Waste

The problem with George Miller is I never know how much is intentional and how much is him spraying his unfiltered id onto the screen and me overthinking it. Like did he know how making the Dogs of Humungus both gay and ex military/police would play in 30 years? No, of course not. Of course not. Not possible. He was an ER doctor with a lot of motorhead friends that made a movie about the 1970s energy crisis. Thats all, that explains it.  He was just reflecting what he had already seen back at us, that's all. Hes not a literal prophet. For example, George doesn't think it would be more sensical to have Tom Hardy's Max low key be Feral Kid, so George is not like smart in a lot of ways, right?

Then kash patel starts talking about his fellow war boy riding eternal in Valhalla and I think yeah George fucking knows, he knows exactly what's gonna happen for the next 50 years and always has and we're about to enter the Plague of Dementuses era of humanity.

Foul truths

 Witchfire is the game i wanted Nightreign to be

Witchfire is also the game i wanted DOOM TDA to be

In Three Days - Howlin Wolf, mostly, sometimes Jim Lee Blues if I'm in a rough spot

I wake up. 

I have a howlin wolf burnett song stuck in my head and a mask on my face. Doesn't matter who's singing it or what year it was recorded or where i first heard it, but it's almost never howlin wolf singing it when it's howling wolf stuck in my head

One of the several challenges I set with this series that I've already failed is that of having some kind of idea of where I'm going with the post when i start. Like I know I wanted to talk about aldia and alken with gnoster and those who live in death with the nightfarer stuff, even if it is mostly improv. If I don't have an idea I should shut up and go do something else, not try to stripmine my own burnout for something that wasn't there yesterday. 

I had no idea what I was going to say about caligo and sometimes improv works out and it's great fun with friends but this is a Google Blog i need to have some standards dammit this is legacy shit I'm doing. The software I mean, I'm pretty sure Google forgot about the site which is good because it means it doesn't change but bad because it'll probably vanish and reapper as a bunch of ai prompt responses diffused throughout the robotosphere. 

We made a heaven of our own.

The blues doesn't change, it just isnt ever the same. Except the blues does change, because the blues just is, it isn't a genre, it isnt 12 bars, I IV V progressions being sad being rebellious, none of that. It's a fire within that lights the world. I forget who I'm paraphrasing here but she said something like blues being the cry of a full heart and a troubled spirit.

Blues just is and it's either something you do or don't got. 

And people go crazy trying to get it, catch it, claim it, learn it learn about it, refine it, bottle it and shelf it and resell it as budget compilation cassettes all across cold war america. 

And those that got the blues are usually made crazy by it or the underlying issues causing it, if they weren't already crazy, and a lot of them would just as rather not have it (crosses arms). Some people got it and don't want it, some people find it or lose it along the way.

Song are a lie, an enchantment. And of all the magics known to us song is among the oldest.

I don't know what to say about gladius. He should be our dog, not theirs. 

I wake up. 

I've got a song stuck in my head and a mask on my face, it's a song that is new to me but not a new song. 

I met an honest to god sad ukele girl from washington state at work and she hits me with leo sayer the show must go on. I hit her with Justin townes earle live solo. doesn't matter.

I'm talking about gladius I promise.

So I pull up a live video because if you can't play it live because that's where the blues lives. Leo Sayer The Show Must Go On 1974. 

...

...

...

Like I've got a line, somewhere, with art, and I say this as an artist, where I start wanting to hand out wedgies while blasting ACDC out of an el camino. 

But anything that doesn't go over the line with me I'm usually okay with. Love even. Queen? Sure. Rush? Get in the locker, nerd.

Brian Wilson is the line, to specify. I break mike regarding the 'purpose of doing this music live and/or as an economic venture' thing, despite being a capital S socialist and not having anything else nice to say about mike, sorry.

So here's this little English dude. Recommended to a texasish honky tonk fan. Gonna rock some socks before god and the queen or whatever, allegedly, hopefully...

English people trying to play blues rock is usually instant wedgies territory. Like 98% fail rate. But also sometimes new and true and genuine hip-shaking barn rocking good time bad time true new tunes for misfits like you does happen, because the blues doesn't discriminate. But it also can't be replicated.

Also, if your band is named the singer's name: I'll be at the bar facing the stage, arms crossed, a non-alcoholic mug of old fashioned haterade and a notepad like a semi-professional lead guitarist, but for band leaders.

And he, Leo the french mime from England in the 70s, is gonna play us a rock and roll song. 

Hype couldn't be lower.

I understand every single thing you're about to going to say about the beatles, probably better than you, and I can confirm they still sound like toothpaste when they're not sounding like overtly twee toothpaste being dispensed at a carnival as tediously as possible by someone who has never been to a carnival and doesn't really understand what a carnical is, but do understand that they enjoy clowns and tigers both and consider themselves experts in these matters. Please enjoy your ice cold toothpaste.

Even by British pop standards the Beatles are bad and suck. Except Ringo, he was in a ray wylie hubbard video and that's about the coolest thing there is to do.

Even if he did try to dance. 

Like, it doesn't ruin the video. He doesn't... its just for a second. Maybe two seconds. Seems longer. It's a great song, Bad Trick. More towards the tony joe white side of rays stuff. Strip club potential. You can hardly notice. And it's not Ringo it's just that's how english people dance outside of like pagan festivals and military balls. Just please, like, try get him to sit at a drumset next time that's literally his job.

He, Ringo does the one dance where you go up and down on your knees and do finger guns. It's universally known as a dance only rich, boring white guys who cant dance (Eagles fans) or but dont realize they cant dance dance, do at parties, usually when they take cocaine. But even that implies a level of coolness almost but not quite entirely absent in English blues rock. Real big notebook next to the haterade :)

It doesn't ruin the video. It Doesn't. It's fine. Happy people are having authenticly presented enjoyment during a grooving tune by one of the all time greats and famous musicians are there. With famous musicians. Outside of Texas famous.

You gotta think about headlines, like Steve earle or Elizabeth cook is gonna attract a lot of approving but penniless band leader critic types and college students, but cottonmouth road was a long time ago, relative, whereas Walsh fans have money, if not sense, and im sure he, joe, personally is fine and not like a ted nugent or kid rock type. 

Plus think about how the english are with blues, and if ringo can keep it together enough to mention it over there on occasion, it's like a package deal you can't say no to even if the package is smoking and being held by a guy with horns. It's fine. Just for a second he dances and it cuts to something else.

You-re old, you got a family. You said it yourself Ray, were you gonna hold out for the bass player? Its fine. You can dance, Ringo, and other cool english guys. We won't mention it. Often. Dance like your hips work, o sons of the silliest empire.

Fucking don't though.

Some of the stones stuff was good for like ten years or whatever, is my understanding, and commercially the US isn't much better, its just like how much shit do you want in the shit sandwich, right? We're all the Irish vampire guy connected to the same radio frequency in this regard.

