"The Shattering" refers to the war that followed after Marika shattered the Elden Ring. If the Demigods' "newfound strength" triggered the Shattering, that means that they had only recently (like after Marika shattered the Elden Ring but before the Demigods were warring with each other) acquired the "shards of the Elden Ring" which make them Shardbearers. This is a clearly established timeline. It is up to us to decide if these Shards are the Great Runes themselves or the Rune Arcs. I only know one of those two described as "shards"... However, we can find Rune Arcs all over the game and there are plenty of enemies that even drop them. Does that mean that those enemies are also "shardbearers"? Clearly, the distinction between the two groups is that one group (demigods) also have Great Runes of the Elden Ring. Finally, Enia says "Brave Tarnished, your Great Rune is a handsome shard of the Elden Ring." which thus puts Great Runes into the category of Shards. "Demigods all claimed the Shards of the Elden Ring". Enia has already identified the Great Runes as shard of the Elden Ring. "The mad taint of their newfound strength triggered the Shattering" The newfound (recent) strength from the shards (Great Runes) they received post- Elden Ring shattering caused them to go kind of power hungry and begin a new conflict, the Shattering. This does not rule out these "shards" just being rune arcs and not Great Runes but it really does not seem like this is the case.
Agreed I think he’s got a cool theory he has but it leaves the question what happened to the Elden Ring after Marika shattered it- just the rune arcs splitting off? It makes more sense that the only way to split several great runes off would be to forcibly shatter it. Thus the Demi gods claiming, not being given, the great runes and going to war
To understand what the Shattering of the Elden Ring was, you need to understand what the Elden Ring is. It is not a physical or a metaphysical object. Like all greater truths, it is an abstraction that a mind can more easily grasp than a complex truth. A good friend of mine is a hardcore occultist and as they put it, "divinity isn't a representative of a divine concept. It is the living embodiment of that concept. There are not gods of War, Death, Life, or Fertility They _are_ War, Death, Life, or Fertility. They define the concept which is then expressed in the world. Malenia isn't afflicted with Scarlet Rot. She is a living portal by which the Scarlet Rot enters this world. Just as whoever it is that is sealed in the Lake of Rot was the vessel for the Rot in an earlier Age. This is why the sealing away of the older vessel of rot decreased its effect in the world until the Rot created another to replace it. Within the game, this abstract concept of divinity carried by all life is embodied by their runes. At the start of the game, the three central runes of Life, Form, and Death are housed by Marika, Radagon, and Maliketh. These form the central concepts of reality within the Lands Between, though the Rune of Death is now inactive. The runes of the demigods are further refinements of those concepts manifesting within the world. For example, Gowry describes the Rot Malenia personifies as both an aspect of death and rebirth, aka Death and Life. Indeed the malfunctions within the demigods are likely due to the imbalance created with the sealing away of Death. For example, aging is an aspect of Death, and with it inactive Miquella cannot age. The lesser runes in the game are further refinements to the concepts of divinity within all things. They can be considered what old school occultists call True Names. The divine name of an object that idenfies it within the nature of reality. To get back to the point, the Elden Ring is in truth the collective force of all of the runes, the collective whole of all names created by Marika, that defines reality as Jack demonstrates in this video. The Tarnished collects the Runes of those they slay, taking their power and nature. Melina as another aspect of divinity uses these collected runes to rewrite the reality of the Tarnished. When a Remembrance is used to create an object or power, you are reconstructing the runic structure of the object and copying the original form. Melina is hacking reality, a living embodiment of reality trying to fix things. To get back to the main point, the Elden Ring is the sum total of all of these runes to create the reality of the Lands Between. It's "shattering" is when the runic forces started to no longer working in alignment. This is personified by the demigods fighting each other. Rather than the individual divine elements of the world working together to create a harmonious reality, they are fighting to dominate each other and the land suffers between them. in a single example, Melania and Radahn's battle destroys the land about them beyond recovery and rewrites reality to favor the Rot based life. This is why it is called the Shattering War. Because this is the manifestation of the Shattering. But if this is the case, why is is said Marika shattered the Elden Ring? Because she started the process of disharmony by sealing away Destined Death. Remember that the runes can be transferred. The Rune of Form was likely first held by Godfrey and then transferred to Radagon when Marika banished Godfrey. This is the Grace being removed that Marika refers to. Since Godfrey was the source of Grace for his followers, his followers also lost their connection to Grace and became the Tarnished. However so long as there as a bearer for the rune of Form active in the form of Radagon, reality continued relatively the same. And of course our Tarnished vacuums up runes all the time. But the transfer of the Rune of Death from the Gloam-Eyed Queen to Maliketh caused the Rune to be sealed away and no longer affect reality. This created an imbalance and if From Software's Souls games have taught us anything it's that interfering in the cycles of life of death is a. very. bad. idea. In Dark Souls it created undeath and the Hollowed. Elden Ring shows what the early stages of that process were, when there was just enough balance left to allow a small amount of normalcy to reality. The creation of Godwyn as the Prince of Death is likely reality trying to reestablish balance by reintroducing Death into reality by creating a new Death god and Death rune, but the process was incomplete due to Ranni hijacking it for her purposes. So thus the Shattering of the Elden Ring is a metaphor for the messed up state of the Lands Between caused by Marika removing Death from reality. Without such a critical and necessary component of reality having an active living divine vessel to express it in the Lands Between, the Lands began to fall apart. Because runes affect reality and all runes are expressions of the now imbalanced Elden Ring, that imbalance affected everything. The demigods fought, went mad, fed themselves to snakes, started to graft living beings onto their bodies etc. Since runes at are the base of all reality, that effect passed down to the lesser beings all the way down to the animals and flora of the world. This is why the Lands are so messed up. The Runes are the code of reality of the Lands and the program has crashed. What about those images of Marika breaking something apart on a forge and Radagon trying to fix it? Metaphors for the limited understanding of the Tarnished trying to make sense of the information the Grace is feeding him. The Tarnished understand blacksmithing a lot better than advanced metaphysics. As for the final battle, it is happening within some higher dimension and the Tarnished's mind is fixing onto concepts they can comprehend.
@@ravendelacour1917 It is not called the Shattering War. The war is just called the Shattering. What is The Rune of Form? I've never heard of that before. I appreciate you putting so much thought into your comment here but there is nothing I want to engage with really. I laid out a coherent explanation of a widely shared understanding of the game's fundamental lore. You have replied with... a lot and did not engage with my comment or my reasoning. Maybe you can make a reddit post or something for these ideas!
@@oup6009 I am referring to the real life occult roots of what the devs used to create the world. You can answer any direct questions with the wiki. Here I expected to engage with lore speculation using the same material as the devs did. My mistake. As for your actual desired engagement the Rune of Form is shorthand for the hatch work rune used as Radagon's signature. You see it on the wards outside the Elden Tree that block you, in the talisman Jack referred to, and behind Radagon's statue for example. See Jack's earlier videos on it.
Fantastic video Jack. I really like the connection you drew with Rykard and Radahn both being consumed in their "deaths". They do literally consume people and are personified crucible animals in a sense- Rykard as the snake and Radahn as the Lion. Funny how karma works hey.
So if we meet Mogh, he'll look nothing like an omen, huh. We should be on the lookout for a human-looking character with a missing left eye in the DLC.
He'll likely have both eyes and since the dung is a human with the soul of an omen it's likely this could really happen...that mogh we fight might but be a phantom
"Wait? Have I been saying mimic this whole time?" I was wondering if I was missing something, and apparently I am... 🤔 Are you suggesting that the Nox succeeded in crafting a "lord"... being us? 😮
I have never made a dedicated video on this. All I do is play as a character who wears black armor and a massive heap of iron, far too large to be called a sword. I also feature the music from Windmills hip hop songs, much like ENB(the first souls TH-camr) used too. And my characters have used larval tears, to reborn again and again, until he became Elden Lord. If you can’t spot a mimic by now…
i think one of the most important aspects of the DLC is how the symbol Miquella places around the Land of Shadow has a horizontal line. while the crescent evokes an eclipse, i think it's also meant to combine with the Elden Ring's bottom arc to form a full circle. i think Marika's upward arc represents a focus on order and life. the Rune of Death has the downward opening arc, which i think represents the opposite: death and chaos. this would've been the Gloam-Eyed Queen's focus. Marika commandeered the birthing and burial processes so she can curate life and prevent undesirable creation, while the Gloam-Eyed Queen accelerated the Crucible system with abundant death to feed randomization. so a full circle would represent an all-encompassing system, perhaps completing or perfecting the Elden Ring. the goal is that horizontal line. notice how the Elden Ring doesn't have one, but does have that central vertical line and the diagonal lines from Radagon. however, like how Marika's pose represents her upward facing arc, Radagon's pose is a cross stance representing that straight horizontal line. so Radagon also strives for balance, but intended to do so by holding the current system together. Miquella disagrees with the approach, which echoes the lore bit where Miquella started searching beyond the Golden Order for answers.
I see the Great Runes as genetics that are passed down from Marika to her offspring that evolves along with their vessel. Radagon is Marika so that will explain why Rennala's children also have Great Runes. My thoughts are that they are "giving" at birth but maybe they don't activate until they come to an age or state where they are given their own 2 Fingers. I think the Shattering could have been the reason (or one of them) that killed/petrified the Fingers in the Divine Towers and that's why we have to go to those to activate the GR. Maybe Ranni moved her 2 Fingers to "safety" in the night of the black knives so nobody will use her GR once her body was killed and wait until she obtain the Fingerslayer Blade, or maybe killing the body with the Rune of Death is enough and maybe that is also why there's no GR from Godwyn (this guy has no DIvine Tower either). If we need Finger Maidens to tranform runes into strength, it could be because they know how to interpret the 2 Fingers? so where are Melina's hiding? These are all my assuptions and feelings, but I have no way to prove them. My brain is like the crucible right now, send help :D Great video as always, they keep me thinking!!
Okay, crazy quirky theory, Marika helped Ranni(without her knowledge) with assasinating Godwyn in order to test the true power of the Golden Order. "In Marika's own words. I declare mine intent, to search the depths of the Golden Order. Through understanding of the proper way, our faith, our grace, is increased. Those blissful early days of blind belief are long past. My comrades; why must ye falter?" Maybe this was her way of searching the depths. Maybe when Ranni and Rykard were plotting she heard wind of the plan and used it as a perfect tool to test it. Maybe after doing so she had found something that made her skeptical. So she had to test it, to test if this order is truly perfect, will her children be saved from such a terrible fate such as true death. And the answer was no. Maybe when she had realized that The Golden Order, The Elden Beast, The Greater Will was not as perfect or great as she thought it would be she realized she had to act. And after Godwyn's death she then gifted each of her Demigod children Great Runes possibly to create an order of their own. "Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices..." Sacrifices to what? To the Tarnished possibly. But why the tarnished specifically? Because we were sent to wage war in lands afar? I'm not sure. This theory isnt perfect but with all these theories and lore speculations my brain is firing up ideas man.
Thank you Jack for putting out a safe video on the day of the spoiler reckoning. Great speculation as usual, and I'm glad someone else recognizes the Unborn rune as Miquella's. All of the sibling runes look the same, so why not Miquella's?
I got two more videos coming out before the DLC too! Since the Godwyn video Ive been trying to get one video a week up until the DLC. Happy someone else recognized the Great Rune of the Unborn!
Wait a minute, if Godwyn was slain at the same time as Ranni and because of that one died in spirit the other in body. Isn't Marika impaled by a shard of destined death in the boss room? Is Marika's soul gone and because another soul (Radagon) inhabited the body too the only reason her body remains? What if Marika as a soul has returned to the erdtree, and that's why she's been missing?
I still have a sneaking suspicion that Marika's soul is the Mother of Truth. Marika is from outside of Lands Between and she was referred to as a god. So even the outer god part fits.
It’s speculative to insist that marika is impaled by destined death, as it’s the first time we see anything remotely similar to that spike in game, and, aside from hue, it more closely resembles the very crucifix she’s bound too in composition.
on the divine tower，if you turn around the camera to observe the great rune you will find that the great rune always facing toward you，it always looks like this ring shape，as if it is some kinds of high dimensional existence
I love how one of the closest demigods thats pure and uncursed Marika's got would be Godrick. This tiny shell of a man, distilled demigod, who rips the limbs off of his people and sticks it onto him, is one of the last of the Golden Lineage.
Thoughts on how Radagon came to have the rune of the unborn? Miquella must have given it to him before he cocooned himself into the Haligtree, I would assume. So he could grow larger and provide more blood perhaps?
Maybe it was at the same time he gifted Radagon with the Discus of Light incantation. I guess he did it after giving up on Golden Order Fundamentalism and beginning to grow the Haligtree, as a farewell gift.
So does this imply that radagon took miquella's great rune? Well i suppose their close relationship points more to it being given during their time studying fundamentalism
The Rune of the Unborn being Miquella's is something I have never think of until now and makes total sense 🤯 And I totally on board with you on Malenia and MIquella being the oldest children of Marika 👍
Personal theory: The crucible and primordial gold was red, then became golden. Much like lightning, and other "red to gold" transitions after the golden order. Is it to crazy to say, that rather than Marika turning into Radagon... it's actually the other way around? Radagon (red haired) became golden, truning into Marika (blonde), and became god. Yet his original self, Radagon, has "yet to become a god" ?
As we see in game Primordial Gold is Gold tinted Red, it is both and not just red. So for me, it is that Marika was once just that: Gold tinted Red. With the removal of Destined Death, or the Crucible, or whatever, Marika is now just Gold, but the Red needs to go somewhere and that somewhere, I assume, is Radagon. So at one point she was whole and complete, red and gold together in unity, then there is the split and now we have the unique characters of Marika and Radagon. Does that make sense? Its similar to what you are saying, but I would tweak it to that the original was not just Radagon but Marika and Radagon together. Its so hard to talk about these characters lol
@@JackisaMimicJust now it occurs to me that the merging of Serosh and Godfrey makes him Golden, but wripping Serosh apart makes him purely Red Hoara Loux. Any thoughts on that?
