How Death Died in the Lands Between

I am a tombstone... and enduring sign of deathless remembrance

Seikilos Epitaph (the only surviving Ancient Greek Song)

As long as you live, shine bright!

Never for a moment be sad

Because life is only for a bit...

and time will extract its due

History begins,  quite literally, with Herodotus. Dubbed  the Father of History by Cicero,

and the  Father of Lies by more self-satisfied modern  readers, Herodotus of Halicarnissus was a man

so bafflingly unique that his life's work began  a hitherto unknown discipline, that of History.

It's not that there wasn't writing before him.  And it's not as if there weren't stories of the

past before him, of course, think of Homer's epic  tales of the Iliad and Odyssey in his own culture.

But before Herodotus no one thought  of investigating and documenting the

past in order to preserve the  truth, or some version of it.

This innovation had such a profound effect on  later studies of the past that, according to

Schopenhauer, Once one has read Herodotus, one has  studied enough history, philosophically speaking.

Principally, Herodotus was concerned with the  origins of the Greco-Persian wars, as he himself

states at the outset of his magnus opus: Herodotus  of Halicarnassus, here displays his enquiries,

that human achievement may be spared the ravages  of time, and that everything great and astounding,

and all the glory of those exploits which served  to display the Greeks and barbarians alike to

such effect, be kept alive- and additionally, and  most importantly, to give the reason they went to

war. But the histories which means the inquires,  as the notion of history did not yet exist when

he wrote it is so much more than a history of  war, because fundamentally Herodotus was a man

intensely curious of, perhaps obsessed by, other  cultures and their customs. Thus the historian

and translator Tom Holland says of Herodotus s  Histories it is above all else, a treasure trove

of wonders. Herodotus, who famously quipped  custom is king , goes to great, often superfluous

lengths to describe the customs of the many  peoples that feature in his book; their languages,

their grooming habits, their food, their dress,  and most importantly, their funerary customs.

Because there is perhaps no greater way to seek  insight into a foreign culture than the understand

how they prepare their dead for the next stage.  Thus Herodotus tells us how the Egyptians mummify

their dead, how Thracians expose their dead for 3  days, or how the Babylonians embalm their dead in

honey before burial. And he even tells a story  of how a group of Greeks were mortified by the

supposedly cannabalistic custom of an Indian  people, and how those same Indian people were

equally horrified by the Greek practice of  cremation. Such is the defining power of the

funerary rite. The potency of these lessons has  not diminished in the slightest in the intervening

2500 years since Herotodus lived. Burial customs  remain as vivid and powerful a defining force as

they once did; just think of the western morbid  fascination with the tribe in Papau New Guinea

whose female members ate their dead; or the bitter  dispute between Orthodox and Catholic Christians

when the Catholic Church lifted its ban on  cremation in the 1960s. Sometimes, you can tell

quite a bit about how a single culture changed  over time by their changing funerary rites.

Perhaps the most famous, and quite relevant  example as we ll see later, is that of the Romans,

who initially practiced pluralistic funerary  rites, then in the time of the late republic

and early empire, practiced almost exclusively  cremation, and then later, for reasons unknown

but possibly relating to Christianity, switched  almost entirely to inhumation that is to say,

burying the dead. These shifts tells us quite a  bit about the shifting broader Roman culture.

Miyazaki and his team are quite  aware of these cultural truths.

Death features so prominently in his games,  it's only natural that funerary rites,

and their various corruptions, play  a large role in the narrative too.

Take, for example, Bloodbornes Hemwick Charnel  lane. In this one, optional, relatively minor

area of the game, there is such a density of  funerary rituals that it boggles the mind,

and has kept the attention of fellow Youtube  nerds like JSF and Sinclair Lore for years.

Speaking of which, if you re a fan of Bloodborne  and you haven't watched Sophie nee Richard s

Bloodborne Up Close series, then that is your  homework for next week's TA lecture. And Sophie,

if you re listening, we expect you to continue the  Reborn version. No excuses. Ok enough flattery.

