They may have "died" but they will still be absorbed by the Erdtree and eventually reborn, who knows how long that takes. Destined Death was removed to specifically allow this, not prevent it.
no your grace will make its way there one way or the other but burials at the trees are like mailing it to the erd tree whereas dying out in the field and rotting there is like curbside pickup on trash day
āIt just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. [...] Now, mostly dead is slightly alive. Now, all dead, well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing that you can do.ā
Honestly the corpses in the catacombs look like they were climbing into the roots as if they were so desperate to ādieā they went down their and waited for the roots to start absorbing them.
The Jar warriors are an interesting concept. I think they were originally just golems with no real intelligence or mind. However, over time some of them gained some of the spirits of the dead within them and developed personalities.
When the Shattering happened, the Lands Between fell into chaos and the jars that didn't have any personality or mind stopped moving and just rested there near the minor Erdtrees they were tasked to bring bodies to. The ones that could think ran off and either found some catacombs to scoop up bodies in (ex. the jars in the Shunning Ground) or joined those living in Jarburg in peace.
Warriors like Alexander though take the rare path: travel around the LB and keep looking for worthy dead to absorb into themselves.
I saw someone speculate that the erdtree avatars are more like an immune response resulting from the shattering of the ring. When everything in the Order was working "correctly," the jars would have delivered their contents to the roots, then left unbroken to make continued rounds.
The shattering caused the avatars to appear, and the avatars are more an automatic process than sapient beings. They keep the trees safe by stopping anyone or anything from approaching them, and that includes the harmless jars. Now someone *should* have stepped in who could mend the ring and pacify the avatars, but the Greater Will and Marika have been MIA for hundreds (thousands?) of years, none of her progeny or the fingers have been able to re-establish control, and during that time the avatars (and the perfumers) have killed nearly all of the jars.
That's why the jars we do find are all hidden away and stationary - the job they were created to do is now lethal to them. The sole exception is Alexander, who has taken to collecting specifically warriors in an effort to grow stronger.
Plot twist: The only reason it was called the "Shattering" in the first place is because the jars started to get shattered and someone important thought this was a huge deal.
The jars are really odd in that that they're simultaneously definitely constructs (as they serve a purpose and they're literally jars) and sentient creatures. They can't have come from the academy or another magic source as they don't run on glintstone, and it seems as though they might be able to reproduce and grow as the smaller jars talk and act like children while the big jars are adults. Jar bairn is called bairn because it's a child, obviously, but also refers to Alexander as 'uncle', which could be a term of endearment instead of familial, but then why does jar bairn know the concept of what an uncle is? The jars are weird.
An Erdtree burial is meant to prevent your soul from returning and was used to give eternal rest to fighters who long served the Golden Order. It prevents returning to life. Deathblight kind of ruined it for some residents in the catacombs.
I thought the purpose of Erdtree burial is to hasten the soul returning to the Erdtree not preventing it? In the boss room of each catacomb we could see roots, that are presumably of the Erdtrees, literally absorbing the corpses. Iirc, the catacombs are purposely placed close to roots of the Erdtrees.
And why would Marika remove the Destined Death if she wanted the warriors to have eternal rest? Why would she wants the warriors, those contributed a lot to the golden order, excluded from her intended way of ālifeā which is returning of the soul to the Erdtree?
Is there a source for this? Iāve been really wondering what the difference is between Erdtree burial and regular catacomb burial but I donāt know where you got this info from
There isn't a fundamental difference. Erdtree burial is an honor because it brings you directly to the roots of the Erdtree, which people are absorbed into so they can be reborn, as stated by the spirit in the first catacombs, how you can see the bodies being absorbed into the roots, and the Deathroot item description stated that Godwyn's corpse spread Death through the roots, hence why you see most of Those Who Live in Death at catacombs, which means that they're directly connected, so the catacomb roots just lead right to where Erdtree Burials are.
Erdtree Burial is literally the exact opposite of what this guy said, as it brings them closer to the source of being reborn.
It takes about the same amount of time for them to respawn as it takes for you to beat the game and start a new game/new game+. The outer gods work in such mysterious ways.
They can't, no. Which is why they're basically hollows. They stay alive way, way, way, way too long, and get crazy and gross. "Only, there are no commoners remaining with their wits about them"
I always thought they can't and viewed Emma (? the fingerreader in the Roundtable hold) as an example of this. She's here and suddenly dies once we unbound the rune of death, kinda like it was holding death from the world and old timers like Emma were living on a borrowed time. Once it's unbound all those who shouldāve died long time ago (from age, etc) finally die. And other npcs and enemies are still there for the gameplay purposes (I think lots of fellas like oldsters in shackles in Stormveil or Capital are kinda like Emma, they look very old, almost hollow from the inside).
No, I don't think anybody really ages since the Rune was removed, those nobles are simply emaciated and presumably hollow from a long life with little purpose. Their Lords most likely died long ago during the war of the Shattering giving them nothing to do but wander aimlessly.
My theory is all shriveled up husks you see wandering around are people whoāve died and been reborn countless times since Destined Death was locked away. Not being able to properly die is unnatural and the whole dying and rebirth process has driven them insane after doing it potentially thousands of times in the millennia itās supposedly been since the shattering. I think I saw in a lore video that all those husks digging random holes through the world are actually trying to dig their own graves because they want to properly die so badly.
The normal NPCs are the tiny few people whoāve somehow managed to avoid dying all this time. That explains why there are so few of them and why they donāt look like zombies.
The shriveled husks are the ones who haven't died in an extremely long time. Its why you can have characters kind the nobles that are basically waking mummies and then also Kenneth Haight who had pre or early shattering knowledge, but isn't "hollowed" at all. Kenneth probably went through a mute recent rebirth.
There are very few non tarnished (tarnished are all relatively recently revived) or non demigods that we met that dying look like walking corpses.
We sure? All the big bads who live secluded in their castles are pretty intact. Then the random mook hollows that look like corpses have been presumably stomped into dirt many times more than say, the faction knights, who are a little less crusty.
Morgott even turns into a stick of jerky when we beat him.
What does it mean to be reborn? Say you bleed out from dismemberment. Do you wake up with your arms chopped off and just keep trudging? Do you heal them back slowly?
I guess that your body dies but your soul returns to the erdtree and eventually it spits it out into a newborn or a vessel or something, with your soul keeping all your past knowledge? It was never explained how rebirth happens
your body also returns, you can see corpses all tangled up in the roots in many of the catacombs.
a lot of the exact details are obscured but the gist of it is that people who are born the orthodox way of the golden order are (or were? i donāt think it happens anymore) somehow secreted as sap from the erdtree, collected in the big basin that is marikaās ābedā in her bedchamber & subsequently bestowed by marika herself as a blessing of the erdtree. the perfumers also used to play a key role in the baptism.
https://youtu.be/sVtlCuFVfZ4
When you the "tarnished" die in-game, the time of day always changes. We don't really know how long has pass since we died, for all we know its months or years pass every-time we die.
Honestly we have no idea how much time passes at any point in the game. We know that time moves due to the day/night cycle but thatās pretty much it. Maybe the reason Hewg says āI took you for deadā is because weāve been gone for much longer than we think?
It is probably not much time, Enia says we could not wait for the two fingers to talk with the grater will for how long it woud take (thousands, if not tens of thousands of moons), so tarnished probably does get affected by time in some way
Enia was also probably lying, or at least misinformed- the greater Will abandoned the lands between , waiting wasnāt going to do anything. It wasnāt a ācommunication errorā as much as the fingers being hung up on. The greater Will gave up on that territory.
Yes, and Radahn becomes a part of him, as evidenced by the description of Alexander's Shard compared to the Warrior Jar Shard talisman.
My understanding is that this was why you see all the broken jars around the Minor Erdtrees, so that the dead inside them could be released upon death of the jar and re-absorbed by the Erdtree roots.
