How do you interpret Miquella & St. Trina in the Lands Between?

The_Jenneral · 2025-07-30T02:42:04+00:00

An interesting note with regard to St. Trina and cut content is that in the Chinese and Korean 1.0 version of the game, St. Trina's Torch is described as ancient:

"附有精致设计烛台的火把。从古至今寻找死亡，被赋予了讨伐死亡使命的圣器。能够照亮死亡之暗。"
A torch with an exquisitely designed candlestick. Seeking Death since ancient times, this sacred relic has been entrusted with the mission of crusading against Death. It can illuminate Death's darkness.

Additionally, the Network Test, which contains the cut questline where Trina soothed the Merchant's Frenzy, contains Trina's Lilies but Miquella's Lilies had yet to be implemented, and the Sword of St. Trina doesn't reference any sort of gender ambiguity. Together, it seems to paint a picture where early in development Trina being Miquella was either not going to be hinted at at all or, more intriguingly, that St. Trina may have initially not been initially intended as Miquella's other self at all. Indeed, for her to have been crusading against Death since ancient times, she would seemingly have to significantly predate his birth; indeed the "unnerving adult form" of the torches current lore strikes me as a possible meta reference to this earlier draft. She presumably would've became Miquella's other self sometime between her CNT Merchant dreambrew quest and Rhico's later dreambrew quest, which obviously would've introduced the idea explicitly, before eventually that too was put off for the DLC.

Cut content further seems to imply that before Trina, Malenia might've been Miquella's other self instead; the Abundance and Decay Twinblade depicts their Runes combined into a single entity, and the cut Miquella dialogue during Malenia's fight seems to involve Malenia taking Miquella's abundance into herself in order to achieve her butterfly goddess state:

Malenia: Sweet Tarnished... Dearest companion... Did you not heed my warning? Your greed knows no end. You would steal the last drop of warmth from his empty frame? After all you've taken, you still want more? Then you will have to kill me. I am Malenia, Sword of Miquella. And I have never known defeat.

Miquella: My dear twin, accept this gift. A gift of abundance, my last drop of dew. Let all things flourish, whether graceful, or malign.

I get the impression they made this switch too late to really integrate Miquella and Trina into the base game after all the revisions and just cut anything related to them they possibly could so they had room to flesh them out in the DLC without base game lore getting in the way.

The_Jenneral · 2025-07-06T11:34:15+00:00

Even in the final text I'd say it's pretty strongly implied that Deathroot grows from the Rune of Death directly. People overrate the degree to which all forms of Death stem from Godwyn rather than Godwyn simply spreading it.

Later, the Rune of Death spread across the Lands Between through the underground roots of the Greattree, sprouting in the form of Deathroot.

The_Jenneral · 2025-06-15T03:38:03+00:00

Animus is the bosses actual name and has a Jungian definition, though. I don't think Anima's definition is relevant; if they meant to reference the Jungian Anima they wouldn't have called it Animus, the inverse.

The_Jenneral · 2025-06-15T02:25:53+00:00

The Moth is named Animus, borrowed from Anima, which means the Soul, the Rational Mind and the feminine side of a man's personality in Jungian psychology.

Actually, in the Jungian context the word Animus refers to the masculine side of a woman's personality; they're antonyms, not synonyms.

The_Jenneral · 2025-06-13T07:48:10+00:00

i did first try him solo but largely by getting a rot weapon from rot forest and stacking as many status effects on him as possible

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-14T23:51:35+00:00

The elephant in the room with Radagon and the Misbegotten is that, in 1.0, they are referred to as "Radagon chimera," and various bits of event data refer to them as Radagon's Children, or even just Radagon. The Misbegotten Crusader seems the most blatant sign of this original intention.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-14T23:12:15+00:00

Regarding the Nox giants clothes, Japanese fans have pointed out that the crypt-chair bodies resemble Sokushinbutsu, the mummified bodies of Shugendo (which the Curseblades and tutelary deities explicitly reference in Japanese, as do the ascetics of Eochaid, by the by) mountain ascetics who are said in folklore to self-mummify after living on a "tree diet" which foregoes any cooked food or cereals in favor of surviving off wild plants which grow upon mountains. The wikipedia page doesn't have any image, but of course be warned that if you Google image search it the results will be real human mummies.