In Hemwick Charnel lane the variety and  thoroughness of corpse usage is truly impressive.

First corpses, or even sometimes soon  to be corpses, have their eyeballs and

other precious organs extracted  for use in various chalice rites.

There are even specialized eye scooping tools used  by the local hags specifically for this purpose.

Then the corpse, after it's precious let's have  been extracted, is left exposed on wheels to be

picked clean by carrion birds, like Zoroastrian  sky burial, the inspiration for Eileen's crow

garb. The idea here being suspension on the  wheel, above the ground, to allow the carrion

birds but not scavengers, like dogs, to have  access to the corpse. Scavengers break the

bone with their powerful jaws, and this is to  be avoided at all costs. Finally, the cleaned

skeletons are burned in custom furnaces, producing  the main export of the town, bone marrow ash.

It's not corpse ash, it's bone marrow ash,  which is how you can reconcile the existence

of such seemingly contradictory funerary rites  as sky burial and cremation all in one place

only the bones, once picked clean of flesh  and sinew by the birds, are cremated.

Miyazaki and company thought this entire  process through, from the removal of the eyes

to the burning of the bones, and made sure the  forensics fit. Yes, one item description mentions

that bone marrow ash comes from hemwick charnel  lane, but that's it; the rest of the story is

told through through exquisite forensic detail.  The point we re making here is Miyazaki is not

just obsessed with death, but he's extremely  careful with displaying it, and how different

factions in his games deal with death, or lack  there of, is often their defining feature.

So how could it be any different in Elden Ring,  a game so concerned with death that a mysterious

force called Destined Death is the central plot  driver, and literal catacombs are the most common

dungeon type in the game. The catacombs are  where the all important rite of Erdteee burial

takes place, one half of the orthodox cycle of  life. Which makes it all the more puzzling, then,

that the catacombs themselves do not seem built  for this purpose. Why are the catacombs at all,

replete with stone sarcophagi, if you re  just going to dump the bodies at the roots?

And how to possibly explain the existence, of all  things, of cremation urns in a catacombs designed

explicitly for the root inhumation of bodies?  These questions, which have nagged at us since

our very first playthrough, hold deep mysteries.  The catacombs are a collective microcosm of the

Lands Between, and like Herodotus tells us, one  good way to understanding an ancient culture is

through its funerary customs. So, we ask you  then; what culture built the catacombs?

Let's begin with a proper description of the  problem. Simply put, cremation and Erdtree

burial are incompatible. Although we are not  told much of the specifics of Erdtree Burial,

we are shown this process taking place, which  has stagnated in recent times. In each of the

catacombs throughout the lands between, there is  an inner chamber usually the boss room in fact

whose sole purpose appears to be the reabsorption  of physical, fleshy bodies into the great roots.

Here we find root resin, which reads The roots  of the Greattree were once linked to those of

the Erdtree, or so they say, and it is for this  reason catacombs are built around Greattree roots.

By the way, Roots don't secrete resin root  resin is just corpse wax by another name,

because fleshy corpses are decomposing in the  roots. By now you all know our thoughts on the

GreatTree/Erdtree distinction, but that  is not particularly germane here. What is

important is the insight that the catacombs  were specifically built around these roots,

meaning that the builders already practiced a form  of tree worship. So far, nothing surprising. And

we have the spirit NPC in the tombsward catacombs,  who says, A proper death means returning to the

Erdtree. Have patience. Until the time comes...and  the roots call to you. So it seems pretty clear

that the rite of Erdtree burial, by which one is  returned to the Erdtree by burial at its roots,

exactly we process we see in the innermost  chamber, is an opt-in system. Wandering undead

must be guided to the roots to voluntarily be  reabsorbed. No doubt they are guided by Rosus,

which is the diegetic explanation for why his  statues point the way to the catacombs. Indeed the

dead have always been in need of guidance, or so  they say. And why else would TWLID be so reviled,

but that they refuse this call? They are opting  out of Erdtree burial, a most heinous offense.

