Thanks to Lokey_DS for translating the Japanese term used here. "Cadaver surrogate" is an evocative name, but isn't quite as direct as the original, it seems. In the comments of a previous video, I said I hoped the DLC added a new Godwyn, and it looks like I got just what I asked for. Previously, there'd been some uncertainty about which of the Stormveil corpse or Deeproot corpse was Godwyn's actual body and which was the copy, but the fact these new additional copies all resembled the Stormveil corpse makes it seem likely Deeproot is the original. Your prize for expanding this comment is more water-logged Godwyn footage: th-cam.com/video/O-PrYLxGxYg/w-d-xo.html
It always seemed to me that the Deeproot one was the original, as his whole body is on display (almost in a crucifixion pose); this always seemed to imply (or, at least, I had inferred) that the places where his visage was less formed (like the face with no body at the bottom of Stormveil) were growths.
@@muggogoop I had felt the Deeproot one was the original, especially with the pustule description stating Godwyn's body was buried under Leyndell, but I had received a few dissenting comments from people believing the Stormveil corpse was the original for various reasons.
@@ZullietheWitchthe fact that it managed to kill Rogier remains the most fascinating detail to me. It’s almost unfortunate that there’s nothing the player can do to trigger the same event, as it would be more canonically consistent.
Maybe the corpse in Stormveil is where he was killed, being so marked as a important place in his death, developing his facade. The original root is his corpse, buried in the roots of the Erdtree. But places marked by his presence, the murder scene, and where all sorts of death converge, bore fruits of his image and stronger influences
@@gwyndolinds-en8yt I wouldn't say that he was killed there. Stormveil castle is just a place where a lot of people were murdered, gruesomely I might add... Think of all the grafting, all that death seeped beneath the castle and started to feed a full visage Godwyn...
@@WhoisDxo Look man, I think what Ranni did is fucked up but I gotta get my moonlight greatsword. It's been by my side in every soulsborne game. It's my true mentor. My guiding moonlight.
Oh That's a dead god THERE IS A dead god forgotten by the Golden Order lying motionless at the bottom of the Erdtree, Stormveil Castle, and two separate catacombs in the Land of Shadow
That last shot of Godwyns face beneath the ocean is terrifying and so fitting, a soulless and deformed body growing from the depths, and there's nothing that can stop it.
My first exposure to Godwyn's corpse was when I was exploring Stormveil Castle on my first playthrough. One of the enemies killed me and my body fell off the side of a ledge. Then I just kept falling. And falling. My body landed in view of a weird, giant face, and then the Ulcerated Tree Spirit erupted from the floor. THEN the "You Died" message appeared. I thought "HOW BIG IS THIS CASTLE HOLY SHIT. AND WHAT THE HELL WAS *THAT*???"
@Jormara3475 Dontcha hate when you accidentally coordinate the assassination of your half-brother? I get what you mean tho, no one could've predicted what a soulless corpse could be capable of
@@Vankodek No matter her reasons it wouldn’t be truly defensible. No reason could justify this act in any capacity even if she was subjugated by the two fingers. Though to give her a bit of perspective from her side she did feel trapped and saw no other way to escape her fate which is probably true if we believe she did try and seek every known option to avoid this but came to this conclusion plus the external pressure of becoming a servant like Marika instead of a reigning heir to the Carian lineage. Even if she didn’t predict the event she certainly should’ve expected big consequences from her decision which does make her selfish in this way as did not consider the outcome of her actions.
@@specialnewb9821 Marika had nothing to do with that And no burning the erdree isn't permanent once we become elden Lord we reverse it, in fact in the age of duskborn ending it's the ending where Goldwyn's corpse will be worshipped implying it's perfectly intact And even if it did destroy him it doesn't matter anymore he already spread to other regions too even the scarudtree roots are effected by him it's too late to contain him he will eventually spread to the entire world which is a horrifying idea
People wanted a Godwyn boss fight in the main game and the DLC, but in my opinion, the absolute inanimity of the corpse makes it absolutely more terrifying. It just exists, it grows and corrupts relentlessly like a cancer, and the corpse is just there... existing. There is no evil in it, it doesn't spread the deathblight because it wants to, the corpse is just this, Death.
@@LynnWolfgaming if Elden ring 2 happened, it would still not have a Godwyn battle, we would mostly fight some other unrelated criature that was afflicted by deathroot, like a giant skeleton of sorts. Godwyn is DEAD dead, the corpse we see is just a continent/planet size cancer Ranni gifted the Lands Between
@randomguy7951 True. Godwyn is dead, but it could still function similar to how in DS3, there are enemies who turn into Pus of Man versions. And we could also fight his corpse that's being controlled by the Deathroot. Godwyn, the Duskborn Deathblight or something
Godwyn in his current state is more like a plant, maybe even a fungus, and an invasive one. He spreads, releasing his spores of death, just multiplying
Literally nothing could stop it, and Duskborn ending, while sounded positive and noble, actually would only make things worse, because it would make Godwyn's Death became a legit part of the laws of nature that no longer can be oppose, meaning when Death is around, you can only sit there and embrace the eventual Deathblight with open arms, a disease that you had to view as a blessing. Then you became one of the walking skeletons, lead by a "leader" with no soul nor mind of his own.
@@apophisstr6719 I think both the Age of Stars and Frenzied Flame endings are the only way it could be stopped. If only because the Elden Ring is physically destroyed in both, and the Erdtree doesn't stick around, which would at *least* halt his spread, and hopefully even lay him to rest. Genuinely all the other endings are just doomed, though. The Erdtree stands tall, with the Elden Ring dictating the cycle of life, so Godwyn is free to keep spreading. The only beings who would eventually be left standing would be Godwyn and Ranni, alongside those who live in death.
@@tTaseric You could probably fix it if you made Maliketh shove his rune back into the ring for a while. That would probably also kill Marika, all the skeletons, Bayle, maybe Rykard, a bunch of Cleanrot knights, possibly the Fire Giant, and probably innumerable other people with intact souls but bodies so grotesquely wounded the only reason they are alive is because Marika made everyone effectively immortal. Hell even the Scadu and Halig Trees would probably fall apart. Cuz I was pretty sure the reason Godwyn is so personally twisted is, as Mahito might say, the lack of a sense of self, a shape of a soul, makes his body lose track of what it should be, so instead it seems to respond to the dampness of his environment, enabling aquatic features. And in turn, the reason he spreads through the tree is because the body is symbiotic to the roots, the two being alive but he being soulless, and he being soulless has no definite point to manifest his flesh and reincarnate via the tree, as is true for Erd Tree Burial. Anyway, if we could just make Maliketh stab his main body with the body destroying effects of his rune, he'd burn away right there. And unfortunately, all that would remain are history books.
@@danielsettle3942 I don't see it happening ngl, he's like a monstrous parasite, growing on it's own and assimilating the world. How do you fight an eldritch being after all?
@danielsettle3942 if we could fight it and defeat it then it wouldn't be anywhere near as creepy. It's there, it's spreading, and we can't interfere. Like how Gwyn perceived the age of dark.
@jeebus_christ It could have just been his original human form somehow, I mean an afterlife does canonically exist within Elden Ring as shown by the Helphen's Steeple.
The ability to self-replicate is possibly the most basic definition of life, but in a really "soulless" kind of way that fits well with Godwyn's undead state.
@@KamilMalach I had an idea for this since a Godwyn boss fight isn’t possible, so you instead fight off an entire Deathblight area with Godwyn’s features everywhere.
took me until now to realize gurranq/maliketh wants us to feed him deathroot so he can use Destined Death within himself to "delete" it from reality, his futile attempt to fix the glitch of godwyn's state of existence
In theory, Destined Death could've ended Godwyn's plague, but now it's too late. At this point nothing short of a mended Elden Ring rewriting the laws of physics could stop the spread of deathblight.
More than Use Destined Death, probably he wants Deathroots to reunite what he see as fragments of Destined Death and fix what he see as his mistake. Poor boy.
@@sofer2230 nothing could, godwyn is too vast. He's in the roots of the erdtree, hell he exists inside the shadow of the erdtree as well. He literally has too much space right now for him to be stoppable. You can't seal his main body either, because its not even alive.
Miquella realised that Godwyn was beyond saving. But he may very well have tried to put him out of his misery for good once he became a god, just like how he promised to return to Malenia and heal her. He's just unfortunate that he ran into the Tarnished first and immediately had his teeth kicked in. There can be only one God and Lord in the Lands Between, bitch!
Seeing Godwyn’s face again yesterday in the catacomb guarded by the death knight had me profoundly saddened. We’ll never truly know what a loss he’s been and this state of an undeath pariah is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
That final shot of the face underwater was excellent. I've always found the aquatic themes of Godwyn and Those Who Live In Death to interesting. Now I'm imagining another of the surrogate bodies but on a truly colossal scale, covering the entire bottom of the sea. Awesome but terrifying.
Godwyn's body continues to spread in a state of undeath, like a horrifying cancer. I always thought it was weird to see his remains in more than one place-- "wait, how could he be in two places at once?" Because his remains refuse to stay down.
You know the way Godwin grows reminds me of some types of mushrooms. Literally massive lengths of unseen underground roots and sometimes massive collections at the surface.
