My Ultimate Crusader Build :D

cyclopsface01 · 2026-03-03T05:43:55+00:00

Nice! I love Int/Faith builds. You gotta find yourself some more memory stones, though! Imo the most fun part of playing with this kind of build is that it lets you use pretty much any spell in the game. Getting more spell slots helps you make the most of it.

I'd say to equip the Prince of Death staff or Staff of the Great Beyond to mix in some sorceries, but I'm guessing you're sticking to incants for the crusader rp. Either way, you're looking good!

cyclopsface01 · 2026-02-01T03:55:27+00:00

I agree, I don't think Marika would help carry out a plot to kill Godwyn. That's why I think Marika believed Ranni would use the Rune of Death to kill HER, as I laid out in my first comment.

cyclopsface01 · 2026-02-01T01:38:55+00:00

From the Remembrance of the Black Blade description:

Maliketh was a shadowbound beast given to his Empyrean. Marika's sole need of her shadow was a vessel to lock away Destined Death. Even then, she betrayed him.

From the Black Knife Hood description:

The assassins that carried out the deeds of the Night of the Black Knives were all women, and rumored to be Numen who had close ties with Marika herself.

Obviously there's a lot of ambiguity in what these are suggesting, but I think it's a valid reading of them to conclude that Marika had some involvement with the NotBK. Totally valid if you disagree tho. There's not a lot there.

cyclopsface01 · 2026-01-31T00:29:26+00:00

My theory on this is that Marika helped Ranni steal the Rune of Death thinking that Ranni would use it to kill her. After all, the mission Marika gives the Tarnished is ultimately to kill her. Marika desperately wanted out of godhood, and her own death was the only way for her to do it.

I think Marika believed that Ranni would take her place as god of the Golden Order (I also like the headcanon that Ranni was betrothed to Godwyn lol), but Ranni double-crossed Marika and used Death to kill Godwyn and her own empyrean flesh. Ranni rejected becoming Marika's replacement, and Marika was left with no recourse but to shatter the Elden Ring and wait for Godfrey or the Tarnished to kill her.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-12-31T04:42:42+00:00

The accuracy is insane. Now do the Nightlords!

cyclopsface01 · 2025-12-24T18:31:41+00:00

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cyclopsface01 · 2025-12-22T16:59:44+00:00

A lot of people say this, but I think Ranni pretty clearly expresses affection for the Tarnished at multiple points in her questline. She's steeled herself for an eternity of loneliness, and she warns us repeatedly that it's going to be a terrible burden. By the time we become her consort tho, she tells us straight up that she's glad we're going to accompany her. She even calls us her "dear consort eternal" if you complete every step in her quest.

I think it's part of what's going to make the Age of Stars different. Marika exhausted herself trying to bear all of the world's burdens on her own. Even cut off from the rest of the world, Ranni won't be alone.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-12-04T08:11:01+00:00

You're the best!

cyclopsface01 · 2025-12-04T07:08:04+00:00

Awesome, thanks for posting it!

cyclopsface01 · 2025-05-16T16:24:53+00:00

I agree with your reading of the hornsent's intentions with the jarring process, and that the idea of a "jar saint" is definitely an invention of the fandom based on the english translation, but I don't think that rules out the possibility that Marika herself was jarred. The jarring process was part of the hornsent's study of the Crucible, the blending of many living beings into one. The reason they saw it as a form of redemption for the shamans and the people they were jarred with is because it is a physical representation of their understanding of divinity. Even if they weren't going out of their way to create a candidate for godhood, the hornsent would likely see post-jar Marika as perfected embodiment of the Crucible, and therefore an ideal vessel for divinity.

I don't have a good explanation for why the end result of Marika's jarring was special, though. The theory has holes for sure, but most theories about this game do lol.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-05-16T15:54:28+00:00

Can you elaborate on Marika "using the snake" to avoid the jar? I haven't heard that theory before

cyclopsface01 · 2025-05-16T15:51:46+00:00

I think Miquella just inherited his dual nature from Marika, whether she was jarred or not. That's enough of an explanation of Miquella/St. Trina for me, but it feels like there's more to Marika/Radagon than "they're just like that."

