Elden Guess 03 - Eochaid's Wake

Eochaid is described as a lost Between Land. If you look at the map you can see that it looks like most of limgrave is under the ocean, and you find Eochaids Regalia in an area overlooking this area.

Eochaid, historically, was a fir bolg king. The fir bold, or bag men, were giant war wizards (equivalent to the Norse frost giants,) that ruled the world before Godqueen Danu overthrew them and ushered in the age of the Fey

Eochaid was the last king of the fir bolg. He was viewed, possibly, as a sun god.

Eochaid married Etain. Hypothetical long time readers and lore psychos may recognize etain as the star-crossed lover of Midir.

The story goes that Midir appeared to to long-lost lover Etain, who had married Eochaid, and tried to convince Etain to leave with him. Etain agreed on the condition it be with Eochaids Blessing.

Eochaid challenged Midir to a game of fidchell, something like chess, checkers, or go. Midir, being a brilliant fidchellist, let Eochaid win early on, let the king raise the stakes, and then sharked the king of queen and pride.

Eochaid, obviously, was furious and sent all his best men to kill Midir. They failed. The story continues but, well, this is the part I want to focus on and celtic mythology is even more impenetrable than souls lore and there's no way I'd make it less confusing. Long story short is the whole debacle brought the king and his kingdom to ruin.

Welp time for work hopefully I finish this later

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Elemer and Marias

Elemer kills patches, who dies, apparently, trying to rake the dancer's castanets. The spinny sword attack elemer thing does is described as a dancing blade. In fact, most of Elemer's connections beyond House Marais connect him to Volcano Manor.

Right?

The head of house marais and tanith both wear the zamoran-style death mask helmets associated with arcane-shading-to carian characters. Tanith's is based off of a queen. Tanith, who may have been Daedica at some point before the Long March, was flayed for adultery & hedonism, became a dancer in a foreign land, and went on to become the head of the volcano manor.

the head of house Marais is described as a castellan. A castellan usually refers to one of two things: an appointed governor responsible for overseeing a castle and environs OR

a jailer. Or gaoler. We find Eochaid's Regalia in a Gaol.

Elemer has killed patches and marias, and is implied to have killed or is trying to kill Bernal, Muriel, and at least two nomadic merchants. Elemer's shield, and it's hard to make out so I'm probably wrong, appears to depict a knight clad in red astride a bed of fire or vines, flanked by two skeletons. This could be a reference to the splitting of the Destined Death rune.

Elemer is described as a sinner who has been sentenced to death, and the briars are a symbol of this.

I think tanith may be from house marias. I mean she runs a prison town that is a castle and sends execution orders all day.

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Was wrong about the dragonflies; theyre not baby astels theyre baby rot priests. The worms are baby astels though.

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Bernahl sure is weird huh

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Radahn scourged the stars and his sister ranni because the stars were fucking up f azula. Chunks keep getting knocked off by meteors. The place is closely associated w godwyn, and radahn loooooooved godfreys clan. So he protected their sky castle, and this would have been after godwyn befriended the dragons, and now the sky castle is filling up with godwyns deathblight.

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Crucible knights gear and eochaid gear is made from primordial crucible gold. This material allows it to be manipulated by willpower. C knights use holy gold energy, eochaidians, or elemer at least, seem to use blood magic.




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The copper ore of the dancing blades allows them to be controlled by willpower alone. It always confused me how the valkyrie prosthetics worked, but I think it may be that they're made out of the same ore and utilize the same technique. We find Eochaid's Regalia in the gaol in western Limgrave. House Marias are described as castellans, a word that means both overseer of a castle and jailer. There's a picture of what I assume is Malais' father or grandfather featured in Volcano Manor (same robe, but with a bearded mask). This would probably mean that Marias' authority was derived from Rykard/Volcano Manor. Rykard, as Praetor, would have derived his power from Leyndell as a kind of head administrator for various unsavory activities Marika didn't want tied to the Capitol or Golden Lineage.

As such, Volcano Manor probably oversaw the confessors (the emblems on the confessor and gelmir knight sets are very similar,) and definitely oversaw the inquisitors (Ghiza) before the Shattering. Why is that important? Because the confessors have a closely guarded secret magic they use for maintaining momentum while using twinblades (twinblade talisman) and the inquisitors seem to have access to the same technique (ghiza's wheel). The confessors and inquisitors seem to have been replaced by the Iron Virgins as Rykard descended into gluttony and, eventually, the inside of a giant snake.

So, if the above all holds, we have something like the following.

Rykard was given or pillaged the secret of Eochaidian dancing magic. Rykard, incidentally, seems to have a thing for dancers. This was then passed to the confessors and inquisitors, House Marias and, eventually, the Virgins. The technique is also used to forge Malenia's prosthetics. Malenia would go on to use one of these prosthetics to Destroy Caelid and Rykard's brother Radahn, Radahn being one of like three people Rykard seems to have respected judging from the portraits in the Manor. Eventually, Rykard becomes functionally absent and Tanith becomes the de facto praetor, but house Marias goes on to side with Malenia. This last part is especially interesting since Gelmir doesn't seem interested in killing Malias for what should be considered a betrayal of Rykard (Radahn utilized Virgins and is shown fighting Morgott in the Shattering). Tanith's reasoning may be something like "well, Malenia bested Radahn and our motto /is/ 'The strong take', so I'll allow it."

Getting back to Elemer. Elemer is marked as a sinner (thorns) and seems to wear them as a badge of pride. If it was Marias, under Rykard, that marked Elemer as a sinner and sentenced him to execution then it brings up one of my two big questions about the whole thing: Why doesn't Elemer show up anywhere on Mount Gelmir?

The second question: Did Finlay pass through the Shaded Castle on the way back to the Haligtree with Malenia?

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The world map has some s going on. We all, hopefully, knows its a big curls finger by now and that the finger is decaying.

The boats around the map represent, like, prophecy. If you don't understand prophecy it's like this, following the Weeping knuckle up to the Moonlight knuckle.

A parent and child sail towards the church of pilgrimage. The pair face scylla and chrarybdis coming into the outlet (I ain't looking up the spelling bite me mythology nerds). Yet, the pair, clad in blue, look behind them. The clouds behind them are distant but storming.

A similar pair, save these look ahead, make for Morne castle.

A third pair, poorly equipped and faded of color, sail away from Morne and towards maelstrom.

A large ship, sailors clad in blue flying under red flags, sails for Raya lucaria. The ship is doing well and seems to be making good progress.

A slightly less impressive ship, unflagged, makes for fort haight. The ship seems to be doing poorly, and at least half the crew currently appears to be naked.

Now,

I think these various boats and their crews represent outside influences and/or interests and their relationship with TLB. From what I can tell, theyre the only people on the map.

