#greater will

[maranigai]

(partial) humanization of the Greater Will and the Frenzied Flame because I can.

(this also vaguely follows my hc about them being two selves of one god, so they're kinda twins)

[starfreak]

Random Elden Ring Rant (Contains Spoilers, VERY LONG)

So, the Numen. We can choose it as a character preset, which tells us they come from another world, or another land. I say "or another land" because historically, America is referred to as the "New World," but it's not a separate planet. However, translations from the Japanese version of the game suggest that the world they come from is one of spirits, the dead, etc., so it could definitely be a Literal other world.

Marika is (rumored to be) a Numen, as are the Black Knife Assassins that participated in the Night of Black Knives.

If Marika is Numen, then it stands to reason so is Radagon, since they are the same person in the same body. This means their children together, Malenia and Miquella (and now presumably Messmer since he has red hair like Radagon, but Miyazaki said that he's the child of Marika, so unless there's another red-haired hottie running around the Lands Between, Radagon is the father), are also Numen. This also means that other children of Marika/Radagon are half-Numen.

It seems Numen are not a single ethnicity, but a whole race of people, with various different contradicting skin tones and hair colors. The template in the character creator has medium-dark skin and brown hair. Marika has pale skin and golden hair (possibly changed to be gold from the Greater Will's influence) and Radagon has the same skin with fiery red hair. We know from the Giant's Red Braid item description (below) that Radagon was either cursed by the Fire Giants or simply born with red hair. I mean...no item descriptions suggest he was born with it...but if I was born with hair I hated, I would blame it on a curse too. Though, to be fair, it IS the same color as the Fire Giants' hair.

Also the Black Knife Assassins have no physical form, so we can't discern their hair or skin colors.

So skin tone seems like a non-factor, but Hair is much harder to parse, due to half the Numen in the game having fiery hair and pronouns. The game says nothing about Marika's hair changing to gold, so it may have always been that color, leading me to believe that indeed, Numen are just...magic humans from a land far away...she's just blonde.

WELP.

That's all cool, but what is the culture of the Numen like? Well we can see that they have a very strong affinity for women and femininity. Not only is Marika, the most powerful Numen we know, a woman...all of the Black Knives are women. Additionally, if we choose to believe that Malenia and Miquella are Numen, this fact is further evidenced by Malenia's being a strong warrior woman (she is literally a Valkyrie) and Miquella's own complex gender identity. Miquella was (supposedly) born male, but presented as rather feminine/androgynous all his life. While Malenia is a masculine woman and reflects Radagon, Miquella is a feminine boy reflecting Marika. Not to mention that Miquella is ALMOST DEFINITELY Saint Trina, who is exclusively referred to as feminine.

In addition to the stong feminine aspects of Numen society apparent in the overabundance of strong fem-presenting characters, the description of Marika's Hammer suggests that women in Numen society (like Marika) have a role as destroyers and warriors, while men (Radagon) have a role of construction and repair.

"Queen Marika shattered the Elden Ring and Radagon attempted to repair it."

Again, this is just speculation, and the mythological actions of Radagon/Marika are likely motivated by a mutlitude of things (namely, the Greater Will constantly looming over them, the presence of the Elden Beast constantly lurking just under the surface), but I'm making do with what I have.

Also, back to genetics of the Numen again for a second, of all Radagon and Marika's children outside of the ones they had together (Messmer and the Twin Empyreans), most of them seem to inherit Radagon/Marika's hair.

Radagon and Rennala's kids, Radahn, Rykard, and Ranni, (presumably) have red hair. We never actually see Ranni's hair pre-doll form, so I'm assuming it's red lkke her brothers'.

Marika and Godfrey's kids, Godwyn, Mohg, and Morgott, all have either pale hair or no hair (Mohg has no hair visible on account of all the omen horns).

So it seems like the genes of Numen are incredibly dominant, even dominating the gene pool multiple generations after the first. Godwyn's kids, Godrick and Godefroy, have the same hair color as he does. Malenia's "daughters," although not genetically related to her, all seem to have gained her red hair through exposure to her Scarlet Aeonia. This may also be true of the Cleanrot Knights, but they could also have plucked the red hairs from Fire Giants or Leonine Misbegotten and used them as decor for their armor.

