From the Cocoon 3 - A Dream Shared

 Spoilers go away.

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Cocoon 2 - Issue of the Wantons Trumpet

 I don't know if this is a bug or a feature but

Wait spoilers go away until like October

I hope it's a feature, but there's an obviously trapped bridge in a gaol where one of the, uh, innards, bursts through the wall like Kool-aid man, but only they didn't see me because obvious trap. So the...fellow? walked to the edge of the bridge and idled for a few seconds and then stepped off. 

I pray to any gods that can hear me that From put a suicidal Kool-aid Man in their game.

Also, like, Mogh, if youre gonna start talking about how you've been morally vindicated by the cancel culturing woke moralists you should really, first of all, listen to your bodyguard when he warns you about the mind control demigod and second don't hire a mind controllable bodyguard. That's on the level of "whoops my shirt fell off" as far as plausibility.

I think npc hornsent is grandam the wonderful's son. And she's dressed like one of the base game chaircrypt giants, who dress like the windmill village npcs who had a village on mount gelmir that was taken over by demihumans. 

And Yet I can't get the image out of my head of Kool-aid man bursting through a wall, going OH YEAAAAHHH, realizing no one is around, and immediately becoming so despondent they throw themselves off a cliff. 

But wait, what if that's how Kool-aid man works? He oofs in one world and is reborn through a random wall? Like a Forlorn, eternally drifting between worlds searching for children's parties to destroy.

I know I'm just randomly talking about hornsent and warrior unjars and they're in no way related, I just like these two puzzle pieces. The red and black thorns are probably bizzaro twins the way everything else is. 

From the Cocoon 1 - LIES A BLOODY RUIN

 Don't read this for like a couple months. You, yes. I'm talking about voice actors/npcs and general themes from the expansion. I'm nowhere near done. I think I have two more map fragments to unlock? 

Holy shit Igon goes hard.

Like I barely know what the thing he's shrieking about is, but I made him inform me about it repeatedly before I advanced his dialogue. That's the gyoubo guy right? Gotta be. MY NAME IS

The omen finger reader lady in the tower settlement I love with all of my heart. Team whatever Team she's on. Team go away, issue of the wanton harlot.

There are parts where we who have been here for a while can really see how far this has come. To see echoes of ideas like New Londo and Tseldora recontextualized and scaled up like this is wonderful. 

As expected, everything is bizarro everything we knew. Mostly. Dead guy controls a lion king, omen are skinny, dragons are evil. 

Boy I'm sure excited and not sleeping enough.

Elden Guess 08 - Slugfest

 I think if you added up the run time of all the trailer analysis videos that came out just today,  Story Trailer Day, you'd have like a week solid of ideas to sort through. 

I generally try to avoid lore channels and deep dive theories until I've gone through the game a couple times and kind of got my head around what I think is going on. Like I figured the zamorans and ebonivory lords would connect somehow. Gut instinct, KNEW IT IN MY HEART, fucking no, nothing. They're just the around the same height and use magic is all. 

I think rykard, and to a lesser degree marias, in the base game, are essentially the heirs of mesmers operation. 

When we arrive on Altus by the main elevator we don't find any guards. Even the golems I'm pretty sure won't attack if you have the medallion. 

But then off to the left you see damn near every able-bodied bonker in the kingdom facing the same direction, from behind a barricade, with a weapon out. Omen are there, misbegotten. I'm sure once the honorable and upstanding Kenneth Haight works his magic the nearby demihumans will join in the fun. 

By fun I mean staring at the path to Gelmir, terrified.

But what's to be afraid of? One political genius and half a dozen not-at-all-to-kinda strong Ayn Randian fascists? Like, sure, the serpent and the lava and all is pretty impressive but have you heard Fia's offer? She gives hugs, Tanith. Most people would take a hug over some dork-ass non-erotic dancing and being burned on a stake for being insufficiently murderous. 

Just to point out, leyndell isnt or shouldn't be worried about Marias, he ain't gonna do nothing, he fell in love with Malenia.

It doesn't really make sense that Leyndell would have that many arrows pointed at Gelmir if all that could really happen is Bernhal and like three other guys charge at them.

It kinda also doesn't make sense Rykard being that big of a player in the Shattering that he would have that big an army. The descriptions of the Gelmir front and the sheer horror of the opening cinematic make it clear that that whole stretch was a literal meat grinder that made what happened in Caelid look humane and reasonable by comparison.

