#from software lore

[secteel]

The League and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

Some screenshots of the essay I’m working on. My takes might be a little vague considering there is very little known about the League, so most of it is conjecture from my little 2am brain.

[gobbogoo]

A Brief Analysis of Elden Ring's Miquella

Miquella is a manifestation of the childish question: "why can't we all just get along?"

His power to "charm" others is an answer to that question, and what makes it so frightening is that everyone IS happier when under the charm's effects; they arguably become much kinder versions of themselves, but that forced compassion is its own form of tyranny. You can't make people get along without removing their autonomy.

Miquella likely recognized this once, as with one notable exception there's no record of him ever forcing his will upon others within the Lands Between. It was only after trying and failing to save Malenia, Godwyn, and the Lands Between itself that his desperation to have ANY impact on things made him forsake his morals and take control of Mohg's mind.

Miquella came to believe his curse of eternal nascence was responsible for his impotence. He told himself if he could just break free of his youth, he'd finally be able to help everyone like he always wanted. What he didn't realize was that adulthood comes at the price of childhood innocence, and by forcing himself to grow up, he was leaving behind everything that once defined him. The curse was a part of who he was, and to hate it was to hate himself.

We never truly meet Miquella in-game, because Miquella lies in pieces scattered across the Realm of Shadow. Instead we find something that claims to be him, even as it stands in opposition to everything he believed in.

His story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of self-sacrifice. You cannot aid others by burning yourself out, and you cannot love others if you do not love yourself. Miquella allowed his selflessness to destroyed him, and in doing so he ultimately harmed all those he wished to help.

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

I just. Can't get over Queen Marika as a character. Like just. Learning who those flesh amalgams in the Gaols actually are, seeing Shaman Village with how it is, and learning about how The Two Fingers have been abandoned by The Greater Will even before Marika's time...

But like. The most important thing to me is Shaman Village. The way it's sealed off behind a statue of Marika, and just. How sorrowful it is. It's still, it's peaceful, it's serene, but it's also empty. Within the field of flowers, you find a small sprout of a tree, surrounded by golden light. You receive the incantation that allows you to momentarily conjure up a minor erdtree, that heals all that it's light shines down upon.

What's truly important is what it means. "The kindness of Gold, without Order...

She basked her old village with this golden light, knowing full well there was nobody left to heal"...

It really hits me. Hard. That through all of Marika's corruption, her cruelty, her subjugations, her purges, her murders...

That she really did have the capacity to be a good person. She and her people were subjugated by Hornsent society, but that doesn't change what she did... a lot of people treat it as "justified", but that's a weak way to look at it, and misunderstands how Marika became THE ultimate subjugator with her Golden Order. She subjugated hornsent on an individual level, she also killed and cursed the giants, she had all these conflicts with all these other folks in the Lands Between, all to create some ideal order...

Now this is the part where is spirals out and it makes my head hurt to think about it all...

But man...

The point I am trying to make is how that gentle silence, and still beauty of Shaman Village, and how whoever Marika was in the past is just... completely lost...

"What was her prayer, her wish, her confession?

There is no one left to answer.

and Marika never returned home again."

All that remains is that still silence, those blooming flowers, rustling in the wind, and those gentle strums, to always remind us of what this place means, and what it represents...

[ohnoitstbskyen]

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.

[knightscanfeeltoo]

If Caitha is Indeed Gwyn's First Wife, is she the Mother of The Firstborn Son/Nameless King Too????

(Who Knows These Days and I don't know why I still Love Dark Souls...)

[lothricsage]

Lothric castle × Anor Londo solidarity 🌞🌛 👑🌙

[galakaz]

COUNT YA DAYS YOU LANKY BASTARD YOU CAN'T KEEP YOUR EQUIPMENT AWAY FROM ME FOREVER

[guard-en]

"...This fucking thing better not choke up on me again."

[bleue-flora]

it doesn't seem like non sense I'm keen on decoding it now lmao like i feel like I've seen that kind of code language before

[context]

Omg yes! Please do, I’m so curious. Like I feel like if it was just nonsensical mashing randomly on a keyboard then why are there underscores and parentheses which require the shift key, ya know?

And I’m not sure if it has to do with the maps at all, but I’ve tried to go ahead and locate them all. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out #1 or #4 (highlighted in teal) Perhaps it is their lab? Their island?Also, while not shown on the large map, I think #6 is actually Techno’s house.

