What makes us tarnished? Being dull of colour.

‘The grace of gold blessed those who were first

to serve it with “most vivid colouration”’. Morgott’s sword, his sealed omen blood, is of shifting
hue, the mirrorhelm reflects all light and colours, Marika is a carrier of the Elden Ring’s vision,
The Greater Will and its vassals are masters of a language of.. Light.. The fallen leaves tell a
story..
And it is a story of Colour.. Colour is so variable in our world we didn’t see what was in plain
sight.
In the Lands between, colour means much more.. And once you start to see.. You cannot stop..
“The mad taint of their newfound strength”. The Night of Black Knives,
Scarlet rot, Amber eggs, Purple mariners, Blood dynasties, Omens, Albinaurics, Giants, Gods..
Colour takes centre place wherever you look. It is also a focus in a sea of item descriptions.
The word colour is mentioned over and over.. Hue even more often…
Reds, Yellows, Greens, Purples, Blues… Every Tone…
Every Hue… Colour again and again and again like an obsession and more than anything, an
infatuation with..
Gold… Colour: The Pillars of the World of Elden Ring.
Colour is connected with all fundamental aspects of the Lands Between… and these
connections are in a discoverable pattern.
All things physical, energetic, informational, emotional and spiritual in the Elden Ring
world are paired.. With colour.. a unifying natural law.
These base natures are what’s being represented by the Elden Ring and these overlapping and
intersecting runes.
It gets a little bit more complicated than that, and we are going to get into it.
Because if we understand colour as a foundation, we can understand the entire Lore of Elden
Ring more clearly.
Foundations of Colour
How will we solve the mystery of colour? It is clear Alchemy was an influence. Colour holds
great importance in Alchemy, as does gold.
One famous Alchemist gave us the splitting of colours and their relations. Blue borders green,
which goes to yellow, to red, to purple, always moving through all possible shades.
Another renowned scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, discovered that, unlike the mixing of paints
that artists use,
the fundamental colours of light registered by the human eye are red, green and blue.
This gave him the insight to make the first colour photograph. Modern science has since proven
the eye’s sensitivity to these three base colours,
and it is the combinations of red, green and blue that make every colour on the digital screens
you’re watching on.
The system of additive colour, how the colours of light work and how colours mix within light,
that Maxwell is credited as having a founding role in, is the colour system we use here.
While the paint colour relations are mostly similar to light colour relations, light colour mixing is
additive whereas paints are not.
Show all colours at once in light and you get white.. Unlike with paints..
But it is light we deal with in the Lands Between, languages of light, and obsessions with what
the eyes see..
So, we will use the true light colour relations in this analysis. How different perceptions of colour
may change perceptions of reality, or reality itself,
is worthy of speculation.. With that, we will look at the Lands Between itself for evidence,
since inspirations only go so far, and they are numerous and mix unpredictably.
We have to begin as though we have woken up in the Lands Between, and use what we see
around us to guide us.
One difficulty is that there are other foundational laws in Elden Ring which all mix and interfere.
Another challenge is that colour isn’t surface deep. We will have to isolate and simplify.
We must find colours in basic and simple forms to understand. Then we will earn a key to the
complex Lore.
Colours are of course a useful tool in game design, used to form associations for the player and
help the understandability of the world.
This is why health, mana and stamina are almost always depicted in games as red, blue and
green respectively. However, in Elden Ring, colours are far more important, featuring heavily in
the Lore,
and may in fact be an integral part of the rules of the world, rather than just a symptom of them.
Eventually we will understand why looking into another’s eyes is so intimate. Why we cannot dye
our clothes another colour.
Why Radagon was ashamed of his hair. Why Godfrey needed Serosh to be a Lord.
Why the Albinaurics are so weak. Why Melania’s Rot is scarlet. Why Radhan needs purple to
keep his beloved horse.
Why the Frenzy Flame is yellow. Why multicoloured is so vital.. And understand the enigma.. of
gold…
the obsession that haunts madmen, nobles, and..
Gods. All this colour will lead out of the Lands Between. Past the stars..
Past the void.. Past even the Gods. It leads beyond the creative work itself..
to ourselves.. After all, what if the Lands Between was.. an inner world?
If this work of art is about what it feels to be human, body, mind and soul,
then by learning about colour, we can learn about ourselves. And, with learning and the grace of
good fortune,
we ourselves may rise to a future that is bathed in gold.
Red
Red.. Crimson.. Scarlet.. Flame..
Giants.. Rot… and … Blood.
What is this colours place in the rules of the world? What effects, magics,
emotions is it connected with? For this first colour we will take a deep dive into the proof in the
world.
As we move through colours we will not be so exhaustive, but those who are curious can search
to find what we have.
The first place to look is where we can see red’s nature the clearest. Where is red in a pure form?
An unmixed form, away from interference? In the simple items we use most often.
One of the first items is “Flask of Crimson Tears''. Tears, like all blessings from the Erdtree,
come in different colours,
but the red tears we couldn’t live without. They replenish your HP. The vitality of your player
character.
We can also bring Torrent back to life with crimson tears. Other crimson things in-game also
affect HP.
Crimson amber medallion, red scarabs and crimson seeds among others.
Exalted flesh, treasured by heroes, is red meat in a medicinal solution of fiery red
spices. It gives you the raw power of a beast, boosting your attack output.
These things taken together make us think of bodily vitality. Red is needed to have a healthy
body, red is physical life.
To interact with the physical world via physical means, you need red to restore that energy.
Red is a colour our own world associates with health, youth and strength. In alchemy red was
believed to have these properties
and the coveted Philosopher's stone, which gave eternal life, is depicted as a vivid
crimson. Other items in Elden Ring link to this idea of vitality. The red-feathered branchsword
raises the power of your attacks.
All types of invigorating meat, which are always pickled in a red medicinal solution,
boost our robustness, which help against buildups of frost and blood loss. Now, if a doctor in
our world had matching coloured medicines for symptoms,
you would choose to go to a different doctor. But in Elden Ring it really works. The correlation
between red and the same boosting effects even carries across cultures.
Horn charms, made by the ancestral followers, a different society to the Erdtree,
come in many colours. The one that is pure red, boosts robustness.
Red has a true nature, and is a fundamental aspect of the world regardless of culture.
What is the next red that is essential in Elden Ring. Essential, yet, forbidden.
Fire… Fire is diverse in Elden Ring, but in one way more than any other..
Colour.. Some “flames” are more like lightning, some are lilac some are ghostly, yellow, or black…
All the flames have different attributes that once again match.. With colour.. For now though, we
will look at red fire.
Red fire in Elden Ring is more like fire in our world. Intense, destructive, life giving,
essential, beautiful, tempting. Fire itself is not unlike bodily vitality.
The “warmth of a champion”. Both carry increasing heat with increasing energy.
After all, we seem to reanimate the Ancestor Spirits with fire.. Both are hard to control as they
increase in energy.
But is red fire, just as fire is red? Is colour a true law of the world, as opposed to a correlation?
Let's look at the clues left in-game. Starting with medicines, made often via cookbooks, we can
isolate the ingredients.
Many medicines are heart and liver based, another alchemy inspired rule. Eat liver to purify,
hearts for vigour, and so on.
You will gain the nature of what you eat. So too in Elden Ring. Of the various coloured cured
livers in-game one is called “fireproof dried liver”,
and it is made with.. red medicinal solution. Another set of items with sets of colours are the
Drake talismans.
They all have a different colour but the one that boosts fire damage negation, is red.
What about the giants? They were the protectors of perhaps the most important fire in-game,
the giants forge.
Their fire nature is within them, their hair and eyes are red. This is not only as a representation,
the fire and redness is truly within them, within the redness.
We can find and hold this hair in our hand. Giants red braid.. And it does fire damage.
Fire grease, of course, adds damage to a weapon, and is a vivid red.
In our world flammable grease or oil would be unlikely to follow these colour patterns,
and it doesn’t, but in Elden Ring they always match, and across other coloured greases and their
natures.
Another notorious connection to red is.. Blood. Blood is one of the engines of bodily vigour.
In our world eating red fruits wouldn’t change your amount of blood or energy more than any
other fruit.
Yet this is not what we find in Elden Ring. Consumables, when they are minimal and simplistic,
once again follow a pattern.
Staunching boluses which alleviate impending blood loss, are red. Blood sorcery and blood
magic are red.
Blood grease is blood coloured. And blood will take us to more colour insights.
What has strong blood, rich red blood? Beasts.
Rich, untamed life is red. Vigorous life is deep red.
Red is the beast, the animal, the flesh side of the human. Those deep red, or built of a red closer
to wildness, exhibit beast-like transformations.
Mohg sprouts wings. Crucible knights, who are infamously red tinted,
sprout horns, wings, and can use the power of many beasts. Certain reds link these aspects
together all at once.
Red glintstone boosts thorn sorceries and lava sorceries, blood and fire.
Bloodflame is the same pairing of reds. And Mohg’s own blood bursts into flame in his boss
fight.
This also happened when he stood before the formless mother, “his accursed blood erupted
with fire”.
Blood and fire, both red, are not so different in nature.
Red pairs up blood and heat in the trait of robustness. All the medicinal solutions that help
robustness are red.
What is the use of robustness? It helps prevent buildup of frost and blood loss.
The giants are fire, and with such internal heat they can survive the cold regions.
And with abundant vitality blood loss is more manageable. If we join Mohg’s blood cult we have
a colour affect our own character.
