It's fascinating how perfumers, seemingly a very small aspect of the lore, ends up being connected to nearly every major aspect. I did not expect this, but it was a welcome surprise
I'm still surprised they didn't make the video twice as long, seeing as how the depraved perfumers seem to be directly connected to the nomadic merchants. They may have saved it for another video.
These kind of microcosms are a really interesting part of Souls Game lore. You could easily write a multi-book fantasy saga based on the pointers in this video alone ... it's amazing how dense it is.
Rollo's story gets me every fucking time. Dude was trying his best to keep everyone safe, and lost everything in the process. I think people always forget that without the propaganda, and control of information the royals had someone like Rollo who was super committed to the safety of everyone could've done great things, but instead they were lead to be a monster by the powers that be.
@@theobell2002 Pretty sure that the main argument about political stuff is that it should be as fictional as possible with little or no relation to any real-world ongoing politics (mainly because that ages extremely poorly as times change). Everyone looooves fiction politics that is extremely far removed from reality (Fallout, Dragon Age, Warhammer, Dark Souls, etc are 90% politics in their lore) due to how uniquely unlike reality they tend to be from real world politics. But they hate it when a game's politics are based entirely or heavily on real-world events since that's very lazy, uninteresting, uncreative, and oftentimes inconsistent with the game's own setting. Anyone who wants to learn about real world politics will learn about it since it's really easy to do with a google search. That google search is also why real-world politics in games is lazy and uncreative since that's how the material is obtained and copy-pasted with no imaginative flair.
So any way you slice it, the art of perfuming involves either consuming liquidized human remains, or spraying them upon your enemies. You've gotta wonder, was that a George thing or a Miyazaki thing?
@@andrewbowen2837 Unless From release their GRRM literature we'll likely never know exactly how many ideas he gave them to work from, but I suspect you're underselling it a little. He wasn't involved in the game development process but that was never his remit, he was tasked with developing the lore for a new fictional universe and you have to imagine he gave them a lot of detailed notes, I doubt they just got a couple of a4 pages describing the main bosses. The name "Miranda" following George's GRM motif kind of lends to the idea that George did in fact go into some further detail on the flowers in his manuscripts.
Alchemy. Look into the Calcination and Putrefaction ideas. Also think: soil is dead stuff consumed and turned into reduced waste that other things live in/on. One strata of the environment feeds the next, which feeds the next. Elden Ring is pretty heavy with Alchemical motifs.
Finally we have arrived at a time where acclaimed youtubers have covered what to them seemed to be most interesting about Elden Ring, leading to them covering more obscure topics like the Miranda Flowers! This is showing that the Game really is full of details in every single part of its World! Most people would say a full first blind playtrough is the best way to experience the Game, but what im saying is, that the more you know about the Worlds Backround, what everything represents and how its all connected really catapults my enjoyment trough the Dark-Souls-Lover roof!
Absolutely. This game is meant to be played multiple times. Just the gameplay alone is designed to give you a ton of options to entice you to try a different build each time. And the experience is enhanced each time you learn something new about the lore of the game, giving a deeper and richer look into the story.
Preach. I can't stand how people say the last third of the game is lazy with copy/paste enemies and has no environmental storytelling. Thing is, the world beyond the Forbidden Lands has so much copy/paste because it shows us all the dirty secrets of Leyndell and how much they've stolen from their predecessors. The giant crows and dogs that are in Mountaintops and Caelid, they're strange because they seem to have come as a result of a mutation of the Rot Goddess, given how sudden and horrible their presence in Caelid feels when you stop and consider the human settlements these monsters now surround and nest near. Point is, upon replaying and seeing so many similarities between the Outer Gods, it makes me feel like the Fell God, Goddess of Rot, and Formless Mother are all related or are many faces of the same malevolent deity. Like, come on: a twisted, fiery presence which haunts your very blood and mutates and twists all it touches. It vies to ravage the land and wrest control over it from the Greater Will. It's a theory. And it all started from me realizing how Fell God and Goddess of Rot and Formless Mother (those bloody crows in the swamp) all seem to have the power to mutate wildlife.
@@elwynn9931 i havent yet finished my first playthrough, currently doing a spellsword build (intelligence strength and some dex) but am already thinking about future builds. next build will probably be a faith/dex build with an emphasis on weapon buffs. i have played through most of the game blind and am just now watching videos on it, im around level 80 but i feel like i am missing so much as there is a lot of hidden or hard to find things
"Depravity is only depravity until it outcompetes: then it becomes mainstream as everyone gets onboard," Words to remember. Bless you lads and your fantastic Elden Lore.
the miranda flower item descriptions aren't scarcastic. I believe it is either a perfumer that is describing the flower and its components, or the effects of perfumes were so intoxicating that everybody revered the flower because it is required in every perfume.
@@darkhobo interesting! I wonder how deep their lore goes, there are a few different pre-erdtree races like them & the alabaster lord's & the nox, I wonder how much they'd interacted back in the day
Thanks for this piece. For a seemingly minor group (at least I thought so until about 50 mins ago) there is so much lore. This in my opinion is what, I'm finding out as a new Souls player, makes FromSoft games stand the test of time - not graphics, not mechanics, not even the exhileration of beating Malenia or Radagon, but the attention to detail - the lore. Everything has a story, a place, a function in the game. I'm on my fourth playthrough and finding out more and more everyday.
