u/Bakerpit

Claymen are found all around the underground and they seem to be the oldest part of it, Noxes got banished there much later and ancestral followers seem to have built their culture on remains of older structures.

We know that claymen together with those structures and statues of some bearded dude are the only remains of this civilisation (I will be calling it Uhl civilisation, i know uhl was probably just one of a few dynasties but it is the most recognizable one).

We know that claymen were not always mindless monsters they are now, oracle bubbles description says: „Sorcery of the claymen who served as priests in the ancient dynasty (…)”. This implies that they had proffesions, culture and faith. And considering that the only sculpture from that period depicts a human (the one people call Elden John) I think they were once regular people.

So what happened?

Claymen are not the olny ones to turn into minerals. Same fate befell Azur and Lusat (not yet fully but good enough) except they were turning into glinstone and not mud. I believe both of this transformations have similar causes, close contact with dangerous primorial powers.

Claymens oracle bubbles share with primorial spells their unshaped form, they are irregular, pulsing, and sort of alive. They require arcane to cast, and arcane can be interpreted as your level of understanding of some mystical processes (Actually, I think primorial spells were also supposed to require arcane but this idea was abandoned later on because witch’s glinsone crown raises arcane and this is the crown of Sellen whose main goal is to restore lessons in primal magic at the academy, but this is just speculation so I wouldnt vouch for it).

What we know is that trifling with such forces never ends well. Just look at Sellen at the end of her quest and the rest of gravem mass. Some of the notyetclaymen could have lost themselves within their oracles in a similar way. This would then lead to their body slowly mineralising and their soul being trapped inside those covers.

So was it the cause of Uhl civilisation falling?

I don’t think so

I think the key to uncovering what secrets are clayman hiding is to look at one of their most monumental constructions: The Grand Coister.

The grand cloister surely was a very important part of the ancient world. But now it is completely covered with rot and I think it is not a coincidence. Right next to it lays the lake of rot in wich the very God of Rot is sealed. Have you ever wandered why there was even a need to seal it? I think it is clear that the god of rot once sowed destruction in the lands between and it was surely way before Marikas times. The era of Uhl civilisation just seems as the best point on the timeline to put it on.

I know it sounds weird and there seems to be no clear evidence about it but it just fits perfectly. Think about it, The only things that are remaining from Uhl civilisation are the Claymen and buildings, both of them cannot rot (yes I checked it, Claymen are immune to scarlet rot). And try to find other point on the timeline where God’s of rot presence in TLB fits. It was sealed by a man, wich means people were already around so it couldnt be sealed in the ancient dragons era nor before it.

This makes me wonder wether some of Uhl people underwent the transformation intentionally to save their lives? To me this feels like something fromsoft would do.

One thing I didnt mention yet is that Claymens harpoon is made out of glowing meteorite. I have seen some speculation about it but I personally believe that those are made of stars that fell from the sky with the discovery of sorcery:

The eldest primeval sorcery, said to have been discovered by an
ancient astrologer. A sorcery of legendary status.

(…)

Thought to be the founding glintstone sorcery. The glimpse of the
primeval current that the astrologer saw became real, and the
stars' amber rained down on this land.

~founding rain of stars spell

This would also fit in the timeline because ancient astrologers lived together with the fire giants wich defeated the ice dragons probably way after Placidussax’s best times but still long ago. Again, only a speculation.

I am curious what do you all think about that, what do you agree with and what do you disagree with. Sorry if I am not the first to have such speculations and you already knew these ideas.

There have been many theories about this topic ranging from ”we are Marikas lost child” to „we are Godwyn”. And although some of these theories are very interesting, there is a much simpler explaination.

You can only level up after accepting Melinas offer, she calls this „turning runes into strength”. What if other tarnished present in game just do not have that option because either their maidens can’t do that or they are maidenless? Then they would have to actually train to achieve better scores wich definitely takes much longer.

Of course, the question why Melina chooses you in the first place is even more important, but I think you get my point.

