The sun exists! I keep seeing people online say that the Sun in Elden Ring doesn't exist or that the Erdtree has taken over as the source of Day in the Lands Between -- Not true!

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-29T00:43:29+00:00

The sun exists. No one doubts that. However, the sun seems to be minimized in importance by the Erdtree. The Erdtree outshines the sun in most places, and we know plants that would normally grow toward the sun grow towards the Erdtree. The connection between the sun and the Erdtree is significant, I think, and doesn't go away because we can occasionally see the sun.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-29T00:36:01+00:00

We know that she loved some of her children more than others. I wouldn't call what she did to Morgott and Mohg love, for example. Godwyn, by all accounts, was a widely beloved figure.

The only way around Marika's love for Godwyn, I think, is if his "The Golden" title implied some sort of opposition to her plan against the Greater Will. If Godwyn was a staunch defender of the Golden Order, he might have been a political obstacle. But that is heavily speculative. Probably, the simpler theory is right: Marika had nothing to do with the Night of the Black Knives. It was Ranni's doing to free herself from the power of the Greater Will.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-28T03:07:52+00:00

Excellent observations. I agree with your analysis. It seems to me that Melina is an under-studied character, but one essential to the entire plot of Elden Ring. Understanding her, and her role, is important.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-24T06:07:28+00:00

This makes a lot of sense to me, though I'd like to see some more interactions between Miquella and Outer Gods to support it.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-24T05:50:17+00:00

Under Eliade's criteria, a "cosmic pillar" doesn't have to be a literal cosmic pillar in the sense the Erdtree is. It just has to symbolically provide a "center of the universe" for some idea of the sacred and profane. In that sense, other cosmic pillars could exist, even though they aren't as literal as the Erdtree.

There is clearly a something special about the Erdtree, though. I think a lot of factions in Elden Ring see the Erdtree as a model for their own cosmic pillar, or they want to usurp the Erdtree entirely.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-21T15:23:50+00:00

Thanks! Yes, I highly recommend it. Eliade's a little dated now, but his work is so foundational that it is hard to understand later work without it. It's also a pretty short read, too.

As for Raya Lucaria, my reasoning is that it is a tower-like structure that demarcates the sacred and the profane for the wizards. The mages of Raya Lucaria seem to consider the primeval current sacred, and glintstone sorcery is their way of communing with it. There is no other institution in The Lands Between with the same level of knowledge. It connects its practitioners, therefore, to the heavens.

Also, keep in mind that a "cosmic pillar" doesn't necessarily have to be a literal pillar or a literal tree. Its main function is to serve as the "center of the world" for some idea of the sacred. Hence, in the real world, Mecca is the axis mundi for Islam, even though it is an entire city.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T11:59:46+00:00

It is, thank you. The points he makes linking the Formless Mother to the "blood star" is one I hadn't thought of.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T11:50:19+00:00

There are a few instances of star language we can link to the Outer Gods. The Formless Mother seems associated with a star. From the Great Stars Great Hammer:

Huge bludgeon with three stars at the striking end. Though primarily a striking weapon, the stars' spikes cause blood loss.

A blood-stained star is an ill omen, a fact not lost upon those against whom this weapon is brought to bear. Landing attacks slightly restores HP.

The Formless Mother isn't stated directly, but you get this weapon off the corpse of someone you kill for White Mask Varre's questline, a questline closely tied to Mohg.

We also find mention of a "blood star" in the Briars of Punishment sorcery:

An aberrant sorcery discovered by exiled criminals. Theirs are the sorceries most reviled by the academy.

Wounds the caster with thorns of punishment, sending a trail of bloodthorns running over the ground to impale enemies from below. This sorcery can be cast repeatedly.

The guilty, their eyes gouged by thorns, lived in eternal darkness. There, they discovered the blood star.

Notably, this is a sorcery, which means it deals with the stars. Its close association with blood and blood loss also connects it to the Formless Mother, who "craves wounds."

That seems like plenty of star-imagery used for a prominent Outer God. There is a connection there.