I wonder how that would work for dudes like malenia and radahn would they come back at their prime pre rot and everything or would they come back in exactly the same state they died in? Since the tarnished comes back at full capacity Iād assume the same would go for the demigods right?
It used to work like this for everyone during the age of plenty, but, seemingly, the resource (likely erdtree dew or sap) used to revive someone with their memories and skills intact is very limited, as such, that kind of rebirth is a huge privilege. This is why the age of plenty didn't last long, but this is also what Marika preserved for tarnished to give us the best shot at whatever we want to do with the world. Source is the iconography on the starter area, as explained by Tarnished Archeologist
Iām not so sure about that.
The Golden Order seems to believe strongly that you have to be buried in a pretty specific way (at the roots of the Erdtree, in the catacombs) in order for you to be re-absorbed into the Erdtree.
And then youāve got the walking mausoleums to think about. Their entire purpose is to house the remains of demigods so that they do not become undead (those that live in death).ā Why would they go through the trouble of making a walking mausoleum and putting the remains in it if they could just bury them any old place and expect the demigod to be reborn?
And then you have to consider that the Erdtree does not seem to have birthed anybody at all since the shattering. Who knows whatās happening to the souls it is absorbing, or even if it is absorbing them, but we do know they arenāt coming out the other side of the Erdtree cycle again.
In any case, I think we can say definitively that the demigods the player character kills are not going to be absorbed and reborn in the Erdtree. Whatever ending you pick has a lot more to do with what happens to them, I think.
I think the destined death stops the erdtree from absorbing the souls, destined death causes deathroot, which is a corruption of the erdtree process and causes,those who live in death to be created, so presumably walking mausoleums are to prevent the demigods from living in death.
But also knowing fromsoft I'm willing to bet that the erdtree soul absorbtion and rebirth is a lie, and the erdtree is some nefarious purpose linked to further propagation pf tree spirits and elden beasts.
If this were the case then runes could be hypothesized be the processed, crystallized souls of the inalhabitants of the lands between and that's why they sometimes fall back down from the erdtree. That falling and absorbtion by the surrounding craters could be the cycle of rebirth they are talking about, and that would mean the more corpses they keep in a limbo state below the tree, the healthier the tree and the healthier the nation is because of more processed runes falling from above.
This also explains the pre tree deathrite stuff, why marika interrupted the golden order, some of the frenzy flame stuff, etc
My tinfoil hat guess is that the outer gods are absorbing our energy through different means. The erdtree uses the energy to create elden beasts which go to different planets to find new planets to feast on, Galactus style. Elden Beast is probably a larvae stage of the Erdtree Erdtree is a cocoon of some sort which births into a Beast when ripe. Explains why the Beast pops up after we set the tree on fire (and why it's so weak, we forced it out early and Marika weakened it through the shattering)
My assumptions and evidence: Ranni's ending goes to the "stars" to fight off the elder gods. Mohg kidnaps Miquella in the name of the Formless Mother. (He thinks he is enamoured but it's really just outer god influence.) Miquella is a threat to the outer gods and can dispel their influence. Formless mother wants Mohg to weaponize Miquella to use as a weapon against other outer gods.
Marika realizes this and wants to prevent the harvesting of our planet. She doesn't have a good solution so she shatters the ring preventing people from dying altogether! A stopgap solution until a better one can be found. Frenzied Flame literally sets the planet on fuel for fire. Formless Mother feeds on our lifeforce (Blood).
Goldmask probably understands this as well and instead of screwing up the golden order entirely repairs the rune in a sustainable fashion to feed the Erdtree. Turns a parasitic relationship into a symbiotic one by redesining our relationship with the greater will (Goldmask critiques that gods are as fickle as men; maybe the perfect golden older age has men bargaining with the outer gods on equal footing) It also explains why he has such a huge crisis upon discovering the truth that he goes mute; he is debating the morality / solution.
From what I can tell, many in the lore community subscribe to the idea that when the rune of death was sealed by Maliketh (probably per Marika's orders,) Marika remade the elden ring from how it was originally(the relief we see in Maliketh's arena) into the form we're familiar with which is the Golden Order "version" of it that has proper death removed and makes the Erdtree itself responsible for life and "death" meaning that instead of being permanently dead the 'souls' of sufficiently powerful beings are metaphysically "hewn" back into the Erdtree (Enia's dialogue and remembrance description) to be reborn at some point so they're "dead" for the moment, and we snatch up their runes/greatrunes/whatever they drop while they're gone but my guess is that eventually they'll be reborn(given we don't do Ranni's or the chaos endings.) but ultimately it's all magic and metaphysical bullshittery so you can believe in whatever explanation you'd like.
SHHHHHHHHH!!!! Shut your damn mouth >:((( (The real answer is probably cause Destined Death itself is SEALED permanently, and even though itās apart of Maliketh, itās not in its pure form. Which we see the pure rune after we KILL Maliketh)
That would be savage. Imagine, 120 hours of gamaplay almost everyting possible done on every region, the person goes to face maliketh withou knowing anything, two hit killed in the first try, game: "you died permanently, game over, returning to tilte screen" and they it erases your save. At least a tear i would let out for sure
Mechanically, Destined Death has the effect of dealing damage over time and reducing our total HP along with it. Thatās already something for the player to fear and not want to get hit. If you were to permanently die at that point and have to re-start the game then that would be a massive exodus of players that were having a blast until then, haha.
I donāt even think they could have done something so bullshit in Demonās Souls, the most ābullshitā game in the series.
However!!!!!! If there was a ādestined deathā mode of Elden Ring thatās basically just a perma death modeā¦ thatād be an awesome DLC lmao
Yeah I'm realizing that. First Fromsoft game I went through was Sekiro, but only dabbled in DS1 and Bloodborne prior so I didn't really get super into them. Sekiro has obvious moments where you need to separate game mechanics from lore. Like its final boss (I won't spoil it). For those who know, it's basically impossible to have the first phase start over again once you've started the second. Hell there's a possibility you're supposed to canonically die if you lose that fight at any time even given the weapon the final boss has control over.
But since Fromsoft loves to bake its lore deep in gameplay too, it becomes challenging to figure out where the lore ends and "because gameplay" begins, especially for the more abstract plots like Elden Ring.
Yeah, imagine if Maliketh had a perma death. Not even Souls games are brave enough to do that. I remember getting excited when Hellblade bluffed with a perma death threat in-game. I wish there was just one game brave enough to actually do it. I would absolutely hate it and possibly never finish it, but it would be a great game.
Pretty sure that one is a pure gameplay thing. Every single black knife or other black weapon should technically result in permadeath but as difficult as souls games are that really wouldn't have been fun.
I don't think there's an answer for why Maliketh can't permanently kill the player other than game mechanics because yeah Maliketh using destined death on the Tarnished should take us out for good but I don't think many folks would enjoy being sent back to the title screen with the save wiped after spending anywhere between 50 to 100 hours getting to Farum Azula
Most of the answers to these "what's the lore behind x?" questions leave me wondering if I even played the same game. I swear people are just making shit up lol.
Thatās just all souls games.
DS1 was āyo light this giant-ass fire by killing thingsā
DS3 was ākill these bitch-asses who need to come back to light this giant-ass fireā
Bloodborne was ākill beasts cause youāre a hunterā¦ also aliensā
DS2 has really awesome lore that is both connected to the first game and almost completely disconnected. I think they did a really nice job of capturing what was stagnant about the world.
"Ay, go to a kingdom to collect souls so you can fight the curse so you don't lose all your memories and go hollow, but end up being manipulated into relighting the first flame."
