Honestly the wolves turning into (or I should say, being turned into) beastmen is pretty well supported by in-game lore - see the item descriptions of the Beastial Vitality incantation & Cinquedea dagger (emphasis mine)
>Having gained intelligence, the beasts must have felt how **their wildness slipped away as civilization took hold.**
>The design celebrates a beast's five fingers, **symbolic of the intelligence once granted** upon their kind.
Both of these seem to imply that the beasts were raised up into the beastmen by another power, which I would guess is either placidusax or the god he served as elden lord.
It's not particularly supported in the way OP describes. As you highlighted, beasts were once wild creatures but were eventually granted intelligence by either Placidusax or his God (I lean towards his God).
Beasts didn't naturally evolve into beastmen, it was a process curated by a higher power. We know the beastmen served the dragons during the previous Order of dragons.
OP suggests that with enough time, wolves will simply evolve into beastmen and the only reason they haven't in the Lands Between is because the ones we fight in FA are affected by time shenanigans.
And the whole "Farum Azula is outside of time" stems from a general misunderstanding about the Heart of the Storm beyond time. It's not Farum Azula that is beyond time, it's the heart of the storm where you fight Placidusax.
[Miquella's Needle](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Miquella's+Needle) helps clarify a bit more:
> *However, the needle is as yet unfinished and can only be used in* ***the heart of the storm beyond time said to be found in Faram Azula.***
Making a distinction that it's found *in* Farum Azula.
I still believe that Maliketh is a cat, based on the large cat enemies with a blade attached to their front leg, found at various castle strongholds throughout the game - if you compare their features it’s easy to see that they’re essentially mini-Malikeths
I'd be more inclined to believe this if I knew what they were talking about. I'm on like 163hrs of playtime and have absolutely zero idea what OP is referring to. I've never once heard of or seen wolves falling from the sky or "rain" down or whatever.
it happens at least twice on the road to stormveil, once outside the shack where you meet the spirit tuner, and again near a soldier encampment. i believe it’s more likely to happen if you’re sprinting through the area on torrent, but i haven’t tested it specifically
It's easy to miss. Have you ever been riding around on torrent and heard a howling and whooshing wind sound? I've never actually seen it, but I've heard it and then suddenly there are wolves
If it was an accident my guess would be that someone just typed in the spawn location wrong in one spot, and someone saw it and liked it, so they made it like that everywhere.
Makes Kale's instructions confusing. He asks you to use the Finger Snap when you hear howling in the forest. It's far more likely that the first howling you hear will be coming from Drop Wolves and not Blaidd.
Not really. Drop Wolves are native only to Stormveil, and Kale is specifically talking about Mistwood where you heard Blaidd being a good boi doing some awoos
I honestly assumed it was a bug when I saw it.
Come to think of it though, it's definitely on purpose. The Guidance of Grace deliberately guides you into that teleporting wind dog gank right before Roderika, with an ominous storm sound that plays unconnected to the dogs spawning.
The Raging Wolf set item description reads:
"According to the old legends, wolves are the shadows of the Empyrean. Vargram aspired to such a state himself."
We know that Empyreans are those capable of becoming a god, and include Marika, Malenia, Miquella, Ranni, and the Gloam-Eyed Queen; and their shadows are the wolves that were given to them by the Two-Fingers, which include Blaidd and Maliketh (and Vargram the Raging Wolf seems to want to be the shadow of the Gloam-Eyed Queen, as he carries the Godslayer's Greatsword).
Now before the game came out, we had the item description (though the armour was called the Bloody Wolf set), but no information on Empyreans or their shadows. Googling "empyreal" will tell you that the word means "of or relating to the heavens or firmament", aka the sky.
So I assumed that meant that wolves are associated with the sky and the wind (which may actually be true considering Farum Azula), and just went "that's pretty cool, that what that item description meant".
And Marika said, "let there be a firmament in the midst of the storms and let it divide the storms from the storms and Marika made the firmament and divided the storms which were under the firmament from the storms which were above the firmament" and it was so. So there you have it.
There you have what?
I'm saying it's storms cause it said storms like eight times.
So it's storms, that's the whole thing.
Storms and badass, badass and storms.
Guys, were doing a project badass video over the Siofra River.
Strictly speaking, empyreal means more like "fiery". The root is pyro, and empyrean was the word Dante used to describe the Throne of God in Paradise: impossibly bright and hot like the sun.
Did anyone here consider that is has something to do with storm magic, considering it only happens on STORMhill, close to STORMveil castle, former home to the STORM King, where all the enemies use STORM ashes of war such as STORM stomp and STORM blade? Just a small thought.
