The Complete Lore of ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights

[Music] hey guys indie explorer here and today i'm excited to talk about one of the best games of 2021 ender lilies quietus of the nights with unique complex combat brutal boss encounters interesting characters and a massive beautifully realized world brimming with secrets there is truly something for everyone here and with well over half a million units sold as of march 2022 it seems plenty of people have found exactly what they were looking for in land's end in light of the physical edition of the game dropping next month including the coveted collectors edition i figured now is a good time to take a closer look at one of the most interesting yet confounding aspects of ender lilies it's lore the game's lore is revealed very gradually layer by layer through notes memories character dialogue and the environment itself and is honestly quite difficult to piece together not only is the story told in non-linear fragments but some of these fragments seem to directly contradict each other as well my goal with this video is to take a deep dive into the sea of information gathered during lily's journey and piece it all together into one cohesive story some degree of speculation is inevitable but i'll try to back up my claims with evidence wherever possible also i want to preface this by noting that i've split the timeline of ender lilies into five distinct sections the ancients the first age the second age the third age and the game or present events most of these terms are not used within the game itself but for organizational purposes and ease of explanation i will be using them as if they were obviously there will be massive spoilers ahead so if you haven't played the game yet and have any interest whatsoever in doing so now's your chance to turn back and now without further ado i present the complete lore of ender lilies quietus of the nights [Music] the most valuable resource that humans have is time and the desire for more time is perhaps the most universal of all human wants our lives are relatively short and unpredictable so making the most of what time we have is one of the most commendable of life's pursuits as stated by a certain wise old man all we have to decide is what to do with the time that has given us so many aspects of the game echo this idea on a broad scale ender lilies is a tragedy a tale of two civilizations whose time was cut short by the sword and by their dealings with immortality in the form of the blight there are many smaller examples throughout the game as well melville the sorcerer leaves the coven determined to find a cure for his lover the floral sorceress only to lose out on what little time she had left silva leaves her sister sigrid to become a guardian so she can protect her but in the end is unable to do so and loses both her and the time they might have spent together and the king prioritizes extending his own life over sharing that life with his son julius and as a result is killed by his own kin while the kingdom collapses into ruin the core message of ender lilies is that all time is precious and if you make the most of that time while you can it is enough [Music] [Applause] [Music] our story begins with the people known simply as the ancients they were the original inhabitants of land's end and while we aren't given much information about them we learn enough to get an idea of what kind of people they were we know that they lived in the land for hundreds of years or perhaps even millennia due to the sheer size of the catacombs and number of bodies interred within the umbral knight comments that the catacombs look much the same as they did during his lifetime as the new kingdom simply settled over what the ancients had built most importantly we are told it was their sorcerers who discovered the supernatural organism growing deep in the caverns below the land that would later come to be known as the blight and this was a development that would have far reaching impact on the history of the land to come we read in the king of the first ages note 2 that the white priestesses were worshiped in the ancient society for their ability to ward off the blight much as they would be later in the white parish and the relic colivia's ring tells us that these priestesses actually lived alongside the blight in the verboten domain they had a great understanding of the blight and were easily able to manage its power and influence as evidenced by the aegis curio artifact that can remove the pain of purifying even incredible amounts of it the ancients were not satisfied to simply study the blight in peace however this was a nation of war the priestess rings found littered throughout the game hint at a war-like culture that actively weaponized the blight against their rivals and employed white priestesses on the battlefield against their foes and the weathered necklace description relays legends that say the ancients used to rule the world while this is likely hyperbole the massive size of the ancients empire indicates they were quite successful regardless an interesting part of the ancients culture that shows they had an interest in immortality was the deathless pact ritual in which great warriors would swear allegiance to and forge a bond with high-ranking priestesses that would transcend death itself the warrior spirit would live on as long as his sworn bloodline continued and the priestesses would be protected [Music] [Applause] [Music] everything changed for the ancients when the colonists arrived at the beginning of the first age their reasons for leaving their own continent are never given the soon to be king of the first age simply wrote i am prepared to do what i must for my people though it's implied that they tried to negotiate a deal with the ancients a deal with extremely one-sided terms no doubt they obviously came expecting and prepared for a war and that's exactly what they got despite having superior numbers the colonists struggled to prevail due to the deathless soldiers the ancients commanded after a long bloody conflict lasting a period of weeks to more likely months the colonists won with the ancients being almost completely wiped out it is not explained how exactly they were able to defeat the deathless warriors but the king of the first age states that they could only be contained through magical means which implies that his sorcerers were able to come up with something to if not destroy the blight at least suppress it this is further supported by the coven handbook which states that the duties of the coven include aiding and blighted eradication when needed obviously they would have done this with magic so relentless was the invaders advance that the final defending ancients were eventually forced underground into the hallowed caverns of their priestesses and as we are told by the umbral