The Shattered Elden Ring Thread: Tarnished Edition - (Shadow of the Erdtree p. 85)

[hanselthecaretaker]

The Elden beast is described as a vassal of the greater will. It's also the thing that became the Elden Ring.

In the ending cutscene, apart from the lord of frenzy and the age of stars, we see the Elden Ring is still inside Marika, and it's implied your character takes it in order to become Elden Lord. In this sense, I would read it less that you killed the Elden beast and more that you subdued and absorbed it, becoming its next vessel.

As for how shitty some of the endings are, I don't think the Greater Will cares. It didn't care about all the people Marika killed, it only cared when she defied it by shattering the Elden Ring. I suspect that's why all the endings where you take the Elden Ring are basically identical. Nothing has fundamentally changed, you're just the new Marika. You can make the world nice or shitty depending on your choices, but you're still a servant of the Greater Will. The source of your power and the order of the world is still the Elden Ring.

Ranni's ending is different presumably because Ranni doesn't have a body, and thus can't become a vessel for the Elden Ring. The frenzied flame ending is different because Marika's body crumbles away completely, implying that the ring, and thus the concept of order, has actually been destroyed. These endings are different because the whole order of the world is fundamentally changed in some way.

Random aside, it's actually a really weird coincidence that I've been writing about the historical concepts of order and chaos lately, because the game uses the word chaos in the premodern sense. When Shabriri says "let chaos take the world", it doesn't mean "let everything be really confusing and random" or "let there be an absence of stable authority", it means "let the world return to the undifferentiated state before creation". This kind of stuff is actually pretty common with the souls series, and why it's really fun to discuss them with academics, because whoever writes and translates them are a bunch of nerds. It's why I never feel bad about reading too much into them.

At one point years ago I recall that Miyazaki had a canon worked out across the Souls titles but even then, much is intentionally left up to personal interpretation. There’s just no way that with multiple endings people would ever universally accept anything as definitive.

Here it is, in a post with the vg247 link to an interview-

Dark Souls 3: Miyazaki explains the difference between "difficult" and "unreasonable"

The Dark Souls creator talks storyline, challenge, character builds and more.

www.vg247.com

 

[Silvanus]

The Elden beast is described as a vassal of the greater will. It's also the thing that became the Elden Ring.

In the ending cutscene, apart from the lord of frenzy and the age of stars, we see the Elden Ring is still inside Marika, and it's implied your character takes it in order to become Elden Lord. In this sense, I would read it less that you killed the Elden beast and more that you subdued and absorbed it, becoming its next vessel.

AFAIK it's just supposition that the Elden Beast became the Elden Ring. If you were merely fulfilling the Greater Will's wishes, its vassal wouldn't be violently trying to stop you.

As for how shitty some of the endings are, I don't think the Greater Will cares. It didn't care about all the people Marika killed, it only cared when she defied it by shattering the Elden Ring. I suspect that's why all the endings where you take the Elden Ring are basically identical. Nothing has fundamentally changed, you're just the new Marika. You can make the world nice or shitty depending on your choices, but you're still a servant of the Greater Will. The source of your power and the order of the world is still the Elden Ring.

Quite a lot fundamentally changes in certain endings, and the Greater Will clearly envisages a certain order for the world, since its gone to enormous lengths to implement that order.

It doesn't care about cruelty or death for humans. But it cares about its preferred order. There's a reason the Dung Eater is said to aim to "defile" the Ring and the order; something isn't described as "defilement" if the subject of it is absolutely fine with it occurring.

 

[BrawlMan]

Patches as a girl.
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[Dalisclock]

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I mean people simp for Malenia and Ranni(oh boy do they simp for Ranni) so yeah.

Also nice job of sounding like patches.

 

[sXeth]

I mean people simp for Malenia and Ranni(oh boy do they simp for Ranni) so yeah.

Also nice job of sounding like patches.

Oh its not just the girls that get the simping lol

 

[Dalisclock]

Oh its not just the girls that get the simping lol

Oh, yes, also that. I didn't want to mention the furry simping for him and Rya,

So anyway, a couple things come to mind about the game after thinkings over it.

-Farum Azula feels weirdly inserted into the game the way it is. It'a basically impossible to see before you get there, except if you happen to go to the isolated divine tower which as far as I can tell is the only place you can see it from the game world. You get hints it exists prior to going there due to the big chunks of ruins all over parts of the map and the mention of a sky temple from some of the item descriptions, however, that doesn't tell you much/

What's honestly wierd is that your journey's focus for a vast majority of the game is to get to the Erdtree. You're pointed at it from the word go and told you need to reach it, you're given some guidance along the way you need two great runes to get into Lyndell(though technically I think you only need to beat Radahn and do the long underground bit to the deeproots depths). Once you finally reach the Erdtree you're told you need to burn the thorns around door and you have to go high into the moutains to the giants forge and only then are you told "Oh, and also go get the rune of death" and you're suddenly teleported to Farum Azula in the sky. IIRC, there's like no build up to this in the main narrative(what little you get anyway), you're just sent there like "Oh, you're not done yet, because we're adding a new goal to the checklist before you can reach the final boss". And Farum Azula seems like it should be rather important to the backstory but there's honestly not a lot of lore about it as it is right now. Which leads me to......

