Shadow of the Erdtree | Episode 3

That St Trina Episode

[@tolaut]

What an emotional rollercoaster that was. Miquella's followers losing trust in him AND St. Trina insisting that you.. well.. Poor Quelaag

[@HeevaEgo]

Genuinely might be my favourite set of events in a fromsoft game ever. Especially the portion leading up to, and concerning with, Trina. That broke me. Love the direction they took Trina. I had it all wrong before the DLC. I thought she was initially a force of evil, but her being a tragic force of Good is what makes it even more upsetting

[@hardin_of_astora]

Well, the hornsent werent innocent after I learned what they have done to the shamans... Both the hornsent and Marika were really really really cruel people...

[@sethstewart9704]

My wife and I played through the DLC together, and the fissure sequence was downright chilling. The sadness of it all was instantly conveyed as soon as you read the word "love".

[@possibly12]

This is the video that made me go check for the twitch vods instead LOL. Some of those comments were so frustrating. Unfortunately the twitch vods do not have their chat saved.

[@Haden475]

idk why but chugging the nectar and then dying was so funny to me

[@jolteontrainer7489]

Okay, first off, this was an amazing stream. The DLC is phenomenal, and Quelaag was killing it with the boss fights (and making sense of the lore to put things into context). Second, those who keep misunderstanding or just being hella dense about what's being said to derail the stream were straight-up asses. For Quelaag to entertain your arguments and then accussing her on baseless logic is so disrespectful. Anywho, I can't wait for more insightful dlc lore content. Lol

[@vanDaalstad]

i like that i followed roughly the same route you did, about a day delayed. i explored everything but Scadu Altus thoroughly (though not thorough enough it seems, you found stuff i hadn't in the Gaols) and the Fissure was also my top priority after the seal broke. i can't wait to see your reaction to later revelations on these vods.

[@johndavis29209]

Thank you for uploading these! I pretty much played the DLC alongside you and Jerma lol

[@cavia-xe8eg]

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[@peytonrussell7613]

Kinda like the rules of hypnosis. You have to want to do the thing/believe deep down to be made to do so?

[@cavia-xe8eg]