Looks like #9 is the entrance to the prison and #2 is adjacent. #3 is the Las Nevadas casino. #5 is… is that where the secret staircase is from the finale? #7 is L’manberg and #8 is Snowchester…

[bmpmp3]

when it comes to like, headcanons and lore and fanon with vocal synths I tend to play very fast and loose and switch stuff around a lot (because tbh thats what i do with everything i get really into LOL) but one thing that does kind of stay consistent for me is which synth characters I think are aware that they are vocal synthesizing software and which ones are not.

the crypton crew definitely know and embrace it, the dreamtonics letter people know but never talk about it, utauloids depend on individual stories but most from the past 10 years don't know (although someone like adachi rei definitely knows), other vocaloids like gumi kind of know, i think kiyoteru has no idea (blissfully being a teacher and a rockstar, unaware...) and i think kaai yuki has an inkling about it but doesn't care or understand because she's 8 and she has more important things to worry about (learning shapes and colours). i think the ah-software girls band mostly doesn't know (rikka kind of has an idea but shes in denial and ignores it, karin and chifuyu have no clue), frimomen obviously knows he's a software mascot born and raised, with the virvox guys i think mostly have no idea (ryuusei has been suspecting something and takehiro knows but wont talk about it explicitly because its scary), lola leon and miriam don't know and you can't tell them their brains will break theyre too old. all vocal synths are living in some kind of matrix simulation psychological horror. to me.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Let me tell you a secret...

...lean in closer. No-thing is watching.

It is done. The magnum opus, my most delicate, intricate post|patch|work, everything I couldn't stop thinking about since Shadowkeep until this very moment. But now, I can't remember a time when I didn't know it deep inside. I've always wanted to create something beautiful that lasts, that makes an impact in the waves and touches the hearts of those who will listen. Make them beat harder, faster, better, stronger. Give them a ring of spears in which to grow. Something that harmonizes and shares how the tales and tunes of old and new have moved me, made me feel. Something from my heart that draws it's power from yours. But I couldn't even begin to imagine how. I was lost in the Deep. I had no voice; barely a whisper.

This is the way. This is how we find the words. The light of action and self-realized purpose in the darkness of suffocating, deterministic thought. Thus we are truly unveiled.

The post broke the tumblr text editor more times than I can count, but I had to make sure it resonated and so I poured my heart into this one. It's been an enormous struggle against limitations, doubt, and failure, but I hope I made it work. One last word of advice, it is best viewed on a tablet or anything that doesn't occlude your view.

Even if it's not the truth, I share this in hopes you can find some of your own shining|singing|echoing back at you from the dark. Forget about me entirely. The clockwork is waiting, it just needs the trigger mechanism. The spark. The fuel.

It just needs you.

Go deeper. Don't slip. Find the cord and hold on for dear life. Tune your strings. Crank it up to 11. Keep your one-and-only mind sharp and true. Go all out within and refract the radiance. I'm not trying to confuse you, but do feel free to let yourself become vexed. Sometimes there's just no other way to understand a thing than to say and do it, no matter how imperfectly. Be a fool, call me senselessly woken if you must. Call me mad, delusional, over the top|edge|precipice. You'll have to excuse my morbid excitement, but there's simply nothing sweeter in the darkness than harmony.

Sometimes plants wither, even with care, if the atmosphere is unfair and the soil goes to rot. But the greater sin is for those who are called to care for it to instead turn a blind eye, or worse, rage against it.

//

ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: 2CA9SXUO2C$IKO-006

REP#: 011-PSYCHOMETER-TEST

AGENT(S): TRU-135

SUBJ: PSYCHOMETER FIELD TESTS

1. The new version works. Love all the knobs and antenna; very analog. I took readings off a hatch control out here on Europa and Cowlick was able to retrieve badly distorted voices in some kind of distress. I don't know if it's doing exactly what you Warlocks want, but it's doing something all right. Cowlick says it's probably tapping into her scrutiny, if you permit that term in your ivory halls.

2. Now, I'm not much for gadgets, so I won't ask you how you rigged this thing. But I am one for gossip. Weren't we closing in on some kind of workable theory of exactly how our Ghosts resurrect us? One which was, if I am not mistaken, based on research by the Future War Cult? Did any of that work survive Lakshmi?