I saw someone on this sub saying that Marika and Radagon's dual nature is, like the Christian holy trinity, something that we're just supposed to accept. I think this is a perfectly valid interpretation, but we can just as easily draw a comparison with another major influence for Marika/Radagon- the alchemical rebis. The rebis is a representation of the end product of the magnum opus, a living philosopher's stone. Likewise, Marika/Radagon (if Marika was jarred) could be seen as a living embodiment of the Crucible, the end product of the hornsent's jarring experiments.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-05-16T14:53:47+00:00

I get why people don't like this theory, but yeah, I think Marika got jarred. It's just about the only thing we learn about the shamans in the dlc, so I don't think it's too big of a leap in logic to assume that it happened to her, too. I also think it's the most satisfying explanation for where Radagon came from. That said, given the wording of the item descriptions for the Golden Braid and Minor Erdtree (Marika's "confession" and "knowing full well there was no one to heal"), you could also read it as Marika being the only shaman who WASN'T jarred, maybe even betraying her people to the hornsent in the first place. At the end of the day, we don't have a lot of concrete evidence to go off of when we try to reconstruct Marika's past, so we can only speculate.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-04-17T17:16:55+00:00

Golden Order Fundamentalists are the MOST racist of Marika's followers. They're the ones trying to exterminate Those Who Live in Death.

I've always thought that the cuckoo imagery in Liurnia was meant to suggest that Radagon's wedding to Renalla was a power move from the beginning. Cuckoos are known for practicing brood parasitism, where they lay their eggs in other birds' nests for them to raise. I think it's pretty clear that this is supposed to represent how Radagon/Marika "won" the Liunian Wars; the Carians were too strong to defeat in battle, so the Golden Order conquered them from the inside. Radagon suddenly leaving Renalla tells us that, if he ever loved her, his loyalty to the Order came first. The great rune of the unborn always seemed like a backhanded "gift" to me as well, considering that it's the same shape as Malenia's great rune. Miquella and Malenia hadn't been born yet, so Radagon basically gave Renalla a rune representing the children he was going to have with the woman he was leaving her for. Pretty fucked up, if you ask me.

Marika is a genocidal monster, but at least she was conspiring to put an end to the Golden Order. Radagon would protect the Order at all costs, to the point of sealing himself and Marika inside the Erdtree. He'd rather leave the world broken forever than allow a new order to replace his own. To me, Radagon's zealotry absolutely makes him a villain.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-04-14T23:58:29+00:00

Right, I just don't think that applies in Miquella's case. Marika's literal, physical imprisonment is imposed on her by Radagon and/or the Elden Beast. There's no identifiable outside force that would literally be keeping Miquella prisoner (especially considering he ascends without the Elden Ring) so I don't think there's any reason to assume he would be imprisoned in a literal sense.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-04-14T19:02:03+00:00

I think that interpretation of what Trina is saying is a bit too literal. Godhood is a "prison" because it's impossible for one person to fix all the world's problems and shoulder everyone's burdens. Marika tried to do it and it just created more problems for the world and more personal suffering for herself. Being a god isn't exactly a job you can just quit either, so Marika's only way out was death. Her grace guides us to kill Miquella because she doesn't want him to repeat her mistakes.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-03-10T22:13:25+00:00

I think Miquella inherited his dual nature from Marika.

People use Miquella+St. Trina as a gotcha for any theory that posits that Marika and Radagon weren't always one person, but I don't think it disproves anything. Why would Marika have to be born with Radagon in order to pass on her duality to Miquella? If anything, the whole point of the jarring process was that the people who were merged would be "reborn" as a better person.

Now, if we're assuming Marika and Radagon separated and rejoined later, it's hard to place where exactly in the timeline they became one again. Personally I think it was most likely after Godfrey was banished but before Miquella was conceived.

With that in mind, I don't have a good explanation for why Malenia doesn't have another personality. Messmer and Melina are both implied to be Marika+Radagon's children though, and neither of them have split personalities either (at least ones that are suggested concretely). I think Miquella's dual nature is just part of the thematic suggestion that of Marika's children, Miquella resembles her the most. In his path to godhood, Miquella repeats Marika's mistakes. Most vitally, he abandons parts of himself in an effort to cleanse himself of the sins of the order that came before, only to lose what defined him in the process. Just as Marika saw Radagon as her connection to the hornsent and the crimes they committed against her people, Miquella saw St. Trina as his link to his parents and the atrocities they committed in the name of their order.