I don't think Rykard could ever inspire that kind of devotion, even under threat of being fed to snakes while on fire. I also don't think Rykard would be the one to face Maliketh if Rykard was the top dog of Caria's offensive.

If Radahn had sided with Rennala then whoever was leading the assault wins.

So, from this I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the army from the opening cinematic was originally under Mesmer's command, and that Mesmer was originally gonna be the World Devouring Immortal Serpent from Gelmir. And from this new trailer we can infer that he did break the walls but this breech, unlike Gransax's, wasn't recorded. There was a theory I heard in a Ziostorm video that, when you think about it, the opening cinematic battle HAD TO have happened before half of Leyndell was blasted down into Nameless Eternal, because that gate doesn't have anything but a lake behind it in the present. 

So, judging from the burning of Leyndell in this new trailer it becomes clear that the walls weren't just breeched: it would be seemingly impossible to stop the assault without giving Mesmer anything he wanted.

Except they did. 

I think maybe Radahn did. Not directly, but he had access to Ivory and Ebony Lords and those guys are only called lords because everyone's scared of what they can do. 

Astel means "Star". And someone called them. And they answered. Not that penny-ante bullshit Radahn's doing; these things treat up and down and now and then like a child's flipbook.

But Mesmer ain't here no more, so problem fixed. Plus Morgott gets to justifiably send Radahn packing back to Caelid.

Couple of notes on Mesmer:

He and his spears are dressed closely to Drakebloods, and seem to be a 'shadow' faction of dragon cultists, and it's pretty likely they were in direct opposition to Godwyn's faction. Maybe not even a shadow faction: the Magma Worm faction.

Where Rykard and his serpent are represented as gluttony incarnate, Mesmer and his snakes are The Machinist thin. 

So what are the snakes?

I think they're slugs. Like you'll be riding through a green field on a rainy day and there's be a gathering of like five slugs, on fire, crawling around setting a fire, with a bunch of butterflies, also on fire, hovering around them. It's the kind of thing your partner will see and say something like 'I thought everything in this game made sense" and you're like "it does" they're like "that slug is on fire" "it's a fire slug" "it doesn't make sense" "it does we just don't understand how it makes sense" "that's literally what 'it doesn't make sense' means".

The slugs like to find shells and they can take on a variety of different pokemon evolutions. Skeleton snails, classic. Those things all over Rykard's sword are like baby ones. "Those aren't snakes" the snails in Gelmir are snakes. The not on fire ones I mean. There aren't fire snails, there are snail snakes. "so three unrelated animals with zero things common between them?" Yeah, they're all the same thing. Like Eevee. "Also none of them have wings like on the statues" that's probably because the Mesmer evolution went extinct in the base game.

Creating new post

I've got that weird artist thing that makes me impossible to be around when I don't have an outlet and only tolerable when I do so here we are and I can't find anyone to make music, greenbelts, or fight choreography with, so here we are.

There's a lot of posts I want to write but will probably never get around to. The lore in these games really is the gift that keeps giving.

So open poll, what should I do next in order?

 It's not like a real poll, unlikely reader, I'm just trying to make myself write.

Patches. I've even got a draft for a patches post.

In Elden Ring patches was a ravenmount assassin. He may extra secretly be working for mogh. 

Nadalia. This will never happen. Needs to. Won't. I'm just straight up not smart enough to figure the shit all the way out and all the people who are ain't interested. 

Marriage and twin dragons. Almost equally unlikely. 

Pharos contraptions, illusory walls, hidden walls. This one just needs time its not like trying to work out the plot of the illiad with only references from 1990s saturday morning cartoon shows to work with.

Slashy Souls HAHA IT'S NOT THERE ANYMORE IS IT FOOLS

Lorethrough of the Titan comics. I've got the comics I just feel like I've talked about the important stuff elsewhere except did I talk about the ant lady and the samurai? Plus I figured out why solaire showed up when he did. I have Problems with Age of Fire.

Straid and Ornifex. Gavlaan stretch goal.

Dorohedoro. I could probably do an entire other blog about this one. That or conan but fucking fascists like conan too much so fuck that. If you're into intricate world building and lorehunting and horror mixed with humor and the seemingly but secretly not unhinged: it has a really good anime adaption of the first kinda arc on Netflix. Lizard headed guy. Potstickers. Not for kids. Leave kids go away. But remember don't take any shit from old people, especially if they call you or other young people lazy or dumb or criminal or naive or whatever. They're the naive criminal ones trust me. "Hey let's make it so only millionaires can sleep in a house and spend all our money on cops and proxy wars". Fucking geniuses right? Go be irresponsible. No felonies.

