The Lore of Elden Ring is Mesmerising
B2
Deep in the forest by Bonny Village lies the shed skin of a great serpent.
Why it's here is a mystery, one the community has yet to unravel.
We know from Rykard's lore that serpents like
this are reviled, but we don't know why.
We don't know why Messmer has his two winged companions.
We don't know why an abyssal serpent writhes within
him, nor why Marika, in her fear, sealed it away.
But the less we know, the more infinite the possibilities.
And that is what makes Elden Ring's lore so mesmerizing.
The circumstances of Messmer's birth are the most fascinating thing about him.
Who was his father?
When was he born?
Why was he the vessel for both a malevolent snake and an unquenchable fire?
That first question is probably the easiest to answer.
Messmer's father is most likely Radagon.
For one, Messmer bears Radagon's signature red hair.
Second, his boss music seems to carry similar
leitmotifs from Radagon's own theme.
And third, most importantly, Messmer has his own butterfly.
This is the black pyrefly, which burns in dark and slender ribbons of fire.
Named so for Messmer's habit of making a pyre out of his defeated foes.
This butterfly is symbolic of his identity
and it's a dark counterpart to the butterflies of Melina, Malenia
and Miquella, who are the other children of Marika and Radagon.
But this parentage poses a problem for us.
Usually we can place Marika's children along the timeline based on her consort.
We know that Godwyn, Mohg and Morgott were born of Marika's
union with Godfrey as the age of the Erdtree was beginning.
We know Ranni, Rykard and Radahn were born of Radagon's union
with Rennala at the conclusion of the Liurnian Wars.
And we know that Miquella & Malenia were twins born of Marika's marriage
to Radagon, after Radagon returned to become the second Elden Lord.
But since Marika could immaculately conceive with her
other half at any time, Messmer, like Melina, could have
been born whenever it was convenient to Marika, which
makes it way harder to place him upon the timeline.
Fortunately, though, we do have some clues.
The first comes from the statue of Marika with Messmer in her arms.
Here, you'll notice that Marika's left braid of hair has been severed.
The loss of this hair is an important moment
in Marika's story, for after she ascended as a God,
she returned home and made an offering of her
golden braid to the grandmother of her old village.
So, from this statue we know that Marika had already ascended as
a God when she had Messmer, though perhaps that goes without saying.
Our next clue comes to us from the remembrance
of the wild boar rider, which especially in
the Japanese description, makes it quite clear
that Messmer was an elder brother to Radahn.
For context, Radahn was the son of Radagon
and Rennala, the Champion of Gold and the Queen
of Caria, who were wed at the Church of Vows
following the first and second Liurnian Wars.
So Messmer was born early enough that Radahn
looked up to him like an older brother.
But what else can help us place him?
Well, one great suggestion comes from the community.
As the theory goes, Messmer the Impaler might have been
present during Godfrey's war against the Fire Giants.
The main piece of evidence?
The giant corpses are impaled upon spears, a signature of Messmer the Impaler.
Perhaps this is where he earned his title.
Further support for this theory comes from the fact
that Messmer is technically a knight, referred
to as Sir Messmer, and such knighthood is
typically earned through notable deeds in battle.
Perhaps these were the deeds that led to him becoming known as the Impaler.
All that said, this theory isn't perfect.
You'll note that the spears impaling the
giants don't perfectly match Messmer's own.
Instead, they're actually a perfect match for these
stakes in the nearby camps of the Thorn sorcerers.
This strongly suggests that it was the Thorn sorcerers, not Messmer,
that may have been responsible for the giants impaling.
However, if you still prefer to believe that Messmer was
involved here, then there is still a way to argue for it.
User TyrionBananaster on Reddit makes the great
point that Messmer's modern spear was remade by the
forging arts of the Realm of Shadow, a fact that
might help to account for this visual discrepancy.
It really comes down to you.
Did Messmer develop his impaling technique here alongside the Thorn sorcerers?
It's possible, but it's far from a bygone conclusion.
Let's move on to the other evidence surrounding Messmer's birth.
According to Godrick's great rune, the first demigods were
the Elden Lord Godfrey and his offspring, the golden lineage.
If we take this at face value, it certainly seems
to suggest that Messmer wasn't Marika's firstborn.
Instead, it seems like that title would go to one of Godfrey's children,
most likely Godwyn, though perhaps even Mohg or Morgott.
That said, while I do take most item descriptions as
absolute truths, this line about the first demigods gives me
pause because it reminds me of that other item description
that claims Godfrey is the first Elden Lord when he's not.
Placidusax is.
In truth, Godfrey was merely considered the
first Elden Lord, and so I wonder if calling Godfrey
and his golden lineage, the first demigods,
might be a similar piece of propaganda.
So was Messmer formally considered a part of the golden lineage?
Or more likely, was he a bastard demigod born
before Godfrey or after, and shunned by him?
It's certainly up to your own interpretation.
Whatever the case, one thing is certain.