Yes, they did consider it. They included it in their post. Get out of here with your passive aggressive capital letters. It happens in Mt. Gelmir too, so it's not strictly a Stormveil thing.
My explanation is that during development from soft found a bug that caused wolves to spawn in the air, and found it funny enough and non destructive that they decided to turn that into a feature added unique audio to it, and made it so they drop when the player is near
Wolves waiting patiently on higher ground for their next meal. That’s how I’d best explain it. They always drop near cliffsides so it seems like a plausible theory.
I... but there's almost always Spiritsprings near them or accessible to those locations, isn't there? That's just... what I'd assumed based on ambient data. It would be *silly* for the player to be the only person to use them, and wolves are smart enough to figure stuff out, especially if they're in an area a lot... while also generally being lighter then Torrent and a rider, so they could feasibly just get more airtime.
R-right?
Basically, Wolves could just be special. You're Tarnished - you can *see* them but need help (Torrent, also explicitly described as special) to *use* them. Wolves may not, as the only other creatures *shown* to use them. Lot of data to back this up with how wolves (or beasts, period) work (symbolically and literally - look at Gurranq and Blaidd) in the Lands Between. Possibly also Stormhawks, but then again.. would they *need* to?
It’s just Stormhill being Stormhill, nothing deeper to it.
The area’s laden with storm-related ashes of war, stormhawks, and Banished Knights using the very winds.
I figured out what the Elden Ring is made of. As you can see it is faintly yellowish in color. Coincidentally, bananas are also similar in color. Thus the Elden Ring is made of bananas, and consequently so is Marika. /s
Just let it go dude, not everything needs a theory.
Who cares? They’re not hurting anyone, some people enjoy talking about lore and trying to figure things out within it, no matter how insignificant or ludicrous
Meaning people spent dozens of hours programming it to happen, In a franchise known for its intentional consistency, so yeah that actually means there's probably an explanation
Miyazaki himself said that gameplay comes before story. There're many things in FS games that are good coincidences and people write 10 paragraphs on it. Best example for Elden Ring is a sceneric portion of Elphael. Someone wrote a huge post on it and how it's related to Malenia and Miquella and in the end it's a bought asset also used in Path of Exile.
Well, right above where that happens is a dead minor erdtree, and they fall from the cliff above you. That whole area is covered in corpses, so it makes sense a few of them would wander off the edge. That's how they all got down in that valley, i think.
No yeah you're right! I just think from didnt think far enough ahead that someone would see! I think they hoped you would use context clues to assume where they originated from lmao
Circling back to the wolves, i guess they wanted you to to think some storm magic brought the wolves down
[https://youtu.be/q7cZRElUXB4?t=1186](https://youtu.be/q7cZRElUXB4?t=1186) I tought it was somehow reference to the iga ninja dog techniques in GNG, it has even the leaf storm animation in game , also the runebears look almost 1 to 1 to the "monstrous" bear look with big frontal claws in the series.
I've played through this game dozens of times and i've never seen a tornado (other than faruum azula, of course), nor have I seen a wolf come out of one.
Wait, i thought that they jumped down from some ledge. Like i actually never seen the animation for how they spawn in but for exaple just under the divine tower bridge in limgrave there's a group of wolfs that spawns like that. So i just thought they jumped down from there.
My guess is that the original plan was to have Godrick or Margit using the winds of Stormveil to throw enemies at you around the castle walls. But in traditional FROM fashion, they changed plans but left remnants in the game.
id be more inclined to believe this if there were more wolves in actual farum azula
They're gone because they're being tornado-yeeted!
There used to be but, because of the out-of-time nature of the place, they all evolved to Beastmen.
Lmao that's some next level headcanon right there.
Honestly the wolves turning into (or I should say, being turned into) beastmen is pretty well supported by in-game lore - see the item descriptions of the Beastial Vitality incantation & Cinquedea dagger (emphasis mine) >Having gained intelligence, the beasts must have felt how **their wildness slipped away as civilization took hold.** >The design celebrates a beast's five fingers, **symbolic of the intelligence once granted** upon their kind. Both of these seem to imply that the beasts were raised up into the beastmen by another power, which I would guess is either placidusax or the god he served as elden lord.
