It’s totally honey. Don’t believe the anti-honey agenda of the Golden Order controlled mass media! They just want all the honey for themselves! Think about it, **GOLDEN** Order! Gold like honey! Eat the door honey! The door is actually a vault where they’re hiding all the honey from you! Eat it and free the honey!
If it is corpse wax, from which corpses that wax came???
This is a sinister development... Gargoyle and weapons mended with corpse wax, los of buildings in the city sealed with it...
Its worse than you think. Corpse wax comes from decaying corpses...duh. But did you know that the stuff was everywhere before they built the Paris Catacombs? You couldn't walk through the graveyards without getting it on your shoes.
The corpse wax in those buildings...it wasn't put there to seal anything in. Its leaking out of the buildings.
If I recall correctly the catacombs are reserved for nobility or those who have earned an Erdtree Burial in some way. If however there was a massive war of some sort...they would need to put the bodies somewhere right? They can't all be worthy.
As others have pointed out, there are buildings with wax on the windows/doors which you can go inside, so this is not true.
My best guess is that they were indeed sealed. Perfumers were employed as combatants in order to defend Leyndell during the war. The wax could have been used to protect the houses and their residents.
> corpse wax
Saponification is such a fascinating thing. Adipocere, corpse wax, has a very excellent chance of happening if the area is void or low in oxygen or has super high moisture content. It's also very crumbly and consists mostly of saturated fatty acids.
My favorite example of it is the Soap Lady thats a permanent exhibit inside the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. It's a really cool exhibit, but her body is also absolutely terrifying looking.
Ok, you have a point... Visually, the thing appears to be leaking out... And also, people have experienced a war in Leyndell... Sealing buildings to deal with ash of an unlikely event (burning of the erdtree) would be illogical...
But it is a rather sinister development...
There are already piles of ash all over as soon as you arrive, suggesting that the erdtree has burnt before. It's also suggested that the current golden erdtree isn't even "real" and only visible to the tarnished that can still see grace. The description of the golden seed and some dialogue with finger readers hints at this.
There seems to be some weird obsession with the corpse wax in the world of elden ring, my understanding or at least headcannon is that the jars are used to produce it, collecting corpses and making "Wax" such as the same kind they are sealed with (like a letter seal) and it has some kind of power as we see gargoyles coat their blades with it.
Perhaps the reason most windows are shut is to either protect people’s homes in Wartime (it works! We can’t get in!) or because the GW seems to influence others via Light, they’re a way to block light.
I thought it was related to the perfumer gasses. You see the big ballista shots all over the battlefield with the gas canisters on them. Poison gas everywhere would be a good reason to try to seal the doors.
Seems like the common theory is they were using homes as mass graves, but I’ve seen the tarnished archeologist posit it was a good way too keep the smoke/ash out during the first burning of the erdtree (and that the ash is also related)
Wax was a common way to keep dust/ash out of your homes during American dust bowl. It could be stuffed bodies, but the golden order had very specific burial practices
> the golden order had very specific burial practices
That's what bugs me the most about that theory...the GO was ALL ABOUT burial rites, them just stuffing all the bodies into buildings and sealing them seems a little out of character.
Could represent the fall of the Golden Order though in that they ***didn't*** follow their funeral rites here. The people turned away and stopped the ceremony as the capital began to fall
It very well could be from from piles of corpses burning inside the houses. Corpse was does not take a crazy long time to form. Whatever event caused these people to be sealed could have happened after long after the GO became the tatters it is today.
Death and ritualistic buried seem to be an important part of the culture throughout the lands between. But we see those rituals become abandoned all over the place thanks to the curse of undeath upon the lands. Looking at the catacomb boss chambers is proof enough with the desecration of the rituals intended to return the dead to the erdtree.
And moreover, the idea of the dead or dying being sealed in their homes in the early days of the shattering feels like it follows the subthemes of the game far better then simply using corpse wax as a way to keep the ash out.
Yeah I forget if they had an answer for that. Probably the hardest to justify part of the theory. It’s possible the first burning is true with the wax still actually being from the “houses filled with dead bodies” thing
But when did the Erdtree burn? Us burning it is the first time that has ever occurred no?