Our eyes glow red. It may also affect our view of the world, as a true follower’s hunt for blood
will become a mental obsession.
This eye colour, just like the colour of armours, medicines, spells, has a causative connection in
the game.
It is a law of the world. It therefore is not a fashion option. We cannot change it at will.
It would change the Lore of the game fundamentally. Our eyes become our nature,
which is paired, in Elden Ring, with colour. Yet.. Red doesn’t only link with flame, blood, vitality,
and so on.
It also connects with harder to define things. Red has a quality shared with emotions, desires,
sensations…
Emotions are enormously important in Elden Ring. Nearly every ending is defined most by its
emotion.
Fear, doubt, loneliness, grief,
despair, Mania. What emotions would be paired with red in Elden Ring?
Emotions that are instinctive, primal, animal.. beast-like emotions.
These emotions are messy, hard to control, and ill adapted to society. If colour was only colour,
would a God be ashamed of his red hair?
Beast blood is a rich red, and beasts are red natured. Those closer to animal emotions are
closer to red emotions.
They lack self control or regulation. They do not possess enough intelligence to understand, or
to override their instinct.
Beasts are aggressive. As well as the obvious signs of aggression in battle, they also roar when
they fight,
something very unique to beasts and those of a beast like nature. Rune Bears roar, but so too do
the red Fire Giants,
Maliketh.. Or Gurranq, And Serosh roars… until.. he is made silent..
These types of nature are also useful. There are benefits, such as in battle.
"Well, thou art of passing skill. Warrior blood must truly run in thy veins”.
After all Radagon’s glory burned as “red as his hair”.. Which leads us to another success story
that drew from a well of red..
Godfrey. He waged war all the way to become Elden Lord.
His strength was unmatched. But these emotions had their time and place,
and once Elden Lord they no longer had a place in the capital. When we meet him Godfrey
maintains his lordly nature at first.
He does not roar, his wildness contained in his bestial other half. This side of him, Serosh, does
roar..
But Godfrey talks to us relatively calmly before the fight. When he is pushed to his limit
however..
Red has a place once more. He is then not content to have his beast, his aggressive side, held
separate to him.
He wants his bestial nature within him. He slays Serosh, becoming his true nature once more.
The deep red blood splashes all over him, staining him. Now, bestial and blood red,
he roars. His breath and body so hot they steam even in the air of the burning Erdtree.
He charges us like a beast, using only his bare hands.
So..
Another red emotion is aggression: A clear sign of this is the jellyfish,
these young sisters change colour when they become aggressive, to red. Aggressive invaders
have always been red.
Bloodboil aromatic, from a totally different sect to beasts, is rich red.
Consuming it increases your damage output but also your damage taken. At first this seems to
be odd, until you read the description.
It puts those who consume it into a frenzy.. Berserker like.. Beast like..
Linked to aggression is the competitive urge. Ambition. The desire for power, dominance,
possession.
Competitive summon signs are red. The red effigy is competitive. The true Hoarah Loux fought
for a crown, and,
on defeat, tells us our strength deserves one. "Brave Tarnished... Thy strength befits a crown."
We were told this Lore before the game came out.. “Emboldened by the flame of
ambition..someone must extinguish thy flame”
Aggressive competitiveness that puts the person at risk cannot be unlocked without the red
emotion of confidence, unquestioned by Intellect.
Innate and animal confidence is red. Godfrey doesn’t worry about his enemies, he seeks them
out.
He even strips his own armour. This confidence doesn’t question, it knows.
And confidence brings us to another emotion. Faith. What is knowing confidently, a knowing you
feel within you, instinctively?
What is knowing without thought, intellect, or proof? Faith.
This deep feeling, or trust, we believe is a red emotion. It is confidence not only in oneself, but in
things that are outer.
Fate, gods, magic. The Red Wolf of Radagon can use typical sorceries but also..
Red sorceries. Red sorceries draw on the power of .. Faith.
Red glintstone itself draws from faith, not intelligence. Radagon holds faith to this day.
While Radagon’s wife announces “Those blissful early days of blind belief are long past”,
he has faith to the very end. He tries to hammer the Elden Ring back together,
and dies protecting it. Faith is having a gut feeling.
It is red. Unquestioned and unreasoned belief is the opposite to reason based intelligence.
Faith can also be a celebration of an object of faith.. But we will get to those incantations later..
One emotion, supposedly absent in the Lands Between, must be red. Lust.. the “urge to
reproduce”.
It is primal and instinctive, and it has waned since “long ago”.
The food for boosting virility is an untreated bright red, blood and flesh.
No bloodless meat for this effect. This can bring back the feelings those in the land between
had long ago,
a more animal nature. But now things red have faded,
and red emotions have gone the way of the crucible knights. Once useful and essential,
the knights, coloured a red of the past, represent that mix of life and vitality.
Now red is looked down upon, and viewed as uncultured. Urges are repressed or simply cease
to be,
as society develops beyond their need. These red emotions form a pattern.
They go against civilisation. Aggression, ruthless competitive desire,
anger, physical power, raw blind confidence,
these are not so useful in developed society.
To quote Elden Ring’s own assessment in Ruler’s Mask “such a mask illustrates the qualities of
an ideal lord: chiefly, wise and possessing
a certain defanged geniality.” Red is certainly not defanged, and a lord is the representation of
high society.
Red emotions will get you in trouble if left unchecked. Those in society show their disregard for
red with their clothes.
It is a symbol of wildness, just as vestiges of the crucible are. Both are now “Increasingly
disdained as an impurity as civilisation has advanced”.
Those in the capital do not want to wear things that boost their bestial nature. Those who are
exiled, however, are given clothes to wear to mark them as not fit for society.
What is the colour of the Exile Robe? Red. The Exile Hood?
Red. What is the colour of those exiled for heresy? A deep red,
Sage Hood is burgundy and is literally “evidence the wearer was driven from town”.
Red is a signal of a social reject. There are more mysterious uses of red.
Why is the bolt that pierces Marika red? Is this because her physical body must be pinned down
by red,
by the bodily and physical nature of red? And what does the red of the two fingers tell us?
What can we draw from the red that spills out after Raani slays her two fingers… are the Two
Fingers the physical aspect of something greater?
The body of the greater will? Yet.. for all the risks of red, who could do without it?
For many, a life without red wouldn’t be worth living.
In its most wild state red is similar to.. And In fact borders..
Another infamous colour. But first red’s opposite.
Blue
Blue.
Blue in any Miyazaki game brings one thing to mind. Sorcery.
The colour of sorceries are, like all of Elden Ring, very varied. Some sorceries are cast with
faith..
But almost all are cast with Intelligence. These intelligence spells are ranges of blue.
The first thought is that blue is the colour of the mind, of the intellect. And perhaps..
Of the soul. Let's see if this intuition is right, and if so, what else does this colour do?
What does this colour help, harm, and what are blue emotions? Blue makes its appearance as
one of the first items we find.
Flask of cerulean tears. It replenishes your focus points. Focus is the engine of the intellect.
Focus points are used to cast spells, activate skills, and much more. The navy blue hood, simply
from its colour, increases mind.
Magic grease, magic scorpion, blue liver, shimmering hearts, all affect magic damage,
all are blue. The blue Carian Regal Sceptre enhances full moon sorceries,
and “only those of the highest intelligence” can wield it. It is all mental power.
Blue is the colour of the mind, intellect, focus.
The characters of the world confirm this. As they become more and more intellect focussed it
reflects in their colours.
Raani is no longer connected to her body, and she is permanently blue. She is also.. cold, with
literal ice crystals under her hat.
Lusat’s brain has become almost inorganic it is so far from red life.
His new head has a deep blue within it.. The mind’s eye of Astel, a star being, is blue.
Of course the centre of blue on the map is the Academy. Surrounded by mists and waters,
bathing in the night sky of the moon. Their robes are blue. Their spells are blue.
The very mist and air around the academy has a blue tint. Rennala’s robe is blue.
The realm we are taken to in the boss fight is a realm of water, star and moon,
all of it, shades of blue. The nature of the place? Designed for intellectual growth and learning.
The other heads of sorcery, the Carian Royal family, even have their own shade, Carian Blue.
Their Royal Castle is lit with blue flame with blue crystals growing in an air alive with blue
sparks.
Just as red is organic life, blue is intellectual life, but inorganic.
We see this clearly in the nature of glintstone. Hard, inert, yet able to spring forth action and
energy.
The inert, non living nature of the mind is shown by Lusat. As he descends more and more into a
meditative, intellectual world
he becomes physically different, and less and less like typical animal life. Lusat’s glintstone
crown says
”This crown replaced Lusat's brain and skull altogether, and now, removed from his body, it is all
but dead.”
It looks like a large polished crystal. Lusat’s manchettes tell us: “Lusat had reached a
near-inorganic state.”.
Lusat leads the mind directly to Crystalians. Magical and mysterious beings with almost
inorganic bodies.
Perhaps not entirely.. But they wear red to boost this as much as they can. The crystalians are
shades of blue.
The “Inscrutable” crystalians have their own culture, creator, and clearly, a deep intelligence.
The mind is the seat of thought, and therefore of character. Instincts are one thing,
but when someone tries to self control and choose their actions we say it is their “true
selves”. We may say it is their soul. The mind is therefore linked to spirit.
Your true self is your soul. The soul can have different natures itself,
but blue is intimately linked with the soul. Indeed the blue primal glintstone of Sellen states that
this is in essence her soul.