I’m not sure if Omens were something that began to be born later, after the Perfumers were already an established culture. Rather, as society began to turn against the Crucible sometime during Godfrey’s reign (it was still seen as divine early on when the Crucible Knights fought for him, but as civilization advanced came to be seen as “impure”, some point during his reign before the birth of the Omen Twins). Following that, I think the attempts to cure Omen appeared after the Omen stopped being viewed as a blessing, and began to be viewed as a curse. The Omenkillers’ masks to me indicate a shift in the priorities of the Omenkillers. Rollo may have been an emotionless mercy killer, but the Omenkillers we see are actively taunting and tormenting the Omens, prolonging their suffering as they kill them. I don’t think the present Omenkillers use physick to suppress emotions the way Rollo did. Omenkillers targeting Albinaurics is…interesting. Unlike the Omens, their “accursed blood” seems not to have any effect like the Omens’ blood does. Albinaurics are discriminated against since they’re artificially-created beings, but the Albinauric Shield description says that it’s mostly the Liurnia/Carian society that persecutes them rather than the Leyndell/Erdtree one. As for them using fire, it’s said only those who served the Erdtree were forbidden from using it, so maybe if you used it outside Leyndell or were not officially associated with the Church or with the Leyndell society it was fine? Fire was clearly okay for lighting, for example (there’s candles, torches, and campfires everywhere).
Absolutely, I think that the current generation of Omen killers take pride and enjoyment from their 'craft' hence why they were more than happy to be employed by Rykard for his torture, or Gideon for his slaughter at the village. Alternatively, emotion is tied to decision making. Without emotion you cannot make decisions, as studies have shown. Perhaps the imbibing of this emotion killing perfume has resulted in the omen killers essentially becoming the perfect servants, easily controlled by those in power and directed to do all sorts of horrible deeds outside of their original purpose
We don’t know when exactly the golden order turned on the omen. Personally I think it happened sometime after the omen twins were born, otherwise it’s difficult to account for Morgott’s devotion to it.
@@gudmundur-heimisson If it occurred after their births, why were they imprisoned in the sewers since infancy? Also it seems to be all of human society that turned on them, it wasn't a change Marika made to the Order.
@@soarel325 do you have any source for them being imprisoned since infancy? I’d be genuinely curious to see it, I did a quick scan of Morgott and Mohg item descriptions and as far as I can tell there’s no reference to when they were imprisoned.
Just a thought: the land octopus require humans for reproduction and their parts are used in the blood boil perfume, another connection to humanity in the recipes.
The Perfumers had completely passed me by during my playthrough and now I'm itching to do a perfumer lore run. Spectacular video, really like the subjects you tackle. Looking forward to more!
One thing is for sure. Trying to do a perfumer character run in Elden Ring is hard. The ingredients are so scattered, and can be hard to collect. It's possibly the longest running, and hardest playthrough possible. I want to try it, but the effort is daunting. Also it ain't easy to collect the cookbooks.
The mages like Sellen who studied the stars aspired to become star seeds, rights? That was one of their ways of ascending if I’m not mistaken. Maybe Miranda was a Perfumer who wanted to become closer to the materials she studied similar to that?
A year late but no they did not. The "star seeds" were actually the reason why the conspectus studying the Primeval Current was taken out of the picture - people who gazed upon it - most notably Sellen - would go mad, and they would create artificial seeds of stars out of other students, and then would study those seeds for their research.
This has got to be one of the best Elden Ring lore videos I have ever seen. I notice the speculation, but I don't mind if it creates a story. Excellent work, sir! Thanks for the good content!
As always, the level of analysis is superb. It goes to show how much detail and nuance Fromsoftware puts into their games. And this is why their worlds work and are do immersive. It's not only the major characters or events that require polishing. It's the little things, the little idiosyncrasies that actually create a living, believable world. It's culture, it's society, it's everything.
You've joined Smoughtown and Tarnished Archaeologist as my favorite Elden Ring lore channels. Great choices for videos that stand out and I really enjoy how your process and connect ideas.
I see Omens as remnents of the influence of the crucible from when it and the erdtree were connected. The crucible is gone, but its influence remains. And as another great tree the omen under its influence have no connection to the erdtree and thus no Grace.
Your level of insight is like no other, huge fan of your dark souls vids. I wish to gain eyes on the inside just so I can understand the story of elden ring.
Love your work! Thanks for the hard work and fantastic insights! A bit late to the party, but something to consider, provided by Tarnished Archeologist, is that people in the Lands Between are born from the Erdtree itself, and that Omens are the in-game representation, not of something new, but of the reemergence of the crucible from the original roots of the Erdtree, the current one we see in-game being a grafted on phantom tree, and not a fully corporeal one. The Omens are a representation of a late-stage aspect of real-world plant grafting where the plant used for the roots and base begins to take over, starving the grafted-on limbs of nutrients and inevitably killing it. This, combined with your insights into the relationship between the perfumers and the omen as part of an early attempt to "cure" the reemergence of the crucible from the grafted, physical stump of the phantom tree paints a pretty desperate picture as the former healer Rollo dulled his emotions so he could cut away the metaphorical "root suckers" of the failing Erdtree.
It’s always an event for me when Hawkshaw publishes a video. I don’t understand how you aren’t above 100k subs yet. You’re such a valuable aspect of the souls community that everyone who plays the games should be subscribed. Hit like and subscribe people!
Perfumers might be my favourite part of the world, but man trying to play as one especially online is so tedious when Perfume Arts are not incantations but very hard to gather consumables compared to their frequent use.
Would love to see a video on the "beasts" of Elden Ring. I have so many questions about beast incantations, shadows, the evolution/devolution of life in the lands between, Farum azula, etc. And how they relate, if at all
Excellent video! I never saw the giant projectiles outside the capital as being perfume diffusers - that was a very good catch! I love how you've woven together a story for these perfumers and their development.
If we believe that there is a connection between the deathbed companions and the perfumers, maybe Deathroot is the key binding them together. There are Those Who Live in Death all over the Lands Between, and their presence is attributed to deathroot, even in places there isn't any around This could imply that, after the Night of Black Knives, the perfumers may be responsible for Death spreading, a byproduct of them roaming around during the Shattering. We don't know what deathroot was actually used for, but if Gurranq is said to have a craving for it, it could have been something as simple as it's flavor or smell, addictive and eventually sinfully indulgent
I think the deathbed companions are foreign fia says she is from a land were woman like her are respected or at least aspired too and I think the perfumers are only for the lands between (but history has worked with pheromones homemade scents everywhere) Also this is very well done it’s very perfect I love this video and really respect the effort
I completely missed the detail with the ballistic shots from the shattering War. I did wonder why they had a weird back for a big ballistic bolt but now it makes sense.