It feels so obvious now that im actively thinking about it but this red-gold pairing is EVERYWHERE. Malenia/Miquella, Morgott/Mogh, Marika/Radagon, Golden Erdtree/Burned Erdtree... Now to say something slightly tangentially related, red and gold (yellow) are the final two colors of the process to create the Philosopher's Stone, the first two being...black and white, which immediately makes me think of the Gloam-Eyed Queen. With that in mind, I believe in alchemy that red was the final stage? Which makes it interesting that Marika seemingly deposed the GEQ (black and white), possibly turned the Crucible (red) into the Erdtree (gold/yellow) inversing their order compared to the stabdard alchemical one. My neurons are firing.
"Soon after what? We have no way of knowing." Soon after the thing he said immediately before that, dude. That's how the phrase "soon after" works. The cinematic makes it very clear they claimed the runes after godwyn's death and the shattering. This is one of the strangest lore claims I've seen.
If that is the case, did Ranni have a Great Rune? If yes, how could she have a Great Rune if she died during the Night of the Black Knives? Why do siblings, especially twins, have Great Runes that are the same shapes? Why does Morgott's Great Rune prove he was born of the Golden Lineage? How do you answer those questions if they received their Great Runes after the Shattering?
@@JackisaMimicto add on, Ranni is said to have cast away her rune... It seems strange for her to die, make a doll body, grab a great rune while it's still available, and then choose to cast it away some unspecified period after.. Also, with the theory of Unborn Great Rune being Miquellas, it could make sense thematically that he gave away to Radagon the rune that he was born with, as it's a burden to him. And he chooses to create St. Trina, and through that develops the rune we see in DLC
6:12 i thought it was pretty clear the demigods acquired the great runes sometime around the shattering, as Godwyn "died" sometime _before_ that there's no reason to expect he ever aquired one in the first place
I disagree with that assessment because it isn’t clear and doesn’t explain many of the inconsistencies. For instance, do you think Ranni had a Great Rune? If so, how did she have one if she died in the NOBK?
@@JackisaMimic I've no reason to assume she claimed one in the first place, but regardless she still has the _capability_ of claiming one despite her "death", she retains her own will, consciousness, and mobility to do so while Godwyn is a mindless, soulless, rotting husk incapable of conscious action. Doesn't seem very inconsistent to me 🤷
@@JackisaMimic why shouldn't they? It seems far more questionable that a soulless lump of flesh could house a great rune than a fully realized soul inhabiting an artificial body. There's no suggestions to my knowledge on any limits as to who or what can or cannot _house_ a Great Rune in the first place, technically Renala's rune is "housed" in a chunk of amber, even after you "acquire" it for yourself, and the rest of them seem to actually be "housed" in their respective finger towers rather than the body of their owner (though _you_ do seem to physically acquire those ones iirc). The question at hand isn't really about any ability to house the runes, but to _claim ownership_ over the rune in the first place
Ranni specifically slew her Empryean flesh to not have to house the Elden Ring which is made of various runes. From the actions Ranni has taken to avoid having to house the Elden Ring we can deduce a spirit can’t house it. If not, somebody should tell Ranni she’s made a big mistake
Is it just me or does it seem like Ranni's moon and Godwyn's sun would combine to make an eclipse? Also, did you ever catch Kosmos's video on Ensha possibly being the, "soulless bones," that Miquella was trying to restore life too. If that's the case then it is possible that Eclipse and night of the black knives are the same event (Moon blocks sun) and that Miquella was involved in the assassination of Godwyn, possibly in an effort to restore Ensha's soul. =)
I always believed, and I still do, that Marika is responsible for everything that is wrong with the Lands Between. But there's so many unanswered questions. Did she do it to free herself? Did she do it out of ambition? In the trailer, we see the unknown man trying to rip the runes from his body through his mouth...could Marika have suffered the same way, metaphorically? Forest Spanning Great Bridge Finger Reader: "Wherever the path leads, only more sorrow. Tis a curse! A curse! The curse of Queen Marika! Ah...ahh... Ha...ha..." Finger Reader Enia: "Queen Marika is the vessel of the Elden Ring, carrier of its vision. A god, in truth. But after the Elden Ring's shattering, she was imprisoned in the Erdtree. A grim punishment for shattering the Order, despite her godhood." Echoes of Queen Marika: " Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices..." Finger Ringer Enia, well, the two fingers speaking through her, tell us that it was the Greater Will that brought the Tarnished back, not Marika, and that we are to join her as her "consort". Have we literally been brought back to kill all her children ("The Greater Will has long Renounced the Demi-Gods"), unify the Elden Ring, and continue to force her to be a God...or a Slave? Unless Miquella can provide at least one happy ending, everything is pointing to this being an epically tragic outcome.
I really liked how you pointed out the likelihood that Morgott's Great Rune and his abilities are derived by the crucible, specifically, and not just as being the product of being the "anchor rune" of the Ring. That was my favorite bit. Keep it up!
Did you notice something. Most great runes are opposite reflections of each other. The twins runes, moghs has a centeal line which is missing in morgots
Yeah but what if Mogh is the one in the cocoon in Mogwyn Palace and Miquela (or someone else) are just projecting him in both of his fights? He disappears the same way margit does when you beat him and the body in the cocoon looks a lot like Margot’s body after he gets defeated.
Idk if im tweaking but both mohg and morgott's runes are quite opposites in shape. You can see where the color contrast is high on morgott's rune there is nothing on mohg's rune, and vise versa
Mohg's looks like the Shadow or outline of Morgott's. I think Jack's perception here is astounding. I never really thought about the red of the crucible being anything but a kind of copper / red gold, but this makes too much sense for it to miss the mark. Blood, fire, bloodflame, all of this would be antithesis to the golden Erdtree, since the divorce of red and gold. I think Moxa had a recent video along the same lines, so I don't think it's coincidence. I had this vague feeling that blood and flame were related since the first dlc trailer dropped but now it's really taking form and now that people are putting this into words, I'm getting hyped. Can't wait to learn what happened when red split from gold!
So if you assume that the rune of the unborn is Miquella's, then what do you propose the rune looking grace thing in the shadow of the erdtree trailers are? Another demigods rune? A false rune? Just some memory locations?
My theory is that Miquella created St. Trina like how Marika created Radagon. That rune is essentially St. Trina's, though by creating her Miquella is able to essentially take her form in the shadowed lands
Alright just one quick thing: Radagon gave the Amber Egg to Renalla before leaving her to return to Marika. This event supposedly happened before the twins were born, because Radagon returned to Marika and then became one with her and then they had the twins (Miquella and Malenia), because they are supposedly born from a single god and theyre supposedly the only children born from Marika-Radagon union. So when Radagon gave the Amber Egg to Renalla there was no Heligtree so it can't be made of Heligtree amber. I do think Miquella and Malenia are clones/copies/mimics like the neofites that are born from the Amber Egg tho. Or that the twins are related to the Amber Egg in some way. Cause really nothing ever explains where Radagon found this egg. If the Rune of the Unborn is Miquella's Great Rune then either Miquella came from the Rune of the Unborn or the Rune of the Unborn came from Miquella. Now, if the Rune of the Unborn came from Miquella then the timeline definitely has a loop or a paradox somewhere. The period between Radagon leaving Renalla and returning to Marika is definitely the most unsettling part of the lore for me.
I keep going down so many rabbit holes I've gone hollow! Swimming in silver, rot, mimics, dragons, ice witches, nox, ants, ancestral spirits, puppets... Love your vids, amazing work!
Because our character can be anything they choose to be through the power of mimicry. They can look like your favorite bosses, use any weapon they wish, they can change voice, faces, gender, they can go from spells to prayers, strength to dexterity. Larval tear in hand, you character can mimic anything you want it to ;)
in the beginning of the 2019 announcement trailer，godrick was holding an arm，i think that arm belongs to godwyn and that is how godrick got his great rune. i think this is the reason why godrick have the most balanced and the central part of the Elden ring，because it belongs to the first golden son of marika
If I had a great rune it'd only be usable for pvp. You get a flat 15% increase in physical attack power and additional 5% per hit for 5 seconds. Basically increasing without end if you can keep attacking or it resets in 5 seconds. And you'd get a flat 5% poise increase
I’ve watched a lot of your videos and they are great, but I gotta say, unless it’s my screens I’m watching on, there is almost no color difference to me between the Numen and Hero’s runes. The Numen just looks darker in some middle areas
Gr8 vid jack! Luv this series. Ok. I have a new theory. Tell me what you think guys. Its always stood out to me that when Morgott was king, Margit came into existance or vice versa considering the name of his shackle. Could the greater will be the cause? Everyone who is afflicted by an outer god has some severe side effects. Maybe the greater will's is splitting beings to reconstitue them as the hermaphrodite. The point of alchemy is to break things down and reassemble them to create the philosophers stone. Anthropomorphized as the hermaphrodite. Perfect convergence. The greater will and the golden order have very strong alchemical associations. Anybody afflicted by the greater will is split. However, only empyrians will be split in a way that will allow the hermaphrodite to be created from them. This has other implications. Miquela is the only demigod / empyrean without an obvious outer god causing his affliction. He is also the only demigod with an opposite sex counterpart. What is the deal with morgot and margit? They both dissolve to gold glitter at death. Marika, miquella, morgott all afflicted by the greater will thus they have split counterparts. I will go even further and say, i include godwyn the golden in the list of those afflicted by the outer will. Not only that but mesmer is his split counterpart.
I had someone say something interesting in my discord about how both of the Omen twins don't know how to understand or express love and affection due to their imprisonment undergound. From the intro slide we know that the Shattering War lead to the Abandonment of the Greater Will. It seems like Morgott's decision to take on the Margit persona (and becoming Leyndell's Batman) seems to be based on his neglect as an Omen.
One thing I realize is how Malenia and Miquella's Great Rune is literally the same. Malenia's Great rune is decaying with scarlet rot but as we all know this is essentially a form of death and rebirth. Something dies, it decays, fungi and insects prosper from this death and then those die and the cycle repeats. My question is, how does Miquella's Great Rune work? Is it simply birth eternal? Making it so that as you are born your form can be altered?
Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but Godwyn would never of had a Great Rune as the Elden Ring isn't shattered until after his death. The Demigods collect the Great Runes from the shattered Elden Ring, right?
I disagree, Great Runes are bestowed onto the demigods at their birth and are the source of the strength and their afflictions. Demigods getting Great Runes after the Shattering, to me, is a misreading of the intro-slides and an assumption.
@@JackisaMimic There is more evidence than the opening scene to shed light on the nature of Demigods and their Runes. It is more likely they received their runes post Knives rather than pre. That being said, even Godwyn’s untimely demise wouldn’t necessarily deny his lineage, the Golden lineage (if you believe he had descendants), from claiming Godwyn’s “birthright”, at least in theory. Besides, Godrick must have some genuine claim to the title of Demigod, meaning he must have been part of Marika’s family tree. And he also seems to inherit Godwyn’s former title of “the Golden”, at least before he resorts to Grafting.
Great video,i think miquella has alot to do with the shattering,more than godwyn I think mequella casting away his great rune to go to the land of shadows is why marika shattered the ring and the reason of her grief.
It's always the small stuff, the basic questions that immediately follow from basilar lore. Why would something like the Elden Ring, when shattered, yield, of all things, a "mad taint"? What/who's "tainting" what? How much of it has an hereditary effect? If the ER can "pool" at the basin, how much of Marika can also "pool" in her children? Can it stagnate? Kegare detected? Rather fascinating stuff. Also, DLC info out there and in full swing. Stay pure everyone, it's just around the corner now.
That’s a whole lotta hubbaballoo with not a lot of meaningful insights to glean from it. Feels like he ran with his headcanons and scrambled for ways to justify it. Not to deny the obvious multitudes of parallels between shardbearers. I for one have long been interested in the duality of Rykard and Miquella. Where one threw himself away to the serpent, and wars against the erdtree(s), the other threw his body away as well, only to Mohg, and that was after attempts to “replace” the erdtree with his own. Malenia and Radahn’s encounters also showcase how those two mirror one another, where Malenia effectively curses Radahn with a life of resisting rot, like her own. While she in fact changes to embrace that rot, what without Miquella’s needle, and the Haligtree in clear disrepair. What’s more, Radahn’s pursuits in life indicate a clear devotion to the status quo, and a resistance to change, while Malenia’s mere existence is a sign of the ever encroaching new order of rot, and pest-kind. Then there’s Morgott, in taking the mantle to protect Leyndell as its last king, against Mohg, rejecting the society that rejected Omens, and using Miquella to usher in his own “dynasty” through ancient rite and tradition, and blood.. so much blood… That leaves Godrick as the final shardbearer. But we know that, if fate had allowed for it, Ranni and Godwyn would be privy to their own great runes. So it makes me wonder if Godrick’s is merely the one intended for Godwyn, passed down along his lineage instead. This could somehow relate to Ranni, but as she divested herself entirely, it’s unclear what it would manifest as, or why. But I still imagine her fate is meant to parallel Godwyn’s, considering the nature of her machinations. This is a stretch, but the Golden lineage’s rune being the “anchor” could relate to the way Ranni severed the tie between body and soul. In a way, “releasing” that which “anchored” her. She seems to have little interest in runes to begin with, given her plans for an age of the moon, and the stars. Even going as far to abandon the elden ring in her ending.
Damn, Jack actually made a video with only theories and information I knew already…I like this game too much man, I can’t wait to see you toot your own horn after the dlc drops
look at the shoulder damage on merika annd Rad, then compare it to Godwyn's wound. They mimic one another. Plus, Consider Merika and Raddy adam and eve, so where is our serpent and apple?