Raani died in body alone, and her soul lives on. Torrent is a spirit steed,
and as we summon him, he appears in blue. If red was wild heat and energy,
blue is cool and calm, and at extremes, cold and ice.
If red is fire, blue is water, the sun to the moon.
The cold is intimately connected with blue and there is a pattern here too. As the nature
becomes more cold, the blue becomes paler.
Paler blue brings frost damage and frost protection. Coldness and the mind combined gives..
Logic. Diligent thought, free from emotion. Blue is this cold mental operation.
Instead of needing to be tamed, like instinct, it is the taming energy, the guiding reason.
This form of mind is used by sorcerers to unlock secrets about the world, new spells, the
understanding of the stars, and of themselves..
It is extremely powerful, if limited, just as instinct is. We see the power of this form of mind
in-game.
Raani is the epitome of it. If we attack her on first meeting what happens?
No indignation, no damaged pride. “What hopest thou to profit?”
“...” She doesn’t even physically respond. There is no logical reason to, nothing to gain by it.
She dissolves this temporary spiritual body into the air in a shimmer of blue.
Even if we try to kill her after being her loyal ally, after placing an engagement ring on her finger
and swearing to become her consort,
how does she respond? No rage or aggression. "What hopest thou to profit?
..." She asks why we would do this, a logical question,
then reflects on her behaviour and how she may have caused her own downfall. Hmph.
So, this is the measure of my Lord? Perhaps it is precisely what I deserve.
...For surrendering myself to delusion.” The blueness of these cold, logical forms of mind, and
Raani’s behaviour
may lead us to believe there are no blue emotions, but this is not true. They exist, they are just
drastically different to red ones.
What emotions might blue feel? What emotions come with coldness, with logic?
Raani tells us when talking about her planned form of order.. She will take us “Into fear, doubt,
and loneliness..”
Blue emotions include all of these. A rational mind, that analyses and looks at evidence, will
alway carry doubt.
The world is full of the unknown, of chaos and randomness. A blue mind will think about the
limitations of knowledge,
how knowledge can be an illusion. Even Gideon the All-knowing has gaps in knowledge, and
makes mistakes.
A blue mind doubts. Fear comes next, and directly from doubt.
It is a fear of the unknown, not the known. The fearless are usually those who don’t know
enough,
the red and foolishly confident. Loneliness, for a cold rational mind is almost a guarantee.
Less animal, less instinctive, less social. More introspective, wanting to understand more than
feel,
loneliness is a complete match with blue. The mind struggles to connect with others as easily
as the body can,
and mental pursuits have their costs. Many of the sorcerers we find in-game have receded into
thought so deeply,
they have stopped being social entirely. They do not even talk to us.
Disconnected sorcerers are spread out across the world, and are quite content in their solitude.
Other blue emotions are more positive. Calmness, ease in one’s own company,
pleasure in learning and erudition, self awareness. It may not sound exciting but it can do very
well,
which is why blue has a premier place in.. Society.
Blue is the colour of the effective members of developed society. Bestial Consistution informs
us of Societies shift to blue:
“Having gained intelligence, the beasts must have felt how their wildness slipped away as
civilization took hold.”
It is not chaotic like the red of the animal. It does what should be done, it self controls for
success..
Blue is ever present in the clothes of those in society to display this commitment to self control
for the greater good.
What does Godfrey the Lord wear, not Hoarah Loux? Blue.
Not only Godfrey, Lords and Royals of all kinds all wear blue.
Royalty following the guidance of grace, serving the greater good on missions away from the
capital,
wear a navy hood.. Unlike the exile red hood, marking them as social outcasts,
royals display their respect of society and their adaptation to it.
Officials attire is blue, worn by magisterial officers to carry out grim but necessary tasks that
“drive the
wheels of mankind.” Devotion to society is what is on display with these robes.
Blue’s true nature once again extends to other cultures. Ruler’s robe states “Luxurious robe worn
by Lords in a smaller nation.
Its fine blue mantle serves to prove its wearer's status.” Blue proves status in society.
Even the Mohgwyn nobles, despite blood being the foundation of their dynasty,
wear blue. Red would only prove one’s strength and dominance in animalistic hierarchies.
Societal status is gained another way. With a blue mind and blue approach.
Returning to Godfrey and his blue attire, we will find perhaps the most beautiful illustration
in-game of the natures of colour,
and how they can unlock the rules of this world. While Godfrey still controls his bestial nature,
contained in Serosh,
a regal blue is on display. He wields his Axe, symbolic of his vow to conduct himself as a Lord.
He is very calm. He treats us with courtesy when we meet him.
He remarks how strong we must be to make it this far. He peacefully says goodbye to the
corpse of his own son,
the son we killed, and does not insult us. Only Serosh roars.
Godfrey is angry, but self control keeps it within Serosh.
Finally his self control gives way, and Hoarah Loux emerges. He rips open Serosh, releasing the
deep red blood which spills all over him,
making himself his true nature, predominantly red. The regal blue attire now hangs shredded,
drenched in red blood,
irrelevant.. forgotten. He then says “I have given thee courtesy enough”..
Courtesy, the blue of a lord, is done with.
With that, he roars.
Yellow
All these socially productive behaviours help to keep out one very dangerous thing..
Which leads us to.. Yellow… Perhaps the most notorious colour in the world of Elden Ring..
The colour of chaos.. Yellow is the end of form or order of any kind.
Beyond the animal wildness of red, beyond even extreme motion or manic thought,
it is pure chaos. No society can endure, no emotion sustain,
no being survive. All of these things are patterns which cannot exist in chaos.
The mind cannot witness chaos without madness, the eye cannot even process it without
destruction.
Chaos.. like all fundamental aspects of nature in the Elden Ring universe,
is paired with a colour. Yellow. The Frenzy Flame does not only look yellow,
it is explicitly called yellow again and again in spell descriptions. In fact all but one of the frenzy
spells mention the specific quality of yellow,
and the one exception doesn’t even summon the flame. As well as yellowness being explicit to
its nature, so is chaos.
The Lord of the Flame of Frenzy is called “The Lord of Chaos”. Chaos and Yellow pair up
throughout the game.
Things that possess aspects of chaos take the colour yellow, with only certain things going a
deep yellow.
The pattern is very consistent, from yellow boluses, eye of yelough grown in frenzy afflicted
lands,
to the frenzyflame stone, which swaps yellow in place of the gold of its gentler cousin.
Even our eyes when we have accepted the flame turn a vivid yellow, reflecting the chaos within
us,
the chaos which will eventually.. consume us. So, what is chaos?
In typical language it is “complete disorder and confusion”. In science it is more about total
unpredictability.
Disorder of course contrasts with order. It is therefore a fundamental aspect of the world.
It may be a lie, but Shabriri says Shabriri is “chaos incarnate.
I cannot die.”
Whether or not Shabriri can be destroyed, chaos certainly cannot be.
It is the bottom on a scale of order, or a peak on the scale of chaos.
Order is structure, patterns, divisions. Chaos is its opposite.
It cannot be destroyed anymore than you can permanently destroy a temperature. However this
does not mean that chaos doesn’t have a very real effect on anything non-chaotic.
Shabriri wishes for the yellow flame to “incinerate all that divides and distinguishes”.
Yellow is disordered, but yellow has an effect on other things too. Like acid changes what it
comes into contact with.
It brings things to chaos; it burns up order. Kale’s cut dialogue states that a Frenzied Flame can
“melt away the curses, suffering and despair.. And the Order entire”.
The reverse is true, order is destructive to chaos. Look at how the nomads are locked away,
sealed and rejected by order.
Look how thick, heavy doors, a simple physical order, seal the three fingers.
Look how the flame of frenzy decays to red once we cast. In a domain of non chaos it becomes
its red, less chaotic neighbour, before fading away.
Neither order or chaos can survive in an environment which is overwhelmingly the opposite.
Shabriri has been working on his plan for a long long time.. “May chaos take the world!”
But until our influence the frenzy flame is still so irrelevant it can be totally missed in a
playthrough.
It is not much easier being an anarchist than someone trying to progress order in society,
to move the scale long term is an enormous challenge. Hard to believe?
Imagine adding as much chaos as you could to the world.. How long would one last before
being locked up,
or saying farewell to the world oneself? The damage chaos does to the order that accepts it is
obvious.
Our yellow eyes will eventually become yellow “embers”, burst and broken from suffering the
flame of chaos.
Simply seeing the dazzling glare of frenzy for too long is too much for the order of our eyes.
The merchants suffer. The three fingers seems injured, or heavily fatigued,
but it may not be from outside influences, it is just the cost of holding chaos within it.
Finally.. it burns up. Even channeling chaos is not free.
It means damage to anything with order. We ourselves are a lot of order,
and the pain we feel casting a frenzy spell is obvious. Even just the sight of the flame of frenzy
drives the enemy, and ourselves, mad.
All this summoning time and agony merely to summon frenzy in the most random and
inaccurate
way. Frenzied burst is one exception. This spell manages to direct chaos in a generally straight
direction.
Yet the Frenzy Flame shows its nature as it flies, wildly spiraling as it rebels against this control.
The spell’s description matches our understanding of frenzy. “In times past, every single person
who attempted to control the flame of frenzy
succumbed to madness after a desperate internal struggle. This incantation is testament to a
meager victory.”
What else is yellow in game, and does it fit with the fundamental nature of chaos? There is one
thing we can encounter at random in the plains as we ride..
Lightning. Randomness is a clue.. Just like the flame of frenzy it bursts forth,
chaotically and seemingly unpredictably. The match between yellow and lightning is more than
just the colour of lightning.