Brilliant video, Hawkshaw. ER lore is vast and impenetrable in many ways, and I am always blows away by work you put in it. Thanks for shining some light on perfumers!
This was amazing. I don’t know how I’ve never heard of this channel before, but if this video is indicative of the quality of the rest of your work, I’ll be subscribing!
I absolutely hold Hawkshaw videos as the the BEST in analytical work for Fromsoft games. Thank you for this amazing video and I look forward to the next video.
I think you're forgetting that, while Morgott does consider himself a fell omen, a being that is inherently undeserving of love, he comes to that conclusion as a result of decades of abuse and imprisonment since birth. He's not making a rational declaration, he's trying to get love from that which abused him; the Erdtree. If you were locked in chains for your entire life, told that this was what was right and good, because *you* were a fell omen, would you be able to not have that be what you believed? Would you grow up to have a healthy conception of your existence? Would you not think that you were cursed, if that was all you were called as a child? I wanna give Morgott a hug.
When i found out about the perfumers and saw their attacks it made me want to make a build around them, i may make a perfumer character that uses those bottles for both offenses and defense
Just a couple things: 1. Quotation marks are very rarely used in item descriptions to indicate opinion or unreliability. Looking at the word “loathsome” and interpreting it as a fact of some kind doesn’t make much sense, even ignoring the punctuation issue, as it’s a word signifying extreme emotions, which aren’t any sort of universal, factual element. 2. Omen horns, Godskin tails, scales and feathers are all indicated as once being seen as holy in the age of the Great Tree, long before the Erdtree. So it’s a pretty safe bet to attribute the cultural treatment of Omen as simply an effort by the Golden Order to suppress any preceding or opposing beliefs. Their immediate willingness to make use of the Omen when it served their interests is pretty telling in just how untrustworthy they are, so…
Now that I think about it. The Omenkiller's mask resembles the gargoyles but the point being is that they lose all emotions and almost like they have become machinations just like the gargoyles that mechanically defend the area they exhibit in. A better comparison would be the actual Marionette Soldiers but all the same robotic entities that kill in coldblood except the Omenkillers are actually just drugged up soldiers.
I think with the omen bairn, the line of text comes from a mother of an omen, referring to the forced excision of the omen horns on literal babies, often rrsulting in an excess of child death. The bairns are created for the grieving mothers, so i imagine them begging not to be hated or cursed, refers to them asking their dead children to forgive them for the sins of the golden order
Wasn't expecting the Rome: Total War ost in a video on FromSoft lore, but goddamn if I wasn't pleased as hell seeing my two favorite franchises come together for a beautiful moment.
As soon as you mentioned the idea of using Omen horns to make perfume, the idea that everything bad about the Omen is made up to make it easier to justify harvesting their horns loomed into focus.
A fun thought about why the Poison Spray Mist needs to be held in the mouth before use: Our mouths contain a rather horrific microbiome. The kind that puts a komodo dragon to shame in terms of certainty of death, even if not swiftness. The poison spray mist might make use of that fact, given that all sorts of natural ingredients are used. And if so, if people actually knew about germ theory in this setting, we might see poison spray being made with human saliva and a number of extra ingredients that do nothing but feed a microbiome for a little while before use.
Do you have a link to support your mouth bacteria claim in comparison to the komodo dragon? I work in microbiology and never heard this comparison before and would like to read up!
@@paxtonb3926 sadly I don't. What little I know is a comparison of how fast animals die and the rates of survival, and while a komodo can cause septic shock with a bite, I do know that humans have disturbingly aggressive mouth biomes.
So, I’ll be honest, your interpretation of Gwyn back in Dark Souls pissed me off a bit, but I must thank you for what you said regarding Rollo. It would have been very easy to do a “The Golden Order irrationally hates omens because they’re ugly/different, prepare to cry”, but you went through this pretty accurately, even explaining how the omen curse affects normal humans, as we’ve seen with Boggart, or even the Albinaurics under Mohg. Rollo understands the gravity of the situation at hand, and decides to act for the greater good, taking upon himself a heavy emotional toll. My favourite minor NPC character by far, I’ll dedicate all my powerstanced jumping attacks to him.
I wonder if rollo had to remove his emotions not only because empathy would make him less effective, but also the potential in an omens blood reacts to some way to those emotions causing you to be unable to effect the outcomes in a systematic way. Like maybe because the golden order could not fix the problem from within, by removing his emotions he could step out of the golden order and find a solution from outside.