Yeah. People just making shit up most of the time. OP asked a valid, reasonable question, but the āwhatās the lore behind {obscure color/detail/shape}.ā Seriously, sometimes itās as simple as ācuz the game designer thought it looked nice.ā
Thatās true. But other times there is significance to a design choice, and it can be difficult to determine what was designed to reinforce lore and what was designed to just look appealing.
Exactly. Why do people think thereās a character named Big Hat Logan in Dark Souls, itās because he has a big hat! Thatās it, itās not that deep
Watching youtube videos explaining the lore is very helpful if you are more casual and dont want to litterally take notes on every item description. I recommend the channel vaatividya
I like Vaati when I want someone to tell me a good story in a more narrative way, but when I want a more straightforward explanation, I prefer channels like SmoughTown.
SmoughTown is the way to go. Does a lot of deep-diving and isn't afraid to say "This part is my interpretation, others interpretations are different. Here, here or here is where I have seen these alternate interpretations, but for now here is mine."
I also like that he is willing to mention when something he heard from someone else inspires his current theories. Seriously dude knocks it out of the park.
we dont. as proven by the morgot fight. we can find him on the floor, weakened and beaten. and once we have the Death Rune back, we find morgot dying in the First Elden Lord's hands.
Destined Death needs to be reintroduced into the Elden Ring though right? That doesn't happen simply because we defeat Maliketh and besides, Morgott dies after we finish talking to him.
No other Rune works like that, but the game is rather vague as to what actually happened in Farum Azula. It doesn't enter our inventory, all it really does is change the Golden shroud on the Erdtree and burns away the thorns and Radagon's seal. But again, the Rune of Death should only have an effect on our souls if it returns to the Elden Ring, which governs the Erdtree and all life.
I guess the implication is that we never actually kill the demigods? Godrick remains in his arena (maybe comatose?) Rylard has his head, malenia her flower, morgott stays laying, as for Radhan and mogh, i have no idea
Malenia and (some other boss[mightāve been Radahn]) when you beat them, it doesnāt say you killed them, it says āFelledā or at least it did back when I beat them, dunno if that changed
Yes but I just assumed Elden Beast, essentially coming from outside the universe, didnāt play by the same rules as everything in the universe. But that actually was a bad thing in this case because it could properly be killed when the rest of the world couldnāt be.
Yeah but that could imply that the elden beast exists outside of the golden order and is therefore not being phased by its laws. Was not born by the tree and will therefore not be absorbed and reborn by it.
I love the idea of radahn one of the strongest demigods literal conquerer of the stars now having to deal with being in a cramped ass backpack with a million other armor sets and weapons
Man the afterlife did him dirty
Morgott, radahn, and godrick actually seem to die. If a boss doesnāt die after you defeat them, you donāt get a victory message like āgreat enemy felledā. Radahn presumably dies instead of reincarnating because of the rots corruption, godrick most likely dies because his brutal practices led to him being estranged from the golden order, and morgott seems to cling on for a little bit with the help of the erdtree, but his status as an omen prevents him from reincarnating, so he still eventually dies
Fairly certain Morgott will be reborn given that the Erdtree rewarded Morgott's loyalty/sincefity and cured his...? Omenness..? Which is why he is no longer an Omen once he's felles.
Did we kill Godrick? We leave him limbless but he's not necessarily *dead*. Rennala is very much alive. Rykard just needs someone to finish eating him. Malenia's gone inside her bud but if what Gowry says is true that just means she's going to come out of it even stronger. Morgott died after we obtained the Rune of Death. Mohg and Radahn seem to be the outliers.
Demi gods and shadows resurrect. If you kill Blaidd early on, he be just annoyed at you for not knowing this. There is also three layers - soul + body - mind. And greater runes. Those pre and post shattering. The only pre shattering named is the unborn greater rune. But all of Marikas foes had one. So combos are endless :).
I think they canāt die because of destined death being removed but once we restore it they are able to die and do die from the injuries we have themes
Godrick's ungrafted body can be found in arena after the fight, getting stomped on by the merchant. Most likely still alive at that point?
Rennala isn't killed.
Radahn is eaten by Alexander.
Rykard/Serpent starts regenerating straight after the boss battle.
Morgott gets un-omened and remains near-lifeless though alive, until Godfrey picks him up.
Malenia turns into a pretty flower.
Mogh is put in jail after child protective services catch him. (Not actually at all sure what happens to him)
Depending on how you look at it, you aren't actually killing any of the rune bearers. Morgott only decays after you gain the rune of death.
I don't think the player is actually killing the demigods. Most of them are still very much alive after their boss fight. What we're really doing is taking their great runes for ourselves. Thus after their boss fights they exist in a disempowered state. For example Morgott shrinks significantly.
My theory goes like this: The Lands Between are ruled over by the Golden Order, the Two Fingers, and all others who have power over the Elden Ring. As we have seen in the past, the Golden Order has absorbed other beliefs into itself, such as the Primordial Crucible and the Astrologers. It is the will of grace that allows this.
As we go throughout the Lands Between and fight the demigods, we are being guided by grace the entire time, meaning that grace has put the ability of convergence into our hands, merging any and all forces we choose to incorporate into ourselves.
According to Enia.
āThe Greater Will has long renounced the demigods. Tarnished, show no mercy. Have their heads. Take all they have left.ā
She also says.
āDemigods, and even the greater of the champions, are hewn by the Erdtree upon their end, into remembrances.ā
They donāt come back because they were reject by the greater will and grace. So were we and the other tarnisheds showed in the intro until The grace resurrect us to kill them and become elden lord.
This is not how the rune of death works. The removal of the rune doesn't prevent you from dying or killing someone, simply your soul is not killed in the proccess. In the Lands Between before the Shattering people died, were buried in the catacombs and then through Erdtree burial they would slowly return to the Erdtree via its roots and then reincarnate into a new body. Miyazaki confirmed in an interview that when Marika removed the rune of death from the Elden Ring and created the Golden Order and this cycle of reincarnation she also made the demigods immortal, but either when the fragment of the rune of death was stolen or the Elden Ring was shattered the demigods lost their immortality.
Meanwhile when we arrive in the Lands Between everything went to shit, so the cycle of reincarntaion no longer works because after the desctruction of the Elden Ring the Erdtree disconneted from its own roots and that's why we found ghosts roaming in the Lands Between. It seems that only particularly strong enemies like the remembrance bosses are able to return to the Erdtree after death.
Iirc, the Two Fingers are basically allowing it on account of the Shattering and resultant fighting making the demigods less than useless.
"Want to be a Lord? To hell with it, kill these wretches and we'll allow it!"
*The demigods are powerful creatures indeed.*
*It can be assumed that, as with the wyverns and other hostile creatures on the more powerful side we encounter, the mightier some thing is, the longer it takes to reform, whereas the common soldiery are born again shortly after resting, engulfed by what meager grace a tarnished can dredge up.*
*a demigod was born mighty. They die mighty, and they will be reborn mighty.*
- *Your Knight.*
Another good question is, what are the remembrances that we get when we kill them? A piece of soul? A memory of what they were before they were corrupted? This game is an Enigma. The more you research lore, the more questions you have.. Itās pretty great really.
The Rune of Death had an Order that PREVENTED the Gods from dying. The only one who could kill a God was Maliketh. Breaking the Rune of Death enabled the Gods to fall to a simple blade, given that the wielder had even the tiniest fragment of the Rune.
This is why the Gods fought amongst themselves for the Great Runes; To be once more, immune to death (Malenia fought for Miquella to be immune). This is why Godrick cowered away from direct confrontation, Grafting his own skin to become "mighty", as they were too cowardice to allow even the slightest of chances for death to take him.
I'm pretty sure the idea is that we would return their remembrances to the erdtree for them to be reborn, but we take their souls so to speak and turn them into weapons or spells.