Oh sorry I must not have uploaded subs for this video! I will fix that Edit: They were set as drafts and I had to click "publish". My most recent videos should all have subtitles now, thank you for letting me know
Dude! Such a good observation that all the Demigods leave remains behind except Mohg! I never had the thought before now.. But what if the body in the cocoon isn't Miquella's? You pointing out that Mohg is the only Demigod we slay that doesn't leave behind remains.. What if the body that's identical to Morgott's in the cocoon is Morgott's identical twin's body o.O I've never questioned that it is Miquella's body in the cocoon before just now. So to think through it a bit.. Giddeon explicitly says it's Miquella, but what does he know, really? And Miquella definitely has a tree body in Malenia's boss room. And in the intro cutscene Mohg carries a weird slimy child Miquella - not a giant cocoon. Perhaps it's not Miquella's withered hand that transports us to the land of shadow, rather Mohg's. Maybe that's why Mohg can T-1000 shape shift from blood. He's somehow extracted his blood along with his Great Rune curse and all from his body. Leaving behind an identical-Morgott-twin husk. He's turned himself into a red bloody version of a mimic tear o.O We have to choose, either we're missing Miquella's remains or Mohg's remains.
Of all the assumptions to make regarding the cocoon, Miquella is by and large a safer bet than Messmer, who had no lore significance before the trailer revealed him. And why would Mohg kiss the hand, while speaking to or of Miquella, if the hand was in fact not Miquella’s? I don’t believe one could spin a satisfying answer, no matter how hard they tried.
couldnt it be that the outer gods like the formless mother, youth and rot are mere aspects of the greater wiill? After all a world which includes death would naturally include things like rot too. But since death has been removed such things may have become foreign for the inhabitants of the lands between.
inspiring video, i guess u figured it the rune on the top is of life (the middle one) but should those on the left and right (great runes) be swapped? If u swap them they completely fit on top of the ring. The line in every great rune is the middle line. Also they come in pairs interestingly one in the image of the golden order and one in the image of the shadow realm maybe or something like that.
I do mostly agree with this theory but if the Great Runes also give curses to their owners, then why doesn't our Tarnished/Mimic receive any kind of drawback to owning or using them, except for when Malenia's is active? Although it might be better that we don't end up becoming an Grafted-Omen-Snake-Rot hybrid creature that's cursed with eternal childhood by the end of the adventure!
@@2Quick4You100 Yeah, it does look that way. At least that's one example of being physically changed by the Elden Ring then, certainly gaining Godlike power usually seems to result in growing in size in FromSoft's Soulslikes.
I’ve been concerned with that as well. It’s implied she may have had one. And it’s also not explicitly implied that Rennala’s is Ranni’s, which lends further credence to the possibility it was meant for Miquella. But more importantly, the timeline seems to imply the great runes were granted or claimed following the Death of Godwyn, which supposedly triggered Marika to shatter the Big Ring, ergo, The Night of Black Knives was what granted the Demigods Great Runes. Ranni would have been assumed dead in association with that event, and with no lineage of her own, there would seem no point in granting her a rune at all, no? So why is it believed otherwise? At least in the case of the Anchor Rune, we can infer it belongs to the Golden Lineage, as Godwyn’s successors. Did Ranni really get one, or not?
That same cut content calls Malenia’s the Great Rune of Decay, when in the final product it’s Rot. Abundance and unending rebirth don’t seem that much different under a microscope
@@JackisaMimic oh, um, theory goes that Radagon used the celestial dew to compell Renalla to love him, and the unnatural nature of their love is what broke her when he left. Evidence: if you betray ranni to seluvis, it kills her quest line and she hates your ass. If you then use celestial dew to repair the relationship, she forgets all that and you can then proceed to marry her anyway. It's creepy, and evidence that celestial dew doesn't affect the user, it casts a spell on whomever the user names.
I think we should look at celestial dew as a parallel to the amber egg. Where the Amber Egg allows for physical rebirths, baptism from Celestial Dew allows for a spiritual rebirth In Christian tradition, I think it’s the case that baptism is the practice of your spirit being born again Spirits in Elden Ring are very important, obviously, so having your spirit reborn could be a washing away of your sins and antagonisms, because you are essentially a “new person”. I don’t like looking at Radagon from a nefarious lens, my reading of Elden Ring shows him to be a kind, curious, and thoughtful individual that did love Rennala. I don’t see malice in his actions.
He most likely didn't need to. Carrying two Greatrunes is only necessary to get inside the Capital, as per the Two Fingers in the Table of Lost Grace. There is two Roundtable Holds, with the original being the Fortified Manor. So we can deduce that Vyke, like Vargram and Wilhelm, were members of the Roundtable Hold already located in the capital and not the ethereal Table of Lost Grace. This confusion is purposeful, I think, for even characters like Roderika don't seem to know the distinctions between the two Roundtable Holds.
Its highly possible that the order of birth the demigods are is not what we think i believe miqualla and melania are the oldest or second oldest i believe godwyn to be the oldest i believe messmer to be his twin and i believe renallas kids are the youngest but what we do know is they all were around each other and they all had their own throwns basically like game of thrones but all this leaves the question of radagon we need answers on him because those answers would make alot of questions go away just know where he came from all we know is he is not originally from the lands between
I talked about one of them in the Fire and Blood video, that the Crucible most likely came from outside the Lands Between. The real UFO video is coming after the DLC, sorry to keep you waiting lol
Answer this. If The Great Runes are the Elden ring, and If the Elden Ring IS the Elden Beast, how come we can fight him in his full form without having all the runes? Also, why does the Elden Ring within Marika look the same no matter how many great runes we collected? Something doesnt add up. Edited: Last sentence was a little too confrontational. My bad. Originally said "something doesn't square with your theory"
@@JackisaMimic I'm not arguing anything. I'm just asking a question. How does Marika's Elden Ring look identical inside her body, and after we see her, regardless of how many runes we have? Something just doesn't add up here. You'd also think the Elden Beast would be be very different in some way if significant portions of its power were missing, right? It's like the Great Runes are a PART of the Elden Ring, but without them the Elden Ring still exists in its regular form. Something is funky. Edit: I did say "something doesn't square with your theory" my bad. Should've said something more general like "something doesn't add up"
From the Two Fingers, via Enia, “Brave Tarnished, your Great Rune is a handsome shard of the Elden Ring.” If the Two Fingers in the Table of Lost Grace are to be believed, Great Runes come from the Elden Ring. We know from the Mending Runes that Runes can be created(Fia creates one from two curse marks, Dungeater creates one from seed bed curses, and Goldmask “discovers” one). There is no indication that the Great Runes were created in such a manner. We see that the Elden Beast is damaged, presumably from the impact of Marika’s hammer, but we don’t know if the removal of Runes changes how it looks or acts. We only see it in a post shattered/repaired state without any runes returned to it, so we have no way of knowing what a previous iteration could have possibly looked like, or if it would look different at all. I am looking over Enia’s dialogue right now and there isn’t any line that clearly states that the Great Runes are used explicitly to repair the Elden Ring. I don’t have access to my full text document to search, but I think her dialogue would hold that information. So it may be the case that having Two Great runes is only a merit the Two Fingers have for deeming worthiness and may not actually be a necessity for becoming Elden Lord and restoring the Golden Order. That is to say, at the end of the game the Great Runes may not actually be integrated back into the Elden Ring. We have no way of knowing if that is the case. I tried to find the answers for the questions but they are open enough that I think we may be asking off of assumptions we are making rather than hard and fast rules that are actually defined. If you find anything let me know
The idea of (cursed) great runes were purposefully given by Marika, can't be true at the same time if 12:40 happened after the shattering and demigods claimed them by themselves, right? Then there would need to be a different explanation. So this whole thing is conditionally built on that one assumption?
Reread the intro cutscene again: the events laid out are not in chronological order. The Elden Ring is Shattered -> Marika is Missing -> Godwyn is killed in the NOBK -> Demigods claim their shards -> Mad Taint triggers the Shattering War The NOBK happened during the Golden Age of the Erdtree, long before the Shattering of the Elden Ring, as per Rogier. So if one event in the intro is out of chronological order that means the others can be as well, and most likely are. In game you can hold a Great Rune in your body and it not have any Benediction or power until you restore it at the Divine Tower AND use a Rune Arc from the Shattered Elden Ring. The Demigods can have their Great Runes since birth but not have the power of the Great Runes fully realized until after the Elden Ring is shattered. The assumption is that the Demigods received their Great Runes after the shattering of the Elden Ring, which is a common thought but goes against the literal text in the game. If the Great Runes were acquired after the Shattering, why do Morgott and Mohg have naturally similar Great Runes as twins? How does Morgott's Great Rune prove he is born of the Golden Lineage?
@@JackisaMimic About the twin and golden lineage rune thing, I guess the argument would be that after they 'claim' the runes, their own qualities shaped them. Like Rykard's turning snake-y. Or snakeier. Wish the game gave us more clues
I guess the Demigods received at least a part of their Great Rune when they were born or much younger, then after the shattering of the Elden Ring the Runes' full powers activated, whether intentionally on behalf of the Demigods or not, and this lead to "The Shattering" war.
@@MK-sj4mf Miyazaki loves the concepts around giving birth and GRRM loves the concepts around blood/genes/lineage... I don't buy the theory that the Great Runes and shards and whatnot are just a bunch of pieces scattered around the floor and people where fighting over them. Even if you fight for something material like a throne you will need something that allows you to claim it.
I always wondered why Miquella's body (or hand, that we can see) looked so old if he was cursed with eternal youth - his great rune being linked to that and having been removed makes a lot of sense
You ever look up a build online? What’s the best weapon to use? How about wearing the armor of Radahn or Malenia? Hell ever watch a lore video, are all your thoughts your own, or are you mimicking someone else’s idea? “The Silver Tear makes mockery of life, reborn again and again into imitation. Perhaps, one day, it will be reborn a lord...” Bring that larval tear to Rennala, be reborn again and again, and perhaps you too will be able to defeat the Elden Beast and become Elden Lord.
@@JackisaMimic I love this! You make a great point! Thank you for taking the time to explain. I only recently found your channel and I’ve been enjoying watching all of your lore videos.
I have a whole video explaining that demigods born with great runes....only need to know basic spanish....its my masterpiece, my opus, my greatest video
@@JackisaMimic I call it tarnished like the game implies, like the creator says himself :) Surely you can set aside your ego on your own theories to label the character correctly as the game and developers do? Or do you HAVE to be extra and seek validation on some theory you made up?
@@fallasleep3513Looks like you’re trying to mimic a tough guy. Once you gain the confidence to post your face and your opinions online for thousands of people to see then maybe you can start slinging mud my way.
Calling the Tarnished a mimic makes your video practically unwatchable. The game tells us mimics have no will of their own. They also bleed silver. Our character is not a mimic. The rune of unborn demigods was Ranni's rune. She literally conjures a massive spell from the amber egg to initiate the 2nd phase Rennalla fight, which is implied to be something she left to protect her mom. Godwyn had no great rune because the elden ring was shattered after his death. The great runes are shards. That is why they are called shardbearers who have then. They gain their traits based on will of the demigods who had them. Not the other way around as you suggest You speculate too much and ignore what the game devs have told us by the details
Hey if you’re gonna tell me I’m wrong at least try being right - “This spirit takes the form of the summoner to fight alongside them, but its mimicry does not extend to imitating the summoner's will.” The Mimic Tear ashes explicitly say that mimics have wills of their own. Since you know so much about the lore please help me answer these questions then: If the Demigods got their Great Runes after the Shattering, how does Ranni have a Great Rune? The Night of the Black Knives happened before the Shattering, so with your assertion she shouldn’t have a Great Rune at all. If the Rune of the Unborn is Ranni’s why is it stored in Amber? Who put her Great Rune in Amber? How did Radagon get it? Why is it shaped like Malenia’s and Miquella’s Rune? If the Demigods got their Great Runes and not just Rune Arcs after the Shattering how does Morgotts Great Rune prove his lineage? Why do Mohg and Morgott as twins have similarly shaped Great Runes?