knight it is there they made their final stand eldrid's memory gives us valuable information regarding the end of his people we learned that nearly all the ancients had been slain including the white priestesses and pharyn the umbral knight is entrusted with protecting the last priestess who is just an infant this child is none other than nimphilia who is later to be known as the priestess of dawn the nature of pharyn's deathless pact seems to have been quite different from the norm due to the obviously desperate circumstances they were in he was bound to a child rather than a fully realized priestess and as a result seems to have kept his body rather than forfeiting flesh as part of the ritual as described in the deathless pact we can assume from context clues that nimphilia was the first priestess to whom pharyn was bound as this memory occurs in the ritual chamber where the rites were performed it makes sense that the last surviving adult priestess eldridge ward would bring the infant here and initiate a deathless pact so as to give the child the best chance at survival as possible the gamble paid off as farron was able to miraculously escape thus preserving the legacy of his people the next we hear from the colonists is that they divided the land into six nations with the young king of the first age being given the area of land's end which seems to be near the ocean to the south due to the presence of corals in the witch's thicket he notes that a remnant of ancients remained in the land but it appears their numbers were very small and insignificant since they are never mentioned again in his notes for the next few years as the colonists settled into the land farron appears to have stayed in the area and took care of nimphilia to the best of his ability to stay out of sight they lived in the so-called deadlands most likely outlying areas that had been ravaged by the war details on this period are basically non-existent so we have to go into speculation territory a bit but what i think happened next is that pharyn died if he did indeed keep his body after the deathless-packed ritual as explained earlier then this was an inevitability and there are myriad ways he could have met his mortal end succumbing to old battle wounds starvation or exposure to cold and of course he was trying to provide for a child during this time as well despite being a deathless knight it would seem that the transition from life to being an immortal spirit was one that took time as upon his death he was no longer present to protect the priest as child this interim between life death and spirit may have actually been the reason eldred's priestess did not perform the death part of the ritual in the first place as farren had been needed immediately unfortunately the partially completed ritual resulted in pharyn sleeping far longer than normal and thus unable to look after his ward but we'll come back to him later having lost her protector the young name philia had no choice but to wander out on her own and by a stroke of luck she was found only a short while later by the king himself her inability to speak makes sense considering her young age she was likely no more than five years old and that her only company had been fernan a man who doesn't seem to speak much the king decided to take her in and nimphilia was raised by the colonists who had destroyed her people identifying nemphilia as the first priestess helps us cement the timeline of ender lily's story based on the life expectancy of adults during the middle ages and because there were three priestesses we can infer that the span of time from the arrival at land's end to the purification of the land by lily was approximately 70 years while it may seem odd to call the indigenous peoples ancient after such a short amount of time there's actually a very simple explanation for this the title ancient doesn't refer to a span of time at all but rather to a cultural heritage in the king of the first ages note 3 he refers to the native inhabitants of the land whom he personally helped destroy as ancients these people were known as ancient not because they existed far in the past but because the history of their civilization stretched far back into the past in this same way we could say that the country of egypt is ancient even though it is still around today plenty of other evidence supports this explanation as well such as the fact that warriors of the ancients were interacting with those of the new kingdom not long before the events of the game the new kingdom experienced a fairly long period of peace probably around 20 years that was mostly uneventful as no records are found from this period the next we hear of it is that carriers of the rot appeared from the land of snow and came down to attack the kingdom now the king explains this by saying it was the ancients reanimated but i don't think this is the case as powerful as the blight may be it is never shown to have power to reanimate a creature that is already dead which makes sense considering that blight feeds off of the soul once the soul is gone the vessel is no longer of any use a good example of this is that the king of the third age remains dead after being killed by julius despite being in a room covered with blight what was really happening was that one of the other five nations had fallen and been consumed and it was their blighted inhabitants that came to attack this idea is supported in the game first in the parish way 2 we read said to be the ancients revenge not the ancients themselves just their revenge the rot drove people to madness and transformed them into monstrosities the note was written about this first attack in the first age so clearly the problem was regular people being infected and transformed furthermore on the blighted one tells us that once a host has been fully infected they are driven purely by the wrath of the blight the blight seeks to destroy for reasons i'll get to later in this video but suffice it to say that it makes sense for its hosts to attack other humans this explanation also sheds light on the pattern of blighted attacks one of which occurs in each age the full assault comes after another nation falls to the blight and during the interim there is a steady trickle of blighted victims into the land the other nations fell so much faster than land's end because they had no priestesses to purify the corruption they really didn't stand a chance going back to the timeline it was during this conflict against the blight that the white parish was established under the guidance of nimphilia the priestess of dawn so named since she was the first priestess of the white parish the dawn of a new age we are told that the prayers of the woman in white saved the kingdom and subsequently the region's other religions died out including the true way presumably the religion the colonists had brought from