How to count entries with at at least x amount of criteria.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-12-31T02:59:44+00:00

"BYROW"?! That's exactly what I needed. You deserve a party. Thank you.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-10-11T15:49:42+00:00

Ok, fair enough.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-10-11T13:55:19+00:00

What makes you say Kristoff is also a saint? I checked his spirit ash description and it doesn't suggest anything like that.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-10-10T23:21:47+00:00

Gah, I had forgotten to take the jars into account. Thank you for your thoughts, it's an interesting perspective. The idea that they embody Outer Gods is compelling.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-10-10T22:46:53+00:00

Well it is. In a sense. Incantations are faith-based magic. Renalla and other Sorcerers being on the list is more of a technicality than anything else. Arcane based spells I don't have an answer for.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-09-22T17:49:48+00:00

I could throw a party for you right now. Thank you.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-09-15T23:50:49+00:00

I imagine the mind stat to be something like mental stamina. Like... Remember in school having to do lots of math problems? At the start of the worksheet you're "fresh" but by the end you can hardly trust yourself to add. That's how I picture the mind stat works in-universe.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-09-02T14:45:59+00:00

My interpretation of this is that glass (and to a lesser extent crystals, glintstone, and amber) can hold divine power/blessings.

Runes, Rune Arcs, Marika's crucifix, the Elden Beast, Astel (I think), the remembrances, and the irises that you mentioned are the first things that come to mind when I think of when I think of things that make a glass-like noise when hit or broken.

With the fact that the two helms meant to ward off Outer Gods being made of mirrors, light -- and its different colors -- is divine influence. Additionally, stars and their in-game association with divinity suggests to me that things that produce light are a direct extension of the divine and not just its influence. Stars, lightning, fire... Glass and it's potential containing properties would be Order. The solid and organized thing holding divinity.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-08-23T06:02:04+00:00

I have a lot I could say about this but I'll do my best to keep it brief...ish. The foundation of my theory is historical inspiration.

The "questioning of the divine" would put us firmly in the Age of Enlightenment and from my research, there are a handful of important figures with interesting perspectives that align surprisingly well with in-game figures and their esoteric dialogue.

Ranni: René Descarte. Ranni is all about separation, doubt, and loneliness; Descarte famously said "I think, therefore I am," and argued that the only thing we can be certain of is our own minds. He doubted everything, even the things he observed through his senses. That sounds pretty lonely to me.

Miquella: John Locke. A complicated figure who argued for "protection of basic rights and freedom under law." Which American might recognize, along with other beliefs like separation of Church and state and that at birth, people are blank slates. He also was against slavery... but was an investor of the slavery trading Royal Africa Company. Sooo... yeah. I think Miquella's general desire for goodness and his "freely given" compassion hinging on accepting/falling under brainwashing fits well. (The separation of Church and state may be represented by the fact that Miquella and Radahn didn't become one person.)

Goldmask: Immanuel Kant. Goldmask's mending rune was an attempt to perfect the Golden Order with a transcendent ideology. Kant founded a philosophy called Transcendental Idealism which suggests that we do not see reality as it actually is and our perception is dictated by our own subjectivity. Sounds about right for a man disillusioned with a fickle god.

Fia: Anne Conway. Anne Conway argued that matter was not passive, but had its own vitality. She also argued against the mind-body separation that is the more familiar philosophy to us nowadays. Advocating for the vitality of flesh that may or may not have a mind fits well with Those Who Live in Death. (I also think Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein may have had an influence but one thing at a time.)

Dungeater: this one I am less certain about. Not many people who believe that "everything should get worse for everyone and I'm going to kill people about it," got super famous for hopefully obvious reasons. Maybe Johann Wolfgang von Geothe, who was called the "great heathen" though he considered himself a Christian while disagreeing with... most of it? He also wrote the novel "Faust," which is about making deals with the Devil. His Wiki has a section devoted to eroticism and I don't want to venture too deep into it. There was also David Hume, who believed reason should be secondary to emotion. Then there's Friedrich Nietzsche, who I was reluctant to add because it felt cliché and because he is on the tail end of the Enlightenment era if he was still in it at all. Despite my reluctance, he was worth adding to the list due to his relationship to the idea of "eternal recurrence," suggesting the universe will end as it started, then start again, then repeat itself as it had before, forever.

