Elden Ring Lore - The Scadutree Avatar & Miquella's Great Rune

[@kagelynx]

One of my favorite boss fights. The tree felt like it was struggling to win, too.

[@happysuds1856]

I loved this boss too … until plow 😣 then light spear 😖

[@LocksAndChains]

I love it when playing solo. One of my favourites. Not so much when I’m helping others. A lot of stupid hosts get destroyed by this thing.

[@Nicoseilas]

That attack when it mimics the scadutree, explodes and fall. Majestic

[@levampblaze6312]

A bit harsh dont you think. Not every players are re good dodging. ​@LocksAndChains

[@chandusaha4864]

one interesting observation is that, when you walk into the scadutree base, the water around the area has a golden hue to it but after we kill the scadutree avatar you can the that golden color has been drained and the water around us is now black

[@jamesnorman9160]

There's something depressing about the fact the Scadutree Avatars are consigned to the muck and the mire at the Scadutree base while the the Erdtree Avatars remain bathed in golden light and grace. And Miquella abandoning his Great Rune here could be seen as him discarding it in the most concentrated part of the Scadutree's power, and leaving it in the care of a suitably powerful guardian in case a certain Tarnished comes looking for an advantage...

[@joebykaeby]

Scadutree Avatar is currently my favorite FromSoft boss design to date. The symbolism and creativity of the design is just top-tier.

[@CDio-vr3bx]

There's a certain level of irony in Miquella trying to bury the sins of his mother marika and how it simuñtaneoudly leads to more pain. - it led to the manipulation of mohg, Radahn and possibly Malenia which leads to the bloody fingers going mad, the battle at aeonia and the rotting of caelid - it led to him casting St Trina away, perhaps his other half and I believe to have been his original plan for consort which leads to us needing to kill him - it led to him provokig the scadutree avatar and flooding the town which we can assume was inhabitted with innocent people Miquella's age of compassion would be built on bloodshed tbf most of the endings available for us are built on bloodshed except for maybe goldmask's ending. Miquella the kind is a monster.

[@Nemo12417]

Eh, while Mohg is definitely cleared of the allegations of pedophilia, if the Bloodfiends are anything to go by, what we saw of Mohg in the base game is probably what the servants of the Formless Mother are like. To quote Ansbach, Mohg aspired to Lordship, and no demigod who aspired to that could be said to have clean hands. Especially the ones who wanted to do so outside the purview of the Greater Will.

[@VictorIV0310]

@Nemo12417 So Mohg was already a brutal, opportunistic warlord and cult leader vying for lordship in a broken, war torn land even before Miquella charmed him? Or that the charmed somewhat enhanced these traits that were already there to begin with?

[@Dressyone223]

Yet despite that his age would have been the best bet for peace

[@Von_Ruckems]

I was just wondering when there would be a video on this and boom. I love this channel.

[@KurwaRomek]

It's always puzzled me why the Scadutree seems to be even holier than the Erdtree, its sap a vibrant gold that keeps pouring on the land. It's like the Erdtree is a husk that longs for being reunited with its half.

[@jager477]

This whole game and DLC is about half’s, Marika and Radigon, Miquilla and St. Trina, Godfrey and (insert different second phase name here), even minor characters like D, Hunter of the dead, who is one soul split into two body’s. It’s so cool!

[@positivecontacts]

0:50 It’s not the literal shadow of the Erdtree in the literal sense, it’s is the shadow of the Erdtree in the Jungian sense! It’s the body, the flesh and the lower self, the Yin of light and shadow. The Erdtree is the mind element, intangible, representing cognitive faculties, the Yang element of the Dao duality. The “shadow” part is only shadow because it is suppressed. Light and shadow need to be unified in a Jungian individuation sense. In this way it is a literal tree and where the force of the Erdtree came from, but it is only the Erdtree shadow in a metaphorical sense (and maybe a visually allusion) sense BECAUSE it was suppressed by Marika. It’s easier to understand if you look at the game from the metaphor of a human internal landscape- the Scadutree is the spine, nervous system and guts. The Erdtree is the cerebral nerve, core and brain. Marika separate mind and body by becoming a god. What has consciousness to do if it is ever conscious and never dying.

[@AegisKHAOS]

Don't know why, but I find it particularly funny we are using the avatar's head as a club. 😂 As far as Miquella's rune goes, I remembered months ago watching a vid on how the description of 'original sin' was a mistranslation, and the more appropriate word to use instead was 'causality'. Having recently played games that touched on the concept of karma, specifically Wukong, Miquella trying to become a god by going beyond causality stood out even more. Also, the imagery of Miquella removing his own body parts piece by piece was funny enough. Now I am imagining him standing there letting the avatar beat the crap out of him. :p

[@jager477]

The Scadutree and its avatar both seam to resemble weeds rather than trees. This fits thematically because of our perspective of trees and weeds in relation to the Golden order and the Hornsent. Trees are seen as positive and need to be protected like the Golden Order, while weeds are seen as something to be uprooted and tossed away to be forgotten like what Marika did the Hornsent society.