Elvis? You think Kid Rock or Ted Nugent are shameful and shameless there is pictures of Elvis Presley shaking hands with a confused Richard Nixon, letters from Elvis Presley begging Tricky Dick Nixon to let him be an official secret communist hunter during the red scare, said he, Elvis hated workers, hated kids, loved guns and hating Asia. Said Elvis. To the President who made him a pretend cop because Nixon knew fuckall about what he was doing but oh nobody tell Elvis he's not a real cop look how much red we're gonna scare. Wrote it in crayon, the letter to nixon, I heard.

You want a picture of what rock & roll looks like? here look I'm gonna go get another picture I'll even get one with an English-adjacent person. Point is Elvis could at least dance.

I'm talking about Gladius, I promise.

Anyway, so this very small very English young man Leo Sayer appears dressed like an old timey French clown (would you be hyped for this? be honest. Pull your wallet out excited? no you would not.) but it puts me in mind of ICP, so Sayer gets like an extra half second on the clock before he gets shoved in a locker in my brain several different but all metaphorical ways.

...

This silly little tap dancing English muppet dude is real close to the Beach Boys Line but guess what? 

SHOOP BOOP DEEP BOP DOODLEY DEE I LOVE YOU YOU SILLY LITTLE MUPPET YOURE SO GOOD OH WAIT YOU ACTUALLY DANCED WITH THE MUPPETS WHEN THEY WERE GOOD GODDAMMIT WHY IS ELTON JOHN FAMOUS AND NOT YOU OH ELTON JOHNS A COP HOW SURPRISING

I wake up.

I have a song stuck in my head and a mask on my face. Charlie Patton's old Jim Lee whistle is blowing. Samantha Fish is singing, , so lonesone, like she wasnt gonna sing no more.  

Tricky cover for a white gal, or white presenting gal pesenting gal me having learned better finally to some degree. 

She has a song with tech n9ne. Just to, like, foreshadow where I'm going with this.

Please go watch fd signifiers video Eminem and the White Rapper problem. Because I need to talk about rap without having to go over a bunch of very basic stuff it took me an embarassingly long time to figure out and I feel fucking awful about the person I was and as of fifteen or so years ago my life has been devoted largely to trying to cancel out the wickedness of my prior selves, so i want to be clear, as a suspected supernatural but not racist Irish vampire analoge and on behalf of poor, pitiable remmick: The white rapper problem is the white blues problem is the white rocker problem is the white disco problem etc. Theft is theft but not all theft is equal. Vanilla Ice stealing a david bowie or whoever bassline is fine. Stealing a board from a rich man's house to fashion a the world at large has never seen is good and noble. Unintentionally stealing the craft and legacy and styling and voices of centuries of unheard songs by unremembered singers is not.

I had arrived at conclusions similar to FD Signifier around blues music, broadly, in the late 90s after the 7000th person i asked about the blues came back with stevie ray vaughn. I can't directly say anything bad about SRV because he's a texas bluesman but fortunately he's also not as universally and inexplicably agreed-upon-as-good-despite-being-a-bland-souless-clone-at-best as the beatles or elvis.

So,

Between this and having a few big 'oh' moments around rock and metal I developed an allergy around guitars for some reason in the late 90s and switched to hip hop until the late 2000s, but the stuff i look for in music regardless of genre is somehow always the same and has nothing to do with what the music sounds like to anyone else so don't listen to any recommendations I make, I was about to write Leo Sayer off. People talk about music being pure or authentic or Truth or having soul, stuff like that. It was the opposite of sellout music, in the lexicon. Lo and behold apart from a few mix tapes and used cd section finds it was all sellout music. Then the internet slooooowwlly made its way into my life and, along with real world...stuff related to music, the scales fell all the way from my eyes and I realized hey, we're all Lautrec to someone let's try to at least pursue the vibe since we're knee deep in the blood of dead poets anyway.

Genres sure have fucked us all haven't they? Among other things. 

And, so right there in the middle of it as I a music fan on their way to becoming something more than a fan thinking they're getting further and further away from the blues that first took em, right in the middle of this journey, was tech n9ne. Absolute Power. I haven't heard that album in ages but it's one of those things that's just, like, right there. That was The Album for that era of rap, and also that era of toxic masculinity, if you're trying to convey it to an outsider.

About as pure a case of the blues as you could ever find out there. 

And here he is again. Worlds apart and lifetimes passed. Singing a song with about a pure a case of blues as you could ever find Sam Fish who sings a nice cover of a song from an old mix tape that plays in my head when I've knowingly been engaging in some manner of foolishness. 

Whatever it is it ain't got no genre or style it's something you is or you ain't.

What is it? Part of it is you mean it. You mean it like you mean it as hard as you can as pure as you can and it works or you get the fuck off the stage because someone else is always gonna mean it more than you.

And then it means you gotta make peace with even being on that stage being the pact with the devil. The devil was the wantin of it to begin with, it always was.

Now go out there and start a party you won't get to attend, because if we don't sell enough drinks nobody gets paid but the bank and the blues dies here.

Since the first time I saw Gladius something has AAAAAllllllmmmmooosssssstttttt been there. The Idea. I've seen that chain but where those helmets but when. TRIUNES MEAN SO MUCH AND SO LITTLE

People jump to Cerberus as a connection and it's like yeah but the Mona Lisa is the most boring thing in the painting.

So.

My gut reaction at the time when I first saw gladius was: Farron. I dismissed this as too obvious. Then I see the sword, the chain, I think Londor, Carthus, harald knights(?), the kingdom that became a desert that became the graveyard where the world ends, where all worlds end. The End that survives itself.

My baby caught the train. Left me all alone.

If Gladius is from The Lands Between I'm fucked if I can place them beyond tedious connections to radagon era caria. I really don't think they is though. Oh hey go find a maga chud see if you can make them glitch out over gladius' pronouns I fucking hate English pronouns so much we need new ones. And also governments. Institutions in general. Music industry top to bottom and retroactive. 

You know I love her. She's doing me wrong.

A Gladius, irl, is a Roman Shortsword. It seems to have become just a general word for sword in Rome after a while, but the military shortsword was the only literally-a-gladius gladius. 

My baby bought a ticket. Long as my right arm.

The word gladius or glavus seems to have come from the french 'glaive,' by way of, uh, Rome, by way of of... wow proto-celtic Europe. 

Words evolve and change and diverge and split and loop back the same way weapons and cultures do. I think that's what happened with Gladius, in some sense. 

So the name of the sword Rome is most associated with was traced to France, who traced it back to Rome, who traced to it to the pre-Celts of Europe. I'm gonna have to look into this more if I have time later.

Of all the words for sword, glaive is among the oldest.

She says she's gonna ride. Long as I been from home.

Well so thank god that hail mary payed off, thank you wiktionary you have saved this blog yet again.

Well who been talking? Everything I do

Once there was a great godking who overthrew the order of old and evil and established a new kingdom of glory and good.

Well goodbye baby. I hate to see you go.

Once the heir of a great godking traveled to a distant land and founded a new kingdom of glory and good.

