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.
•