Messmer has lived for a very long time, what
his Helm description calls "an eternity of suffering".
Another thing that helps convince me of Messmer's old age is the fact that
we know so little about the dark Kindling and the wicked serpent within him.
Thus, I feel like his birth could have been closer
to a dark period within the lore where we know little.
Messmer isn't the only child of Marika
cursed with unwelcome entities inside of him.
Many of Marika's other children with Radagon
too appear to have been suitable hosts.
The clearest example of this is Malenia, who was inhabited
at birth by the Outer God of Rot, and her lore seems to
suggest that being the child of a single god is the precursor
for this phenomenon, where they can be inhabited or cursed.
It's as if these children are born more vulnerable than others, and
it's as if Marika is able to put this vulnerability to use sometimes.
A great example of that is Melina, who I'd hazard
is an incarnation of a certain Gloam Eyed Queen.
Since Marika is said to have defeated the Gloam Eyed Queen, Melina's
existence may have been a deliberate act
with Marika, allowing her enemy to be reborn within her own
child, perhaps as a means of wielding the fire within her.
For Melina was given a purpose by Marika to burn down the Erdtree.
Incidentally, Messmer too bore a vision of fire, and like Melina,
the fire within Messmer was fated to incinerate a significant tree.
Perhaps Marika had learned from Messmer just what birthing
other entities into her children could be used to accomplish.
But I digress.
It's currently unclear whether Marika knew
that Messmer would be cursed from birth, but cursed
he was, cursed to harbor both a wicked serpent
and a kindling that would not be extinguished.
The serpent in particular filled Marika with such terror that
she plucked out his eye and put in its place a seal of grace.
Even so, her fear compelled her to secret
away her child within the realm of shadow.
Now, there is no lore that talks directly about how or
why, or even if the malevolent snake was his curse.
But the lore surrounding such serpents is fascinating.
So let's talk about that and compare these other serpents to Messmer.
Both the serpent hunter and the serpent god's curved sword speak of
an immortal serpent deity that once existed in the distant past,
worshipped through sacrifice in a long forgotten religion.
a God so feared that a special weapon was forged to hunt it.
And what appears to be this same serpent is what
eventually devours Rykard, becoming one with him.
Now, Messmer's serpent is physiologically different from the Great Serpent,
but there are still some very noteworthy similarities between the two.
Like Rykard's, Messmer's serpent still displays that
same propensity to devour the world, stretching its maw
over a giant orb, a visual that mirrors the world
devouring serpent depicted upon the Devourer's scepter.
So perhaps there is not just one undying serpent, but many.
After all, Rykard's concept art shows two unbroken eggs
beside the broken shell of the Great Serpent.
A hint, perhaps, that others were yet to hatch.
And as Rykard himself says, it's not the serpent that never dies, but a serpent
never dies, suggesting the immortal Great Serpent
was not the only one of its kind.
But what else connects this ancient Great Serpent to Messmer?
Well, we also see winged serpent statues throughout Gelmir,
which could suggest a connection to Messmer's own.
And upon the peak, we find snakes embellishing an
ancient artifact of the Giants, tying serpents
to the Fell God and and his flame, which could
conceivably be the same flame within Messmer.
And that's a very interesting theory I want to discuss.
As a reminder, the Fel God is the entity that lurked within
the Fire Giants, and sometimes even within fire itself.
Its fire is able to burn the Erdtree.
So unsurprisingly, it was painted as corrupt
and malformed by Queen Marika's regime.
The One Eyed Shield actually goes so far as to say that
it's believed Queen Marika killed this evil deity.
But that's probably just another example of Golden Order Propaganda.
The Fell God inhabits the last Fire Giant when we
fight it, so it clearly still lives on, slowly
obsessing the minds of the Fire Monks who were
tasked with watching over its flame of ruin.
So it's curious that there are snakes embellishing
this ancient bowl of the Fel Gods Fire.
But there's more to connect snakes to the Fel God.
So the giant's flame incantations of the Fire Monks,
you may recall, have really distinct names.
This is a common pattern among the incantations of the Flower Fire Monks.
And curiously, this same naming scheme is
also present on the Serpent Flail, a weapon
intended to burn Hornsent with coiled snakes, branding them with agony and fear.
Its description says nothing about the Fel God, but its skill is named
echoing the incantations of the Fel God's flame.
It's an impressive piece of storytelling to hide a connection
to the Fel God in the name of a weapon skill of all things.
Credit to user 'callmeclaire' for making me aware of this amazing discovery.
So is there still any doubt that Messmer
has a connection to the Fel God of Fire?
Messmer's flame does manifest as an orb not
unlike the literal flame of the Fel God.
Messmer's furnace golems, too, were designed to evoke it.
Their masks are surrounded by curled horns depicting the
fell God of fire that haunts the sagas of the Hornscent.
This was an intentional act of terror by Messmer to mimic the visage of
a God that the Hornscent feared in the form of these walking furnaces.
