I hear other reviewers read it that way. Love your vid. Interesting theory about Messmer’s potential father. I was only thinking that it might me Radagon as well.
I know the general consensus is to call it shadowtree/shadowfragment now but we dont call the Haligtree Holytree or the Erdtree Earthtree, its evident scadu is from the word shadow but im not fully convinced we have to spell it like that too
I just realized that the omen are being treated the way they are due to Marikas history with the horsent. This whole chapter 4 part is stunning. Using her tormentors own power to achieve godhood, bathing her new world in light while condemning the hornsents world in shadow and then stealing the rune of death to make them suffer eternally by her own sons hand, thus creating the curse of the omen. Although I still don’t get how she achieved godhood to begin with. Why weren’t the hornsents able to do that themselves but a random shaman was? Did it have to do something with the two fingers helping her?
I also wonder why the area the Shaman Village is located in is called ”Hinterland“. Why is it in German? I’m a German myself so is it one of those situations where it’s just a word the English language decided to use for itself like with Kindergarten for example? Or does it have lore significance?
First of its not just the hornsend I think its also the serpent. In the trailer we see her with a serpent armband. Just like er having 2-3 children connected to them like she has 2 omens. I think the serpent is an aspect ( or born) of the crucible as the immortal serpent tries to eat the gods and the world to make all one again. As for why se ended it all? Loosing the villiage damaged her ( in Trauma). Yes she took revenge but her past catched up to her. Her children became what she wanted to run away from. She had to even abandon them or rip their eyes out. Lastly she wanted to create a world in which she didnt have to loose anyone anymore which is why she sealed death. But even that didnt work out for her. Her first Husband lost his Grace making him Banished and her only Perfect Son died even with all she did to make it impossible. She completly lost Faith in the Order and in the Greater will likely. She probably didnt want to end it all she just wanted to end herself. Im not sure what Rabadons part is in all tat but he seemed to use and push her to godhood cuz he wanted it himself.
So my working theory on why it didn't work for the hornsent is that the crucible is just a raw power source with no outer God attached to it. This is dependent on the Hornsent having made the divine gate in the first place which is also questionable. But, if the crucible has no outer God attached, then there was no active force to elevate them the way the Greater Will elevated Marika to God hood via the gate and the fingers. Also, an interesting detail that leans more into it being solely due to the greater will, the divine gate takes the shape of the uppermost rune of the Elden Ring. The part that looks like crucifix made of a rune arch on top with a line straight down. It is the shape Marika is literally mimicking in her prison state when we come to her, and it is the void space making up the divine gate. The straight line up with the arch on top.
I’ve always felt a lot of marika’s actions in the base game felt weird for a god like being, but finding out she basically entered a slave contract with the greater will in exchange for the safety of her loved ones (getting rid of death) after her people were slaughtered changes a lot. It makes her going 0-100 immediately on her sons death make a lot more sense. She basically viewed the greater will as having lied to her and betrayed her by letting him die
DLC literally confirms the Greater Will has nothing to do with…almost anything and people out here still don’t get it lol Not trying to be a smartass. I’m not even talking about you in particular. Just…in general. Do every quest, people. The Greater Will sent down Metyr the Mother of Fingers, sent down the Elden Beast, then effed off after having sent the means to ensure order. We know this was as early as the era of the dragons. It’s been long gone by the time of Marika. Metyr went insane after being unable to contact the Greater Will for ages. She was the one speaking to the fingers in the Greater Will’s stead. And she guided Marika. Likely trying to impose order so the Greater Will came back. We can even say the Golden Order is the…combination of that. Marika’s first incantation (forgot the actual name) is described as having only the kindness of Gold, without the Order. Marika must have made a deal with Metyr and was guided by the fingers to achieve godhood, only for it to be too late to help her people after she ascended. So she instead turns to vengeance on the Hornsent and anything Crucible related, while trying to create a world of order and boundless life where she’ll never lose anything again, only to go mad once Godwyn dies.
@@abdieljove2011 Also I think Metyr imprissoned Marika after she removed the rune of death. But that would imply that Metyr and the Elden Beast was working together? 🤔 Another think I find interesting is how the hell is Melina pro two fingers? She must not know that Metyr lost contact with the greater will? While Ranni seems to have figured it out already.
@@McDudes I see Metyr and the Elden Bessts as on the same side, yeah. Well, kinda? They’re both shooting stars sent down by the Greater Will to impose order. I’m not sure the Elden Beast is even sentient though. It’s just the living form of the Elden Ring and a physical embodiment of Order. The ring has no agenda beyond order. Its rightful owner can alter it to create their own laws of nature. I think the Elden Beast was just defending itself since Marika shattered the ring lol As for Melina, she’s a mystery. Ecen her connections to the Gloam Eyed Queen make her a real head scratcher since she’s Marika’s daughter and Mesmer’s sister. I hope we dig up more on her somewhere. That said, I think she’s more…anti Frenzied Flame than anything lol
@@abdieljove2011 Yeah she's for sure anti Frenzied Flame. If anything it seems she's supporting Marika in helping us kill her and free her I guess. But well we end up killing Radagon instead 🤔
@@abdieljove2011 you are talking about dlc lore but ignoring base game lore to make assumptions. Both dlc and base game lore work together to make the true lore, and in the base game it is states that marika has a deal with “the greater will” not its agent, the being itself. So while it’s true that contact was cut off at some point marika clearly interacted with them at least once. We also are given no timeframes for the shattering war or the shadow wars, it could have happened the day before the tarnished awakened or 2 centuries, we don’t know. So you can’t assume things about timeframe in this game outside of extremely general timeframes
Just noticed Marika named all her cursed kids after herself with an M, while the healthy kids are named after the healthy spouse, either Godfrey or Rennala.
radagon starts with an R too and marika probably let godfrey name his first born son after himself to honor him for his service. i think your theory is partially true tho i think she didn't consider morgott and mohg as worthy enough to hold a name that indicates they are part of the golden lineage like godwyn and godrick.
Underated? Bro this is like, right in front of your face even on a first playthrough... That was like the first thing i really noticed, parts of the family are named similiary and idk the redhair kinda helps and the fact there was two consorts, item descriptions idk man. @bobjim245
I think it's possible the hornsent would have raised one of their own to godhood, if not for Marika's intervention. The old woman in Belurat is referred to in one item description as the "Empyrean grandam," which at the very least means the towerfolk knew about Empyreans and this lady was in charge of finding and/or training them So I have a theory that in that moment with Marika in the trailer the hornsent were one step away from successfully creating a god of the Crucible. They'd constructed the Divine Gate, they had the primordial gold that would become the Elden Ring, and they had an Empyrean... And then Marika, who had been pretending to be their ally up until this point, killed that person, stole the Elden Ring, and ascended to godhood herself "The seduction and the betrayal"
In shadowkeep there's a statue of woman with a horned head, looking exactly like Marika, crucified in the exact same way as Marika in the final fight cutscene. I think hornsent actually did succesfully create a god of Crucible, mixing a saint with Elden Beast and maybe couple dozens of other losers. Problem is, their god hated them.
Marikas people were being stuffed into Jars at bonny village, mixing with criminals. The whole point of doing that was to meld and graft them into saints. I think Marika stole the ritual because she was the saint that succeeded, and she had an accord with the Greater Will, which the hornsent didn't. Here's the things though; Marika prayed to the Grandmother at her village, who looks remarkably like the statues of Marika throughout the game. I'm willing to bet that Marika succeeded in the melding, was supposed to replace the current God, but decided to abandon and later destroy the Hornsent for what they did to her. You have to remember, this was the entire reason her people existed as far as the hornsent were concerned. The hornsent saw all of them as slaves to torture, slaughter, and meld together in the creation of saints
Yeah I think so too, they used the Shamans and their powers of spiritually merging people into one as a sacrifice or catalyst to make possible the ascension to godhood of one of their own. Marika cooperated with them for a while, maybe against her will, maybe she was even put in a jar herself, but in the last second, so to speak, she took divinity for her own. So she pretty much reached godhood at the cost of sacrificing her entire own race of people, which could be described as her "original sin". Which she tried to hide by having Messmer wipe out the hornsent and by hiding the lands of shadows behind the veil. That's my personal head canon at this point at least.
On a related note, The design of the furnace golems seems to be a sort of twisted karmic retribution towards the Hornsent approved by Messmer and Marika. The shamans were mutilated, then stuffed into jars to become saints by the Hornsent so in response, Marika orders her son Messmer to wage a brutal, genocidal war against the Land of Shadow with his most prominent war machine being the massive furnace golems where the Hornsent themselves are rounded up in droves, dead or alive (but most likely still alive for extra cruelty), to be stuffed in the golems and lit aflame to bring it to life. Imagine the screams and howls of terror and agony and the smell of burning flesh as the golem surges to life; An instrument of death’s first gasps of “life” brought forth by the deaths of so many within its frame to serve as fuel for the golem as it marches over the land as an instrument of terror, destruction and mockery as it wears the horned mask of the fell god of fire the Hornsent so feared.
@@Mr.Rendo1Not necessarily the actual faces of dead giants that they sliced off but rather crude effigies with their hair. The hair may be the only part of the giants that is real on it.
Since we know the Jars can create a meshed personality of sorts, I think it is possible that "Marika" is a successful saint of the shaman jars. That is the reason she became an Empyrean and was able to rise to godhood. Radagon can be a second "personality" created by the Jars who embodies order and honour. Also there are mentions of Marika betraying the Hornsent. Maybe the Saint Marika was prayed to by the hornsent and she used her status as a saint to raise an army somehow and then turned on the Hornsent for revenge. Later she went on to become a God after being contacted by the Greater Will/Two Fingers. Also its pretty much confirmed that Messmer is son of Radagon and MArika due to the red hair
I wonder if that specific Hornsent who said these cruel words to the shamans in Bonny Village lived long enough to be subject to similar cruelties by Messmer’s crusaders when they invaded. I don’t know how long Hornsent lived but assuming he lived to see the crusade take place, I can only imagine it shifting from him whipping shamans with tooth whips and shoving them in jars like it's an ordinary day to him being captured by the crusaders before enduring days of being beaten and branded by serpent flails while being yelled at with slurs and obscenities by them such as being “Graceless scum” who’s only purpose is to be hunted, dehorned, impaled and burned before being forced to march alongside fellow Hornsent who’ve been rounded up, beaten, branded and dehorned to a furnace golem that has yet to come to life. As the Hornsent are being pushed and crammed inside the golem to the point where’s it’s getting hard to breathe, they are given a speech by a Black Knight captain who says that though they are graceless vermin with no place in the order, their lives will at least serve one purpose: as kindling for their holy crusade. The Hornsent suddenly reminisces on those shamans back in Bonny Village and realizes that he has become a victim to the same cruelties he inflicted on them. However, he has no time to think of his current predicament as the crusaders set the golem aflame and the screams of countless Hornsent and the stench of their burning flesh fill the air as the golem comes to life. So ends the life of one Hornsent among thousands, now used to fuel a lifeless machine of death and murder as it marches onto the battlefield. And so, the crusade continues.
It actually explains it the other way. Marika didn't divest herself of anything to become a god. Miquella only did that so he could become a god without any taint of the old golden order which his body and other selves were full of. He had to get rid of them or the Greater Will would still be ruling in his name even if he attained Godhood as "Miqella the gold". The shedding of Trina and his body was not something Marika herself did. She had no need to. She wanted an order led by the greater will, up until she didn't. But she was already a god by then. Miquella from the start had no trust in the greater will, so he got rid of all his greater will products before godhood. which was basically all of him.
I think it is more likely that Radagon was grafted into Marika's body. That is what Melina's recital of Marika's words suggests: "O Radagon, leal hound of the Golden Order. Thou'rt yet to become me. Thou'rt yet to become a god. Let us be shattered, both. Mine other self." "Let us be shattered" must refer to the process of mutilating their bodies and allowing their limbs, torsos, etc. fuse together the same way as the jars were created by the Hornsent.
@MrTrancelator i agree too, except the shattered part. For me that's her durect indirect way of her telling radagon in his face what she's planning. The black knives were her assassins. They were numen with close connections with marika herself. This heavily enforces the fact she planned with ranni. I think maliketh remambrance states she betrayed him which most certainly alludes to the the betrayal that is the night of the black knives. Marika even burned melina to prepare her to be kindling (bernhal maiden cut dialogue).
@@justsomeotherguywithamusta6810 I think she did not want to shatter the Elden Ring at the time. Her fusion with Radagon was probably driven by her desperation to seal away her genetic heritage that caused some of her children to be born an Omen. Although Radagon was never identified positively as their father, I think Messmer and Melina were Radagon's and Marika's first offspring, hence the red/reddish hair. Messmer was born an abomination so Marika drove away Radagon from her side, and sent him to conquer Liurnia. She then tried again to create a proper lineage free from the Crucible's influence, but her children with Godfrey were also flawed except Godwyn. Also, Godfrey kinda fused with his lion, which reminded her of the Hornsent, so she expelled Godfrey, and called back Radagon who, in the meantime, fathered 3 normal children. She figured that if she can fuse with Radagon, Radagon will seal away her "flaw", and allow her to have normal children. Apparently, it did not work out, Malenia was born with the scarlet rot, and Miquella was cursed with eternal childhood. The naming of Marika's children is actually quite telling: those who are abnormal in some way have a name that starts with "M" (after Marika - Mohg, Morgott, Malenia, Miquella). Yes, I realize that Melina seems to be normal... if you discount the fact that she has no physical body and she is burnt for some reason. Also, I'm convinced that Marika was actually chopped into pieces by the Hornsent and put in a jar with some minced Hornsent criminal meat, but she survived and emerged relatively unscathed - that's why some of her offSpring are Omen as her originally clean Numen bloodline was tainted by Hornsent genes. (Of course, this is speculation. We know next to nothing about the Numen and their relationship with the Crucible.)
I feel that Radagon and Marika are like St. Trina and Miquella. Like St. Trina is Miquella's "Love". So, Radragon is an aspect of Marika broken off so she could become a God. But everything eventually will move to recombined back together. So, when Radragon merges back, He will become the God Marika became by losing him.
I think they are 2 different shamans that melded and/or unmelded. The symbols in the forehead of the jar people are very similar to radagon's and marika's seal overlapped. Marika also has some words of "defiance" for Radagon in the base game about "you're not yet me" or something similar
@@pilebunker420the Japanese word for the shamans is “shrine maidan” and it’s heavily implied they are a matriarchal society. So there might not be male shamans.
@@pilebunker420 Remember when Aspects are removed to "become God" , they become "Separate Persons" . See St.Trina wanting Miquella to be ended. Which means Radragon can act opposed to Marika and still be of the same Essence.