Even merely interacting with a Numen as powerful as Marika, or her direct children, can change one's appearance irreversably. Sure, this could all likely be from her status as a God, but who knows how powerful the average Numen could become if granted the strength? We become Elden Lord after all.

[val-of-the-north]

Some random Elden Ring DLC-related doodles

[oo-artsy-oo]

Trying to piece together some Elden Ring Lore…

Some definitions mixed with speculations:

Elden Ring - Basically the natural laws of the land. Can be edited by the empyrean who chosen to brandish it. The person who brandishes the Elden Ring is a God, chosen by the Greater Will.

Empyrean - A demi-god (or just a being) being chosen as fit to be a God (not a God yet, but are the only ones able to pursue godhood).

Elden Beast - A physical manifestation of the Elden Ring. Landed after Metyr.

Metyr - The messenger and Translator of the Greater Will. “The abandoned Daughter”. Also the mother of the 2 fingers (and the fingercreepers).

The Greater Will - The “Creator” also a “fled God” was most likely the progenitor of all life in this world. It does not dwell on the earth. And has seemingly stopped sending messages to Metyr and her children.

Outer Gods - Other (possibly) cosmic beings working in opposition to the Greater Will (Perhaps competition?) Beings such as: The Frenzied Flame, The Formless Mother, The God of Scarlet Rot, The Nameless god of the twin bird and a few more…Like the Greater Will, these gods require vassals in order to enact their wishes

The Frenzied Flame - The antithesis of The Greater Will, embodies the idea of Chaos and destruction of order, return everything back to primordial soup, possibly paving the way to something new, something unimaginably different.

Two Fingers - Metyr’s children, relay Metyr’s wishes to those who understand them (the Finger readers). Originally thought to be the words of the Greater Will, it is revealed that Metyr hasn’t heard her mother’s voice in eons, and so the instructions that the fingers echo don’t come from the Greater Will.

Three Fingers - The messenger of the Frenzied Flame, also known as the reader-less fingers. It seems they communicate differently to the two fingers. Is it a seperate being to Metyr? Or is it meant to mimic them, similar to how Hyetta and Shabriri mimic Irina and Yura? The Fingerprint shield description states that the reader-less fingers left messages in the form of finger prints…possibly braille?

Finger maidens - members of the Golden order who fulfill the wishes of the Greater will by guiding the tarnished toward becoming Elden Lord. (most tarnished can’t see grace anymore so they actually need the guidance, unlike the player tarnished who could see it from the beginning).

Extra: Vyke and Bernhal’s maidens apparently needed to burn, but as shown with Bernhal’s maiden, her sacrifice was for naught, she couldn’t be kindling for the flames, this was a task that only Melina could enact. Vyke on the other hand, wanting to find another way, turned to the Frenzied Flame, the only other sure fire way to burn the Erdtree…Seems Marika wishes to be freed from the eternal cage of godhood, regardless of how it’s done, weather it’s by Ranni or The Frenzied Flame.

Extra: Hyetta wanted to become a finger maiden, but seemed to attract the attention of people who curse their existence, they would unsolicitedly offer her their eyes which give her a weak glimpse at a “distant flame”. Like Shabriri, I believe the frenzied flame used Irina’s corpse as a puppet in order to guide the tarnished, except they would find that this finger maiden leads not to becoming the Elden Lord, but instead to becoming the Lord of Frenzied flame.

Grace - The guidance of grace and the guidance of the fingers are different things. The Tarnished are those loyal to Godfrey, who in turn was Marika’s loyal Elden lord, the one who enacts her visions. It would make sense that Marika summons the Tarnished back to the lands between to follow HER wishes, not the Greater Will’s. Hence Grace leads our Tarnished to the Lands of the Giants after discovering that the Erdtree has barred its entrance, something the Fingers Freeze up about, as they have no clue what to do now, this wasn’t in their plan…

This links back to Metyr, she doesn’t know what the Greater Will wants anymore and has only been assuming. Everything Enia’s fingers had been saying were just assumptions made by Metyr.

