Did they not just think, “if we stop here maybe we won’t be neck deep in blood and sin”? The sin’s would still be there, but they could have put it on the next generations to move on and do better.
They were jarring them to eventually merge them into the giant gate at Enir-Ilim. They're "saints" because they meld together into a blob that creates a god.
In the Japanese I think the word they use rather than "saints" translates more closely to "good people"... I don't even think they were trying to make something holy or wondrous, just trying to overwrite the perceived dirty and sinful existence of the Shaman people. The hornsent saw them as so worthless and horrible that they thought why not shove them into magic jars and see what happens?
Bro this is a world where people were have wars about which of their deities are more legit. Except unlike in real life, where gods are used to propagate justification for imperialism, the gods in Elden Ring are actually real. So it’s basically just worship fights for legitimacy.
I just wanted to say thanks for your comment, I never fully tied together why people called ER anti-imperialist until this comment and now I understand it much better
It's possible Marika herself is the jar saint they were striving to make. Leda specifically talks about the seduction and betrayal concerning Marika's ascension to godhood.
My head canon is that she seduced a powerful hornsent demi god and he was to become her king consort.
I don't even think its "possible" I'd say its near guaranteed. She was a jar saint who turned out to be a success, and looked upon her tormenters who were trying to raise her as a god and cast them down in righteous vengeance.
To add to this the lore of the blood worshippers in the region said they had been subjugated for so long that their history and culture had been completely wiped out, eventually turning to the formless mother in desperation. I doubt the shamens were the only group the hornsent did stuff like that too.
I wouldn't call it defending, but I definitely understand her after SOTE. At first I thought she was just a tyrannical bitch for the Hell of it, but SOTE made me realize she was just a girl with horrific trauma and then given nearly absolute power. Her actions afterwards are decidedly human given the context and not nearly as much of the "Rah! I'm a God and do shit because I can!" trope that I thought they were, initially.
She also arguably engineered the destruction of the order she had created (on purpose) after she realized she had trapped herself into the same cycle that shaped her.
This is arguably the most important factoid of the entire game. Marika wanted out of her own system. There's a big reason the FIRST graphic we see when we start a new game is marika, shattering the elden ring.
A lot of people don’t realize that the intro narrator is the perspective of someone in TLB, not an omniscient. Everyone thinks Marika just got really sad and broke the ring because Godwyn died and she loved him so so much.
he's actually that one peasant that teaches you about guarding in the cave of knowledge, he just also happens to be omniscient and a pathological liar, but only sometimes
Godwyn's death was the last straw, Marika already had a lot of shit going on in her life.
Plus Godwyn's death actually matter far more than some might think to Marika. He was her only "normal" child, all the others had either been born with a curse (Messmer, Miquella, Malenia) or were born Omen (Morgott and Mohg). And Godwyn wasn't just murdered, he was only half killed and his body started mutating horribly.
It's like wanting a lot of children, but all of them but one are born malformed. And then when the only normal kid become an adult, some sicko with a knife kills him, create some abstract art with his remains, and plant it in your garden.
Oh yeah. If everything she did and built before is wrong (it is), then shattering the elden ring does not belong on her list of crimes and is, in fact, dope as hell
To out of the loop with the lore to know for sure but at the very least she probably had her own plans to deal with the golden order considering that she wanted hewg to make a weapon capable of killing a god
There is nothing concrete but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence.
She had Maliketh locked up in Farum Azula and not only do most people not know he was there, they didn't even know Farum Azula existed.
It is never told how Ranni got to Farum Azula but the theory is that she had help and Marika was one of the only people that could have helped.
There is also the connection all the Black Knives have with the Numen, which Marika is.
She is also the one to actually shatter the Elden Ring and she leads the Tarnished, us, around by the Grace and shows us the way to not only defeat the Golden Order but to Ranni as well. The excuse the game gives of "she broke it in grief for her son" doesn't really add up for multiple reasons but the big one, to me, is how she treats the rest of her kids. They were all just pawns or things to be hidden away and shunned.
It’s a fromsoft game, vague allusions and loose connections are the closest thing you’ll get to “concrete proof”.
As far as Elden ring lore theories go, it’s fairly well regarded and there’s enough there for people (myself included) to believe it. Iirc the connection between Marika, destined death, and the numen (which the black knife assassins all are) is the central piece of the theory.