Once there was an aspiring godking who returned to his ancestral homeland in order to defeat the forces of old and evil and establish a new kingdom. Of glory and good. And the shadows danced all the while.

You know I love her.

I'm the causing of it all...

In Three Days - living deliciously

 I didn't think I had much to say about caligo and I went and figured out both drakes and revengers. I thought I'd have acres written shit libra by now but here I am. 

It thinks it's people. There done. I wish I could get a good long look at his various sigils. He seems to cast spells via the eyeballs in his hands rather than his staff, which he uses as a club. When he's calm his spells come across as very academic and refined, whereas his animalistic spells are much more primal, like he's rendering the environment around himself down into something like magma out of sheer mindless anger. 

Going out on a limb here. 

Libra is omen, and one of his aspects is eyeballs.  He got a couple really cool looking horns, sure, but his real gift is being able to seemingly produce infinity eyeballs, which he is able to Frenzy, although he himself is nearly immune to Frenzy and thereby engage with his art relatively safely. 

However: things around Libra, including the ground and air, are NOT immune to Frenzy. In other words,  I think the grapes he's constantly either shedding or weaponizing are acting as shabriri/nanaya with the equivalent of an endless army of very very very weak vykes/midras. To such a degree that I think it's conceivable libra could bring about the frenzied flame ending entirely by accident during a rampage.

Something that didn't make sense to me in the base game expansion was the abyssal woods. It's so frenzied torrent runs away, but there's wildlife. Like normal wildlife, behaving normally while frenzied. Frenzied rats attack you, it makes sense rats really are people, frenzied bats and demihumans i could understand but the common bullgoatsheep? They don't even act different than normal, no vomiting liquid fire from their eye sockets, no apocalyptic machinationing, no grim and dreadful tale of bottomless woe,

Just goats, hanging out. There of all places, where even the water is apparently omnicidal with despair.

Part of me is wondering if Libra came from there,  maybe libra was something like midra's pet goat or a mad science experiment gone horribly right or a forgotten ritual component that wondered into a library after eating a jar of frenzied grapes or something.

He has human hands but cloven feet, so i don't think he's necessarily a beast or demihuman, and libra being a misbegotten just doesn't /feel/ right, scientifically speaking. But when you get right down to it, 

He's a goat that thinks he's people. 

Right, I'm going to talk about what I think libra is or could be, and since this is a Dark Souls (2) blog is need to analyze possible connections to that. 

Libra having a mix of human and goat feet could mean that he's one of the Gen 1 Beasts that were granted intelligence directly by the god of placidusax (presumably), making him as old as maliketh or gurrang (THEYRE DIFFERENT PEOPLE)

Alternately, Libra is constantly referenced as being "a demon", and I'll be interested to learn if it's the same word they use in dark souls to reference post-chaos children of izalith.

With libras mix of human and goat features it could be we're looking at something like a capra demon or ghru. In fact, now that I've pulled up some ghru screenshots I'm becoming convinced this was a cut ds3 demon ruins boss. Imagine the ghru during high farron, before the Old Woods turned poisonous and the ghru feral: libra would have fit right in.

In Three Days - Draggin

 There's so many dragons in these games. Literally back to kings field. 

Caligo is a dragon what on earth am I supposed to say about that that I haven't already. 

She's an Ancient Dragon, maybe more ancient than the Ancient Dragons. Seems to function like a mothman but for pivotal moments in history, she seems to be curious about them. 

She look a lot like the archdrakes in dark souls 3, at least her neck and body, save that she has the double dragonfly wings of a True Dragon.

I said in another post that drakes are tied to lakes, can probably be seen as an embodiment of them. 

I don't think caligo was the dragon of the frozen lake,  but I don't think borealis was either. 

Borealis looks all fucked up, like he lost a fight or recently has something like glintstone or omen horns removed. I don't know what that means but I bet it relates to why he moved to the mountaintops, a place not exactly dragon friendly.

I think the frost-emanating drake in the mountaintop shifting earth event is what froze the giants mountaintop and I'm betting frozen lake was their lake before the shattering, if not the lesser drake i always found down towards the foot of the nightreign mountaintop. 

I just went and checked, and the nightreign drake-dragon looks more-or-less identical to borealis, so this could be a variant, twin, or even a member of a once-common line of drakes.

My thinking was always that the Mountaintop was frozen in order to suppress the Fell Flame. And now I'm looking at all the dragon stuff on the map. Magma Wyrms at either end of the river, dragonkin summons guarding the frenzied settlement, a frozen drake nest full of misbegotten, one of whom has the Rennalagon sword.

The Sun itself always seemed to me like it had two factions; one of light and life and lofty ideals, and another of fire and consumption and the withering heat of an overlong summer. These are factionated(?) in-universe between the dragons/sun realm and the giants. The drakes would naturally gravitate towards the flame, but the nightreign frost drake, which I'm sorry but it's way more relevant to broader-universe stuff than Caligo seems to be, is obviously a thing of frost. Further, the treasure of the mountain makes it so frost basically makes someone stronger.

It would almost seem like the original Drake of the Frozen Lake, if it is the one from the Nightrein mountaintop, was used to shift the political balance from the giants to the ancient dragons, which would set the frost drake/s up as having betrayed the other drakes.  

Fuck dragon cult stuff is so confusing...

AI 028 - something big

Go watch Sinners I just saw it it's really good. Watch the I Lied To You clip oh ye doubters. 

To the point.

The...wait...

...

Right, this series is labeled "AI" because it's called Ashen Idols not because a robot wrote it. That would've not occurred to me ever when I started. It's about taking like single head scratcher topics like nadalia apart rather than trying to analyze the entire-ass story of dark souls 2 in relation to 1 and 3.

This almost whole entire blog is about trying to take dark souls apart in relation to each other. Also this series is about trying to figure how nadalia figures into it, the same way scholar was trying to figure out who the cardinal tower/undead crypt statue was, and The Elder being on the way, was what kicked off the scholar series.

Speaking of slowly being left behind by the world faster:

The mod I was using for nightreign was like a parameter edit, but all the new updates are online-only, which sure I get it, but the mod moved to me3 whatever that is and I don't have the bandwidth to do anything more complicated than copypaste a modded database file over and click a offline launcher app to make me cool and good at things.

So for nightreign I'm just like watching other people fight the boss and then watching zullie and bonfirevn until i start seeing normie articles about mods because if they can figure it out. Holy shit am I writing two series at once I must be less depressed. Hey, look into that if you proofread this later and delete everything back to the Sinners recommendation and then everything after this go to bed.

Right, to the point.

A large part of Dark Souls story is told mostly by what's missing. It's the missing parts that make it something MORE that just item descriptions and quest objectives and contrivance. I'm sure it's the weed talking, but the part of the story we're told is like the white outline around a humanity sprite and the part of the story we're not told is the big most-of-it black part.