So this is the current system facilitating  Erdtree burial, so far so good.

But this tidy story begins to unravel  once you actually start to look around

the catacombs themselves, something few people  would feel inclined to do, as they are largely

copy-pasted variations with shared assets. But  that's what we re here for folks; if Tarnished

Archaeology won't spend hours inspecting the  pot shards in the catacombs, who will?

From the moment you step foot into the  very first catacomb, this story begins to

crack. Right off the bat, there are dozens  and dozens of niches for storing bodies,

clearly modeled after the Roman style. They  are catacombs, after all, so, fair enough.

But what's the point of shelves for storing  bodies, much less stone sarcophagi, if they re

just going to be dumped at the roots in a separate  chamber. Good question. And why are the shelves

almost always empty? Another good question. To be  blunt, the purpose of a sarcophagus is to avoid

biological consumption by worms and roots, not to  assist it. So something already is a bit amiss.

In some of the catacombs, we can see a different,  smaller niches, again usually empty. The best

example of this is in the Giants mountaintops  catacombs, but there are several other examples.

Visually these seem inspired by Roman Columbaria,  impressive structures used for storing cinerary

urns. And, wouldn't ya know it, in the Auriza  side tomb Auriza meaning golden roots, by the way

we can see they are indeed used for exactly that  purpose, with row upon row of niches filled with

urns. And though this is perhaps the most  impressive example, in fact their are cinerary

urns in every catacomb, at least in some capacity,

and they are quite clearly  based off the Roman style.

Alas, while solving one minor mystery of the  niches, this just exposes the larger one. To

be quite explicit, there is no need for cremation  urns if the predominant rite is one of inhumation.

These practices are fundamentally at odds,  like Herodotus story of the cross-cultural

reaction to the Greek cremation tradition, and  the mere existence of cremation urns in the

catacombs speaks to a more complicated story  than the one that emerges on first glance.

Why would catacombs built for the purpose  of Erdtree burial have not just shelves

for sarcophagi but also cremation urns? Well,  our fellow archaeologists, the answer is simple.

The catacombs were not built by the Erdtree  faithful. They were built by a prior culture,

one that practiced cremation, not just  inhumation. And whether you ve realized

it or not, you likely already know this culture. A  culture which worshipped a sacred ghostflame used

for burning the dead, and revered the keepers  of that flame, the Deatbirds; a culture more

ancient than the Erdtree who worshipped  an outer God. The Outer God of Death.

Let's get to the specifics of this cremation  process, because luckily, unlike Erdtree burial,

there is substantial documentary evidence to  bear. First, we have the Rancor Pot description,

which reads In times of old, the dead were burned  with ghostflame, and from those cinders arose

vengeful spirits. Confirming that that use of  cremation is an ancient, not a current tradition,

again raising the question of why the catacombs  seemed designed to facilitate it. And even more

explicitly, we have the Explosive ghost flame  description, which reads: In the time when there

was no Erdtree, death was burned in ghostflame.  Deathbirds were the keepers of that fire. This

tells us a couple of invaluable details. First,  that this practice of burning death, or cremation,

indeed preceded the Erdtree. Though not everyone  is given the honor of Erdtree burial these days,

as we will see, cremation is explicitly a  thing of the past, a pre-Erdtree practice.

And second, the description tells us that the  Deathbirds tend to the cremation flame, which will

allow us to do some proper visual analysis on this  process. Indeed we can see the Deathbirds have

several attacks that generate the cold ghostflame.  Their weapon, called Death's poker, reads: The

birds are graveyard fire keepers; it is said they  rake out the ashen remains of the dead from their

kilns. From this we can deduce that the weapon is  a tool used for raking out the ashen remains after

cremation, undoubtedly to then collect and store  them in cinerary urns. So the picture is coming

together a bit. One interesting visual detail  is that the shape of the tool is such that it is

clearly not designed for raking out the ashes per  se, otherwise it would be shaped like a shovel,

but rather it is hooked to rake out the ashen  remains . And ashen remains, in ancient cremation,

were bones. You see, in a Roman cremation, the  body was burned in a pyre, often taking up to

8 hours to burn the entire corpse. The heat was  not sufficient, and still even today with modern

crematoria, to also burn away the bones, so the  bones would be removed after the cremation and

placed in an urn, and then stored in a separate  location for eternity. That is precisely what

appears to be happening with the Death rite  birds. These burnt bones are the ashen remains.