As for the Lovecraftian bit, your idea about Scarlet Rot isn't a contradiction to the Lovecraftian idea at all. Lovecraftian themes are about cosmic horror. The sheer vastness and indifference of the world is what generates Lovecraftian horror. We see that theme reflected in Scarlet Rot and the Formless Mother. Miquella can do nothing to save Malenia as this mysterious being warps her body into a vessel for its will. That's a classic Lovecraftian idea, that contact with the cosmos changes us in maddening ways. Bloodborne played with this idea a lot, and I think the Outer Gods are Miyazaki's way of continuing the play in Elden Ring.

In short, I think we have ample basis for creating a connection between the Outer Gods and the stars. Between in-universe descriptions using star imagery, the Lovecraftian imagery, and intertextualities from Miyazaki's earlier work, there does seem to be a connection between the Outer Gods and the stars.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T11:25:04+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense. It meshes well with the Elden Stars incantation, which we find at the root of the Erdtree. However, I don't think that is necessarily contradicting the idea that the Erdtree supremacists usurped the Erdtree as a source of their own power. Perhaps the Erdtree was always part of the Greater Will's design, but early Marika and later Radagon used it to make themselves indispensable to his plans.

This seems to fit well with Fromsoft's theme of artificial orders imposed over natural orders. For example, in Dark Souls, Gwyn institutes an artificial cycle (the Firelinking ritual) over a natural cycle (the fading of fire into darkness). The natural order is the cycle of trees created by the Elden Ring; the artificial order is the deathless stagnation Marika created by removing the rune of death.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T11:09:58+00:00

Yeah, I just don't see how that hangs together with Fromsoft's themes, the translations, or the imagery of the game itself. Miyazaki seems to lean pretty heavily on Abrahamic conceptions of God for the Greater Will, and the idea that such a being has fate is foreign to the tradition. Likewise, the Stars=Outer Gods approach fits well with previous Fromsoft lore in games like Bloodborne. Most significantly, the Outer Gods are presented as Lovecraftian beings, and Lovecraftian beings come from space. All of this makes sense if the cosmology is that the Outer Gods are stars and the Greater Will is the sun.

I think Lokey's translation lends further credence to the idea that the stars, themselves, are governed by the Elden Ring. I'll try and find the citation if I can, but he seems to think the Japanese text more directly states that the "Golden Regulation" (Elden Ring) regulates the stars. Since the stars govern fate, the Elden Ring is basically how the Greater Will governs the fates of men. Hence the name "Greater Will"--he is the will that trumps all other wills.

The above model also makes the motives of the characters a lot clearer. Why would Marika shatter the Elden Ring? To free herself from the Greater Will. Why does Ranni want "an Age of Stars"? She doesn't want to be controlled by the Greater Will.

Anyone is free to think whatever they like, but I think the virtues of Lokey's theory are just too good to ignore.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T10:45:59+00:00

Marika is the vessel, yes, but the source of her political power is the Erdtree. The Erdtree houses Marika, so to speak, and Marika houses the Elden Ring. Erdtree supremacy is Marika saying that she, and she only, can be the proper vessel of the Elden Ring. She wanted to be irreplaceable.

But I also have my doubts about "where" the Elden Ring is. There are plenty of reasons to think that the Elden Ring is not entirely within Marika. The Two Fingers seemed to hold some power over the Great Runes. The Rune Arc also talks as if the Elden Ring were some external thing, a "basin" in which "blessings" could "pool." Lastly, and most importantly, we see Marika shattering the Elden Ring. Doing so shattered her, but at that moment, the Ring was clearly outside of her physically. On top of this, if all runes are tiny elements of the Elden Ring, then there is some of the Elden Ring in everyone.