Sure, this could have been nothing more than a
strategy to terrorize his foes, but it fell feels so
significant that it's Messmer and his flame that brings
these avatars of the Fel God and its furnaces to life.
I just wish we knew more about these Hornsent sagas that spoke of the Fel God.
The lore on this topic is just so tantalizing.
It's just enough for us to start forming theories, but
it's not enough for us to land on any one in particular.
But there is a fascinating story being teased
here of Fel Flame and Serpent gods that
could conceivably have crossed paths with Marika
and played a part in Messmer's birth.
But how you imagine that story is up to you for now.
Can they announce Elden Ring 2 already?
But back to what we know for certain.
What we know is that the serpents had an extremely ill reputation
in the age of the Erdtree, to the point where in the arena
gladiators would be adorned with bronze snakes, for the audience
delighted in seeing these bronze effigies beaten and battered.
Whether this hatred was justified or manufactured by the Erdtree's
order is unknown, but it must have surely shaped Messmer's life.
His snakes wouldn't exactly have been easy to hide.
Sure, they're not visible on the statue of him as
a baby, but Messmer's helm makes it clear that the
winged snakes in particular were his constant companions,
wise friends which keep the base serpent at bay.
That would have been a crucial role, especially
before Marika sealed the base serpent away with her grace.
The word 'base' in this context means to lack higher
qualities, to be morally low or despicable.
This is probably in reference to the serpent's
desire and its propensity to endlessly devour.
The base serpent thus stands in contrast to the
winged serpents, which are benevolent by comparison.
We get the briefest glimpse of the base serpent behind Messmer's eye.
It appears to be knotted, visually similar to
the knot that Rykard's great serpent forms.
And in that dark hollow, it's feeding on something.
Messmer's kindling, a dark thing eaten away at by a wicked serpent.
We know a few things about this fire.
First, it's ever burning, not unlike the giant's flame.
Second, it can burn the ceiling tree.
Third,
it ties Messmer to Melina, who shares a similarly burning butterfly
and kindling that is similarly capable of burning the Erdtree.
If I had to guess, it's this ever burning flame
that has caused Messmer's eternity of suffering.
And Messmer's orb reads,
So wait, what exactly was Messmer doing to rid himself of his flame?
I wonder,
is it possible that in an attempt to rid himself of his fire,
Messmer could have fed his kindling to the base serpent?
This spell does depict the orb that's inside of the serpent's maw.
So, I wonder if there could be a story being told here.
The story of a dark serpent that consumed Messmer's essence.
Not unlike the great serpent that consumed Rykard and became one with him.
Indeed, Messmer and the base serpent are one entity,
as you can see in phase two of his boss fight.
Look closely and you'll notice that the snake shares
his greasy red hair and that same savaged right eye.
Under this interpretation, the serpent would not have freed him from his flame.
Instead, Messmer's fire would have become serpentine, attaining those
serpentine black streaks from the abyssal serpent that had become one with him.
But to be clear, this is just speculation.
It's entirely possible that Messmer was just born with the twin
snakes and born with the abyssal serpent and his kindling altogether.
Without learning the circumstances of his birth, we may never know for sure.
At some point, Messmer tried to offer his serpentine fire to
his knights, but alas, it would not find purchase within them.
I think this phrasing is deliberate, since
finding purchase within is wording that Tanith
also uses when she wishes that the serpentine Rykard
would find purchase within her.
"Dear Rykard, please find purchase within me."
Since it would not inhabit them, Messmer's knights
honoured their bond with him by incanting his flame instead.
This serpentine fire bends and curls in pursuit of its foes, evoking
other pursuit spells like death Rancor or hexis from the Souls series.
Pursuit spells such as these are typically alive in some way,
whether they're vengeful spirits or dregs drawn to life.
Messmer's embers were found all over after the Crusade,
and they were smoldering as if crawling across the ground.
So his fire really does appear to be alive.
So alive, in fact, that it can actually
substitute the role of a spirit calculus
and fit inside a raw burrow to release a boisterous fire sprite.
The spirituality of this fire is what led an
elder of the Fire Knights, a man named Weigo,
to use Messmer's flame in a rite of
resurrection, bringing soulless bodies to life.
"Fire, take seed in death and rise again!"
This was done in a bid to quell his loneliness.
But the walking corpses were of no comfort to the poor man.
Interestingly, no lore mentions Marika fearing Messmer's fire.
Rather, it only mentions that she fears the malevolent snake.
She so feared it that she plucked out her son's own
eye and replaced it with a seal of grace instead.
Yet, even having done so, her fear still compelled her to secret
away her child within the realm of shadow, where he could be hidden.
The Seal of Grace given to Messmer is a sort of
crystal eye engraved with Marika's own Elden rune.
It's essentially identical to Marika's saw seal,
which has a description that's particularly relevant
to Messmer and his his role in The Realm of Shadow
that reads,
And to a degree, this seal appears to exert an influence over Messmer,
for it's only when he shatters it that he lets forth his true feelings.