The Omenkillers always strike deep in me. The irregular are slaughtered due to being born "wrong". Even with the destructive possibilities of Omens, they definitely don't deserve any of their fate. If you think using the dead as fuel for healing is innatily bad, then you cannot justify their slaughter. Either justify both, neither, or just the one where it isn't neccesary to cause harm (just because there probably was, doesn't mean it was gauranteed). And say we DO say that it is justified for the Omens because of the Dungeater or something (Not that it the slaughter stopped the Dungeater. Honestly it seems like maybe the Dungeater actually benifits from the slaughter so he can get horns more easily. Who's to say that the nature of the Omens even encourages his accursion? Maybe they are a natural and healthy way for the world to get rid of a buildup of accursedness?). The Albanaurics definitely DO NOT deserve the slaughter. The Albanaurics did NOTHING. They were no threat. They just didn't fit in to a society not made for them. And they get brutally murdered and their corpes burned. The Omenkillers are pure evil. Somebody doesn't need to take pleasure in something to be evil. And it's not like they act out of ignorance or accident, otherwise they wouldn't need to rid themselves of their emotions now would they? They've just been indoctrinated. Which does not absolve them of their sin. Because other healers try to help even the Omens. It was a CHOICE to become the killers. THEY CHOOSE. And their choice was an evil one. Just because the entire system is wrong and rotted to the core doesn't absolve ANYONE. It just adds to the list of people responsable. It wouldn't have taken much for the Albanaurics, the Misbegotten, Demi-humans and even the Omens to be incorporated into the society in anyway. Even a life of distainfull tolerance would be less evil (Though do not underestimate the evil of such a life. It just makes the slaughtered do the dirty work for the slaughterers). But the worst part is that it is 100% something that would have happened in our world. There were, and still sometimes are, even worse situations IRL. People who abberate in either body or mind are doomed to live a live of struggle. Even if their abberations are a boon in a vacuum. Regular people's fear and ignorance add fuel to the fire, and so many people are hated for how they were born. And so people will comit the most heinous crimes to another. People will slay the weak and call it justice. People will rip the baby from the arms of the mother, painfully mutilate it, perhaps kill it, and then burn it's body on the fire all in front of her. Perhaps even with her approval. This sort of thing can happen easily when encouraged, and even as easily unencouraged. By people not even under the effect of a drug to dull their emotions, nor by sadists or psycopaths, but by regular people. People who will spin a tale everywhichway to justify it, because they need to justify it. Because they need to feel like they are doing the right thing. So often it's disguised. Usually by faith: either to a religion, or a nation, to society, or whatever you can imagine. Or by ignorance. People pretending it's for the good of the victim. Or for some other "greater good". Very often for the chronic cases it's institutionalised and hidden behind many such institutions to hide it. To make it look good. Instead of the horror it truly is. So while Elden Ring has it bad, it's not the worst. At least it's somewhat honest about it. This was quite a bit long, but I do have a lot to say on these matters. Because the more we talk about such cruelties, the better we recognise them, and the easier we can stop them. Because neither in Elden Ring, nor IRL is it neccasary, unavoidable, unstoppable or unsolveable. But I'll leave you with one final quote which reminds me of the Omenkillers: “There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.” ― Sir Terry Pratchett, Small Gods. GNU Terry Pratchett. Speak his name.
POSSIBLE THEORY Miranda flowers are said to feed apon humans. But never say live humans. Jars are a bunch of corpses So. Perhaps the jars may be vital for em to avoid suspicion and ethical issues. Just kill living jars. After all there shards are essential as well. So there kinda perfect prey.
I've always wondered why the knights of the lands between were so robotic and stoic now I understand that despite their honorable look they're really just the lands between versions of stoners
Miranda: derived from Latin 'to be worthy of admiration/wonder's Miranda Rights: US Law- the warning during arrest, given by the police, that you may remain silent until you have an attorney during questioning.
I wonder if there is a connection between perfumers and the grand masters of raya lucaria, sence their sets look similar, or is it just fashion at the time.
It's fascinating how perfumers, seemingly a very small aspect of the lore, ends up being connected to nearly every major aspect. I did not expect this, but it was a welcome surprise
I'm still surprised they didn't make the video twice as long, seeing as how the depraved perfumers seem to be directly connected to the nomadic merchants. They may have saved it for another video.
These kind of microcosms are a really interesting part of Souls Game lore. You could easily write a multi-book fantasy saga based on the pointers in this video alone ... it's amazing how dense it is.
@@CheckUnderYou I just ate.,…”9
Mmmm
Immediately thought they were interesting and cool as hell. Only missing plague doctor beak mask but that would have been too cliche
Rollo's story gets me every fucking time. Dude was trying his best to keep everyone safe, and lost everything in the process. I think people always forget that without the propaganda, and control of information the royals had someone like Rollo who was super committed to the safety of everyone could've done great things, but instead they were lead to be a monster by the powers that be.
A man who sacrificed everything to protect others from monsters ended up being misled into becoming a monster that does nothing but hurt others.
Because the Greater Will is a germophobe who calls the Crucible-born Omen Loathesome
I guess it not good for publicity if the New King is an omen
"Stop politicizing my Elden Ring 😡"
- Gamers
@@theobell2002
Pretty sure that the main argument about political stuff is that it should be as fictional as possible with little or no relation to any real-world ongoing politics (mainly because that ages extremely poorly as times change).
Everyone looooves fiction politics that is extremely far removed from reality (Fallout, Dragon Age, Warhammer, Dark Souls, etc are 90% politics in their lore) due to how uniquely unlike reality they tend to be from real world politics. But they hate it when a game's politics are based entirely or heavily on real-world events since that's very lazy, uninteresting, uncreative, and oftentimes inconsistent with the game's own setting. Anyone who wants to learn about real world politics will learn about it since it's really easy to do with a google search. That google search is also why real-world politics in games is lazy and uncreative since that's how the material is obtained and copy-pasted with no imaginative flair.
So any way you slice it, the art of perfuming involves either consuming liquidized human remains, or spraying them upon your enemies.
You've gotta wonder, was that a George thing or a Miyazaki thing?
As with most things in the game, probably a combination of both. One probably came up with the basic idea and the other elaborated upon it.
I'd wager a Michael Zaki thing. George was mostly hands off and probably only wrote stuff relating to the gods and their history
@@andrewbowen2837 Unless From release their GRRM literature we'll likely never know exactly how many ideas he gave them to work from, but I suspect you're underselling it a little. He wasn't involved in the game development process but that was never his remit, he was tasked with developing the lore for a new fictional universe and you have to imagine he gave them a lot of detailed notes, I doubt they just got a couple of a4 pages describing the main bosses. The name "Miranda" following George's GRM motif kind of lends to the idea that George did in fact go into some further detail on the flowers in his manuscripts.
Alchemy. Look into the Calcination and Putrefaction ideas. Also think: soil is dead stuff consumed and turned into reduced waste that other things live in/on. One strata of the environment feeds the next, which feeds the next. Elden Ring is pretty heavy with Alchemical motifs.
I think george for sure
Some *really* good cinematography here! The shot at "let us return to Rollo" after the omen section is gorgeous
23:27 for those looking to witness the great cinematography again.