Ultimately, the Tarnished (in my belief) were always Marika’s plan B, her means of escape, of rest, in case her vision of her world backfired. Marika, having gone through so much, almost being a husk by the end, but still being strung up and used as a vessel, wished for her reign to finally end, one last ‘fuck you’ to the Greater Will, the very thing that seduced her with notions of vengeance for her loved ones, only to betray her by turning her into its eternal puppet.

Sorry for the babble, this was some clarification for myself, but hopefully it helps or inspires others too. Elden Ring Lore is something I could ruminate on forever XD.

[dryococelas01]

Sorry for the shit picture but wait

Is the greater will a black hole?

Circular lightless abyss, further away celestial body...

It's strange it's described as lightless when so many things associated with it (I.e elden beast) are gold.

This is such an interesting Lore tidbit

[geminialchemist]

This is a theory I crafted up about the Golden Order, the Crucible, and the Frenzied Flame shortly after I beat the dlc the first time. I wrote it down, and forgot about it until just now, so it’ll be a little bit less well researched, seeing as it’s from waaay before the wiki had info to pull from, and so is probably shaky by our understanding of the dlc today, but I still wanted to share.

Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree below!

The Golden Order, the Crucible, and the Frenzied Flame are all the same thing.

So, this is one of the wilder theories, though hopefully not Pepe Silvia levels of conspiracy. If Marika can be Radagon, and if Miquella could be St. Trina, why can’t the Greater Will be the Frenzied Flame?

Throughout Elden Ring, we find out that that the Golden order assimilated a lot of things into it, even things that seem contradictory to the teachings of the Erdtree, like Carian sorcery. One of its primary teachings is that all things can be conjoined.

(Mirial dialogue upon getting a book o’ miracles)

“Oh, what have we here? Very well, let us both learn together. Heresy is not native to the world; it is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined."

Now, this alone doesn’t mean much, the Golden Order is just branching out and adopting other cultures teachings like a lot of religions do to assimilate more followers, rather than fusing everything by melting it down with flame.

One more thing to keep in mind for later before we leave the Golden Order side of things, the DLC revealed something interesting about the Two Fingers, and the Golden Order. That even before the time Marika became a god, the Fingers had stopped receiving word from the Greater Will to guide them. The entire order is built on a lie, and no one in the Lands Between have communed with the Greater Will in a very, very long time.

Meanwhile, the DLC has the Hornsent, people who worshipped the Crucible, which came before Marika’s Golden Order. Anyone who has entered the various gaols knows the horrors they inflicted. The Hornsent believed that blending life together was a holy act, and massacred Marika’s people to put them into jars as saints, because of how easily their flesh melded with others. Now we’re getting closer to the premise of this theory. But take a look a this:

(Aspect of the Crucible: Breath description)

This is a manifestation of the Erdtree's primal vital energies - an aspect of the primordial crucible, where all life was once blended together.

The Erdtree seems to have some ties to the Crucible’s energies, which ties the two together on some level. Conjoining all things, and blending life together. And do you know what a crucible is? A crucible is a container used in smithing that you melt things in to blend them into one, heated over an open flame.

Hyetta has some interesting dialogue as well at the end of her questline:

(Hyetta dialogue)

"All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls.

But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction... every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake.

And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again."

Note that she says the Greater Will made a mistake, in a way that implies that it’s something the Greater Will is fixing. It broke one into all, now it has to be made one again through the yellow chaos flames. The same Greater Will that the Two Fingers can no longer contact. Except for the Three Fingers, who seem to have found a different god to listen to. Or perhaps they found the same one, and are just doing what they were made to do, follow the Greater Will’s orders, and help burn down the world.

The Greater Will is order, and the Frenzy is Chaos, and I think they came from the same place. Two sides of the same coin, two halves of a whole being, and one of them isn’t listening or reaching out anymore. Much like Miquella stuffed St. Trina in a cave at the deepest part of the world, The Frenzied Flame has cut off the Greater Will to fix their mistake and melt it all down, back into one. It just needs a way to worm its ideology into the minds of men. Perhaps a religion is introduced that familiarized people with the concept of conjoining things, until it gets more and more extreme, and the frenzy appears, ripe in their minds. In the Shadow Lands, a place where physically conjoining flesh is the norm, the Frenzied Flame seems to have considerably more influence in comparison to the Lands Between, infecting an entire region of the map of the DLC, and even having a failed Lord of Frenzied Flame as a boss.