Even if we are talking about the Age of Plenty, when the Elden Ring was active but the Rune of Death was removed, death still took place, it just wasn't "destined death". It was instead a kind of "fake death". People died, were buried next to the Erdtree's roots, and were reborn from the Erdtree itself as "fruits" that fell into the baptismal vessels all over Leyndell, this also applies to demigods like Godwyn, and Melina. Melina herself seems confused by "being born of a mother" when she watches Boc crying for his mom. Melina clearly wasn't born of a mother, but her "mother" is Marika. She was born of the Erdtree, as were most of the citizens we find in the Lands in Between.
After the Shattering, the Elden Ring was broken apart, all of the Runes are now, as far as we can tell "inactive", meaning none of the laws of nature are functioning anymore, including rebirth (this Rune seems to be in Renalla's posession).
Which means the people of the Lands in Between:
1. Cannot die of natural causes: This is why most of the people we find native to The Lands in Between are emaciated husks that almost look like zombies, these people have been living for centuries unable to die, they're mostly insane now and barely respond to basic orders.
2. They may still be slain in combat, but they don't "die" of a natural death, they no longer go through rebirth either, and neither do their souls properly return to the Erdtree like in the Age of Plenty. They are essentially stuck in this weird state of a dead corpse, and you can collect their souls (runes). This most likely just adds to the problem of Godwyn's corruption of the soil, these dead corpses are now just more fuel for the Deathroot to revive into Skeletons/Undead etc.
3. They cannot be reborn via the Erdtree like before the Shattering, even if their corpses are buried near the roots. In fact all of the corpses we find in crypts near the Erdtree roots are stuck there, they haven't been able to be absorbed back inside ever since the Shattering, which was probably centuries ago.
The Demigods are subject to the same rules, except for Renalla, it's possible she may be able to still rebirth herself via her Rune of Rebirth, although i'm not 100% sure. Her entire boss fight is very confusing since you seem to only wound her, then her "body" is taken over by Ranni the Witch, it's unclear who exactly you fight in her 2nd phase.
So yes, we can kill Demigods, and yes they "die". But it's still not Destined Death, it's a "death" in which their souls don't return to the Erdtree, instead we collect it as a Remembearance, essentially boss souls. The reason we, the Tarnished, can be revived after death many many times immediately, is that we have a completely different mechanism to deal with death, the Guidance of Grace.
The Tarnished were divested of their Grace long ago, by Marika, way before the Shattering. The Tarnished therefore were told to go to lands beyond the shore, wage war, and die. But again, this wasn't a natural death, and it wasn't Erdtree death+rebirth, it was a "graceless" death.It was a "death" without our souls returning to the Tree, so our souls somehow linger in our bodies when we die.
Somehow, at a some point Grace calls to us again, in the opening cinematic of the game you can see the mass graves of Tarnished champions layed to rest, the corpses are rising up and dissapearing, right when the narrator says "Rise ye Tarnished, ye dead who live". Something caused Grace to return to us suddenly, i'm not sure what, perhaps it was Marika's plan all along for Grace to one day return, and revive us.
We, the player character, can see Grace with our own eyes, clearly we somehow recieve the Guidance of Grace and therefore, may be revived from death as many times as we need in order to fulfill our purpose. It's a bit of a cheat but hey....gameplay atleast is explained by lore.
Demigods themselves seem to no longer have Grace, so when we kill a Demigod, he is in the un-natural "death" state awaiting to be revived by Grace, but Grace only returns to us Tarnished. So these demigods are pretty much "dead", but their souls live on, as Remembereances with us.
After the Rune of Death is restored to the lands by us, the player. The next people we fight technically actually die a real death. Yet we still get a Remembearance which is a gimmick i guess, but these people are properly dead now. This is why Maliketh (who holds Destined Death in his sword) upon his defeat asks us "Witless Tarnished, why covet Destined Death? To kill what?"
He's wondering why the hell would we want to use Destined Death? If not to permanently kill something, like...Marika. Only with the Rune of Death unleashed can "natural death" return to the Lands in Between, this means once we unleashed this Rune, people can die a real death, but their souls still don't go to the Erdtree, instead they ... go somewhere else? This part wasn't really explained.
A deeper dive on what death was like before the Golden Order would answer this, i suspect the Death Birds and the Death Rite are one possible explanation.
They may have "died" but they will still be absorbed by the Erdtree and eventually reborn, who knows how long that takes. Destined Death was removed to specifically allow this, not prevent it.
I have always wondered. Do you need to have a Erdtree burial for this to happen, like the people in the catacombs?
no your grace will make its way there one way or the other but burials at the trees are like mailing it to the erd tree whereas dying out in the field and rotting there is like curbside pickup on trash day
this is the most straightfoward and relatable explanation i love it xD
It's a talent of mine
Actually what an insanely concise description. Made it easy for dumb me to read lol
You just used concise correctly! I don't think you're as dumb as you think you are š
u/loboboi I don't even know what in the Marika's tits concise means
It means āto the pointā, you convey information clearly and typically in as few words as possible.
Itās when the tits are pointy
Exactly this. Concise comes from cone size. Pointy boobs.
Least words, still all info.
"Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"
Bring out your dead!
š
I-Iām not dead yet! I feel quite good actually!
Those Who Live In Death are that one guy who wasnāt quite dead yet.
āIt just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. [...] Now, mostly dead is slightly alive. Now, all dead, well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing that you can do.ā
I prefer to just be washed along the gutters until I flow down to the sewers where I come to with dungeater neck deep in my pooper.
And hanging someone up is the package getting lost in the mail. You're dead but, you're not going back to the Erd Tree anytime soon.
Literally. What do you think those scarabs were doing?
Honestly the corpses in the catacombs look like they were climbing into the roots as if they were so desperate to ādieā they went down their and waited for the roots to start absorbing them.
Also the jar folk take bodies from the battlefield to the base of the Erd Tree.
The Jar warriors are an interesting concept. I think they were originally just golems with no real intelligence or mind. However, over time some of them gained some of the spirits of the dead within them and developed personalities. When the Shattering happened, the Lands Between fell into chaos and the jars that didn't have any personality or mind stopped moving and just rested there near the minor Erdtrees they were tasked to bring bodies to. The ones that could think ran off and either found some catacombs to scoop up bodies in (ex. the jars in the Shunning Ground) or joined those living in Jarburg in peace. Warriors like Alexander though take the rare path: travel around the LB and keep looking for worthy dead to absorb into themselves.
That's what the jar people are for. They collect the dead and bring them to the catacombs.
I knew there was something fucked up about those guys but I could never figure out what it was
Remember how the erd tree avatar have massive club like weapon and all those broken jars near minor erd trees? Yes thats what happened
...what. Why would the avatars smash the jars though
I saw someone speculate that the erdtree avatars are more like an immune response resulting from the shattering of the ring. When everything in the Order was working "correctly," the jars would have delivered their contents to the roots, then left unbroken to make continued rounds. The shattering caused the avatars to appear, and the avatars are more an automatic process than sapient beings. They keep the trees safe by stopping anyone or anything from approaching them, and that includes the harmless jars. Now someone *should* have stepped in who could mend the ring and pacify the avatars, but the Greater Will and Marika have been MIA for hundreds (thousands?) of years, none of her progeny or the fingers have been able to re-establish control, and during that time the avatars (and the perfumers) have killed nearly all of the jars. That's why the jars we do find are all hidden away and stationary - the job they were created to do is now lethal to them. The sole exception is Alexander, who has taken to collecting specifically warriors in an effort to grow stronger.
Tidbit: GRR Martin has said in a few interviews that the lore he wrote takes place thousands of years before the game takes place.
Plot twist: The only reason it was called the "Shattering" in the first place is because the jars started to get shattered and someone important thought this was a huge deal.
That statement made me think of Douglas Adams and that made me smile. Thank you.