It’s definitely possible but that wouldn’t explain why Radagon can have children with Marika. You can explain Radagon and Rennala’s children yMarika just using Radagon’s body to marry Renala. But it would be a bit weird if she could have children with herself… but then again Millicent’s quest line shows that creating some kind of clone/off shoot of another person without parents is possible in Elden ring. Perhaps there is something special about Radagon and Marika’s children specifically (Malenia, Miquella, Melina, Mesmer)
@@donovan4222 Oh, They are separate persons and when Aspects are removed, they have separate Bodies. So, no trouble there. One becomes Two, later becomes One again. They just have the Same Soul Essence.
The shape of the Divine Gate is very reminiscent of a crucible. If you look at the negative space, it looks like light being poured out of a bowl of some kind... Or metal being poured out of a crucible.
Knowing that she was a Shaman and that Shaman's bodies meld together with the bodies of others, it makes sense that Radagon was his own person but became part of her, whether by choice or not
It's implied radagon is an aspect of marika. When she became a god, I assume she did what miquilla did to st trina and cast that part of herself away. Who knows what part of her made radagon but for st trina it was miquillas love
@@jakemoore5077 The problem with that theory is Radagon is still with Marika when we find them in the final boss fight, it’s stated he tried to repair the Elden ring and stop Marika from shattering it. So he wasn’t discarded it seems. Also, Radagon is able to have children with both Marika and other people, so he seems like more than just a discarded part of Marika to me, but could be wrong. He seems to have opposite views on the golden order to Marika, where Marika wants to destroy the order, shatter the ring, and have a new Elden lord, while Radagon wants to preserve the order and seals themselves inside the erdtree.
@@donovan4222 Remember St. Trina wants Miquella to be ended and not become a God, while Miquella wants the opposite. It is also implied by the Law of Regression that all urge to come back to One. So, Marika cast Radragon apart to become a God, but she wants to make all her Aspects God. So, she drew him back.
@@Fragmentsinfractals488True St. Trina also has opposite goals to Miuella, I think you may be right…the Radagon/Marika were always the same person theory continues to look more and more plausible imo. I still don’t fully understand them having children though. I’m torn because Mesmer seems to be clearly Radagon’s son, but for the timeline to work this would mean Marika would have had to met Radagon way earlier, likely before Godfrey. So it suggests that they were always together, but doesn’t explain how you can have a kid with yourself.
I don't think the Hornsent created the Gate of Divinity. In the story trailer, the bodies of the Gate are still fresh as Marika walks through them. It makes more sense to me that this was Marika's "original sin", as they call it. She used the sacrifice of countless Hornsent to rise to godhood.
@@alliesangalli1757 If you look closely at the story trailer, you can see those strands of runes she is holding up are connected to all the bodies around the divinity gate. So yeah she is clearly using them as some kind of sacrifice.
Personally I think she was with Godfrey at the time. Everyone needs a King Consort. There is a Crucible Knight in the Lands of Shadow and he and his knights both used the power of the Crucible. Also the could be the seduction and betrayal she eventually cast him aside and took his grace.
My Crucible theory: The tower folk alternately describe it as a spiral, a pair of twin trees, and also as a current that reaches up toward the heavens... But that last one at least is not a new concept to us. We've seen plenty of currents shooting up toward the heavens both in the DLC and in the base game. The spirit springs I think that in the place where the Erdtree is now, there used to be a massive spirit spring that rose up in two streams spiraling around each other, most likely taking with them a great fountain of water since the Erdtree's roots are right above the source of the two underground rivers. Perhaps these waters even at one point had healing abilities similar to the sap of the Erdtree, before Marika transformed this fountain of life into a tree of life Her biggest mistake was separating the two trees, because she wanted a world of order and light, without chaos and shadow. The Erdtree and Scadutree SHOULD have been together, twined around each other like a spiral and in balance with one another But that aside, if the Crucible is a miraculous spirit stream where all life is blended together, where does its power come from? From spirits of course. We learn from the Suppressing Pillar that when the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow were one, it was a place where all forms of death "washed ashore." It was a place where all the world's dead were inexorably drawn, where their spirits would gather and blend in a single great melting pot, a crucible you might say, and then eventually burst up from the ground and bring new life to the world Death was the source of the Crucible's life, and this might explain why the sap of the Erdtree dried up so quickly after Marika sealed the Rune of Death
@@FeelTehPOWA I think I need more evidence to come up with a theory I'd feel confident in, but one potential explanation is that the GEQ is very similar to Messmer or the Omen twins Marika suppresses the flame of the Fell God, and she has a child born with the flame inside him. She seals him away in the Land of Shadow, and then we start getting people like Corrin and that one starting class, mortals loyal to the Erdtree but who have prophetic visions of it burning and are able to use forbidden fire incantations Marika tries to suppress the Crucible and anything to do with horns, and she has two children with an overwhelming amount of horns and power in their blood. She seals them away beneath the capital, and the "Omen curse" begins spreading all throughout the kingdom Perhaps after suppressing death, Marika had a child born with the ghostflame and/or god-killing black flame inside her, and like Messmer she found a use for her for a while, hunting down opposing gods, until Marika eventually became too afraid of her power and sealed her and the Rune of Death away as well, eventually leading to the spread of deathroot and Those Who Live in Death As much as Marika would have liked, these concepts and forces refuse to be removed from the world for long, always finding some form through which to reenter the Lands Between. And death very well could be one of them
I personally think that there was just a large material tree where the Erdtree now stands, one fed by the waters as you describe. Otherwise I think you're bang on the money. My addition: all ages prior to Marika are "unbound" in that all elements that Marika would go on to suppress are in play. It is essentially nature as we understand it, represented metaphysically. In this world, being Elden Lord was essentially pledging yourself to this natural process. It might grant you power, sure, but it doesn't let you change the fundamentals. You are fundamentally under the sway of a darwinistic natural order. Marika would therefore be the first God as we understand it, with God before being nothing but a force. She decimates the old tree, leaving nothing but the stump and the roots, and fuses herself to the force at its core, and makes use of the connection, the "grace" that is transmitted to her via the Fingers from a totalitarian alien entity that seeks absolute control, to sever all the rules of nature that she finds repellent. This is why grace can be seen by us in streams in the air and why the Fingers stand tall and stock still: they are antenna for instructions and will. And that is why the Erdtree is semi-transparent: it is a projected manifestation, emanating the rules out across the land. Marika is the tree now.
I was of a mind that Radagon was a mimic tear, but now I think he is Marika's discarded Faith in the GW, much like how St Trina is Miquella's discarded Love. This might be why she calls him "leal hound of the GO" and why she gives a speech speaking of no longer relying on "blind faith" in their future.
Miquella had to discard his body and other self because he was Golden Order made. Marika was not, she didn't need to do this because she wanted a godhood of the Golden Order (Greater Will). Miquella wanted a new order, it's why he divested himself of all things Golden... Marika had no intention of this, she wouldn't have done the same. It is not a required step to becoming a god, it was just a step Miquella took to ensure there was no Greater Will involved in his godhood (which is what ruined Marikas because the fingers are broken).
@@garethlawton5278 she calls Radagon her "other self". St Trina is Miquella's other self, too. Hence the androgyny. They are each the Rebis of their distinct Orders. Whether or not it was crucial to discard all or only part of their bodies has no bearing, especially since St Trina is Miquella's Love, not a part of his body, but his other self, just as Radagon is part of Marika without necessarily being part of her body. There is a big difference here.
Just a theory, but considering that Melina is messmers little sister. Notice how his right eye has the seal, Melina has a birds foot (death bird) tattoo over her left eye. Maybe confirming that her curse was to be inhabited by a death bird queen. The gloam eyed queen.
It's radagon. It's pretty obvious. Radagon's theme plays subtly at mesmer's boss fight. He has red hair. He's cursed like malenia and miquella. His name starts with M like miquella and malenia.
I don't think that Marika wed herself to Godfry until well after she had become a God and it was this mysterious Serpent entity who keeps popping up that was her original Lord Consort as she became a god
i agree! except i theorize that before she became a god she became a saint (through following the hornsent until she reaches the gate) and consort to the snake. I believe thats maybe when she betrayed everyone, kills the snake and robs its grace or godhood (? sometimes i think maybe she used Radagon as consort bait
@@FeelTehPOWA It seems likely that Marika instead turned the whips against her captors before she could be stuffed into the jar herself and Radagon is likely the part of herself that craved an Ordered life while Marika craved a Golden one. I'm interested to know when Marika learned she could create a child with herself via Radagon? Because the story suggests it was Just before Radagon and Renalla's unnamed 4th child was born, but then where did Messmer and Melina come from? I think they might be the children of this first serpentine union and Messmer more resembles his father the Blasphemous Serpent who Rykard ended up adopting as his family. It makes sense because there is a giant shed serpent skin in Marika's home village that has the same model as the on in Rykards castle.
20:35 this can somehow explain how Marika and Radagon, Miquella and Trina were able to “mend together”. Which could also explain how Miquella just left parts of his body away and Godrick grafting abilities
There's a theory which states that the Land of Shadow and the Lands-Between were once part of the same landmass, but became separated due to Marika sealing the Land of Shadow after ascending to godhood. This theory also states that Leyndell was once connected to the ancient ruins of Rauth by a massive bridge which started at the divine bridge in the southwestern part of the city.
To add on to that: When you overlap the SotE map with the base game map, the little tree Marika planted in Hinterland also lines up with the Erdtree. And the upper edge of the SotE map (ruins of Rauh) slots almost perfectly into the southern edge of the Altus Plateu/Leyendell where it's breaking off into the ocean.
Hey, Last time I commented asking If you were going to play Genshin Impact anytime in future (Around the time when you had made the announcement that BanditGames will be just renamed to Bandit; Its BanditGames again for some reason) and you had replied to me that you will play the game here on this channel instead of Bandt Jo, but you never played it and I thought you don't wanna play it anymore and I wanted to respect that. But Just saying that Genshin is going to release pyro nation 'Natlan' in a few weeks and it is hype. Fontaine (Hydro Nation) was already peak and Natlan is looking even more hype. So just informing you incase you wanna hop in for some story, If you don't wanna play it then its fine, I respect that. Hoping for a reply soon.
When we think that the Nox are Numen a few things start to make sense. We know that the lands of shadow didn't use to be disconnected. Maybe she saved them and told them to create a world underground to protect them from the hornsent. She then said they committed a sin to make interaction with her kin something like treason to deter trespassers.
2 items, a couple lines and an empty village, all it took to understand all the intentions of Marika, turning her from a villain, to a tragic character
@@KonradCurz3 Ranni isnt a villain either, if anything shes the opposite of Miquella. Yes she killed Godwyn, but the age she brings about is one that actually brings about growth and change, unlike Miquella's age of compassion and the age of the golden order. When you talk to miniature Ranni after finishing her quest, she says, "Mine will be an order not of gold, but the stars and moon of the chill night. I would keep them far from the earth beneath our feet. As it is now, life, and souls, and order are bound tightly together, but I would have them at great remove. And have the certainties of sight, emotion, faith, and touch... All become impossibilities. Which is why I would abandon this soil, with mine order." What she means is that no icon of faith and order would exist, it would give total free will to mankind to forge a future for themselves. No more gods, just man and his ambitions to forge a future for themselves. Is it scary? yes. Thats why Ranni says in the ending, "into, fear, doubt, and loneliness." Its a huge change shes bringing about to the lands between, one totally unlike everything else that came before, but its hopeful. Change as big as this is scary, and being devoid of a god to pledge worship to is lonely. But she hopes that instead, man will govern man, allowing society not to be governed by divinity, but equal man. Its probably one of the best endings you can have.
This raises a lot of questions regarding her first marriage with Godfry. Was he part of the hornsent culture? We know the crucible Knights were his warriors or connected with him, so they had some connection to the power or admiration of the crucible.
I doubt that Marika soloed the entire hornsent nation, so its possible that the "seduction" mentioned in the trailer is of Godfrey, or Horah Loux who was a chieftain and so probably had an army of his own. She seduced Godfrey and used his armies to destroy the Horsent. This would also have parallels to Daenerys and Khal Drogo who were also written by George R.R. Martin
@@zachariahsmith9130 Godfry and his crucible Knights potentially being connected to the hornsent is explained in the base game? I can't say I've heard anyone talk about that before. I'd love to hear the explanation
@@CodexisInkwind Hes not connected to the hornsent at all. Hes not even from the lands between hes from the Badlands. The Badlands are not in the game.
One more thing I noticed in Bonny Gaol, in the areas where there are Shaman Pots and living Innards there are no Warrior Jars, but in the areas that has only corpses there are actual Warrior Jars.
Belurat Gaol also makes it clear that it wasn’t just the shamans in the jars, it was also just regular criminals, including other Hornsent, and anyone else they put in the jails (like for example Midra and his scholars for studying the frenzied flame). Basically, Shamans were the main ingredient who’s flesh bound everything together, but they butchered other people as well to meld with them.
Her removal of the rune of death to punish the hornsent eternally is great. Great lore video. There’s still so much of this story to tell. I want a sequel damnit.
I do think that Marika probably did a lot of what we see Miquella do in this DLC. I think she travelled and left part of herself across the land. What if Radagon was her St. Trina, just not her heart/love, maybe her fanaticism or yearn for perfection. Radagon sought more knowledge as a champion, going so far as to learn sorcery from the best sorcerer of his age, Rennala, and yearned to create perfect order as Elden Lord. Marika could have cut him out and then became a God. I also wonder if the Gloam Eyed Queen was also originally another aspect of Marika that she cut out, explaining why Melina may evoke ideas of the GEQ in the frenzy ending if you don't use her as kindling. I think Marika wanted to be a God of abundance, of life, in order to combat the death that her people the Numen/Shamans experienced at the hands of the Hornsent. It would make sense later on then when Godwyn dies that she, in severe grief, shatters the elden ring and locks away the realm of shadow as it is a land associated with death. I think Radagon reappeared during the Liurnian Wars under the guise of being on Marika's side, but was actually only working with the Greater Will and the Two Fingers to eventually supplant Marika as the vessel of the Elden Ring and become God. That could explain the dialogue from Marika later on, she realizes who Radagon is at the point of his betrayal, proving to be her other self, like St Trina and Miquella, and yet to become a God. We see the Two Fingers try to stop Ranni, they send a Baleful Shadow after her, but we never see the fingers ever try to stop Miquella, or at the very least no evidence is found yet showing any interruption, so what if they don't care if Miquella becomes a God, because they just need a new vessel for the next age. Miquella doesn't seem to want to stop the continuation of the Elden Ring, he is a fundamentalist, he just wants to stop pain and suffering, like Marika except that he is going to basically control or compel everyone to do so. Marika's story is tragic, not just the sad backstory but because of how she became what she hated in her past life. The forces of the Erdtree committed genocide against the giants, went to war against the Carians and the Ancient Dragons. She caused suffering and she sees this all come to fruition when one of her family (extended) rebels against her order by murdering her son. Shattering the Elden Ring is something akin to her last defiance against the Greater Will, who she possibly has viewed as the progenitor of the cycle of suffering she was the victim and perpetrator of. She still was a tool and perpetrator of genocide, so the people saying she is a hero is a bit off, but it doesn't mean her act of shattering the Elden Ring and trying to end the cycle isn't a heroic act. I don't think Marika would call herself a hero
This!!!! Tho i dont think Radagon was trying to supplant her, hes just her desire to defend and protect what she has. Therefore he wants to preserve the golden order. His purpose is singular in nature, tho he is a seperate being. Which also explains his desire to get stronger. He clearly cant be working with the greater will because its stated that the greater will hasnt been communicating with the fingers in the DLC.
