Hi Cinder, I hope you are having a good hiatus but we miss you. I have been replaying elden ring and I think of your fics every time I see a trina/miq lily somewhere haha. I was curious about your opinion on something though. I noticed that there are two different seedbed curses in the Haligtree which I found really surprising. I guess it could just be because it’s a late game area but idk, do you have thoughts?
Hi anon, first off thank you, I'll probably be returning to posting sometime soon!
As for your question, I do actually have quite a few thoughts! The seedbed curses in the Haligtree have always stuck out to me as feeling almost but not quite out of place and I do have a loose idea of how it could tie into the Haligtree lore - or at least, the base game lore I've built my fics on top of. This is going to be long, I apologize.
The easiest but least compelling explanation is they put it there to be region-specific to force players into a difficult, optional area in order to complete the Dung Eater questline. I thought this at first but I no longer think this is true.
A few things to establish first:
1 - I don't believe Mohg was part of Miquella's plans, but I DO believe the Formless Mother has always been seeking an Empyrean vessel like Malenia is for the Outer Rot God but lacked the same foothold due to [future FoR spoilers]
2 - I believe there's far too many specific overlaps between the Ancestral Followers and Miquella|Trina (and even Malenia) to be a coincidence and it informs my theory for the Haligtree's intention
3 - My theory disregards all DLC lore because I've had this theory since well before the DLC came out, and also I think it's irrelevant by being retroactive retcon lore rather than pre-planned for Miquella's quest specifically
My take on the Haligtree is that it was intended to be a way to circumvent the Erdtree's cycle of rebirth due to the deathblight infecting it and also to repair the broken cycle of life and death through removing the dependency on Marika's grace. Hence all the graceless creatures given safe haven. I believe Malenia's rot in the roots was intended to be beneficial not harmful, supplementing and nurturing the roots (a known phenomenon known as mycorrhiza) and that if Miquella was successful, the Haligtree could be used to be reborn. The Ancestral Followers circumvent the Erdtree by interfacing with the Crucible, so why not just make the Haligtree into a new Crucible?
It's fairly evident that's what Miquella was attempting himself to some extent with the womb imagery in the Haligtree and in Mohg's boss chambers, presumably to try and cure his own curse and be reborn in a new body (the bug wings in the concept art tie directly back to being Crucible remnants). If it worked, that paves a path forward to cure Malenia, letting her rot-afflicted body be consumed by the Haligtree roots while she gets a brand new uncursed, unalloyed gold anti-Outer God body -- no godhood required (since he should know that won't work because it sure didn't work for Marika now did it)!
The problem? Their pesky souls yearn for the blighted Erdtree, not the Haligtree. The solution? Option 1: Confirm an Eclipse allows a spirit to be returned to a body ala Godwyn (and put him out of his blighted misery). Except, no Eclipse happens because the stars aren't moving, so that doesn't work. Option 2: Find another preventative measure to prevent the soul from yeeting itself back to the Erdtree. And oh, would you look at that seedbed curse description:
Curse grown on a corpse killed and defiled by the Dung Eater. A tender pox afflicted with omen horns. The Dung Eater cultivates the seedbed curse on corpses.
By doing so he prevents dead souls returning to the Erdtree, leaving them forever cursed. One of the most loathsome things found in all the Lands Between.
Two afflicted twins in need of new bodies and two seedbed curses feels pretty convenient if they could be harnessed in that way. Whether or not it would have worked, we'll never know, since the whole kidnapping thing derailed Miquella into trying to salvage the situation however he could when the Formless Mother's blood tainted the body in the cocoon.
