The Color Theory of Elden Ring | Elden Ring Lore

What makes us tarnished? Being dull of color. The grace of gold blessed those who were first to serve it with most vivid coloration. Morgott's sword, his sealed Omen blood, is of shifting hue. The mirror helm reflects all light and colors. America is a carrier of the Elden Ring's Vision. The Greater Will and its vassals are masters of the language of light. The fallen leaves tell a story, and it is a story of color.

Color is so variable in our world. We didn't see what was in plain sight. In the Lands Between, color means much more, and once you start to see, you cannot stop. The mad taint of their newfound strength, the Knight of Black Knives, Scarlet Rot, Amber eggs, purple Mariners' blood, dynasties, Omens, Albinaurics, Giants, gods. Color takes center place wherever you look. It is also a focus in a sea of item descriptions. The word "color" is mentioned over and over. "Hue," even more often. Reds, yellows, greens, purples, blues. Every tone, every hue. Color again and again and again, like an obsession. And more than anything, an infatuation with gold. Color, the pillars of the world of Elden Ring. Color is connected with all fundamental aspects of the Lands Between, and these connections are in a discoverable pattern. All things physical, energetic, informational, emotional, and spiritual in the Elden Ring world are paired with color, a unifying natural law. These vast natures are what's being represented by the Elden Ring and these overlapping and intersecting runes. It gets a little bit more complicated than that, and we are going to get into it because if we understand color as a foundation, we can understand the entire law of Elden Ring more clearly.

How will we solve the mystery of color? It is clear Alchemy was an influence. Color holds great importance in alchemy, as does gold. One famous alchemist gave us the splitting of colors and their relations. Blue borders green, which goes to yellow, to red, to purple, always moving through all possible shades. Another renowned scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, discovered that unlike the mixing of paints that artists use, the fundamental colors of light registered in the human eye are red, green, and blue. This gave him the insight to make the first color photograph. Modern science has since proven the eye's sensitivity to these three base colors, and it is the combinations of red, green, and blue that make every color on the digital screens you're watching on. The system of additive color, how the colors of light work and how colors mix within light, that Maxwell is credited as having a founding role in, is the color system we use here. While the paint color relations are mostly similar to light color relations, light color mixing is additive, whereas paints are not. Show all colors at once in light, and you get white, unlike with paints. But it is light we deal with in the Lands Between, languages of light and obsessions with what the eyes see. So we will use the true light color relations in this analysis. How different perceptions of color may change perceptions of reality, or reality itself, is worthy of speculation. With that, we will look at the Lands Between itself for evidence, since inspirations only go so far, and they are numerous and mix unpredictably. We have to begin as if we have woken up in the Lands Between and use what we see around us to guide us.

One difficulty is that there are other foundational laws in Elden Ring which all mix and interfere. Another challenge is that color isn't surface deep. We will have to isolate and simplify. We must find colors in basic and simple forms to understand. Then we will earn a key to the complex law. Colors are, of course, a useful tool in game design, used to form associations for the player and help the understandability of the world. This is why health, mana, and stamina are almost always depicted in games as red, blue, and green respectively. However, in Elden Ring, colors are far more important, featuring heavily in the lore and may, in fact, be an integral part of the rules of the world rather than just a symptom of them. Eventually, we will understand why looking into another's eyes is so intimate, why we cannot dye our clothes another color, why Radagon was ashamed of his hair, why Godfrey needed Serosh to be a Lord, why the Albinaurics are so weak, why Malenia's rot is scarlet, why Radahn needs purple to keep his beloved horse, why the Frenzy Flame is yellow, why multicolored is so vital, and understand the enigma of gold, the obsession that haunts madmen, nobles, and gods. All this color will lead out of the Lands Between, past the stars, past the void, past even the gods. It leads beyond the creative work itself, to ourselves. After all, what if the Lands Between was an inner world? If this work of art is about what it feels to be human, body, mind, and soul, then by learning about color, we can learn about ourselves. And with learning and the grace of good fortune, we ourselves may rise to a future that is bathed in gold.

Crimson, scarlet, flame, giants, rot, and blood. What is this color's place in the rules of the world? What effects, magics, emotions is it connected with? So, this first color, we will take a deep dive into the proof in the world. As we move through the colors, we will not be so exhaustive, but those who are curious can search to find what we have. The first place to look is where we can find red's nature the clearest. Where is red in a pure form, an unmixed form, away from interference, in the simplest items we use most often? One of the first items is Flask of Crimson Tears. Tears, like all blessings from the Erdtree, come in different colors, but the red tears we couldn't live without. They replenish your HP, the vitality of your player character. We can also bring Torrent back to life with Crimson Tears. Other crimson things in-game also affect HP: Crimson Amber Medallion, red scarabs, and Crimson Seeds, among others. Exalted Flesh, treasured by heroes, is red meat in a medicinal solution of fiery red spices. It gives you the raw power of a beast, boosting your attack output. These things, taken together, make us think of bodily vitality. Red is needed to have a healthy body. Red is physical life. To interact with the physical world via physical means, you need red to restore that energy. Red is a color our own world associates with health, youth, and strength. In alchemy, red was believed to have these properties, and the coveted Philosopher's Stone, which gave eternal life, is depicted as a vivid crimson. Other items in Elden Ring linked to this idea of vitality: the Red-Feathered Branchsword raises the power of your attacks. All types of invigorating meat, which are always pickled in a red medicinal solution, boost our robustness, which helps against buildups of frost and blood loss. Now, if a doctor in our world had matching colored medicines for symptoms, you would choose to go to a different doctor. But in Elden Ring, it really works. The correlation between red and the same boosting effects even carries across cultures. Horn Charms, made by the Ancestral Followers, a different society to the Erdtree, come in many colors. The one that is pure red boosts robustness. Red has a true nature and is a fundamental aspect of the world, regardless of culture.

What is the next red that is essential in Elden Ring? Essential, yet forbidden. Fire is diverse in Elden Ring, but in one way, more than any other color. Some flames are more like lightning, some are lilac, some are ghostly yellow or black. All the flames have different attributes that once again match with color. For now, though, we will look at red fire. Red fire in Elden Ring is more like fire in our world: intense, destructive, life-giving, essential, beautiful, tempting. Fire itself is not unlike bodily vitality, the warmth of a champion. Both carry increasing heat with increasing energy. After all, we seem to reanimate the Ancestor Spirits with fire. Both are hard to control as they increase in energy. But is red fire just as fire is red? Is color a true law of the world as opposed to a correlation? Let's look at the clues left in-game, starting with medicines made often via cookbooks. We can isolate the ingredients. Many medicines are heart and liver-based. Another alchemy-inspired rule: eat liver to purify hearts for Vigor, and so on. You will gain the nature of what you eat. So too in Elden Ring. Of the various colored cured livers in-game, one is called Fireproof Dried Liver, and it is made with red medicinal solution. Another set of items with sets of colors are the Drake Talismans. They all have a different color, but the one that boosts fire damage negation is red. What about the Giants? They were the protectors of perhaps the most important fire in-game, the Giant's Forge. Their fire nature is within them. Their hair and eyes are red. This is not only as a representation; the fire and redness is truly within them. Within the redness, we can find and hold this hair in our hands: Giants' Red Braid, and it does fire damage. Fire Grease, of course, adds damage to a weapon and is a vivid red. In our world, flammable grease or oil would be unlikely to follow these color patterns. A hand, it doesn't. But in Elden Ring, they always match. And across other colored greases and their natures. Another notorious connection to red is blood. Blood is one of the engines of bodily vigor in our world. Eating red fruits wouldn't change your amount of blood or energy more than any other fruit. Yet this is not what we find in Elden Ring consumables. When they are minimal and simplistic, once again follow a pattern. Staunching Boluses, which alleviate impending blood loss, are red. Blood sorcery and blood magic are red. Blood Grease is blood-colored, and blood will take us to more color insights. What has strong blood? Rich red blood. Beasts, rich, untamed life is red. Vigorous life is deep red. Red is the beast, the animal, the flesh side of the human. Those deep red or built of a red closer to wildness exhibit beast-like transformations. Morgott sprouts wings. Crucible Knights, who are infamously red-tinted, sprout horns, wings, and can use the power of many beasts. Certain reds link these aspects together all at once. Red Glintstone boosts Thorn sorceries and Lava sorceries. Blood and fire. Bloodflame is the same pairing of reds, and Morgott's own blood bursts into flame in his boss fight. This also happened when he stood before the Formless Mother. His accursed blood erupted with fire. Blood and fire, both red, are not so different in nature. Red pairs up blood and heat in the trait of robustness. All the medicinal solutions that help robustness are red. What is the use of robustness? It helps prevent buildup of frost and blood loss. The Giants are fire, and with such internal heat, they can survive cold regions. And with abundant vitality, blood loss is more manageable. If we join Morgott's blood cult, we have a color effect. Our own character, our eyes glow red. It may also affect our view of the world. As a true follower, the hunt for blood will become a mental obsession. This eye color, just like the color of armors, medicines, spells, has a causative connection in the game. It is a law of the world. It therefore is not a fashion option. We cannot change it at will. It would change the law of the game fundamentally. Our eyes become our nature, which is paired in Elden Ring with color.