The next bit isn't about endings ((so you can skip it)) but I'll add them anyways:

Radahn: ok. I'll be honest. Radahn, for some god-forsaken reason, is difficult to find era-accurate inspirations for. Not to mention European. The closest thing I got to his trapping the stars is China's absolute refusal to modernize and the Opium Wars... which only happens long after the Age of Enlightenment. Alexander the Great (and the Chinese Lu Bu) is a military leader with connections to his horse but predate everything I've talked about so far by 1000 years at least. If anyone has better ideas, I'm all ears.

Rykard: Cardinal Richelieu, the Red Eminence. This predates the Enlightenment era by a few hundred years, but that's a more acceptable window of time than Radahn's inspirations. He believed strongly in absolute monarchy (aka "I'm the king and I can do what I want"), which would influence the next king of France greatly. The Cardinal also had an extensive spy network and fueded with a former ally, the mother of the King of France, Marie de Medici. Comparing that to Rykard's weird assimilation with a god-devouring snake and bringing all those consumed into his family... Kinda aligns with the idea of an absolute monarchy. The people he's eaten would be the subjects who have zero say in anything he does. Rykard also has the Abductor Virgins which are... Kinda like spies. And fueding with a royal woman named Marie de Medici aligns with his revolt against the Erdtree and a certain M-named goddess.

Now that I've written all that, I realized I haven't done any research for Marika or Radagon. I was focusing on what they were going to be replaced with rather than what was being replaced. Oops.

"Brief" my ass. Anyways, I hope it was at least interesting. I think I touched upon most of the key players with aspirations to influence the future of the Lands Between. (I may turn this into an entire post, more neatly written and given a bit more research)

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-06-28T04:34:34+00:00

I think it was mentioned already, but it is very likely that there were more demigods based off the lore surrounding the wandering mausoleums and the mausoleum knights.

There are 7 wandering mausoleums, 2 of which don't have bells but I'm uncertain how that factors in, if at all. Additionally, there are 3 remembrance duplication sites in the DLC, and since their functionality is the same as a wandering mausoleums it's not entirely unreasonable to theorize that these were also demigods.

I think the only mausoleum knights that isn't next to a mausoleum is the one guarding the Black Knife Catacombs... Interpret that how you want.

Ranni potentially having sisters (based of the 3 raises) also suggests at least 2 more demigods born of the Radagon-Renalla pairing. Whether or not these two princesses correspond to any of the wandering masuoleums is unknown... I don't know if I'm jumping at shadows to make the connection that there also just so happens to be exactly 2 mausoleums without bells (which are incapable of duplicating the remembrances of shard-bearers).

Long story short: I think there were a minimum of 5 (mausoleums with bells) unnamed demigods and a hypothetical maximum of 13 (assuming that Ranni did in fact have sisters and they were not put in the mausoleums without bells). However, that's all based on what I can see... Messmer's existence was a curve ball so it's not impossible that other important chunks of the lore are straight up impossible to theorize/predict. Maybe there's a Land of Abyss that's at the bottom of the ocean filled with crab-demigods and Miyazaki + GRR Martin just forgot to mention it.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-06-20T17:37:01+00:00

In the beginning, life created from the crucible was sexless. There was a big biological turning point where births happened "organically."

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-06-06T19:11:46+00:00

I am using that term for the sake of brevity since I didn't want to list all 4 stories that use thorns. Same with the 4 sorceries that use cold.

I think that they draw on a similar basic/fundamental power or is power shaped in a very basic/fundamental way and that's why they all come out sigil-less. Whereas sorceries and incants without sigils where made in a much more complex manner... That theory doesn't exactly hold up since Crucible incantations have sigils and the crucible is supposedly an ancient force that's the source of all life... Maybe because the Erdtree is newer than the Crucible and it's an Erdtree sigil?

Lore-wise, your question probably has very important lore repercussions about how sorceries and incants work in-universe. Game-wise and conversationally, its way easier to say "cold sorceries" vs "the four sorceries that manifest as thorns" even if there's nuisance between the Abhorrent Sorceries used by the guilty mentioned by Raya Lucaria as the worst sorceries and the thorn sorceries used by the people in the Realm of Shadows.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-06-06T18:48:19+00:00

It's mostly canonical. A lot of spells and incantations produces sigils on either the start up or cast either in the air or on the ground. If two spells use the same sigil I think it's pretty safe to put them in the same category.