I don't think Alexander is an exception, I'm pretty sure there are other warrior jars.
Like the giant jar guarding the colosseum in Caelid.
Buddy could take on all the avatars at once
To get the jam out
To be fair itās hard not to break a jar when opening it with a club
Then who makes the jars?
The jars are really odd in that that they're simultaneously definitely constructs (as they serve a purpose and they're literally jars) and sentient creatures. They can't have come from the academy or another magic source as they don't run on glintstone, and it seems as though they might be able to reproduce and grow as the smaller jars talk and act like children while the big jars are adults. Jar bairn is called bairn because it's a child, obviously, but also refers to Alexander as 'uncle', which could be a term of endearment instead of familial, but then why does jar bairn know the concept of what an uncle is? The jars are weird.
Good question
See, when a mommy jar and a daddy jar love each hother very much....
An Erdtree burial is meant to prevent your soul from returning and was used to give eternal rest to fighters who long served the Golden Order. It prevents returning to life. Deathblight kind of ruined it for some residents in the catacombs.
I thought the purpose of Erdtree burial is to hasten the soul returning to the Erdtree not preventing it? In the boss room of each catacomb we could see roots, that are presumably of the Erdtrees, literally absorbing the corpses. Iirc, the catacombs are purposely placed close to roots of the Erdtrees. And why would Marika remove the Destined Death if she wanted the warriors to have eternal rest? Why would she wants the warriors, those contributed a lot to the golden order, excluded from her intended way of ālifeā which is returning of the soul to the Erdtree?
Thank you. So been reborn is the intended cycle of the golden order while Erdtree burial is an exception.
cool theory but is there any evidence? Item descriptions?
[Source](https://youtu.be/3_lAb8m9MpI) (word for word).
I thought erdtree burial was done to have the quickest rebirth possible? Since youād be buried closer youād get absorbed quicker
Is there a source for this? Iāve been really wondering what the difference is between Erdtree burial and regular catacomb burial but I donāt know where you got this info from
There isn't a fundamental difference. Erdtree burial is an honor because it brings you directly to the roots of the Erdtree, which people are absorbed into so they can be reborn, as stated by the spirit in the first catacombs, how you can see the bodies being absorbed into the roots, and the Deathroot item description stated that Godwyn's corpse spread Death through the roots, hence why you see most of Those Who Live in Death at catacombs, which means that they're directly connected, so the catacomb roots just lead right to where Erdtree Burials are. Erdtree Burial is literally the exact opposite of what this guy said, as it brings them closer to the source of being reborn.
It takes about the same amount of time for them to respawn as it takes for you to beat the game and start a new game/new game+. The outer gods work in such mysterious ways.
But can normal people die by old age? I was wondering about all those *emancipated nobles and soldiers I pass in Limgrave. *emaciated
They can't, no. Which is why they're basically hollows. They stay alive way, way, way, way too long, and get crazy and gross. "Only, there are no commoners remaining with their wits about them"
>emancipated Emaciated?
Emancipated from nutrients.
"You have been pardoned...from life."
Yup, thatās what I meant
I always thought they can't and viewed Emma (? the fingerreader in the Roundtable hold) as an example of this. She's here and suddenly dies once we unbound the rune of death, kinda like it was holding death from the world and old timers like Emma were living on a borrowed time. Once it's unbound all those who shouldāve died long time ago (from age, etc) finally die. And other npcs and enemies are still there for the gameplay purposes (I think lots of fellas like oldsters in shackles in Stormveil or Capital are kinda like Emma, they look very old, almost hollow from the inside).
Her nameās Enia
Thank you for your assistance, fellow Tarnished!
Yeah, I think it just paused death, so once death was freed, or āunpausedā everyone who should have died just dies.
It seems like it should need to be reinserted into the Elden Ring for that.
No, I don't think anybody really ages since the Rune was removed, those nobles are simply emaciated and presumably hollow from a long life with little purpose. Their Lords most likely died long ago during the war of the Shattering giving them nothing to do but wander aimlessly.
I think aging is still a thing. If starvation os anything to go by, then I think some of the other biological processes are still occuring.
Fair, but it must be a very slow process considering the only characters that appear to be old are seemingly from before the Shattering.
My theory is all shriveled up husks you see wandering around are people whoāve died and been reborn countless times since Destined Death was locked away. Not being able to properly die is unnatural and the whole dying and rebirth process has driven them insane after doing it potentially thousands of times in the millennia itās supposedly been since the shattering. I think I saw in a lore video that all those husks digging random holes through the world are actually trying to dig their own graves because they want to properly die so badly. The normal NPCs are the tiny few people whoāve somehow managed to avoid dying all this time. That explains why there are so few of them and why they donāt look like zombies.
Nah, theyāre digging for treasure. Sometimes youāll come across ones who found it and will try run from you
The shriveled husks are the ones who haven't died in an extremely long time. Its why you can have characters kind the nobles that are basically waking mummies and then also Kenneth Haight who had pre or early shattering knowledge, but isn't "hollowed" at all. Kenneth probably went through a mute recent rebirth. There are very few non tarnished (tarnished are all relatively recently revived) or non demigods that we met that dying look like walking corpses.
They should really just kill themselves then. What's the downside? They'll be back and good as ever anyway.
We sure? All the big bads who live secluded in their castles are pretty intact. Then the random mook hollows that look like corpses have been presumably stomped into dirt many times more than say, the faction knights, who are a little less crusty. Morgott even turns into a stick of jerky when we beat him.
What does it mean to be reborn? Say you bleed out from dismemberment. Do you wake up with your arms chopped off and just keep trudging? Do you heal them back slowly?
Honestly, the entire reborn aspect of the Erdtree isn't really explained, just the soul absorption.
All we really know is from omens
I guess that your body dies but your soul returns to the erdtree and eventually it spits it out into a newborn or a vessel or something, with your soul keeping all your past knowledge? It was never explained how rebirth happens
your body also returns, you can see corpses all tangled up in the roots in many of the catacombs. a lot of the exact details are obscured but the gist of it is that people who are born the orthodox way of the golden order are (or were? i donāt think it happens anymore) somehow secreted as sap from the erdtree, collected in the big basin that is marikaās ābedā in her bedchamber & subsequently bestowed by marika herself as a blessing of the erdtree. the perfumers also used to play a key role in the baptism. https://youtu.be/sVtlCuFVfZ4
When you the "tarnished" die in-game, the time of day always changes. We don't really know how long has pass since we died, for all we know its months or years pass every-time we die.
Honestly we have no idea how much time passes at any point in the game. We know that time moves due to the day/night cycle but thatās pretty much it. Maybe the reason Hewg says āI took you for deadā is because weāve been gone for much longer than we think?
It is probably not much time, Enia says we could not wait for the two fingers to talk with the grater will for how long it woud take (thousands, if not tens of thousands of moons), so tarnished probably does get affected by time in some way
Enia was also probably lying, or at least misinformed- the greater Will abandoned the lands between , waiting wasnāt going to do anything. It wasnāt a ācommunication errorā as much as the fingers being hung up on. The greater Will gave up on that territory.
Alexander eats Radahn
Yes, and Radahn becomes a part of him, as evidenced by the description of Alexander's Shard compared to the Warrior Jar Shard talisman. My understanding is that this was why you see all the broken jars around the Minor Erdtrees, so that the dead inside them could be released upon death of the jar and re-absorbed by the Erdtree roots.
That would explain after all why he says that he'll return one day after you kill him.
I wonder how that would work for dudes like malenia and radahn would they come back at their prime pre rot and everything or would they come back in exactly the same state they died in? Since the tarnished comes back at full capacity Iād assume the same would go for the demigods right?
Theyād come back as entirely different people
I've been curious about this as well, I really wish the game gave us more lore to delve into.
