Tear Jerker / Elden Ring

"It's been a long while, Morgott..."

A common player message at certain plot points in Elden Ring is "sadness ahead" and "Why is it always sadness?" There's plenty of reasons why.

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• Queen Marika. Given how venerated, beloved and feared she was by the majority of the Lands Between, to see the state she is reduced to by trying to buck the fate that was bestowed upon her is horrifying to behold, all because she no longer (if ever) wanted the godhood she never asked for. She vehemently tried to fight against the order that she is ostensibly in charge of, thus one must wonder how much of Queen Marika's reign as a "god in truth" was on Marika herself. Her plan to free herself from the Golden Order and the Greater Will go back at least as far as the end of the war with the Fire Giants, if cut dialogue from Godfrey is to be believed, and she had several contingencies in place to try to ensure it came to fruition (her demigod children and the Tarnished, to name two), indicating her godhood was a burden on her. Even for all of her planning, though, the Elden Beast still managed to catch wind of her intent to defy it and had to take a personal approach to punishing Marika; first by imprisoning her within the Erdtree, then crucifying her on a Rune Arc and impaling her on a shard of runic matter in a manner none too dissimilar to the Crucifixion of Christ, and we have no idea how long she has been tortured for. In the process, her children ended up cursed, dead or worse, the world fell to ruin. And in the end, all of it would be for naught, because the Elden Ring is either restored or Marika dies before she can ever see her freedom.
• Despite his terrifying appearance and role, Maliketh manages to be a surprisingly tragic figure.
  • He was utterly devoted to his beloved half-sister, Marika, and had served her faithfully every waking moment without question or hesitation, no matter how grim or dangerous the task, all because he wanted to protect her and her Empire. And how was he rewarded for his loyalty? Marika betrayed him and then disappeared, Ranni (his step-niece) stole a portion of his Rune of Death (and made plans to kill him with it if necessary), Godwyn (his nephew) was murdered using said stolen Rune, and the Empire he'd fought so hard for collapsed into civil war when the remainder of his family started making grabs for his sister's now-vacant throne.
  • Blaming himself for everything that happened, he elected to seal the remaining portion of the Rune of Death inside his own body to keep it from being stolen again; this, likely coupled with his feelings of guilt, seems to have had an adverse effect on his mental state, inflicting him with an insatiable hunger for Deathroot which drove him to the verge of madness. It only gets worse if the player completes his questline as Gurranq by finding and feeding him all nine Deathroots: despite consuming every last shred of the stuff in the land, it utterly fails to sate his hunger. At this revelation, he can only lament his condemnation to such a fate, humbly thank the Tarnished for their aid, and then leave to be alone with his torment.
  • If given all nine Deathroots prior to confronting him at Crumbling Farum Azula, his dialogue before and after the battle is altered: he recognizes the Tarnished as they approach him and weakly questions why they've come so far to seek him out, before the realization hits him that they've come to take the remains of Destined Death from him, and that he's been betrayed by someone he trusted again. And even despite all of this betrayal, his last words are to beg Marika's forgiveness for his failures.
  • Even worse, Marika may have had good reason not to let Maliketh in on her plans. As her Shadow, Maliketh was likely the Two Fingers' Manchurian Agent not unlike Blaidd, programmed to turn on Marika if she showed signs of defying the Greater Will.
• When you strip away all the battles and glory and destruction, the Shattering is ultimately a family feud. The demigods are siblings, family that must at one point have held some love for each other. With the disappearance of their mother Marika and the murder of beloved sibling Godwyn, however, the survivors have all fallen to the hunger for power and are now naught but petty tyrants and beasts. With Malenia and Radahn, you can even see that they both take after their father's red hair, but the Shattering turned what could have been Bash Siblings into rivals with no desire except to murder the other. Who each of them once was has long since been changed or gone away, and the loss of those relationships and their own humanity is nothing short of haunting as circumstances outside of their control ripped them away from each other or permanently altered them, making them unrecognizable from their former selves, and despite their shared history, they never get to each other again before their deaths.
  • To make it even more tragic, the entire Civil War has been All for Nothing. Any recorded battles fought were either a stalemate (Radahn vs. Malenia) or the victories were utterly pyrrhic in nature (Morgott vs. Rykard), and thus, no one was even one step closer to a meaningful victory. Not a single demigod was able to gain a significant foothold in the entire war, and all it came out of it were lives lost, architecture destroyed, and the demigods either ending up dead, insane, indisposed, or too stubborn to change the status quo. "A war from which no lord arose", indeed.