It looks to me as if the Gate of Divinity was the true goal of the flesh jars. The hornsent used bodies for bricks and shrine maidens for mortar. They were creating a place for one of their own to achieve divinity, and perhaps the creation of a god was originally a mutual goal of the hornsent and shrine maidens, but after that alliance morphed into a genocide, Marika simply ascended first and put a stop to it.
17:41 the woman in the tree. It’s an offering to the grandmother, that would be the presumably petrified woman in the tree, it’s a common concept in faith to have a person die such that a tree bearing fruit may grow, and that’s probably what’s happening here, based on the fact they have an entire separate culture up there, shaman are spiritualists, and it is likely that corpse is the shrine referred to by marika’s proper title “shrine maiden” in the Japanese
I feel like Marika and Radagon were once one person. Then they split, as Miquella split from St.Trina. Then they recombined after Godfrey was banished and the ring was shattered.
Very well done! As someone who's watched at least 100 of these lore videos, I have to say this one has been the best. You have thoroughly covered this topic.
Miquella bewitched Malenia and used his puppet to go after Radahn. Miquella then took Radahns Soul using Melania and the soldier betwitched by Miquwlla took Melania back to the Haligtree. Malenia attacks you and chants she is tthe blade of miquella, her enchanter. The entire population of the haligtree is under miquellas control. Ranni was told that the only way to achieve godhood was through slaying Godwin. It was Miquella that told her, the Greater Will had abandoned them. Godwin was slain by the Black Knives, thinking they were toast as Ranni was told by Miquella about being abandoned and she would be taken. So, here we have Ranni commit the kill, Miquella sending for Radahn and shoving Radahn into Kohg's Body. Richard got swallowed, because he had to fight off Miquella. In the end, Marika sent away Godfrey and we got put in the bell tower golems waiting to be awakened. Marika shattered the ring and we are children of Marika. It was Miquella that is the villian. The worst part? It was Miquella that put the spell on his mother, the offsprinf in amber is bewitched to be Miquella. Miquella is evil.
@@ZacharyJClark There’s nothing that points at Miquella telling Ranni to kill Godwyn. If anything, she would want to keep Godwyn alive, as it is said that Miquella genuinely admired Radahn due to his leadership and strength, and seeing that Godwyn has those same qualities, it’s unlikely that Miquella would want Godwyn dead(as in not coming back at all dead)
@@ZacharyJClark How would Godwyn even stop him? He would have to find out about Miquella’s plans first. And it’s not like Miquella got himself involved with every demigod. He ain’t do nothing with Morgott
@@djw3512 Miquella controls, he does not trust. Godwin was uncontrollable, Godwin beside Marika was one of the most charismatic. St Trina was banished for this very reason. Marika plucked destined death and Miquella used his power to turn the Black Knives. They carved for Ranni. However, Carrian Manor was then attacked. Ranni then locked away the leader of The Black Knives. Marika shattered the ring after Godwins death, and Ranni violated. The leader of the black knives only rememvers being given destined death by Marika. Malekith took DD willingly,(Marika stole it) but after Godwins death and Rannis binding with Melina, (Taught and helped by Miquella) Malekith was overcome with obsession to reclaim DD. Marika, Ranni and Miquella all saw tarnished as the solution. They all knew, we were the wildcard. Banished with Godrey, brought to the Bellfrees and revived as a last resort.
Separate room with a weird statue, obscure message confirming it as a puzzle, huge inaccessible chunk of map that lies behind it. Gesture name shouting "use me you know where".
I spent hours doing crazy things. Trying out gestures and actions in seprate locations. Few gave fruitions lol many were a waste of time. I even went back with the gesture yoy gst from final fight to see if it trigures something somewhere but nothing.
27:00 nah that doesnt seem to line up with the timeline. 1. he already has the marika sealed eye in the trailer when he burns and ravages Belurat. 2. it is heavily implied he was either born with the serpent or it was actively sealed into him by Marika herself.
In the last of ziostorm's video it was shown that there's a huge shedded snake skin that can be found in shaman village that looks similar to the snake skin that can be found in the arena were we fight the Godskinn noble in Volcano Manor. There's no explanation why it's there. My only guess is that it may have been planned to be part of an abandoned storyline that may explain the origin of Marika's aversion to snakes.
If we look at Dominula, the dancing women have skinned and burned men, piling them up as if to mold them into masses like they do in Bonny village, and there is a Godskin apostle there. As we know from the Church of Eiglay, the Godskins are connected to the Great Serpent. The snakeskin is a symbol of rejuvenation through death, and the maidens of Dominula are trying to rejuvenate the Lands Between. It is also not a coincidence that Dominula is a windmill village, the windmill being a symbol for cyclical change that grinds grains into meal, ridding it of the grist.
I belive that the hornsent used the great jar innards to construct the divine gate, as they refer to the innards as saints. To become a saint one can give their life to a divine purpose - the constructon of the divine gate. In the trailer, the gate has a similar colour as the jar innards.
This guy's videos are the perfect cure to procrastination when I play it in the background, also hella good to watch since he doesn't do that annoying deep/sorrowful voice that every Vati copycat tries to do
4:25 It can also be theorized that Radagan was originally part of Marika, and was split off and tossed aside like St. Trina was. (Assuming that Miquela basically recreated the extract scenario that led to Marika's ascension) Then this dialogue is about becoming one with the _new_ godly Marika. As it seems strange that she would even tell anyone, including the target, that she can merge with someone and become them.
4:28 I think this line of dialogue more implies that Marika didn’t want to merge with Radagon to become one. I think Radagon and Marika were once the same but at some point a curse was placed on Marika to split her into two halves.
I have a feeling that Marika was born a normal sweet girl, the hornsent became overconfident and greedy due to their strength, forcing the shamans to merge with pots against their will, Marika somehow managed to escape and when she gained power she took revenge through Messmer by having her son attack the hornsent however she hid Messmer from the golden order but Marika loves all her children and couldn't leave Messmer alone, or so he thought. Godwyn seemed like a child born of love and kindness, his death certainly proving that even gods can die. Marika had everything taken from her, messmer, as her first child perhaps, was the first time she was given something to live, love and die for again, but he was seen as unclean because of the snake in his eyes by the golden order, so Marika hid him because she loved all her children, the omens Margit and Mohgwyn showed Marika how her actions haunted her, even as a goddess there was something that showed her she was not perfect or infallible, she killed all hornsent except her own children, the love for them and the trauma the hornsent did to her endures, she can't forget but she can't stop loving either, godwyn seen as a golden child and probably the greatest of all Marika's loves died in the dark night, whereupon she broke the Elden Ring so that godwyn would not be purified and reborn by the golden grace, but that is exactly what led to godwyn never being able to die completely and since then she has never had another child like him no matter how many times or with whom she tried. Marika seems sad, hurt and misunderstood. She just wanted to live in peace and quiet, she seems as if she had expected nothing from the world and was still disappointed...
17:00 the part about the minor erdtree and the “kindness of gold without order”…definitely some deeper connection w Miquella the Kind being associated w unalloyed gold? Minor erdtree (young) portraying the youth of miquella? Idk definitely something there
I think Marika was at one point at the head of the Horncent civilization. You find statues of her all over Enir Elim which is still predominantly populated by the Horncent. You can tell this is her because another one of these statues is present in Castle Ensis being prayed to by one of Messmer’s soldiers, praying that Marika would grant Messmer grace. I also think at one point she was communing with a God that they worshipped that we don’t know but can be seen in other statues in Enir Elim with a massive horned crown. There are also statues depicting a male and female figure together wrapped in a horned spiral, I would imagine this is the two mentioned above. This as well as the trailer dialogue mentioning a “seduction” is what leads me to believe that Marika was communing with this other God at some point during the Horncent civilization’s reign.
My headcannon will always be that radagon was a half giant warrior with the fell god within him, and he and marika were tooth-whipped into flesh slurry and combined in a jar. Together they seduced Godfrey, lord of the divine bird kingdom of the erdtree and home of the crucible, become god and took over the world
I don’t know much about Eldin Ring but I just wanted to say congrats BanditGames on successfully changing up your channel away from Zelda content only! I totally get the frustration with the lore being nerfed in totk so seeing your success is like a mini win for me too!
I just wish it wasn’t so confusing to know what changes once you become a god via the divine gateway. I mean does the universe bend to your will now or do you just have enough holy damage to kill everything
Super long shot theory here, and borrowing from another YT video where the pile of flesh that Marika pulled the golden threads from was a giant snake, what if that was the Gloam Eyed Queen? And perhaps Marika/Radagon sired Mesmer and Melina. Mesmer inherited the more snake aspect (and red hair from Radagon), and Melina inherited the glaom eye? With the great betrayal being the slaughter/sacrifice of GEQ that Marika makes to acquire the golden threads to craft the elden ring?
this is a great video. here's what I think. I believe that snakes used to be quite integral to the crucible, and to the erdtree. but now, they have done something so terrible that they are seen as traitors to the erdtree. you may think this is just because of messmer, but it thinks it goes deeper than that. I believe messmers father was a serpent god. I believe the serpent tempted Marika to commit the original sin, just like Eve in the garden of Eden. and then she burnt down the erdtree with messmers flame. the scadutree looks like a burnt tree, without any leaves. the burning of the erdtree is described as the cardinal sin, and I believe that the original sin was the first time the erdtree was burnt. the item description for "messmers kindling" says that he keeps company with the original sin, and he literally does keep company with the base abyssal serpent, and his flame. miquella is definitely a kind of christ-figure, and wishes to atone for the original sin, as it says in his great rune. I think the original sin is an extremely important factor in marikas rise to power, and is also probably the reason why the lands are shrouded in shadow now. but that's just my theory, I may be wrong. still looking into it, and I may end up making a video about it if I get enough information together.
You should 100% check out the theory that Midra and Nanaya are Marika’s parents. I think it’s relevant because that would Marika half-hornsent. Since the Hornsent claim they were “betrayed” by Marika, wouldn’t there have to be an alliance to betray in the first place?
the road from bonny village to the cathedral of manus metyr is full of wolves，unnaturally. i can't help but thinking these wolves must mean something，then i realize there is a statue of a girl and three wolves in Farum Azula. i imagine young marika was once in bonny village then she run away，on the road she somehow made the wolves to help her，eventually she hided in the cathedral of manus metyr the people there helped her and guided her to became a god
The way I see it, in her youth Marika came across (either coincidentally or guided to) the Finger Mother. With the finger's guidance, instead of sharing her people's gruesome fate, she used seduction and deception to make her way into the Hornsent's society (as the grandam stated, by a lot of bed activity) and eventually reached the Gate of divinity and ascended into godhood (the process also presumably separated Radagon from her, just like how Miquella separated St.Trina from himself). This is just me speculating, but it might be why Morgoth and Morg are Omens (or Hornsents) while her true son with Godfrey, Godwyn is without any affliction. And why she despised them so. As to why Mesmeth, Melina, Malenia, and Miquella are all afflicted in one way or another, while Godwyn and Rennala's children are not, I think it's because they are all children born from her and Radagon (aka herself). It has been my theory ever since the base game that this plays into the theme of unnatural birth. Incest is not only morally condemned but also has scientific consequences on the children. And this is Marika birthing them technically on her own.
Personally I feel there are still a lot left unexplained about Marika even after the DLC. What exactly did she pulled out from what in the DLC trailer? Or her true intention behind shattering the elden ring. There are evidences that it was all planned, not her slashing out in anger because of Godwyn's death (not mentioning she might have a hand in this herself). We can only speculate, but i feel that this DLC did not give us definite answers the way the Ringed City did for DS.
We still lack the details on the night of black knives (if Marika was involved in Ranni's plot), how exactly Marika became a God, what was the "betrayal" and her "sin". And how the Greater Will and the fingers are related to her. Did she betray the hornsent? How so it's not explained. Why would they trust her when she's a minority supposed to be pickled in a jar. How could she raise an army without them noticing and from where. Why are all of her children cursed? What was the mother's sin? It would need to be a transgression against a God and mere genocide won't count.
I have been watching your videos for a good minute now. I'm glad to see you covering Elden ring, as I moved from Zelda to Elden ring myself LMFAO, love the video Keep it up, please! :D Also I'm interested to know more about the connection between Melina and the Gloam Eyed Queen.
It might be that the rune of death was removed as Marika never wanted a close one to die ever again and perhaps was the deal with the fingers. Might explain how the death pf Godwyn exposed the facade and caused her to shatter the Elden ring itself
Thank you so much to you and your crew for this video! I hope to this comment might help to spread your work through the algorithm because you really deserve it! You make the best elden ring content ever!
Just a theory based on naming conventions, what if she became known as Marika the Eternal, not only because she removed the rune of death and death itself from the Lands Between, but also (adding to your theory about succesfully saving shamans) built the Eternal Cities for the Shamans/Numen/Nox that she saved. I don't remember if these cities sank, or were purposely built underground. If it was intentionally underground, perhaps it was done to protect them further.
Theory: Messmer is half fire giant, when Marika saw that Messmer is cursed she hide him is shadow realm then she married Godfrey, told him to kill all the giants (no witnesses) , then she cast him away when he was useless. Dont know if timeline is correct.
The game all but directly confirms the reason messmer is still down there/wiped from history is to contain the base serpent, it has nothing to do w fire giants
I always assumed Radagon was a result of the curse the fire giants put on her when they were defeated. I believe that’s why all of their children together, with the exception Miquella, have red hair and her first two have an affinity towards fire. You can even see it as the scarlet rot scars and burns as well, and St. Trina can compose a purple flame of sleep. It’s also stated Radagon hates his hair because of its association with the giants and his children with Rennala all had red hair (one was a giant in stature and the other also had an affinity for fire and serpents). The common denominator is Radagon.