3. You know they did try to recruit me once. The Cult. Over a game of poker. Fifty-two cards in a deck don't seem like many, this hard-ass Titan told me. But there are 80 658 175 170 943 878 571 660 636 856 403 766 975 289 505 440 883 277 824 000 000 000 000 different possible shuffles of 52 cards. You could walk back and forth across the observable universe faster than you could count all those possible shuffles. A lot faster. That's life, she said, and she had daisies impaled on the spikes of her skull. Life is endless permutation. So many possibilities. But the rules are what matter. Who cares how the deck shuffles if you don't know the rules of the game? We play this game over and over. Life and death. Light and Dark. But the only way you learn the rules, the only way you're ever gonna get one of those Truces you're named for, is if you come inside. Come into the Cult. Come on in and see. But I didn't.

4.Another thing she told me is that you can play poker with just three cards and two players. Jack, Queen, King. Ante one, max bet one more. High card wins unless one player folds. And in this game, there are many strategies available to the first player, but very few to the second, who acts to exploit the choice made by the first. Many possibilities against few. Sounds like you'd rather be the first player, huh? But if both players play perfectly, that second player wins in the end. Mathematical inevitability. Ain't that something? But I said, your game's just a toy. It's just a contrivance. That's not life. Life isn't one player always exploiting and beating the other.

5. Anyway, back to testing. Might go back to Cocytus and aim this thing at the gate. See how wild it goes. If you never hear from us again, you know Truce and Cowlick finally found something too spooky.

MESSAGE ENDS

_If the Light forgets while the Darkness remembers, then why does a Ghost's power of determination let it access latent memories imprinted in the dead? That's paradoxical. That should be a property of Darkness. How can such fundamentally opposed forces do the same thing?

Am I as shallow as those Guardians arguing over power levels? Trying to force a simple binary upon a complex spectrum… ? The Drifter talks about "spectrums of Light"—powers his Ghost can access because of its modifications. Forcing the metaphor, I thought. Light is not light. It doesn't have frequencies or spectra.

But if we are all constrained by our internalized ontology, by our tacit understanding of how the world works… maybe the circumstances of extreme survival compelled the Drifter to explore a new ontology. Maybe his Ghost achieved a new way to think about the Light.

Keep your eye on the Conductor's baton

Get ready to sing of sorrow|forgiveness

It's all up to you

But dread not

For destiny awaits us

//SIGNAL TETHERED TO UNKNOWN SOURCE

VEXSIG:MSDUND12

Transmitting....

I leave you this now, when it is too early to act. Before you have the faculty to understand it's gravitas. You were offered the age you've fought to restore. Everything we've lost. You won't find it on this narcissist's station.

I will set it in front of you, finely crafted and tuned. You mistakenly label it hubris, and resist. As you know ...

Failure is a catalyst. It breeds invention.

I was only trying to change your mind. To help you see a better future. That exchange... Did not always end in your favor. It does not have to still.

You believe my ideology... virulent.

All right.

Know that I have bled across time, and under the skin of the cosmos. My knowledge became its fabric, filled it's vessels, through its minds.

Humanity is scattered, yet to see a collective. But in the infinite forest of this infinite network the Vex have created... There is only one answer.

A Golden Timeline. With a heavy cost.

Come. Drink your fill. Let me change your minds.

Choice is the ego, raging against the inevitable.

You may not see a choice, but I make my own fate.

Don't ever let anyone else tell your story for you.

I can only make you look. Perhaps, in time, you will see.

Bpm jmab dwqkma - dwqkma bpib bzctg uibbmz - vmdmz ittwe bpmuamtdma jm pmizl. Bpqa tmaawv qa ewzbp tmizvqvo ioiqv ivl ioiqv.

Nwzmdmz.

Gwcz dwqkm uwdma ia i epqaxmz, uczuczqvo qvaqlm tizomz eqvla. Wvtg bpm bzcabml nme kiv ijawzj epib qa vmkmaaizg. Eqam ivl atg ivl xmznmkb, gwcz qvabzckbqwva lzwx, tmidqvo vwbpqvo jcb bpm pizl aemmb zqum wn mvtqopbmvumvb. Bpm xibp qa amb. Gwcz dwqkm qa cvtmiapml.

The living and breathing Alternate Reality Game we play in our heads and hearts every single second makes us trip over our feet in real reality. Cut open both and find your rhythm within.

