SPOILERS FOR REVENANT'S REMEMBRANCE QUEST IN ER: NIGHTREIGN UNDER THE CUT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
i know the final cutscene doesn't say it explicitly, only shows in certain gestures and movements, but it's still so important to me that people acknowledge something about the revenant/daphne: that the reason she is so hellbent on getting revenge on the night is because she loved.
now, i don't think it was romantic love at all; the closest love i could fit into it is familial love. she was loved by chloe so so much, despite being but a doll, an object; and despite that same obstacle, she loved in return.
and that love was so strong that it brought her to life, right as the object of that love was brutally murdered, not by a man, but by the night wearing a man's skin.
and daphne knows that killing that singular man would not bring her comfort, for he was not even in control of his actions. no, if she wants to fully avenge the one who loved her and that she loved in return, she needs to kill the source of it all.
and on another note, i think it still eats at her that she couldn't move fast enough to at least comfort chloe in her last moments. ofc, that's all but explicitly stated when the entire setup for that quest is that something is eating at her, allowing the night to settle into her form.
that something is not fear.
it is guilt.
guilt she finally gets over when she fights the corruption, and remembers that night, and her own vow, made manifest by the portrait she took from her owner's corpse.
On the Nature of Outer Gods and Other Beings: a ranting essay
To preface, I'm in an Elden Ring RP server, and there very often is heavy lore talk there. Part of what I'm gonna say originated from there, and part from my own musings. None of this is Certified Canon, just my interpretations.
To begin with, I feel like there's a lot to be said for cosmic motifs regarding the Outer Gods and similar beings.
The Greater Will is likened to a "lightless abyss/dark" in the Gravitational Missile and the High Priest Hat's item descriptions, and together with the fact that Ymir says that "we are all children of the Greater Will", and Hyetta mentioning that the Greater Will "made a mistake" in the same dialogue that she mentions the One Great was shattered and fractured, brings me to believe that the Greater Will is both the universe itself (a great lightless abyss, filled with very separate bits of matter) and the equivalent of the Big Bang (which is theorized to have been a very dense point of matter that exploded outward, and probably was the birth of our universe).
As for the Outer Gods (confirmed or not), the possibility of the Blood Star (explicitly a star) also being the Formless Mother, and the simple fact one of them are the Moons, lead me to believe most Outer Gods are (kind of sapient) stars or other celestial bodies.
The exception is the Frenzied Flame, which, unlike others, I don't believe to represent entropy. Entropy is the process in which energy is "lost", and it's entirely natural and slow. It's believed the heat death of the universe will come through entropy; a very slow, and ultimately cold, process. Rather, the Frenzied Flame seems to want everything to go out in a final blaze of glory, melting all back into one being/object. That reminds me of the (now defunct) theory of the Big Crunch, where the universe's growth was gonna reverse itself, and eventually go back to that very dense point of matter.
The Night from Nightreign, while very ambiguous on its exact nature, I feel is very similar to a black hole. It consumes eternally until nothing is left: not memories, not people, not the world itself. Much like a black hole attracts and "devours" everything past its event horizon to (probably) lay forever crushed on its surface or under it. The very concept of the "event horizon" reminds of the ring of rain in Nightreign's gameplay: it closes and closes on itself, preventing you from leaving its limits (unless you want to brave damaging rain, of course).
To move onto other matters, it's impressive to me how Outer Gods and beings of similar power affect their chosen.
While Marika ascended without the Greater Will (thanks Metyr), it likely eventually chose her anyways, since she's in possession of the Elden Ring aka the Elden Beast, its envoy. And, while we don't know if the Greater Will actually is about Order, since that could just be Marika's propaganda, if we assume it is, then Marika was very much about following a specific order of things, without allowing changes or deviances (see: almost every subjugated or genocided species/races in Elden Ring). Goldmask even seeks to emulate this, not wanting Gods to be able to change the Elden Ring aka the natural order of the world.
While the God-Devouring Serpent isn't an Outer God, it's still a greatly powerful being, and once Rykard was devoured by it, he took over and ended up being the exact same as the Serpent: an endlessly hungering being that doesn't care for much else, just more ambitious in its scope.
Malenia hates the Scarlet Rot, even when becoming its Goddess, yet her very body and mind have been ravaged by it, almost as if its punishing her for rejecting it. Supporting this is that Romina, while clearly mutated, isn't rotted per se, and even seems content with her situation; which makes sense, as she seemingly weaved the Rot from an earlier state into what we find in the present.
Mohg is difficult to gauge because he was charmed by Miquella, but from what we see, the whole "blood cult" thing was his idea, and the Formless Mother explicitly craves wounds and is all about blood.
The Tarnished and Midra, after becoming Lords of Frenzied Flame, seem overjoyed at the destruction going on around them; especially the Tarnished, who has just completed the Frenzied Flame's entire purpose by the time they revel in the burning Erdtree.
Finally, while the Night is once again ambiguous in its lore, there is a strong argument to be made about it being related to loss (no, not the meme). When you are afflicted by the Night, you lose memories, you lose your purpose, you can lose your life, even. And Heolstor, who has been at the center of the storm for likely many years, has seemingly lost everything too. Note how in the first phase, he starts out wandering aimlessly, dragging his sword, and his attacks, while hitting hard, are overall simple sword combos. Only when he hits certain HP thresholds does he gain better attacks, but, aside from certain added effects, the wisp attack and the two nuke attacks, they're still relatively simple sword combos. It's almost as if Heolstor lost his fighting skills outside of the Night's power. Not to mention that he has that gaping hole in his armor, which shows nothing but the Nightlord's Rune and darkness, as if he has even lost his own body. He's literally got nothing left but the armor, the swords, and the Rune that links him to the Night.
