u/ferrumtitan

>"Their armor was of bronze, and their houses of bronze, and of bronze were their implements."
"Great was their strength and unconquerable the arms which grew from their shoulders on their strong limbs."
"a brazen race, sprung from ash-trees"
Hesiod's Works and Days

That's not a description of the Crucible Knights. It's nearly 3,000 years old.

It's Hesiod. Around 700 BC, the Greek poet described the ages of man, gold, silver, and bronze. And the bronze race is unlike any other. They didn't just use bronze. Their armour was bronze, their homes were bronze, their tools were bronze, there was no iron yet in the world.

Hesiod says the bronze race came from ash/oak trees, and we can find a Crucible Knight with their eyes locked on what appears to be a bronze ash/oak tree.

That's the Crucible Knights. The bronze warriors who live for combat, who live for the crucible of life.

The Crucible Knights are Hesiod's bronze warriors, reforged in the Lands Between.

Hesiod was building a myth of decline, gold, silver, bronze, heroes, iron, each race worse than the last, each further from the divine. And roughly three hundred years later, Plato picked up that same blueprint and used it to build his ideal state, the Aristocracy.

In the Republic, Plato tells his own myth of metals. Gold souls to rule, silver to guard, bronze labour. It's Hesiod's ages, collapsed into a single society, standing still instead of decaying. And who sits at the top of that hierarchy? Not a bronze warrior. Not even a silver guardian. A gold soul, fixed, incorruptible, and unchanging. A philosopher-king whose worth comes precisely from not degrading, not shifting, not becoming something else.

That's Marika. An immutable god who always remains in her own form presiding over a Golden Order built using the same blueprint Hesiod and Plato laid down.

Interestingly, Plato also has five ages of man. Aristocracy, ruled by an immutable golden god. Timocracy, a warrior nation led by spirit and combat. Oligarchy, ruled by the wealthy, where money replaces honor as the measure of worth. Democracy, where every desire is given equal voice and the soul fragments into competing appetites. And finally tyranny, where one appetite conquers all the others and calls itself freedom.

The first two ages sound just like the Golden Order and the Hornsent culture.

The main narrative takeaway from the Shaman Village is that it marks the beginning of Marika's journey to godhood. Every element operates on the same logic.

A village is an early stage in the development of a city; the Minor Erdtree is an earlier stage of the Erdtree; the Grandmother in the tree is an earlier stage of Marika. And the Golden Braid confirms she isn't a God yet because to present an offering, to pray, to wish — to confess is what one does to a god not what a god does to others.

There is a even earlier form of the elements mentioned above, before a village and a sapling. Marika herself and the Erdtree Seed. This isn't to say Marika is older than the village, but rather that what we're seeing are the stages of a civilisation's development. An individual, a village, a city. A seed, a Minor Erdtree, the Erdtree. The gradual scaling of the Shaman's way of life.

To have the kindness of gold, without the Order, is to have the vision of Order, without the city. Marika knows what her city will look like, now she has to plant that seed into the world.

What does that vision of Order look like?

Just like the Hornsent's Tangled Horns inform us on what they value and how they live, to lock horns in the crucible of combat, the Shaman's braids do the same.

A braid is made of three sections of hair harmoniously braided into one, and like a braid, her city will have three classes. Aristocrats, Warriors, and Commoners.

We the Tarnished actually help build this very Order described above with the Great Kenneth Haight. By the end of his questline we have Kenneth the Aristocrat, Nepheli the Warrior, and Gostoc the Commoner. Three classes harmoniously coming together like a braid.

>"Ah, you've come to lend me your aid, have you? Well, that's very kind, but, um... No, no. Th-the help is very much appreciated. Even from a Tarnished. Despite appearances, nobility is no prerequisite to serving the true Order. You might have heard of me. Kenneth Haight. Next in line as the rightful ruler of Limgrave"

Interestingly, if we so choose, we can strike down Kenneth Haight. Upon his death he drops a Golden Seed, the same symbol harkening back to the birth of the Erdtree itself. His quest to restore the Order parallels Marika's vision of Order.

This kind of Order has real-world roots and is called an Aristocracy. Plato, through Socrates. describes this Aristocracy as having three distinct classes, Golden Rulers, Silver Warriors, and Bronze Commoners. All under the guidance of an immutable god.

>"Then it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change; being, as is supposed, the fairest and best that is conceivable, every God remains absolutely and for ever in his own form."

And just like how Kenneth appoints Nepheli as the Ruler, paralleling Godfrey the first Elden Lord:

>"Ah, nice to see you after so long. Safe and sound, I take it, yes? Good. Ah, quite. I have indeed selected a new ruler. Lady Nepheli is strong and just. Worthy of the burden of Limgrave's lineage."

So too does Plato say the same:

>"And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and that all education and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings?"
"That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged."

The chief concern of Plato wasn't the order of the city but the order of the soul. The city was an analogy, a way of making the soul's three parts visible at a scale large enough to examine. Because our mind’s eye is weak, we must first examine justice, Order, at the scale of the city before returning to the individual soul.

>Plato’s The Republic: “...having weak eyes he shall be allowed to read the large letters first and then go on to the smaller, that is, he must look for justice in the State first, and will then proceed to the individual. Accordingly he begins to construct the State.”

Each class in the city corresponds to a part of the soul. The philosopher-kings/Rulers are reason. The Warriors are spirit. The Commoners are appetite. A just(Ordered) soul, like a just city, is one where each part does its proper work and none exceeds it.

Three classes, like the three parts of the soul, harmoniously woven together under the guidance of an unchanging and eternal ideal.

Tidbits:

For Plato, justice is not fairness in the modern sense. It is order. Each part of the soul, and each class in the city, doing its proper work and nothing beyond it. That is justice. Plato's Aristocracy is ruled by the philosopher-kings, whom he calls the golden-souled. A city ordered by golden rulers, where each class holds its proper place. Plato's Aristocracy was always a Golden Order.

Plato's God is described as perfect, and through an exchange of dialogue it's deduced that because God is perfect, any change could only be for the worse, never the better. You can only fall from the top. And since no man would ever willingly make themselves worse, God would never willingly change. Therefore God remains absolutely and forever in his own form.

>Socrates: "Very true, Adeimantus; but then, would any one, whether God or man, desire to make himself worse?"
Adeimantus: "Impossible."
Socrates: "Then it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change; being, as is supposed, the fairest and best that is conceivable, every God remains absolutely and for ever in his own form."

FromSoftware takes Plato's just man, the man who would never willingly make himself worse, and builds his antithesis. Dung Eater degrades himself deliberately. By the end of his quest he is asking you to defile him.

FromSoftware also takes Plato's immutable God and makes them mutable. Radagon being Marika and therefore Marika is mutable. After we tell Goldmask that Radagon is Marika, we can buy the Immutable Shield Incantation.

It's a shield against change because God shouldn't change and if they do it'll be for the worse.