Finally we have arrived at a time where acclaimed youtubers have covered what to them seemed to be most interesting about Elden Ring, leading to them covering more obscure topics like the Miranda Flowers! This is showing that the Game really is full of details in every single part of its World! Most people would say a full first blind playtrough is the best way to experience the Game, but what im saying is, that the more you know about the Worlds Backround, what everything represents and how its all connected really catapults my enjoyment trough the Dark-Souls-Lover roof!
You think the same way I do 😂 I’ve been waiting for lore videos on topics like this
Absolutely. This game is meant to be played multiple times. Just the gameplay alone is designed to give you a ton of options to entice you to try a different build each time. And the experience is enhanced each time you learn something new about the lore of the game, giving a deeper and richer look into the story.
@scalpel exactly. blind playthroughs leads to the big "wow" when you start piecing the world for yourself.
Preach. I can't stand how people say the last third of the game is lazy with copy/paste enemies and has no environmental storytelling. Thing is, the world beyond the Forbidden Lands has so much copy/paste because it shows us all the dirty secrets of Leyndell and how much they've stolen from their predecessors.
The giant crows and dogs that are in Mountaintops and Caelid, they're strange because they seem to have come as a result of a mutation of the Rot Goddess, given how sudden and horrible their presence in Caelid feels when you stop and consider the human settlements these monsters now surround and nest near.
Point is, upon replaying and seeing so many similarities between the Outer Gods, it makes me feel like the Fell God, Goddess of Rot, and Formless Mother are all related or are many faces of the same malevolent deity.
Like, come on: a twisted, fiery presence which haunts your very blood and mutates and twists all it touches. It vies to ravage the land and wrest control over it from the Greater Will.
It's a theory. And it all started from me realizing how Fell God and Goddess of Rot and Formless Mother (those bloody crows in the swamp) all seem to have the power to mutate wildlife.
@@elwynn9931 i havent yet finished my first playthrough, currently doing a spellsword build (intelligence strength and some dex) but am already thinking about future builds. next build will probably be a faith/dex build with an emphasis on weapon buffs. i have played through most of the game blind and am just now watching videos on it, im around level 80 but i feel like i am missing so much as there is a lot of hidden or hard to find things
"Depravity is only depravity until it outcompetes: then it becomes mainstream as everyone gets onboard," Words to remember. Bless you lads and your fantastic Elden Lore.
Fashion pretty much is the bread and butter of society
the miranda flower item descriptions aren't scarcastic. I believe it is either a perfumer that is describing the flower and its components, or the effects of perfumes were so intoxicating that everybody revered the flower because it is required in every perfume.
I assumed most of the spirit descriptions are from Roderika. Especially the ones with character that stand out
Cool! The perfumers and the Zamor are the two factions that really stuck out to me in this game
Zamor are interesting. Very Sidhe and/or Other like. And the only race describes as "long lived" besides Marikas Numen.
@@darkhobo interesting! I wonder how deep their lore goes, there are a few different pre-erdtree races like them & the alabaster lord's & the nox, I wonder how much they'd interacted back in the day
Thanks for this piece. For a seemingly minor group (at least I thought so until about 50 mins ago) there is so much lore. This in my opinion is what, I'm finding out as a new Souls player, makes FromSoft games stand the test of time - not graphics, not mechanics, not even the exhileration of beating Malenia or Radagon, but the attention to detail - the lore. Everything has a story, a place, a function in the game. I'm on my fourth playthrough and finding out more and more everyday.
Hell yeah! It's so exciting to see people getting into this for the first time :)
I’m not sure if Omens were something that began to be born later, after the Perfumers were already an established culture. Rather, as society began to turn against the Crucible sometime during Godfrey’s reign (it was still seen as divine early on when the Crucible Knights fought for him, but as civilization advanced came to be seen as “impure”, some point during his reign before the birth of the Omen Twins). Following that, I think the attempts to cure Omen appeared after the Omen stopped being viewed as a blessing, and began to be viewed as a curse.
The Omenkillers’ masks to me indicate a shift in the priorities of the Omenkillers. Rollo may have been an emotionless mercy killer, but the Omenkillers we see are actively taunting and tormenting the Omens, prolonging their suffering as they kill them. I don’t think the present Omenkillers use physick to suppress emotions the way Rollo did.
Omenkillers targeting Albinaurics is…interesting. Unlike the Omens, their “accursed blood” seems not to have any effect like the Omens’ blood does. Albinaurics are discriminated against since they’re artificially-created beings, but the Albinauric Shield description says that it’s mostly the Liurnia/Carian society that persecutes them rather than the Leyndell/Erdtree one.
As for them using fire, it’s said only those who served the Erdtree were forbidden from using it, so maybe if you used it outside Leyndell or were not officially associated with the Church or with the Leyndell society it was fine? Fire was clearly okay for lighting, for example (there’s candles, torches, and campfires everywhere).
Absolutely, I think that the current generation of Omen killers take pride and enjoyment from their 'craft' hence why they were more than happy to be employed by Rykard for his torture, or Gideon for his slaughter at the village. Alternatively, emotion is tied to decision making. Without emotion you cannot make decisions, as studies have shown. Perhaps the imbibing of this emotion killing perfume has resulted in the omen killers essentially becoming the perfect servants, easily controlled by those in power and directed to do all sorts of horrible deeds outside of their original purpose
Yeah, most likely under servitude
Society as a whole under the Erdtree is fine with fire as a 'tool'
We don’t know when exactly the golden order turned on the omen. Personally I think it happened sometime after the omen twins were born, otherwise it’s difficult to account for Morgott’s devotion to it.
@@gudmundur-heimisson If it occurred after their births, why were they imprisoned in the sewers since infancy?
Also it seems to be all of human society that turned on them, it wasn't a change Marika made to the Order.
@@soarel325 do you have any source for them being imprisoned since infancy? I’d be genuinely curious to see it, I did a quick scan of Morgott and Mohg item descriptions and as far as I can tell there’s no reference to when they were imprisoned.
Christmas came early this year.