"Mother. Marika. A curse upon thee!"
After all,
similar to Messmer's eye is the
Iris of Grace, an item that you can find in game.
It features Marika's rune overlaid with an incantation
of the Erdtree, granting a fleeting blessing
when placed upon the eye.
Its counterpart is the Iris of Occlusion,
something that can deny one light in all its forms.
In the realm of Shadow, these artificers were employed by the priests of
the Erdtree to quell or intensify the
fears of their flock to magnificent effect.
And speaking of the priests of the Erdtree, we've heard of them before.
The Flask of Wondrous Physick is described as a relic
of these same priests who are said to have been
physick chemists, utilizing in their brews crystal dew
that would weep from the boughs of minor oak trees.
Marika herself practiced such physick chemistry,
and her ultimate creation was the Blessing of Marika,
the ultimate healing item to Messmer,
who likely suffered thanks to the fire within him.
These physics offered rare relief, for Marika once created
several of these physics for Messmer's sake, but then never again.
Presumably this mercy ended when Messmer was sealed away in the realm of Shadow.
So perhaps there was real affection between the two.
For all of Marika's fear, she did offer him relief.
Messmer also had his soldiers and black knights,
some of whom he even considered brothers in arms.
But perhaps his closest companion was Gaius, described
as both Messmer's friend and the leader of his men.
Like Messmer, Gaius was as an elder brother to Radahn,
and the two trained under the same alabaster lord, whose
tutelage led them to discover powerful gravitational
sorceries, products of their friendly rivalry with each other.
And just like Messmer, Gyas was cursed from birth.
He was a warrior of albinauric extraction.
And as we know, first generation Albinaurics
like this famously have no control of their
lower body, relying instead on mounts like
wolves, horses, or in Gaius case, a boar.
That was his other half.
In spite of this Albinauric curse, or perhaps because of this
very reason, there was a kinship between Gaius and Messmer.
Indeed, the lore makes quite a few mentions
of Messmer valuing friends and brothers in arms.
He seems to have had a pretty amicable nature,
which must have made his fate all the more painful.
For, on his mother's wishes, Messmer made himself a symbol
of fear, undertaking the cleansing crusade she desired.
In doing so, Messmer declared,
Yet Messmer was not the only one to suffer
the consequences of his ill reputation.
His Fire Knights, who each and all hailed from a
renowned family of the Erdtree's upper echelons,
were shunned and chased from their homes after
pledging allegiance to Messmer as their master.
Twinned golden snake snakes adorn the necks of these knights.
Yes, they have the gold of order, and yes,
these knights are aligned with the Erdtree.
But the snake clearly remains a despised symbol.
And allegiance to Messmer was thus a stain on the reputations of these
highborne families, who probably believed their children could do better.
Yet the Fire Knights were the only ones who truly knew Messmer, his flames
like serpents, and the painful fate that accompanied his accursed form.
A part of this painful fate was likely having to make himself a
symbol of fear without ever revealing that truth to the masses.
As there was a reason Marika instructed
her son to make himself a symbol of fear.
It's because she had a task for him.
One that she should not be closely associated with.
A vile crusade unbecoming of a queen.
A purge without grace or honour.
A crusade started by Messmer, son of Marika.
Have you ever noticed how bored Messmer sounds in his voice lines?
"Those stripped of the grace of gold shall all"
"meet death in the embrace of Messmer's flame."
Some people have chalked this up to bad voice acting, but I don't think so.
FromSoftware has a painstaking process for recording NPC dialogue.
There's an excellent interview on that.
I'll link in the description.
And every line is recorded with Miyazaki himself overseeing the situation.
So if Messmer sounds tired, disinterested, it's deliberate.
And I think it's because they aren't really his words.
They're the words of the crusade.
Thus, Messmer exhaustedly, almost sarcastically, intones the
words, even as he faces off against the graceless tarnished.
"O lightless creature, embrace thine oblivion."
"As shall I."
Now compare this to the way Queline speaks.
A man who zealously serves the crusade.
So desperate is he to become a second Impaler.
"Queen Marika."
"Behold."
"I have excised another."
"Another Cancer to thy joy."
While the tarnished are graceless, it's clear that
the true targets of the Crusade were the Hornsent.
For, as you may know, they were the ones who wronged Marika and her kin long ago.
And so, Messmer's army burns them with his fire
in return, branding them with agony and fear.
When I say it like that, it's easy to think that this crusade took place not
long after Marika ascended to godhood at the Hornscent's Gate of Divinity.
But that can't be right.
There had to have been a period of peace between Marika and the Hornscent.
A time to set the stage for what was their eventual betrayal.
So there's debate over when exactly the crusade
took place, but there is a consensus that it
must have at least have been some time before Rennala
was broken by Radagon, abandoning her.