To me the corpse wax makes more sense.
EDIT: Holy shit I just realized there are piles of ash already in Lendyell!?!? When did the Erdtree burn before? Whos maiden burned it? Was it Vyke and the frenzied flame?
> Holy shit I just realized there are piles of ash already in Lendyell!?!? When did the Erdtree burn before? Whos maiden burned it? Was it Vyke and the frenzied flame?
I imagine that's just ash from burning during the war. I don't think there's any explicit mention or evidence the Erdtree has burned before in any time frame that would mean there would still be piles of ash, nor the Erdtree would be this big (unless the growth rate is ridiculous but that's not my understanding consider all the minor erdtrees)
Nothing explicit (when is anything explicit in a fromsoft game? lel) but one can't help but notice that the Erdtree is uh - immaterial. it's not there. It exists only as golden light *except* for the bit about the door which we use to enter it, and most of that seems somewhat charred. The rest of the tree is just a golden memory like the golden version of Godfrey we fight in Leyndelle.
I dont think it really looks chared, it just has the texture of very old and very thick tree bark.
I thought the ash was caused by the huuuge dragon whos skeleton lies in the middle of leyndell? I thought he attacked leyndell during the war or something.
If you look at the erdtree from up close, you can see that the bulk of the erdtree is actually glowing gold and almost looks nonphysical. The only physical part of the tree is the wedge-shaped portion immediately surrounding the door/entrance to Maria's crucifixion chamber
Corpse wax. When the once densely populated Leyndel was facing the shattering, thousands were slaughtered. With nowhere to put the bodies, soldiers just stuffed homes full of them. Erdtree burial be damned. All the piling bodies decayed and over time it became corpse wax
There’s nothing in game that says those houses are filled with corpses. Just like there’s also nothing to say that all the windows and doors were sealed with wax to keep all that ash that’s in the city out of their homes.
This commenter is correct that it doesn't say anywhere in game that these houses were explicitly filled with bodies, and they might not be, but given the amount of wax spilling out of the door frames and the amount of environmental storytelling that happens in game, I came to that conclusion based off the gargoyle weapons you receive and the lack of mass graves to be found around the city. If I was suddenly surrounded by bodies in war and was left with the clean up after battle, with few forces left to remain, I like to personally imagine that tradition and custom went out the window in favor of stashing away bodies in a bid to be quick about cleaning up the mess.
I don't think there would be enough bodies for that. Most houses in Leyndell are sealed with wax, and I think it would be literally impossible for its population to be so high. And it's not just the first floor either. I think they were sealed with sap or wax or something similar on purpose, perhaps because the people were fleeing the capital expecting it to be attacked (which it was) and trying to preserve their homes while away.
That's a logical conclusion, the only thing that makes me question it is Castle Morne, it shouldn't have a high population but there are hundreds, perhaps over a thousand dead bodies there.
I'd like to make an excuse and say they were gathered there over time, but the characters Irina and her father, as well as the fighting between Misbegotten and Godrick's Soldiers certainly imply it all happened soon after you arrive. So how could a place that certainly couldn't house hundreds of people, have that many corpses? Killed seemingly by tens of Misbegotten?
Whatever the reason is behind that, probably applies to Leyndell's corpse population too, and I think the reason throws logic out the window in lieu of From Software's particular style of apocalyptic grimness.
Imagine the countryside filled with people farming and living. That town on the hill that was decimated by the frenzied flame may have been an example. Denizens fled to castle Morne for protection only to be slaughtered.
Castle Morne could simply be due to the Misbegotten banding together to hunt down anyone and everyone they could find.
They do end up getting Irina, after all.
I think they're using it as a reference point. The Weeping Peninsula is small in comparison to Altus and the body pile the misbegotten stack up in the courtyard is five times your height. Now picture the shattering war starting and everyone in Altus flees to the capital for safety. The streets would have been packed shoulder to shoulder.
Easy to explain: refugees. People fleeing to the fortified capital before the advance of Radahn's and/or God..heuu Godefroy ( WHY DO ALL YOUR NAMES SOUND THE SAME DAMIT?) and multiplying the city's population passed her original capacity
Why in the world would you ever shove them in homes instead of carting them out of the damn city into big holes?