I swear I’m not a conspiracy nut, but if I come off as mad, well… MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD! AHAHAHAHA!

[chiefexecutiveofnir]

I have recently realized that my The-Greater-Will-isn’t-a-god-or-even-sentient theory kind of puts a wrench in one of my other favourite theories, that being the theory that the Greater Will split Marika in half because she started having doubts about the Golden Order.

But then I remembered Miquella and St. Trina. Miquella divested himself of St. Trina because he couldn’t complete his goals with certain emotions and feelings. So he put all those feelings into St. Trina and threw her into a really deep pit.

Now, imagine you are Marika, and you are having doubts about your religion, but you have spent a big portion of your life building this religion and committing atrocities with/for it. It would be hard to break out of it after having committed so hard. Unless you sever the part of yourself that was so certain your religion was right and just. But to your knowledge no one has ever done this before, and you underestimate just how bad splitting your psyche is for you. Your other half fervently wants to keep your religion together, it has had its doubts cut away, and you can’t quite control it.

This is what Marika did, and I think this is what Miquella improved upon. Miquella fully divested himself, so much so as to make a second body and throw that body so far away that it could never stop him. Marika shared the same body as Radagon, she could not lock him up, so she tried to kill him.

Unfortunately for Marika, nothing goes right for her and instead her beloved son Godwyn is killed and she’s still stuck with her religious fanatic alter self.

[driften-sea-snake]

The Greater Will Doesn't Exist

There is no greater will in the universe. Existence precedes essence. Limited by our mortal, subjective perspectives, it is natural to yearn for some sort of larger design or unity. The vast, lonely distances of individual consciousness make the universe seem like a collection of tiny islands in the vast expanse of an ocean, doomed to one day sink. It seems impossible to reach across and truly understand another's experience of reality.

Elden Ring's themes concern the solitude of consciousness and the struggle to connect to a larger unity of all existence. Marika and Radagon were the same individual, but once split were forever changed by their different experiences and could not simply merge again. This is a microcosm of many stories in Elden Ring. All life was once unified in the Crucible, free of the burden of subjectivity and disparity. Whether yearning for home, rebirth, understanding or a larger purpose, so many characters in one way or another wish to return to the Crucible. Regression is the pull of all meaning, after all. As the Frenzied Flame incantations make clear, suffering is inherent to subjective experience. This is represented by these incantations expressing pain-derived spells through the eyes, a symbol of individual perception. Hyetta seeks to literally use the eyes of multiple people to surpass her own limited perspective and find a more universal truth. In the end, the Frenzied Flame seeks to return the universe to the shared harmony of unified existence. However, much like Marika and Radagon, subjectivity cannot be undone. There is no going back to the Crucible. All the characters and factions of the Lands Between can do is hope to simulate it.

The Greater Will is the ultimate manifestation of this, a childish wish by an orphan to not be alone, adrift in the cold. The Elden Beast is a lost child above all else. Its isolation is underlined by the inability of most beings to even comprehend its "language." It must be very lonely to only be heard and understood by a handful of other individuals. However, there were other beings it was supposed to share existence with. If you look at the body of the Elden Beast, it is immediately clear that it resembles an Erdtree. It has roots, a trunk, and branch-like wings. That's because it is an Erdtree, or at least was supposed to be. At the very top of the creature is a bright orb-an eye. This single eye indicates a subjective experience of the universe. The Elden Beast is an Erdtree seed that, in the aftermath of the end of the Crucible, developed consciousness. Isolated from it's brethren, by chance or by choice it traveled to a world that held an Erdtree. This one was much closer to the days of the Crucible. Indeed, the other Erdtrees in the cosmic background of the final boss arena suggest that they still share a kind of shared existence or connection. Unable to give up its individuality the Elden Beast was left with the powers of an Erdtree and an eye with which to perceive the unity it could not join.

