#scadu tree

Everyone is focusing on Marika betraying the hornsent at the gates of Divinity and who/what was going down with that "affair" mentioned, and I'm like... can we please not forget the fingers??

Why is nobody talking about the Fingers?? And who is the Grandmother mentioned in her braid item description?

We're told (by a pretty cookie guy) that the fingers and Marika were "unsound from the start".

We also see the craters in which the Fingers/Metyr first arrived. So like... did that happen during Marika's lifetime? Or was she born to a Shaman numen village that was already communicating/communing with Metyr somehow?

"A braid of golden hair, cut loose. Queen Marika's offering to the Grandmother. What was her prayer? Her wish, her confession? There is no one left to answer, and Marika never returned home again."

You can see the missing braid on this statue BTW.

Is the grandmother perhaps a finger reader? Did Marika harness the Greater Will's powers to take over? Or was the Greater Will already arround and in use by the hornsent? I certainly didn't see any proof of that. There is also no example of a finger reader anywhere while their bodies pepper the ground in some areas of the base game.

From my personal experience riding around and reading what I find, it seems like Marika, part of a people destined for inhuman torture in jars, all for lofty goals of "sainthood", whatever that means, made a secret prayer, wish and confession, to this reverential Grandmother figure.

There was already signs of tree worship, what with the lifelike human shape within the tree you find the gifted braid at. It reminds me of Miquella's own shape in his tree.

We also see people eembedded in trees in the keep on our way to the final boss. Clearly this is something endemic to this land, that Marika implemented in the Lands Between. Maybe the difference between that tree and Miquella's is simply the divinity of the person at its core.

Anyway, she clearly confessed she was about to do something F'ed Up, wished for revenge and prayed for success... Or prayed to the Greater Will, accepting to become a vessel for it if it can give her the tools to destroy her oppressors.

I'd like to also mention that the fingers mushroom has completely whack lore :

You're telling me people want to be fingers so bad that they eat that mushroom to hallucinate that they are? And fingers are basically mushrooms growing off the Erdtree?? Like some sort of alien parasite?

What's the timeline then???

Metyr makes landfall. She's the first shooting star in the Lands between. Some time later, the Elden Beast arrives. It is explicitely a vassal beast and the one that carries the Elden Ring.

The Erdtree sprouts from the Elden Ring, so the tree, whatever it was called at the time, predates all this. We have the hornsent, in their own land, doing their own thing. And in the Lands between we have Placidusax as Elden Lord, with his own god. Meanwhile the hornsent are building spirals to try and reach the gods, and stuffing people into jars to make "saints". Maybe that mentality is what leads them to making the pillars of divinity out of freshly slaughtered people...

The entire time Metyr is (presumably??) making babies that serve as relays to the Greater Will. But allegedly relay to her and her to nothing at all, and they give garbled guidance the entire time?? Was Placidussax using fingers to get his guidance? I don't know.

Then Marika cuts her braid, makes a prayer, and leaves her village. She has an affair (which doesn't have to be sexual) is involved into seduction (her being seduced, or her doing the seducing? Again, doesn't have to be sexual) and betrays the hornsent. This is pretty obvious.

We see her pull gold thread out of something, and I've seen theories it's grace from the eyes of Placidussax's god. Grace from the gloam eyed queen belly, some sort of egg, or even the serpent Messmer is bound to.

I frankly have no idea. The previous age being of the crucible, some have guessed THAT is the crucible, or its physical form. I wonder if that thing is at all related to the jars, which are so prominent in the story. Sainthood is never explained, but was the goal of jar making perhaps related?

It would certainly explain Marika's presence for such a ritual, since she can't have had crazy status as a shaman? Or else she did do some seducing, and was there in some other official capacity.

Does Hoarah come into play already?? Does Serosh??? Were the fingers guiding her, leading her on, explaining how she needs a consort, and the strands of the Elden Ring, so that she can kickstart her own order?

Were the fingers guiding the hornsent towards that tree making goal already, and Marika highjacked that?

You also have to see the way the gate is a fused mass of bodies reaching to the sky, and their culture was obsessed with stuffing people into jars to bring them closer to the divine. The serpent fuses with Messmer and the God devouring serpent is made out of writhing bodies. The erdtree is stuffed with corpses at its root, and the trees in the hornsent settlements are as well.

