Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree, Part 3

So yeah, in my bit of a mad dash to make sure I don't accidentally break the NPC quests after approaching the Shadow Keep, I haven't really been exploring the main storylines of the game yet. It is quite frustrating. I did admittedly not lose out on too much, but I also used a guide and some exploits to otherwise get to talk and unlock some of the Thiollier/Moore conversations. I did miss out on all of the Moore cookbooks, and some interactions with Sir Ansbach and the Hornsent but that's not the worst that could happen. 

I did think that was a really poorly designed 'quest progression' because I didn't even enter the castle, I merely approached it. Bit of a shame, cause that did put a dampener on my runthrough of the game. 

But anyway, I've been mostly doing exploration of the dungeons that are hidden on the first plains that we're dropped into, as well as running around unlocking maps and areas. After making sure which areas I shouldn't go to, I was spending a lot of my gameplay time just running around, exploring and clearing minor dungeons.

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Jar Innards

We'll start off with a dungeon 'attached' to the Belurat Tower Settlement, the Belurat Gaol. The relatively expansive dungeon is filled with a lot of Living Jars, seemingly being created and being venerated. Massive altars and actual Living Jar enemies are there... but this time, some of the jars pop up to reveal these things. The Jar Innards! Dialogue with the cheerful Alexander and Jar-Bairn from the base game have already clued us into the fact that the Living Jars actually do contain the amalgamated flesh and presumably souls of the people stuffed into them... and of course, the DLC gives us a nice showcase of what they look like. 

The Jar Innards are Resident Evil-esque masses of tumorous flesh, and you can make up a lot of flesh-blobs and faces into it. There does seem to be a 'core' body in the middle of the tumourous blob, with a primary pair of legs that shamble around, and a primary pair of hands that hang uselessly. Is this what Godrick and Godfrey's "grafting" was based on? Item descriptions found around the dungeon note that there's some sick ritualistic deal to the creation of the jars, noting that this is the 'cycle of death and rebirth', and that 'they might be reborn int sainthood'. However, the actual ghosts found in the place are begging to not be stuffed into a jar. With the jars themselves seemingly utilized in the main game's Erdtree worship, it is eerie to see the more brutal insides of the Living Jars. 

And the way these things fight are also quite pathetic. they just lunge at you and more likely than not flop onto the ground. They do like to hide under thick armoured jars, which tend to take a hit to break before you actually start to damage the monster beneath. It's cute, in a Zelda enemy kind of way. A bit less cute, however, is the Jar Innard's grab attack, where it extends a massive tentacle of sinew, flesh and bone to grab you and pull it into it, at which point it starts pounding at you with its many claws. 

Demi-Human Swordsmaster Onze
The boss of the Belurat Gaol is the surprising Demi-Human called Onze. He's a unique model and a swordsmaster, and he fights by literally disappearing, teleporting around and then unleashing giant glowing blades. The fandom has taken to comparing him to a design based on Master Yoda, albeit more hostile, and I do agree. Onze apparently had once devoted himself to the 'star-lined sword', but imprisoned himself willingly within the gaol because of some terrifying truth he learned. Okay. 

Greater Potentate

Found in a location called the Bonny Village where are 'potentates'. The strange term has been used before as a term of respect for Jar-Bairn, the Living Jar living in Jarburg, a rank given to our buddy Diallos. The Potentates were implied to simply be guardians of the Living Jars, and the term is an archaic word for monarch. In Bonny Village, we find out that the Greater Potentate near-naked chubby Hornsent men with gigantic cleaver knives, and the implication is that they go around killing a people called the 'shamans' and stuffing them into Living Jars. 

The only time we've heard of the word 'shaman' in the game refers to the spellcasters of the Ancestral Follower people, although I don't think the two are specifically linked here.  The shamans' flesh, it seems, 'melds well' with others. {erhaps the 'main' body of the Jar Innards are these 'shamans'? Why are they chopping people up and making them into Living Jars? Regardless, the visual image is... is a rather creepy one, looking wild and honestly quite psychotic. 

Black Knight Garrew / Black Knight Edredd

We've got a couple of named Black Knights. Garrew serves as the boss of the Fog Rift Fort. I don't find the Black Knights anywhere as cool as the Tree Sentinels or Crucible Knights, but Garrew is a bit more notable because he uses some crucible spells... which I find odd because as a minion of Messmer, isn't he supposed to oppose the Crucible? In addition to some spells we have seen, Garrew has a hilarious one where he manifests a cartoony set of lips on his chest, and a chameleon or frog tongue zips out and pulls us towards him so he can bash us with his hammer. That came so out of nowhere and most certainly not what I expected from a big burly knight guy! 

Black Knight Edredd serves as the boss of the Fort of Reprimand, which appears to be a torture-haven. Unlike the other Black Knights, he wields a twinblade which makes him surprisingly fast. He also uses crucible spells, although the 'wings' variant that we have already seen multiple times from the Crucible Knights.

Putrescent Slime
In the 'base' Elden Ring, the slimes have mostly been skeletal or blood, and tied to either places where a lot of people die or the Mohgwyn Dynasty. However, the slime model has been reskinned for some fungus-themed slime enemies in the base game... and purple, putrescent slime-lumps here. 

The 'putrescence' is only found in a dungeon on the south side of the Lands of Shadow called the Stone Coffin Fissure, mostly filled with gravebirds, souped-up abnormal stone clusters and these slimes. The slimes, drop unique 'Congealed Putrescence' that apparently 'oozes from stone coffins', and are created from the tainted remains of the impure flesh within the coffins, or something. It's only found around the Fissure, and presumably have something to do with the unnatural death in this location... or with St. Trina herself -- I don't have the full story on her yet, but she's essentially a fragment of the demigod Miquella who was cast off and sealed within this location.  

Anyway, in conjunction with the 'death doesn't really work properly' themes of the game, apparently improperly-interred flesh will manifest into these 'putrescence'. Without the proper burial rites of the Erdtree Burial practiced in the Lands Between, or even the deathflame/ghostflame of the Deathbirds, apparently this is what happens to dead bodies! 

Putrescent Knight

The Stone Coffin Fissure dungeon is a eerie one, with giant coffin-boat structures jammed into the side of the massive chasm, purple flowers growing everywhere, and eventually leading to a strange part with a lot of animals seemingly kneeling in reverence, while the only way for you to proceed is to jump on a 'leap of faith' a long way down to fall onto an even deeper subterranean location where this thing awaits to fight you. 