The Golden Order is the Elden Beast's attempt to use its powers as a sentient Erdtree to try to recreate the shared unity of the Crucible. If consciousness could not be reversed, then perhaps there was a way to get around it. If every single being in the universe were to agree on the same story of life and death, united and granted purpose by a larger design, would that not be a kind of unified reality? Grace literally changes the eyes of all individuals granted it. Most inhabitants of the Lands Between have golden eyes with which to view the world. Though all those eyes connect back to subjective experiences of reality, they see things in the same way that the Elden Beast's golden eye does. With Marika as its chosen vessel and god, the people of the Lands Between share the same cosmology and faith. At death, bodies are returned to the Erdtree so that they can forever be joined in unity, now having lost their individuality.

At the center of this shared narrative is the Greater Will. It's clear that people in the Lands Between believe it is a god that literally exists. However, I don't think this definitively has to be the case. Even if the Greater Will is an Outer God, these seem to represent primordial emotions and desires more than a being hanging out somewhere in space. In any case, I believe the Greater Will doesn't actually exist. The Elden Beast is described as a "vassal" of the Greater Will. It is an adherent of the idea that inherent order and purpose exist in reality. The concept of the Greater Will suggests that the universe follows some sort of design. It is only in that case that essence can precede existence. This kind of universal truth would exist beyond tiny islands of individual consciousness. For the Elden Beast this idea offers the unity of life that the Crucible once held.

The Elden Beast doesn't literally believe that the Greater Will exists out there. However, it does believe that its own efforts have in a sense created a greater, conscious force in the universe. There is a large degree of self-awareness to the Golden Order. It is a kind of narrative construction that seeks to avoid the organic, messy material changes and human agency that actually form history. It has to constantly adapt its story, expelling and welcoming elements to compensate for the changes of the world. Even references to and signs of the Crucible were eventually purged. The Golden Order is supposed to be a bastion of unending stability; reminders of the past and omens of the future have no place in an eternal present. Change is what the Elden Beast seeks to control. It was change that ended the Crucible, that led to the development of individuality and consciousness. However, life is change, and nothing lasts forever.

By the time Elden Ring starts, the end result of the Elden Beast's attempt to recreate the Crucible is eternal stagnation. It seems content to let the current state of affairs continue forever, or perhaps it is as lost and afraid as when it first gained awareness. The Golden Order demands faith in a shared, inherent purpose in the universe. It can only trust in something that exists outside the mortal, limited perceptions of individuals. The Greater Will does not require eyes to perceive it in order to exist. The Elden Beast does not realize that this kind of truth no longer exists after the end of the Crucible. It does not know how to put faith in the idea that the eyes of another person behold the same reality as ourselves, or that it is through those same eyes that the proof of our own existence is found.

[melliae]

About Metyr Being Abandoned

More than a theory, it's more of a little thought I had this morning. I think is more of a possibility.

So, I guess the first thing to do is to point to this reddit post about the relationship between the Greater Will and the Primeval Current. In essence, I'm taking them to be the same, which means that what Lusat and Azur saw within the Primeval Current was the Greater Will's true essence: an abyss that encompasses the movement of (seemingly) all stars and celestial bodies, the endless chain of causality that binds and encompasses the entire universe. In a way, it's a pretty buddhist conception of the world, and pretty lovecraftnian as well, how trying to understand the universe at large is a foolish task and only leads to madness.

Now, it's easy to see why the Greater Will never directly communicated with the inhabitants of The Lands Between, and why Metyr was sent as an intermediary between them, having by definition some sort of status or propety that allowed "her" to understand the Greater Will without ending like Lusat or Azur. We don't know what exactly that thing was, or if it even was a "thing" to begin with, but since Metyr was broken it wouldn't be surprising that "she" lost that capacity to understand the Greater Will unharmed. And really, what could have the Greate Will done in such case?

"Long ago, the Nox invoked the ire of the Greater Will, and were banished deep underground. Now they live under a false night sky, in eternal anticipation of their liege. Of the coming age of the stars. And their Lord of Night." - Nox Monk Hood.

And we all know that the Greater Will can be emotional.

[velvet-apricots]

Marika Rebels

Marika kneeled before the Emissary of the Greater will, head bowed as she sat within the Erdtree. Her dusty face was streaked from tears shed. So many tears for her eldest child. 

For her boy that now rotted at the roots of the Erdtree.