Yeah, red doesn't only link with flame, blood, vitality, and so on. It also connects with harder-to-define things. Red has a shared quality with emotions, desires, sensations. Emotions are enormously important in Elden Ring. Nearly every ending is defined most by its emotion: fear, doubt, loneliness, grief, despair, mania. What emotions would be paired with red in Elden Ring? Emotions that are instinctive, primal, animal, beast-like emotions. These emotions are messy, hard to control, and ill-adapted to society. If color was only color, would a god be ashamed of his red hair? Beast blood is a rich red, and beasts are red-natured. Those closer to animal emotions are closer to red emotions. They lack self-control or regulation. They do not possess enough intelligence to understand or override their instinct. Beasts are aggressive, as well as the obvious signs of aggression in battle. They also roar when they fight. Something very unique to beasts and those of a beast-like nature: Rune Bears rule, but so too do the red fire Giants, Malakor, or Garank, and Serosh rules until he is made silent. These types of nature are also useful. There are benefits, such as in battle: "Well, thou art of passing skill. Warrior blood must truly run in thy veins." After all, Radagon's glory burned as red as his hair, which leads us to another success story that drew from a well of red: Godfrey. He waged war all the way to become Elden Lord. His strength was unmatched. But these emotions had their time and place, and once held in Lord, they no longer had a place in the capital. When we meet him, Godfrey maintains his lordly nature. At first, he does not roar. His wildness contained in his bestial are the half. This side of him, Serosh does roar. But Godfrey talks to us relatively calmly before the fight. When he is pushed to his limit, however, red has a place once more. He is then not content to have his beast, his aggressive side, held separate to him. He wants his bestial nature within him. He slays Serosh, becoming his true nature once more. The deep red blood splashes all over him, staining him. Now be still, and blood red, he rules. His breath and body so hot they steam, even in the air of the burning Erdtree. Charges us like a beast, using only his bare hands.

So, another red emotion is aggression. A clear sign of this is the jellyfish. These young sisters change color when they become aggressive to red. Aggressive invaders have always been red. Blood Boil Aromatic, from a totally different sector. Beasts is rich red. Consuming it increases your damage output, but also your damage taken. At first, this seems odd, until you read the description. It puts those who consume it into a frenzy, berserk-alike, beast-like. Linked to aggression is the competitive urge, ambition, the desire for power, dominance, possession. Competitive summon signs are red. The Red Effigy is competitive. The true horror, Lu fought for a crown, and on defeat tells us our strength deserves one. Rave drink s the crown. We were told this law before the game came out: "Emboldened by the flame of ambition, someone must extinguish thy flame." Aggressive competitiveness that puts the person at risk cannot be unlocked without the red emotion of confidence. Unquestioned by intellect, innate and animal, confidence is red. Godfrey doesn't worry about his enemies; he seeks them out. He even strips his own armor. This confidence doesn't question; it knows. And confidence brings us to another emotion: Faith. What is knowing confidently? And knowing you feel within you instinctively? What is knowing without thought, intellect, or proof? Faith. This deep feeling or trust, we believe, is a red emotion. It is confidence not only in oneself but in things that are outer: fate, gods, magic. The Red Wolf of Radagon can use typical sorceries but also red sorceries. Red sorceries draw on the power of faith. These spells are reviled by other sorcerers who prefer intelligence as a casting source. Red Glintstone itself draws from faith, not intelligence. Radagon holds faith to this day. While Radagon's wife announces, "Those blissful early days of blind belief are long past." He has faith to the very end. He tries to hammer the Elden Ring back together, eyes protecting it. Faith is having a gut feeling. It is red. Unquestioned and unreasoned belief is the opposite to reason-based intelligence. Faith can also be a celebration of an object of faith, but we will get to those incantations later. One emotion supposedly absent in the Lands Between must be red. Last, the urge to reproduce. It is primal and instinctive, and it has waned since long ago. The food for boosting virility is an untreated bright red blood and flesh. No bloodless meat for this effect. This can bring back the feelings those in the Lands Between had long ago, a more animal nature. But now things red have faded, and red emotions have gone the way of the Crucible Knights. Once useful and essential, the knights colored a red of the past represent that mix of life and vitality. Now red is looked down upon and viewed as uncultured. Urges are repressed or simply ceased to be as society develops beyond their need. These red emotions form a pattern. They go against civilization: aggression, ruthless competitive desire, anger, physical power, raw blind confidence. These are not so useful in developed society. To quote Elden Ring's own assessment in Ruler's Mask: "Such a mask illustrates the qualities of an ideal Lord, chiefly wise and possessing a certain defanged geniality." Red is certainly not defanged, and the Lord is a representation of high society. Red emotions will get you in trouble if left unchecked. Those in society show their disregard for red with their clothes. It is a symbol of wildness, just as vestiges of the Crucible are. Both are now increasingly disdained as an impurity. As civilization has advanced, those in the capital do not want to wear things that boost their bestial nature. Those who are exiled, however, are given clothes to wear that mark them as not fit for society. What is the color of the Exile Robe? Red. The Exile Hood? Red. What is the color of those exiled for heresy? A deep red. Sagehood is burgundy and is literally evidence the wearer was driven from town. Red is a signal of a social reject. There are more mysterious uses of red. Why is the bolt that pierces America red? Is this because her physical body must be pinned down by red, by the bodily and physical nature of red? And what does the red of the Two Fingers tell us? What can we draw from the red that spills out after Ranni slays her? Two Fingers are the Two Fingers, the physical aspect of something greater, the body of the Greater Will. Yet, for all the risks of red, who could do without it? For many, a life without red wouldn't be worth living. In its most wild state, red is similar to, and in fact borders, another infamous color. But first, red's opposite: blue.

Any Miyazaki game brings one thing to mind: sorcery. The color of sorceries are, like all of Elden Ring, very varied. Some sorceries are cast with faith, but almost all are cast with intelligence. These intelligent spells are ranges of blue. The first thought is that blue is the color of the mind, of the intellect, and perhaps of the soul. Let's see if this intuition is right, and if so, what else does this color do? What does this color help, harm, and what are the blue emotions? Blue makes its appearance as one of the first items we find: Flask of Cerulean Tears. It replenishes your Focus Points. Focus is the engine of the intellect. Focus Points are used to cast spells, activate skills, and much more. The navy blue hood, simply from its color, increases Mind. Magic Grease, Magic Scorpion, blue liver, shimmering hearts, all affect magic damage. All are blue. The Blue Crest Heater Shield enhances Full Moon Sorceries, and only those of the highest intelligence can wield it. It is all mental power. Blue is the color of the Mind, intellect, Focus. The characters of the world confirm this as they become more and more intellect-focused, it reflects in their colors. Ranni is no longer connected to her body, and she is permanently blue. She is also cold with literal ice crystals under her hat. Lusat's brain has become almost inorganic; it is so far from red life. His new head has a deep blue within it. The Mind's Eye of Astel, a star being, is blue, of course. The center of blue on the map is the Academy, surrounded by mists and waters, bathing in a night sky of the moon. Their robes are blue, their spells are blue. The very mist and air around the Academy has a blue tint. Rennala's robe is blue. The realm we are taken to in the boss fight is a realm of water, star, and moon, all of it shades of blue. The nature of the place, designed for intellectual growth and learning. The other heads of sorcery, the Carian royal family, even have their own shade: Carian blue. Their royal castle is lit with blue flame, with blue crystals growing in an air alive with blue sparks. Just as red is organic life, blue is intellectual life, but inorganic. We see this clearly in the nature of Glintstone: hard, inert, yet able to spring forth action and energy. The inert, non-living nature of the mind is shown by Lusat as he descends more and more into a meditative intellectual world. He becomes physically different and less and less like typical animal life. Lusat's Glintstone Crown says: "This crown replaced Lusat's brain and skull altogether, and now removed from his body, it is all but dead. It looks like a large polished crystal." Lusat's monologues tell us Lusat had reached a near inorganic state. Lusat leads the mind directly to Crystallians, magical and mysterious beings with almost inorganic bodies. Perhaps not entirely, but they wear red to boost this as much as they can. The Crystallians are shades of blue. The inscrutable Crystallians have their own culture, creator, and clearly a deep intelligence. The mind is the seat of thought and therefore of character. Instincts are one thing, but when someone tries to self-control and choose their actions, we say it is their true selves. We may say it is their soul. The mind is therefore linked to spirit. Your true self is your soul. The soul can have different natures itself, but blue is intimately linked with the soul. Indeed, the Blue Primal Glintstone of Seluvis states that this is in essence her soul. Ranni died in body alone, and her soul lives on. Torrent is a spirit steed, and as we summon him, he appears in blue. If red was wild heat and energy, blue is cool and calm, and at extremes, cold and ice. If red is fire, blue is water, the sun to the moon. The cold is intimately connected with blue, and there is a pattern here too. As the nature becomes more cold, the blue becomes paler. Paler blue brings frost damage and frost protection. Coldness and the mind combined gives logic, diligent thought, free from emotion. Blue is this cold mental operation. Instead of needing to be tamed like instinct, it is the taming energy, the guiding reason. This form of mind is used by sorcerers to unlock secrets about the world, new spells, the understanding of the stars, and of themselves. It is extremely powerful, if limited, just as instinct is. We see the power of this form of mind in-game. Ranni is the epitome of it. If we attack her on first meeting, what happens? No indignation, no damage to pride. "What hope art thou to profit?" She doesn't even physically respond. There is no logical reason to. Nothing to gain by it. She dissolves this temporary spiritual body into the air in a shimmer of blue. Even if we tried to kill her after being her loyal ally, after placing an engagement ring on her finger and swearing to become her consort, how does she respond? No rage or aggression. "What hope art thou to profit?" she asks us why we would do this, a logical question. Then reflects on her behavior and how she may have caused her own downfall: "So this is the measure of my Lord. Perhaps it is precisely what I deserve, surrendering myself to delusion."

