Elden Ring's Most Mysterious Enemy (and Its Lore)

the lands between offer many mysteries for us to explore from decaying ruins to cryptic war monuments there is no shortage of events and people whose stories we can delve into and research this can be the lore of demigods the timeline of the shattering or anything else that lies under the surface of the lands between and when it comes to the less grandiose foes the average joes of the world as opposed to the towering demigods a few stand out for their extreme dearth of information there are the worm faces greater and lesser skulking about with a disappearing rise there are the cemetery shades embodiments of death and infested with crab spiders but beyond even these enigmatic enemies there is another that seems to be even less blessed with exposition they are found throughout the lands between popping up in more areas of the game than any other enemy probably they are always on guard standing look out over their territory these creatures of the watch that i want to discuss in this video might be the most mysterious enemy in all of elden ring and they go by many names abnormal stone clusters according to fecturelite a live stone according to the game's internal file names and mihari ishii according to the japanese game guide in this video i invite you to join me as we do our best to sleuth out the lore and information of the enemy with literally no written lore or in-game reference let's find out what these one-eyed stone lookouts really are and as we begin i just want to note that you can subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with my content and doing so helps the channel out also a thank you to my patrons who support me on patreon and now let's begin our investigation [Music] miharishi [Music] as my title suggests i think this enemy might be the entity in the game with the absolute least description previous discussions have noted some enemies like wormface and the cemetery shades as being pretty sparse on info and lore but these enemies seem to have a bit of an edge over our stoneworms the cemetery shades are referenced and described by the mantis blade which is dropped by the lesser shades it describes them as insect-ridden grave keepers wormface follows a similar story of having greater and lesser versions but goes down a peg in opacity considering no lore or item descriptions reference them however they are not completely devoid of in-game reference since the boss fight in the altus plateau does give us their insulting and almost juvenile name of wormface but unlike both of these enemies the stones get literally no reference description or name according to the game they have no item reference for any details and no boss form to offer a name the text dump of the entire game leaves no trace either most players won't have anything definitive to even call these creatures in a playthrough so we have a good of a starting point as any a name as the game gives us nothing we have to look elsewhere somehow fextralife decided to call these creatures abnormal stone clusters i don't know where fextra chose this name or gets their names from but it is explanatory if a bit dry the game's internal file names goes for a bit less informative and a bit more comedic with the very straightforward alive livestone all one word but neither of these likely count as the official name of the enemy thanks to my fellow creator the lore hunter we have a photo of this enemy's page in eldon ring's japanese game guide and wouldn't you know there seems to be a name there too google translate says the japanese reads as mihari ishii don't know if i pronounce that right and in english that translates to either guardstone or lookout stone in terms of effect these lethargic worms don't do much guarding but we can say that they function somewhat as lookouts so i'll go with lookout stone for the rest of the video and there we go we at least have a name for the subject of our search look out stones not much but better than alive stones i guess now that we have a name we can try to piece it together with the other information we have about the enemies it isn't much but we do have some environmental info along with their item drops i'll wait on their drops for now but the environment does tell a story these stones are almost exclusively placed around ever jails throughout the lands between we can find them as early as limb grave or as late as the mountaintop of giants but in almost every case they surround ever jails the only exception to this rule is near the deep chauffeur well but we'll return to that later too encircling every ever jail in the game makes sense for these stones now that we have their name they are lookouts for the ever jails making sure no prisoner escapes kind of and yes if you didn't know these are called ever jails not ever goals or ever gowls or any other odd pronunciation jail g-a-o-l is another way to spell jl j-a-i-l it's an older spelling that is still used in some places like i know ireland has historic jails like kilmainium jail and that's spelled with the gaol spelling so these are jails which house inmates of a kind and the lookout stones are likely standing guard or at least serving as lookouts the sole eye on each one helps sustain the idea that they're lookouts keeping an eye out for any trouble and exploding in case it comes about though as you may have realized they're not great at their job they won't explode if you don't attack them so they don't do much guarding or functional looking out they stand glowing at attention to ever jails which house their inmates but once you kill these locked in troublemakers the stones become more passive or at least that's what i thought happened i wrote that line before checking and now i've just checked it in game and the stones don't seem to stop looking out or glowing after killing the inmate so they're probably just glitched out in general or i forgot some step if i did let me know in the comments if we instead assume that they're still working out as intended it seems the stones may be chill with you slaughtering the inmates so maybe they're only on lookout for breakouts but we do actually get to free someone from an ever jail live near the end of ronnie's quest and they don't attack or react then or at least i'm pretty sure they don't so maybe it's better to assume that they just aren't working properly the stones don't do much else they'll attack if attacked but they just slink around otherwise considering this we aren't going to get much more information from them directly so now let's look at the evergles they guard the magic they seem to be imbued with and the items they drop one of the most distinct features of these alive stones is their purple glow and employment of what seems like gravity magic we see that every other instance of gravity magic from spells to radon and the alabaster and onyx lords is the same kind of