@@peytonrussell7613 to some extent, at least! obviously ansbach and the hornsent were both working with the rest of these people regardless, but we saw ansbach (and i'm paraphrasing here for fear of accidentally getting spoiled for anything later-game, forgive me!) holding off swearing his allegiance to miquella without more information, and leda straight up says the hornsent never trusted her even while charmed, so i feel like probably if mohg wanted nothing to do with this he still would have cut miq out of the haligtree and brought him down to the uhl palace ruins, because miquella said so and we very politely do whatever miquella asks of us 😌, but it probably would've involved a little less kissing the hand and "miquella is mine and mine alone"-ing. mohg and thiollier are both Super Weird and possessive about their respective preferred aspect of miquella, but none of the rest of the cast so far appears to be psychosexually obsessed with them in quite the same way - i'm not entirely sure what the common thread is yet. maybe they both have just naturally obsessive personalities and so that's the lens through which miquella's love was interpreted! maybe they were both already enamored of miquella in some way before being charmed! to figure out more about mohg's situation i really feel like we need formless mother lore and marika lore. i don't know what connection miquella has to either of our moms yet. miquella being called "the Wounded Empyrean" in the empyrean blood burgeon item description is giving formless mom for sure, but miquella crafting a needle to ward off the influence of outer gods all while gladly turning to an outer god is...a little strange. not impossible, but definitely strange. there's also the line gideon has about how "perhaps queen marika's sorrow was justified..." when we tell him mohg had miquella. if marika and miquella were enemies, then marika's sorrow might be at the realization that her cursed children were going to achieve what they sought, but there's a decent amount of circumstantial evidence that marika and miquella were allied: we find marika's scarseal in elphael, there's a black knife assassin in ordina and another in the cave where we find a necromancer, the candletree shield, and a nascent butterfly, and obviously it seems marika and ranni were somehow associated in the night of black knives, and ranni and *miquella* have connections through torrent and the spirit-calling bell, and i'm also interested in the demi-human queens, whose staves are "a gift once given to the demi-humans to foster peace...sneered at by fools in the academy", and they cast blue sorceries but using the same sigil that appears in gold on the cleanrot's weapons? it's not the standard haligtree sigil but it seems undeniably associated with miquella. anyway, if marika and miquella were allied, which i have absolutely no clue one way or the other (miss marika please tell me your secrets) then mohg being charmed into taking miquella to the uhl palace ruins wouldn't seem worthy of sorrow, implying potentially that the charm came later, potentially in self-defense as it sounds like ansbach's was. there's also the detail potentially worth considering that in cut content miquella was still in the haligtree, and it seems like the backstory grrm wrote ended right around the actual event of the elden ring's shattering, after which "the mad taint" of the great runes twisted their holders. miquella being moved to the uhl palace ruins by mohg then might be a very late stage addition and not part of the original plan, whatever the original plan was? they also might have been just normal allies at some point in the past and one or both of their great runes made things go wonky. hell if i know. i do feel like so far miquella is more likely to be affiliated with placidusax's god than the formless mom (unless those are one and the same), given that miquella's needle has to be used in farum azula, ranni gives us the wolves from the farum azula praying figure statue underneath the old elden ring configuration, and the other use of "halig-" that comes to mind apart from haligtree is the haligdrake talisman, "talisman depicting a golden ancient dragon...the ancient dragons, who ruled in the prehistoric era before the erdtree, would protect their lord as a wall of living rock. and so it is that the shape of the dragon has become symbolic of all manner of protections." i'm really interested by the golden color in particular here because there's gold all over the place in farum azula, and the series of events with rings of light spells are...very interesting. we start with miquella's discus of light, which was made while miquella was still a fundamentalist and produces "a ring of light"; radagon's ring of light replies with "a golden ring of light", then miquella again gives "three rings of light", no gold, and we get the lore about miquella abandoning fundamentalism. the new incantation we got, multilayered ring of light, says: "produces a multilayered ring of golden light...this light-ring incantation was cultivated by a tradition separate from golden order fundamentalism." we've achieved gold finally! but through a completely different tradition! uhhh this got very long and very far away from your question. but yeah i think miquella's charm is not 100% mind control judging by what we've seen so far, and different people are affected in different ways or to a greater/lesser extent based on reasons that we can really only speculate on right now! anyway wow i'm interested to see where we go from here! i really want to pick apart whatever's going on with the mohgwyn dynasty under a microscope. FINAL THOUGHT it's very interesting that mohg and gideon talk about "the *revival*" of the mohgwyn dynasty, not the founding. 🤔

[@Skibbutz]

Justice for Lord Mohg! He was being Miqlested all these years and the bastard had us thinking it was the other way around

[@Sleeper_6875]

really interesting

[@cadoized]

my heaurt. i loved her. waaaaaaaah.

[@Baconomics1]

52:24 i love the sheer disrespect Quelaag has for the human nuggets

[@MyriadTisiphone]

miquella's abandonment of trina really hits really hard as someone that lives with other selves

[@mishi6693]

hey quelaag would u mind switching back the video thumbnail to ur cool art like eps 1 and 2? the screenshots got spoilers 😅

[@typhonyx_was_taken]

54:30 for Lamenter 2:08:49 Colonialism bad, trans people cool, don’t harsh the vibes 2:11:23 COLONIALISM BAD, TRANS PEOPLE COOL, DON’T HARSH THE VIBES 😠 2:17:46 for Putrescent Knight Chat was being so batshit insane that I decided to count it as a boss fight. Sorry if I missed any my liege

[@denniscarr9234]

I remember once when I was in a bad relationship, I always felt like there was a part of me saying "I can't". "I can't be a good boyfriend", "I always mess up", "I can't be good enough". But now when I look back, I realize that part of me knew it wasn't right, and was trying to push away from that situation. Really it wasn't an "I can't", but an "I won't". "I won't betray myself." "I won't let myself be content with something that isn't right for me." "I won't give everything to this person who doesn't love me." I see power in that now. I think Miquella mistook Trina's "I won't" for an "I can't". He thought of her as a weakness rather than the one thing that was protecting him. She was that intuitive part of him that knew pursuing godhood wasn't right. When he gave her up, he betrayed himself as much as he betrayed his followers.

[@perseusveil9376]

Miquella abandoned Trina probably because she was making him doubt about ascending to godhood and do what he thought he had to do, which is why she expressed the need to stop him. Its a situation similar to Radagon and Marika having different goals regarding the elden ring, and Radagon probably getting the Elden Beast support to crucify and imprison her.