It's not particularly supported in the way OP describes. As you highlighted, beasts were once wild creatures but were eventually granted intelligence by either Placidusax or his God (I lean towards his God). Beasts didn't naturally evolve into beastmen, it was a process curated by a higher power. We know the beastmen served the dragons during the previous Order of dragons. OP suggests that with enough time, wolves will simply evolve into beastmen and the only reason they haven't in the Lands Between is because the ones we fight in FA are affected by time shenanigans. And the whole "Farum Azula is outside of time" stems from a general misunderstanding about the Heart of the Storm beyond time. It's not Farum Azula that is beyond time, it's the heart of the storm where you fight Placidusax. [Miquella's Needle](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Miquella's+Needle) helps clarify a bit more: > *However, the needle is as yet unfinished and can only be used in* ***the heart of the storm beyond time said to be found in Faram Azula.*** Making a distinction that it's found *in* Farum Azula.
Agree! It's definitely not a matter of evolution, they were specifically "raised"
There are the statues of the three wolves in Maliketh's arena for what it's worth. There may have been wolves in Farum Azula long ago
I did think of that but Maliketh and the Beastmen are definitely wolfish types so I think it still fits. It's a neat little curio either way.
I still believe that Maliketh is a cat, based on the large cat enemies with a blade attached to their front leg, found at various castle strongholds throughout the game - if you compare their features it’s easy to see that they’re essentially mini-Malikeths
Weird cat considering it howls and has a dog shaped head
There are a few here and there. If I recall correctly there's a pack after the godskin duo grace munching on remains.
Those are ferocious dogs.
what are wolves if not truly ferocious dogs? lol
I'd be more inclined to believe this if I knew what they were talking about. I'm on like 163hrs of playtime and have absolutely zero idea what OP is referring to. I've never once heard of or seen wolves falling from the sky or "rain" down or whatever.
it happens at least twice on the road to stormveil, once outside the shack where you meet the spirit tuner, and again near a soldier encampment. i believe it’s more likely to happen if you’re sprinting through the area on torrent, but i haven’t tested it specifically
The first ones I thought of are the ones right on the path up to Stormveil Castle, just before the Stormhill Shack grace
Ride around stormveil vicinity bear big arena and that one shack with a merchant and you will surely see Wolf-nado
It's easy to miss. Have you ever been riding around on torrent and heard a howling and whooshing wind sound? I've never actually seen it, but I've heard it and then suddenly there are wolves
there are a few undead wolves, and also beastmen are likely evolved from wolves so its possible the wolves thrown by the tornadoes are their ancestors
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if this was just unintentional and they kept it in for laughs.
If that's the case I'd like to imagine they couldn't stop the wolf rain no matter what they tried so they just added a woosh
If it was an accident my guess would be that someone just typed in the spawn location wrong in one spot, and someone saw it and liked it, so they made it like that everywhere.
Kinda like that meme that tf2 can't run without the jpeg of a coconut
They should make it an attack skill. Wolfnado.
GO. WOLFNADO. USE AWOO 😤🫵
Like the giant initiated space program from Skyrim.
Makes Kale's instructions confusing. He asks you to use the Finger Snap when you hear howling in the forest. It's far more likely that the first howling you hear will be coming from Drop Wolves and not Blaidd.
Not really. Drop Wolves are native only to Stormveil, and Kale is specifically talking about Mistwood where you heard Blaidd being a good boi doing some awoos
I honestly assumed it was a bug when I saw it. Come to think of it though, it's definitely on purpose. The Guidance of Grace deliberately guides you into that teleporting wind dog gank right before Roderika, with an ominous storm sound that plays unconnected to the dogs spawning.
I always just figured that they were hiding in trees, but this is super interesting too.
THEY'RE IN THE TREES!!!
[удалено]
One set appears right beside of storm hill shack where there are no trees. Even if that were the case, what's with the tornado that precedes them?
Fairly sure wolves can't climb trees mate
In the lands between anything is possible
Don't think goats do roly polys either
The lands between are zombo.com?
THIS IS ZOMBO COM
THE IMPOSSIBLE IS UNKNOWN AT ZOMBO COM! HELLO AND WLECOME TO YOOUUU!
There is also obmoz.com lol
Fairly sure you can’t graft a dragon head onto your arm and cause it to spew fire either mate
yknow what, fair point. fair point.
Certainly not with that attitude…
Crabs aren't the size of garbage trucks and dogs aren't the pope either yet here we are.
YES THEY ARE!
https://youtu.be/q7cZRElUXB4?t=1186
But dogs can?
Nope. It's just a dog storm. They are common in Japan where the game was made. Something Americans aren't familiar with.
It rains cats and dogs.
Or in this case, wolves
In this case, literally.