If we pickle liver in a yellow medicinal solution, it boosts lightning damage negation.
Fulgurbloom itself is yellow. Lightning grease is a bright yellow. So lightning has a yellow nature,
a chaotic, sudden, unpredictable nature. Of course, lightning isn’t always yellow,
which may hint to how exactly lightning works, and what brings it into existence…
If they exist, yellow emotions would be quite a thing to feel. What do we feel when our inner
order is troubled by yellow?
Pure yellow is beyond emotion, but we can be riddled with chaos before we disappear,
and so too can emotions. The simplest emotions are the unavoidable ones.
Ravaged by internal chaos one emotion is inevitable. Fatigue.
Have you noticed that all the nomadic merchants are seated? When Kale or an aggressed
merchant does stand
they have very hunched shoulders. They slouch even more than the use of their cane requires.
As skinny as his donkey, Kale helps to hold up his own coat with one arm.
The posture is of someone suffering from fatigue, reminiscent of a teenager. Villagers of the
frenzied village are brought to their knees by the frenzy.
The three fingers is too alien to be certain, but it seems to be exhausted.
In comparison, even the old two fingers, described repeatedly as having lost all vigour,
stands upright and present until death. Posture is very carefully designed in Elden Ring.
Rya is snake-like. Patches squats. Those who are learning discipline or lack discipline sit
slouching or lie down.
Millicent lies down when suffering from rot, then stands tall and elegant as a swordmaster once
revived.
Physical posture is chosen with care and the merchants have been given this gait by design. It is
not only when using their canes,
but also when they sit that they hunch over. Others such as Bernahl sit straight upright despite a
tonne of steel armour.
Hyetta, as blind as the merchants, stands tall when she has not yet taken the flame of frenzy
within her.
Fatigue will be felt by those who harbour yellow, even if it itself is not directly yellow.
Fatigue correlates heavily with one thing that is certainly yellow. Creativity.
Thops, despite being ill disciplined at school, a “bluntstone” who can't sit upright,
creates something worthy of a new conspectus. Millicent and others who are weakened and
exhausted by rot
yet have a creative fire within them. It exhausts them as it burns them up, yet it is a great driving
creative force.
Roderika has a remarkable gift. The merchants are enterprising, musically talented
devise solutions to blindness, and have a remarkable fashion sense.
Yellow is creative because it doesn’t respect any borders. It doesn’t have filters or rules, it is
unpredictable.
Could the world survive without some chaos? Could a Lands Between flourish if only two fingers
had their way?
Or would no chaos be as destructive as no order..?
All creativity must have some yellow in it, but pure yellow is extreme creativity.
Delinked from order, the mind whirls about manically. It might discover anything.
But this yellow creativity is once again so manic it is damaging to the mind.
No sooner is an idea had before another crowds it out. Creativity beyond all function, beyond all
capture,
all memory, all use, a living torment of possibilities.
But great creativity usually doesn’t come without some madness. The thumb is a fitting
example.
It is the most important and creative part of the hand. But it is creative because it is so much
more..
unhinged. Shabriri gives us the next emotion.
“Incinerate all that divides and distinguishes”…
The yellow emotion of Rebellion. Yellow doesn’t want to be controlled.
Yellow doesn’t want to follow rules. Red might be wilful, but yellow will rebel even if it is against
its own interests to do so.
Rebellion is innate to it, it will not be contained. Shabriri himself is reviled,
yet he does not let the opinions of others constrain his behaviour. How are the yellow materials
that make lightning described?
“Fulminating”. What a profoundly odd and specific word for a Japanese game.
Fulminating can mean to “explode violently” or “flash like lightning”, but this is a literary
definition.
Its primary definition means to “express vehement protest.” Yellow is a constant revolution
against any order.
Shabriri laughs at our judgment. Nomad merchants were cast out for heretical beliefs,
only for them to summon the flame of frenzy. To this day they live outside of society, nomads
who live under their own rules.
Lightning itself is willful, and hard to direct. Even the masters of lightning receive heavy lightning
damage.
Perhaps they are only channelers of it, and not rulers. How does the flame of frenzy itself
behave when we try to channel it?
It writhes furiously against direction. The sheer time to summon it is something any frenzy
flame spellcaster has suffered!
A further example of the rebellious nature of frenzy is, counterintuitively, the spell Gelmir’s Fury.
It looks.. Uncannily like the behaviour of the flame of frenzy..
Why? Because both are physically rebelling. Neither want to be summoned.
Gelmir’s Fury is “held to represent the fury of the volcano” Gelmir itself.
However “the arrogance of attempting to harness it is solely that of men and serpents.”
It is not the place of men and serpents to try and tame a volcano. So the magma bursts
chaotically from the ground, rebellious,
frenzy-like. The most heavily referenced yellow emotion is madness.
This may be more what happens with chaotic thoughts and emotions. A lack of inner order so
extreme your mind breaks down.
If all thoughts and emotions can never rest or settle they cannot be put into action, or even
remembered effectively.
How can one sleep with a chaotic mind? How can one resist the tides of euphoria, paranoia,
hysteria?
So intense it corrodes our mind to madness. A final relatable emotion is the glee taken in chaos.
A desire and joy for surprise, mess, unpredictability.
Many experience a love of chaos while young. If you can feel what we are talking about you
might have some frenzy in you.
Just like inner chaos taken too far can drive you mad, outer chaos taken too far leads inevitably
to self destruction,
and yet.. There is nothing else like it.…
What about yellow’s place in society? Practically speaking, it has none. Aside from the odd flash
of creativity that might be viewed as acceptable,
yellow isn’t welcome. Even then.. Society doesn’t want creatives coming and disrupting the
hierarchy..
Rebellion doesn't work well in society. Rules must be followed. Not only at the large scale, law,
religion or customs,
but at the smaller social scale. Nomads are solitary when they aren’t rounded up and locked
away.
Yellow isn’t good at social niceties and rules of courtesy. Kale himself says “I've always
preferred my own company, to that of other people's...”
On top of that Kale doesn't hold back the truth “Oh, then you met Blaidd, did you?
Wonderful. I'm glad I pointed you in his direction. He's boorish, blunt, and couldn't find his nose
with both hands,
but he's a good egg. I think the two of you are sure to find the best in one another.”
Calling Blaidd a good egg doesn’t undo the insult, but yellow doesn't play the courtesy game.
“The kit costs a bundle, and I admit, I do take my cut. But the important thing is that you survive.
Every customer counts, after all.” Unfiltered. Honest, but not tactful.
At large scales not only the social, but the individual and whole society are destroyed in chaos.
The ending in typically obscure fashion shows this. The Lord of Frenzy ending is the only one
without any context.
There is no dialogue. No description of the age. No story of how it will be remembered.
Everything has been destroyed. Finally, chaos is linked.. To time.
Predictability, chaos, order.. Without time, do these make sense?
Order is in some sense predictable, or patterned, over time.. And Chaos has no predictability at
any time..
Yet.. Chaos cannot die.. Therefore chaos.. Is immortal. It lives forever, yet has..
No duration to its existence moment to moment.. How peculiar..
How peculiar too that on becoming mad, or within a great frenzied spell,
or the great frenzied sun.. And ourselves as the Lord of Chaos…
have a core of… Black..
Black
Black is a remarkable colour in Elden Ring, and we believe that it is paired with..
Time. Time is referenced heavily in-game. A God is supposed to live “a life eternal”.
The Dragon Lord lives “beyond time”. We can stop the meddling of an outer god but only when
“beyond” time.
Ancient dragon smithing stones “lightly twist time” which allow the “creation of a weapon
capable of slaying a god.”
Time is an essential aspect of everything, and it is very linked to Gods, life, death, entropy and
much more.
Time, after all, dictates the duration of your existence. However, time is not directly part of
existence in the same way red or blue is.
In a similar way it might be said that black is not truly a colour.. Instead there is a scale on which
black and white are the extremes.
Darkness to lightness. And all colours can be shifted along this scale. To clarify this it is easiest
to look at one end of that scale.
What is black? Black is one extreme end of time rates;
time stopping. When something stops progressing in time, it turns black.
An obvious and simple example is death. “The Lands Between are shrouded by Death's dark
fate.”
Fate becoming dark is a fate that stops. One form of death, though there are many forms,
is if a being stops continuing in time. Black is Death lightning,
death blight, part of the god slaying black flame, “The forbidden shadow, plucked from the
Golden Order upon its creation…”
and the black that ends Radagon’s life eternal. The boluses we consume to robust ourselves
against death blight are black.
Time is so essential to death, that to those beyond time death may not apply.
Black may help boost the effectiveness of killing in and of itself. The nightriders are dressed all
in black, and their weapons are jet black.
They were “deliverers of death for great warriors, knights and champions.” The black could be
more than symbolic given their aim.
Of note here are the evergaols, and Ordina the liturgical town. For both of these we can enter
another realm,
and we find the world beyond shrouded in darkness.. Yet this does not seem to be a new place,
at least not entirely. After all the runes we drop on death are findable in our reality.
So are evergaols in fact the ultimate prison? A jail that holds its prisoners by freezing time?
They are called evergaols after all.. There are more complicated aspects of time stopping,
for which Miyazaki seems to have been partly inspired by scientific theories about the universe.
Time, or any meaning of time, stops at the centre of chaos. What do we see at the centre of the
Flame of Frenzy, when it is intense enough?
A black core. As we have mentioned, chaos is eternal, but has no duration.