[@thospe-f8x]

That argument around 2:00:00 over whether Marika's regime was colonizing and subjugating other populations, as frustrating as it was, I think is a testament to the quality of the worldbuilding because we literally hear those arguments all the time in the real world. "that wasn't colonialism - it seems more like a civil war" sounds like every time an imperialistic culture claims that a neighboring group does not have its own distinct culture and has always been a part of them anyway, and that annexation is merely reclaiming their rightful ancestral homeland or uniting their people. Think Russia with Ukraine. I would also make an argument for this applying to the China's treatment of Hong Kong and Taiwan - even if the former is complicated by earlier colonialism, Hong Kong has diverged culturally from mainland China and its people have made it clear they value their independence. "That culture had some unethical practices" (ESPECIALLY when we only really have fragmentary information about that culture, robbed of context) would've read as "those were savages and we were uplifting them" except the golden order pretty explicitly committing a genocide against the crucible-touched within their own borders makes it clear that even that is a lie. Similar to arguing "queer folks shouldn't support because they have a lot of institutional homophobia" as if there aren't queer people within that population who are also getting bombed, displaced, or starved, or as if cultural eradication is an appropriate response.

[@Sleeper_6875]

exactly!!!

[@jjohnfnchf7535]

The culture had some unethical practices. Interested in what the implications of the elders hiding and partaking in frenzied flame worship is. Some legitimacy to the claim maybe

[@goro158]

SPOILERS FOR LATER IN THE DLC - except in the case of Marika, she is native to this land and her people are the ones that were being used by the Hornsent as sacrifices (filling for the jars that were then used by the Hornsent to try and reach divinity), so it's less "Spanish conquistadors destroy the Aztec Empire and subjugate its people and try to whitewash it as stopping a heathen culture" and more of a slave revolt turning into the former slaves/sacrificial victims turning into the oppressors, so the quote about Hornsent just being on the losing side of a war actually does apply here unironically.

[@felipecouto1102]

@@goro158 I still have to catch up to Queelag's current streams, but I am DYING to see her reaction to Shaman village, because with all the info she currently has, she is absolutely correct: the Golden Order would not have ANY right to come to another culture and exercise a Crusade in their lands because they view their culture as barbaric, SPECIALLY when we see they do barbaric things to the oppressed people they would be supposedly saving. Ofc, Marika still has no grounds for genocide here, but it complicates things SO MUCH MORE, and humanizes her character so much more, when we learn that she actually IS local to the area, she *is* indigenous population, and was the oppressed one. I think, at the end of the day, that the point the DLC makes is about cultural oppression and cycles of violence, and how Miquella intended to break free from those cycles, but its still incredibly interesting how EVEN WITHOUT FULL INFORMATION of the context provided, we could still have very interesting debates about what was going on

[@dietrichenstein]

Seeing people throwing around words like 'colonialism' and 'genocide' in the context of the mythology of this setting is so unbelievably annoying. Brain rot for real. Colonialism, like imperialism, are specific products of capitalism and exist IRL in our particular historical context SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of economic exploitation. Reducing a mythological figure who is the vessel/container for the metaphysical being that LITERALLY dictates the nature of reality, life and death to - hurr hurr Marika bad bc colonialism bad - is just intolerably annoying. Like I'm sorry are ya'll saying the golden order is just capitalism??? Are ya'll saying that Marika just brought capitalism to the lands between??? god... Ppl are projecting so much complete and utter reductive nonsense that isn't supported anywhere in the game - framing Marika as a 'settler' colonial power who shows up and puts her boot on the neck of natives for her own enrichment is completely insane and is not what the game portrays in any way. 😩

[@count_rizzula]

st. trina is the most adorable little thing on earth and miquella WILL be getting powerbombed for throwing her in a goop pit

[@Haveldorf]

Came here for lore and gameplay, stayed for Quelaag shutting down dumbasses in youtube chat. I appreciate you keeping your content on here in spite of the contrarians, the agitators and the morons you encounter.

[@KingJobber]

All Mohg haters. APOLOGIZE.

[@mikedelgrande5296]

Thank Marika your videos exist to get me through work and back to my real world, The Lands Between.