What I'm missing is how the age of dragons, with their own tree, elden ring, lord, etc. fits in all this. Here's what I think: the Crucible is the reason the Elden Beast and Fingermother came to the lands between in the first place. A singularity; an inexhaustible source of chaotic life energy, or some such. The plan being to imprint a schematic of Order, an Elden Ring, onto it. And the Crucible granted Order takes the visual form of a Great Tree, differing depending on what the Order is. But the mother could not communicate with the Greater Will, so did not know what that Order needed to look like. Seems like there was a first Order, the age of dragons, with its own Elden Ring and Tree. That era ended somehow, and the hornsent era started. The hornsent era is characterised by wild mutations and a spiral Great Tree, but unclear if that is a result of them having their own Elden Ring and all the rest, or just a result of leaving the Crucible alone to do its thing. The latter would better support the motivation of the Fingermother teaming up with Marika to restore Order, by making a new one. The former could help explain what Marika did to become a god, i.e. take the old Elden Ring from the hornsent god. Would appreciate anyone poking holes in this, by they way. For now, its what makes sense to me.
Radagon is marika, the dialogue you showed was literally her saying my other self at the ending when she was talking about merging into one body before that they were separate at one point when he was with rannala but when we fight radagon marika is shown to be the same body but one point their bodies were separate, also the reason their children were cursed is because of them being the same person.
Alright hear me out folks. Here's my theory on what Marika's seduction and betrayal was, and this has a lot to do with the parentage of Messmer and Melina. Marika by birth was a red haired powerless shaman, from the bottommost sect of the hornsent society. But she was special because she was chosen as an empyrean from the shaman people by her two fingers. Marika in her desperation, fear, and anger towards the hornsent manifested this other self that is Radagon. She was then instructed by her two fingers to use Radagon to commit an act of blasphemy which would later grant her significant power.. Now the hornsent were an advanced civilization that worshipped the crucible, created the gates of divinity by blending life forms together to emulate the crucible, and ultimately succeeded in accessing the powers of the crucible. The hornsent were strongly connected to the godskin. It was the godskin that aided the blending of lifeforms by skinning and making up those gates of corpses. The leader of the godskin, the golden haired gloam eyed queen was the god of the time and represented the crucible. You see crucible like features on the goskin nobles and apostles (tail, crucible like incantations etc). The godskin also had some kind of association with serpents as we have seen a godskin noble at the temple of Eglay. Here is what Marika and her two fingers plotted: Marika would use Radagon, a powerful and charming champion to seduce and have an affair with the gloam eyed queen. Once seduced, the gloam eyed queen birthed two red haired children, Messmer and Melina. Marika was also bestowed upon a powerful shadow by the two fingers, Maliketh. Once the children were born, Marika would use the opportunity to assassinate the gloam eyed queen using Maliketh. Marika would then pluck out the golden rune of the gloam eyed queen as shown from the trailer. This rune resided within the golden hair of the gloam eyed queen (You see that the body from which the hair is removed looks like godskin and the sky in the scene looks like a golden sky is about to replace a previous gloam colored sky). Marika would therefore assume godhood and would become the golden haired queen. The seduction, the affair and the betrayal is what lead to gold arising through Marika. And so was shadow born. I think shadow here also refers to the two children Messmer and Melina. Messmer inherited the black flame (Black pyrefly) and serpentine natures from his mother and Melina inherited the gloam eyes and destined death. Marika would seal both of these away. The golden braid that Marika left to the grandmother before she left her village forever, which is her prayer and confession, is simply a part of the same golden hair that she tore off from the gloam eyed queen for the great rune. Marika became a golden haired god but Radagon would remain red haired. The red hair reminded Marika of her sin which is why Radagon always hated his hair.
Where all these crazy cinematic coming from? Are those trailers? Just edited gameplay? Like the shot of the person in the divinity gate. That was wicked
The jars we find in the erdtree realm also present a different seal compared to the ones we find in the realm of shadow. Does this mean that the culture if potentates also propagated in the erdtree realm, after the shadow realm was banished?
I like the interpretation of the whole Numan thing as that Marika is a Numan and Marika is a Shaman/Priestess, but not all Numan are Shaman. The Shaman and Nox feel like they're all of the same species but of different cultures and magical tendencies. I even read the Hornsent basically being Numan, with the signs of the crucible/horns marking them as more divine beings in their culture and raised to a higher status (which is why they can act with impunity within The Lands Between before Marika's rise. This would also explain why crucible horns can appear on other creatures and why Mogh, Morgott and the Omen can be born in the era of the Erdtree despite their parents not being Hornsent or having horns. It makes the sins the Hornsent commit (and then Messmer's war later on) feel a lot more grounded and tangible (very G.R.R.M.) as opposed to a kinda generic fantasy race war, as these horrible acts end up being justified purely out of class superiority, circumstances of birth, and revenge.
I don't believe the betrayal speaks of what marika did to the hornsent but what she did to her fellow Shaman, for one we see marika ripping out golden hair out of a body, and the shaman (judging from marika herself) have golden hair. Secondly the gates are made of fused flesh and who else then the shaman have an affinity with flesh fusing?
@@vvbr2372 yeah I think you’re right, if you look closely in the DLC trailer you can see that those strands of hair she’s holding up are connected to the bodies of the divine gate. It’s like she’s using the shaman flesh to hold all of bodies together, similar to how the shaman were used to hold the innards together in the jars.
The whole point of miquellas journey is to give insight to his mother and her journey. The betrayal is simply her promising to end the brutality she saw and then did the opposite.
Want to note that the english translation has some mistakes regarding the jar innards. The original translation says stuffing like it is some ritual for people in the jars to become saints, like it is some sort of ascension ritual. but the original japanese text is trying to say it is a sort of punishment so sinners can become 'good'.
I really do think finding out about the Miquella and Saint Trina dynamic subtly confirms that Radagon always WAS once Marika, but was split from her upon her ascension to godhood, just as with Miquella discarding Saint Trina. This would explain Melina's dialogue in Marika's bedchamber too, as it would be Marika bringing Radagon BACK into her their shared body to shatter them both with the Elden Ring, even though he opposed her (or perhaps because of it). This is why he was not a god yet, as she says, because he never had an apotheosis as she did, since he was some kind of abandoned characteristic of hers (not her love like Trina was for Miquella, I wager, but something else, like duty or loyalty). Either way, I feel like assuming Radagon was once his own entirely separate entity totally undermines the narrative weight of the "Radagon is Marika" reveal from the base game, and Shadow of the Erdtree only reinforced that they were originally the same person to me, at least. It's always going to be open to interpretation though, of course, the story is specifically written that way, without definitive answers for many ambiguous core questions like this.
Also have a theory on the pots in the lands between that Marika turns them into an almost form of reward for great warriors to be congealed into pot warriors as a way to turn her back on the horrors that were done to her people inside the pots in the land of shadow.
Man this DLC can be called a whole game it's so big and it revealed so many things and still there is so many questions .... i hope it doesn't end up like some other stories where they end up leaving it half assed
I believe that the reason Rykard is able to meld with the God-devouring serpent and retain his consciousness, when it’s implied that nobody else was able to do so, isn’t just because he’s a demi-god, but perhaps because he carries Shaman blood in him. Perhaps Radagon was also a Shaman, since he is described as Marika’s “other self”. On this same note, this explains why Godrick is able to perform grafting, since his flesh is also that of a Shaman due to his heritage in the Golden Lineage. Marika becoming a god at the Crucible explains why Morgot and Mogh are Omen. They aren’t really Omen, they’re Hornsent, and they are that because of Marika’s contact with the Crucible. The curse you mentioned that one Hornsent Grandam placed on them probably also had something to do with it. At any rate, they’re “cursed” not because of their blood, but because of what they remind Marika of. Since she wouldn’t be able to kill them, being their mother, she instead decided to hide them away where she’d never be reminded of them and their connection to her tormentors, deep within the Leyndell sewers. This also explains why it was common practice to “dehorn” the Omen. It all stems from an inherited and passed-down hatred of the Hornsent.
I think Mohg and Morgott were the firstborn twins, as both of them were born omens and afflicted by the accursed blood of the Formless Mother, or Mother of Truth, another important deity in the land of shadows. The Hornsent Grandam cursing Marika to birth Omens, the same people she sought to eradicate would be very fitting of revenge, but I cannot in this moment explain how the accursed blood found it's way to them. But I do think she has something to do with the Gate of Divinity. In the story trailer, you can see Marika walking up the gate surrounded by blood and gore who look very similar to the Sacred Bloody Flesh item, the item description reads: "The blood is said to have fallen from the Formless Mother's wound. Never will it dry, never will it rot." And another observation that might just be of chance, but the blades of the Bloodfiend's Sacred Spear very much looks like the gate of divinity, when they where whole. I believe the Gate of Divinity was once a large spear that continuously pierced the Mother of Truth as a form of communion. From the Bloodfiend's Sacred Spear: "Sacred spears of blood are the instruments of communion with an outer god. The mother of truth desires a wound." Could be a theory that this gate of divinity was originally part of an ancient religion, that allowed the ascension to Godhood with the assistance of an Outer God, the Formless Mother. But now, sealed and forgotten by the Hornsent who scorned the old bloody ways.
9:07 since day 1 there has been a single crucible, no references to more than one exist anywhere, they call it THE crucible, not A crucible, second off, the most likely candidate of such a thing is the “one great” Hyetta mentions, all things were once one, and the fractures created sin, pain, and suffering, the frenzy flame ending is literally the new age of the crucible, where you “melt it all away” with the chaos flames “it all” being the differences that create distinction
Great video and great explanation for a lot of stuff in the DLC. But there is one thing I've been wondering for quite some time now and suprisingly it seems that no one really talked about yet. Or at least, I haven't seen any videos or discussions about this topic about Marikas seduction, betrayal and what her connections with the Fingers (and in turn Greater Will) is. To me the location of Shaman Village is very interesting since it seems to be quite secluded and strangly close to the Finger Ruins of Dheo. So isn't it possible that Marika, in a desperate attempt to save her people found Metyr (which we learned was the first shooting star to fall upon the Lands Between) and made a deal/pact to gain power and followers to go against the Hornsent. Maybe she even stumbled upon Metyr on accident and got seduced by her by promising Marika revenge and a better future. Marika realised her mistake and later in a another desperate attempt shattered the ring and tried to bring it all down to try and remove the influence of the Fingers and Greater Will that she was responsible for. This would also explain what Count Ymir told us.
Theory: crucible is a spiral tree upon which The Tower was built to honor it. Bloody remains seen in trailer are Hornsent offerings to the Crucible to let it grow more, until it reaches gods - like Miquella used his own blood to grow Haligtree. Marika burned Crucible away, which is why Enir-Ilim is covered in ash. Marika took part of Crucible, a seedling maybe, with which she created Erdtree at separate location.
We see the actual crucible guarded by the commander riding a pig. It means the life came from the sap of those trees. In Leyndel, it seems that an equivalent of the crucible in the Shadow Lands is placed in Marika's bedchamber. There are other minor crucibles in this area.
The crucible sounds a lot like the many concepts that are brought up at different points. The Law of Regression and Casuality. The One Great, the primeval current, the jarring rituals, and in fact the forge of the giants resembles a giant crucible.
Im convinced that Messmer is child of Marika and Radagon, simillar to Malenia and Miquela. They share a trait of curse, trait of names and trait of haveing own butterflies. What is more, Messmer strongly suggests that Melina is also child of Marika and Radagon shareing same traits
8:53 in spanish the word 'Crucible' sounds like 'Cruzado/Cruzable' which kinda means (crossed or mixed) since fromsoftware like to use latin a lot in their games , i'd say this is the way is meant to be understood (referring something mixed)
Messmers father is Radagon. As he follows the naming scheme for children from that pairing. Messmer, Melina, Miquella and Melania. Kids from the other paring between Radagon and Renalla are R names. Kids from the Godfrey pairing are G names. They wouldn't have secured a naming scheme in the game, then shown us two kids with M names and said they're Radagons kids to then thrown an unnamed person begining with M to father Messmer and Melina. Radagon is most likely the father. This would confirm Radagon was around alot earlier than the liurnia wars, but was only brought into the forefront and into history's eyes at that time.
Fun fact: in old English, "sc" was pronounced like "sh", so the "Scadutree" is pronounced like "Shadutree".
IfI'mwrongplzbenicetome
This is cool
I hear other reviewers read it that way. Love your vid. Interesting theory about Messmer’s potential father. I was only thinking that it might me Radagon as well.
I know the general consensus is to call it shadowtree/shadowfragment now but we dont call the Haligtree Holytree or the Erdtree Earthtree, its evident scadu is from the word shadow but im not fully convinced we have to spell it like that too
@@formatomi right there with you🛡🛡🛡
You're actually right.
I just realized that the omen are being treated the way they are due to Marikas history with the horsent. This whole chapter 4 part is stunning. Using her tormentors own power to achieve godhood, bathing her new world in light while condemning the hornsents world in shadow and then stealing the rune of death to make them suffer eternally by her own sons hand, thus creating the curse of the omen.
Although I still don’t get how she achieved godhood to begin with. Why weren’t the hornsents able to do that themselves but a random shaman was? Did it have to do something with the two fingers helping her?
I also wonder why the area the Shaman Village is located in is called ”Hinterland“. Why is it in German? I’m a German myself so is it one of those situations where it’s just a word the English language decided to use for itself like with Kindergarten for example? Or does it have lore significance?
@@mt2r-music It's a loan word the English language uses!
@@IRLlosersQthanks!
First of its not just the hornsend I think its also the serpent. In the trailer we see her with a serpent armband. Just like er having 2-3 children connected to them like she has 2 omens. I think the serpent is an aspect ( or born) of the crucible as the immortal serpent tries to eat the gods and the world to make all one again.
As for why se ended it all? Loosing the villiage damaged her ( in Trauma). Yes she took revenge but her past catched up to her. Her children became what she wanted to run away from. She had to even abandon them or rip their eyes out.
Lastly she wanted to create a world in which she didnt have to loose anyone anymore which is why she sealed death. But even that didnt work out for her. Her first Husband lost his Grace making him Banished and her only Perfect Son died even with all she did to make it impossible.
She completly lost Faith in the Order and in the Greater will likely. She probably didnt want to end it all she just wanted to end herself.
Im not sure what Rabadons part is in all tat but he seemed to use and push her to godhood cuz he wanted it himself.
So my working theory on why it didn't work for the hornsent is that the crucible is just a raw power source with no outer God attached to it. This is dependent on the Hornsent having made the divine gate in the first place which is also questionable.
But, if the crucible has no outer God attached, then there was no active force to elevate them the way the Greater Will elevated Marika to God hood via the gate and the fingers.
Also, an interesting detail that leans more into it being solely due to the greater will, the divine gate takes the shape of the uppermost rune of the Elden Ring.
The part that looks like crucifix made of a rune arch on top with a line straight down. It is the shape Marika is literally mimicking in her prison state when we come to her, and it is the void space making up the divine gate. The straight line up with the arch on top.
