The Lore of Elden Ring's Eternal Cities

I think everyone had this moment in Elden ring you find a building hidden in the forest of lim Graves Mistwood and the door mysteriously opens of its own volition to reveal an elevator down that just keeps going and going on and on until you forget that you're even Underground cavernous roof is now so far above that it might as well be a false night sky and the world below has life light and a culture of its own what's interesting about the environment down here is that it's actually a fusion of cultures there are the dynastic remains infested with claymen and then there's the ancestral grounds brimming with wildlife but built amidst it all between the ruins Beyond The ancestral grounds and even hanging from the ceilings are the incredible Eternal cities inhabited by the Knox for now think of the Knox as just these enemies the monks swordstresses and night maidens of the Eternal cities the word Knox means night in Latin some of you might remember this from the phrase vario knocks in Dark Souls which was commonly held to mean fear the night this theme has carried over to Eldon ring where fear and respect for the night is conveyed by characters like Rani who seek to usher in an age of stars here begin it's a chill night that encompasses all reaching the great beyond into fear and loneliness and just like the age of dark in Dark Souls the coming age of stars is presented as a bit of an inevitability in Elden ring or at least it might have been were it not for starskoge radan who locked the stars out of motion and fettered the Fate once written in the night sky on behalf of the golden order again this is just like in Dark Souls where the coming age of dark was stolen from mankind by a greater power yet even now the age of stars continues to be championed by a people called the Knox except now the knocks have been banished to the underground and here they live in this state of Eternal anticipation just endlessly waiting for a fate that has been taken away from them whenever explicitly told which act it was that led to the nox's banishment but my best guess is that it has to do with this the Finger Slayer blade which we loot beneath the Giant's throne in nocron a part of its description reads this blood-drenched fetish is proof of the high treason committed by the Eternal City and symbolizes its downfall so what was the nature of the nox's high treason then well this is a Finger Slayer blade one that is able to harm the greater will and its vassals this blade is drenched in Blood and proof of high treason so it seems like the weapon was successfully used but we can only really speculate on which pair of two fingers this blade might have been used on of course it might have just been high treason to create this blade in the first place and this weapon is said to be born of a corpse so let's take a closer look at its icon doing so reveals a spine running up the blade and two arms that form the hilt so clearly this weapon is born of a corpse but it's not the only weapon in game that's like this remember that moment at the end of the game where the Elden Beast reaches into the ground and pulls a sword from radigan's Corpse that is the sacred Relic sword and it's 2 is a spined spiral Blade with a human forming the hilt so to sum in this item's description this weapon represents the end of an age and to others the beginning now I kind of doubt that the Finger Slayer blade is made from a corpse that's as powerful as Radigan just because it seems so much smaller broken and Limp but regardless it clearly was an attempt to bring about the end of one age and the beginning of another just so the Finger Slayer blade can only be wielded by Ronnie who needs the weapon to claim her fate and achieve her ending but this can only happen when you defeat radan and unlock the Fate in the night sky because doing so sets free a star from the cosmos which crashes into Lim grave revealing the path to nocoron the Eternal City where the Finger Slayer blade lies hidden there are multiple Eternal cities that are spread widely across the lands between and located deep beneath the Earth first we have the city of nocron that Lies Beneath lingrave the entrance to this city is torn open by redan's meteorite when we explore it so all of the foremost buildings are ruined but they form the path leading to this undisturbed multi-layered city that's sort of tucked behind the dynastic remains and the ancestral environs that were built here long before then there's no Cron's twin the city of Knox Stella which is located beneath Leonia I think most people would have got their first hint of this city when they wound up in the Ansel River Fighting the Dragon Kin soldier of noxtella but the true city is further up from here stretching out between long sections of ant infested tunnels here the Knox have actually learned how to ride these ants though the ants will happily turn on them if given the chance but there's a third City a completely devastated nameless City located beneath Lane Del which is a place we'll have to talk about a little bit later in this video these three cities just have incredible architecture I love knockron's massive inverted