For Rennala, Queen of Caria, was lucid enough to
give away a lock of her lustrous black hair, a
gift to her sister Rellana, who renounced her lineage
to chase after Messmer and follow him into war.
In order to prove her loyalty to the Erdtree, Rieanna entered the arena.
Ritual combat was once a custom performed to honour the Erdtree.
And so she donned her Carian thrusting shield and proved her loyalty alone.
It's clear Rellanna went on to have a huge impact in the realm of Shadow.
And I mean that literally, for here at the town of Morth,
the buildings have fallen into the broken earth.
The town's lynchpin stone, intended to prevent earthquakes, has broken, and
one eyewitness account claimed that the moon itself had come tumbling down.
This was the impact of Rellana's twin moon.
In her youth,
she and her elder sister Rennala met the twin moons,
overlapping as though nestled against one another.
So, just as her elder sister had the full moon and Ranni
had the dark moon, Rellanna had the twin moons.
Many Carians pledged to follow Rellanna wherever her lunar vessel would take
her, and left their homeland behind in this act of unparalleled devotion.
The wolf was engraved on the wolf crest
shield for them as a symbol of the moon's
pride that none can forget, no matter what remote lands they may arrive in.
Ymir was here too.
He once instructed Rellanna in the sorceress arts
and had an allegiance to the moon, though he
would later abandon it, claiming,
Even the Trolls came, sworn to service.
Fighting alongside them was Moonrithyll,
the Twin Moon Knights Chamberlain, who was a friend to
the Trolls, proudly wielding their weapons as she
fought arm in arm with her gargantuan comrades.
Speaking of the Trolls, once the astrologers who studied
the night sky were neighbours with the Fire Giants.
And the Sword of Night and Flame was forged to commemorate that unity.
A unity between the Night sky and the Fell God of Fire.
Those times are long past.
But here, in the realm of Shadow, would Moon and Fire be ever together?
For Rellana remained loyal to the Twin Moon and to Messmer and his Flame.
Her helmet description claims that she chased after him,
which I think suggests that she had an affection for him.
Just like her elder sister, who also clearly had a thing for men with red hair.
But just like Radagon, who would abandon Rennala for Marika, Messmer
doesn't give any signs that he returns Rellana's affection.
Nor does he seem comforted by her presence.
And Rellana seems to have anticipated this as she pursued him,
Indeed, Messmer keeps to himself in the dark, brooding over
betrayal and the painful fate that his mother left him to fulfill.
Sadly, unbeknownst to Messmer, his mother is long gone
and could not return to him even if she wanted to.
A phantom in Castle Ensys laments.
"Oh Marika! I beg, embrace your child and give us a sign."
"How long must this holy war stretch on?"
If it sounds like I've skipped over the actual battle
against the Hornsent, you're right, I kind of have.
Because I'd argued that the defining element of
the war was not the fight against the Hornsent.
Everything seems to point to this being a very one sided battle.
No, instead, I think the defining element of this war was how long
it was forced to stretch on, leading to the fatigue of all involved.
That said, of course the Hornscent did fight back with
the sculpted Keepers, whose lion dance ritual was turned
towards martial ends, and with the Cursed Blades, who were
a scourge to the Hornsent and the invaders both.
But they were ultimately defeated.
The sculpted keepers were impaled and burned in an act witnesses
later described as a funeral pyre for the tower itself.
And the Tower of Anir Elim was sealed away in shadow.
Sealed by a tree that is actually a scaled down version of the Scadutree.
Just as Marika and the two Fingers have control over light,
so too do they often wield Shadow.
And with shadowy thorns encasing Enir Ilim, Hornsent
culture was broken beyond repair.
Even if some Hornsent live on, it's as Hornscent himself.
"Indeed, I think it rather plain to see."
"Things once broken can never be the same."
Before the tower was sealed, it towered over the invaders.
And as the people of the Erdtree sacked the land of the Tower, the majesty of
the Tower was burned into their memory, even inspiring a secret faith in some.
Though it was not enough to sway them, for the soldiers who joined the
crusade had been showered in runes and rewarded with grace aplenty.
Still, the catch was that these soldiers
could not be properly honored in death.
They would not return to the Erdtree's roots and to the
faithful citizens of the lands between who hope to cheat death.
This is a dire fate indeed.
But they still had the Scadutree, the shadow of the Erdtree.
The Scadutree is this enduring curiosity
in Elden Ring lore, so omnipresent in the
dlc, and yet so devoid of any significant
detail in the game's many item descriptions?
Figuring out when it came to exist has been
something I've been trying to puzzle out.
In a previous video, I proposed that it came to exist in the moment
that Marika sealed away the realm of Shadow behind the Veil.
But I'm starting to change my mind.
I'm starting to think that it's been there since the Erdtree's own beginnings.
After all, it's born of dark notions that bear no sense of order,
and this duality is the reason Grace shines ever so brilliantly.
So perhaps there was always the Erdtree and
this Scadutree that was everything Marika
did not want, and thus the Erdtree was everything that shone brilliantly.