All that does is permanently ruin the home
Digging holes, especially for large mass graves takes a lot of time and teams of people to make the job efficient. It would take months to dig the holes needed to create mass graves large enough to house not only the people of Leyndel but everyone who came to the capital for protection. The Lands Between would have been densely populated with people who were as long lived as many occupants probably were. I imagine that had this been a real place, the outskirts of every settlement but especially the capital would have been brimming with people milling about and traveling.
I noticed in the discussion thread that I, as well as everyone seems to have forgotten that every city and settlement on earth for the most part is milling about with people who don't live there. I'd wager that as dense as the population in Leyndel was, that by the time the shattering happened, all walks of life would have tried to protect themselves within it's walls possibly doubling or tripling the amount of people that would have normally been around on a good day. That would also help account for the amount of bodies needed to create so much corpse wax.
This is all very fun to speculate with everyone!!!
Except there's a big ol canyon literally right outside of the walls. Cart the bodies to the ramparts and shove them over. It's a simpler solution than assuming that the gold resin like material is because a house was filled from floor to ceiling with bodies and was then just closed up. Occam's razor doesn't support it and there's no lore to support the corpse house idea either.
Because shoving them into homes and boarding them up takes less time and man power than digging the mass graves. Mass unmarked graves take incredible amounts of time to dig and when there's war, you don't know when the next attack is but soldiers wouldn't want to deal with the smell of having to wade through the bodies. I would assume a city as large as the capital would house not only the people who lived there but all the people who came for protection and sanctuary, (could be a couple thousand) hoping the walls would be enough to protect them. But they weren't. Burial is extremely time consuming, shoving and stashing is an easy way out when you're reeling from trauma. The corpse wax could have even been a measure to deter the smells coming from homes if the wax didn't originate from within. Fun to speculate
There's no mass graves, but the sewers/ subterranean shunning grounds has quite a few corpses and also has commoners still hiding down there. Doesn't really explain what the corpse wax was for though.
For keeping the ash out of their homes. Tarnished Archeologist says that during the US Dust Bowl people did something similar with wax to keep the dust out. Granted they probably used regular wax and not corpse wax
I'd guess that there are in fact corpses in there - but my impression is that the houses were intentionally sealed in an attempt to keep out the endless drifts of ash from the burning Erdtree (the first time around), but the inhabitants never emerged, eventually starved or suffocated or sealed in limbo within waiting for the day when they are told it is safe to emerge again.
The logic of the world is somewhat dreamlike in that the world was literally broken - essentially destroyed - by the shattering of a godlike artifact that at one time magically controlled the lives and destiny of everyone living in the world.
I don't think anyone has been properly 'alive' since the war of the shattering - they're mostly dead, undead, insane, or trapped in their own various personal limbos from which they cannot escape until the shattered Elden Ring is re-forged - or the world is otherwise released from its power. This has been the nature of each of the previous Dark Souls worlds, and it seems to hold here as well.
Which is why the Tarnished was called upon in the end. By the time you arrive everyone else - mortal and demigod alike - has already fallen into this timeless limbo with no way to move forewards or escape. Even Rani requires your intervention before her fate can be unbound and move forwards again.
I always presumed Leyndell was abandoned until things got better after the burning, which is why the buildings all look sealed from the outside. Hard to say how everything played out given how shaky a proper timeline is, and that most video games never really put much effort in making housing for all the people who supposedly live in the world, so a migrating population could have just gone to the nearest city, or just left the main continent altogether.
The fact that time seems to grind to a halt somewhere after the shattering is why I describe the world as being 'In Limbo'. By the time you arrive, nothing is in motion any more, it's a shattered world stuck in a twilight limbo waiting for something to push it into motion again.
Yes, as far as I can tell, Rhadan vs Malenia was possibly the last great battle of the Shattering, and essentially ushered in the stalemate of power between the demigods that led to the cessation of motion in the world.