Doubt burning Godwyn would even do anything. His growth is so wide it could be just about anywhere. The death root and cadaver surrogates we see are just the ones that have managed to pop onto the surface so there could be an untold amount of it just under the surface.
ngl, Messmer is on par with Morgott of actually being useful to The Greater Will, killed almost all of the Hornsent that were a danger to Marika, took over the whole shadow realm and proceeded to continue doing his deed even though Marika has left him, because she was scared of the serpent inside him. They both really deserve better.
The physical aspect of Godwyn spreading throughout the Lands Between I think proves that the Shadow Lands are just veiled by Marikas power rather than being a pocket dimension or separate sphere of existence like Midgard and Jotunheim are in mythology. Godwyn has hijacked the rootsystem of the Erdtree, the same root system that the its Great Tree predecessor grew which even though veiled, still connect physically with the Shadow Lands.
@@itsukarine There is no evidence for that just player speculation. You could also put it in the left bottom to complete the finger shape. And it would explain why you have a tomb with a hole like in the land of shadow at the very south of the map.
I remember thinking for a brief period of time that it was Godwyn's corpse swimming around in the Shadow Keep's flooded church sector. Was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that I was wrong.
Godwin is the perfect way to continue elden ring story, he can make a completely new world of lore in the passage of time, and be the basis of a completely new game
Yes and the Hunter turning into a fledgeling Great One was the perfect set up for Bloodborne 2, yet we are still waiting for 10 years now and probably never going to get it. Much like we are never going to get DS 4 in the Age of Dark.
@@paha4209 DS3 fully ended the trilogy though, no? Making a 4th installment would sorta ruin everything the DS games built. I'm pretty sure Bloodborne 2 can't or won't happen because Miyazaki doesn't want to do another Sony deal.
@@paha4209 "The fire-linking curse, the legacy of lords. Let it all fade into nothing." The entire message of DS3 is when something has run it's course it's better to let it die than try to force it to keep going. Dark Souls is complete, if they'd tried to force out a Dark Souls 4 we wouldn't have gotten Elden Ring.
Well, I can't exactly blame them for failing to protect him from a dozen invisible assassins weildng death itself, but they still failed. Somewhat admirable that they kept protecting his corpse, though.
That final shot of godwyn's face-clam-thing beneath the waves is just horrible. I love it. I'd love to see a peek beneath the sea in the land's between, such a space would be ripe for crazy creature designs.
Hopefully in her age of stars where everyone is separate Godwyn won't have much influence, every other ending besides frenzied flame though, the lands between are fucked
The thing is... do you believe that was Ranni idea? Its just to much knowledge about the inner works of the world to make that plant. And why Godwyn? Why half of the mark in each one? Why kill the body of one and the soul of another? A body without soul create problems, why would a soul without body dont create another? I think all this its a bunch of misguided ppl working for someone else.
@@ArantyrDarkhand Ranni's plan was to kill her Empyrean body to escape the influence of the Two Fingers. I guess she thought that without a soul, Godwyn's body would die naturally on its own, or at worst simply sit there, brain-dead. She didn't realize it would turn into this.
@@shaktosh524 That's the thing. I'm not actually sure if deathblight is synonymous with Godwyn, or if it's Deathroot, something completely different. Godwyn is clearly related to Those who Live in Death, but are we sure he was actually the origin of deathblight? As you say yourself, there's wormfaces with deathblight in Farum Azula. There are also Death Birds with deathblight - and Death Birds originate in an age long before the Erdtree. To me it seems like deathblight might actually be much older and not at all the result of Godwyn's spiritual death.
Some people were mad that Godwyn wasn't the main focus of the dlc.But seeing how he has become this lurking horror growing outside everyone's eyes i say that he is much better being the focus of a whole new game
@@ValtheJean not really rannis fault her mother sealed away destined death making this possible to happen in the first place If anything ranni with her ending reverses that And im saying that as frenzied flame stan
@@jfturle They show up only after killing Bayle I believe, you can find them with target lock as they're invisible, they die in one hit and scream like the male player model, there's one really close to the site of grace I mentioned, you can find it by going up the mountain while sticking to the border of the cliff, there's like 3-4 total that I've seen, prolly some leftover file but they may have more data in the code or something
Everything to do with Godwyn, deathblight, and deathroot has got to be one of the scariest and most disturbing concepts I've ever seen in a video game, and possibly fiction in general.
Considering the fact that the armor mentions a "coming age of the duskborn" and the fact that we see godwyns corpse grow ever bigger through the Lands, I wouldnt be surprised to see another DLC focussed on him
Godwyn continues to amaze me as the most aloof piece of Elden Ring's story. Just the rotting, living corpse of a god, spreading throughout the world uncontrollably. What could be done?
I have been thinking for a while that these surrogates could better be described as 'cuttings'. As with plants, a cutting is taken from the parent and a clone of the first tree is grown from them. I currently live in Cambridge where a cutting of Isaac Newton's tree has grown into a clone of the original (I think in Lincolnshire?), and actually there are many clones beyond just Cambridge where these cuttings have grown. To me the possibility remains that the minor erdtrees came from cuttings - not seeds. As the erdtree was thought to be eternal it grew no seeds. Well the shattering came, branches fell and grew into new trees. I believe the seeds came from these new trees which were changed by the stress of the shattering. Similarly when gods go through a traumatic event (their 'shattering') I believe they drop cuttings - and this leads to the stormveil godwyn, Millicent, and Melina (from Marika). These are all clonal progeny of the gods who underwent significant trauma and in the dialogue of Millicent you can see this. "I could be sister, daughter, or offshoot." Actually Millicent in a way is all three. Similarly Melina seems to indicate that Marika is her mother, but she is also an offshoot, a clone, a cutting of queen Marika. I'm no lore expert though so I'd love to hear what others think of this.
Something someone pointed out in another video that's stuck with me is the fact that in Elden Ring, a soul and a mind are separate. So while his soul is dead, his mind and body are alive, essentially meaning he has locked in syndrome. Every time I see his corpse and those eyes I am reminded of this and it freaks me out.
I like where you're going but it's really more of a Body & Soul separation. Soul and Mind are typically the same. Prime example being Ranni who retains who she is without a body.
@@dracses4529 My main reasoning behind my thinking stems from the armor description for the Twinned Armor, which states "They are of two bodies and two minds, but one single soul." Which to me, indicates that souls, mind and body are all separate. Another example to my point would be when you hit Fia at the base of his corpse, Death skulls will be summoned towards you and Fia will even comment along the lines of "Godwyn.. is that you dear?" I also get what you are saying, especially in regards to Ranni, since she has her mind and soul, but not her body.
@sylvastreak Fortissax went in to stave off the effects of Death, but it was ultimately meaningless since he was powerless to stop it AND because there's nothing left to save
The entirety of Godwyn has always deeply disturbed me. The fact that probably the most notorious demigod, and possibly one of the kindest, has evolved into this abominable cancer constantly expanding throughout the Lands Between _and_ the Shadow Realm is... scary. His corpse as well is nightmare fuel.
Doesn't matter who gets on the throne of Elden Lord, everyone is screwed anyway because of Godwyn. Frenzied Flame feels like the only solution to the world made by Greater Will.
Not really. In every ending we release the rune of destined death which allows things to die permanently again. Those that live in death are only the way they are because they are unable to fully die thanks to Marika's meddling of the Elden Ring. So they are stuck in an in between state thanks to being infected by the power of only a piece of the rune of death. They are unable to pass on because a piece of them is still alive and thus unable to die due to the rune of death being sealed. So theoretically by releasing the rune of death and restoring death to the lands between those who live in death are able to now fully die. What the duskborn ending and prince of deaths great rune does is formalize those that live in death into the laws of the world and golden order. Now instead of being a bug or mistake they are something that can naturally occur and are recognized as another form of life able to recieve Grace.
I know! Considering this is the last one, I thought Godwyn was going to take center stage in the finale. I personally think Miqeulla should have revived Godwyn somehow and we would have to fight Godwyn. That would have been awesome.
Maybe if Elden Ring gets a second DLC someday? After all, as the Gods and Lords of the Lands Between fight for Power, Godwyn's Deathblight doesn't care and it doesn't stop, eventually becoming the greatest threat to all living beings.
@@kolbywilliams7234 Kinda hard to revive someone who's soul has been obliterated into nothing by a blade of pure death. I guess Miquella could have made a convincing copy though.
@@kolbywilliams7234 That would've been stupid. Why is everyone so obsessed with the idea of Godwyn being the final boss of the DLC? He already has an entire ending dedicated to him with multiple NPC questlines being tied to his character. It also undoes the entire point of Godwyn being the prince of death, hes become a very part of the world, being able to fight him would be really lame.
me: "its difficult to do Lovecraft style horror in a fantasy setting" ER: An undead god with no control of their faculties is spreading throughout the habitable realm. If unchecked, the whole of reality could succumb.
@@piotr78 I mean you do fight him and even "prune" the spread of his deathroot, but to no avail as nothing you do can stop him nor even slow him down. Remember C'thulu could be fought but never truly harmed, let alone defeated and he's the face of eldritch horror.
