One Thing That I Really Like About Elden Ring Is How Devoid Of Anything Noteworthy Our Character Is Because

Shadow of the Erdtree spoilers

It just occurred to me that if Miquella wanted Mohg to stop his murder cult shenanigans then it was fully in his power to make that happen, as we see with his influence over Leda. So that just begs the question of why he wouldn't stop him.

It definitely wasn't a boundary thing as Miquella's been shown time and time again to not care less about how the opposite party feels when it comes to bewitchment.

I also doubt it was solely to get Mohg killed for his corpse either, because Mohg already had a massive target on his back just by proxy being a shardbearer. There was no need for him to continue the blood cult thing so violently for someone to come after him.

So why would Miquella allow Mohg to continue ravaging the lands between? He's one of the most powerful figure heads in the game and definitely has some of, if not the most followers aswell. Varre, Nerijus, all of the sanguine nobles, Anastasia and Eleanora all travel the lands between causing Chaos and Miquella does nothing. It's almost like he wants this to happen.

It gets me thinking about Eleanora and Yura... How despite being a proud knight she renounced everything for seemingly no reason, to become a bloodthirsty killer. How she devoted herself to Mohg despite holding the very item capable of countering him, as if she actively opposed him at some point. How she seemed almost bewitched by bloodlust. How the festering finger the killers have seemingly has a hold on them, to the point where Yura believes slicing it off would be enough to free her. As if her actions are no longer her own, and haven't been for a long, long time.

...

Maybe Miquella didn't want Mohg to stop.

Maybe he helped him continue for as long as possible.

The stronger the body, the stronger his consort would be when he returns.

Like raising a pig for the slaughter.

Even with the recent developments with Messmer, I personally still believe that the smouldering butterfly is supposed to represent Melina. The main reason is because of the butterfly's main use as kindling.

Messmer might have a lot of fire stuff going on, but Melina embodies the butterfly much more. Not only was she seemingly born burned and bodiless, much like the smouldering butterfly is born eternally burning, but she also acts as kindling to burn the erdtree in a similar way the butterfly does for crafting items.

The butterfly's represent the main curses of all 3 of the youngest siblings. Malenia's being rotted, Miquella's appearing eternally young and Melina's being burned and inevitably used as kindling.

I personally don't see the connection to Messmer other than the fact that they both share fire motifs. And even then, he's presumably not a part of Malenia and Miquella's sibling group as he's likely one of the oldest demigods, so it wouldn't make too much sense for him to be the third butterfly in the trinity.

Elden ring DLC ending spoilers.

I’ve seen a lot of contention surrounding the main twist regarding Miquella and Radahn in the DLC, primarily the lack of build up to it in the base game, and while I understand where these people are coming from, it's something I can personally forgive.

While it would have been nice to have some sort of hint to who Miquella’s chosen consort would be, or even that he had someone in mind at all in the base game, they did go to great lengths to rectify this in the DLC, and adequately hint at Miquella’s plans and who his consort will be.

Radahn does not in any way come out of nowhere by the end of the DLC. He only comes out of Nowhere if you’re not engaging in the questlines and talking with the characters, which still isn’t perfect mind you, especially with how easily they seem to be breaking at the moment, but this also isn’t a flaw exclusive to the DLC. The base game is just as, if not more guilty of this with its Marika/Radagon twist.

I also think it's a fine twist because it gives context to past events that we could only speculate on before. Mainly, why Radahn and Malenia fought. Despite being such a massive part of the games story, we previously had absolutely no idea why it took place. But now we do. We finally have context behind one of the most important historical battles in the lands between's history.

is there anything specific you think you'd like to know? I love this game a lot and like to think I'm pretty deep into the story/lore side of things

I don’t think I ‘hate’ a single Elden Ring character. Each and every one is designed so compellingly, their stories are so varied, their interactions while sparse are the type to carry magnitudes of meaning.

Example:

For the longest time I did not realize that the scene we stroll into at Castle Morne is a slave rebellion. The misbegotten are treated as chattel. My first go around I assumed “ah yes, monster attack castle, understand”

It wasn’t until I watched a random lore video that only referenced it that I got it. I went back and read the descriptions of stuff and I’ll be damned.

There’s a lot of little tidbits hidden here and there that flip entire perspectives on their heads. Preaching to the choir on this point.

Even the characters that I generally dislike/disregard (dung-eater, (hot take) Varre, selvus) I still find fascinating. One of the cool parts about the game is you can just kill the character you don’t like. If you’re doing a run and you want to get a little roleplay in, sometimes murder freak be murdering.

Personally, I’m not on twitter, instagram (used to be), deviant art (do people still use that), or anywhere else ((I Do have a blue sky but I think I’m too dim to use it just yet)) . I’d love to be in a space where people talk more about lore or art things! I haven’t the foggiest clue where to go though. When I hear people say “everyone hates on xyz character” or “this fandom is so nuts” or whatever I am genuinely confused. I’m only seeing a portion of the stuff here, and so far it’s been more than pleasant! Big ups to the people on here, so far you’ve all been very kind 😊

So I guess, could I ask anybody to fill me in? Or where to go to get filled in?