• Godwyn's murder is nothing short of tragic, as it was what led to the Shattering in the first place, and the more that is learned about what kind of person he was, the more heartbreaking it becomes. The most cherished demigod in his time, Godwyn not only spared the Dragons from the usual terrible fate of those who lost to the Golden Order, but also gave them a place in it, forging a lifelong friendship with Fortissax that made them close companions and allies. Unlike his biological siblings, he had a very tender and supporting relationship with half-siblings Miquella and Malenia, and it is likely from being a kind and supportive big brother to them that they grew to be as wise and empathetic as he was, carrying on his legacy as just and heartfelt inspirers who put forth the needs of others above themselves, all in spite of their disabilities. By the events of the game, when all other demigods became horrific abnormalities or overtaken by disfiguring curses (willingly or otherwise), Godwyn was the only one who remained as stunning as he was benevolent in his lifetime, a visage of beauty with long shining gold hair, handsome chiseled features, and a muscular athletic physique befitting of his status as an attractive warrior. To see him horrifically mutilated and corroded by the Rune of Death and the Black Night Assassins who violated him is itself a perversion of the traditional hero's tale, stripping Godwyn from ever being someone's Prince Charming and the best ruler the Lands Between ever had, in the most brutal and violent way. He didn't remotely deserve the horrible death he endured or the indignity of what the half of the Curse-mark of Death did to his remains. Worst of all, his soul is destroyed. Everything that made him who he was, the way he loved others, his personality, his honor and gallantry, is completely erased, the person he was gone as if he never even existed in the first place, and there is nothing that can be done to bring him back. The Order he fought for has crumbled to nothing, the family he loved is in shambles or deceased, never to reunite with him, and his soulless corpse has become a blight on the entire Lands Between, cursing people with an illness Godwyn never would have subjected anyone to when he was alive. All that remains of him, and the person he once was, is his golden hair hanging loose and limp from the corpse of what was once a beautiful soul, who gave everything he had to a world that gave him nothing in return, and he cannot even find peace in the next life. He is simply gone.
• Miquella was probably the kindest and purest of the demigods. He had good relationships with both sides of his family and was particularly close with his sister Malenia. Like her, he was also a gifted prodigy, in his case being a genius and master of Golden Order Fundamentalism. But for all his prowess and power he was forced to watch his beloved sister literally rot away as the years went by; his response to this was abandoning his throne in the capital and defying the gods themselves in an attempt to cure her by founding the Haligtree. He actually made good progress on this goal by inventing the Unalloyed Gold series which slowed her infection, could potentially purge it entirely if used "outside time", and had the potential to liberate not only Malenia but the whole world from the outer gods' curses. In the meantime he did his best to help other outcasts like them, allowing the Haligtree to be used as a home to the mistreated refugees of the Lands Between, touring the land as Saint Trina to combat the Frenzied Flame with the "sweet oblivion of sleep", and trying to give his half-brother Godwyn peace by granting him a true death. His reward for all this? He was kidnapped, violated, and possibly mutilated by Mogh, seemingly dooming his followers and beloved sister because the Haligtree starts dying without him around to nurture it. By the time the game begins Miquella is completely catatonic but (according to Gideon) still alive, trapped in a husk-like body being constantly "embraced" by Mohg, unable to even move as everything he valued slowly dies around him.
  • If you look closely, Miquella's arm is pointing straight upwards when you walk in, looking as if it's trying to grab something. What happens to be right above this room? The Heart of Aeonia, where Malenia was overtaken by the Rot for the first time. Either he was signaling for help or he was despairing at what happened to his beloved sister.
  • To add insult to injury, the space right outside of Mohg's cathedral (and thus Miquella's cocoon) is occupied by corrupted, red-hued Albinaurics seemingly listening to a sermon by one of Mohg's Sanguine Nobles. Some of the very same outcasts who would ideally find salvation in the Haligtree have instead been spirited to this place, subjected to Mohg's blood treatments (giving them a "blessing" that they can use for combat but which visibly causes them damage and agony), and rendered little more than slave soldiers bound to the Formless Mother's whims. Considering Miquella's attempts to both cure his sister and offer a home to outcasts like the Albinaurics, this represents the ultimate insult to and perversion of everything Miquella fought for. And he can't do anything about it.
• The fate of the Albinaurics is absolutely tragic. Artificial creatures formed of mercury, they are said to be severed from the grace of the Erdtree as a result of their unnatural origins. A good number of them were corrupted by Mohg, Lord of Blood, and turned into his servants. Some of them reached the surface and started a village, but were slaughtered on the orders of Sir Gideon Ofnir. Others were lost in the Mountaintops of the Giants and other remote locations in search of the "promised land" of the Haligtree, becoming roaming vagabonds. Many more ended up captured in the Volcano Manor and used for cruel experiments.