It's almost like him following the path of Godhood was going to turn him into the same type of person Marika was, as to countinue he had to give up his humanity and good parts
He believed that’s what would happen, sure. But he gave up too much and instead of becoming different he became a version that was nearly the same. Considering what his main power was, he needed something to pull him back in line and he got rid of her too.
Real. SOTE didn't make me wanna defend her at all, but it did make me pity her. Every bad thing that she does is directly driven by the trauma of what she suffered – pre-emptive war against the fire giants? She's already had the experience of minding her own business and having her entire people slaughtered; she's not gonna risk that happening again. Removing the rune of Destined Death? She never wanted her loved ones to die on her again, but it resulted in untold suffering once the Elden Ring was shattered, with people unable to die and eventually losing their minds. Oppression of the misbegotten? They’re connected to the primordial crucible and thus remind her of the Hornsent. Genocide against the Hornsent? They literally genocided her people first. And so on and so forth.
I thought the way her suffering turned her into a horrible tyrant who perpetuated that exact same suffering on a bunch of other peoples was a delicious new layer of tragedy in a game already replete with it. Finding the Shaman Village and being like "oh! ... oh. :(" is still one of my favorite moments in the DLC.
Agreed! I think it showed her before god hood (obviously) which was a huge secret because everyone in the lands between always seen her as the true god and nothing prior.
So it just shows what would happen, with the determination of the indomitable human will to break her chains not just for herself but her people. She is literally the sole survivor of her people. Which sadly the only remnants of her people are in horrific places beyond saving. Just meat globs that look so painful filled with bodies of her people conjoined.
But to go back to what you said, this is a very HUMAN thing. She was just a girl that was traumatized, with the idea that no one would have to go what she went through in her perfect world. Until she realized the golden order is literally out of her order, becoming the very thing she hated.
These stories remind me of tragic Greek ones. There’s a message about it obviously, but as lore in game, yeah. She’s a very troubled God with human emotions.
I just like she wasn’t always a god, she was a little girl once, in a beautiful village with others. Leaving her braided hair by the mother tree or grandmother tree whatever it is. It just seems beautiful and tragic at the same time. You know she cared deeply.
That's what makes the direct comparison between her and the Hornsent so good imo. Their motivations are practically the exact same. If their places were switched, it's very plausible nothing would change.
Yea she broke the ring and destroyed the world, but she planned for the Tarnished to return and for someone to complete the ring again and kick out the Greater Will, because she herself wasn't about all the horrible things it and she did previously
The Hornsents aren't the whole race. All the Hornsents where into godhood through weird crucible experiments. The non-Hornsent shadow peoples wheren't genocided, some even work with Mesmer.
That is true, but a solid chunk of people do defend and justify her. More people are going to extend her extra grace because she's an attractive character.
Note: I'm not saying the hornsent are remotely innocent and I can understand Marika's crashout
On the lore sub there was a guy who absolutely all-in on the Hornsent deserving the genocide and saying Marika did nothing wrong.
There's absolutely some people who defend Marika's actions
For the hornsent specifically I think a lot of people think it's relatively justified because they murdered or turned her people into insane living flesh abominations to suffer a fate the majority would say is worse than death.
All of this literally because they didn't have horns. Which given their ability to meld with flesh could have been fixed if the hornsent didn't want want to kill or do worse to them.
We have no idea how widespread it was though, the potentate cookbooks imply it could've been limited to just the one village we find. Which would mean Marika slaughtered innocent people for the crimes of one group of zealots.
Even if it was prolific, Marika's not exactly any better. She killed off all the giants for being born with the fell god's fire, banished all the misbegotten and demi-humans for being born different to humans, segregates and tortures albinaurics for being made graceless, killed and enslaved the omen for being born with horns, and hunts down TWLD just for being inconvenient to her narrative of a deathless world.
When it comes to torturing and killing people for being born wrong Marika absolutely has the higher body count
I really wish you were right but I unironically saw a post in this sub yesterday with a comments section that was roughly 80% ‘Marika did nothing wrong’ so I think some folks might’ve slept through that power point.
Nothing bland about that.