For example, I think one of the canoes probably represents godreys return, with the child figure representing nephili, as the Tower of Return seems the be where it is specifically to teleport someone powerful directly into leyndell.

I think the barrel of goods represents eochaid or another land lost to the waters, and the waves seem to be pushing the barrel towards either the dragon church or the well-equipped backwards, facing canoe.

Unfortunately, despite being in the navy for almost 6 months in the 1990s, I don't know fucking anything about boats other than to stay off them.

They might represent outer gods, or kingdoms, or individual champions/demigods, or some combination of the above, but I don't have any real ideas beyond the return of godfrey thing. There are a number of other boats/objects. Have fun speculating. 👍

Elden Guess 02 - Senescence

It seems like miquella, when he was young, cured Radagon of something. Radagon was grateful for this. Miquella's unalloyed gold blocks the influence of outer gods. In-game this mostly relates to the Rot God, but historically may have related to the Chaos Flame god. Connect back to the mimic tear mask and radagon being a w physicked mimic tear of Marika.

But why didn't radagon succumb sooner? Miquella didn't even exist until after radagon returned from liurnia. We know that radahn is old enough to have served Godfrey directly and ranni old enough to plot the Night of Black Knives, and that whooooole time Radagon is sitting there with the mark of chaos branded onto his pre-formed Silver Tear essence, and then not being consumed by it for centuries until Marika recalled him, made some even weirder kids, waited til the perpetually youngest worked out a cure, and then millicented Radagon just in time to "die" smash-fixing the Elden ring?

The butterflies relate to marika and radagons children; nascent, aeonian, smoldering = miquella, malenia, Melina

Malenias second bloom, the aeonian lake, looks like a butterfly

The even ring was already fucked up when the golden order was founded. They excised the death rune, hid it in malekith and maybe gurrang if that's a different person, and then established the Order to, at least in part, cover up this crime. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out godwyns throne feeds directly to the dead portion of the erdtree.

I got real confused about the death rune. Malekith still has it, or what's left of it. The hallowbrand/cursemark Mending Rune fia makes w godwyn and rannis runes is a replacement, a new rune made from the "corpse" of the old.

So who killed ranni?

Godwyn is known as the first demigod to die, but ranni is described as having died at the same time.

Ranni has maybe the most unique ability in the game: she can instakill you. And will if you help seluvis too much. And when I mean instakill I mean she just turns your and his asses off with a thought. I don't even know how she smells things, but it was probably the dung eater puppet she was picking up, not my breath, I want that on record.

Can Mohg access the 3 Fingers and chooses not to, or is he trying to gain access but can't?

He carries a trident, which, yknow, ina game about 2s. His agents are being hunted/hunting yura, who becomes host to Shabiri.

Unalloyed Gold, as a concept, may revolve around the idea of trying to "breed" the erdtree with itself. The tree is a single-celled entity, and breeding it with Godfrey worked great, once, and then started producing omen, like it couldn't figure out how to advance the idea beyond blind evolution using the "genetic code" for stuff the tree god already had in its satchel - claws, horns, scorpion tails, monkey limbs, etc - but is unable to arrange logically. Or what we would think of as logically.

In this sense goldmasks ending is the only "good" ending for the tree god. Mask's rune is of an internal cell wall. Old goldibeast still won't be splitting any time soon but she'll at least make the jump from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life and, yknow, organelles and really big mitochondria and who knows, give it a billion years, maybe more for scale, and it may start to see some real progress.

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If we try to work out what Guidance is telling us it seems to have a meta-narrative take on directions. As if it's looking at the Lands Between from outer space, which it probably is, and is able to predict the actions of those loyal to the Golden Order.

First it wants us to get to RTH (the final Storm Plateau guidance points out to the ocean where the Roundtable icon is), which involves making it to Stormveil to trigger Melinas "I guess Torrent was right" dialogue. Guidance, near as I can tell, really wants us to fuck up edgar twice, investigate Caria Manor, Radahn, Fort Faroth, and Volcano Manor, then beeline AROUND Leyndell to the Giants' Forge. If you make it to Castle Sol it would like you to collect the Haligtree Medallion. It makes a point of pointing around Leyndell to the Forbidden Lands site and then a straight line until the frozen lake, cross the lake to the First Church of Marika, then around and up to the Forge.

Guidance wants to burn the erdtree.

Guidance seems to be unable or unwilling to offer guidance in southwest Liurnia, the Dragonbarrow, Farum Azula, or anywhere underground. I don't have a character with the full Haligtree grace map unlocked and too stubborn to open a tab and look one up online. Will update.

FUck I said I'd update.

Rennala had a plan for Radagon. If you compare the statues of Radagon in Rennala's chamber and the Gardening Monk on Bellum Highway it seems like Rennala reckoned Radagon's Mesh - the replacement for the Roots in the actual Elden Ring - could be used to, basically, rebuild something like the original Greattree that became the crucible that produced the Erdtree.

The Twins took this idea and, lacking the Mesh for support, used each other's trees for support.

And it would've worked to if it wasn't for

Elden Guess 01 - Hypothoseses

 "To imitate the imitator is a cunning play indeed" - s tear mask

The finger readers job is literally to look at the nearest two fingers and be like "two fingers side by side that's what it's fucking saying maybe get a pencil for it?"

I've been updating this like a lot everything kind of clicked at once. I think the m tear mask has the Flame of frenzy rune etched on it, dot dot dot radagon the small giant. I think I called the erdtree god the golden order somewhere, the golden order is the church established after Maradonica broke fixed the Ring and tried to Quarantine the death rune. Rune was stolen by the black knives, all women, incidentally, and used to kill godwyn. The Greater Will is the God of the erdtrees, I think. The erdtrees come from crucibles. Crucible are, like, gah, it's a space dandelion done landed on a big finger like a real real big finger that's the story

Marika, early on, realized she wouldn't be able to overcome the Greater Will alone, should the need arise. 

The Greater Will is a space amoeba sorcerer that wants to go multicellular and when I say big you thought the finger was big hoo boy

Radagon, like Marika, likely predated the Elden Ring and the arrival of the crucible, maybe even anticipated it. Radagon, and I'm pretty sure about this, is Marika's Mimic Tear, bonded to marika the way torrent is to us and serosh is to godfrey, and left summoned for a looooooooong time. Like Long enough to have kids, raise kids, remarry, have more kids long. 

Radagon Marika, divorced of will. or Will. As in Greater. The mystery there though is how red hair but hold on I'm getting there [see above I'm on mushrooms tonight (see below)] 

When Marika announced her intention to fully understand the GWill she drew a line in the sand. Godfrey stood on the other side. She had to've known he would. So, her shadow, General Radagon, who Marika had been having learn gravity magic and carian magic gets recalled for, look we all saw Loki right?