  • The Albinaurics' situation is already bleak, but it's even worse when you actually visit their "promised land" of the Haligtree. The Haligtree is quite the sight...but it's also clearly dying. The tree is covered with rot. It turns out this is because Miquella, the demigod whose blood sustains it, was kidnapped by Mohg (who is also responsible for torturing and twisting Albinaurics too). The Albinaurics' best hope for a home is just a dying hulk of rotted wood.
• Malenia has quite possibly the most tragic story of any character in a From Software game. A gifted and noble prodigy, in a normal world Malenia would have been a great hero with few troubles. But by a cruel twist of fate, she was cursed from birth as the vessel of the Scarlet Rot, meaning she was both afflicted with a horrific flesh-eating disease and designated as the proxy of the malignant outer god who created it. Not even the Erdtree knew of any cure for it; she simply had to make do. From the moment she exited the womb, the outer god of Rot progressively chipped away at Malenia's body and mind, rendering her a diseased amputee since childhood and constantly sapping her will. Yet against all odds, Malenia's mind held and she prospered, not only as a loving sister to Miquella and Godwyn, but as a virtuous and intelligent motivator to the Lands Between in its darkest hour. While anyone else infected by the Rot degenerated into a beast or puppet near-instantly, Malenia kept it contained within her for her entire (first) life, in spite of the fact that giving in at any point would grant her true godhood. Not only that, she worked past her physical disability^note Bare minimum she's been missing her right arm since she as a teenager, judging by her depiction on the Prosthesis-Wearer Heirloom. to become quite possibly the greatest warrior in the Lands Between and a revered champion of the downtrodden outcasts of the Haligtree. She went so far as to reject a second chance at godhood as an Empyrean to devote herself totally to helping her brother Miquella, who returned her devotion in kind by dedicating his own life to curing her of her Rot. While the outer god kept trying to exert influence, Malenia continued to maintain superhuman mental discipline up to near the end of the Shattering, at which point she had lost three limbs and both of her eyes to her lifelong battle with the Rot. Alas, amidst her stalemated duel with Radahn,^note Which quite possibly only happened in the first place because of her misguided attempt to rescue her missing brother, as the opening depicts Mohg kidnapping Miquella before this and the location of the Radahn-Malenia duel happens to be right above Mohg's throne room. she lost control of the Rot for the first time in her life, either unable or unwilling to hold it back anymore. The result was an outbreak that destroyed an entire fiefdom rather than just the guy she wanted to kill, rendered her comatose, killed many of her loyal soldiers, and gave the Rot more power. And in the end it was All for Nothing; Mohg still had Miquella, and without Miquella both the Haligtree and Malenia herself were doomed. By the time the Tarnished awakes she's spent the recent years passed out next to her brother's former throne at the base of the Haligtree, hoping in vain to see him again. She's seemingly resigned to rot into nothingness if he can't return.
  • Her boss cutscene begins with her stoically equipping her prosthetic arm. Before she does so, Malenia pauses for a split-second and calmly comments: "I dreamt for so long. My flesh was dull gold, and my blood rotted." While she seldom shows it, Malenia clearly resents her physical disabilities and the horrible hand she was dealt in life, and can't escape them even in her dreams. She won't let it keep her down, though.
  • Malenia's story is one for her followers as well. A community of refugees and outcasts granted a home in the Haligtree, they absolutely worshipped Malenia despite the fact that prolonged contact literally killed anyone close to her. Every Cleanrot Knight willingly followed her despite knowing this. In particular Finlay was devoted enough to carry her unconscious form through the whole Lands Between to save her, O'Neil was devoted enough to continue her war in Caelid years after she left despite the Rot present, and every single soldier in the Haligtree fights to the death if the Tarnished intrudes and tries to disturb her. Misbegotten warriors can even be found praying to statues of her. But with Miquella gone and her mind being consumed by the Rot, the tree is decaying and Malenia herself is subtly but surely leaking Rot as the years go by. In spite of all of this, her subjects love her so much that they apparently refuse to just dump her to die in the Consecrated Snowfield, even if their devotion dooms them all. Consider also that, in spite of her tremendous curse, Malenia still managed to become a great warrior, inspiring leader, and accomplished military strategist. What could she have become without it?
  • When Malenia is finally beaten for the first time in her life, likely after dozens of tries on your part, she doesn't reject the result despite her justified pride as a warrior. Instead she simply praises you as a Worthy Opponent, and then quietly apologizes to her brother for losing. It really emphasizes how broken the woman is by the time we fight her.
    Oh, dear Miquella. Dearest Miquella. My brother... I'm sorry.
  • Malenia's plight is arguably even worse than the above states. It's possible that she may have no idea Miquella is even missing from the Haligtree. She's blind meaning she cannot see that Miquella's cocoon is no longer connected to the Haligtree's roots. Meaning she has spent all her time vainly waiting for her brother to wake up and return to her, not knowing he's long gone. So when she wakes up to fight the Tarnished, she thinks she's protecting Miquella from an intruder when in reality she's fighting for no good reason at all.