The Putrescent Knight is, at first glance, 'just' a knight. It's a humanoid figure riding a horse, with a ridiculously large crescent-shaped blade it swings around. But the more you look at it, the more wrong it looks. But then there are some things that are a bit odd. For one, the horse is eyeless, and its lower body dissolves into a trail of goop that merges with the arena it's running in. 

The rider is even weirder. The head is the most obvious, having a snake-like neck and ending in a orb with two glowing eyes and no mouth. That alone sets it apart from the legions of samey 'knight in full armour' enemies we've already had in this game. The rest of his body seems to be made up of an oversized ribcage, and there's one too many joints in his weird arms. Some people have posited that the Putrescent Knight seems to have a horse's ribcage, which... I'm not qualified enough to make comparisons of, but I could see the idea of the horse's skeleton bursting out of a muscle-and-skin bag, terminating at where the eyes cut off from the face for some reason? That's weird. The rider and horse do separate from each other a couple of times, so they aren't actually connected... but who knows how an ooze-skeleton creature is supposed to 'naturally' act?

The Putrescent Knight itself is an unsettling fight, though. It may be a skeleton, but it's a weird goopy skeleton -- which means that its joints don't work like a normal human, allowing it to have some dizzyingly weird combos. In addition, the Putrescent Knight is able to summon giant globs and waves of this putrescent material. In its ultimate move that it does when it goes below half-health, the horse expands into a gigantic glob and spews goop everywhere. I do like this guy, and it's a bit of a surprise to find him at the end of the dungeon.

St. Trina

After defeating the Putrescent Knight, you get to meet St. Trina herself, the being that has apparently been purifying the putrescence... who is a strange sleeping woman whose body has mutated into a plant. There is a bit of a silhouette where the flowing petals are shaped to look like a woman in a dress, but the actual head and arms of St. Trina is located where one would find the chest in a regular human. She's depicted as slumbering and from all of the hints from the base Elden Ring game, we know that St. Trina is a being associated with sleep and dreaming. This DLC confirms that St. Trina is a cast-off part of the kindly demigod Miquella, and sealed within this location. It tracks with a lot of the 'gods sometimes have multiple personas' theme we see in the original game, with Marika/Radagon being two beings and personalities in a single body, and Miquella's own twin Malenia having split off at least five 'offshoots' that are implied to previously been part of her. 

St. Trina herself is not exactly an enemy, but just a strange immobile figure that we can 'imbibe' the nectar from. Said nectar gives us eternal sleep... i.e. it instantly kills us. Except do that enough times, and St. Trina will start speaking to us in the moments between death and resurrection, asking our aid to stop Miquella's ascension to godhood for his own sake. 

Thiollier

...all this is a bit of an intro to this character, Thiollier. Technically a character that I'm supposed to have some interaction with before, Thiollier sits a bit separate from all the other charmed adherents of Miquella, and is a sickly man in a mask that's obsessed with poisons. He is also extremely fanatical about Miquella, having made the pilgrimage down to the Stone Coffin Fissure's depths after we cleared out the Putrescent Knight. But St. Trina doesn't speak to him, and only us. And when we try to share those words with him, he gets so jealous that St. Trina is picking favourites, and attacks us. He fights with poison perfume bottles, and I think most of the new NPCs in the DLC fights with one of the new weapon types... but it's not really anything new since the Perfumer enemies have been using those weapons before; it was just inaccessible to the player. Thiollier is an interesting character concept, but I find Thiollier probably one of the least interesting of the NPCs introduced in Shadows of the Erdtree. Admittedly, I did miss out on a chunk of his earlier dialogue, but I didn't feel sorry at all kicking his butt. 

Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree, Part 2

As I continue my little sojourn through the Lands of Shadow, it's a nice feeling to be back like when I was first exploring the original Lands Between. A lot of castles, a lot of soldier camps, and trying to piece together the context of what's going on. In this case, we know -- at least we assume we know -- that the land was torn in a horrible, purging war between the forces of one of Marika's demigod children, Messmer the Impaler, against the local people called the Hornsent. But the forces of Messmer seem to be just as trapped as the people they were sent down to hunt. 

And there's the matter of Miquella the Kind, allegedly the kindest demigod in all of the Lands Between, who has been traveling through the Lands of Shadow and 'leaving pieces of his flesh' in various locations. 

Not much is really told, just built up, as I explore a lot of the earlier areas, clear out a couple of castles and tombs, and avoid giant furnace golems. Next up in the dungeons is Castle Ensis, which felt a bit shorter than the other legacy dungeons, although it was a bit surprising to see a lot of Raya Lucarian enemies here, scaled up to DLC scaling. 

I do have a little quibble about the way Shadow of the Erdtree's sidequest systems are designed versus the base game, though. One of the most major events that happen, the breaking of a Great Rune, happens when I... get too close to a big, imposing and very visually 'get here, it's cool' castle. There is no NPC or any lines of dialogue warning me that this was going to change anything. In the base game, as convoluted as it can be, a lot of the major changes and 'NPC acceleration' checkpoints happen when you kill certain bosses -- Radahn, Morgott, or activating the Forge of the Giants. Actions that have a significant amount of buildup by context or by the sheer fact that you're taking out a major demigod. Walking up a castle? Really? I don't think I've locked myself out of too many side-quests, looking at the guide, but that also made me, y'know, look at a guide and see just how terribly someone would really screw this up without even meaning to.

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Spirit Eel

Look at these guys.  Look at these guys! These things are adorable little tube-like entities that sprout out of the ground, rendered in transparency the same way that ghosts or Spirit Jellyfishes are. They've got adorable little dot-faces and dot-mouths that people have compared to the Kodamas of Princess Mononoke fame. What are they? The internal files call them 'Rei Chinanago', or spirit eel, which brings to mind very specifically garden eels. I've seen many of these garden eels while diving, and indeed, these tiny eels hide with half of their bodies buried underground, and their head just hanging up and bobbing around. It is that scene, scaled up to several dozen times the scale, and given adorable human faces and tiny, almost negligible human arms. 

The Spirit Eels, by the way, are completely harmless, similar to the Jellyfishes. They don't drop anything and they don't guard anything, so there's not even a reason to attack them. But if you do, their heads turn red similar to the Spirit Jellyfishes. At that point, they can inflate their angry red heads and slam them down on you like a club... or the more interesting one that I captured here in a screenshot, vomiting out strange tendrils of thread that much of the fandom has collectively identified as being similar to a sea cucumber's defense mechanism of vomiting out its own digestive tracts to distract an enemy -- a factor that was somewhat recently adapted into the Pokemon called Pyukumuku.