I do think Rad loved ren i dont think he had a choice in the matter as i think zamorans are born magnetically charged twins and i think the tree god didnt know this when it chose marika as its avatar. D  Hunter and Beholder is a zamoran. Probably seluvis and jerren. As was Marika, probably, once.

So the Big mystery is

Why or how did Radagon give the Unborn rune to Renalla. If radagon had a copy of the elden ring, kept secret from the Greater Will, wait, no, the Unborn rune we get from rennala can't be activated, which is like the, ahem, two factor authentication for the runes (see there are bullshit radio towers in Elden Ring)

Unless,

The Radagon Mimic was created AFTER Marika bonded with the Ring, creating a secret copy of the Elden Ring cut off from the Greater Will despite being locked in a vessel that was technically ; a kind of back-up save...

Look fuck you gotta think like a fucking amoeba the elden beast is a fucking single called organism that desperateeeeeeeellllllyyyyyy wants to be multicellular but it can't even seem to manage what's it called cell devisi9n. It's like the butthole monster from Evolution with...fucking...the 7 up guy I gotta look that up now jesus

[2 weeks pass]

Marika the Eternal made radagon the mimic tear

So how does radahon get the rebirth rune to leave with rennala before Marika breaks and distributes the Elden Rune? Radagon would have to have been w rennala loooong before the murder of godwyn, as ranni is implied to be the architect of the plot. Radagon and rennalas children are demigods, though, so it's possible Marika mimicked the ER into radagon as well.

Unless she somehow only copied the rebirth rune gaaaah why am I so hung up on radagon the younger godsdamned rune

The Zamorians are a race of long-lived gravity sorcerers that were considered mortal foes of the fire giants.  They could also be the onyx and ivory lords. If they aren't the Numen then they may have provided the other half of the genetic code, or whatever, for either/both the crossbreeds radagon and malekith

Radagon taught radahn gravity magic dot dot dot onyx ivory dot dot dot astel worms fucking everywhere

Those exploding gravity worms guarding the egaols are baby astels but house caria doesn't seem connected to astel and ranni seems to oppose or be indifferent to astel. Actually the dragonflies are baby astels but they turn into the grave worms

So the grave worms and astels may be like remora fish for the lord of night shark the way the hand spiders/two fingers are remora for the golden order shark and land octopuses maybe connect to Destined Death. Look at the Growths around f azula, theyre landopusses w godwyn eyeball pustules, that was godwyns palace once hes the supple young god that was skinned, Look things get very hr giger beyond here with that and I'm a very reserved person outside of the bedroom

Right 

Fuck specifically D the other somehow worse D, Gideon and Seluvis but not dung eater. Milo's a short giant and a pathetic incel that someone needs to beat the shit out of and teach a few lessons to but he's redeemable, spiritually. Oh and fuck extra specifically Igi I hate you fucking with your smug ass igi get fucked you worthless wannabe hewg

Blaidd you were a very very good boy, right to the end.

There's a shadow story between blade and ranni,  and malekith and Marika 

Torrent, probably a small one of those spirit beasts in siofra, is bonded to us the way serosh bonded to h loux to create Godfrey. When Marika yoinked Godfrey's soul out Godfrey was basically turned into a vegetable puppeted by the Lion. 

But old hulk hogan was playing possum.

Sending hoarax away was the smartest play of all. Put your fucking snout in my world try it once chickenshitass lion

The ancestral followers, the species the game calls nobles, are supposed to travel AWAY from established erdtrees so they can get and stay healthy enough to make more erdtrees. 

So Serosh, who almost nobody can see in his phantom form, bear in mind gets to spend however many years barbarianing sorry generaling up somewhere else, somewhere where, basically, too much mystical nitrogen is building up in the soil in tlb 

Then, unlike gudeons dumb as fuck Big Play, hogan murders the fuck out of serosh, yknow, the part of himself that was the problem, the second his throat enters our dimension and he, hoarax, literally physically could. Then, very next move, 

fucking 

powerbomb 

And that's a lot of wet undergarments, your honor. 

Godwyns bottom half is a basilisk. There see I sex policed myself happy 

Ooh am i gonna hit publish this time oh oh am I it's Saturday I'm very high on mushrooms uh oh here we go

Look I'm typing on my phone into a platform that barely works on the machines it's designed for I'm giving what I'm getting

Oh and I love genuinely love that rannis quest is "look I can't, like, ask someone to kill my brother so I can be the next global avatar but the motherfucker is literally holding back progress so I'll just sit here and wait for blaidd the himbo to fucking piece it together I guess"

AI 023 - Ten Thousand Eyes

This is a work in progress. It needs to be edited and finished and then re-edited and then cauterized and prayed over.

Onward.

I'm going to attempt to catalogue potential descendants of Queen Izalith. I'll try to start with 'is definitely a princess' and work my way out to 'probably doesn't exist' and, as always, get sidetracked a lot.

Quelaag is probably the most well-known. She seems to be something like the leader of the Chaos Servants and Izalith's general. It's implied she can 'speak a human tongue,' both by Eingyi and her, Quelaag's, own cut dialogue: 

Go back,
Forbidden be these parts,
The realm of the creatures of Chaos.
They accept their banished fate.

Go back,
Lest the flames devour us all,
And the children of Chaos feed upon your charred ashes.

Those who defy the pact,
Those who trespass Quelaag's Domain;
May you feel the depth of Our wroth.

We could speculate until the end of time what all that means and how much, if any, of it fits in with the 'final' version of the story. In fact I plan to speculate until the end of time on that kind of thing so may as well start now.

Leading theory: Quelaag and probably Gwyndolin formed some kind of pact or truce following the Chaos War. In fact, the pact might be quite recent (in the metanarrative sense). The upper bell is housed in 'the new church,' as Andre describes it, while the lower bell can only be accessed by 'those who trespass Quelaag's Domain,' assuming her cut dialogue is at all trustworthy. This could mean that, moving forward in Lordran's immediate timeline, the Blades would get a boost from Solaire's firelinking but would immediately fall to (open) war with the Servants, who probably team up with the Hunters once they meet in the middle and lay the groundwork for Farron and the latter-day Demon Ruins.

Quelaag's spider half seems to have the same disorder as Ceaseless Discharge. Both are examples of the primal Chaos that was refined into pyromancy and in-game demons.  

I cut a paragraph here that hinged on the reader having a somewhat working understanding of 20+ year old RA Salvatore novels. When I was a kid you could get a box of old books at a garage sale for like a dollar and take it to a used book store and they'd give you store credit and when you have nothing but 2 TV channels and AM Hate radio for escape a box of random Shadowrun and Dragonlance novels does a lot to keep your sanity. There's that's a much better paragraph than the one about Menzobarennzan I'm not even googling the spelling.

People 'of Izalith' are bugs that function like the fantasy equivalent of Venom from Spiderman. Only also Ninja Turtles. Thank god those references held up.