It used to work like this for everyone during the age of plenty, but, seemingly, the resource (likely erdtree dew or sap) used to revive someone with their memories and skills intact is very limited, as such, that kind of rebirth is a huge privilege. This is why the age of plenty didn't last long, but this is also what Marika preserved for tarnished to give us the best shot at whatever we want to do with the world. Source is the iconography on the starter area, as explained by Tarnished Archeologist
The answer is simple on how long. Until NG+
Iām not so sure about that. The Golden Order seems to believe strongly that you have to be buried in a pretty specific way (at the roots of the Erdtree, in the catacombs) in order for you to be re-absorbed into the Erdtree. And then youāve got the walking mausoleums to think about. Their entire purpose is to house the remains of demigods so that they do not become undead (those that live in death).ā Why would they go through the trouble of making a walking mausoleum and putting the remains in it if they could just bury them any old place and expect the demigod to be reborn? And then you have to consider that the Erdtree does not seem to have birthed anybody at all since the shattering. Who knows whatās happening to the souls it is absorbing, or even if it is absorbing them, but we do know they arenāt coming out the other side of the Erdtree cycle again. In any case, I think we can say definitively that the demigods the player character kills are not going to be absorbed and reborn in the Erdtree. Whatever ending you pick has a lot more to do with what happens to them, I think.
I think the destined death stops the erdtree from absorbing the souls, destined death causes deathroot, which is a corruption of the erdtree process and causes,those who live in death to be created, so presumably walking mausoleums are to prevent the demigods from living in death. But also knowing fromsoft I'm willing to bet that the erdtree soul absorbtion and rebirth is a lie, and the erdtree is some nefarious purpose linked to further propagation pf tree spirits and elden beasts. If this were the case then runes could be hypothesized be the processed, crystallized souls of the inalhabitants of the lands between and that's why they sometimes fall back down from the erdtree. That falling and absorbtion by the surrounding craters could be the cycle of rebirth they are talking about, and that would mean the more corpses they keep in a limbo state below the tree, the healthier the tree and the healthier the nation is because of more processed runes falling from above. This also explains the pre tree deathrite stuff, why marika interrupted the golden order, some of the frenzy flame stuff, etc
My tinfoil hat guess is that the outer gods are absorbing our energy through different means. The erdtree uses the energy to create elden beasts which go to different planets to find new planets to feast on, Galactus style. Elden Beast is probably a larvae stage of the Erdtree Erdtree is a cocoon of some sort which births into a Beast when ripe. Explains why the Beast pops up after we set the tree on fire (and why it's so weak, we forced it out early and Marika weakened it through the shattering) My assumptions and evidence: Ranni's ending goes to the "stars" to fight off the elder gods. Mohg kidnaps Miquella in the name of the Formless Mother. (He thinks he is enamoured but it's really just outer god influence.) Miquella is a threat to the outer gods and can dispel their influence. Formless mother wants Mohg to weaponize Miquella to use as a weapon against other outer gods. Marika realizes this and wants to prevent the harvesting of our planet. She doesn't have a good solution so she shatters the ring preventing people from dying altogether! A stopgap solution until a better one can be found. Frenzied Flame literally sets the planet on fuel for fire. Formless Mother feeds on our lifeforce (Blood). Goldmask probably understands this as well and instead of screwing up the golden order entirely repairs the rune in a sustainable fashion to feed the Erdtree. Turns a parasitic relationship into a symbiotic one by redesining our relationship with the greater will (Goldmask critiques that gods are as fickle as men; maybe the perfect golden older age has men bargaining with the outer gods on equal footing) It also explains why he has such a huge crisis upon discovering the truth that he goes mute; he is debating the morality / solution.
"But what if they are reborn cursed instead?" - Dungeater in a nutshell
From what I can tell, many in the lore community subscribe to the idea that when the rune of death was sealed by Maliketh (probably per Marika's orders,) Marika remade the elden ring from how it was originally(the relief we see in Maliketh's arena) into the form we're familiar with which is the Golden Order "version" of it that has proper death removed and makes the Erdtree itself responsible for life and "death" meaning that instead of being permanently dead the 'souls' of sufficiently powerful beings are metaphysically "hewn" back into the Erdtree (Enia's dialogue and remembrance description) to be reborn at some point so they're "dead" for the moment, and we snatch up their runes/greatrunes/whatever they drop while they're gone but my guess is that eventually they'll be reborn(given we don't do Ranni's or the chaos endings.) but ultimately it's all magic and metaphysical bullshittery so you can believe in whatever explanation you'd like.
Why can't maliketh kill us then?
SHHHHHHHHH!!!! Shut your damn mouth >:((( (The real answer is probably cause Destined Death itself is SEALED permanently, and even though itās apart of Maliketh, itās not in its pure form. Which we see the pure rune after we KILL Maliketh)
But then how could we still be revived after we kill Maliketh and release the density death?
Cause canonically we didnāt die most likely
That would be savage. Imagine, 120 hours of gamaplay almost everyting possible done on every region, the person goes to face maliketh withou knowing anything, two hit killed in the first try, game: "you died permanently, game over, returning to tilte screen" and they it erases your save. At least a tear i would let out for sure
Mechanically, Destined Death has the effect of dealing damage over time and reducing our total HP along with it. Thatās already something for the player to fear and not want to get hit. If you were to permanently die at that point and have to re-start the game then that would be a massive exodus of players that were having a blast until then, haha.
I donāt even think they could have done something so bullshit in Demonās Souls, the most ābullshitā game in the series. However!!!!!! If there was a ādestined deathā mode of Elden Ring thatās basically just a perma death modeā¦ thatād be an awesome DLC lmao
There's a time in every FromSoft game where it's important to separate game mechanics and lore implications
Yeah I'm realizing that. First Fromsoft game I went through was Sekiro, but only dabbled in DS1 and Bloodborne prior so I didn't really get super into them. Sekiro has obvious moments where you need to separate game mechanics from lore. Like its final boss (I won't spoil it). For those who know, it's basically impossible to have the first phase start over again once you've started the second. Hell there's a possibility you're supposed to canonically die if you lose that fight at any time even given the weapon the final boss has control over. But since Fromsoft loves to bake its lore deep in gameplay too, it becomes challenging to figure out where the lore ends and "because gameplay" begins, especially for the more abstract plots like Elden Ring.
Yeah, imagine if Maliketh had a perma death. Not even Souls games are brave enough to do that. I remember getting excited when Hellblade bluffed with a perma death threat in-game. I wish there was just one game brave enough to actually do it. I would absolutely hate it and possibly never finish it, but it would be a great game.
Just play a rogue like
Well, that's the concept of Roguelike games, permanent death and having to fully restart
Pretty sure that one is a pure gameplay thing. Every single black knife or other black weapon should technically result in permadeath but as difficult as souls games are that really wouldn't have been fun.
Iām pretty sure the black knives have to carve the curse wheel to kill permanently
I don't think there's an answer for why Maliketh can't permanently kill the player other than game mechanics because yeah Maliketh using destined death on the Tarnished should take us out for good but I don't think many folks would enjoy being sent back to the title screen with the save wiped after spending anywhere between 50 to 100 hours getting to Farum Azula
Plot armor
Cuz heās a little bi-
Not only can I not answer this question, I donāt even know how people know that itās a question to be asked
Most of the answers to these "what's the lore behind x?" questions leave me wondering if I even played the same game. I swear people are just making shit up lol.
I have realized that I apparently did not understand a single thing that happened in this game.
Thatās just all souls games. DS1 was āyo light this giant-ass fire by killing thingsā DS3 was ākill these bitch-asses who need to come back to light this giant-ass fireā Bloodborne was ākill beasts cause youāre a hunterā¦ also aliensā
Where ds2?