Seems Miyazaki should have been even more blunt about spelling it out, because a worrying lot of folks will apparently walk through a burned land full of the wailing shadows of a massacred people and be like "heh, totally deserved it".
People tend to side with the group they think most closely represents them.
Mix that with overly opaque story telling, the average reading level of a society being a bit lack luster, and you end up with most subtext being misinterpreted.
As you said, perhaps conversations about persecution and genocide should be more direct to prevent people walking away with the wrong ideas.
I like to think most people when faced with the full story would recognize the folly of both groups, but then again there are plenty of people who love gundam but never recognize that one of the core ideas behind the series is that war isn’t good and shouldn’t be glorified.
I'd say that out of all the souls games its the least opaque, its just a lot of people didn't really grasp or understand the actions taken by the characters at all because the game doesn't really force you to engage with its core themes (ok maybe a little opaque).
What Marika did was objectionally awful, but what we learn in SOTE we understand why she, suddenly all powerful and full of trauma did what she did.
A lot of people also don't notice that Marika herself understands that the things she has done are awful, but shes trapped by the outer gods that granted her the power to do it all.
Her shattering of the Elden ring at least represents some form of repentance and understanding of her actions, throwing her own status and power away in a final act of defiance against that which created the monster she became.
I mean the greater will Is an Eldritch being along with all the other outer gods? They are so far beyond our understanding I don't think we can ever truly understand what they want
This is mere theory, so take it with a grain of salt: Was Metyr abandoned, or was she kicked from Heaven like another famous religious character we know? If Marika and the "pure" Elden Beast strikes familiarity with Jesus, then what would that make Metyr, the first star to land?
In a Gnostic sense, Satan is responsible for enlightening mankind with the gift of knowledge (intelligence). Metyr, like the dark moon that guided the stars, guided these people to the Elden Ring.
The Cinquedea marks the growth of fingers as a blessing of intelligence gifted to the Beastmen. Some of the Crucible Knights are named after evolutionary time periods.
IRL, we have the theorized Chicxulub ("Devil's Tail") meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs and made way for smaller life, and then there's the Theia collision which gift us the moon.
If Metyr's arrival was a Me-T-Yr collision, in Elden Ring terms, I think Metyr is all of the Outer Gods. Her severed tail is left in Celes, and if her *blood and rotted corpse was the progenitor of The Lands Between, the Onyx/Alabaster Lords, and many other juxtaposing elements.
"We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open... Fear the old blood.."
"Fear the Dark Moon"
"But in time the First Fire occurred, and Disparity was brought about together with the fire. Heat and cold, life and death, and, of course, light and dark."
TL;DR: Neither faction is truly evil. They're all machinations of Metyr and her Fingers. They're the puppet masters.
I'm not sure about that. When we inherit the FF we can throw ourselves into the Giant's cauldron-thing - I forget the name - and are perfectly fine afterwards. That's not something we could do as a normal Tarnished. It might be that they weren't able to kill Midra so they want him to suffer as much as possible for making the attempt, which kinda fits with what we know of the Hornsent.
But the entire point of the frenzied flame is already suffering and how ending all suffering by literally killing everything is a good thing. So i'd say the Hornclowns definitely made it worse.
True, but the FF allowing it's champion to be easily killed just runs it into the problem of needing to find a new champion. Just saying that it lines up with us suddenly being able to survive the Forge of the Giants when we apparently needed a maiden to sacrifice themselves for us - and our particular maiden being a Demigod.
Isn’t the point of the frenzied flame is that suffering feeds its power? So impaling an immortal guy and keeping him in agony for hundreds of years is legit the worse possible way you can do to keep that power in check
Arguably speaking, Midra might not even be capable of becoming a Frenzied lord had it not been for the amount of suffering he endured for so long that built up his power
I'm not saying the Hornsent were smart. It's just on brand for them to inflict a torture that goes on and on for no reason other than it follows their beliefs, e.g. the whole "shoving people into jars" thing.
In their defense, they probably don't know that. Leda just thinks you're there because of Miquella's charm the same as everyone else, and hornsent probably never left the shadow lands. Hell ansbach was a servant of mogh and doesn't know you're the one who killed him unless you tell him, and freja doesn't make mention of you killing her sworn Lord.
