#sote theory

[art-from-within]

One sote lore question that has been troubling me concerning mohg and miquella

SO. The dlc reveals that miquella was not so kind and tender in the end, and used mohg in every way a man can. He was used by Mohg to go to shadowlands, and for his corpse to become a vessel for Radahn’s soul. I also have good enough reasons to suspect his cult and himself was being used as a blood bank, for what idk, considering there are a tad too many references of miquella needing blood/ post enchantment mohg asking his followers to ‘bathe his consort in blood’.

But one thing i am not really set on is the timeline. Biggest question is, HOW and WHEN did miquella enchant mohg? Did he visit him in the sewers way back? (The final battle with miquella shows us that he needs to be close in other to enchant someone, to steal their heart) or did mohg already have a plan to kidnap him in the haligtree, and miquella just made the best of his situation? Did he go to the haligtree because he was seduced? Or was it already on his agenda, but he bit more than he could chew?

I am leaning more towards the former, the fact that we can get the bewitching branch cookbook only after doing varre’s questline/visiting mohgwyn palace and receiving it from gideon is a huge red flag. Would this imply he sent mohg some bewitching branch drink or smth? Or shot it like an arrow? Used haligtree like an incense burner releasing pink clouds eve- okay…. (Or he stabbed him with the pin when he got close enough…could be argued either way)

Another reason i lean on this idea is that i feel miquella has more discernible motives to have mohg than the other way around. Needs his corpse, his blood, and a ticket to shadowland to become a GOD and fix EVERYTHING. What does mohg get in return….to be his wife??

I would still like to hear all you guy’s thoughts though

+ or maybe he was able to visit mohg in his sleep, through st.trina? We do know that omens suffer terrible nightmares….maybe st.trina helped him in a way

[sparrow-in-boots]

EDIT: the viper example picture got changed to a proper viper species, thank you @/the-white-eye for the correction!

everytime i see the winged serpents drawn/modelled as vipers, my heart breaks a little bit

guys, they are specifically pythons!! :3 mouth shape and all!! the sole viper head we see is Messmer/abyssal serpent!!

pythons kill prey by strangling them with their bodies. vipers hunt through venom bite pounces. pythons are also more notably languid and slow compared to vipers or cobras. this isn't just a thematic distinction, but also a clear visual design cue, too!

in Volcano Manor and the Temple of Eiglay, you can see that the winged snake statues are Also python-headed. it's also notable that the snakes in the statues have fangs, and so do the winged serpents Messmer has. i doubt that's a coincidence.

and most importantly, the Great Serpent is also closer to a python than a viper or even a cobra. it's admittedly a more distinct head shape than any real-life snakes i'm aware of, but the longer snout, the scale patterns (particularly on the temples and side of the head), and the teeth type are not unlike an anaconda, actually.

[space-blue]

A Radical Messmer Theory

OKAY so hear me out.

I think we're all on top of things regarding how much Marika used to care for Messmer despite the embivalence of their relationship.

On one hand you have the OP healing vials she created for him and him only. You have his love and dedication to her. You have her taking his eye and giving her a seal that both locks the serpent but also hides the fact that he is GRACELESS.

Then you'll have things like how he hates his flame and tried to be rid of it, yet was clearly made to fight with it, in her name. How he wishes for hate and resentment to come to him and not her, yet she seems to have abandoned him.

BUT CONSIDER THIS!!

What if Marika sealed him away to keep him safe?

Because... If you are of the opinion that Marika has orchestrated the entire thing. That she exiled Godfrey and his people asking them to come back stronger because she was laying out a plan... That she hooked Ranni up with numen warriors to engineer Godwyn's death, then broke the Elden Ring purposefully...

And then took her punishment and set out to *wait* for the Tarnished to return and free her from the control of the Elden Beast...

Then it's possible that she veiled Messmer and exiled him to protect him FROM US. From the Shattering War.

After all, we can completely skip the DLC. Killing Mogh is completely optional. And the only reason we enter the shadow realm is because Miquella has discovered something of the gate of divinity and has been cooking up a plan for ages as well.