[@Berkut888Gaming]

Quelaag I love you content! But damn, let the npcs finish their lines girl 🥲

[@ryelynnwrites]

As soon as I went through the fissure, I knew I had to come and listen to what you thought of the new lore. This area broke my heart but I loved watching your experience with this thread of lore.

[@supertoaster57]

Weird people in chat are indeed unfortunate, I am here because I want to see a youtuber based on the lore aspect play through the game from a detailed lore perspective. Quelaags knowledge and commentary on the game makes for the most interesting playthrough and probably the only full one I'll watch. I hope chat can stay on topic and not be weird so I can just listen to her get excited about lore.

[@null8384]

did not expect the politics this stream lmao "guys no one brought up hitler we're not bringing up hitler"

[@pitpuscas]

Love your content! Btw I was listening to a history podcast the other day and stumbled upon some cool name references that might be related to the DLC story. The Romans led a campaign called the CELTIBERIAN Wars fought to subdue a group of CELTS inhabiting an area in the Iberian Peninsula. Its last phase was called the NUMANTINE War (i.e. against the NUMANTINE). Bellum Numantinum was the latin name. Bellum (latin for war) might also be a inspiration for the Belurat settlement, even though i like the link to the sun god much more.

[@pitpuscas]

The final siege of Numantia began in 134 BC. Scipio Aemilianus in command of an army of 30,000 soldiers laid siege to the city, erecting a 9 km barrier supported by towers, moats, IMPALING RODS, and other devices. The Numantians refused to surrender and famine quickly spread through the city. After eight months most of the inhabitants decided to commit suicide rather than become slaves. A few hundred of the inhabitants decided to burn the city before surrendering after 13 months of siege. Numantia's exact location vanished from memory, and some theories placed it in Zamora, but in 1860 Eduardo Saavedra identified the correct location in Garray, Soria. sorry for the spam :)

[@teagancombest6049]

Also isn't there just a bellum or bellus highway in the base game?

[@void.lawyer]

This world is horrible. The characters cant help but be horrible. But, Miquella is trying to stop all of this horrible shit and to do so he has to become God. Trina was a capapcity for love which only existed in the dream world. He was limited. His whole being is limited. Unaging. The Seducer. Eternal Child. St Trina. Etc. Everyone knows him as they have to come to know him through interaction or word of mouth or legends or whatever. Its all boxes. And to become unlimited, God, he has had to shed all of those limitations. Solve et coagula or the breaking of the vessels. He has to break apart piece by piece and then reassimilate everything AND everything he wasnt: the shadow of himself and also, since its ascension to godhood, all of existence and everything in it. Griffith was human who was broken by the world and used his "get out of eternity free" card to become what he became but it was all the machinations of something more powerful than him. so until all of this lore is pieced together im not going to put Miquella in the box of pure evil griffith flavored look what Merika did, she carved off the parts that she did, painted the remainder gold, called it order and it was all at the behest of The Greater Will. until we know for sure that Miquella is being puppeted by some other outer god or this all just some complicated way his mother(the greater will) holds her power then im holding back judgement. The Hermeticism/Jungian thing is articulated very well in this game and ive not enjoyed a game more. It is truly wild you have to explain why colonialism is a bad thing. But when the "Shadow" being the theme of all of this it was an expected synchronicity.

[@bunglebenjoyer]

Colonialism is bad but what if it’s to stop ethnic cleansing? 🇵🇸

[@beansnrice321]

Love the theory that Miquella is reinterpretation of Inanna's descent.

[@Nope_ihtt]

I've been pulling all nighters to watch your vods, I'm too invested

[@sabotower1792]

1:14:58 It begins

[@sergeyshabay6835]

I wonder what is the trigger. As my rune broke in a different place.

[@Mojj2099]

It’s hilarious seeing Quelaag confused on how to get the top map fragment and I’m looking all around for the lower one😂😂😂😂

[@Haveldorf]

So, holy shit! Just vinished the VOD and your reactions to St Trina's abandonment really fucked me up.

[@alexandrejjbruneau]

this is making me think of Carl Jung's concept of the anima. He posits that in everybody's psyche, there is an animus (masculine entity) and an anima (feminine entity). Jung also talked a lot of the 'shadow' we also all possess. So, it feels FromSoft has read up ! Also, he delved deep into alchemy but I haven't read about that just yet. What do you reckon?

