I think everyone had this moment in Elden Ring. You find a building hidden in the forest of Limgrave's Mistwood, and the door mysteriously opens of its own volition to reveal an elevator down that just keeps going and going, on and on until you forget that you're even underground. The cavernous roof is now so far above that it might as well be a false night sky.
And the world's blow has life light and a culture of its own. What's interesting about the environment down here is that it's actually a fusion of cultures. There are the dynastic remains infested with clayman.
And then there's the ancestral grounds brimming with wildlife, but built amidst it all, between the ruins, beyond the ancestral grounds and even hanging from the ceilings, the incredible eternal cities inhabited by the Nox. For now, think of the Nox as just these enemies the monks, swordstresses and night maidens of the eternal cities. The word Nox means night in Latin.
Some of you might remember this from the phrase Vereor Nox in Dark Souls, which was commonly held to mean fear the night. And this theme has carried over to Elden Ring, where fear and respect for the night is conveyed by characters like Ranni, who seek to usher in an Age of Stars. [Ranni] Here beginneth the chill night that encompasses all, reaching the great beyond into fear, doubt and loneliness.
[Vaati] And just like the Age of Dark in Dark Souls, the coming Age of Stars is presented as a bit of an inevitability in Elden Ring. Or at least it might have been, were it not for starscourge Radahn, who locked the stars out of motion and fettered The fate once writ in the night sky on behalf of the Golden Order. Again, this is just like in Dark Souls, where the coming Age of Dark was stolen from mankind by a greater power.
Yet even now, the Age of Stars continues to be championed by a people called the Nox. Except now the Nox have been banished to the underground. And here they live in this state of eternal anticipation, just endlessly waiting for a fate that has been taken away from them.
We're never explicitly told which act it was that led to the Nox's banishment. But my best guess is that it has to do with this. The Fingerslayer Blade, which we loot beneath the giant's throne in Nokron.
A part of its description reads "This blood drenched fetish is proof of the high treason committed by the Eternal City and symbolizes its downfall. " So what was the nature of the Nox's high treason, then? Well, this is a Fingerslayer Blade, one that is "able to harm the Greater Will and its vassals.
This blade is drenched in blood and proof of high treason. " So it seems like the weapon was successfully used. But we can only really speculate on which pair of Two Fingers this blade might have been used on.
Of course, it might have just been high treason to create this blade in the first place. this weapon is said to be born of a corpse. So let's take a closer look at its icon.
Doing so reveals a spine running up the blade, and two arms that form the hilt. So clearly, this weapon is born of a corpse. But it's not the only weapon in game that's like this.
Remember that moment at the end of the game where the Elden Beast reaches into the ground and pulls a sword from Radagon's corpse? That is the Sacred Relic Sword. And it too, is a spined spiral blade with a human forming the hilt.
So to some in this item's description, "this weapon represents 'the end of an age' and to others 'the beginning. '" Now, I kind of doubt that the Fingerslayer Blade is made from a corpse that's as powerful as Radagon. Just because it seems so much smaller, broken and limp.
But regardless, it clearly was an attempt to bring about the end of one age and the beginning of another. Just so the Fingerslayer Blade can only be wielded by Ranni, who needs the weapon to claim her fate and achieve her ending. But this can only happen when you defeat Radahn and unlock the fate in the night sky, because doing so sets free a star from the cosmos which crashes into Limgrave, revealing the path to Nokron, the Eternal City where the Fingerslayer blade lies hidden.
There are multiple eternal cities that are spread widely across the Lands Between and located deep beneath the earth. First, we have the city of Nokron, that lies beneath Limgrave. The entrance to the city is torn open by Radahn's meteorite when we explore it, so all of the foremost buildings are ruined, but they form the path leading to this undisturbed, multilayered city that's sort of tucked behind the dynastic remains and the ancestral environs that were built here long before.
Then there's Nokron's twin, the city of Nokstella, which is located beneath Liurnia. I think most people would have got their first hint of this city when they wound up in the Ainsel River fighting the Drgon Kin soldier of Nokstella. But the true city is further up from here, stretching out between long sections of ant infested tunnels.
