Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring, Part 11

 

I'm at the point in Elden Ring where I do kind of have to decide between going to the Volcano Manor and Caelid, since both are, I think, possible ways to go after clearing Liurnia. And... what I've been doing is mostly just running around and clearing the lesser dungeons, gathering items and farming for runes to slowly build up my stats.

I've also ignored a lot of the side-quests going on, and I've been ever-so-slowly going through the rather long Ranni storyline properly. As the monsters in this review show, I've reached the part where I have to explore the Siofra River. Also did some of the stories involving "D", Rogier, Millicent and Sage Gowry. It is kind of interesting that I've explored a bunch of areas related to her quests (and even cleared some of them!) but the game does work on rather traditional 'event triggers' for the quest to continue. I'm not sure how much I like this, to be honest, because on one hand I like the immersion to the world and the lack of spoonfeeding me the quest with quest markers or whatnot, but I also wish that there was a more efficient way to go through these storylines. 

So basically, I went through a guide and checked off everything so I can do both the Radahn Festival and enter the Atlus Plateau in peace. Major things that I did here was to progress the Ranni storyline (and accidentally clearing all of Siofra River in the process, which I thought was necessary for said quest), and finish the whole Albinauric Village mini-storyline with Nepheli Loux,

Anyway, I think I did most of what I have to do before I start off the Radahn storyline in Caelid, which is finally me going off the dungeon-clearing and back to the main storyline.

In other news, I'm out of images for the starter classes. And with at least four more large areas, I guess maps won't last that long, so I'll just have to look for prominent non-boss NPCs to put as the header pictures. 

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Glintstone Dragon Smarag

I've already met and slain the dragon in Limgrave, Agheel, but there have been many other dragon encounters -- a bunch in Caelid, and this big guy in Liurnia that guards a key that leads into the main story dungeon. It's just that I do have a policy of only reviewing a monster after I have properly beaten them, meaning that I haven't talked about Smarag before.

And... just like many other things in Liurnia, Smarag seems to have merged with the magical glintstone. It's a bit hard to tell from afar, but his body is covered with pockmarks of glintstone. Apparently, Smarag became encrusted with glintstone after eating a lot of the local glintstone sorcerers, causing the magical stones to infuse his body. Just like many of the other enemies in Raya Lucaria, this also makes Smarag inordinately resistant to glintstone magic, which is a bad thing for my astrologer build! Of course, being a dragon, this also means that Smarag launches a bunch of glintstone magic as his 'breath weapon'. 

Glintstone Dragon Adula
Another Glintstone Dragon hangs around in Liurnia, in the 'Three Sisters' area where the witch (and totally one of the demigods; she just pretends as if we don't know) Ranni makes her base. Her towers are guarded by this massive dragon Adula, who is more or less the same thing as Smarag but with more health. But the biggest problem here is that the terrain! Smarag (and Agheel before him) are fought in huge swamps with plenty of places to run. Adula's fought with a lot of ruins, meaning that you're more likely to get caught up in some kind of ruin as you try to escape his blue-fire breaths. 

Of course, you're most likely going to be allies with Ranni, and Adula's essentially the equivalent of a particularly aggressive guard pitbull. Once you beat its health down to around 40%, Adula just flies off, probably so the game doesn't have to record lines of you explaining to your prospective new boss how you just murdered her security guard for runes. 

Also, Adula completes a nice little trifecta -- remember how when we fought Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon back in Raya Lucaria, and Ranni takes over the second phase with an illusion of Rennala at her prime? Rennala-Ranni uses several spirit summons that correspond to her minions -- a Bloodhound Knight as well as some wolves (Blaidd the Wolf), a Troll Knight (Iji), and a dragon (Adula). 

Dragonkin Soldier

The Ranni storyline brought me back to the underground lands of Siofra River, with all the creepy Claymen and ghostly Ancestral Followers that we've reviewed forever ago. And tucked away in a lake at the edge of these locations is this giant Dragonkin Soldier. Over my time of playing video games, I've seen a lot of different "dragon-men" enemies, but the Dragonkin Soldier here just feels... wretched. From the moment that he decides to fight you and tries to get up from the prone position that he's in, the Dragonkin Soldier looks like he's barely holding himself together. Is he even alive? And indeed, throughout most of the fight, he seems like he's having trouble standing and has to crawl around. Due to his size and insane reach, the Dragonkin Soldier hits hard and can almost one-shot my character... but there are also parts of his attack string where he's just flailing or struggling to get up, allowing me to get some hits in. 

