Gold and Silver Imagery in Elden Ring

 I don't know how deep I'll be able to get here, as I'm mostly going off the cuff (and procrastinating on redesigning tonight's D&D session given that one of the players whose character was going to play a prominent role in the session will be missing) but I wanted to talk about one of the key symbols in Elden Ring: Gold and Silver.

Gold is probably the element that is more obvious - the Elden Ring itself is golden, and we've got the Golden Order it represents. But there's also a fair amount of silver to be found.

Gold and Silver are, of course, culturally associated with wealth as the most prominent precious metals, used historically as currency. They're the 1st and 2nd place medals one gets in athletic competitions (bronze is kind of an odd choice for third place, as it's both an alloy and one of relatively base metals by comparison).

Symbolically, Gold and Silver are also often associated with the duality of day and night. It's actually, I believe, pure coincidence that the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size from the surface of the earth - their relative sizes and distances happening to match up in that way. But the Sun is also typically seen as golden, with sunlight having that yellow quality, while the moon - though pretty clearly chalk-white - is often associated with silver. We ascribe colors to these that are sort of interpretive, but we get a rather effective dichotomy of yellow and blue, and that's also a pattern we see a lot of in Elden Ring.

In the Lands Between, you might notice that there is no sun. The brilliant light that illuminates the day is actually, apparently, coming from the Erdtree. This is likely inspired by Tolkien's Legendarium, where Arda (the world upon which Middle-Earth is found) was first illuminated by two great lamps, but after their fall, the illumination was provided by two great trees, under whose light the elves first awoke. (Apologies if my Tolkien lore is not 100% accurate). The destruction of those trees then led to the creation of the sun, and it was under the sun that the first humans arose. (The first episode of Rings of Power has a prologue in which Galadriel, as a child, grows up under the Great Trees). (Also, if you had any doubts that Tolkien was a big influence on Elden Ring, consider the race of the "Numen" that Marika and the Black Knife assassins belong to, and compare them with the humans of Numenor from Tolkien).

Gold is tied to the Golden Order, and the Greater Will, but we can also imagine that the radiant gold that the Two Fingers promote might actually be of the same material as the sickly yellow that is the Flame of Chaos, promoted by the Three Fingers. FromSoft games often invoke elements of Cosmic Horror, obviously never as explicitly as in Bloodborne, but in their other works as well. The Chaos Flame, as a force of madness, is very Lovecraftian in nature, but even more terrifying is the notion that it may just be the other side of the same force that the Golden Order represents. If the Two Fingers and the Three Fingers were originally one Hand, it suggests the dangerous, eldritch nature of what presents itself as conventional holy divinity. Indeed, the Frenzied Flame seems to wish to melt down reality back into a single mass - while the Two Fingers reinforce a hierarchy of gods and nobles, separating reality and sorting it.

In a strange way, though, these are both paths of "gold."

The path of silver, though, is one that we can associate with the Moon, and the Stars. If you get the Age of Stars ending, you summon Ranni with a blue summoning symbol, rather than the golden one you typically use to summon allies or the red ones you use to invade others' worlds.

As laid out very well in VaatiVidya's recent video about the Eternal Cities, these locations, and their Nox inhabitants, seemed bent on subverting the will of gods and other "golden" entities, duplicating their divine magic through sorcery. The Nox created Silver Tears - amorphous blobs that could re-shape themselves into people and other creatures as needed (interestingly, the tears arguably serve a similar purpose to the Shoggoths of Lovecraft, which were made by the Elder Things, presumably, to serve as all-purpose servants). The Nox seek out the Age of Stars that Ranni ultimately brings about if you help her.

And it's also from the Eternal Cities of the Nox that the Albinaurics originally come. And let's break down that name: Albin, like the word albino, implies "white" while "auric" means golden. White gold. White gold is another name for an alloy of gold with some white metal - including silver (naturally occurring electrum is typically an alloy of gold and silver, sometimes with a little copper, making it "green gold.")

But we're all overlooking the biggest reference to silver, aren't we?

The Tarnished.

Gold, famously, does not tarnish. Golden artifacts from thousands of years ago are still brilliant and gleaming (they can still get covered in dust, of course) but Silver tarnishes - to keep it bright and shiny you need to polish and clean it regularly.

The Tarnished are descendants of Godfrey, who was divested of his grace and basically divorced by Marika, though it seems not to punish him, but instead to let him be his true self - a warrior out beyond the Lands Between, to fight and conquer. The divestment of grace is what makes them "Tarnished," but does that then imply that was left behind when the "golden grace" was removed was silver?

