Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

Title: Elden Ring & Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Media: Video Game
Approximate Length: 150+ hours

What It's About

You are one of the Tarnished - someone who, ages ago, was cast out of the Lands Between by the god-queen Marika the Eternal, and has now, centuries or possibly millennia later, been brought back after death to seek the title of Elden Lord, consort of Marika, and unearth the secrets of this now-broken world.

Since your banishment, several wars have come and gone; nations have fallen, crusades have been carried out, and a beloved demigod, Godwyn the Golden, has been murdered in an event known as the Night of the Black Knives. In the aftermath, Marika the Eternal in her grief shattered the Elden Ring (a configuration of Great Runes which shapes the laws of reality in the Lands Between), a crime for which the Greater Will (an alien cosmic horror and capital-G God) crucified her. Her remaining children went to war with each other to claim the pieces of the shattered Elden Ring and become lords or gods themselves.

It is your mission, o Tarnished, to kill the demigods and take their power for yourself, reforging the Elden Ring how you please and becoming the Lord of a new age. You are guided by the light of Grace and several individuals with mysterious intentions - and you are not the only one who seeks to rule. There is also Gideon Ofnir the All-Knowing, another Tarnished like yourself, who is collecting both Great Runes and secrets; Ranni the Witch, a demigod chosen by the Greater Will's emissary to become a god, but whose Age of Stars is forestalled by her brother, Starscourge Radahn; the Lord of Blood, a mysterious figure with a Great Rune of his own who seeks to bring about an Age of Blood on behalf of the outer god known as the Formless Mother; and finally, the Empyrean Twins Malenia and Miquella, likewise chosen to become gods (despite having been born cursed, Malenia slowly rotting, and Miquella forever a young child), who seek to bring about an Age of Compassion for the sake of those reviled by the old order - but Miquella is said to have disappeared long ago.

Where to Find It

It's on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series One. Unfortunately, due to the way the game is written, this is not a very Let's Play-able canon to consume, but you could certainly try. The trailers for the base game and for the DLC all contain story-relevant information that does not appear elsewhere, and the full English and Japanese text dumps can be found here and here, though because a lot is communicated through environmental storytelling and visual design elements, the text dumps don't paint the fullest picture. You can find a lot of people's meta on YouTube (SmoughTown, VaatiVidya, and Tarnished Archaeologist all immediately come to mind) or Reddit - as a habitual fanon dissenter, I personally disagree with plenty of it, but seeing what other people took from the same lore can be worthwhile, and can help inform your own opinions (even if just because "that's so stupid, why would you ever think that?").

What I Love About It

I tend to get weirdly obsessed with tiny worldbuilding details and one-off characters we know one or two things about, and Elden Ring is a game that is just... full of this. A lot is left to interpretation, both thematically and in terms of piecing together the timeline, and seeing people's various theories and working out your own is a lot of fun. The lore was created by GRRM, so there's a lot of political and family drama going on that appeals to me a lot, as is the fact that, despite six (or arguably seven) possible endings, not one of them is an unambiguously happy ending. And if you find yourself drawn to messy incest ships, oh boy, is this the game for you. There's also canon selfcest and LGBT characters!

I'm Requesting

Miquella the Unalloyed/Starscourge Radahn and Loretta Knight of the Haligtree & Starscourge Radahn, though I welcome any background unrequested ships and characters as well (including other ships that involve requested characters). The new DLC recontextualized a lot of what we know about Radahn, and I'd love to see someone go hard on politics, worldbuilding, and character study, whether that's exploring pre-canon or an AU. Or even post-canon! You do you.

Content Warnings: Graphic gore and body horror, including eye trauma and immolation. Bugs. References to slavery, ethnic cleansing, incest, torture, imprisonment, child abuse, death in childbirth, cannibalism, self-harm, terminal illness, sexual violence, pedophilia, and partial mind control, among other things.