Another oolacile post NO NO NO But cat-centric NO NO NO

Project for a New Anorian Century. Gwyndolin and/or Gwynevere was working with Carim in the first game. I think I can draw a straight line from that, aaaaalllll the way through the second game, and arrive in lothric with no major plot holes or inconsistencies and account for like 90% of everything. I mean I know I can write that, but funding the time and also making it legible and less than 100k words and not go off on a weird tangent most of the time. 

Prisoner of Prisoner of Ash. The problem with the third game is it has as much lore as the first two games combined plus the first two game, and has like half of the item descriptions. It's playing DOOM on the one hit permadeath difficulty of fictional conspiracy theories. 

Ninja turtles. People don't understand this because it's framed as a for kids thing - still leave kids - but it's the kind of kids show where one episode out of five a major character will be killed on camera or like John carpenter's The Thing happens but The Thing is your Mom and You're Part The Thing Too and The Thing Has Your Face.

But then it's like Michelangelo makes a joke about liking candy bar and mushroom pizza or whatever and it's back to a toy commercial. It's magical. 

AI 026 - Bond of the Hawk

Goddamn Hawkshaw.

I'd been kicking around this idea that the DS2 Hawk and Leo Rings were given to or taken by characters that are acting as representatives for Gough and Ornstein in Drangleic. I've gone over the Old Dragonslayer at length, but briefly I believe him to be Ornstein's hollow following in Nameless' footsteps after either having his Lords Soul stripped by Seath (and made into a golem) or being defeated by the DS1 Chosen Undead (Solaire, for the purposes of this project). 

I couldn't make much sense of the Hawk Ring beyond maybe it meant Lanafir was involved in the War of the Giants but sided with Raime (Raime's Baneful Bird Ring has the same hawk design as Gough's Ring). But I've realized something: royal blacksmith Help Anytime had Hawkeye's Ring in the Chosen Undead's time. 

Here's something I just noticed because I'm incredibly dense.

We find the Hunter Set in the Fort as well, near the Seeding Giant. The Large Leather Shield, carried by the DS1 "Pharis" NPC Hunter in Darkroot, is also in the Fort, near the elevator to the Last Giant.

Here's another thing:

Raime and his soldiers' helmets looks like Leeroy's Way of White paladin helmet, obviously. But also they look like Gough's helmet. 

Gough predates both Raime and Leeroy.

So here's what I'm trying to figure out.

Who Blinded Gough? 

I don't think Gwyn did this, as Gough both earned and is still displaying a badge of Gwyn's favor when we find him. Personally, I think Nameless is probably the culprit because I think Nameless was stripped and banished for being a complete dick. However, the culprit/s dismissed Gough as 'brutish'. This makes me think Seath was maybe responsible, because I think Nameless, who only respected strength of arms, wouldn't consider 'brutish' much of an insult. Of course, both or neither could have been involved.

What happened to Gough's dragonslayers?

Hawkshaw makes the case that Gough was responsible for training the Silver Knights in dragonslaying, and they may have been under his command during the Dragon War. I feel like it's safe to assume that the other Anor giants fell under his command at the time, before they were enslaved, or more obviously enslaved. Additionally we seem to have human hunters like Pharis, and some of these, I suspect, became loyal to Alvina and the Forest Hunters. Others, I suspect, may have been foundational to the, uh, founding of the Thorolund White.

Did Durgo meet Help Anytime?

Somehow Gough's ring ended up with Help Anytime. Given Gough's dialogue, it's possible Gough gave the smith the ring before being 'jailed' in Oolacile. It's also possible a Gough loyalist took the ring upstairs after.

From here the ring travels to the Fort of Fallen Giants. It's heavily implied that we find the ring on Durgo's body, and one of the things we know about Durgo

Is Lanafir Lordran?

Probably. Between Durgo and Magerold I feel pretty confident about this.

Magerold is interested in the Iron Kingdom. I've made the case that the Iron and Ivory civil war period of Drangleic coincided with or slightly predated the main story events of DS1, and the Iron King was, as a prince, connected to the Warriors of Sunlight, although Iron kind of went through the journey backwards and instead of becoming Buddha he became Scarface.

Stuff from Magerold's Traveling Merchant set: 

Blue represents knowledge in Lanafir, but is associated with faith in Drangleic. Eagles represent wealth in Lanafir, strength in Drangleic. Lanafir is the 'farthest land to the south' and their people seem 'odd' to Drangleic natives. The traveling merchant set is also the starting set for the Explorer class. Additionally, Mags sells Gough's wood carvings.