  • The worst part of all of the above? You can't help her, despite having the tools to do so. The game blatantly gives you ways to both save Miquella^note You can locate Miquella's cocoon and Mohg early on, kill Mohg, and even get a convenient medal that teleports you into his lair. and cure her of the Scarlet Rot,^note Miquella's Needle permanently purges the Frenzied Flame if used in Farum Azula; as both the Frenzied Flame and Scarlet Rot are the manifestations of Outer Gods, the same principle should apply, and indeed that was the original point of the needle when Miquella made it. but at the moment no option to actually use them exists. Walking into her chamber just automatically triggers her boss fight. Unless DLC rectifies it (or you invoke post-game headcanon),^note You don't actually have to kill Malenia, and killing Mohg, retrieving the needle, and opening the path to Placidusax's lair means the Tarnished could easily help them after becoming Elden Lord. the tale of the Twin Prodigies and their attempts to defy the afflictions they were born with seems to have ended in pointless tragedy.
• The plight of Radahn is a sad one. Despite his Face of a Thug, Radahn was once among the most beloved demigods, A Father to His Men and a great warrior famed across the lands. It was said that he learned gravity magic solely so that he could keep riding his weak, scrawny horse that he had since childhood after he outgrew it, since he loved it so much. When the Shattering began, Radahn clashed with his sister Malenia, the only one who could hope to match him in skill, but they were locked in a stalemate until Malenia, infected by the horrid Scarlet Rot, spread it to her brother. Over the ensuing years, the rot claimed Radahn's mind until the great and kind demigod was nothing but an animal feasting on corpses in the desert. Unable to see their beloved leader suffer such, his soldiers arranged a festival, calling all the greatest champions to see if any could finally put Radahn out of his misery. One is reminded of a line from a certain hunter.
  Simon: A tragic figure, but he will shame himself no longer.
• In the game, Blaidd has absolutely no hesitation in facing Radahn in battle, despite having been raised alongside him. In the manga, on the other hand, he has a somber expression when Aseo brings up the connection, before insisting that it doesn't matter because it's for Ranni's sake. Aseo notices and is about to say something, but Blaidd changes the topic before he can.
  Aseo: Isn't Radahn Ranni's brother?
  Blaidd: You know your stuff. [Turns somber] But now... That matter scarcely applies at all. Not as we- er, as our mistress walks her new path.
  Aseo: Blaidd...
• The life of an Omen. Omens are mutated, ogre-like creatures that are occasionally born in the Lands Between to normal parents. Considered bad luck to keep around, most Omens have their horns cut off as newborns, usually resulting in death, and those few who survive are sent into the sewers (literally called the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds) to be kept out of sight forever. What's worse is that anyone, even gods, can birth an Omen, and that no matter their status they are mistreated and considered cursed. Morgott is one such Omen, and though he is loved by the royal capital, he too is bitter and incensed at his treatment.
  Omen Bairn description: "Please, don't hate me or curse me. Please."
  • The Omens' situation is even sadder after finding item lore such as that of the Crucible Knight sets. They're persecuted for being associated with the supposedly heretical Primordial Crucible, when in actuality the Crucible itself is just another form of the Erdtree, and the horns they possess were originally seen as blessings granted by it. Meaning, despite having been blessed by the Erdtree itself, they're persecuted as monsters opposed to it.
• The beginning and end of Morgott’s boss fight is pretty depressing. At first he strolls out of the Erdtree entrance, listing off the names of his demigod siblings and half-siblings (save for his twin), before he proclaims them all willful traitors. You can hear the bitterness and resentment of them abandoning their duties and leaving it up to him to try to hold things together in his voice. Then after defeating him, he becomes an emaciated husk of himself, half-mockingly, half-mournfully telling the Tarnished that their quest will end in failure, just like his own...
  • Morgott's second phase. Rather then starting with him becoming more determined to win or angry at you for defying him, he becomes upset and ashamed that you've stained the holy grounds with his "cursed" Omen blood. Even after all he's done for the Golden Order, he's still feels utterly unworthy.