towers and it's cool how knock Stella's shining city is built right into this low-hanging false night sky and now the game isn't really clear on whether these cities existed before the nox's banishment underground or if they were built afterwards however I'm inclined to think that they actually existed before their banishment take the fingerslayer blades description for instance this weapon is the most likely reason for the noxus banishment and it lays the high treason at the feet of the Eternal City it doesn't blame the Knox who would have existed above ground at some point it blames the Eternal City but regardless while they at least might have already had these well-developed cities down here their banishment was still a brutal punishment because the knocks would have been cut off from the true night sky which was a core part of their culture as some small Comfort I speculate that they created these false night skies which are made of suspended white fragments this they accept as they wait for the age of stars to begin in order to learn more about these cities though I'd like to look at some data mind information of course you have to take this with a grain of salt but in version 1.0 of Elden ring the Eternal City buildings are frequently listed as America's ruins and the Eternal City Pavilions are America's Pavilions what's more the Knox themselves are actually called America's descendants this obviously has pretty huge implications so let's try to break down America's ancestry and see if we can arrive at the Knox so America herself is of the Newman Race who according to the character Creations screen are supposed descendants of denizens of another world the only other supposed Newman in game are the black knife assassins who according to their silver armor were all women and rumored to be Newman who had close ties with America herself and we have proof that these Newman black knives were tied to the Eternal cities they say the Assassins who carried out the deed were signs of the Eternal City so if we take Roger at his word then it seems like Newman are indeed tied up with the genealogy of the Eternal City and that America herself is likely one of the knox's ancestors you could go as far as to say that America is actually from an eternal City too she is called the Eternal after all but again remember this is data mind information that we're not really supposed to know but at any rate while the nox might be descended from the Newman I think enough time has passed that most knocks aren't really considered Newman anymore if anything they're now more akin to the night folk which is actually another descendancy you can choose for your tarnished in the Character Creator night folk and Knox share similarly huge skin and night folk are a race that was said to bleed silver long ago so let's finally actually talk about the Knox monks the priestesses the night maidens and the silver that they wield the monks of the Eternal cities are all men and they fight with flowing weapons of liquid metal so too do the swordstresses a female cast of the Knox who are agile Warriors and serve as the personal guards of the night maidens the night maidens themselves are said to be of the highest clerical Rank and it's definitely interesting that a group of Maidens would be of the highest clerical rank it's almost as if the night maidens exist as a sort of parallel to the kindling maidens of the two fingers who serve the tarnished so that they might become Lord because remember a core part of the Knox culture is also about searching for a lord to serve except unlike the title Elden Lord The Knocks are waiting for a lord of night in a way this Lord of night is almost an imitation of the olden Lord which would make sense because the knocks are extremely well versed in the art of imitation so let's talk about that I think I speak for a lot of us here when I say that a core part of so many of our late game playthroughs were the mimic tier Spirit ashes which copied the form of their Summoner and from a law point of view the whole point of this mimic tier is actually to mimic the tarnished who might become the Elden Lord its description reads mimic tears are a result of an attempt by the Eternal City to forge a lord however the description also says that their mimicry does not extend to imitating the summoner's will this makes it seem like mimic tears are this tool right they're something to be used to achieve the Eternal cities ends so it's important to point out here that mimic tears are actually more accurately silver tears and silver tears literally are tools because they're wielded by The Knocks As Weapons The Knocks flowing hammer and the knox-flowing sword are forged from the liquid metal of silver tears and tempered to hardness this gives them the ability to extend Bend and when wielded by The Knocks to drastically change their form into spiked Shields and even giant hands and what's kind of chilling to realize is that these weapons are actually living beings this is all quite clearly inspired by ancient alchemical conceptions of mercury or Quicksilver which was this compound that was believed to be able to shift between liquid and solid States as well as life and