So did I
That's because santa came early
Amen brother
@@sachahjkl oh that naughty old elf
Just a thought: the land octopus require humans for reproduction and their parts are used in the blood boil perfume, another connection to humanity in the recipes.
I’m sorry they require humans???? Do I even want to know how that works?
For... For reproduction?
@@omnissiah6697 If you look at the Land Octopus Ovary it mentions they're full of human blood (presumably from people the octopus has eaten).
"require humans for reproduction"
"octopus"
_"reproduction"_
*The Implication*
@BearSeek Berserker And the FromSoft vore obsession continues!
Just realized that miranda flowers are found just bellow the arena in the capitol... so the defeated go on to be plant food...
The Perfumers had completely passed me by during my playthrough and now I'm itching to do a perfumer lore run. Spectacular video, really like the subjects you tackle. Looking forward to more!
Lol. Doing the same. Using arcane and dex.
Arcane for obtaining mats and inflicting status.
Dex, since some perfumer items require dex.
@@hunterburguillo5891 I like the idea of an Omen Killer who ultimately kills Morgott and takes his sword.
@@theguileraven7014 Bad ending
Same for me. The only difference being is that I still don't care about these stupid things despite this child attempt at poetry.
Never noticed that the huge arrows were topped with incense holders for perfume warfare. That is so insanely cool. Great catch!
One thing is for sure. Trying to do a perfumer character run in Elden Ring is hard. The ingredients are so scattered, and can be hard to collect. It's possibly the longest running, and hardest playthrough possible. I want to try it, but the effort is daunting. Also it ain't easy to collect the cookbooks.
The mages like Sellen who studied the stars aspired to become star seeds, rights? That was one of their ways of ascending if I’m not mistaken.
Maybe Miranda was a Perfumer who wanted to become closer to the materials she studied similar to that?
A year late but no they did not. The "star seeds" were actually the reason why the conspectus studying the Primeval Current was taken out of the picture - people who gazed upon it - most notably Sellen - would go mad, and they would create artificial seeds of stars out of other students, and then would study those seeds for their research.
With this work, the golden age of Elden Ring lore truly begins.
I like that they are basically just Berserk’s Bakiraka one of my favorite enemies in Elden Ring even if they’re relatively easy.
This has got to be one of the best Elden Ring lore videos I have ever seen. I notice the speculation, but I don't mind if it creates a story. Excellent work, sir! Thanks for the good content!
Would suggest smoughtowns recent videos, they scratch that deep lore itch too
They are my favourite faction in Elden Ring. They have so many details, and I especially love that they used to be commanders during the Shattering.
As always, the level of analysis is superb.
It goes to show how much detail and nuance Fromsoftware puts into their games.
And this is why their worlds work and are do immersive. It's not only the major characters or events that require polishing. It's the little things, the little idiosyncrasies that actually create a living, believable world. It's culture, it's society, it's everything.
19:00 is when he starts talking about Rollo the Omenkiller, for anyone looking for that point like me
You've joined Smoughtown and Tarnished Archaeologist as my favorite Elden Ring lore channels. Great choices for videos that stand out and I really enjoy how your process and connect ideas.
I see Omens as remnents of the influence of the crucible from when it and the erdtree were connected. The crucible is gone, but its influence remains. And as another great tree the omen under its influence have no connection to the erdtree and thus no Grace.
Fantastic work folks. Everything from the cinematography to the narration to the script itself. You really outdid yourselves this time.
Your level of insight is like no other, huge fan of your dark souls vids. I wish to gain eyes on the inside just so I can understand the story of elden ring.
Sweeeeeet.... my favorite souls lore theorist on UA-cam covering Elden Ring lore, cheered up my day immediately. Thank you!
Love your work! Thanks for the hard work and fantastic insights!
A bit late to the party, but something to consider, provided by Tarnished Archeologist, is that people in the Lands Between are born from the Erdtree itself, and that Omens are the in-game representation, not of something new, but of the reemergence of the crucible from the original roots of the Erdtree, the current one we see in-game being a grafted on phantom tree, and not a fully corporeal one. The Omens are a representation of a late-stage aspect of real-world plant grafting where the plant used for the roots and base begins to take over, starving the grafted-on limbs of nutrients and inevitably killing it.
This, combined with your insights into the relationship between the perfumers and the omen as part of an early attempt to "cure" the reemergence of the crucible from the grafted, physical stump of the phantom tree paints a pretty desperate picture as the former healer Rollo dulled his emotions so he could cut away the metaphorical "root suckers" of the failing Erdtree.
It’s always an event for me when Hawkshaw publishes a video. I don’t understand how you aren’t above 100k subs yet. You’re such a valuable aspect of the souls community that everyone who plays the games should be subscribed. Hit like and subscribe people!
Tbf i believe their channel might take off if they keep making vids of this caliber about subjects that are not really covered by anyone else yet
The "Familyyyyy" bit gets a like on its own!!!
Now this is gonna be interesting. I always thought something shady was going on with the perfumers, and that Leyndell had something to do with it.
Perfumers might be my favourite part of the world, but man trying to play as one especially online is so tedious when Perfume Arts are not incantations but very hard to gather consumables compared to their frequent use.
There really should be bells for most ingredients
Would love to see a video on the "beasts" of Elden Ring. I have so many questions about beast incantations, shadows, the evolution/devolution of life in the lands between, Farum azula, etc. And how they relate, if at all
Excellent video! I never saw the giant projectiles outside the capital as being perfume diffusers - that was a very good catch! I love how you've woven together a story for these perfumers and their development.
Wow I was literally looking into their lore last night, crazy timing lol
3:42 "... even animals get drunk by mistake."
Fun fact, in nature, it's mostly not a mistake, lol.
