Again, I've been reading about complaints about the high difficult of the new DLC, and I think there are only two possible explanations: the first is that the build I'm on is just insanely powerful compared to others - I'm still using my Blasphemous Blade/Flame Art Gargoyle Greatsword dual-wield jumping Strength/Faith build, though occasionally trying out some of the newer weapons just to make sure I'm getting some variety (I think I'm tempted to take my sort of orphaned character in next, who has gotten to either Godfrey or even up to the final boss, but wound up going back to an old boring standby of the Fallingstar Great Jaw weapon, which is effective but a little dull - alternatively, I might grab my Arcane/Faith guy and possibly focus on status-ailment weapons).
The other possible explanation is that it's being considered hard by players who refuse to use the various tools that are there to make the game less insurmountable - namely Spirit Ashes and NPC summons. I consider these to be just as much a part of your build as, you know, upgrading your armaments or casting buff spells on yourself (and frankly, I'm even pretty lazy when it comes to using consumables).
Because while I have genuinely hundreds of hours of Elden Ring under my belt, I doubt that puts me in the top 20% of players. I can't imagine it's that hard if I'm not having that difficult a time with it.
Or maybe I'm just awesome. Who knows?
Anyway, I think I'm in a clean-up phase before pushing the story of Shadow of the Erdtree into its final chapter. Once again, we've got a big plant-growth to burn to let us progress (ironically, it seems this will take us to what is probably the first major dungeon of the expansion).
I wrote in the last post about how I had traversed the Abyssal Woods, where the vibes of Elden Ring (already quite dark on the dark fantasy spectrum) pitches headfirst into full-on Bloodborne cosmic horror. Notably, the monsters that I refer to as "Winter Lanterns" partially in reference to those most terrible nightmares in Bloodborne (and also because there are crafting materials that seem to be related to them called Winter Lantern Flies) actually look quite reminiscent of another classically creepy Bloodborne monster, the Garden of Eyes (those fly-people you find around Byrgenwerth).
Anyway, having arrived at Midra's Manse, I made my way through what I guess technically counts as a full legacy dungeon, though unless I'm missing some enormous swath of it, it's somewhat small - a little more akin to your medium dungeons in the vein of Caria Manor (actually, another way to distinguish them is by the number of bosses, but this would actually disqualify Belurat, Tower Settlement, which only has the one boss at the end (though I suspect the expansion's final boss will be found in the tower above it).
The Manse has the full haunted house vibe, with giant bookshelves and moldy old pages scattered everywhere, along with two important hidden passages (look for the big, unique paintings).
While from the previews I had assumed that the woman standing next to Midra in their portrait might have been a pre-deific Marika, it appears she's someone named Nanaya, and we find her body in the manse, where you can take a Frenzied Flame-associated torch.
Given that there's significant evidence to suggest that Marika was born here, though, and the similarities between Nanaya's appearance and hers, I'm almost tempted to consider some kind of familial connection. Marika's home village (if indeed that is what the Shaman Village is) isn't particularly close to here, but it would be pretty crazy if Midra and Nanaya were Marika's parents.
I don't have much evidence to suggest that - just a thought.
Anyway, Midra seems to be in some kind of agony, and can be heard screaming in pain occasionally while exploring the Manse. When we find him, he has this massive barbed, branched spike going through his entire body, including his head. This appears to be the kind of weapon that the Inquisitors use - a faction that appears affiliated with the Hornsent/Belurat culture. Jori, one of these inquisitors, is the gateway boss at the end of the Darklight Catacombs that guards the entrance to the Abyssal Woods.
Anyway, Midra begins as a relatively low-stakes NPC fight (he did tackle me and cause me some madness build-up, but he's a pushover in this form. And then he rips the barb out of his body, taking his head with it, and what replaces his head is the head of the Lord of Frenzied Flame.
I will be fascinated to see what lore people dig up surrounding Midra and Nanaya. Thankfully, wearing a bunch of Focus-based gear against Midra, I had a massive pool of Madness resistance, so I was able to take him down without ever having Madness proc on me.
Next, the Scadutree Avatar was sort of sitting there waiting for me at the back door of the Shadow Keep (a different back door than the one guarded by Gaius). This is basically a giant, thorny, evil sunflower that's about 20 feet tall. The arena here is enormous, but you can't mount Torrent, so you'll need to do a lot of running and dodging attacks from far away.