I myself don’t fully believe this theory because of how Varee reacts to you having no Maiden (he thinks you are already dead). He seems to know that finger maidens are very important and meybe turning runes into strengh is this crucial help every tarnished needs?

Sorry if this was already said, I just feel like all the „who are we” theories are getting more and more crazy.

I always took chapel of anticipation for a pretty important part of lore but when I was looking for some theories about it the only post I found was from three years ago and it didn't really convince me, so I did some reaserch and here is what I think.

Chapel of anticipation lays on a lonely and tall af rock, and it gives the impression that the entire area surrounding it has eroded, as if the very forces of nature were carefull with it. What remains is:

- The chapel itself

- A giant statue of a Leyndell knight

- A courtyard with some sarcophagi and a statue of Marika

If you look closely you can see many lion symbols all around (likely pointing to Godfrey)

I think that the key to uncovering chapels secrets is its name: Chapel of anticipation. But who is anticipating for whom? My theory is that here the fingermaidens were awaiting their tarnished. But not those sent to distant lands, they were awaiting their return from death.

Hear me out

Firstly, as I said before, lions are found all over the place. Lion is a symbol of Godfrey, who is known as the first tarnished. But weren’t tarnished supposed to leave TLB in order to return one day?

Remember the Dung Eater? He is a tarnished although he probably never left the lands between, it was always pretty weird to me. He was executed in Leyndell and despite this he was brought back to life by grace to become a tarnished. Because of it we can assume that you do not necessarely need to leave TLB in order to become a tarnished, as long as you were able to die without it. I do not know how would the tarnished burried in sarcophagi die, but it is not necessary now. (This would also mean that what we see in the beggining cutscene is not us crossing the fog to return from badlands, but rather returning from the true death realm, probably the one the Helphen grows in)

So why then, when we wake up, don't we step out of a sarcophagus, and why isn't a maiden waiting for us? Grafted scion comes here to help answer that question.

For now my model looks like this: There is a chapel in wich Finger Maidens wait for some mighty heroes burried outside to eventually return from death (I would like to point out here that not all of them are necessarily expected to come back).

But then something happens, Godrick sends his servant/s to the chapel in order to collect valuable bodies of past champions. They carry out a massacre in the chapel. But one finger Maiden grabs one body, drags it to the chapel and closes the doors. Knowing she would eventually die from starvation or potential wounds she leaves on the ground a message: „Though the path be broken and uncertain, claim your place as Elden Lord.”. That body was us and the Maidens body still lays there.

I can’t really explain the weird rock on wich the chapel is located, I can think of two options:

1. while the land around it eroded over time the chapel might be defended by some powerfull incantation

2. The land around it was removed intentionally (I am sure this is possible lorewisely) to defend the chapel from potential agressors (unsuccessfully)

Maybe you can come up with a better solution

One thing that I haven’t mention yet is that the stormhawk king is found here as well as stormhawk deenh ashes. I do not know how to connect this with the rest of the theory, it just seems to be a decent spot to hide the ashes of a previous lord of stormveil. Also, if we assume that stormhawk king is the „storm lord” said to be fighting with Godfrey, then he could be held here as a sort of trophy (and deenh’s ashes, wich are found on ground on a balcony, could have found their way here because of Deenh’s loyalty to his lord mentined in their description, they got carried by the wind or something).

I also did not mention that one of the four belfries can take us here but they can take you to so many seemingly random places that I don’t want to get into that.

What do you think about this theory? To be clear, I am not claiming that all tarnished were created this way, those few who were, were probably like a 1% of all.

Some people take them for game mechanics, but I think they are an important bit of environmental storytelling. Of course, some of the topics I will bring here are probably overinterpretation but I do not believe there is no lore at all behind them so maybe I get at least part right.

We can divide them for 2 groups:

- Those flask-refilling ones

- Those with some usefull loot

Where those refilling flasks bear a weird diamond symbol, unseen anywhere else in the game, while those with loot bear a symbol of an eye.