Miquella got thwarted and has been forced to wait in stasis until someone killed Radahn AND Mogh for ages. The moment he does, we have the opportunity to enter and follow, and because of that we have to kill Messmer.

But Marika's grace leads the way! you argue. Not until a certain point though, and most importantly: once Miquella is on his way to become a god (partially through your actions freeing the tower from shadows) then he becomes someone you need to kill because he's threatening the old order.

Marika is gambling on us, and when Miquella rises, she leads the way towards us defeating him and his consort, and then back to the main purpose.

But there's no reason to go kill Messmer. And if we don't, we can easily stipulate that Miquella's happy go lucky band of misfits also wouldn't have managed to bring him down, trapping Miquella's soul in the of shadows, once more in stasis waiting for a hurdle to be overcome for him.

It makes sense then, that the land of shadows, all considered, is the safest place for one of Marika's children to be. Out of the way. Without a great rune. He protects something she wants to keep secret, but maybe the secret itself protects him.

She sent him on that crusade around the time she married Radagon. Everyone theorises she wanted him out of the way to either have his true nature hidden out of shame or to protect him from backlash at the time, but imo she sent him to seal him away because :

1- she knows he's endlessly loyal and devoted

2- it gets her revenge underway and keeps her secrets

3- it gets Messmer out of the public eye in the moment

4- it keeps Messmer SAFE from the dark shit she's got planned that will wreck the lands between.

The Messmer most beloved son theory! The good Tarnished doesn't play the DLC, or does just long enough to run around but leaves Messmer alive and Miquella forever blue balled.

[katyahina]

So, this is what I understood about Midra Mansion and Frenzied Flame business (in chronological order)

It is more like a reference so I don't forget, just piecing the story together since I am sure I found all helpful items yet! Add please if there is something else!

1) So, it started with how for one reason or another, Midra and people in this place attracted paranoia (?) of the hornsent and were done dirty by inquisitors! Not specified whether they actually done something bad or not!

The entrance in this location is guarded by Elder Inquisitor Jori, that also summons ungodly amount of fellow clerics what in the actual Deacons of the Deep was that fdhfdhs

^ This item is dropped by an NPC Maddening Hand, and this IS my reason to think that rather than everyone here being punished for potentially messing with Frenzied Flame, they were accused and hunted for something else and affiliation with FF came because of that resentment!

^ This dialogue perplexed me at first, as I initially thought it related to inquisitors coming in the Manse after the FF events, but by now I concluded it more likely related to the era where they were hunted as heretics for no particular reason! Because people of the Manse should have known what in another case:

2) The contact with Frienzied Flame happened and effected the people and the place in general. Like I said before, Frenzied Flame started to manifest upon yearning of Midra/his people for revenge. He might have even been directly contacted by the Three Fingers in a similar manner as how Marika was contacted by the Two Fingers for her situation, as suggested by an item found in this map:

Besides, the whole Manse was destroyed but especially the books, and we will get to it later but evidently it was done to hide the knowledge about Frenzied Flame accumulated:

3) A child of Midra and Nanaya likely was lost to a failed attempt of becoming Lord of Frenzied Flame! Nanaya is depicted holding her hand on her belly on the portrait, perhaps being pregnant, and the torch you pick from her corpse is said to be gently 'cradled' by her! I need to see Japanese script to confirm or deny how accurate the word 'cradling' is here since it does have connotation with caring for the baby, so put a pin on it! However, feeling of affection from her alone might make this nitpick less relevant.

These 'evidences' that it was their child do not look very strong, I admit this much, as well as calling it 'distant' land is odd. I think it still works; for example, distant from the standpoint of the world map in general since it is very well hidden!

^ We pick this item from the corpse of Nanaya herself. Her eyes are obscured on the portrait and yet that looks to be an artistic decision. Her corpse, on the other hand, has eyes covered with bandages! We can assume that she went blind from spending too much time holding onto this "torch", as well as that prolonged exposure to FF was what killed her in the end. Why cling onto this spinal column so much, if not because it belonged to someone dear for her?