Here, the Nox have actually learned how to ride these ants, though the ants will happily turn on them if given the chance. But there's a third city, a completely devastated, nameless city located beneath Leyndell. Which is a place we'll have to talk about a little bit later in this video.
These three cities just have incredible architecture. I love Nokron's massive inverted towers, and it's cool how Nokstella's Shining City is built right into this low hanging, false night sky. And now the game isn't really clear on whether these cities existed before the Nox's banishment underground or if they were built afterwards.
However, I'm inclined to think that they actually existed before their banishment. Take the Fingerslayer Blade's description, for instance. This weapon is the most likely reason for the Nox's banishment, and it lays the high treason at the feet of the Eternal City.
It doesn't blame the Nox who would have existed aboveground at some point. It blames the Eternal City. But regardless, while they at least might have already had these well-developed cities down here, their banishment was still a brutal punishment because the Nox would have been cut off from the true night sky, which was a core part of their culture.
As some small comfort, I speculate that they created these false night skies, which are made of suspended white fragments. This, they accept as they wait for the Age of Stars to begin. In order to learn more about these cities, though, I'd like to look at some data mined information.
Of course, you have to take this with a grain of salt. But in version 1. 0 of Elden Ring, the Eternal City buildings are frequently listed as Marika's ruins and the Eternal City pavilions are Marika's pavilions.
What's more, the Nox themselves are actually called Marika's descendants. This obviously has pretty huge implications. So let's try to break down Marika's ancestry and see if we can arrive at the Nox.
So Marika herself is of the Numen race, who, according to the character creation screen, are "supposed descendants of denizens of another world. " The only other supposed Numen in game are the Black Knife Assassins who, according to their silver armor, "were all women and rumored to be Numen, who had close ties with Marika herself. " And we have proof that these Numen black knives were tied to the eternal cities.
[Rogier]They say the assassins who carried out the deed were scions of the Eternal City. [Vaati] So if we take Rogier at his word, then it seems like Numen are indeed tied up with the genealogy of the Eternal City and that Marika herself is likely one of the Nox's ancestors. You could go as far as to say that Marika is actually from an eternal city too.
She is called "the Eternal" after all. But again, remember, this is a state of mind information that we're not really supposed to know. But at any rate, while the Nox might be descended from the Numen, I think enough time has passed that most Nox aren't really considered Numen anymore.
If anything, they're now more akin to the Night Folk, which is actually another descendant. See, you can choose for your tarnished in the character creator. Night Folk and Nox share similarly hued skin and Night Folk are a race that was said to bleed silver long ago.
So let's finally actually talk about the Nox monks, the priestesses, the night maidens and the silver that they wield. The monks of the eternal cities are all men and they fight with flowing weapons of liquid metal. So to, do the swordstresses a female cast of the Nox who are agile warriors and serve as the personal guards of the Night maidens.
The night maidens themselves are said to be of the highest clerical rank, and it's definitely interesting that a group of maidens would be of the highest clerical rank. It's almost as if the night maidens exist as a sort of parallel to the kindling maidens of the Two Fingers, who serve the tarnished so that they might become Lord, because remember, a core part of the Nox culture is also about searching for a Lord to serve. Except unlike the title Elden Lord, the Nox are waiting for a Lord of Night.
In a way, this Lord of Night is almost an imitation of the Elden Lord, which would make sense because the Nox are extremely well versed in the art of imitation. So let's talk about that. I think I speak for a lot of us here when I say that a core part of so many of our late game playthroughs were the Mimic Tear spirit ashes, which copied the form of this summoner and from a lore point of view, the whole point of this Mimic Tear is actually to mimic the tarnished who might become the Elden Lord.
Its description reads "Mimic tears are a result of an attempt by the Eternal City to forge a lord. " However, the description also says that "their mimicry does not extend to imitating the summoner's will. " This makes it seem like Mimic Tears are this tool, right.
there something to be used to achieve the Eternal City's ends. So it's important to point out here that mimic tears are actually more accurately silver tears, And silver tears literally are tools because they're wielded by the Nox as weapons. The Nox Flowing Hammer and the Nox Flowing Sword are forged from the liquid metal of silver tears and tempered to hardness.
