"This is goodbye, my dear. But I am satisfied."

The best good boy in gaming.

"Thank you. For guiding me here. The one who walks alongside flame, shall one day meet the road of Destined Death." "Goodbye..."

True Death, the Crucible, and how Marika fucked up big time

In a world were life essence is a finite resource, a True Death require two things : complete destruction of the Old, and transformation of the destroyed matter to make something truely new.

This is what a Crucible is used for : extreme heat allow breaking down of ore into their base components, who can then be treated and refined. Alchemicaly, this means the pure metals (gold, silver, copper) are separated from crude materials to express their full potential. So, to attain true purity, true corruption must first be accomplished. The Alchemist call this the Nigredo, or darker than black, also named the raven, rot, or the Shadow of the Philosopher stone.

In Elden Ring, this primordial Law of existence is fully contained in the Crucible. The Era of the Crucible was an era of chaos and violence, but also floroushing life and metalorphosis. It was both the Era of Birth and of Death. Marika, by sealing Death, also ended up stopping the flow of life, and of Birth.

The rune of Death is the prime comportement of the Crucible, because it is composed of it's two part, the breaking down of things, and the transformation of raw materials. This is fully illustrated by the state of the corpses of Ranni and Godwyn, who both suffered half of Death.

Ranni suffered the half the break things down. Or, in other word, the Flame. Her body is completely burned and empty. It is in noway a living being, but it vaguely kept its old shape because the half Death of Ranni had no transformation.

Godwyn suffered the half that transform raw materials. His soul was completely destroyed in the process, but his body is thriving, transformed into a completely new being. However, because his half Death didn't break down his components, I can't be free of his flesh and is stuck in the Nigredo : existing only as rot and corruption and Shadow, unable to transcend it.

By sealing the Principl of Death of the Crucible, Marika stopped all life from changing : the dead couldn't be freed by rot, and new being couldn't be born.

The Crucible, and it's ability to transform life into raw matter into new life, exist in all creatures, in the form of two organs : the stomach and the womb.

This means the seal of Marika on Death deprived all inhabitant of the Lands Between of these two organs.

For the womb : no one has been born for a long time. The turtleneck used to be eaten as an aphrodisiac, but no one care about this anymore. The bat women lament the loss of their ability to give birth.

For the stomach : everyone is malnourished. Humans and beasts alike are terrifyingly thin. A ravenous hunger animate them. Humans resort to cannibalism, and the dogs and raven turn monstrous from hunger.

No matter how much they eat, they can't be fed, because it has become impossible to assimilate another life. Souls are perpetually stuck in their body even After being digested. The golden excrements are warm and don't smell because there still is a human soul in it.

The Erdtree Roots are bloated with the corpses they couldn't assimilate. The mixture of ulcerated wood and mass of human flesh is rampaging, trying to end it's existence.

The only way to eat or reproduce is via the influence of an outer god, forbidden by the Golden order because they come from the Crucible. Rotten Radahn stay alive by eating corpses. Scarlet rot destroys all and gives birth to many children. The snakemen are all the Offspring of Rykard, who want to devour the Gods.

Marika knew the links between the belly and the Crucible, that is why so many of her non human citoyens, like the trolls,have been gutted. To be accepted in the golden order they had to get rid of all link to the old order.

But now the Land's between are completely rancid, and Marika couldn't do anything to changing because of the very Order she created. So she destroyed this Order, the Elden Ring, and conspired so it could only be reforged by bringing to it the rune of Death, so her mistake could be corrected.

Maliketh sketch(Elden Ring) Got addicted to Elden Ring again, so I felt like sketching one of my absolute favorite bosses I might do some dumb things with my more bestial "tarnished" (the goofy buff lady for those that remember my art from last year) interacting with Guranq and Blaidd

Theory: Godwyn the Golden could’ve been an Empyrean, but he died before the Fingers decided to choose him, and/or he was disqualified because the Greater Will wants a new order and the dragons he’s closely associated with are an old order.

All three of the Empyreans have big ideas. Ranni wants to bring about the age of stars/remove godly influence. Malenia could have had Rot ideas, but she hates it and threw her chips down for Miquella instead. And Miquella thinks the current order is insufficient, so he’s also started a plan to remove the gods. No matter which option wins, it means big changes and something new.