The blueness of these cold, logical forms of mind and Ranni's behavior may lead us to believe there are no blue emotions, but this is not true. They exist. They are just drastically different to red ones. What emotions might blue feel? What emotions come with coldness, with logic? Ranni tells us when talking about her planned form of order: "She will take us into fear, doubt, and loneliness." Blue emotions include all of these. A rational mind that analyzes and looks at evidence will always carry doubt. The world is full of the unknown, of chaos and randomness. A blue mind will think about the limitations of knowledge, how knowledge can be an illusion. Even Gideon, the all-knowing, has gaps in knowledge and makes mistakes. Blue mind doubts. Fear comes next, and directly from doubt. It is a fear of the unknown, not the known. The fearless are usually those who don't know enough. The red and foolishly confident. Loneliness for a cold, rational mind is almost a guarantee. Less animal, less instinctive, less social, more introspective, wanting to understand more than feel. Loneliness is a complete match with blue. The mind struggles to connect with others as easily as the body can, and mental pursuits have their costs. Many of the sorcerers we find in-game have receded into thought so deeply they have stopped being social entirely. They do not even talk to us. Disconnected sorcerers are spread out across the world and are quite content in their solitude. Other blue emotions are more positive: calmness, ease in one's own company, pleasure in learning, and our addition, self-awareness. It may not sound exciting, but it can do very well, which is why blue has a premier place in society. Blue is the color of the effective members of developed society. Bestial Constitution informs us of society's shift to blue. Having gained intelligence, the beasts must have felt how their wildness slipped away as civilization took hold. It is not chaotic like the red of the animal. It does what should be done. It self-controls for success. Blue is ever present in the clothes of those in society to display this commitment to self-control for the greater good. What does Godfrey, the Lord, wear? Not Horolu. Blue. Not only Godfrey, Lords and Royals of all kinds all wear blue. Royalty following the guidance of Grace, serving the greater good on missions away from the capital, wear a navy hood, unlike the Exile Red Hood, marking them as social outcasts. Royals display their respect of society and their adaptation to it. Officials' attire is blue, worn by magisterial officers to carry out grim but necessary tasks that drive the wheels of mankind. Devotion to society is what is on display with these robes. Blue's true nature, once again, extends to other cultures. Ruler's Robe states: "Luxurious robe worn by Lords in a smaller nation. Its fine blue mantle serves to prove its wearer's status." Blue proves status in society. Even the Moghwyn Nobles, despite blood being the foundation of their dynasty, wear blue. Red would only prove one's strength and dominance in animalistic hierarchies. Societal status is gained another way with a blue mind and blue approach. Returning to Godfrey and his blue attire, we will find perhaps the most beautiful illustration in-game of the natures of color and how they can unlock the rules of this world. While Godfrey still controls his bestial nature contained in Serosh, a regal blue is on display. He wields his axe, symbolic of his vow to conduct himself as a Lord. He is very calm. He treats us with courtesy when we meet him. He remarks how strong we must be to make it this far. He peacefully says goodbye to the corpse of his own son, the son we killed, and does not insult us. Only Serosh roars. Godfrey is angry, but self-control keeps it within. Serosh finally, his self-control gives way, and Horolu emerges. He rips open Serosh, releasing the deep red blood which spills all over him, making himself his true nature, predominantly red. The regal blue attire now hangs shredded, drenched in red blood, irrelevant, forgotten. He then says, "I've given thee courtesy enough." Courtesy, the blue of the Lord, is done with. With that, he roars.

All these socially productive behaviors help to keep out one very dangerous thing, which leads us to yellow, perhaps the most notorious color in the world of Elden Ring. The color of chaos. Yellow is the end of form or order of any kind. Beyond the animal wildness of red, beyond even extreme motion or manic thought, it is pure chaos. No society can endure, no emotion sustain, no being survive. All of these things are patterns which cannot exist in chaos. The mind cannot witness chaos without madness. The eye cannot even process it without destruction. Chaos, like all fundamental aspects of nature in the Elden Ring universe, is paired with a color: yellow. The Frenzy Flame does not only look yellow; it is explicitly called yellow again and again in spell descriptions. In fact, all but one of the Frenzy spells mention the specific quality of yellow, and the one exception doesn't even summon the flame as well as yellowness being explicit to its nature. So is chaos. The Lord of the Flame of Frenzy is called the Lord of Chaos. Chaos and yellow pair up throughout the game. Things that possess aspects of chaos take the color yellow, with only certain things going a deep yellow. The pattern is very consistent, from yellow boluses, eye of yellow grown in frenzy-afflicted lands, to the Frenzyflame Stone, which swaps yellow in place of the gold of its gentler cousin. Even our eyes, when we have accepted the flame, turn a vivid yellow, reflecting the chaos within us, the chaos which will eventually consume us. So what is chaos? In typical language, it is complete disorder and confusion. In science, it is more about total unpredictability. Disorder, of course, contrasts with order. It is therefore a fundamental aspect of the world. It may be a lie, but Shabriri says Shabriri is chaos incarnate. I dying. Whether or not Shabriri can be destroyed, chaos certainly cannot be. It is the bottom on a scale of order, or a peak on the scale of chaos. Order is structure, patterns, divisions. Chaos is its opposite. It cannot be destroyed any more than you can permanently destroy a temperature. However, this does not mean that chaos doesn't have a very real effect on anything non-chaotic. Shabriri wishes for the yellow flame to incinerate all that divides and distinguishes. Yellow is disordered, but yellow has an effect on other things too, like acid changes what it comes into contact with. It brings things to chaos. It burns up order. Carly's cut dialogue states that a frenzied flame can melt away that caused his suffering and despair and the order entire. The reverse is true: order is destructive to chaos. Look at how the Nomads are locked away, sealed, and rejected by order. Look how thick, heavy doors, a simple physical order, seal the Three Fingers. Look how the Flame of Frenzy decays to red once we cast in a domain of non-chaos. It becomes its red, less chaotic neighbor before fading away. Neither order or chaos can survive in an environment which is overwhelmingly the opposite. Shabriri has been working on his plan for a long, long time, but until our influence, the Frenzy Flame is still so irrelevant it can be totally missed in a playthrough. It is not much easier being an anarchist than someone trying to progress order in society. To move the scale long-term is an enormous challenge. Hard to believe. Imagine adding as much chaos as you could to the world. How long would one last before being locked up or saying farewell to the world oneself? The damage chaos does to the order that accepts it is obvious. Our yellow eyes will eventually become yellow embers, burst and broken from suffering. The Flame of Chaos. Simply seeing the dazzling glare of Frenzy for too long is too much for the order of our eyes. The merchants suffer. The Three Fingers seems injured or heavily fatigued, but it may not be from outside influences. It is just the cost of holding chaos within. Finally, it burns up even channeling chaos is not free. It means damage to anything with order. We ourselves are a lot of order, and the pain we feel casting a Frenzy spell is obvious. Even just the sight of the Flame of Frenzy drives the enemy and ourselves mad. All this summoning time and agony, merely to summon Frenzy in the most random and inaccurate way. Frenzy Burst is one exception. This spell manages to direct chaos in a generally straight direction, yet the Frenzy Flame shows its nature as it flies wildly, spiraling as it rebels against this control. The spell's description matches our understanding of Frenzy. In times past, every single person who attempted to control the Flame of Frenzy succumbed to madness after a desperate internal struggle. This incantation is testament to Amiga's victory. What else is yellow in-game and does it fit with the fundamental nature of chaos? There is one thing we can encounter at random in the plains as we ride: lightning. Randomness is a clue. Just like the Flame of Frenzy, it bursts forth chaotically and seemingly unpredictably. The match between yellow and lightning is more than just the color of lightning. If we pickle liver in a yellow medicinal solution, it boosts lightning damage negation. Bloom itself is yellow. Lightning Grease is a bright yellow. So lightning has a yellow nature, a chaotic, sudden, unpredictable nature. Of course, lightning isn't always yellow, which may hint to how exactly lightning works and what brings it into existence. If they exist, yellow emotions would be quite a thing to feel. What do we feel when our inner order is troubled by yellow? Pure yellow is beyond emotion, but we can be riddled with chaos before we disappear. And so too can emotions. The simplest emotions are the unavoidable ones, ravaged by internal chaos. One emotion is inevitable fatigue. Have you noticed that all the nomadic merchants are seated? When Kalé or an aggressed merchant does stand, they have very hunched shoulders. They slouch even more than the use of their cane requires. As skinny as his donkey, Kalé helps to hold up his own coat with one arm. The posture is of someone suffering from fatigue, reminiscent of a teenager. Villagers of the Frenzied Village are brought to their knees by the frenzy. The Three Fingers is too alien to be certain, but it seems to be exhausted in comparison. Even the Old Two Fingers, described repeatedly as having lost all vigor, stands upright and present until death. Posture is very carefully designed in Elden Ring. Raya is snake-like, Patches squats. Those who are learning discipline or lack discipline sit slouching or lie down. Millicent lies down when suffering from rot, then stands tall and elegant as a swordmaster once revived. Physical posture is chosen with care, and the merchants have been given this gait by design. It is not only when using their canes but also when they sit that they hunch over. Others, such as Bernard, sit straight upright despite a ton of steel armor. Hayata, as blind as the merchants, stands tall when she has not yet taken the Flame of Frenzy within her. Fatigue will be felt by those who harbor yellow, even if it itself is not directly yellow. Fatigue correlates heavily with one thing that is certainly yellow: creativity. Thoughts, despite being ill-disciplined at school, a bluntstone who can't sit upright, create something worthy of a new conspicuus. Millicent and others who are weakened and exhausted by rot, yet have a creative fire within them. It exhausts them as it burns them up, yet it is a great driving force. Rodrick has a remarkable gift. The merchants are enterprising, musically talented, devise solutions to blind us, and have a remarkable fashion sense. Yellow is creative because it doesn't respect any borders. It doesn't have any filters or rules. It is unpredictable. Could the world survive without some chaos? Could the Lands Between flourish if only the Two Fingers had their way, or would no chaos be as destructive as no order? All creativity must have some yellow in it, but pure yellow is extreme creativity, de-linked from order. The mind wools about manically. It might discover anything, but this yellow creativity is once again so manic it is damaging to the mind. No sooner is an idea had before another crowds it out. Creativity beyond all function, beyond all capture, all memory, all use. A living torment of possibilities. But great creativity usually doesn't come without some madness. The thumb is a fitting example. It is the most important and creative part of the hand, but it is creative because it is so much more unhinged.