their own country once they realized the priestess had such great power so determined to protect this white priestess were the people that a system was established where she would be protected by not one not five but ten highly trained guardians during the same period the coven was established as a place for magic to be studied and practiced though members were strictly forbidden to practice ancient magic which they correctly viewed as dangerous instead they focused their practice on elemental magics including water fire air and earth and seemed to study the abyss as well in some form this explains why they have an entrance just south of the coven [Music] [Applause] [Music] around the time of the death of the first king the second age began details are scant but we know that the white parish continued to thrive under the guidance of the priestess of dawn and later her daughter priesus of the wind seemingly with the full support of the second king it seems this was a time of relative peace though the threat of the ever-present blight remained we know purifications were happening semi-regularly at least and at some point during the priestess of the wind's lifetime another of the land six nations fell and came down to attack the kingdom they were successfully defeated and subsequently the twin spires were built on the cold border of the land to provide greater protection from abroad it was around this time that people began to notice the rapid growth of blight in the verboten domain without the ancients white priestesses holding it at bay it was now free to spread through the caverns and even up to the surface the monument engraving found in the twin spires states that the structure granted refuge from the blighted menace's encroach from the verboten domain indicating that this was a real concern perhaps as a result of this increased awareness interest in blight magic began to take root in the magical community as evidenced by the sorcerer's notes though such dabbling was still forbidden the forbidden text scrap tells us as much based on its location in fact it is possible that the order of dark executioners was formed to deal with this surge of heretics though it could also have simply been a response to increased crime since the kingdom was steadily growing larger [Music] [Applause] [Music] the third age which is that most heavily explored in the game begins with the reign of the third king also unnamed and the births of key characters including julius elaine silva secret and fredia which likely occurred in a 10-year window of time freddia's mother the priestess of the wind died shortly after her birth due to the sheer amount of blight she had purified from the kingdom and the land went through a 14-year span without a priestess until freddie was old enough to take on such big responsibilities at age 14 she officially became the next priestess and on that very day she purified elaine's blighted mother based on the note the next white priestess it seems the guardians would have waited if they could but so many people were afflicted with blight that it didn't seem wise to wait any longer as freddia grew into the lonely role of priestess that had been thrust upon her she continued to spend time in the hamlet the place of her upbringing we can see from the hamlet's scroll that she had a close relationship with the children of the hamlet we are told very little about the third king besides the fact that he at some point becomes interested in immortality no doubt due to rumors spreading regarding the ancient's magic and that he had a romance with honier's sister that led to julius's birth honir's diary entries directly contradict each other regarding the relationship he had with his sister at the end of her life but regardless of which account is accurate the fact is that he raised julius as his own son interestingly the king seems to have at first been furious that his son had been taken from the castle and had great interest in finding julius but this was short-lived and probably stemmed from a selfish desire for his bloodline to continue rather than actually caring about his son once immortality cropped up as a potential alternative any interest he had in julius vanished with the king on board with blight study faden and other mages who had seceded from the coven were able to negotiate a deal whereby they could investigate the verboten domain and the group came to be known as the king's mage brigade though it is never explicitly stated it would appear that the king approved of the mage brigade only on the condition that they studied the secret to immortality for the king and his soldiers and for no other purpose we know that muriel's purpose for joining in the research was to find a cure for the white priestess's pain and that phaedon was interested in this as well but they were very careful to keep these discoveries especially the aegis curio a secret faden seems to have trusted muriel from the very start as he gives her the curio's first stone tablet for safekeeping at what is probably her home in the hamlet just as the blight had resurged in ages past so now it returned in full fury we read in defense of the twin spires one that a plague wind blew in from the far east and the kingdom was attacked by a massive horde of blighted victims this time led by the mysterious crimson blight the entire kingdom mobilized to defend their home and what followed was the largest battle since the conflict with the ancients several generations earlier in preparation for the battle a great number of knights including julius and garrod took a newly created elixir the mages concocted as a result of their blight study the kingdom's criminals or sinners were conscripted into the army as well and forced to take the elixir among whom was the fallen archer we learned from bloodied note 3 that sorcerers from the coven volunteered to fight as well which makes sense considering their magic was able to affect the blight in some way the battle stretched for many weeks with freddia and the immortal knights the only thing keeping the defenses afloat we know from the bloodied note 3 that the conflict lasted at least 20 days but it could have been and most likely was many more than that at some point during a break in the battle freddia visited olve at the top of the right side spire for a respite and they had the sweet exchange shown in olf's memory this is also when she promised him the picture mentioned in freddie's memoirs iii while the recipient is never mentioned by name there are clues that indicate it was ove in his chambers at the base of the spires we find a single framed picture on the wall which seems to be a self-portrait of freddia herself we know that old had an affinity for flowers and as the lily of land's end freddia must have appeared to him as the most beautiful flower of all it seems quite reasonable that his last