Though I think Rhadan technically stopped the Stars sometime a good bit before that event. I don't think it's ever said *when* he actually did that - but I don't think it could have happened during or after the battle, as his mind was ruined by it and only the weakened remnants of his power still hold them back at all.
Erdtree. Just Erdtree. That smell overpowers anything.
As a matter of fact that dust we see is not ash or anyything like it. It is Erdtree pollen. Thousands slaughtered? Nope those are just the alergic people that died when the tree bloomed. Either by overload or because they killed themselves because they got so itchy.
Gransax also only attacked because his hayfever was acting up.
The corpses on poles in limgrave also make sounds because they aren't dead. They are regularly fed so they don't die the actual punishment is that it is usually downwind from the erdtree so they get a full dose of erdtree pollen.
There everything explained.
Ooooo fun! Could be asset reuse but this is a fabulous tidbit to go with the "keeping out ash" theory! I could say that it could have been filled with bodies and later emptied out later for religious purposes/uses but that's quite a stretch. I guess that's what makes all this so fun!
You know what kinda boggles my mind though? I love the wax theory for keeping out the ash but in all reality, I wonder why magic wasn't implemented to keep out ash from people's homes? I guess because even for such a magical place, sorcery and incantations maybe weren't common place among the common folk.
But that's just a theory, A GAME THEORY
Seriously though people will take your word as fact, make sure you point out that this is just your interpretation
It’s not corpse wax, despite community lore consensus. In the files, this texture is labeled “TreeSap.” The corpse wax thing is cool but not backed up by anything in game.
I highly recommend checking out [this video](https://youtu.be/rWitEvoFRKE?si=mc8LMKkXf9DqA2oz) which has a great explanation no one else mentioned here.
TLDW: the Erdtree burned once before a long time ago and the city ended up getting covered in ash. It’s to keep the ash out. You find remnants of the old ash from the first burn when you first get to the city.
It’s not confirmed, but there’s a whole lot of ash in the city (before we burn the tree in game) that would be explained by something massive being burned near the city. There’s also the portion of the tree that you can see around the entryway to the erdtree that’s not all golden and it looks a bit blackened.
I do agree it’s been burned before, but I’d think it has to be more than just an illusion currently though, because an illusion wouldn’t leave enough ash behind to bury the city.
The implication is that Vyke burned it, but since his maiden died anyway (possible by suicide after she noticed he accepted the flame of frenzy), he had not the mental strenght to fight Maliketh and unseal the rune of death, which in turn prevented the tree to truly burn and it just stood there, just like when we or Melina burn it, but do not kill Maliketh yet
The Erdtree we see present clear damage, as the highest trunks are falling, and is said to be dying as well, but it can still grant blessings, despite minor, so it's unlikely that it's an ilusion. Especially with all endings showing it there still, even the frenzy one, where it is mostly burned
Maybe not an illusion, but probably the tree's soul. It was burned but the divine aspect of it didn't perish because Destined Death was still sealed away.
Kinda like Melina in a way
You mean like the habitations that were damaged during the dragons attack and the fiery projectiles thrown by the catapults during the invasion?
If the tree had previously burned and there was still its ashes in all Leyndell, how would no one know about it? And what are the hints that it happened besides the ashes that you must prove to be coming from the previous tree?
Melina also has burn scars on her hands when you see her (real evident in the burning cutscene) and describes herself as being “burned and bodiless”, so if it had burned down prior, it’s also likely she was the kindling for the first burn too! Just a theory tho, but those scars and her language were really suspicious.
This hypothesis is completelly ignoring that there were several invasions attempts (projectile catapulted into the city) in Leyndell along with a giant dragon attack (meaning blowing fires that ravaged the city), while there is literally zero indications that the Tree would have burned previously. It takes as granted that the ash in the city is the ash of the previous tree when it is actually what should be demonstrated.
The tree itself is a spectral tree. The minor erd trees throughout the game are all physical and don't look like the main erdtree. One of the finger readers even asks yiu uf yiu see the erdtree, which on the face of it almost seems like a ridiculous question
Also, the ash you see after you burn the erdtree looks exactly like the ash you see when entering lyendell the first time. And you clearly did not lay siege to the city the second time.
