Metyr, Mother of Fingers, an emissary of the Greater Will.

You can’t be told what happened- well, I guess you could but I don’t think if would have nearly the same impact as exploring this world and piecing together the clues on your own, finally finding this truth. The powers in the world rose and fell in cycles- we knew this from Farum Azula and Enir-Ilim. But the world was truly broken because a seemingly insignificant person who had suffered unimaginable levels of pain, violence, and persecution, was given the powers of a god and enabled to act out her grief and anger on the world, only to find out that divinity was a prison. Even removing death from the world once her position was secure couldn’t save her from loss.

This definitely makes me feel more confident in choosing Ranni’s ending. All of this horror, this pain, needs to end. There is no fixing something that was fundamentally broken from the beginning.

[2xplusungood]

Alright I think I have a working theory of the events of elden ring. LOTS of spoilers for Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree DLC

In the beginning, there was The One, a singularity of intense heat and chaos until The Greater Will, causes the big bang and creates the universe to bring order to this formless chaos and usher in an age of order. However the side effect of that was the creation of The Greater Wills Sucessor, Space/The void/entropy.

The people of the lands between were known as The Numan, who knew of the coming age of stars, worshipped the moon (becuase it happened to be the closest celestial body). Around this time The God of Rot attacked in the form of a scorpion but was sealed away by a blind swordsman. What was left behind was its stinger which carried its rot. However it was discovered that the bodies who had been afflicted by the rot would turn to putrescence which the numen would begin to harvest bodies sent to and from the grand cloister where they would be tainted by The Lord of Rots stinger and turned into putrescence which would then be used to create living silver. (Congealed putrencense and silver tear husk harvestables even share the same model)

Fearful of the coming age of stars, The Greater Will sends down Mythra, mother of fingers. However on her way down she gives birth astel, fathered by The Void (Hence "Naturalborn of the Void" in english and "Bastard of the Stars" in Japanese) who in turn spawns the fallingstar beasts and later the Onyx lords.

As a result, Mythra was abandoned by the Greater Will, furthermore she was rejected by the numens who devised a method to kill her and her children with the fingerslayer blade. Desperate, she sends Astel down onto Nokron, who destorys the city and causes it to sink underground, so that the night sky may never be seen from the city again

Some of the survivors stayed, casting a false night sky over the ruins of the city while others left, becoming shamans in small villages.

Hundreds of years later there where the hornsent who were zealots of a religon centered around the crucibal, the primordial erdtree from which all life orginally spawned. Their faith in the crucibal and miracles of is currents cause them to grow horns, a symbol of divinity. They built a massive tower of babel and actually succeeded in it. As a result of the numens exposure to living silver (another name for mercury is "Quicksilver") their bodies have the ability to have deceased flesh grafted onto them. As a result, shamans are collected, have their skin flayed and then placed into living jars along with the bodies of criminals so that they meld together and are transported to the top of the tower where these "saints" are used to build a massive set of gates to the primordial currents of the crucibal itself and in doing so create a massive colemn of normalized primordial current, that reached the gods themselves.

Some time before this, The Greater Will sent down another envoy, this time a fierce beast that was little more than the embodiment of pure order, landing in farum azula where it would be worshipped by the ancient dragons and gives intellelect to the beastmen to serve as puppets to the greater will.

There was born a shaman named Marika, who swore revenge against the hornsent. Advised by the fingers and granted Maliketh, Marika surrendered her flesh to The Greater Will and entered the gates of divinity to ascend to godhood while The Greater Will takes over the crucibal, turning the massive colemn of primordial energy into the erdree, which in turn creates the Scadutree and Shadow Realm around the tower. This is the "Original Sin" and Marika's "betrayl" of the hornsent. Also betrayed and abandoned by The Greater Will, Placidusaax summons a powerful storm that engulfs Farum Azula and takes it outside time itself so that he may await the return of his god.

The flesh that Marika surrenders becomes a vessel for radagon. However, Their offspring are born cursed and fated for fire, Messmer would be sealed away in the Scadutree to wage an unending holy war against the hornsent and Milena becoming the gloam-eyed queen who Maliketh kills and takes the rune of death from.

This begins the golden age of erdree amd thr formation of the folden order. Queen marika takes powerful warrior Hoah Loux as her husband and the fingers place Sarosh on his back to queel his ferocious nature so that he may instead stand nobly as Godfrey, the first elden lord.

While this is happening, Radagon marries a Carian Princess and has Ranni, Radahn, and Rykard. Then dragons attacked the captial but are defeated by Godwyn the golden which creates the dragon cult.

However the crucibal didnt simply disappear. Children continues to be born with horns and demihumans had deep ties the crucibal. Marika, in her hatred of what the hornsent did to her people declared that children born with horns are to have them removed, likely killing them in thr process while those that survive are to be locked away underground.

With Godfrey, Marika has Godwyn the Golden but then has two omen children due to Godfreys Involvement with the crucibal knights and exposure to crucibal energy, leading to Marika casting him and his warriors away. No longer guided by grace and without the ability to die becuse of marika removing the rune kf death, they are sent off on boats to fight in the badlands.

With no Elden Lord, Radagon casts away Renala to become the new Elden Lord but leaves her with the rune of the unborn. Then has Miquella and Millena.