If we believe that there is a connection between the deathbed companions and the perfumers, maybe Deathroot is the key binding them together. There are Those Who Live in Death all over the Lands Between, and their presence is attributed to deathroot, even in places there isn't any around
This could imply that, after the Night of Black Knives, the perfumers may be responsible for Death spreading, a byproduct of them roaming around during the Shattering. We don't know what deathroot was actually used for, but if Gurranq is said to have a craving for it, it could have been something as simple as it's flavor or smell, addictive and eventually sinfully indulgent
I think Gurranq’s appetite is specific to him considering his circumstances
I think the deathbed companions are foreign fia says she is from a land were woman like her are respected or at least aspired too and I think the perfumers are only for the lands between (but history has worked with pheromones homemade scents everywhere)
Also this is very well done it’s very perfect I love this video and really respect the effort
I completely missed the detail with the ballistic shots from the shattering War. I did wonder why they had a weird back for a big ballistic bolt but now it makes sense.
can't believe my eyes
Brilliant video, Hawkshaw. ER lore is vast and impenetrable in many ways, and I am always blows away by work you put in it. Thanks for shining some light on perfumers!
It would have been cool to have a perfumer starting class.
you mean a medic?
Amazing deep dive into an underappreciated subculture of the lands between.
Exactly perfectly put.
Great video there are a lot of connections here that i never made
This was amazing. I don’t know how I’ve never heard of this channel before, but if this video is indicative of the quality of the rest of your work, I’ll be subscribing!
Their vid on Izalith basically set the basis upon which the whole lore community builds now. Quality is an understatement imo
Talking for an hour about one character of Elden ring
Hell yea bois we are celebrating
Ahh shit here we go. The goat makes more
Never caught that the Huge Arrows were actuallp poison despensing devices
great catch
I highly appreciate the berserk music in the background
Oh wait is it Avitar music
Great work, as always. This channel is really one of the best sources in the community.
I liked the part with the Tsungi horn music in the background. Seems fitting for the perfumers.
This video is so well done, I didn't notice it's length until it was over. It was so good to watch, gj
I absolutely hold Hawkshaw videos as the the BEST in analytical work for Fromsoft games.
Thank you for this amazing video and I look forward to the next video.
I think you're forgetting that, while Morgott does consider himself a fell omen, a being that is inherently undeserving of love, he comes to that conclusion as a result of decades of abuse and imprisonment since birth. He's not making a rational declaration, he's trying to get love from that which abused him; the Erdtree. If you were locked in chains for your entire life, told that this was what was right and good, because *you* were a fell omen, would you be able to not have that be what you believed? Would you grow up to have a healthy conception of your existence? Would you not think that you were cursed, if that was all you were called as a child?
I wanna give Morgott a hug.
What an interesting perspective to deconstruct the game!!! I can not appreciate more of your hard work! The true lore master!!
When i found out about the perfumers and saw their attacks it made me want to make a build around them, i may make a perfumer character that uses those bottles for both offenses and defense
Just a couple things:
1. Quotation marks are very rarely used in item descriptions to indicate opinion or unreliability. Looking at the word “loathsome” and interpreting it as a fact of some kind doesn’t make much sense, even ignoring the punctuation issue, as it’s a word signifying extreme emotions, which aren’t any sort of universal, factual element.
2. Omen horns, Godskin tails, scales and feathers are all indicated as once being seen as holy in the age of the Great Tree, long before the Erdtree. So it’s a pretty safe bet to attribute the cultural treatment of Omen as simply an effort by the Golden Order to suppress any preceding or opposing beliefs.
Their immediate willingness to make use of the Omen when it served their interests is pretty telling in just how untrustworthy they are, so…
Ah thank you!! I’ve been waiting for a good lore video on perfumers!
Now that I think about it. The Omenkiller's mask resembles the gargoyles but the point being is that they lose all emotions and almost like they have become machinations just like the gargoyles that mechanically defend the area they exhibit in. A better comparison would be the actual Marionette Soldiers but all the same robotic entities that kill in coldblood except the Omenkillers are actually just drugged up soldiers.
I think with the omen bairn, the line of text comes from a mother of an omen, referring to the forced excision of the omen horns on literal babies, often rrsulting in an excess of child death. The bairns are created for the grieving mothers, so i imagine them begging not to be hated or cursed, refers to them asking their dead children to forgive them for the sins of the golden order
The Age of Mythology music in the beginning sure brought back some memories.
It must take a whole team to make these…..well done
Wasn't expecting the Rome: Total War ost in a video on FromSoft lore, but goddamn if I wasn't pleased as hell seeing my two favorite franchises come together for a beautiful moment.
As soon as you mentioned the idea of using Omen horns to make perfume, the idea that everything bad about the Omen is made up to make it easier to justify harvesting their horns loomed into focus.
A fun thought about why the Poison Spray Mist needs to be held in the mouth before use: Our mouths contain a rather horrific microbiome. The kind that puts a komodo dragon to shame in terms of certainty of death, even if not swiftness. The poison spray mist might make use of that fact, given that all sorts of natural ingredients are used. And if so, if people actually knew about germ theory in this setting, we might see poison spray being made with human saliva and a number of extra ingredients that do nothing but feed a microbiome for a little while before use.
Do you have a link to support your mouth bacteria claim in comparison to the komodo dragon? I work in microbiology and never heard this comparison before and would like to read up!
@@paxtonb3926 sadly I don't. What little I know is a comparison of how fast animals die and the rates of survival, and while a komodo can cause septic shock with a bite, I do know that humans have disturbingly aggressive mouth biomes.
@@paxtonb3926 lmao it's nothing more than misinformation head canon
The perfumers are so intriguing, I’m pumped for this video!
Tonight we feast
Consider my mind blown... Beautifully-crafted vid.
This is one of my fav lore vids to date. Great video!
I can't believe it wasn't till this video I finally noticed the toxin coming out of the giant bolts during the siege of Leyndell.
Absolutely amazing video. So many details I had not heard about or considered before. Thank you!
Great video, I love all the linkages you found.
this is top notch. I'm amazed this doesn't have ten times as many views. I'm on my second viewing. hope to see more eventually!