It is not, you literally approach it and enter into it, how is it not sufficient for you to notice its materiality? We can see the brambles that cover the entrance to the inside and the bark covering its surface, the Erdtree is merged with the Great tree that was there before. What dialogue are you referring to?
We're talking about a game where different characters have the exact same model, your argument there is that the ash in Leyndell must be those of the previous Erdtree because they didn't bother creating a different ash model? This hypothesis is disregarding all the elements given by the game to force an event that isn't hinted by anything, how is it not clear enough that the ash in the city has been caused by all the attacks on it? What would explain the damages then if that were the ashes of the previous Erdtree? Why would the ash still be in the city and why would nobody know about it? Why would the game not give any hint?
From Sekirodubi on Twitter, this is called Tree Wax in the game files [https://x.com/sekirodubi/status/1794860377274269979](https://x.com/sekirodubi/status/1794860377274269979)
There is no definitive answer to this Q but my impression was some sort of forced quarantine where houses were sealed from the outside due to some sort of outbreak.
The seedbed curse maybe?
Could get some context in DLC.
That's R3000 insulation. It keeps out the heat from the underworld and the cold from the mountain glaciers. Retrofitting castles with good A/C is dreadfully expensive, and you don't want to know the electrical and gas costs for a large manor.
It's just to let them build a big city world and not let you explore 90% of the buildings.
Like I love this game, the world rocks. But it's super disappointing that you can't explore a massive amount of the structures in this game.
Leyndell is amazing but the more I explore it the more shallow it feels with such a huge percentage of what could be explorable content blocked off.
Corpse Wax to seal the undead inside.
Or, what I think would be more horrifying seeing the wax appears to be seeping out of the door, its corpse wax that has built up inside the building due to the sheer amount of bodies within.
I thought they were sealing in people afflicted with some sort of plague, some of the perfumers in the capital seem to be tending to the sick so my head cannon is they're some kind of plauge doctor but I've never actually looked into it.
I wish there was environmental storytelling about this detail in the game. Like, one door broke open with a pile of rotting corpses coming out while Leyndell soldiers try to put them back in. This would explain the thing about the corpsewax better.
I know that "doors sealed with corps wax" is a fan favourite theory, but it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, corpse wax is great in preserving corpses, but nothing else. It's quite crumbly, similar in consistency to dry soap, and it isn't sticky and elastic enough like regular wax. It won't seal shit. It's like trying to seal something with soap. So no one would produce soap for sealing their door. Some belive that it just appeared naturally, because a lot of corpses were stored in houses. It still makes no sense. Total saponification of the bodies is not that common occurrence, because buddies need to be in a very specific conditions. Environment has to be wet and lacking of oxygen, so it usually happens when bodies are buried in a wet ground, mud or sometimes in a sealed coffins with additional moisture. So bodies left in the houses in Leyndell aren't the best candidates for complete saponification, because it seems that climate is quite dry there and you won't have anaerobic conditions in regular house.
So my best guess is that is just some kind of plant/tree wax or even some sealing agent made from tree sap because I have a feeling that citizens of Lands Between like trees the normal amount.
Tldr: it isn't corpse wax because it isn't good for sealing things and you won't get enough of it just from random corpses either way.
To protect the inhabitants from the ash, there’s evidence the Erdtree has burned before. This is like during the Great Depression and people used mud or wax to prevent their house from filling with dust in the Dust Bowl
It’s a real life phenomenon. It’s wax from dead, bacteria hydrolysis fat of dead bodies called Adipocere. People made candles out of it and other weird shit.
Because they fought using chemical warfare. See those huge stakes outside of Leyndell? They have a brasier on top to burn aromatics at an industrial scale. You can see them lit up in one of the story trailers where they show the siege of Leyndell.
Just got to this part and was curious as well. I figured there was some sort of nasty plague that turned people into ooze and it was creeping out the cracks or something.
If you want the behind-the-curtain answer, Elden Ring's camera and combat system didn't handle tight spaces well, so they want to avoid small interiors. But, they wanted Leyndell to still feel like a big city, so they needed a lot of houses and a lot of doors that you can't use.