So, something that I've always come back to as far as The Lore, is the undead asylum; working out that "oscar" was a, pardon the French, coward and a weakling and also The Actual Chosen Undead Yes Oscar Of This Family Saying Chosed By Me Gwyn, or Nameless, I God Almighty Am Saying This Astoran Family That Hollows Incredibly Easily Shall Succeed Me. 

What would it have took to have been The Dark Lord, back before the firelinking, had gwyn been a little less successful at resisting the course of nature?

They would have to be incredibly powerful obviously. But further, they would need to be fully human. That means no souls, no leveling up, no soul arts, no time or light magic beyond good old fashioned Getting Good. "Here is one humanity, beat the game or game over." 

Because a humanity is basically just a raw id waiting aimlessly until something agitates it or it gets trapped inside someone, at which point it gets caught up in an adventure where it begins to understand division as a concept and develops preferences and the Wanting Stuff begins.

There's a bbc kids cartoon called numberblocks, probably tory propaganda somehow, but the idea is each number is a cartoon character and they can add and subtract to turn into each other. Both my kids love it, the oldest is a math wizz, which is a correlation. The eldest will also probably end up being a king charles fan somehow. 

Not the point. Kind of the point, he was a raw id that found division and thereby preference. Alongside the point.

The point: Once the vessel that housed it hollows, every humanity (in a natural state) goes back to being more-or-less identical to each other. They don't become anything like a Soul of a Proud Knight or a Soul of a Box Loader Who Should've Stayed in Bed or a Soul of a Great Big Dumb King or a Lords Soul (although they can merge with them, but it's always [under natural circumstances] just one humanity).  

They can split though. It's a twin humanity, not a pair humanity.

Which is now where finally I'm getting to the point about the kids cartoon:

Imagine an entire planet where every single person is the number one block in the first episode. Every time it asks a question, poof, +1 humanity waiting to notice something, poof +1 humanity. Somehow one of these things has to overthrow the God of going "equals two! equals three!" And the god, as this would have been shortly after the dragon war, would still be a pretty big slice of the Global Maximum Number pie chart.

Therefore, 

The original Dark Lord, whoever it was, would basically need to be the Best Infantry Soldier ever; a Godfrey or Good Hunter level recruit, opposed to the "every weapon is a club" hacks we see during the bonfire era. Is it cool to say badass again yet? Just the worst people you could imagine were all saying it last I got out. I don't say it much do I? Fuck I'm trying not to be a the worst people I promise. The worst people are fascists and their enablers. "Their enablers" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. I want to be clear who I think the bad guys are. Gendered on purpose. 

Another thing about the dark/light dynamic is that while souls can "pair" and grow stronger, they can't "twin". A spul can exist as 1 up to Global Maximum, they can add and subtract between each other, but they can never +1. The Maximum only goes down. 

It could've been giant smith. It could've been patches. It could've been anyone, that's kind of the point, so long as both the sprite and the vessel were given the right opportunities and came to the right conclusions and took the right actions. In other words, a champion of that most human of attributes: luck.

Which sort of brings me to the point: 

It's easy,  given the setting, to think of this conflict as a lex luthor vs clark kent or guts vs griffith or storm team vs doomguy situation. 

But there's one other thing I keep coming back to across the series.

We're supposed to be talking about marrying a princess here. 

When we look at the lords pygmy, I think there's seven thrones, in the ds3 dlc, we find they all sold humanity out, obviously, but 

What

If

The original Dark Lord didn't wage or win a great war? What if they just won a hand in marriage? 

The lords pygmy seem to be married to fillianore, in some kind of "and the seven dwarves" narrative in what seems like it could be a kind of Dark Lord Ascension Ritual that has stalled out. 

We find a princess, gwyndolinevere, nashandra, anri, finianore. We find seven dwarves, seven trials, seven colors, seven fires.

We find a rarely seen eighth color.

Filianore holds and egg and the egg has black obsidian albumin and the yolk is pure light. 

The conclusion, I think, is that this, here in the ringed city where gwyn broke time, was originally supposed to be where the dark lord from the dark tales period was supposed to ascend, with Lordship inherited via marriage rather than conquest. 

A further possible conclusion is that marriage is how anor succeeded izalith

 

From the Cocoon - Revenge

There's a loose collection of enemies that's always fascinated me, the Revengers. They include some of the saddest, most busted-down depressed and depressing characters in the game.

It seems like of you're stricken by full blown despair but can't break free of the Will of Gold you succumb to Frenzy, a sort of suicidal instinct turned against all that is Golden.

Those untouched or forsaken by gold, however, can become consumed by vengeance towards it.

In castle morne, we find a fort turned into a slave market. We see tortures indescribable and know that those sent to stormveil will face worse.

We find an old knight there, in castle morne, where a slave rebellion has broken out. 

The man seems loathe to take up arms in defense of godricks operation, loathe to take up arms against the misbegotten, but also knows he cannot abandon his fort.

Later, having lost the fort and the only living person keeping him tethered due to the uprising and his stupid honor code, we find him murdering and apparently consuming a whooole lot of misbegotten. 

Then he comes after us. 

In caelid, along the highway, we find a lone surviving drake of old, positioned between a lake and a communion church, killing the holy fuck out of anyone coming towards either.

Because drakes, see, write this down, are tied to their lakes. 

Ecosystem functions somewhat normally? We get agheel,  classic fantasy dragon. Lake gets infected with radioactive space meteors? Magic crystal dragon. Lake gets used as a generational burial ground for things that can't die? Undead dragons. You get the idea. Lake freezes: frost dragon. You get it.

Bayles lake is a volcano. And I'd wager bayle is probably the first revenger.

If you've watched tarnished archeologists stuff, and if you're reading this I assume you have, you'll know that one of the current Mysteries is what caused the Ancient Lava Flood.

I reckon it was Bayle or his god.

Bigger mystery: was Irina under the control of Gold (ie was she adopted by the hornsent-adjacant and probably erdtree-ineligible edgar) or was she chosen purposefully as a vessel (the vengeful spirit of Edgar being reflected by Gold in an empty vessel for Frenzy a la djura/shabriri with the mogwyn drakeknight eleonara).

As for Edgar, remember that big field where we fight gaius? Most of Edgar's order is there, not really buried so much as ground slowly into the mud by the patrols of a giant pig. 

Edgar survived hooray and was sent into exile provided he remain in an ancestral fort and swore allegiance to a demigod, Edgar the Lucky's chosen (probably chosen For him) demigod, godrick, had Edgars former, I assume, captain's leg grafted onto his body, and Edgars job is to usher new gold-touched arrivals to the kingdom up to the castle for dismantling and reconstruction.

And if you have a blind kid to look after and lost literally everything else: guess what kind of moral math starts to make sense?

And when that fragile string snaps? Here comes Edgar reeking of decaying misbegotten. Why?

The misbegotten know Godfrey is returning and will, if anyone would, liberate them. And to Edgar, Godfrey is probably the single asshole all the shit that went wrong in Edgars life can be traced back to.

Ekzykes, I'm not trying to spell that on my phone, the Rot dragon; his lake was blown literally to kingdom come by these asshole demigods, one of whom he was sworn allegiance to because of that stupid night and flame oath.