One of the absolutely most distinctive creatures to come from the DLC, it's no wonder that they show up in all of the loadscreens and promotional artwork. It is also honestly quite surprising and refreshing that they're just there to make the world a bit weirder and creepier. I feel the best video game worlds do that -- you don't need to devote half your bestiary to non-hostile creatures, but having one or two that isn't just a sheep or a dog does help to sell the impression of a world that's not obviously meant to have every single creature there have stat blocks for a player to kill.  

Black Knight

More humanoid enemies, the Black Knights seem to be Messmer's Army's equivalent to enemies in the base game like the Crucible or Banished Knights -- far better-armoured knights with unique tricks and weapons. In the Black Knight's case, they wield a big, fuck-off giant hammer and a very distinctive gold-rimmed shield. They can also cast certain Crucible spells, which makes me wonder if these are the 'modernized' or 'militiarized' version of the Crucible Knights -- which were always noted to be relics of a more bygone age. Or more likely, these were former Crucible Knight that were press-ganged and forced to serve under this 'away' army, because a lot of hints and dialogue we can find note that Messmer's Army is made up of the undesirables of the Lands Between that were sent away, out of sight, to fight a most heinous war, and was eventually also discarded when Queen Marika cast the spell that cut off the Land of Shadow from the Lands Between. 

Bloodfiend 

These big, burly ogre-like guys are another non-human enemy, but they're not that much terribly interesting than the knights. I do like their little squished-up rat faces, but they're otherwise just an enemy themed around the 'Bloodboon' rituals that were previously only associated with Mohg's Cult of Blood. Item descriptions tell us that the Bloodfiends had been a tribe that also found a 'twisted deity', presumably the same Formless Mother that Mohg worships, and in turn was twisted into these hulking rat-people that casts blood spells. 

I do find it neatly gruesome that some Bloodfields actually hold the dismembered arms of their kin -- and you, too, can loot the Bloodfiend's Arm as a weapon! Not the most exciting enemy, but a nice little visual and thematic difference from the Omens and Albinaurics we've been seeing a lot in the base game. Wonder if they'll actually have a bigger role or sub-area later on? 

Logur the Beast Claw

Logur, the Beast Claw, is just... some naked human with one of the new weapon types, the 'Beast Claw' weapon type. It's kind of cute, I suppose, that most of the new weapon types gets a named NPC to kind of introduce them to you. Logur is a rather surprising reference to Wolverine/Logan of Marvel comics fame, with the hair, the claw weapons, and his iconic half-naked escape from the Weapon X facility. There's not much else to note about Logur other than the really jump-scaring bird screech he makes when we wander into his territory. Unlike Logan, Logur's bark is definitely much worse than his bite. 

Knight of the Solitary Gaol

We've got more gaols in the Lands of Shadow, and one of them is guarded by the Knight of the Solitary Gaol, an asshole who wields a repeat-fire, infinite-ammo crossbow that makes the boss fight against him particularly annoying due to the small, square room it happens in. What little information we can find about him note that the mausoleums in the Lands of Shadow -- again, a land patterned and themed upon death -- have mausoleums specifically for great warriors "who lost their names, or their hearts". Which is apparently literal, because the Knights of the Solitary Gaol were an order who, through a secret rite, 'relinquished their hearts for heightened battle prowess'. The idea that this order might be connected to the Mausoleum Knights from the base game (who sacrificed their heads to become wandering security guards devoted to the mausoleums they guard) is intriguing, but on the other hand the Mausoleum Knights become teleporting ghost guards. This guy just has a minigun crossbow, that kind of ruins the whole vibe of a warrior who sacrificed his life for power. 

Dryleaf Dane

Technically an NPC who has a questline, I do fight Dryleaf Dane. He just sits in a corner of the world, not saying anything, unless you manage to find some instructions from a different NPC to to do a certain kung-fu-fight pose in front of him because 'no words are needed'. That's... that's kind of cute despite the ridiculous way you get around this. Defeating Dryleaf Dane earns you the respect of this kung fu master, and gives you a weapon that allows you to punch-and-kick enemies to the death instead of just utilizing weapons attached to your arms. For that alone, I find it funny. 

Moonrithyll, Carian Knight

While the exterior parts of Castle Ensis is filled with your regular gaggle of Messmer Soldiers and Black Knights, going a bit deeper shows some surprising returning enemies -- the stone-slab-headed mages of Raya Lucaria! Or the Carian Royal Family! We've got other Caria-related enemies like Troll Knights and Noble Sorcerers as well. Guarding the pathway to the boss chamber is Moonrithyll, Carian Knight, who's basically a similar-looking enemy to Moongrum, Carian Knight, who had guarded Queen Rennala. And that's because the boss is...

Rellana, Twin Moon Knight

RELLANA, Twin Moon Knight, twin sister of Queen Rennala! If the very similar-sounding names and the convoluted Game of Thrones-y royal family tree confuses you, this lady seems to be a cheeky joke by the developers. Yes, just like how some of the connections in the game are a bit ambiguous, turns out that Queen Rennala had a twin sister all along!

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy her boss fight. She had zero dialogue, which I thought was doing her dirty -- if the nameless lion dancers got a whole cutscene to build them up, surely Rennala could have had a badass line or two, right? She has one of the most kickass sounding boss OST's in the game with a really cool violin solo, though, and I found her hectic fight so fun. During her first phase, she just fights with her twin swords coupled with souped-up versions of Carian Magics. Her sword extending to a gigantic size to slash across the entire battlefield, summoning magical flying swords around her... 

But on phase two, she ignites her twin swords into fire and ice. Such a simple thing, such a simple visual, but it looks cool, isn't it? She starts casting all sorts of fancy fire and ice spells, and near the end of her health she flies up, summons twin moons, and chucks them down onto the ground. And a third, unexpected explosion when Rellana herself slams down and makes a groundpound. I love the fact that the 'Twin Moon' isn't just a wink-wink nod at Rellana being a 'twin' with a character very associated with the moons, but part of her ultimate attack as well. 

Very cool boss fight, even if I really wished we had learned more about her as a character. Item descriptions from stuff we got after beating her tells us that she is disavowed her birthright (which is probably why she's 'scrubbed from history' or something) and chose to stand at Messmer's side, and it's implied that she did it out of unrequited love. Okay! 

Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree, Part 1

And so, we begin -- not too far after completing Elden Ring, the DLC. Spanning through a world that's noted to be approximately one-fourth of the full game, focusing on one of the original game's unseen and most cryptic demigods, and showing us the aftermath of a particularly brutal part of the history of the world of the Lands Between, we have... Shadow of the Erdtree .

Rather infamous in its release for requiring you to beat around 75% of the game to even unlock the DLC (you need to beat Radahn and Mohg, the latter being in a rather hidden area in one of the last parts of the game), Shadow of the Erdtree interestingly doesn't function as a real sequel to the whole 'become Elden Lord' part of the primary game, but takes us to the strange Land of Shadows. 

Kindly Miquella, twin brother of Malenia who was abducted, assaulted and seemingly murdered by Mohg, Lord of Blood, is actually alive in sorts in this enigmatic land. It's a land with strange spectral gravestones all over, a gigantic crooked tree with veil-like ornamentation around it, and the entirety of it is noted to originally be part of the Lands Between that has been 'sealed off'. I've not read up much more beyond that since I wanted to discover the world on my own, but that's the setting! It's kind of a strange not-quite-purgatory, and it's clear that the reach of the Golden Order -- the dogmatic religion centered around the Erdtree and Queen Marika -- has reached even the Land of Shadows.

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Shadow Undead

While the actual terrain of the Land of Shadow isn't super shadowy other than the skies -- a bit of a necessity to ensure the players can actually play the game without a headache -- the actual enemies are actually shadowy people. Also alternatively known as Shadow Commoners, Revered Spirits or variations thereof, the Shadow Undead just wander the Lands of Shadow, apparently coalesced spirits of the dead people of the region. Mechanically they behave similarly to a lot of the humanoid enemies like Wandering Nobles or Commoners in the Lands Between... but with some backstory. 

Rather quickly, you find out that the Lands of Shadow has been 'put to the torch' by war. And that these Shadow Undead are the coalesced undead spirits of those that were massacred during the battle. Most interestingly, however, is the fact that almost all of these Shadow Undead have prominent horns in their heads, horns that recall those of the persecuted Omens in the Lands Between...

Messmer Soldier

And here are the invaders, the Messmer Soldiers and Messmer Knights. Messmer the Impaler is a demigod child of Queen Marika, representing the Golden Order and the rulership of the Lands Between. They have been waging war against the locals of the Land of Shadows, and are apparently winning by the fact that most of them are alive, hanging out in fortresses and camps while their enemies, the 'Hornsent', are wandering undead. 

There is not much to say about these soldiers, since they are quite similar to the 'soldier' and 'knight' enemies from the base game with a couple of the DLC's new 'Messmerfire' incantations, but it does make sense that the soldiers from the Lands Between would be more or less similar. 

Horned Warrior

Again, we go back to the inhabitants of the Land of Shadows, who are properly called the 'Hornsent'. As we explore the first 'dungeon' of the region, the Tower Settlement of Belurat, we get to see some of the surviving Hornsent, called Horned Warriors. Again, the fact that they have curled horns is prominent here, resembling that of the persecuted Omens. 

The revelation of these knights imply very heavily that these are the 'Primordial-Crucible-worshipping' civilization mentioned by a lot of item descriptions in the base game that was noted to worship the Crucible, the previous form of the Erdtree, until Golden Order fundamentalism denounced anything to do with the Crucible as being unclean and heretical. This also extends to the eradication of the Omen, children who were born with horns... but in the Land of Shadow, looking at the models of the Shadow Undead, we see that those without horns were actually the ones persecuted, because they seem to have slave-chains around their wrists. It's still a fair bit of mystery to me at this point, but there seem to be a reversal of what is treated as 'normal' as the Crucible civilization was overthrown by the Golden Order civilization. 

Anyway, the Horned Warriors themselves aren't anything too special, they sure are huge guys with huge weapons, and they can cast some spells that the Crucible Knights do. 

Fire Knight Queelign

Also seemingly a minion among Messmer's minions is Fire Knight Queelign, who is voice-acted and ambushes you halfway through Belurat. He wields fire spells and a most terrifying bowl-cut. He seems to be a fanatic of Messmer! I don't have much to say about him otherwise, though. 

Curseblade

Okay, now we're talking a bit. Described as 'ascetics', the Curseblades' bodies are withered almost to nothing, giving the impression of a mummy. The description from the weapons they drop note that they once strove to 'become tutelary deities' with 'self-flagellating dances', up until the war against the Golden Order forces caused them to become fighters. And indeed, their attacks do look like wild dancing, which would be beautiful if it wasn't so deadly. 

Their rather uncomfortable-looking pose and skeletal-thin body makes them quite distinctive, and that's before going into their equipment. The Curseblades wield two massive Cinques, ring-blades that they hold in an almost wing-like position when they are stalking around the area. They also have golden masks with their horns growing in wild directions all around it. The Curseblades are also programmed to be extremely bloodthirsty after being enraged. It takes usually an attack for them to become hostile, and otherwise they're content to perch and look at you with their creepy masks. But they will chase you down to the ends of the world once you've pissed them off, taking quite a bit of distance to shake off unlike other enemies that return back to their 'spawn point' after you run away from them. 

Gravebird

Those are the human enemies out of the way, I promise! Now we're going to some more interesting things. First among them are the Gravebirds, whose name and design calls to mind the Deathbirds and Death Rite Birds from the base game. The Gravebirds appear to be golems of sort, allowing them to sometimes pretend to be statues and part of the terrain. 

Just like the Deathbirds, the Gravebirds are able to unleash gouts of ghost-flame, although they are significantly weaker than their spectral counterparts. The Gravebirds were apparently created in the image of the Deathbirds and 'to be kindred' to them. Their primary purpose is to guard spirit-graves. What this means is a bit confusing, to be honest. Elden Ring does have a heavy Nordic inspiration to it, and the Land of Shadow seems to be its answer to realms like Helheim or Niflheim, and the sheer amount of gravestones and ghosts in the Land of Shadow might imply that there's something to do here with a more traditional underworld? Not sure. 

Man-Fly

Oh, now we're talking. The Man-Flies are first found in the Abandoned Ailing Village, as well as Belurat Tower. The former location seems to tell a rather horrifying story of a plague spreading across villagers, and a talisman found in the fly-infested village notes that the poor people in the village were infected with the 'dreaded fly sickness', and apparently died before the transformation took hold. Strangely, those who cared for the infected and took care of burial rites were never afflicted themselves. You could take this to mean a couple of things -- either the medics and ritualists gained immunity from the disease... or were themselves responsible for it. Yet another interpretation, considering the heavy themes the game has around death, seems to be that the act of respecting death rites caused some higher power to spare them from the illness. 