Secant Filaments

The nature of the secant is to intercept a curve, a role all human relationships likewise fill.

Better think to remember your compass and protractor. You're gonna need 'em both at one point or another.

In this treatise, I plan to revisit earlier mathematical theorems and revise them considering our new observations on the Light, the Darkness, and lifeforms imbued with those respective powers. But before I do so, I must preface it with a personal note. Despite high-minded assumptions, mathematics is not an intrinsic language of the universe. It is how we describe the portions of the universe that we can observe. While numbers can track the abstract and find pattern in chaos, they cannot account for fundamental aspects of reality such as compassion or justice. The existence of the Lucent Hive, and Hive Ghosts in particular, may expand our understanding of causality, but they themselves are not "new"—the only thing that is new is our awareness and observation of them. These Ghosts have already been living alongside us. They've traveled with us. Endured with us. What we see is the mushroom, the fruit of the fungus. The fungus itself is a vast mycorrhizal network of filaments growing and working unseen below the soil, often barely connected to the fruiting bodies we observe. Similarly, we have observed Ghosts—Hive Ghosts included—without understanding the nature of the unseen filaments that may guide us. In our eagerness to understand the universe, we must not assume our observations are complete, or objective. Otherwise, we blind ourselves to possibilities… like the possibility that an unnoticed faction among us may be one temptation away from betrayal. Or that what drives our creator is no more than the same base desire for survival that drives all living things. —On Secants, Introduction, Ophiuchus

It's okay to be puzzled. It's supposed to be a hard and winding road. But we'll figure it out eventually. You've just gotta remember; take it one fragment at a time.

I dive to understand.

You get all that?

Here at the end and beginning is a gift from me to you, originally from another lost to the waves. Save your background, if you wish, for they verily do inform who we are. Clothe yourself in truth every day. Remember your past, the forsaken and the fallen. Fight to preserve their memory and possibility, and in the light of their truths we will seek evolution beyond this imperfect stasis.

Like you and I and everything, this amalgamation and its seed are ever changing as the wind. Living documents. If you feel any pull here, any resonance—any at all—if you drift or come undone, simply return to this place and remember who we are. Remember why we fight. Let your doubts become questions, and the answers you seek will be found in the map of your heart. In darkness or in light, your destiny will inevitably find you. Be ready.

We are, always and forever, Guardians of all existence. How will you decide to walk that vermicular path? Be careful.

I need a break before the third act. See you starside, my family in love|war. Be brave.

—MG

[izar-tarazed]

Toying around with Dungeon Alchemist and I tried to make what I imagine Izar's room at the Roundtable Hold to be like.

While we don't see anybody's personal quarters apart from Fia's in game, my headcanon is that they very much exist and the permanent residents of the Hold each get one. Izar was assigned hers after presenting her first Great Rune and suddenly having a small space entirely of her own was huge for her, and step by step, she made it a place that feels like home.

Of course there's a desk, usually all but covered with one of her star maps and stacks of notes and sketches. She mostly prefers to work at the Roundtable proper because the Grace there grants better lighting, but she still uses her own desk a lot.

There's always a teapot, too. She retrieved that armillary sphere from the Caria Manor and treasures it almost as much as her beloved telescope. (It was broken when she found it, and fixing and assembling it anew took a long time.) Also, her backpack is usually sitting next to the door, all ready to set out again.

A simple bed with a somewhat improvised nightstand, plus a storage chest. There's always a book on the nightstand, even though Izar will often either just fall into bed all exhausted, or spend the night working on her maps.

Obviously most books at the Roundtable Hold are found in Sir Gideon's study, but Izar has gathered her fair share of books, too, so unsurprisingly she has a bookshelf of her own. (Some of those are loans from Raya Lucaria, but she'll return them... eventually.)

While Izar's room doesn't have a real fireplace like others at the Hold, it does have the luxury of a small stove that provides warmth... and boiling water. The shelf nearby mostly holds ingredients for tea: dried herba leaves, but also the spiced tea she regularly purchases from the nomadic merchants.

(However, she still has to head down into the kitchens if she wants coffee.)

And last, a washstand with a mirror and a simple washbowl, another small luxury.

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

You know... I have thought a lot about Messmer.

Whether or not he ever left the Realm of Shadow, what matters is that one must think about how deeply heartbroken he must have been by his banishment.