@@Mare_Man The inevitability of his blight spreading while he is "alive" to witness it all is what makes it terrifying. Killing him in a battle completely nullifies that
This question has been running through my mind ever since I stumbled across Godwyn's copy beneath the Stormveil castle. If Godwyn's Cadaver Surrogate is already almost fully formed, why are there no undead skeletons around the castle? Or why isn't the castle overtaken by undeath yet?
I am finally mostly satisfied with wtf the "surrogates" are/are for. These things were so mind boggling to look at the first time I found it and I was really racking my brain. I like how you drew parallels to the "offshoots" like Milicent for Malenia. Thanks, Zullie!
I would have liked Godwyn to take a much bigger role in this DLC. Miquella's plan to give him a "real death" would have been much more interesting than bringing "we know who" to life.
I agree, the final boss being who it was really felt like it came out of nowhere and not in a good plot twist sort of way. It was spoiled for me by a TH-cam thumbnail and I thought it was someone playing around with assets not that it was actually good he finally boss.
There are many obvious reasons why that won't work, one of them being those who lives in death aka Godwyn and his followers literally can not be charmed by Miquella
I thought Miquella's plan was to bring Godwyn back from the dead and becoming a God was a means to do that. Especially with all the talk about how the dead eventually find their way to the Land of Shadow. I thought that's where Godwyn's soul must have ended up because it couldn't return to the Erdtree due to being killed by a shard of the rune of death. This was further reinforced when it seemed like the plan was to use the corpse of Mohg to restore Godwyn's soul to that vessel, which makes sense considering they are direct brothers and so would be more compatible for a 'soul transplant'. But then it turns out even *that* wasn't the case and it was some convoluted plot to create a consort out of Radahn's soul and Mohg's body?!? Why?! Why not try and make a consort out of Godwyn's soul and Ranni's empyrean body, uniting both the first soul and first body of a demigod to die. With the Prince of Death restored to an Emyprean's body as his consort, he could have become God of Death. Making it so all things are unable to die, and would instead just love him eternally. This also makes more sense logistically, as Miquella's plan only works if both Radahn and Mohg die, which was a bloody longshot considering Radahn was by far the most powerful demigod who even Melania failed to kill and Mohg was a recluse, hiding away deep underground so much so that even Gideon THE ALLLL KNOOOWING couldn't find him.
It would be so interesting if Godwyn had a secret Radagon/St. Trina like offshoot that still had a soul because it had already been acting independant from him before the night of the black knives. Godwyn's coprse and deathroot, as well as the death knights, could then be trying to find that offshoot again in an effort give the main corpse a soul again.
It's such a unique concept, the corpse of a dead god growing like a parasite everywhere and no one is prioritising how to stop it. It just this quiet apocalypse slowly happening.
Damn, The Godwyn face under the water in the video made me flinched a bit there. - Once had a nightmare in which I was swimming on the water surface in the middle of a large body of water and there was an island within vision range. I started to swim to the island and noticed that Godwyn and his souless eyes are staring at me deep underneath the water. What's worse, his face and eyes are getting closer to me. - Shit got me spooked and I tried to swim to the island as fast as I could. After a while, I almost reached the island and Godwyn almost caught up to me. The dream ended when I felt his tendrils on my leg and I looked down to see his face and his eyes staring just underneath me... He caught me. Did not know if I even managed to swim to the island or he yanked me down into the deep. I immediately woke straight-up in the night and took awhile b4 I could sleep again. Thanks Zullie for reminding me of that. Much love!
Everyone seems to forget that Ranni did this to him lol. Killed her brother as a ritual sacrifice that caused a plague of undeath. Ranni is very cool, but she is not exactly as benevolent as players seem to often believe.
I have always believed that Godwyn's corpse in Stormveil was just the result of unchecked growth, and that anywhere his influence is spreading will eventually grow into a full sized clone until all the world lives in death. It would be neat to see if he has any motivation to spread of if it is just a part of how he isn't properly dead
I think the way godwyn spreads is inspired by real life plants, since it seems that without a soul, Godwyn's corpse has become a plant-like organism. Some plants reproduce by budding from roots of a single plant. An example of this is the aspen tree, which as the original seedling grows, it's roots spread out, which eventually form "root suckers" that become new aspen trees that then form their own root systems and buds along with them. Despite being able to grow into vast forests the individual aspens are genetically the same, so an entire forest of aspens is regarded as being a single organism. Which I think is what is going on here with Godwyn. His roots are spreading and growing identical corpses to the original. Besides all that I wonder if Godwyn turned into this plant thing because he was buried and became connected to the erdtree, and so if the corpses were to be left undisturbed maybe they would grow into a death-like erdtree? Maybe similar in appearance to the gray erdtree we see in the age of the dusk born ending?
Honestly, it’s amazing that Deathroot isn’t addressed more heavily. Unless you go for the Duskborn ending that fully embraces it, or the Frenzied Flame ending that burns away everything, it feels like Godwynn’s corpse is a threat to any age you choose for the finale. I don’t think even Ranni’s Age of the Moon/Stars has a way to deal with the spread of Deathroot.
It's not a threat. Godwyn is in this state because Marika removed the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring. And we put the Rune of Death BACK into the Elden Ring in every single ending. This means that Godwyn will finally die a true death (or at the very least, that he can now be granted true death), and once he does, all the undead will die with him. Except if you got with Age of the Duskborn, where undeath becomes an integral part of the Elden Ring.
@@Knoloaify Oh is that how it works? TBH the Rune of Death is one of the only plotpoints about Eldin Ring that I never fully understood. I got the basic gist of it and how its absence keeps anyone from dying a true death, but the fact that a piece of the rune was broken off further and then became its "Undeath" cendipede rune between Godwynn and Ranni... Yeah, it's a lot. But I suppose if that centipede rune is never completed, it does make sense that Godwynn would finally, truly die when the Eldin Ring is restored.
@@Knoloaifywhat I don’t like in this logic is that after unleashing Destined Death every! death in the lands between must be permanent. Including ours. So technically if you lose any fight after defeating Maliketh it has to be game over.
@@dmmax18how died that make sense? Last i checked you have to beat a giant magical fish to get to the elden ring and restore death amonst other things. If you said we could die after the elden beast thatd make sense
I have put together some lore info and thoughts i had: 1. Godwyn seems to be the only child of Godfrey without a curse, so I think his curse might have been deathblight since birth, being unrelated to his tumor like growth after the night of the black knives. 2. It is said that Godrick stole a relic before he fled Leyndell and Rogier refers to the Godwyn face under Stormveil Castle as a "sacred relic". I think the relic Godrick stole was a piece of Godwyns corpse that kept growing but without eyes since it was not attatched to the main body. 2. The lands of shadow were physically connected to the lands between, so those might be Godwyn's pieces which were brough there before the spliting of the lands, or grew from the main body but got chopped of with the lands spliting.
Mohg and Morgott aren't cursed. No child born of Godfrey or of Rennala with Marika/Radagon is cursed, only the children born from the single entity of Marika/Radagon are cursed. Miquella, Melania and Messmer. It's just that the Golden Order are super racists, and so treat anything born with aspects of the Crucible as cursed, as the Crucible is what existed before the Erdtree parasite and Golden Order took over the Lands Between. They don't like to be reminded of that. Such aspects were once seen as divine for this reason, especially by the Hornsent, which is why Marika/Radagon sent Messmer to burn them out of existence.
1-The point is that. Godwyn was the only child no cursed, not deformed, pure and simple the perfect child of Marika. Now is just a rotten corpse, still alive, spreading a curse all above. This is his tragedy, he don't need a curse, even because Deathblight is born only after his "death" 2-Relic probably is Marika's veil, the item we use to transform, something he used to behind as a woman and run away from Leyndell. Godwyn's face is literally a big root emerged in that point like the ones we see in the DLC. 3-Yeah, probably the first one you said. Maybe, as the Scadutree is the Shadow od the Erdtree, Roots are still connected in some way, as we see even the Shattering had an effect on it.
Everyone with a curse at birth has an M name, Malenia has scarlet rot, Miquella is eternal youth (unalloyed gold), Mohg and Morgott are omens, Messmer has dark fire and the abyssal serpent, Melina has fire (possible the fel god). All of Marika's other children aren't cursed at birth but the first letter is still important to their heritage, Ranni, Rykard, and Radahn are fathered by Radagon (as Marika); Godwyn is fathered by Godfrey. First letter matches their father, if they're cursed at birth then the first letter matches the mother (Marika).
Burial at the roots of the erdtree is ritual that allows access to the land of shadow since they are an afterlife dimension. The roots were connected physically but now are linked spiritually only.
This was the plot point I was sure that was gonna be explored in the dlc. Godwyn's growth is not stopped in any ending and I thought for sure a dlc would resolve that. As it stands now I kinda think that Duskborn is probably the best ending because it is the only one with a semi solution to Godwyn.
Same. I thought that narratively we would see Miquella trying to raise Godwyn as his Elden Lord instead of Radahn. It makes a lot more sense considering they appeared to be close and Miquella worked hard to find a way to fix him. Instead the Radahn thing kind of just comes out of left field.
@@rwberger6 No it doesn't, it makes no sense, there's only ONE item referencing miquella and godwyn directly and evidence shows the eclipse isn't about godwyn alone but other victims of the night of the black knives (and this eclipse plan fell completely on its ass, a total failure) and most importantly it's been stated multiple times and with a lot of emphasis on how godwyn HAS NO SOUL, his soul is GONE FOREVER, there's nothing to revive, no ego memory, no broken shards to reunite and be made whole, absolutely nothing but his aberrant body remains.
