ELDEN RING LORE
Chronicles of the Outer Gods, the shattering of the Elden Ring, and the tragic fate of the demigods.
The Greater Will & Queen Marika
The world of the Lands Between is ruled by powerful, bodiless entities known as Outer Gods. The most prominent among them, the Greater Will, sent a golden star from the cosmos bearing a beast that would eventually manifest as the Elden Ring—the mystical artifact that serves as the foundation for the laws of the world. Queen Marika the Eternal was chosen as the vessel for this Ring. Marika shared her body with a male alter ego of a differing personality and will named Radagon.
Godfrey & The Cursed Lineage
At the dawn of her kingdom's creation, Marika chose the formidable warrior Godfrey as her consort and the first Elden Lord. To tame his barbaric bloodlust, the beast Serosh was placed upon his back to suppress his rage. Godfrey led a victorious war for the kingdom against the Fire Giants, whom Marika cursed to forever tend to their fading flame—a flame capable of burning the Erdtree. Godfrey and Marika had three children: Godwyn the Golden, and the twins Morgott and Mohg. The twins were born as Omens—cursed beings sprouted with horns—and as newborns, they were shunned and imprisoned within the subterranean sewers beneath the capital. Once Godfrey defeated their last worthy foe, the grace faded from his eyes, and Marika exiled him from the kingdom, making him the very first Tarnished.
Radagon & Queen Rennala
During this time, Radagon led an army against Queen Rennala, the ruler of the Liurnia region who commanded the Academy and its lunar sorceries. Through a twist of fate, however, the two fell in love and married, a union that brought forth Radahn, Rykard, and Ranni. Yet when Godfrey was exiled by Marika, Radagon abruptly abandoned Rennala, leaving her with nothing but an amber egg. Radagon returned to the capital to marry Marika (essentially marrying himself) and become the second Elden Lord. This departure, compounded by the subsequent death of her daughter, drove Rennala to insanity, leaving her obsessed with perfecting flawed rebirths.
Miquella & Malenia
From the new union between Marika and Radagon, two more children were born, though both carried terrible curses from birth: Miquella was cursed with eternal childhood, while his sister Malenia was afflicted with the devastating Scarlet Rot. Seeking a cure for his sister, Miquella turned away from the golden order of the Erdtree and grew his own Haligtree, eventually embedding himself within a cocoon inside it to escape his curse and grow into adulthood.
Night of the Black Knives
The kingdom's peace shattered on the Night of the Black Knives, orchestrated by Ranni. A group of assassins stole a fragment of the Rune of Death, which Marika had previously removed from the Elden Ring and entrusted to her shadow, Maliketh. The assassins murdered Marika's son, Godwyn the Golden. While his soul perished, his mutated body lived on, and his loyal friend, the dragon Fortissax, became corrupted by the death curse while trying to fight it off from within him. In an act of profound shame, Maliketh bound the Rune of Death inside his own flesh and hid under the guise of the Beast Clergyman.
The Fracture & Blasphemy
Grief-stricken and rebellious against the Greater Will, Marika shattered the Elden Ring, an act for which she was imprisoned inside the Erdtree alongside Radagon, who tried and failed to repair it. This event triggered the Shattering—a brutal civil war among the demigod siblings who fought to claim shards of the Ring. A distant, weak descendant of Marika named Godrick fled the capital disguised among a group of women, later turning to "grafting"—murdering Tarnished and attaching their limbs to his own body to artificially manufacture strength. Morgott and Mohg escaped the sewers; Morgott took the throne of the capital under the alias Margit to loyally defend the Erdtree, while Mohg allied himself with a different deity, the Formless Mother. Rykard, despising the Greater Will, traveled to Mount Gelmir where he fed himself to the blasphemous God-Devouring Serpent, merging with the creature in a gluttonous pursuit of immortality.
The Starscourge vs. The Blade
The greatest clash of the war erupted between Radahn and Malenia. Radahn had previously mastered gravitational magic to hold back the stars and the cosmic monsters within them (such as Astel). Their cataclysmic battle locked into a stalemate until Malenia unleashed her Scarlet Rot, infecting Radahn and driving him to mindless ferocity. An unconscious Malenia was carried back to the Haligtree by a loyal knight. During her slumber, Mohg sneaked into the tree, cut Miquella's cocoon out, and kidnapped him, desiring to raise him to full godhood and rule by his side as his consort.
The Return of Grace
As the world decayed into total ruin, the once-exiled Godfrey abandoned his barbaric past as Hoarah Loux and returned to the Lands Between to claim the title of Elden Lord once more. Standing in his way, however, is the Tarnished protagonist, who must defeat the distorted gods of this history, ultimately facing the imprisoned Radagon and the cosmic Elden Beast. In the background of these events, remnants of ancient eras still linger—such as the Dragonlord Placidusax, who waits in a seat beyond time for the return of his own god from an age long before the Erdtree ever existed.
Miquella's Journey & The Land of Shadow
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