gives us the next emotion and incinerate all that divides and distinguishes: the yellow emotion of rebellion. Yellow doesn't want to be controlled. Yellow doesn't want to follow rules. Red might be willful, but yellow will rebel, even if it is against its own interests to do so. Rebellion is innate to it. It will not be contained. Shabriri himself is reviled, yet he does not let the opinions of others constrain his behavior. How are the yellow materials that make lightning described? Fulminating. What a profoundly odd and specific word for a Japanese game. Fulminating can mean to explode violently or flash like lightning, but this is a literary definition. Its primary definition means to express vehement protest. Yellow is a constant revolution against order. Shabriri laughs at our judgment. Nomadic Merchants were cast out for heretical beliefs, only for them to summon the Flame of Frenzy. To this day, they live outside of society. Nomads who live under their own rules. Lightning itself is willful and hard to direct. Even the masters of lightning receive heavy lightning damage. Perhaps they are only channelers of it and not rulers. How does the Flame of Frenzy itself behave when we try to channel it? It rides furiously against direction. The sheer time to summon it is something any Frenzy Flame spellcaster has suffered. A further example of the rebellious nature of Frenzy is, counter-intuitively, the spell Gelmir's Fury. It looks uncannily like the behavior of the Flame of Frenzy. Why? Because both are physically rebelling. Neither want to be summoned. Gelmer's Fury is held to represent the fury of the volcano Gelmir. However, the arrogance of attempting to harness it is solely that of men and serpents. Is not the place of men and serpents to try and tame a volcano? So the magma bursts chaotically from the ground, rebellious, frenzy-like. The most heavily referenced yellow emotion is madness. This may be more what happens with chaotic thoughts and emotions: a lack of inner order so extreme your mind breaks down. If all thoughts and emotions can never rest or settle, they cannot be put into action or even remembered effectively. How can one sleep with a chaotic mind? How can one resist the tides of euphoria, paranoia, hysteria so intense it corrodes our mind to madness? A final relatable emotion is the glee taken in chaos. A desire and joy for surprise, mess, unpredictability. Chaos take the world. May chaos take the world. Many experience a love of chaos while young. If you can feel what we're talking about, you might have some frenzy in you. Just like inner chaos taken too far can drive you mad, outer chaos taken too far leads inevitably to self-destruction. And yet, there is nothing else like it. What about yellow's place in society? Practically speaking, it has none. Aside from the odd flash of creativity that might be viewed as acceptable, yellow isn't welcome. Even then, society doesn't want creatives coming and disrupting the hierarchy. Rebellion doesn't work well in society. Rules must be followed, not only at the large scale (law, religion, or customs) but at the smaller social scale. Nomads are solitary when they aren't rounded up and locked away. Yellow isn't good at social niceties and rules of courtesy. Kalé himself says: "I've always preferred my own company to that of other peoples." On top of that, Kalé doesn't hold back the truth: "Ah, then you met Blind, did you? Wonderful. I'm glad I pointed you in his direction. He's boorish, blunt, and couldn't find his nose with both hands. But he's a good egg. I think the two of you are sure to find the best in one another." Calling Blind "the good egg" doesn't undo the insult, but yellow doesn't play the courtesy game. "The kit costs a bundle, and I admit I do take my cut. But the important thing is that you survive. Every custom accounts, after all." Unfiltered, honest, but not tactful. At large scales, not only the social but the individual and whole society are destroyed in chaos. The ending, in typically obscure fashion, shows this. The Lord of Frenzy ending is the only one without any context. There is no dialogue, no description of the age, no story of how it will be remembered. Everything has been destroyed. Finally, chaos is linked to time. Predictability? Chaos, order without time. Do these make sense? Order is, in some sense, predictable or patterned over time, and chaos has no predictability at any time. Yet chaos cannot die. Therefore, chaos is immortal. It lives forever, yet has no duration to its existence. Moment to moment. How peculiar. How peculiar, too, that on becoming mad, or within a great frenzied spell, or the great frenzied son, and ourselves as the Lord of Chaos, have a core of black.