I suppose it is up to interpretation whether Nanaya approved of the idea of the Lord of the Frenzied Flame as their kid and only lost courage when the plan failed and availed them nothing, or she didn't know Midra would let their son of all people to go through such a risk and father and son acted behind her back (maybe not they alone), or she straight up disapproved of Frenzied Flame moods and called inquisitors for """help""" herself to at the very least isolate the madness! So, speaking of:

4) Inquisitors learn about Frenzied Flame business here, those who were helping with the Frenzied Flame meddling were executed, Nanaya is spared for either reason.

I didn't understand it instantly, but yes, the implication of the neat row of beheaded guys right at the entrance with their wrists tied is that they were executed:

The glowing 'stick' in their necks does give me an impression of their barbs, however they do not stick out at the sides?

So, the Hornsent inquisitors did this to him, but as we learn from Midra no longer being able to take it and pulling the barb out of himself this is not a fact that they've done it specifically to seal the Frenzied Flame! Because why would they leave him like this despite the risk that he could choose to pull the barb out one day? They might not have known that Midra caught Frenzied Flame to this extent and just believed in giving specific form of punishment to the leader of the dangerous people! ...right?

^ Wrong! @val-of-the-north shared this icon for an item that exists in the game files but was not implemented in the end, on which Midra's had both has the same eye as Tarnished has after being grasped by the Three Fingers and has obvious trace of their grab not unlike Vyke's armour! This gives me a feeling that the Inquisitors had enough information to conclude something wasn't right. So, maybe they decied that they killed him and were not aware that FF would not let him die now?

OR MAYBE Nanaya is the key here! If she was fully affiliated with Midra and servants on FF plot, why she never got executed? She might have successfully lied to them about not having been aware to still seize some control, or she genuinely disapproved of all this and wanted it to stop. Thus, in case if the inquisitors knew of Midra's situation, maybe they also trusted her to control him from breaking free.

^ This suggests that Nanaya knew of what danger he held within prior the inquisitors did their thing! Since he was also willingly holding onto her demand for such a long time, maybe he himself realised the ramifications by then, especially if their son was lost like this. This gives me an impression that they both agreed it all went too far and decided to call for "help", whether Nanaya was a part of the plan all along too or simply was able to collect herself when Midra confessed her everything, dragging their son into it included, and understood they had bigger problem to worry about now!

^ This makes me feel like "weakness" it refers to was actually his reluctance and fear upon realising what he messed with, rather than actual failure! I don't know about you guys, but I found him a pretty functional Lord of Frenzied Flame during the battle 🤔 But if he contracted the 'Lord', how his head was still in place when inquisitors arrived for his ass? So likely he was able to keep it in before, to "endure" like Nanaya said earlier, when NOT "failing" would entail "understanding" and embracing the motivations and the meaning of FF. (Melina looks with a massive judgement)

However, pulling out that barb also entailed succumbing to the Frenzied Flame, which now made him no longer "fail" at it.

5) Inquisitors remain to patrol the perma-damaged land getting afflicted with FF themselves so no curious idiots wander here, Nanaya and other spared (?) people die from old age.

(sorry for phone picture, I forgot to copy this one to USB fhdhdsf) Even if Lord of Frenzied Flame was prevented, the impact of the contact with the Three Fingers (?) was permanent now. There was no way to destroy it (how do you destroy THE desctruction?), only keep it secluded.

^ I mentioned how Nanaya oddly was spared, but what about this person? Either not she alone and this guy might have died from old age or something, OR these are the words from the time before inquisitors arrived here. Because, again, we have evidence that Midra and Nanaya knew he contracted Frenzied Flame even before that, from the description of his remembrance!

^ This, all things considered, refers to the time the Hornsent arrived here to execute, punish and set up the patrol, as they discovered what happened!

__________________

So, yeah.. It is a really messed up story. I have enough pointers towards how the family, ironically, had to accept "help" from THE very folks who harassed them to the point of events that attracted the Frenzied Flame to begin with! Even if they are probably/likely descendants or a branch-off from the hornsent that originally were hunting them as heretics. Like realising that no amount of torture and mistreatment of their people must doom the whole world to burn, yet it would happen if Frenzied Flame broke loose from here.

