Elden Ring and the remains of forgotten aquatic life

“They were greenish in color with white bellies. Their skin appeared shiny and smooth, but their spines bristled with scales. Their vaguely anthropoid body ended in a fish-like head with protruding eyes that were always open. On the sides of their necks, palpitating gills opened up, and their long legs were webbed. They advanced in irregular leaps, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four… Their croaking voice… had all the shades of expression their faces lacked.”

H.P. Lovecraft, The Nightmare of Innsmouth

Under Elden Ring’s Ocean

When you clicked on this article, you may have asked yourself: “What does Elden Ring have to do with the theme of water?” I can’t really blame you, even if that would be to overlook a symbolism that has always been part and parcel of FromSoftware games. Maybe not on the surface, I admit, but as an almost imperceptible ripple, something that eludes us but that we feel buried beneath the endless waves of Lore that come crashing down on us.

To neglect the aquatic theme in FromSoftware games is to forget Dark Souls 1’s Ashen Lake, one of the game’s best-hidden areas. One of the game’s most mysterious areas, too, which can still be seen today as a conceptual zone that the authors didn’t have time to finalize. But it’s still alive, 13 years on: its infinite trees whose tops we can’t see, its ancestral dragon whose oath we can join or whose tail we can cut off to obtain a powerful weapon, its bipedal mushrooms, its gigantic scallops ready to swallow us…

But above all, the Hydra, multi-headed mythological creatures we encounter twice in Dark Souls 1. Their origin and the reason for their presence are still a mystery to Lore hunters. In any case, there’s no doubt that they testify to an already undisguised attraction on the part of the Japanese studio and its creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki, to all things related to aquatic mythology.

Surprisingly, it’s not until Sekiro in 2019 that the protagonist of a FromSoftware game will be able to take the plunge for the first time. There are several aquatic zones in Sekiro, but at the start of the game you don’t have the option of diving to discover their depths. It’s around 2/3 of the way through the main story that Loup obtains this ability, giving him the opportunity to collect treasure and fight the notorious Soulless (among the game’s most complicated bosses).

It’s also an opportunity to cross paths with the flippers of the famous Giant Carp in Ashina Palace, inspired by the legend of the Koi Carp, which, after making its way up the river, flies up into the sky to transform itself into a dragon. It’s no coincidence that, at the end of the same area, there’s an unforgettable confrontation with the legendary Divine Dragon, from which we try to extract a tear.

Sekiro's giant carp — *Sekiro’s giant carp*

Finally, to neglect the aquatic theme in FromSoftware games would be to forget Bloodborne, which remains to this day the best adaptation of Lovecraft’s universe without ever uttering the name. You’re no doubt familiar with the myth of Cthulhu, that monster “from the stars” inspired by numerous European and Oriental legends, a winged beast with the head of a cuttlefish and the tentacles of an octopus.

“No language can paint this vision of madness, this chaos of inarticulate screams, this hideous contradiction of all the laws of matter and cosmic order” H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu.

You may be a little less familiar with Those of the Deep, appearing in the short story Innsmouth’s Nightmare. Fictional amphibious beings, living in underwater cities and usually breeding with humans. Those of the Depths worship Father Dagon and Mother Hydra as parental deities within the esoteric Order of Dagon, a mysterious cult “originating in the East” that lavishes abundant fish on its devotees.

These are themes and influences found both in Bloodborne, with its fishing village on which the great Ancient Kos has run aground, and in Sekiro, since Ashina, the city of the game, also features a rather similar village in its depths. (In fact, it’s in this village that you obtain the ability to “dive”).

As Elden Ring is a melting pot of all the influences FromSoftware has encountered over the years, it’s only logical to find them in their major work, their Magnum Opus. As is often the case with the Japanese studio – and this is something they have in common with Lovecraft – what is merely hinted at, but never shown, arouses more fear, attraction and mystery than usual. And so, the question that started this article – “What does Elden Ring have to do with water themes?” – slowly begins to fade into the deserted sands.