Like the Erdtree, the Shadow Tree still seems
to draw from the gold of the Crucible SAP
that was proudly collected at the Black Keep
with this giant structure that broadcasts to
the entire land that the SAP is theirs, and in
it went into the chalice of the Sharu Tree,
where that SAP was later scattered to
the Furnace golems who drop such crystal tears.
So if we assume that the furnace golems
of Messmer's Crusade always had the sap of the Scadutree
within them, as the DLC Crystal Tear
description states, then the Scadutree kind of
has to have existed before the start of the
war, which the furnace golems were created for,
and thus the Scadutree probably existed
alongside the Erdtree since its inception as well.
Its existence has probably just been a secret until now, but
let me know if you guys think that I'm off base with that one.
To many, in the realm of Shadow, the image of the misshapen Scadutree
became an edict, a proclamation that one should spurn
all that exists and wound all that exists.
So read the Thorn spells which were the sorceries of those who abandoned the
practice of incantations after devout faith rewarded them with only despair.
Denounce their ways, do them harm, for we have been abandoned.
Blessed boneshards are found throughout Messmer's fortifications.
These are special bone fragments that can be turned
into light by the Rite of the Golden Vow, which
honours the comrades who placed the faith in the
distant Erdtree and gave their lives in the Crusade.
Their bone fragments have this power because
they've been touched by the gold of the Scadutree.
It's a reminder of the Scadutree's power, and indeed,
there's something to be said for merely being in its presence.
Take the Shadow sunflowers, for example,
which only bloom when facing the Scadutree
and are suffused with profound holiness much akin to the Scadutree itself.
Thus, to be hidden from the Scadutree's sight
would be a severe indictment of an individual.
And one such instance of this exists with Messmer's
soldier ashes, which read,
An ignoble penal battalion would have been a
unit comprised of disgraced soldiers, warriors
assigned to fight as a form of punishment,
maybe, or perhaps as a path to redemption.
If it's the latter, the fact that their ashes were
disgraced with a hidden burial would be all the more tragic.
Now, it's unclear whether all of Messmer's soldiers comprise the penal battalion
or whether it was just these two, but I'm inclined to think it was just them.
Either way, it's very interesting that Messmer was willing to send
the guilty to war, especially if you believe that Messmer was
a part of the war against the giants, because that war, or the
aftermath at least involved the sinful Thorn sorcerers as well.
The Scadutree is all many in the realm of Shadow have left.
The armour of those soldiers as well as the Black Knights
has a gold Scadutree motif engraved on the chest plate.
It was a small consolation to those forced
to wage a war without grace or honour.
Yet for some, the Scadutree wasn't enough.
In a small cave on Scadu Altus, a fledgling Erdtree grows surreptitiously,
being tended to by the most proficient of gardeners, perfumers.
And elsewhere, another golden tree grows in a courtyard of the Shadowkeep.
These are akin to minor erdtrees, or illusory
trees, which, early in the age of the Erdtree,
likely were not around, as the Erdtree was
thought to have been perfect and eternal.
And thus was it believed that Erdtree seeds could not exist.
But exist they did, scattering across the various lands when the Elden Ring
was shattered, as if life itself knew that its end had come.
And in that moment, too did the Erdtree avatars emerge from the minor
erdtrees, determined to protect the withering Erdtree's offspring.
So for a long time, I thought that minor
erdtrees across the entire lands between
only came to exist when golden seeds flew from
the Erdtree in the wake of the Shattering.
But that can't be true, because then how could these trees be here?
The Shattering happened after this realm was split off for the Crusade,
so the trees here must have been planted before the Shattering, right?
Unless you believe that people and things
like Erdtree seeds could be brought across
the Vale, in which case a lot of the timeline
becomes extremely complicated.
Anyway, now, I think that the Age of Plenty with the Erdtree
came swiftly to a close, and then minor erdtrees like
these were grown all across the lands, with their sap
being collected in basins by the physick chemists.
I think one of these trees was even grown here in
the Shadowkeep itself, where we can see Hornsent.
Loyal to the Erdtree are accustomed to praying.
But this tree that the Perfumers tend to is
smaller, suggesting, I think, that it was
grown more recently, perhaps after the Perfumers
were brought to the Realm of Shadow.
Gardening certainly wasn't what they were brought here to do.
The Crusade was a violent purge, and
the Perfumers were not called there to heal.
Still near the Perfumers, we loot heal from afar, which is
an erdtree incantation discovered in the Realm of Shadow.
It reads,
Their faith persists, but their practices suffer because erdtree
enchantments are all but a lost art in the Realm of Shadow.
And truthfully, even the faithful have
begun to suspect how bad things are outside.
For when the Elden Ring was shattered, the people of the Realm
of Shadow felt it too, and feared it as a sign of the Erdtree's wrath.
This is information learned from an incantation that's
found in the rafters of the specimen storehouse.
