arkcantoscreampsnpc7274: I’ve always felt a lot of marika’s actions in the base game felt weird for a god like being, but finding out she basically entered a slave contract with the greater will in exchange for the safety of her loved ones (getting rid of death) after her people were slaughtered changes a lot.

It makes her going 0-100 immediately on her sons death make a lot more sense. She basically viewed the greater will as having lied to her and betrayed her by letting him die

mt2r-music: I just realized that the omen are being treated the way they are due to Marikas history with the horsent. This whole chapter 4 part is stunning. Using her tormentors own power to achieve godhood, bathing her new world in light while condemning the hornsents world in shadow and then stealing the rune of death to make them suffer eternally by her own sons hand, thus creating the curse of the omen.

Although I still don’t get how she achieved godhood to begin with. Why weren’t the hornsents able to do that themselves but a random shaman was? Did it have to do something with the two fingers helping her?

VictorIV0310: I wonder if that specific Hornsent who said these cruel words to the shamans in Bonny Village lived long enough to be subject to similar cruelties by Messmer’s crusaders when they invaded.

I don’t know how long Hornsent lived but assuming he lived to see the crusade take place, I can only imagine it shifting from him whipping shamans with tooth whips and shoving them in jars like it's an ordinary day to him being captured by the crusaders before enduring days of being beaten and branded by serpent flails while being yelled at with slurs and obscenities by them such as being “Graceless scum” who’s only purpose is to be hunted, dehorned, impaled and burned before being forced to march alongside fellow Hornsent who’ve been rounded up, beaten, branded and dehorned to a furnace golem that has yet to come to life.

As the Hornsent are being pushed and crammed inside the golem to the point where’s it’s getting hard to breathe, they are given a speech by a Black Knight captain who says that though they are graceless vermin with no place in the order, their lives will at least serve one purpose: as kindling for their holy crusade.

The Hornsent suddenly reminisces on those shamans back in Bonny Village and realizes that he has become a victim to the same cruelties he inflicted on them.

However, he has no time to think of his current predicament as the crusaders set the golem aflame and the screams of countless Hornsent and the stench of their burning flesh fill the air as the golem comes to life.

So ends the life of one Hornsent among thousands, now used to fuel a lifeless machine of death and murder as it marches onto the battlefield. And so, the crusade continues.

Fragmentsinfractals488: I feel that Radagon and Marika are like St. Trina and Miquella. Like St. Trina is Miquella's "Love". So, Radragon is an aspect of Marika broken off so she could become a God. But everything eventually will move to recombined back together. So, when Radragon merges back, He will become the God Marika became by losing him.

jungtothehuimang: Knowing that she was a Shaman and that Shaman's bodies meld together with the bodies of others, it makes sense that Radagon was his own person but became part of her, whether by choice or not

wordedhalo6746: I don’t care how hard Nintendo falls off, I am NOT playing a souls game

VictorIV0310: On a related note, The design of the furnace golems seems to be a sort of twisted karmic retribution towards the Hornsent approved by Messmer and Marika. The shamans were mutilated, then stuffed into jars to become saints by the Hornsent so in response, Marika orders her son Messmer to wage a brutal, genocidal war against the Land of Shadow with his most prominent war machine being the massive furnace golems where the Hornsent themselves are rounded up in droves, dead or alive (but most likely still alive for extra cruelty), to be stuffed in the golems and lit aflame to bring it to life.

Imagine the screams and howls of terror and agony and the smell of burning flesh as the golem surges to life; An instrument of death’s first gasps of “life” brought forth by the deaths of so many within its frame to serve as fuel for the golem as it marches over the land as an instrument of terror, destruction and mockery as it wears the horned mask of the fell god of fire the Hornsent so feared.

aranthur: I think it's possible the hornsent would have raised one of their own to godhood, if not for Marika's intervention. The old woman in Belurat is referred to in one item description as the "Empyrean grandam," which at the very least means the towerfolk knew about Empyreans and this lady was in charge of finding and/or training them

So I have a theory that in that moment with Marika in the trailer the hornsent were one step away from successfully creating a god of the Crucible. They'd constructed the Divine Gate, they had the primordial gold that would become the Elden Ring, and they had an Empyrean... And then Marika, who had been pretending to be their ally up until this point, killed that person, stole the Elden Ring, and ascended to godhood herself

"The seduction and the betrayal"

SolidShepard: Imagine if Rani had just chosen someone else, like Mohg

plebmcpleb5761: The shape of the Divine Gate is very reminiscent of a crucible. If you look at the negative space, it looks like light being poured out of a bowl of some kind... Or metal being poured out of a crucible.

Jul 07 2024

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