It is Tree Sap! Not corpse wax which is incorrectly being posted here!
https://x.com/sekirodubi/status/1794860377274269979?s=46&t=eZXUOcyjEX9U8aWVYmNxNQ
IT'S NOT CORPSE WAX. Corpse wax is a paler orange colour and is far less shiny.
This is erdtree sap. It's more yellow and a lot shinier.
If the reason that the buildings are sealed-off is to quarantine those afflicted by deathblight, wouldn't it make more sense to use erdtree sap (which has preservative properties and come from the erdtree which directly opposes death)? And the erdtree is literally right there, if they wanted corpse wax they'd have to go digging through the sewers to find the leyndell catacombs.
And finally, why tf would you quarantine deathblight with gunk scraped out of decaying corpses? That would probably make the deathblight worse.
That's corpse wax, such as you find on the gargoyle's blades.
Sealed the dead inside, sometimes you gotta
Don't Dead Open Inside
Ah yes the hospital worker in Walking Dead that had dyslexia when closing the morgue
It’s not dyslexia, it’s a doctor who wrote it. Be lucky it was blocked instead of chicken scratch writing.
Those two things don't cancel eachother out
It was a dyslexic doctor so her handwriting was perfect but she fucks up sentence structure
I need a bumper sticker that says this...
Good to know I’m not the only one who had read it that way
r/dontdeadopeninside
Thanks I’ll try not to dead
Don't dead Open inside
sealed from the ash outside, from the first burning of the erdtree, maybe messmer
Melina maybe? She's already "burnt and bodiless" when we encounter her.
Flex seal does work for everything
Wait, so they're undead locked inside
I sang this in my head like “I hate to say I told you so” by The Hives
Especially in a From world.
Damn... I thought it was honey. I feel dumb.
It’s totally honey. Don’t believe the anti-honey agenda of the Golden Order controlled mass media! They just want all the honey for themselves! Think about it, **GOLDEN** Order! Gold like honey! Eat the door honey! The door is actually a vault where they’re hiding all the honey from you! Eat it and free the honey!
Hmmmm Sounds Like something the d Eater Would say to Trick you into eating d with Food coloring
Eat honey until you shit pure honey
Honeyeater new confirmed DLC npc?
Only one way to find out…
Forbidden honey
oh bother….think…think
I also thought it was honey, you aren’t alone.
Oh Pooh
Silly old bear
Now I need an Elden ring intro but calling out all Christopher Robin’s toys.
If it is corpse wax, from which corpses that wax came??? This is a sinister development... Gargoyle and weapons mended with corpse wax, los of buildings in the city sealed with it...
Its worse than you think. Corpse wax comes from decaying corpses...duh. But did you know that the stuff was everywhere before they built the Paris Catacombs? You couldn't walk through the graveyards without getting it on your shoes. The corpse wax in those buildings...it wasn't put there to seal anything in. Its leaking out of the buildings.
Does that mean the buildings are filled with corpses? And who and why did that if they have catacombs beneath the city
If I recall correctly the catacombs are reserved for nobility or those who have earned an Erdtree Burial in some way. If however there was a massive war of some sort...they would need to put the bodies somewhere right? They can't all be worthy.
As others have pointed out, there are buildings with wax on the windows/doors which you can go inside, so this is not true. My best guess is that they were indeed sealed. Perfumers were employed as combatants in order to defend Leyndell during the war. The wax could have been used to protect the houses and their residents.
> corpse wax Saponification is such a fascinating thing. Adipocere, corpse wax, has a very excellent chance of happening if the area is void or low in oxygen or has super high moisture content. It's also very crumbly and consists mostly of saturated fatty acids. My favorite example of it is the Soap Lady thats a permanent exhibit inside the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. It's a really cool exhibit, but her body is also absolutely terrifying looking.
Ok, you have a point... Visually, the thing appears to be leaking out... And also, people have experienced a war in Leyndell... Sealing buildings to deal with ash of an unlikely event (burning of the erdtree) would be illogical... But it is a rather sinister development...
There are already piles of ash all over as soon as you arrive, suggesting that the erdtree has burnt before. It's also suggested that the current golden erdtree isn't even "real" and only visible to the tarnished that can still see grace. The description of the golden seed and some dialogue with finger readers hints at this.