The Forgotten Map of Elden Ring

There are two types of story in Elden Ring: the story that the game is willing to tell us, cryptic of course, but visible to all. Through character dialogues, environmental narration and object descriptions, this story may require investment and a certain amount of research, but it remains accessible to everyone.

And then there’s the hidden story, the one that lies in limbo, behind the game’s code, accessible only to the most fervent and aptly named “Data-miners”. These code scholars have been scouring the game’s files for months now, trying to get their hands on a forgotten quest, an unused enemy or an unsuccessful zone concept.

So, alongside the Vaatividya and other Lore storytellers, we’ve seen the emergence of archaeologists, explorers of the past and Zullie the Witch, who have, for example, uncovered an unused quest surrounding the character of Miquella.

Although the two practices are fundamentally different, they are in no way opposed to each other; on the contrary, they complement each other, and the joint actions of Lore Trackers and Data Miners are now making it possible to reconstitute the contorted and fragmented universe of these games.

It’s precisely this hidden history that interests us today, and more specifically that of a map that everyone seems to have forgotten. A little over two years ago, during Elden Ring’s first Closed Beta, players were given access to a map that bears little resemblance to the one available to you today.

*The forgotten map from Elden Ring closed beta*

Sea creatures, boats and mysterious inscriptions that don’t appear on the final map can be seen. At first, players might have thought it was simply a variation of runic script, but a Chinese player eventually recognized the Yi alphabet, an extremely rare dialect in China.

A little subtlety: these are not Yi words per se, but Japanese words phonetically translated into this alphabet. You’ll agree that it was worth thinking about. Once deciphered, these inscriptions reveal a number of words and phrases, some very trivial, such as the names of developers or motorcycle brands. There’s also mention of the 4 seas surrounding the area, indicated by the points of the compass. Even more interestingly, there are repeated warnings about the dangers these waters could represent.

“Beware, do not listen to the mermaids’ deceitful songs”, reads this creature, straight out of Paolo Forlani’s World Map. An obvious reference to the sirens of Norse myths, capable of bewitching sailors. There are also several references to the Moskstraumen Maelstrom, an ocean current that actually exists in Norway, but is often described and elevated to mythical status in the short stories of Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe.

Multiple nods to Paolo Forlani's Map of the World — *Multiple nods to Paolo Forlani’s Map of the World*

Mention is made of the Kraken and the Colossal Octopus from Pierre de Montfort’s Histoire Naturelle Générale. But it’s from Olaus Magnus’ Carta Marina that the developers drew their main inspiration, such as the red sea serpent devouring a ship, or the whales spitting water over their heads. Finally, it was undoubtedly the Hortus Sanitatis that I enjoyed browsing the most. This herbarium, published in 1491, lists all sorts of imaginary species, including an 8-legged fish found on our forgotten map. I was fascinated by the book’s iconography, so many images echo the world of Elden Ring.

Scouring image banks related to this work, I came across this one, which made me think furiously of Godwyn, the Prince of Death (a central character in the game). That mermaid body, that long hair, and all around, the snake biting its own tail, the Ouroboros. A symbolism intimately linked to the figure of Godwyn.

*Godwyn and the symbolism of the Ouroboros*

But what caught my attention more than anything else was an earthly inscription that was translated with difficulty, presenting Necrolimbe as the “Continent of the Sea God”. So was there originally a Divinity of the Seas in Elden Ring? After consultation, this is probably a slight translation error on the part of the group of Chinese students, since the term Rita or Ritan read here certainly refers to Litan, or Laton in French, the servant of the Sea God Yamm, in the Ougarit myth.

The Ugarit (or Ugarit) religion is linked to an ancient eponymous kingdom in the Near East, located in present-day Syria, in the 2nd millennium BC. –

So we’re not talking verbatim about the God of the Sea here, but rather about the Servant of the God of the Sea, Laton, often likened to Leviathan, but also to Ouroboros, to which we’ll return. Keep all these elements in mind, and we’ll come back to them in a moment.