@@JackisaMimic that phrase does not say that Mimic Tears have wills of their own. In the Elden Ring world mind / will, soul and body are separate things. The reason mimic tears are implied to have failed to become a lord candidate is because they don't have wills. Mimic tears have a body and they have a soul (larval tears, which we now know from the DLC are created from a spirit / soul at the end of the reincarnation phase that involves the spirit gravestones). Thus mimic tear spirit ashes can exist, because they have a spirit. But they don't have will. Without will you cannot create a rune and you cannot "brandish" ie raise up the Elden Ring. That is why it cannot become a lord. In Japanese, Rogier explains will is what allows people to refuse to die in the Golden Order, and what allows the once dead to revive again. Will is a very important concept in the game universe, and is distinct from a soul. This seems to be inspired by real life alchemical occult beliefs, as many have pointed out, which served as inspiration for a number of story concepts in the game story. As for the shape of the runes. You're looking far too much into this for something that is not there. The 1.0 version of the game has tons of cut content showing that Miquella and Malenia were part of another ending for the "age of abundance". This is also why the rune of unborn demigods has nothing to do with Miquella. Miquella's original intention was for him to be found in the haligtree where Malenia boss fight happens. He would produce a last drop of dew, implied to be a mending rune of abundance. Because this act would kill him, Malenia fights us to try to stop this from happening. So the only thing the shape of the Great Runes / shards tell us is what runes of the Elden Ring they broke off from as shards. 1.0 and the game files still, Great Runes are called shards. Remembrances are called runes. This was hastily changed just before launch, for reasons unclear. What is clear is their function in the game world did not change, which means remembrances are created the same way mending runes are -- they are created from the will of a person or particular entity. The boss fight we have with Rennala in 2nd phase is created from the memories of Ranni of her mother given form as will. Just as the mending runes are created from the will of Fia, Goldmask and Dungeater. An act that, similarily to defeating bosses, also results in their deaths as well. Why the content was cut for Malenia and Miquella is unknown but what is certain is rune of unborn demigods existed alongside but was unrelated to the quest involving Miquella creating the Haligtree and giving us his mending rune of abundance. Miquella's rune was always abundance, not unborn demigods. Abundance creates uncontrolled growth, just like Malenia's Decay rune does. We know this because, again, it is in the 1.0 version of the game cut content quest involving Miquella. So the DLC stuff, all of that was created after launch and not part of the original intention for the game story. I even doubt Messmer and the existence of a shadow tree was part of the original story concept, which is why nothing involving him or even hinting at him or the shadow tree exists in the base game. This is stuff they wrote after the fact, in an attempt to try to make some of the plot holes from the abrupt changes just before launch make sense, and I suspect, an effort to clear up confusion on certain things, like the role of larval tears which is why they have two different icons for those we get in the dlc and such. I think the DLC was primarily written to try to fix the plot holes in the base game and more clearly communicate intentions of how the world works, and information about Marika and her motivations. There are a number of things in the current version of the game that don't make sense because they were changed just before launch. We can only speculate why but a lot of this stuff made it into the game translated into English and even has English voice recording. Voice files are recorded late in development for a game title, meaning these story elements were part of the master design document for probably the vast majority of the game development, only changed just before launch. Cut content is normally a result of lacking sufficient development time to complete the testing, so that is probably why it was cut, and a new story involving Miquella created for the DLC reusing some of these concepts from the original cut quest (like the rune of abundance) is what they developed after launch. At any result it is clear the intention has always been that the Great Runes held by demigods are shards that broke off from the Elden Ring and/or otherwise removed, like the Rune of Death. These runes can be transformed by the will of their wielder, infusing it with their principles. The same way we take the much smaller fragments of runes and have Melenia turn them into power for us, changing our stats, based on the principles we would follow. And what does not have will and therefore cannot turn runes into power? A Mimic. Which is why our Tarnished is not a mimic. BTW it seems, based on the game files cut content, neither Morghot or Mogh were intended to be children of Marika originally. they are all called demons in game files, and Japanese name of Omen are Oni. The English translation is very bad and causes some of these misunderstandings, but the sudden changes just before release of the game to some of this stuff probably hasn't helped much either. For whatever reason, the developers gave these two Great runes to what was originally Oni boss characters and added text to these Great runes to show the connection to Godfrey but based on game files this was not originally part of the master story document throughout Elden Ring's development and was changed literally right before launch. Godfrey's placement from Stormveil and his replacement with Godrick is another of these changes, and a legacy of this seems to be in the grafting room at Stormveil where we see a massive painting of Godfrey with broken axe even though the axe description now says it was broken after he was banished from the lands between, which makes no sense why an old painting of him with it broken would exist in Stormveil. Well, it does make sense because he was supposed to be the boss for Stormveil castle originally and the developers forgot to remove the painting. Elden ring is full of a bunch of plot holes like this (another example, the Nox armor all says Empyrean armor in base files, still) because of the abrupt changes to the story just before launch. So you're trying to make sense out of the similarity of their runes when these two characters didnt have runes until just before launch to begin with, and no association to Godfrey. Besides this, the "Great runes" are most certainly not the actual runes of the Elden Ring, because we see the Elden Ring inside Marika / Radagon's body when we find them. If you look closely the damage is primarily to the great rune representing the lower left and right of the body. So the developers didn't even update Marika's model to accommodate the creation of the omen twin runes. All of this suggests hasty changes made to the story just before launch, and not updating other aspects of the game to align with these decisions. So trying to judge whose rune the unborn demigod one is based on similarity to Miquella and Malenia's runes is a fruitless endeavor because the symbols of the runes only represent what Runes of the Elden Ring they are shards of, not who gained them. Instead, look at what the rune does, Ranni has a spell on it to pull us into a trap (not unlike the trap used in Bloodborne on Rom, btw, which also involved the moon and water) and fight a projection of her mother brought to life based on Ranni's memory, through her will. Ranni is stated to have discarded her great rune. So the obvious implication is the rune belonged to Ranni. Why Rennala is obsessed with it, how she actually got it, and what she is trying to do with it, are ambiguous but since the game already tells us that many of the details we are told about Radagon and Rennala are lies, we should not take what characters like Miriel and the game item descriptions tell us at face value. The reason Rennala is in the library is not because she was imprisoned by the academy. She is protected by Carian forces, including one of the surviving Carian knights and a wolf of Radagon. None of her children tried to rescue her from the academy or even attacked the academy to free her. Ranni does not want her to be removed from the library, which is why she left a protective spell on the rune. So the reason Rennala is there is not because of the reason Miriel tells us. Trying to figure out which parts of the text are poorly translated (ie primordial gold and great tree being two examples of something that doesn't actually exist in the original Japanese text) and which are legacies from older story ideas the developers forgot to remove or change, and which are the result of implementing rushed story changes just before launch, makes the task of figuring out what the story actually is much harder than it ought to be, but if you spend hours making these videos the least you could do is pay attention to the material that many other players have shared about the cut content, the story changes made before launch, and what the original japanese text actually says. (I just realized I used my other profile to respond to this.)
@@JackisaMimic If you want me to answer the question of why the great rune of unborn demigods was encased in amber, my answer based on what we know in the current game, is that the rune is not encased in amber. The amber egg is crystalized Erdtree (World Tree in Japanese, important distinction) sap leftover from the age of abundance. The game asset files show what seems to be locks of Radagon's hair inside it, and also blood vessels similar to the primal glintstones used by astrologers to transfer their souls into a new host body, which we learn about in Sellen's questline. So the amber egg seems to be a version of this using the golden sap from the World Tree, which is implied to be a cosmic being based on what Sellen said and of course the existence of the Elden Beast. What Rennala is trying to do with it and why she is in the library with it, I think the answer is probably trying to revive Ranni, or at least at some point in development that was the answer. I think that aspect was probably cut early in development, along with the rest of the quest chain that involves all the other recorded voice lines the juvenile scholars have that went unused. Anyway, Radagon's hair is significant. If you zoom in on all of the Shards / Great Runes, they are made from braided hair of Radagon and Marika. Just as, now in the DLC, we have a super powerful item made from Marika's lost braid left at the Shaman (or rather, Shrine priestess in Japanese) village. You will also notice that despite being a child of Marika, Messmer does not have a shard of the Elden Ring. So my guess is that at some point in the story development the amber egg and its rune is what allowed Radagon and Rennala to have kids to begin with, but now its not working anymore for whatever reason, probably because the Elden Ring was shattered. But with story changes it was changed to be associated with Ranni, in a way that is as full of plot holes as that painting of Godfrey in Stormveil castle. I think for most of the game's development the intention was Marika and Radagon are from a race of people who are like hermaphrodite trees which is what the Numen were intended to be, and this plot line was incorporated into the shrine priestess village story material in the DLC. I think the original story is that, since the game was stated by George RR Martin to be a sequel to Dark Souls, the world of Elden Ring was intended to take place in another planet within the Soulsverse, much like Bloodborne is. The game was meant to take place around these characters who descend from Archtrees or possibly can become Archtrees, who come into contact with outer god cosmic lovecraftian beings similar to those in the Bloodborne planet. I think the original story Martin created took some of the concepts from the Souls universe games and built a new story around them, and he started with Archtrees. Erdtree, or World Tree, is an Archtree wrapped in cosmic golden aura and the shadow tree is two other Arctrees conjoined together wrapped in cosmic shadow and gold. This is probably Martin incorporating the Bloodborne outer god concepts into the world of Elden Ring's story, or perhaps Miyazaki doing this. I think the vast majority of the game story is written by Miyazki, not Martin. I think Martin's treatment involving a world history and a few key characters based on prior Dark Souls and Bloodborne lore was revised heavily by Miyazaki throughout development, including just before launch of the finished game. The Ancient dragons are basically Archdragons who are not weak to lightning, which is interesting but their origin is probably not much different than that in Dark Souls. The main difference is probably the presence of of Bloodborne Lovecraftian outer gods and the influence they have on the world that changed its development trajectory to what the world of Elden Ring became. Numen were probably intended to be the people that become Archtrees, who fell on the world as stars and other life forms spray from them, like ancient dragons (or rather, archdragons). So how does this relate to the amber egg? Well tree sap is a function of a tree as an organism. Its basically blood of trees, that provides nutrients needed for growing new buds. So the amber egg, and its rune, is for creating new buds of the tree. That is to say, new demigod children of Marika, as the branches of the Tree. So it is not a coincidence they all develop a shard of the Elden Ring into a unique Great rune infused with their principles. I think during development of the story some of this became convoluted to where not all of the demigods became new branches of the Erdtree, or rather the Elden Ring, but some of these story elements remain with the minor erdtrees scattered across the land, the amber egg once used to create new seldom born Numen children of Marika (perhaps pollinated by a powerful will, like Rennala, in a process similar to any other lord) who were supposed to use their blood to develop minor erdtrees into full blown Archtrees (as Miquella did). Perhaps Marika's big plot twist is she corrupted the original practices from Farum Azul time in an effort to make her Archtree the sole one and everyone else subservient to her, but she still needed children to continue growing her tree. But for whatever reason part of these story elements were not further developed (shown in the cut questline involving Miquella), leaving the base game's story in the state that it is, and more focus was placed on the gameplay tuning before release. That's my theory for what is in the game and explains some of these plot holes. Miquella becoming a new God by doing whatever ritual Marika did to become a god is further evidence of this. He used a broken fragment of his Rune of Abundance, from the Elden Ring, to birth a new rune that he intended to grow into a replacement for the Elden Ring. I bet the intention is, Miquella 2.0 God version can incorporate other Runes into his own. His rune is basically the same top part of the Elden Ring that represents Marika, infused with his own principles, grown from his own braided hair. He and Radahn were probably going to steal the Great Runes we have to infuse them into Miquellas, then proceed to go do the same to Marika / Radagon. This also matches what we see of Marika at the divine gate in the cinematic movie trailer, where she ripped out strands of hair from likely the former god whose archtrees were in a spiral pattern, and is now the shadow tree. A dying tree still having some celestial power and still functioning somewhat like it did before in regards to remembrances, but clearly dying because it has been cut off from the rest of the world and has lost its Numen God and elden ring. But again, I think a lot of the story details are missing and not in the game. I think with the DLC the once again rushed the story elements and dropped planned questlines that would have better explained this. I suspect Bandai gave From hard deadlines for when to launch the game and then to release DLC and they just ran out of time to fully flesh the story elements out.
last post (I promise). The Night of Black Knives did not happen before the Elden Ring was shattered. The Elden Ring was shattered and then Godwyn was assassinated after. The game opening movie tells us this. It literally opens with the ring being shattered, tells us Marika is missing, and then talks about the assassination of Godwyn as the event that sparked The Shattering War. Which has a confusing name, I know, but is not the same event as the Elden Ring becoming shattered. The Shattering is probably named for the shattering of Marika's Empire into fragmented nations ruled by different demigods.
"The Shattering" refers to the war that followed after Marika shattered the Elden Ring. If the Demigods' "newfound strength" triggered the Shattering, that means that they had only recently (like after Marika shattered the Elden Ring but before the Demigods were warring with each other) acquired the "shards of the Elden Ring" which make them Shardbearers.
This is a clearly established timeline.
It is up to us to decide if these Shards are the Great Runes themselves or the Rune Arcs.
I only know one of those two described as "shards"...
However, we can find Rune Arcs all over the game and there are plenty of enemies that even drop them. Does that mean that those enemies are also "shardbearers"? Clearly, the distinction between the two groups is that one group (demigods) also have Great Runes of the Elden Ring.
Finally, Enia says "Brave Tarnished, your Great Rune is a handsome shard of the Elden Ring." which thus puts Great Runes into the category of Shards.
"Demigods all claimed the Shards of the Elden Ring". Enia has already identified the Great Runes as shard of the Elden Ring.
"The mad taint of their newfound strength triggered the Shattering" The newfound (recent) strength from the shards (Great Runes) they received post- Elden Ring shattering caused them to go kind of power hungry and begin a new conflict, the Shattering.
This does not rule out these "shards" just being rune arcs and not Great Runes but it really does not seem like this is the case.
There's also mending runes that are seemingly created from scratch (still need to watch vid, idk if mentioned)
Agreed I think he’s got a cool theory he has but it leaves the question what happened to the Elden Ring after Marika shattered it- just the rune arcs splitting off? It makes more sense that the only way to split several great runes off would be to forcibly shatter it. Thus the Demi gods claiming, not being given, the great runes and going to war
To understand what the Shattering of the Elden Ring was, you need to understand what the Elden Ring is. It is not a physical or a metaphysical object. Like all greater truths, it is an abstraction that a mind can more easily grasp than a complex truth.
A good friend of mine is a hardcore occultist and as they put it, "divinity isn't a representative of a divine concept. It is the living embodiment of that concept. There are not gods of War, Death, Life, or Fertility They _are_ War, Death, Life, or Fertility. They define the concept which is then expressed in the world. Malenia isn't afflicted with Scarlet Rot. She is a living portal by which the Scarlet Rot enters this world. Just as whoever it is that is sealed in the Lake of Rot was the vessel for the Rot in an earlier Age. This is why the sealing away of the older vessel of rot decreased its effect in the world until the Rot created another to replace it.
Within the game, this abstract concept of divinity carried by all life is embodied by their runes. At the start of the game, the three central runes of Life, Form, and Death are housed by Marika, Radagon, and Maliketh. These form the central concepts of reality within the Lands Between, though the Rune of Death is now inactive. The runes of the demigods are further refinements of those concepts manifesting within the world. For example, Gowry describes the Rot Malenia personifies as both an aspect of death and rebirth, aka Death and Life. Indeed the malfunctions within the demigods are likely due to the imbalance created with the sealing away of Death. For example, aging is an aspect of Death, and with it inactive Miquella cannot age. The lesser runes in the game are further refinements to the concepts of divinity within all things. They can be considered what old school occultists call True Names. The divine name of an object that idenfies it within the nature of reality.
To get back to the point, the Elden Ring is in truth the collective force of all of the runes, the collective whole of all names created by Marika, that defines reality as Jack demonstrates in this video. The Tarnished collects the Runes of those they slay, taking their power and nature. Melina as another aspect of divinity uses these collected runes to rewrite the reality of the Tarnished. When a Remembrance is used to create an object or power, you are reconstructing the runic structure of the object and copying the original form. Melina is hacking reality, a living embodiment of reality trying to fix things.