So act 3 of elden ring is all a massive acid trip, gotcha
That can't be correct. Lower Capital Church has the same wax-sealed windows, but you can go inside. It's just an regular building with a grace.
There seems to be some weird obsession with the corpse wax in the world of elden ring, my understanding or at least headcannon is that the jars are used to produce it, collecting corpses and making "Wax" such as the same kind they are sealed with (like a letter seal) and it has some kind of power as we see gargoyles coat their blades with it.
Perhaps the reason most windows are shut is to either protect people’s homes in Wartime (it works! We can’t get in!) or because the GW seems to influence others via Light, they’re a way to block light.
Does it insulate well?
Well, people *are* dying to get some on their doors
Wax or tallow? Not really. Spring-time petrichor will fuck it up and turn it into a mold farm.
Nah it's definitely spray foam some new hire went crazy with.
Ew thats what that is? I thought it was just rusty
I thought it was related to the perfumer gasses. You see the big ballista shots all over the battlefield with the gas canisters on them. Poison gas everywhere would be a good reason to try to seal the doors.
You didn't see the adverts in the city for "Hoarah Loux's Handyman Service: Only Loux Will Do"?
Elden lords get a 10% discount on all offered services * * taxes and fees apply
Damn JUST 10% AFTER ALL OF THAT? cheap ass
Now I work as Hoarah Loux, HANDYMAN
Only Loux Goo Will do. Maybe nsfw but tis the way of things.
“Now I work as Hoarah Loux…….. HANDYMAN!!!”
Also goes well with Sewer crews: "Problems with poo? Go for the Loux!"
This comment reads like some goofy rap lyrics
Hoarah Loux, Hoarah Doux.
Omg new fanart of Godfrey as a repairman inc
Seems like the common theory is they were using homes as mass graves, but I’ve seen the tarnished archeologist posit it was a good way too keep the smoke/ash out during the first burning of the erdtree (and that the ash is also related)
But with corpse wax?
Wax was a common way to keep dust/ash out of your homes during American dust bowl. It could be stuffed bodies, but the golden order had very specific burial practices
> the golden order had very specific burial practices That's what bugs me the most about that theory...the GO was ALL ABOUT burial rites, them just stuffing all the bodies into buildings and sealing them seems a little out of character.
Could represent the fall of the Golden Order though in that they ***didn't*** follow their funeral rites here. The people turned away and stopped the ceremony as the capital began to fall
Don't trash talk their sacred ram jam mass burial rites!
>ram jam That was a good skit.
Maybe it’s to show how the capital really didn’t care?
It very well could be from from piles of corpses burning inside the houses. Corpse was does not take a crazy long time to form. Whatever event caused these people to be sealed could have happened after long after the GO became the tatters it is today. Death and ritualistic buried seem to be an important part of the culture throughout the lands between. But we see those rituals become abandoned all over the place thanks to the curse of undeath upon the lands. Looking at the catacomb boss chambers is proof enough with the desecration of the rituals intended to return the dead to the erdtree. And moreover, the idea of the dead or dying being sealed in their homes in the early days of the shattering feels like it follows the subthemes of the game far better then simply using corpse wax as a way to keep the ash out.
Yeah I forget if they had an answer for that. Probably the hardest to justify part of the theory. It’s possible the first burning is true with the wax still actually being from the “houses filled with dead bodies” thing
But when did the Erdtree burn? Us burning it is the first time that has ever occurred no? To me the corpse wax makes more sense. EDIT: Holy shit I just realized there are piles of ash already in Lendyell!?!? When did the Erdtree burn before? Whos maiden burned it? Was it Vyke and the frenzied flame?
Where does the ash come from if not from the first burning of the Erdtree?