[@sk8legendz]

1:38 Looks like Bongo Bongo and Petey Piranha had a baby ngl 😂

[@Merzhost]

Hey you think the Scadutree might be the Great Tree? The Erdtree's roots are said to follow the Great Tree's roots in order to parasitically collect the bodies shoved into them, and everyone assumes that the second tree that's choking out the Scadutree is the "top" of a tree, but it might be the root structure of the Erdtree reaching up and squeezing the amber sap out of it. Most of those "branches" should be reaching outwards for light, but they seem to be reaching "inward" for nutrients, which makes me think of roots. Also, if you look at the Messmer Soldier Chest Armor it says it has an image of the Scadutree, but it looks like a kind of smaller and fuzzier image of the second larger tree that we see on the Door of the Erdtree. There's a smaller tree representing the Erdtree at the bottom, and this big tangly tree at the top, which was probably what the Great Tree looked like before Marika sealed Destined Death and wrapped the Erdtree around it. If this is true, it really punctuates how insane and traumatizing The Betrayal was. Not only is your land sealed away in some pocket dimension, but the Great Tree, the Primordial Crucible of Life and an everlasting symbol, is now being slowly strangled over the course of hundreds of years as you are being cleansed by Messmer's Crusade. Spurn all the exists. Wound all that exists.

[@square-table-gaming]

I don't believe it's possible for this to be the case as it's said the Scadutree is the literal shadow of the Erdtree and was born alongside it

[@positivecontacts]

@@square-table-gamingtwo halves of the same whole- have you seen the new movie The Substance? It deals with themes of the female gaze and pressure put upon young women in Hollywood, but also on parasitism, biological legacy (parenthood) and split-gene cloning. I find a lot of visual allusions, while done with a completely different visual language, are talking about the same thing here. The main character (very loose spoilers) receives a treatment that makes a biological clone of herself who then she has to share time with- while she grows ever older- the young clone doesn’t age- see the parallels to Miquella and Malenia? The tagline of the film is “Remember You Are One” that is to say mind and body are one. The protagonist makes a clone for her mind to be young in and she just acts like a brat, abusing her older self. This is telling us that there is often a disjuncture between our mental age and physical age- or that if there is, it can play chaos in the choices we make with our lives. Marika’s choice to ascend to godhood but excise the light from the shadow and suppress the greatree’s truth is a similar example of this divergent path of mind and body. She created a world where only “gold” (thought, memory, light, life) should exist but also went to war upon her body, the greatree and the land of shadow, all things to do with cycles and ageing (the crucible is the womb aka earth, the formless mother is space or the void etc.. the land of shadow is filled with BODIES. Enir Elim shows that evolution was made through human sacrifice, body on top of body, but the crucible current is made up of two half’s equal and opposite attracting. Marika broke the contract and took what she preferred, damning everyone else to live in a purgatory or a hell. Marika’s choice was a reaction due to trauma, but she is suffering the consequences of it the most. (Just my two cents on a coffee ramble, don’t take it too seriously if you don’t like the idea.)

[@mc-inversal7069]

@@positivecontacts THE SUBSTANCE REFRENCEC AND MORESO TIE-IN TO THE VERY CLEAR COMMENTARY OF THE DIVINE FEMININE AND MATERNITY WITHIN ELDEN RING I LOVE TO SEE IT

[@pancakke08]

The Great Tree is a mistranslation

[@positivecontacts]

@ it doesn’t matter- there is still a spiral helix double tree depicted on the tablets in Enir Elim, let’s call this “idealized” double tree the Greattree. The depicted image is clearly upright compared to the leaning and supported wreck we meet that is known as the Scadutree. Let’s then say that Scadu + Erd = Great. Then it doesn’t matter if it’s a mistranslation, though I think it likely that the roots under the Lands Between are small “g” greattree roots and the Erdtree was grafted to those roots before it was destroyed and replaced with an illusory tree of light.

[@peterbear4413]

'Impenetrable thorns' is also the exact wording used for the barrier that keeps our Tarnished (and everyone else) out of the interior of the Erdtree, and what keeps Marika/Radagon confined within. This raises the interesting question of whether that 'sealing' is related in some way to the Scadutree, the Land of Shadow, or perhaps even Miquella. We don't actually know who or what imprisoned Marika in the Erdtree, save for one line of dialogue that implies it was the Greater Will Itself, but as we know the Two Fingers are not always reliable narrators. Could it be that Miquella is somehow the one that sealed away his mother, as part of (or perhaps even the beginning) of his own quest for godhood?