In modern cremation, in case you were  wondering, after the bones are raked out,

they are ground down into powder and  mixed in when the ash, because our

culture is such that we find it discomfiting  to see the burnt bones of our loved ones.

As we said before, the presence of cremation  niches in the catacombs suggests they were

built before the age of the Erdtree. No surprise  then we can see ghostflame, not traditional flame,

lighting the torches of the catacombs. Based on  the ghostflame torch description, which tells

us the fallen hawks began to burn the bones of  their fellows, acquiring the cold ghost-flame, but

sealing their fate as dwellers of the underground  for all eternity we can confirm that ghostflame is

produced by burning the dead, and infer that  association with the ghostflame condemns one

to a chthonic fate, quite consistent with its  use then in the catacombs in a pre-Erdtree era.

Furthermore, the mere presence of the catacombs  all over the map, even in areas the Erdtree

empire didn't control, like the mountaintops of  the giants, suggests as much. They were built

at the roots of the GreatTree, a root system far  more ancient and widespread than just the Erdtree,

but you ll have to watch our Old Tjikko video  for more on that. And finally we have the Winged

Scythe description, which reads According to  pagan belief, white-winged maidens are said

to be Death's gentle envoys. The game uses the  term pagan to refer to beliefs that predate the

Erdtree orthodoxy, mirroring real world religious  transitions as we ve detailed in other episodes,

and it's not hard to imagine these angelic  envoys of death actually being Deathbirds,

vestiges of a pre-Erdtree faith. Other features  of catacombs suggest similarly that this was a

pre-Erdtree society, for example the peculiar  features of the burial watchdogs and their staff,

which uses glinstone magic, not a golden order  thing, and the imps, who were crafted by the

golem crafter referenced in the crystal dart  description. But most of all we must return to

the original observation- the chambers full of,  and evidently purpose built for cinerary urns.

Here we should address the concept and function  of spirit ashes. When Ranni gives us the spirit

calling bell, she calls them ash unreturned  to the Erdtree , implicitly juxtaposing

cremation with Erdtree burial; if you re  Ash, you haven't returned to the Erdtree.

This would be quite straightforward if not for the  fact that some spirit ashes, for example Lhutel

and Oleg, were explicitly said to have been given  the honor of Erdtree Burial. So apparently they

were both cremated and then also given Erdtree  burial. The only way to reconcile this would

be to say that, in a world without true death,  people may experience multiple death rites. For

example if you ve seen our cycle of life trilogy,  you ll know that people are both reabsorbed by,

and born from, the power of the Erdtree, a  fully self-contained arboreal circle of life.

It's no great stretch to see this as a form of  rebirth, then, after your body is decomposed by

the roots of the Erdtree, you are reborn, so to  speak, by the life giving power of the Erdtree.

It seems to be a riff on the Buddhist cycle  of reincarnation, Samsara, a favorite theme of

Miyazaki s. It's no accident that some of endings  have us escaping this cycle; so I guess in a way

we achieve Nirvana by marrying Ranni. Anyway,  our point here is that, since nobody can properly

die anymore, it's possible that some people  experienced both cremation and Erdtree burial.

Oleg is a prime example he's a banished knight, so  he's definitely been around since before the age

of the Erdtree, and only later on once he served  Morgott was he given the rite of Erdtree burial.

It may actually be that those we were cremated  were still ritually buried by removing a body

part before the cremation and burying that. This  was actually a known practice in, you guessed it,

Rome, called os resectum, during which a  finger was cut off the corpse before cremation,

and that finger was then ceremonially mounted  for a period of about a week by the family of

the deceased, and then ceremonially buried.  If these rituals were not properly observed

then the deceased would not be able to  pass the river styx into the underworld.