  • Morgott, more than perhaps any other character in the game, emphasizes the truest tragedy of the Golden Order's rule: wasted potential. By his displayed behavior, the Omen King was honorable, intelligent, capable, and loyal to a fault. He was a fundamentally decent person and despite everything even held some love for his opposing siblings, as demonstrated by his disappointed tone of voice when addressing their thrones^note As well as the respectful address he gives to Miquella and Malenia, "the twin prodigies", sounding almost wistful as he says it. On the other hand his disdain for Rykard is very apparent. and the description of the Sentry's Torch, which says he tried to protect them in the aftermath of the Night of the Black Knives. In a just world, Morgott would've used his considerable talents to become a hero in his own right, standing tall alongside his family. Instead he's been so utterly broken by his upbringing that he despises himself and all others like him, and uses his vast skills to preserve a fundamentally unjust and undeserving authority. What's worse is that he knows he's destroying his kingdom by refusing to defy the Erdtree, but he's literally incapable of going against it, having long since accepted that he is forsaken.
  • Some time after Morgott's boss fight, when you return to the Erdtree entrance you will encounter Godfrey, the first Elden Lord. He kneels at the entrance, cradling Morgott's body and laments that it's been too long as the Omen King finally fades away (as pictured above). You remember that as first Elden Lord and Marika's first husband, Godfrey is Morgott's father, and he's cradling his dead son's corpse.
    • It becomes sadder with the revelation that Godfrey is Hoarah Loux, one of the many Tarnished called back to the Lands Between: as first Elden Lord he probably had some greater chance of restoring the Elden Ring, but this also means Godfrey was separated from his children for who knows how long, only to return to see his old home has become a destroyed husk of its former self and his sons at war with one another for no reason other than greed and ambition, if not already dead. He comes back and doesn't even get to interact with the one remaining son who endured through the Shattering (and remained uncorrupted by power or greed) until the very end. Considering Morgott was the rare Omen who was well-loved by his family, instead of being shunned and abandoned, one can only imagine how bittersweet it all is. Adding to that that after leaving, Godfrey probably never got to see Godwyn again and was only allowed back after he was murdered...it's a surprise he's as collected as he is. If you kill Mogh before the fight, then Godfrey has outlived all three of his sons, two of whom are dead by your own hand.
    • It's almost remarkable, then, how his boss fight with the Tarnished is more of a challenge for the other to prove themself than a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, perhaps because it saved him from having to do the deed himself, as he wanted to ascend and Morgott had made it absolutely clear he would allow no one to do so.
    • The impact of the scene is made more powerful by the difference in size between Godfrey and the emaciated Morgott. It's as if Morgott is a small child in the arms of his father.
• The ending of Ranni's questline is initially quite cute, with the Tarnished and her becoming betrothed, but it quickly turns to disaster for her other allies. Blaidd goes insane when his loyalty to Ranni conflicts with the Two Fingers' directive to kill her if she defies them, forcing you to put him down like a mad dog, while Iji is killed by Black Flame Assassins. It's a POWERFUL gut punch, with the only saving grace being that Seluvis (and Pidia, should the implication of him being the one controlling the puppets be true) also get killed during these events.
  • If the player tells Iji of Blaidd's death, then the blacksmith is quite devastated by the news. He simply says that if he and Blaidd meets in the next life, he can only hope Blaidd forgives him. Reloading the area and you'll find Iji's smoldering corpse surrounded by dead Black Knife Assassins.
  • Want to feel even worse? Blaidd and Iji's fates are YOUR fault. Ranni was insistent that she must walk this path of hers alone, and judging by her state in the Cathedral of Manus Celes when you find her after she has slain her Two Fingers, it's likely that she knew the task would essentially kill her. Blaidd does not go insane until the player puts the ring on Ranni's finger, meaning that her whole goal all this time was simply to break herself free of the Two Fingers' control, as she likely had concluded that attaining the Elden Ring on her own was an impossible task. In reviving her and becoming her consort, the player has given Ranni the possibility of attaining the Elden Ring, making her a direct threat to the Greater Will's rule, and causing the Two Fingers to intensify their directive for Blaidd to kill her, driving him insane and possibly sending the Black Knife assassins after both him and Iji in retaliation.
• Rennala's boss fight is one of the easier ones, due to the fact that she's undergone a Heroic BSoD after a Trauma Conga Line, consoling herself with the amber egg containing her final child, who you effectively have to kill to gain the Great Rune of Rebirth. One player realized that her students are actually singing a song during the first phase, and will become discordant when her protective shield is broken, which is genuinely heartbreaking.
  Sleep tight; Bound tight; By mother's amber; Sleep tight; Find light; In mother's umbra
• At the end of the Subterranean Shunning Grounds is a secret area filled with hundreds if not thousands of merchant corpses, with only a few still living as husks of their former selves, sadly playing their instruments and lashing out at anything that comes close. Investigating their lore reveals they were once a significant caravan of people who were one day persecuted by the Golden Order and locked down here to die in the dark, pushing them to a Despair Event Horizon that could potentially end the world, depending on the Tarnished’s choices.