In the meantime I want you to know I’ve started working on a pair of drawings centered around Malenia and Miquella - ooooo be so tragic oooooo

With recent revelations about security breach’s development, it’s honestly impressive Steelwool managed to develop a functioning game at all.

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What the fuck do you mean he didn’t tell them the plot of the game that they were working on!?!?

How are you really going to be so terrible at your job as supreme god that your vassal successfully planned to overthrow you and betrayed you right under your nose and one of her possible replacements went to some seriously extreme lengths just to get away from you?

Wouldn’t be surprised if the GW abandoned the lands between out of embarrassment tbh. The other outer gods are never going to let it live this down. The formless mother has a very loyal pawn and the rot god has wormed its way back into the system. What does the GW have again? Two problem children that wont listen to it?

Oh what Radagon? Radagon's probably it's self insert it made/possessed to try and looks slightly less pathetic /hj

One small part of elden ring I find really interesting is Millicent's prosthesis and how you go about getting it.

I find it incredibly interesting to have such a good item locked behind doing something horrible during a questline. It's an entirely needless act of evil as well. Millicent trusts you wholeheartedly and never gives you a reason to attack her. The only way to get this item is through actively betraying her completely unprovoked.

The game gives you a pretty interesting ultimatum. What's more important to you? An incredibly useful and powerful talisman? Or the life of one of the very few friendly faces throughout the lands between? Does the answer change knowing that she's doomed to fall either way?

It's also good that this time around, there isn't an achievement for collecting every talisman. Only the legendary ones. So there's not even an achievement based incentive for the talisman. If you want the talisman, you want it for entirely self imposed reasons, and you're going to have to go through Millicent to get it.

totk endgame spoilers

Y'know, I've always wondered if this line represents that a small piece of Demise was beginning to seep through the cracks of Ganondorf.

Ganondorf is a lot of things in this game, but he isn't above "mortals." He's very much one himself, even if he has survived for thousands of years, so the line "I will not be defeated by a mere mortal..." Feels kinda strange.

That is unless the power of the secret stone started to awaken that side of him. After all, Demon king Ganon looks shockingly similar to Demise, to an almost frightening degree. And the power of the secret stones themselves, which are only supposed to be able to boost ones own power ended up turning Ganondorf into a borderline god. Giving him abilities that base Ganon straight up didn't have. Giving him control over literal celestial entities, allowing him to create life out of thin air and granting him the power to defeat 6 other fully fledged sages in battle single handedly. It turned him into a god. It awoke something within him. Something that had been dormant for so, so very long.

Rykard and the Night of the black knives.

Y’know after thinking about it for a while, I think Rykard's involvement in the night of the black knives could run a little deeper than just being a co conspirator. What if he was the person who actually did the deed?

Not on Godwyn mind you, we already know that was all the black knife assassins handy work. But there is one other corpse that is left unaccounted for.

What if he was the one who killed Ranni and carved the cursemark into her back?

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I know there’s no evidence in game that says anything about this but… it had to have been someone right? Someone other than Ranni I mean. She’s metal as fuck, but it would have been incredibly hard to carve such a specific symbol into her own back. Especially since failure would mean certain death. 

And I also don’t think it would have been some random black knife assassin either. It’s certainly possible but looking at everything revolving them, their alliance seemed shaky at best, and they may not have even known about Ranni's half of the plot to begin with. No, I don't think she would have trusted them to do it. But I do believe she’d trust Rykard. They were already in on this together, and assuming he wasn’t part of the heist itself then there’s only really one other role he could have played in the event. 

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And going off of purely in game mechanics, he definitely has the stats to wield a black knife blade. If you compare the stat requirements for the black knife and Rykards own blasphemous blade, then they match up pretty well. He would be able to use one.

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And then we've got Ranni's body itself, which is burnt beyond recognition. Which is strange for a black knife killing, since they have no inherent fire damage, and while they do seem to have some sort of burning affect, it's never as bad as how scorched Ranni's corpse is. We never see this sort of damage done by a black knife again.

This leads me to believe that Ranni's body may have been burnt after the fact. Possibly as one final middle finger to the Two Fingers and the GW for trying to control her fate. One last 'fuck you' by desecrating the holy flesh they bestowed upon her.

And who do we know that has access to fire powers? Or more specifically Magma powers?

Rykard. The lord of blasphemy himself.

Your honour, I rest my case.

Nowadays unless I'm doing an evil character run, Edgar from castle Morne has been put alongside the dung eater on my "on sight" list.

I just cannot stand him. The way he acts regarding the Misbegotten uprising makes my skin crawl. No, I'm not going to help you stomp out a slave uprising, why don't you go fuck yourself instead?

It's lucky that he's relatively unimportant to any other questlines because I just have no drive to help him at all.