I suspect I had a big advantage here because my build does roughly half of its damage as fire, which tends to be very effective against plant-based foes (my pure faith pyromancer character should have a field day). What makes this fight hard is that the avatar is very mobile and has a lot of tricky-to-dodge attacks. The thorn-based ones will also proc Blood Loss (I did suffer that once). And you'll sometimes also have to dodge some holy-based spell attacks as well.
The real trick of the fight, though, is that you need to kill the thing three times. The first two times you kill it, you have a couple seconds of respite before it comes back. Still, not the most insane fight, and again I was able to take it down in one attempt.
Killing the Scadutree Avatar yields you not just a remembrance but also Miquella's Broken Rune. Mechanically, I believe this is used in the final boss fight to protect you against a particular instant-death attack, but it could also suggest that as we're approaching the Shadow Keep, Miquella is here, breaking that Great Rune.
We are starting to get a better sense of why Miquella is actually here, but also, considering what Ymir has to say, why it was never going to work: Miquella realizes that the sins his mother committed in becoming a god herself will always taint anything that comes of their divine projects (and here I think we have to wonder if this even applies to Ranni, who isn't technically Marika's daughter but instead is Radagon's, if that actually makes a difference). The whole "shedding everything" process Miquella is going through, from his flesh to his fate to his love to his feminine half to his Great Rune... one must wonder what is actually going to be left of him to become a deity in the end. Perhaps only his ambition? And is that such a good idea?
I think Elden Ring, and FromSoft's games in general, tend to follow Lin Chi's advice: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." Those who believe they have all the answers to spiritual truths are actually the most ignorant. Miquella seems to have all the answers, and that's a very appealing idea, but it's our duty as the game's protagonists to test that. (Again, I think that Ranni's choice to treat her millennium of godhood as a massive exploration into the deep mysteries of the cosmos seems more in line with the state of curiosity and contemplation that the game seems to prefer - though it's also opening the door to full-on cosmic horror, so don't think that any of these endings is truly the "good one.")
Lastly, we come to Bayle. Luckily, I thought to kill the various dragon bosses along Jagged Peak that I had previously just ridden past. Upon slaying the second Jagged Peak Drake (which is the one fighting the other drake) I heard Igon call out, and he implored me to summon him to fight Bayle.
This proved a little tricky, because you have to enter Bayle's arena and engage him in order to find the summon sign, similar to getting the Hornsent to show up in the Messmer fight. And while it's not far from the entrance, the ashy ground of the arena made it a little tough to spot, so I basically left my Mimi Tear to tank Bayle while I frantically looked for the sign.
Bayle was a contemporary and betrayer to Placidusax - he's the father of all the Drakes (the two-legged lesser dragons). His fight has some similarities to Placidusax, though he's less elusive, and his big "fly up and dive bomb you" attack seemed to come less frequently and be easier to dodge. While he grows wings halfway through the fight, he spends most of the fight pretty low to the ground, making it not too terrible to get some hit onto his head.
While he doesn't have a remembrance, there's an Ancient Dragon Communion site if you veer south from the path that takes you to the mountain, and Bayle's heart can unlock one of two Dragon Communion incantations.
There's also an NPC here who can give you some shockingly explicit and clear lore surrounding Bayle. Back when Placidusax was Elden Lord (presumably to some pre-Marika deity) it was Bayle who struck against him and destroyed the two missing heads you might have noticed when fighting Placidusax in Farum Azula. The Dragon Cult (later integrated by Godwyn into Marika's Golden Order in a kind of syncretic act to cement the end to the war with the dragons and gain their allegiance) basically encouraged the development of Dragon Communion in order to get humans to hunt down the Drakes in vengeance over this betrayal.
And I find that really interesting, because it explains one major thing: Ancient Dragons, when killed, do not drop Dragon Hearts. You would think they would, but apparently only Drakes' hearts are used for Communion, because the whole point is for you to kill them, and not the Ancient dragons.
