Bad video peddling bad lore

Could the shadow realm be the sun realm veiled 👰‍♂ to make the shadow as wee se at the end of the trailer Miqella has lifted the veil and the sun is directly behind the shadow tree maybe thays why it wont grow

So Messmer basically IS Elden Lord already

When I saw "archaeology", I knew I was going to be in for some great videos. I never even thought about how much storytelling you could gleam just from looking at things, how many stories the developers put beyond more direct text allusions. Throughout your series you've clearly shown the hard work and thorough research the developers have put into making a living world with a rich history mirroring our own, whether it be the pre-historic Ancient Dynasty mirroring early human empires like Sumeria that formed in Mesopotomia, the Eternal Cities mirroring the cultural genesis of Rome and finally Marika's empire mirroring the rise of monotheistic religions. In essence, you've shown how Elden Ring is a celebration of all of human history and is really a treatise on different cultures intermingling creating particular identities people come to represent and embrace. Thank you for your wonderful videos.

Wonderful video! I always learn something new about ancient history watching your videos, and love to see their parallels in the game.

"the Greater Will" could it be like "the greater good" and like the words/wording "a God", oppose to "the God" ? It is interesting to read item des. mentioning the Greater Will with this context in mind.

Well there is already few occurrences in-game in which we are teleported after being engulfed in smoke. "Dragon-Burnt Ruins Teleporter Trap" "Tower of Return Teleporter Trap". So, the presence of mist is probably related to teleporting. Ranni also visit us surrounded by a misty haze (early game) and disappear with it if we attack her in any point during her quest.

So, I pretty much disagree with everything here. Going in order. While the introduction message is nice and all, there's very little that allows us to establish a cyclical theme in Elden Ring's story. The Erdtree has, in fact, never been burned before us, such a massive historical event is never even hinted at any of the game's description and, to put it simply, it physically couldn't anyway. The way we are forced to go around burning it reveals the impossibility of such a task before our own personal quest. First you need the Flame of Ruin, the only capable of burning the Erdtree as explained in the backstory to the war against the Giants. But the flame has been put to rest, even if not completely, so to re-awaken the flame we need a maiden capable of envisioning flame, a role only Melina is seemingly capable of, and Melina is no regular maiden. If we don't have Melina on our side the literal Flame of Frenzy has to take her role, a semi-divine entity. Finally, even if someone were to find a suitable maiden to re-awaken the Flame of Ruin, and managed to get past the many defenses the Erdtree forces placed on the way to the forge, including a literal Fire Giant, that's still not gonna accomplish anything as long as the Rune of Death is bound to Maliketh and the Erdtree can't burn no matter what. The flame will simply have no effect. So. The Age of the Erdtree begins with the defeat of the Giants. This rules out that the Giants burned the tree, because they lost that war, and their flame was put to rest, even if it could never be fully extinguished. From this moment on the burning of the Erdtree is prevented by the defenses placed on the Mountaintop and the presence of the last giant as a guardian, any would-be burner would have to somehow get past all that force, on top of getting access to the mountaintops, which are also closed to most people. When the Gloam-Eyed Queen is defeated however it's truly GG for any idea of burning the Erdtree, as now the rune is bound to Maliketh and the Erdtree is literally indestructible even to the Flame of Ruin. The only window that might have existed to burn the Erdtree existed only very early in the Erdtree's life, probably in the middle of the Age of Plenty, and then became totally impossible due to the sealing of the Rune of Death. There's no going around it, the Erdtree literally can't burn if Maliketh is alive, and Maliketh is alive when we find him, meaning the Erdtree couldn't have burned at any point between the defeat of the GEQ and Maliketh's death. This according to the very laws of reality inscribed within the Elden Ring. Everything else appears very circumstantial. Some flowery speech from the narrator, some foreshadowing of events that have yet to happen and not that have already happened, some dust in the capital that can't be coming from the Erdtree because the Erdtree can't have burned at any point since literal ancient history (it's highly unlikely that they sealed all the doors in town and left the dust in the city for thousands of years since the time there was a semi-realistic window to burn the Erdtree, this would mean Leyndell was barely ever inhabited and has been a collapsing ruin for all of the golden age of the Golden Order, which doesn't make a lick of sense obviously). And finally, the biggest problem. From games tell themselves through a combination of written descriptions and environmental storytelling. One completes the other, and the written descriptions are very necessary in giving us the tools to actually understand the environment we see, and without those descriptions we'd be left in a vague mess where everyone can just see whatever they want in the 3D assets and no one can ever be wrong. Now, the game tells us many things about the history of the Lands Between through written text, it even tells us of scandalous secrets that the Golden Order tried to hide. Notably, what should be a cardinal point of the story, the many past burnings of the Erdtree, isn't there. Like, at all. It just never happened. Not a line of text, not a stele, not a dialogue from interested NPCs, nothing at all. If such a thing was part of the game's story, it'd be there. It's not. Because it didn't happen. We do have a lot of talks and descriptions telling how it couldn't have happened, and nothing about how it could. The establishment of new Elden Lord is not associated with the burning of any tree. The topic of previous burnings never gets a single mention even when we have characters directly involved in the process explaining us how to do it. It's... Simply not in the game. It's not part of Elden Ring's story. It seems to me that there's just no strong argument here. Just a series of anecdotes, comparisons with other franchises who have different storylines and don't necessarily apply to Elden Ring... Actual facts of real history and trees that are completely irrelevant to us? This is about Elden Ring's story, and it should be analyzed for what it is, a narrative. Adding extraneous element that are not mentioned, directly or indirectly, by the narrative itself is only going to cause confusion and not help us in solving the actual story. So, yeah. Way too much babbling and way too little care for the actual game and its written lore. I truly don't see how you could fit a burning of the Erdtree at any point in the timeline from the beginning of the actual Age of the Erdtree to modern day. You'd probably have better luck with the pre-Erdtree era and its muddled environments where the vagueness of it all gives more space for the burning of an hypothetical previous giant tree that should still be the Crucible, and even then there's still no description at all to suggest such a story and it'd be the realm of wild speculation. At least it wouldn't contradict the established written story of the game though.

