Since growing up with Star Trek: The Next Generation and loving Data as a character, I've always had a real fascination with artificial people. Robots are a pretty classic staple of sci-fi, and I'm a big fan of them, but the notion of making a person who is meant to be not just human-like in behavior, but truly emulate human appearance and intelligence, is one that feels threaded throughout science fiction and even myth.
We're in a weird era regarding the development of artificial intelligence. The Large Language Models like Chat-GPT kind of took the world by storm, and everyone's trying to integrate them into their businesses and digital services before we really have a great sense of how useful they'll really be (my dad is a now-semi-retired professor of computer science at one of the top CS departments in the world, and has developed something of a reputation as one of the few vocal LLM skeptics in the field). Personally, I don't think that we've actually created real intelligence, nor digital consciousness (though proving consciousness is more of a philosophical debate than a technical one).
Still, the idea of an artificial person who thinks and feels is one I don't think is strictly impossible. After all, our own bodies and brains are just organic machines that have developed over billions of years of trial-and-error evolution. It stands to reason that we could make something similar with artificial materials.
Elden Ring has vast lore, and in typical FromSoft style, the nature of that lore is vague and implied, and very much open to interpretation. Just getting a broad timeline can be difficult, and I suspect that some might even contradict itself, the information we find in-game being imperfect.
However, within the lore, we have a type of being called the Albinaurics, and they've always fascinated me. Generally pale in complexion (whenever I type this I feel like it must be the UK spelling of the word, but then "complection," which feels like how it should be spelled, is always caught by spell-check functions), there are three kinds of Albinaurics we see in-game. Some look like wizened old men. Others look like fairly healthy young women. And lastly, we have bizarre bulbous-headed ones that look vaguely frog-like in appearance. The former two are both paraplegic, and in the case of the old men, their legs are literally fading from existence. The loss of their legs seems to be fatal - likely coinciding with other internal issues.
We know them to be artificial people, but it's not strictly clear who made them.
One possibility is that they're made by the Nox of the Eternal Cities, underground (in Elden Ring's "underdark"). But we don't actually see a lot of them there, other than the bloody red ones around Mohgwyn Palace. Instead, we see larval tears, the mercury-like blobs that can transform into people.
I suspect there's a connection between them, but I don't know that we can strictly say that the Albinaurics are created in the same way that the Mimic Tears are.
There are a few pretty clear suspects (even sometimes identified explicitly). Loretta, whom we fight a summoned spirit of at Caria Manor and later fight for real at Miquella's Haligtree (she's basically the midway boss in the Haligtree/Ephael legacy dungeon) is very likely an Albinauric. She has at least been a champion to them, and seems to have come there to protect Albinauric refugees seeking acceptance into Miquella's new society there (there are also some cocoons not unlike Miquella's that seem to have Albinaurics attempting to be reborn there - though, and this is a real aside, I saw a take somewhere that suggested that the body in the cocoon is actually Mohg's, not Miquella's, which honestly solves a lot of lore questions I've had, and we can just assume the Mohg we fight is a kind of projected manifestation of his through his blood, given that he and Morgott are clearly very adept at manifesting such projections. And hey, isn't the plan for Mohg to be "reborn" as Radahn?)
Anyway, all that aside, the fact that we face Loretta on horseback is actually kind of telling - while the wizened man Albinaurics will sometimes crawl at us, the Albinauric women often ride wolves to give them mobility. None of the non-frog-like Albinaurics can walk.
Put a pin in that.
Similar to Loretta, Gaius in the Shadow of the Erdtree is said I think explicitly to be an albinauric. He rides a massive boar (with what sometimes feels like an impossible large attacking hit-box that's insanely hard to dodge). His armor consists of only a chestpiece, gloves, and helmet, because he doesn't have legs (though we can find a set of leg armor that was evidently there to mock him).
Now, artificial life is not necessarily restricted to the Albinaurics. Already, we have the Mimic Tears. But as we discover in Shadow of the Erdtree, the Jar Warriors (who certainly count even in modern days) were originally created by stuffing Marika's people into jars in the hopes of creating a "Saint."
The exact meaning of "Saint" is an interesting one (I can think of two people explicitly called Saints, namely Trina and Romina,) but I think there's a very strong implication that Marika might have actually been the result of one of these jar rituals actually being a success. This would mean that, while the core of Marika was one of the Shamans from the village, she might have actually been combined with others to form an amalgam capable of being an Empyrean.