To get back to the main point, the Elden Ring is the sum total of all of these runes to create the reality of the Lands Between. It's "shattering" is when the runic forces started to no longer working in alignment. This is personified by the demigods fighting each other. Rather than the individual divine elements of the world working together to create a harmonious reality, they are fighting to dominate each other and the land suffers between them. in a single example, Melania and Radahn's battle destroys the land about them beyond recovery and rewrites reality to favor the Rot based life. This is why it is called the Shattering War. Because this is the manifestation of the Shattering.
But if this is the case, why is is said Marika shattered the Elden Ring? Because she started the process of disharmony by sealing away Destined Death. Remember that the runes can be transferred. The Rune of Form was likely first held by Godfrey and then transferred to Radagon when Marika banished Godfrey. This is the Grace being removed that Marika refers to. Since Godfrey was the source of Grace for his followers, his followers also lost their connection to Grace and became the Tarnished. However so long as there as a bearer for the rune of Form active in the form of Radagon, reality continued relatively the same. And of course our Tarnished vacuums up runes all the time.
But the transfer of the Rune of Death from the Gloam-Eyed Queen to Maliketh caused the Rune to be sealed away and no longer affect reality. This created an imbalance and if From Software's Souls games have taught us anything it's that interfering in the cycles of life of death is a. very. bad. idea. In Dark Souls it created undeath and the Hollowed. Elden Ring shows what the early stages of that process were, when there was just enough balance left to allow a small amount of normalcy to reality. The creation of Godwyn as the Prince of Death is likely reality trying to reestablish balance by reintroducing Death into reality by creating a new Death god and Death rune, but the process was incomplete due to Ranni hijacking it for her purposes.
So thus the Shattering of the Elden Ring is a metaphor for the messed up state of the Lands Between caused by Marika removing Death from reality. Without such a critical and necessary component of reality having an active living divine vessel to express it in the Lands Between, the Lands began to fall apart. Because runes affect reality and all runes are expressions of the now imbalanced Elden Ring, that imbalance affected everything. The demigods fought, went mad, fed themselves to snakes, started to graft living beings onto their bodies etc. Since runes at are the base of all reality, that effect passed down to the lesser beings all the way down to the animals and flora of the world. This is why the Lands are so messed up. The Runes are the code of reality of the Lands and the program has crashed.
What about those images of Marika breaking something apart on a forge and Radagon trying to fix it? Metaphors for the limited understanding of the Tarnished trying to make sense of the information the Grace is feeding him. The Tarnished understand blacksmithing a lot better than advanced metaphysics. As for the final battle, it is happening within some higher dimension and the Tarnished's mind is fixing onto concepts they can comprehend.
@@ravendelacour1917 It is not called the Shattering War. The war is just called the Shattering.
What is The Rune of Form? I've never heard of that before.
I appreciate you putting so much thought into your comment here but there is nothing I want to engage with really.
I laid out a coherent explanation of a widely shared understanding of the game's fundamental lore.
You have replied with... a lot and did not engage with my comment or my reasoning.
Maybe you can make a reddit post or something for these ideas!
@@oup6009 I am referring to the real life occult roots of what the devs used to create the world. You can answer any direct questions with the wiki. Here I expected to engage with lore speculation using the same material as the devs did. My mistake.
As for your actual desired engagement the Rune of Form is shorthand for the hatch work rune used as Radagon's signature. You see it on the wards outside the Elden Tree that block you, in the talisman Jack referred to, and behind Radagon's statue for example. See Jack's earlier videos on it.
Fun fact: Radahn was the face of Liurnia's "Got Milk?" campaign
That's how he got so big
While Ranni showed up on the milk cartons
Omg 🤣
@fullspeedpagan Omg noooo
Are you 700 years old?
Fantastic video Jack. I really like the connection you drew with Rykard and Radahn both being consumed in their "deaths". They do literally consume people and are personified crucible animals in a sense- Rykard as the snake and Radahn as the Lion. Funny how karma works hey.
heck, we see Radahn eat a Cleanrot Knight in the cutscene before his fight
So if we meet Mogh, he'll look nothing like an omen, huh. We should be on the lookout for a human-looking character with a missing left eye in the DLC.
Good call!
He'll likely have both eyes and since the dung is a human with the soul of an omen it's likely this could really happen...that mogh we fight might but be a phantom
Uhh....
"Wait? Have I been saying mimic this whole time?"
I was wondering if I was missing something, and apparently I am... 🤔
Are you suggesting that the Nox succeeded in crafting a "lord"... being us? 😮
I think they showed us tbh 😮
@@GhostWriter-Gohan Please explain... 🤔
That is exactly what JiaM is implying 😂 take a look at his older videos
I rewatched the prior video and maybe I missed it but I don't get why the playing character is a minic
I have never made a dedicated video on this. All I do is play as a character who wears black armor and a massive heap of iron, far too large to be called a sword. I also feature the music from Windmills hip hop songs, much like ENB(the first souls TH-camr) used too.
And my characters have used larval tears, to reborn again and again, until he became Elden Lord.
If you can’t spot a mimic by now…
i think one of the most important aspects of the DLC is how the symbol Miquella places around the Land of Shadow has a horizontal line. while the crescent evokes an eclipse, i think it's also meant to combine with the Elden Ring's bottom arc to form a full circle.
i think Marika's upward arc represents a focus on order and life. the Rune of Death has the downward opening arc, which i think represents the opposite: death and chaos. this would've been the Gloam-Eyed Queen's focus. Marika commandeered the birthing and burial processes so she can curate life and prevent undesirable creation, while the Gloam-Eyed Queen accelerated the Crucible system with abundant death to feed randomization. so a full circle would represent an all-encompassing system, perhaps completing or perfecting the Elden Ring.
the goal is that horizontal line. notice how the Elden Ring doesn't have one, but does have that central vertical line and the diagonal lines from Radagon. however, like how Marika's pose represents her upward facing arc, Radagon's pose is a cross stance representing that straight horizontal line. so Radagon also strives for balance, but intended to do so by holding the current system together. Miquella disagrees with the approach, which echoes the lore bit where Miquella started searching beyond the Golden Order for answers.
Bravo! Well done my friend. Thank you for all the love. Can’t wait to see what the DLC holds for Miquella and Marika.
When I find Miquella I’m going to look him in the eye and say “your momma”
I see the Great Runes as genetics that are passed down from Marika to her offspring that evolves along with their vessel.
Radagon is Marika so that will explain why Rennala's children also have Great Runes. My thoughts are that they are "giving" at birth but maybe they don't activate until they come to an age or state where they are given their own 2 Fingers.
I think the Shattering could have been the reason (or one of them) that killed/petrified the Fingers in the Divine Towers and that's why we have to go to those to activate the GR. Maybe Ranni moved her 2 Fingers to "safety" in the night of the black knives so nobody will use her GR once her body was killed and wait until she obtain the Fingerslayer Blade, or maybe killing the body with the Rune of Death is enough and maybe that is also why there's no GR from Godwyn (this guy has no DIvine Tower either).
If we need Finger Maidens to tranform runes into strength, it could be because they know how to interpret the 2 Fingers? so where are Melina's hiding?
These are all my assuptions and feelings, but I have no way to prove them. My brain is like the crucible right now, send help :D
Great video as always, they keep me thinking!!
Radahn and Rykard playing double dash has me rolling😂💀
Great video Jack👏
“Radahn mastered gravity magic in order to continue riding his trusted go-kart”
Okay, crazy quirky theory, Marika helped Ranni(without her knowledge) with assasinating Godwyn in order to test the true power of the Golden Order.
"In Marika's own words. I declare mine intent, to search the depths of the Golden Order. Through understanding of the proper way, our faith, our grace, is increased. Those blissful early days of blind belief are long past. My comrades; why must ye falter?" Maybe this was her way of searching the depths. Maybe when Ranni and Rykard were plotting she heard wind of the plan and used it as a perfect tool to test it.
Maybe after doing so she had found something that made her skeptical. So she had to test it, to test if this order is truly perfect, will her children be saved from such a terrible fate such as true death. And the answer was no. Maybe when she had realized that The Golden Order, The Elden Beast, The Greater Will was not as perfect or great as she thought it would be she realized she had to act. And after Godwyn's death she then gifted each of her Demigod children Great Runes possibly to create an order of their own.
"Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices..."
Sacrifices to what? To the Tarnished possibly. But why the tarnished specifically? Because we were sent to wage war in lands afar? I'm not sure. This theory isnt perfect but with all these theories and lore speculations my brain is firing up ideas man.
Thank you Jack for putting out a safe video on the day of the spoiler reckoning. Great speculation as usual, and I'm glad someone else recognizes the Unborn rune as Miquella's. All of the sibling runes look the same, so why not Miquella's?
I got two more videos coming out before the DLC too! Since the Godwyn video Ive been trying to get one video a week up until the DLC. Happy someone else recognized the Great Rune of the Unborn!
I've been wanting to know how powerful snakes are conceptually in the lands between, Rykard's rune is literally being altered in favor of a snake
Wait a minute, if Godwyn was slain at the same time as Ranni and because of that one died in spirit the other in body. Isn't Marika impaled by a shard of destined death in the boss room? Is Marika's soul gone and because another soul (Radagon) inhabited the body too the only reason her body remains? What if Marika as a soul has returned to the erdtree, and that's why she's been missing?
I still have a sneaking suspicion that Marika's soul is the Mother of Truth. Marika is from outside of Lands Between and she was referred to as a god. So even the outer god part fits.
🤔
It’s speculative to insist that marika is impaled by destined death, as it’s the first time we see anything remotely similar to that spike in game, and, aside from hue, it more closely resembles the very crucifix she’s bound too in composition.
on the divine tower，if you turn around the camera to observe the great rune you will find that the great rune always facing toward you，it always looks like this ring shape，as if it is some kinds of high dimensional existence
I have always loved the “the lands between” is such a fun way of corrupting the name “midgard” or “middle earth” 😊
Make Marika Whole Again!!!
Hey prismo
For a whole piece of that bakery? Anything.
I love how one of the closest demigods thats pure and uncursed Marika's got would be Godrick. This tiny shell of a man, distilled demigod, who rips the limbs off of his people and sticks it onto him, is one of the last of the Golden Lineage.
Thoughts on how Radagon came to have the rune of the unborn? Miquella must have given it to him before he cocooned himself into the Haligtree, I would assume. So he could grow larger and provide more blood perhaps?
Maybe it was at the same time he gifted Radagon with the Discus of Light incantation. I guess he did it after giving up on Golden Order Fundamentalism and beginning to grow the Haligtree, as a farewell gift.
Miquella closes out the gift-giving competition with a slam dunk egg hell yeah
@@WH1SK3YJ4CK And then he regifts it to his ex.
So does this imply that radagon took miquella's great rune? Well i suppose their close relationship points more to it being given during their time studying fundamentalism
The Rune of the Unborn being Miquella's is something I have never think of until now and makes total sense 🤯
And I totally on board with you on Malenia and MIquella being the oldest children of Marika 👍
Godwin is older than miquella tho
@@ididntaskverified3663 The only thing I know for sure it's that I not sure of anything 😅
Personal theory:
The crucible and primordial gold was red, then became golden. Much like lightning, and other "red to gold" transitions after the golden order.
Is it to crazy to say, that rather than Marika turning into Radagon... it's actually the other way around?
Radagon (red haired) became golden, truning into Marika (blonde), and became god. Yet his original self, Radagon, has "yet to become a god" ?
As we see in game Primordial Gold is Gold tinted Red, it is both and not just red. So for me, it is that Marika was once just that: Gold tinted Red.
With the removal of Destined Death, or the Crucible, or whatever, Marika is now just Gold, but the Red needs to go somewhere and that somewhere, I assume, is Radagon.
So at one point she was whole and complete, red and gold together in unity, then there is the split and now we have the unique characters of Marika and Radagon. Does that make sense? Its similar to what you are saying, but I would tweak it to that the original was not just Radagon but Marika and Radagon together.
Its so hard to talk about these characters lol
@@JackisaMimicOooh, I like this idea, it makes sense to me. I hope we learn more about them!
@@JackisaMimicJust now it occurs to me that the merging of Serosh and Godfrey makes him Golden, but wripping Serosh apart makes him purely Red Hoara Loux. Any thoughts on that?
It feels so obvious now that im actively thinking about it but this red-gold pairing is EVERYWHERE. Malenia/Miquella, Morgott/Mogh, Marika/Radagon, Golden Erdtree/Burned Erdtree...
Now to say something slightly tangentially related, red and gold (yellow) are the final two colors of the process to create the Philosopher's Stone, the first two being...black and white, which immediately makes me think of the Gloam-Eyed Queen.
With that in mind, I believe in alchemy that red was the final stage? Which makes it interesting that Marika seemingly deposed the GEQ (black and white), possibly turned the Crucible (red) into the Erdtree (gold/yellow) inversing their order compared to the stabdard alchemical one.
My neurons are firing.
Praise be to the soulsborne loremasters for feeding us while we wait for the DLC to drop
"Soon after what? We have no way of knowing." Soon after the thing he said immediately before that, dude. That's how the phrase "soon after" works. The cinematic makes it very clear they claimed the runes after godwyn's death and the shattering. This is one of the strangest lore claims I've seen.
If that is the case, did Ranni have a Great Rune? If yes, how could she have a Great Rune if she died during the Night of the Black Knives? Why do siblings, especially twins, have Great Runes that are the same shapes? Why does Morgott's Great Rune prove he was born of the Golden Lineage?
How do you answer those questions if they received their Great Runes after the Shattering?
@@JackisaMimicto add on, Ranni is said to have cast away her rune... It seems strange for her to die, make a doll body, grab a great rune while it's still available, and then choose to cast it away some unspecified period after..
Also, with the theory of Unborn Great Rune being Miquellas, it could make sense thematically that he gave away to Radagon the rune that he was born with, as it's a burden to him. And he chooses to create St. Trina, and through that develops the rune we see in DLC
Woops lmao you literally go over the second theory. I took a break to read comments part of the way through
Miquella’s great rune is Regression and Malenia’s great rune is Causality.
6:12 i thought it was pretty clear the demigods acquired the great runes sometime around the shattering, as Godwyn "died" sometime _before_ that there's no reason to expect he ever aquired one in the first place
I disagree with that assessment because it isn’t clear and doesn’t explain many of the inconsistencies.