[@robaustin_]

TheCenteredTarnished on KZbin talks about this being the entire point of the game. He discovered this years ago

[@alexandrejjbruneau]

@@robaustin_ nice! i'll go check it out. I started reading 'man and his symbols' in april and this is why i've mentioned it

[@alexandrejjbruneau]

@@robaustin_ which vid did he mention this?

[@robaustin_]

@@alexandrejjbruneau all of the videos that have psychology in the title 👍

[@alexandrejjbruneau]

@@robaustin_ amazing, i'm watching Miquella the healer and it's bang on

[@joshzuker8308]

I love the nyquil pit

[@Cylle]

what if the walking mausoleums dont have 4 legs, but 4 fingers as legs.. just a thought i had after seeing the remembrance altar at the finger ruins.

[@Djmattymulz]

What are those blue map markers? I'm almost done with the dlc and haven't seen those...

[@dqixsoss7436]

Enjoyed this stream :D 🏳️‍⚧️

[@void.lawyer]

Tohl-Lee-Ay

[@ishi...]

she has 2x great stars, but only +8 flasks?

[@teunvanderveen6477]

Imagine you and your mother dating a pair of twins lmao

[@dylan-qf2ch]

I WOULD LIKE TO LEAVE THE REFRIGERATOR.

[@oPauloVincent]

i was so hyped about this dlc. BUT THIS. I WANNA TATTO ST TRINA RIGHT NOW

[@Agi5864]

Man, the way she keeps skipping some dialogue lines the first time she hears them gives me such anxiety, it's like she can't stand waiting for the NPCs to finish their sentences (great playthrough otherwise though)

[@bunglebenjoyer]

Her adamantly defending the Hornsent no matter what without knowing the whole story is kind of cringe to watch in hindsight

[@OriginalNotNyanCat]

34:20 Tonkotsu is a type of ramen. You're talking about Katsudon, pork cutlets.

[@ubermenschen01]

You've got it backwards: tonkatsu ramen is called that b/c it's served with tonkatsu in it. Tonkatsu is just a fried port cutlet. Katsudon is tonkatsu served over rice with a sweet & savory sauce (made with mirin, sugar, and soy sauce), onions, and egg.

[@neontetraploid2026]

​@ubermenschen01 no, tonkotsu with an O is the Ramen with milky pork bone broth. Tonkatsu with an A is the fried pork cutlet

[@loblo5542]

Why is she skipping "they were never saints, they just happen to be on the losing side of a war" dialogue?

[@sixft_under]

She's talked to that guy several times before in her previous episodes. Just checking to see if he says anything new which he didn't

[@loblo5542]

@@sixft_under Ohhhhh thank you clarifying. Good sir.

[@prisoner817]

I think she just doesn't like Leda lol she skips more of her dialogue at 3:00:36

[@Benevolentforestspirit]

God, I absolutely hate the fact that they've made Miquella become Griffith. Like...that is exactly what I've been dreading this whole time😭

[@cool2314]

Lol miquella is not Griffith, miquella genuinely thinks he his doing the right thing while Griffith did bad things purely so he could obtain power even sacrificing his friends.

[@thomasmcginley26]

Why does she skip dialogue? I thought she was into the lore?

[@07thfan35]

What a condescending comment. Whenever Queelag skips a line, that means she's already read it. Like the "they were never saints" line with Leda, she already exhausted all that dialogue and other NPC dialogue in the previous live. You'd know that if you had bothered to pay attention or check out the previous VODs.

[@void.lawyer]

This is episode 3 and each are hrs long. She has read it. Go back and watch her from the first. This isn't the start of her playthrough.

[@wind-flower]

She does skip some dialogue that comes up for the first time though. 3:00:36, for example.

[@prisoner817]

Yall straight up gaslighting people in the comments yes she absolutely does skip a bunch of stuff, like when tholliers talking from 2:30:00 ish onwards. She clearly has an issue letting the VA finish their line, but it's not that big a deal. You don't gotta get in your feelings cause someone slightly criticized your favorite streamer. Skipping happens again at 3:00:36. Happens again at 3:01:58

[@madara9522]

Maaaaaan turn this shit OFF