#and then Eye of Slythor

[spiderin-space]

We are going to beat you to death

[rainbowolfe]

Bishop Relics II

Overview | Heket | Kallamar | Shamura | Narinder

Leshy

Up first, everyone's favored worm! (feat. the Icegore) To start, I think it's interesting that he has an eye-based relic when there's a special category dedicated to that; The Eyes of the Lost. His Relic is even formatted the same. "Eye of Leshy" instead of just "Leshy's Eye".

In the files, this ritual circle is labelled as the Demon Rune. This rune is marked by two swords. This thick-style of sword makes reference to Neptune's Curse (and Pilgrim).

The bottom-most layer is two X's side-by-side. This is a symbol you'll find on the Old Faith Rune in the top left corner. It's enclosed by a diamond. The Sacrifices here are "bombs". Circles with 'fuses' attached to them.

This rune has a few different variants to it, but they all relate to demon summoning. It's likely each one summons specific demons. The sword (cross with two bars) would suggest this one summons Hathor.

This could be very literal for the receiver, as Leshy does have two crosses shoved in him. But two daggers means an exchange is happening (a boon in exchange for a detriment), so two swords likely means something similar.

Perhaps it's the opposite of the Tarot Card. In exchange for one heart, Leshy received power. According to the Fox, 2 followers is equal to half a heart (aka a pound of flesh). So four Followers sacrificed totals to one heart.

As for the Source of this power... This ring of eyes is likely a reference to the Red Crown specifically. In the same way the corrupted relics all likely reference the Purple Crown.

Although the Bearer of the Red Crown (until recent events transpired), Narinder's color is actually white. Which is relevant because Leshy's Cleansed rune makes the eyes black and white instead.

So far, the only other relic I've encountered that uses a ring of red eyes is Beak of the Fowler, which instead uses what's labelled as the Familiar Rune. Cleansed or not, the aura surrounding the eye is red.

What's a Familiar? The eye relics. lmao. Did a full circle. (It's possible that Leshy, the Icegore, the Slythor, and the Fervant themselves are the familiars, and not just their eyes)

Onto what the Relic actually does...

It does damage. That's it. Just raw damage. The Icegore eye and the Slythor eye can both be tied back to blast curses—Divine Blizzard and Divine Blight respectively—based on their descriptions and what they specifically do. They knock back enemies and apply their specific effect, but they don't do melee damage on top of that.

It seems that Leshy's eye can also be tied to a curse. Two, actually. Divine Blast (damages and knocks back enemies), "A curse against those unworthy of your presence." The other would only apply to his Cleansed Relic, Divine Guardian. "Under the shadow of wings thou lie protected."

At least partially, because this is the only other curse that uses the word "damage". That sounds small, I know, but it works for too many items to be nothing.

I also think they're trying to connect Leshy to one of the Corrupted Relics, because they share an ability. Fang of the Starved, "Hunger that drives and consumes."

This relic also has the effect of obliterating the visuals long after it's been activated. Almost as if there's something wrong with your vision.

Maybe its not that the Starved is Leshy, but its who he off-loaded his detriment onto (as the Unholy Alliance relics suggest is an option).

In summary? Red is the color of Darkwood during the day, and Leshy also shares this aura color with the Fervant. These two are either related to or had a close relationship with a red-aligned Death God. Or they were literally a little pet that God kept around.

There were 3 or 4 of those. Big era for wrath, I guess.

Leshy was flammable. Leshy had a sort of invincibility. The difference between Fervour and Cleansing Flames is the presence of white and black. Before being cursed, Leshy would produce the latter. Cleansing flames would only burn certain people, hence them being unworthy of his presence.

Pure Fervour seems akin to fire, that's what's in Kudaai's forge after all. So cursed, Leshy would just burn... Everyone. He wouldn't be able to go near anyone without harming them. The effect might even harm him too, considering his bald patch. His uncleansed Relic is also bald.

As for the Fang of the Starved, the only references to dark blue are... the Don't Starve Together collab (the aura around the Moon/Mercury) and the vision Lamb has for the third card Clauneck draws in the launch trailer (its again the aura around the round object in the sky :eyesemoji: ).