@@rwberger6 People keep saying this but Godwyn can't ever come back. His soul is dead. It's gone, there's no more Godwyn to bring back. That was established already very clearly that Godwyn no longer exists, only his body. Ranni lost her body, Godwyn loses his soul. Also, Radahn may have been out of nowhere, but promotional material before the game releases showed Malenia whispering to Radahn, which Radahn's new armor reveals what was said. So Radahn was 100% always planned to be Miquella's consort from the game's conception. I'm very tired of hearing people want Godwyn despite the fact that Godwyn has been very clearly wiped from existence. Not to mention bringing him back would absolutely ruin the horror of his body now becoming this eldritch like monstrosity that haunts the land. Idk, feels like a bunch of Elden Ring players can't grasp that From soft games have never had happy endings where everything is solved.
If fromsoft develops the lore of Elden Ring forward through time like it did for Dark Souls, then some day, far in the future, Godwyn's Living Flesh may be the only remains of Marika's Golden Order.
Glad you're still making content, Zullie. Between BonfireVN showing us model close-ups and your more in-depth analyzing, I don't think there's much in the art that the community will miss in regards to models and visual storytelling.
Kinda wish you could call Ranni out for essentially unleashing deathroot on the world, since it was her assassination of Godwyn that set this all in motion.
I wish you could too, but player choice is the anathema to these games unfortunately. The deed is not something I believe she would be proud of but isn’t necessarily ashamed of her deed as she performed the deed to relieve her soul from her body and another Demi god was needed for the ritual to work. Her time was running out and something needed to happen drastically or else she lose her grasp on her own free will forever. It was essentially in her eyes it was “either him or me” and she chose both of herself and him lol.
Same and because she basically did nothing to stop it or at least try. She created such a huge mess and caused more death when she assassinated Godwyn. She believes its justify if she could get the ending she wants
@@mnwlk Same comment I’ve posted to you to see what I said about her knowing if she even knew about it or not. She indeed caused the plague yet she probably isn’t aware of it nor is the only person responsible for it as Marika is the one who sealed the rune of death causing no one to die. She bears the most responsibility out of Godwyn state of existence however. She didn’t cause more death than already then what had done to Godwyn and herself. The shattering was strictly Marika and I do understand how people forget that Marika was the one who shattered the Elden Ring and told her children to do whatever they want with the runes she gave them. The Demi gods explicitly took part in the war that caused a unknown amount of deaths but she is one of the only ones who took no part in it and explicitly says “What could the Demi gods ever hope to gain.” No she doesn’t believe it’s justified she killed or more accurately ordered his death so that she could remove her body so that she wouldn’t be controlled by the two fingers. She most definitely will sacrifice or kill someone to get what her goal is but the means of Godwyn death was because she was likely put in situation where it’s do something heinous or become a slave for eternity. She obviously has a choice and there could’ve been an other option to not do this but we don’t know that nor know the exact circumstances to want to not be controlled by the two fingers. It most certainly wasn’t a good situation for her as she likely didn’t want to become like Marika nor adhere to her destiny as she believes that the divine she not interfere in the lands between. I don’t think she wants to justify it either considering how upfront she is about her involvement and she states she neither wants to bury the act but is not ashamed of it which doesn’t mean she’s proud of it but she doesn’t show any remorse for it likely because it wasn’t personal and it was done for singular act in mind.
For me it seems like a reference to a stolon, which is a way some plants can spread in which a special root reaches out and grows another plant at the tip, creating little clones of the original.
Problem being, stolon extend above ground. Godwyn is more like a mushroom. Expanding his mycelial network underground with some eruptions above ground. Or maybe he's more like a slime mold?
It's also reminiscent of how some cancer cells can keep growing and dividing after the death of the original body they came from, if they're transmitted to another animal or grown in vitro. They're essentially immortal.
Thanks to Lokey_DS for translating the Japanese term used here. "Cadaver surrogate" is an evocative name, but isn't quite as direct as the original, it seems.
In the comments of a previous video, I said I hoped the DLC added a new Godwyn, and it looks like I got just what I asked for. Previously, there'd been some uncertainty about which of the Stormveil corpse or Deeproot corpse was Godwyn's actual body and which was the copy, but the fact these new additional copies all resembled the Stormveil corpse makes it seem likely Deeproot is the original.
Your prize for expanding this comment is more water-logged Godwyn footage:
th-cam.com/video/O-PrYLxGxYg/w-d-xo.html
It always seemed to me that the Deeproot one was the original, as his whole body is on display (almost in a crucifixion pose); this always seemed to imply (or, at least, I had inferred) that the places where his visage was less formed (like the face with no body at the bottom of Stormveil) were growths.
@@muggogoop I had felt the Deeproot one was the original, especially with the pustule description stating Godwyn's body was buried under Leyndell, but I had received a few dissenting comments from people believing the Stormveil corpse was the original for various reasons.
@@ZullietheWitchthe fact that it managed to kill Rogier remains the most fascinating detail to me. It’s almost unfortunate that there’s nothing the player can do to trigger the same event, as it would be more canonically consistent.
Maybe the corpse in Stormveil is where he was killed, being so marked as a important place in his death, developing his facade.
The original root is his corpse, buried in the roots of the Erdtree. But places marked by his presence, the murder scene, and where all sorts of death converge, bore fruits of his image and stronger influences
@@gwyndolinds-en8yt I wouldn't say that he was killed there. Stormveil castle is just a place where a lot of people were murdered, gruesomely I might add... Think of all the grafting, all that death seeped beneath the castle and started to feed a full visage Godwyn...
"Zullie, this is the seventh time you've presented Godwyn to this class this year"
make it seven more
These are new Godwyns, fresh from the store.
Zullie is Fia confirmed?
Zullie: I just think they're neat.
@@georgehouliaras7239Goth girls just love the giant mutant merman
Dude just wanted to hang out with his siblings and dragon bros. Now he's a literal cancer.
Thanks Ranni.
Yet yall praise ranni
@@WhoisDxo Look man, I think what Ranni did is fucked up but I gotta get my moonlight greatsword. It's been by my side in every soulsborne game. It's my true mentor. My guiding moonlight.
@@Glaster6Thanks Obama
@@Zedzilliotyeah but you don't need to do her ending, I got the sword and then didn't choose hers because she's a monster.
"All forms of Death drift into the shadow realm."
Godwyn: "It's free real estate."
Oh
That's a dead god
THERE IS A dead god forgotten by the Golden Order lying motionless at the bottom of the Erdtree, Stormveil Castle, and two separate catacombs in the Land of Shadow
I love this meme format
@@augiekintop6242 😮 THIS is a meme format on Know Your Meme?
did you know there is a dead god under castle stormveil by rellana del rey
The expression on your mudkip is a perfect combination with this
Oh that's
that's a corpse
@xamadfp's corpse was found in the leyndell sewers on 16th of August 2024.
Elden Ring 2: the entire landscape is a mass of Godwyn faces, growing on top of each other.
That last shot of Godwyns face beneath the ocean is terrifying and so fitting, a soulless and deformed body growing from the depths, and there's nothing that can stop it.
My first exposure to Godwyn's corpse was when I was exploring Stormveil Castle on my first playthrough. One of the enemies killed me and my body fell off the side of a ledge.
Then I just kept falling. And falling.
My body landed in view of a weird, giant face, and then the Ulcerated Tree Spirit erupted from the floor. THEN the "You Died" message appeared.
I thought "HOW BIG IS THIS CASTLE HOLY SHIT. AND WHAT THE HELL WAS *THAT*???"
This King Fields song fits so well whenever talking about Godwyn that at this point I just consider it his theme
Dark Reality = Land Of Shadow
If From could just remake KF4 I could die a happy man.
I never get tired of hearing it, honestly.
He could be down on the submerged city.
I love this song and it sounds so familiar but I've never played kings field
"whoops"
- Ranni
A mess up to be sure but I don’t think she meant it. Not a justification but a way seeing things from a different perspective.
@Jormara3475 Dontcha hate when you accidentally coordinate the assassination of your half-brother?
I get what you mean tho, no one could've predicted what a soulless corpse could be capable of
@@Vankodek No matter her reasons it wouldn’t be truly defensible. No reason could justify this act in any capacity even if she was subjugated by the two fingers. Though to give her a bit of perspective from her side she did feel trapped and saw no other way to escape her fate which is probably true if we believe she did try and seek every known option to avoid this but came to this conclusion plus the external pressure of becoming a servant like Marika instead of a reigning heir to the Carian lineage.
Even if she didn’t predict the event she certainly should’ve expected big consequences from her decision which does make her selfish in this way as did not consider the outcome of her actions.
Eh, it was Marikas fault. Plus if we burn the Erdtree roots and all, we probably destroy him too since death is unlocked.
