#servants of rot also themselves have a low chance to drop serpent arrows

[arx-aru]

ok so. Both dungeons with Cleanrot Knights as bosses have 2 interesting quirks in common:

the "goons" (theoretically)protecting them are Servants of Rot and Miranda Flowers

there are items & casualties explicitly related to Rykard

From these we can speculatively-tentatively-theoretically extrapolate a few things:

a. Due to item descriptions associated with Servants of Rot, the present Malenia-Miquellan inhabitants of these caves arrived after the Battle of Aeonia, or were infected/indoctrinated by survivors of it

b. The placement of the Servants of Rot in relation to the boss!Cleanrots suggests they either view themselves as or are aligned with the Cleanrot Knights, presumably in a subordinate fashion

c. The cave in Caelid(Abandoned Cave) is littered with destroyed (Rykardian)Iron Virgins; the one in Liurnia(Stillwater Cave) has an outlying room filled with corpses, one being a Sage(wearing the same attire as Gowry) and another having seemingly been shot by Serpent Arrows... this translates to, most likely, the Miquellans and Rykardians having fought each-other at these locations

(The Serpent Arrows and Serpent Bow(found next to a derelict Iron Virgin) are both explicitly tools(or 'minions'??) of the Formless Serpents, connected with the Serpent Worshippers of Mt. Gelmir)

with another round of speculation telephone these dungeons, presumably 2 of the most thought-out Cleanrot encounters, seem to serve as suggestion of 1) a direct relationship between the Cleanrots and the Servants of Rot, 2) multiple post-Aeonia Miquellan-Rykardian skirmishes, 3) the loose, Doylist drawing of a parallel/comparison/contrast of some variety between Serpent pagans and Rot pagans