purple color so with the consistency that fromsoft employs it seems almost certain that the lookout stones are using gravity magic and this provides a connection between the stones and the onyx and alabaster lords who i will from here on out use interchangeably we know the lords or at least one of them taught radon how to use gravity magic and from their alabaster lord sword we learn that they are a race of ancients with skin of stone who are said to have risen to life when a meteor struck long ago the remark about skin of stone further cements the connection between these lords and the lookout stones it seems pretty sensible that beans with stone skins and wielding gravity magic would create automatons made of stone that also wield gravity magic we will come back to see more of a connection with the alabaster lords and evergles but i want to quickly bring up the other automatons of the lands between for comparison you may remember that there are some other stone enemies throughout the world like the golems urgently burial watchdogs and the imps we might be tempted to draw a connection between these golems and our featured guardstones but we must be careful in doing so here i'll point out a really comprehensive reddit post by user rocket luco who explored the ancient civilizations of the lands between including ideas about the creation of the guardstones and the golems rocket notes that many of the items around the golems like the golem grepo for instance refer to a civilization now gone to ruin the bose description also says that it is made of black stone not too far of a cry away from onyx lords with skins of stone a uniting aspect of all of these golem creatures is that they are affected by crystal darts throw enough of these energized projectiles and any of these stone golems will turn frenzied attacking anything near them this applies to each of this new group of stone automatons but it doesn't work on the lookout stones throw crystal darts at them and they remain inert only responding as they would to a normal attack with no frenzy effect provoked to me this draws a definite distinction between the lookout stones and the other golem constructs they are to some degree of a different kind the question though is whether this distinction is enough to make us think that the lookout stones were made by someone or some group other than those who made the gollum constructs rocket leuko points out that the stone construct magical light engine motif which is found in the golems is also present in the elevators of the chauffeur well entrances and somewhat at the divine towers as well there are also stone etchings in these areas that we'll see maybe could bear similarity to the evergles maybe rocket theorizes that these were created by some ancient mechanical construct civilization which they later posit may simply be one in the same with the onyx and alabaster lords while i understand the connection it's hard for me to come to the same conclusion at least without any hesitations the lookout stones do have the same stone powered by magical light motif but their visual presentation is different the purple gravity light does not appear in any of the golems or elevators even though it would have been a perfect use case for powering elevators as they are completely gravity dependent obviously they're going up and down on the axis of gravitational pull and looking closer at the evergles things keep getting complicated the evergles also feature the stone powered by light motif but like the lookout stones they are purple but to be fair their entrance light does actually have a bit of a blue hue to the purple color though once we get inside the purple coloring becomes stronger and as an aside there are also these runes or scripts on the evergel seal i don't know where else we can find this kind of etching in game it looks familiar to me but i can't place it or find a match after searching if any of you recognize this as something you've seen elsewhere in the game please point out in the comments and then that might elucidate some connection that the ever jails have to other things in the game okay end of aside and when we enter the evergles to fight their prisoners we see another connection to the stone lords each prisoner comes into being with a purple black aura surrounding them we can see a similar effect when we come across the stone lores outside of the jails such as in the lake of rot the crater park glade and lim grave or the pronunciation pending yellow annex tunnel in the consecrated snow field we could also even theorize that what keeps all of the inmates in these jails is some utilization of gravity magic that pulls them in to keep them trapped with all of these connections even if the last one is pretty tenuous it seems only right for us to conclude that the ever jails were originally made by the alabaster lords this theory fits since the stone skin lords are ancient beings from this we should also probably surmise that the lookout stones which exist in such close connection with the evergles and seem to use gravity magic were also fashioned by these same lords that then gives us the creators of the lookout stones another piece of info arrived at for an enemy with no explicit lore or reference we are making progress even if it seems slight as i said rocket luco thinks the alabaster and onyx lords may be the same as the mechanical construct civilization which built the wells and divine towers i still think it's contentious due to the differences but i do have to admit that the only place we find a host of lookout stones outside of evergel areas is in caled in the ravine housing the deep chauffeur riverwell also in the area are a few golems which could lend support to the idea that the construct builders were the alabaster lords it looks like the lookout stones are lined up with the golems to block the way to the coliseum like they are working in tandem this could lend credence to the idea of them being built by the same people or group also another quick aside here we find some of the stones set up in ball formation from the get-go ready to explode if we get too close maybe we can call these versions of the enemies the guard stones and the ones standing at attention with their eyes looking around can be the lookout stones one is more guardy and one is more lookouty and we get to use both names they do act different as these guard stones are the only in the game that attack you outright the only ones that do so that i can tell at least so i think that it makes sense to give them their own name we get to use both names and we get a little distinction in the kinds of guard lookout stones okay end of aside in terms of whether or not the stone lords are the mech civilization we don't have too many other options to choose from in game there are the beastmen of pharah missoula who have been around since the previous age and are likely one of