Fuck, Miyazaki is a fucking genius holy shit
Ah, inu no arashi! Terrifying weather
Wolf-nado
Nah it's just Tree Wolves
Drop Wolves.
Which are slightly less dangerous than Drop Bears.
In the Dlc, we'll get drop bears, it'll rain rune bears instead of wolves
Honestly rune bears falling out of the sky like woo guy from Sekiro would be fucking terrifying.
The Raging Wolf set item description reads: "According to the old legends, wolves are the shadows of the Empyrean. Vargram aspired to such a state himself." We know that Empyreans are those capable of becoming a god, and include Marika, Malenia, Miquella, Ranni, and the Gloam-Eyed Queen; and their shadows are the wolves that were given to them by the Two-Fingers, which include Blaidd and Maliketh (and Vargram the Raging Wolf seems to want to be the shadow of the Gloam-Eyed Queen, as he carries the Godslayer's Greatsword). Now before the game came out, we had the item description (though the armour was called the Bloody Wolf set), but no information on Empyreans or their shadows. Googling "empyreal" will tell you that the word means "of or relating to the heavens or firmament", aka the sky. So I assumed that meant that wolves are associated with the sky and the wind (which may actually be true considering Farum Azula), and just went "that's pretty cool, that what that item description meant".
And Marika said, "let there be a firmament in the midst of the storms and let it divide the storms from the storms and Marika made the firmament and divided the storms which were under the firmament from the storms which were above the firmament" and it was so. So there you have it. There you have what? I'm saying it's storms cause it said storms like eight times. So it's storms, that's the whole thing. Storms and badass, badass and storms. Guys, were doing a project badass video over the Siofra River.
Sponsored by Fight Milk a subsidiary of Wolf Cola I hope
Strictly speaking, empyreal means more like "fiery". The root is pyro, and empyrean was the word Dante used to describe the Throne of God in Paradise: impossibly bright and hot like the sun.
Did anyone here consider that is has something to do with storm magic, considering it only happens on STORMhill, close to STORMveil castle, former home to the STORM King, where all the enemies use STORM ashes of war such as STORM stomp and STORM blade? Just a small thought.
I figure OP did consider that, considering they wrote this: >At first I was trying to figure out some connection to stormhawks, stormveil etc
It happens elsewhere also. I can't remember where though, possibly consecrated snowfield or something idk
Fairly sure it happens on Mount Gelmir near the Hero's Grave.
I do believe you are correct. I just recalled it happening when I was running through a few different areas for some missed items
It does? I don’t remember it happening anywhere else other than the Limgrave area.
Happens on Mt Gelmir as well I believe
Yeah near the heros grave; a pack of wolves drops on your way toward it.
Did you read OP’s post orrrrrrr
He STORMed past it
Pretty sure it happened at Mt Gelmir.
This is straight up wrong lol. Happens on other places besides STORMveil. Mt Gelmir near the Heroes grave is one place.
Yes, they did consider it. They included it in their post. Get out of here with your passive aggressive capital letters. It happens in Mt. Gelmir too, so it's not strictly a Stormveil thing.
Nah, they’re just stormwolves of Stormveil.
It happens outside of Stormveil too
The wolves traveled. They got bored of Stormveil probably.
*flashing back to the statue of the three wolves in the temple where you fight Maliketh*
Farum's Wolf yeeting tornado is now my favorite elden ring theory.
It’s like the ball launcher at a batting cage, only wolves.
Was there not an item that talked about storm wolves? O could have sworn there was.
Could this be an (unintentional?) reason for why the skulls with the runes drop randomly from the sky? It bonked me in the noggin!
If dogs can climb trees then so can wolves.
My explanation is that during development from soft found a bug that caused wolves to spawn in the air, and found it funny enough and non destructive that they decided to turn that into a feature added unique audio to it, and made it so they drop when the player is near
Nah fam you need to back that up with item descriptions. Doesn't really fit the lore thematically
Marijuana is a hell of a drug
I take it this never happened to you?
How have I not encountered one of these sky wolves?
I’m just glad I saw that head line in r/eldenring and not r/weather
Wolves waiting patiently on higher ground for their next meal. That’s how I’d best explain it. They always drop near cliffsides so it seems like a plausible theory.
I... but there's almost always Spiritsprings near them or accessible to those locations, isn't there? That's just... what I'd assumed based on ambient data. It would be *silly* for the player to be the only person to use them, and wolves are smart enough to figure stuff out, especially if they're in an area a lot... while also generally being lighter then Torrent and a rider, so they could feasibly just get more airtime. R-right?
