zoiwill123: I love how you can see the paintings were done before the yellow spirit Erdtree appeared, and the sky had natural colors.

jirivoborsky7010: I didn't even know how much I craved another Nameless Singer video

btw do they teach Archaeology of Lands Between at Raya Lucaria, or is that a Sellia course?

I doubt Leyndell would

lgzn: The missing tower looks uncannily similar to the frenzy flame tower in Liurnia

Devlocity7600: Marge-it was a great boss.

vanDaalstad: I wanted to mention the fact that not all denizens of the Lands between can see the Erdtree anymore, and only the ones still able to see Grace seem to see it. However the absence of the Divine Towers and other oddities make this trickier.

regulareric8759: 47:14 i never noticed how the scadutree looks like a person with 2 trees coming out of their head while crying gold out of one eye

glitchkrown: 5 min in and i was screaming OMG as i made the connections!

falgalhutkinsmarzcal3962: "Testu" or Testus is Latin for an earthenware pot. Considering that the Glintstone sorcerers were obsessed with pots and jars, this might explain its meaning. After all, in 1.00 it is said that Jars like Alexander are a result of Glintstone sorcerers trying to achieve a form of immortality. Alexander's shard is even said to be a part of his "surrogate soul". I believe they were basing this method off of the methods of the Hornsent and the Jar Saints, trying to make immortal vessels for their glintstone hearts. Basically, they wanted to make a Frankensteined vessel (like Marika) and then implant their souls into it (like Sellen does in her questline). I sometimes think the Albinaurics and Mimics were also such experiments. Basically, make a vessel of Silver that does not rely on Gold, then transplant your "soul" into it. It is really as much sci-fi as it is fantasy, like a lot of GRR Martin's works. In fact, it recalls to mind Skin-Changers and Wargs from ASOIF, and The Meathouse Man with its flesh-puppets.

BS-lk3jg: truly excellent. something i noticed going through the dlc again this week is that the painting of enir ilim with the giant spectral cup above it that happens to look a lot like a pure white light erdtree gets cut off in the game files once you get it in your inventory so it doesnt at all look like a tree anymore. the only way you can see it is outside the game or by not picking up the painting in the first place. sneaky fromsoft.

spongemanicecone2736: Commenting this before I watch the whole thing. At 4:17 we see pre-godrick stormveil, without the gold embellishments. Crucially, the gold embellishments added much later by godrick are the parts of the front gate which mimick the shape of the divine gate, implying that the mimickry was actually of godricks own design. This implies that godrick actually had some knowledge regarding the divine gate, or at least the nature of divinity, backed by him being the only of marika's descendants to attempt grafting. I don't think grafting is a thing only godrick can do, I think it's something only he thought to do, because at some level, he actually understood a few of the steps required to manufacture a god.

Ektuma: thank you so much for this video you have no idea how long me and alot of lore enjoyers waited for someone to make a video about the paintings because this painting are always overlooked by so many lore enthusiast the only one I found who made an effort to talk about it was Jackisamimic and he too is still at the tips of the iceberg in terms of discussion.

CantankerousTomato: In Bok's questline his dialogue indicates he can see the Erdtree. This leads me to believe that everyone can see the same thing, unless he has also been given grace.

rycte: Im pretty sure shadowkeep and fortified manor were made at the same time, they share architecture and have the exact same layout in one place.

FoxBatinaHat: 13:00 sounds like the dragon-wars wrecked a bunch of the bridges. ((Dragon-burnt ruins being a painting)) is a major hints to me.

That the destruction occured during that conflict.

My question in Elden Ring was; Why did the Dragons, suddenly have cause to attack Lleyndell.

And if Lleyndell instigated something between Bayle amd Placidusaxx- creating Dragon communion conceotually.

The expression: Burning Bridges. Is pretty-apt.

But also: London bridge is falling down.

terrortoaster: Guys, the tower names are all just turtle-related.

Testu = Testudines (order of turtles and tortoises)

Chelona = Chelonia (the old scientific name for that same order)

Oridys = tortoise lmao

You usually have to interact with spirit tortoises to get in.

films-AMiller: I love how years later after the game released we are still uncovering new details and lore and perspectives and still not knowing the full history

thechozenfew1273: great find and video - miyazaki did mention in an interview that there was 1 secret left that he noticed no one has discovered yet - this has a chance to be it

sheahon1179: "Given how this seems to happen during Messmer's Crusade"... did I miss something? I believe the evidence points fairly strongly to Marika predating the Crusade by a significant time. We know Melina and Messmer are siblings and I believe the evidence is fairly conclusive that she is the gloam eyed queen given her burns, and the flame of madness ending showing her literally gloam eye. I don’t believe there is any evidence linking the Hornsent Civ to any active god either. Please correct me if I'm wrong though

So let me say that I love the way you establish the giant/serpent allience. And your archeology work on the bridges is fantatic. The structural detail absolutely supports many of the assumptions and connection you bring to light here. And your work on the road system continues to be utterly inspired! Your videos are always amazing and i don't want my appreciation of your content to be lost in criticism!

ekamitayoga: Super sick video, I'd like to offer some thoughts that spawned while watching:

- The Divine Towers are so similar to Rauh because of ancient lava/earth/nature bending magic that Marika (or someone related) discovered from those tablets. I think whoever did it is from the Volcano Manor, Fire Giant, Elphael, Star/Astrologer time period.