Therefore paradoxically, its time state does not progress. Another place where time slows and
eventually stops
is areas of deep gravity. And black is exactly what we see in the centre of powerful gravity
spells.
White
The other end of the scale is white. All colours can lighten by adding white, but what is full
white?
Where black is the current of time completely stopping, white is deep time duration.
A maximum time duration is.. Infinite. So, too deep a colour and it ceases to move in time,
too diluted and pale, it lasts and lasts. But what is the only thing that truly lasts forever?
Nothingness. The permanent background in which all things that come and go. So, depth of
colour is more intense in its existence but has less duration,
and as things become whiter they last longer but are less intense. This scale is actually
therefore simply an aspect..
Of all colours.. The world of Elden Ring confirms this. Whiteness increases time duration, but at
a cost.
All items we make with white meat say this clearly. “Lasts longer than traditional cured meat,
but with reduced effectiveness.”
Albinaurics show this too. However, colour is not surface deep, so we have to be careful as we
move to more complicated things in the world such as creatures.
Everything inside and out has a colour and an influence, something may be as much skin as
clothing,
and we only discover the colour of blood in battle.. Luckily Albinaurics do not only have white
skin, but also..
White blood.. What is their nature? As we expect for something so pale to the core, they are
extremely weak.
Their bows are specifically designed to require “dexterity over strength to master”.
They need wolves to help them move in battle. When we summon Latenna she has
exceptionally low health for a summon.
Only young Albinaurics manage carrying the shield of their namesake. Yet for all this weakness,
whiteness makes them last and last.
As deep time goes by, Albinaurics wash out their colour and become nothing “my legs will soon
fade, and with them, my life”.
Fade.. So what is health in terms of time duration? Not grey, which is time itself disordered and
messy.
Health cannot function without good timekeeping. Not black, which is stalling the stream,
clogging it unhealthily like a sludge. Nor too pale, which is like butter spread over too much
bread.
Health is surely somewhere in between. This is what those in the know wish for, healthy colour,
and to some it was gifted long ago. “The grace of gold blessed those who were first to serve it
with the most vivid coloration.”
To be healthy, whatever your mixes of colour, is to be vivid.
Just as all ranges of the scale have an impact, the two extremes, black and white, have an
important relation.
What has ceased to exist, and what lasts and lasts? Is the eye, the window to the soul and mind,
representative of the departure of intelligence in later generation albinaurics? But the whiteness
of their longevity is still shown in the body?
The two extremes of the scale are very useful individually, but they are also useful together.
You can kill with white too just as with black. And the mix of stopping something with black,
and then making that moment last forever, with white, is deadly. Or making an aspect of
something sustain indefinitely, which will eventually kill,
works too. Stopping Scarlet Rot is simply halting its progression in time, but if time is
recontinued, it means death.
Dark emotions are intense and consuming, but they move on fast, like a child’s.
Paler emotions are calmer, but last much longer. In raw nature white emotions might be true
long term gratitude or regret,
while black is more likely to be brief, but consuming anger, or elation. But any emotion can be
light or dark, it is defined by intensity and duration.
What we can be sure about is that emotions which are inextricably linked with eternity
will be black or white. Despair, according to “eternal darkness” has a core of black.
Despair is the “complete loss or absence of hope”. You know what you hope for can never come
to pass, and never is black in its time state.
Is there an emotion that is the opposite? That matches something existing, eternally?
Perhaps, if hope springs eternal, it is itself white.. Purple.
Purple
Purple has always been a remarkable colour in our world. Extremely hard to find in nature,
it was a rare sight before the modern day. Thanks to this unique obscurity it has been
consistently associated with similar ideas
across cultures, from East to West. Wealth is a frequent one.
Anything hard to obtain will have this connotation. More interestingly there are the associations
of spirituality,
the subconscious and imagination. In general, of the border between worlds.
This is one case where evidence in game seems to match with our real world notions,
something not always the case. The colour of sleep in-game is Purple.
We know this from numerous items of St Trina,
to perhaps even the first meeting with Raani. What happens when we sleep in our world?
It feels like we leave our bodies, or at the very least the time vanishes.
It is certainly a place where the subconscious continues to live, and while opinions vary no one
can deny there is something magical about dreams.
In Elden Ring dreams achieve great things, sustain generations of warriors in their jars,
may even be that which motivates a tarnished. Yet in Elden Ring the sense of dreams being truly
another world is very real.
“I dreamt for so long.” Sleep is a gateway to dreams, and the realm of dreams is a real place.
Some may seem to be sleeping, but be quite busy in this dream world. We ourselves enter Fia’s
dream as she sleeps.
We fight Fortissax in her “Deathbed Dream”, the surface of the boss fight a quagmire of purple.
Perhaps she used a sleep pot to put herself to sleep. And yet the events of this shared dream
have enormous real world consequences.
Trina’s Torch burns with a purple flame, and these purple flames cause sleep.
But Trina is involved in more than just sleep. Trina is clearly depicted with a third eye in the
centre of the forehead.
The third eye is to see beyond. To see across boundaries.. into other worlds.
Sleep is simply one of these many borders between worlds. Trina may be a Saint of journeying
into the subconscious,
the dream world, the spiritual world. The energy to bridge these gaps is purple.
What is the energy that brings more classical, physical worlds together? The force that defines
the border of a world, star or galaxy?
Gravity. That which makes physical bodies move almost with a mind of their own.
Indeed when one thinks that interfering with it causes small lightning sparks, it may be that the
matter rebels at our meddling..
Gravity is much stronger and much more relevant to physical bodies, and so gravity is a deep
purple.
In Elden Ring how do we bring meteorites into a battle? With gravity. Preferably with glintstones
that boost gravity sorceries, which are, of course, purple.
Gravity in Elden Ring pulls but not merely from distances, but pierces to completely different
regions.
We don't have to wait for the meteorites to come from space! Gravity can open a door or bridge
between worlds as sleep does.
Bringing collapsing stars, or meteorites from nothing, and even pulling objects from the
mysterious “void”.
Astel, the leveler of the Eternal City, is very talented at moving through gravity doorways..
but the master of moving between worlds is the Elden Beast. What colour does the Elden beast
emit when transporting us to another realm?
Deep, gravity purple. Both gravity and sleep are dragging, sinking forces.
One weighs down focus and presence, the other weighs you down physically and exhausts you.
This shared sinking effect, in different intensities and across different planes,
are represented by their shades of purple. It once again fits the pattern of darkness and
lightness of colour.
Dark purple is more intense, has a stronger physical effect, but it doesn’t last as
long. At its most intense it goes black, and as in our world, time stops.
Indeed with stars seeming to dictate fate, this hints at how time, fate and gravity are connected..
Meanwhile light purple lasts much longer, is gentler, doesn’t pierce so deeply as the physical,
but nonetheless drags us to the world of dreams. What is the most important border to being
human?
Whether you’re a dreamer or purely practical it is surely.. the border between the mind and the
body.
Red is the body. Blue is the mind. Red and Blue gives purple.
Both weaken each other in a way, the body exhausting the mind, the mind questioning and
tempering the body,
but it is this costly relationship that gives rise to great things. Imagination, dreams, the
subconscious,
the deep invisible wisdom of the third eye. Purple is this border, neither enough presence to be
fully blue,
yet not all raw instincts and animal unconsciousness to be red. This mysterious middle is what
makes us human.
Exist too imbalanced in any direction.. And the humanity fades away..
We have mentioned there are many ways to die in Elden Ring. But total destruction is quite rare.
Instead, destroying an essential border that makes us human is one solution.
Before the Erdtree there was a different system for dealing with the dead. They were burnt in
ghostflame..
Interestingly we know from the spirits that resulted from this process that it was not a
destruction of everything.
The bodies may have been destroyed, raked as ashes, but the spirits lived on, sometimes with
great bitterness.
But they were no longer human.. How did they separate these minds, or souls, from their
bodies?
With ghostflame. Ghostflame burnt this border between the two worlds.
What colour is ghostflame? Despite the appearance of the magic in the current day, its colour is
Violet.
“a purple flower that blooms in graveyards.. The hue of ghostflame.”
And we see this Purple used by a master, the Tibia Marina, as he brings the dead back from their
world.
He himself fades in and out of this world, likely to the world of the dead, wrapped in purple the
whole time.
It is unclear why the current ghostflame magic and its users are a different hue however. Is this
the remaining colour once all that is purple has burnt away, the body left as
ashes? Or maybe only in this later order has ghostflame lost its hue.
The purple consumables, staffs, grease, plants, all pattern to sleep, gravity and borders to other
worlds.
Purple cured meat, called clarifying, prevents the buildup of sleep and madness. Sleep of course
prevents focus..
But madness is interesting, because Purple is not the opposite of chaos..
perhaps if the third eye becomes too dominant we begin to see things in the random chance of
the world that simply aren’t there.
It is a fine line between intuition and madness. The subconscious and its interpretation,
dreams and understanding, the outside world and its patterns,
it is so easy to fall into superstition and fantasy. Imagination can run wild.
You might end up believing in what simply doesn’t exist..
And yet the mysteries of purple are so.. Seductive..
Green
Green is a more abstract colour than red or blue, but it is essential to both in the Lands Between.
In our playthrough green might be seen as less important, as it is less relatable than red,
but it is just as fundamental. We meet green time and time again in game when it helps us, as
stamina, and hinders us, as poison.
But it is more complicated than that. For stamina there are many items which show the pattern.