is a remarkable color in Elden Ring, and we believe that it is paired with time. It is referenced heavily in-game. A god is supposed to live a life eternal. The Dragonlord lives beyond time. We can stop the meddling of an Outer God, but only when beyond time. Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones lightly twist time, which allow the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god. Time is an essential aspect of everything, and it is very linked to gods, life, death, entropy, and much more. Time, after all, dictates the duration of your existence. However, time is not directly part of existence in the same way red or blue is. In a similar way, it might be said that black is not truly a color. Instead, there is a scale on which black and white are the extremes: darkness to lightness, and all colors can be shifted along this scale. To clarify this, it is easiest to look at one end of that scale. What is black? Black is one extreme end of time. Rates time stopping. When something stops progressing in time, it turns black. An obvious and simple example is death. Fate becoming dark is a fate that stops one form of death, though there are many forms. It is if a being stops continuing in time. Black is death. Lightning Death Blight, part of the God-Slaying Black Flame, the Forbidden Shadow plucked from the Golden Order upon its creation, and the black that ends Radagon's life eternal. The boluses we consume to make ourselves robust against Death Blight are black. Time is so essential to death that to those beyond time, death may not apply. Black may help boost the effectiveness of killing in and of itself. The Knight Riders are dressed all in black, and their weapons are jet black. They were deliverers of death for great warriors, knights, and champions. The black could be more than symbolic, given their aim. Of note here are the Evergaols and Ordona, the liturgical town. For both of these, we can enter another realm and we find the world beyond shrouded in darkness. Yet this does not seem to be a new place, at least not entirely. After all, the runes we drop on death are findable in our reality. So are Evergaols, in fact, the ultimate prison. A jail that holds its prisoners by freezing time. They are called Evergaols, after all. There are more complicated aspects of time stopping for which Miyazaki seems to have been partly inspired by scientific theories about the universe. Time, or any meaning of time, stops at the center of chaos. What do we see at the center of the Flame of Frenzy when it is intense enough? A black core. As we have mentioned, chaos is eternal but has no duration. Therefore, paradoxically, its time state does not progress. Another place where time slows and eventually stops is areas of deep gravity, and black is exactly what we see in the center of powerful gravity spells. The other end of the scale is white. All colors can lighten by adding white, but what is full white? Where black is the current of time completely stopping, white is deep time duration. A maximum time duration is infinite. So too deep a color, and it ceases to move in time. Two diluted and pale, it lasts and lasts. But what is the only thing that truly lasts forever? Nothingness. The permanent background in which all things come and go. So depth of color is more intense in its existence, but has less duration. And as things become whiter, they last longer, but are less intense. This scale is actually therefore simply an aspect of all colors. The world of Elden Ring confirms this. Whiteness increases time duration, but at a cost. All items we make with white meat say this clearly: lasts longer than traditional cured meat, but with reduced effectiveness. Albinaurics show this too. However, color is not surface deep, so we have to be careful as we move to more complicated things in the world, such as creatures. Everything inside and out has a color and an influence. Something may be as much skin as clothing, and we only discover the color of blood in battle. Luckily, Albinaurics do not only have white skin but also white blood. What is their nature? As we expect for something so pale to the core, they are extremely weak. Their bows are specifically designed to require Dexterity over Strength to master. They need wolves to help them move in battle. When we summon Lhutel, she has exceptionally low health for a summon. Only young Albinaurics manage carrying the shield of their namesake. Yet, for all this weakness, whiteness makes them last and last. As deep time goes by, Albinaurics wash out their color and become nothing. "My legs will soon fade, and with them my life." Fade. So what is health in terms of time duration? Not gray, which is time itself, disordered and messy. Health cannot function without good time keeping. Not black, which is stalling the stream, clogging it unhealthily like a sludge. Nor too pale, which is like butter spread over too much bread. Health is surely somewhere in between. This is what those in the know wish for: healthy color. And to some, it was gifted long ago. The grace of gold blessed.

Those who were first to serve it with the most vivid coloration to be healthy. Whatever your mixes of color is to be vivid, just as all the ranges of the scale have an impact. The two extremes, black and white, have an important relation. What has ceased to exist and what lasts and lasts is the eye, the window to the soul and mind, representative of the departure of intelligence in later generation albanorex. But the whiteness of their longevity is still shown in the body.

The two extremes of the scale are very useful individually, but they are also useful together. You can kill with white, just as with black. And the mix of stopping something with black and then making that moment last forever with white is deadly. Or making an aspect of something sustained indefinitely, which will eventually kill, works too. Stopping Scarlet rot is simply halting its progression in time, but if time is recontinued, it means death.

Dark emotions are intense and consuming, but they move on fast, like a child. Paler emotions are karma, but last longer in raw nature. White emotions might be long-term gratitude or regret, while black is more likely to be brief but consuming anger or elation. But any emotion can be light or dark; it is defined by intensity and duration. What we can be sure about is that emotions which are inextricably linked with eternity will be black or white. Despair, according to Eternal Darkness, has a core of black. Despair is the complete loss or absence of hope. You know what you hope for can never come to pass, and never is black in its time state. Is there an emotion that is the opposite, that matches something existing eternally? Perhaps if hope springs eternal, it is itself white.

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Purple. Purple has always been a remarkable color in our world. Extremely hard to find in nature, it was a rare sight before the modern day. Thanks to this unique obscurity, it has been consistently associated with similar ideas across cultures, from East to West. Wealth is a frequent one; anything hard to obtain will have this connotation. More interestingly, there are the associations of spirituality, the subconscious, and imagination in general, of the border between worlds. This is one case where evidence in game seems to match with our real-world notions, something not always the case. The color of sleep in game is purple. We know this from numerous items of Saint Trina, to perhaps even the first meeting with Ranni.

What happens when we sleep in our world? It feels like we leave our bodies, or at the very least, the time vanishes. It is certainly a place where the subconscious continues to live, and while opinions vary, no one can deny that there is something magical about dreams. In Elden Ring, dreams achieve great things, sustain generations of warriors in their jars, may even be that which motivates a Tarnished. Yet, in Elden Ring, the sense of dreams being truly another world is very real. I dreamed for so long. Sleep is the gateway to dreams, and the realm of dreams is a real place. Some may seem to be sleeping, but be quite busy in this dream world. We ourselves enter Fear's dream as she sleeps. We fight Fortisax in her deathbed dream, the surface of the boss fight, a quagmire of purple. Perhaps she uses a sleep pot to put herself to sleep. And yet, the events of this shared dream have enormous real-world consequences. Trina's torch burns with a purple flame, and these purple flames cause sleep. But Trina is involved in more than just sleep. Trina is clearly depicted with a third eye in the center of the forehead. The third eye is to see beyond, to see across boundaries, and into other worlds. Sleep is simply one of these many borders between worlds. Trina may be a saint of journeying into the subconscious, the dream world, the spiritual world. The energy to bridge these gaps is purple.

What is the energy that brings more classical physical worlds together? The force that defines the border of a world, star, or galaxy? Gravity. That which makes physical bodies move almost with a mind of their own. Indeed, when one thinks that interfering with it causes small lightning sparks, it may be that the matter rebels at our meddling. Gravity is much stronger and much more relevant to physical bodies, and so gravity is a deep purple in Elden Ring. How do we bring meteorites into a battle with gravity? Preferably with glintstones that boost gravity sorceries, which are of course purple. Gravity in Elden Ring pulls, but not merely from distances, but pierces to completely different regions. We don't have to wait for the meteorites to come from space. Gravity can open a door or bridge between worlds, as sleep does, bringing collapsing stars or meteorites from nothing, and even pulling objects from the mysterious void. Astel, the leveler of the Eternal City, is very talented at moving through gravity doorways. But the master of moving between worlds is the Elden Beast. What color does the Elden Beast emit when transporting us to another realm? Deep gravity purple.

Both gravity and sleep are dragging, sinking forces. One weighs down focus and presence; the other weighs you down physically and exhausts you. This shared sinking effect, in different intensities and across different planes, are represented by their shades of purple. It once again fits the pattern of darkness and lightness of color. Dark purple is more intense, has a stronger physical effect, but it doesn't last as long. At its most intense, it goes black, and as in our world, time stops. Indeed, with stars seeming to dictate fate, this hints at how time, fate, and gravity are connected. Meanwhile, light purple lasts much longer, is gentler, doesn't pierce so deeply as the physical, but nonetheless drags us to the world of dreams.

What is the most important border to being human? Whether you're a dreamer or purely practical, it is surely the border between the mind and the body. Red is the body, blue is the mind. Red and blue gives purple. Both weaken each other in a way; the body exhausting the mind, the mind questioning and tempering the body. But it is this costly relationship that gives rise to great things: imagination, dreams, the subconscious, the deep, invisible wisdom of the third eye. Purple is this border, neither enough presence to be fully blue, yet not all raw instincts and animal unconsciousness to be red. This mysterious middle is what makes us human. Exist too imbalanced in any direction, and the humanity fades away.

We have mentioned there are many ways to die in Elden Ring, but total destruction is quite rare. Instead, destroying an essential border that makes us human is one solution. Before the Erdtree, there was a different system for dealing with the dead. They were burned in ghostflame. Interestingly, we know from the spirits that resulted from this process that it was not a destruction of everything. The bodies may have been destroyed, raked as ashes, but the spirits lived on, sometimes with great bitterness, but they were no longer human. How did they separate these minds or souls from their bodies? With ghostflame. Ghostflame burnt this border between the two worlds. What color is ghostflame? Despite the appearance of the magic in the current day, its color is violet, a purple flower that blooms in graveyards. The hue of ghostflame. And we see this purple used by a master, the Tibia Mariner, as he brings back dead from their world. He himself fades in and out of this world, likely to the world of the dead, wrapped in purple the whole time. It is unclear why the current ghostly magic and its users are a different hue. However, is this the remaining color once all this purple has burnt away? The body left as ashes? Or maybe only in this later order has ghostflame lost its hue? The purple consumables, staffs, grease, plants, all patterned to sleep, gravity, and borders to other worlds. Purple-cured meat, called clarifying, prevents the buildup of sleep and madness. Sleep, of course, prevents focus, but madness is interesting because purple is not the opposite of chaos. Perhaps if the third eye becomes too dominant, we begin to see things in the random chance of the world that simply aren't there. It is a fine line between intuition and madness, the subconscious and its interpretation, dreams and understanding the outside world and its patterns. It is so easy to fall into superstition and fantasy. Imagination can run wild. You might end up believing in what simply doesn't exist. And yet, the mysteries of purple are so seductive.