request to her would have simply been a picture furthermore freddia brings up this detail during her musings about the battle so olv would have been fresh in her mind as well in the end the defenders prevailed against the blighted horde and freddia was able to purify the last of the blighted attackers though the toll it took on her was substantial for reasons unexplained many of the surviving soldiers took suspicious elixirs given to them by the mage brigade after the battle had ended why they would have wanted to do such a thing as anyone's guess but it seems likely they were deceived by the mages in some way following the conflict the kingdom experienced another and final period of peace as stated in defense of the twin spires too to the common folk of land's end all was well with the enemy soundly defeated but there were those who knew better it is at this point where silva's downhill descent begins as fear and self-doubt overwhelm her in silva's note 1 we read that she feels unworthy of the role of being freddie's guardian and she recognizes the danger of the kingdom defenders now affected by the blight based on her comment that she and fredia were the lone souls at the spires spared by the blight it would appear that the white priestess's other guardians had either fallen in battle or been infected with the blight as a result of the long-term exposure or taking the elixir directly this would partially explain why silva seems to be the only guardian by freddie's side another reason to worry was that one blighted from the battle of the bastion remained the crimson lord itself who the king refers to as lord of the blighted lands for reasons unknown it had somehow made its way back into the abyss below the verboten domain as implied in silva's unfinished note and it was there silva escorted fredia to purify it once and for all the result of doing so was catastrophic for her the sheer quantity of blight took hold over her faculties incapacitating her completely rendering her unable to even lift a pencil and her protective amulet the heirloom of land's end was shattered in her crippled state she was carried back up to the verboten domain to be carefully monitored by fading and the mage brigade now the king ever uncaring was relieved by what he saw as a definitive triumph over his enemies with the blighted taken care of he felt once again free to pursue his goal of immortality and was no doubt motivated by the success of the immortal knights though he personally held back from taking the elixir so as to be sure it was perfected the period of peace continued though blighted problems began to crop up white was still overflowing from the verboten domain of course and we know from the hamlet request one that the hamlet was having problems with blighted creatures in the forest as a result of these two sources people continued to be infected and the hamlet request too tells us that those so afflicted were held in the catacombs likely while they waited for the priestess to recover enough to purify them unfortunately for them freddiah was still in bad shape down in the verboten though not entirely alone around this time elaine began to visit her and freddia gave her the now broken heirloom necklace and asked if she could repair it into an amulet to which elaine agreed though her second diary entry tells us that she would need faden's help to do this in light of freddia's delayed recovery the mages coven members and chief guardian began to worry and discuss the succession problem mentioned in freddie's memoirs iv if she dies so dies the ancient line of priestesses and with it the kingdom's only real means of defense against the blight because freddia had no desire for children and was obviously in no condition to bear children anyways the only option that left was the creation of artificial life or cloning in order to keep her bloodline alive the king agreed to this study recognizing the gravity of the issue at hand as part of this research the mage brigade's human experimentation dramatically increased in number and to fill the demand we know prisoners on death row were sent to the verboten as test subjects muriel however had other plans as a member of the mage brigade and feyden's personal assistant her goal all along was to find a way to ease or even cure the suffering of the white priestess which was likely inspired by the first tablet fragment regarding the aegis curio entrusted to her by faden it is very possible that she assisted in the recovery and strategic distribution of the other tablets for safety which we know was still strictly forbidden by the king as evidenced by the unlucky tablet holder found in the stockade it is a mystery why the king would have been against something that could alleviate the very issue at hand but it seems quite clear that he was regardless unfortunately for muriel she was infected by the blight and began the rapid regression suffered by the blighted an outcome she recognized as all but inevitable by the time faden's archives 4 was written we know faden was already searching for a way to bring muriel back to herself his desperate concern was not just for muriel however it was also for the child with which she was pregnant this is never talked about by fading or muriel but was certainly the case and is at least hinted at in faden's memory when he refers to her as his lover we'll come back to this later though finally after countless terrible human experiments the priestess clones were successfully created using the creation cages we see many of in the verboten though it may seem like quite a leap to go from blighted monstrosities like the hidden test subject to such pure subjects as the clones we can see in the verboden test tubes vaguely human figures that could represent the transitional phase between these two groups from feden's archives 5 we know that at this point any trace of humanity left in muriel had long since dissipated and her form would have been close to the state we see in feyden's memory additionally we learned that the successful clone research also yielded the substance feden named the deathless elixir which is further proof that the earlier elixir used at the battle of the bastion must have been a cruder prototype version of it perhaps due to the clone's creation giving freddia a new sense of purpose or her simply gaining the upper hand in the war within herself between purity and blight she began to recover and was able to finally leave the verboten domain we know from garrett's memory that she visited him with one of the clones and while it may seem a stretch for freddia to have already been walking again we know she was assisted by elaine's magic in the form of the anklet charm she also regained her ability to draw as in her room in the catacombs we find a drawing of three clone girls likely the first three to be created obviously this could only have