[locuas642]

WAIT A DAMN SECOND

[gobbogoo]

Hey... is Zorayas/Rya the daughter of the Winged Serpent??

According to the Winged Serpent Helm:

"It is a wise friend which keeps the base serpent at bay and holds its power in check."

I don't know about you, but that describes Rya to a tee. She's like this kindly counterbalance within Volcano Manor; inexplicably wholesome, and capable of drawing kindness from people like Lady Tanith and EVEN PATCHES. (He's watching over her from afar in Liurnia, and directs you to her to help her.)

We all assumed Rya was born from the Blasphemous Serpent, but it has grey scales and yellow eyes. Indeed, it always confused me why she had a different colour-scheme than the other man-serpents, why she alone was considered special among them, and why she was so darn NICE compared to them. Perhaps Lady Tanith and Rykard intended for Rya to one day rein in the Blasphemous Serpent after it had served its purpose?

[bellepeppergirl]

Is Scarlet Rot Really a Bad Thing?

Throughout the game, Scarlet Rot is typically depicted in a negative light; Malenia is described as being cursed by it, what happened to Caelid is described as a disaster, and certainly none of us like being afflicted by it when we're in the Swamp of Aeonia or the Lake of Rot, but there's also many being who not only like the Rot, but worship it. So, that begs the question, is Rot actually a good thing?

Now, make no mistake, what happened to Caelid is a tragedy no matter how you spin it, but the crux of this question stems from the fact that to me, there does still seem to be some positives to the Rot. Malenia may not agree, seeing as she is literally rotting alive, but one thing I've noticed is that she and Millicent seem to be the only ones actually rotting, whereas everything else affect by the Rot seems to evolve. We could make ties to Bloodborne with these facts.

In Bloodborne, Cleric Beasts are said to be the most terrible ones. This is because, as clerics of the Healing Church, they are exposed to more Old Blood than anyone else, but also resist it more than anyone else, so when it finally overtakes them, their transformations are more horrid. Millicent and Malenia both dislike the Rot. Malenia sees it as a curse and tried to stop it, and Millicent uses Miquella's needle to subdue her own rot.

Could it be that, by resisting the rot, that is when you start to degrade? That is when you start to fall apart? But should you embrace it, you will instead evolve and become either some form of insectoid or a mushroom?

Romina, another Rot-related character, also does not seem to be rotting herself, instead she has these bug features. From her lore and title, we know that she was not against the rot, but embraced and worshipped it, and she has a magnificent and beautiful form, unlike Malenia who, while beautiful in her own right, seems a little bit more miserable since she's literally falling apart. Malenia's Cleanrot Knights, however, don't seem to be rotting, and instead look to be evolving. This is notable because they embraced Malenia's rot.

One could see these factors as a sort of allegory to death; resisting and fearing death makes the process more horrific and painful, whereas accepting it allows you to see the beauty in the lifeforms who thrive amongst decay, that being bugs and fungi. Rot has its own order, like the Erdtree does; a cycle of death and rebirth. Now, maybe being a bug person isn't as attractive an idea to most people, which is understandable, but it still all begs the question...

Is Scarlet Rot that bad?

Rotgirl Summer.

[onedecimatedduck]

.......did miquella ever realise Radahn's type is the same as his

Radahn loves Godfrey so bloody much, that he has to wear him on his clothes, follow the same career path, and have the same build even though his heart is a lot gentler and he is a magic user from an int family. It would not surprise me if there's a secret chest full of Godfrey's pictures in Redmane castle.

There would have been a higher chance for Radahn to be on board if it was Mohg who asked him to be his consort... I am so sorry miquella

[dr-zeddy]

I vaguely remembered I left a comment on the Fextralife page for "Fevor's Cookbook (3)" last summer

so I went back to check if it was still there and, well,

tfw your delulu ramblings about your favourite video game turn out to be right???