The areas of the Belurat Towers that are infested with the Man-Flies has some rather creepy Alien-esque cracked-open cocoons that show how these Man-Flies were metamorphosized. Their design is pretty creepy as well, having way more human features than is comfortable for a giant bug monster. All the human parts appear to still be wrapped up in bandages, similar to the state of the presumably pre-metamorphosis corpses we find in the Ailing Village. They still have the head, torso and upper arms of a human, but then below the torso, the body just tapers off into a spine... not too dissimilar from the very thin thorax-abdomen connections of some paper wasps. A second pair of human hands, but much thinner, extends from it. These second pairs of hands are bonier,  and doesn't seem to have flesh around it. 

And then the body terminates in a bulbous, stinger-tipped abdomen, and human legs bent like a bug's leg sprouts out from the abdomen. Two insect-like wings are draped over the abdomen, less like an insect's rigid wings and more like a sickly shroud.  The fact that the limbs don't all sprout out from the same place like a proper insect, but neither is the body shape properly humanoid, really does make this design a fair bit creepier than 'just' a insect centaur. 

Spider Scorpion

Yep, two of the most creepy but epic-looking arachnids are fused together into a massive monstrosity! A Spider Scorpion, as its name implies, has the long, jointed legs and wall-crawling abilities of a spider, but the scorpion stinger and powerful claws of a scorpion. The way those legs are arranged, with the rear legs being more jointed upwards, also gives the resulting design a silhouette similar to the amblypygids or whip-spiders, making this a strange fusion of the world's most notable arachnids. 

A fair bit more interesting than just a giant spider or just a giant scorpion, the Spider Scorpions come in various sizes. The little ones are around dog-sized and rely on swarm tactics and trying to afflict poison, but the larger ones hang upside-down in large caverns or hide on ceilings, before jumping down and attempting to snack on you. 

I love the description of the item they drop, called 'Scorpion Liver'. The description notes that 'it is referred to as 'liver,' but no one is quite sure of its purpose.' The art actually shows the bulb of a scorpion's stinger, which definitely not a liver! It is also apparently a local delicacy because of its numbing toxins, which doesn't sound like a fun time. 

Anyway, both the Man-Flies and Spider-Scorpions are very cool arthropodal monsters and a welcome addition to Elden Ring!

Divine Beast Dancing Lion

"Dance and cavort, cleanse all that thou wilt. Cruelty, woe, and those who plague the tower. Cleanse away the strumpet's vile progeny."

This is... an interesting design. At the top of Belurat, a chant from a Hornsent elder seems to revive two figures under the elaborate cape and mask of a massive Lion Dance getup. Lion dances, a traditional dance originating primarily from China and associated with the Lunar New Year, has two performers, one manipulating the head of the lion and one manipulating the end. And the Divine Beast Dancing Lion is animated as such, with it being clear in the cutscene and animations that the lion suit and cape-like body are just accessories. 

And on paper, this would be silly... until you see the eyes of the horrifying lion mask glow. The lion head itself is raggedy, with almost human-like hair, and of course it's got sharp, spiky horns growing all over it. But creepiest of all is its mouth, which has a pair of human teeth within, and lion fangs outside. The head being a mask, this is completely unnecessary in-universe and I don't know why they felt their lion dance suit needed a pair of very human teeth inside, but it sure is intimidating!

In addition to the fast, frantic dance-like movements, the Divine Lion can also cast elemental spells. Which elemental spells? All the elemental spells. Again, the game isn't really clear at this point, but it seems like the dance is channeling 'horn-deck'd beast, from higher sphere deliver'd' under the prayer of the Hornsent elders. With a lot of connection to similar incantations and spells shown by the Crucible Knights, who themselves transform part of their bodies into holy fascimiles of bestial anatomy, it does seem like the spirit of a beast is indwelling the bodies, which they also need a dance to channel? It is still a bit ambiguous so early into the game's stories. Regardless, though, a lion dance being adapted as such a nightmarish look is definitely quite a creative and unexpected enemy design. 

Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring, Part 24

And so, like all great journeys, my run through the base game of Elden Ring ends. 

What a game, huh? This is my first 'Soulsborne' game from FromSoftware, with all its infamous 'get good' mentality and unforgiving ways to go through a game. No quicksaves, no easy mode, not even a pause button. Experience is lost. Going back to a boss fight involves walking back. And you know what? That does give a great sense of accomplishment. 

The world-building is amazing, even if I will agree that the way quests and storylines are given out in this immense open-world game is... not the best. Perhaps it's a bit of a holdover from when the game was developed as a more linear Dark Souls like experience... but I enjoyed myself, even if I did admittedly need to open up a guide particularly in the middle portions of the game. 

There were parts of this that I didn't enjoy so much... Farum Azula felt like it was there for coolness' sake; there was a lack of buildup on some of the major characters; and I also felt like the 'PvP invasion' stuff raises questions more than making it feel like something 'in-universe'. But despite that... I really enjoyed my time through it. It took me almost two years to complete the game -- admittedly with several hiatuses -- but I did it. And I'll jump straight into Shadows of the Erdtree after this. 

So this page covers the two final 'dungeon' parts of the game. The main 'dungeon' is what people have noted to be a bit of a 'bonus dungeon', Miquella's Haligtree, with one of the two infamous hardest bosses in the game -- Melania, Blade of Miquella. And the other is just the endgame... Leyndell, Ashen Capital, is what the Leyndell dungeon was transformed into after the events of the Farum Azula stuff, and I'm waltzing in to claim my title as Elden Lord and beat up anyone who's in my way. 

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Giant Oracle Envoy

As I first explore the Haligtree, the branches are filled with Oracle Envoys. We've seen the regular and slightly-larger ones in Leyndell, but they are a lot deadlier in a location where you have to jump from branch to branch, and they shoot homing bubbles that do way more damage than you'd expect a bubble to do. In addition to the regular Oracle Envoys and the Large Oracle Envoys, the Haligtree features the giant Oracle Envoys. 

I like that whatever the Oracle Envoys are, their faces are always the same size, so despite this particular Envoy's body, arms and wrapped-up head expanding to dwarf its smaller counterparts, the head stays the same. Oh, and whereas the other envoys have smaller trumpets, the Giant Oracle Envoy holds a five-pronged one that launches a whole swarm of exploding music bubbles at you. 