death in game silver tears are called formless life able to be reborn again and again into imitation they are as much a substance as they are a living organism and we see this in their multitude of forms silver spheres trolls and even night folk to name but a few there's even this entire cut quest line that would have had you bond with a silver mimic tear called asimi In The Cut dialog files this mimic tear claims to have grown a desire for life and knowledge and lordship and she desires to share the throne with you you could have become Eldon Lord and I could have become sovereign eternal I think and I know a lot of you guys did as well when I mentioned this last time I think this would have gone a really long way towards making players relate to the story of the Knox and it would have made them question the order of the earth tree even more and after learning about this questline I can definitely see why mimic tears and artificial life might have been this enormous threat to the Earth trees Authority The Knocks were after all messing with these crucial things that the old tree had come to govern they were messing with the powers of Life Death and Rebirth of course we know that death was sacrosanct to the urge tree during its age as I discussed in my video on death many ancient methods of death came to be abandoned or shunned in favor of returning to the Earth trees Roots instead through the process of a tree burial all the old ways of death were abandoned and as for rebirth while the Earth tree is never really explicitly said to be able to to rebirth beings I think a lot of people just assume that it's implied but there is a bit of evidence many depictions of the old tree actually show human forms growing along its branches just as they show human forms being absorbed in death by its roots and you can't forget that an entire great Rune of the Elden ring explicitly governs rebirth this is Ronaldo's Amber egg and inside it is the great Rune of The Unborn in the end lady Ronaldo was left to learn cradling the Amber egg Lord radican bequeathed her now she devotes herself to it through forbidden right the Grim art of reincarnation I think Muriel calls Ronaldo's reincarnation a grim act here because reincarnation already has a bit of a history with the knocks in the lands between and ranala isn't the Earth tree so I can see how what she's doing might be a bit sacrilegious she's even capable of using larval tears from the Eternal City so Muriel speaking as any follower of the earth tree would understandably the cries ranala's rebirths as forbidden rights and when I searched for this phrase forbidden writes in my dialogue spreadsheet I stumbled upon cut dialogue from thops who confirms that forbidden rights like this did indeed originate in the Eternal City I don't think it's a coincidence that forbidden rights is the same phrase used for ranala and by thoughts as well oh one more thing beware the albinotics cursed Souls born of a forbidden right of the Eternal City [Music] so the albinorex albanorics seemed to be a reference to the ancient Notions of artificial life and that's something that's supported by the albenoric blood clot description which calls them life forms made by human hands according to the albinorex shield albanorex is said to have been created from a primordial drop of dew which to me evokes the old tree's own imagery of Jew where drops of Life dripped from the herd trees branches a sort of imitation in that way to me the Ripple blade that is wielded by Young albinorex Echoes this stating that ripples are thought to be at the origin of their species obviously these are all references to liquid and it suggests that albinorex are born of the same liquid silver that we just discussed an older description of the blue silver set also confirms this calling albionics children of silver and there are a few different types of albinoric that can be encountered game they're a first generation albanorics who have withered legs and are called The albanorics Vault and then they're a second generation albanorics who resemble frogs and are called the Young albanorics let's discuss these first generation Albion oryx first as far as enemy models go there are the men who are commonly the subject of torture and genocide and then there are the women who seem to have learned to defend themselves as albinoric wolf back archers this is probably a good time to mention this isn't the only example in this video where the women of the culture are far more dexterous than the men all of the black knives are women the Knox swordstresses defend the night maidens who are of the highest rank and if we're talking about rank then karia and its princesses as well are a prime example of that speaking of karia actually pedia is an example of an albinoric man that serves karya and other albenoric men in Korea have clearly learned glenstone's sorcery not to mention Loretta but maybe that's the story for another time moving on to the second generation albanorics as Nua albanorics and alliance between the formula for these artificial humans seems to have been improved as they now have legs which they put to comically good use although thops in his cut dialogue does say