One of the things I've thought a bit about is the symbolism of circles. The Elden Ring is, of course, a set of interlocked circles (and other shapes). But there's a detail in particular on Ymir's crown, where a circular gap in the piece above its forehead is meant to symbolize the Greater Will, and the Night Blades who seem to serve Ymir and Metyr appear to be themed around the black void of space - as if the Greater Will is found within that endless darkness and potential of the void.
Likewise, Metyr's weird intertwined "tail fingers" (again Metyr is maybe the most alien-looking thing in the game) have an orb of cosmic darkness between them, which can also shine with brilliant light, as if from a star.
This imagery of a bright circle around a dark center can also be seen in Goldmask's Mending Rune, which would seem to keep the Gods in line along with the mortals (whether this just eliminates free will entirely or simply keeps Gods like Marika from screwing with the nature of the world is up to interpretation), and I almost wonder if his Great Rune is kind of like inviting the Greater Will itself to contain and safeguard the functionality of the Elden Ring.
It sounds as if the project was abandoned at some point, but Miquella's plan to somehow use the Eclipse to restore Godwyn's soul to him also has this "dark circle rimmed with light" imagery. Might this have been an attempt to directly petition the Greater Will to fix it? (Also, an eclipse happens when either the Earth blocks the light from the sun from hitting the moon, or when the moon blocks the light of the sun from hitting the Earth. We have plenty of associations with the Moon(s) in Elden Ring, but oddly few when it comes to the sun - such that for a while I thought the Lands Between literally didn't have a sun, and only had the glow of the Erdtree to generate light. Turns out there is a sun, but you can only see it in certain parts of the map, and it's just your classic little ball of light up in the sky).
But, finally, the other echo of this symbol I wanted to touch on was actually the face of the Lord of Frenzied Flame. Both when we fight Midra and if we get the Frenzied Flame ending of the base game, the head of whichever Lord of Frenzied FLame is represented by a churning circle of sickly yellow flame surrounding a dark center (actually not unlike a sunflower, which we know is also a big symbol in this game).
The Frenzied Flame has always felt like it's this sort of dark side of the sacred - that yellow fire is actually kind of the same color as holy energy, and while I don't think we've gotten anything more about the Three Fingers in this DLC (other than assuming that it's in some way related to Metyr) it seems weirdly fitting that the Frenzied Flame should have a messenger so similar to that of the Greater Will (even if the Two Fingers and Metyr maybe were'nt being entirely forthright with just how often they actually talk).
Another, extra-canonical instance of this kind of symbol is in Dark Souls' Darksign, but that might simply imply the studio's affinity for that shape.
Oh! Another thing occurred to me while writing all of this.
Messmer basically played the role of scapegoat to Marika's genocidal campaign against the Hornsent culture. He and his soldiers did horrible things, but they're also kind of victims because they were forced to stay within these lands and were blamed for all of the atrocities while Marika denied responsibility for them.
Among their most horrific weapons are the Furnace Golems, who burned much of Belurat and were clearly used to kill massive numbers of Hornsent people. The golems bear a "Furnace Visage" that appears to be a sun with a face. The rays coming off of that sun are shaped like omen horns, and it's said to represent the Fell God, worshipped by the Fire Giants (and which clearly had a very ancient civilization that I'd guess is related to the forges we find in Realm of Shadow - the Fire Giants also probably built the Divine Towers).
Now, this sun-with-a-face symbol is remarkably similar to the one that adorns the armor of the Dung Eater - a crazed serial killer who cursed people with the "Seedbed Curse" to turn them into omens upon their rebirth.
It's reasonable enough to assume that the reason we see Dung Eater hanged in the opening cutscene for the game, and why we find him imprisoned in the Omen Shunning Grounds beneath Leyndell, is simply because of this criminality.
But that sun image makes me wonder if we now have a hint as to his motivations: I suspect Dung Eater was actually part of Messmer's army, and participated in the genocidal campaign against the Hornsent. He may have even been picked for such an assignment because of his capacity for unbridled cruelty and ruthlessness.
But I wonder if the horrors he was ordered to perform upon the Hornsent caused him to snap, and he decided that he needs to "balance the scales" by inflicting his curse upon the world.
The thing is, would the Hornsent see his efforts as an ultimate greater good - they do think the appearance of horns is a blessing, after all. Or would they see what he does as a perversion - a sacrilegious distortion of their faith?
Point is, this game has such insanely rich, fascinating lore.
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