#oracle envoys

[catcas22]

What is your take on the absence of Oracle Envoys in Enir-Ilim. Feel free to say they can't find their way in, but idk how they found the haligtree either.

Oracle Envoy Ashes

Spirits of a monstrous band of musicians who employ sacred arts. It is said that when Oracle Envoys appear, playing their pipes, they do so to herald the arrival of a new god, or age.

I'll admit, this one stumped me, but my best guess would be that it has something to do with Miquella's curse. Like the Nascent Butterfly, Miquella is cursed to be always on the cusp of achieving his potential, but never seeing it realized. Given that there is no Age of Abundance/Compassion ending to the DLC, and the only option is to kill Miquella and thwart his schemes, it may be that even when freed from eternal childhood, his curse remained and he never would have been able to truly usher in a new age. Maybe the oracles can sense that. Maybe they manifested in the Haligtree not for Miquella, but for Malenia, the Goddess of Rot.

This interpretation would add to the tragic futility of Miquella's story. After all that he sacrificed, gaining his adult form ended up being the equivalent of a band-aid over a gunshot wound. Sure, he managed to stretch himself out like an eldritch Mike Teavee, but the underlying curse of Nascence remained, ensuring that none of his many schemes would ever bear fruit.

Side note: Wearing the oracle envoy headpiece boosts claymen bubble sorceries, and the claymen are said to be looking for "lost oracles." I wonder if the envoys appeared in the eternal cities before their fall, harbingers of doom announcing the ascension of Marika?

[loxosceleslolo]

The Envoy's Long Horn finally dropped for me this playthrough and I am absolutely going to see what the fuss is all about.

[midorishinobi5]

Celebrating @all-lee24 getting unbanned on Twitter

[nightmaresyrup]

I heard there was supposed to be even smaller Oracle Envoys. Freaky, but sorta cute?

[sir-virtem]

Is better if you think that Miquella wasn't manipulative or anything

[milkybootscomix]

Since I will be stuck in a car driving through the barren hellscape that is central Illinois today, no new fanart Friday. So here is an oldie: my Oracle Envoy! And yes, it is available as a sticker: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1656204456/sticker-doot-doot?ref=share_v4_lx

[dancinbandit]

Toot toot

[bornetoblood]

can you please draw uhm a large oracle envoy

i love these weird little guys

[artnoutdraws]

[2024/04/23] Oracle Envoy

Warm-up sketch: day 5

[alphagravy]

[ouchlord-vivaldi]

Oracle Envoy, Large Oracle Envoy, and Giant Oracle Envoy

[serpent-sister-made-of-yore]

Inktober 2023, day 19. Plump

"The soft bundle worn on the head by Oracle Envoys. Densely wrapped in several layers of cloth. No one knows what the cloth hides, but some claim to have heard a faint whimpering from inside. It must have been their imagination"

[comparativeoracle]

The Deadeye. Art by Jessica Lei Howard, from The Artifacts & Envoys Oracle Deck.

[miquella-everywhere]

Fromsoft forgetting about their base lore of Elden Ring is the least surprising thing to me at this point 😭

By the way

Am I the only one who noticed that there were absolutely no Oracle Envoys at Enir-Ilim despite the fact that Miquella did indeed become a GOD

[rann-poisoncage]

Since bell's hells are facing the whole council of exandria forces, I wonder if we'll see an envoy from the silken squall or Dorian's parents in next episode O_O, while not a force in terms of warfare, their heir was killed and their spare is in the middle of this war.

Also them being oracle kind of explain why they were reluctant for their sons to leave, why not knowing exactly how they might have foreseen it.

I just think it'll be nice to have dorian face directly the death of his brother by facing his parents.

[thatboreddrake]

Okay, bare with me on this one, because I am operating on a grand total of like, two lines of dialogue and a dream: a dream of finally getting a solid-ish number on the Elden Ring Timeline!