The design of this guy is just pretty sorry-looking. This guy is technically a bipedal dragon-man, but that would give the sheer nastiness of this thing some disservice. The arms are way too long, the dragon face looks mutated and is a weird fusion of a draconic head-shape and an almost human set of teeth, and it's wearing armour that is in the process of falling apart. Look close enough and you see that its torso and abdomen seem to be gouged out like the trolls. It seems that this is someone who tried to merge himself with a dragon, or transform into a dragon, but ended up getting trapped in this strange in-between Frankensteined form. 

The halberd that the Dragonkin Soldier drops states "alas, the Dragonkin Soldiers never attained immortality and perished as decrepit, pale imitations of their skyborn kin." So presumably, this is an undead? It's not classified as one of the 'Those Who Live In Death'. Other item descriptions seem to note that the Dragonkin Soldiers were the result of some kind of magical experimentation to gain the power of dragons, but are they transformed humans or a wholly synthetic race like the Albinaurics? Whatever they are, they're now mindless and in pain, and utilized only as siege weapons. 

Ancestor Spirit

Okay, so this is the god that the horn-cosplaying Ancestral Followers worship! The way to unlock this boss fight is quite interesting, where you have to run around and light up some braziers next to obelisks that the Ancestral Followers are worshipping, at which point a deer corpse in a temple starts to glow. Upon touching it, you're transported into this ethereal, creepy cave where the Ancestor Spirit slowly walks up to you before engaging you in a battle. 

The presentation is pretty amazing, but the design of the Ancestor Spirit is also quite badass, too. It's easy to handwave it as just a zombie deer. Or, well, a giant, glowing zombie deer. But it just looks so creepy, so emaciated. Look at all those strips of fur (?) hanging off his body like moss. Look at how messy the antlers are and how they're gnarled and ever-growing, as if they just can't stop branching. Maybe some more connections to trees that has been around all this game. And when the Ancestor Spirit opens its mouth... yeah, that isn't the mouth of a deer, but it's not so grotesque that it doesn't look like it doesn't fit in an organic creature. 

Deer are already creepy animals, but having a decrepit, creepy one -- particularly with all the mystery revolving around the Ancestral Followers and their worship of it -- is a pretty great setup for a boss. 

Oh, and he can also jump around and make little air platforms in the sky. I mean, it's a weird spirit deer, I'm not surprised that it can do that. What makes it interesting is that the animation feels super familiar, and that's because our own horse -- our horned horse -- Torrent does the same thing. So while I haven't done my in-depth research, I won't be surprised if there's some connection between the two.

Magma Wyrm

Since we're already talking about dragons, let's acknowledge another mutated pseudo-dragon, the Magma Wyrm! This guy is the boss of the Gael Tunnel dungeon. Item descriptions note that Magma Wyrms are the result of people who partook in 'Dragon Communion' a bit too much. What's Dragon Communion? Your character can do it too, it's taking the Dragon Hearts you loot from all the dragons you kill and sacrificing them to gain access to specific dragon spells. 

Apparently, if you do it too much, you get transformed into a dragon... but not just any dragon. You get transformed into a Wyrm, and the game's taking a nice nod of having 'wyrm' be also a word for 'worm', because these Magma Wyrms are pale imitations of the true dragons we've been fighting, with their tattered wings and their very gecko or salamander-like bodies that are pressed close to the ground. Their a lot more cohesive than the Dragonkin Soldiers, though, other than the tattered wings and the fact that one of their arms ends in a giant, mutated organic sword that it can light on fire. The animation for this thing is so wretched and it really does look like it's writhing and struggling in pain. 

I really like the look of this and the shape of the face here. I like varieties of dragons, I like 'dragonspawns' and 'lesser dragons' but I've always felt that some games go a bit too far in just introducing a ton of variations without really justifying them. Having different origins for them is a nice little touch. 

Crystal Snail

Found in some caves in Liurnia are even more wildlife mutated by the glintstones in the area, and one of them are... Crystal Snails? Calling them just 'crystal snails' seem to do the sheer bizarreness of this creature a disservice, though. Just look at this thing. The shell is replaced with chunks of crystal, sure. That's not too special. What's weird is that the body of the snails have extended and elongated into a snake-like shape, though still ending with a pair of goofy snail eyestalks. They normally curl up in their happy crystal snail shells, but they can shoot out cones of crystals or launch glintstone pebbles at you, or, failing that, just leap towards you. Oh, and their mouth yawn open very creepily.