So it's hidden way out of sight.
And I imagine that the shattering might have been one truth too many
for the people of the Realm of Shadow, whose faith was already waning.
Indeed, it's rare to find a statue of Marika in this place that is not defaced.
Literally.
A phantom in the Shadowkeep gives voice to this wavering belief.
"No, such a thing is utterly inconceivable."
"We have not been abandoned."
Messmer is the son of Queen Marika.
Her Grace would never abandon her own flesh and blood.
Maybe this is why there needed to be a fort of Reprimand.
A place where many were reprimanded.
Even those blessed with Marika's own grace were hunted down and slain like Omen.
But remarkably, rebellion did rise from a Black Knight of all people.
The Black Knights were the primary force of Messmer's army.
With weighty shields meant to symbolize their iron conviction in the crusade.
The Black Knights will never yield, nor will they ever doubt their purpose.
Wishful thinking, for the Black Knights didn't even fully understand
the nature or potential of the impurity they were facing.
Thus does the pearl shield talisman boost
all types of non physical damage reduction.
Or for all they knew, tainted by their own
blackened souls festering after endless slaughter.
Is it any surprise then that once the dust had settled,
the Black Knights began to question their purpose?
A Japanese description here makes it clear that like the other
soldiers in the war, Andreas was driven away from the Erdtree.
But that despite being a devout follower of Messmer, he would
rebel after learning of his leisure's serpentine nature.
This is strange, considering the winged serpent is
literally the token creature of Messmer's military forces.
So surely it was obvious that Messmer had a serpentine nature.
Either Andreas was totally oblivious, or he glimpsed something deeper.
Or more disturbing. Maybe he glimpsed the abyssal serpent.
We know this happened sometime after the Divine Beast Hunt,
thanks to the ashes of Andrea's son, Hugh, who afterwards
followed his father Andreas into rebellion against Messmer,
only to be rewarded with imprisonment in an underground tomb.
Messmer mourned the loss of a brother in Arms.
How bad must the snake's reputation have been for it
to have made Messmer's most devout knights rebel?
It wasn't the the shrieks of sorrow from those they were killing.
It wasn't the horror of the Crusade itself.
Instead, it was their commander's serpentine nature.
I guess, to many of the Erdtree, the Crusade
itself was beyond questioning, for they
were certain of the sanctity of their campaign
and invigorated by each cry of death.
But Messmer was a different matter entirely.
Ironically, it was actually those closest to Messmer,
his Fire Knights, who questioned the Crusade on moral grounds.
One of them still stands guard at the bridge
to Roar, risking his life to protect an old ruin.
This is Saltzer, the sage, disciple of the elder Wego, who we mentioned earlier.
Soltzer are asked if we reduce to ash this land, this land against which
we hold no grievance, no ill will, are we any better than barbarians?
And his disdain for barbarism never waned, even as he
burned more villages and scorched more land than any other.
I suspect it was Saltzer who prevailed upon Messmer
to create the specimen storehouse with
within the Black Keep, a place for the preservation
of Hornsent culture, a museum of sorts,
actually tended to by loyal Hornsent scholars,
folk of burned body and soul, who ironically
incant coils of Messmer's own fire, the same
fire thrown by Messmer's rank and file soldiers.
A dear friend of Saltzer was the fire knight Hilde, who
joined those that urged that the specimens be preserved.
And so Hilde's ashes were enshrined here, a charm to protect the storehouse.
Messmer, for his part, showed his compassionate
side within the Black Keep as well, curating a wing
dedicated to the care of the Jar Saints, the shaman,
his kin, who were tortured by the Hornsent long ago.
Though it has long fallen into ruin, it's a reminder of
the real reason for the crusade against the Hornscent.
A cycle of vengeance that goes on and on, of curses realized and placed anew.
"Mother. Marika. A curse upon thee!"
As we close out this video, I'd like to go over a
few topics that are more open to interpretation.
I'd like to talk about who Messmer's soldiers
might have been in an age long past, what
the Black Keep might have meant, and why the serpent
skin in Bonny Village might be there to begin.
There was a time before Marika's ascent to godhood, where the realm of
shadow was not separate, but rather simply a part of the lands between.
Back then, here roamed the Highlanders, fierce axe
wielding warriors who hunted bears and chased glory.
In our previous video, I discussed their
connection to Hoarah Loux, their greatest
warrior, who would later abandon his Highlander
roots to become Elden Lord Godfrey.
And naturally, I suspect many of his Highlander
kin followed suit, leaving their past behind.
Yet, perhaps, traces remain in the men who became Messmer's
soldiers, though they now serve the Impaler, wielding spears.
I suspect there's more to them than meets
the eye, for like Godfrey, they favour axes.
Like Godfrey, they specialize in charge attacks.
And like Hoarah Loux, they roar.
And like Hoarah Loux, they can shake the earth itself with their stomp attacks.
So, were these Highlanders drafted into Messmer's ranks after Godfrey
became Elden Lord, or did their culture simply evolve over time?