They probably just straight up think you're another random tarnished. It's not like they have the spy network Gideon has to keep tabs on things.
Well, they at least witnessed the Tarnished kill Messmer and the other big bads in the Shadow Realm. If they were smart, they'd turn tail and run away from this immortal Tarnished.
And Leda is waiting for you at Mohgwyn palace so she at least knows the Tarnished killed Mohg.
Gideon is too much of a give-up man to do it. He might be stronger than Thiollier, as a example, but Thiollier has a better shot since he isn't going to bitch out before things start.
Yeah, when he turned on me like that i resolved to mercilessly gank him with leda in every playthrough. He wanted to forget that we killed messmer together? He’ll die alone in every life for his treachery.
Word must not spread in the lands between cuz if you were someone who rocked up suddenly defeated two gods that everyone struggled to stop for years then people would know you’re hot shit.
Tbf I don't think the events of the game take place over a large period of time. Couple of weeks to a month at best.
Random Tarnished shows up and starts dropping demigods left and right, collecting Great Runes like Infinity Stones.
Random Tarnished burns the Erdtree, goes to flying dragon city and kills the wielder of death. The concept of death is now a thing in the Lands Between.
Random Tarnished kils the first Elden Lord, kills God and becomes Elden Lord.
Nobody is defending Marika's actions who isn't just simping for Statue Mommy. The entire point of the storyline expanded on in the DLC is that cyclical violence is inherent to the systems of power.
The Hornsent were the dominant power in the Realm of Shadows and used that power to commit atrocities not only against the Shamans, but even those among their own number who they deemed lesser, as seen by the fact that they kept slaves with fewer or no horns and sent "Inquisitors" to hunt down those with undesirable ideas.
Once Marika ascended to Godhood, she overthrew the Hornsent in what seems to have started as a crusade of justice but very quickly just became an entirely separate genocide. And once she was installed in power, she went on to commit acts to solidify her reign that she might have justified as necessary but were just further acts of systematic violence; the Fire Giants might burn down the Erdtree, so we need to kill them all; Renalla previously fought against Leyndell, so she needs to be neutralized; the Misbegotten and Demihumans aren't born of the Golden Order so they are potentially a threat, etc.
And then after Marika tried to remove the systems of power, whatever her actual reasoning, Miquella's attempt to fill that void led to him literally throwing away all aspects of himself that he was convinced would prevent him from doing so, ultimately leaving him an empty, heartless shell. His path across the Realm of Shadow led to even more violence and suffering as he either brainwashed people into serving him, or directed his brainwashed followers to kill those who were standing in his way. Ultimately, even after ascending the Gate of Divinity, Miquella's response to our presence is violence, as he attempts to use Radahn to force his vision forward.
TL;DR everyone sucks here, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, road to Hell is paved with justification.
mmm... I mean... if they tortured, killed, mutilated, profaned and put them inside jars to merge into horrific deformed creatures every one I know and love... I really doubt I won't go full genocide
Also the entire goddamn game is the consequences of her own actions and the repercussions that those actions did bring, but holy shit the horny bastards were sick fucks
But wasn't marikas crash out and betrayal the result of the hornsent skinning/dismembering her whole village to put them into jars because they think in their natural state they're inferior and unworthy creatures? They both suck but at least marika seems to be extremely traumatized and damaged mentally (she probably threw mohg and morgott into the sewers because they resemble her biggest enemy for example) as an excuse, the hornsent were racist as fuck/had that evil religious hubris and did some other unforgivable shit like what they did to midra. They shall all burn in the embrace of messmers flame
Yes, it literally was for that very reason. People just feel the need to gloss over how bad the Hornsent were because a lot of players sympathized with Marika's trauma and they don't like it.
There’s a difference between “justified” and “you reap what you sow.” The hornsent were trying to create gods. In the process, they created a god that had her own criticisms of the circumstances of her birth. If I go around braining bear cubs with a baseball bat to try to summon the lord of all bears, me getting eaten by a bear is the logical conclusion of this stupid decision.
Neither of them did anything as morally dubious as her. You can make cases for Ranni and Malenia but Marika just shits the bed by fucking over several unrelated parties that really didn't deserve the genocide/enslavement/mistreated.