For instance, do you think Ranni had a Great Rune? If so, how did she have one if she died in the NOBK?
@@JackisaMimic I've no reason to assume she claimed one in the first place, but regardless she still has the _capability_ of claiming one despite her "death", she retains her own will, consciousness, and mobility to do so while Godwyn is a mindless, soulless, rotting husk incapable of conscious action. Doesn't seem very inconsistent to me 🤷
@PixelOverload She is a spirit though, now we have to determine if spirits can house Great Runes, and we see where things start to get messy…
@@JackisaMimic why shouldn't they? It seems far more questionable that a soulless lump of flesh could house a great rune than a fully realized soul inhabiting an artificial body. There's no suggestions to my knowledge on any limits as to who or what can or cannot _house_ a Great Rune in the first place, technically Renala's rune is "housed" in a chunk of amber, even after you "acquire" it for yourself, and the rest of them seem to actually be "housed" in their respective finger towers rather than the body of their owner (though _you_ do seem to physically acquire those ones iirc). The question at hand isn't really about any ability to house the runes, but to _claim ownership_ over the rune in the first place
Ranni specifically slew her Empryean flesh to not have to house the Elden Ring which is made of various runes. From the actions Ranni has taken to avoid having to house the Elden Ring we can deduce a spirit can’t house it. If not, somebody should tell Ranni she’s made a big mistake
Is it just me or does it seem like Ranni's moon and Godwyn's sun would combine to make an eclipse?
Also, did you ever catch Kosmos's video on Ensha possibly being the, "soulless bones," that Miquella was trying to restore life too.
If that's the case then it is possible that Eclipse and night of the black knives are the same event (Moon blocks sun) and that Miquella was involved in the assassination of Godwyn, possibly in an effort to restore Ensha's soul. =)
I have made that theory is multiple videos! Specifically in my videos Miquella’s Secret Crime and Godwyn’s Sun Realm Resurrection: check them out!
I always believed, and I still do, that Marika is responsible for everything that is wrong with the Lands Between. But there's so many unanswered questions. Did she do it to free herself? Did she do it out of ambition? In the trailer, we see the unknown man trying to rip the runes from his body through his mouth...could Marika have suffered the same way, metaphorically?
Forest Spanning Great Bridge Finger Reader: "Wherever the path leads, only more sorrow. Tis a curse! A curse! The curse of Queen Marika! Ah...ahh... Ha...ha..."
Finger Reader Enia: "Queen Marika is the vessel of the Elden Ring, carrier of its vision. A god, in truth. But after the Elden Ring's shattering, she was imprisoned in the Erdtree.
A grim punishment for shattering the Order, despite her godhood."
Echoes of Queen Marika: " Hear me, Demigods. My children beloved. Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a Lord. Be it a God. But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken. Amounting only to sacrifices..."
Finger Ringer Enia, well, the two fingers speaking through her, tell us that it was the Greater Will that brought the Tarnished back, not Marika, and that we are to join her as her "consort". Have we literally been brought back to kill all her children ("The Greater Will has long Renounced the Demi-Gods"), unify the Elden Ring, and continue to force her to be a God...or a Slave?
Unless Miquella can provide at least one happy ending, everything is pointing to this being an epically tragic outcome.
I really liked how you pointed out the likelihood that Morgott's Great Rune and his abilities are derived by the crucible, specifically, and not just as being the product of being the
"anchor rune" of the Ring. That was my favorite bit. Keep it up!
Thank you! Happy you enjoyed the video!
Did you notice something. Most great runes are opposite reflections of each other. The twins runes, moghs has a centeal line which is missing in morgots
Yeah but what if Mogh is the one in the cocoon in Mogwyn Palace and Miquela (or someone else) are just projecting him in both of his fights? He disappears the same way margit does when you beat him and the body in the cocoon looks a lot like Margot’s body after he gets defeated.
Idk if im tweaking but both mohg and morgott's runes are quite opposites in shape. You can see where the color contrast is high on morgott's rune there is nothing on mohg's rune, and vise versa
Mohg's looks like the Shadow or outline of Morgott's. I think Jack's perception here is astounding. I never really thought about the red of the crucible being anything but a kind of copper / red gold, but this makes too much sense for it to miss the mark. Blood, fire, bloodflame, all of this would be antithesis to the golden Erdtree, since the divorce of red and gold. I think Moxa had a recent video along the same lines, so I don't think it's coincidence. I had this vague feeling that blood and flame were related since the first dlc trailer dropped but now it's really taking form and now that people are putting this into words, I'm getting hyped. Can't wait to learn what happened when red split from gold!
So if you assume that the rune of the unborn is Miquella's, then what do you propose the rune looking grace thing in the shadow of the erdtree trailers are? Another demigods rune? A false rune? Just some memory locations?
I think if the same shape is reminiscent of rot and unborn, then perhaps the general indication is rebirth or regeneration?
My theory is that Miquella created St. Trina like how Marika created Radagon. That rune is essentially St. Trina's, though by creating her Miquella is able to essentially take her form in the shadowed lands
Alright just one quick thing: Radagon gave the Amber Egg to Renalla before leaving her to return to Marika. This event supposedly happened before the twins were born, because Radagon returned to Marika and then became one with her and then they had the twins (Miquella and Malenia), because they are supposedly born from a single god and theyre supposedly the only children born from Marika-Radagon union. So when Radagon gave the Amber Egg to Renalla there was no Heligtree so it can't be made of Heligtree amber. I do think Miquella and Malenia are clones/copies/mimics like the neofites that are born from the Amber Egg tho. Or that the twins are related to the Amber Egg in some way. Cause really nothing ever explains where Radagon found this egg. If the Rune of the Unborn is Miquella's Great Rune then either Miquella came from the Rune of the Unborn or the Rune of the Unborn came from Miquella. Now, if the Rune of the Unborn came from Miquella then the timeline definitely has a loop or a paradox somewhere. The period between Radagon leaving Renalla and returning to Marika is definitely the most unsettling part of the lore for me.
Yea so if the Haligtree didnt exist yet, which tree do you think the Amber is from?;) the Erdtree. Thats what the egg is made from.
@@BenSchalk-m9l before or after it was burned down?
@@BenSchalk-m9l the amber starlight description says it comes from the stars tho
I keep going down so many rabbit holes I've gone hollow! Swimming in silver, rot, mimics, dragons, ice witches, nox, ants, ancestral spirits, puppets...
Love your vids, amazing work!
Thanks man! Hope the tinfoil fits well!
Outer god of lies...like one that can assume the guise of another person?with a veil perhaps?
Why do you keep referring to the Tarnished as a mimic?
I would recommend watching the “Black Swordsman” series from his catalogue, it explains it there
Because our character can be anything they choose to be through the power of mimicry.
They can look like your favorite bosses, use any weapon they wish, they can change voice, faces, gender, they can go from spells to prayers, strength to dexterity.
Larval tear in hand, you character can mimic anything you want it to ;)
Coz we're a Mimic tear imbued with a fragment of Miquella (probably definitely maybe) 🤷🏻♀️
@@JackisaMimicok but that is through a great rune, not our own ability. Right?
😂
5:41 EY YO THATS A LIL SUS
Jack thank you so much for your work. Doubly I love to see you commenting on other lore channels even those not well known. You are a cool person.
We're all just trying to figure this game out and its much easier if we do it together.
in the beginning of the 2019 announcement trailer，godrick was holding an arm，i think that arm belongs to godwyn and that is how godrick got his great rune.
i think this is the reason why godrick have the most balanced and the central part of the Elden ring，because it belongs to the first golden son of marika
If I had a great rune it'd only be usable for pvp.
You get a flat 15% increase in physical attack power and additional 5% per hit for 5 seconds. Basically increasing without end if you can keep attacking or it resets in 5 seconds.
And you'd get a flat 5% poise increase
seriously love your vids. can't wait for the dlc!
I’ve watched a lot of your videos and they are great, but I gotta say, unless it’s my screens I’m watching on, there is almost no color difference to me between the Numen and Hero’s runes. The Numen just looks darker in some middle areas
Gr8 vid jack! Luv this series. Ok. I have a new theory. Tell me what you think guys.
Its always stood out to me that when Morgott was king, Margit came into existance or vice versa considering the name of his shackle. Could the greater will be the cause? Everyone who is afflicted by an outer god has some severe side effects. Maybe the greater will's is splitting beings to reconstitue them as the hermaphrodite.
The point of alchemy is to break things down and reassemble them to create the philosophers stone. Anthropomorphized as the hermaphrodite. Perfect convergence. The greater will and the golden order have very strong alchemical associations. Anybody afflicted by the greater will is split. However, only empyrians will be split in a way that will allow the hermaphrodite to be created from them.
This has other implications. Miquela is the only demigod / empyrean without an obvious outer god causing his affliction. He is also the only demigod with an opposite sex counterpart. What is the deal with morgot and margit? They both dissolve to gold glitter at death. Marika, miquella, morgott all afflicted by the greater will thus they have split counterparts.
I will go even further and say, i include godwyn the golden in the list of those afflicted by the outer will.
Not only that but mesmer is his split counterpart.
I had someone say something interesting in my discord about how both of the Omen twins don't know how to understand or express love and affection due to their imprisonment undergound.
From the intro slide we know that the Shattering War lead to the Abandonment of the Greater Will. It seems like Morgott's decision to take on the Margit persona (and becoming Leyndell's Batman) seems to be based on his neglect as an Omen.
One thing I realize is how Malenia and Miquella's Great Rune is literally the same. Malenia's Great rune is decaying with scarlet rot but as we all know this is essentially a form of death and rebirth. Something dies, it decays, fungi and insects prosper from this death and then those die and the cycle repeats. My question is, how does Miquella's Great Rune work? Is it simply birth eternal? Making it so that as you are born your form can be altered?
Professor Jack, as Always, im here to enjoy some of the best lessons on TH-cam.
Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but Godwyn would never of had a Great Rune as the Elden Ring isn't shattered until after his death. The Demigods collect the Great Runes from the shattered Elden Ring, right?
I disagree, Great Runes are bestowed onto the demigods at their birth and are the source of the strength and their afflictions. Demigods getting Great Runes after the Shattering, to me, is a misreading of the intro-slides and an assumption.
Ok fair I like a new outlook, loving your stuff lately man! Keep it up!
@@JackisaMimic There is more evidence than the opening scene to shed light on the nature of Demigods and their Runes. It is more likely they received their runes post Knives rather than pre.
That being said, even Godwyn’s untimely demise wouldn’t necessarily deny his lineage, the Golden lineage (if you believe he had descendants), from claiming Godwyn’s “birthright”, at least in theory.
Besides, Godrick must have some genuine claim to the title of Demigod, meaning he must have been part of Marika’s family tree. And he also seems to inherit Godwyn’s former title of “the Golden”, at least before he resorts to Grafting.
So thats why Miquela is grown. I was always wondering but just wasnt able to put 1 and 1 together to make 2. I just kept getting 11.
Made me think of FMA Father removing his sins in the form of humonculi.
And now we know what happened to Mohg...
Great video,i think miquella has alot to do with the shattering,more than godwyn
I think mequella casting away his great rune to go to the land of shadows is why marika shattered the ring and the reason of her grief.
I've been waiting for this one. Can't wait to watch.
It's always the small stuff, the basic questions that immediately follow from basilar lore. Why would something like the Elden Ring, when shattered, yield, of all things, a "mad taint"? What/who's "tainting" what? How much of it has an hereditary effect? If the ER can "pool" at the basin, how much of Marika can also "pool" in her children? Can it stagnate? Kegare detected? Rather fascinating stuff.
Also, DLC info out there and in full swing. Stay pure everyone, it's just around the corner now.
Tldw: a summary of all his previous videos
20:20 o Godwyn, é o primogênito e o Messmer, é o segundogénito.
That’s a whole lotta hubbaballoo with not a lot of meaningful insights to glean from it. Feels like he ran with his headcanons and scrambled for ways to justify it.
Not to deny the obvious multitudes of parallels between shardbearers. I for one have long been interested in the duality of Rykard and Miquella. Where one threw himself away to the serpent, and wars against the erdtree(s), the other threw his body away as well, only to Mohg, and that was after attempts to “replace” the erdtree with his own.
Malenia and Radahn’s encounters also showcase how those two mirror one another, where Malenia effectively curses Radahn with a life of resisting rot, like her own. While she in fact changes to embrace that rot, what without Miquella’s needle, and the Haligtree in clear disrepair. What’s more, Radahn’s pursuits in life indicate a clear devotion to the status quo, and a resistance to change, while Malenia’s mere existence is a sign of the ever encroaching new order of rot, and pest-kind.
Then there’s Morgott, in taking the mantle to protect Leyndell as its last king, against Mohg, rejecting the society that rejected Omens, and using Miquella to usher in his own “dynasty” through ancient rite and tradition, and blood.. so much blood…
That leaves Godrick as the final shardbearer. But we know that, if fate had allowed for it, Ranni and Godwyn would be privy to their own great runes. So it makes me wonder if Godrick’s is merely the one intended for Godwyn, passed down along his lineage instead. This could somehow relate to Ranni, but as she divested herself entirely, it’s unclear what it would manifest as, or why. But I still imagine her fate is meant to parallel Godwyn’s, considering the nature of her machinations.
This is a stretch, but the Golden lineage’s rune being the “anchor” could relate to the way Ranni severed the tie between body and soul. In a way, “releasing” that which “anchored” her. She seems to have little interest in runes to begin with, given her plans for an age of the moon, and the stars. Even going as far to abandon the elden ring in her ending.
Damn, Jack actually made a video with only theories and information I knew already…I like this game too much man, I can’t wait to see you toot your own horn after the dlc drops
This channel is actually ran by a series of Oracle Envoys all tooting into various horns.
look at the shoulder damage on merika annd Rad, then compare it to Godwyn's wound. They mimic one another. Plus, Consider Merika and Raddy adam and eve, so where is our serpent and apple?