This is amazing, Im discovering so much stuff I didnt know wtf
So, I’ll be honest, your interpretation of Gwyn back in Dark Souls pissed me off a bit, but I must thank you for what you said regarding Rollo.
It would have been very easy to do a “The Golden Order irrationally hates omens because they’re ugly/different, prepare to cry”, but you went through this pretty accurately, even explaining how the omen curse affects normal humans, as we’ve seen with Boggart, or even the Albinaurics under Mohg. Rollo understands the gravity of the situation at hand, and decides to act for the greater good, taking upon himself a heavy emotional toll.
My favourite minor NPC character by far, I’ll dedicate all my powerstanced jumping attacks to him.
Loved the Greenpath music choice.
5:56 Hawkshaw really hit us with the Iroh horn sfx, didn't he?
This seems to have a bit of a Bioshock consideration. Plasmids - Vigors - Perfumes
7:00 The Flower Crucible? So interesting! I hope we learn more in future DLC. More more more lore.
I have been waiting with great anticipation for your insights on Elden Ring. Thank you!
I wonder if rollo had to remove his emotions not only because empathy would make him less effective, but also the potential in an omens blood reacts to some way to those emotions causing you to be unable to effect the outcomes in a systematic way. Like maybe because the golden order could not fix the problem from within, by removing his emotions he could step out of the golden order and find a solution from outside.
Love the Age of Mythology Sound Track background music.
Actually it's 2 am, I'm gonna need that sleep back
The Omenkillers always strike deep in me. The irregular are slaughtered due to being born "wrong". Even with the destructive possibilities of Omens, they definitely don't deserve any of their fate. If you think using the dead as fuel for healing is innatily bad, then you cannot justify their slaughter. Either justify both, neither, or just the one where it isn't neccesary to cause harm (just because there probably was, doesn't mean it was gauranteed).
And say we DO say that it is justified for the Omens because of the Dungeater or something (Not that it the slaughter stopped the Dungeater. Honestly it seems like maybe the Dungeater actually benifits from the slaughter so he can get horns more easily. Who's to say that the nature of the Omens even encourages his accursion? Maybe they are a natural and healthy way for the world to get rid of a buildup of accursedness?). The Albanaurics definitely DO NOT deserve the slaughter.
The Albanaurics did NOTHING. They were no threat. They just didn't fit in to a society not made for them. And they get brutally murdered and their corpes burned.
The Omenkillers are pure evil. Somebody doesn't need to take pleasure in something to be evil. And it's not like they act out of ignorance or accident, otherwise they wouldn't need to rid themselves of their emotions now would they? They've just been indoctrinated. Which does not absolve them of their sin. Because other healers try to help even the Omens. It was a CHOICE to become the killers. THEY CHOOSE.
And their choice was an evil one.
Just because the entire system is wrong and rotted to the core doesn't absolve ANYONE. It just adds to the list of people responsable. It wouldn't have taken much for the Albanaurics, the Misbegotten, Demi-humans and even the Omens to be incorporated into the society in anyway. Even a life of distainfull tolerance would be less evil (Though do not underestimate the evil of such a life. It just makes the slaughtered do the dirty work for the slaughterers).
But the worst part is that it is 100% something that would have happened in our world. There were, and still sometimes are, even worse situations IRL. People who abberate in either body or mind are doomed to live a live of struggle. Even if their abberations are a boon in a vacuum. Regular people's fear and ignorance add fuel to the fire, and so many people are hated for how they were born.
And so people will comit the most heinous crimes to another. People will slay the weak and call it justice. People will rip the baby from the arms of the mother, painfully mutilate it, perhaps kill it, and then burn it's body on the fire all in front of her. Perhaps even with her approval.
This sort of thing can happen easily when encouraged, and even as easily unencouraged. By people not even under the effect of a drug to dull their emotions, nor by sadists or psycopaths, but by regular people. People who will spin a tale everywhichway to justify it, because they need to justify it. Because they need to feel like they are doing the right thing. So often it's disguised. Usually by faith: either to a religion, or a nation, to society, or whatever you can imagine. Or by ignorance. People pretending it's for the good of the victim. Or for some other "greater good". Very often for the chronic cases it's institutionalised and hidden behind many such institutions to hide it. To make it look good. Instead of the horror it truly is.
So while Elden Ring has it bad, it's not the worst. At least it's somewhat honest about it.
This was quite a bit long, but I do have a lot to say on these matters. Because the more we talk about such cruelties, the better we recognise them, and the easier we can stop them. Because neither in Elden Ring, nor IRL is it neccasary, unavoidable, unstoppable or unsolveable.
But I'll leave you with one final quote which reminds me of the Omenkillers:
“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”
― Sir Terry Pratchett, Small Gods.
GNU Terry Pratchett. Speak his name.
POSSIBLE THEORY
Miranda flowers are said to feed apon humans. But never say live humans.
Jars are a bunch of corpses
So. Perhaps the jars may be vital for em to avoid suspicion and ethical issues. Just kill living jars.
After all there shards are essential as well. So there kinda perfect prey.
Kind of makes me wanna try a Perfumer build
I wish we had crab spit as a perfume, boil crab eggs and smoldering butterfly, boom jet of hot water
Top notch narration! Keep up the good work
I've always wondered why the knights of the lands between were so robotic and stoic now I understand that despite their honorable look they're really just the lands between versions of stoners
"SNIFF* Aaaaahh ayo pass me the other bottle too fam.
Stellar, simply stellar work!
That age of mythology theme slaps
Great collection of thoughts, love your rapping at the end.
Miranda: derived from Latin 'to be worthy of admiration/wonder's
Miranda Rights: US Law- the warning during arrest, given by the police, that you may remain silent until you have an attorney during questioning.
I went into this thinking it was like 5 min long lol love the dedication 👏
So happy you’re back doing videos 💪💪💪
I wonder if there is a connection between perfumers and the grand masters of raya lucaria, sence their sets look similar, or is it just fashion at the time.
wow almost an hour worth of relevant content, this is so cool
Using age of mythology music, i like it.