Quelaag has a potentially twin sister that has a terrible affliction that keeps her trapped between life and death this is a THEME.

The Fair Lady is... sad. Sad-making. Induces sadness. Lorian & Lothric and Pain & Below  and Ivory and Alsanna are sad in the same way but like a 2 on the Prepare to Cry-ometer sad this is The Biggest Number sad. Even trying to spin her relationship with Quelana from the first game to the third a dozen different ways doesn't work they're all sad a bottomless well of sadness.

After the death of the Queen the Fair Lady would have, in all likelihood, been viewed as the new Queen by Izalith.

Quelana is the invisible third sister. This is another Theme.

When people say things like 'and all of this will play out again,' in-universe, what they mean is these same dozen or so stories will be played out, with semi-random variations, by Fire using hollows, again, once the Fire is linked and the Great Soul recycled into the ecosystem. The Sacred Oath miracle is an example, I suspect, of this same kind of 'three siblings/comrades in arms' story.

There is, of course a Fourth Sibling Proper Noun (Dark Flame Scorpioness/Fillianore) aligning with the Dead Soul which, by the principle of Numbness, isn't just hidden but is actively absent and can only be inferred by the impression they leave on the rest of the story.

There is then revealed a Fifth Sibling and Sixth Sibling out to a 'very rare eighth color' and once you work that one out have the secret The Secret Ingredients for Godking Gwyn's Secret Sauce. 

But we're meant to be talking about Quelana here.

Quelana, mother or godmother of in-game pyromancy, appears to be spending her time in-game hanging out in a swamp waiting for a powerful enough pyromancer to come along so she can train them up and then ask them to kill her family.

The story goes that shortly after the Chaos Flame went nuclear Quelana, having escaped relatively unscathed, came into contact with Salaman, the Great Fireball of the Great Swamp. It's unclear if she traveled to the Swamp or if Salaman traveled to Lordran. The extent to which pyromancy has spread suggests the former, Quelana's personality suggests the latter. In any event, Salaman became Quelana's first and, as far as in-universe history is concerned, only apprentice. This is another one of the meta-stories, reflected with Lloyd and his Apostle, about an institution, usually religious, being founded by a relationship between a mortal and a god that, from an outside perspective, might never have even existed.

Quelana's early pyromancy was much closer to Quelaag's than Laurentius'. By that I mean that the Chaos she inherited was wild and uncontrollable and would probably result in a lot of self-detonating hollows if you tried to teach it to them. Quelana and Salaman's Legacy was refining the early chaos pyromancy down to the more controllable stuff we find in-game. 

I know I say this a lot but From really does make this point clear and people seem really acknowledging-It-averse but let's spell this out:

Pyromancy is the art of burning poop. Cloud-based spells, like those devised by Eingyi? Those are considered perverse distractions from the art. This led to Eingyi's exile from the Great Swamp but Eingyi found that, because of his selfless service to the Brood, he was allowed to serve as a religious functionary. Not just a functionary, but Eingyi was the Fair Lady's personal attendant and had access to vermifuge chestnuts, which are normally forbidden by the Servants.

Eingyi is or is implied to be an ascended pyromancer and suspects that Quelana is somewhere around the Domain, but can't see her. This confirms that Quelana can and does hide herself from high level pyromancers if they're associated with her family. 

It's somewhat assumed that Quelana uses Rapport to hide herself, meaning that she's not actually invisible or a ghost, but that she actively mind controls anyone in the vicinity into not seeing her. 

Guelana - This is the Chaos Sister guarding the entrance to the Bed of Chaos. The name is kind of fan-canon based on translations of her name in the Japanese official guide, which her name is almost identical to Quelana's (Gulaana vs Kulaana). Not much is known about her beyond she is apparently her mother's personal attendant and last line of defense, Kirk notwithstanding. It's assumed that Chaos Fire Whip is her signature spell and that she is the eldest daughter.

Guelaag - This is the corpse in the Ceaseless Discharge arena, and kind of Exhibit A in the case for Quelana is a Ghost. Personally, I've never been a hard believer in the "Seven Daughters in the cinematic means ONLY Seven Daughters," only that there were seven daughters associated with the Dragon War.

Ceaseless Discharge - His story is pretty straightforward. A prince of the 'failed champion' variety. Something like a Melted Iron King.  It should probably be noted that he should be considered a Fire God. Poor Guy. 

I feel like there's something big and obvious I'm missing about his relationship between the Centipede Demon and Orange Charred Ring...

Jeremiah - My very first lore post was about Jeremiah. I think it's still up. Mostly because I think the Dracula stuff is important. The Blighttown wallhugger may be his brother. 

Jeremiah is from the Eastern Lands. Therefore he may be related to Aurous and his pyromancy is derived from the same source as the Desert Priestesses and Shiva's attendant. Jugo, in other words.

I'll go into more detail about the Source below.

The Lost Sinner - A Chaos Sister (possibly pre-Chaos Sister,) who sought to light a First Flame of Drangleic by improving on the Chaos Flame ritual. This event, the Lost Sin, led to the downfall of Olaphis. The Sinner has remained imprisoned since, and has renounced the use of fire (even preferring to fight in darkness), although her attendants -- apparently Great Swamp pyromancers -- have no qualms about indulging in the art. 

It's possible that it was the Sinner that imparted knowledge of Izalith and pyromancy to Straid.

Scorpioness of the Darkflame - This is another example of a mostly-inferred character associated with Oolacile, specifically with the creation of the Sanctuary Guardians and the pyromancy we find in the Chasm. Since the Guardians pre-date and are unrelated to Manus' resurrection we can assume that this sister created the guardians earlier in her life and discovered/created the dark pyromancy later in her life. I don't even know if she's a singluar character or two different pyromancers and if so which two. Her inclusion in the DLC makes me think she's associated with a DS2 character/s who I've alluded to in past posts but don't think I've ever really tried to address head on. I think the Ool Pyromancer -- who may have pre-dated Chaos and definitely pre-dated Quelana's pyromancy -- may have been some combination of the following characters:

Freja (or their ancestor), Najka, and/or the female half of Darklurker (a character I call The Hooded). Let's Discuss.

Freja - Right, time to defend one of my insaner theories.

Aldia was an apprentice to a Chaos Pyromancer. Let me back up.

Aldia was Duke Tseldora. 

Now a Duke is a very specific peerage title. It doesn't just mean 'a lord' or 'some bigshot' or 'someone highly valued by the royal family.' A duke, originally, was when something like a head general was promoted to something like a prime minister and, outside of the monarch's direct family, was the most powerful person in a kingdom. In other words if the entire royal family gets poisoned at dinner the duke is automatically the lead suspect.

In the first game Seath was the Duke of Anor Londo. Just like in real history, this dukedom was awarded for service, rather than inherited.