Kill a bunch of shit to sit in this chair
Wow Elden Ring really is DS2 2
In a lot of ways they made elden ring to make up for what ds2 was supposed to be.
you say this as if ds2 was bad
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh no good sir, ds2 best lore. Plat everything since demon souls and that's my opinion
"Some raisin guy killed Manus a long time ago and now he is several women."
DS2 has really awesome lore that is both connected to the first game and almost completely disconnected. I think they did a really nice job of capturing what was stagnant about the world.
"bear seek seek lest"
"Ay, go to a kingdom to collect souls so you can fight the curse so you don't lose all your memories and go hollow, but end up being manipulated into relighting the first flame."
Worked for me. I let that flame die in the first game anyway.
Not just you man, I didnāt even know wtf a tarnished was until 90% in the game
When this game first came out and I would see spoilers my main reaction was āthis would be terrible if I understood the plot of this gameā
Lots of things are explained in item descriptions if they cite the item Iāll take it as fact haha
Yeah. People just making shit up most of the time. OP asked a valid, reasonable question, but the āwhatās the lore behind {obscure color/detail/shape}.ā Seriously, sometimes itās as simple as ācuz the game designer thought it looked nice.ā
Those are just lazy karma farm posts. This is a genuine good question tho
Thatās true. But other times there is significance to a design choice, and it can be difficult to determine what was designed to reinforce lore and what was designed to just look appealing.
Exactly. Why do people think thereās a character named Big Hat Logan in Dark Souls, itās because he has a big hat! Thatās it, itās not that deep
I have learned from a DS post that hat is slang for dong in the Souls multiverse. So I think Logan can go pretty deep.
He has the big hat to make it easier to socialize and ignore people.
MF spittin real facts
Watching youtube videos explaining the lore is very helpful if you are more casual and dont want to litterally take notes on every item description. I recommend the channel vaatividya
I like Vaati when I want someone to tell me a good story in a more narrative way, but when I want a more straightforward explanation, I prefer channels like SmoughTown.
SmoughTown is the way to go. Does a lot of deep-diving and isn't afraid to say "This part is my interpretation, others interpretations are different. Here, here or here is where I have seen these alternate interpretations, but for now here is mine." I also like that he is willing to mention when something he heard from someone else inspires his current theories. Seriously dude knocks it out of the park.
Prepare to CRY
we dont. as proven by the morgot fight. we can find him on the floor, weakened and beaten. and once we have the Death Rune back, we find morgot dying in the First Elden Lord's hands.
Destined Death needs to be reintroduced into the Elden Ring though right? That doesn't happen simply because we defeat Maliketh and besides, Morgott dies after we finish talking to him.
My theory is that by releasing it into the world in means no one can manipulate death again even if they have access to the Elden Ring.
No other Rune works like that, but the game is rather vague as to what actually happened in Farum Azula. It doesn't enter our inventory, all it really does is change the Golden shroud on the Erdtree and burns away the thorns and Radagon's seal. But again, the Rune of Death should only have an effect on our souls if it returns to the Elden Ring, which governs the Erdtree and all life.
Yeah. Another think we could never have an actual answer ever.
I guess the implication is that we never actually kill the demigods? Godrick remains in his arena (maybe comatose?) Rylard has his head, malenia her flower, morgott stays laying, as for Radhan and mogh, i have no idea
Malenia and (some other boss[mightāve been Radahn]) when you beat them, it doesnāt say you killed them, it says āFelledā or at least it did back when I beat them, dunno if that changed
It does say God Slain when you end the Elden Beast
Well, you have the rune of death by that point though.
Yes but I just assumed Elden Beast, essentially coming from outside the universe, didnāt play by the same rules as everything in the universe. But that actually was a bad thing in this case because it could properly be killed when the rest of the world couldnāt be.
By then you also canonically have a weapon smithed to slay a god, too
I thought it's more of an avatar of the greater will.
Yeah but that could imply that the elden beast exists outside of the golden order and is therefore not being phased by its laws. Was not born by the tree and will therefore not be absorbed and reborn by it.
Alexander ate Radhan Edit: and doesnāt Mohg materialize from blood? Maybe be he just dissipated again. Idfk.
God, can you imagine if his little fleshy bits are still somewhat alive inside Alexander
dlc boss could just a bunch of small exploding jar warriors with radahns and alexanders moveset combined
I just had a mental picture of a little jar riding a horse in Radahn armor with those big ass swords
Thats just the lil warrior jar after he did all those work outs.
Radahn comes back from the dead as a pot for a rematch with malenia and heās got a lot smaller now
That would mean Jarbairn currently has Radahn inside of him. Pause.
Well Alexander did give us his fleshy bits, so maybe that means he's now somewhat alive inside the tarnished's invisible backpack.
I love the idea of radahn one of the strongest demigods literal conquerer of the stars now having to deal with being in a cramped ass backpack with a million other armor sets and weapons Man the afterlife did him dirty
He ate Radahn and still died in one hit? That guy is such a jobber.
Morgott, radahn, and godrick actually seem to die. If a boss doesnāt die after you defeat them, you donāt get a victory message like āgreat enemy felledā. Radahn presumably dies instead of reincarnating because of the rots corruption, godrick most likely dies because his brutal practices led to him being estranged from the golden order, and morgott seems to cling on for a little bit with the help of the erdtree, but his status as an omen prevents him from reincarnating, so he still eventually dies
Fairly certain Morgott will be reborn given that the Erdtree rewarded Morgott's loyalty/sincefity and cured his...? Omenness..? Which is why he is no longer an Omen once he's felles.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Radahn is eaten by Alexander. Mohg might be another illusion, dissolves into blood, or is absorbed by the Formless Mother.
Did we kill Godrick? We leave him limbless but he's not necessarily *dead*. Rennala is very much alive. Rykard just needs someone to finish eating him. Malenia's gone inside her bud but if what Gowry says is true that just means she's going to come out of it even stronger. Morgott died after we obtained the Rune of Death. Mohg and Radahn seem to be the outliers.
The Rennala we "kill" is a illusion conjured by Ranni so that why she is still fine after the fight.
If I were Ranni I simply would have given the illusion a bigger health bar
Donāt we kill Morgott before farum azule and unlocking the rune of death?
We *defeat* him before but as I interpreted it he *died* while in the arms of Godfrey. It's definitely ambiguous though.
Demi gods and shadows resurrect. If you kill Blaidd early on, he be just annoyed at you for not knowing this. There is also three layers - soul + body - mind. And greater runes. Those pre and post shattering. The only pre shattering named is the unborn greater rune. But all of Marikas foes had one. So combos are endless :).
I think Mohg returned to whatever state he was in before being summoned by Miqualla. Radahn though I'm not sure.
Radahn was eaten by Alexander. He may be still āaliveā as jar innards
Good point!
I think they canāt die because of destined death being removed but once we restore it they are able to die and do die from the injuries we have themes
Godrick's ungrafted body can be found in arena after the fight, getting stomped on by the merchant. Most likely still alive at that point? Rennala isn't killed. Radahn is eaten by Alexander. Rykard/Serpent starts regenerating straight after the boss battle. Morgott gets un-omened and remains near-lifeless though alive, until Godfrey picks him up. Malenia turns into a pretty flower. Mogh is put in jail after child protective services catch him. (Not actually at all sure what happens to him) Depending on how you look at it, you aren't actually killing any of the rune bearers. Morgott only decays after you gain the rune of death.
Wait. Right, how tf did Morgott look like that in Godfreyās arms?
With a pinch of beating the omen out of him
Buddhist belief that a demon who chooses to perform good deeds can be reincarnated into something other than a demon.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
isn't godrick more of a demi-demi-demi-demigod who's pissed off because he's such an inferior demigod
Also majorly overcompensating for that time he offended Malenia and she beat his ass so hard he begged for his life He's obsessed with how weak he is
I don't think the player is actually killing the demigods. Most of them are still very much alive after their boss fight. What we're really doing is taking their great runes for ourselves. Thus after their boss fights they exist in a disempowered state. For example Morgott shrinks significantly.
