Carusco, a hornsent who survived Messmer's purge and was taught the perfuming arts by a war-weary, deserted perfumer from Messmer's army.
He takes care of misbegotten and hornsent survivors when he finds them, likes cooking absolutely wicked stews and does a bit of rune bear hunting on the side.
I’ve been playing Elden Ring and devouring any lore video I’ve encountered like a lot of people. But a niche I’ve been looking into because I think it’s interesting are the Perfumer enemies and variants. Like usual Fromsoft really knows how to use their environment and the dozen or so lore filled descriptions to do a LOT.
I thought I’d compile all I’ve gathered and include some speculation on it! I wont be posting a screenshot of every item or item description bc it would make this long as hell and all of them can be found on the wiki psa.
Piecing somethings together, there are 4 variants of the perfumer:
The Traveling Perfumer, a novice perfumer or perfumer in training. Usually sent off on their own to gather and discover new flora and fauna to use in perfumer concoctions. Their outfit is a simpler and I suppose more hardy version of the regular perfumer garb. It still has a similar shape and consolidated design to signal to others their Golden Order allegiance and perfumer role. (travelers apron below)
Regular perfumers are primarily found in the capital or in herb gathering places known only to them. Their role is sacred and held in high esteem, and the description of the erdsteel dagger which some of them can be seen wielding implies they may be royalty or some form of it. Whether this role is voluntary or not is unknown. Their job is to use their mastery of apothecary based and overall healing arts to treat and care for those the Erdtree order rejects, such as Omens, Misbegotten, or anyone that doesn’t fit its image. In turn they can be found interacting with groups of misbegotten for example in the capital. Whereas its implied that regular people would not and sometimes could not interact safely with them. Most are utterly devoted to their cause and can be inferred to overall have pride in their role. (apron details below because theyre pretty :)
Depraved Perfumers are rarer than all their other counterparts are deemed heretical to the regular perfumers goals. They use their knowledge only for themselves and repeated exposure to their own concoctions is said to be slowly destroying their body in some way and likely their mind. Instead of the detailed perfumer apron theirs is deliberately designed to be a curse towards the erdtree. According the spirit ashes of the first depraved perfumer Carmaan, he was trying to find a way to bring people back from the dead. Knowing how those Who Live in Death are treated, and how people are supposed to “return to the erdtree” via their ashes, devoting yourself to trying to bring back one person would likely be considered selfish and heretical.
Instead of using the buffing perfumes and simple poison concoctions in a fight they use more destructive things like Bloodboil Aromatic and Acid Spraymist.
Lastly, Omenkillers are probably the most troubling perfumer offshoot. A next step up from a perfumer, they specifically are tasked with hunting omens. A job that they seem to be at odds with. The average perfumer is said to specifically care for and treat omens, yet it was deemed necessary to make some of said perfumers execute them. Their apron is designed after the first Omenkiller, Rollo, who used his skills to make a concoction to rid himself of emotions in order to undertake his role. Omenkillers can be found throughout the game usually solo, but sometimes with other perfumers or depraved perfumers, but perfumers and depraved perfumers are unsurprisingly never found together. (omenkiller and depraved perfumer aprons below)
I understand why Omens can be a problem, the Golden Order deems them monsters and impure (although there’s nothing wrong with them its just because they are linked to the culture/religion of the old world before the Greater Will’s vassal arrived) so omen children are killed, de-horned which also usually kills them, or those “lucky” to be born to royalty cast into the sewers to be hidden from society. Omens who live and are welcomed above ground are usually used as temporary soldiers but once they serve their purpose I assume they don’t want to return to their sewer home willingly. They would probably need specific skilled people to kill them, as well as track and kill any omens who escape the sewers on their own.
The fact that one had to rid himself of his emotions to be up to the task makes it clear how much it pains them to hunt and kill the very people they have spent their studies and life helping. Another thing that initially baffled me was why their outfit and weapons were also deliberately horrific towards omens, aka the caricature mask that resembles the “evil” spirit omens say appears in their nightmares and their cleaver that they line with omen horns.
If I were to speculate, I imagine their guise is directed to scare omens so much just so it might give them a leg up in fight if the omen’s confidence faltered at the sight of their scary foe. Not that it makes it any better : ( As for why its perfumers chosen for this role, out of anyone else who does not have a direct link with assisting omens its probably just because they know their habits best, since theyre the few people who interact with them. I was surprised to not find any in the sewer area, but I didn’t explore everywhere down there it sucked lol.
More thoughts is that they seem to fill a like, catholic nun like role i guess, but with more scholarly inclinations with their mastery of apothecary arts. Their uniform is extremely intricate and covers nearly all skin and they devote themselves to humanitarian efforts focused on those discarded by larger society. Said society seems to view them with respect and reverence for their holy position. While the ones we encountered are hostile and have shifted their healing knowledge to poison/explosive they nevertheless still try to fulfill their role.
And they love to fucking jump around and spray exploding fire mist on me. One final interesting note was on the Spark aromatic description
Now that I think on it it’s not surprising that fire magic was banned, seeing not only how their enemies like the fire giants used it, but how destructive it would be to the erdtree and smaller erdtrees. Clearly when people were in the chaos of the shattering all that went to the wind, every man for himself its time to grab and mix the plants that makes fire mist.
also the ironjar aromatic is so fucking good i love making myself a walking stainless steel refrigerator
Anyway hope this was interesting! Almost all of this was from what I found on lore descriptions and extrapolated from perfumer locations in game! Let me know if I got something wrong, you interpreted something different, or if there’s something I missed!