been done after their creation this also indicates she would have been able to finish drawing the picture for olve which she does since we can see it hanging in his room this period of freedom was short-lived however as freddia experienced some kind of relapse that returned her to a nearly comatose state likely due to the exhausting effort of keeping so much blight suppressed following this turn of events and with the total of eight clones created the mages decided to proceed with a blight transfer ritual that would transfer freddie's blight to the clones saving her but in the process likely killing them due to their age and fragility freddia and the clones were taken down to the abyss where the mages were possibly relocating them for further study the easel and canvas found at the edge of this room tellingly empty implied this was to be a long-term stay they laid freddia upon the black pedestal and it is here her memory begins she sensed the clones around her feeling their innocence and purity and decided that she would not let the ritual happen she wanted her legacy to the girls to be one of hope and telling lee remarks that it was the time with them that saved her when the young priestesses attempted to absorb the blight she forcefully pushed them out just as she pushes lily out later as the crimson lord this action is very consistent with what we know of freddia she deliberately guides lily the last hope out of the kingdom to protect her from the blight and its suffering there is no way she would have allowed any of the young priestesses to absorb even one soul's worth of blight if she could help it she saw them as her own children and in turn they considered her their mother well-intentioned though this action was the repercussions were devastating the disruption of the failed ritual broke the balance within her and caused a wave of power to surge through the verboten domain facilitating a spike in growth that resulted in earthquake tremors rippling through the caverns and across the land though never directly referred to in game it is clear this is what happened first of all there is a huge amount of blight in the verboten so much so that the kingdom is essentially sitting atop a giant mushroom not the most stable place to build upon this would also explain why so much of the coven is submerged during the events of the game it was already close to the ocean and even a mild earthquake could cause sinking substantial enough to result in massive flooding we can also see serious damage to structures all across land's end that seem beyond the scope of blighted creatures to inflict during this time frame furthermore in the white priestess's bastion letter the priestess wonders if everyone else who escaped is well so it is clear a serious and dangerous event occurred at this time unbeknownst to the inhabitants of land's end however the blight was not simply growing haphazardly under their feet it was growing sporocarps or fruiting bodies the fungal equivalent to flowers we find these stalks across the land as blight deposits with just one the pod hanging over the twin spires having reached maturity the blight seems to have produced lighter than air gases enabling it to lift a piece of the castle up into the air it is no coincidence that we find it here at the twin spires as the highest point in the land these towers were the perfect candidate for the blight to spread its spores as far as possible this is the same reason we find a blightstalk atop the highest tower of the ruined castle as well it was this pot at the twin spires that reaching across the sky with its spore-filled bodies brought the reign of death to land's end the idea of fungus causing rain may seem a bit far-fetched but this is actually a well-established phenomenon in the real world clouds form when water molecules in the atmosphere coalesce into droplets which can only occur at fairly low temperatures however the process is considerably expedited by the presence of tiny particles in the air which the water molecules can cling to and fungal spores are the perfect candidate for this a single mushroom can release up to 30 000 spores in a single second many of which are carried by the wind up into the atmosphere and with thousands of mushrooms and other fungi all releasing spores in the similar way the effect they have on local precipitation patterns is very significant it is clearly indicated from freddie's memory that the ritual is directly responsible for the rain since you can hear it start to fall at the end after the fade to black however this theory explains why the rain did not start immediately after the failed ritual instead falling several days later the sporocarps needed time to grow even more evidence that this is the case is the fact that the developers signed the twin spire sporocarp with the initials dd what better place to sign your name on your work than the very answer to the mystery teased on the game's official website itself but let's back up a little after the ritual failed freddia began her final transformation into the blighted lord and as the caverns shook around them the party of mages and coven members rushed to get the clones back up above the surface for safety they were split up each being assigned a protector the first was chosen by the king who probably assumed the eldest clone would become freddie's official successor one was assigned to secret hence her title as guardian despite the fact she was never one of the ten another two honir one to ol one to elaine one to garrod one to fade in and one to silva it was at this time that in the commotion silva made the decision to transform herself with the mage's elixir when she got the chance her resolve being written in silva's blightstained note 1 which is found at the entrance to the abyss her disdain for the clones is made apparent in her second blightstand note when she calls them the airsats priestesses and abominations and doubtless she still felt her loyalty belonged to freddie herself rather than to what she saw as an imposter so instead of guarding the clone assigned to her silva passed the responsibility off to her brother the fallen archer with freddie's state of well-being unknown silva felt she would have to be stronger than ever in order to be ready for what was to come we learn from the white priestess's bastion letter the priestess's castle memo and lily's note that a span of time passed with the clone separated each wondering how the others were faring in the aftermath of the failed purification attempt the mages decided to create one more clone either because they believed a total of nine would be able to complete the purification ritual or simply as a precautionary measure in the face of great uncertainty and successfully created lily 2.0 protagonist lily and sent her to the cathedral under the protection of secret and the chief guardian groa elaine