@@specialnewb9821 Marika had nothing to do with that
And no burning the erdree isn't permanent once we become elden Lord we reverse it, in fact in the age of duskborn ending it's the ending where Goldwyn's corpse will be worshipped implying it's perfectly intact
And even if it did destroy him it doesn't matter anymore he already spread to other regions too even the scarudtree roots are effected by him it's too late to contain him he will eventually spread to the entire world which is a horrifying idea
People wanted a Godwyn boss fight in the main game and the DLC, but in my opinion, the absolute inanimity of the corpse makes it absolutely more terrifying.
It just exists, it grows and corrupts relentlessly like a cancer, and the corpse is just there... existing. There is no evil in it, it doesn't spread the deathblight because it wants to, the corpse is just this, Death.
To be fair, I feel like fromsoft could make a boss that retains all of those aspects
@@LeadHerring You want a boss that remains totally dead and unmoving?
They could easily turn it into something similar to the Pus of Man like in DS3 in a later Elden Ring game, if they do that.
@@LynnWolfgaming if Elden ring 2 happened, it would still not have a Godwyn battle, we would mostly fight some other unrelated criature that was afflicted by deathroot, like a giant skeleton of sorts. Godwyn is DEAD dead, the corpse we see is just a continent/planet size cancer Ranni gifted the Lands Between
@randomguy7951 True. Godwyn is dead, but it could still function similar to how in DS3, there are enemies who turn into Pus of Man versions. And we could also fight his corpse that's being controlled by the Deathroot. Godwyn, the Duskborn Deathblight or something
Godwyn in his current state is more like a plant, maybe even a fungus, and an invasive one. He spreads, releasing his spores of death, just multiplying
Literally nothing could stop it, and Duskborn ending, while sounded positive and noble, actually would only make things worse, because it would make Godwyn's Death became a legit part of the laws of nature that no longer can be oppose, meaning when Death is around, you can only sit there and embrace the eventual Deathblight with open arms, a disease that you had to view as a blessing.
Then you became one of the walking skeletons, lead by a "leader" with no soul nor mind of his own.
@@apophisstr6719 I think both the Age of Stars and Frenzied Flame endings are the only way it could be stopped. If only because the Elden Ring is physically destroyed in both, and the Erdtree doesn't stick around, which would at *least* halt his spread, and hopefully even lay him to rest.
Genuinely all the other endings are just doomed, though. The Erdtree stands tall, with the Elden Ring dictating the cycle of life, so Godwyn is free to keep spreading. The only beings who would eventually be left standing would be Godwyn and Ranni, alongside those who live in death.
He is the blight that infects the trees
he's just a copy of the king from Super Mario Bros 1993 lol
@@tTaseric
You could probably fix it if you made Maliketh shove his rune back into the ring for a while. That would probably also kill Marika, all the skeletons, Bayle, maybe Rykard, a bunch of Cleanrot knights, possibly the Fire Giant, and probably innumerable other people with intact souls but bodies so grotesquely wounded the only reason they are alive is because Marika made everyone effectively immortal. Hell even the Scadu and Halig Trees would probably fall apart.
Cuz I was pretty sure the reason Godwyn is so personally twisted is, as Mahito might say, the lack of a sense of self, a shape of a soul, makes his body lose track of what it should be, so instead it seems to respond to the dampness of his environment, enabling aquatic features. And in turn, the reason he spreads through the tree is because the body is symbiotic to the roots, the two being alive but he being soulless, and he being soulless has no definite point to manifest his flesh and reincarnate via the tree, as is true for Erd Tree Burial.
Anyway, if we could just make Maliketh stab his main body with the body destroying effects of his rune, he'd burn away right there. And unfortunately, all that would remain are history books.
bro, Godwyn's messed up state deserves a dlc of its own.
Godwyn's corpse is the single most horrifying thing fromsoft has ever conceived. absolutely nightmarish
Should have been the final boss
@@danielsettle3942 I don't see it happening ngl, he's like a monstrous parasite, growing on it's own and assimilating the world. How do you fight an eldritch being after all?
@danielsettle3942 if we could fight it and defeat it then it wouldn't be anywhere near as creepy. It's there, it's spreading, and we can't interfere. Like how Gwyn perceived the age of dark.
@@jeebus_christ with guns and trick weapons my friend
@jeebus_christ It could have just been his original human form somehow, I mean an afterlife does canonically exist within Elden Ring as shown by the Helphen's Steeple.
The ability to self-replicate is possibly the most basic definition of life, but in a really "soulless" kind of way that fits well with Godwyn's undead state.
The last shot of the godwyn's face beneath the sea is so haunting and amazing
Can never go swimming again. No sirree. Not for me! 😖
Okay, hear me out
Entire location made of Godwyns
Godwynland, kinda like Disneyland but with people in basilisk costumes
No. Please.
@@KamilMalach I had an idea for this since a Godwyn boss fight isn’t possible, so you instead fight off an entire Deathblight area with Godwyn’s features everywhere.
your pfp goes eerily well with your proposition
@@senmeii Frog plushie Best plushie
@@thegodofsoapkekcario1970 No, FromSoft, don't listen to these madmen! 😭😭😭
took me until now to realize gurranq/maliketh wants us to feed him deathroot so he can use Destined Death within himself to "delete" it from reality, his futile attempt to fix the glitch of godwyn's state of existence
In theory, Destined Death could've ended Godwyn's plague, but now it's too late. At this point nothing short of a mended Elden Ring rewriting the laws of physics could stop the spread of deathblight.
More than Use Destined Death, probably he wants Deathroots to reunite what he see as fragments of Destined Death and fix what he see as his mistake. Poor boy.
@@themaniae4803 Blaidd and Maliketh were truly the goodest boys.
@@sofer2230only the frenzied flame can stop it
@@sofer2230 nothing could, godwyn is too vast. He's in the roots of the erdtree, hell he exists inside the shadow of the erdtree as well. He literally has too much space right now for him to be stoppable. You can't seal his main body either, because its not even alive.
Godwyn's lore continues to grow
Melina lore: I sleep
Godwyn doesn't loose he just keeps godwynning
At this point i would not be suprised by a Godwyn below majula
Miquella just gave up on bro
@@Scoliosistic Radahn's cheeks were too distracting
Miquella realised that Godwyn was beyond saving. But he may very well have tried to put him out of his misery for good once he became a god, just like how he promised to return to Malenia and heal her. He's just unfortunate that he ran into the Tarnished first and immediately had his teeth kicked in. There can be only one God and Lord in the Lands Between, bitch!
Even the Miquellester didn’t want to fix him🙂↕️🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨
@@anakinskyguy500 the gigachad and the twink who are both related and gay for each other. Truly one of the sentences I have ever typed.
Fromsoft give up on telling a good story
Another cool thing is that the imps in the catacombs have the heads of lions and dragons, symbols commonly associated with Godwyn.
I thought it had to do with beasts, like the Divine Beast helm
So I haven't seen anyone talk about this, but down near the corpse in stormvile is the only NPC bloodstain fromsoft had ever placed.
Seeing Godwyn’s face again yesterday in the catacomb guarded by the death knight had me profoundly saddened.
We’ll never truly know what a loss he’s been and this state of an undeath pariah is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
That final shot of the face underwater was excellent. I've always found the aquatic themes of Godwyn and Those Who Live In Death to interesting. Now I'm imagining another of the surrogate bodies but on a truly colossal scale, covering the entire bottom of the sea. Awesome but terrifying.
I want an entire from soft game that's set in and around the ocean and entirely nautical/sea themed.
that shot of him under the water goes crazy
Where is it located? Never met this
@@andreypashentsev2118 Its edited by Zullie
@@shuvi1565 ah, okay :(
The underwater Godwyn face at the end was absolutely genius.
Godwyn's body continues to spread in a state of undeath, like a horrifying cancer. I always thought it was weird to see his remains in more than one place-- "wait, how could he be in two places at once?"
Because his remains refuse to stay down.
You know the way Godwin grows reminds me of some types of mushrooms. Literally massive lengths of unseen underground roots and sometimes massive collections at the surface.
Godwyn’s lore, design, and character are far and away the most compelling aspects of Elden Ring to me and it’s not close.
Where's Messmer when the whole place's in dire need of some burning down?
Doubt burning Godwyn would even do anything. His growth is so wide it could be just about anywhere. The death root and cadaver surrogates we see are just the ones that have managed to pop onto the surface so there could be an untold amount of it just under the surface.
Unfortunately a mass executioner named The tarnished killed him
The flame of frenzy: "You called?"
I don't think he'd care anymore. He's just tired of all this shit
ngl, Messmer is on par with Morgott of actually being useful to The Greater Will, killed almost all of the Hornsent that were a danger to Marika, took over the whole shadow realm and proceeded to continue doing his deed even though Marika has left him, because she was scared of the serpent inside him. They both really deserve better.
The physical aspect of Godwyn spreading throughout the Lands Between I think proves that the Shadow Lands are just veiled by Marikas power rather than being a pocket dimension or separate sphere of existence like Midgard and Jotunheim are in mythology. Godwyn has hijacked the rootsystem of the Erdtree, the same root system that the its Great Tree predecessor grew which even though veiled, still connect physically with the Shadow Lands.
It seems pretty heavily implicated that the Shadow Lands fill the gap in between the main map, though the fit isn't super distinct.