In the second game Aldia is implied to be the eldest son of the Iron King and Mytha, and rightful king of Drangleic under Alken. Except, like Seath, he doesn't want the job because it would interfere with his research. So, instead, he helps his younger half-brother, the bastard of Venn, steal the Great Soul from the gods of Lordran and bring it to the half-brothers' fallen homelands that they might forge a new  empire. This played well politically as Vendrick could easily be reframed from 'bastard of both kingdoms' to 'heir of both' and thereby use his name to re-unite the kingdom. 

Aldia, then, would be awarded dukedom -- if he hadn't been already --- and allowed to pursue his research.

Right, so now we're to Tseldora. There are two powerful magics buried in Tseldora. At least two. No, at least three, the dragon counts but is unrelated to pyromancy beyond being a thematic plot device.

The corpse of the dragon has attracted a number of admirers. The  Ruin is an obvious one, and would seem to be associated with Seath, or at least Moonlight, and is implied to be the source of the Brightstone. 

The spiders are also admirers.

The chapels in the vicinity both make clear that the spiders are considered holy. It's also clear from item descriptions that Duke Tseldora intentionally used the spiders to murder the settlement. In the lower chapel (the pickaxe chapel, not the dragon ruins below,) we find a well-locked door hiding a Black Knight weapon used for killing demons and Great Fireball: Salaman's ultimate pyromantical achievement in the art of refining chaos.

Freja isn't, or doesn't seem to be, a Daughter of Izalith. She's described as having been a 'solitary insect' that was kept by the Duke, who had a fascination with spiders. The insect was then possessed by the warped souls of the land and mutated, broke out of her cage, grew (possibly by feeding on the dragon), and became the Keeper of the Writhing Ruin, which seems to be centered around the same dragon, which Freja is using as a nest. The Tseldora skull spiders are presumably her offspring, even though they look nothing alike.

Design-wise Freja appears to be a reinterpretation of the Chaos Servant twins, with the twist being that rather than a spider stuck to a lady it's a spider stuck to a spider. 

The dragon corpse beneath Tseldora is, obviously. the Big Treasure whose discovery culminated in the Tseldora Spiderpocalypse. The story of Tseldora is that it was an impoverished, probably Gyrm, mining community in the eastern mountains. Brightstone was discovered and the town struck it rich, triggering something like a gold rush. Volgen has a particularly heavy and very current, from an in-game perspective, presence there.

Tseldora was overseen by a Lord, a duke. A duke, generally speaking, is the highest ranking member of a royal family outside of the nuclear family. So like a brother or uncle of the king. Historically a duke meant something like king asskicker. Like Vendrick is a duke in the ancient sense, Aldia is a duke in the ye olde European sense. I mean like Europe's still got dukes and silly shit like that they're just mostly really old...like the Trump Boys? My point, goodness, where's it gone.

Are the peasants the settlers or are the merchants the settlers?

We get the set Maughlin wears - which features a brightstone crystal and boosts souls gained - from the spider zombies (another variation of DS1 'demons', just free of the influence of the Chaos Flame [but not free of the influence of the Writhing Ruin, hence Freja casting Soulstream instead of, yknow, Quelaag's fire attack]). The spider zombies are only found after the Congregation. Sigh. These posts are so damn hard to write. 

look. 

I gotta figure out how to record game footage so I can just talk about it while it's happening like a fucking normal person would do. That means I gotta buy a new computer and that makes my skin want to crawl off. I don't know fuck about computers I'm like ten years too old to have been there for the internet. Wanna know what the first game I fell in love with was? Fucking ZORK. Like on a 5"X5"...you know what records are right? THE STATUE IN THE CHURCH IN THE ALDIA CHURCH IN THE PARDORNER CHURCH HAS A FUCKING HAIR TALISMAN WHO HAS THOSE

Now.

Let's back up.

I want everyone to sit down and think "hey, maybe DS2 is actually full of a bunch of big, obvious shit everybody missed the first time through. 

Aldia was Lord Tseldora. 

As a young prince of Alken Aldia would have spent a lot of his time being tutored by the likes of Eygil and Mytha. While his father devolves into hedonism and cruelty and his mother succumbed to her grudges Aldia must have been doing something. Maybe he served in the military, or travelled, or just studied all day long.

Eventually Vendrick returns with the DS1 Great Soul and Aldia's Plan gets underway. Vendrick had probably already amassed a sizeable following, and it's entirely possible that some of the apparently more recent arrivals from Lordran -- Ornifex, the implied knight of Berenike in the Fort of Giants -- came here with Prince Vendrick on his return trip.

Aldia then fills out the ranks by conscripting mercenaries from Forossa and Mirrah, and they begin shuttling troops into the country through the Tseldora cave systems -- the Rat King's lands -- to stage their army in the Shaded Woods and expand westward and pacify the sub-continent. 

They get to Majula and Aldia sets up in the Mansion. It's possible the  broken lordvessel we find in the basement was Vendrick's, used to transport the Great Soul to Drangleic where it was used to help fuel portions of this campaign. Once it was spent, released back into the wild as sovereignless souls, some of the older, more powerful souls began to re-coalesce into appropriate vessels; King Alken and The Firstborn, Izalith and Sinner, Rotten and Nito and

Freja and Seath.

Freja has a number of 'spells' she can cast. Obviously there are web-based spells that slow movement, and also a kind of stomach acid vomit attack. The most impressive, however, is her Soul Stream (Soul Bolt in DS2 terms) attack. This spell has a number of variations in the game -- Iron King and Nashandra both use versions -- but only Freja's features the standard light blue of moonlight sorcery. 

Soul Bolt, the version the player can wield, is described as having been devised by Straid after witnessing an 'unwieldy spell that backfired on its owner.' I've talked before about how this apparently alludes to Logan's Crystal Dragon Breath spell and how, even with the timeline overlapping as much as it does, there's no way a character that dates to at least Olaphis could have contact with an institution as recent as Vinnheim. It's possible the spell Straid witnessed was related to Seath, who could have been involved with the Anor Londo colonists that founded Olaphis up until probably either the failure of the Lost Sin or Gwynevere's second exodus. 

We find Straid's staff in upper Tseldora, in the old ruined house only accessible via the well. Here's a couple of interesting facts about the staff. First, its spider-like design is a closer match for the chapel inscriptions than Freja's brood, and the brood are a closer match for the inscriptions than Freja. Second, it only casts sorceries. No hexes, no other schools. 

I've mentioned how Tseldora seems to have had several successive settlements and upheavals over time but I'll lay out my current best guess as to what and when.