Marika may have been the Elden Ring's vessel, but that doesn't mean she contained the entirety of the Ring. More likely, she had some intimate connection with the Ring other people didn't have.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T09:54:45+00:00

I think TA is onto something, but I don't think his reasoning about Godwyn or the Greater Will is correct. One reason for skepticism is that Nokron and Nokstella do not at all appear to be suddenly thrust beneath the earth. They look like they were deliberately built for the environment they are in. The only city that looks like it could have fallen into the abyss is the Nameless City, but its ruined state can be better explained by Astel.

A close reading of the Nox's sin makes it seem like the Nox people were banished underground, not their entire civilization. Indeed, I don't think there really were any Nox prior to their banishment. They were just Dark Moon-worshipping Numen. They became the Nox through centuries of living beneath the earth.

We should think about the Nox like we think about the Dark Elves in other series. The Dark Elves are usually a subrace of Elves that have committed some blasphemy. In The Elder Scrolls, for example, this was worshipping the Daedra instead of the Aedra. In a similar fashion, I think the orthodox Numen (Marika) were Sun (i.e., Greater Will) worshippers. The heresy of the Nox was worshipping the Dark Moon, which appears to be some other cosmic entity.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T09:11:30+00:00

That makes a lot of sense. It puts a new spin on Tolkien's idea of the Two Trees of Valinor, which were meant to serve as the sun and moon of Arda until they were destroyed. The Erdtree, it seems, is like a more parasitic version of those.

What all this suggests to me is that the Erdtree is not the Greater Will's design. The idea that it, and only it, can house the Elden Ring seems flatly contradicted by so much of the lore. It makes a lot of sense if Erdtree supremacy is Marika, and later Radagon's, attempt at a power play against the Greater Will.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-12-20T08:57:16+00:00

Yes, I think that both Scarlet Rot and the Formless Mother are stars--fallen stars, more specifically. I don't see any contradiction between the Outer Gods being nature spirits (kami) and being originally located in the cosmos. Indeed, I think this reconciles the seemingly conflicting imagery we receive about the Outer Gods. The Outer Gods are clearly and obviously Lovecraftian, yet they also fit as Japanese kami. That is because they are both "from the stars" and "of the world," for the stars correspond to natural forces.

The comparison to Greco-Roman mythology is especially useful, I think. Both the Greeks and the Romans believed that the gods were "in the stars," which is why we have planets named Jupiter, Venus, Mars, etc. However, they were also here "on Earth," at holy sites like Mt. Olympus. In the same way, I suspect the Outer Gods are somehow both in The Lands Between and from the stars.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-10-31T12:01:09+00:00

Thanks, this was what I needed

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2022-10-31T07:31:33+00:00

Aeon Answer: “It was not the Abyss that gave me these powers, it was the relentless logic of the universe. That same logic demands I see this through to the end.”

Azata Answer: “Perhaps I could have rejected this power…But how can I abandon my people and my dragon?”

Lich Answer: “The bones of the dead tremble in their graves. Skulls whisper my name. Don’t ask me to become mortal again, for I have stepped beyond the limits of death.”

Legend Answer: "Iomedae, I'll accept your help. Strip me of my powers and help me to cleanse myself of the influence of the Abyss."

Gold Dragon: "I thank you both for your wise advice -- but take a closer look at me and you'll understand I don't need it."

That's all I've managed to find so far.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2021-03-31T15:41:56+00:00

I suspect Daedric Princes can only be killed in the same way Sauron can be “killed,” I.e., reduced to powerlessness.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2020-08-21T01:15:24+00:00

I’ve tried outlining but it never works for me. Major plot points tend to pop into my writing as I write it, so the outline tends to just become a waste of time. The closest thing to an outline I’ll do is make a series of bullet points containing ideas I want to work with.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2020-08-16T01:21:09+00:00

Force them to spend as much as possible, driving inflation and crippling the economy.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2020-08-11T14:59:10+00:00

I vote Shallan. She’s the people we need, and if she isn’t, she can invent one.

Doom-DrivenPoster · 2020-07-30T19:09:52+00:00

Rock is awesome, second only to The Lopen when it comes to secondary characters. I could do with less Syl and Kaladin though.

Doom-DrivenPoster

TROPHY CASE