It's... it's just really weird. I love these guys. After the glut of random humans we've reviewed in the previous episode of Elden Ring monsters, I love that we're back to talking about really weird crystal-breathing snail-snake monsters. 

First-Generation Albinauric

Nestled on the side of Liurnia of the Lakes is the 'Village of the Albinaurics', filled with these old, decrepit men. Or, rather, men-looking things. When our Tarnished arrives into the Village of the Albinaurics, the entire population has been decimated, with bodies piled up or crucified for the seeming crime of not being humans. And if the name sounds familiar, that's because we've met the Second-Generation Albinaurics before, who look like... frog people? Turtle people? They certainly didn't look anything like these guys, who just look like sad old men with slightly longer arms and shorter legs. The apparently deformed legs really didn't register to me throughout my gameplay, and I just thought that they crawl on the ground because it looked creepier. And it is!

Almost all of the Albinaurics we see in the Village have been driven mad and feral by the tragedy done to them, save for two that end up realizing that we're not affiliated with the Tarnished that killed them, and offer their aid to us. These Albinaurics are mostly harmless and you can really just ride past them, though some are at least smart enough to cast sorceries. Oh, and they bleed silver blood, just like their Second-Generation cousins. Item descriptions and dialogue from the sentient NPCs note that Albinaurics were artificially created by human hands, but because of this reason, many humans view them as lesser since they're outside of the 'Golden Order'. Hence, the tragic massacre. 

Without the existence of the Second-Generation Albinaurics I probably wouldn't find them particularly interesting, just a group of old-people looking guys that are apparently artificially created, and had the misfortune of being caught in the crossfire of more powerful soldiers. But the connection between the First and Second Generation Albinaurics, and how or why the second generation is created, is quite interesting. 

Depraved Perfumer

One of the humans that assaulted the Albinauric Village is the Depraved Perfumer, and... uh... he sure uses perfumes to fight, I guess? Actually, considering how many enemies in this game like the harpies and Miranda Flowers use poisonous gas-clouds to fight, I probably shouldn't be surprised. They also apparently partake in the insanity-causing perfumes and use it to alter their body and mind. So they're perfume-shooting drug addict racists. Neat. It's not something you see in every setting, and in later areas they'll apparently be more plentiful... but I don't have much to say beyond that. 

Omenkiller

The boss in the Village of the Albinaurics is an Omenkiller, who is an armoured almost samurai-looking person wearing a creepy mask shaped like a demon. Oh, and he wields massive swords that terminate in horns... and item descriptions note that these horns are amputated and harvested from their previous kills. As we noted before, Omens are large, ogre-like children who were born with horns and face a lot of persecution under the belief that they're also 'outside the Golden Order', so I assume that these Omenkillers are religious fanatics that go around killing anything they view to be outside of the Golden Order, whether they be Omens, Albinaurics, or anything else. 

Ensha of the Royal Remains

While fighting and killing the Omenkiller and his minions seem to bring the Albinauric Village tragedy to a close, a conversation with the surviving Albinaurics mention that someone else seem to be behind it. A Tarnished seemingly going around looking for a medallion plot device. There are no real clues to this until you teleport back to the Roundtable Hold... and suddenly the music is ominous and you're ambushed by Ensha here. Ensha is a silent NPC that has been hanging around leaning against the walls of the Roundtable Hold for a while, seemingly just there for decoration or flavour since he's the only Tarnished who doesn't have a quest or offer some kind of shop or upgrade material. 

Ensha himself is extremely silent, though, so we don't really learn much about what his motivations are... and it's ambiguous on whether he is or isn't doing all of this under the orders of the grouchy boss of the Roundtable hold, Sir Gideon Ofnir. He has a funky armour set that is skeleton-themed, and the descriptions of his set talk about some ancient king. I find his weapon -- a pair of daggers made out of human arm bones -- to be funny. Because the way Ensha holds them, he's essentially shaking hands with a pair of disembodied skeletons and uses the pokey lhumerus bones as the tip of the dagger. It's ridiculous. I don't have a whole ton to say, I'd probably feel a bit more of an 'oh shit' moment if Ensha has been an actual proper presence as an NPC in the game. Being ambushed in the supposedly safe base is a cool 'wtf' moment, but I don't really feel all that much beyond that about Ensha here. 

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...and that's all the monsters and enemies I want to talk about now! Next up, we're going to set off the Radahn Festival and finally move forwards with the story!