Her back was marred with cracks from her shattering of the Elden Ring, a fit of rage against the being that destroyed her.

All she had left was Godwyn. Miquella and Malenia left her, Mohg and Morgott were lost to the sewers both.

And now Godwyn was gone.

The Greater Will demanded repentance. It demanded control.

It demanded order, for it was order itself.

It remained still, but its interest was waning. For life was chaos.

And there was no greater proof of its chaos then war.

Marika lifted her head, her grief fueled rage renewed. She would tear it all down. All for her sons to Godfrey, the only man who she loved. Godwyn, and the twins who’s memories she clung to.

Even her beautiful treacherous twins who left her. Because they were cursed by the Gods the Greater Will deemed the enemy.

She would bring a war unlike any other. For her remaining children were like her. Burning with flames of ambition.

 “I am the Queen Eternal. I shall not be thy dog. I shall not heel.”

The Beast reeled back at the defiance, brandishing a spear. Marika bared her teeth, resisting as Radagon tugged upon her body, demanding he be the one in control.

She was god upon the earth. She had power. She would not be silenced, tormented, and maimed into compliance. She would chase the Greater Will and its need for order out of the lands between. Banish the thing that shattered her to pieces.

“Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved…”

The spear came down and ripped through her chest, her body further cracking away. She spilled no blood, for the beast would never draw it.

She was stone, and stone did not bleed.

“Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God.”

Her children, her blood, all heard her words. 

Even Godwyn’s soulless husk heard, his milky eyes gazing skyward as death infected the golden roots which tried to claim him.

“But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices-”

Her voice caught in her throat, her own hands clasped tightly around it, squeezing as Radagon finally silenced her.

The beast loomed overhead, and she knew she would not be leaving this tree.

But she still had faith. She was the golden order. She was the god that walked upon the earth. Oh she may be strung up and tormented for an eternity, but this was her land.

It was her grace. And this was her tree. They may seal it off, prevent everyone from entering.

But nothing prevented her from reaching out.

And she had planned this. From the moment the last Giant fell and her first husband lost his grace.

She had planned to break free of her curse. If not that day, then one day.

This day. When she had nothing left.

So come ye tarnished. 

Come and return home.

Come and slay the beast that binds me.

Come and free me.

Come my one true Lord. 

Come return to mine side.

[magicalqueersarah]

The greater will is not evil or good. It's the supreme deity of the world but it seems obvious to me that it's a non-interventionist deity, if it even exists. Marika's Golden Order claims it follows the GW in the same way oppressive regimes claim to be representative of God's will.

The GO is not only oppressive, but divine family disputes wreak havoc on the world and its creatures. Ranni's order of stars is a solution to this by placing divinity(herself and the Elden Ring) into space away from mortals. It's made clear that Ranni's problem is with the Two Fingers who have their own agenda and not the Greater Will since it has "abandoned" the world. If the Greater Will was interventionist and Marika shattered the Elden Ring to oppose it, it would've stopped her from doing so the same way it supposedly collapsed the Nox civilization. Speaking of, I think it's highly likely that the GW didn't actually do anything to the Nox and it's more akin to the Tower of Babel myth. The Nox Society collapsed, probably because of Astel, and the Two Fingers claimed it was because they angered the GW to prevent people from questioning them. Throughout the game it's made clear that the Two Fingers are manipulators and cannot be trusted, supposedly speaking for the GW when we are told in the intro that it has abandoned TLB. Empyreans' Shadows are created directly by the Two Fingers to keep them in check. The Two Fingers are basically the heads of the church while Marika is the head of the Eastern Roman Empire.

[rikudo-pain]

The Greater Will...

To this day, I fail to see from where the narrative that the Greater Will is "controlling" anything comes from. Often I see people saying it used Marika and her family as pawns and shit...for what? Why?

Often people will say shit like, the golden Order was for the GW, and that's a goddamn lie. The Golden Order entire purpose was to worship Marika. It was created by and for her. Radagon is not a loyal hound of the GW, but of the Golden Order, that is completely unrelated to the GW (in terms of actual influence). If anything, the existence of the GW would be an afront to the GO, directly contradicting Marika's claim to godhood, as she is supposed to be the one and only god of the Golden Order(Radagon's existence also kinda contradicts this, which in turn links us directly to Goldmask and his dissapointment with the "gods").