I don't have much else to say, but I do think the Outer Gods and their similars are all too interesting, especially if we take the motifs mentioned up above into the matter.
i already talked about this on discord, but i forgot to put it here
yesterday, i was doing a caligo run in nightreign with randoms. we were doing the weirdest route through noklateo, when i got a wending grace as a drop from either one of the random knights or the dragonkin soldier.
however, i was playing duchess, so when we got to the spirit shelter, i dropped the wending grace and the wylder grabbed it.
later, while fighting caligo, both of my teammates had gotten downed thrice, while i hadn't even gotten downed once. so, when i finally got downed, the wending grace did its magic on the wylder, and rather than try to fight caligo alone, he tried to revive me. he died immediately after, so i was alone.
and, as caligo was about to kill me with her downwards breath, i killed her first with a magma shot.
i honestly felt so good about that run. wylder named shabriri and executor with darkness skin whose name i don't remember... if you're out there... thank you
some of my assorted elden ring headcanons under the cut
Radagon is a part of Marika that she cast off, much like Miquella cast off St. Trina. In this case, he's her loyalty and (possibly) her faith. Later, when they re-fused, Radagon had diverged enough from Marika to be considered his own person, so he could no longer go back to being a mere part of her. Additionally, Radagon was cast off during the war with the Giants, when Marika realized how ruthless she would have to be to win.
Marika planned to cast off her goodhood's shackles the moment Morgott and Mohg were born Omen. And despite her behavior towards them, she did love them (they were educated despite everything, after all), just not enough to beat out her trauma and hatred of the Hornsent.
While Mohg always wanted to become Lord once that became a possibility, and he was always going to be a brutal warlord (the Formless Mother does crave wounds, after all), the extent of it was partially caused by Miquella's charm. For starters, his delusion of using blood to forcibly ascend Miquella was an extrapolation that wouldn't have happened without the charm. Plus, a more sound of mind Mohg would have tried to recruit more Tarnished, rather than have them kill each other just because.
Godfrey is absolutely aware of Marika's initial plans. However, her whole plan changed with time, something Godfrey was not made aware of.
Marika's shattering of the Elden Ring was an attempt on the Elden Beast's life, but also her way of committing suicide. That failed when Radagon, loyal to Order as he was, tried to revert her damage, ending up with both Marika and Radagon alive (if slowly dying), and the Elden Beast alive too (if damaged).
Marika's plan went from just killing the Beast and her godhood to a murder-suicide because of Godwyn's murder; while she did facilitate things for Ranni to steal Death, she didn't intend for Godwyn specifically to die; she would have been content with anyone else.
The rest of the plan was still mostly the same: have the Tarnished, guided by Grace and stronger through death, come back and kill the Beast, freeing her.
Rellana is aware that Messmer does not, will not and cannot return her feelings, but she's in too deep to go back now.
Miquella's ascension to godhood was a last ditch effort plan, after everything else failed. And in the end, he could only bring himself to do it after he cast off Trina, which itself he could only do after casting off his doubts.
Miquella, warped in mind as he was by being able to charm almost anyone, did not think his charm was a bad thing. After all, they're happier while charmed, no? Even still, charming the entire world was something even he couldn't do with love still in his heart.
There's three people Miquella didn't intend to call to the Realm of Shadow: Ansbach (why call someone you charmed to avoid harm to yourself, when you know the charm will eventually break?), Leda (he charmed her to suppress her paranoia, which, if the charm was supposed to eventually break, would have returned, as it happened in the game; an enormous risk around allies), and the Tarnished of No Renown (this is basically just canon).
On the flip side of the coin, the rest were called/charmed mostly so he could have someone else kill Messmer and open the way to Enir-Ilim. Freyja, Dane and the Hornsent were ideal for this, while Moore was more of a promise to take care of the children of the Rot.
Miquella didn't intend for his Great Rune to break so early (he'd rather have cast it aside moments before his ascension), but Messmer, who he met to secure passage through the Shadow Keep and Rauh, forced him to leave it behind early.
The reasons Miquella had Radahn become his consort weren't necessarily romantic. It was a mix of practicality (Radahn was one of the strongest people he knew that weren't overtly loyal to the Golden Order and wasn't afflicted with a magical disease), and simple admiration (in his early days, before he turned out a warlord, Radahn was far kinder).
I'm a bit torn on the reasons for Aeonia, but there's two roads: Radahn reneged on the vow, so Malenia was supposed to either bring him to the Haligtree or kill him outright to be revived in a new body (you know how that went); or, part of the agreement between Radahn and Miquella was a fight to the death with Malenia (neither died).
For that matter, on the second case, the original vow wouldn't have included the fight to the death; Radahn added that after the start of the Shattering.
Melina is a spirit ash summoned by Marika (as I said in another post).
When Marika was captured/jarred by the Hornsent, Hewg was the one to free her in secret, which is why Marika "spared" him and gave him a special task.