Lets discuss them individually.

Those flasks refilling ones basically put another crimson/cerulean tear inside your flask (you may not know this detail but you have only one flask for each and you basically only take sips form them, I did not made it up, you can even see as the flask in your hotbar shines more and more faintly as you drink). I believe those tears are basically different aspects of grace itself, because you can refill them at sites of grace and letting you take more sips with yourself requires golden seeds, descendant from the very erdtree, which we know was the original source of grace a long time ago. I believe crimson and cerulean tears are like two sides of one coin and that is why those two scarabs share the same diamond shape, it could be interpreted as symbol of tears/grace.

I believe those two types of scarabs collect remains of grace scattered across the lands between.

For some reason they do not appear in crumbling Farum azula and Mohgs part of Siofra (while the loot scarabs can be found there) but here I cannot really find any answer other than „those areas are too small” so maybe you will come up with something.

Now to loot ones. Those are more complicated because they have much more types. There are scarabs with: Ashes of war, Sorceries, incantations and Smithing stones. Smithing stones are the hardest to explain so I will leave them for later.

At the very beginning of this part I want to say that I do not think those scarabs are Gideon Ofnir’s spies and most definitely he did not create them. We know that Gideon already has some human spies from the piece of armour we find at Rykards arena (eye surcoat). Scarabs seem to be older than those forces and even Gideon. Even their eye symbol seems to be more primitive and both scarab thalismans suggest scarabs are well known in TLB as carriers of treasures. If I were to guess, I would say Gideon took inpiration from them while making his emblem and this eye symbol generally resambles knowledge.

Here is why I think so:

Sorceries, Incantations and ashes of war are all knowledge based. Ashes of war seem to be the most phisical but somehow sorceries and incantations also can be found in chests. This means that all three can have some kind of phisical form. Those phisical forms are probably what the scarabs are rolling inside their balls. If so, they spend a lot of time very closely to phisical embodiments of knowledge which could have corrupted them in some way, changing their colour and perhaps something more than that.

The most interesting part of that is the question: How are these phisical forms formed? Starting with ashes of war where the answer is quite obvious, lost ashes of war description says: „Empty ashes of war, devoid of any memories of battle. …” this suggests that normal ashes somehow carry memories of battles, I think it means that when you use an ash of war you basically put a lost memory of some warrior in your weapon so that it can use the power of memory’s owner.

With sorceries and incantations the thing is not so obvious because we are not aware of any phisical carrier of them, like ash or something. Again, if I were to guess I would say that the ideas of spells and incants are trapped inside scarabs’ balls. Every single spell and incantation is basically an idea of bending energy into doing something (except for dragon communion incantations), the only difference is that sorceries draw power from your understanding of cosmos and incantations bend power granted to you by powerfull beings you put faith in. And if memories can be trapped why not ideas? When you kill an incantation or sorcery scarab the idea inside its ball becomes yours. And with spells in chests… Maybe the ideas can also be trapped inside chests? Idk really.

And now smithing stones. Smithing stones are materials you can use to upgrade your weapon. But the smithing stones found inside scarbs’s balls are not regular ones, they are somber. Somber smithing stones are basically smithing stones drained out of colour (as their description says). They can be found in caves similarly to regular smithing stones, but they are much rarer. I think regular smithing stones fell form the sky on meteorytes, as a gift from the Fell God, often associated with forging and fire. I assume that somber stones are made when a regular smithing stone lays untouched a long time, decaying it’s colour. So how do scarabs get those stones inside their balls? I would say they find a redular smithing stone and the process of losing colour takes place inside their balls. But why then they bear the symbol of knowledge? I can only guess but I would say that the colour of a smithing stone also wields some kind of knowledge, memory or thought of the Fell god and when the stone looses it, the information goes to scarabs mind.