Ranni then traded torrent to Milena for info about the rune of destined death and made her move to rebel against the fingers by killing Godwyn the goldens soul so she could kill her empyrean flesh to set her spirit free to act against The Greater Will. This caused Godwyns soul to die but his body to continue living, creating deathroot and those who live in death.

With something horrible happening to her only son who up until this point had yet to have anything horrible happen to them, Marika is broken and decides to shatter the elden ring. The runes are distributed to the demigods in the hopes that one among them will prove themselves worthy of taking marikas place. However, the demigods aside from Margot would betray the golden order and a war broke out with no one winning.

Miquella then began his plan. Creating the Haligtree and then charming Mohg, he was able to secretly travel to the shadow realm to begin the process of apotheosis free from the influence of The Greater Will. Milena was thrn sent to kill Radahn, resulting in the scarlet rot blossuming in Caelid. From then the stage is set for his plan to wait until mohg and radahn have die so that radahn may be reborn in Mohgs body to user in the god Miquella

With the shattering war at standstill, the greater will returns to the tarnish and they in turn return to The Lands Between. Sir Gideon Ofnir is put in charge of the roundtable hold and made to assist tarnish who show potential enough gather runes from the demigods so that they may bring them to Lyndell. However, the tarnished of no reknown who was able to show off their ability to beat the asses pf demigods beats the ass of demigod morgot. Unfortunately, the tarnished have all been lied to and the greater will has no interest in the dishonor of a tarnished lord so radagon seals the erdtree with thorns, resulting in the burning of the erdtree.

[fancytrinkets]

Elden Ring | Grace and monsters

721 words / POV Second Person / Lore (Elden Ring) / St. Trina (Elden Ring) / Vague speculation about Miquella and St. Trina leading up to the DLC / Malenia battle, the exact way I played it / Radagon is Marika / Light Angst / Temporary Character Death / Memory Loss / Blood Loss / Poetry

Altus Plateau

The Grand Lift of Dectus shakes the earth as its ancient gears unlock and begin to move. You stand alone on a platform built to hold an army, and you rise.

On the plateau above, you follow the path towards the capital, slaying creatures as you go. The afternoon sunlight is as golden as the Erdree that looms above all. In its shadow, you feel bereft, bathed in an all-consuming grief that emanates from every corner of this broken landscape. With golden tendrils, it reaches down into your viscera and calls to mind a half-remembered grief that is your own.

The sun sets and at night you grow weary, but you find no rest. Your campsite is close to the road, chosen not for any strategic virtue, but for the remnant of Grace that rises, a flowing pillar of light. It moves like water, pooling in its hidden font. With nerves on edge, you watch it for hours as you listen, alert to every sound. There is danger in the night.

By day, you fight your way through camps of Leyndell soldiers, guarding the capital with sword and shield and trebuchet, with crossbow and ballista. They are the sputtering embers of an age-old flame for war. They fall, one by one, impaled on your blade.

At night, again, you watch the light of Grace, fearful that if you were to camp elsewhere, you'd lose the knack for seeing it. You'd become like the others, substituting some obsession of your own to fill the darkness. And yet you grow so very tired. Desperation rises and you pray to St. Trina for sleep. But she isn't there or doesn't listen. You can't understand what's gone wrong.

Leyndell Royal Capital

You stand before the statue and cast the Law of Regression to reveal a hidden truth.

Radagon is Marika.

And, implicitly, you understand. Because you are that way also, though perhaps you didn't know till now. Someone else exists beneath the surface of your skin, some other person who lived their life and died in exile. And when they were called back by Grace to the Lands Between, it was you instead who woke, disconnected from that other self — the same being and yet altogether different. With Rennala's gift, you changed their form to match the shape of you.

Two and one.

Perhaps you should go back to the broken queen in her darkened library and tell her: Radagon didn't leave the way you think. But no, it would not matter. She is lost in grief and you cannot help her. Since last you met, you have killed both her sons.

The Haligtree

You die a thousand times.

And yet you are chosen by Grace to wake up anew. These many deaths are the only sleep you've managed for a month of nights or more, and so you don't begrudge the loss. You simply get up. You walk down the stairs, down the corridor, and past the doorway arch to the roots of the Haligtree where you face your greatest foe.

You were slow at first, but you have learned. Malenia does not touch you as you slide past her blade. Your knife is small, but where it hits, your enemies bleed. In this, Malenia is no different. In her desperation, the scarlet rot blooms once more. She is fiercer now, but with a thousand deaths behind you, you can see her every move. Nothing hits you.

In the end, it is she who falls dead.

Moghwyn Palace

You have killed the Omen, Lord of Blood. In the stolen cocoon, Miquella lies still, subsumed by sleep or stasis. Perhaps it is best that he does not wake. You have slain Malenia, his beloved sister, in your relentless purge of the broken Order and its demigods scattered across these lands.

Perhaps you could kill Miquella also, cutting him free from his slumber. But here, the child god is no great threat. He is locked away from the world. And you did not kill Rennala either. You are a monster, yes, but not always. And right now all you want to do is rest.

In this blood palace, you sit by the light of Grace that moves, not like flame, but like water. You pray to St. Trina, and you drift off to sleep.

(ao3 link)