To take it back to the idea of Frenzy being reflected by Vengeance: psax (and marika for that matter) looks like he has 3 finger burns. I'm not making that up but I don't remember who I got the idea from, but bayle and psax may have been phase 1 in this dance we see continued with hyetta & edgar and djura & elonara and midra and nanaya(?) and vyke when his handmaid died & vyke at a later time when he thought about what actually happened(?).

Psax's big laser attack is called Ruin. Bayles is called magma but it behaves more like the kind of physics you'd get on the sun. Which hey back to the omen-horned sun god/ess, that seems to be another division between the two.

So let's say psax was Frenzied and maybe that's why he, king of the immortal dragons, will die if he doesn't get enough sleep and has to be kept in chronostasis: he'll metastasize into a lord of Frenzy if he tries to recover or fully excercise his will. 

Let's play devils advocate and say bayle was even instrumental in preventing this outcome, wittingly or not. But Bayle was a tyrant. He sent psax packing not because he wanted to save the world, but because he wanted to kill it himself, broadly speaking, because he was young and prideful and had been visited by loss and betrayal and subjugation to such a degree that he was consumed with burning everything responsible. And with the lava flood he seems to have nearly succeeded. 

In Three Days - rK

 One of the things From keeps coming back to is the idea of r/K selection theory. This is the idea that, when presented with reproduction, life generally adopts one of two strategies: high rates of low-investment offspring or low rates of high-investment offspring. We could think of bacteria or insects as more r-type and whales and humans as K-type. It's kind of an obsolete theory as the whole thing is more like several overlapping spectrums of this-and-that in the real world BUT it makes for a great worldbuilding and gameplay concept.

Bloodborne, if you were fortunate enough, really drilled down into the idea with the different eldritch gods being so unique and advanced that they couldn't reproduce at all, however comma their parasites and bacteria and bodily remains could be used by us humans to evolve over a single generation, thereby becoming something more like Them to the point where a kind of elaborate cross-pollination fertility ritual can be undertaken [d mcredgrave the paleblood hunt searchitup]

It's also been a concept in Elden Ring that we see elaborated on with Marias, a very bloodbornian boss, even before the variant fight.

Normally Mary starts fairly aquatic and becomes more so during her second phase, adding a veil and long jellyfish tentacles. She also hatches ten thousand babies to help her and it breaks her heart a little bit every single time you kill one, you monsters. 

During her variant fight she acts less like a bonobo and more like a chimp YES I UNDERSTAND THIS ANALOGY IS OBSOLETE AS WELL NERDS IT IS USEFUL NARRATIVE SHORTHAND IRREGARDLESS [insert a picture of a wrestler doing the D-X "suck it" thing here {fuckadahoakhoagansheiki4everbaby}) - FM]

Ahem. By that I mean she doesn't try to make allies in her variant form, she tries to solo us, the players. She acts individualistically rather than communally. She doesn't approach the nightfarers as a problem to be solved, but a threat to be destroyed. This is reinforced by her first phase being her bubble invader form rather than her regular ethereal cloaked alien form.

I think marias was maybe supposed to be the next Elden Beast the Dynasty Claymen were/are heralding. I further thunk her regular form second phase summons are related to the Elden Ring base game jellyfish, and the spirit worms of the expansion. Especially the spirit worms. Their lack of direction and order seems to be about the only thing to say about them, which lines up with marias description as a sentient entity that didn't know enough to know that it was sentient until it and the Night noticed each other. For the jellyfish, they seem to be aware of and in communication with each other, and we see with Aurelia's sidequest that at least some of them can retain or reclaim memories and personality traits of their former existence, even if only as some kind of ghost echo. Or like a parrot if it was a ghost echo fuck idk they're like powered by a ghost echo, unfinished business in life, searching for a long lost home, etc.

Both spirits seem to spawn in areas associated with unclaimed dead bodies, which could imply that had the claymen's prophecy come to pass, the nameless, forgotten bodies spawning these things would have otherwise been warriors and champions and visionaries of a The Lands Between where Marias had become god.

In Three Days - long lost lords lasting lore

 Threes are important in nightreign, and the third phase gnoster fight further illustrates this.

Basic gnoster involves two entities with a shared health pool. The third phase involves three entities with their own health bars, but the new one can heal and revive the others.

Gnoster would seem to be from the same root as gnostic; knowledge or wisdom, basically.

The new phase both differentiates and names the second entity, faurtis, and introduces the third, animus.

I'm not entirely sure what faurtis means, but I'm going with "fortis" - strong or fortified - because animus would seem to complete a "body, mind, spirit" deal with the other two. Animus usually means ones instincts or motivations, but can also mean animosity or, in old timey "sheltered rich guys guessing about things" psychology, the male aspect of a female psyche.

It's pretty easy, at least for me, to read gnoster and faurtis as drangleic creatures. Gnoster is pretty obviously a moonlight butterfly turned into a boss monster. In ds2 these were enemies that, in most places, would be non-respawning, hidden enemies that drop healing items. In the huntsmans corpse they appear as respawning enemies that cast poison cloud and drop poison moss. Faurtis could relate to tark and najka, both found in the shaded ruins but associated with freyja and, by extension, Duke Tseldora (Aldia, probably). Tark najka and freyja were attempts to apparently create lordranic demons in drangleic. Since faurtis doesn't have a humanoid rider I'm going to guess it's a similar species as tarks lower vinegeroon half and, as such, capable forming permanent symbiotic bonds with other creatures.

Animus I need to think more on but: gnoster's pilgrim butterfly?

W/r/t lore: I set out a case a long time ago that Carthus, the desert empire that took over most of the world, began in fallen Alken under the reign of Mytha, who was the, uh, head of the snake of an alliance of the brotherhood of blood, jugo pyromancers, and the grave wardens. Based on jester Thomas behavior, it seems like queen Mytha was set in opposition to queen Elana. Elena's faction seems to have gone on to become a kingdom that would, via reverse colonialism as a result of the rise of and opposition from carthus, become lothric.

Huntsmans copse, if it was the birthplace of carthus, matches the description of the forest that became a desert gnoster could have come from, and the shaded ruins are framed as desertifying due to various influences.

In Three Days - a light in dark places

 I mentioned earlier that Sentient Pest is very DS2-coded. A lot of the nightlords are Souls-themed, at least to an extent.

The Darkdrift Knight especially.

The new sovereign event has them adding Gwyndolin's arrow magic attacks, lightning 'miracles', and the upward thrusting spears associated with the Spears of the Church, and, of course, a big-ole Ms Marvel Manus arm. It has hair like Manus' arm, but no apparent mouth or teeth, and it has three fingers like the pus of man enemies. 'Darkdrift' is a souls concept that refers to something existing between planes of existence, something half-in and half-out of the material and ethereal planes that can act in either with the advantages of the other; it was a concept associated with Agdayne & the Undead Crypt and, later, Yuria & Londor.