This Forgotten Map oozes fantasy and mythology from every pore. It’s fascinating to see how FromSoftware manages to suggest the mystery of all that surrounds the maritime world of Elden Ring, on a map available long before the game’s official release.

*Translation of the Chinese dialect Yi leading to the God of the Sea*

Remains

What remains of this forgotten map? The sea creatures have disappeared, as have the Yi code phrases, leaving only the ships and the Maelstrom as a symbol, a final nod to that first map and to the imaginary world of fantasy.

But has the notion of maritime life completely disappeared from Elden Ring? You know the answer: not at all, it’s still very much present, in the form of jellyfish, lobsters and crabs, particularly present in the Liurnia area and its lake, which appears as a vestige of this tormented maritime life. And let’s not forget the diaphanous nochers, ethereal skeletal beings who invoke the Undead in waterlogged places. Echoing the fishing villages of Bloodborne and Sekiro.

In one of his videos, Zullie the Witch even mentioned a Sea Boss not used by FromSoftware, soberly named Umi-Bozu in the game files. The Umi-Bozu is a well-known creature from Japanese folklore, found in numerous works. A spirit that attacks and sinks ships, sometimes depicted as vaguely humanoid, sometimes as something more monstrous. A boss we could have faced on the shores of the Inter-Earth, a bit like the Hydra from Dark Souls.

*Umi-Bozu described by Zullie the Witch*

But how could we talk about the maritime world of Elden Ring, without mentioning Godwyn’s more than mysterious transformation. A mermaid’s tail, webbed hands and a shell for a head, from which the golden hair of the former Demi-God protrudes. As a source of inspiration, the same Zullie the Witch evoked in another video the Ningyo, another monster of Japanese folklore, a cursed mermaid fish with human limbs. Capturing a Ningyo brings bad luck, and anyone who consumes its flesh is cursed with unnatural longevity. A central myth in Sekiro, where the Divine Dragon was named “NingyoRyu” in the game files.

The body of Godwyn, Prince of Death in Elden Ring

But as is often the case with FromSoftware, I think it’s Lovecraftian myths that are the source, and more specifically Ceux des Profondeurs, which I mentioned earlier. These fish-headed creatures with their eyes always open were also a source of inspiration for the Albinaurics, one of the game’s peoples. These white-blooded beings were created artificially, certainly to serve humans. As I mentioned earlier, Those of the Deep worship a deity called Dagon, an ichthyoid (fish-like) monster, who was given his own short story, and who is already Lovecraft’s reuse of the seed god Dagon in the Ougarit myths.

Do the Ougarit myths ring a bell? Yes, that’s where our Litan or Laton comes from, the serpent servant of the God of the Sea. So there’s a logical link between the Lovecraftian myths, Those of the Deep, Dagon and the Ugarit myths. But it doesn’t stop there, because if you start looking for representations of Dagon in Ougarit mythology, you’ll come across this kind of illustration: a man with the body of a mermaid.

So what are we to make of it? That Lovecraft’s Cosmogony, combined with the mythology surrounding the God of the Sea and the World Serpent in all its forms, are at the heart of FromSoftware’s inspirations. Does this mean that Elden Ring is a Divinity of the Seas? It could. Could Godwyn have a link with this theme? Possibly.

What seems obvious is that all these elements – the Albinaurics, the jellyfish, the crabs, Godwyn’s ichthyoid transformation – could be part of a single whole, scattered over time. The remnants of a forgotten aquatic life that still breathes.

This forgotten map of Elden Ring is a treasure trove of information for anyone trying to explain and interpret the game’s lore. Beyond that, it testifies to a desire on the part of its authors to suggest the remains of a vanished aquatic kingdom. From Dark Souls’ hydra to Godwyn’s ichthyoid transformation, from Bloodborne’s fishing village to Sekiro’s giant carp.

They are all occupants of a single ocean, the ocean of all possibilities, the ocean of the fantastic imagination. Let’s plunge ever deeper into the limbo of this infinite aquatic world.