I'm not convinced since you never adress how you could burn a illusion.

29:49 Now I'm not an expert, but it's my understanding that China really censors stuff related to death and undead (for example, the Undead race in World of Warcraft are different), so maybe the rune of life mentioned here is just The Rune of Death under a slightly different name to appease the Chinese censors?

28:24 WTF

25:50 I think you need to look up the literal meaning of the word "prophecy". "a prediction of what will happen in the future." - Cambridge You contradicted yourself in the sentence "in Bloodborne this is not merely prophecy (...) Ariana concieves and gives birth to a devine child". Ariana also fulfilled a "mere prophecy"

Whats the music in the beginning?

I find it so curious that Marika's great locks of golden hair are all stripped away once the Elden Beast is put down. Practically all of that massive bundle of golden strands completely cut off once we move in to repair the Elden Ring. Particularly after watching the May 21st DLC trailer, I'm very curious what meaning that hair truly holds.

If you look at the bark of the tree is charged already before we burn it

Your really stretching with this one

Mesmer did it all for marika I would say. I definitely wouldn’t say that he burnt the tree and was banished I would say he did it so marika could have the new red tree under the golden order

Dunno if someone else beat me to it, but Deathblight doesn’t have thorns. Those “spikes” are the wings of insects.

Technically earth actually is the center of the universe though :P

I like all what have been said about the archaeology related stuff in the video But the root resin item description explicitly says "for this reason catacombs are built around Greattree roots. " if the purpose of the catacombs was for cremation why would they build it around the greattree (or erdtree) roots? Maybe i am missing somethin obvious!

The use of the word Shadow in the title specifically is interesting to me, given the aenima/aenimus self thing going on with Marika/Radagon. If we take it a step further and substitute Godrey/Tarnished as the ego, then Messmer's motifs start to fit into the idea of the subconcious shadow

Elden Ring origin story TL;DR: Graham Hancock was right

Given the new video and the similarities of the erdtree portal I wonder if Messner burnt the first erdtree revealing the old god from which Marika took the threads that would weave the elden ring. To prevent the same happening to her she created the illusion of the erdtree so that her reign would never be ended. My prediction is that after we kill messmer possibly in the name of Marika we might have the chance to fight Marika (hidden ending) and as such perpetuating the old gods age or we see her taking the threads and hiding the reality under the veil. Roll credits. In any case there’s gonna be some Cthulhu shit at the end 100%.

Can I like a video twice

I still think that there were more than one ancient dynasty, based on the different palace names (Uld and Uhl) and the existence of ancient "rot kings" that seem to be linked to the Grand Cloister. I think that, much like the sumerian city-states, some dynasties came to equate their authority with the worship of a single god, resulting in the rise of the rot king. This may be why Mohg chose that palace and styles his rule as a dynasty: it might have been associated with the Formless Mother way before him. Regardless, it's clear that Elden John's teachings persisted in several dynasties and well into the present, given how Marika herself has a lot of ancient tablets presumably dated to that period. It wouldn't surprise me if the "Great Tree Empire" you speculate existed arose from these "faithful", while the more monolatric cities died out.

