Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was enormous: while the Land of Shadow certainly wasn't as large as The Lands Between, it was nonetheless a huge region with basically an entire Dark Souls' worth of stuff, sending us into iconic fights with Messmer and a resurrected Radahn and Miquella, as well as really fantastic side content like our exploration of the Abyssal Woods that led to Midra, or Metyr, the Mother of Fingers. (And who could forget Igon's howling fury at Bayle the Dread?)
What I think a lot of players were surprised by, though, was the lack of closure for the story of Godwyn, the first of the demigods to die, slain in soul while his body has continued to live. Godwyn is something of the Baldur of Elden Ring's pantheon, beloved by all (it seems) and whose death triggered The Shattering.
Let's do a summary here:
Godwyn is (though to be) the son of Marika and Godfrey (first Elden Lord and also first of the Tarnished, whom we defeat en route to the final fight against Radagon in the base game). It's likely he was the firstborn, and while Marika's whole Golden Order is built around the notion that she's eternal, in a more traditional monarchic system, Godwyn would have been the clear heir apparent. Godwyn defeated and befriended the dragons, ushering in the establishment of the Dragon Cult within Marika's Golden Order (Cult here in the more traditional term, as a kind of narrower religious movement that is accepted by the larger church but not adhered to by all. I think technically by this definition, a monastic order like the Franciscans would count. In polytheistic traditions, it would be like people who dedicated themselves particularly to, like, Athena, while still worshipping the other Olympians).
Godwyn is thought to have been a kind older brother to Malenia and Miquella. He also, presumably, had children of his own, as it seems that the various characters with "God" as a prefix to their names (subtle, right?) were all part of The Golden Lineage. Unfortunately, this eventually led to Godefroy (a minor Evergaol boss) and Godrick the Grafted, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Elden Ring, though how direct his descent from Godwyn was is questionable (Nepheli Loux, interestingly, is probably a direct descendant if not the daughter of Godfrey, whose actual name is Hoarah Loux, meaning she's probably got a more legitimate claim as heir to Godfrey specifically, even if she's not descended from Marika).
Anyway, Godwyn was the golden child, but on the Night of Black Knives, he was ambushed and slain by the Black Knife Assassins. In a simultaneous act, the cursemark of death was inscribed in his flesh while the other half of it was inscribed on Lunar Princess Ranni's body. Ranni's soul survived but her body died, while Godwyn's soul was killed and his body left alive.
It's not clear if this was evident to start with, because Godwyn's remains were given Erdtree Burial down in the Deeproot Depths. Perhaps because his body lived on without its soul, this created a corruption that now spreads across the Lands Between - Deathroot, which leads to the rise of Those Who Live in Death - more or less Elden Ring's version of the undead (though interestingly, some item descriptions describe the various "nobles" found on the road as undead. Likewise, the Tarnished are described as "Those who Died Yet Live." Unlike the Tarnished, Those Who Live in Death are rotting and decayed, sometimes skeletal.
Godwyn is now considered the Prince of Death, and Fia's questline, where she serves her role as a Deathbed Companion, has her ultimately lay with the Prince to create the Mending Rune of the Death Prince, which gives us the Age of the Duskborn ending.
There are a few things that I find really interesting surrounding Godwyn.
Among the Golden Order Fundamentalists, there are some who hunt Those Who Live in Death, who find their existence to be an affront to the Golden Order, such as D, Hunter of the Dead. Fundamentalist incantations require equal parts Faith and Intelligence, and their dedicated Seal scales with both in equal measures. Many of these have special effects against Those Who Live in Death, preventing them from rising again once struck down the first time.
Ironically, Death Sorceries work the same way, requiring a mix of Intelligence and Faith, and again, their dedicated staff, the Prince of Death's Staff, scales equally with both.
Anyway, Deathroot is said to hold fragments of the Rune of Death, which is why Gurranq (aka Maliketh) has us gather it for him in his attempt to reconstitute it and keep it under lock (supposedly there's an old bit of folkore that dogs can purify dead things by eating them, which might have inspired this).
Godwyn's form is utterly bizarre - his face has transformed into something that almost looks like a scallop shell, and his lower half is that of a fish.