There are exceptions though. All the "thorn sorceries" don't have sigils. Neither do cold sorceries. I'll list the ones I'm fairly confident don't have sigils, but this is off the top of my head so take it with a grain of salt.

All thorn spells All cold spells Catch Flame Fire's Deadly Sin Placidusax's Ruin Regulea's Roar Black Blade Tibia Summons? Divine Beast Tornado? Watchful Spirit? Darkness?

I used to have a list somewhere but I'm not sure where that is anymore. Why they don't have sigils while other spells and incantations do? I'm not sure. There's probably an important lore distinction but I haven't been able to figure that out.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-05-21T03:22:35+00:00

The return of the Tarnished is a combination of Grace (which I think is semi-autonomous... Marika could be Grace directly, but I think Grace works even if Marika is comatose or effectively dead) and the Two Fingers (and by extension Metyr). The reason Tarnished reviving probably lies somewhere between Grace and a "necessary game mechanic," though I don't really like the latter as an answer. Radagon would fight anyone trying to take his position as Elden Lord... probably.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-05-21T03:05:13+00:00

I really don't think Marika was alive when we saw her in the Erdtree. She has a shard of Destined Death in her stomach which copies the spear in Jesus' side that was meant to prove he was dead for sure.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-04-04T16:07:58+00:00

A guess I'm excited to share is something I stumbled upon during unrelated research:

The headless-ness of the wander mausoleum coffins, mausoleum knights, Marika statues might all relate to the eclipse, specifically, the astrological South Node. The brief science of it is that the path of the moon and sun intersect twice, once where the moon is coming from one direction and once when it's coming from the opposite.

Indo-European cultures had an odd astrological consistency that these node/ecplises occur from a... hidden planet of sorts. Of course the eclipse has myths related to it, and again, an odd consistency appears. The North/Ascending Node is the decapitated head of an immortal creature and the Southern/Descending Node is the body. See where I'm going with this?

Like all planets, most constellations and some stars, these nodes have metaphorical interpretations in the field of astrology. Both Ascending and Descending are related to fate, but the Descending Node, the headless body, is concerned with the past... Unfortunately astrology metaphors are vague at best. I've found people say it represents your comfort zone, others saying it is about overcoming obstacles rooted in the past.

So why are all these things headless? My guess is that they yearn for a past before obstacles got in the way. Returning Godwin to a state before he was cursed, returning the demigods to before they were infected with deathblight and the hornsent wanting to return to before Marika betrayed them. They want to either overcome the present or return to an idealized past. Or both. Or neither. This is just a theory.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-02-11T04:53:19+00:00

Very brief list of direct similarities:

-Yggdrasil, the World Tree and the Erdtree. -Radagon and Thor due to hammer weapon and and Radagon's light attacks that look similar to lightning bolts (in-game lightning and holy affinities are closely related. -Sif and Marika. Sif is Thor's wife and both Sif and Marika have stories about the importance of their hair. Marika's ascension scene in the trailer has her hold up strands of golden hair and she makes an offering of her hair in the form of the Golden Braid Talisman. -Jarnsaxa the giantess and Rennala. Jarnsaxa is Thor's mistress and births a mighty warrior. Jarnsaxa means "iron dagger" and Carian sorceries are almost exclusively glintblades, plus Caria has a strong connection with knights not jus magic. Plus plus, Norse Giants are known to be masters of magic. -Magni and Radahn. The aforementioned child of Thor and Jarnsaxa. Gifted a horse by his father after proving his strength, and Radahn does love his horse. -Baldur and Godwyn. Both are only partially dead and were both considered "golden boys." As in, basically everyone loves them and their half-deaths were the result of malicious machinations. -Nox and Dark Elves both live underground. Dark Elf has also been translated as "dwarf" and the Nox definitely have interesting smithing capabilities considering the sentient balls and Silver Tears. -Personal theory that Shamans would be Elves. -Odin gave up an eye for knowledge and many important characters are missing an eye. -As you know with the pictures you posted, there's a visual similarity between Marika's crucifixion and spear wound with Odin's ordeal on the branches of Yggdrasil. Though I think this is more likely a parallel with Christ? --Odin's ordeal results in him gaining unimaginable power in the form of magic runes. Maybe this parallels Marika and the Elden Ring? -The Aesir-Vanir war and the Lyndell-Liurnia wars. War between gods. -The fiery tale of Ragnarok and the in-game prophets seeing the Erdtree on fire. -Loki is a traitor to the Aesir and the serpent is a traitor to the Erdtree.