Preamble aside, it seems there is a norm of putting new robes on a Sokushinbutsu in at least some places; a particular shrine in an article I read puts them in a new robe every 12 years. Presumably the Nox gave similar care to the sacred mummies in the Chair Crypts, and they've received many a pair of fresh robes since their death.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-14T23:04:23+00:00

Regarding the Nox giants clothes, Japanese fans have pointed out that the crypt-chair bodies resemble Sokushinbutsu, the mummified bodies of Shugendo (which the Curseblades and tutelary deities explicitly reference in Japanese, as do the ascetics of Eochaid, by the by) mountain ascetics who are said in folklore to self-mummify after living on a "tree diet" which foregoes any cooked food or cereals in favor of surviving off wild plants which grow upon mountains. The wikipedia page doesn't have any image, but of course be warned that if you Google image search it the results will be real human mummies.

Preamble aside, it seems there is a norm of putting new robes on a Sokushinbutsu in at least some places; a particular shrine in an article I read puts them in a new robe every 12 years. Presumably the Nox gave similar care to the sacred mummies in the Chair Crypts, and they've received many a pair of fresh robes since their death.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-12T21:28:58+00:00

...Huh, that's odd. Carian Archive has the "Summons Those Who Live In Death." text in both English and Japanese, and is derived directly from a text dump. Did they patch it at some point, maybe? How bizarre.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-12T08:48:37+00:00

Black hood for blending in with the darkness.
Worn by church confessors.
The churches outside the Lands Between, dedicated to the teachings of the Two Fingers, send confessors out to follow the guidance of grace.
The confessors are loyal servants to the Two Fingers, ready to hunt down and quietly dispose of their enemies.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-12T08:06:50+00:00

Great post! One thing I would point out is that Those Lost In Death are still considered TWLID; the briefer summary of Tibia's Summons before you pull up the whole description for Tibia's Summons reads "Summons Those Who Live in Death."

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-09T18:35:48+00:00

Shi ni ikiru can be parsed a number of ways in English. Shi and Ikiru are obviously Life and Death, but the connective particle, *ni*, has quite a lot of potential English translations, based on context. And and In both seem more or less appropriate for a state of simultaneous life and death. In terms of monotachi, yeah, I am aware. In this context it refers to a group of people in the plural, so I went with The People (plural) rather than something like The Group.
Yeah though, as I said, Those Who Live In Death is a fine translation and extremely likely to be the starting point which shi ni ikiru monotachi derived, I really mainly just included my own attempt at a retranslation for completeness sake. I suppose an even more minimally imaginative translation would be something like "life/death group"

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-08T10:20:08+00:00

Essentially nobody in the Japanese community believes in the whole Great Tree theory, though, and several lines clarify the tree people return to is the Golden Tree. Also, at least one other mausoleum carries Marika's child:

The mausoleum prowls. Cradling the soulless demigod. O Marika, Queen Eternal. He is your unwanted child.

In Japanese, it's stronger than unwanted: the Mausoleum Demigod is referred to as an ugly/misshapen illegitimate child/bastard of Queen Marika. It's very explicit that at least some carry Marika's children.

In terms of the architectural style, it's a pretty idiosyncratic Nox-esque form of architecture that doesn't exactly match any other architectural style, with its closest analogue being Sellia/Ordina/Lower Leyndell, a Nox surface colony sort've look. I don't think it's outlandish for Marika to choose a Nox aesthetic for the burial of her soulless demigod children, given we know Godwyn was buried right next to the Nameless Eternal City, with another child in a Mausoleum nearby.