 Durgo was described as having blue eyes and being well-known-and-travelled despite Lanafir's isolationism. He's described as having defended Lanafir from aggressors with his brother-in-law. His Greatbow is made from what seem to be giant ribs and a horned skull. Durgo's ring and hat both extend arrow range, and the Twin-Headed Greatbow has the greatest range of greatbows. 

Problem I have with Lanafir=Lordran: Lordran seems like it should be to the east, past the three kingdoms, not past the southern ocean.

We can say that Lanafir is heavily associated with Gough and seems to be very interested in the Iron Kingdom, Raime, and Eleum Loyce (Durgo's hat and bow are found here).

Is Zena Drangleic?

Slightly less probably. We only have Domhnall to go off.

Domhnall's helm, like Magerold's symbolizes wisdom, although in Zena horns represent wisdom. Horned noble characters: Vamos, the lady titanite demon concept art, Iron  King, Mytha. I'm yet unable to get or find a good picture of Domhnall's glorious medals, but they mostly appear as copper, silver and gold coins with religious iconography, and we see a similar design on the Gyrm set, which possibly cross-references Vamos. Additionally, he appears to have access to crystalization prior to gaining access to the Duke's Archives, which could possibly also connect him to Tseldora, which I believe was originally a Gyrm settlement.

His shoulders display of what I take as a hawk of the Gough variety but not necessarily aligned with Gough.

His golden gauntlets symbolize a vanquisher and his silver-inlaid boots symbolize an explorer. Gold and silver in dark souls seems to be associated with the covetous serpent rings, with gold being item discovery and silver being increased soul gain. Doesn't seem to relate, but Ciaran I'm talking about later and Leonhard is the only other gold/silver noble I can think of and we're STILL NOT THERE YET.

Pharis

I don't think the hunter NPC from Darkroot is Pharis, but it could be, and if it isn't she's meant to be a mortal stand-in for Pharis. I think the DS1 hunter Forest Hunter may have accompanied Durgo to the Fort of Giants, based mostly on the armor set being in a chest in one of the only areas of the fort where the defenders aren't mindless zombies.

Pharis' hat is 'universally' loved by children; their gender is left ambiguous; I would really like it if the English world would come up with something better than the current bullshit with pronouns; we find the DS1 positioned in a, goddamn I must be tired I'm getting doctor seussy, sniper position between the Garden and Basin, meaning the basin may have been her stead before Seath moved in.

Pharis, whoever they originally were, was a dragonslayer and ranked alongside Gough despite being human. There's a lot to unpack there. Dragonslayer means 'was alive at the Dawn of Fire'. Ranked alongside Gough is more nebulous. Does this mean 'was as prolific as Gough?' does it mean 'there were Five Knights of Gwyn but lets easily forgotten the pygmy?' does it mean 'Hi Gwyn Here! Look, Anor Londo can't brag about having an order of blood-crazed hornet assassins acting in darkness as a pillar of empire, Pharis, so your zombie looking ass is going to play one of My Four Knights in public until you betray one of my kids for Alvina, Gough, etc,'?

In any case, Pharis was mythologized into Godhood as Evlana in Drangleic, and admiration of her, or her hat at least, continued into latter-day Farron.

Helm of the Holy

Let's say Raime and Leeroy, at some point, were contemporaries. Let's say they could say "I was there!" when Lloyd's Apostle set up shop. Let's say they both were turned undead, willingly and intentionally.

Let's say the old hero their armor is modeled after is Gough's, despite neither being a ranged character or having any apparent narrative or faction connections beyond possibly being members of the Old Way of White.

 Let's say Durgo and possibly one or more Forest Hunters, acting in Gough's interests in some sense, came to Drangleic to meet with/work with/ join the cause of/potentially recruit Raime. Possibly they were brought together by Vendrick between Vendrick being, for the purposes of this work, the canonical DS1 Dark Lord (stole the lords souls and went home), and building an army of mercenaries and refugees. Possibly, if Lanafir is Lordran, Durgo joined Vendrick for the prince's return.

Let's say they agree this shit with the giants has gone too far around the time Vendrick starts scavenging ironclad and necromancing elephant monsters. They were banished. Raime went to the Forge of Alken/the Iron Kingdom, Durgo goes to the Old Chaos in...shit it's this thing again.

Look.