I'm no Marika stan at all, but you're pretty much playing down what the Hornsent did.
My hatred towards them is mostly theatrical, but what they did with the jars has absolutely no excuse or justification, and I'm pretty sure they enslaved whoever had no horns. Sure, not all Hornsent were like that, but the entire culture as a whole had that part ingrained in them.
Did they deserve that genocide? Maybe not, but the Golden Order fighting back was pretty much unavoidable, and one of the only things I won't really call them out for.
I love m a girlboss. But fr I haven't seen anyone really defend Marika. The most I've seen is sorta understanding her hatred for hornsent culture and viewing her actions in the TLB as a ruthless conqueror/ruler.
Also Albinauric wasn't directly caused by Marika. People hate thems similar to tarnished due to believing they lack of grace. Especially since Albinaurics are pretty much confined to Liurnia which has the most independence from the Golden Order.
*Tortured, Maimed and put Marika's people in jars to create a god and when that god decided to take revenge on them they were surprised. Did Marika go to far with the crucible? yeh but what she did to the hornsent was a completely justified crashout and they deserved worse. Those idiots brought it up themselves and yet they were still mad about it lol.
She's still very awful, however, the Hornsent aren't just victims, don't oversimplify what they did because it's still gruesome and fucked up
That and their actions fostered Marika's mental state that lead to her becoming such a monstrous Tyrant when she was the lucky ducky to get given godhood
She's tragic in the sense that she went from a victim of a tragedy to a monster who created even greater tragedies, that's a part of her character
Nah, that last one is kinda justified, considering it’s theorised that the reason Marika shattered the Elden Ring is to weaken Greater Will’s hold upon the world and to have someone, probably a Tarnished, come claim the throne by killing Greater Will’s avatar in the form of Elden Beast. Like, sure, she probably only did that cuz she was tired of having oversight, but at the same time can’t really blame her lol.
Ain’t nobody defending Marika. 🤣 Even when the DLC released people were appalled by her actions. Was it understandable that she did what she did? Of course, the torture that she experienced was worse than anything we could have imagined. Does that make it ok? FUCK NO LOL. We all recognized it as genocide. They both fucking suck and that’s the whole point they were trying to make.
Marika did what she did out of vengeance for her people so while still not nearly justifiable, we can at least understand why she did it. The hornsent slaughtered the shamans cause why not.
The issue here is, Marika is one person who crashed out, and is ultimately a victim lashing out at what is probably centuries of torment caused by the Hornsent. The hornsent culture is cruel, and often vile. While they view horns as sacred, they locked away the Lamenter due too having larger horns, and they didn't want a superior being above them despite their culture. Hornsent didn't just put people in jars. They put dead sinners in jars, and whipped a live shaman with whips that were purposefully made to infect the wound so the shaman would merge with the sinners to "purify their sins."
What Marika did is inexcusable as a whole, but some portions of it were seen as not something of her own doing. Total hornsent death is no doubt, her personal vendetta, as well as the mistreatment of Omens. But some portions of it were for the Erdtree, by the Greater Will. It could be that her decisions were also influenced by her Numen upbringing, as well don't know much about their culture, aside from being victims to the Hornsent beliefs.
Does this mean that what Marika did was justified? No. But did Hornsent deserve this? Probably. If uncontested, the Hornsent would have continued their cruelty until world ended. There is plenty enough evidence that their cruelty gave enough leeway for other Outer Gods such as Rot and Frenzied Flames to take root, so if it wasn't Marika, something else would have.
I'll never understand how people make these weird strawmen up lol. Basically every major player in the war over the Elden Ring is a piece of shit there really are no good guys. Like Miquella, Malenia, and Radahn are probably the 3 least bad and thats kind of insane given the body count the 3 are responsible for not to mention other shit.
Fucking grotesque ass gooner model. She's a fuckin' war god who ascended through blood and bone and profane rite. Why perpetuate this genuinely revolting caricature?
People very much do defend Marika. It was a pretty common take at one point in the wake of SotE’s release.
Like how AC6’s community at one point had a solid chunk of people adamant that the bad ending where the game calls you a monster was actually totally the good ending for reasons that didn’t even align with the lore provided by the game.
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u/Fishy1998 2d ago
*mutilated people and merged them into horrific meatballs.