SlyYevon: His body is separated into Holy relics just as the remains of our Saints are Holy. Godrick robbing the capital is like a bishop robbing the Vatican.
puzzleheaded6195: Godwyns aquatic form makes some sense to me if you consider the implications of the Uhl lore. For a long time, I was trying to sort out why Gideon calls Mogh’s dynasty a “revival” and why it’s constantly being reffered as “new” meaning he wasn’t the founder. The ancient dynasty stuff have a heavy theme of water or the ocean because they are built on top of the Ainsel/Siofra rivers which we can only enter from “Wells”. Not to mention the claymen who use bubble sorceries and harpoons. You get the idea. He builds his dynasty on top of the Uld so I was trying to see what I could find. What’s interesting is that the ruins are built on top of the Ainsel/Siofra Rivers that are described to originate where Godwyn is found, conviently in the Greatree Roots as well. I also found it interesting that apart from the Elden Beast, Godwyn is closest thing to a water deity in this game and I started to play with the idea that the Uhl king or whatever could be what Godwyn is morphing into. We know the Uhl Statues always depict a bald figure with a giant beard with some intricate stonework focused on a few places, suggesting something else mixed with the hair. Well, if you look close at the Prince of Death under the Erdtree, Godwyn’s merman form is actually bald(his head tilted to the side) and the blonde hair he inherited from Marika grow under his face suggesting a beard with the tendrils mixed with the hair. He’s also just as skinny. The only exception is the legs but strangely almost all of these statues are purposely cut in half, from the torso. It fits together more when you have many instances in this game where Godwyn is a source of water(Stormveil Husk and the Story Trailer) Going back to Mogh, it’s curious that he calls his dynasty “Moghwyn” which plays with the naming convention after “Godwyn” or maybe the Godwyn Dynasty.
ravencarino6115: Screw you for revealing both the teeth underneath and the hand and arm. Cause I really DO love sleeping at night.
Jerry-iw9sn: I am convinced that Godwins followers were literall gamers starved for more of his lore.
communistmidget583: I think the Erdtree is malfunctioning and can't process that only Godwyn's body is alive, so it mutates it in order to revive it, and his different bodies go through different mutations based on the environment they are in.
johannjorsh3334: The fact that they used the same word for "offshoot" to describe the cadavers seems really interesting to me after you consider that these death knights are basically planting and growing new Godwyns as if he was a tree
Also their circular crowns remind me of an eclipse or a sun besides just the centipede mark
jameshankel8219: Don't forget the blood stain in Stormveil Castle that shows Rogier being struck with deathroot next to Godwyn's face. We may not find collectible deathroot near Godwyn's faces, but Rogier's infliction shows us deathroot is indeed present.
HappyDays66666: Nice. Thats what I always though about godwyn at Stormveil.

Godrick took a piece of godwyn to graft to himself and it didnt work so he buried the piece under his castle and it grew into what we see now. Same for the death knights in SOTE - They maybe took some remembrance or peice of godwyn and it grew into what we see today.
RecluseBootsy: Seeing his corpse in the shadow lands actually scared the shit outta me both times.
Jatch25: I think cadaver surrogate is a surrogate in the sense that they are trying to grow something inside of them. It reminds me of how Mohg's body is effectively a cadaver surrogate for Radahn's soul.

Maybe the death knights and Miquella had intentions of placing Radahn's soul into these husks. However, Miquella may have discovered that he needed a fully dead demigod corpse to resurrect Radahn, not one that is only dead in soul. This would line up with the golden epitaph sword description, which has Miquella wishing for Godwyn to "die a true death.", so that he can use Godwyn's corpse to bring back Radahn. When he realized thst wasnt possible, he changed his plans and charmed Mohg, knowing that a tarnished seeking to become elden lord would kill him.
likeasonntagmorgen: Before the DLC came out, my theory was that the cadaver surrogate beneath Stormveil was actually a shed skin from an earlier form of Godwyn’s metamorphosis. I also drew a tenuous connection to the real world Turritopsis dohrnii, the so called immortal jellyfish. I likened death root to the jellyfish’s polyps.
greenbean4422: Look into Lhutel the Headless

A headless mausoleum knight brandishing the symbol of the eclipse, SHE imbues her weapon with death lightning for fights and uses the Spectral Lance ash of war, which is an occult ash.