At the very end I want to say that I think the scarabs are to some point „normal” creatures. Even if they carry a memory or an idea inside their balls, the scarabs themselves are not embodyments of them. Description of Incantation scarab helmet says: „…As a scarab approaches death, it abandons its rolled treasure and stretches its wings wide for long journey to its home nest.” I know it is not what happens in game but it is canonical. The only thing that bothers me are the questions: Where are those nests? What does a long journey mean? Maybe they live in erdtrees crown? Maybe beyond the fogs, in lands other than TLB? I have no idea. Also, I cannot reject the theory of them spying for Gideon fully, although Gideon already has some human spies, and scarabs seem to be very old, it is still possible that he uses them in some way, even if he did not create them.

That is it from me, sorry for so much speculation in this post if it’s an issue but there is very little information about these bugs in game and I just wanted to say what I think. Perhaps you have some better answers for questions i brought here? If so, I would be glad to hear them.

You all probably know the guy who has more statues than Marika herself and those statues are to be found all around underground and in uld palace ruins. You may also know that on one of the stone tablets he is holding appears a depiction of a tree, most probably erdtree (no, it is not the great tree and there are two reasons for that:

1. There is no trustworthy proof that the great tree even existed

2. Even if great tree existed, claymen sorceries, which are probably some of the last remains of ancient civilisation’s culture, are all into oracles/seeing future not past.

)

I am not trying to get into who this dude is and what exacly was his civilisation, but rather focus on the title question.

Option 1: He heralded it

This is probably the first thought of many who find out about the tablet for the first time, and it is pretty logical, we know that at the beginning, erdtree brought a lot of abundance to it’s followers, so maybe ancient civilisation was awaiting it’s incoming.

Option 2: He warned against it

After all the new order brought with the erdtree led to many wars, suffering and dismissing certain groups as worthless trash. Of course, some might argue that all of that is just golden orders fault, which can be interpreted as separate fram the Erdtree but that is why I want to know your opinion.

Option 3?: He heralded the Haligtree

This may sound weird because we know that Haligtree never fully grew up, but somehow oracle envoys (who are said to herald the incoming of a new era) are found there. This may either mean that prophecies can sometimes be wrong, or that the Haligtree still may grow in the future.

Those are all the options I can see, maybe you have your own ideas. Let me know in which scenario do you believe.

We know the Godskins were „skinning gods” but we could never know who exackly those Gods were. I may not be the first one to come up with a solution, so sorry if this theory is already known, but at least I never heard of it.

In game we know only of a few beings that have a status of a god. Most often when we think of gods, Marika and outer gods come to mind, but none of those really fit in this case.

But there is one item that points us the way when looking for the answer. Ancient meteoric ore greatswod. Its description says: „…Fashioned from an excavated shard of an arrowhead that once was a part of the old gods' arsenal…”, there is one group of beings that I can think of, who would be capable of using arrows this huge: ancient giants whose skeletons lay throughout the lands between.

I once heard a theory that ancient giants ruled the lands between before the ancient dragons, they worshipped the one who is now known as The Fell God, built the forge of giants, and most importantly the divine towers. I have seen it on YT channel Vaatividya, (respect to copyright), in the same video he pointed at traces of molten rock on every single divine tower which seem to point on one spot, where a meteorite could land long time ago.

Back to my theory, now when the DLC is out we know of two powerfull meteorite impacts that hit the lands between: the meteorite Metyr was inside of, and the one with ER and EB and they are both sent by the Greater Will. I think one of them would fall and kill most of the ancient giants, while the rest surely would not like to serve Greater Will so that it would choose ancient dragons as its servants making Placidussax their elden lord. I think the rest of the giants wouldnt just peacefully wach dragons’ rise so Placidussax had to do something. And so GEQ would be given destined death to kill the remnants of the giants with the help of the Godskins.

What do you think about that? I personally couldnt find any evidence against this theory (unless we count Godskin Noble’s tail as a sign that it comes from crucible, but I think it would not ruin the theory, just complicate it a bit) but maybe it is just because I am blinded beeing too proud of myself. Also, this is my first post and english is not my first language so I would be grateful for feedback on the quality of the post.