Olaphis Period - This region was probably under the control of the Rat King and Gyrm, and was probably a mining settlement, if it was even a settlement. If there were any humans around they were probably farmers. The ruins, especially the ones leading down to Freja, seem very old, and obviously are older than Vendrick-era installations like Giants Fort or Castle Drangleic. My guess is whatever mad science passion play that played out with Aldia and this hypothetical master sorceress of Izalith also played out in Olaphis, possibly between the Lost Sinner and whatever character filled the Old Moonlight role at the time, and probably also played out between Seath and the old mistress of the Anor archives (whose statue reappears in the Bastille, the Lothric Archives, and the Ariamis Archives). The Old Archivist is clearly an important character and probably qualifies for this post but I don't have enough of her story worked out to include it, but I will say that her statue in the Bastille -- weathered and unrecognizable -- is placed next to a very big very new very 'look how big my dick is' statue of Aldia.

Later, Aldia sets himself up as duke and begins exploring the place, possibly as early as the civil war or as late as Vendrick's return. They discover Brightstone and, more importantly, the dragon corpse. Aldia completes his studies, kills the town to keep it quiet, and the place is abandoned, again, save for Aldian cultists and the Keepers.

Then Volgen arrives. It's difficult to tell what their interest in the place is, apart from economic (and there has to be easier ways to get rich). The Volgen forces are mostly comprised of falconers and merchants. The, I guess we can call them lesser spider demon enemies drop Volgen merchant equipment and there are a few references to Fiorenza the merchant lord scattered around the lower areas.

I would make the case at this point that the person we find in the Lord's Private Chamber is Fiorenza. 

Freja's children are interesting. Mostly because they look very little like Freja. Freja looks like a big tarantula; scary, sure, but not actually all that dangerous. The children look like the kind of spiders that can crawl into your dreams and if they bite you your three closest relatives die. The spiders fear fire, for whatever reason. We find a group of non-hostile spiders in the attic of the upper chapel with Pardoner Cromwell. In the chapel below is a statue of a witch brandishing a book and a Lordranic miracle talisman. I suspect that the Pardoner and the statue are both recent arrivals but maybe not as recent as the Volgen forces.

Right, so to conclude: how is Freja a Chaos Sister? I've already stated that she's not, or probably not. I do believe that she and the other spiders, along with the hidden pyromancy and black knight weapon are evidence of a Chaos Sister that, in some sense, was the mother to the spiders and a tutor to Aldia until Aldia betrayed her. 

So who was she? 

I don't know. But luckily Freja has a sister. And a brother. In some sense.

Najka - Right, obviously she's a scorpion and not a spider. But she does wear a skull, which the spiders are marked by a skull, and she's quite near to Tseldora just beyond the Doors of Pharros. She's also a demoness, possibly, that uses sorcery.

Tark relates a very interesting tale regarding Najka, Freja, Aldia, and the Pale Old Being. Tark and Najka are married and were once inseparable. They were created long, long ago by the Paledrake character at the peak of his madness. Let's assume Olaphis here. Tark states that their master never dies, only changes form. The pale being is described as being 'tragically lonely' and that this solitude 'eroded his reason,' and led to the master's 'fatal flaw' turning into an all-consuming curse. This flaw is described as a hatred born of resentment towards those who had what he lacked. 

Tark believes that Najka has succumbed to this same Ruin and seeks the players assistance in overcoming their stalemate. Tark further relates that, once, there was a 'third being, with powers similar to ours, that took the form of a spider' and disappeared. Tark suspects that the spider was seduced by the same madness that afflicts his wife and master. When we talk to him after killing Freja -- who was possessed by the paledrake -- he thanks us for killing his master but laments that he will inevitably return. 

 Now, the wording of item descriptions and interpretation of dialogue is a big part of the lore game, so let's really try to figure out what's going on as best we can.

Tark, Najka, and Freja were all created artificially, and not as a result of the Chaos Flame. Najka and Freja are both sorcerers and both possessed by the same madness that Ruined Seath and Logan. If we learn how to speak monster and speak to Tark he asks us to kill his wife in a way not unlike Quelana's request for us to kill her mother. 

The same stories. Over and over and over.

Seath is credited as being the Typhoid Mary of Ruin but Typhoid Mary didn't invent Typhoid and was, in fact, trying to help prevent its spread. I'm not trying to humanize Seath that much but I would like to raise the possibility that Seath may not be the source of the curse of the paledrake. 

The Old Moonlight Greatsword spell in the third game seems to spell out, well, first that if you liked Dark Souls you should check out From's back catalogue but secondly that Seath maybe wasn't the original wielder of the Moonlight Greatsword and that the entity that did possibly predated Seath and induced his madness.

Seath's madness is twofold: first his lack of corporeal immortality, second his inability to breed naturally. Again, not trying to portray him as sympathetic or be like 'aww see the fascist woman hater really just has a big sad :( " like no, fuck Seath fuck Logan they are Bad Guys inasmuch as that title means anything. But it does seem to outline the mechanics behind his apparently contradictory madness of abducting and experimenting on young mortal women while also being the 'father' of at least one and almost definitely two young mortal women. Shira may not be mortal but you get the idea.

ANYWAY, jesus christ, this is the point where I segue to Flame Weapon, the spell we can craft from the Old Witch's soul. Pyromancy and sorcery share a common origin. The fire arts and the soul arts share a single, common art somewhere in the Soulsverse's pre-history. And, by inference, they share a single, common artist.

A lot of theorizing has been done around the idea that witches, at least some of them, are daughters of Izalith untouched by Chaos. This list usually includes characters like Velka, Caitha, Zullie, and Beatrice. I think this may be what's going on, but this post is long enough without dragging them into it. I just want to point it out as possible evidence that daughters, or Daughters, of Izalith can (or at one point had the option to,) choose between or possibly use sorcery and pyromancy. This would seem to indicate that Queen Izalith is not just Mother of Life and Queen of Birth and High Goddess of Fire but also The Source. Or at least the one who worked out how to channel The Source and raised her children accordingly. 

So, knowing all this, what can we possibly infer about Najka, Tark, and Freja?

Before they became what they are we can maybe infer that the trio existed as 6 distinct entities: a two-tailed scorpion, a, well, let's be more specific, Tark resembles a whip scorpion or vinegaroon, Freja and her brood resemble harvestmen. The two humans involved in the experiment would have been a paladin or sentinel of some description (Based on his weapon of choice), and a sorceress who may not have always used sorcery exclusively.

Let's assume the bugs were sentient, at least to a greater degree than normal conjoined spiders and two-tailed tarantulas, which I hope is not very. Let's also assume that they also had the potential to bond with a hollow/mortal/undead/god?/giant? in a way not unlike Venom from the spider man comics only, well, Sekiro exists now, tha'ts what's going on. I hope that 'Izalithians are bugs that like to bond with human hosts' thing, at least, is evident by this point.

Look, let me back up.