sent freddia's now repaired amulet for her knowing she was the most vulnerable of the clones in her newly born state and of course without having any way to contact freddia herself in her letter to sigrid elaine specifies that the amulet is to go unto that white priestess not just any priestess but that one the newest one because it was imbued with a blessing that would greater protect her from the threat of the blighted and as such was more powerful than the necklaces given to the other priestess girls her concern is warranted as it appears that the waking process of new clones takes time as evidenced by the fact that lily 2.0 was delivered to the cathedral in her creation cage and remains asleep for a great deal of time even when she does wake she is of course a newborn who cannot speak and must gradually learn about the world around her a valid question to ask at this point would be why does secrets lily have a name while protagonist lily doesn't seem to have one yet it would appear that the first eight clones were all called lilies since they were grown from the priestess of the fount and the fount grows lilies furthermore the lost heirloom relic implies fredia saw the clones as her own kin and worthy of such a name the ninth clone lily 2.0 or technically 9.0 was never formally given this name which is why it matters when she decides to keep the name for herself fadin did not however send just lily up to the cathedral he also sent the note restoring the aegis curio to groa the chief guardian stating he was ready to restore the artifact if she could decipher the incantation if anyone would be able to decipher this type of ancient text the chief guardian was a good bet since she headed the church that was directly founded upon the magic and customs of the ancients it would seem fading had finally reached a point where he was desperate enough to risk performing a powerful spell with irreversible consequences likely due to the loss of muriel but unfortunately it was too late the final day had come in sigrid's memory we see the final moments between her and lily as the two sit before the cathedral altar each consoling the other not knowing that at that very moment the sporocarp atop the twin spires had finished seating the sky with its spores and in broad daylight began the reign of death the ensuing rainstorm is likely that wherein the hamlet youth was lost and blighted and his situation was repeated all across the land the kingdom fell into chaos as scores of its citizens were transformed into blighted creatures who were driven by the blight's wrath to attack the uninfected we know that the soldiers who drank the second elixir after the bastion defense transformed into winged monsters including the fallen sentinel and the forsaken felworm and it is likely that the centaurs transformed for the same reason report from a verboten mage tells us that the mages were experimenting with human animal fusions and it seems they were successful in deriving some kind of essence from animals that these unlucky soldiers were transformed into this was a different elixir than the one given to the knights because the former kept their human forms as well as their minds which seems to be the difference between blighted mortals and blighted immortals it is this latter group referred to in on the blighted 2 as there are blighted whose minds do not fade and the bloodied note 3 gives us a first-hand example of that these unfortunate souls not only had their bodies stolen from them by an invasive power but were also forced to watch in horror as they committed atrocities they were powerless to stop this situation is very similar to that of the real world zombie fungus that affects insects and hijacks their bodies while leaving their brain untouched forcing them to infect others of their kind while cognizant the whole time this was likely the inspiration for the blight in the first place it also explains the aggressive nature of those affected by the blight by attacking those not yet infected the blight is able to spread itself over entire populations as the kingdom fell into utter disarray julius wrote his resolve and intentions on the castle wall then headed straight for the palace to kill his father the king julius memory is the most that we see of the king and despite him being a pretty selfish guy i don't think he can totally be blamed for what happened the kingdom almost certainly would have fallen anyways despite the strength and dedication of the cloned guardians the calamity of reign and the ensuing horde of blight within the realm's defenses was simply too much for them to defend against and one by one the clones are killed we learn from poner's memory that the blight poured from the earth likely out of cracks formed during the earthquake several days earlier as his small party of executioners was picked off one by one he received communication from freddia down in the abyss who now fully transformed herself asked him to guard the stockade's entrance to the abyss so that no one would go down to try and rescue her even when he is overtaken and blighted he does not forget this charge and remains the keeper of the abyss until being set free by lily the coven already weakened by the earthquake was devastated by the rain as we see in elaine's memory having been unable to protect the clone in her care elaine's last act is to cast a protective ward over what remained of the coven the exact nature of this spell is unclear but it's implied that its purpose was to keep the blight from growing despite all of the people being blighted the environment of which is thicket remains surprisingly clean and pure in stark contrast to other areas like the ruined castle this is also reflected by the music of the area which is oddly whimsical and unlike any other tracks in the game one by one the rest of the clones are either killed or die from starvation exposure or both siegert's lily likely survived the longest protected as she was by her fierce guardian but even secret fell to the madness of blight and lily was left vulnerable to the creatures running rampant through the cathedral the clone assigned to faden appears to have gotten lost in the verboten domain far from her protector and like any lost child sought out the safest most familiar place she could think of the place of her birth which sadly provided her no refuge but on the topic of the verboten let us return to fadin who at this point is affected by the blight and beginning to lose his mind even as his attempts to save muriel have failed over and over again as i mentioned earlier muriel had been pregnant when she was infected by the blight and that left one final option for the half-mad all-desperate fade-in to attempt to perform the spell referred to in the forbidden text scrap and guide muriel's spirit into the body of the babe who in faden's mind at least may have been