We still don't really know what they are beyond the fact that they 'appear' to 'herald the coming of a new god, or age. Finding one of their headwears as equipment gives us the cryptic description of 'no one knows what the cloth hides, but some claim to have heard a faint whimpering from inside. It must have been their imagination.' They also drop the item 'strip of white flesh', an item normally dropped by aquatic beasts like octopi, crabs, crayfish and slugs... which raises even more questions! 

Haligtree Knights

Our final Soldier/Knight combo are the Haligtree Knights, who are knights sword to the Empyrean twins Miquella and Malenia. They're really just kind of there to exhaust you at this point. It is cool that the knight variants can enchant their weapon with holy damage, but that's not really something that's particularly useful against you, the player. Some of the weaker soldiers will rush you and explode, which... sure, not very 'Golden Order' of them, I'm sure. 

Rather, far more impressive are the knights of Malenia -- the Cleanrot Knights, previously met as minibosses, who wander around the Brace of the Haligtree area.

Fungal Corpse

Tragically, while the Haligtree was initially a haven for worshippers of Miquella and Malenia -- and beings like the Misbegotten who found a haven there -- Malenia's status as the goddess of rot hasn't been kind to those around her. Malenia, lest we forget, was the demigod who caused Caelid to happen when she lost control of the Scarlet Rot within her. One of the main motivations for Miquella to set up his own Haligtree is to find a way to cure his sister, but with Miquella being abducted and killed by Mohg, nothing is stopping Malenia's rot powers from spreading wide. Giant fungi and lichen have been growing all around the Haligtree, and some of the people there have been overgrown with mushrooms in a way that looks a lot more uncomfortable than the Servants of Rot we've seen. Honestly, I'm not even sure if they are still alive or not, or if the mushrooms are just animating the corpses. Of course, contact with them causes the Scarlet Rot condition. 

Loretta, Knight of the Haligtree

The miniboss here is a lady knight on a horse shooting spells at you. We've met a specter/echo of Loretta before in the Carian Manor, and apparently Loretta left the Carians to serve Miquella, with the item descriptions noting that she's a champion for Albinauric rights and she wanted to help them find a haven. Such a noble cause ends up causing all the courtly nobles to gossip that maybe Loretta herself is an Albinauric herself, otherwise why would she help the non-humans? Except...  it doesn't seem to be too far-fetched a leap, since we've only seen Loretta on her horse, and all of her signature spells involves creating giant bows and arrows out of magic, essentially a stronger version of the Albinauric Wolf-Riders' archery. That's a neat little story detail that elevates Loretta from being essentially a reskinned Tree Sentinel with some extra moves. 

I spent way too much time fighting Loretta because I was insistent on killing her with the spell Loretta's Bow. 

Putrid Avatar / Putrid Tree Spirit

At this point in the game, these guys have graduated (or degraded, I suppose) from being 'oh shit oh shit oh shit' to just an enemy with a huge health bar that you just have to be careful at dodging. The Erdtree Avatars show up at basically all Minor Erdtreees, and also in places like Leyndell, Royal Capital. Ulcerated Tree Spirits tend to show up in catacombs that thematically have roots of the Erdtree... and also Leyndell. Makes sense that the two tree-themed enemies show up where the big holy divine tree are at, yes?

Except in several locations, they are infested with Scarlet Rot. Which are also true for the specimens we met in Caelid, but I don't think I've reviewed them before. And with the Haligtree dungeon taking place in an attempt to copy the Erdtree, having these tree-themed enemies show up makes sense... except the presence of Malenia has inadvertently befouled the roots of the Erdtree, causing pools of rot to appear everywhere and for the manifestations of these beings that appear in both the Haligtree and the Mountaintops to also be rotting.

Again, they're functionally the same boss with their regular versions, just with a noxious rot breath attack instead of the holy beams associated with the Golden Order plants. But it's a neat bit of visual storytelling -- if you're going to reuse enemy models, reusing them in ways that fit to the lore is very much acceptable to me. 

Lesser Kindred of Rot

We've seen the 'centipede-prawn-men' Kindred of Rot in any place where the Scarlet Rot has infested, namely Caelid and the giant underground temple in the Lake of Rot. Malenia's unchecked disease in the Haligtree, however, has created rivers of rot, corrupted the local plants, and also either spawned or drawn in a bunch of Kindred of Rot. Nothing new there... except that there's a smaller, weaker version of the Kindred of Rot that appear here, scaled to be around half as strong as the regular Kindred. 

The model is actually more or less the same, with several clear differences -- the long human legs that the regular Kindred of Rot has are absent, forcing them to swim or crawl around. This does make them look a lot like 'prawns', which is a comparison that I didn't really see in the main or 'adult' Kindred of Rot. I also like that they have a lot of creepy little limbs running down their abdomen that are still made up of human hands. 

It is interesting, too, to bring up the lore behind these guys. We now know that the Kindred of Rot worship the Scarlet Rot -- this entity of pure rot, disease and unchecked growth that seems to be the manifestation of some 'Outer God', an incomprehensible force who manifests in the form of the Scarlet Rot. Whatever the nature of this being is, it's currently 'incarnated' or 'sealed' within Malenia as a curse. Malenia herself doesn't want anything to do with the Scarlet Rot and, in fact, has been trying to purge it from her body. The Kindred, however, go around trying to worship her because she's the goddess of rot! One Kindred called Sage Gowry even impersonates a human and adopts an 'offshoot' of Malenia (implied but not confirmed to be a daughter/sister/clone created when Malenia unleashed the giant spell that created Caelid) called Millicent and is trying to groom her to become their new Scarlet Rot goddess. It is an interesting little story, I feel, that makes these 'Pests' a lot cooler than just being weird bug people. 

Millicent's Sisters

In our journey through Caelid, we find a mysterious girl that resembles the Goddess of Rot, Malenia, called Millicent. Talking to the aforementioned Sage Gowry, who adopted Millicent, we can get the idea that the Kindred of Rot are trying to get Millicent to 'bloom' into a new flower, a new avatar of the Scarlet Rot for them to worship. Millicent, interestingly, is the only one out of five sisters -- 'offshoots' of Malenia born during the creation of Caelid -- either clones or fragments that split off the main Malenia. It is a bit ambiguous other than her birth and creation has something to do with Malenia. We befriend Millicent in our journey, even stymying the Scarlet Rot ravaging her body by Gowry's instructions. Helping a sick lady stop her disease, it's something good, right? 