The Chaos Servants exist, publicly, to guard the Demon Ruins and Izalith and secretly to take over Undead Burg and even more secretly to funnel humanity to Fair Lady. Presumably this had something to do with the spider half's, uh, prolific egg-laying abilities. 

Right, so Quelana, mother of mosquitos and onebro clubists, spent her long life taking the raw-ish Chaos we see on display with the Molten Giant and rendering it down to Fireball, then back up to Great Fireball.

Should a mortal shell manage to master Great Fireball they're ready to learn more primal arts, like Fire Tempest and Chaos Fireball.

It's back-to-front, but there's an evolution going on with Quelana's magic system. Not that it's exclusively Quelana's, there's plenty of evidence to suggest convergent evolution happens with Chaos. Further, there's a case to be made that Chaos has been 'invented' more than once. 

Quelana's history happened. Her children evolved. So did Quelaag and the Fair Ladys. The Taurus and Capra demons look blended in a way that older demons -- Q & FL, The Worm (plural), Ceaseless -- do not. The zodiac demons look like the kind of super soldiers you'd engineer in a science fiction movie if given given mad genetic science, a rat, a bull, and a human. A particularly nice touch is how the extra limbs have been shortened down to bone plating on the shoulders. \

Sanctuary Guardian, our only example of probably-pre-Chaos demon-craft still looks like four different animals stitched together. then we have the Demon Princes, who were probably born shortly after Chaos and look much more chaotic and monstrous, and these are eventually refined by the Servants down to the much more cohesive Tauruses and Capras. 

So I've made the case how middle-aged-ish Aldia could have been mentored (or pillaged knowledge from) a legit Princess of Chaos in either the Lost Sinner or the Scorpioness of Oolacile or the Archivist or even just by studying Vendrick's accounts of the Chaos Servants and experimenting with the Life aspect of Vendrick's pillaged Great Soul that would eventually find its way to the Lost Sinner.

Aldia was in the grip of Ruin by this point, Tark makes this pretty clear. When Aldia murdered Tseldora and retired to his manor Freja  broke out of her cage and made her way to the Dragon Temple and began laying eggs/ guarding the Ruin (she's described as the Writhing Ruin's Keeper. This would seem to imply that the Ruin was, maybe in some sense, imprisoned by Aldia with Freja acting as a guard. Possibly also Aldia figured out a way to transfer the Ruin from himself to the spider. Doesn't really matter I suppose this isn't a Seath post. Point is Tark associates both Duke Tseldora and Freja with Ornifex's Pale Beast. 

Point is is it was mad obsession with something unobtainable that led to Aldia demonizing Tark, Najka, and Freja (and probably the Lion Knights once he got the hang of it). Freja falls victim to the Ruin (or is focused on makin babies), while Najka seems to succumb to an unrelated madness, despite Najka being a moonlight sorceress. 

I can't make sense of her spear. Clearly it's curved to evoke a scorpion's tail but is it also a shepherd's crook? There's obvious symbolism there if so, but the only connections to sheep I've found are the ram's skulls found in Tseldora and Aldia's Keep, which is not nothing but also not enough to tell more of the story, at least at this point.

The Ant Queen 

Believe it or not the Ant Queen potentially makes an appearance in official Dark Souls media. I forget which one but one of the anthology series features a story about a demoness that looks like Quelaag or Najka only an ant that uses moonlight sorcery and petrification-based attacks. 

Her children like bonding with mushrooms in particular and appear to be divided into Elana and Mytha factions based on whether they use poison or corrosion-based attacks, although the factioning may be more related to environment.

Alonne may serve the Ant Queen. Alternately he may have beheaded her. 

The ant queen may have a sister, or half of a sister, in the Gutter. She seems happy.

Lady of Leydia

The Leydia priestess are obviously pyromancers with a direct direct connection to Izalith in the form of their helix staves. The Izalith Catalyst definitely dates to Pre-Chaos and are possibly Pre-Fire. This would seem to imply that whoever founded their order was in all likelihood a pre-Chaos flame artist. We don't know who the original artist was, but candidates include Lost Sinner, Galib, Pre-Scorpioness Najka, and Darklurker's 'female' half.  

[glares]

Alright.

AI 022 - Token of Spite

Token recognizing that the owner 

has traveled worlds to defeat others.

Simply carrying these tokens shows the bitterness 

of the grudges the holder has accumulated.

The Honorable Path

The sky is holy to kings and crows both.

Look here's this I'll try to add pictures later you know how it is

It could be debated that the Red Sign Soapstone is the real treasure hidden in the Painting. I suppose the choice comes down to whether we'd rather fight a gang of bonewheels or fight a gang of pissed off corvians with every advantage. That staircase tho.

The sky is fake in that world, of course; a canvas stained by long dry blood letting in dim and difuse twice-filtered moonlight from the world outside.

Can a Darkwraith, or something approximating it, retain its honor in pursuit of its ends?

In the first game Kaathe gives you the red eye orb: for invaders seeking a deeper Dark. The Orb is absent in the the second game, but the cracked eye orbs, sold by Gren and dropped by torturers, inform us that the eyes belonged to sinners that succumbed to dark.

So would this make the orb the eye of a sinner that DIDN'T succumb to dark or to someone that succumbed to dark but WASN'T a sinner?

The purpose to which the orbs are put to use in the second game was to spill blood -- madly and indiscriminately slaughtering strangers if that's your thing, in honorable duels of skill between the likeminded if that's your thing. Blood spilt that's the important thing.

Paint the world in blood.

In the third game we get the red sign from the non-hostile Finger of Rosaria, but we had to kill him to get it, which isn't exactly dishonorable, he seems perfectly happy to let you do it. He even stands at the edge of the 'arena' as you battle your way through the other fingers to Rosaria's door.

If we prove ourselves competent invaders, Ringfinger Leonhard will give us his name and the key to an uncracked orb. The orb itself id dropped by the Darkwraith in the Lothric dungeon, who seems to be either a training dummy for Lothric Red Knights or a voluntary beheading machine for same.

So in the first game the Orb requires you prove your competency to Kaathe (donate ten soft humanity to the covenant,) which itself requires you to murder Sif and Ingward and the Four Kings before interacting with Frampt. Which is more hoops than Leonhard.

Further: Kaathe wanted the orb to be used to spread Dark, while Leonhard wants us to bring Rosaria tongues, which is gross but probably w/e for most fingers that don't volunteer for wormhood, but wormhood seems to be a requirement for earning the covenant's trust. The tongues may just be a way of keeping score with the real goal to spread the infestation, which may be a way of opposing the Deep faction in a way similar to the Rot or Burn factions of Ariandel.
...
crows again.

Of course Leonhard doesn't give you the orb and the Darkwraith doesn't willingly give you his. But, again, with the wraith: whether you think of yourself as invading his cell or challenging him to a duel: does it matter so long as the painting gets painted?

