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.
• 
  

From the Cocoon 05 - Consortium

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

Spoilers, go away....

One God, one consort. Sorry, sis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Patches.

From the Cocoon 04 - Endure

 I feel like

Go away spoilers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Motherhood seems to be the overall theme here. 

Time to finish this up.

-

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

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