One thing that is very open to speculation and interpretation is Marika's motivations in Elden Ring. She seems to have set up the entire plot, but notably, when we come to actually face her, we instead see her transform into Radagon, who is the actual person we fight.

My personal interpretation is that Marika wishes to see the Golden Order undone, and for her tenure as god to end, but that Radagon does not, and wishes for her to remain the god, for him to remain Elden Lord. Though they might have been in full accord when they merged into one body (and yes, I interpret Radagon as having originally been a separate person from Marika) they parted ways, philosophically.

Given the ties between the Numen and the Nox, is it then possible that Marika was meant for some other fate? Did the Greater Will pick her as a god in order to prevent the Age of Stars? We've seen that the Shadows the Two Fingers send to guard over Empyreans (aka potential gods) can be "activated" to turn against them. Marika's was Maliketh, while Ranni's is Blaidd. And as loyal as Blaidd is to Ranni, once you slay her Two Fingers, he is compelled to attack against his will.

But back to the metals.

Completing Millicent's questline, we empower the Unalloyed Gold Needle, which for a time staves off the Scarlet Rot within Millicent (until she takes it out). Ultimately, with some kind of blessing from Miquella after we defeat Malenia, we can use this to purge the Flame of Frenzy from ourselves.

Now, let's consider a couple things: it's "unalloyed" gold, in other words, pure gold. That purity might be what keeps the Rot as bay. But it might also thus stand as a bulwark against the Flame of Frenzy, which seems bent on melting away all disparity (we might need a whole post to unpack why Melina describes an Age of Chaos primarily as one that has no more "births,"). The Unalloyed Gold stands for purity, which by definition requires separation (and yeah, we've got some old Dark Souls themes coming in here again.)

You know what you typically use to melt metals together? A crucible.

That's something that might take another post to unpack.

Broadly speaking, one of the things I find interesting about the apparent superiority of gold over silver is how it's somewhat inverted when it comes to a few bits of folklore. Gold is highly valuable, of course, but with that comes an association with avarice - King Midas destroying all he loves because of the greedy wish he made. Silver, on the other hand, is often associated with purity and holiness - silver is used to defeat monsters like werewolves (to be fair, it's also 30 pieces of silver that Judas is paid to betray Jesus in Christian tradition).

Looking at Dark Souls, there's also a bit of duality when it comes to the binary of souls and humanity. The souls one uses as a currency in that game (similar to Runes in Elden Ring) are white in color, while the dark soul of humanity is black. Elden Ring only has the single currency (Rune Arcs are the rough equivalent in terms of gameplay of Humanity) and while Runes are golden (implied to be tiny fragments of the Elden Ring) I don't know if there are any specific silver runes or rune-like things that we use. The closest I can think of are the Larval Tears that allow Rennala to rebirth us, but that seems like a stretch.

Tying into the associations with Sorcery and Miracles (silver and gold, respectively,) in Selivus' quest chain we give him Starlight Shards, which are blue, to get puppets from him (the puppets are also, unlike other spirit summons, blue in color) but when he tries to get us to trick Ranni into drinking his draught, he requires an amber shard, which could (in theory) dictate the fate of a god (which Ranni has the potential to become, as an Empyrean). Again, that duality of blue and yellow (or orange).

If we associate Silver with not just the moon, but also the stars, an irony emerges, which is that in most human folklore, the sun is seen as supreme of all the celestial objects - which makes sense, as it's the one that dictates the most about life on Earth. But once humans realized that the sun is, in fact, just the star that the Earth orbits, and is a rather middling example of one (perhaps even on the small side?) we learn that the stars are, in fact, a much bigger deal than either sun or moon.

Now, in Elden Ring, there is no sun, but the Golden Order and the Erdtree kind of stand in for that supreme presence. And yet, seen from another perspective, the establishment seems terrified at the prospect that the stars could continue and bring about a new age. Radahn, whose mind is completely gone from scarlet rot, still has at the very base of his mind the will to keep the stars from moving and fulfilling their destinies. (Which is sort of interesting, as he seems to be the only one of Rennala and Radagon's three children who are actually loyal to the Erdtree - Rykard has embraced total, brutal blasphemy, while Ranni is trying to usurp the godhead from Marika. I have no idea if Marika actually intends for Ranni to succeed, and that it's actually Ranni's father Radagon who would oppose her goal).

Anyway, the subtle richness of FromSoft's approach to lore is on full display in Elden Ring. I so hope that we can get some DLC or a sequel and see what hints the lore expands into.