So, the first line of dialogue, which Ranni delivers during the cutscene for the Age of Stars ending:

Now cometh the age of the stars. A thousand year voyage under the wisdom of the Moon (emphasis added)

Fine, vague, poetic.

The second line, delivered by Miquella during the fight with Promised Consort Radahn if the player is hit by the grab attack:

"I promise you, a thousand-year voyage guided by compassion."

Now, once is vague, but twice just might mean something. Could it be metaphorical for "this is gonna be a long time"? PROBABLY BUT WHO CARES!

This brings me to my first main point: we have an official time-stamp on how often ages and gods cycle in the Lands Between, presumably. This means that this is a semi-regular phenomenon which could be looked for upon its arrival. Or perhaps, this time of transition is marked by visitors:

It is said that when Oracle Envoys appear playing their pipes, they do so to herald the arrival of a new god, or age.

Anyway, this allows me to slap together a somewhat coherent timeline of events for Elden Ring (effing finally):

The age we will start with is the Age of Dragons, led by Placidusax as Elden Lord (Remembrance of the Dragonlord) with Uhl, the Fire Giant, as the vessel of the Fell God and centered on the power of the Crucible (blatant speculation but its headcanon at this point). In the last few hundred years of the Age of the Crucible, the Hornsent begin to focus their efforts on producing a viable Empyrean to ascend to godhood for the next age. Side note, but this would also be when the denizens of the Eternal Cities were working on their project with the Lord of Night.

Anyway, through one way or another, Marika is chosen by the Fingers to serve as the Greater Will's vessel in the Lands Between after her village is butchered by the Potentates. This is also approximately when a proto-Radagon enters the scene through Empyrean mitosis (Marika severed her desire for order after the death of her family as per the Minor Erdtree incantation). For a time, Marika plays along with the Hornsent, if only to establish her base of power.

Her first stop is at the Eternal Cities, where she attempts to convince the Nox to join with her in the upcoming war against the Fire Giants. The Nox reject her upcoming divinity in favor of their Lord of Night, killing proto-Radagon with the Fingerslayer Blade as a symbol of their rejection. The Greater Will does not stand for this insolence, and sends the Malformed Star Astel to devour their sky and cast them beneath the earth.

Marika then allies with the berserker warlord Hoarah Loux and begins her assault on the Fire Giants of the Mountaintops. After all, their flame would be the one thing that could threaten the Erdtree during her reign. She manages to slay Uhl in battle, and shunts proto-Radagon's soul into his body, thus birthing Radagon as a proper Lord. However, at this point, Marika is diverted from her mission by the First War of the Dragons.

Emboldened by the defeat of Placidusax's god, Bayle the Dread leads his brood of drakes in a direct assault on Farum Azula. To counteract this threat, Placidusax sends the Ancient Dragon Florissax to instruct their erstwhile human allies in the practice of Dragon Communion. Among these, the greatest knight and leader of their order was Theodorix, a troll freed from the Fire Giants during Marika's initial assault. It is during this war that Marika and Radagon bear the kindling twins, Messmer and Melina.

Where Messmer fights on the front lines alongside Radagon and Godfrey, Melina instead takes up tutelage under Maliketh, Marika's Black Blade. After the war is over, and Placidusax has had three of his heads removed, he sees that the age of the dragons has come to a close and moves Farum Azula outside of time to await the return of his god.

Keeping their momentum, Marika and her forces carry on to complete their destruction of the Fire Giants, realize that the flame cannot be put out, and leave a nameless giant in charge of tending the forge. At this point, the time of ascension arrives, and Marika ascends to godhood using Radagon as her Lord catalyst. However, afraid of exposing Radagon's true nature to their followers, Marika instead takes Godfrey as the First Elden Lord, ushering in the Age of Plenty (Blessed Dew Talisman).