the first forms of intelligent life in the lands between rocket makes a tie between them and the lords through a shared connection to the dragons remember skins of stone but i find it hard to think that the beast men even if they used to be less feral were the construct builders the tarnished archaeologist has a great video exploring the beastmen and their environmental lore and i highly recommend you go watch that to learn more about the ancient lands between and the inspiration of the design of lots of pharah missoula it's a very interesting video that goes over a lot of the details and i don't think those details lend a lot of credence to the idea that the beastmen were the builders of all these constructs so there might not be any other likely candidates for the ancient construct civilization slash builders than the alabaster lords if we say the civilization has to be something from in game or reference in game or that we'd like to see currently in the world of the lands between then there seems to be enough clues to think that maybe the lords built both the stone constructs in addition to the evergells and lookout stones but we could also go the other way of saying that the creators of these other stone fixtures simply aren't in game they maybe used to be in lines between and now they aren't anymore or maybe they were just made by the dragons we know the dragons can take a humanoid form and i'm sure they can move a lot of stuff in their dragon form as well and pharaoh missoula is flying after all though i don't think it has any special light like the elevators or constructs rocket lugo thinks that phara missoula may be powered by gravity magic which would make lots of sense from a floating city being powered by anti-gravity view but the lack of purple makes me hesitant to get fully on board with this every other instance of gravity magic has that purple and we don't see it here or i haven't seen it there isn't much more room to explore about the creators of all of these stone constructs so i'll leave this here let me know what you think seems most likely did the alabaster lords create all of the stone constructs or just the evergles and licko stones was it the dragons or was it someone or some group not even in the present day game let me know your thoughts in the comments but don't worry we're still not done there are a few loose ends with our stone worms starting with something which i reference but still haven't gotten to which is the drops that you can get from killing the lookout stones rune fragments and sanctuary stones and maybe volcanic stones according to the wiki both of these stones reference ruins fallen from the sky and the rune fragment specifically says that they are believed to have once been part of a temple in the sky the obvious connection here is pharah missoula so maybe i was too quick in dismissing a connection to the floating mausoleum the lookout stones also seem to be made at least partially of these fragments with bits of the orange gold of the ruined fragments in their spheres this would strengthen the connection even more but still leaves us in the dark about the acute specifics did the alabaster lords create these only after pharam azula started to crumble trying to come up with a timeline would be tough but i'd be interested to see your attempts in the comments we can also ask again if the lookout stones are broken they don't attack on sight and they even let us free blind so they're not doing a good job of keeping anyone locked up a possible explanation would be that they only attack those sealed away by the original creators and now that the jails are just used by literally anyone from the carrions to the dragon knights the lookout stones don't get any authorization code say to actually attack and defend any of these random new inmates or maybe since they are lookouts they only look and report sending info back to some alabaster lord hq but if we think of all of them as guard zones we see they do a poor job of guarding so i'd say they're probably just kind of broken as i said earlier in the video there's also plenty we could talk about with the evergles themselves the people that are trapped inside whether it's right to keep people eternally locked up or the effects of solitary confinement in a pocket dimension might have on one's mind but none of this really has to do with our friendly stoneworms so i won't explore them here in any case these lookout stones don't do a whole lot they look and they go boom when you attack they do have some unique and goofy attacks which is interesting that the devs would spend time making unique attacks and animations but then nothing would get put in the lore or text references which describes or even names these guys in game a very unique enemy in gameplay and design gets no unique description or identification in the game story or anything written in the game and because of that there aren't many conclusions to draw about the stones they be looking out that's for sure and they give us insight into some of the beings and machinations of the past ages of the lands between showing us how integrated the alabaster lords may have been to primeval life they definitely connect the lords with pharam azula to some degree but it's hard to say exactly how is there anything else we can learn from them tell me in the comments what kinds of conclusions or ideas do you draw from these mysterious one-eyed stone worms and i think that will do it for my exploration of the lookout stones i think i covered every avenue we can to get information about them i hope you've enjoyed the video and if you did consider subscribing to the channel or becoming a patron on patreon i'd like to thank you all for watching and be sure to stick around because there is of course more lore to explore i want to look at some of the broader themes of the game and upcoming videos kind of the story the game is trying to tell us through its enemies and lore and stories i also want to explore these ideas in relation to some of elden ring's influences like berserk and the philosophy that is present in these works i'm a big philosophy guy if you couldn't tell from the frenzy flame video and i also want to do a full scale critique sometime in the not too distant future well that's about it for me let me know what you think about these video ideas and the lookout stones in the comments thanks again for watching and i'll see you in the next video peace

Channel: MadLuigi

Views: 570,253

Keywords: elden, ring, elden ring, elden beast, lore, elden ring lore, elden beast lore, final boss, greater will, outer god, lore explained, explained, elden ring explained, elden beast explained, ending, ending explained, marika, melina, radagon, outer god lore, astel, star, fallingstar, naturalborn, naturalborn of the void, astel lore, nox, eternal city

Id: pF5oSPdqGtk

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022