I’ve always felt a lot of marika’s actions in the base game felt weird for a god like being, but finding out she basically entered a slave contract with the greater will in exchange for the safety of her loved ones (getting rid of death) after her people were slaughtered changes a lot.
It makes her going 0-100 immediately on her sons death make a lot more sense. She basically viewed the greater will as having lied to her and betrayed her by letting him die
DLC literally confirms the Greater Will has nothing to do with…almost anything and people out here still don’t get it lol
Not trying to be a smartass. I’m not even talking about you in particular. Just…in general. Do every quest, people. The Greater Will sent down Metyr the Mother of Fingers, sent down the Elden Beast, then effed off after having sent the means to ensure order. We know this was as early as the era of the dragons. It’s been long gone by the time of Marika. Metyr went insane after being unable to contact the Greater Will for ages. She was the one speaking to the fingers in the Greater Will’s stead. And she guided Marika. Likely trying to impose order so the Greater Will came back. We can even say the Golden Order is the…combination of that. Marika’s first incantation (forgot the actual name) is described as having only the kindness of Gold, without the Order. Marika must have made a deal with Metyr and was guided by the fingers to achieve godhood, only for it to be too late to help her people after she ascended. So she instead turns to vengeance on the Hornsent and anything Crucible related, while trying to create a world of order and boundless life where she’ll never lose anything again, only to go mad once Godwyn dies.
@@abdieljove2011 Also I think Metyr imprissoned Marika after she removed the rune of death. But that would imply that Metyr and the Elden Beast was working together? 🤔
Another think I find interesting is how the hell is Melina pro two fingers? She must not know that Metyr lost contact with the greater will? While Ranni seems to have figured it out already.
@@McDudes I see Metyr and the Elden Bessts as on the same side, yeah. Well, kinda? They’re both shooting stars sent down by the Greater Will to impose order. I’m not sure the Elden Beast is even sentient though. It’s just the living form of the Elden Ring and a physical embodiment of Order. The ring has no agenda beyond order. Its rightful owner can alter it to create their own laws of nature. I think the Elden Beast was just defending itself since Marika shattered the ring lol
As for Melina, she’s a mystery. Ecen her connections to the Gloam Eyed Queen make her a real head scratcher since she’s Marika’s daughter and Mesmer’s sister. I hope we dig up more on her somewhere. That said, I think she’s more…anti Frenzied Flame than anything lol
@@abdieljove2011 Yeah she's for sure anti Frenzied Flame. If anything it seems she's supporting Marika in helping us kill her and free her I guess. But well we end up killing Radagon instead 🤔
@@abdieljove2011 you are talking about dlc lore but ignoring base game lore to make assumptions.
Both dlc and base game lore work together to make the true lore, and in the base game it is states that marika has a deal with “the greater will” not its agent, the being itself.
So while it’s true that contact was cut off at some point marika clearly interacted with them at least once. We also are given no timeframes for the shattering war or the shadow wars, it could have happened the day before the tarnished awakened or 2 centuries, we don’t know. So you can’t assume things about timeframe in this game outside of extremely general timeframes
Just noticed Marika named all her cursed kids after herself with an M, while the healthy kids are named after the healthy spouse, either Godfrey or Rennala.
radagon starts with an R too and marika probably let godfrey name his first born son after himself to honor him for his service. i think your theory is partially true tho i think she didn't consider morgott and mohg as worthy enough to hold a name that indicates they are part of the golden lineage like godwyn and godrick.
Underated? Bro this is like, right in front of your face even on a first playthrough...
That was like the first thing i really noticed, parts of the family are named similiary and idk the redhair kinda helps and the fact there was two consorts, item descriptions idk man. @bobjim245
I think it's possible the hornsent would have raised one of their own to godhood, if not for Marika's intervention. The old woman in Belurat is referred to in one item description as the "Empyrean grandam," which at the very least means the towerfolk knew about Empyreans and this lady was in charge of finding and/or training them
So I have a theory that in that moment with Marika in the trailer the hornsent were one step away from successfully creating a god of the Crucible. They'd constructed the Divine Gate, they had the primordial gold that would become the Elden Ring, and they had an Empyrean... And then Marika, who had been pretending to be their ally up until this point, killed that person, stole the Elden Ring, and ascended to godhood herself
"The seduction and the betrayal"
Now *that* is an interesting thought. It would explain why the Divine Gate appears to be freshly built when Marika uses it, at least
In shadowkeep there's a statue of woman with a horned head, looking exactly like Marika, crucified in the exact same way as Marika in the final fight cutscene. I think hornsent actually did succesfully create a god of Crucible, mixing a saint with Elden Beast and maybe couple dozens of other losers. Problem is, their god hated them.
Would explain the god-skin like material that she reaches in and grabs the great runes from.
Marikas people were being stuffed into Jars at bonny village, mixing with criminals. The whole point of doing that was to meld and graft them into saints. I think Marika stole the ritual because she was the saint that succeeded, and she had an accord with the Greater Will, which the hornsent didn't.
Here's the things though; Marika prayed to the Grandmother at her village, who looks remarkably like the statues of Marika throughout the game. I'm willing to bet that Marika succeeded in the melding, was supposed to replace the current God, but decided to abandon and later destroy the Hornsent for what they did to her.
You have to remember, this was the entire reason her people existed as far as the hornsent were concerned. The hornsent saw all of them as slaves to torture, slaughter, and meld together in the creation of saints
Yeah I think so too, they used the Shamans and their powers of spiritually merging people into one as a sacrifice or catalyst to make possible the ascension to godhood of one of their own. Marika cooperated with them for a while, maybe against her will, maybe she was even put in a jar herself, but in the last second, so to speak, she took divinity for her own. So she pretty much reached godhood at the cost of sacrificing her entire own race of people, which could be described as her "original sin". Which she tried to hide by having Messmer wipe out the hornsent and by hiding the lands of shadows behind the veil. That's my personal head canon at this point at least.
On a related note, The design of the furnace golems seems to be a sort of twisted karmic retribution towards the Hornsent approved by Messmer and Marika. The shamans were mutilated, then stuffed into jars to become saints by the Hornsent so in response, Marika orders her son Messmer to wage a brutal, genocidal war against the Land of Shadow with his most prominent war machine being the massive furnace golems where the Hornsent themselves are rounded up in droves, dead or alive (but most likely still alive for extra cruelty), to be stuffed in the golems and lit aflame to bring it to life.
Imagine the screams and howls of terror and agony and the smell of burning flesh as the golem surges to life; An instrument of death’s first gasps of “life” brought forth by the deaths of so many within its frame to serve as fuel for the golem as it marches over the land as an instrument of terror, destruction and mockery as it wears the horned mask of the fell god of fire the Hornsent so feared.
Ah the parallels!!! Great analogy!
The golem even bears the faces of dead giants likely killed by messmer himself mayhaps what horrific cruelty
@@Mr.Rendo1Not necessarily the actual faces of dead giants that they sliced off but rather crude effigies with their hair. The hair may be the only part of the giants that is real on it.
@@VictorIV0310 still from dead giants most likely lol
Since we know the Jars can create a meshed personality of sorts, I think it is possible that "Marika" is a successful saint of the shaman jars. That is the reason she became an Empyrean and was able to rise to godhood. Radagon can be a second "personality" created by the Jars who embodies order and honour.
Also there are mentions of Marika betraying the Hornsent. Maybe the Saint Marika was prayed to by the hornsent and she used her status as a saint to raise an army somehow and then turned on the Hornsent for revenge. Later she went on to become a God after being contacted by the Greater Will/Two Fingers.
Also its pretty much confirmed that Messmer is son of Radagon and MArika due to the red hair
I wonder if that specific Hornsent who said these cruel words to the shamans in Bonny Village lived long enough to be subject to similar cruelties by Messmer’s crusaders when they invaded.
I don’t know how long Hornsent lived but assuming he lived to see the crusade take place, I can only imagine it shifting from him whipping shamans with tooth whips and shoving them in jars like it's an ordinary day to him being captured by the crusaders before enduring days of being beaten and branded by serpent flails while being yelled at with slurs and obscenities by them such as being “Graceless scum” who’s only purpose is to be hunted, dehorned, impaled and burned before being forced to march alongside fellow Hornsent who’ve been rounded up, beaten, branded and dehorned to a furnace golem that has yet to come to life.
As the Hornsent are being pushed and crammed inside the golem to the point where’s it’s getting hard to breathe, they are given a speech by a Black Knight captain who says that though they are graceless vermin with no place in the order, their lives will at least serve one purpose: as kindling for their holy crusade.
The Hornsent suddenly reminisces on those shamans back in Bonny Village and realizes that he has become a victim to the same cruelties he inflicted on them.
However, he has no time to think of his current predicament as the crusaders set the golem aflame and the screams of countless Hornsent and the stench of their burning flesh fill the air as the golem comes to life.
So ends the life of one Hornsent among thousands, now used to fuel a lifeless machine of death and murder as it marches onto the battlefield. And so, the crusade continues.
Based. Its shame not all Hornsent were killed , there are still some in land of shadow or Bonny village
Sounds like you wrote this with one hand.
@@wojciechmazurk5468You realize that Hornsent also threw there own people in the jars and many of them had nothing to do with what happened to Marika?
Wow everyone come look at the freak type out dumb crap.
Wtf dude get therapy.
I too, enjoy reading torture porn.
To me, the dlc explains to us that Radagon is Marika's divested self through the journey of Miquella.
It actually explains it the other way. Marika didn't divest herself of anything to become a god. Miquella only did that so he could become a god without any taint of the old golden order which his body and other selves were full of. He had to get rid of them or the Greater Will would still be ruling in his name even if he attained Godhood as "Miqella the gold".
The shedding of Trina and his body was not something Marika herself did. She had no need to. She wanted an order led by the greater will, up until she didn't. But she was already a god by then. Miquella from the start had no trust in the greater will, so he got rid of all his greater will products before godhood. which was basically all of him.
I think it is more likely that Radagon was grafted into Marika's body. That is what Melina's recital of Marika's words suggests: "O Radagon, leal hound of the Golden Order. Thou'rt yet to become me. Thou'rt yet to become a god. Let us be shattered, both. Mine other self." "Let us be shattered" must refer to the process of mutilating their bodies and allowing their limbs, torsos, etc. fuse together the same way as the jars were created by the Hornsent.
@MrTrancelator i agree too, except the shattered part. For me that's her durect indirect way of her telling radagon in his face what she's planning. The black knives were her assassins. They were numen with close connections with marika herself. This heavily enforces the fact she planned with ranni. I think maliketh remambrance states she betrayed him which most certainly alludes to the the betrayal that is the night of the black knives. Marika even burned melina to prepare her to be kindling (bernhal maiden cut dialogue).
@@justsomeotherguywithamusta6810 I think she did not want to shatter the Elden Ring at the time. Her fusion with Radagon was probably driven by her desperation to seal away her genetic heritage that caused some of her children to be born an Omen. Although Radagon was never identified positively as their father, I think Messmer and Melina were Radagon's and Marika's first offspring, hence the red/reddish hair. Messmer was born an abomination so Marika drove away Radagon from her side, and sent him to conquer Liurnia. She then tried again to create a proper lineage free from the Crucible's influence, but her children with Godfrey were also flawed except Godwyn. Also, Godfrey kinda fused with his lion, which reminded her of the Hornsent, so she expelled Godfrey, and called back Radagon who, in the meantime, fathered 3 normal children. She figured that if she can fuse with Radagon, Radagon will seal away her "flaw", and allow her to have normal children. Apparently, it did not work out, Malenia was born with the scarlet rot, and Miquella was cursed with eternal childhood. The naming of Marika's children is actually quite telling: those who are abnormal in some way have a name that starts with "M" (after Marika - Mohg, Morgott, Malenia, Miquella). Yes, I realize that Melina seems to be normal... if you discount the fact that she has no physical body and she is burnt for some reason. Also, I'm convinced that Marika was actually chopped into pieces by the Hornsent and put in a jar with some minced Hornsent criminal meat, but she survived and emerged relatively unscathed - that's why some of her offSpring are Omen as her originally clean Numen bloodline was tainted by Hornsent genes. (Of course, this is speculation. We know next to nothing about the Numen and their relationship with the Crucible.)
I feel that Radagon and Marika are like St. Trina and Miquella. Like St. Trina is Miquella's "Love". So, Radragon is an aspect of Marika broken off so she could become a God. But everything eventually will move to recombined back together. So, when Radragon merges back, He will become the God Marika became by losing him.
I think they are 2 different shamans that melded and/or unmelded. The symbols in the forehead of the jar people are very similar to radagon's and marika's seal overlapped. Marika also has some words of "defiance" for Radagon in the base game about "you're not yet me" or something similar
@@pilebunker420the Japanese word for the shamans is “shrine maidan” and it’s heavily implied they are a matriarchal society. So there might not be male shamans.
@@pilebunker420 Remember when Aspects are removed to "become God" , they become "Separate Persons" . See St.Trina wanting Miquella to be ended.
Which means Radragon can act opposed to Marika and still be of the same Essence.
It’s definitely possible but that wouldn’t explain why Radagon can have children with Marika. You can explain Radagon and Rennala’s children yMarika just using Radagon’s body to marry Renala. But it would be a bit weird if she could have children with herself…
but then again Millicent’s quest line shows that creating some kind of clone/off shoot of another person without parents is possible in Elden ring. Perhaps there is something special about Radagon and Marika’s children specifically (Malenia, Miquella, Melina, Mesmer)
@@donovan4222 Oh, They are separate persons and when Aspects are removed, they have separate Bodies. So, no trouble there. One becomes Two, later becomes One again. They just have the Same Soul Essence.
The shape of the Divine Gate is very reminiscent of a crucible. If you look at the negative space, it looks like light being poured out of a bowl of some kind... Or metal being poured out of a crucible.
It looks a lot like the entrance to the erdtree in Leyndell
It also looks like marikas seal. What could this imply???
Two fingers as well
It's also like the thing behind Gaius.
Knowing that she was a Shaman and that Shaman's bodies meld together with the bodies of others, it makes sense that Radagon was his own person but became part of her, whether by choice or not
It's implied radagon is an aspect of marika. When she became a god, I assume she did what miquilla did to st trina and cast that part of herself away. Who knows what part of her made radagon but for st trina it was miquillas love
It also explains why her children are so easily cursed and possessed by outer gods.
@@jakemoore5077 The problem with that theory is Radagon is still with Marika when we find them in the final boss fight, it’s stated he tried to repair the Elden ring and stop Marika from shattering it. So he wasn’t discarded it seems.
Also, Radagon is able to have children with both Marika and other people, so he seems like more than just a discarded part of Marika to me, but could be wrong.
He seems to have opposite views on the golden order to Marika, where Marika wants to destroy the order, shatter the ring, and have a new Elden lord, while Radagon wants to preserve the order and seals themselves inside the erdtree.