unaffected by the blight as its mother was what he forgot to take into account of course was that the spirit's power would be transferred as well and since blight binds to the soul itself it would have been transferred along with it the results of this magic were grotesque with muriel's body swelling to many times its original size to accommodate the rapid growth of an infant that housed not one but two blighted souls we can see the culmination of this in the background of feyden's lab the monstrous creature finally burst out of muriel's abdomen alien style and remained to guard the lab wherein lied its mother father and lover taking all of this into account it makes perfect sense that when lily encounters the creature on her journey through the verboten it is named muriel rather than something else it literally is her it is obvious that the remains we find in the lab used to be her since the butterflies and stick-like appendages from the memory match exactly but since it is lifeless we have to assume that the soul is no longer contained within as a blighted soul cannot die further proving this when you collect the blight deposit from its head the body is not purified faden remarks at the end of his memory that he will surely be kicked out of his lab by the king presumably because his experimentation on muriel had taken over all of his research commissioned by the king but obviously this never happens and it's pretty easy to see why with the rain falling up above the king had far more pressing matters to attend to [Music] [Applause] [Music] this brings us to the events of the game which start not with lily but with the umbral knight finally after decades trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead he awakes from within a cave out in the deadlands as a deathless spirit he mentions to lily that his dispirited slumber was eased by gloom glow blossoms which are found only in dark environs and it would make sense for him and nimphilia to have hidden in caves to stay out of sight of the colonists who are likely searching for and terminating survivors of the war drawn by the bloodline to which he was sworn he traveled through the ruins of land's end searching for freddia and was surprised to find lily instead his remark that chaos had befallen the villagers long before his arrival suggests that some amount of time had passed after the rain began to fall though how long is difficult to determine we know that lily survived solely due to the empowered amulet given to her by elaine in addition to granting a measure of protection from the blight it also kept her warm and sustained her as evidenced by the fact she never needs to eat on her journey this would have been enough to keep her alive until she was awoken by the night though i suspect she was already close to awakening since she could remember the other lily talking to her while she slept what's more the clones bodies that we find are in pristine condition aside from you know being dead suggesting that perhaps only a few days have passed at first the umbral knight considers killing lily to end his deathless pact but after a short time traveling together he decides against it remembering why he made the pact in the first place his desire to end things himself is not explained but it's not hard to see why he may have felt this way the man just watched his entire nation be annihilated his friends cut down before his eyes then spent long years in the cold wilderness struggling to protect a child before dying himself and stuck in a partially alive partially awake state for 70 years only to fully awake to a kingdom that is even more utterly destroyed i'm pretty sure anyone would be pretty tired of life at that point fortunately lily's innocence and purity reminds him of nemphilia the first priestess he was sworn to protect and he resolves to bear that duty until the end with the ultimate goal of finding the priestess of the fount together they follow her trail through the ruined kingdom freeing the knights and guardians from their blighted bondage and collecting the last wishes from the young priestess's bodies this is where the title of the game comes into play quietus is an old english word for death more accurately death as a sweet release from the heroes of life lily is granting these knights a release from the blight that their souls may go free and have eternal rest while on this topic i think a brief explanation of the spirit is in order when lily purifies one of the knights or other blighted beings their spirit is fully unbound and able to move on but a blighted imprint of that person is left behind as explained by the blighted phantom relic this is not the person themselves and is why none of the spirits can speak except for the umbral knight after lily brings this relief to silva who has remained in the catacombs freddie's spirit manifests and starts to guide lily towards the fount in the hinterlands this is where we get to the first of the three endings if lily travels to the found she is purified by freddie's final spiritual projection who implores her to leave the land and seek a life elsewhere free from the blight this is her final wish the umbrella knight encourages her to go as well but states that he is unable to follow due to his deathless pact he will instead remain in the kingdom and continue his search for the priestess on his own this small detail indicates that a deathless warrior must protect the eldest living member of the bloodline not just any member and when he tells lily that the pact will bring them again one day he simply means that upon freddie's mortal passing the pact will transfer to lily herself in the second ending things get much more complicated choosing not to visit the fount as directed lily and the umbral knight instead make their way to the dangerous verboten domain deep below the surface and fight their way through many of the mage brigades labs can be found here with the remnants of their twisted experiments though all have been completely overgrown by the ever-spreading blight upon reopening the elevator shaft through the heart of the verboten they encounter none other than the monstrous muriel guarding faden's lab and defeat her in order to get to feyden and to the abyss below it is there in the blighted heart itself that lily finally finds fredia the priestess of the fount she appears to still be in human form and warns lily not to come any closer since she is beyond saving and explains that the lilly flowers you found along your journey were growing from the rain caused by her body the source of the blight despite her awful condition she is still trying to control the blight within as evidenced by the pure lilies that can be found among the blighted ones when lily refuses to leave however the priestess cannot hold the projection any longer and it is swallowed up by her true form the crimson lord she has