Even speculation as to whether or not he ever saw Leyndell adds to this because imagine. Your mother, your guiding light, creates her perfect, shining, Golden Order, and she looks at you and decided that you are not in it. You will never be in it. Because you stand as a testament to her mistakes. Even though you were a favorite of her's, the serpent that writhes within you is her shadow, and as her son, that serpent has become something that defines you. It has defined you from day one. From the very moment you carried out her graceless purge, you have fully made yourself a son of Queen Marika the Eternal, as that is what Marika has come to embody. Any warmth that was within her instead shines out in a hollow facade, and with that facade, comes the shadow that shows the truth. The truth being you, Messmer.

Messmer is such a fascinating character. He clearly looks up to Marika so much. After all, she is the woman that defined his entire existence. He was most likely the closest to Marika out of all of her children, and his abandonment set an example. I cannot think of any other example of any of the demigods that personally interacted with Marika, only hearing her name echoed through legend. Only candidate I can think of is Godwyn and... well we all know what happened to him.

Anyways Messmer hits close to home because like. He's such a gloomy figure. The dungeon where you find him as a boss, Shadow Keep, is so extremely desolate throughout, even the research hall feels deeply depressing and vacuous. When you find him, he is in the dark, his serpent and flame writhing within him, sitting by a statue of his Mother.

Now I feel as though my thoughts aren't fully formed right now, but god. The dynamic between Messmer and the Tarnished really gets me. Think of it. Marika, someone who represents a golden, holy light that shunned him for his Gracelessness, has summoned you, a Tarnished, bereft of Grace, to succeed her and become Elden Lord. Think of it. How unfair that is to him. Messmer, son of Queen Marika, made to become a symbol of fear, someone truly unforgivable, like his own Mother, only for her to cast him away for that curse that dwelled within him, that serpent at the base of everything, her deep sin, so she can create her Golden Order, and be at peace knowing that her shadow is hidden away, beneath her, suppressed. Banished, completely forgotten, wiped from every historical record, not a single thing in The Lands Between that list his name. Him, made by her to be forgotten, being uncovered again by you, the Tarnished, someone from outside the Land of Shadow, and just. It is just such a shock to Messmer that such a thing happened. That his Mother's interest lies in a figure that in some ways, is not dissimilar from him. It must just feel so unfair. He's shorn of light, a shadow, abandoned by Marika. While you. You are Tarnished, without Grace, only guided by it, and Marika has chosen you, and others like you... and not him. I believe his commentary about his purpose, him embracing you with his flame, is out of envy, out of him trying to talk from a high position he doesn't have. All of this climaxes with his second phase, where he finally rips out his Mother's seal, and embraces oblivion. He stops living a lie. He realizes who he is. Cursed by shadow, fallen down into oblivion, merely a coiling, base serpent, embodying vice. Embodying all his cruelty, all of it completely taking him over.

All of this means that the only worlds he can say as the last of his life leaves him, are these words that just say it all.

"Mother... Marika...

A curse...upon thee..."

His mothers love has long since left him, abandoned him, and this is all he had left, until the end, where he finally realizes everything.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

The Ulcerated Tree Spirit || Boss Designs of Elden Ring #6

The Tree Spirits are a recurring enemy in Elden Ring. You'll find them among the roots of Erdtrees, slithering their way through the thick brambles, and you will find them... disgusting, also, because they are inflamed and infested by god only knows what kind of disease, that has caused them to break out into ulcers and swellings.

While not the most lore-central bosses in the game, their names and presence among the roots of the all-important Erdtrees do imply that their appearance has some sort of meaning - if they are spirits OF the Erdtree, then surely their nature reveals something of the tree in turn? If if the spirits of the trees are so catastrophically ulcerated, so poisoned, so rotten, what exactly does that say about the trees themselves?

Of course, we don't have to assume the spirits are friends of the trees. Like most things in Elden Ring, they have a mythological inspiration behind them, which might imply different and rather interesting things about the relationship of these spirits to the trees whose roots they nest in.

[knightscanfeeltoo]

I'm sure that Havel would be a Good Father to Priscilla maybe...

(If Havel ever knew his Illegitmate Daughter still lives anyway...)

[lothricsage]

Happy Father's day to Oceiros, best dad from Dark Souls 3 👑🎊💜