[eldenringslut]

More evidence that Miquella’s character in the DLC wasn’t a retcon, from the description of Malenia’s set:

[tarnussy]

certified new birb moment

[reitziluz]

hey about the vow made to radahn?

i had a moment of red string insanity while, as i have been since the dlc dropped, thinking about the motivations and agency of radahn.

(please tell me i'm not the only one stumbling into this hypothesis)

i've been long pondering about gaius, radahn's older brother figure, being an albinauric, one of the opressed people miquella is trying to save. and how he is stated to be cursed from birth, cursed people being also part of miquella's motivations.

i am in the camp that miquella has good intentions, but desperation has driven him to extreme methods. the "he is controlling everyone, nobody is willing!!" angle doesn't sit right with me. frankly, it makes for a less impactful story. it makes things convoluted, where seeing miquella as someone with limited power and a lot of his moves as scrambling to recover from setbacks makes sense. everything didn't go down as planned, there were things out of his control.

so. radahn. he promised to be miquella's consort, for better or worse. what did miquella vow to him?

i considered it, but wanting gaius to be saved doesn't feel like enough motivation for him. or if it was, would the man who learned gravity magic to keep riding his beloved horse decide to abandon his sworn brother so that he can, what, go hog wild in the shattering war?

but thinking about gaius made me think of albinaurics. lack of feet. being cursed from birth. radahn lacks his feet during the festival. that's not anything, scarlet rot rots away limbs all the time.

but scarlet rot doesn't turn your skin gray and sclera black.

marika's children are prone to being born cursed. cursed to be taken over by entities. losing their minds.

it's hard to find a sensible reason for radahn and malenia to have fought. two possibilities i've seen before are 1) radahn wasn't on board with the plan (likely had broken out of miquella's charms and control) so malenia was sent to bring him back in line 2) for some reason, miquella specifically needed him to die and be resurrected, and all the weird circumstances are somehow part of the same plan and make sense for reasons we just can't know but trust me bro they do.

it's interesting that in the story trailer, in radahn's and malenia's fight, radahn's face is shown only for a split second.

gray skin. black sclera.

was radahn, too, cursed from birth?

was he doomed to be overtaken, to lose himself?

had he lost his mind long before he was afflicted with scarlet rot? had he turned into a scourge, and not much else, before he and malenia fought?

did malenia see herself in him? did she want to give him the death he would have wanted? did she want to help him keep a promise he wouldn't have wanted to break?

did miquella vow to save him, like he did the albinaurics, like he did malenia?

[wanderingmausoleum]

the Golden Lineage can graft others’ body parts onto themselves because they’re of the blood of Marika, the shaman :)

[space-blue]

SOTE rant (1)

One thing that I find very annoying, is the propensity for Lore video makers to completely jump on the DLC and analyse it in a void. Everyone is theory crafting like the base game doesn't exist anymore.

Everyone is taking Miquella's approach as the go to for divinity 101 and acting like only the people name dropped in the DLC matter, except for Radagon, who is very important, despite NEVER being named, ANYWHERE in the SOTE game files.

Oh no, excuse me, he's named ONCE in a delete dialogue (unless he speaks during battle but I was under the impression that he never does?) from Radahn:

Yet everyone is out there saying Marika used the gate to make herself a god and created Radagon in the process. And that he was created that way as her lord, and then immediately fathered Messmer and Melina.

But I... kind of don't see it? Why would SHE need to use a special vessel ritual like everyone is theorizing?

She already has a sworn lord : Godfrey.

Why is everyone making these Marika centric lore videos and never dropping the names of key characters?

Godfrey. Serosh. Maliketh. Why is nobody asking themselves WHEN did Marika get granted her "brother" Maliketh by the three fingers? Why is nobody making speculation on whether she had a pact with Hoarah Loux before becoming a god.

He could very well be the vessel needed. He doesn't need to have his soul separated from a body or any such nonsense. That's what Miquella ended up doing because he had no choice if he wanted to use Radahn.