Now... the interesting thing is that we never actually see him before the moment he's assassinated, and when he is, he's being held up by his elbows much in the way that he's posed in death, and he's lower than the assassins. Is it possible that he always had a merman-like form? Certainly Marika's disdain for her Omen twin sons, Mohg and Morgott, with their omen horns (which marked them actually as Hornsent, who would have been considered blessed in an earlier age) would have abhorred Godwyn's exhibition of aspects of the Crucible, where people manifest animal-like features (including horns?)
Perhaps, or perhaps not: after all, Marika hated the Hornsent, which were specifically all about horns. But given that Godfrey drew power from the Crucible (even if he himself is fully human in form) maybe it wasn't even that much of a shock if Godwyn was born with that fishy lower half, and maybe it was acceptable?
Otherwise, there's a possibility that the fish tail was a result of his corruption by Death. There is a lot of aquatic imagery related to death as a power, such as the Tibia Mariners. Perhaps the abyssal depths of the ocean are tied to death, and so the Prince of Death would naturally take on a form more at home int he deep waters?
The strange thing is that Godwyn's presence is pretty thin in The Land of Shadow. The Land of Shadow holds a pillar where it is said that "all manner of death converge." The Suppressing Pillar seems like it was probably made on Marika's orders, given that, as a god who sought to embody abundant life, she loathed death in all of its forms. The Land of Shadows is, in many ways, the Land of the Dead.
Godwyn has a presence there, but it's not as extensive as you'd expect it to be.
There are three catacomb dungeons in The Land of Shadow. These are far larger than the ones in the base game, with multiple levels to descend. In each, you can find one of Godwyn's loyal knights, the Death Knights, who employ his golden draconic lighting magic. (Two are the dungeons' final bosses, while one is found dead there, and you can get their cool armor set, while the final boss is actually outside the catacombs and leads into the Abyssal Woods).
In either one or two of these (I can't remember,) there is a massive Godwyn face similar to the one we find in the depths of Stormveil Castle.
We know that Godwyn's body is growing, cancer-like, across the Lands Between. It's truly some of the most unnerving imagery in the game, with root-like structures manifesting eyes, and showing up even on some creatures (like the crabs in the moat outside of Leyndell where we fight Dung Eater or the various Basilisks).
Thus, these huge facsimiles of him might just be particularly advanced growths. But their presence in the Land of Shadow implies that the Deathroot does reach there somehow (hell, it even shows up in Farum Azula, which raises some really interesting questions about when the city flew up into the sky). I believe, though, that one of the odd details about the Shadowlands Catacombs is that, other than these massive faces, you don't actually see the Deathroot threaded through them like you do in the base game.
When the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was announced, many players were convinced that we'd finally have our big fight against an undead Godwyn the Golden, and so a lot of people were kind of shocked and even disappointed that we were having a kind of rematch with Radahn as its big final boss fight.
Here's the thing: FromSoft tends to zig when you expect them to zag - Shadow of the Erdtree's marketing was focused a ton of Messmer, who is a memorable boss to be sure, but also kind of a supporting player in the real drama of the expansion. Similarly, Artorias of the Abyss was the headliner for the DLC that shared his name, but the actual final boss of that was Manus.
In other words, if we do get a second DLC, if they put Godwyn front-and-center, I would say the chances are very high that he'll be an important boss on the way to the actual final boss. If he's barely referenced, though, I think there's a fair chance.
All this being said: at this point, do we want more DLC for Elden Ring? Or would we want an Elden Ring 2? I know that Dark Souls III was kind of all about how dragging a series out for multiple sequels leads to diminishing returns. But Elden Ring's world is so profoundly dense with lore, even more, I'd wager, than that of Dark Souls.
I wouldn't be upset at all about getting an Elden Ring II (Roman numerals seem more appropriate for the series). At the same time, I suspect that the focus would be more on new elements, with a ton of new characters and taking place probably thousands of years after the first game. Of course, a figure like Godwyn is sure to still be around in thousands of years. How might the Deathroot have evolved in that time?
To be clear, all this speculation is based on a social media post that simply referred to the beauty of riding around on the Siofra River, but it kind of came out of nowhere.
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