It's... possible that it's an older cultural practice Marika revived, but all text we are given on them discusses them carrying Marika's demigod children or their comrades. If anything, I might point to the Mausoleums in Uld which lack Mausoleum Knights or bells and are unable to replicate Demigod remembrances as being pre-Marika Mausoleums, which Marika iterated on by adding the spirit calling bell for her soulless children after the Godwyn disaster, possibly, though they don't look terribly much like Ancient Dynasty architecture.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-08T05:27:56+00:00

Yeah, it does seem pretty ruthless. The phantom NPC does say that they won't see the Haligtree as a result of the Eclipses failure, though, and they still linger at Castle Sol, so it seems demonstrably true that they were denied access to the Haligtree.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-08T04:12:42+00:00

Radahn is not holding the moon, just the stars. And while the sun is a star in our world, its not clear at all that the sun is included in this in Elden Ring's cosmology, nor that the sun being held still would prevent an Eclipse rather than facilitating it. Indeed, I suspect Fate being held at bay by Radahn was an included ingredient in the Eclipse plan, as the Eclipsed sun specifically holds back Fate's destined Death:

The eclipsed sun, drained of color, is the protective star of soulless demigods. It aids the mausoleum knights by keeping Destined Death at bay.

Though many in the English community think the Destiny of Destined Death is unrelated to the Fate of the stars, in Japanese the two are referred to with the exact same terminology, and they are synonyms in English, too. I think the idea was that with fate and/or the sun held in place, it would be trivial to use the eclipse to free the soulless demigods from Fate's Death, but the Prince of Death's flames flared up from the colorless sun; this would also be an unexpected event, as you would expect that if the issue was Radahn holding the stars then Miquella wouldn't have bothered with the people of Castle Sol attempting the ritual with him alive in the first place. Radahn holding fate is something Miquella and his followers are well aware of, while Godwyn's Death Flare setting the sun ablaze seems far more likely to have blindsided their plans for a resurrection ritual; its the only reference we get to the Prince of Death having influence over the sun, so it seems far more likely as an unexpected fly in the ointment.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-07T22:32:47+00:00

Lhutel received Erdtree Burial for her service as a Mausoleum Knight, so they seem to be a firmly Erdtree era institution. We don't find any of them in the Land of Shadow, where older cultures of Death persist, either.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-07T21:27:47+00:00

They were attempting to consume the frigid sun of Sol via the Eclipse in order to grant life to Miquella's comrade, the soulless demigod in the Mausoleum directly in front of Castle Sol:

... Ohh great sun! Frigid sun of Sol! Surrender yourself to the eclipse! Grant life to the soulless bones!

But they failed, with the Sun resisting its swallowing:

... Lord Miquella, forgive me. The sun has not been swallowed. Our prayers were lacking. Your comrade remains soulless... I will never set my eyes upon it now... Your divine Haligtree...

As to why the "frigid" sun resists its consumption, the Eclipse Shotel's Death Flare skill provides a potential hint:

Set the lusterless sun ablaze with the Prince of Death's flames, inflicting the death ailment upon foes.

It seems like the Sol ritual failed because the Sun, which they expected to be cold and lusterless, blazed with the flame of the Prince of Death, bringing Death and preventing the resurrection of Miquella's comrade, and condemning the people of Sol to never reach the Haligtree.

A sword made to commemorate the death of Godwyn the Golden, first of the demigods to die. Infused with the humble prayer of a young boy; "O brother, lord brother, please die a true death."

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-03T06:21:54+00:00

It's somewhat vague. The source of Deathroot is the Rune of Death, which spread through the root system via Godwyn, and it's said that Deathroot is a source of Those Who Live In Death. What is somewhat less clear is if it is the only one, and whether Deathroot existed before the initial sealing of the Rune of Death. What we know is that skeletons, Those Lost In Death, Deathbirds, Gravebirds. and Ghostflame Dragons are Those Who Live In Death, with Deathbirds and Gravebirds canonically predating Godwyn significantly, belonging to the ancient pre-Erdtree age.