Runes were taken by the demigods after everything went wrong, Godwyn was already dead by that point
Love your work! Any chance you could do proper subtitles for your videos?
Oh sorry I must not have uploaded subs for this video! I will fix that
Edit: They were set as drafts and I had to click "publish". My most recent videos should all have subtitles now, thank you for letting me know
@@JackisaMimic Thanks so much! Really appreciate it 😊
Dude! Such a good observation that all the Demigods leave remains behind except Mohg!
I never had the thought before now.. But what if the body in the cocoon isn't Miquella's? You pointing out that Mohg is the only Demigod we slay that doesn't leave behind remains.. What if the body that's identical to Morgott's in the cocoon is Morgott's identical twin's body o.O
I've never questioned that it is Miquella's body in the cocoon before just now. So to think through it a bit.. Giddeon explicitly says it's Miquella, but what does he know, really? And Miquella definitely has a tree body in Malenia's boss room. And in the intro cutscene Mohg carries a weird slimy child Miquella - not a giant cocoon.
Perhaps it's not Miquella's withered hand that transports us to the land of shadow, rather Mohg's. Maybe that's why Mohg can T-1000 shape shift from blood. He's somehow extracted his blood along with his Great Rune curse and all from his body. Leaving behind an identical-Morgott-twin husk. He's turned himself into a red bloody version of a mimic tear o.O
We have to choose, either we're missing Miquella's remains or Mohg's remains.
this assumes that is Miquella in the cocoon. I still believe it's Mesmer, but we'll see.
Of all the assumptions to make regarding the cocoon, Miquella is by and large a safer bet than Messmer, who had no lore significance before the trailer revealed him. And why would Mohg kiss the hand, while speaking to or of Miquella, if the hand was in fact not Miquella’s? I don’t believe one could spin a satisfying answer, no matter how hard they tried.
couldnt it be that the outer gods like the formless mother, youth and rot are mere aspects of the greater wiill? After all a world which includes death would naturally include things like rot too. But since death has been removed such things may have become foreign for the inhabitants of the lands between.
inspiring video, i guess u figured it the rune on the top is of life (the middle one) but should those on the left and right (great runes) be swapped? If u swap them they completely fit on top of the ring. The line in every great rune is the middle line. Also they come in pairs interestingly one in the image of the golden order and one in the image of the shadow realm maybe or something like that.
basically, Marika is Father from FMAB
Another great video, thank you
I’ve always been curious about who the intro narrator was and if we could meet them in the game at some point…
My head canon is Gold Mask
@@NerdOracle the quiet guy….that would be hilarious
Great video!
I do mostly agree with this theory but if the Great Runes also give curses to their owners, then why doesn't our Tarnished/Mimic receive any kind of drawback to owning or using them, except for when Malenia's is active? Although it might be better that we don't end up becoming an Grafted-Omen-Snake-Rot hybrid creature that's cursed with eternal childhood by the end of the adventure!
Our character grows large enough to sit comfortably on one of the thrones at the end if you chose to mend the Elden RIng.
@@2Quick4You100 Yeah, it does look that way. At least that's one example of being physically changed by the Elden Ring then, certainly gaining Godlike power usually seems to result in growing in size in FromSoft's Soulslikes.
One of the strongest, one of the fiercest, etc. etc. Are you Zeltik, by any chance?
And somewhere out there the discarded rune that belongs to Rani
I’ve been concerned with that as well. It’s implied she may have had one. And it’s also not explicitly implied that Rennala’s is Ranni’s, which lends further credence to the possibility it was meant for Miquella. But more importantly, the timeline seems to imply the great runes were granted or claimed following the Death of Godwyn, which supposedly triggered Marika to shatter the Big Ring, ergo, The Night of Black Knives was what granted the Demigods Great Runes. Ranni would have been assumed dead in association with that event, and with no lineage of her own, there would seem no point in granting her a rune at all, no? So why is it believed otherwise?
At least in the case of the Anchor Rune, we can infer it belongs to the Golden Lineage, as Godwyn’s successors. Did Ranni really get one, or not?
When is it mentioned that the rune of the unborn is miquella's
Its a theory presented in this video, it is not stated in the game.
You're doing an amazing job my dude!!! I share a lot of your theories and methods. Keep up the good work!!!
Jack, with that beginning of the video, I'm starting to think you are a mimic 😋
That will just be our little secret
Cut content states Miquella’s great rune was Abundance
That same cut content calls Malenia’s the Great Rune of Decay, when in the final product it’s Rot. Abundance and unending rebirth don’t seem that much different under a microscope
OBVIOUSLY the rune of the unborn os miquella's rune, and yet for a year and a half people have said im crazy.
If two people have the same crazy idea then it ain't so crazy ;)
@@JackisaMimic how do you feel about the theory that Radagon committed a war crime at the church of vows?
I have never heard that one before
@@JackisaMimic oh, um, theory goes that Radagon used the celestial dew to compell Renalla to love him, and the unnatural nature of their love is what broke her when he left. Evidence: if you betray ranni to seluvis, it kills her quest line and she hates your ass. If you then use celestial dew to repair the relationship, she forgets all that and you can then proceed to marry her anyway. It's creepy, and evidence that celestial dew doesn't affect the user, it casts a spell on whomever the user names.
I think we should look at celestial dew as a parallel to the amber egg. Where the Amber Egg allows for physical rebirths, baptism from Celestial Dew allows for a spiritual rebirth
In Christian tradition, I think it’s the case that baptism is the practice of your spirit being born again
Spirits in Elden Ring are very important, obviously, so having your spirit reborn could be a washing away of your sins and antagonisms, because you are essentially a “new person”.
I don’t like looking at Radagon from a nefarious lens, my reading of Elden Ring shows him to be a kind, curious, and thoughtful individual that did love Rennala. I don’t see malice in his actions.
What demigods did Vyke kill for his two great runes?
He most likely didn't need to. Carrying two Greatrunes is only necessary to get inside the Capital, as per the Two Fingers in the Table of Lost Grace.
There is two Roundtable Holds, with the original being the Fortified Manor.
So we can deduce that Vyke, like Vargram and Wilhelm, were members of the Roundtable Hold already located in the capital and not the ethereal Table of Lost Grace.
This confusion is purposeful, I think, for even characters like Roderika don't seem to know the distinctions between the two Roundtable Holds.
Great fking video!!!
Isn't miquella's great rune the rune of abundance?
How come?
Its highly possible that the order of birth the demigods are is not what we think i believe miqualla and melania are the oldest or second oldest i believe godwyn to be the oldest i believe messmer to be his twin and i believe renallas kids are the youngest but what we do know is they all were around each other and they all had their own throwns basically like game of thrones but all this leaves the question of radagon we need answers on him because those answers would make alot of questions go away just know where he came from all we know is he is not originally from the lands between
bro pls learn writing like a human, holyshit. Very unpleasant to read.
Still Godrich great rune is arguably the best..
Make Merika Whole Again...
Hey lore police! Godefroy is the key to everything!
When’s the UFO vid droppin? 👀
I talked about one of them in the Fire and Blood video, that the Crucible most likely came from outside the Lands Between. The real UFO video is coming after the DLC, sorry to keep you waiting lol
@@JackisaMimic I’m hype for that! Your goated man thanks
Answer this. If The Great Runes are the Elden ring, and If the Elden Ring IS the Elden Beast, how come we can fight him in his full form without having all the runes?
Also, why does the Elden Ring within Marika look the same no matter how many great runes we collected?
Something doesnt add up.
Edited: Last sentence was a little too confrontational. My bad. Originally said "something doesn't square with your theory"
You’re arguing that the Great Runes don’t come from the Elden Ring?
@@JackisaMimic I'm not arguing anything. I'm just asking a question. How does Marika's Elden Ring look identical inside her body, and after we see her, regardless of how many runes we have?
Something just doesn't add up here.
You'd also think the Elden Beast would be be very different in some way if significant portions of its power were missing, right?
It's like the Great Runes are a PART of the Elden Ring, but without them the Elden Ring still exists in its regular form. Something is funky.
Edit: I did say "something doesn't square with your theory" my bad. Should've said something more general like "something doesn't add up"
From the Two Fingers, via Enia, “Brave Tarnished,
your Great Rune is a handsome shard of the Elden Ring.”
If the Two Fingers in the Table of Lost Grace are to be believed, Great Runes come from the Elden Ring.
We know from the Mending Runes that Runes can be created(Fia creates one from two curse marks, Dungeater creates one from seed bed curses, and Goldmask “discovers” one).
There is no indication that the Great Runes were created in such a manner.
We see that the Elden Beast is damaged, presumably from the impact of Marika’s hammer, but we don’t know if the removal of Runes changes how it looks or acts.
We only see it in a post shattered/repaired state without any runes returned to it, so we have no way of knowing what a previous iteration could have possibly looked like, or if it would look different at all.
I am looking over Enia’s dialogue right now and there isn’t any line that clearly states that the Great Runes are used explicitly to repair the Elden Ring. I don’t have access to my full text document to search, but I think her dialogue would hold that information.
So it may be the case that having Two Great runes is only a merit the Two Fingers have for deeming worthiness and may not actually be a necessity for becoming Elden Lord and restoring the Golden Order.
That is to say, at the end of the game the Great Runes may not actually be integrated back into the Elden Ring. We have no way of knowing if that is the case.
I tried to find the answers for the questions but they are open enough that I think we may be asking off of assumptions we are making rather than hard and fast rules that are actually defined.
If you find anything let me know
@@JackisaMimic Lot's to think about here, but yeah, it's kind of clearing up how those things can be possible. Thanks for the response!
What is this mimic thing, Jack? *Looks suspiciously* 👀
Frog boy made another video 😂
Thats not miquallas rune the great rune has to be either godwyn or an unborn demi god and the real question is where is ranni great rune
the worst great rune lore wise is actually the best great rune in game
You’re using “pride before the fall” so wrong..
Tell that to Mufasa
The idea of (cursed) great runes were purposefully given by Marika, can't be true at the same time if 12:40 happened after the shattering and demigods claimed them by themselves, right? Then there would need to be a different explanation. So this whole thing is conditionally built on that one assumption?
Reread the intro cutscene again: the events laid out are not in chronological order.
The Elden Ring is Shattered -> Marika is Missing -> Godwyn is killed in the NOBK -> Demigods claim their shards -> Mad Taint triggers the Shattering War
The NOBK happened during the Golden Age of the Erdtree, long before the Shattering of the Elden Ring, as per Rogier.
So if one event in the intro is out of chronological order that means the others can be as well, and most likely are.
In game you can hold a Great Rune in your body and it not have any Benediction or power until you restore it at the Divine Tower AND use a Rune Arc from the Shattered Elden Ring.
The Demigods can have their Great Runes since birth but not have the power of the Great Runes fully realized until after the Elden Ring is shattered.
The assumption is that the Demigods received their Great Runes after the shattering of the Elden Ring, which is a common thought but goes against the literal text in the game. If the Great Runes were acquired after the Shattering, why do Morgott and Mohg have naturally similar Great Runes as twins? How does Morgott's Great Rune prove he is born of the Golden Lineage?
@@JackisaMimic About the twin and golden lineage rune thing, I guess the argument would be that after they 'claim' the runes, their own qualities shaped them. Like Rykard's turning snake-y. Or snakeier.
Wish the game gave us more clues
I guess the Demigods received at least a part of their Great Rune when they were born or much younger, then after the shattering of the Elden Ring the Runes' full powers activated, whether intentionally on behalf of the Demigods or not, and this lead to "The Shattering" war.
@@MK-sj4mf Miyazaki loves the concepts around giving birth and GRRM loves the concepts around blood/genes/lineage... I don't buy the theory that the Great Runes and shards and whatnot are just a bunch of pieces scattered around the floor and people where fighting over them. Even if you fight for something material like a throne you will need something that allows you to claim it.
what a banger
I always wondered why Miquella's body (or hand, that we can see) looked so old if he was cursed with eternal youth - his great rune being linked to that and having been removed makes a lot of sense
Numen = Newmen. Omen = Oldmen
Lore police 😂
Mimic? Huh??
Why do you call the player character a “mimic”?
You ever look up a build online? What’s the best weapon to use? How about wearing the armor of Radahn or Malenia? Hell ever watch a lore video, are all your thoughts your own, or are you mimicking someone else’s idea?
“The Silver Tear makes mockery of life, reborn again and again into imitation.
Perhaps, one day, it will be reborn a lord...”
Bring that larval tear to Rennala, be reborn again and again, and perhaps you too will be able to defeat the Elden Beast and become Elden Lord.
@@JackisaMimic I love this! You make a great point! Thank you for taking the time to explain. I only recently found your channel and I’ve been enjoying watching all of your lore videos.
I have a whole video explaining that demigods born with great runes....only need to know basic spanish....its my masterpiece, my opus, my greatest video
Unfortunately I don't speak Spanish, I could try to put it into a translation app. Which video is it?
You saying mimic over and over again genuinely made me mad 😭 We’re not a mimic. Even if you have a theory on it, that’s for you
What do you call using a larval tear, being reborn with new stats, and dressing up like Malenia, Godfrey, or Guts? I call it mimicking
@@JackisaMimic I call it tarnished like the game implies, like the creator says himself :) Surely you can set aside your ego on your own theories to label the character correctly as the game and developers do? Or do you HAVE to be extra and seek validation on some theory you made up?
@@fallasleep3513Looks like you’re trying to mimic a tough guy. Once you gain the confidence to post your face and your opinions online for thousands of people to see then maybe you can start slinging mud my way.
@@JackisaMimic whatever helps you sleep at night dude! If you wanna mislabel a game, by all means, be wrong 🤷♀️
Next time you visit Rennala for rebirth add some extra points in Mind or Intelligence
Why are we calling our character a mimic?
Ohh..your name huh 🤣
Wait no okay, you caught it, nevermind xD but hey - 3 comments helps right hahaha
Calling the Tarnished a mimic makes your video practically unwatchable. The game tells us mimics have no will of their own. They also bleed silver. Our character is not a mimic.