Some things that help with this beyond the connections you made and the timeline you have given evidence for:

- Rauh is almost TOO much in the ground, all over the world, beyond what time and shifting lands would do. I think they had terraforming magic to accomplish this.

- We see the walking Mausoleums as moving earth fueled by spirits/the dead and relate to the Eternal City (Nox/Numen) and thus Marika.

- The bestial powers of rock and how they are also a very old civilization could suggest this ability

- I think the wisdom/knowledge of stone and being able to spawn glintstone at will suggests a similarity as well, but they chose to focus specifically on certain types of stone

- Nightreign depictions of divine Towers with tree - hands kind of growing

- examples petrified trees and petrified marika, and the many vine/stem motifs on the towers - could suggest nature magic and then fossilization

These timeline things always mess me up, especially since we know time travel and time shenanigans are possible. Regarding the Divine Towers looking more eroded, i think there are a few possibilities. One could be that the Medieval Stormveil/Great Bridge culture existed long, long ago, and the Rauh/Black Stone civilizations are simply alien invaders. Making the Medieval architecture crazy crazy old. This could make sense, but feels off. Another possibility is the storm of farum being in the middle of the map at one point eroded these towers extra quick, and possibly added time shenanigans to them.

Another possibility relates to the time stuff, the Spiritual Quality of the divine towers in Nightreign and the mixture of multiple dimensions (as suggested by many different tarnished heroes with different choices and endings, the many Erdtrees in the Elden Beast fight) and the perception/memory alteration shown heavily in different ways. Maybe the painters could see different alternate realities? Maybe they are from different realities/timelines? Or maybe they saw different things depending on if they were given "grace" (parasitic finger mushroom alien thing). What if at one point the divine towers were more like the Erdtree, similar to Nightreign, and the Testu's Rise paintings are what the regular person saw at the time those towers were not solidified? This means that the Erdtree could have actually existed as well but the painters couldn't see it.

For the Stormveil painting with the tower and no Stormveil I can see another option. Since the painting "Prophecy" is in Stromveil and is of a similar view, and how this connects to the "Flightless Bird" Painting that is in fact the "Prophecy of Burning the Erdtree" I think this painting is the future. It is when the erdtree is totally burnt and stormveil has completely decayed, but the bridge and tower still stand. I think this is most likely and solves the issue of the extra long bridge in the Testu Painting vs the shorter bridge of the Stormveil one. The arches also look a tad pointed in the Stormveil one.

Just some thoughts. I love the videos examining the assets like this, thank you so much.

MemoriesLP: Girl! The intro made me so hyped lol. Good job at that!

Cant wait to see the rest!

mattbrady2011: 8:30 absolutely looks like the same. Look at the damage the hole in it, its the same exact broken parts. Yeah the Tower itself isn't 1-1 but its DAMAGE is.

jacobperry2491: This raises a big question for me, which is where was the destroyed bridge that has the Blessed Dew Talisman going to go? It's all set up to be a bridge towards a divine tower, but there's no divine tower it could have been aimed at and if there was it would have been totally out of line with the others.

noahwysocki1233: There's a complicating factor for Marika's rise to Godhood taking place during Messmer's Crusade. The Crusade is actually really late in the timeline. It's post-Marika Golden Order establishment, because the fact that Messmer knew Radahn personally places the Crusade post-Carian/Marika-Leyndell alliance- which happens a good deal after the genocide of the Giants- and the Impaler's Catacombs imply he was present for Godfrey's last march to Castle Mourne to face the Storm Lord, which pushes the Crusade all the way up to the banishment of the Tarnished at the earliest. All of these events happen after Marika is already a God, so the Crusade cannot have been when Marika reached Godhood.

Now, it's how many Hornsent bodies went into the Gate of Divinity and Marika was just allowed to walk out of there, but if we consider that the Gloam-Eyed Queen's thing was, you know, and in the story trailer the gate is clearly comprised of flayed bodies, it's quite possible that as a fellow Empyrean and therefor also gunning for Godhood- built the Gate, and Marika hijacked it. Then used her defeat of the Gloam-Eyed Queen to win the loyalty of the Hornsent, because there's also clearly a period where Marika was them; the Fly-Man plague came about because the Hornsent, rather than burning their dead as per tradition, were following Golden Order burial practices- preserving bodies to feed into the Erdtree- which were established under Marika's rule.

metafauxr: Great work on who built the divine towers and timeframe, the architecture all through it confirms this.

marzzattak: 8:30 there are 2 towers in Limgrave. The one with the ballista surrounded by demi humans, and the one closest to Castle Morne where there's a trap chest.

zoiwill123: FUCK YWAH, I JUST GOT OUT OF WOTK AND THIS DROPS. WEEKEND LOOKING GREAT

kaiquegabriel214: I didn't expect that paintings and the history of bridge construction could reveal so much about the lore

Sep 07 2026

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