Greenspill crystal tear raises max stamina, its Greenburst cousin raises stamina recovery,
and Green Turtle Talisman does the same. A turtle neck pickled in green also boosts stamina
recovery,
a completely different effect to the red, unpickled neck from the same creature.
But what is stamina? Stamina is defined as “The ability to sustain prolonged physical or mental
effort”
But what gives that ability in essence? What is physical and mental activity really?
It seems to be reducible to motion in the physical world and in the mental, the more abstract,
animation. Green is therefore the animating energy, for the body or mind.
It is in that which moves, animates, progresses,
cycles, rises, grows. It is in nature certainly, but so too in the racing mind..
and the body is full of energy. Green in isolation has another clear effect in game.
A green medicinal solution creates various cured meats that boosts immunity.
Immunity helps fight poison. We consume it like a small dose of poison, to strengthen our
resistances for the future.
Neutralizing boluses, made from nothing but cave moss, but this time naturally green,
also boosts your immunity against poisons. Poisonbone darts and arrows poison your enemy,
and their tips drip in green liquid.
The various horn charms have various effects, patterned by their colour, the one that boosts
immunity has green on the horns.
And of course everything that causes typical poison follows the same pattern. The pattern goes
on well beyond this.
But is this the other side of the same coin, could animation itself be poison?
And if so, how? The first hint to green’s nature is the fact that the green rule for poison,
not rot, which we will come to, continues across plants, to inanimate stones, to medicine.
The second is that there is a consistent colour difference, a consistent shade of green that
differentiates stamina, or healthy animation,
with unhealthy animation; poison. Poisons in our world are not a specific shade of green.
Stamina green is, consistently, a rich, vivid green, sitting healthily in the range of the colour.
But poison.. Is a shade of green that moves towards.. Yellow.. Why is unhealthy animation
towards the shade of yellow?
Because it becomes.. Disordered. Or by another name, Chaotic.
Better to have ordered motion, even if it is a little slower than desired, over chaotic motion.
Animation going wrong in the body is very linked to timing going wrong, movement being paired
with time.
We know from black and white that grey timekeeping doesn’t do well for health. What about
chaotic movement, or animation, within our bodies?
What can happen if the body's processes go out of sync?
How fast might we last with a sped up heart and a slowed down liver? Or a metabolism many
times too fast?
Chaotic bodily processes are deadly, even slight rhythm errors between them, over long periods
of time,
causes huge problems in the organs. Therefore if the green is not the right shade and it gets in
your system,
it is poison. Green has simpler emotions than red or blue, and while it has its highs and lows, its
place is the animation of things.
Of emotions and thoughts too. The rate of change, whether they cycle or not,
how fast they come and go. Green also has its own mysteries.
Is the light green celadon blade of the Godskin Apostles simply for increasing the thrust speed?
It works, the thrusts from specifically the weapon, regardless of wielder, “are swifter than the eye
can follow.”
But is there some other secret? Is Sellen’s glintstone, a sickly poison green, evidence of her
twisted mind?
She was the Graven Witch, after all… And how to explain this remarkable green sky, on that
fateful night of the black knives?
Perhaps you have spotted a similar sky in your playthrough too.. There is one poison in-game
that is not green, that is called rot.
Scarlet
What is Scarlet Rot? Once again it is named by colour. And from its name we have the answer.
If there is more and more energy, green, in life and bodies, red,
What happens? What did we say was the colour more energetic life moved to?
As it became more madly mobile? More chaotic? Red trends to..
Yellow.. Which is exactly what you get when you mix red and green. And one of the closest
shades of red to the border of yellow or chaos..
Is .. Scarlet…
Scarlet is life, but too manically energetic, it grows and lives too vigorously and chaotically.
Consuming and destroying its host. Life.. Out of control.
Shades of Colour
Scarlet brings us to the idea of colours being similar. Being neighbors. Of course there is no one
nature for any one colour.
It is all.. hues What is the order and relationship of colour.
In a natural splitting of colours from white light we can see it clearly. Red is on one side of the
split,
leading to yellow, to green, to blue, and then to purple. The shades of these colours are infinitely
varied as it goes between them.
Every colour can be made by the two that border it on either side. So a wheel can be formed, as
a famous alchemist did long ago.
More than the darkness or lightness, where is the colour exactly? How close is it to others?
The hue as we have mentioned, may divide gravity nature from sleep. But there is no strict
border in any of their natures.
Everything can approach.. And mix. “Heresy is not native to the world; it is but a contrivance.
All things can be conjoined”.. So.. Red going too close to yellow..
Gives scarlet.. Chaotic life is scarlet rot. Blue gains some green and it becomes energised,
full of innovation and impact on the real world, but too much green and the mind cannot keep
the stability for things like attention or
memory. Become too green, a shade of turquoise, and you might be called a bluntstone..
Perhaps being this hue his whole life led Thops to a great insight. A mind that is internally over
animated repels the entry of external mental influence.
It raises the question of whether sorcery damage really arises simply from strong mental belief..
Moving further away from blue moves further away from sentience and more into the automatic
animations of the natural world.
Comets represent this, always much more green than the bluer stars and are never referred to
as sentient.
Stars on the other hand are referred to repeatedly as active, conscious agents.
Green animation moved towards yellow is poison. Mind and body mix into the purple worlds of
sleep, dreams, and the mystic..
and inanimate bodies moving with what seems to be minds of their own, is purple gravity.
Most interestingly, and what really shows the purposeful nature of Elden Ring’s colour design,
is in opposites. Colours may have associations in our world, but their opposite associations do
not match to their colour opposites.
What do we mean by that? Well, for most colour systems opposite associations do not have
opposite colours, or light wavelengths, and vice versa.
Thus, we do not find in our world that the associations of purple are the opposite of the
associations of green.
The odds of them doing so is remarkably low. If they did, you might start to say that it was a
natural law.
But what do we find in Elden Ring? White and black are the two opposites of time, but it is a
scale for all colours.
And Grey, the mess and mix of time states, when inverted, is still…
Grey.. It has no time opposite, unlike black or white.
So what about true hues? The opposite of red, heat,
is ice hued blue. The opposite of chaos, the rational mind, regulating and maintaining control.
The opposite of purple, the sinking, dragging sleep and gravity force, is green, the animating,
uplifting energy of stamina and cycles.
Clearly, this is a conscious design for the Lore of Elden Ring.
Let’s move on to some more nuanced colours.
There are some unique colours, some more common, some rare, but all mysterious.
Silver
Silver… whether in the real world or Elden Ring, always takes second place to gold.
Often the name for money in various cultures, it is much more practical than the hard to come
by gold.
Silver is the most reflective metal and the best conductor of electricity and heat.
It really can seem to become one with things, visually and energetically.
In Elden Ring the nature of silver is similar, but much more magical.
Silver seems in nature quite similar to quicksilver.. Or its other name, mercury..
While this metal is not referenced in game, the silver we find seems to flow and run like liquid.
Silver tears are liquid, Nox weapons stretch and warp, formed from this same tear.
The centre of this creature is a Larval tear, within which we can see the apparent liquid flow of
silver under its surface..
In alchemy silver is associated with the moon, and.. Snakes.
Silver doesn’t appear in any of the “all colour” or multicolour items. It doesn’t seem to be part of
the mainstream world and arrangement of colours..
Mercury, being a liquid metal, is perceived in Alchemy as being able to cross natures and
borders.
It also competes with silver for its reflectivity, and has been used in telescopes for this property.
Most interestingly, almost all elements can combine with mercury in a process called..
Amalgamation. Both Silver and quicksilver seem to have the ability to take on the properties of
other
things, whether visually, or physically absorbing, or in its heat or electric nature..
In Elden Ring silver truly takes on the nature of others. We can even birth ourselves anew with
this silver..
And it is hinted that maybe a lord can be made by a silver imitation.
While this nature of silver seems to be a pattern, it is still a mystery. Why is the metal of Trina’s
sword, full of purple magic, silver?
To conduct from the realm of dreams? Is Oracle Envoy blood.. Silver?
They look somewhat similar, white and blue, to the white blooded albinaurics.. And Albinaurics
were formed from a sacred drop of dew..
Was that dew as silver as the shield that represents it?
And what is.. Blue silver? A mysterious metal born from the same mother as albinaurics
themselves..
Amber
Amber is.. perplexing. Amber in our world is fossilised tree resin.
Different colour ambers form from the Erdtree’s old sap, as in our world sap and time are the
ingredients.
The various hues of amber match the various natures of colours. However most important is
the traditional colour of amber.
It is very connected to the process of rebirth. The amber egg of Rennala is a beautiful example.
Why is rebirth this colour? And more confusingly, why does it need silver to operate?
The sacred dewdrop tear represented in the Silver Mirrorshield has amber atop it.
Another strange relation. Amber starlight says that “amber hued stars must command the
gods.”
The draft made to attempt to control Raani is an Amber Draft. This colour seems to have
something to do with formation.
Formation of life, formation of a future and fate. But it is a colour of mystery we need to explore.
Gloam
What is gloam? Gloam is twilight or the darker part of twilight..
Gloom.. Shade. Given what we know about colours and relations to death,
gloam would be a fitting colour for the Queen’s eyes. Who it might be..
Remains in the dark. Copper is another colour that is also a metal.
Copper
Copper appears vividly in certain swords. Regalia of Eochaid says that the copper coloration of
the blade is
“a conduit for its wielder to move it by their will alone.” We believe Copper is therefore the colour
of the will.