With her seat of power established, Marika dispatches her champions to complete their conquest of the Lands Between. Godfrey goes south to Limgrave to do battle with the Storm Lord and the inhabitants of the Weeping Peninsula. Radagon also goes south, but stops in the swamps of Liurnia to challenge the kingdom of sorcerers, who have been united under the rule of one calling herself the Full Moon Empyrean. Messmer, meanwhile, travels back to Belurat to exact vengeance against the Hornsent for their treatment of the shamans. It was this last expedition that was closest to Queen Marika's heart, and thus were they accorded the greatest share of golden grace of any of the Erdtree's armies.

In the ensuing 700 years or so, things proceed as normal. Messmer slaughters the Divine Beasts and burns the country to ashes. Godfrey's conquest of Limgrave nears its conclusion and he sets his eyes towards the Caelid Wilds. Radagon has fought two wars in Liurnia, finally forging an alliance with the House of Caria through his marriage to Rennala. Beneath all this, an old god conspires to put its own Empyrean on the throne.

Per Prince of Death canon (it is canon to me!), Melina is selected as an Empyrean vessel by the Deathbird who pushes her towards rebellion by exposing the injustices perpetrated under Marika's rule. Melina's breaking point is when Marika abandons her own children, the twin Omens Mohg and Morgott, for the sake of keeping up appearances (or so it seems). Taking the moniker of the Gloam-Eyed Queen, Melina marches to Leyndell to cast Marika down from her throne and slay the Elden Beast with black fire.

This rebellion is stopped by Maliketh's timely intervention. He bests his former pupil in combat and, under Marika's orders, seals the Destined Death which gives her flame its deadly bite. It is at this time that the Land of Shadow becomes Shadowed, as Marika fears how Messmer may respond when he discovers that his sister has "died" in a rebellion against their mother. However, Marika's heart is not of stone. She sees anew that which had driven her daughter to such desperate measures, and vows to reexamine the fundamental tenets of the Golden Order.

Remembering what happened to the last civilization to deny the Greater Will, however, Marika banishes Godfrey and his Tarnished warriors from the Lands Between. Should another star come to punish the land, she would not have her beloved caught in the blast zone. Thus ends the Age of Plenty; Marika plucks the very concept of true death from the Elden Ring and the blessings of the Erdtree slowly begin to dry up.

Here, the Ancient Dragon Gransseax sees an opportunity to restore the Ancient Dragons to primacy in the Lands Between and assaults the very walls of Leyndell itself. However, he did not account for the tenacity of humankind, nor the power of Godfrey's son, Godwyn. Godwyn leads Marika's order to victory in this Second War of the Dragons, forging an alliance with the Ancient Dragon Fortissax.

Seeking to keep Marika loyal, the Greater Will recalls Radagon to serve as Elden Lord in Leyndell, threatening his family with true death at the hand of the Black Blade should he refuse. Together, Marika and Radagon usher a new thousand years of history, an Age of Order.

Towards the final quarter of this new age (fully guestimating here), Marika sees that she is running out of time to find a solution to the cycling of ages and gods. Conspiring with her step-daughter Ranni, she plots to use a fragment of Destined Death to sever both herself and Radagon from the Greater Will's control, if only to free them both from the curse of immortality. However, plagued by internal conflict and mistrust, Ranni takes this opportunity to free herself from the machinations of Manus Celes, a Two Fingers serving its own god. Marika is distraught as, rather than severing her own fate, she is instead left to deal with the aftermath of the death of her beloved son, Godwyn.

In a final act of desperation, seeking to end the cycle once and for all, Marika takes up her hammer and shatters the Elden Ring, that which represents order itself. Aghast at her actions, Radagon joins her inside the Erdtree, sealing the entrance using an aberrant sorcery to create a barrier of impenetrable thorns. He sought to repair the damage done to the Elden Ring, but erecting the barrier bled him nearly dry. Seeking to protect its last hope of maintaining control, the Elden Beast fuses Marika and Radagon into one and stuffs the shattered fragments of the Elden Ring into the gaping wound in their side. There, the fused, fractured deity would hang for hundreds of years, until the time for ascension came again, and the envoys arrived once more to herald the arrival of a new lord.