Her dual nature as Marika and Radagon has long been associated with the creation of the Alchemical Rebis, which is a goal of Alchemy.
But I wouldn't call her an Albinauric - she just might be a "made" person, and I'd even hesitate to say "artificial." (Though the fact that her form is like a crumbled statue at the end of the game really makes you wonder how organic she truly is - or anyone, for that matter.)
One thing that does seem to link Albinaurics - at least those of the first generation (and I will say now, I can't think of any real interesting stuff to say about there being a second generation of albinaurics with frog heads) - is the failure of their legs.
And you know who doesn't seem to have functional legs?
Literally all of Radagon and Renalla's children.
Admittedly, this is a bit circumstantial. We never see a full picture of Rykard before he merged with the God-Devouring Serpent, only portraits that are at best waist-up. We also never see Ranni in her original body, only the seemingly burned corpse she left at the top of the Liurnian Divine Tower.
But we do see Radahn in his original body.
One of the really endearing things about Radahn is that he mastered gravity magic so that his ancient horse, Leonard, could continue to carry him even when he grew to enormous size. Leonard is there in the boss fight against him in Caelid (we can presume the poor horse dies when we take him down).
Now, when we fight Radahn again in Enir-Elim at the end of the DLC, he's fully capable of running around on his own, but that's because he's literally been transplanted into Mohg's body. Much like Ranni has no problem standing up in the Age of Stars ending, it's because she's not in her original body (actually kind of interesting that the three children of Renalla aren't really in their original bodies anymore).
Anyway, Radahn is always on Leonard, even in the pre-release trailer when he faces off against Malenia. You know what else you might notice about his model during the boss fight?
Dude's got no feet.
Now, I think earlier on, there was speculation that this was just the result of his long madness under the effects of the Scarlet Rot, and that his feet were basically sanded away by his endless wandering across the battlefield.
But... what if the children of Radagon and Renalla are actually Albinaurics? Then, the degradation of Radahn's feet would be consistent with the affliction that the Albinaurics suffer. It would also explain the desperation that Ranni and Rykard each felt to find new bodies.
But what about Renalla and Radagon?
It's a real matter of debate as to whether Radagon was ever an independent individual, or if he was always just Marika's masculine persona (her animus, to use a Jungian term).
I'm inclined to think that neither of them is an Albinauric. Radagon obviously has no problem standing when we fight him at the end of the game (indeed, with all the botanical imagery in the game, Radagon represents a trellis with his Great Rune). And while Renalla cannot walk when we fight her (the second phase of the fight is actually an illusion created by Ranni to give her mother some dignity,) her sister Relanna is perfectly capable of walking around when we fight her, so Renalla's bed-ridden status might not be physiological so much as psychological.
How would that work, though?
Well, the first phase of the Renalla fight has a ton of legless children endlessly reborn by Renalla, who might actually be Albinaurics.
And this is something I've always struggled to unpack:
Why are the Knights of the Cuckoo called that?
The Cuckoo is a bird famous (infamous?) for destroying the eggs of other birds and laying their eggs in the empty nest. The mother bird victim will then raise the young Cuckoos, thinking they are her own.
And so, I had always thought that Renalla must be the victim of some similar plot. Was it just the amber-like egg containing her Rune of Rebirth?
Or was it three artificial children?
Look, it's a lot harder to trick a mother into thinking that children are hers than a father, given how physiology works (yes, I know that a trans father can be the one to carry the baby to term, but I'm using "mother" and "father" here in the sense of their reproductive role). But in Elden Ring, it's clear that birthing offspring does not necessarily work the way it does in our world.
There's lots of reason to believe that Radagon's marriage to Renalla was a matter of political expediency, and fully exploited the fact that Renalla probably thought it was a real act of love and equal partnership. Ranni is rightfully enraged that her mother was used so poorly, knowing what a magnificent and powerful person she had been. Renalla was clearly broken by Radagon's abandonment.
But given the callousness with which Radagon treated Renalla, I also think it is well within reason to think that he took full control over her heirs and offspring, making them rather than siring them.
Ironic, then, that if we consider the Age of Stars ending canonical (I don't think any single ending is likely to be considered canon, but the Age of Stars one feels the most right to me,) then it was one of these artificial children who would unmake the Golden Order and overthrow Marika.
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