#jarring

Twice Cale asked for cold water and twice three times he—out of character—thanked Ron for it. So the next time he asked Ron decided to test him by bringing him something he knew Cale would hate in order to see what he would do.

Would Cale go back to normal and throw a tantrum like usual? Or would he keep up this strange, suddenly polite act?

And of course Cale, fearful of retribution assassin-style, just thanked Ron again. He even drank the lemonade.

"Thanks," he said. "That's good stuff," he said.

(Honestly, if I were Ron I'd be tempted to keep feeding him lemonade, too… I mean, if he's gonna react like that… Choking it down while saying things like "that's good stuff"? I'm sorry, but that'd just be too funny to resist.)

When I was exploring Enir-Ilim, the pillars made of humans reminded me of stories of the 'Hitobashira' in Japan (which literally means 'human pillar'.) Hitobashira was the practice of sacrificing humans before a grand project (such as bridges or castles) to appease gods and ensure the success of the project. In some stories, the sacrifices are entombed/buried alive in the structure as part of the ritual. It was also said that the hitobashira gave the building more structural integrity (with a side effect of the occasional vengeful spirit because not all sacrifices were willing participants.) You can read the wikipedia entry for hitobashira here if you're interested.

Bringing this back to Elden Ring, I felt like this was the most straightforward explanation to what sainthood meant; becoming human pillars for the gate of divinity to usher in a new god. If building Enir-Ilim required a large number of sacrifices, and the shamans somehow acted as catalysts that stuck more bodies together, it'd make sense why the hornsent would hunt them to extinction. It would also make sense why it wasn't just the numen put in jars, it was as many people as they could fit to complete the project.

Spiced Blood Orange Cranberry Jam!