So now you know the inspiration for this  whole tarnished bloody finger trope.

The ancient romans used the severed finger to  represent the deceased person's soul during

this period of mourning, as a kind of effigy,  as it retained a link to that person; likewise

in game we apparently use the severed fingers of  tarnished to connect to other worlds. And that

way across the river styx by the boat ferryman  Charon undoubtedly inspired the Tibia Mariners.

Let us now take a moment to appreciate the  absolute cornucopia of death rituals present

in this game. Beneath stormveil castle there  is evidence of an ancient boat burial ritual,

something seen in multiple real world  cultures but most famously by Vikings.

As pointed out by SmoughTown, even the existence  of graveyards attests to aformer pluralism of

funerary practices And this is all to say nothing  of Fia and the Deathbed companion ritual, clearly

based on the real world medieval Japanese Buddhist  practice of death bed purification, whereby a

family member or monk was responsible for a  ritual purification of the death pollution.

But most intriguingly, importantly, and  adorably, we have our friends the living jars.

They appear to be from the Erdtree Era,  based on the seal imprinted on their tops

They are clearly fleshy corpses, based on their  gruesome death animation and the descriptions

of the living jar shards and alexander s  shard. So they re sort of any anti-cremation

urn a jar burial for those who refuse cremation.   And most importantly, while we find these

occasionally in select catacombs, most commonly  we find them surrounding the minor Erdtrees.

Since we know from the Golden Seed description  that the Minor Erdtrees are a post-shattering

phenomenon, then by implication it seems clear  that the practice of Jar Burial that is to say,

taking fleshy, noncremated corpses and  stuffing them in jars for decomposition is

a post-shattering (of the ER) practice. (Likewise  Avatar staff says they are post shattering) And

it would make perfect sense for this adaptation  to emerge in a world where Erdtree burial has

stagnated, and the Erdtree faithful are desperate  for altnerative means of proper burial

So to summarize, the catacombs were  built before the age of the Erdtree,

during a time when cremation in ghostflame  was common, but overall there seemed to be

a relatively pluralism of death rites, based  on the contemporary existence of shelves for

both sarcophagi and cinerary urns. Only later was  Erdtree burial added and enforced. This exactly

mirrors the transition that occurred in the Roman  Empire first there was a pluralism of practices,

then for a few centuries cremation  was by far the most common practice,

followed finally in the middle empire  by inhumation as the dominant rite.

And it is this transition that can explain some of  the other oddities of the catacombs. For one, most

of the shelves, sarcophagi, and niches are empty,  almost like they ve been deliberately emptied.

It's possible that when Erdtree burial was  enforced, the corpses peacefully resting in

their niches were dumped onto the roots, adding  more fuel to the Erdtree's fire, so to speak.

Likewise the cinerary urns are often scattered and  shattered throughout, indicating at best neglect,

and at worst deliberate desecration  of the more ancient practice.

Also the Rosus statues in the Hero's graves  which reflect golden Erdtree light into the

shape of Erdtree faith, which are of course of  the Erdtree era, appear to be later additions,

which would help explain why they actual stun and  seem to harm the servants of the catacombs like

imp shades and Erdtree watchdog shades. These two  groups don't appear to play well together. In much

the same way that, in each of the Hero's graves  there are different banners but the architecture

is the same, telling us about the original stratum  and their varied, later usage, so Rosus is an

adaptor of the later Erdtree stratum, a way to get  the wandering undead to accept Erdtree burial.

So, besides an emphasis on cremation  rather than inhumation, what can we say

about the culture that built the catacombs?  To answer that we need to delve deeper into

the the relief iconography of this stratum, a  do a little Old Fashioned Tarnished Archaeology.

Join us next time, as we conclude our analysis  of the death rituals of the Lands Between,

and reveal Queen Marika's role in this story.