The rune of unborn demigods was Ranni's rune. She literally conjures a massive spell from the amber egg to initiate the 2nd phase Rennalla fight, which is implied to be something she left to protect her mom.
Godwyn had no great rune because the elden ring was shattered after his death. The great runes are shards. That is why they are called shardbearers who have then. They gain their traits based on will of the demigods who had them. Not the other way around as you suggest
You speculate too much and ignore what the game devs have told us by the details
Hey if you’re gonna tell me I’m wrong at least try being right - “This spirit takes the form of the summoner to fight alongside
them, but its mimicry does not extend to imitating the summoner's will.”
The Mimic Tear ashes explicitly say that mimics have wills of their own.
Since you know so much about the lore please help me answer these questions then:
If the Demigods got their Great Runes after the Shattering, how does Ranni have a Great Rune? The Night of the Black Knives happened before the Shattering, so with your assertion she shouldn’t have a Great Rune at all.
If the Rune of the Unborn is Ranni’s why is it stored in Amber? Who put her Great Rune in Amber? How did Radagon get it? Why is it shaped like Malenia’s and Miquella’s Rune?
If the Demigods got their Great Runes and not just Rune Arcs after the Shattering how does Morgotts Great Rune prove his lineage? Why do Mohg and Morgott as twins have similarly shaped Great Runes?
@@JackisaMimic that phrase does not say that Mimic Tears have wills of their own. In the Elden Ring world mind / will, soul and body are separate things. The reason mimic tears are implied to have failed to become a lord candidate is because they don't have wills. Mimic tears have a body and they have a soul (larval tears, which we now know from the DLC are created from a spirit / soul at the end of the reincarnation phase that involves the spirit gravestones). Thus mimic tear spirit ashes can exist, because they have a spirit. But they don't have will. Without will you cannot create a rune and you cannot "brandish" ie raise up the Elden Ring. That is why it cannot become a lord. In Japanese, Rogier explains will is what allows people to refuse to die in the Golden Order, and what allows the once dead to revive again. Will is a very important concept in the game universe, and is distinct from a soul. This seems to be inspired by real life alchemical occult beliefs, as many have pointed out, which served as inspiration for a number of story concepts in the game story.
As for the shape of the runes. You're looking far too much into this for something that is not there. The 1.0 version of the game has tons of cut content showing that Miquella and Malenia were part of another ending for the "age of abundance". This is also why the rune of unborn demigods has nothing to do with Miquella. Miquella's original intention was for him to be found in the haligtree where Malenia boss fight happens. He would produce a last drop of dew, implied to be a mending rune of abundance. Because this act would kill him, Malenia fights us to try to stop this from happening. So the only thing the shape of the Great Runes / shards tell us is what runes of the Elden Ring they broke off from as shards.
1.0 and the game files still, Great Runes are called shards. Remembrances are called runes. This was hastily changed just before launch, for reasons unclear. What is clear is their function in the game world did not change, which means remembrances are created the same way mending runes are -- they are created from the will of a person or particular entity. The boss fight we have with Rennala in 2nd phase is created from the memories of Ranni of her mother given form as will. Just as the mending runes are created from the will of Fia, Goldmask and Dungeater. An act that, similarily to defeating bosses, also results in their deaths as well.
Why the content was cut for Malenia and Miquella is unknown but what is certain is rune of unborn demigods existed alongside but was unrelated to the quest involving Miquella creating the Haligtree and giving us his mending rune of abundance. Miquella's rune was always abundance, not unborn demigods. Abundance creates uncontrolled growth, just like Malenia's Decay rune does. We know this because, again, it is in the 1.0 version of the game cut content quest involving Miquella. So the DLC stuff, all of that was created after launch and not part of the original intention for the game story. I even doubt Messmer and the existence of a shadow tree was part of the original story concept, which is why nothing involving him or even hinting at him or the shadow tree exists in the base game. This is stuff they wrote after the fact, in an attempt to try to make some of the plot holes from the abrupt changes just before launch make sense, and I suspect, an effort to clear up confusion on certain things, like the role of larval tears which is why they have two different icons for those we get in the dlc and such. I think the DLC was primarily written to try to fix the plot holes in the base game and more clearly communicate intentions of how the world works, and information about Marika and her motivations.
There are a number of things in the current version of the game that don't make sense because they were changed just before launch. We can only speculate why but a lot of this stuff made it into the game translated into English and even has English voice recording. Voice files are recorded late in development for a game title, meaning these story elements were part of the master design document for probably the vast majority of the game development, only changed just before launch. Cut content is normally a result of lacking sufficient development time to complete the testing, so that is probably why it was cut, and a new story involving Miquella created for the DLC reusing some of these concepts from the original cut quest (like the rune of abundance) is what they developed after launch.
At any result it is clear the intention has always been that the Great Runes held by demigods are shards that broke off from the Elden Ring and/or otherwise removed, like the Rune of Death. These runes can be transformed by the will of their wielder, infusing it with their principles. The same way we take the much smaller fragments of runes and have Melenia turn them into power for us, changing our stats, based on the principles we would follow.
And what does not have will and therefore cannot turn runes into power? A Mimic. Which is why our Tarnished is not a mimic.
BTW it seems, based on the game files cut content, neither Morghot or Mogh were intended to be children of Marika originally. they are all called demons in game files, and Japanese name of Omen are Oni. The English translation is very bad and causes some of these misunderstandings, but the sudden changes just before release of the game to some of this stuff probably hasn't helped much either. For whatever reason, the developers gave these two Great runes to what was originally Oni boss characters and added text to these Great runes to show the connection to Godfrey but based on game files this was not originally part of the master story document throughout Elden Ring's development and was changed literally right before launch. Godfrey's placement from Stormveil and his replacement with Godrick is another of these changes, and a legacy of this seems to be in the grafting room at Stormveil where we see a massive painting of Godfrey with broken axe even though the axe description now says it was broken after he was banished from the lands between, which makes no sense why an old painting of him with it broken would exist in Stormveil. Well, it does make sense because he was supposed to be the boss for Stormveil castle originally and the developers forgot to remove the painting. Elden ring is full of a bunch of plot holes like this (another example, the Nox armor all says Empyrean armor in base files, still) because of the abrupt changes to the story just before launch. So you're trying to make sense out of the similarity of their runes when these two characters didnt have runes until just before launch to begin with, and no association to Godfrey. Besides this, the "Great runes" are most certainly not the actual runes of the Elden Ring, because we see the Elden Ring inside Marika / Radagon's body when we find them. If you look closely the damage is primarily to the great rune representing the lower left and right of the body. So the developers didn't even update Marika's model to accommodate the creation of the omen twin runes. All of this suggests hasty changes made to the story just before launch, and not updating other aspects of the game to align with these decisions. So trying to judge whose rune the unborn demigod one is based on similarity to Miquella and Malenia's runes is a fruitless endeavor because the symbols of the runes only represent what Runes of the Elden Ring they are shards of, not who gained them. Instead, look at what the rune does, Ranni has a spell on it to pull us into a trap (not unlike the trap used in Bloodborne on Rom, btw, which also involved the moon and water) and fight a projection of her mother brought to life based on Ranni's memory, through her will. Ranni is stated to have discarded her great rune. So the obvious implication is the rune belonged to Ranni. Why Rennala is obsessed with it, how she actually got it, and what she is trying to do with it, are ambiguous but since the game already tells us that many of the details we are told about Radagon and Rennala are lies, we should not take what characters like Miriel and the game item descriptions tell us at face value. The reason Rennala is in the library is not because she was imprisoned by the academy. She is protected by Carian forces, including one of the surviving Carian knights and a wolf of Radagon. None of her children tried to rescue her from the academy or even attacked the academy to free her. Ranni does not want her to be removed from the library, which is why she left a protective spell on the rune. So the reason Rennala is there is not because of the reason Miriel tells us.
Trying to figure out which parts of the text are poorly translated (ie primordial gold and great tree being two examples of something that doesn't actually exist in the original Japanese text) and which are legacies from older story ideas the developers forgot to remove or change, and which are the result of implementing rushed story changes just before launch, makes the task of figuring out what the story actually is much harder than it ought to be, but if you spend hours making these videos the least you could do is pay attention to the material that many other players have shared about the cut content, the story changes made before launch, and what the original japanese text actually says.
(I just realized I used my other profile to respond to this.)
@@JackisaMimic If you want me to answer the question of why the great rune of unborn demigods was encased in amber, my answer based on what we know in the current game, is that the rune is not encased in amber. The amber egg is crystalized Erdtree (World Tree in Japanese, important distinction) sap leftover from the age of abundance. The game asset files show what seems to be locks of Radagon's hair inside it, and also blood vessels similar to the primal glintstones used by astrologers to transfer their souls into a new host body, which we learn about in Sellen's questline. So the amber egg seems to be a version of this using the golden sap from the World Tree, which is implied to be a cosmic being based on what Sellen said and of course the existence of the Elden Beast. What Rennala is trying to do with it and why she is in the library with it, I think the answer is probably trying to revive Ranni, or at least at some point in development that was the answer. I think that aspect was probably cut early in development, along with the rest of the quest chain that involves all the other recorded voice lines the juvenile scholars have that went unused. Anyway, Radagon's hair is significant. If you zoom in on all of the Shards / Great Runes, they are made from braided hair of Radagon and Marika. Just as, now in the DLC, we have a super powerful item made from Marika's lost braid left at the Shaman (or rather, Shrine priestess in Japanese) village. You will also notice that despite being a child of Marika, Messmer does not have a shard of the Elden Ring. So my guess is that at some point in the story development the amber egg and its rune is what allowed Radagon and Rennala to have kids to begin with, but now its not working anymore for whatever reason, probably because the Elden Ring was shattered. But with story changes it was changed to be associated with Ranni, in a way that is as full of plot holes as that painting of Godfrey in Stormveil castle.
I think for most of the game's development the intention was Marika and Radagon are from a race of people who are like hermaphrodite trees which is what the Numen were intended to be, and this plot line was incorporated into the shrine priestess village story material in the DLC. I think the original story is that, since the game was stated by George RR Martin to be a sequel to Dark Souls, the world of Elden Ring was intended to take place in another planet within the Soulsverse, much like Bloodborne is. The game was meant to take place around these characters who descend from Archtrees or possibly can become Archtrees, who come into contact with outer god cosmic lovecraftian beings similar to those in the Bloodborne planet. I think the original story Martin created took some of the concepts from the Souls universe games and built a new story around them, and he started with Archtrees. Erdtree, or World Tree, is an Archtree wrapped in cosmic golden aura and the shadow tree is two other Arctrees conjoined together wrapped in cosmic shadow and gold. This is probably Martin incorporating the Bloodborne outer god concepts into the world of Elden Ring's story, or perhaps Miyazaki doing this. I think the vast majority of the game story is written by Miyazki, not Martin. I think Martin's treatment involving a world history and a few key characters based on prior Dark Souls and Bloodborne lore was revised heavily by Miyazaki throughout development, including just before launch of the finished game. The Ancient dragons are basically Archdragons who are not weak to lightning, which is interesting but their origin is probably not much different than that in Dark Souls. The main difference is probably the presence of of Bloodborne Lovecraftian outer gods and the influence they have on the world that changed its development trajectory to what the world of Elden Ring became. Numen were probably intended to be the people that become Archtrees, who fell on the world as stars and other life forms spray from them, like ancient dragons (or rather, archdragons). So how does this relate to the amber egg? Well tree sap is a function of a tree as an organism. Its basically blood of trees, that provides nutrients needed for growing new buds. So the amber egg, and its rune, is for creating new buds of the tree. That is to say, new demigod children of Marika, as the branches of the Tree. So it is not a coincidence they all develop a shard of the Elden Ring into a unique Great rune infused with their principles. I think during development of the story some of this became convoluted to where not all of the demigods became new branches of the Erdtree, or rather the Elden Ring, but some of these story elements remain with the minor erdtrees scattered across the land, the amber egg once used to create new seldom born Numen children of Marika (perhaps pollinated by a powerful will, like Rennala, in a process similar to any other lord) who were supposed to use their blood to develop minor erdtrees into full blown Archtrees (as Miquella did). Perhaps Marika's big plot twist is she corrupted the original practices from Farum Azul time in an effort to make her Archtree the sole one and everyone else subservient to her, but she still needed children to continue growing her tree. But for whatever reason part of these story elements were not further developed (shown in the cut questline involving Miquella), leaving the base game's story in the state that it is, and more focus was placed on the gameplay tuning before release. That's my theory for what is in the game and explains some of these plot holes. Miquella becoming a new God by doing whatever ritual Marika did to become a god is further evidence of this. He used a broken fragment of his Rune of Abundance, from the Elden Ring, to birth a new rune that he intended to grow into a replacement for the Elden Ring. I bet the intention is, Miquella 2.0 God version can incorporate other Runes into his own. His rune is basically the same top part of the Elden Ring that represents Marika, infused with his own principles, grown from his own braided hair. He and Radahn were probably going to steal the Great Runes we have to infuse them into Miquellas, then proceed to go do the same to Marika / Radagon. This also matches what we see of Marika at the divine gate in the cinematic movie trailer, where she ripped out strands of hair from likely the former god whose archtrees were in a spiral pattern, and is now the shadow tree. A dying tree still having some celestial power and still functioning somewhat like it did before in regards to remembrances, but clearly dying because it has been cut off from the rest of the world and has lost its Numen God and elden ring. But again, I think a lot of the story details are missing and not in the game. I think with the DLC the once again rushed the story elements and dropped planned questlines that would have better explained this. I suspect Bandai gave From hard deadlines for when to launch the game and then to release DLC and they just ran out of time to fully flesh the story elements out.
last post (I promise). The Night of Black Knives did not happen before the Elden Ring was shattered. The Elden Ring was shattered and then Godwyn was assassinated after. The game opening movie tells us this. It literally opens with the ring being shattered, tells us Marika is missing, and then talks about the assassination of Godwyn as the event that sparked The Shattering War. Which has a confusing name, I know, but is not the same event as the Elden Ring becoming shattered. The Shattering is probably named for the shattering of Marika's Empire into fragmented nations ruled by different demigods.