that they've lost the use of their tongues so they really haven't got the formula quite right there's something also going on with their heads which from software themselves call Dumpy and frog-like you can even loot The albenoric Mask which is literally just their own face skinned in an active malicious mockery and I really shouldn't laugh but it is kind of funny admittedly that even Elden ring players are also guilty of genociding helpless albanorics there's this site in Morgan Palace where it's just Far and Away the best way to farm runes and thousands of players just kill these albinorex over and over again it's just the perfect example of gameplay matching lore anyway with all of this terrible happening to album oryx frankly just for the sheer audacity of them simply existing it's no surprise that they see mikola's halik tree as a Haven but in talking about that we're getting far away from the Eternal cities so let's get back to there so it appears the Eternal cities weren't content with just birthing silver tears and albanorics because the dragonkin too were born in the Eternal City there are a tragic view that you can fight down there and unlike the real stone dragons up above they knew no true sky nor true lightning it seems these dragonkin were created I think with the intent of achieving a sort of immortality something that is suggested by the dragon scale blade which is an ice lightning weapon that reads a weapon made by sharpening a gravel Stone scale thought to be the source of Dragon immortality into an unclouded blade alas The Dragon King soldiers never attained immortality and perished as decrepit pale imitations of their skyborne kin there's the word imitation again and interestingly just like the finguslayer blade is this Hidden Treasure of the Eternal City that is capable of harming the greater will ancient dragons smithing Stones too are a hidden treasure of faram Azula capable of creating weapons that can slay a God so like so many other things in this video The dragonkin Almost seem like they are imitations that were born with a malign purpose but just like Ronaldo's children and the first gen albanorics these imperfect births only led to withered legs and a pitiful existence and now we finally arrive at the third City the nameless Eternal City which is located deep beneath the Earth tree at the deep root depths and it's lost its sky its name and even all traces of the Knox and I believe we know exactly what is to blame for all of this Estelle bastard of the Void is responsible according to astel's remembrance it is a malformed star born in the lightless void far away and with all the force of a falling meteor it seems Estelle destroyed an eternal City and took away their Sky logically this nameless Eternal City is that Eternal City he destroyed since it's absolutely devastated and it is missing its false night sky and when the description says astel took away their sky I believe that's really literal I think Estelle really did take it away far away because we don't fight Estelle anywhere near the nameless Eternal City we fight it way further south almost as if astel ruined the nameless City then flowed all the way down the ancel river to the South past noxtella and into an enormous Cavern where it set up a suspiciously familiar night sky the Eternal Darkness spell tells us that it's this manifestation of the despair around the ruin of the Eternal City and the spell in question is essentially this black hole with a powerful gravitational force drawing everything into it the Estelle don't seem like these super sentient beings to me so what if they were mere animals just drawn towards a sort of black hole or maybe towards another powerful gravitational force like a moon which brings us back to the city of Knox Stella exploring nostellar's tallest Towers rewards you with the legendary Moon of noxtella Talisman a treasure of theirs that represents the Lost Black Moon this Moon apparently was once the guide of countless stars and might have served as a sort of artificial Moon below ground tragically it seems this black moon was shattered into pieces because fragments of this Moon can be found in memory stones which have a really similar gameplay function to the Talisman granting you additional memory slots these stones are rightfully treasured by Sorcerers and above ground Towers evoking those of the Eternal City would be built to protect these precious artifacts I'm not sure how these fragments were stolen from the city though over in nocron there are examples of foreign forces making incursions into the city these beings are members of the company of the Fallen Hawk a company of slaves that were ordered to explore the Eternal City logically these soldiers are slaves of the golden order but who were the fallen Hawks before their enslavement well there's this one little theory that I quite like by user no contribution 15 on Reddit that suggests that these Fallen Hawks could have once been common soldiers of stormvale Castle because these soldiers once had Hawk Crest Shields and even a storm Hawk King dating back to ancient times back when there was a true storm in stormvale and so as the theory goes the crest for this company