He's described as having lost his arm when his companions attacked him from behind. Fulghor seemed to find the companions' betrayal of their gods more despair inducing than their betrayal of Fulghor himself. These gods were described as 'mightily radiant' and able to 'conceal themselves with thunder'. This would particularly seem to invoke the Warriors of Sunlight and the Sun's Firstborn, presumably named Grynn by the Menial. Serpentine Herald on Youtube has a great video breaking down the etymology Gwyn's lineage go watch it.

My thinking is that Fulghor is from very early or very very late in Lordran's history, possibly pre-ringed city. He would probably be considered a demon in souls parlance in the same way that the Sanctuary Guardian is a demon, but Fulghor's more Iz-ian features seem to be either better hidden or completely absent.

His spear/catalyst doesn't look like it was intended to be used as a melee armament; it looks like something that would be used by some kind of siege engine. He 'spiritcalls' the 'spear' into a twinblade during his special phase and reveals he can fly to an extent, but seems to need to pray and/or absorb a lot of sunlight to do so.

In Three Days - confoundering

 Limveld was cut off fairly recently, in the timeline. 

Let's make assumptions publicly. Whole umptions, out the car window, blasting nu metal and energy drinks.

Noklateo is the missing part of leyndell, which means Nameless Eternal was maybe something like noklateo's Academy Gate Town.

Noklateo isn't underground, Nameless Eternal is. Noklateo, and by extension limveld, were still present during the "what could the demigods hope to gain by warring" part of the basegame cutscene, where the rykard-ish faction is making its big push against Margit and the war-perfumers. Noklateo has an astel boss, though, so it seems like naturalborn astels predated the burial of the Eternal cities in tlb, or noklateo is usually underground in limveld outside of the event. I feel like I'm thinking about this all wrong.

If we assume when we see morgot kicking radahns ass is something like later in the same battle, then it would be before malenias march, so the twins were probably still at the haligtree.

Mogh's faction existed, but this was probably before miquella got involved. 

The shadowlands were obviously removed from tlb before limveld. 

Limveld is the central sea area, which is why it has connections to everywhere despite being mostly "more limgrave". Another way of thinking about it would be that this is the place the divine pillars were surrounding, the lands between the lands between.

Big picture is limveld was probably severed during the shatterings fiercest fighting, a war that had escalated into a neverending battle with multiple factions and we're spawning into different variations of the result at some point post-dating ranni's ascension. 

This is where I feel like it falls apart, with the nightlord being framed as a kind of Galactus at the end of time eating entire worlds. Only the worlds don't seem to be actually eaten, just converted to the Night. Unless it's something maybe golden or bright or powerful enough to be taken to the desert. 

I think maybe, since we're in the roundtable and the roundtable is outside of limveld, then the desert is there, rather than in limveld then gaaah why does nightlord have a busted elden ring

In Three Days - everyone hates multiverse shit now

 Here's my first big gripe with the game. It's gonna seem dumb, considering the gripes other people have but look.

When we come across an obvious, direct port of a basegame boss with a proper name, like Agheel, they change the name to something like Flying Hill Dragon, or it's a character that kinda would make sense to show up like Margit or Elemer. 

They didn't do that with Freja. She is still the Duke's. In the context of Nightreign this would seem to call for a direct connection to the Duchess, otherwise we're back to ignoring any kind of peerage or succession analysis and the story of Dark Souls is back to not making any sense.

Unless Duchess is really is married to Aldia or Seath, which seems like the least likely thing.

However,

Gnoster is very DS2-coded and gives us a DS1-only status effect. Only the worm doesn't like us this time.

My best overall reckoning is that, since the Adel-Recluse connection seems pretty solid, that each of the nightlords lines up with one of the nightfarers.

Gladius and Wylder seems fairly obvious, and the Adel+Recluse thing.

Raider and Auger are both ocean-themed.

Caligo and Heolstor both show up late, as do Executor and Revenant.

So,

Gladius - Wylder

Adel - Recluse

Gnoster - Duchess?!?!

Maris - Raider

Libra - Ironeye or Guardian

Fulghor - Ironeye or Guardian

Caligo - Executor, somehow

Heolstor - Revenant (exists only to kill the nightlord, gains strength from NOT being alone, and loneliness seems to be a Nightlord theme)

So that's the hypothesis.

I don't know if it started with the 1.01.3 patch, but Augur has been dayfaring into my nightfaring missions and Freja seems to spawn instead of Bell Bearing thank god.

In Three Days - hazards ineffable

 So I beat the final boss with cheat mods for suck gamers who are bad (fun is allowed mod + offline launcher) and am...halfway? through the remembrances.

Ii have Thoughts but they're mostly still being Thunk, and that's a road with a lot of detours, pit stops, and dead ends for me.

But I watched my first nightreign lore video, Nameless Singer's Strange Sky. Lore videos all sound like pre-science science texts. Sinclair's Bloodborne Iceberg, Aegon's Dissections, Jack's Controversial Mimickry...

Anyway,  Strange Sky details how the, well, sky above the gate leading from the Spirit Sanctuary looks like an embryo, with an umbilical that looks like Destined Death, whoch looks like a jagged, thorny S rune. And that got me thinking how the helphens steeple inscribes a smooth S shape, and that got me thinking that Destined Death, after the death of the goddess that became the Mother of Blood, is smooth-S Death but infected with thorns. So that got me thinking this is Her womb we're looking at.

But that got me thinking "where's the blood?" The recluse has innate cursed blood magic that manifests as thorns. Margit is much more bloodflame friendly. Probably there's more.

I think what happened is the recluse tried to help some champion or champions stand against the night early on, specifically by making their bindings, and inadvertently created heolstor. She then tried to create a "child" that could stand against the night, adel the gnawling, but it was corrupted by the nursemaid witch and fell victim to the Night. 

We, as Those Who Live In Death, represent another faction of Death that stands in opposition, but I haven't worked all of that out, not that I imagine I'll work it out correctly any time soon, but I still think the ranni/miquella war/stalemate/arrangement is in play, just with these...let's call them Greater Lesser Gods of Death attached, and with Recluse trying to, in some sense, set right the wrongs of maliketh and Marika. Which has seemingly given rise to entire new categories of Wrong, but she means well.

In Three Days - player of player players

 The character work, like the isolated, standalone, Prepare to Cry stuff vaati should be milling out, in Nightreign is the best Fromsoft has ever done.

It's like they say; Hank Williams didn't invent yodeling, he invented making yodeling sexy.

Nobody says that, I say that. 

Anyway.

Back in the demon and dark days From didn't have dialogue. Npcs would either explain something badly, stab you in the heart, or give you a non sequitor and we all just kind of /inferred/

One of the things they did do is have their characters be, and was really rare for video games for a long time, be normal people. Some games (books movies shows etc) will have every single character talking like a suicidal nobleman from Shakespeare. Imagine how DIFFERENT demons souls would've played out if Prince Failson and Dredgling Merchant had both been given "forsooth, an warrior most brave hath arrivedeth in fair boletaria!" Dialogue,  rather than having merchant like "fuck that dipshit but at least it ain't me dying over there".