[@KurwaRomek]

I would say the seal of thorns itself is the work of Radagon because it's shaped like his trademark diamond cross pattern, the same one that is behind his statues, on his soreseal and shown when you use the sacred relic sword's wave of gold. So if I had to bet, it's Radagon who confined Marika (therefore himself)

[@josephdellavecchia7828]

I figured it was 3 separate avatars and they each represented a separate twisting of the scadutree

[@Nicoseilas]

The scadutree avatar arena looks like a bunch of dead sunflowers. I think marika banned the light from the original scadutree. That place was beatiful.

[@nemesisundead83]

My guess on Micqulla has three arms, its what he sacrificed to make his Erdtree, thats what it cost him, the cost of divinity, is the cost of self, the more you sacrifice they stonger it grows, His lost arm as part of the old order, and can't be returned cause well there is a massive tree to he north thats already fully grown, cant take back whats no longer there, his arm is the tree now, heck Miquella probably relazied what was going on with his "soul, sprirt, grace, whatever" was being used to make his tree so he abandoned it cause the cost was too great, he would literally have to die to get his tree to grow to the full power of the golden erdtree I would have left and out another way especially if i find out my "soul" is being destroyed to make my perfect kingdom

[@epiccthulu]

Seems like we found the origins for the Briars of Sin. The lore involving the guilty whose eyes are gouged with thorns, the thorns on Stormveil castle and mountain top of the giants, all of it seems linked to this.

[@DanielGarcia-rx3kt]

Finding Broken Runes throughout the Land of Shadow seem to have credence to your theory about the Scadutree and its power being able to break the light of the Erdtree. That's what shadows do.

[@akechijubeimitsuhide]

Miquella: *yeets his broken rune* Some Goth Sunflower: mine now

[@The.Nasty.]

The Scadu Avatar multiple stages almost gave me an aneurysm… The third time he regrew I was screaming at the TV WHY? WHY?!? WHAT IS THIS? WHEN DOES THE PAIN END??

[@kyte5648]

I bet the second time it used it's nuke, you thought you knew, what to expect, only for it to hit you with the triple holy combo nuke.

[@buckyhurdle4776]

@@kyte5648 I don't know why, but I just knew the 3rd resurrection was coming. The triple nuke, not so much

[@kagelynx]

One of my favorite boss fights. The challenge and story told were amazing. Difficult but fair. The tree felt like it was struggling to win, too.

[@thebigboy7644]

I’ve been waiting for a lore drop on this boss, genuinely one of my favourite bosses in the dlc so far. It felt so desperate in the 3rd phase, like the avatar was really giving its all.. it made me sad

[@nikhilnair4359]

Scatdoodoo tree

[@Splunkmastah]

Never felt so bad about killing a Sunflower. Genuinely felt the same way I feel when killing the Old Demon King and Maiden Astraea. Just…. Icky.

[@tHEsHINYsTONES]

Eldenloooooooooore.... nice❤

[@Xander-DE]

Amazing 🎉

[@mattsherman4964]

I never understood what they meant when they said the Scadutree was a “shadow” of the erdtree. Does this mean it was basically a yin to its yang or something or is it like literally its shadow or something?

[@square-table-gaming]

They were born simultaneously. I think of it as a physical "shadow self"

[@crilleedara]

BUT WHAT IS THE DIVINE GATE???

[@Löweundju]

It's a dead tree, in the fact that it resembles real white dead trees that are infected. It's possibly a dead trunk.

[@hhowdy]

Wait so if Miquella is divesting his flesh and his great rune in The Land of Shadow what was the Mohg thing then? Isn’t that his body? In the cocoon?

[@square-table-gaming]

Interestingly, this has never been confirmed. It's possible the only think in the cocoon is the arm we see hanging from it, as "God Miquella" is clearly missing 1 arm.

[@danwright4384]

I heard a theory - and I'll admit that this was one I subscribed to for a while - that the Scadutree Avatar WAS Miquella. Or at least what became of Miquella once he divested himself of his great rune. The three phases supposedly represent the three stages of Miquella's life, with the final one being his ascent to a god. Not sure how true this is, but it would be an interesting idea. This would also make sense why it makes a Miquella type pose when it explodes into light.

[@frankiefromky]

[@nbmoleminer5051]

For the algorithm etc etc

[@Soulute367]

This fight was cool when I got to it the first time. Still a fun fight either way.