The shadow realm is the cloud in the middle of the map. The supressing pillar proves this since its states its at the center of the lands between
Hell, there are even traces of Godwyn in Farum Azula
@@itsukarine There is no evidence for that just player speculation. You could also put it in the left bottom to complete the finger shape. And it would explain why you have a tomb with a hole like in the land of shadow at the very south of the map.
@@AkioJunichiro There is evidence. The divine bridge of Leyndell has a continuation in the northern part of the land of shadow.
I remember thinking for a brief period of time that it was Godwyn's corpse swimming around in the Shadow Keep's flooded church sector.
Was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that I was wrong.
Jesus Christ, how horrifying...
“As thrones change hands, Goldwyn continues to stretch”
The frenzied flame:
Godwyn is so disgusting I love him
Godwin is the perfect way to continue elden ring story, he can make a completely new world of lore in the passage of time, and be the basis of a completely new game
Yes and the Hunter turning into a fledgeling Great One was the perfect set up for Bloodborne 2, yet we are still waiting for 10 years now and probably never going to get it. Much like we are never going to get DS 4 in the Age of Dark.
@@paha4209 DS3 fully ended the trilogy though, no? Making a 4th installment would sorta ruin everything the DS games built. I'm pretty sure Bloodborne 2 can't or won't happen because Miyazaki doesn't want to do another Sony deal.
@@paha4209 Dark Souls 3 was literally an entire game with the premise of "We are not making Dark Souls 4"
@@paha4209 "The fire-linking curse, the legacy of lords. Let it all fade into nothing."
The entire message of DS3 is when something has run it's course it's better to let it die than try to force it to keep going. Dark Souls is complete, if they'd tried to force out a Dark Souls 4 we wouldn't have gotten Elden Ring.
@@mafu7939 Miyazaki said he would be open to it, I think, but it's entirely in Sony's hands. They own Bloodborne.
Even in death his royal guard still protect what’s left of their precious lord.🐱
I mean, they didn't do a particularly great job in life sooooo 😬
An admirable dedication.
Well, I can't exactly blame them for failing to protect him from a dozen invisible assassins weildng death itself, but they still failed. Somewhat admirable that they kept protecting his corpse, though.
Not unlike the Mausoleum Knights now that you say it
@@locustpreacher2102very much like masoleum knights except this guys followed him into the land of shadow/afterlife.
Thanks a lot Ranni
I imagine she isn’t proud of the results but isn’t ashamed of it either.
@@Jormara3475she went to moon so
imagine if there was just a rare chance for the eyes on godwyn's corpse to just fucking swivel towards you
That final shot of godwyn's face-clam-thing beneath the waves is just horrible. I love it.
I'd love to see a peek beneath the sea in the land's between, such a space would be ripe for crazy creature designs.
Whenever you put Dark Reality or Central Tower OST, it's always an especially incredible video
Ranni created a much bigger monster than she realized
Hopefully in her age of stars where everyone is separate Godwyn won't have much influence, every other ending besides frenzied flame though, the lands between are fucked
The thing is... do you believe that was Ranni idea?
Its just to much knowledge about the inner works of the world to make that plant.
And why Godwyn? Why half of the mark in each one? Why kill the body of one and the soul of another?
A body without soul create problems, why would a soul without body dont create another? I think all this its a bunch of misguided ppl working for someone else.
@@TheSilly6403 My dude, Godwyn's influence reached Farum Azula, a place beyond of time. You think the age of stars is safe from him?
@@ArantyrDarkhand Ranni's plan was to kill her Empyrean body to escape the influence of the Two Fingers. I guess she thought that without a soul, Godwyn's body would die naturally on its own, or at worst simply sit there, brain-dead. She didn't realize it would turn into this.
@@shaktosh524 That's the thing. I'm not actually sure if deathblight is synonymous with Godwyn, or if it's Deathroot, something completely different. Godwyn is clearly related to Those who Live in Death, but are we sure he was actually the origin of deathblight? As you say yourself, there's wormfaces with deathblight in Farum Azula. There are also Death Birds with deathblight - and Death Birds originate in an age long before the Erdtree. To me it seems like deathblight might actually be much older and not at all the result of Godwyn's spiritual death.
Some people were mad that Godwyn wasn't the main focus of the dlc.But seeing how he has become this lurking horror growing outside everyone's eyes i say that he is much better being the focus of a whole new game
This is why you choose the Flame of Frenzy; to destroy the vile corruption brought by the Outer Gods and to return reality to serene oblivion.
ranni was so desperate to escape the greater will she unleashed an abomination on the lands between
Don't tell that to Ranni stans. They get incredibly angry if anyone mentions that she was not, in fact, a saint.
@@ValtheJean not really rannis fault her mother sealed away destined death making this possible to happen in the first place
If anything ranni with her ending reverses that
And im saying that as frenzied flame stan
@@Bleilock1also technically the frenzied flame would deal with godwyn in a way either destroying him or leaving nothing for him
@@Bleilock1 Rennala had nothing to do with Destined Death.
@@Kromgarhe means Radagon/Marika
Zullie after killing Bayle there are some invisible NPCs after the Jagged Peak Mountainside site of grace, could you please look into them
First I'm hearing of this. How and where are they?
@@jfturle They show up only after killing Bayle I believe, you can find them with target lock as they're invisible, they die in one hit and scream like the male player model, there's one really close to the site of grace I mentioned, you can find it by going up the mountain while sticking to the border of the cliff, there's like 3-4 total that I've seen, prolly some leftover file but they may have more data in the code or something
Just looked myself, can confirm this is a thing.
That's fucking weird.
Everything to do with Godwyn, deathblight, and deathroot has got to be one of the scariest and most disturbing concepts I've ever seen in a video game, and possibly fiction in general.
Considering the fact that the armor mentions a "coming age of the duskborn" and the fact that we see godwyns corpse grow ever bigger through the Lands, I wouldnt be surprised to see another DLC focussed on him
"He's back"
I didn't think a thumbnail could give me chills.
Godwyn always kinda reminded me of Cthulhu: once a Great Lord, now just sitting at the bottom of an ocean... waiting...
Must've missed the underwater surrogate, where is it?
@@alexrc7333 doesn't exist, it was just for dramatic effect
@@myggmastaren3365 Thanks for the insight pal!
Godwyn continues to amaze me as the most aloof piece of Elden Ring's story. Just the rotting, living corpse of a god, spreading throughout the world uncontrollably. What could be done?
I have been thinking for a while that these surrogates could better be described as 'cuttings'.
As with plants, a cutting is taken from the parent and a clone of the first tree is grown from them.
I currently live in Cambridge where a cutting of Isaac Newton's tree has grown into a clone of the original (I think in Lincolnshire?), and actually there are many clones beyond just Cambridge where these cuttings have grown. To me the possibility remains that the minor erdtrees came from cuttings - not seeds. As the erdtree was thought to be eternal it grew no seeds. Well the shattering came, branches fell and grew into new trees. I believe the seeds came from these new trees which were changed by the stress of the shattering.
Similarly when gods go through a traumatic event (their 'shattering') I believe they drop cuttings - and this leads to the stormveil godwyn, Millicent, and Melina (from Marika). These are all clonal progeny of the gods who underwent significant trauma and in the dialogue of Millicent you can see this. "I could be sister, daughter, or offshoot." Actually Millicent in a way is all three. Similarly Melina seems to indicate that Marika is her mother, but she is also an offshoot, a clone, a cutting of queen Marika.
I'm no lore expert though so I'd love to hear what others think of this.
Man, poor Godfrey. Three sons, two deformed, the eldest cursed to this hellish fate. His final descendants being Godrick and Nepheli.
at least nepheli is a decent lot
@@mauauauauaua14 true enough
I was legitimately screaming in the catacombs as those pair of eyes drifted up and down the hallways. It was so god damn freaky I loved it.
Something someone pointed out in another video that's stuck with me is the fact that in Elden Ring, a soul and a mind are separate. So while his soul is dead, his mind and body are alive, essentially meaning he has locked in syndrome. Every time I see his corpse and those eyes I am reminded of this and it freaks me out.
We're not sure if his mind still exists or not, but that is a good (horrifying) analogy.
I like where you're going but it's really more of a Body & Soul separation. Soul and Mind are typically the same. Prime example being Ranni who retains who she is without a body.
@@dracses4529 My main reasoning behind my thinking stems from the armor description for the Twinned Armor, which states "They are of two bodies and two minds, but one single soul." Which to me, indicates that souls, mind and body are all separate. Another example to my point would be when you hit Fia at the base of his corpse, Death skulls will be summoned towards you and Fia will even comment along the lines of "Godwyn.. is that you dear?"
I also get what you are saying, especially in regards to Ranni, since she has her mind and soul, but not her body.
@@dracses4529 Questioning this just because iirc, Fortissax went to protect Godwyn's mind specifically from the influence of the fragments of Death?
@sylvastreak Fortissax went in to stave off the effects of Death, but it was ultimately meaningless since he was powerless to stop it AND because there's nothing left to save
I love it so much that you use this music for your Death-related videos 😊
The entirety of Godwyn has always deeply disturbed me.
The fact that probably the most notorious demigod, and possibly one of the kindest, has evolved into this abominable cancer constantly expanding throughout the Lands Between _and_ the Shadow Realm is... scary.
His corpse as well is nightmare fuel.
Okay, Godwyn's face under the waves is genuinely terrifying.