Additionally, we know From does the individual character stories really well. But I don't think it's been until nightreign that we've gotten such an atomic view of that kind of back and forth. 

It's kind of weird, though, that our character goes silent protagonist during the rememberances. Like they already over ride our dialogue menu choices, just let them be like "death to all charm merchants" when it would make sense to. 

One thing I've uncovered in nightreign is we, the knightfarers, are Those Who Live In Death. Chamions of Godwyn and heirs of fia's faction, in other words. That's some big ole implications. 

In Three Days - Untethered

 I've beaten through the centaur and started ironeye and wilders remembrances. 

With reference to dark souls...

This is Aldia's Path Beyond Paths. 

This is the story about Patches. In a way. 

You Hollow and you are given a clean slate. A blank canvas. All that was, is an echo carrid across muscle memory and a dream long faded.

But,

The slate wasn't always blank. 

Go listen to stolen horses by ray wylie, it'll make sense. 

...

In Three Days - Knower, knowing of knowledge

 I'm beating the bosses in order, third one down. The bugs seem much easier than the dragon hippo, that thing's grab attack ate all of my lunch all week.

The relic drops have sure been interesting. A whole lot of Improved Giants Flame Incantations and Improved Attack when 3 Flails Equipped and super useful shit like that. Not much in terms of, yknow, +1 Stat or improved cooldowns. Maybe they get less bad (or at leady requiring a degree of run management I dont have time for, later. 

I missed another cutscene and some probably interesting dialogue from the menial. Mutliverse theory confirmed. I've unlocked the journal missions for ironeye and wylder. 

I fought a smelter demon. i dont know if he doesn't or just didn't do it, but there was no delay between his jump attack and his aoe blast. In ds2 he'd wait a few seconds pretending to recover to lure you in before blasting you. I also don't know if it was because I was taking sooooo long or if it's a feature but when he did his second power up he turned blue and we both started taking chip damage. See, I had a fire weapon equipped because the menu said to bring a fire weapon because that would be effective against the nightlord, but not smelter demons, which are made of fire and fire that has become enraged. 

I found a church with a tornado on top of it and purple oracles and I think duchess invaded me but I had to afk. Again.

I'm going to try taking on the Exiled Castle a few times, the central fort with all the storm knights, it seems like it's meant to be a static location in all this madness. 

...

Update,  I had a lucky run later this very same day and have slain an infant elden beast, I think. By lucky I mean "I was using ironeye and turns out balloons are weak to arrows"

Things have changed in the hold and I got my wish for some no bs relics and I think. Probably should have explored the Exiled Castle before I did this but I didn't think I would win.

In Three Days - know ida did

 Everybody talked about Fortnite leading up to this. Nobody talked about Diablo or Binding of Isaac. My dream, back when I was grinding chalice dungeons because of course I like chalice dungeons, was to see that system expanded upon and deepened and given a proper chance to shine,  and I think that would look a lot like Binding of Isaac except obviously it looks nothing like Binding. What I mean is Binding proved you can have one of these things that is both fun in the gameloop and deep in the lucked up fore sense. 

I'm hoping now that big M, having played it safe and made smart sensible moves and lemme tell you as a secret business major from makes smart moves

I'm hoping they cut loose with this one. Because they were THAT company a long time ago, before Demonses Souls hit with the right people and they turned it into a beautiful engine of war to cut through to the mainstream. And they still are THAT company, if you look at ALL their releases. So I hope they take some risks,  engage with trends, milk some cow.

And they have been, comparatively, but like, I'd buy all the skins. Boc executor? 5 dollars. 7.99. Pre-ordered. On my knees.

Because I have faith that whatever milk they milk is gonna go mostly back in the cake because the whole company seems to be aware that they have the worst fan base composed of the best elements of 6 very different other fan bases while the press is feening and i mean dee oh pee ee feening for some of that almighty inevitable backlash engagement and oh boy the other publishers would like that. And so any negative points will count triple going forward and From knows this and has known it but also knows that anyone who tried to start that kind of backlash with Elden Ring re: framerates etc was laughed out of the proverbial room.

Metal wolf chaos wylder from cmon you can buy all your back albums nobody's playing them, I don't care how stupid it gets, give wylder the president's dialogue, like ripped directly from the game with the background noise, if people keep paying keep doing it, horse skins for torrent but never torrent idgaf let me give you money so you can put ten billion new things in this game and then cut them all and start over until you get the mix right. PS1 kings field skeleton summon for revenant, 8.99 on sale, please Big M; Yui talk to him, get the old ex sony boss guy, he'll tell you: money's bad but like, we won, comparatively, so enjoy your age of gold right?

In Three Days - First Rain

 I played like 20 hours of nightreign, solo, made it past the first nightlord after the 1.01.1 patch

Rucking rustrating as shit if you have, like, a family you care about because that's like a every 12 minutes you gotta get some water, change a diaper, put out a fire, go for a walk etc. And then you time out on the second night and come back to not even a single tear shed for your heartache.

I'm gonna be playing with easy mods for suck gamers because the patch went from way beyond to just barely under my skill ceiling, and it's like playing randomized Earth Defense Force on nightmare with Diablo's loot management plus a timer.

Observations and Thoughts, such as They Are, having Slain Cerberus and read some Journals and missed a Cutscene due to Obligations

I think the general idea is the roundtable and the nightlord arena are set "outside of but also after the end of time", similar to the ashen desert in dark souls or that place the TVA sent everyone in Loki.

I think general idea in limveld is we're defending Miquella's "nascent godtree" from Ranni's Age of Stars, a kind of liferaft for anyone that can't or doesn't want to "join the dark side" the way the first and second lower-case-n night bosses seem to have done.

Revenant is heavily Trina-coded. 

The shifting landmarks and enemy faction locations may be caused by different outcomes during the shattering; the player is time traveling into diverging limveld timelines three days before the world ends, at which point miquella restarts the game.

From the Cocoon 06 - Among Mongers

Consort Radahn, towards the end of phase 2, will occasionally start throwing out a bloodflame attack. We can think of this as foreshadowing for miquellas hypothetical Age of Compassion. 

Miquella is framed as being both a brilliant strategist and emotionally childlike. That bloodflame attack looks like someone's about to have a tantrum.

We see in the haligtree when miquella didn't get his way he just abandoned it, didn't even tell anyone he didn't bring with him, and them I assume are stuck rotting in coccoons in the haligtree. He probably didn't even warn them first, one day you're a misbegotten crusader proudly defending the haligtree the next you're stuck phantoming into the stinkiest hole in the world to make sure nobody finds Trina.

I don't think miquella can mind control other demigods, or if he can it requires multiple "grab attacks". I think radahn said no and mogh said yes. I don't think mogh knew what he was saying yes to at the time, though. "Grab you from the tree while malenia is negotiating with radahn to re-establish the Old Order with my glorious hornsent corpse? Bet."