It seems like ascending to a higher power or to godhood requires an enormous sacrifice.

In that regard, we also see Miquella speedrun the god thing, and he discards his flesh, his emotions and his doubts (not great) and worst of all, his love. Which really saddens a nearby ghost, and prompts his own alter ego to beg us to kill him. Because godhood would be torture/a cage to him.

Then he's at the gate, trying to use the reanimated corpse of one half brother, stuffed with the compliant and silent soul of another... The making of his lord required the killing of two demi gods, which is maybe just as meaningful as killing hundreds of nobodies.

Did Marika strike an alliance with the Abyssal Serpent and a lord of the Badlands and a Beast because that's who she had to ally herself with against the hornsent? Was Maliketh given to her as half brother/shadow as a form of alliance with Serosh's people? And she then gave her firstborn son to the serpent?

Or did she turn parts of her allies into her first children by stuffing them into jars? I've seen that theory, and it certainly would help explain why Messmer is half fused with a serpent and Melina (his little sister) has a gloam eye.

Marika could then promptly have betrayed *everyone*, killing the GEQ, The serpent, and reducing Serosh to a ghostly limiter for her husband, and her new brother into a tool for future plans.

She went on a crusade of violence, conquest, and never stopped fucking with the hornsent back home, hiding their realm from view and making it the recipient of every death.

Then she stops to take a breather and study the Greater Will a little closer, realises how wrong it is. Maybe finally cotoning on to Metyr's abandonment. Maybe she also sees the plans for her own replacement.

So she creates the Tarnished, tasks them to return, enable Ranni and give her shaman (??) numen girlies to go kill her child with. And assuming Godwyn is perfect because Marika divested herself of her love (the same way we know Miquella did) and formed him with it, then it's possible she has little trouble sacrificing him for her plans. Marika has very few qualms about sacrifice, clearly.

Eventually she breaks the Elden Ring, knowing it'll shatter the Greater Will's influence and trap her (Radagon, can't fit him in this easily), but she'll bide her time.

I wonder if she thought her definition of Order was flawed. I wonder if she saw that she'd become the same as the people who made her, sacrificing others. I wonder if any of it was part and parcel with her divinity, and that her only way out was to be slain by the next god chosen by the (broken) fingers.

I wonder WHEN the fingers started rotting.

I wonder if Marika had it in for the hornsent, or had it in for the Outer Will from the get go. With base game I was pretty happy with the theorry that Marika, as a numen, was playing the Long LONG con against the Outer Will, getting to godhood to lay the fundation of her betrayal. There are plenty of signs of premeditation, the Tarnished themselves being the biggest of them all.

The guidance of Grace now can basically only come from Marika herself as well! So it's another big tell.

But now we learn her very ascencion is born of betrayal. In the sin of mass sacrifice (and with the potential guidance of a broken fallen star)

And you gotta wonder... were jars made for the Greater Will? Is the Greater Will, which is THE big creator of life, the god that the hornsent were making saints for? Was it the Greater Will's teachings, or past incarnation of gods, that gave life to shamans only to wip them raw and merge them into other being until they made jars? Whatever that meant? Do baby jars contain shaman children???

Is Alexander related the Marika???????

More seriously, it's fascinating that Jar making culture went from stuffing live people in it, to becoming a funeral practice, with the living jar stuffing corpses inside itself and absorbing their power. That seems... like an evolution? The people Alexander stuffs inside him are not alive. UNLESS the core that makes Alexander is also a fucked up shaman.

WHY IS THERE A BONNY VILLAGE WITH A POTENTATE IN THE LANDS BETWEEN???? Who is perpetuating that tradition, and why? Shouldn't Marika be livid and forbid it? Or does she allow its continuing because the nature of the jars has changed? Is the village made from rescued jars containing people she once knew and loved?

What about the giant massive ass fucking jar outside the arena? How do you explain that one? Surely if anyone is going to reach sainthood, it'll be that jar...

Anyway. Could Marika have started with a deeply ingrained hatred for the Greater Will? Could her becoming its god just be her way to highjack its power and start ruling, even as she planned its very downfall?

This would even mesh well with Ranni's ending, or the three fingers. Any ending that basically ends the Greater Will's influence would be a victory for such a Marika. Where she'd make the ultimate sacrifice of her own self.