transformed into a literal flower albeit a grotesque one twisted by the blight you can clearly see during the ensuing fight that it is growing out of the wall of the chamber the fight itself is quite interesting unlike the other bosses in the game the crimson lord seems reluctant to actually fight you since freddie's spirit is straining to hold back the wrath of the blighted monster she has become let's talk about the crimson lord for a minute to be frank the nature of this entity is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in the game the being is referred to by multiple names in multiple contexts that complicate the issue for example the king refers to it as lord of the blighted lands so we know that at one point it was a mobile entity that for sure led the blighted horde to land's end but we clearly see that freddia as the crimson lord is immobile so did the crimson lord she purified look completely different every other blighted creature that we see purified in the game was once human but this one in particular is different because it seems to be the actual source of the blight the blighted heart and when fully purified the entire land is freed from the curse of blight as well what's more it is implied by freddie's lines that her body is not just the creature you fight but the entire abyss and verboten domain and this actually makes a lot of sense the ribotin is not simply fungus but also flesh as evidenced by the huge number of eyes bones and brain-like structures that can be found there in the abyss you can even hear the environment breathing around you furthermore if you look at the shape of the abyssal gauntlet zoomed out it has a striking resemblance to a human's lower intestine it definitely appears as though this is one massive creature of supernatural origin now back to lily upon defeating the priestess lily attempts to purify her but is pushed out in her weakened state however she has nowhere else to go and chooses against freddie's will to attempt purification once more and join in her suffering by doing this freddia's pain would surely be lessened at least a bit but lily's aid is still not enough for them to overcome the blight in the third ending which the game itself seems to consider the true ending lily does not head straight to the abyss instead following faden's notes and collecting all seven stone fragments scattered around the kingdom that are needed to reactivate the aegis curio the last piece is found deep in the abyss in the ancients ritual chamber which is where she learns the truth about the umbral knight and about her lineage upon making her way back to the surface with all the pieces gathered together underneath the cathedral the umbral knight deciphers the incantation and through feyden's magic it is made whole again the knights line to lily about the ritual potentially unfettering her amulet which is of course the lost heirloom suggests that it is an artifact with powers similar to the aegis curio she travels down to the abyss to confront freddia exactly as in the second ending and the first part of the fight plays out the same way but after being pushed out of her attempted purification the spirits of all the other lilies the ender lilies burst out and give her strength it's an incredible moment made all the more powerful by its definitive proving that each of the clones has their own soul each lily truly is their own person now reinvigorated our lily fights against the crimson lord a second time and upon defeating it performs the ultimate purification the miraculous power of the aegis curio allows her to absorb all the blight stored within freddia and withstand the pain of doing so the rain finally stops and the kingdom while still ruined will suffer no more we know that freddie's soul is finally freed and she promises to watch over lily it is unclear exactly how she is able to do this but based on the priestess's ability to handle the blight it stands to reason that their souls have greater tangibility and influence in the physical world than those of others and with that the next age begins just as the first did with a young girl who cannot speak striking out to make her way in the world well we've made it to the end of the video and i have a confession to make i lied to you see i called this the complete lore of ender lilies but as i'm sure you've noticed this analysis is actually far from complete there are notes spirits relics and areas i haven't discussed as well as a plethora of questions that remain unanswered such as where had the umbrella knight seen these flowers before were priestess amulets mined from the abyss what was lily planning to tell you are sentient rock formations out wandering around somewhere did lily's purification affect all six nations or just land's end and are any of the other nations even left at this point where did the bligh even come from in the first place and most importantly what is the deal with sigrid and silva's wings they're fair and angelic so they must be natural but secret doesn't have them in her memory so they must be given only to guardians but seagrid never becomes an official guardian and the other guardians don't have them and the mages didn't know how to make people fly before the blight so they must be caused by the blight but there are ancient statues with angel wings so they must be natural but the ancients lived with blight so they could still be caused by the blight and i don't even know what i know anymore so i'm just gonna leave this one out on the table at the end of the day though part of what makes ender lily so captivating is that it doesn't give you all the answers and some mysteries may never be definitively solved it gives players a reason to come back again and again searching for even the tiniest clue that could lead to a revelation and if you haven't already that's what i would encourage you to do experience lily's journey for yourself and discover the haunting beauty of this tragic world use this analysis as a starting point for your own theories and be sure to let me know what you find this video certainly has its share of flaws and some of my theories will likely need to be revised or rewritten to account for new information and i'm totally open to expanding on it later as more of these secrets are uncovered but if you enjoyed it please like and subscribe and be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Indie Xplorer

Views: 66,822

Keywords: ender lilies lore, ender lilies lore explained, ender lilies story, ender lilies story explained, ender lilies, ender lilies quietus of the knights, ender lilies review, ender lilies analysis, ender lilies lore explanation, enderlilies, ender lilies miriel, ender lilies rain, ender lilies verboten, ender lilies clones, ender lilies narrative

Id: Y9o0x1GJ_f8

Length: 51min 52sec (3112 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022