The total absence of the Ancestral Followers from the historical record, even other cultures', makes me think that they are a revanchist cult that reverted back to what they perceive to be "the old ways", likely conflating them with the ancient dynasty, which they fantasise could have welcome them, unlike the Golden Order. Given their skin colour, it wouldn't surprise me if they were originally Nox that distanced themselves from their society when they perceived its imminent downfall, or traumatised survivors in search of new purpose. This theme of "retro-cults", besides its romantic and medieval literary precedents, is also present in Dominula, the Mohgwyn Dynasty and the Volcano Manor. Pretty interesting stuff either way.

Omg Risk Of Rain 2 song at 17:34

Re-watching for Primordial Crucible speculation.

The Lands Between deez nuts

Brother, you have some of the best lore videos on the internet today, I fall asleep to this man!!

Amazing video and analysis man, Love ur videos from Iraq❤️

I think ancient people were generally smart enough to understand that manta rays were sea creatures. If you live near the sea, you probably subsist partially if not mostly on seafood, meaning you're very familiar with how sea creatures look and smell, and might have even seen manta rays swimming in the ocean. You're also familiar with dead fish and whatnot washing up on land, especially after storms. However, if manta rays aren't native to a region, you might not see them much aside from the biggest hurricanes, or other unusual circumstances in weather patterns and ocean currents, so I think it's possible that a myth might develop of manta rays as some kind of special omen of storms and disasters, related to but distinct from regular sea creatures. I feel like it would have taken a long time for the myth to develop into giant flying manta rays, but then again, the world of Demon's Souls is pretty fantastical, so the theory doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to me.

I'm pretty sure the story trailer they just released will be a goldmine for the next video.

Also LMAO Vaati literally copied you word for word about the trailers!!! He's a real fucker for that imo. Like POS lvl 10. And his voice is smarmy 😂 TA all day!

At 6:34 the Erdtree looks like a sad face or something, kinda like the great deku tree from Zelda *Ocarina Of Time*

wow that last bit really gagged me

I thought we were all pretty confident that Vyke was the most recent burner of the Erd Tree before the tarnished player arrives. Do we still think that's true or has the Erd Tree been burnt 3 or more times in the past?

To add a little horticultural context to the gnarled tree shown in the trailer and in regards to the video on the misbegotten and grafting. The tree is 'dog legged' which happens for multiple reasons but generally denotes an undesirable plant. One can still graft these plants but they are cut off below the aberration.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", as in the film version of The Wizard of Oz. Away from the "curtain", we see the spectral Erdtree, which no one can receive the sap from, any longer. Its glory is too sacred to touch: It must be worshipped from a safe distance, so that no one can uncover the truth. Behind the "curtain" is the burned Erdtree, still giving sap, but in a form that shows that Marika is not as powerful as she wishes herself to be perceived by the populace. The symbol of her weakness, the object of her shame, is not for public consumption. The masses must not know her fallibility; otherwise, she will lose her tenuous grip. Out of sight indeed means out of mind: Anything hidden away can be ignored and forgotten.

Dude doesn’t have the moral validity to say “crusades bad”

I just started watching your videos. I think you make some of the most interesting and insightful Elden Ring content out there. Keep up the amazing work! I can't imagine the big brain it takes to put all these pieces together

Truly amazing video. The tablet absolutely blew my mind. I've just discovered your channel and am now watching all of your videos from oldest to newest.

Thank you! I've been scouring the web for an actual explanation for what the hell was going on with Mensis, and this is absolutely the most sensible interpretation I've heard so far!

I figured the new tree was the “corpse” of Erdtree, so it’s good to see the facts support it lol

Another important detail is Godfrey's portrait as Horah Loux. the fact that they Hung him up on a tree with his beast in his death tells us the enemy in the badlands hated him. (maybe it was his own clan that took him out for originally leaving them for the erdtree.) BUT A HUGE DETAIL is that the tree they hung him up on has a tiny bit of grace in it... (which shines just behind him and there are clouds behind the tree so it's likely not the sun. a small amount and it's twisted like the great tree in the shadowlands. It was though they crucified him on it and yet they have their own tree with a bit of grace? That portrait must be after he lost his grace or why else would they crucify him in such a way.

I noticed that these reliefs of the ships and the early historical figures are in large, large relief at the Grand Cloister, too. So was it Numen and Beastman peers of Marika’s who sealed away the God of Rot?