-Farum Azula might be the most ancient place in the entire game world, except for maybe the Eternal Cities which seem to predate the Erdtree or at least the Golden Order. It's a mosleam but possibly also a palace that's tied to beastmen and dragons and both of those are heavily connected the Crucible, which the Golden Order seems to be constantly trying to sweep under the rug. Then you have this gem.

Credit:
The one of the right is the Elden Ring we see on the title screen and the one the runes are derive from. The one on the left, however, is the one from Farum Azula and is implied to be much more ancient, seems to have several more runes and a hell of a lot of roots. But there's no Rune Arc at the bottom, Radagan's lattice is missing and it looks far more organic. Which makes me wonder what the fuck happened to the original Elden Ring and where did the other runes go?

 

[Dalisclock]

-On a Related note to that, the Divine Towers form a circle around the interior sea in the center of the map. Each of them seems to be associated with a rune, but you run into the weirdness that Miqualla doesn't have a rune shown(though presumably it would be connected to Malenia's tower and rune) and Morgott and Mohg both have their runes connected to the same tower. Ranni's Rune, OTOH, is implied to be on the moon. But if the OG Elden Ring clearly seems to have more runes, then shouldn't there be more Divine Towers to connect to them? Were there more towers in the past? Were the present towers only constructed after the current Elden Ring was formed? Are the Towers connected to Farum Azula in some way? And why is every pair of two fingers at the top of each tower dead when we find them? Or do they only die when their associated demi-god is slain, as you can't seem to access the towers prior to killing the demi-god and getting the rune?

And why are there apparently so many more finger readers then two fingers? The only ones you see actually directly serving the fingers are in the round table hold, while the rest are either hanging out in the middle of nowhere being creepy and begging to read a tarnished fingers(GET AWAY FROM ME YOU CRONE!) or dead near the Queen's Bedchamber just shy of the Elden Throne, so were there once far more fingers in the past?

-Finally, speaking of maidens, it's interesting how not only do you seem to be the only tarnished who didn't get one(Melina only "plays the part" as she says), though suspiciously there's a dead one in the very room you start the game in. It's implied she was killed and just left there, though by whom and why is a mystery And for that matter, we don't seem to really find out what finger maidens are meant to do. Nobody else you talk to seems to have one, or at least, that that I saw. Apparently Vyke killed his, and none of the other tarnished so much as mention one at all. I know that on a meta level they're basically the games version of the fire keeper/maiden in black or the plain doll but within the Lands Between I'm not sure exactly what was meant to happen there.

And just how you get from the Chapel of Anticipation, which is on an isolated cliff out in the sea and can't easily be reached from anywhere, to the place you wake up after you inevitably die there, either from Spider McGee or falling to your death? There's not terribly far but they also aren't terribly close to each other either. You just seem to teleport there with no real way to do so.

 

[sXeth]

I mean, late game areas that either feel rushed and oddly inserted into the narrative are nothing new for the series. Jump back one step and Dark Souls 3 has Dragon Mountain being just a random idea seemingly tossed on. And the mirror Firelink zone feels like it should be important but lacks much buildup. (Of course Elden Ring has its own mirror roundtable, but we never get a whole lot on what the Roundtable we use is, but would seem equally timey wimey)


Placidusax is a former Elden Lord per his descriptions, and his presence in Farum Azula would probably tie him into there. Which already means Marika and Radagon were not the originals. Both Dragons and/or Beastmen presumably had their own variations of the Elden Ring. The changing runes, well, you can literally pick and choose which runes you want to use in "your" Elden Ring in the course of the game. Seemingly indicating it is wholly mutable and up to the whims of whomever last assembled it or is currently in possession of it.


Based on cut content, Miquella was probably the rune of sleep or dreams. Malena(? the level up girl, god the names are aweful) (and/or possibly Ranni) seems likely to have been created/birthed by Marika and Radagon potentially to bear the Destined Death rune when she took it out. Became the Gloam Eyed Queen so then Maliketh had to go shut that down and he became the keeper of that rune. Maliketh not being a proper demigod or elden lord probably reslting in his state we encoutner him in as *spoiler*

 

[BrawlMan]

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[Dalisclock]

Eeep

 

[SilentPony]

I've been getting back into this one. I was exploring like this lake area with giant lobsters and weird skeleton monsters, and BOOM! Giant death chicken boss fight out of nowhere. It was fun and unexpected!
Then later I was bullying all these poor claymation dudes in a town and there was a dude just standing by a fire, and I thought "Oh I'll sneak up on him and get a backstab. He sees me and BOOM! OmenCutter boss! And it was great! These surprise bosses just kinda in places is great.