@@donovan4222 Remember St. Trina wants Miquella to be ended and not become a God, while Miquella wants the opposite. It is also implied by the Law of Regression that all urge to come back to One. So, Marika cast Radragon apart to become a God, but she wants to make all her Aspects God. So, she drew him back.
@@Fragmentsinfractals488True St. Trina also has opposite goals to Miuella, I think you may be right…the Radagon/Marika were always the same person theory continues to look more and more plausible imo. I still don’t fully understand them having children though.
I’m torn because Mesmer seems to be clearly Radagon’s son, but for the timeline to work this would mean Marika would have had to met Radagon way earlier, likely before Godfrey. So it suggests that they were always together, but doesn’t explain how you can have a kid with yourself.
I don't think the Hornsent created the Gate of Divinity. In the story trailer, the bodies of the Gate are still fresh as Marika walks through them. It makes more sense to me that this was Marika's "original sin", as they call it. She used the sacrifice of countless Hornsent to rise to godhood.
Perfect use for race of genocidal massmurdering maniacs in my book ...
@@alliesangalli1757 If you look closely at the story trailer, you can see those strands of runes she is holding up are connected to all the bodies around the divinity gate. So yeah she is clearly using them as some kind of sacrifice.
Personally I think she was with Godfrey at the time. Everyone needs a King Consort. There is a Crucible Knight in the Lands of Shadow and he and his knights both used the power of the Crucible. Also the could be the seduction and betrayal she eventually cast him aside and took his grace.
TLDR: Marika pulled a Griffith from Berserk, sacrificing everyone to become a god.
@@RRed19It all come back to berserk
My Crucible theory:
The tower folk alternately describe it as a spiral, a pair of twin trees, and also as a current that reaches up toward the heavens... But that last one at least is not a new concept to us. We've seen plenty of currents shooting up toward the heavens both in the DLC and in the base game. The spirit springs
I think that in the place where the Erdtree is now, there used to be a massive spirit spring that rose up in two streams spiraling around each other, most likely taking with them a great fountain of water since the Erdtree's roots are right above the source of the two underground rivers. Perhaps these waters even at one point had healing abilities similar to the sap of the Erdtree, before Marika transformed this fountain of life into a tree of life
Her biggest mistake was separating the two trees, because she wanted a world of order and light, without chaos and shadow. The Erdtree and Scadutree SHOULD have been together, twined around each other like a spiral and in balance with one another
But that aside, if the Crucible is a miraculous spirit stream where all life is blended together, where does its power come from? From spirits of course. We learn from the Suppressing Pillar that when the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow were one, it was a place where all forms of death "washed ashore." It was a place where all the world's dead were inexorably drawn, where their spirits would gather and blend in a single great melting pot, a crucible you might say, and then eventually burst up from the ground and bring new life to the world
Death was the source of the Crucible's life, and this might explain why the sap of the Erdtree dried up so quickly after Marika sealed the Rune of Death
that's a really interesting theory
adding to that what are your thoughts on the Gloam Eyed Queen and Death?
Oh that could also be why Melina says the world needs Destined Death (rune of death)
@@FeelTehPOWA I think I need more evidence to come up with a theory I'd feel confident in, but one potential explanation is that the GEQ is very similar to Messmer or the Omen twins
Marika suppresses the flame of the Fell God, and she has a child born with the flame inside him. She seals him away in the Land of Shadow, and then we start getting people like Corrin and that one starting class, mortals loyal to the Erdtree but who have prophetic visions of it burning and are able to use forbidden fire incantations
Marika tries to suppress the Crucible and anything to do with horns, and she has two children with an overwhelming amount of horns and power in their blood. She seals them away beneath the capital, and the "Omen curse" begins spreading all throughout the kingdom
Perhaps after suppressing death, Marika had a child born with the ghostflame and/or god-killing black flame inside her, and like Messmer she found a use for her for a while, hunting down opposing gods, until Marika eventually became too afraid of her power and sealed her and the Rune of Death away as well, eventually leading to the spread of deathroot and Those Who Live in Death
As much as Marika would have liked, these concepts and forces refuse to be removed from the world for long, always finding some form through which to reenter the Lands Between. And death very well could be one of them
I personally think that there was just a large material tree where the Erdtree now stands, one fed by the waters as you describe.
Otherwise I think you're bang on the money.
My addition: all ages prior to Marika are "unbound" in that all elements that Marika would go on to suppress are in play. It is essentially nature as we understand it, represented metaphysically.
In this world, being Elden Lord was essentially pledging yourself to this natural process. It might grant you power, sure, but it doesn't let you change the fundamentals. You are fundamentally under the sway of a darwinistic natural order.
Marika would therefore be the first God as we understand it, with God before being nothing but a force. She decimates the old tree, leaving nothing but the stump and the roots, and fuses herself to the force at its core, and makes use of the connection, the "grace" that is transmitted to her via the Fingers from a totalitarian alien entity that seeks absolute control, to sever all the rules of nature that she finds repellent. This is why grace can be seen by us in streams in the air and why the Fingers stand tall and stock still: they are antenna for instructions and will.
And that is why the Erdtree is semi-transparent: it is a projected manifestation, emanating the rules out across the land. Marika is the tree now.
Forced evolution, rampant mutation, idolizing dna, someone call the imperial inquisition already. :D
I was of a mind that Radagon was a mimic tear, but now I think he is Marika's discarded Faith in the GW, much like how St Trina is Miquella's discarded Love. This might be why she calls him "leal hound of the GO" and why she gives a speech speaking of no longer relying on "blind faith" in their future.
Miquella had to discard his body and other self because he was Golden Order made. Marika was not, she didn't need to do this because she wanted a godhood of the Golden Order (Greater Will). Miquella wanted a new order, it's why he divested himself of all things Golden... Marika had no intention of this, she wouldn't have done the same. It is not a required step to becoming a god, it was just a step Miquella took to ensure there was no Greater Will involved in his godhood (which is what ruined Marikas because the fingers are broken).
@@garethlawton5278 she calls Radagon her "other self". St Trina is Miquella's other self, too. Hence the androgyny. They are each the Rebis of their distinct Orders. Whether or not it was crucial to discard all or only part of their bodies has no bearing, especially since St Trina is Miquella's Love, not a part of his body, but his other self, just as Radagon is part of Marika without necessarily being part of her body. There is a big difference here.
Just a theory, but considering that Melina is messmers little sister. Notice how his right eye has the seal, Melina has a birds foot (death bird) tattoo over her left eye. Maybe confirming that her curse was to be inhabited by a death bird queen. The gloam eyed queen.
I thought the death bird god is the twinbird? And the death birds don’t actually like the gloam eyed queen
Dude this community is crazy, it literally says on a shield that the Twin Bird are the god of the death birds................ :|
I love when there are spoiler warnings in Fromsoft game videos as if anyone thinks they’d be able to figure the lore out by themselves in game 😂
Def way off base on a lot of things
OH GOD NO !!!! I DIDNT KNOW THE FINAL BOSS IN THE DLC WAS ZANZIBAR OF THE GOONMOON !!!!
I think Marikas seduction and betrayal is related to whoever the father of Melina and Messmer was.
It's radagon. It's pretty obvious. Radagon's theme plays subtly at mesmer's boss fight. He has red hair. He's cursed like malenia and miquella. His name starts with M like miquella and malenia.
I don't think that Marika wed herself to Godfry until well after she had become a God and it was this mysterious Serpent entity who keeps popping up that was her original Lord Consort as she became a god
Isn’t Godfrey defeating the giants what allowed Marika to create the erdtree? Not disagreeing but she must of met Godfrey pretty early,
@donovan4222 No, she 8nvades the giant because they ha e the power to burn the Erdtree, which already existed by that point.
@@donovan4222she created the erdtree when she became god
i agree! except i theorize that before she became a god she became a saint (through following the hornsent until she reaches the gate) and consort to the snake. I believe thats maybe when she betrayed everyone, kills the snake and robs its grace or godhood (? sometimes i think maybe she used Radagon as consort bait
@@FeelTehPOWA It seems likely that Marika instead turned the whips against her captors before she could be stuffed into the jar herself and Radagon is likely the part of herself that craved an Ordered life while Marika craved a Golden one.
I'm interested to know when Marika learned she could create a child with herself via Radagon? Because the story suggests it was Just before Radagon and Renalla's unnamed 4th child was born, but then where did Messmer and Melina come from? I think they might be the children of this first serpentine union and Messmer more resembles his father the Blasphemous Serpent who Rykard ended up adopting as his family. It makes sense because there is a giant shed serpent skin in Marika's home village that has the same model as the on in Rykards castle.
20:35 this can somehow explain how Marika and Radagon, Miquella and Trina were able to “mend together”. Which could also explain how Miquella just left parts of his body away and Godrick grafting abilities
There's a theory which states that the Land of Shadow and the Lands-Between were once part of the same landmass, but became separated due to Marika sealing the Land of Shadow after ascending to godhood. This theory also states that Leyndell was once connected to the ancient ruins of Rauth by a massive bridge which started at the divine bridge in the southwestern part of the city.
Where can we find this theory? I would like to hear more about it!
Also the suppressing pillar is said to be at the centre of lands between
To add on to that: When you overlap the SotE map with the base game map, the little tree Marika planted in Hinterland also lines up with the Erdtree. And the upper edge of the SotE map (ruins of Rauh) slots almost perfectly into the southern edge of the Altus Plateu/Leyendell where it's breaking off into the ocean.
That's not a theory. Miyazaki said it in an interview.
Hey, Last time I commented asking If you were going to play Genshin Impact anytime in future (Around the time when you had made the announcement that BanditGames will be just renamed to Bandit; Its BanditGames again for some reason) and you had replied to me that you will play the game here on this channel instead of Bandt Jo, but you never played it and I thought you don't wanna play it anymore and I wanted to respect that.
But Just saying that Genshin is going to release pyro nation 'Natlan' in a few weeks and it is hype. Fontaine (Hydro Nation) was already peak and Natlan is looking even more hype.
So just informing you incase you wanna hop in for some story, If you don't wanna play it then its fine, I respect that.
Hoping for a reply soon.
When we think that the Nox are Numen a few things start to make sense.
We know that the lands of shadow didn't use to be disconnected. Maybe she saved them and told them to create a world underground to protect them from the hornsent.
She then said they committed a sin to make interaction with her kin something like treason to deter trespassers.
2 items, a couple lines and an empty village, all it took to understand all the intentions of Marika, turning her from a villain, to a tragic character
She is def still a villain, we just know now why she did what she did.
Well that and ... everything about Bonny village.
@@pkpseudo5166 villain? Depends on point of view. In many cases WE are the villain.
@@pkpseudo5166she isn’t a villain, Miquella and Ranni are villains
@@KonradCurz3 Ranni isnt a villain either, if anything shes the opposite of Miquella. Yes she killed Godwyn, but the age she brings about is one that actually brings about growth and change, unlike Miquella's age of compassion and the age of the golden order. When you talk to miniature Ranni after finishing her quest, she says,
"Mine will be an order not of gold,
but the stars and moon of the chill night.
I would keep them far
from the earth beneath our feet.
As it is now, life,
and souls,
and order
are bound tightly together,
but I would have them at great remove.
And have the certainties of
sight, emotion, faith, and touch...
All become impossibilities.
Which is why I would abandon this soil,
with mine order."
What she means is that no icon of faith and order would exist, it would give total free will to mankind to forge a future for themselves. No more gods, just man and his ambitions to forge a future for themselves. Is it scary? yes. Thats why Ranni says in the ending, "into, fear, doubt, and loneliness." Its a huge change shes bringing about to the lands between, one totally unlike everything else that came before, but its hopeful. Change as big as this is scary, and being devoid of a god to pledge worship to is lonely. But she hopes that instead, man will govern man, allowing society not to be governed by divinity, but equal man. Its probably one of the best endings you can have.
This raises a lot of questions regarding her first marriage with Godfry. Was he part of the hornsent culture? We know the crucible Knights were his warriors or connected with him, so they had some connection to the power or admiration of the crucible.
Most likely not he was a warrior who probably was more soft to those that followed the crucible rather then markia
I doubt that Marika soloed the entire hornsent nation, so its possible that the "seduction" mentioned in the trailer is of Godfrey, or Horah Loux who was a chieftain and so probably had an army of his own. She seduced Godfrey and used his armies to destroy the Horsent.
This would also have parallels to Daenerys and Khal Drogo who were also written by George R.R. Martin
This is clearly answered on the base game.
@@zachariahsmith9130 Godfry and his crucible Knights potentially being connected to the hornsent is explained in the base game? I can't say I've heard anyone talk about that before. I'd love to hear the explanation
@@CodexisInkwind Hes not connected to the hornsent at all. Hes not even from the lands between hes from the Badlands. The Badlands are not in the game.
One more thing I noticed in Bonny Gaol, in the areas where there are Shaman Pots and living Innards there are no Warrior Jars, but in the areas that has only corpses there are actual Warrior Jars.
Belurat Gaol also makes it clear that it wasn’t just the shamans in the jars, it was also just regular criminals, including other Hornsent, and anyone else they put in the jails (like for example Midra and his scholars for studying the frenzied flame).
Basically, Shamans were the main ingredient who’s flesh bound everything together, but they butchered other people as well to meld with them.
Maybe they rebelled? The warrior jars rebelling against the hornsent?
@@octavianpopescu4776 Maybe? I like that idea but to me this just confirms more that Warrior jars are made through corpses 😅
Her removal of the rune of death to punish the hornsent eternally is great. Great lore video. There’s still so much of this story to tell. I want a sequel damnit.
I do think that Marika probably did a lot of what we see Miquella do in this DLC. I think she travelled and left part of herself across the land. What if Radagon was her St. Trina, just not her heart/love, maybe her fanaticism or yearn for perfection. Radagon sought more knowledge as a champion, going so far as to learn sorcery from the best sorcerer of his age, Rennala, and yearned to create perfect order as Elden Lord. Marika could have cut him out and then became a God. I also wonder if the Gloam Eyed Queen was also originally another aspect of Marika that she cut out, explaining why Melina may evoke ideas of the GEQ in the frenzy ending if you don't use her as kindling. I think Marika wanted to be a God of abundance, of life, in order to combat the death that her people the Numen/Shamans experienced at the hands of the Hornsent. It would make sense later on then when Godwyn dies that she, in severe grief, shatters the elden ring and locks away the realm of shadow as it is a land associated with death. I think Radagon reappeared during the Liurnian Wars under the guise of being on Marika's side, but was actually only working with the Greater Will and the Two Fingers to eventually supplant Marika as the vessel of the Elden Ring and become God. That could explain the dialogue from Marika later on, she realizes who Radagon is at the point of his betrayal, proving to be her other self, like St Trina and Miquella, and yet to become a God.
