#mt gelmir

[slavonicrhapsody]

Let’s talk about Mt. Gelmir

Mt. Gelmir is one of my favorite locations in the game because of its striking environmental storytelling… the minute you start exploring the slopes of the volcano, you can just FEEL that something awful happened here. The imagery is so potent that I wanted to go through every detail of the region and explore how it supports and expands the story we’re told through dialogue and text. Let’s start with the text on the Mt. Gelmir sword monument:

“The Assault on Volcano Manor

The squalid, the sick, the blasphemous;

A wretched, unending war with no glory”

This dismal description refers to Leyndell’s attack on Praetor Rykard’s forces at Volcano Manor. After the Shattering war broke out, Rykard declared his intention to take up arms against the Erdtree itself: this was not just treason, but blasphemy, marking him as “an enemy, never to be forgiven.” We can conclude that Rykard’s blasphemy was so unacceptable that Leyndell made it a priority to silence him as quickly as possible, sending an army straight to his doorstep. I believe it’s implied that Rykard had the Mt. Gelmir Minor Erdtree burned as his first act of blasphemy; we find the tree destroyed amidst a smoking ruin:

The assault on Volcano Manor, introduced to us by Gideon Ofnir as “the most appalling battle in the entirety of the Shattering,” was the site of some of the most horrific violence in the entire story. Traveling around Mt. Gelmir, we can observe the gruesome aftermath of the battle and the remnants of the armies continuing to struggle — some scattered groups of Leyndell soldiers remain, while the only troops left to Rykard are his marionettes and iron virgins, since his knights have long since deserted him after his hideous transformation. (Side note: I love the detail that Rykard uses marionettes and avionettes, which were “crafted to serve the sorcerers;” it further cements his identity as a sorcerer and his connection to his Liurnian heritage.) Despite having no real soldiers though, Rykard’s grim constructs seem to tear through the remaining soldiers of Leyndell with ease, which we can observe in real time:

The death toll of this conflict cannot be overstated — the slopes of Mt. Gelmir are literally piled high with bodies.

Within a pit of corpses, we can find the spirit of one of Rykard’s men, who says this:

“Lord Rykard… If this putrid field of death is what your blasphemy would bring, then I can no longer abide. No one can.”

These unspeakable horrors are enough to make Rykard’s followers question if the cost of resistance is too high a price. Leyndell’s armies are just as badly affected — stranded on the mountain with no hope of reinforcements, we can observe several soldiers feasting on the bodies of their fallen comrades:

These soldiers have long abandoned any hope of achieving glory, and are little more than mindless husks at this point. Furthermore, if we return to the sword monument, something you’ll notice as you make your way over is that there are several Leyndell soldiers who are affected by the frenzied flame. At the same time, the troll soldier guarding the door to the Manor is also affected by the frenzied flame:

The frenzied flame is affecting soldiers of both sides of the conflict here, which tells me it wasn’t being used as some kind of weapon, but that it took hold independently… I believe that the frenzied flame was embraced by the soldiers here due to the sheer hopelessness of those who have experienced this uniquely horrific battle. The ethos of the Three Fingers is essentially that the world is full of unendurable pain, so it must all be melted away so no one will suffer ever again: “the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction... every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. […] Those who gave me grapes howled without words. Saying they wished they were never born. Become their lord. Take their torment, despair. Their affliction. Every sin, every curse. And melt it all away.” (Hyetta)

The soldiers who fought on Mt. Gelmir have experienced untold suffering, the very worst of humanity… it makes perfect sense that such people would be susceptible to the essence of the frenzied flame; to want to burn this tormented world to the ground.

[areas-of-fromsoft]

Elden Ring Round 1, Side A, Match 6. Favourite Area?

[seasonofthebxtch]

The Mt Gelmir Magma Wyrm better enjoy his last breaths

[mistleaneous-chaos]

Rykard is Underappreciated

I don't really talk about Rykard much, but I do think that he is one of the most interesting demigods, and they're all interesting but his story is one that I think is one of the most unique in the context of the game. The reason he's underappreciated is because of the fact that both of his siblings are such fucking WINNERS, and his stuff just reeks of unfinished/cut content.