Except Millicent realizes that Gowry and her own sisters are trying to make her into the new 'Malenia'. And she removes the magical gold needle preventing the disease from ravaging her body so she can choose her own death instead of being forced to transform into something else. During this, we fight 4-on-2 against Millicent's sisters: Mary, Maureen, Amy and Pollyanna. It's interesting why these four are allied to the Kindred of Rot (even using the Pest Threads spells only available to Kindred of Rot) while Millicent is more independent. 

Malenia, Blade of Miquella

"I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat."

And here she is. The woman, the myth, the legend. Malenia, Blade of Miquella. Empyrean, bearer of the Scarlet Rot, the woman who has never known defeat. In video game terms, she is one of the two 'superbosses' -- bosses you can fight before the final end of the story, but is so much more difficult and powerful than them. The entire Haligtree area is completely optional, even moreso than anything else in the game, and in fact does require a fair bit of work to even access. Nothing in the game (other than Millicent, who's a bit more obscure anyway) narratively points you towards the Haligtree and the slumbering goddess beneath it, since even if you're interested in the Miquella stuff, he's not even there in the Haligtree -- and primarily saved for the DLC anyway. 

And then she wakes up... and fights you. I think the previous couple of entries did talk quite a bit about her. She's a badass who fought the other strongest demigod, Radahn, to a draw. She's the undefeated woman, and she looks like a tall valkyrie with that winged helmet. Her right arm, since rotted away, is a prosthetic golden arm and she fights with a gigantic katana (which actually locks onto the golden arm) that she swings around like a toothpick. 

And she is deadly fast. She doesn't do anything special in this phase, but she is fast, she can dodge everything you throw at her, her range is insane and once she starts doing her 'Waterfowl Dance' combos, she's unleashing an insane anime blender-slash of doom with that katana. In a game that actually does a pretty great job at making all the demigods have impressive monster forms, Malenia is the epitome of a speedy, deadly warrior in the way that the other two 'just a tall person' demigods that embody a certain aspect of what a warrior should be -- Radahn and Rennala representing a strong warrior and a mage respectively.  

"The scarlet bloom flowers once more. You will witness true horror. Now, rot!"

Once you reduce Malenia down to zero health, she flops face-first onto the water in an almost undignified way... before she asks you to 'wait'. And then she blooms, a fiery flower called the Scarlet Aeonia, the signature spell that Malenia does in the trailers leading up to the Elden Ring story (a cutscene I wished was in the game itself) and we see the calcified remnants of in the center of Caelid. 

And we get to see Malenia's second form. Her clothes have rotted away to reveal what lies beneath... a beautiful female body, but ravaged by rot. We see some of her limbs have rotted away to be replaced by golden prosthetics. And probably the coolest feature in her Goddess of Rot form is her massive almost-angelic wings. Unlike the wings of someone like, say, Mohg, Malenia's wings are made up of a literal horde of butterflies. Butterflies have shown up a lot in the game in areas associated with the Scarlet Rot, and these butterflies are particularly prominent as they flutter off of Malenia's body during her transformation. Her long red locks also meld into the butterfly-clumps as well.

The result is an interesting look, for sure. It's not my 'kind' of an enemy, but it does fit what we know of Malenia and how much she herself despises the Scarlet Rot incubating within her and how she rejects it so much. Our fight against her pushes her to the brink that she finally ceases holding back and embraces the power within her. Or alternatively, no longer has the willpower to control it. She still has everything that she can do in her first phase, except she's faster, and she unleashes these massive scarlet blooms that afflicts you with the Scarlet Rot condition. 

Very cool boss fight, very cool character, and probably my favourite boss on this page. I feel like she's a lot cooler to fight and a lot more... fair, I guess? Her attacks are deadly but there's a nice split-second for you to roll away or react to it, which isn't something I felt from a boss like Rykard (who's still the one that gives me perhaps the most trouble in this game) or Placidusax. 

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Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing

As we continue our journey, more and more of our fellow Tarnished allies in the Roundtable Hold either die, or leave... and up until this part of the endgame, Sir Gideon Ofnir the All-Knowing (or more accurately, "Sir Gideon Ofnir... the ALLLL KNOOOOWING!") is the de facto leader of the Roundtable Hold, sitting in his library and researching and looking for information about the demigods and informing us about who they are and giving us hints about them. 

Gideon, however, has been shown to be very much not a nice person, the type who would achieve victory by any means necessary. One of the most horrific things we see on-screen is sending out Omenkillers to annihilate the entire Village of the Albinaurics, and it's also implied that he's the one that sent the silent Ensha to try and get a plot device from us. So to have him barring our way to the Elden Throne? It's really not a surprise that he betrays us, it's honestly a matter of when and how. He does seem to have somehow fallen into despair just prior to the fight, though, with his dialogue being more despondent than gloating... apparently having found out some truth that broke him. 

Gideon is delightfully easy to beat up, even compared to other 'minibosses' I would've faced recently like the Godskin Duo or Loretta. Which makes sense in-universe... there is a reason he needed people to do all his dirty work. There is a cute little gimmick where he uses spells of some of the demigods -- namely Mohg, Melania and Rykard, all optional bosses -- against me. But only if I've beaten them! The implication is that he's been studying and collecting data while stalking us. That's cute, even if Gideon himself isn't too impressive of a boss fight. 

Godfrey, First Elden Lord / Hoarah Loux, Warrior

"Tarnished Warrior. Spurned by the grace of gold. Be assured, the Elden Ring resteth close at hand... alas, I am returned."

Yeah, a lot of the endgame bosses are admittedly just dudes. Godfrey's cool, though. I find him a bit less cool than Malenia up above, but that's more of a praise to Malenia than any real dislike of Godfrey. The first Elden Lord Godfrey is this big burly viking dude wielding a shattered axe. That alone would have been boring, especially since I don't actually find Godfrey particularly interesting as a character, but he's also got the ghost of a lion attached to him like a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stand. This is Serosh the Beast Lord, and apparently this is how the 'grafting' that Godrick tried to mimic is supposed to look like. 

Anyway, just like Malenia, Rennala and Radahn; Godfrey exemplifies the 'barbarian' archetype, going for heavy attacks and just looking cool while doing it. I did enjoy it, and I like Godfrey's more boisterous voice-acting, but I don't have much to say here. 