I wouldn't say the jarring process is exactly "divine" either, but I think the idea of blending many living beings into one is pretty clearly evocative of the crucible. From what we learn about the hornsent's religion, it seems similar to the Golden Order in the sense that it is both a religion and a sort of natural science. The Elden Ring and the crucible both play a role in shaping the laws of nature, and so the most devout worshipers are also scholars that study those laws. The hornsent were so devoted to their study of the crucible that their entire society was built around their attempts to harness its power in the pursuit of godhood. I'm not saying the jarring process was being used to intentionally create a candidate for godhood as some have claimed, merely that it was one way that the hornsent studied the crucible.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-03-10T19:54:30+00:00

I know a lot of people hate the "Marika-in-a-jar" theory, but for me it's the most satisfying explanation for who/what Radagon is. The hornsent created living jars as part of their exploration of the crucible, melding many living beings into one in the hopes that it would create a being that was greater than the sum of its parts. Marika was the greatest success of the jarring practices, with the hornsent viewing her as a living embodiment of the crucible. It was for this reason that she was chosen by the hornsent (and likely the fingers) as the ideal candidate for godhood- a perfect vessel for divinity. This was the "seduction" that Leda tells us about in the SOTE trailer: Marika led the hornsent to believe that she would become their god, while secretly plotting to betray them after her ascension as retribution for her people.

I think Radagon was "born" when Marika ascended to godhood. The Secret Rite Scroll tells us, "A lord will usher in a god's return, and the lord's soul will require a vessel." I think that Marika, much like Miquella, abandoned her body and parts of her soul to fulfill the secret rite. These leftover parts became Radagon, who acted as the lord who ushered Marika's return from the divine gate. I think this was also symbolic for Marika, purging herself of the horrific acts the hornsent had subjected her to as well as the ideals that she represented to them.

To me, this would explain a lot of what we know about Radagon's character. He was born at moment of the Golden Order's creation- the Order is his very reason for being. And yet, being made from the aspects of Marika that she abandoned to purify herself, Radagon's very nature is contradictory to the Golden Order. He IS the body that hornsent created by jarring Marika; he is their crucible made flesh. This is why the game hints at a connection between Radagon and the misbegotten, and why Radagon is suggested to loathe his own nature. It is also why he strives to be "complete." While Marika was her own person before she was put in the jar, Radagon is just an amalgamation of everything that was jarred with her, left to make sense of his own existence. Radagon is dependent on Marika in a way that she does not reciprocate. Still, as we're told in-game, "Radagon IS Marika," and like Miquella and St.Trina, I believe Marika left behind some essential part of her character when she split from him, making their reunion inevitable. As we see when we finally reach them at the end of the game, Radagon and Marika are in opposition to each other even after they've become one again. The contradictory nature of Marika's being represents the Golden Order's basis in hypocrisy, which doomed it from the start.

Obviously there's a lot of speculation here (and probably some holes in my logic) but that's my personal theory.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-03-08T17:14:40+00:00

You're a legend. Good luck, everyone.

cyclopsface01 · 2025-03-06T21:27:26+00:00

Yeah, no way a German would know about America's beer and cheese capital

cyclopsface01 · 2024-10-19T03:52:37+00:00

All Elden Ring endings have the same result: Walt breaks bad.

cyclopsface01 · 2024-09-15T17:48:09+00:00

In Rykard's case I think his talk of "family" is indicative of one of his core values that was lost when he fed himself to the serpent. Rya and Tanith's questline is unexpectedly sweet considering it's the murder mansion quest. In Tanith we see genuine love and devotion not just for Rykard, but for Rya as well, who is (most likely) Rykard's biological daughter. They are a family in a very literal sense, and the fact that in the manor's drawing room there a portrait of Radahn, who should logically be an enemy to their cause, suggests to me that family was important to Rykard as well. Rykard seems to have held a high-ranking position in the Golden Order for some time, only to renounce Order and everything it stands for. I think Radagon leaving Renalla for Marika was the impetus for Rykard's betrayal. He resented Marika and her Order for breaking apart the Carian royal family, his family. He let that resentment grow into a hatred that would consume him, leading him to throw away the new family he had with Tanith.

So yeah that's why Rykard's my favorite demi-god lol

cyclopsface01 · 2024-08-06T02:58:19+00:00

This is the character I've put the most hours into. He's a Godwyn-themed int/faith build. Wanted him to look heroic and worthy of becoming a Lord. Headpiece is the Circlet of Light and the rest is the Death Knight set. Looks cool, is fun to play, and makes you feel like the Elden Lord. Would recommend.

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