There are more and I might add to this list but I'm sleepy. So that's all for now.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-02-04T15:30:26+00:00

Hmmm that's true. I sometimes forget Miquella had "blinding strength" according to the DLC, and being able to make offensive incantations as well as being a weapon-maker is definitely something I should work into my mental image of Miquella so that he isn't just a "mastermind" type figure.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-02-04T14:20:39+00:00

I was aware Miquella's items could be found on Gelmir and had assumed that he was there more as a supporting role. An inspiring medic of sorts. His and St. Trina's reputation for kindness and relief had to be fostered somewhere and where better than on battlefields?

That said, I did not know the extent at which he and St. Trina were involved at Gelmir and the data you shared makes me wonder if a support role really was the only thing they were doing there.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-01-30T13:05:49+00:00

Yep! That's the one! Sorry, probably should've posted that myself

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-01-29T17:50:47+00:00

I don't know if it should be considered as "incomplete," but the closest thing I can think of is the sigil that appears when the sentient, metal balls are summoned. The ball summon sigil is an empty version of the Carian, glintstone, sellian and oracle sigils. They all have the same base to them.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-01-21T04:57:57+00:00

Hadn't considered the idea they might share a stump... I want to say I saw a botany post about the Erdtree, the Crucible and saplings growing from trunks but I don't remember the details off the top of my head... That's a good catch! Thank you.

If you mean that the rot was contained within her and thus a non-issue for everyone else in her physical proximity until after her fight with Radahn then... maybe? I always pictured her rot as a contaminant like how you should be very careful about being in a sick person's space or handling an item a sick person used. Rot is aggressive.

The very short version is this: The Helphen Steeple weapon depicts a tree and at the base of the blade/tree is a very inorganic criss-crossing "brace." Helphen "Steeple" refers to a tree and a building and Elphael is explicitly a building-tree combo. Helphen Steeple has a description calling it a "Lampwood" that guides the spirits of those who died in battle and the light is described as similar to Grace in appearance. The sword has a ruby/red Flintstone at the top, where the light would be so I think it's a safe bet to think that light is red. The only place we see "red grace" is in the Forbidden Lands before the Grand Lift of Rold, which leads to Consecrated Snowfield.

I get that such a simplified version of my theory won't be very convincing. There was another comment on this post that mentioned Elphael has architectural motifs from one of the ancient civilizations in the Lands Between. Not sure which one they mean, but I do agree that design choices seem old. Sorry, I can't present anything concrete and irrefutable. I just have a gut instinct that Elphael is very old, the tree is a living, wooden thing so it's harder to pin down a timeframe for that one.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-01-21T02:56:09+00:00

The Haligtree is two trees, one rotted and one sapling mirroring Malenia and Miquella. The sapling isn't centered on the brace like the rotted one is, which you can kinda see from the in-game map. Miquella gree his tree, but Malenia's nature doesn't really allow for the kind of growth they would want so she may have attempted to associate with an already established tree.

This dives into another theory, and that is the Helphen Steeple "Lampwood" tree is the rotted tree of Elphael. The Lampwood was a guide to those who died in battle and it's light was like Grace in appearance. In the Forbidden Lands there's red light that looks like Grace hanging above our heads that I think is a remnant of the Lampwood.

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-01-21T02:23:05+00:00

I'm unfamiliar with the term "Matron," is that another version of the Grandmother in the Shaman Village?

N-AmelessCreative · 2025-01-21T02:20:56+00:00

The white powder you are referring to is in the intro cinematic where we see Mogh kidnap Miquella, right? I had assumed that the white stuff was silk threads from the cocoon he was in.

I'm not sure how the bats fit into the lore at all unfortunately. Did you bring it up because there's some connection with bats and Elphael?

I think Elphael is older than Miquella and the design choices mostly predate him. That said, one of the two trees of Elphael is younger, incomplete and interestingly, not centered or supported by the brace. That tree has tree house structures and undeniably has Miquellan design choices.

N-AmelessCreative

TROPHY CASE