FINALY a New Godwin videooooo
Doesn't matter who gets on the throne of Elden Lord, everyone is screwed anyway because of Godwyn. Frenzied Flame feels like the only solution to the world made by Greater Will.
godwyn/deathblight is definitely one of the spookier and more obscure parts of ER lore
Frenzy flamme god and Godwyn are my two fav plots in Elden, They give me the most : ''woa, fascinating'' experiences in the game.
Godwyn made me think about which ending ultimately is the best, because I think in every ending besides frenzied flame Godwyn is a problem.
duskborn
Don't forget the Duskborn ending, he's got a fairly significant role there lol.
Not really. In every ending we release the rune of destined death which allows things to die permanently again. Those that live in death are only the way they are because they are unable to fully die thanks to Marika's meddling of the Elden Ring. So they are stuck in an in between state thanks to being infected by the power of only a piece of the rune of death. They are unable to pass on because a piece of them is still alive and thus unable to die due to the rune of death being sealed.
So theoretically by releasing the rune of death and restoring death to the lands between those who live in death are able to now fully die.
What the duskborn ending and prince of deaths great rune does is formalize those that live in death into the laws of the world and golden order. Now instead of being a bug or mistake they are something that can naturally occur and are recognized as another form of life able to recieve Grace.
@@Nhblubird true lol I forgot
@@rwberger6 Do they still want to kill me? If so, I don't think that's a very good ending.
Kinda bummed that we didn't get much more Godwyn stuff with the DLC
I know! Considering this is the last one, I thought Godwyn was going to take center stage in the finale. I personally think Miqeulla should have revived Godwyn somehow and we would have to fight Godwyn. That would have been awesome.
Maybe if Elden Ring gets a second DLC someday? After all, as the Gods and Lords of the Lands Between fight for Power, Godwyn's Deathblight doesn't care and it doesn't stop, eventually becoming the greatest threat to all living beings.
@@kolbywilliams7234 Kinda hard to revive someone who's soul has been obliterated into nothing by a blade of pure death. I guess Miquella could have made a convincing copy though.
@@kolbywilliams7234 That would've been stupid. Why is everyone so obsessed with the idea of Godwyn being the final boss of the DLC? He already has an entire ending dedicated to him with multiple NPC questlines being tied to his character. It also undoes the entire point of Godwyn being the prince of death, hes become a very part of the world, being able to fight him would be really lame.
@@Johnny-ms4irMiyazaki said this was the last DLC.
2:15 Not sure Godwyn is devoid of self. In Elden Ring, soul is separate from the mind, and if you attack Fia, Godwyn will defend her from you.
Cant believe Ranni did her bro like this
Really out here becoming his own tree separate from both the erd and scadur.
me: "its difficult to do Lovecraft style horror in a fantasy setting"
ER: An undead god with no control of their faculties is spreading throughout the habitable realm. If unchecked, the whole of reality could succumb.
Fans: let us fight him! Pls just let us ruin this!
@@piotr78 I mean you do fight him and even "prune" the spread of his deathroot, but to no avail as nothing you do can stop him nor even slow him down.
Remember C'thulu could be fought but never truly harmed, let alone defeated and he's the face of eldritch horror.
It's not a could, it's inevitable that he wins he has already infected the roots that are all throughout the lands between.
@@piotr78 Ruin how, exactly?
@@Mare_Man The inevitability of his blight spreading while he is "alive" to witness it all is what makes it terrifying. Killing him in a battle completely nullifies that
This question has been running through my mind ever since I stumbled across Godwyn's copy beneath the Stormveil castle. If Godwyn's Cadaver Surrogate is already almost fully formed, why are there no undead skeletons around the castle? Or why isn't the castle overtaken by undeath yet?
Thanks, Ranni!
I am finally mostly satisfied with wtf the "surrogates" are/are for. These things were so mind boggling to look at the first time I found it and I was really racking my brain. I like how you drew parallels to the "offshoots" like Milicent for Malenia. Thanks, Zullie!
maybe when his soul was destroyed it actually shattered and split into all these faces and eyes
I would have liked Godwyn to take a much bigger role in this DLC. Miquella's plan to give him a "real death" would have been much more interesting than bringing "we know who" to life.
I agree, the final boss being who it was really felt like it came out of nowhere and not in a good plot twist sort of way. It was spoiled for me by a TH-cam thumbnail and I thought it was someone playing around with assets not that it was actually good he finally boss.
We know miquella plan failed, it’s explicitly said by the phantom in castle sol, I see it as one of the reason miquella decided to abandon everything
There are many obvious reasons why that won't work, one of them being those who lives in death aka Godwyn and his followers literally can not be charmed by Miquella
I thought Miquella's plan was to bring Godwyn back from the dead and becoming a God was a means to do that. Especially with all the talk about how the dead eventually find their way to the Land of Shadow. I thought that's where Godwyn's soul must have ended up because it couldn't return to the Erdtree due to being killed by a shard of the rune of death. This was further reinforced when it seemed like the plan was to use the corpse of Mohg to restore Godwyn's soul to that vessel, which makes sense considering they are direct brothers and so would be more compatible for a 'soul transplant'. But then it turns out even *that* wasn't the case and it was some convoluted plot to create a consort out of Radahn's soul and Mohg's body?!? Why?! Why not try and make a consort out of Godwyn's soul and Ranni's empyrean body, uniting both the first soul and first body of a demigod to die. With the Prince of Death restored to an Emyprean's body as his consort, he could have become God of Death. Making it so all things are unable to die, and would instead just love him eternally.
This also makes more sense logistically, as Miquella's plan only works if both Radahn and Mohg die, which was a bloody longshot considering Radahn was by far the most powerful demigod who even Melania failed to kill and Mohg was a recluse, hiding away deep underground so much so that even Gideon THE ALLLL KNOOOWING couldn't find him.
@@mhiggs8001 Good ol' GRRM Plot Twist
I really wish Godwyn was a secret boss
Crazy that no one has thought of using his body for whatever plans they'd want
I wish they would make a second dlc set in the future where Godwyns surrogates have almost taken over
@@alexf0723 Guess there are no necrophiles in the Lands Between.
@@LordDragox412Fia.
Fortissax is pretty cool too. Very hidden away and the background is also impressive
It would be so interesting if Godwyn had a secret Radagon/St. Trina like offshoot that still had a soul because it had already been acting independant from him before the night of the black knives. Godwyn's coprse and deathroot, as well as the death knights, could then be trying to find that offshoot again in an effort give the main corpse a soul again.
Godwyn=Cthulhu. Thanks for keeping the same music as last time, it really fits the whole Godwyn mood.
It's such a unique concept, the corpse of a dead god growing like a parasite everywhere and no one is prioritising how to stop it.
It just this quiet apocalypse slowly happening.
Damn, The Godwyn face under the water in the video made me flinched a bit there.
- Once had a nightmare in which I was swimming on the water surface in the middle of a large body of water and there was an island within vision range. I started to swim to the island and noticed that Godwyn and his souless eyes are staring at me deep underneath the water. What's worse, his face and eyes are getting closer to me.
- Shit got me spooked and I tried to swim to the island as fast as I could. After a while, I almost reached the island and Godwyn almost caught up to me. The dream ended when I felt his tendrils on my leg and I looked down to see his face and his eyes staring just underneath me... He caught me. Did not know if I even managed to swim to the island or he yanked me down into the deep. I immediately woke straight-up in the night and took awhile b4 I could sleep again.
Thanks Zullie for reminding me of that. Much love!
Everyone seems to forget that Ranni did this to him lol. Killed her brother as a ritual sacrifice that caused a plague of undeath. Ranni is very cool, but she is not exactly as benevolent as players seem to often believe.
Thank you Zullie for continuing to provide such enthralling videos.
It sucks that outside of the frenzied flame no matter what ending you pick, The Age of the Undead is only a matter of time.
When i first found the Godwyn under stormveil i was like "omg wtf is that ?", and discovering the lore about it didn't help
With out a doubt Godwyn is the most ominous thing fromsoft has ever created.
He is the Corpse Flower of Elden Ring.
i love your cinematic shots! very good work!
I have always believed that Godwyn's corpse in Stormveil was just the result of unchecked growth, and that anywhere his influence is spreading will eventually grow into a full sized clone until all the world lives in death. It would be neat to see if he has any motivation to spread of if it is just a part of how he isn't properly dead
The moment I saw his body in the wall of the arena in the DLC I went. "Oh God, not here too..."
The eeriness in the music is peak
Ahh, I can see it, clear as day! The coming of our dynasty!
Godwyn!
I think the way godwyn spreads is inspired by real life plants, since it seems that without a soul, Godwyn's corpse has become a plant-like organism. Some plants reproduce by budding from roots of a single plant. An example of this is the aspen tree, which as the original seedling grows, it's roots spread out, which eventually form "root suckers" that become new aspen trees that then form their own root systems and buds along with them. Despite being able to grow into vast forests the individual aspens are genetically the same, so an entire forest of aspens is regarded as being a single organism. Which I think is what is going on here with Godwyn. His roots are spreading and growing identical corpses to the original.
Besides all that I wonder if Godwyn turned into this plant thing because he was buried and became connected to the erdtree, and so if the corpses were to be left undisturbed maybe they would grow into a death-like erdtree? Maybe similar in appearance to the gray erdtree we see in the age of the dusk born ending?