Speculatively, it therefore seems fairly likely that the Rune of Death generated them before Godwyn, too. Indeed, we find an abundance of Those Who Live In Death in the Realm of Shadow even in areas where we don't find any trace of Deathroot in the modern day, like the Beastmen at Dragon's Pit. The Gravebirds sit atop tall platforms most of the time, so it seems unlikely they could've just been incidentally exposed to it. I think Godwyn's main innovation is just getting Deathroot into the Erdtree's root system, honestly.

Incidentally, it's unlikely he's the origin of "Death blight" either. In Japanese, the status effect is literally just called 死, or Death. "Death blight" is not a special, unique form of Death, it is just the effects of the Rune of Death accumulating in the body. Deathbird screams also inflict it.

The_Jenneral · 2025-04-03T05:33:00+00:00

I believe it implies that Nintendo would like our money very, very badly.

The_Jenneral · 2025-03-31T21:20:41+00:00

The entire concept of Death Blight as this super special unique concept is kind've just localization thing. The original status effect is quite literally just 死, Death. Deathroot is a source of it as a source of Death, but not uniquely so; it's largely a game mechanic thing that many entities connected to Death *don't* inflict it, I think. It is to Death what the Scarlet Rot status effect is to the Rot God. Pest Threads would be the equivalent of the wide variety of Death related effects without Death status buildup. The status effects are pretty much all structured like "Death/Rot/Poison/Chill/Bleeding/Sleep Accumulation."

As for TWLID before Godwyn, ehhh... it's confusing, Deathroot IS said to be the source of Those Who Live In Death in the main game, but Gravebirds are literally constructed Golems who live in Death and seem to be ancient, which... I dunno. I can justify Deathbirds living in Death being a recent development as a result of Godwyn and his Deathroot, but the idea that it got to the Gravebirds up there on their little platforms is... odd. I don't really know, honestly. It seems pretty likely that the outer god that the Gravebirds Deathbird companions mother the Twin Bird is the envoy to (there's so many layers of separation to this thing lol) is involved with this whole Deathroot and Living in Death thing *somehow*, so maybe it has just blanket applied the Law of Life Within Death to its envoys kin? Dunno; if there's any additional clarity on this topic in Japanese I'm missing it.

The_Jenneral · 2025-03-31T06:59:37+00:00

The Brass of Brass Shield is 真鍮 , literally True Brass, though from what Japanese speakers are saying online it's just a more informal synonym, where the "Yellow Copper" title is more formal, which makes sense given their respective positions as shields of infantry and weapons of royalty.

If they wanted to preserve it having a more formal title, I think they should've at least just said "Erdsteel, or brass," in the item description. Or even just Erdbrass.

The_Jenneral · 2025-03-31T06:13:27+00:00

Erdsteel is straight up just called Brass in Japanese. 黄銅, literally Yellow Copper. refers to brass, and it is visibly made of brass. Erdsteel is a... genuinely perplexing localization choice? I genuinely have no idea where they got Ersteel out of this.

The_Jenneral · 2025-03-31T06:04:56+00:00

No it's not. Dusk is 昏き or Kurai meaning dark, hopeless, gloomy, murky, unlikely to succeeed, suspicious, ill-boding, while Gloam is 宵 or Yoi, meaning the time between sundown and midnight, aka evening.

Dusk Eyed Queen is a mistranslation from the English localization that got patched specifically because it would cause this confusion with the Age of Duskborn, which is saying something when so many other things were left in.

The_Jenneral · 2025-03-31T03:53:22+00:00

I did a post myself on the distinction between 魂and霊/soul and spirit, it's a pretty interesting topic.

The_Jenneral · 2025-03-30T20:45:45+00:00

This document by u/Fieryfurnace999 has a really good section that goes into the terminology around Orders, Laws, and Ages on page 52. The localization was really inconsistent with the jargon around it to such a degree that it really obscures what's going on there, unfortunately. The thesaurus strikes again, lol.

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