What's more, very few people in the lands between actually know of the Greater Will; other than the demigods, only Hyetta, Bernhal and Ymir come to mind, so how would the GO ever worship or serve the GW if no one knew about it? Any other person oppossing the "order" of the world(Like Rykard) is seemingly against the Erdtree and its society.

All of Marika's crimes are very often put at the Greater Will's feet, but if you think about it, all of it is related to her trauma. For example, the treatment of the Hornsent, the Omen and the other Crucible adjacent races like the Misbegotten and the demihumans.

With the lore pieces we got, and linking it up with stuff we already knew, the Greater Will seems so much bigger than anything in that little planet, that anytime someone points at it as this scheming being I can't help but scratch my head.

It is referred as the darkness between stars, it has control over them, it's kinda implied that it created life as it is, and then with Ymir's comments you could even say it was the origin of all of the universe, by causing the Big-Bang and bringing forth reality. It might also be implied that the Primeval current is the GW, depending on how you interpret the little lore we know about it. Glinstone sorcery and faith incantantions are directly linked to it. Depending on how you take the Elden Beast's arena, those Erdtrees you see in the distance may be golden trees planted in another worlds, the Beastmen used to think their intelligence was a direct gift from the GW, the dragons were its subjects once, and the way Placi is resting at their arena may imply they are trying to contact the GW, like the fingers.

It created the Elden beast, which in turn is the Elden Ring. By Miyazaki's own words, the ER is literally the rules for the world to follow. Like gravity, life, death. Hell, the crucible of Life, with its reddish gold color may also be related, not to the GW, but to the Elden beast. It is theorized that water was brought within the meteorites that crashed on old earth, we are told the GW created life, so what if the crash landing of the EB on its star also created this primordial soup from which all the rest surged forth? Now, I'm not so sure about that last part, because it kinda contradicts with Metyr's own arrival, but I think you still can make it work somehow.

Still, the GW feels so huge and distant that I just can't picture it like the conniving and planining God so many in the fandom sees it as.

Am I saying it is a benevolent and perfect God? Nah, not at all. But it feels more like distant and eldritch being that just goes around creating life, than some asshole playing games with or against the other Gods. Because, other than the Frenzy Flame, all of them feel magnitudes weaker and smaller than the GW and the FF, seemingly limited to that planet, and also needing the Elden Ring to actually manifest their Orders...

idk, it kinda frustrates me, because this fandom has a tendency of being reaaaally rigid with how they see any character once they make up their minds (hell, Vaati's Erdtree parasite theory still gets brought up a lot, and I'm pretty sure he even admitted about being wrong with a couple of things in that one video).

[katyspersonal]

@val-of-the-north will probably make his own post about it (with pictures) when he is not terribly busy but basically:

He says that it makes more sense that Greater Will had no involvement in Golden Order or even any law of nature prior that whatsoever, but rather dropped Elden Ring/Beast there hoping life will sort itself out and left! So, Metyr was the first falling star and first creation of GW, and her offspring was responsible for terraformation (look at Finger Ruins as the very first Two Fingers, incredibly bigger than modern ones, literally grabbing the ground to prepare it for further life) And then Elden Ring was the last falling star, carrying the essence of life itself like what Sellen confirms is known about primordial life existing in golden ember! Or rather, it carried the power of creating laws of nature, extended to Empyreans/Gods and their offspring, when in era prior Elden Ring things were more "chaotic"! Primordial Crucible and red rather than gold and all that.

Talismans found in both Finger Ruins depict the birth of the Erdtree and feature Two Fingers, when Ymir also speaks about the "roots being already rotten" referring to Metyr and Fingers that guided Marika! Think of it this way: Greater Will had no inherent corruption or rotting or ill will, it is literally just life-creating power that either went to slumber until the next time or moved onto creating other worlds as soon as it's last gift, the Elden Ring, was sent! "The blame lays solely on the mother", though; like how Miquella's only fault is Marika being corrupt, Two Fingers' only fault is Metyr being corrupt!