I don't think miquella knew what he was saying yes to at the time either though, wrt mogh.

If the gloam eyed queen died before miquella was born he may not even realize that she became the formless mother. We gotta remember that these are aspects of the story that Gideon hasn't even worked out.

Or maybe he does realize, and thinks that injecting the formless mother (the twisted, vengeful god that the GEQ seems to have turned into) into the order is the same as restoring the GEQ. 

So there you go, what was being framed as incest is actually cannibalism.

But still and all, why didn't miquella pick like any other demigod for the vessel?

Morgott, obviously, would see this as a Worst Possible Idea, as morgott seems to think there's something particularly dangerous about omen/hornsent blood. 

Especially when it's lit on fire. He even changed his own cutscene over it.

AI 027 - butt rock bangers

 I keep having this idea and forgetting it. I've been ignoring souls lore mostly pending nightreign, which I will consider canon, same as the comic books and slashy Souls. But consider it an outline and happy Easter. 

Petrification showed up in ds2, and figured pretty heavily in the story. Straid was petrified centuries before we arrive, rosabeth was petrified (possibly) days or months before we show up. 

It's instant death, mechanically, which was caused by the curse in the first game. In the second game the curse functions as the -5% total hp penalty you suffer on death. It's also an example of lore contradicting mechanics as it should be a permadeath for your PC.

I think the lizard guys in Amana are turning into basilisk, and basilisks cause petrification. The layout of the level has these guys tied to the milfanito, and the final tower with the weird statue, milfanito, and great swamp pyromancers is surrounded by basilisks.

Aldia decided petrification was going to be standard opsec for his territories (lion soldiers, ornifex, the gremlins, the giant basilisk in the keep, the eyeless basilisks in tseldora...)

The kingdom of the rat would seem to be the faction most cosely tied to this school of "magic".

As a school of magic it seems to be nestled between stone/earth magic and death magic, it's associated with "vermin" in its natural state (rats, basislisks), but is also associated with some of the smartest royal-court-associated characters. It seems to be opposed/countered by "life" magic, but in particular the light green plant magic we find associated with CHLORANTHY and stamina regen via the fragrant branch, rather than Izaliths various visions of fire and fire's own tendency to lead to petrification (demon ruins, ds3 asylum demon).

Right, so,

Castle Drangleic is full of soldiers that are undergoing or have undergone petrification. These include Syan's men, both the 'sunlight' heavy knights and the greatsword soldiers, and the primal knights if you want to include those (they have almost identical armor as the Syan knights, apart from the helmet), as well as Velstadt's soldiers and Wellager's men (if that's who the horse headed twinblade soldiers answer to). Soldiers that don't petrify seem to turn into ghosts, a state that seems to be described by the darkdrift katana as existing imperfectly between worlds.

This petrification maaaaaaybe relates to the Milfanito, but I think the lullaby is only serving to pacify the inhabitants, as we see in Shulva and Amana. 

So the petrification may be related to Nashandra, but she seems more related to the curse of hollowing, not of petrifying. 

I don't think there are any actual statues that require a fragrant branch in the Castle, which is somewhat interesting, as it seems like maybe since the soldiers in the castle are petrifying more slowly than curse-frogged - Rosabeth, Straid, the Lion Clan - that once they fully petrify there's no coming back.

Santier's Spear describes a living statue, and the 'rock' the speartip is embedded in would seem to be the head of this same stone knight. They don't seem to be a golem, so the other conclusion would seem to be some kind of living statue. Which we do see something like living statues in the first and third game, very obviously with the 'baby firesage' demons, but in Lothric petrification seems to be a fate that befalls most-if-not-all older demons when their flame goes out.

Fragmentary Scrawl

I think I may be close to starting to understand the actual story of Elden Ring. To paraphrase Sinclair Lore, all of this shit is going to be obsolete in 9 months, so let's proceed with some more final guesses.

• Miquella is ushering in the Mother of Truth. Mogh's goddess is the lesser god they're channeling to draw the attention of the outer twin bird death god they're fishing for.
• The bloodfiends are the highlanders, Hoarah's people.
• Radahn said "No thank you".
• There were 3 trees to start with, post-crucible, but the Bellurat and Leyndell factions turned on the Elphael faction early on. There's a third broken off root you can see on the scadutree from the hinterlands.
• Marika bonded with Eiglay when ascending to godhood, it's how she became 'eternal'. Messmer was a variation of this, Rykard is trying to replicate this.
• Messmer and probably Melina were born from marika and eiglay, possibly in the crucible after the 'original sin' of burning the Erdtree with Eiglay's serpentine fire. 
• The Base and Abyssal serpents, all serpents really, were children of Eiglay, who was probably a queen and either the prior mother goddess during the Dynasty or the death goddess during Marikas ascent (hence Rykard's apparently illegitimate claims of kingship [Tanith doesn't identify as a queen, Morgott is the one on the throne of leyndell, and Rykard {iwouldfuckinghope} isn't married to Renalla, the other current queen he is a prince under]).
• Godwyn may be a pre-godfrey snake baby as well
• the political implications are that Rya is probably the MOST important NPC in the game, being a daughter of one and grandaughter of two other queens. Shame her family are all incel libertarian fascist techbro dorks.
• Ranni is considered an empyrean despite apparently not being born of a single god. I think this is because she's the child of a single other god, possibly the fell/sun god or whatever the god of winter and the moon is. But the what, you say? Radagon has giant blood, rennala is a troll and has giant blood, ranni is a giant, giants are associated with the sun god, or it's feminine reflection the moon, not the tree god. Similar story with dung eater.
• The blood swamp outside Moghs palace is making the gen2 albinaurics turn red, grow omen horns, and periodically generateand expel sin briars.  This seems to be intentional, as the only silver frogs we find seem to be stuck to the upper levels waiting for this to happen before they're allowed in the swamp.
• The line between omen and hornsent is the death of the goddess that became the Mother of Blood
• Briars are associated with both the blood goddess and the burning of the greatree
• Erdtree sap is poison to hornsent and the effect seems to be both ways. Albs exist outside of the grace of the erdtree.
• I think the ripple that created the albinaurics was the death of the old goddess and the destruction of the greatree. I think, in some sense, this was all the same event, possibly also coinciding with the first eclipse, the theft of the rune of death, and maybe even the fingerslaying
• Ranni makes it seem like the theft of death, the creation of the black blades, and the night of black knives all happened in one night. If this was a permanent eclipse then okay, but if it was a normal night then there's no way they could've done all that in like 8 hours
• Between the two headed turtle talisman and the turtle neck meat it seems like the shadowlands are south of the erdtree lands. 
• The Godwyn corpses we find in the shadow catacombs have rootballs made of corpses, but Godwyn's roots seem to be more accepting the corpses, where the erdtree rootballs look like a force feeding.
• The basilisks in the shadow catacombs are growing bright green lichen and have 'mermaid tails' that more closely look like the Prince of Death's lower half.
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