Here is what we know of Godfrey :

Godfrey was a ferocious warrior. When he vowed to become a lord, he took the Beast Regent Serosh upon on his back to suppress the ceaseless lust for battle that raged within. The first demigods were The Elden Lord Godfrey and his offspring, the golden lineage. Crown of Godfrey, the first Elden Lord. The age of the Erdtree began amongst conflict, when Godfrey was lord of the battlefield. He led the War against the Giants. Faced the Storm Lord, alone. And then, there came a moment. When his last worthy enemy fell. And it was then, as the story is told, that the hue of Lord Godfrey's eyes faded. Helm of the Crucible Knights who served Godfrey, the first Elden Lord. Weapon of Godfrey, Elden Lord. It was broken in a battle fought as leader of the Tarnished during the Long March. This weapon is symbolic of Godfrey's vow to conduct himself as a lord, later becoming an emblem of the golden lineage. In the days of the past, a crown was warranted with strength.

The first demigods were The Elden Lord Godfrey and his offspring, the golden lineage.

This line either means that the voice of the game is lying, wrong, or not knowledgeable enough. Or that Messmer is not a demigod, or that Messmer is the son of Godfrey.

And while he does have red hair, he is cursed with a red flame... And his little sister, Melina, doesn't have the distinctive red hair of Radagon's children. She's also not a demigod as far as we know.

Messmer and Melina are named M like Mohg and Morgott! We have plenty of hints that they could be Godfrey's children, first and foremost being the canon base game text asserting all demigods first descended from him. We simply don't know otherwise.

It's also asserting he was the first Elden Lord, and not second or a later addition.

There's also his vow to conduct himself as a Lord, which seems like something he might have done prior to Marika making him Lord.

The beast depicted is Serosh, aged counselor who guides the golden lineage. The black nails protruding from golden fur are said to represent Serosh, Lord of Beasts, who went to become King Godfrey's Regent.

Serosh is very mysterious, and we just know he's some sort of limiter. I've made plenty of posts arguing for Maliketh and Serosh being the same type of beasts from the same global origins.

Beasts are reverred by the Hornsent! Our first boss is their storm beast guys, and the head looks quite similar to Serosh. Who, BTW, is also a spirit form?? Who turns real on command?

All this to say, it doesn't sound impossible at all, to me, that Marika would have come to the gate of divinity already having a lord lined up -- Godfrey -- and counsellors giving advice on how to execute her plan : Serosh and Metyr mother of fingers.

I assume it would be in Metyr's power to grand Marika her (necessary?) Shadowbound beast.

Isn't it interesting that Maliketh is a Shadowbound Beast? In our Shadow Realm DLC? He's never mentioned in the files, sadly.

But all of these people are key to Marika's ascension. I wish people would think about them more when they do their lore videos and not just roll right into creating Radagon out of thin air.

What bothers me most about the secret rite here, is that it says "the secret rite of the divine gateway", like THE rite, not A rite. It could be THE other one is not secret...

But more importantly, the line "usher in a god's return" just really does not fit EITHER of Miquella OR Marika. Neither of them is returning!! Maybe the God of Placidussax would be returning, but both Marika and Miquella are/try to ascend for the first time.

Miquella is also the only one with anyLord shennanigans we know of for sure.

I think Miquella divests himself of everything in order to comply with this ritual. So he has something to "return to". He sheds everything, so that he can pass through the gateway. But he's returning to an Empyrean's birthright. To a demi-god.

But we don't know that this is something Marika would have needed. We don't know that she used this specific ritual. After all, circumstances are VERY different for her :

The Gate of Divinity is fresh and bloody, implying a recent mass sacrifice. And then she plucks Gold from a corpse or receptacle of some sort.

None of this is depicted in Miquella's return, and he's not trying to emulate his mother, because her way of doing things came with a curse loaded "original sin". So we even have reason to believe Miquella would not actually be replicating the same ritual.

[honey-ink]

Hoarah Loux may have been a part of a Dancing Lion?

So DLC spoilers under the cut of course, but I was once again theorizing with @dan-from-onami about base game and DLX connections- more specifically Hoarah Loux/Godfrey and their origin!