This gives them the ability to extend bend and, when wielded by the Nox, to drastically change their form into spikes, shields and even giant hands. And it's kind of chilling to realize is that these weapons are actually living beings. This is all quite clearly inspired by ancient alchemical conceptions of mercury or Quicksilver, which was this compound that was believed to be able to shift between liquid and solid states as well as life and death.
In game silver tears are called formless life, able to be reborn again and again into imitation. They are as much a substance as they are a living organism, and we see this in their multitude of forms silver spheres, trolls, and even Night Folk to name but a few. There's even this entire cut questline that would have had you bond with a silver mimic tear called Asimi.
in the cut dialouge files This mimic tear claims to have grown a desire for life and knowledge and lordship, and she desires to share the throne with you. [Asimi] You could have become Elden Lord, and I could have become sovereign, eternal. I think and I know a lot of you guys did as well when I mentioned this last time.
I think this would have gone a really long way towards making players relate to the story of the Nox and it would have made them question the Order of the Erdtree even more. And after learning about this questline, I can definitely see why mimic tears and artificial life might have been this enormous threat to the Erdtrees authority. The Nox were, after all, messing with these crucial things that the Erdtree had come to govern.
They were messing with the powers of life, death and rebirth. Of course, we know that death was sacrosanct to the Erdtree during its age. As I discussed in my video on death, many ancient methods of death came to be abandoned or shunned in favor of returning to the Erdtree's roots.
Instead, through the process of Erdtree burial all the old ways of death were abandoned. And as for rebirth, well, the Erdtree is never really explicitly said to be able to rebirth beings. I think a lot of people just assume that it's implied, but there is a bit of evidence.
Many depictions of the Erdtree actually show human forms growing along its branches just as they show human forms being absorbed in death by its roots. And you can't forget that an entire great rune of the Elden Ring explicitly governs rebirth. This is Rennala's amber egg, and inside it is the Great Rune of the unborn.
[Miriel] In the end, Lady Rennala was left alone, cradling the amber egg Lord Radagon bequeathed her. Now she devotes herself to it through forbidden rite, The grim art of Reincarnation. [Vaati] think Muriel calls Rennala's reincarnation.
A grim act here, because reincarnation already has a bit of a history with the Nox in the Lands Between. and Rennala isn't the Erdtree, So I can see how what she's doing might be a bit sacrilegious. She's even capable of using larval tears from the Eternal City.
So Miriel Speaking as any follower of the erdtree would, understandably decries Rennala's rebirths as forbidden rites. And when I searched for this phrase forbidden rites in my dialog spreadsheet, I stumbled upon cut dialog from Thops, who confirms that forbidden rites like this did indeed originate in the Eternal City. I don't think it's a coincidence that Forbidden Rites is the same phrase used for Rennala and by Thops as well.
[Thops] one more thing. Beware the Albinaurics, accursed souls born of a forbidden right to the eternal city. [Vaati] So the Albinaurics.
. . Albinaurics seem to be a reference to the ancient notions of artificial life.
And that's something that's supported by the Albinauric Blood Clot description, which calls them "lifeforms made by human hands. " according to the Albinauric Shield. Albinaurics are said to have been created from a primordial drop of dew, which to me evokes the Erdtree's own imagery of dew, where drops of life dripped from the Erdtree's branches.
That sort of imitation in that way, To me. the Ripple Blade that is wielded by young Albinaurics echoes this, stating that "ripples are thought to be at the origin of this species. " Obviously, these are all references to liquid, and it suggests that Albinaurics are born of the same liquid silver that we just discussed.
An older description of the Blue Silver set also confirms this calling Albinaurics "children of silver. " And there are a few different types of Albinauric that can be encountered in game. There are first generation Albinaurics who have withered legs, and are called the Albinaurics of old.
And then there are second generation Albinaurics who resemble frogs and are called the young Albinaurics. Let's discuss these first generation Albinaurics first. As far as enemy models go, there are the men who are commonly the subject of torture and genocide.
And then there are the women who seem to have learned to defend themselves as Albinauric Wolf-back archers. This is a very good time to mention, this isn't the only example in this video where the women of the culture are far more dexterous than the men. All of the black knives are women, the Nox swordstresses defend the night maidens who are of the highest rank.