• The Lord of Frenzied Flame is pretty depressing when you see what pursuing this ending does to your relationship with Melina. Melina warns you against seeking out the Three Fingers, saying nothing good will ever come from the Flames of Frenzy and advises you keep on your current path. The problem is that, if you pursue certain questlines, the Tarnished will learn that in order to become Elden Lord, Melina will have to sacrifice herself to open the way forward. In that sense, one might believe (and in some cases this is even other players' motivations for choosing this ending) that the Tarnished accepts the Frenzied Flame to save Melina. She either isn't aware of or doesn't appreciate the gesture, as when you interact with her after accepting the Frenzied Flame, she swears to one day kill you. To reiterate, the girl who's helped you every step of the way has just become your sworn enemy. So tell me, Tarnished, was it worth it?
  • It's worse than that. If you talked to her after talking to Shabriri, she tells you that while it was her mother's orders to do so, she is sacrificing herself for her own reasons and won't let anyone take that away from her. In other words by becoming the Lord of Chaos to save her, you're trampling on her feelings, resolve, and purpose and betraying her trust. No wonder she wants to kill you afterwards.
  • After talking to Shabiri, any steps the player takes to go further along the path of the Frenzied Flame will have Melina emphatically and repeatedly beg you to stop. Her voice gains a very noticeable tremble the more you follow this questline.
  "I shall see to the kindling. It is a purpose which I choose to fulfil. So, please... Leave the frenzied flame alone."

  "The frenzied flame is not to be meddled with. It is chaos, devouring life and thought unending. So, please... Leave the frenzied flame alone."

  "I ask you, one more time. Please, seek not the frenzied flame."
  • As Melina enters the burning Erdtree during this ending, she retrieves a small ring from a pile of ash, with a harrowing whistle in the background. It might not be immediately clear what it is, but that was the Spectral Steed Whistle, used to summon Torrent. Even your loyal spirit steed mourns for what you have become, and what you have done.
  • Even what the Frenzied Flame represents is tragic. You might expect it to represent pure destruction or chaos incarnate. It isn't. Instead, it's the representation of a philosophy; in particular, it's Efilism, the belief which assigns a negative moral value to birth and life. The Frenzied Flame is the god of those who have suffered so much that they have come to believe that existence itself was a mistake. It's the very embodiment of the idea that life is not worth living, that evil and suffering outweighs good and joy, and that it would be better if all things simply ceased to be. Hyetta's own words actually paraphrase the core belief of Efilism.
  Hyetta: Those who gave me grapes howled without words. Saying they wished they were never born. Become their lord. Take their torment, despair. Their affliction. Every sin, every curse. And melt it all away. As the Lord of Chaos. No more fractures...no more birth...
  • Even if the player (and by extension the Tarnished) personally don't agree life isn't worth living, it shows that the Frenzied Flame's minions aren't pure evil like the Dung Eater or even just power-hungry like Volcano Manor, but many of them are actually trying to stop the suffering in The Lands Between... just in a way sane people would find abhorrent.
• Melina sacrificing herself on the Mountaintop of the Giants to act as fuel for the flames that will burn the Erdtree will hit players who grew attached to her hard.
• Halfway through the boss fight with the Fire Giant, a cutscene plays in which his leg gruesomely snaps in two while he screams in agony. It's difficult to watch, and it's clear that the Fire Giant has still maintained his capacity to feel pain and emotion despite his many years of isolation on top of the mountain. For the remainder of the boss fight, he's left on his knees, desperately crawling at the Tarnished and using fire attacks. In addition, leading up to his boss fight, you encounter DOZENS of corpses belonging to Giants slain in the war. This poor Fire Giant was left alone and isolated on a mountain, surrounded by the corpses of his people, and would have stayed that way forever without the Tarnished's intervention.
  • The giant did not suffer this fate by chance, but by design. After realizing that the flames of the Giant's forge could not be extinguished, Queen Marika cursed the last giant to stand guard and tend to them for eternity.
  • Even worse is that you have to kill him, as he's blocking the way you need to go for Melina to sacrifice herself to open the Erdtree.
• Right on the heels of the above, Crumbling Faram Azula, where the Tarnished finds themselves after the Erdtree is set ablaze, carries a somber, lonely tune. While it could be meant to convey the broken, decrepit nature of the place (and does so very well, mind), it also says a lot about what has just happened to you. Either a) Melina sacrificed herself to become kindling to burn the Erdtree or b) you did so yourself by accepting the Frenzied Flame, saving Melina but alienating her entirely in the process, even if you go this route with Miquella's Needle in hand to cure yourself and cheat the Frenzied Flame soon after. No matter what, you have lost your constant companion, who left your side for a brief time only to realize the Erdtree was rejecting everyone and the Two Fingers have effectively abandoned the Tarnished, leading to the current situation. The music as you explore one of the last legs of the game in search of Maliketh perfectly conveys just how completely alone you are in the final stages of your journey...