The region that uses this sword also gave us Elmer of the Briar. His shield, from a foreign land,
is the land of Eochaid.
“A land of proudly solitary ascetics”. Ascetic is defined as
“characterized by severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence”.
This sword is from a region where willpower is immensely important and practiced daily.
The will is the colour of copper. Bronze seems to support this.
Bronze is an alloy mostly of copper, and a little tin. The gargoyles seem to be operated from
afar.
Their swords are made of bronze, as are hoops on their ankles and wrists.
Almost like a puppet… Tin men moved by the will, at distance.
Additionally, how does one make copper colour? You mix a lot of yellow, chaos,
a lot of red, animal life and raw instincts, with a little.. Blue…
What could better represent willpower than copper? When a little bit of mind or spirit has to fight
as the underdog
against the chaos of the world, and the baser desires, to do what you truly wish to do.
Will is found in this hardship, where one must compete against these two natures,
and win. There is one remarkable colour in-game that is not truly a colour.
Colourless
Drained of colour. According to the natures of colour, this type of “colour”, should be defined by
its emptiness of nature.
And this is just what we see. Eclipse crest greatshield says “the eclipsed sun, drained of colour,
is the protective star of soulless demigods”.
It is an emptiness that matters here, the edge is the symbol that matters.
Soulless demigods have lost their natures, their bodies lie drained of red vigour.
The animation, the mind, the character, the soul, has left this plane.
They are colourless. Nascent butterfly, an important ingredient in many consumables,
has “translucent wings”. It appears as if “it's just emerged from its cocoon for its entire life”.
It has very little nature. Colourlessness can be filled. It is pure potential.
Nascent butterfly makes dappled multicoloured meat. It doesn’t interfere with these hues, it is
colourless,
and can take on varieties of colours without staining it with its own. This concept comes again
with Somber Smithing Stone.
Somber being defined as “dull in colour or tone”. The description of the stone again reminds us
that
colour is an essential building block of the world. “Shard of smithing stone drained of colour”,
what a peculiar thing for a blacksmith to find important. Finally it says
“special armaments with unique characteristics cannot be strengthened with coloured smithing
stones.”.. Colour has nature intrinsically and irremovable,
if something is a unique and balanced mix of colours, to use a coloured stone would literally
change its nature.
Therefore to maintain its uniqueness of nature, which in Elden Ring means its remarkable
uniqueness of colour,
you need to use a colourless smithing stone. So.
Multicoloured
Multi coloured. Now we know the basics, we can approach these remarkable dappled patterns.
There are of course many base colours. We can therefore make a prediction before looking
in-game.
Multicoloured consumables in Elden Ring should have the same effect as its constituent
colours.
Indeed multicoloured is achieved by the most basic function of something else..
These colours after all, are not mixing..
But first.. Dappled, rainbow, mottled. It goes by many names. The mottled necklace, from an
entirely different culture to the Erdtree,
has very clearly three colours on it. Poison green, purple, and red.
The exact colours of the more ordinary immunising, clarifying and stalwart horn charm.
What is the effect of this “vividly coloured accoutrement, precious to the ancestral followers”?
It raises robustness, immunity, and focus. Just like our colours would dictate,
and a combination of the more regular coloured horn charms. Our prediction is right.
This pattern fits across many items. Flask of wondrous physick. “A relic of the physick chemists,
priests of the Erdtree.”
What a curious profession for priests, to focus on the mixing and combinations of base
natures.. “Harnesses the powers of crystal tears, which only form after the passage of many
moons. Various special effects are bestowed upon the drinker, dependent on the specific
mixture of crystal tears.”…
Of course there are many colours of tears, crimson and green and so on,
and with custom combinations the vision of their effect is multicoloured.
One special tear is the Opaline hard tear. Opaline is another word for opalescent, defined as
“showing many small points of shifting colour against a pale or dark ground.”
Opal is famous for being able to display every colour of the rainbow.
If crimson tears and green tears affect hp and stamina, what does this multicoloured tear do?
It boosts all forms of damage negation. The dappled cured meat we make, upon closer
inspection, has three colours that stain it.
Red, purple and poison green. And what do these cured meats do when we consume them?
Dappled cured meat boosts immunity, robustness and focus, exactly what the colours red,
purple and off green do when alone in a cured meat.
What is remarkable too is how we make dappled cured meat. The medicinal solution we cure it
in doesn’t have a combination of the essential ingredients
of other meats. The invigorating cured meat, red, has a land octopus ovary in it.
But it is not in dappled meat. We don’t find a slumbering egg for the sleep resistance,
nor a head of a poison resistant dragonfly. There is one item that seems to give all the variety of
colour to the dappled meat…
A budding horn.. “This horn began to sprout on a beast that typically bears no horn.
Perhaps it’s a vestige of the primordial crucible.” This horn.. gives rise to many colours..
What is the primordial crucible? Where “all life was once blended together”…
All life, all natures… and therefore.. All colours..
With the nature of multicoloured established, we can look at where it appears in the lore.
We can understand why the rarest and most prized of Miranda Flowers are the most varied in
colour.
There is a great power in the diversity of uses. Astel, formed of many colours together,
can cast various forms of magic, and indeed, amongst all this varied colour appear..
Rings.. Why are the celebrants in the windmill village armed with multicoloured rakes, skulls and
sickles? The merchants wear gorgeous multicoloured garments, their famously suave hats
studded with many coloured gemstones.
Is this the lie of the Three Fingers? That removing division will bring together this diversity in
beauty?
Instead of destruction in chaos? The Gods themselves seem to be a multicoloured set..
The Outer God of Scarlet Rot, the God of Ranni’s order, the Formless Mother, and so on..
Perhaps white and black is like a many faced god acting as many colours but in fact is one..
Colours are so fundamental that the very gods seem to be divided by them. And one God, the
Greater Will,
is recognised by one exceptional colour. But nothing is so important in the lore of the
multicoloured
than the crucible and.. the Omens. Omens, with the nature of all creatures emerging,
have much more than a vestige of the primordial crucible. If yellow is a chaos of everything
mixing,
multicoloured is something to be nervous of. How things can be multicoloured without mixing
to chaos
is the place of a most famous colour and omens are evidence of the breakdown of this colour.
As the boundaries of colour begin to weaken, and stir up.. How close we come to chaos..
Morgott is an Omen who knows he is a risk. He is ashamed of his curse.
He recanted it, and sealed it away in his Cursed sword… a beautiful lore item..
“Warped blade of shifting hue”.. The colours tell us his story.
What is an omen but a warped being with many coloured natures shifting and emerging?
“The accursed blood that Morgott recanted and sealed away reformed into this blade”.
When this blood becomes unbound, it emerges. It explodes and mixes in a filthy, off yellow,
staining the thrones.
Staining, an important word, explicitly a word for colour…
Omens and Omen blood, and all that trends towards the primordial crucible, risk blending in a
stew of mess, one step from pure chaos.
But, it is kept at bay.. Kept at bay by one thing.
Gold
Gold.
In our world Gold is formed in stars and is believed to have fallen to earth in meteorites long
ago.
It is unreactive, and one of the most stable elements. It is very hard to destroy and very hard to
make.
And of course, it has a unique colour. In alchemy it is viewed as the highest form of matter, but
not only matter;
also body, mind and soul. To turn base metals, matter, or our own nature into gold takes many
stages,
but gold is the final form. This transformation has been undertaken by many great minds in
history,
but while they gave us many other gifts, gold was never made.
In Elden Ring we need to look at the world, and what is in it, to see gold’s place in the universe.
Gold is seen all around us, but it is hard to find on its own, removed from complex systems.
Religion, characters, obscure dialogue, none of these help us as gold beginners.
Complexity will lead to confusion. We need to find where gold is in the world, simply.
And there are three items which are natural, simple, and, importantly..
ignored. There won’t be any preconceptions about what has been passed by.
Golden rowa, Gold tinged excrement, and Beast blood.
First: Golden rowa. Red Rowa, as we have dealt with, is heavily involved in red nature boosting.
Gold Rowa is a rarer thing.. Though it is easily found near the Erdtree. Gold is easier to find, in
general, near the Erdtree.
More than colour, how does this Gold Rowa differ from a typical Rowa? In what it can make.
Red Rowa and Rimed Rowa cannot make any dappled meats.. Dappled, as we have addressed,
are multi coloured.
They have the effects of each colour. Yet, the meat has identifiable, separate colours in its
dappling.
Why can the preserving effects of a normal rowa not do what is required to make Dappled
Meat, but Gold Rowa can? Gold is required to stop the colours from..
Mixing.. It contains the colours in the meat, together, yet separate.
Gold tinged excrement is next. Once again it has a unique appearance. “It has a golden tinge”.
But we have an enormous clue in this highly ignored substance.. “Gold tinged excrement is a
highly stable substance;
it doesn’t dry out, nor does it lose its customary warmth or scent. For better or worse, it remains
as it is.”.
Goldness maintains the nature of the thing. Finally we have..
“Fresh beast blood, glinting with gold.. This glimmering blood never rots or decays.”.
Between these items, the essential nature of Gold reveals itself.
Gold is Order. Gold has the power to hold things in a state or condition that otherwise might
change.
In a universe where the natures of things are linked with colour, Gold is what can hold them in
relation.
Gold dictates whether they overlap, mix, or are held at a great remove.
Without gold, dappled meat would be very dangerous to eat, as its colours would interfere with
each other.
Without gold things rot. Without gold, for better or worse, things change unpredictably.