This is why the frenzied flame ending is so good as it'd be the only thing that we currently know of that can scour him from the world
Black knifes plot: *kills godwyn*
*accidentally unleashes an incredible threat to all living being*
Honestly, it’s amazing that Deathroot isn’t addressed more heavily. Unless you go for the Duskborn ending that fully embraces it, or the Frenzied Flame ending that burns away everything, it feels like Godwynn’s corpse is a threat to any age you choose for the finale. I don’t think even Ranni’s Age of the Moon/Stars has a way to deal with the spread of Deathroot.
It's not a threat. Godwyn is in this state because Marika removed the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring. And we put the Rune of Death BACK into the Elden Ring in every single ending. This means that Godwyn will finally die a true death (or at the very least, that he can now be granted true death), and once he does, all the undead will die with him.
Except if you got with Age of the Duskborn, where undeath becomes an integral part of the Elden Ring.
@@Knoloaify Oh is that how it works? TBH the Rune of Death is one of the only plotpoints about Eldin Ring that I never fully understood. I got the basic gist of it and how its absence keeps anyone from dying a true death, but the fact that a piece of the rune was broken off further and then became its "Undeath" cendipede rune between Godwynn and Ranni... Yeah, it's a lot.
But I suppose if that centipede rune is never completed, it does make sense that Godwynn would finally, truly die when the Eldin Ring is restored.
@@Knoloaifywhat I don’t like in this logic is that after unleashing Destined Death every! death in the lands between must be permanent. Including ours. So technically if you lose any fight after defeating Maliketh it has to be game over.
@@dmmax18 No, because we haven't put the Rune of Death back into the Elden Ring until after the battle with the Elden Beast.
@@dmmax18how died that make sense? Last i checked you have to beat a giant magical fish to get to the elden ring and restore death amonst other things. If you said we could die after the elden beast thatd make sense
I have put together some lore info and thoughts i had:
1. Godwyn seems to be the only child of Godfrey without a curse, so I think his curse might have been deathblight since birth, being unrelated to his tumor like growth after the night of the black knives.
2. It is said that Godrick stole a relic before he fled Leyndell and Rogier refers to the Godwyn face under Stormveil Castle as a "sacred relic". I think the relic Godrick stole was a piece of Godwyns corpse that kept growing but without eyes since it was not attatched to the main body.
2. The lands of shadow were physically connected to the lands between, so those might be Godwyn's pieces which were brough there before the spliting of the lands, or grew from the main body but got chopped of with the lands spliting.
Mohg and Morgott aren't cursed. No child born of Godfrey or of Rennala with Marika/Radagon is cursed, only the children born from the single entity of Marika/Radagon are cursed. Miquella, Melania and Messmer. It's just that the Golden Order are super racists, and so treat anything born with aspects of the Crucible as cursed, as the Crucible is what existed before the Erdtree parasite and Golden Order took over the Lands Between. They don't like to be reminded of that. Such aspects were once seen as divine for this reason, especially by the Hornsent, which is why Marika/Radagon sent Messmer to burn them out of existence.
1-The point is that. Godwyn was the only child no cursed, not deformed, pure and simple the perfect child of Marika. Now is just a rotten corpse, still alive, spreading a curse all above. This is his tragedy, he don't need a curse, even because Deathblight is born only after his "death"
2-Relic probably is Marika's veil, the item we use to transform, something he used to behind as a woman and run away from Leyndell. Godwyn's face is literally a big root emerged in that point like the ones we see in the DLC.
3-Yeah, probably the first one you said. Maybe, as the Scadutree is the Shadow od the Erdtree, Roots are still connected in some way, as we see even the Shattering had an effect on it.
Everyone with a curse at birth has an M name, Malenia has scarlet rot, Miquella is eternal youth (unalloyed gold), Mohg and Morgott are omens, Messmer has dark fire and the abyssal serpent, Melina has fire (possible the fel god).
All of Marika's other children aren't cursed at birth but the first letter is still important to their heritage, Ranni, Rykard, and Radahn are fathered by Radagon (as Marika); Godwyn is fathered by Godfrey. First letter matches their father, if they're cursed at birth then the first letter matches the mother (Marika).
Burial at the roots of the erdtree is ritual that allows access to the land of shadow since they are an afterlife dimension. The roots were connected physically but now are linked spiritually only.
This was the plot point I was sure that was gonna be explored in the dlc. Godwyn's growth is not stopped in any ending and I thought for sure a dlc would resolve that. As it stands now I kinda think that Duskborn is probably the best ending because it is the only one with a semi solution to Godwyn.
duskborn ending
Same. I thought that narratively we would see Miquella trying to raise Godwyn as his Elden Lord instead of Radahn. It makes a lot more sense considering they appeared to be close and Miquella worked hard to find a way to fix him. Instead the Radahn thing kind of just comes out of left field.
Frenzied Flame takes care of that issue :^)
But I agree, I wish we had more Godwyn content instead of Rahdan.
@@rwberger6 No it doesn't, it makes no sense, there's only ONE item referencing miquella and godwyn directly and evidence shows the eclipse isn't about godwyn alone but other victims of the night of the black knives (and this eclipse plan fell completely on its ass, a total failure) and most importantly it's been stated multiple times and with a lot of emphasis on how godwyn HAS NO SOUL, his soul is GONE FOREVER, there's nothing to revive, no ego memory, no broken shards to reunite and be made whole, absolutely nothing but his aberrant body remains.
@@rwberger6 People keep saying this but Godwyn can't ever come back. His soul is dead. It's gone, there's no more Godwyn to bring back. That was established already very clearly that Godwyn no longer exists, only his body. Ranni lost her body, Godwyn loses his soul.
Also, Radahn may have been out of nowhere, but promotional material before the game releases showed Malenia whispering to Radahn, which Radahn's new armor reveals what was said. So Radahn was 100% always planned to be Miquella's consort from the game's conception.
I'm very tired of hearing people want Godwyn despite the fact that Godwyn has been very clearly wiped from existence. Not to mention bringing him back would absolutely ruin the horror of his body now becoming this eldritch like monstrosity that haunts the land.
Idk, feels like a bunch of Elden Ring players can't grasp that From soft games have never had happy endings where everything is solved.
If fromsoft develops the lore of Elden Ring forward through time like it did for Dark Souls, then some day, far in the future, Godwyn's Living Flesh may be the only remains of Marika's Golden Order.
Glad you're still making content, Zullie. Between BonfireVN showing us model close-ups and your more in-depth analyzing, I don't think there's much in the art that the community will miss in regards to models and visual storytelling.
Kinda wish you could call Ranni out for essentially unleashing deathroot on the world, since it was her assassination of Godwyn that set this all in motion.
I wish you could too, but player choice is the anathema to these games unfortunately.
The deed is not something I believe she would be proud of but isn’t necessarily ashamed of her deed as she performed the deed to relieve her soul from her body and another Demi god was needed for the ritual to work. Her time was running out and something needed to happen drastically or else she lose her grasp on her own free will forever. It was essentially in her eyes it was “either him or me” and she chose both of herself and him lol.
Same and because she basically did nothing to stop it or at least try. She created such a huge mess and caused more death when she assassinated Godwyn. She believes its justify if she could get the ending she wants
@@mnwlk Same comment I’ve posted to you to see what I said about her knowing if she even knew about it or not. She indeed caused the plague yet she probably isn’t aware of it nor is the only person responsible for it as Marika is the one who sealed the rune of death causing no one to die. She bears the most responsibility out of Godwyn state of existence however. She didn’t cause more death than already then what had done to Godwyn and herself. The shattering was strictly Marika and I do understand how people forget that Marika was the one who shattered the Elden Ring and told her children to do whatever they want with the runes she gave them. The Demi gods explicitly took part in the war that caused a unknown amount of deaths but she is one of the only ones who took no part in it and explicitly says “What could the Demi gods ever hope to gain.” No she doesn’t believe it’s justified she killed or more accurately ordered his death so that she could remove her body so that she wouldn’t be controlled by the two fingers. She most definitely will sacrifice or kill someone to get what her goal is but the means of Godwyn death was because she was likely put in situation where it’s do something heinous or become a slave for eternity. She obviously has a choice and there could’ve been an other option to not do this but we don’t know that nor know the exact circumstances to want to not be controlled by the two fingers. It most certainly wasn’t a good situation for her as she likely didn’t want to become like Marika nor adhere to her destiny as she believes that the divine she not interfere in the lands between. I don’t think she wants to justify it either considering how upfront she is about her involvement and she states she neither wants to bury the act but is not ashamed of it which doesn’t mean she’s proud of it but she doesn’t show any remorse for it likely because it wasn’t personal and it was done for singular act in mind.
For me it seems like a reference to a stolon, which is a way some plants can spread in which a special root reaches out and grows another plant at the tip, creating little clones of the original.
Problem being, stolon extend above ground.
Godwyn is more like a mushroom. Expanding his mycelial network underground with some eruptions above ground. Or maybe he's more like a slime mold?
It's also reminiscent of how some cancer cells can keep growing and dividing after the death of the original body they came from, if they're transmitted to another animal or grown in vitro. They're essentially immortal.