From the Cocoon 05 - Consortium

Well, we have a pretty good idea of why Malenia was so pissed off at radahn now.

Spoilers, go away....

One God, one consort. Sorry, sis.

I'm glad they didn't paint radahn as just another arrogant bully. More than strength, more than gravity, radahn found the strength of a lord through his kindness.

I'm glad they didn't paint malenia as just a dutiful sister trying to take care of her younger brother. On reflection, now, it could be that she was keeping miquella safe as a Watcher, rather than Defender. She either didn't want him to ascend or didn't want him to ascend without her.

If anyone in the world was immune to miquella's cupid powers it would be her, so im still operati g under the notion that everything malenia has done has been of her own volition in that regard.

I really want to talk about the hornsent, but I also think that's an incredibly deep topic I've only scratched the surface of.

The omen, in the base game, have a proficiency with shadow magic that I don't think any other factions share until we start running into hornsent, who I would wager are just omen, and any differences can be put down to the same kind of environmental changes we find between ds1 slave and ds2 warrior giants.

Miquella needed this shadow magic to travel to the shadowlands, hence Mogh getting involved. And then he needed radahns gravity magic because, like, astrology is real here, its the best power to have, probably, after mind control.

Mogh's aim is to resurrect the dynasty, the prehistoric "Elden John" culture that seems to have been better preserved in places like belurat than anywhere in the base game.

Marika seems to have engaged in a bit of a genocide wrt to hornsent via messmer. It seems pretty apparent that messmer was the one to initially burn the erdtree by using melina as kindling. I don't know when this happened. If they burned it before Marika shattered the Ring how did Marika get inside to shatter it? If they burned it after she entered the tree who orchestrated the fire?

It could be that what messmer and melina burned was the Greatree, and thereby created the crucible. This would imply that the erdtree always had thorns, as it was born from the same sin, which was an aspect of the crucible. 

I'm glad we got such winged serpent/world devourer stuff. I knew rykard couldn't possibly have been that important. 

I still haven't found any connections to godskinners or the GEQueen. At least nothing obvious like miquella repeatedly saying "Radahn Redmane I choose you!"  Loooot of Ghostflame and duskborn stuff I haven't really looked at yet.

I know theres probably a dozen videos answering this but how tf do you pronounce Rauh. In my mind the name is pronounced by roaring like a lion but I'd like to be able to talk about it without sounding crazy. Like "now cow how rauh?" Or like "nah boo ra-uh"?

As a personal...thing...on my very first playthrough of Demons Souls way back in the day I played a shield turtle with like a moonlight infused spear even though i was a strength build because i didnt know how anything worked. 

Slow and safe, one inch, one millimeter at a time. Finished radahn the same way, with a blood infused spear even though i had respecced into strength for the stupid shield and a competent co-op rando.

Thank you, Patches.

From the Cocoon 04 - Endure

 I feel like

Go away spoilers

I feel like I'm approaching the End of The Expansion. I was in the zone this morning and beat the sunflower, boar, and snake boss at the end of shadows keep in like an hour after falling at all three daily for like a week. I also got our hotheaded friend in the forest and the very pointed high priest quest stuff. I sided with ansbach and kept hornsent alive for the messmer fight, if that matters, and got freyjas shield.

I haven't beat bayle, and my understanding is the final bosses can be some real doozies.

There's a lot of stuff I'm gonna want to compare to the base game. My thinking was I'll try to organize it by elder god. The problem there is how do you separate any of the others from the Greater Will. Now I'm thinking togo by faction. Any area in the game will have around ten recurring factions with nebulous goals and interactions; demihumans, misbegotten, bats, various demigod forces, and so on. 

In the shadow lands we get the bizzaro, divergent iterations of these. Where the purebloods were elegant and regal, the blood fiends are brutish and primitive. Where Rot was buried, here we find it exalted. 

But then we find, in the shadows of the shadows, vestiges of godwyns forces working to bring about the age of the duskborn. We find that here, too, rennala has been betrayed.

I thought we would get more snake stuff and less omen stuff.

I don't know what's going on with death in the expansion, but it's clearly not working there either, although it's described as being suppressed. If anything, death seems even more unobtainable in the shadow lands. 

Motherhood seems to be the overall theme here. 

Time to finish this up.

-

week later. Beat everything but the last boss. Not everything. Everything in the story and big side quests. Threw sticks at bayle WOOOOOOO. 

The spear we get from the Frenzied forest makes me realize that, even though we often find it among gem collections in the real world, amber is not a stone. The reason I bring that up is the glintstone crowns have hogh vitality, death resistance. Sellen calls it the vitality of the stars or something. Chaos is rendering the amber back down into sap. Rannalas egg may be the mew Nadalia level mystery. Must investigate. 

From the Cocoon 3 - A Dream Shared

 Spoilers go away.

Leave, seriously, there's so much other better stuff to read, even on here.

...

My favorite part of the expansion, storywise, is the theme of people with very little held in common, and a large degree of animosity towards each other, banding together for a common purpose.

It's a theme that has been explored before in these games, but it's often the cooperater is framed as being a lone, naive (but incredibly strong) simpleton like solaire or targray or sirris, and as often framed against someone like patches or gren or leonard.

So it's nice to have it portrayed with more depth and nuance here. Miyazaki has talked in interviews about how, although he's an atheist, his deep love and respect for religion and religious people is a big inspiration of his games. The respect, part of it, is born out in Faith's ability to bring disparate groups together. Given a dragon and a path forward, lautrec and solaire WILL coop together. Sirris and the handmaid were aligned on the need for cordial intrusion at one point in the past.

I like how some characters, leda and hornsent, have a harder time working together, and I like how some, moore and ansbach, get along great. I like that they have "useless" characters - thollier and his plants - and "misused" characters, freyja and her tablets.

When we run into a lone, an alone, character in this expansion they're generally not having a good time. Our beloved grandam sure isn't happy, nor is our fearless and daring and not very good drsgon hunter igon. But our presence, in alleviating their loneliness, helps to reignite their joy of purpose, their reason for being. 

Messmer, I've gotten to his second stage but haven't beaten him, he seems like one of the lonliest of all. His entire ENTIRE reason seems to be for Marika; the faith that the Accord is being upheld on her and Radagon's end. As twisted and warped and deranged as he is, he still has that one thread holding him together, probably holding him back from a true rampage, which would probably mean apocalypse for both worlds. 

Also, I think midra is torrents old partner, only explanation. Haven't seen midra yet, have seen the forest