Only, Two Fingers never went on the quest to separate all that connected them to Metyr, of course. They did, however, lie to everyone this whole time, that none other than Greater Will itself is consulting them! The problem of "caged divinity" still remained with Marika, but if there is any fault of Greater Will in it, it would rather be Elden Ring/Beast. However, Ancient Dragons owned it before, and it doesn't seem as though there were any problems or oppression...? Unless, of course, disdain to "lower born descendants" existed BEFORE swearing vengeance on Bayle and all his Drakes, so Bayle did nothing wrong and his attack on Placidusax was a reaction to injustuce and attempt at revolution? Could that be a problem of Ancient Dragons' equivalent of the Golden Order, then, and the same sins and mistakes are doomed to repeat in every life form?

And in this case, yeah, Elden Beast, the essence of life itself, before even Dragons, let alone humans, is to blame for humans OR Dragons or everyone else creating new ways to hurt others and selves. As much as Metyr is to blame for Two Fingers misleading Empyreans, Gods, Demigods and Tarnished, maybe the powerful beings before them. According to Hyetta, Three Fingers, that pass along the signals of Frenzied Flame, opposition of Greater Will "Greater Will made a mistake (by creating life)".

And... to think of it, this is true. Greater Will is then not a malicious force that Marika rebelled against. It is simply the result of One Great fracturing; one part is Greater Will (existence), another is Frenzied Flame (nonexistence). But the life it created can be malicious. And corrupt. And oppressive, and unfair, and fickle, and bigoted, and destructive, and evil, and rotten. But life can ALSO be kind, and creative, and protective, and nurturing, and loving, and selfless. Ymir, much like Sellen, believes in "returning" to the "pure", pre-life form of stars and cosmos, without the "rotten" roots. But by discarding all rotten things life as we know it has to offer, such people suggest discarding all good things either. In a way, it is similar to wishing to melt everything back into One Great, right? Heck, Sellen's experiments also included blending multiple people into one, to make a "star", so it could be inspired by that.

Two Fingers choose Empyerans, so, those who are capable of shaping the order of the world, but they don't seem to tell these Empyreans WHAT to make this order be? They didn't care if a Tarnished would make the Undead a normal thing or infect everyone with the Omen curse, right? So would they really be the ones to tell Marika who to bless and who to divest of grace, to create era "glistening with life" or to take the process of Death itself in her arms? In game events, they just wanted the laws of nature recreated or restored by someone, anyone. They are rotten in terms of choosing people to have this privilege whether they asked for it or not, and appointing a Shadowbeast near them to slaughter them if they refuse to let them have this "laws of nature made by this cool person I chose" fix. What Ranni did was to yeet Elden Ring away so nobody could have the power TO create these laws of nature in their vision. The reason why people believe it is rebel against Greater Will, to the comedic points like Iji wearing setting's equivalent of the tinfoil hat to avoid GW's influence? Because Two Fingers were lying. They were lying the whole time that they are consulting Greater Will, and nobody can check for sure if they're in contact with it or not!

Greater Will is "guilty" for creating life, and for where the roles were put. Nox did make it angry which is mentioned in Fingerslaying blade, implying that the very act of trying to kill the Two Fingers (or maybe Metyr herself) did it. This means that Fingers were a crucial element in how life should work according to Greater Will, but not that it even knew its grandchildren and people they appoint cause a lot of misery. On the contrary, misery is a part of life, it created both misery and happiness by creating life! Maybe Nox even did it before GW dropped Elden Ring, it's last gift, and left for good?

I also joked about Greater Will demanding Radagon to rejoin with Marika yesterday, but it isn't likely, after all. More likely it were either Two Fingers or Marika herself! He is Golden Order, and maybe needed to be kept in check by "enlightened mind of God" rather than just a very smart Carian. So things would not by effect revert back into primordial barbaric state. With all this, Marika didn't rebel against anything extraterrestial, but she rebeled against the monster SHE created when she took the wheel on how the world works. 🤔

[loxosceleslolo]

fromsoft: we are being super specific about the Greater Will going out for milk and never returning. we aren't usually this forthright so this is clearly important

elden ring fans: so anyway the Greater Will is a control freak who wants to control everything and is puppeting Marika--

[arteriasalad]