And if we're talking about rank, then Caria and its princesses as well are a prime example of that. Speaking of Caria, actually, Pidia is an example of an Albinauric man that serves Caria, and other Albinauric men in Caria have clearly learned Glintstone sorcery, not to mention Loretta, But maybe that's the story for another time. Moving on to the second generation Albinaurics, as newer Albinaurics in the Lands Between.
The formula for these artificial humans seems to have been improved as they now have legs, which they put to comically good use. Although Thops's in his cut dialog does say that they've lost the use of their tongues, so they really haven't got the formula quite right. There's something also going on with their heads which fromsoftware themselves call dumpy and frog like.
You can even loot the Albinauric mask, which is literally just their own face skinned in an act of malicious mockery. And I really shouldn't laugh, but it is kind of funny admittedly, that even Elden Ring players are also guilty of genociding helpless Albinaurics. There's this site in Mohgwyn Palace where it's just far and away the best way to farm runes and thousands of players just kill these Albinaurics over and over again and it's just the perfect example of gameplay matching lore.
Anyway, with all of this terrible shit happening to Albinaurics, frankly, just for the sheer audacity of them simply existing, it's no surprise that they see Miquella's Haligtree as a haven. But in talking about that, we're getting far away from the Eternal City. So let's get back to there.
So it appears the eternal cities weren't content with just birthing silver tears and Albinaurics, because the Drgonkin too were born in the eternal City. There are a tragic few that you can fight down there. And unlike the real stone dragons up above, they knew no true sky, nor true lightning.
It seems these dragonkin were created, I think, with the intent of achieving a sort of immortality, something that is suggested by the Drgon Scale blade, which is an ice lightning weapon that reads "a weapon made by sharpening a gravel stone scale, thought to be the source of ancient dragon immortality, into an unclouded blade. Alas, the Drgonkin soldiers never attained immortality and perished as decrepit, pale imitations of their skyborn kin. " There's the word imitation again.
And interestingly, just like the finger- slayer blade is this hidden treasure of the eternal city that is capable of harming the Greater Will. Ancient dragon smithing stones too, are a hidden treasure of Farum Azula capable of creating weapons that can slay a god. So, like so many other things in this video, the dragonkin almost seem like the imitations that were born with a malign purpose.
But just like Rennala's children and the first Gen Albinaurics, these imperfect births only led to withered legs and a pitiful existence. And now we finally arrive at the third city, the nameless Eternal City, which is located deep beneath the Erdtree at the Deeproot Depths. And it's lost its sky, its name, and even all traces of the Nox.
And I believe we know exactly what is to blame for all of this. Astel, Bastard of the Void is responsible. According to Astel's remembrance, it is "a malformed star born in the lightless void far away" and with all the force of a falling meteor, it seems Astel "destroyed an eternal city and took away their sky.
" Logically, this nameless eternal city is that eternal city he destroyed. Since it's absolutely devastated and it is missing its false night sky. And when the description says Astel took away the sky, I believe that's really literal.
I think Astel really did take it away, far away, because we don't fight Astel anywhere near the nameless Eternal City. We fight it way further south, almost as if Astel ruined the nameless city, then flowed all the way down the Ainsel River to the south, past Nokstella, and into an enormous cavern where it set up a suspiciously familiar night sky. The eternal darkness spell tells us that it's this manifestation of the despair around the ruin of the eternal city and the spell in question is essentially this black hole with a powerful gravitational force drawing everything into it.
The Astel don't seem like these super sentient beings to me. So what if they were mere animals just drawn towards a sort of black hole, or maybe towards another powerful gravitational force, like a moon. Which brings us back to the city of Nokstella Exploring Nokstella's tallest towers rewards you with the legendary moon of Nokstella Talisman, a treasure of theirs that "represents the lost black moon.
" This moon apparently was once "the guide of countless stars" and might have served as a sort of artificial moon below ground. But tragically, it seems this black moon was shattered into pieces because fragments of this moon can be found in memory Stones, which have a really similar gameplay function to the talisman granting you additional memory slots. These stones are rightfully treasured by sorcerers and above ground towers evoking those of the Eternal city would be built to protect these precious artifacts.
I'm not sure how these fragments were stolen from the city. Though over in Nokron, there are examples of foreign forces making incursions into the city. These beings are members of the Company of the Fallen Hawk, a company of slaves that were ordered to explore the Eternal City.