Unlike his siblings who were mainly int-based, Rykard actually gets, in a weird way, closer to Golden Order Fundamentalism than anything else. His sorceries require a mixture of Faith and Intelligence, with the higher stat needed being intelligence, and one thing about the Magma sorceries nobody talks about is the fact that Rykard literally adapted them into a new form of sorcery, which honestly just reemphasizes how much the children of Rennala were fucking masters of their individual schools of magic.

Volcano Manor is, in a weird way, a really good example of how fucked up the Golden Order makes those who oppose it, because Rykard has a fucking melting pot of horrible atrocities there. He has a giant at his doorstep afflicted with Madness, Albinaurics trapped with torture devices on their heads, which I think is a symbol of his corruption more than anything else. Along with that is an entire town of serpent-people and a Crucible Knight that is dedicated to him and his wife's goals, a knight that symbolizes what is now considered a curse by the Erdtree.

The reason I think that symbolizes corruption is because there is legitimate proof that Rykard was not always a piece of shit. Exhibit 1 is the painting of Radahn he keeps in his Manor, which is one of the most blunt examples of sibling admiration in the game besides Malenia and Miquella, because Ranni never mentions Radahn and is only ever shown to have associated with Rykard in an item description, and Radahn's insane. The item description and the painting show that he actually either admired or talked to his siblings, which is more than we get from Ranni's quest, Radahn's story, and even fucking all the Godwyn stuff.

Along with that is the Tonic of Forgetfulness, which he gave to Tanith because he didn't want her to think of him as a monster which is what he was becoming at that point. He didn't realize that she loved him so much that she would stay with him even through that, and I honestly think that the gesture of wanting to spare her the pain of his path is something that is really fucking sweet.

I think that the tipping point of his insanity was his Great Rune, as it was for a majority of the Demigods. The Runes are literally said to taint the user, which is probably why they went to war in the first place and all went insane in some way. Along with that, it's likely that he held a resentment for Marika and Radagon, like his siblings probably did. That, along with the Rune, likely motivated him to kill the Gods, and when he discovered the God-devouring Serpent, he basically found his Golden Goose, and decided "Ok Time to fucking get in there and kill my dad" only to then go even more insane with the recusant stuff and all that just eating people over and over again.

Strangely enough though? It's honestly got a lot of parallels to Christian Mythos than anything else in the game. Like a snake that tempts people to join it which is actually a fallen divine being that committed blasphemy against the God of the religion. He's literally fucking Satan guys. And it's weird because the rest of the game is filled to the brim with stories of beings that were actually aliens or beings from space influencing others and Outer Gods and whatnot, but Gelmir is just a bunch of Christian Allegories jam-packed into one spot and almost nobody outside of Gideon brings it up.

It's honestly a shame we don't get as much about Rykard as we do most of the other siblings, considering the fact that he has one of the best boss fights, some of the most interesting lore, and more characters in his plotline than a majority of the others, and yet you get some quests with his wife, kill Tarnished, get their armor, find him, and kill him, and that's it. I mean you get Tanith eating him and some castanets to give her but besides that. Nothin'.

Honestly this just goes to show that Radagon is a failhusband for abandoning 3 amazing kids and sending them down the paths that lead to one casting away her own body, one going insane from the new daughter's rot, and one literally dedicating his existence to blaspheming your purpose and your new wife.

And yet again, RENNALA NEVER MENTIONS HIM OR RADAHN DESPITE THEM CONTRIBUTING JUST AS MUCH TO SORCERY AND THE WORLD AS A WHOLE, but she gets a pass because she's insane. Radagon doesn't though he's a slut

[alberichfanpage]

I love that you can ride on this chariot in Mt. Gelmir

[hyliandude]

When your significant other really watches you play 😂

[kyrdjava]

Why is there a Grafted Scion at Mt. Gelmir?

[blaiddfailcam]

Mt. Gelmir

[marcheriest]

wanderlust

[pybun]

some screenshots that i took since i gotten back to playing elden ring

[slavonicrhapsody]

you ever think about the geometry of Rykard's arena as far as like, where it is and what space it occupies below the manor? sometimes I'm hanging out in there and I'm like, where's the load-bearing supports. how is 50,000 tonnes of magma not instantly falling into here.