We see the Two Fingers try to stop Ranni, they send a Baleful Shadow after her, but we never see the fingers ever try to stop Miquella, or at the very least no evidence is found yet showing any interruption, so what if they don't care if Miquella becomes a God, because they just need a new vessel for the next age. Miquella doesn't seem to want to stop the continuation of the Elden Ring, he is a fundamentalist, he just wants to stop pain and suffering, like Marika except that he is going to basically control or compel everyone to do so.
Marika's story is tragic, not just the sad backstory but because of how she became what she hated in her past life. The forces of the Erdtree committed genocide against the giants, went to war against the Carians and the Ancient Dragons. She caused suffering and she sees this all come to fruition when one of her family (extended) rebels against her order by murdering her son. Shattering the Elden Ring is something akin to her last defiance against the Greater Will, who she possibly has viewed as the progenitor of the cycle of suffering she was the victim and perpetrator of. She still was a tool and perpetrator of genocide, so the people saying she is a hero is a bit off, but it doesn't mean her act of shattering the Elden Ring and trying to end the cycle isn't a heroic act. I don't think Marika would call herself a hero
This!!!! Tho i dont think Radagon was trying to supplant her, hes just her desire to defend and protect what she has. Therefore he wants to preserve the golden order. His purpose is singular in nature, tho he is a seperate being. Which also explains his desire to get stronger. He clearly cant be working with the greater will because its stated that the greater will hasnt been communicating with the fingers in the DLC.
you can find white snake skin in Bonny village in bushes not far from "O mother"
Crucible reminds me of Sailor Moon, the ending using a Cauldron as a place where everything is born.
It looks to me as if the Gate of Divinity was the true goal of the flesh jars. The hornsent used bodies for bricks and shrine maidens for mortar. They were creating a place for one of their own to achieve divinity, and perhaps the creation of a god was originally a mutual goal of the hornsent and shrine maidens, but after that alliance morphed into a genocide, Marika simply ascended first and put a stop to it.
17:41 the woman in the tree. It’s an offering to the grandmother, that would be the presumably petrified woman in the tree, it’s a common concept in faith to have a person die such that a tree bearing fruit may grow, and that’s probably what’s happening here, based on the fact they have an entire separate culture up there, shaman are spiritualists, and it is likely that corpse is the shrine referred to by marika’s proper title “shrine maiden” in the Japanese
I feel like Marika and Radagon were once one person. Then they split, as Miquella split from St.Trina. Then they recombined after Godfrey was banished and the ring was shattered.
Very well done! As someone who's watched at least 100 of these lore videos, I have to say this one has been the best. You have thoroughly covered this topic.
Imagine if Rani had just chosen someone else, like Mohg
Miquella bewitched Malenia and used his puppet to go after Radahn. Miquella then took Radahns Soul using Melania and the soldier betwitched by Miquwlla took Melania back to the Haligtree. Malenia attacks you and chants she is tthe blade of miquella, her enchanter. The entire population of the haligtree is under miquellas control.
Ranni was told that the only way to achieve godhood was through slaying Godwin.
It was Miquella that told her, the Greater Will had abandoned them.
Godwin was slain by the Black Knives, thinking they were toast as Ranni was told by Miquella about being abandoned and she would be taken.
So, here we have Ranni commit the kill, Miquella sending for Radahn and shoving Radahn into Kohg's Body.
Richard got swallowed, because he had to fight off Miquella.
In the end, Marika sent away Godfrey and we got put in the bell tower golems waiting to be awakened.
Marika shattered the ring and we are children of Marika.
It was Miquella that is the villian.
The worst part? It was Miquella that put the spell on his mother, the offsprinf in amber is bewitched to be Miquella.
Miquella is evil.
@@ZacharyJClark There’s nothing that points at Miquella telling Ranni to kill Godwyn. If anything, she would want to keep Godwyn alive, as it is said that Miquella genuinely admired Radahn due to his leadership and strength, and seeing that Godwyn has those same qualities, it’s unlikely that Miquella would want Godwyn dead(as in not coming back at all dead)
@@djw3512 Except Godwin was uncontrollable and a barrier to Miquellas plans.
@@ZacharyJClark How would Godwyn even stop him? He would have to find out about Miquella’s plans first. And it’s not like Miquella got himself involved with every demigod. He ain’t do nothing with Morgott
@@djw3512 Miquella controls, he does not trust.
Godwin was uncontrollable, Godwin beside Marika was one of the most charismatic.
St Trina was banished for this very reason.
Marika plucked destined death and Miquella used his power to turn the Black Knives. They carved for Ranni. However, Carrian Manor was then attacked. Ranni then locked away the leader of The Black Knives.
Marika shattered the ring after Godwins death, and Ranni violated.
The leader of the black knives only rememvers being given destined death by Marika.
Malekith took DD willingly,(Marika stole it) but after Godwins death and Rannis binding with Melina, (Taught and helped by Miquella) Malekith was overcome with obsession to reclaim DD. Marika, Ranni and Miquella all saw tarnished as the solution.
They all knew, we were the wildcard. Banished with Godrey, brought to the Bellfrees and revived as a last resort.
These lore videos are hitting like crack from the whole community love to see it!
WHO THE FUCK WORKED OUT MOVING THAT STATUE?! Absolutely baffles me how some things are found in Elden ring
Separate room with a weird statue, obscure message confirming it as a puzzle, huge inaccessible chunk of map that lies behind it. Gesture name shouting "use me you know where".
I spent hours doing crazy things. Trying out gestures and actions in seprate locations. Few gave fruitions lol many were a waste of time. I even went back with the gesture yoy gst from final fight to see if it trigures something somewhere but nothing.
27:00 nah that doesnt seem to line up with the timeline.
1. he already has the marika sealed eye in the trailer when he burns and ravages Belurat.
2. it is heavily implied he was either born with the serpent or it was actively sealed into him by Marika herself.
Well done, really got in there. Checked the japanese translations. Got some stuff I hadn't seen mentioned anywhere else. 10/10 good video.
In the last of ziostorm's video it was shown that there's a huge shedded snake skin that can be found in shaman village that looks similar to the snake skin that can be found in the arena were we fight the Godskinn noble in Volcano Manor.
There's no explanation why it's there. My only guess is that it may have been planned to be part of an abandoned storyline that may explain the origin of Marika's aversion to snakes.
If we look at Dominula, the dancing women have skinned and burned men, piling them up as if to mold them into masses like they do in Bonny village, and there is a Godskin apostle there. As we know from the Church of Eiglay, the Godskins are connected to the Great Serpent. The snakeskin is a symbol of rejuvenation through death, and the maidens of Dominula are trying to rejuvenate the Lands Between. It is also not a coincidence that Dominula is a windmill village, the windmill being a symbol for cyclical change that grinds grains into meal, ridding it of the grist.
I belive that the hornsent used the great jar innards to construct the divine gate, as they refer to the innards as saints. To become a saint one can give their life to a divine purpose - the constructon of the divine gate. In the trailer, the gate has a similar colour as the jar innards.
oooooh! "Have mercy. For the spirited-away shamans." is her wish! I like that!
This guy's videos are the perfect cure to procrastination when I play it in the background, also hella good to watch since he doesn't do that annoying deep/sorrowful voice that every Vati copycat tries to do
“Because the Frame of Flenzy”
🤣
I died. This is me every single time I open my mouth to speak!
4:25 It can also be theorized that Radagan was originally part of Marika, and was split off and tossed aside like St. Trina was. (Assuming that Miquela basically recreated the extract scenario that led to Marika's ascension)
Then this dialogue is about becoming one with the _new_ godly Marika. As it seems strange that she would even tell anyone, including the target, that she can merge with someone and become them.
Messmer's snakes are the same color as the dead one in the gate trailer. That's his pops yo😂
4:28 I think this line of dialogue more implies that Marika didn’t want to merge with Radagon to become one. I think Radagon and Marika were once the same but at some point a curse was placed on Marika to split her into two halves.
I have a feeling that Marika was born a normal sweet girl, the hornsent became overconfident and greedy due to their strength, forcing the shamans to merge with pots against their will, Marika somehow managed to escape and when she gained power she took revenge through Messmer by having her son attack the hornsent however she hid Messmer from the golden order but Marika loves all her children and couldn't leave Messmer alone, or so he thought. Godwyn seemed like a child born of love and kindness, his death certainly proving that even gods can die. Marika had everything taken from her, messmer, as her first child perhaps, was the first time she was given something to live, love and die for again, but he was seen as unclean because of the snake in his eyes by the golden order, so Marika hid him because she loved all her children, the omens Margit and Mohgwyn showed Marika how her actions haunted her, even as a goddess there was something that showed her she was not perfect or infallible, she killed all hornsent except her own children, the love for them and the trauma the hornsent did to her endures, she can't forget but she can't stop loving either, godwyn seen as a golden child and probably the greatest of all Marika's loves died in the dark night, whereupon she broke the Elden Ring so that godwyn would not be purified and reborn by the golden grace, but that is exactly what led to godwyn never being able to die completely and since then she has never had another child like him no matter how many times or with whom she tried. Marika seems sad, hurt and misunderstood. She just wanted to live in peace and quiet, she seems as if she had expected nothing from the world and was still disappointed...
17:00 the part about the minor erdtree and the “kindness of gold without order”…definitely some deeper connection w Miquella the Kind being associated w unalloyed gold? Minor erdtree (young) portraying the youth of miquella? Idk definitely something there
I think Marika was at one point at the head of the Horncent civilization. You find statues of her all over Enir Elim which is still predominantly populated by the Horncent. You can tell this is her because another one of these statues is present in Castle Ensis being prayed to by one of Messmer’s soldiers, praying that Marika would grant Messmer grace.
I also think at one point she was communing with a God that they worshipped that we don’t know but can be seen in other statues in Enir Elim with a massive horned crown.
There are also statues depicting a male and female figure together wrapped in a horned spiral, I would imagine this is the two mentioned above. This as well as the trailer dialogue mentioning a “seduction” is what leads me to believe that Marika was communing with this other God at some point during the Horncent civilization’s reign.
Im telling yall the hand we touch to enter the dlc was mesmer legit looks like he trying to break out of the shadow place from that egg
My headcannon will always be that radagon was a half giant warrior with the fell god within him, and he and marika were tooth-whipped into flesh slurry and combined in a jar. Together they seduced Godfrey, lord of the divine bird kingdom of the erdtree and home of the crucible, become god and took over the world
Holy moly I’m early, just in time too. I haven’t been able to sleep tonight. Congrats on 300k btw
I don’t know much about Eldin Ring but I just wanted to say congrats BanditGames on successfully changing up your channel away from Zelda content only! I totally get the frustration with the lore being nerfed in totk so seeing your success is like a mini win for me too!
I just wish it wasn’t so confusing to know what changes once you become a god via the divine gateway. I mean does the universe bend to your will now or do you just have enough holy damage to kill everything
Super long shot theory here, and borrowing from another YT video where the pile of flesh that Marika pulled the golden threads from was a giant snake, what if that was the Gloam Eyed Queen? And perhaps Marika/Radagon sired Mesmer and Melina. Mesmer inherited the more snake aspect (and red hair from Radagon), and Melina inherited the glaom eye? With the great betrayal being the slaughter/sacrifice of GEQ that Marika makes to acquire the golden threads to craft the elden ring?
this is a great video. here's what I think.
I believe that snakes used to be quite integral to the crucible, and to the erdtree. but now, they have done something so terrible that they are seen as traitors to the erdtree. you may think this is just because of messmer, but it thinks it goes deeper than that.
I believe messmers father was a serpent god. I believe the serpent tempted Marika to commit the original sin, just like Eve in the garden of Eden. and then she burnt down the erdtree with messmers flame. the scadutree looks like a burnt tree, without any leaves.
the burning of the erdtree is described as the cardinal sin, and I believe that the original sin was the first time the erdtree was burnt. the item description for "messmers kindling" says that he keeps company with the original sin, and he literally does keep company with the base abyssal serpent, and his flame. miquella is definitely a kind of christ-figure, and wishes to atone for the original sin, as it says in his great rune.
I think the original sin is an extremely important factor in marikas rise to power, and is also probably the reason why the lands are shrouded in shadow now. but that's just my theory, I may be wrong. still looking into it, and I may end up making a video about it if I get enough information together.
Nice job Bandit. Great video. 😊
You should 100% check out the theory that Midra and Nanaya are Marika’s parents. I think it’s relevant because that would Marika half-hornsent. Since the Hornsent claim they were “betrayed” by Marika, wouldn’t there have to be an alliance to betray in the first place?
I forgot to say her being half-hornsent is what might’ve allowed her to gain trust
the road from bonny village to the cathedral of manus metyr is full of wolves，unnaturally.
i can't help but thinking these wolves must mean something，then i realize there is a statue of a girl and three wolves in Farum Azula.
i imagine young marika was once in bonny village then she run away，on the road she somehow made the wolves to help her，eventually she hided in the cathedral of manus metyr the people there helped her and guided her to became a god
Suddenly the moniker of "Omen" makes sense. 🤔
15:46 there is quite literally a male shaman ghost at the village, both words refer to the same group because the terms are gendered.
The way I see it, in her youth Marika came across (either coincidentally or guided to) the Finger Mother.
With the finger's guidance, instead of sharing her people's gruesome fate, she used seduction and deception to make her way into the Hornsent's society (as the grandam stated, by a lot of bed activity) and eventually reached the Gate of divinity and ascended into godhood (the process also presumably separated Radagon from her, just like how Miquella separated St.Trina from himself).
This is just me speculating, but it might be why Morgoth and Morg are Omens (or Hornsents) while her true son with Godfrey, Godwyn is without any affliction. And why she despised them so.
As to why Mesmeth, Melina, Malenia, and Miquella are all afflicted in one way or another, while Godwyn and Rennala's children are not, I think it's because they are all children born from her and Radagon (aka herself). It has been my theory ever since the base game that this plays into the theme of unnatural birth. Incest is not only morally condemned but also has scientific consequences on the children. And this is Marika birthing them technically on her own.
Personally I feel there are still a lot left unexplained about Marika even after the DLC. What exactly did she pulled out from what in the DLC trailer? Or her true intention behind shattering the elden ring. There are evidences that it was all planned, not her slashing out in anger because of Godwyn's death (not mentioning she might have a hand in this herself). We can only speculate, but i feel that this DLC did not give us definite answers the way the Ringed City did for DS.
now we sorta understand why kids like morgott and mogh were looked down upon as they were constant reminders of her original sin
We still lack the details on the night of black knives (if Marika was involved in Ranni's plot), how exactly Marika became a God, what was the "betrayal" and her "sin". And how the Greater Will and the fingers are related to her.
Did she betray the hornsent? How so it's not explained. Why would they trust her when she's a minority supposed to be pickled in a jar. How could she raise an army without them noticing and from where.