Lhutel is also seen guarding key graves, and would almost definitely have known the death knights
cbunny6671: Ohhhh I get it. Marika is a tree. Or Numen's rather are trees.

When you cut a shoot off a tree, it can grow into a full tree all on its own, and if you graft to a tree, it can support and provide nutrients to that new growth. And it seems all of Marika's children specifically retain that property. Radagon's children inherent Demi-godhood because he's part of the same tree, but he's not literally the same tree as Marika.

Millicent and the Godwyn corpses are sprouts that have been cut off and been allowed to grow. And they have a desire to return or form in a way similar to the main tree.

The reason why they need Godwyn's offshoot corpses, is they can't get to the main 'tree' of Godwyn, because he's underground.
They're hoping that essentially a 'Milicent' of Godwyn will be enough to craft a rune for the age of duskborn. Basically they're dumb and wrong.
uninhibition31: Excellent findings Zayf. I'm so tired any time I try to talk about Godwyn's absence in the DLC. I get people responding with "He's dead and he's not coming back, deal with it!" It's like these people don't even read the item descriptions or look for contextual clues, they watch 1 Vaati video and are self-proclaimed experts.
twilightsumbra1633: Crazy theory: what if Godrick was planning on grafting a piece of Godwyn onto himself but decided against it after seeing what he became and that's why the corpse is buried under Stormveil because Godrick tossed him there when he decided not to graft him?
autumn.raider: i absolutely agree with your conclusion that the faces grew from different parts of godwin especially because rogier refers to the one under stormveil as a relic which were often body parts of saints or other important figures to the faith.
ang3l.0f.kniv3s: it’s my assumption that fia is the surrogate of godwyn and ranni’s hallowbrands made whole, gestated within fia like a surrogate mother would. Fia is one of the tarnished who came from a distant land to the lands between, thus the death knights were probably looking for fia/ waiting for her next to the manifestations of godwyn, which likely spread through the roots of the scadutree, which are probably the same as the great tree roots
soulstarved4116: So I watched another video proposing that the "cadaver surrogate" were extra bodies that Godwyn could resurrect into if his main body were to be destroyed by the Golden Order. That's why they're isn't Death Root at those sights because Godwyn isn't actually there yet.
TheCheshireTree: Godwyns corpse is not in the roots of the main earth tree in deeproot. If you stand in front of the body in deeproot, switch maps to upper layer and you see you are close to a minor earth tree north of lyndell.

Going there on the upper map you will find a rotten minor earth tree with undead guards...
niemandac: First time I choose not to skip ad and guy just flexed on me for not being maidenless, great vid btw
nickytheanimal2413: I appreciate you reading the Japanese translation with correct pronunciation
Mumbles0225: I took the closed eyes and lack of death root to mean that he had newly spread there. He's described as being like a plant, and if you've cared for perennial plants, you see that over time your plants will spread but their new growth is always less impressive than the old growth. I assume that, once the eyes are open (a common theme in ER), he'll start growing death root. I think that we see his bits growing around corpse laiden areas because, like all plants, they tend to spread where they can flourish.
spiralunity: I think Miquella was talking to Godwyn in that memory, I think Radahn was plan B. Also for some reason i feel like Miquellas extra spectral arms in the final fight have something to do with Godwyn...
paid14: Maybe they aren't growing because of the deathroot, but actually, much like potatoes, they're growing and sprouting out in search of deathroot.