Pestilence is dark blue of course, but the eye shape isn't right. At this time I don't really know what the colors on their own are meant to mean/point towards.

[the-one-who-acts]

Operation-Undoing the damage- Part 2

TW: Medical stuff, details on injury, and gore, implied multiple deaths.

Previous

Next

Entry 2:

3 days later, our dear Leader has come back with more supplies, I have no doubt that these might be compatible, what only puts worry in my bones is just how stable these are, but I have just begun, Our leader has given me and my team a couple of notes as well as resources in case we end up with any sort of complication, all courtesy of Ratoo.

The second sample to be tested is The Eye of Slythor, this one already puts uncertainty in me since it’s poisonous, more specifically, its tears. To ensure the safety of our team, I made a quick potion that could act as an antidote, a mix of various flowers that grow out of a blessed Shamura skull, otherwise, we can always call upon our Lord.

 Leshy’s body doesn’t seem to be reactive to the poison, A member of my team that used to reside in the biome of the Darkwoods pointed out that Leshy’s summoned demons all had this attribute, one even spits poison, I think I shall explore later and gather a sample for a more powerful concoction.

The documents our Lord has gathered with any piece of information on Slythor, he used to roam around in Anura, but he did not rule over the land, instead, he would go there to seek potion ingredients and sell them, the only reason he became a being worth of inscriptions of a legend, was because he bared a crown, but it was not like the ones we have, Our Lord will look further, and speaking of look, Leshy has woken up for his eye exam.

Entry 3:

A pleasant evening to whoever is reading this, due to the circumstances that I shall get into in the next paragraph, I have taken over the role of lead healer, my name is Finayen, and my former boss has been imprisoned and his sentence is currently being decided, but in the meantime, Leshy will be in my capable hands, now, to address the situation.

My former superior documented the making of an antidote to make sure his team did not get poisoned, however, a side effect from it was that no one could swallow any food for days. Our leader was so confused by it, no sign of sickness was brought to his radar, however, Kallamar showed us what has happened, the flowers from the Shamura skull were indeed blessed, AS LONG AS THEY WERE ATTACHED TO THE SKULL, the moment they were taken from it, they became damned, unpure, deadly and not ideal for consumption, and we were left starving for days until our Leader managed to find a cure, sadly the operation will take longer to do, my team seems to be nowhere to be found, so I might now have to figure this out on my own, hopefully, the Eye of the fervent does its job once it arrives.

The eye of Slythor will be taken out, Leshy wished not to endanger the cult any further, we were pretty close but, I cannot deny his reasoning, it wouldn't be ethical of me as a healer to not put what my patients think into perspective, after all, it's their body that I will be operating on if they are feeling unsatisfied despite previous treatment, it is my duty to do better, I think Jullenryn lacked such a sense, he did not mention but rumors have been brought up that he was the reason his village came to ruin, and as the next in command, I shall do better.

[tobernaut]

Vampiric gauntlet or blunderbuss (though I'll settle for godly. Not picky about weapon type either.)

DIVINE GAURDIAN

Eye of Leshy, Eye of the Icegore, Eye of the Slythor, Eye of the Fervant, and Some amount of exorcists finger (I think I've gotten it 3x on my longest run). After all that is stacked, Shamura's skull.

Vosegus, Paean, and Hathor demons along with a deadly dish, stacked hearts, and possibly the golden fleece and we're good. I also stack damage bonuses from my disciples.

I've only achieved this build in its full glory once, but the results were truly godly.

My Favorite Cotl Build

I've recently discovered my favorite run build for Cult of the Lamb.

Bane sword

Strike of the crown

Blessed Clauneck's Hair (or whichever Clauneck's Hair tbh)

And kinda an optional, but Golden Fleece cause it's awesome. (Honestly, as long as it's not Fleece of the Fates, it's fine)

So yeah.

Anybody else have any favored builds?

[rainbowolfe]

Shamura's Warning

I'll put it shortly: The omen Shamura repeats is less a prediction of the future and more of an explanation (to their siblings) of something that's been in motion since before they acquired their crowns. The fate that can't be outrun lol.

Shamura is describing the (unfortunate) fate of four sets of godly beings. And it allllll comes back around to Purgatory.