Frankly, if the current order is a failure and you’re looking for something new, I think the first idea would be to look at what’s excluded from the order and try that instead. See: death, omens, everything happening at the Haligtree, the Blasphemous Serpent, the Frenzied Flame, etc. The removal of Destined Death from the Ring, however, is a pretty explicit and often-repeated thing, especially if you tilt your head and look at the Lands Between as a kind of waystation or purgatory. Between here and there, the grey place, between life and death, between ending and new beginnings. All four of the explicitly named Outer Gods have that motif- the deathbirds function between ending and beginning again as psychopomps, the Scarlet Rot kills and transforms into new growth, the Frenzied Flame wants to melt it all down into the primordial (crucible?) origin, the Formless Mother is literally all about bleeding out (and perhaps the womb, I’ll write on that another day). All of those are kind of on the opposite side of the graph from the Golden Order’s focus on creation, birth, and some degree of immortality.

If the dragons were the first abandoned WIP, I doubt the Greater Will would revisit that idea. Scrapped the biologically stratified slave state for Fantasy Catholicism, and that didn’t work either. Too much order, too strict, too unnatural as compared to the wildness of the ancient dragons. So! What was the flaw in this run?

I’d say Godwyn is at least a pretty heavy hint. If you’re looking for a flaw in the Order, and the Tree is the physical manifestation of that order, and it’s diseased, that disease is probably at least a signpost as to what went wrong.

In his current state though, I don’t think he could qualify as an Empyrean anymore because he’s not exactly Alive to exact some sort of Conscious Decision on this disaster second draft of an ideal world. Seems like agency is a pretty important part of being a living god, seeing as Marika’s punishment was having her agency taken away while the Greater Will fished for new applicants.

So! To summarize. Godwyn’s attachment to the dragons (the Greater Will’s old abandoned blorbos) made him insufficient as an option for enacting New Change, despite his popularity and apparent power. Godwyn’s current state as the Prince Of Death makes him an excellent option for Empyrean, since the world order is missing death and that’d be a hell of a change, but since he doesn’t have agency or will anymore he’s still disqualified.

This is Destined Death propaganda by the way and the Two Fingers just don’t know an eligible bachelor when they see him.

"𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓮...𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓫𝔂𝓼𝓼 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓴𝓸𝓷𝓼."

I saw that twitter is probably going to have banking and payment system and I just don’t see it being a good platform. It’s been dog shit and was already on the way out before Elon got his grubby mits on it but now I’ve completely dropped it.

Fuck that place and all it stands for. The only reason I had twitter installed was to follow my favorite artists and they aren’t there anymore so yeah.

If enough people drop twitter quick enough it might straight up die. Let’s hope that’s what happens.

Penelope is a long lost thames to *me*

it's something sinister to love without regard for dear tomorrow

The love was there. It didn't change anything. It didn't save anyone. But it still matters that the love was there.

Lyrics from I'm your man-Mitski

“honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men”

“life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination”

“You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you”

Three stormlight quotes that genuinely help me move in my day to day life

swapped out the wip for the final (probably??) version to keep my blog looking somewhat clean

Death Loves No One

Cause if he did he'd want to keep them forever

After obtaining the title as Ghost King and losing all his family, Danny started to feel lonely. He had friends, ghosts that would stay for eternity by his side but it wasn't the same. Danny felt that his personal connections were what kept him sane, the evenings with Clockwork calmed him down, but it wasn't the same calm that Jazz used to provide.

So, when he was given the title of Equilibrium it wasn't really a big deal. It was just another title among a thousand others, Clockwork advised him to visit earth to discover his purpose but also warned him that he would not look human.

Danny accepted it but didn't take it seriously, he couldn't help but get scared when people started screaming around him. He wasn't doing anything weird, he was visiting the cemetery, his family's graves, but everyone was running away scared.

He realized that since he lost Jazz (the last one to leave) he no longer looked human. He wondered if it was possible that someone might be interested in talking to him but dismissed it. Some people began to nickname him "Death" because all he did was stay in the cemetery.

That's why it was extremely rare to find a boy calling him every day and making a small talk, he became attached to the boy. The boy would visit different graves but always stayed to talk to him, never yelled, or called him a bad name. Danny couldn't help but love him the same way he loved his family.

He wasn't surprised that the boy died soon after (knowing him brought misfortune didn't it?), but he never stopped visiting the cemetery. So, when the boy rose from his grave completely disoriented, Danny wondered if it was somehow his fault.