So I think Godfrey/ Hoarah Loux may have come from the land of shadows and might have been a Hornsent without horns as well as a Dancing lion- specifically the back of the dancing lion. This might explain a few things from his children/origin/allies/why Marika casted him away. This might explain why Morgott and Mohg have their horns, but also lose them upon death. This might also explain why if Godwyn was born with fish features, it was also a crucible features without Marika knowing since she's only used to horns, wings and tails.

Now for origin I think Godfrey is a more domesticated version of what Marika wants for a lord, and that's why he wears armor and wields an axe. However, I think in the past as Hoarah Loux he might have escaped Messmers/Marikas genocide and abandoned the front half of the lion or escaped somehow before joining Marika and without her knowing his origins since he doesn't have horns. This would explain why in his boss fight (ESPECIALLY AS HOARAH LOUX) both him and the dancing lion are constantly jumping and using no weapons to attack (probably dried leaf arts? Or another form of art), In the frost phase of the dancing lion the back dancer also uses similar moves like horahfrost stomp (will link videos to compare because they are weirdly similar?). This might also explain why Serosh is actually a lion instead of the typical wolf/canine shadow like Blaidd and Maliketh.

Divine Dancing Lion Boss Fight

Godfrey/ Horah Loux Boss Fight

This probably also explains why the crucible knights were specifically Godfrey's knights/ why he chose them to be his knights, and chances are once Marika found out or at least clued in that Godfrey was probably Horsent was the real reason why she cast him and his men away because she didn't want to risk anything happening to the golden order. That would also explain why in our own character creation we can be any race or class we want, but no matter what we are tarnished because we once worked in allegiance with Godfrey/Hoarah Loux.

@dan-from-onami brought up a good point though because he didn't know how much he could believe Hoarah Loux is a Hornsent in particular because Marika at the first sight of any omen-hood will either murder them or boot them into the sewers- which makes a lot of sense now given her past. That's when I went back into the game and realized that in the intro Hoarah Loux is- like us- waking up from death. and in that cutscene he is chained up and impaled.

I'm also not sure if the Badlands and the Realm of Shadow are different, or if it might just be a situation where sometimes the Realm of Shadow is called the "Badlands" due to it's unwelcoming nature. A bit of a long rant haha but I never realized until now that we only know Godfrey/ Hoarah Loux as First Elden Lord and Chieftain Of The Bad Lands, but we don't really know what those titles entail for him or the rest of his story outside of the Lands Between.

[bri-the-nautilus]

The Potentate Complex

Lately, the wonderful @catcas22 and I have been discussing the Hornsent, the Omens, and the Living Jars. Cat has two excellent posts on the subject up, one on the nature of the Lamenters and another on a potential link between the Omen's nightmares and the crimes of their progenitors. I highly recommend you read those posts first and then come back to this one, as they'll make it much easier to understand some of the concepts I'll be bringing up.

Anyhow, there's something that fell by the wayside in all this: the word "potentate." It's curiously exclusive to the context of jars in Elden Ring.

In the base game, Jar-Bairn and the other residents of Jarburg are searching for a Potentate to serve as a leader/protector of their village. The criteria for which are... odd. Jar-Bairn first attempts to enlist the player as Potentate, only to reject us on the grounds that our callused warrior hands are unsuited to the position. He finds what he believes to be a better candidate in Diallos Hoslow, but can later be found remarking that while he rather likes Diallos's soft, supple hands, he finds the younger Hoslow uninspiring as far as protectors go, going so far as to wish that they could have a Potentate who's "big and strong, like you."

In SOTE, we learn that "Potentate" was also the title given to the Hornsent clerics who butchered human/Numen villages to fill the Living Jars.

Interesting.

Assuming Cat's theory about the throughline between the Hornsent Potentates, the Living Jars, and the Omensmirk nightmares is correct, I think I have an idea of what's happening here.