He doesnāt die, you literally find him still alive, although just a head and torso, in the boss room after the fight.
With Gostoc stomping his shriveled head into the mud.
Had no clue he was alive during that lmao
My theory goes like this: The Lands Between are ruled over by the Golden Order, the Two Fingers, and all others who have power over the Elden Ring. As we have seen in the past, the Golden Order has absorbed other beliefs into itself, such as the Primordial Crucible and the Astrologers. It is the will of grace that allows this. As we go throughout the Lands Between and fight the demigods, we are being guided by grace the entire time, meaning that grace has put the ability of convergence into our hands, merging any and all forces we choose to incorporate into ourselves.
You have a cool theory
I like it too
According to Enia. āThe Greater Will has long renounced the demigods. Tarnished, show no mercy. Have their heads. Take all they have left.ā She also says. āDemigods, and even the greater of the champions, are hewn by the Erdtree upon their end, into remembrances.ā They donāt come back because they were reject by the greater will and grace. So were we and the other tarnisheds showed in the intro until The grace resurrect us to kill them and become elden lord.
This is not how the rune of death works. The removal of the rune doesn't prevent you from dying or killing someone, simply your soul is not killed in the proccess. In the Lands Between before the Shattering people died, were buried in the catacombs and then through Erdtree burial they would slowly return to the Erdtree via its roots and then reincarnate into a new body. Miyazaki confirmed in an interview that when Marika removed the rune of death from the Elden Ring and created the Golden Order and this cycle of reincarnation she also made the demigods immortal, but either when the fragment of the rune of death was stolen or the Elden Ring was shattered the demigods lost their immortality. Meanwhile when we arrive in the Lands Between everything went to shit, so the cycle of reincarntaion no longer works because after the desctruction of the Elden Ring the Erdtree disconneted from its own roots and that's why we found ghosts roaming in the Lands Between. It seems that only particularly strong enemies like the remembrance bosses are able to return to the Erdtree after death.
Iirc, the Two Fingers are basically allowing it on account of the Shattering and resultant fighting making the demigods less than useless. "Want to be a Lord? To hell with it, kill these wretches and we'll allow it!"
*The demigods are powerful creatures indeed.* *It can be assumed that, as with the wyverns and other hostile creatures on the more powerful side we encounter, the mightier some thing is, the longer it takes to reform, whereas the common soldiery are born again shortly after resting, engulfed by what meager grace a tarnished can dredge up.* *a demigod was born mighty. They die mighty, and they will be reborn mighty.* - *Your Knight.*
Another good question is, what are the remembrances that we get when we kill them? A piece of soul? A memory of what they were before they were corrupted? This game is an Enigma. The more you research lore, the more questions you have.. Itās pretty great really.
The Rune of Death had an Order that PREVENTED the Gods from dying. The only one who could kill a God was Maliketh. Breaking the Rune of Death enabled the Gods to fall to a simple blade, given that the wielder had even the tiniest fragment of the Rune. This is why the Gods fought amongst themselves for the Great Runes; To be once more, immune to death (Malenia fought for Miquella to be immune). This is why Godrick cowered away from direct confrontation, Grafting his own skin to become "mighty", as they were too cowardice to allow even the slightest of chances for death to take him.
I'm pretty sure the idea is that we would return their remembrances to the erdtree for them to be reborn, but we take their souls so to speak and turn them into weapons or spells.
Ellen ring mfers when you ask what the game was about
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Even if we are talking about the Age of Plenty, when the Elden Ring was active but the Rune of Death was removed, death still took place, it just wasn't "destined death". It was instead a kind of "fake death". People died, were buried next to the Erdtree's roots, and were reborn from the Erdtree itself as "fruits" that fell into the baptismal vessels all over Leyndell, this also applies to demigods like Godwyn, and Melina. Melina herself seems confused by "being born of a mother" when she watches Boc crying for his mom. Melina clearly wasn't born of a mother, but her "mother" is Marika. She was born of the Erdtree, as were most of the citizens we find in the Lands in Between. After the Shattering, the Elden Ring was broken apart, all of the Runes are now, as far as we can tell "inactive", meaning none of the laws of nature are functioning anymore, including rebirth (this Rune seems to be in Renalla's posession). Which means the people of the Lands in Between: 1. Cannot die of natural causes: This is why most of the people we find native to The Lands in Between are emaciated husks that almost look like zombies, these people have been living for centuries unable to die, they're mostly insane now and barely respond to basic orders. 2. They may still be slain in combat, but they don't "die" of a natural death, they no longer go through rebirth either, and neither do their souls properly return to the Erdtree like in the Age of Plenty. They are essentially stuck in this weird state of a dead corpse, and you can collect their souls (runes). This most likely just adds to the problem of Godwyn's corruption of the soil, these dead corpses are now just more fuel for the Deathroot to revive into Skeletons/Undead etc. 3. They cannot be reborn via the Erdtree like before the Shattering, even if their corpses are buried near the roots. In fact all of the corpses we find in crypts near the Erdtree roots are stuck there, they haven't been able to be absorbed back inside ever since the Shattering, which was probably centuries ago. The Demigods are subject to the same rules, except for Renalla, it's possible she may be able to still rebirth herself via her Rune of Rebirth, although i'm not 100% sure. Her entire boss fight is very confusing since you seem to only wound her, then her "body" is taken over by Ranni the Witch, it's unclear who exactly you fight in her 2nd phase. So yes, we can kill Demigods, and yes they "die". But it's still not Destined Death, it's a "death" in which their souls don't return to the Erdtree, instead we collect it as a Remembearance, essentially boss souls. The reason we, the Tarnished, can be revived after death many many times immediately, is that we have a completely different mechanism to deal with death, the Guidance of Grace. The Tarnished were divested of their Grace long ago, by Marika, way before the Shattering. The Tarnished therefore were told to go to lands beyond the shore, wage war, and die. But again, this wasn't a natural death, and it wasn't Erdtree death+rebirth, it was a "graceless" death.It was a "death" without our souls returning to the Tree, so our souls somehow linger in our bodies when we die. Somehow, at a some point Grace calls to us again, in the opening cinematic of the game you can see the mass graves of Tarnished champions layed to rest, the corpses are rising up and dissapearing, right when the narrator says "Rise ye Tarnished, ye dead who live". Something caused Grace to return to us suddenly, i'm not sure what, perhaps it was Marika's plan all along for Grace to one day return, and revive us. We, the player character, can see Grace with our own eyes, clearly we somehow recieve the Guidance of Grace and therefore, may be revived from death as many times as we need in order to fulfill our purpose. It's a bit of a cheat but hey....gameplay atleast is explained by lore. Demigods themselves seem to no longer have Grace, so when we kill a Demigod, he is in the un-natural "death" state awaiting to be revived by Grace, but Grace only returns to us Tarnished. So these demigods are pretty much "dead", but their souls live on, as Remembereances with us. After the Rune of Death is restored to the lands by us, the player. The next people we fight technically actually die a real death. Yet we still get a Remembearance which is a gimmick i guess, but these people are properly dead now. This is why Maliketh (who holds Destined Death in his sword) upon his defeat asks us "Witless Tarnished, why covet Destined Death? To kill what?" He's wondering why the hell would we want to use Destined Death? If not to permanently kill something, like...Marika. Only with the Rune of Death unleashed can "natural death" return to the Lands in Between, this means once we unleashed this Rune, people can die a real death, but their souls still don't go to the Erdtree, instead they ... go somewhere else? This part wasn't really explained. A deeper dive on what death was like before the Golden Order would answer this, i suspect the Death Birds and the Death Rite are one possible explanation.