• Once the Erdtree is set aflame, the Roundtable Hold starts to slowly but surely burn to the ground. As you progress through the final areas of the game, the Hold becomes steadily more decrepit as the fire spreads farther and farther and more and more of the Hold becomes inaccessible due to all the fire and debris. The worst part? Most of those remaining in the Hold refuse to leave for one reason or another, meaning that they've all likely burned to death by the time the Tarnished defeats Radagon and the Elden Beast.
  • Master Hewg starts off the game as a jaded grump who thinks you've died the second you're out of his sight. He has no faith in you completing your quest at first, but slowly over the course of the game, he truly comes to believe in you, and does his best at his mission to make a godslaying weapon. However, as you set the Erdtree ablaze, he starts losing his memories, the bonds he's formed with you and Roderika, and his sense of identity, only retaining the knowledge that he's a blacksmith. In the end, you slay the Elden Beast, avatar of the Golden Order, with a weapon of his making, but he'll never know. By the time that happens, he's lost himself completely. If you talk to him before he completely loses his memories, one of the last things he does is telling you to take care of Roderika. You can hear how much he's struggling just to get the words out, but the real heartwrencher is his last words to you personally.
    Master Hewg: I-it was a great honor to smith your weapons during my time here. Allow me to c-call you this just once, before it ends. My Lord, for that is what you are.
• Roderika. She was forced to leave her home when she was told that she was a Tarnished, all her companions were killed and horribly butchered, and it's implied that this is what she was told she had to do because of how she describes feeling ashamed for NOT joining her companions in being butchered for her limbs. And the worst part of it all? Her Crimson Hood equipment outright states she never was able to see the Guidance of Grace and how the hood is actually given to expatriated royalty, implying she was never a Tarnished in the first place. Her family just used it as an excuse to get rid of her.
  • Actually, some Tarnished can go their entire lives and never once see grace's guidance. It appears that Roderika is one such Tarnished, lost and alone without the ability to see what had guided other Tarnished.
  • She eventually finds a Parental Substitute in Smithing Master Hewg, who teaches her the ways of spirit tuning so that she can upgrade your spirit ashes. All seems well, until the Erdtree is set ablaze near the end of the game, which results in Hewg slowly forgetting about his relationship with her. Despite her trying to get him to leave since he is now free, Hewg sadly stays in the burning roundtable hold, attempting to smith a weapon capable of killing a god while slowly forgetting about you and her. Though she said she now values her life enough to leave before completely burning down, the postgame reveals that she too decided to stay at the roundtable hold, in the same hallway with Hewg that she's been in most of the game. It's most likely just for gameplay reasons, but it's never made clear whether she actually does leave the hold before it burns down or not. She might have decided she would be better of dying with Hewg than living on alone.
• Millicent’s fate, either being betrayed by the Tarnished and slain for her grief to blossom a new Scarlet Rot Flower, or the Tarnished helps her fend off her sisters and she decides to take the needle keeping her alive out herself. Should the latter happen, she thanks the Tarnished for all the aid they’ve given her, and remarks she was glad she was able to live and die on her own terms, even for a brief time. She then asks you to let her die alone, resigned but satisfied with her fate.
• If you've freed the Dung Eater from his cell, he challenges you to a duel and invades you at the lake in the Capital Outskirts. However, while he's waiting for you, he's got another victim to pass the time: Big Boggart, one of the friendlier NPCs that the Tarnished meets. Boggart's fear of the Dung Eater is well-founded, and right before the invasion begins, you can find him desperately clinging onto his life and lamenting his ill luck, before passing away and leaving a Seedbed Curse behind.
• Surprisingly, Patches' fate after the Volcano Manor questline is quite a sad one. His attempts to cheer up Tanith, who is out of her mind with grief after Rykard's death and whom he harbours a great deal of affection for, lead him to the Shaded Castle in northern Altus, where he can be found badly injured just outside the boss room. He all but admits that he has come to respect the Tarnished, calling them a friend and someone he can trust before giving them the Dancer's Castanets as a gift for Tanith. Unlike his previous dialogue, where all of his praise carried a hint of mockery with it, this marks the first and only time where he sounds genuine. When reloading the area, he is nowhere to be found, though unlike other merchants who can die over the course of their respective questlines, he does not drop his Bell Bearing, which leaves his ultimate fate somewhat ambiguous. Up until that point, he has consistently been portrayed as a selfish coward, which makes it all the more notable that he risked (and possibly even lost) his life just to cheer up Tanith. Her reaction when receiving the castanets is yet another gut punch, for she does not care about his gift or his apparent death in the slightest, meaning his struggles were All for Nothing. However, this moment is made a lot less painful when you can find him again at Murkwater Cave perfectly alive and well, ambushing the Tarnished exactly like in their first encounter.