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Green is a more abstract color than red or blue, but it is essential to both. In the Lands Between, in our playthrough, green might be seen as less important, as it is less relatable than red, but it is just as fundamental. We meet green time and time again in game, when it helps us as stamina and hinders us as poison, but it is more complicated than that. For stamina, there are many items which show the pattern. Green Spill Crystal Tear raises max stamina. Its Greenburst Crystal Tear raises stamina recovery. And Green Turtle Talisman does the same. A turtleneck pickled in green also boosts stamina recovery, a completely different effect to the red unpickled neck from the same creature. But what is stamina? Stamina is defined as the ability to sustain prolonged physical or mental effort. But what gives that ability? In essence, what is physical and mental activity really? It seems to be reducible to motion in the physical world and, in the mental, the more abstract animation. Green is therefore the animating energy for the body or mind. It is in that which moves, animates, progresses, cycles, rises, grows. It is in nature, certainly, but so too in the racing mind.

And the body is full of energy. Green in isolation has another clear effect in game. A green medicinal solution creates various cured meats that boost immunity. Immunity helps fight poison. We consume it like a small dose of poison to strengthen our resistances for the future. Neutralizing Boluses made from nothing but cave moss. But this time, naturally, green also boosts your immunity against poisons. Poison bone darts and arrows poison your enemy, and their tips drip in green liquid. The various Horn Charms have various effects, patterned by their color. The one that boosts immunity has green on the horns. And of course, everything that causes typical poison follows the same pattern. The pattern goes on well beyond this. But is this the other side of the same coin? Could animation itself be poison? And if so, how? The first hint to green's nature is the fact that the green rule for poison, not rot, which we will come to, continues across plants, to inanimate stones, to medicine. The second is that there is a consistent color difference, a consistent shade of green that differentiates stamina or healthy animation with unhealthy animation. Poison. Poisons in our world are not a specific shade of green. Stamina green is consistently a rich, vivid green, sitting healthily in the range of the color. But poison is a shade of green that moves towards yellow. Why is unhealthy animation towards the shade of yellow? Because it becomes disordered, or by another name, chaotic. Better to have ordered motion, even if it is a little slower than desired, over chaotic motion. Animation going wrong in the body is very linked to timing going wrong, movement being paired with time. We know from black and white that gray timekeeping doesn't do well for health. What about chaotic movement or animation within our bodies? What can happen if the body's processes go out of sync? How fast might we last with the sped-up heart and a slowed-down liver, or a metabolism many times too fast? Chaotic bodily processes are deadly. Even slight rhythm errors between them over long periods of time cause huge problems in the organs. Therefore, if the green is not the right shade and it gets in your system, it is poison. Green has simpler emotions than red or blue, and while it has its highs and lows, its place is the animation of things, of emotions and thoughts too, the rate of change, whether they cycle or not, how fast they come and go. Green also has its own mysteries. Is the light green of the Salad and Blade of the Godskin Apostles simply for increasing the thrust speed? It works; the thrusts from specifically the weapon, regardless of wielder, are swifter than the eye can follow. But is there some other secret? Is Sellen's Glintstone a sickly, poisoned green, evidence of her twisted mind? She was the Graven Witch, after all. And how to explain this remarkable green sky on that fateful night of the Black Knives? Perhaps you have spotted a similar sky in your playthrough too. There is one poisoning game that is not green; that is called rot. What is Scarlet Rot? Once again, it is named by color, and from its name, we have the answer. If there is more and more energy, green in life and bodies, red, what happened? What did we say was the color more energetic life moved to as it became more madly mobile, more chaotic? Red trends to yellow, which is exactly what you get when you mix red and green. And one of the closest shades of red to the border of yellow or chaos is Scarlet.

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Scarlet is life, but too manically energetic. It grows and lives too vigorously and chaotically, consuming and destroying its host. Life out of control. Scarlet brings us to the idea of colors being similar, being neighbors. Of course, there is no one nature for any color; it is all hues. What is the order and relationship of color in a natural splitting of colors from white light? We can see it clearly: red is on one side of the split, leading to yellow, to green, to blue, and then to purple. The shades of these colors are infinitely varied as it goes between them. Every color can be made by the two that border it on either side. So a wheel can be formed, as a famous alchemist did long ago. More than the darkness or lightness, where is the color exactly? How close is it to others? The hue, as we have mentioned, may divide gravity nature from sleep, but there is no strict border in any of their natures. Everything can approach and mix. Heresy is not native to the world; it is but contrivance. All things can be conjoined. So red going too close to yellow gives Scarlet, chaotic life. Is Scarlet Rot? Blue gained some green, and it becomes energized, full of innovation and impact on the real world. But too much green, and the mind cannot keep the stability for things like attention or memory. Become too green, a shade of turquoise, and you might be called a blunt stone. Perhaps being this you, his whole life led Thops to a great insight. A mind that is internally over-animated repels the entry of external mental influence. It raises the question of whether sorcery damage really arises simply from strong mental belief. Moving further away from blue moves further away from sentience and more into the automatic animations of the natural world. Comets represent this, always much more green than the bluer stars, and are never referred to as sentient stars. On the other hand, are referred to repeatedly as active, conscious agents. Green animation moved towards yellow is poison. Mind and body mix into the purple worlds of sleep, dreams, and the mystic. And inanimate bodies moving with what seems to be minds of their own is purple gravity. Most interestingly, and what really shows the purposeful nature of Elden Ring's color design, is in opposites. Colors may have associations in our world, but their opposite associations do not match to their color opposites. What do we mean by that? Well, for most color systems, opposite associations do not have opposite colors or light wavelengths, and vice versa. Thus, we do not find in our world that the associations of purple are the opposite of the associations of green. The odds of them doing so is remarkably low. If they did, you might start to say that it was a natural law. But what do we find in Elden Ring? White and black are the two opposites of time, but it is a scale for all colors, and gray, the mess and mix of time states, when inverted, is still gray. It has no time opposite, unlike black or white. So what about true hues? The opposite of red heat is ice-hued blue. The opposite of chaos, the rational mind regulating and maintaining control. The opposite of purple, the sinking, dragging sleep and gravity force, is green, the animating, uplifting energy of stamina and cycles. Clearly, this is a conscious design for the law of Elden Ring. Let's move on to some more nuanced colors. There are some unique colors, some more common, some rare, but all mysterious.

[Music]

Silver. Whether in the real world or Elden Ring, always takes second place to gold. Often the name for money in various cultures, it is much more practical than the hard-to-come-by gold. Silver is the most reflective metal and the best conductor of electricity and heat. It really can seem to become one with things visually and energetically. In Elden Ring, the nature of silver is similar, but much more magical. Silver seems in nature quite similar to Quicksilver, or its other name, Mercury. While this metal is not referenced in game, the silver we find seems to flow and run like liquid silver. Silver Tears are liquid. Nox weapons stretch and warp forms from this same tear. The center of this creature is a Larval Tear, within which we can see the apparent liquid flow of silver under its surface. In alchemy, silver is associated with the moon and snakes. Silver doesn't appear in any of the all-color or multi-color items. It doesn't seem to be part of the mainstream world and arrangement of colors. Mercury, being a liquid metal, is perceived in alchemy as being able to cross natures and borders. It also competes with silver for its reflectivity and has been used in telescopes for this property. Most interestingly, almost all elements can combine with Mercury in a process called amalgamation. Both silver and Quicksilver seem to have the ability to take on the properties of other things, whether visually or physically, absorbing or in its heat or electric nature. In Elden Ring, silver truly takes on the nature of others. We can even birth ourselves anew with this silver, and it is hinted that maybe a Lord can be made by a silver imitation. While this nature of silver seems to be a pattern, it is still a mystery. Why is the metal of Trina's sword full of purple magic? Silver to conduct the realm of dreams? Oracle Envoy blood? Silver. They look somewhat similar, white and blue, to the white-blooded Albinaurics and Albinaurics were formed from a sacred drop of dew. Was that dew as silver as the shield that represents it? And what is Blue Silver? A mysterious metal born from the same mother as Albinaurics themselves.