"I have shown thee courtesy enough!"

Godfrey's second phase is Hoarah Loux, Warrior, revealing that he is one of the major Tarnished mentioned a hundred hours ago in the prologue. Which... honestly, doesn't really do anything to me lore-wise. But I do like that Godfrey kills Serosh the lion attached on his back. In a nice little subversion, turns out that the lion has been acting as a power limiter for Hoarah Loux, who is normally so savage and unrestrained, and the addition of the lion somehow prevents him from going too wild? You'd think that this is a trope in media where someone "shunts his emotions aside", and Hoarah Loux is just absorbing it back... but no, Serosh is very much sentient and acting as an actual confidant and advisor. And this leads to Hoarah Loux fighting barehanded. No lions, no battleaxes... just a whole lot of wrestling moves from a big muscular blood-soaked grandpa. Okay then. 

Godfrey's lore has always been a bit more straightforward -- he rose to the status of being the first Elden Lord... or at least, the first Elden Lord associated with Marika's Golden Order. The Golden Order by Marika requires a 'god' and a 'lord/consort', and Godfrey was Marika's consort during the early days of the order, leading a lot of wars against the dragons and giants before he 'lost grace' and reverted back to Hoarah Loux for a while. The Tarnished that the game has been revolving around are all noted to trace their origins to him. It's neat, but again, I didn't really find too much attachment to him considering he doesn't get too much focus even compared to the other mostly-unseen characters. 

Radagon of the Golden Order

"..."

Okay, the design of Radagon is quite cool. Second husband to Queen Marika (the ascended 'god' of the setting, who tried to break the Elden Ring which is essentially the core of the rules of the world), this meant that we're fighting the two previous Elden Lords back to back. It's left quite a bit ambiguous what they are, but a boss fight that seems to be leading up to the imprisoned Queen Marika leads to a fight with Radagon instead. 

Except this is a shell of what Radagon used to be. It's a bit harder to tell in static images, but half of Radagon's body is gone, and made up of shadowy clumps that is replacing his entire upper left torso, arm and head. The idea does sell a crumbling, statuesque god. Within the void of his chest, the light of the Elden Ring shines. And... he fights with his hammer and a lot of holy-themed spells. Only... Radagon is completely silent throughout the entire fight, leaving a lot of theories and arguments as to whether Radagon is even sentient or if some otherworldly force is just using him as a rock-meat puppet. 

Regardless of whether Marika and Radagon are reduced to nothingness or if they just don't deign to interact with us, it is a bit disappointing that two enigmatic characters whose whole deal is that 'are their reputations and stories right about them' get zero lines of dialogue at all. But at least the music is nice. As the cutscene plays, turns out that it's set in tune to the opening main theme, which builds up to a truly epic crescendo as Radagon prepares to battle us. Which made the repeated fights against him to at least be an audial delight, even if I find him far less satisfying as a character, a boss or a design compared to Godfrey or Malenia. I am also disappointed that Marika wasn't a phase in this fight either. 

The Elden Beast

Thankfully, the second phase of the boss fight changes to something far more esoteric. As Radagon's body collapses to the ground, the entire scene changes to a strange goopy fluid, as a gigantic hand lifts up, pushes Radagon into the ground and turns him into a sword, because why not? And this thing, the Elden Beast, shows up. Final boss time!

And the Elden Beast is huge. It's also hard to describe, although I think most people agree that it's meant to resemble some sort of aquatic sea slug, magnified several times to the size of a dragon. Considering how much of the game has nautical themes (sea squirts, octopi, crabs, crayfish, the prawn-like Kindred of Rot, Godwyn's fish parts...) it kind of fits. 

It's got two very well-developed hands with five fingers each, very important in this game. It's got several pairs of feather-like wings, a long neck that terminates in a glowing orb, two stubby legs... and when it flies up, its tail kind of spreads out like a strange feathery tree. More distinctive than the strange anatomical silhouette, however, is the fact that running through its body are designs that resemble the nebulae of space, and yellow light -- both resembling the veins on a leaf and the rough structure of a nervous system -- run through the Elden Beast's body. 

The explanation given to us from items gives us hints that "it was the vassal beast of the Greater Will and living incarnation of the concept of Order." and "it is said that long ago, the Greater Will sent a golden star bearing a beast into the Lands Between, which would later become the Elden Ring." So the game itself is kind of ambiguous on what the 'Greater Will' is, and whether it truly is part of the Lands Between. Or even if such distinctions matter at all? The Elden Beast is at the same time a cosmic alien, the most powerful archangel of 'god', and the manifestation of the Elden Ring itself. 

So this thing is the Elden Ring's universe's incarnation of a Lovecraftian Elder God, something that represents the whole order of the world. A running theme of the game's story is how the Golden Order is set up and seemingly treated as absolute, while most of the endings wish to tweak or break this unfair and biased Order in some way. And after defeating everything in your way, you fight with the cosmic embodiment of the world, in a strange realm of water that your character can walk on. Oh, and strange trunks of Erdtree-like trunks run the background. 

The Elden Ring primarily fights by swinging the giant Radagon-sword around, but also casts all of the most powerful Holy spells -- since in this setting, 'holy' magic comes straight from the Erdtree that's being worshipped as the fundamentalists' primary faith. It also casts the same 'Nebula' explosion spells that the other giant alien, the Astel, casts. And it also can swim up and down through the strange watery realm that is most likely metaphysical. And in a hilarious visual pun, its most powerful attack involves it creating gigantic concentric rings of light that center upon you. It fights you with literal Elden Rings! All the holy and space-y spells are fine and good, but I find that the most simultaneously goofy and unsettling thing about it is that such an eldritch being still finds the need to swing that big sword around. 

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I could go on and on about the world-building of Elden Ring, which I also frustratedly admit hinges on a lot of assumptions and theories. What does the Elden Beast represent, and how does it relate to Marika, Radagon, Godfrey, the Golden Order, the Greater Will, the other Outer Gods, et cetera, et cetera? The game gives us a world that's clearly constructed extremely well, but with a lot of questions still left lingering, never to be answered. The fallen leaves tell a story, but not the entirety of it. Normally, that would be terrible. Normally, that would be frustrating. But the execution and the journey through the Lands Between works in spite of all of that, due to how well-executed everything is. And at the end of the day, as I ascend to the title of Elden Lord despite not comprehending huge chunks of the world... I am happy to have gone through this journey and talked about almost every monster and enemy in this game. 

Next up... the Land of Shadow.