Each colour has its opposite in nature. But gold is not a base colour,
it is an emergent property and an emergent colour.. Just like..
Chaos.. And yellow is the Shadow of gold..
Gold is what can divide and distinguish, and yellow destroys divisions. Interestingly, what is one
thing that can break gold down in the real world?
Aqua Regia dissolves gold away.. It’s colour.. A vivid yellow.
Gold and order is like yellow and chaos, it exists and doesn’t exist.
It is an emergent colour when all colours are in certain orders.. You have faith in gold, you can
see it, feel it,
but it doesn’t exist in the way green does. Break the structure, and gold vanishes into its
constituent parts,
with the true colours within revealing themselves.
If gold is order, Gold may have the power of influencing the basic rules of the universe…
After all, what are rules, whether in society, or the laws of nature, other than..
Order. With enough gold you can guide these laws as you see fit.
You can make things rise or fall. You can make them burn, freeze, reverse in time.
You can temper your own being with blue. You can choose how long red lasts..
How much green.. Your amount of purple.. The enigmatic Miyazaki told us so before the game’s
release..
“The rings that you’re looking at in the logo are.. more a representation of the law of the world,
the rules and the order…
It’s more about how you apply those rules and how you enforce them on the physical world and
what effects they have on it…
That’s what’s being represented by the Elden Ring and these overlapping and intersecting rings.
It gets a little bit more complicated than that, but I’ll leave it there for now.”
Like dams in rivers.. With gold you can direct nature itself.
Whether it helps the world in general, or only yourself, depends on your understanding,
and your choices. “The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology,
can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men.”.. Let us now look at more
complicated aspects of gold and see if things fall into place.
The shackles for Omens have golden symbols on them, and they are “bathed in golden magic”.
They “confine” Omens.. Confinement is a form of order. And now we have learnt the
multicoloured nature of omens…
isn’t this just.. Dappled meat and Golden rowa, but played at a much larger scale?
Omens, the same as anything else, are defined by their colours.
Omens are too primordial, too verging on the chaotic. If let out to mix it becomes..
disordered. Gold, like the golden rowa, keeps these shifting hues in place.
Morgott has the nature of what seems to be rats, goats, and many other creatures growing from
him.
And when the seal he imposed on his own blood seems to break, it is splinters of gold he
coughs out first,
before the emergence of a muddy, mixed colour. Order is very linked to time.
If order is buffeted by non order it dissipates over time. This is why Morgott’s shackle, which
lacks power,
only holds Morgott for a short time. This is why with time, gold seems to decay to a muddy
yellow.
Colours naturally mix. And thus, just as Golden Rowa is needed for cured meat,
so too do we, the player, need.. Runes. Runes are the gold that keeps ourselves in order.
Without Runes we cannot keep any of the natures of colour. If we consume redness a boost
occurs, but it cannot be contained permanently, and it
fades. The golden runes, that can maintain natures in order, can allow us to keep different
attributes permanently.
Think of it like having more gold to add to our own ring. It increases its size.
“Runes will act as nourishment for the development of any Tarnished.” If we want more green
permanently, we can do that.
More runes allow us to alter our own form, our own order.
Without order these natures will mix. We don’t necessarily want a strong body to dilute with a
strong mind
to result in tiredness. Order can raise the parts to a greater whole.
It may be that all the basic building blocks of nature are around us all the time,
much like in the real world. Everything is only its specific nature as a result of its..
Order. Order does not only apply to the inner, it also applies to the outer world.
You can impose order on others just as you can impose disorder. One more complicated aspect
of Golden Order,
a name which takes a more literal meaning now, is incantations. One spell that imposes order
on others is “Litany of Proper Death”.
We cast it upon those who live in death, and it stops them from arising repeatedly. The
description once again is more concerned about image than the physical.
It imposes an “image of order”, in bright gold, which damages those who live in death.
The spell says the hunters aim to “stamp out defiled reason — all for the perfection of the
Golden Order.”
In their opinion, to “live in death”, is an affront to how order “should” be.
However the very name, living in death, shows how flexible order can be,
that such a thing is even possible. The image of order is interesting too.
What shape does order always take? Clear intersecting straight lines, triangles and squares,
and of course, most famously, in rings. What is more ordered than a ring?
Holding an inner and separating an outer, balanced around its centre…
Rings are a perfect visual representation of order. They can contain, they can overlap
and bind. Other spell effects and descriptions help us further.
Two incantations viewed as very important to the lore are the Law of Regression and the Law of
Causality.
Causality: “One of the key fundamentals. Manifests a small ring of causality within
that allows the caster to automatically retaliate upon receiving a certain number of blows.
The fundamentalists describe the Golden Order through the powers of regression and causality.
Causality is the pull between meanings; it is the connections that form the relationships of all
things..”
This is one more key. This is because it is fundamental to understand that order is not only
static.
Something being in a state of order, unchanging through time, is of course ordered.
But there is order in processes too. That which repeats or has a pattern.
That which is predictable. Cause and effect, fundamentally, if it is tightly correlated,
is a form of order. It is order through time. So, with this we can establish that
order is not only something that applies to things with static states, such as beast blood not
rotting.
It applies to processes, just as a dam will consistently redirect water in this or that direction over
time.
The next is Law of regression. “Heals all negative statuses, dispels special effects, and reveals
mimicry in all its forms..
Regression is the pull of meaning; that all things yearn eternally to converge”
This is inverting causality, or removing effect. Any form of order is expensive, and to do this at a
deeper level,
say a wider area, or deeper into the past, ie through more layers of cause and effect,
takes a lot of order. It is expensive. It is easy to damage order with chaos,
but undoing order, cleanly, backwards, is not chaos. It is a very hard operation that also requires
a lot of order.
All incantations are of interest here as well. Immutable shield protects one's own order.
Lord's aid and Cure poison use a great abundance of order to draw out poisons and ailments
from our bodies,
and we can see these colours being removed. Finally we have order healing:
“all the good and the great wanted was an absolute evil to contend with.
Does such a notion exist in the fundamentals of Order?”
So we get to the moral aspect of Order. Who benefits from order?
What does benefit even mean, without order? Before the existence of order,
can we talk about good? Or evil? Both, if they exist, arise from order.
The benefit or harm of a dam, its gain to some, its harm to others,
is already placed atop an order. Can something as fundamental as order itself have a morality?
After all, with chaos, such things fall down. Melina tells us as such:
“If you intend to claim the Frenzied Flame, I ask that you cease.
It is not to be meddled with. It is chaos, devouring life and thought unending.
However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair,
life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not?
If you would become Lord, do not deny this notion. Please, leave the Frenzied Flame alone.”
Life itself is destroyed in chaos. The pain and suffering of life is also order,
it is division and distinguishment. Frenzy removes the order of pain, just as the eye of yelough
relieves it.
Without suffering of any kind we would die. Order contains, perhaps irremovable, suffering.
But is a mixed quality of life better than none at all? “The Lord of Frenzied Flame is no lord at all.
When the land they preside over is lifeless.” Chaos is a release, but a well structured order..
May do wonders. And this range of the possibilities of orders is the purpose of Goldmask.
The state of the current order is weakening, and disorder has become more present. “The fallen
leaves… tell a story..”.
Gold is fading even small distances from the Erdtree. Is it because Gold is alloyed with
something..
Outer? Allowing the influence of outer gods? Is it unstable ideology and fickleness that is the
problem?
Or is it the physical damage done to the Elden Ring that is causing these issues?
Goldmask takes on the task of mending order. His change to fundamental order impacts
everything and everyone in the Lands Between.
In fact the form of order is what defines every ending in Elden Ring. Many orders are possible.
Unlike others who create a mending rune, Goldmask invests incomparable time and thought into
his creation.
He has likely spent a lifetime to reach his level of understanding.
Staring up, through holes in his mask not unlike a pinhole camera, he observes the world.
Is the mask splitting colours, so he can analyse their true natures? He seems to care about the
fate of the world, beyond his own self interest.
We should be glad for it. It is an enormous responsibility to lay down the order for all others.
Order in a sense is innately unnatural, get it wrong and it may have been better to do nothing.
But there are huge benefits to tempering your nature, for yourself and others.
This is why Goldmask’s work is all about transcending. The culmination of his work is the
Mending Rune of Perfect Order.
A rune of “transcendental ideology” which will “attempt to perfect the Golden Order”.
Will this allow vivid colour to return to the Tarnished and the Lands Between?
Goldmask has achieved something miraculous when his rune starts an “age of order”.
Whether it will succeed in the long term, though, only time will tell.
Gold is colours set in order. We can see it when it breaks and ceases to glow, its colours
revealed.
Gold can be a shackle.. But gold can be freedom. All that is cursed, or evil, is order.
But so too is every gift in life order. To choose its alternative..
Is madness. To know ourselves, our nature, our colours is a path we must follow,
just as Goldmask followed his. Never impose order carelessly. Instead, walking this path of
understanding may give the insight to harness our own natures.
To lay down our own Rings. To gain strength of all forms,
to be present, to earn comfort with what we cannot control or understand,
To be more, in harmony. Too much, and you are out of control,
too little, you’re ineffective, too intense, you’ll never last,
too light, and you fade away. In time, our actions, thoughts, energy, instincts and even emotions
can be brought to harmony..
With time, and.. Battle. After all, the creator called gold the “concepts of order
and discipline”. Just as gold won its place in Elden Ring,
anyone can conquer their own Lands Between. Anyone, even if you feel your colours are
tarnished, can transcend..
To Gold.