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Amber is perplexing. Amber in our world is fossilized tree resin. Different color ambers formed from the Erdtree's old sap. As in our world, sap and time are the ingredients. The various hues of amber match the various natures of color. However, most important is the traditional color of amber. It is very connected to the process of rebirth. The Amber Egg of Rennala is a beautiful example. Why is rebirth this color? And more confusingly, why does it need silver to operate? The Sacred Dewdrop Tear, represented in the Silver Mirror Shield, has amber atop it. Another strange relation. Amber Starlight says that amber-hued stars must command the gods. The draft made to attempt to control Ranni is an amber draft. This color seems to have something to do with formation, formation of life, formation of a future and fate. But it is a color of mystery. We need to explore. What is Gloam? Gloam is twilight, or the darker part of twilight. Gloamshade. Given what we know about the colors and relation to death, gloam would be a fitting color for the Queen's eyes. Who it might be remains in the dark. Copper is another color that is also a metal. Copper appears vividly in certain swords. Regalia of A-Ok says that the copper coloration of the blade is a conduit for its wielder to move it by their will alone. We believe copper is therefore the color of the will. The region that uses this sword also gave us Element of the Briar. His shield from a foreign land is the land of A-Ok, a land of proudly solitary ascetics. Ascetic is defined as characterized by severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence. This sword is from a region where willpower is immensely important and practiced daily. The will is the color of copper. Bronze seems to support this. Bronze is an alloy, mostly of copper and a little tin. The Gargoyles seem to be operated from afar. Their swords are made of bronze, as are the hoops on their ankles and wrists, almost like a puppet. Tin men moved by the will at a distance. Additionally, how does one make copper color? You mix a lot of yellow chaos, a lot of red animal life and raw instincts, with a little blue. What could better represent willpower than copper, when a little bit of mind or spirit has to fight as the underdog against the chaos of the world and the baser desires to do what you truly wish to do? Will is found in this hardship, where one must compete against these two natures. And when there is one remarkable color in game that is not truly a color, drained of color according to the natures of color, this type of color should be defined by its emptiness of nature, and this is just what we see. Eclipse Crest Great Shield says the eclipsed sun, drained of color, is the protective star of solar demigods. It is an emptiness that matters here. The edge is the symbol that matters. Solar demigods have lost their natures. Their bodies lie drained of red vigor, the animation, the mind, the character, the soul has left this plane. They are colorless. Nascent Butterfly, an important ingredient in many consumables, has translucent wings. It appears as if it has just emerged from its cocoon. For its entire life, it has very little nature. Colorlessness can be filled; it is pure potential. Nascent Butterfly makes dappled multi-colored meat. It doesn't interfere with these hues; it is colorless and can take on varieties of colors without staining it with its own. This concept comes again with Somber Smithing Stone. Somber being defined as dull in color or tone. The description of the stone again reminds us that color is an essential building block of the world. Shard of Smithing Stone, drained of color. What a peculiar thing for a blacksmith to find important. Finally, it says special armaments with unique characteristics cannot be strengthened with colored smithing stones. Color has nature intrinsically and irremovably. If something is a unique and balanced mix of colors, to use a colored stone would literally change its nature. Therefore, to maintain its uniqueness of nature, which in Elden Ring means its remarkable uniqueness of color, you need to use a colorless smithing stone.

So, multi-colored. Now we know the basics, we can approach these remarkable dappled patterns. There are, of course, many base colors. We can therefore make a prediction before looking in game: multi-colored consumables in Elden Ring should have the same effect as its constituent colors. Indeed, multi-colored is achieved by the most basic function of something else. These colors, after all, are not mixing, but first dappled, rainbow, mottled. It goes by many names. The Mottled Necklace, from an entirely different culture to the Erdtree, has very clearly three colors on it: poison green, purple, and red, the exact colors of the more ordinary Immunizing, Clarifying, and Stalwart Charms. What is the effect of this vividly colored accoutrement, precious to the ancestral followers? It raises robustness, immunity, and focus, just like our colors would dictate, and a combination of the more regular colored Horn Charms. Our prediction is right. This pattern fits across many items. Flask of Wondrous Physick, a relic of the physic chemists, priests of the Erdtree. What a curious profession for priests to focus on the mixing and combinations of base natures. Harnesses the power of Crystal Tears, which only form after the passage of many moons. Various special effects are bestowed upon the drinker, dependent on the specific mixture of Crystal Tears. Of course, there are many colors of tears: crimson and green, and so on. And with custom combinations, the vision of their effect is multi-colored. One special tear is the Opaline Hardtear. Opaline is another word for opalescent, defined as showing many small points of shifting color against a pale or dark ground. Opal is famous for being able to display every color of the rainbow. If crimson tears and green tears affect HP and stamina, what does this multi-colored tear do? It boosts all forms of damage negation. The dappled cured meat we make, upon closer inspection, has three colors that stain it: red, purple, and poison green. And what do these cured meats do when we consume them? Dappled cured meat boosts immunity, robustness, and focus, exactly what the colors red, purple, and off-green do when alone in a cured meat. What is remarkable too is how we make dappled cured meat. The medicinal solution we cure it in doesn't have a combination of the essential ingredients of other meats. The Invigorating Cured Meat (red) has a Land Octopus Ovary in it, but it is not in dappled meat. We don't find a Slumbering Egg for the sleep resistance, nor a Head of a Poison-Resistant Dragonfly. There is one item that seems to give all the variety of color to the dappled meat: a Budding Horn. This horn began to sprout on a beast that typically bears no horn. Perhaps it's a vestige of the primordial Crucible. This horn gives rise to many colors. What is the primordial Crucible? Where all life was once blended together. All life, all natures, and therefore all colors. With the nature of multicolored established, we can look at where it appears in the lore. We can understand why the rarest and most prized of Miranda flowers are the most varied in color. There is a great power in the diversity of uses. Astel, formed of many colors together, can cast various forms of magic. And indeed, amongst all this varied color, appear rings. Why are the celebrants in the Windmill Village armed with multi-colored rakes, skulls, and sickles? The merchants wear gorgeous multi-colored garments. Their famously suave hats studded with many-colored gemstones. Is this the lie of the Three Fingers? The removing division will bring together this diversity in beauty instead of distraction in chaos. The gods themselves seem to be a multi-colored set: the Outer God of Scarlet Rot, the God of Ranni's order, the Formless Mother, and so on. Perhaps white and black is like a many-faced god, acting as many colors, but in fact is one. Colors are so fundamental that the very gods seem to be divided by them. And one god, the Greater Will, is recognized by one exceptional color. But nothing is so important in the lore of the multi-colored than the Crucible and the Omens. Omens, with the nature of all creatures emerging, have much more than a vestige of the primordial Crucible. If yellow is a chaos of everything mixing, multi-colored is something to be nervous of. How things can be multi-colored without mixing to chaos is the place of a most famous color, and Omens are evidence of the breakdown of this color as the boundaries of color begin to weaken and stir up. How close we come to chaos. More God is an Omen? Who knows? He is a risk. He is ashamed of his curse. He recanted it and sealed it away in his cursed sword, the Warped Blade of Shifting Hue. The colors tell us his story. What is an Omen but a warped being with many-colored natures, shifting and emerging? The accursed blood that Morgott recanted and sealed away reformed into this blade. When this blood becomes unbound, it emerges, it explodes and mixes in a filthy off-yellow, staining the thrones. Staining, an important word, explicitly a word for color. Omens and Omen blood and all that trends towards the primordial Crucible risk blending in a stew of mass, one step from pure chaos. But it is kept at bay, kept at bay by one thing: gold.

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In our world, gold is formed in stars and is believed to have fallen to the Earth in meteorites long ago. It is unreactive and one of the most stable elements. It is very hard to destroy and very hard to make, and of course, it has a unique color. In alchemy, it is viewed as the highest form of matter, but not only matter, also body, mind, and soul. To turn base metals, matter, or our own nature into gold takes many stages, but gold is the final form. This transformation has been undertaken by many great minds in history, but while they gave us many other gifts, gold was never made. In Elden Ring, we need to look at the world and what is in it to see gold's place in the universe. Gold is seen all around us, but it is hard to find on its own, removed from complex systems. Religion, characters, obscure dialogue – none of these help us as gold beginners. Complexity will lead to confusion. We need to find where gold is in the world simply, and there are three items which are natural, simple, and importantly, ignored. There won't be any preconceptions about what has been passed by: Golden Rowa, Gold-Tinged Excrement, and Beast Blood. First, Golden Rowa. Red Rowa, as we have dealt with, is heavily involved in red nature boosting. Golden Rowa is a rarer thing, though it is easily found near the Erdtree. Gold is easier to find in general near the Erdtree, more than color. How does this Golden Rowa differ from a typical Rowa? In what we can make, red Rowa and Rimed Rowa cannot make any dappled meats. Dappled, as we have addressed, are multi-colored; they have the effects of each color, yet the meat has identifiable separate colors in its stapling. Why can the preserving effects of a normal Rowa not do what is required to make dappled meat, but Golden Rowa can? Gold is required to stop the colors from mixing. It contains the colors in the meat together, yet separate. Gold-Tinged Excrement is next. Once again, it has a unique appearance. It has a golden tinge, but we have an enormous clue in this highly ignored substance. Gold-Tinged Excrement is a highly stable substance. It doesn't dry out, nor does it lose its customary warmth or scent. For better or worse, it remains as it is. Goldness maintains the nature of the thing. Finally, we have Fresh Beast Blood, glinting with gold. This glimmering blood never rots or decays. Between these items, the essential nature of gold reveals itself. Gold is order. Gold has the power to hold things in a state or condition that otherwise might change. In a universe where the natures of things are linked with color, gold is what can hold them in relation. Gold dictates whether they overlap, mix, or are held at a great remove. Without gold, dappled meat would be very dangerous to eat, as its colors would interfere with each other. Without gold, things rot. Without gold, for better or worse, things change unpredictably. Each color has its opposite in nature, but gold is not a base color; it is an emergent property and an emergent color. Just like chaos and yellow is the shadow of gold, is what can divide and distinguish, and yellow destroys divisions. Interestingly, what is one thing that can break gold down in the real world? Aqua Regia dissolves gold away. Its color, a vivid yellow. Gold and older is like yellow and chaos. It exists and doesn't exist. It is an emergent color when all colors are in certain orders. You have faith in gold; you can see it, feel it, but it doesn't exist in the way green does. Break the structure, and gold vanishes into its constituent parts, with the true colors within revealing themselves. If gold is order, gold may have the power of influencing the basic rules of the universe. After all, what are rules, whether in society or the laws of nature, other than order? With enough gold, you can guide these laws as you see fit. You can make things rise or fall, you can make them burn, freeze, reverse in time. You can temper your own being with blue, you can choose how long red lasts, how much green, your amount of purple. The enigmatic Miyazaki told us so before the game's release: "The rings you're looking at in the logo are more a representation of the law of the world, the rules and the order. It's more about how you apply those rules and how you enforce them on the physical world and what effects they have on it. That's what's being represented by the Elden Ring and these overlapping and intersecting rings. It gets a little bit more complicated than that, but I'll leave it there for now." Like dams in rivers, with gold you can direct nature itself. Whether it helps the world in general or only yourself depends on your understanding and your choices. The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods, no better than men. Let us now look at more complicated aspects of gold and see if things fall into place.