became that of an inverted Hawk symbolizing their fall and perhaps referencing the inverted towers of the Eternal City that they were doomed to explore as for why they explore the city the first thing that comes to mind is that they might have been sent here to look for the finguslayer blade which is the hidden treasure of nokron where the Fallen Hawks were sent although this is mostly all just speculation whatever the case it really helps to characterize these enemies for you otherwise the only other observation we can make is that many of the Fallen Hawks can be found digging hopelessly in the ground hands bloodied by their long efforts to this day torches are an important part of their design and this reinforces the idea that they're here looking for something to the point where the band's last Embers were used up in their long search and then they began to burn the bones of their fellows acquiring the cold ghost flame and with this new flame in hand they became dwellers of the underground for all eternity like with the Fallen Hawks there are some really open-ended parts to the stories of the Eternal cities some things that are Curiosities to me and I welcome you to try and answer them for example the giant Thrones with the giant knock skeletons on them they're almost a complete mystery I think the only place the game references these Thrones are in the symbols for night sorceries and bubble sorceries as well beyond that they're clearly a central part of Knox culture though we don't know what purpose these beings had below each one though you can loot Great Ghost glove Ward which were given in tribute to those who died the most glorious of deaths in the hope of their stories would become Legend so it seems the nox not only venerated these beings with giant Thrones but that their Spirits as well were considered to be heroic for their deaths were glorious another curiosity is the distorted bodies that are found in the Eternal cities these erupt from the ground and many buildings as well of the Knox at these are the inhabitants of the city are their deaths related to the Giants what are these and finally there are the Gargoyles that are found in the nameless Eternal cities with misshapen ruined bodies none of these gargoyles have been mended but those that are mended are mended with black corpse wax and they serve malacath the Black Blade many of you will remember that two Valiant gargoyles defend the path from nokron to the deep root depths where the nameless Eternal City is and interestingly it's a coffin that takes you up there suspended on a golden script this golden script reminds me of the description of the cipherpata which reads the photo of inscription appears to hang in the air the language of light spoken by the two fingers it makes sense that the two fingers would be aligned with these gargoyles that serve malacath and maybe some power of the two fingers is what takes you up to the nameless Eternal City in this coffin speaking of coffins there's another coffin that you ride down from the ground Cloister to astel's Lair and there are a ton of coffins found in the Eternal cities in general Beyond being some absurd method of Transport perhaps sending remains along the river was some sort of burial right at any rate many of these coffins have been way laid along the ainsel river tunnels where ants faced upon the remains and there's something fascinating going on with the ants as well a lot of these have these enormous abdomens these ants in particular are based off honey pot ants which essentially function in nature as these living sources of food storage for the colony and the Elden ring variant dropped one of the most valuable runes in the lands between they drop a Newman's Rune which makes a lot of sense because these ants are feasting upon corpses and we did speculate earlier that Newman are indelibly tied to the Eternal cities I could speculate further but again I'd welcome your thoughts on these Curiosities exploring the lands between in the modern era it's clear that the Eternal cities have had this significant cultural impact upon many things that we find above ground you can take the walking mausoleums for example these have really explicit Eternal City architecture which is something that you can't help but notice when you see one of them wandering down in the nameless Eternal City these mausoleums it seems were appropriated from the Eternal cities to house the remains of soulless demigods of the golden order something that suddenly became very necessary to do after Godwin's death and this tracks because the Eternal cities do have a bit of a history with Spirits we mentioned earlier that they entomb their heroic Spirits with legendary glove wart but even the rebirth monuments above ground that you need to summon Spirits look kind of like Eternal City constructs so I speculate that these might have been pioneered by The Knocks who even if they didn't use these to summon Spirits they definitely might have used them to summon puppets because puppetry is an invention of the Eternal cities to create a puppet of someone you need them to drink a potion made of Starlight shards which are a prized item that was once used in the