Why are all of her children cursed? What was the mother's sin? It would need to be a transgression against a God and mere genocide won't count.
fr people just keep repeating that baseless nonsense, while ignoring marika's own involvement and the black knives
I have been watching your videos for a good minute now. I'm glad to see you covering Elden ring, as I moved from Zelda to Elden ring myself LMFAO, love the video Keep it up, please! :D Also I'm interested to know more about the connection between Melina and the Gloam Eyed Queen.
it's incredible darks souls music is still used widely for any video regarding from softwares games. Iconic soundtrack!
Elden Ring Lore - The Tower Priests Worship "The Spiral"
My headass - Row Row Fight the Powa
It might be that the rune of death was removed as Marika never wanted a close one to die ever again and perhaps was the deal with the fingers. Might explain how the death pf Godwyn exposed the facade and caused her to shatter the Elden ring itself
Thank you so much to you and your crew for this video! I hope to this comment might help to spread your work through the algorithm because you really deserve it! You make the best elden ring content ever!
Just a theory based on naming conventions, what if she became known as Marika the Eternal, not only because she removed the rune of death and death itself from the Lands Between, but also (adding to your theory about succesfully saving shamans) built the Eternal Cities for the Shamans/Numen/Nox that she saved.
I don't remember if these cities sank, or were purposely built underground. If it was intentionally underground, perhaps it was done to protect them further.
Theory: Messmer is half fire giant, when Marika saw that Messmer is cursed she hide him is shadow realm then she married Godfrey, told him to kill all the giants (no witnesses) , then she cast him away when he was useless. Dont know if timeline is correct.
The game all but directly confirms the reason messmer is still down there/wiped from history is to contain the base serpent, it has nothing to do w fire giants
I always assumed Radagon was a result of the curse the fire giants put on her when they were defeated. I believe that’s why all of their children together, with the exception Miquella, have red hair and her first two have an affinity towards fire. You can even see it as the scarlet rot scars and burns as well, and St. Trina can compose a purple flame of sleep. It’s also stated Radagon hates his hair because of its association with the giants and his children with Rennala all had red hair (one was a giant in stature and the other also had an affinity for fire and serpents). The common denominator is Radagon.
What I'm missing is how the age of dragons, with their own tree, elden ring, lord, etc. fits in all this. Here's what I think: the Crucible is the reason the Elden Beast and Fingermother came to the lands between in the first place. A singularity; an inexhaustible source of chaotic life energy, or some such. The plan being to imprint a schematic of Order, an Elden Ring, onto it. And the Crucible granted Order takes the visual form of a Great Tree, differing depending on what the Order is. But the mother could not communicate with the Greater Will, so did not know what that Order needed to look like. Seems like there was a first Order, the age of dragons, with its own Elden Ring and Tree. That era ended somehow, and the hornsent era started. The hornsent era is characterised by wild mutations and a spiral Great Tree, but unclear if that is a result of them having their own Elden Ring and all the rest, or just a result of leaving the Crucible alone to do its thing. The latter would better support the motivation of the Fingermother teaming up with Marika to restore Order, by making a new one. The former could help explain what Marika did to become a god, i.e. take the old Elden Ring from the hornsent god. Would appreciate anyone poking holes in this, by they way. For now, its what makes sense to me.
Radagon is marika, the dialogue you showed was literally her saying my other self at the ending when she was talking about merging into one body before that they were separate at one point when he was with rannala but when we fight radagon marika is shown to be the same body but one point their bodies were separate, also the reason their children were cursed is because of them being the same person.
Alright hear me out folks. Here's my theory on what Marika's seduction and betrayal was, and this has a lot to do with the parentage of Messmer and Melina.
Marika by birth was a red haired powerless shaman, from the bottommost sect of the hornsent society. But she was special because she was chosen as an empyrean from the shaman people by her two fingers. Marika in her desperation, fear, and anger towards the hornsent manifested this other self that is Radagon. She was then instructed by her two fingers to use Radagon to commit an act of blasphemy which would later grant her significant power..
Now the hornsent were an advanced civilization that worshipped the crucible, created the gates of divinity by blending life forms together to emulate the crucible, and ultimately succeeded in accessing the powers of the crucible. The hornsent were strongly connected to the godskin. It was the godskin that aided the blending of lifeforms by skinning and making up those gates of corpses. The leader of the godskin, the golden haired gloam eyed queen was the god of the time and represented the crucible. You see crucible like features on the goskin nobles and apostles (tail, crucible like incantations etc). The godskin also had some kind of association with serpents as we have seen a godskin noble at the temple of Eglay.
Here is what Marika and her two fingers plotted: Marika would use Radagon, a powerful and charming champion to seduce and have an affair with the gloam eyed queen. Once seduced, the gloam eyed queen birthed two red haired children, Messmer and Melina. Marika was also bestowed upon a powerful shadow by the two fingers, Maliketh. Once the children were born, Marika would use the opportunity to assassinate the gloam eyed queen using Maliketh. Marika would then pluck out the golden rune of the gloam eyed queen as shown from the trailer. This rune resided within the golden hair of the gloam eyed queen (You see that the body from which the hair is removed looks like godskin and the sky in the scene looks like a golden sky is about to replace a previous gloam colored sky). Marika would therefore assume godhood and would become the golden haired queen.
The seduction, the affair and the betrayal is what lead to gold arising through Marika. And so was shadow born. I think shadow here also refers to the two children Messmer and Melina. Messmer inherited the black flame (Black pyrefly) and serpentine natures from his mother and Melina inherited the gloam eyes and destined death. Marika would seal both of these away. The golden braid that Marika left to the grandmother before she left her village forever, which is her prayer and confession, is simply a part of the same golden hair that she tore off from the gloam eyed queen for the great rune. Marika became a golden haired god but Radagon would remain red haired. The red hair reminded Marika of her sin which is why Radagon always hated his hair.
Where all these crazy cinematic coming from? Are those trailers? Just edited gameplay? Like the shot of the person in the divinity gate. That was wicked
Trailer am pretty sure
The jars we find in the erdtree realm also present a different seal compared to the ones we find in the realm of shadow. Does this mean that the culture if potentates also propagated in the erdtree realm, after the shadow realm was banished?
I like the interpretation of the whole Numan thing as that Marika is a Numan and Marika is a Shaman/Priestess, but not all Numan are Shaman. The Shaman and Nox feel like they're all of the same species but of different cultures and magical tendencies. I even read the Hornsent basically being Numan, with the signs of the crucible/horns marking them as more divine beings in their culture and raised to a higher status (which is why they can act with impunity within The Lands Between before Marika's rise. This would also explain why crucible horns can appear on other creatures and why Mogh, Morgott and the Omen can be born in the era of the Erdtree despite their parents not being Hornsent or having horns. It makes the sins the Hornsent commit (and then Messmer's war later on) feel a lot more grounded and tangible (very G.R.R.M.) as opposed to a kinda generic fantasy race war, as these horrible acts end up being justified purely out of class superiority, circumstances of birth, and revenge.
I don't believe the betrayal speaks of what marika did to the hornsent but what she did to her fellow Shaman, for one we see marika ripping out golden hair out of a body, and the shaman (judging from marika herself) have golden hair. Secondly the gates are made of fused flesh and who else then the shaman have an affinity with flesh fusing?
@@vvbr2372 yeah I think you’re right, if you look closely in the DLC trailer you can see that those strands of hair she’s holding up are connected to the bodies of the divine gate. It’s like she’s using the shaman flesh to hold all of bodies together, similar to how the shaman were used to hold the innards together in the jars.
The whole point of miquellas journey is to give insight to his mother and her journey. The betrayal is simply her promising to end the brutality she saw and then did the opposite.
Want to note that the english translation has some mistakes regarding the jar innards.
The original translation says stuffing like it is some ritual for people in the jars to become saints, like it is some sort of ascension ritual.
but the original japanese text is trying to say it is a sort of punishment so sinners can become 'good'.
I really do think finding out about the Miquella and Saint Trina dynamic subtly confirms that Radagon always WAS once Marika, but was split from her upon her ascension to godhood, just as with Miquella discarding Saint Trina. This would explain Melina's dialogue in Marika's bedchamber too, as it would be Marika bringing Radagon BACK into her their shared body to shatter them both with the Elden Ring, even though he opposed her (or perhaps because of it). This is why he was not a god yet, as she says, because he never had an apotheosis as she did, since he was some kind of abandoned characteristic of hers (not her love like Trina was for Miquella, I wager, but something else, like duty or loyalty). Either way, I feel like assuming Radagon was once his own entirely separate entity totally undermines the narrative weight of the "Radagon is Marika" reveal from the base game, and Shadow of the Erdtree only reinforced that they were originally the same person to me, at least. It's always going to be open to interpretation though, of course, the story is specifically written that way, without definitive answers for many ambiguous core questions like this.
Also have a theory on the pots in the lands between that Marika turns them into an almost form of reward for great warriors to be congealed into pot warriors as a way to turn her back on the horrors that were done to her people inside the pots in the land of shadow.
9:37 lol
miquella's gentle world = "benevolent" dictatorship/monarchy
which ofc is an oxymoron.
Grandam's curse is just the horns on Morgott and Mohg
25:04 that would make sense in that theory that we the player are a demigod ourself and a child of marika
Man this DLC can be called a whole game it's so big and it revealed so many things and still there is so many questions .... i hope it doesn't end up like some other stories where they end up leaving it half assed
I believe that the reason Rykard is able to meld with the God-devouring serpent and retain his consciousness, when it’s implied that nobody else was able to do so, isn’t just because he’s a demi-god, but perhaps because he carries Shaman blood in him. Perhaps Radagon was also a Shaman, since he is described as Marika’s “other self”.
On this same note, this explains why Godrick is able to perform grafting, since his flesh is also that of a Shaman due to his heritage in the Golden Lineage.
Marika becoming a god at the Crucible explains why Morgot and Mogh are Omen. They aren’t really Omen, they’re Hornsent, and they are that because of Marika’s contact with the Crucible. The curse you mentioned that one Hornsent Grandam placed on them probably also had something to do with it. At any rate, they’re “cursed” not because of their blood, but because of what they remind Marika of. Since she wouldn’t be able to kill them, being their mother, she instead decided to hide them away where she’d never be reminded of them and their connection to her tormentors, deep within the Leyndell sewers. This also explains why it was common practice to “dehorn” the Omen. It all stems from an inherited and passed-down hatred of the Hornsent.
I think Mohg and Morgott were the firstborn twins, as both of them were born omens and afflicted by the accursed blood of the Formless Mother, or Mother of Truth, another important deity in the land of shadows.
The Hornsent Grandam cursing Marika to birth Omens, the same people she sought to eradicate would be very fitting of revenge, but I cannot in this moment explain how the accursed blood found it's way to them. But I do think she has something to do with the Gate of Divinity. In the story trailer, you can see Marika walking up the gate surrounded by blood and gore who look very similar to the Sacred Bloody Flesh item, the item description reads:
"The blood is said to have fallen from the Formless Mother's wound. Never will it dry, never will it rot."
And another observation that might just be of chance, but the blades of the Bloodfiend's Sacred Spear very much looks like the gate of divinity, when they where whole. I believe the Gate of Divinity was once a large spear that continuously pierced the Mother of Truth as a form of communion. From the Bloodfiend's Sacred Spear:
"Sacred spears of blood are the instruments of communion with an outer god. The mother of truth desires a wound."
Could be a theory that this gate of divinity was originally part of an ancient religion, that allowed the ascension to Godhood with the assistance of an Outer God, the Formless Mother. But now, sealed and forgotten by the Hornsent who scorned the old bloody ways.
Marika’s people be like: From numen to shaman to “nah man” 😢
9:07 since day 1 there has been a single crucible, no references to more than one exist anywhere, they call it THE crucible, not A crucible, second off, the most likely candidate of such a thing is the “one great” Hyetta mentions, all things were once one, and the fractures created sin, pain, and suffering, the frenzy flame ending is literally the new age of the crucible, where you “melt it all away” with the chaos flames “it all” being the differences that create distinction
Great video and great explanation for a lot of stuff in the DLC.
But there is one thing I've been wondering for quite some time now and suprisingly it seems that no one really talked about yet.
Or at least, I haven't seen any videos or discussions about this topic about Marikas seduction, betrayal and what her connections with the Fingers (and in turn Greater Will) is.
To me the location of Shaman Village is very interesting since it seems to be quite secluded and strangly close to the Finger Ruins of Dheo.
So isn't it possible that Marika, in a desperate attempt to save her people found Metyr (which we learned was the first shooting star to fall upon the Lands Between) and made a deal/pact to gain power and followers to go against the Hornsent.
Maybe she even stumbled upon Metyr on accident and got seduced by her by promising Marika revenge and a better future.
Marika realised her mistake and later in a another desperate attempt shattered the ring and tried to bring it all down to try and remove the influence of the Fingers and Greater Will that she was responsible for.
This would also explain what Count Ymir told us.
Theory: crucible is a spiral tree upon which The Tower was built to honor it. Bloody remains seen in trailer are Hornsent offerings to the Crucible to let it grow more, until it reaches gods - like Miquella used his own blood to grow Haligtree. Marika burned Crucible away, which is why Enir-Ilim is covered in ash. Marika took part of Crucible, a seedling maybe, with which she created Erdtree at separate location.
We see the actual crucible guarded by the commander riding a pig. It means the life came from the sap of those trees. In Leyndel, it seems that an equivalent of the crucible in the Shadow Lands is placed in Marika's bedchamber. There are other minor crucibles in this area.
The crucible sounds a lot like the many concepts that are brought up at different points.
The Law of Regression and Casuality. The One Great, the primeval current, the jarring rituals, and in fact the forge of the giants resembles a giant crucible.
Im convinced that Messmer is child of Marika and Radagon, simillar to Malenia and Miquela. They share a trait of curse, trait of names and trait of haveing own butterflies. What is more, Messmer strongly suggests that Melina is also child of Marika and Radagon shareing same traits
A likely possibility, more likely she is capable of giving birth by herself
8:53 in spanish the word 'Crucible' sounds like 'Cruzado/Cruzable' which kinda means (crossed or mixed) since fromsoftware like to use latin a lot in their games , i'd say this is the way is meant to be understood (referring something mixed)
Messmers father is Radagon. As he follows the naming scheme for children from that pairing. Messmer, Melina, Miquella and Melania. Kids from the other paring between Radagon and Renalla are R names. Kids from the Godfrey pairing are G names. They wouldn't have secured a naming scheme in the game, then shown us two kids with M names and said they're Radagons kids to then thrown an unnamed person begining with M to father Messmer and Melina. Radagon is most likely the father.
This would confirm Radagon was around alot earlier than the liurnia wars, but was only brought into the forefront and into history's eyes at that time.
Wow! so many dots connected! Thanks man❤🙏🏾