 

[sXeth]

I've been getting back into this one. I was exploring like this lake area with giant lobsters and weird skeleton monsters, and BOOM! Giant death chicken boss fight out of nowhere. It was fun and unexpected!
Then later I was bullying all these poor claymation dudes in a town and there was a dude just standing by a fire, and I thought "Oh I'll sneak up on him and get a backstab. He sees me and BOOM! OmenCutter boss! And it was great! These surprise bosses just kinda in places is great.

Well, Omen Killer has a point to being there. Its just incredibly easy to be there out of order with the questline that would explain whats going on in that village (btw, if you didn't find someone to talk to there, you might want to go back and look for something out of place).


The other one sounds like Death Bird's, which show up 5 or 6 times (in two variations)

 

[SilentPony]

Well, Omen Killer has a point to being there. Its just incredibly easy to be there out of order with the questline that would explain whats going on in that village (btw, if you didn't find someone to talk to there, you might want to go back and look for something out of place).


The other one sounds like Death Bird's, which show up 5 or 6 times (in two variations)

Oh I found the dude pretending to be a pot. I just have no idea what he's on about. He's like Papa Smurf and this is Smurf Village and all the Smurf has gone out of Smurf Village and all the Smurfs have forgotten when it means to Smurf.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I've been getting back into this one. I was exploring like this lake area with giant lobsters and weird skeleton monsters, and BOOM! Giant death chicken boss fight out of nowhere. It was fun and unexpected!
Then later I was bullying all these poor claymation dudes in a town and there was a dude just standing by a fire, and I thought "Oh I'll sneak up on him and get a backstab. He sees me and BOOM! OmenCutter boss! And it was great! These surprise bosses just kinda in places is great.

It’s also neat powerstancing the omen killer cleavers. With proper infusions they yield major unga bunga feels if you’re into that kinda build.

 

[sXeth]

Oh I found the dude pretending to be a pot. I just have no idea what he's on about. He's like Papa Smurf and this is Smurf Village and all the Smurf has gone out of Smurf Village and all the Smurfs have forgotten when it means to Smurf.

Mostly he gives you something important. So yeah.

I mean, you can find context for that whole village scenario, but you have to have done things in a specific order and if you didn't patch the game first it may not even have occurred because it was a quest they "fixed", in quotations cause it barely tracks without using a wiki.

 

[SilentPony]

Mostly he gives you something important. So yeah.

I mean, you can find context for that whole village scenario, but you have to have done things in a specific order and if you didn't patch the game first it may not even have occurred because it was a quest they "fixed", in quotations cause it barely tracks without using a wiki.

See I was looking for a necklace. Some blind chick, and I don't think I've met a woman who wasn't blind, probably some weird Japanese fetish thing, wanted me to find her necklace that some mook stole. She said it was down at the end of the lake in a house. So I went to the end of the lake, found a bunch of houses, no necklace.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

See I was looking for a necklace. Some blind chick, and I don't think I've met a woman who wasn't blind, probably some weird Japanese fetish thing, wanted me to find her necklace that some mook stole. She said it was down at the end of the lake in a house. So I went to the end of the lake, found a bunch of houses, no necklace.

IIRC it’s kind of an isolated shack with a merchant there who will sell you it back. Yes, you could just kill him but it’ll naturally lock you out of his own quest.

 

[sXeth]

See I was looking for a necklace. Some blind chick, and I don't think I've met a woman who wasn't blind, probably some weird Japanese fetish thing, wanted me to find her necklace that some mook stole. She said it was down at the end of the lake in a house. So I went to the end of the lake, found a bunch of houses, no necklace.

Yeah if you want the general gist of it

- Talk to Nepheli Loux in Stormveil castle
- Summon her and beat Godrick
- Talk to Gideon Ofnir and Nepheli as much as you can in Roundtable
- Visit the village and talk to Nephelia and old dude
- Old dude is crap at directions but you already found the girl albinauric
- The grumpy british man boiling prawns at a shack in the mid south of the swamp has her necklace
- Then she'll join you

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Yeah if you want the general gist of it

- Talk to Nepheli Loux in Stormveil castle
- Summon her and beat Godrick
- Talk to Gideon Ofnir and Nepheli as much as you can in Roundtable
- Visit the village and talk to Nephelia and old dude
- Old dude is crap at directions but you already found the girl albinauric
- The grumpy british man boiling prawns at a shack in the mid south of the swamp has her necklace
- Then she'll join you

Does Nepheli’s quest intersect with Rya’s quest at some point? I thought this was only about the necklace and not the potion.

 

[sXeth]

Does Nepheli’s quest intersect with Rya’s quest at some point? I thought this was only about the necklace and not the potion.

OH right, I'm mixing up random girls in the swamp that want you to find things.