FYI, when potatoes are away from the soil for too long they'll grow obscene roots in search of the closest nutrients.
Garl_Vinland: I’d like to point out that Stormveil does have deathroot. The walls of the South are being eaten away by thorny tendrils, as are the exile knights. These are death root
luna7157: If, by that point, they were intentionally preparing for the Age of Duskborn, his body may have been transplanted further to create more of Those Who Live in Death.
theclawyaww3740: Elden Ring 2 where Godwyn is the main antagonist and you fight all the Outer Gods would actually be pretty sick. They could go full lovecraftian like Bloodborne.
NickCombs: The DLC is so weirdly disconnected from the base game that I hesitate to go further than consider its lore inspired by the original. It's a different place with different rules. I can only take the death knight lore at face value: that they thought they could serve their master by spreading him through the shadow tree, but it lacks the life force to form deathroot.

We do get some living dead here though, on the plateau south of the hinterlands.
sgttebbs: Godrick stealing a piece of godwyn and hiding it below stormveil could explain why we find a third death knight, dead, in the third catacomb. They expected to find it in the land of shadow, with the other two pieces. Not knowing that it was stolen and kept in the lands between, which they couldn’t return to.

As for why the two cadavers in the land of shadow don’t sprout deathroot, the tablet on top of the suppressing pillar says that ‘all manner of death wash up here, only to be suppressed’. Maybe that has something to do with it?
Freya-l3n: I find it very interesting that death basically means water/ocean. Some people say the dlc basically is underwater as it is in death. Which would explain the ship coffins in a way. But perhaps this could also explain why there is no death root in the dlc areas because it’s basically already dead and so in the “afterlife” death can’t spread anymore ?
codsamy23: Always feels good to see a video/post about Godwyn that's not filled with some weird "we deserve a Godwyn fight" entitlement. I vibe with your content a lot, it's great keep it up !
SebTed-qu2el: Maybe it is time to revisit Godricks model, and see if he has anything grafted on to him that might've belonged to Godwyn
user-tu3pn1eo7t: Here's Zayf once again, giving us what Miyazaki deprived us of
spiralistichope9216: I was actually looking at the main body of Godwyn in Deeproot while watching this video, and on his right upper arm there are those "strange spikes" you point out, which I believe are actually aquatic fins (fittingly), so I think they are meant to be the same thing in the surrogate cadavers/separated corpses.

Great video by the way, this was fantastic and I appreciate the translations a lot! Many people wanted Godwyn to be far more central to the narrative of Shadow of the Erdtree and its main plotline, but I'm honestly happy with what we got and glad they took the time to expound upon his lore a fair bit and delineate what was going on with these surrogate cadavers, even if the translation perhaps created an unnecessary layer of vagueness to the already highly ambiguous style of storytelling that pervades Elden Ring. Videos like this help a lot to elucidate things, so thanks again and well done!
redhand8836: I feel like the use of the unique term "Wakemi" used for both "offshoots" and "Corpse Surrogates" would indicate that they are technically the same thing. These "Corpse Surrogates" being essentially the Malenia "daughters" but for Godwyn. These are his "sons", but since he is bereft of soul, they are just corpses without the blight, and no mind.

A lot of people seem to think that Godwyn being soulless means he's comatose, or a mindless zombie, but I think the fact that he'll defend Fia if she's present and attacked(up until the mending rune is formed) indicates that while without what would constitute "humanity", he is not incapable of thought. I'd say that because of the lack of soul, his "sons" have no blueprint to form in to the same being, and as such just become bodies resembling their "father". I would posit that these "sons" being referred to as "surrogates" indicates that as pieces of Godwyn, just as Millicent and her sisters are pieces of Malenia, if the main body were to be destroyed, through the roots of the erdtree, the husks would be the new hosts of deathblight and the "mind" of Godwyn.
BrassPetals3Voices: One important thing is the use of IRL tree grafting imagery/references as metaphors for parts of the story. Trees can be cloned, grafted, cross-grafted using scions (cut sprigs) and buds in a process that involves wounding and repair. The Stormveil Godwyn (called Scion of the Golden Bough - literally a twig cut from Marika/Erdtree) is a dead/failed Scion. That twig did not survive being cut, and could not be used to propogate Godwyn via cloning/graft/bud graft with Miquella's Haligtree. Probably why there are broken Miquella and Godwn statues (the ones from the Precipice of Anticipation) all around to symbolize that failure.

Aug 13 2024

Buy Elden Ring Runes