Eternal City as an ingredient in intoxicating drafts Starlight shards are used for this because the Stars command people's Fates and even the fates of the demigods and so they can be used in potions given to create puppets with commanded Fates we know of two such puppets from the Eternal City the night maiden and swordstress puppets who became puppets of their own volition so Keen were they it seems to serve the Eternal cities but when you look at all the puppet summons that you can get in Elden ring these two the night maiden and the swordstress of the Knox these two are a bit of a special case because most puppets we find are actually controlled against their will and are extremely unwilling to serve their masters an excellent example of this are the puppets that are controlled by salivus or should I say pitia who turn on him immediately when they're given the chance these puppets are Knights of the cuckoo a faction that are explicitly aligned against carrier and yet these Knights are forced to fight on karia's behalf here in Korea all the same Koreans also seem to have appropriated a lot of the tools of the Eternal cities like puppetry and inverted towers as well which is only natural considering how much they actually have in common with the Eternal cities Koreans are descended from astrologers who also venerated the night sky another example of an invention of the Eternal cities that the Koreans use is found at the church of vows which features a Knox statue taken straight out of the Eternal cities here at the church Radigan famously repented his Territorial aggressions and cleansed himself with Celestial Dew Celestial Dew is another draft of the Eternal cities it's called a night tear which reverses all antagonizations and moves fate backwards in a sense to a time or a feeling before those antagonizations took place and eventually far away descendants of the Eternal would finally be found above ground as well this is in Celia within caled gowri calls celian's descendants of the Eternal and in addition to having one of those signature Thrones at the center of the city there's also a couple of Knox bosses here and finally salience were famed for their Knight class of sorceries which their assassins made good use of the celians were also really proficient at turning invisible which is an art that the black knives used since they are after all also Scions of the Eternal cities and it's just amazing how it all overlaps in the end and in the end another group would seek inroads to knockron this is when we play the game these were EG Blythe and Rani Rani is a character that inherits a lot of the nox's Legacy she becomes the final chapter in a story that they started to tell so so long ago prepare to cry because I can't wait to cover her story properly as it deserves but before I go I want to share a quick word about audible speaking of people banished to the underground I actually have the perfect audiobook to recommend to you guys today and that's Metro 2033 new members can try audible free for 30 days just visit audible.com vati video or text varti video to 500-500 to get your free trial started today this is the story that inspired the video game of the same name and it reveals this world where mankind are resigned to the train tunnels underground after some sort of nuclear disaster turns the surface into this radioactive Wasteland Bandits monsters and other horror leave below now in the tunnels and listening to this audiobook will really transport you there check out this sample it made archeon shudder to imagine the tunnel beyond the 700th meter it was horrifying just to think about it no one had the guts to go beyond the 700th meter to the north patrols had made it to the 500th and having illuminated the boundary post with the spotlight on the trolley and convinced themselves that no scum had crossed it they hastily returned even the scouts big guys former Marines would stop at the 680th meter they turn their burning cigarettes into their cupped palms and stand stock still clinging to their night vision instruments and then they'd slowly quietly head back without taking their eyes off the tunnel and never turning their backs to it the narrator for this title is really good and they really nailed the Russian accents and just the voice acting as well for your immersion new members can listen to audible free for 30 days so to listen to this head to www.audible.com video to 500 to 500. thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video and thank you for watching

Channel: VaatiVidya

Views: 2,017,033

Keywords: guide, walkthrough, lore, dark, souls, dlc, two, bloodborne, story, vaatividya, vaati, vidya, videos, from, software, sekiro, combat, elden, ring, demon's souls, remake, queen marika, demigods, great runes, godrick, ranni, radahn, rennala, caria, liurnia, leyndell, demi, gods, nox, monk, swordstress, night maiden, lore of the lands, nokstella, nokron, albinauric, fingerslayer blade, fallen hawks, marika, black knife assassin, mimic tear, silver tear, asimi, cut content, blaidd, iji, dragonkin, astel, rot lake, eternal city

Id: WOJ5rCT_D6Q

Length: 34min 53sec (2093 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2022