We've established that when a human consigned to a jar reincarnates as an Omen, they retain some subconscious mnemonic impression from their previous life, potentially establishing the terror and torture endured at the Hornsent's hands as the source for the shared nightmares about horned beings that plague all Omen. We also know that "rancorous spirits" cling to the flesh inside the jars.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that if the Omen retain memories of their previous deaths, the jars created by the Hornsent do the same. However, I'd also suppose that the mindscape of a Living Jar is all kinds of confusing. Every jar we talk to seems to have one unified voice/personality, despite their innards being composed of an every-growing multitude of beings who each have discrete spirits. Add that the same souls clinging to scraps of jar meat are also the ones being reincarnated as Omen, and a picture starts to emerge.

I think that the process of being eviscerated and stuffed into a jar, along with whatever ritual allows for their reincarnation, seems to "split" the soul of the victim, and this may be by design. One fragment is allowed to return the Erdtree to be reincarnated, but the other is trapped, sealed in the jar to prevent it from escaping. The free half comes back as an Omen, while the sealed half remains locked away from the Erdtree and its other half, ensuring that pure reincarnation is impossible.

This also has a confounding effect on the memory impressions of the soul. The Omen have vague nightmares about horned beings torturing them. Meanwhile, the Jars also have the memories of their component people, perhaps clearer as a result of not having passed through the Erdtree but confused in other ways as a result of being part of this single-voiced mass of flesh and spirits.

Jar-Bairn and the others simultaneously associate the word "Potentate" with warrior strength and the gentle, ritualistic touch of a cleric. They vacillate between thinking a Potentate should be a strong protector (the Hornsent's sacking and butchering of villages) and a soft-handed, studious artificer (the same Hornsent going on to craft and fill the Living Jars in clandestine underground laboratories). The word is divorced from the terror its origin inflicted in the minds of the jars, who know only that their existence is inextricably linked to strong yet careful beings called Potentates.

There are two interesting addendums to our tale, one being the Potentate's Cookbook.

A record of crafting techniques of the greater potentate who roamed lands near and far. Haunted by the grotesque practice of his village of birth, he stuffed great pots with all manner of things.

Apparently, at least one Potentate was disgusted by the actions of his peers and left to travel the world, but continued to experiment with ritual pots in other ways that involved considerably less occult sacrifice.

The other afterthought I'd like to mention is the weapon of the Potentates, the Bonny Butchering Knife (which is actually a greataxe that looks like a curved greatsword, but that's besides the point):

Weapon of the greater potentates of Bonny Village. An outsize butcher's cleaver used to dismember human bodies in the making of the great jars stored in the gaols.

Restores a very small amount of HP when it squarely strikes an enemy.

I'll now direct your attention to the Butchering Knife found in the base game, used by the Tarnished-Eater Anastasia:

Huge carving knife made to cleanly butcher the human body. Signature weapon of the Ogress Anastasia, known to have eaten countless Tarnished while disguised as a Finger Maiden.

Restores a very small amount of HP when it squarely strikes an enemy.

Again, still not a knife, or a greataxe, but I digress.

These weapons are IDENTICAL in many respects. They use the same model, have the same heal-on-hit passive, and even their attack/guard ratings, weights, stat requirements, and FP costs are the same. The only difference is their names, descriptions, and default Ashes of War, and even the former two are only negligibly distinct. I feel quite comfortable in stating these to be the same weapon.

So here we have a massive cleaver expressly designed to butcher the human body, wielded historically by the Hornsent Potentates who terrorized the settlements of other races to build "saints" out of their corpses, and one instance having fallen into the hands of a psychotic serial killer in a far-off land.

Tying this back to the cookbook, I propose that after wandering for some time, the rueful Potentate left the Land of Shadow altogether, journeying to the Lands Between, where he beheld the fruits of his peers' labor in the form of the Omen and Living Jars dwelling there. At this point, he cast off the tool of his trade and settled somewhere to live out his days in morose solitude.

Some amount of time later, his former weapon fell into the hands of God's bloodthirstiest soldier, who immediately noticed that it was perfect for her preferred pastime of killing and eating people. So perfect, in fact, that it could only have been designed with such a purpose in mind.

And another thing: isn't it funny that the Omenkillers, whose attire draws inspiration from the Omen's nightmares, also use cleavers? Cleavers made from Omen horns, but cleavers nonetheless.