Logically, these soldiers are slaves of the Golden Order. But who were the Fallen Hawks before their enslavement? Well, there's this one little theory that I quite like, by user No_contribution15 on Reddit that suggests that these Fallen Hawks could have once been common soldiers of Stormveil Castle, because these soldiers once had hawk crest shields and even a Storm Hawk King.
Dating back to ancient times back when there was a true storm in Stormveil. And so as the theory goes, the crest for this company became that of an inverted hawk symbolizing their fall and perhaps referencing the inverted towers of the eternal city that they were doomed to explore. As for why they explore the city, the first thing that comes to mind is that they might have been sent here to look for the Fingerslayer Blade, which is the hidden treasure of Nokron, where the Fallen Hawks were sent.
Although this is mostly all just speculation, whatever the case, it really helps to characterize these enemies for you. Otherwise, the only other observation we can make is that many of the fallen hawks can be found digging hopelessly in the ground, hands bloodied by their long efforts To this day. Torches are an important part of their design, and this reinforces the idea that they're here looking for something, to the point where the band's last embers were used up in their long search, and then they began to burn the bones of their fellows acquiring the cold Ghost Flame.
And with this new flame in hand, they became dwellers of the underground for all eternity. Like with the Fallen Hawks, there are some really open ended parts to the stories of the eternal cities. Some things that are curiosities to me.
And I welcome you to try and answer them. For example, the giant thrones with the giant Nox skeletons on them, they're almost a complete mystery. I think the only place the game references these thrones are in the symbols for night sorceries and bubble sorceries as well.
Beyond that, they're clearly a central part of Nox culture. Though we don't know what purpose these beings had. Below each one, though, you can loot Great Ghost Glovewart, which were given in tribute to those who died The most glorious of deaths, in the hope their stories would become legend.
So it seems that Nox not only venerated these beings with giant thrones, but that their spirits as well were considered to be heroic, for their deaths were glorious. Another curiosity is the distorted bodies that are found in the eternal cities. These erupt from the ground and many buildings as well Of the Nox.
Are these the inhabitants of the city. Are their deaths related to the giants? What are these?
And finally, there are the gargoyles that are found in the nameless eternal cities with misshapen, ruined bodies. None of these gargoyles have been mended, but those that are mended are mended with black corpse wax. And they serve Maliketh, the Black Blade.
Many of you will remember that two valiant gargoyles defend the path from Nokron to the Deeproot Depths where the nameless Eternal City is. And interestingly, it's a coffin that takes you up there, suspended on a golden script. This golden script reminds me of the description of the Cipher Pata, which reads "The furtive inscription appears to hang in the air; The language of light spoken by the Two Fingers.
" It makes sense that the Two Fingers would be aligned with these gargoyles that serve Maliketh. And maybe some power of the Two Fingers is what takes you up to the nameless eternal City in this coffin. Speaking of coffins, there's another coffin that you ride down from the Grand Cloister to Astel's lair.
And there are a ton of coffins found in the eternal cities in general. Beyond being some absurd method of transport, perhaps sending remains along the river was some sort of burial rite. At any rate, many of these coffins have been waylaid along the Ainsel River tunnels where ants feast upon the remains.
And there's something fascinating going on with the ants as well. A lot of these have these enormous abdomens. These ants in particular are based off honeypot ants, which essentially function in nature as these living sources of food storage for the colony.
And the Elden Ring variant drop, one of the most valuable runes in the Lands Between. They drop a Numen's rune, which makes a lot of sense because these ants are feasting upon corpses. And we did speculate earlier that Numen are indelibly tied to the eternal cities.
I could speculate further, but again, I'd welcome your thoughts on these curiosities. exploring the Lands Between In the modern era, it's clear that the eternal Cities have had this significant cultural impact upon many things that we find above ground. You can take the walking mausoleums, for example.
These have really explicit eternal city architecture, which is something that you can't help but notice when you see one of them wandering down in the nameless Eternal City. These mausoleums, it seems, were appropriated from the eternal cities to house the remains of soulless demigods of the Golden Order, something that suddenly became very necessary to do after Godwyn's death. And this tracks because the Eternal Cities do have a bit of a history with spirits.