Or am I completely wrong?
Now, I feel pretty confident, at least, putting forward this theory,
considering we never see the old Highlanders as an enemy type in game.
So I love the theory that they might have
slipped into becoming something else in the age
of Godfrey, a people aligned with grace, though
later they would become divorced from it.
To them, the grace of gold would be a distant memory.
Messmer's Black Knights, too, seem tied to
the land that they would later forever occupy.
According to Ashes, they had command over the powers
of the Crucible, which flourished in this region.
Godfrey's Crucible knights, too, were in tune with the powers of the Crucible.
And since we can place Godfrey's heritage in this region, it makes sense
that we might be able to trace his Crucible Knights back here as well.
So if all of these factions were long standing in this area, who's to
say the structures in the realm of Shadow weren't long standing too?
This brings us to the Black Keep, for it also contains signs of an older
culture, one related to death, as it was in the age before the Erdtree.
Here in the Black Keep, Messmer is cremating
his warriors, turning their remains into light.
But what's curious is that this ritual is taking place
within boats, funerary boats that are an exact match
for those piloted by the Tibia Mariners, the oldest
gravekeepers and boatsmen who can summon the dead.
We've learned a little bit more about the mariners in the shadow of the Erdtree.
Interestingly, they're quite sad beings.
The Polter Stone is this contrivance they devised,
and it creates a noise imitative of human presence
where it lands, which was used by the Gravekeepers to
distract themselves from their longing for company.
But the most important piece of lore for them isn't an item description.
It's a place.
where one river-boatsman
remains watching over those at rest.
What's important here is the name Charo, for Charon
is a figure from Greek myth, the ferryman
of the underworld, whose role is to transport
the souls of the dead across the River Styx.
This confirms what we've long suspected,
the Mariners are a guiding lantern in the mist
to the dead, who are in sore need of leadership and have long been left to wander.
So the similarity of the boats used by the Mariners and Messmer suggests
the Black Keep might have had a deeper tie to the culture of death in this land.
But that's not the only connection.
Helphen's steeple is an extremely curious item
that was dropped by a mariner in the base game.
It's a greatsword patterned after the black steeple of the Helphen,
the lampwood which guides the dead of the spirit world.
For years, we've wondered what the Helphin might be exactly,
and now we have another theory to add to the list.
What if the Helphen was once the Black Keep?
As I learned from Quelaag in her video about the Shadowlands, Helphen's serrated
steeple kind of looks like the jagged
steeples of the Black Keep, making us wonder
whether this keep had a different role in the past and that it might have been
a place that was simply taken over by Messmer rather than being built by him.
While a lot of this is circumstantial evidence and speculation, you
can't deny that there's signs of older traditions enduring here.
The Highlanders, the Helphen, funerary rites, the Serpent's reputation.
It's these things that make the world of Elden Ring feel real and lived
in even across all of the ages, that we don't get to witness in game.
Let's end this video with one of the biggest secrets in the DLC,
the Shed Serpent skin found by Bonny Village.
Man, what is it with FromSoftware and leaving us unanswerable
questions about serpents at the end of their DLCs?
I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what's going on with it yet.
Instead, I'm going to leave you with a few
observations and let those inspire your conclusions.
My first note is that the Serpent skin is found
near the statue that reveals the "O Mother!" emote,
which you later use to gain access to the
shaman village hidden behind the Black Keep.
For this statue to be so close to the serpent, I think
suggests a connection to either Messmer or Marika.
My second point is that this serpent is not
physiologically similar to Messmer's serpent.
Rather, it's a perfect match for the God Devouring Serpent's
visage and Iglay as well for that matter.
As a reminder, Iglay is that flayed serpent skin that's spread
over the altar in her church at Gelmir, and below it we loot
the serpent's amnion, an item that's tied to Raya, who was
the poor unwanted offspring of this repellent birthing ritual.
It's a common trend in Elden Ring for smaller NPC stories to mirror and help
explain more important stories, and so I wouldn't be surprised if Raya's
repellent birthing ritual could help to explain the circumstances of Messmer's
own birth and what's going on with the serpent that took root inside of him.
Perhaps Messmer was born of a repellent birthing ritual as well.
It's also worth noting that a godskin dwells in the church of Iglay,
which could in turn suggest a connection to the Gloam Eyed Queen.
The godskins are somewhat serpentine, with bodies that
can stretch much in the same manner as a man serpent.
The godskin noble robe states that nobles are the most ancient apostles who
are said to have assimilated inhuman physiology not unlike the Crucible.
And there's even a spirit calling snail, which is actually a serpent
that summons godskins in your battle with it in the Spiritcaller Cave.
That's a fair amount of overlap, but it's impossible to be sure.
If you'd like to share what this story
might look like to you, drop your ideas in
the comments and I'll pin my favorite
interpretation at the top for everyone to read.
Thanks for being here and I'll see you in the next one.
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