• Rya/Zorayas is initially shown to be shockingly well-adjusted considering she's the adopted daughter of Rykard and Tanith, but her sidequest spirals into depressing territory fairly quickly. An intrepid Tarnished can discover the secret Prison Town hidden within the Volcano Manor — if Zorayas is confronted about this, they can tell her about the terrible things Tanith kept hidden from her, and more than that, they can present her the very amnion from which she was born. Zorayas goes to investigate matters herself, only to discover she was born of an unholy intercourse between a woman and a snake. Zorayas is completely broken by this revelation and genuinely doesn't understand why Tanith could love someone like her; the next time the two of you meet, she directly begs you for death. From here, there are three endings to the quest, one being surprisingly positive, but as for the other two:
  • The Tarnished can ask Tanith for some backup, for which she'll give you the Tonic of Forgetfulness to remove the horrible memories from Zorayas' mind at the cost of violating her agency. Tanith herself is unenthusiastic about it and will shame herself for going through with it. After defeating Rykard, Zorayas returns to the Manor to await Tanith's return, blissfully unaware that the Manor and its cause are finished and Tanith is never coming back.
  • The Tarnished can fulfill Zorayas' request and strike her down, causing her to thank you in her ever soft tone as she calls out for her mother and reverts to her snake form. Breaking the news to Tanith has her barely keeping herself together as she politely asks you to give her some time alone.
• Both endings of Sorceress Sellen's storyline. Either she is betrayed to her Arch-Enemy by her beloved apprentice, or she finally achieves her lifelong goal, only to suddenly be transformed into a near-mindless abomination that can't even be granted the peace of death. While it's hard to deny she wasn't a good person (since she readily admits to her various crimes), the fact that she was one of the most genuinely friendly and supportive characters in the game makes it sting more than it should.
• In Jarburg, there's a chance you can come across Jar-Bairn sleeping — and having a nightmare about Jar Poachers. The normally cheerful jar sounds absolutely distraught. And even worse, it can later happen for real in Diallos's questline.
  Jar-Bairn: Stop...no... please, no, don't break us...
• On your journey, you may encounter a bat enemy singing in Latin. At first, it might seem to be meant to lure you in to strike, but translating the lyrics reveals that it's actually a lament, mourning their suffering and asking the gods why they have allowed the Lands Between to become the Crapsack World it now is.
  Golden One, at whom were you so angry?
• The description for Black Knife Tiche's ashes states that she sacrificed her life to keep her mother safe as they were fleeing Leyndell after killing Godwyn. You can only obtain said ashes by defeating her mother, Alecto, in the Ringleader's Evergaol. Not only did Tiche's sacrifice come to naught, whoever locked her mother up decided to rub her face in it by giving her her daughter's ashes for company.
• The state one finds Sir Gideon Ofnir in after unshackling Destined Death is one of the most pitiable sights in the game. Throughout your entire journey, Sir Gideon has been a constant, a font of knowledge and wisdom about the demigods and your duty as a Tarnished. By the point where you burn the Erdtree, he has likely given you a few spells and tools as thanks for giving him knowledge that he did not have, and while he is by no means a good person for what he did to the Village of the Albinaurics and his treatment of Nepheli Loux, he has been the only other Tarnished of the Hold determined to stand before the Elden Ring and become Elden Lord. After Destined Death is unshackled, though, Sir Gideon learns the true nature of Queen Marika and her intentions for the Tarnished and it breaks him. Upon encountering him in the Erdtree Sanctuary in the Ashen Capital, he has crossed the Despair Event Horizon and is now standing before you, determined to prevent you from succeeding at the goal that he himself had been championing from the moment you crossed the threshold of the Roundtable Hold. To see the All-Knowing falter and lose his resolve so close to the finish line because he learned a truth too great for even himself to reckon with is crushing, and then being forced to kill the one man who you truly shared a goal with throughout the entire game is rending to the soul, made even worse by his final words to you.
  Sir Gideon Ofnir, The All-Knowing: Ah, I knew you'd come... to stand before the Elden Ring, to become Elden Lord. What a sad state of affairs. I commend your spirit, but alas, none shall take the throne. Queen Marika has high hopes for us. That we continue to struggle. Unto Eternity.
  • To twist the knife a bit further with some Gameplay and Story Integration, he gains a pretty substantial weakness to Madness and the Frenzied Flame when you fight him in Leyndell, proving that he was just barely hanging onto his resolve to stop you after gaining his ruinous insight. He's also quite frail for the third-to-last boss fight in the game, only bolstered by his arsenal of spells and forcing us to once again kill an old man to sad music.

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