We mentioned earlier that they entomb their heroic spirits with legendary glovewart. But even the rebirth monuments aboveground that you need to summon spirits look kind of like eternal city constructs. So I speculate that these might have been pioneered by the Nox, who, even if they didn't use these to summon spirits, they definitely might have used them to summon puppets because puppetry is an invention of the eternal cities.
To create a puppet of someone, you need them to drink a potion made of Starlight Shards, which are "a prized item that was once used in the Eternal City as an ingredient in intoxicating draughts. " Starlight shards are used for this because the stars command people's fates and even the fates of the demigods. And so they can be used in potions given to create puppets with commanded fates.
We know of two such puppets from the Eternal City, The Night Maiden and Swordstress puppets who became puppets of their own volition. So keen were they, It seems, to serve the eternal cities. But when you look at all the puppet summons that you can get in Elden ring these two The Night Maiden and the swordstress of the Nox.
These two are a bit of a special case because most puppets we find are actually controlled against their will and are extremely unwilling to serve their masters. An excellent example of this are the puppets that are controlled by a Seluvis, or should I say Pidia, who turn on him immediately when they're given the chance. These puppets are Knights of the Cuckoo, a faction that are explicitly aligned against Caria, and yet these knights are forced to fight on Caria's behalf here in Caria, all the same.
Carian's also seem to have appropriated a lot of the tools of the eternal cities, like puppetry and inverted towers as well, which is only natural considering how much they actually have in common with the eternal cities. Carian's are descended from astrologers who also venerated the night sky. Another example of an invention of the eternal cities that the Carian's use is found at the Church of Vows, which features a Nox statue taken straight out of the eternal cities.
Here at the church Radagon famously repented his territorial aggressions and cleansed himself with Celestial Dew. Celestial Dew is another draft of the Eternal Cities. It's called "A Night Tear", which reverses all antagonizations and moves fate backwards, in a sense, to a time or a feeling before those antagonizations took place and eventually far away descendants of the eternal would finally be found above ground as well.
This is in Sellia, within Caelid. Gowry, calls Sellians descendants of the Eternal. And in addition to having one of those signature thrones at the center of the city, there's also a couple of Nox bosses here.
And finally, Sellian's were famed for their night class of sorceries, which their assassins made good use of. The Sellian's were also really proficient at turning invisible, which is an art that the Black Knives used since they are, after all, also scions of the eternal cities. And it's just amazing how it all overlaps in the end.
And in the end, another group would seek in Roads to Nokron. This is when we play the game. These were Iji, Blaidd, and Ranni.
Ranni is a character that inherits a lot of the Nox's legacy. She becomes the final chapter in a story that they started to tell so, so long ago. Prepare to cry because I can't wait to cover her story properly as it deserves.
But before I go, I want to share a quick word about Audible. Speaking of people banished to the underground, I actually have the perfect audio book to recommend to you guys today. And that's Metro 2033.
New members can try audible free for 30 days. Just visit audible. com/VaatiVidya or text VaatiVidya to 500 500 to get your free trial started today.
This is the story that inspired the video game of the same name. And it reveals this world where mankind are resigned to the train tunnels underground after some sort of nuclear disaster turns the surface into this radioactive wasteland. Bandits, monsters and other horrors live below.
Now, in the tunnels. And listening to this audio book will really transport you There. check out this sample.
It made Artyom shudder to imagine the tunnel beyond the 700th meter. It was horrifying just to think about it. No one had the guts to go beyond the 700 meter to the north.
Patrols had made it to the 500th, and having illuminated the boundary post with the spotlight on the trolley and convinced themselves that no scum had crossed it, they hastily returned. Even the scouts, big guys, former Marines, would stop at the 680th meter. They turn their burning cigarettes into their cupped palms and stand stock still clinging their night vision instruments.
And then they slowly, quietly head back without taking their eyes off the tunnel and never turning their backs to. The narrator for this title is really good. And they really nailed the Russian accents and just the voice acting as well For your emotion.
new members can listen to Audible Free for 30 days. So to listen to this head to WWw. audible.
com /VaatiVidya or text VaatiVidya to 500 500. Thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video and thank you for watching.