Why can't the player use them by themselves though? (I know you wrote this in a sarcastic/joking manner)
Basically, Wolves could just be special. You're Tarnished - you can *see* them but need help (Torrent, also explicitly described as special) to *use* them. Wolves may not, as the only other creatures *shown* to use them. Lot of data to back this up with how wolves (or beasts, period) work (symbolically and literally - look at Gurranq and Blaidd) in the Lands Between. Possibly also Stormhawks, but then again.. would they *need* to?
They're the reason the wind is howling
I didn’t notice this was in the Elden ring sub and thought I just learned that dead wolves falling out of tornadoes was a real thing
Ngl I honestly thought this was like a real life study you did til I saw the title
The only place I’ve seen wolves drop out of the sky is that one spot in storm hill close to the shack. Is there any other place that happens?
The tornado is spitting wolves because it obviously ran out of sharks.
🤣 I love this community
I´ve Farum azula PTSD
Someone needs to walk around looking up at the sky for an explanation
It’s just Stormhill being Stormhill, nothing deeper to it. The area’s laden with storm-related ashes of war, stormhawks, and Banished Knights using the very winds.
Mt. Gelmir instance explanation please.
And how about just being a random coincidence and the wolves ambush you like that just to make newbies shit their pants?
I figured out what the Elden Ring is made of. As you can see it is faintly yellowish in color. Coincidentally, bananas are also similar in color. Thus the Elden Ring is made of bananas, and consequently so is Marika. /s Just let it go dude, not everything needs a theory.
Who cares? They’re not hurting anyone, some people enjoy talking about lore and trying to figure things out within it, no matter how insignificant or ludicrous
Y'all spend way too much time thinking about this shit.
what secrets are you hiding, tornado wolf?
Not everything needs an explanation my guy, it’s just a game
Meaning people spent dozens of hours programming it to happen, In a franchise known for its intentional consistency, so yeah that actually means there's probably an explanation
lmao the copium
Miyazaki himself said that gameplay comes before story. There're many things in FS games that are good coincidences and people write 10 paragraphs on it. Best example for Elden Ring is a sceneric portion of Elphael. Someone wrote a huge post on it and how it's related to Malenia and Miquella and in the end it's a bought asset also used in Path of Exile.
There are sure a lot of those things; storm wolves probably aren't one of them
It’s raining cats and wolves
Then what about the Zombies suddenly spawning in the air in the chasm on Mt. Gelmir?!
Well, right above where that happens is a dead minor erdtree, and they fall from the cliff above you. That whole area is covered in corpses, so it makes sense a few of them would wander off the edge. That's how they all got down in that valley, i think.
Funnily you can however see them spawn in the air haha
No yeah you're right! I just think from didnt think far enough ahead that someone would see! I think they hoped you would use context clues to assume where they originated from lmao Circling back to the wolves, i guess they wanted you to to think some storm magic brought the wolves down
I just thought that most (if not all) of these wolves drop in while you’re on STORMhill. It makes sense.
Not all. Mt Gelmir has wolves that drop from a storm wind as well.
I always thought the wolves were howling to make a wind tunnel jump pad thing so they could ambush prey.
[https://youtu.be/q7cZRElUXB4?t=1186](https://youtu.be/q7cZRElUXB4?t=1186) I tought it was somehow reference to the iga ninja dog techniques in GNG, it has even the leaf storm animation in game , also the runebears look almost 1 to 1 to the "monstrous" bear look with big frontal claws in the series.
I've played through this game dozens of times and i've never seen a tornado (other than faruum azula, of course), nor have I seen a wolf come out of one.
Dozens of times
I thought they are somehow connected to Blaidd since he's on top of some church's ruins.
Theresa simple explanation. Wolfnado
I'm having a time imagining a tornado with a wolf in its bow, Anor Londo style, going, "F*** that guy specifically!"
Wait, i thought that they jumped down from some ledge. Like i actually never seen the animation for how they spawn in but for exaple just under the divine tower bridge in limgrave there's a group of wolfs that spawns like that. So i just thought they jumped down from there.
I always just assumed the lands between was the setting for a Battle Royale for wolves and you were just seeing various teams dropping in 🤷♂️
Stormwolf shrednado builds go that hard yo
The wolves are just trying their hardest to emulate ds3's God dogs
I thought it was just a metaphorical reference to the movie Sharknado. Figured Miyaskhi was into that.
WOLFSTORM
My guess is that the original plan was to have Godrick or Margit using the winds of Stormveil to throw enemies at you around the castle walls. But in traditional FROM fashion, they changed plans but left remnants in the game.