The shackles for Omens have golden symbols on them, and they are bathed in golden magic. They confine Omens. Confinement is a form of order. And now we have learned the multicolored nature of Omens. Isn't this just dappled meat and Golden Rowa, but played at a much larger scale? Omens, the same as anything else, are defined by their colors. Omens are too primordial, too virgin on the chaotic. If let out to mix, it becomes disordered. Gold, like the Golden Rowa, keeps these shifting hues in place. Morgott has the nature of what seems to be rats, goats, and many other creatures growing from him. And when the seal he imposed on his own blood seems to break, it is splinters of gold he coughs out first, before the emergence of a muddy, mixed color. Order is very linked to time. If order is buffeted by non-order, it dissipates over time. This is why Morgott's shackle, which lacks power, only holds Morgott for a short time. This is why, with time, gold seems to decay to a muddy yellow. Colors naturally mix, and thus, just as Golden Rowa is needed for cured meat, so too do we, the player, need Runes. Runes are the gold that keep ourselves in order. Without Runes, we cannot keep any of the natures of color. If we consume redness, a booster, it cannot be maintained permanently, and it fades. The golden Runes that can maintain Natures in order can allow us to keep different attributes permanently. Think of it like having more gold to add to our own ring; it increases its size. Runes will act as nourishment for the development of any Tarnished. If we want more green permanently, we can do that. More Runes allows us to alter our own form, our own order. Without order, these Natures will mix. We don't necessarily want a strong body to dilute with a strong mind to result in tiredness. Order can raise the parts to a greater whole. It may be that all the basic building blocks of nature are around us all the time, much like in the real world. Everything is only its specific nature as a result of its order. Does not only apply to the inner; it also applies to the outer world. You can impose order on others, just as you can impose disorder. One more complicated aspect of the Golden Order, a name which takes a more literal meaning now, is Incantations. One spell that imposes order on others is Litany of Proper Death. We cast it upon those who live in death, and it stops them from arising repeatedly. The description once again is more concerned about image than the physical. It imposes an image of order in bright gold, which damages those who live in death. The spell says the hunters aim to stamp out defiled reason, all for the perfection of the Golden Order in their opinion. To live in death is an affront to how order should be. However, the very name "living in death" shows how flexible order can be, that such a thing is even possible. The image of order is interesting too. What shape does order always take? Clear, intersecting straight lines, triangles, and squares, and of course, most famously, rings. What is more ordered than a ring, holding an inner and separating an outer, balanced around its center? Rings are a perfect visual representation of order. They can contain, they can overlap and bind. Other spell effects and descriptions help us further. Two incantations viewed as very important to the lore are the Law of Regression and the Law of Causality. Causality, one of the key fundamentals, manifests a small ring of causality within that allows the caster to automatically retaliate upon receiving a certain number of blows. The Fundamentalists describe the Golden Order through the powers of regression and causality. Causality is the pull between meanings. It is the connections that form the relationships of all things. This is one more key, this is because it is fundamental to understand that order is not only static. Something being in a state of order, unchanging through time, is of course ordered. But there is order in processes too: that which repeats or has a pattern, that which is predictable, cause and effect. Fundamentally, if it is tightly correlated, is a form of order. It is order through time. So with this, we can establish that order is not only something that applies to things with static states, such as Beast Blood not rotting; it applies to processes, just as a dam will consistently redirect water in this or that direction over time. The next is Law of Regression. Heals all negative statuses, dispels special effects, and reveals mimicry in all its forms. Regression is the pull of meaning. The tall things yearn eternally to converge. This is inverting causality or removing effect. Any form of order is expensive, and to do this at a deeper level, say a wide area or deeper into the past, i.e., through more layers of cause and effect, takes a lot of order. It is expensive. It is easy to damage order with chaos, but undoing order cleanly backwards is not chaos; it is a very hard operation that also requires a lot of order. All incantations are of interest here as well. Immutable Shield protects one's own order. Lord's Aid and Cure Poison use a great abundance of order to draw out poisons and ailments from our bodies, and we can see these colors being removed. Finally, we have Order Healing. All the good and the great wanted was an absolute evil to contend with. Does such a notion exist in the fundamentals of order? So we get to the moral aspect of order. Who benefits from order? What does benefit even mean without order? Before the existence of order, can we talk about good or evil? Both, if they exist, arise from order. The benefit or harm of the dam; it's gained to some, its harm to others, is already placed atop an order. Can something as fundamental as order itself have a morality? After all, with chaos, such things fall down. Malenia tells us as such: "If you intend to claim the Frenzied Flame, flame, it is not to be meddled with. It is chaos devouring life and thought unending. However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not? If you would become Lord, do not deny this notion. Please leave the Frenzied Flame alone. Life itself is destroyed in chaos." The pain and suffering of life is also order; it is division and distinguishment. Frenzy removes the order of pain, just as the eye of yellow relieves it. Without suffering of any kind, we would die. Order contains, perhaps irremovably, suffering. But is a mixed quality of life better than none at all? The Lord of Frenzied Flame is no Lord at all when the land they preside over is lifeless. Chaos is a release, but a well-structured order may do wonders. And this range of the possibilities of order is the purpose of Goldmask. The state of the current order is weakening, and disorder has become more present. The Fallen Moves tell a story: gold is fading, even small distances from the Erdtree. Is it because gold is alloyed with something outer, allowing the influence of outer gods? Is it unstable ideology and fickleness that is the problem, or is it the physical damage done to the Elden Ring that is causing these issues? Goldmask takes on the task of mending order. His change to fundamental order impacts everything and everyone in the Lands Between. In fact, the form of order is what defines every ending in Elden Ring. Many orders are possible. Unlike others who create a Mending Rune, Goldmask invests incomparable time and thought into his creation. He has likely spent a lifetime to reach his level of understanding, staring up through holes in his mask, not unlike a pinhole camera. He observes the world. Is the mask splitting colors so he can analyze their true natures? He seems to care about the fate of the world beyond his own self-interest. We should be glad for it. It is an enormous responsibility to lay down the order for all others. Order, in a sense, is innately unnatural. Get it wrong, and it may have been better to do nothing. But there are huge benefits to tempering your nature for yourself and others. This is why Goldmask's work is all about transcending. The culmination of his work is The Mending Rune of Perfect Order, a rune of transcendental ideology which will attempt to perfect the Golden Order. Will this allow vivid color to return to the Tarnished and the Lands Between? Goldmask has achieved something miraculous. When his rune starts an age of order, whether it will succeed in the long term, though, only time will tell. Gold is colors set in order. We can see it when it breaks and ceases to glow, its colors revealed. Gold can be a shackle, but gold can be freedom. All that is cursed or evil is order, but so too is every gift in life. Order. To choose its alternative is madness. To know ourselves, our nature, our colors, is a path we must follow, just as Goldmask followed his. Never impose order carelessly. Instead, walking this path of understanding may give the insight to harness our own Natures, to lay down our own rings, to gain strength of all forms, to be present, to uncouple with what we cannot control or understand, to be more in harmony. Too much and you are out of control; too little, you're ineffective; too intense, you'll never last; too light, and you fade away in time. Our actions, thoughts, energy, instincts, and even emotions can be brought to harmony with time and battle. After all, the Creator called gold the concepts of order and discipline. Just as gold won its place in Elden Ring, anyone can conquer their own Lands Between, anyone, even if you feel your colors are tarnished, can transcend to gold.

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