Of course killing the Darkwraith involves killing someone that jumped through Kaathe's hoops and we have no idea how Kaathe would feel about that or how Leonhard got the key and whether his actions with Rosaria -- any of them -- are sanctioned by or turned a blind eye by to either Anor Londo or Lothric. They're tolerated Aldrich and the Archdeacons but we don't know to what degree.

It's interesting that McDonnel, head of Alrich's covenant, doesn't have anything like these items. Mechanically there is no reason we couldn't claim the orb from Mcdonnel's corpse along with covenant membership. The covenant functions by auto-summoning, which was associated with the Blades/Sentinels, among others, in the first two games.

So what role does honor play in all this?

The corvians of Ariamis could be thought of as guarding a body holding the Red Sign that is being given an approximation of a sky burial. Eyeballs and blood don't last long with sky burials, which is probably why Eileen likes them.

There aren't any crows specifically guarding Priscilla's bridge. But we find Jeremiah there. Jeremiah who is down below spilling Vlad Dracul levels of blood on the other side of the gate.

Ariamis Crows = burn, which is honorable
Jeremiah+ Priscilla = rot forever, out of spite, in the alternative

How solid does that sound?

Titchy Gren, the faceless, possibly-crazier-but-also-kinda-maybe-sane Bellkeeper puppet guy speaking for Nahr Alma sells the Soapstone for 5k souls, and sells limited cracked eyes for same. on NG+ he'll at least sell unlimited orbs but charges twice as much. He'll sell the Delicate String for 20k, which can be thought of as an auto-invasion item put to both honorable and dishonorable use. Summon invaders for greater glory and thereby protect the innocent v. set up gank squads; the choice is yours!

So velka values honor and Kaathe values results. Gren doesn't care but recognizes that you shouldn't make 'results' too easy for people, you want servants after all.

Leonhard doesn't care, even if it means potentially crossing Kaathe, Carim the Deacons et al. We don't know if Rosaria wants this or if wanting this is even a bad thing in this context, but the way Leonhard acts it feels like Leonhard's faction is unsanctioned. The worm faction of the fingers would seem to prefer honorable duels, probably are somehow tied to Lloyd's duels of law. 

Also, Patches spends his free time dressed like a Catarine trying to giant to death anyone that tries to access Rosaria but appears to be either neutral towards or friendly to the fingers as they ignore his presence. The difference, I imagine, has something to do with the thing in Rosaria's lap, as Patches was probably something like captain of the original princess guards before he turned undead and became the undead champion, if that's what his story is. I hope I wrote about that somewhere or it'll sound crazy. 

The Champion's Gravetender is guarding ashes, wait hold on, bones, not ashes, that hold a blue lion banner. These are the bones of the Undead Champion. Lapp leaves them for us. 

Gwyn rose to power as red oni. Gwyn trembled at Dark and switched to Blue oni, set up the firelinking and became lord of cinder. The Firstborn inherits the throne of the gods and goes full Bush Jr. with the military and disrespect of anything that wasn't strength of arms. 

The Firstborn, at the height of his madness, is cast down, stripped of name, title, and godhood, and cast out -- alternately, he befwiends the wittle dwagons and makes everyone big mad because they're so mean. The throne then falls to Gwynevere, who is as much the primal blue oni as Nameless is primal red. This is, I suspect, the period when Patches filled the role that Gwyndolin would like you to think Ornstein and Smough fill in the first game and that Targray fills in the second: faith in Father Gwyn and Sister Gwynevere.

He, Patches, turns undead, at some point but proves to be uniquely resistant to hollowing. Gwynevere leaves at some point. Patches remains but doesn't seem to have any favor from or faith in the Gwyndolin/Seathe regime by the time the Chosen Undead shows up. 

At some point he set up the original undead matches. The merit of an undead is number of deaths, so they should celebrate by beating the shit out of each other. This event appears to have happened a long time before the fall of Oolacile as the Gazebo is done in what I think of as pre-Fire Anor style, which is something like clay brick and wooden beams later upgraded with statues, devices, and additions, probably under Gwynevere's rule, as we see in Sen's Fortress.

Now, and I know this is gonna seem like a weird thing to close on,

Sword Master is the Last Princess Guard. But he'll help us kill the Dancer.

Staked

I grew up on what I suspect is an upheaved tomb from an old kingdom out in the desert. Estacado we called it. They, we. Doesn't matter. Staked, it meant. They like to translate it as 'palisaded' cuz it sounds nice. Walled off. Fortified. So of course we dug down and of course we found wondrous treasure and of course it was haunted and of course we didn't connect the dots

I spent a lot of time, alone, wandering around in that desert. I was a weird kid, probably. Huck Finn of the High Wastes. I can say that, it was somebody else.

You'd find pits, out there in all that flat. Not big pits, ten meters across, three deep, maybe, but I was shorter then. 

Some had cars, some were dumps, some were camps, some recent but were never occupied when I stumbled across them. Worn semi-truck tires and broken shopping carts and bench seats weathered to rusty skeleton chairs and spent fluorescent tubing and rusted pipes and withered blankets rotting on mesquite bushes and dead grass.

They cleaned it up, at some point, at least that little stretch prowled by me and my bicycle while Reagan won us the war. There are hotels, new ones with logos you'd recognize, slowly succumbing to the same curse that everything else is slowly succumbing to.

I went back, see, when I started to remember.

As near as I can tell when I was 25 something happened, probably a drug overdose, led to me forgetting everything. I still have almost no memories from the ages 23 to 27, when I woke up in a homeless shelter in south texas with a court appearance in two days and not so much as a social security card to my name. They only let me in the shelter because the weekend manager recognized me from 12 step meetings I had apparently attended at some point. I attended a lot of 12 step meetings for the next few years, got in touch with my family, and was able to travel back home for a few holidays.

They, family, mostly all died over the course of the next few years from the curse I was somehow able to break at the proverbial last minute but which left me with quite a mystery to solve as far as how I happened or how I survived or how I will, hopefully, continue to with all these goddamn ghosts.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. 

Nadir

Look

I don't know who reads this, or why, and don't particularly want to know unless you want to give me money in which case I'm actually a gardener so pay me to do that but MY POINT IS

Mortal Shell looks like it didn't cost that much to make so like: if you have the power to make something like that I would recommend immersing yourself in River City Ransom, Skindred, and Michelle Yeoh movies for like a month and get to work youll have a hit on your hands i swear to god graphics are a scam

only fucking get a writer I'll never understand why computer programmers just assume they'll be good at dialogue and storytelling. Mortal Shell is well-written I'm not saying that I'm just saying in general 

You don't need like a big nibelung of the rings story neither 

I wrote a deleted an idols post three times in the past two months. This fucking story won't fit in my brain or anyone else's apparently WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH BRUME TOWER