When you layer the symbol for Purgatory over the magic circle found in the Bishop's boss rooms, they align like such. And if you add the Mystery Symbol into the mix the lines highlight which symbol belongs to which god.

Five points to a pentagram

When using relics like Shunrue's or Galvar's Charm, this circle of symbols appears. One of them is an upside-down star with the center erased—five points to a pentagram. These gods represent either five phases of the moon OR five phases of an eclipse. I lean towards eclipse because there's no gibbous phase represented.

I suspect these scarecrows are representing the previous rulers of (in order) Darkwood, Anchordeep, Anura, and Silk Cradle. Though they're the only gods left around these parts, there are many shown to not actually follow the Old Faith. I would think the creatures of these lands are fashioning their scarecrows in the image of who they believe to be the true/rightful leaders, much like how Lamb's followers build scarecrows in their image.

Five portents of doom

I cannot point to any particular gods for this one, but their positionings do line up with this sigil(Tail of Slythor, called FamiliarRune in the files). The symbol itself looks like a bullhead, so it could be referencing the statues found in Darkwood. Especially since that headless one is purple. There is a sixth statue with glowing intestine not shown here.

I don't believe the crowns come with a pre-assigned role. Meaning, the Red Crown isn't always the God of Death, the Purple Crown isn't always the God of War/Knowledge, and so on and so forth. That's just how things ended up based on who each sibling killed/usurped.

Alternatively, the original portents of doom are what the high-level, magical enemies are based off of.

Five siblings stood abreast

Here we have our siblings, represented by shields, all grouped together. I get that reasoning from the tarot cards: Shield of Faith, Ichor Lingered, and Mithridatism.

The shields themselves don't have symbols, but they're connected to the portent of doom they end up 'inheriting', and are also in alignment with a crown.

The symbol for Chaos is etched into Leshy's doorway. The symbol for Pestilence is the alchemical symbol for arsenic sulfide (but upsidedown), which was majorly used for crafting medicine. The symbol of Famine is the scales that accompany that horseman. The symbol for War is the nordic runes for Tyr and Gebo. Tyr is a god of war, and Gebo means gift--based on the Consecrated Oil tarot card, Shamura gave the gift of godhood. The X symbol is also a part of Shamura's cloak. The symbol for Death was chosen by process of elimination because I've not a clue what that's supposed to be.

Death and War could be swapped. A common interpretation of the Tyr-symbol is sacrifice (of the self) for the well-being of the whole (society).

Five gods

There may or may not be duplicates of each crown. To clarify; the Red Crown is two rounded spikes, yeah? That shape of crown may also come in green, blue, yellow, purple, or white. Because the crowns on this rug (also found in Smuggler's Sanctuary) are most definitely Red Crowns, but it could be depicting six crown users from different eras.

But this curse's iconography (Divine Blizzard) would imply the existence of a blue variant of the Red Crown. I'm including all the blast curses to show that, although the color of the eye changes from curse to curse, it doesn't use the crown icon.

Either way, I believe the 'five gods' in this situation are five Old Gods. I believe these beings to be the original owners (if not the creators of) the crowns. Maybe even the sources that power the crowns existence. So far we've been given the names Turua, Ithaqua, and the Revenant. There is also this skeleton in Spore Grotto, which is labeled as an Old God.

The graffiti on the rock hidden in ruins on the cult grounds and in pilgrim passage may be referring to Turua, but shrug.

One tomb

And the tomb? Well, that seems to be the Lands of the Old Faith. I guess something about this world just did not vibe with the higher-ups lmao. It's been physically separated from the rest of the land in it's own world; and it's been cosmically separated from the Great One's world. And seemingly, all others. At least, creatures of this world are not welcome in other worlds.

Probably for good reason, all things considered.

BONUS:

Although you defeat four Bishops and break four chains, there are actually five chains attached to his gateway. The largest one, all golden and ornate, is the last to break. There are also five symbols (and a slot for a sixth one which I find suspicious). Four portents of doom (now the four Bishops we know) and one point to the pentagram. The sun. The same sun (save for the X in the middle, presumably marking this god as gone) Lamb covers up with their flag when they take over Pilgrim's Passage.