Ivory is not the King of Forossa. Regardless of their current gender or title they were, in Drang, Princess Venn. Forossa isn't even a kingdom by the time we arrive in Eleum Loyce. Ivory is a King of Drangleic.

Durgo goes to the Old Chaos in Venn/the Ivory Kingdom.

AI 025 - This Endless

Patches was very very important I'm just not sure how.

The Cathedral of the Deep has these enemies that respawn immediately. They're a type of enemy that shows up a lot in these games: a human body riddled with and/or controlled by and/or in a symbiotic relationship with parasitic bugs that behaves, to a large degree, like the Venom symbiote from Spiderman, only internal.

The demonic rockworms from the first game took a diverging path after the first game. I don't know that these are definitely the same things the Chaos Servants were breeding, but the second game points out that they do evolve to fit their environment. The DS2 rockworms are pretty straightforward, but the DS1 blight-born parasites Engyi etc are breeding are much smaller, which Quelana and Salaman's whole thing was refining uncontrollable Chaos down to useable pyromancy. So it seems like Engyi is continuing Quelaag and the Fair Lady's work in refining exploding fire giants down to Tauruses and Capras.

But that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about the gross, pukey graveyard bastards' ability to respawn indefinitely.

Who else has this strange power? (you have to imagine I'm holding up a Human Effigy right now)

These poor guys' are what happened to us, the Lordran Chosen Undead, after Vendrick came through. Solaire didn't become the rockworm, the rockworm became Solaire. Vendrick took the Lords Souls to Drangleic, and from that point the Firelinking Ritual's diminishing returns would fall off a cliff. Untethered from the bonfire the hollows die, are rejected by Death, and return to their home; the graves in this instance. We don't really get to see what happens when our character respawns at a bonfire, but without a darksign or a bonfire this is what it would probably look like.

The Grave Wardens, just like in the second game, are tasked with keeping the undying from getting unruly. Unlike the second game, where Dark mostly remains tranquil and serene, Dark in the third game needs to be kept at bay at all costs, because it was poisoned and driven mad. Multiple times.

Let's back up. There is no "Dark Soul" in Lothric the way there was in Lordran and Drangleic, there are no humanity sprites. The strength of the Unkindled comes from embers, which look like burnt sprites. There's still the Abyss, only this time it's evolved.

The Sky is Dark in the Past, While the Fire was Out.

The Seal of Fire, the burning ring around the Dark Sign, I think, prevents Pus of Man outbreaks, as well as keeps the carrier bound to the bonfire. I think the Seal failed when the fire went out, which if that didn't happen when Vendrick 'stole fire from the Gods', then it would have happened shortly after. In Untended we seem to be very far in the past, before the Unkindled began their quest, but after Lothric had sent Gundyr on his mission.


Which is one of the reasons we're back in this godsforsaken graveyard outside the Cathedral.


You meet siegward and patches here the first time, idk that that relates to anything I'm talking about, but Patches, after finally going hollow, starts to emulate Seigward. You know what I love talking about Patches he's my hero.

[...waitaminute what if patches never went hollow he just wanted a disguise or a break from the past. omg the unbreakable mfer was even lying about being hollow. If that's true that's the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing - fm].

Patches is effectively acting as a bridge troll for Rosaria, and we know that at least some (all) incarnations of Patches thirst for powerful women. He even dresses up like Ivory when he reinvents himself. 

Patches is neutral-to-friendly with the mangrubs, although I don't think Patches is a finger. I think Patches cares about the cathedral, or some aspect of its history, and his entire existence seems to have been fueled by a Morgot-like grudge against everything since at least Gwyndolin was put in charge, as his connection to the White seems to date to before the giants were enslaved or the Thorolund sect rose to prominence. 


He, Patches, is called Unbreakable because for whatever reason his body, which bodies are seeds, seems impervious to cracking, so his Soul never starts leaking out or whatever. My guess is that his grudge started very shortly after Nameless was put in charge.

Both Seigward and Patches seem to like giants. Too nice. That's these peoples' problem.

The mangrubs, I would argue, are really gross, and seem to be the result of overindulgence in rebirth.

Here's what's going on with them.

Rebirth, Rosaria's version, whether or not it directly causes the infestation, does cause a host vessel to demonize, becoming blended with the demonic/parasitic half a la quelaag or queen izalith. Only instead of a bull or goat or archtree or even a flaming mad meltspider demon, you got these fucking worms.

But here we are, fighting demons in a church graveyard. The thing that was the fire of life; the Phoenix, Ever Renewing. 

Even after the fires have gone out.

Thanks, Engyi.