I’m no volcanologist but based on the two hours I just spent reading about volcanic eruptions it doesn’t seem like a volcano actively spewing lava would have a massive chamber underneath that isn’t 1. collapsed or 2. completely filled to the brim with magma. like come on those skinny pillars in Rykard’s boss room aren’t gonna support the weight of this

side note Altus is extremely lucky Mt. Gelmir decided to empty its lava into the sea instead of releasing a pyroclastic flow directly to the gates of Leyndell

ok but maybe this chamber is intact because there’s something special about it… what if it’s not just the place Rykard hangs out these days, but it was actually the historical lair of the great serpent… the place where Mt. Gelmir’s serpent cult of old offered up sacrifices to their serpent god… the chamber is practically built out of hundreds of carbonized bodies frozen in agony

gonna go with the hand-wavey ancient power of the great serpent as the reason why this chamber still stands. and also Rykard’s sheer force of will desperately trying to keep his girlboss empire from being swallowed up by magma

[secteel]

I’m back on the Elden Ring train. I WILL dedicate some time to my idiot man. He WILL eat snakes.

[namelesswhitemask]

I just got a random elden ring oc idea of an albinauric woman who becomes disillusioned with miquella and the haligtree and starts to resort to different paths to say fuck you to the golden order so she makes her way to Mt. Gelmir and becomes an inquisitor and since her legs don't work she gets a special wheelchair fashioned out of the iron virgin/ghiza's wheels or something lmao. And probably has some fucked up torturous prosthetics too I'm sure

[thistoowillpasss]

[wraith-caller]

Mt. Gelmir's Minor Erdtree is weird

Most minor Erdtrees in the game look like this:

They're tall with bright gold leaves like their pappy erdtree, and often(but not always) have loads of warrior jars around them. Most have an Erdtree Avatar defending them, with a few exceptions. And all of them except one have yellow or gold flowers blooming around them. Mt. Gelmir's looks like this:

It's not the only broken and dead minor Erdtree. The two on the Mountaintops of the Giants are this way. I'm not sure if that's a consequence of warring with the giants or something else, but even in their death, they are still guarded by Erdtree Avatars, the one in the Consecrated Snowfields being a putrid variant with Scarlet Rot. In spite of being dead and in the harsh frigid mountains, they, too, are surrounded by golden flowers. Mt. Gelmir's Erdtree bears signs of something I haven't yet been able to place elsewhere in the game. For one, the bark or the vines which used to grow on it are all mottled and black, possibly from being burnt.

The feature I'm still puzzled over are these growths bubbling up at the base of the tree:

The greenish/yellow stuff kind of looks like lichen, but that still doesn't explain much about the blackened stuff under it. It's very pallid and off-putting, definitely indicative of some kind of disease. And this tree isn't guarded by an Avatar, like most the others. Instead we find an Ulcerated Tree Spirit, and it appears in a cloud of something that looks a lot like deathblight:

(Screen from this video by user auralien.)

Ulcerated Tree Spirits are often found in places associated with death or decay, like rot-heavy areas, a few catacombs, and just before the face of Godwyn under Stormveil. That this one shows up shrouded in deathblight mist makes that connection even stronger. And weirdly enough, there's a lone wormface just up the road from this tree, another creature with a strong link to deathblight.

A final association with death is in the pale purple flowers. I may be wrong about this, but the only other place I can definitively remember seeing them is in the Wyndham Ruins where we fight a Tibia Mariner. These flowers are also very close in color to the Mariner's particular flavor of magic.

(Screens from this vid by user Dougers7.)

We know from the Blasphemous Claw item info that Rykard was given a fragment of the Rune of Death by Ranni. It makes me wonder if Rykard having this has any connection to the various symbols of death surrounding the Mt. Gelmir Erdtree.

The other minor Erdtrees not guarded by Avatars are guarded by things with links to death, save the real oddball Erdtree in the Mistwoods with not even minor enemies watching over it, instead being surrounded by scarabs. The two remaining other trees are both in Altus Plateau, one being guarded by wormfaces, the other being guarded by a rather mysterious group.

They're all in black, with the humans wearing veils over their faces. And all of them wield Fia's Mist. Of all the minor Erdtrees, this one is closest to Godwyn's resting place, so I assume them to be followers of the Prince of Death/Fia.

Not sure what it all means, if anything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