"Every time Earth starts to settle, God throws a rock at it."
- Ultron
We usually first encounter misbegotten on the eastern side of the Weeping Peninsula, where they are in the middle of taking over.
Can we allow that the Crucible Knights are Misbegotten? That the Misbegotten Crusaders are the descendants/cousins of Godfrey's Crusaders?
The C Knights objectives line up closely with the Golden Orders objectives. But not quite.
We find them loyal to Tanith, but not Rykard. To Stormveil but not Godrick to the Dynasty but not Mogh to Farum but not the beasts.
Quelaag's recent video makes the case that the 'monk tending a flower' statue we find all over Golden Order territories represents the golden Erdtree being cultivated from the base of something like a multi-stem tree. Historically (I realize this isn't exactly marxist analysis) the root of this multi-stem plant could represent the crucible.
Personally my major point of confusion at this point revolves around whether or not the Greatree and the Crucible/Greater Will coexisted for some time or if the Founding Rain involved the Crucible destroying, and eventually replacing, the Greattree. Or some third thing. I'll talk about Meteo attacks later, but I need to talk about the Greattree.
As we travel back in time the world becomes more polytheistic/multicultural until, at some point, we find another convergence centered on the Dynasty/Elden John. Personally, I suspect that Elden John, as he's depicted in-game, represents a similar deistic culling that ushered in the Dynasty/Age of the Greattree, which appears to have ended with Rot nearly taking over which, in turn, was sealed away by the Blue Fairy and the Dancing Swordsman.
If the Greattree wasn't destroyed by the Greater Will/Crucible Meteor, then it could have been burned down by the Fire Giants and/or dragons, who may have been motivated by the fact that the Greattree could have been succumbing to Rot. This could have created the opening the Greater Will needed to launch the Crucible Meteor. I'm almost certain both things happened, the burning of the Greattree and an attempted burning of the Erdtree.
The problem there is that we can also say that the Greater Will fucked off back when Placidussax was Elden Lord of what I assume was the Age of the Crucible and hasn't been heard from since. Since then the Elden Beast has been in charge, assisted by the Two Fingerses, the Golden Ghost parasites and Marika, at least until she plumbed the depths of Order, at which point she seems to have begun secretly working against the Will. What I can't figure is who Psax's god was. I mean it's clearly a creature of Gold, but was it Marika's first first husband or was it married to a different godqueen that Marika usurped?
Regardless.
At some point during Marika's ascent/early reign the misbegotten were viewed as holy and at some point they were deemed heretical and impure and enslaved.
We usually first encounter them on the weeping peninsula, where they're finishing up with a successful slave rebellion. The humans we meet ascribe this to the misbegotten being inherently evil and treacherous but a casual look behind the castle indicates the revolt probably had more to do with all the torture and child trafficking (I suspect Edgar was probably the first face Roderika saw when arriving in TLB). I don't know how much it ties in but Roderika ends up BFF with obvious misbegotten Hewg.
And it could be no more than a slave rebellion. Or they may have been tipped off that Godfrey is returning.
When the tarnished were exiled one ship was left behind. We find it's anchor being kept by misbegotten. I'm betting it was a ship full of tarnished misbegotten.
Hewg was imprisoned in the Roundtable by Marika. His original crime, we can infer, was attempting, and possibly succeeding, at creating a weapon capable of killing a god, since he's been sentenced to serve as smith for the Tarnished until he forges a weapon capable of killing a god.
And hey what do you know, back at dragons. Smithing stones come from dragons, and ancient smithing stones, like greater dragons, have the ability to warp time, which can allow a mortal weapon to kill a god.
The misbegotten were created by the crucible. As the crucible aged, possibly around the time the Erdtree was cultivated, instead of producing misbegotten it began producing Omen. Morgott and Mohg, who have both misbegotten and omen features, may help fill in that timeline. Given that the omen horns bear such a resemblance to deathblight, Godwyn's death may have marked the transition from misbegotten to omen. Either way, contact with the crucible was outlawed, as was anything associated with it.
I'm almost certain Godfrey opposed this. I don't know how closely it connects, but the big, grey lion enemies we find around, at least some of them, have omen horns. As near as I can tell, they're the only beasts affected by the omen and, the one of the only beasts resembling Serosh, and seem to mostly keep company with the banished/exiled factions. The other beast that resembles Serosh are the leonine misbegotten.
As near as I can tell there aren't any 'canine' or 'ursine' type beasts afflicted with misbegotten/omen mutations, and although they did undergo a similar genetic rewrite when they were given intelligence it isn't stated whether this was caused by the Crucible/GW or some other god/artifact.
So maybe that helps explain why the second crucible knight in Farum Azula is murdering beastmen: Hoarah Loux, obviously, is a cat person.