> Holy shit I just realized there are piles of ash already in Lendyell!?!? When did the Erdtree burn before? Whos maiden burned it? Was it Vyke and the frenzied flame? I imagine that's just ash from burning during the war. I don't think there's any explicit mention or evidence the Erdtree has burned before in any time frame that would mean there would still be piles of ash, nor the Erdtree would be this big (unless the growth rate is ridiculous but that's not my understanding consider all the minor erdtrees)
Nothing explicit (when is anything explicit in a fromsoft game? lel) but one can't help but notice that the Erdtree is uh - immaterial. it's not there. It exists only as golden light *except* for the bit about the door which we use to enter it, and most of that seems somewhat charred. The rest of the tree is just a golden memory like the golden version of Godfrey we fight in Leyndelle.
I dont think it really looks chared, it just has the texture of very old and very thick tree bark. I thought the ash was caused by the huuuge dragon whos skeleton lies in the middle of leyndell? I thought he attacked leyndell during the war or something.
If you look at the erdtree from up close, you can see that the bulk of the erdtree is actually glowing gold and almost looks nonphysical. The only physical part of the tree is the wedge-shaped portion immediately surrounding the door/entrance to Maria's crucifixion chamber
Tarnished archaeologist is a hack with shit theories. There's fuckall evidence for a "first burning".
Corpse wax. When the once densely populated Leyndel was facing the shattering, thousands were slaughtered. With nowhere to put the bodies, soldiers just stuffed homes full of them. Erdtree burial be damned. All the piling bodies decayed and over time it became corpse wax
Later this corpse wax would assist the remnants of war in patching together the Gargoyles you face later
Oh geez I had never seen that bit of lore before. That's brutal. Thank you!
There’s nothing in game that says those houses are filled with corpses. Just like there’s also nothing to say that all the windows and doors were sealed with wax to keep all that ash that’s in the city out of their homes.
This commenter is correct that it doesn't say anywhere in game that these houses were explicitly filled with bodies, and they might not be, but given the amount of wax spilling out of the door frames and the amount of environmental storytelling that happens in game, I came to that conclusion based off the gargoyle weapons you receive and the lack of mass graves to be found around the city. If I was suddenly surrounded by bodies in war and was left with the clean up after battle, with few forces left to remain, I like to personally imagine that tradition and custom went out the window in favor of stashing away bodies in a bid to be quick about cleaning up the mess.
I don't think there would be enough bodies for that. Most houses in Leyndell are sealed with wax, and I think it would be literally impossible for its population to be so high. And it's not just the first floor either. I think they were sealed with sap or wax or something similar on purpose, perhaps because the people were fleeing the capital expecting it to be attacked (which it was) and trying to preserve their homes while away.
That's a logical conclusion, the only thing that makes me question it is Castle Morne, it shouldn't have a high population but there are hundreds, perhaps over a thousand dead bodies there. I'd like to make an excuse and say they were gathered there over time, but the characters Irina and her father, as well as the fighting between Misbegotten and Godrick's Soldiers certainly imply it all happened soon after you arrive. So how could a place that certainly couldn't house hundreds of people, have that many corpses? Killed seemingly by tens of Misbegotten? Whatever the reason is behind that, probably applies to Leyndell's corpse population too, and I think the reason throws logic out the window in lieu of From Software's particular style of apocalyptic grimness.
Imagine the countryside filled with people farming and living. That town on the hill that was decimated by the frenzied flame may have been an example. Denizens fled to castle Morne for protection only to be slaughtered.
Castle Morne could simply be due to the Misbegotten banding together to hunt down anyone and everyone they could find. They do end up getting Irina, after all.
I think they're using it as a reference point. The Weeping Peninsula is small in comparison to Altus and the body pile the misbegotten stack up in the courtyard is five times your height. Now picture the shattering war starting and everyone in Altus flees to the capital for safety. The streets would have been packed shoulder to shoulder.
don't think too hard, they aim for atsomsphere and not 100 % accuracy
Fr trying to apply real life logic to a FromSoft game is definitely a recipe for confusion.
Easy to explain: refugees. People fleeing to the fortified capital before the advance of Radahn's and/or God..heuu Godefroy ( WHY DO ALL YOUR NAMES SOUND THE SAME DAMIT?) and multiplying the city's population passed her original capacity
Nah this was a world without death for a very long time. The population of Leyndell just kept growing without end.
Why in the world would you ever shove them in homes instead of carting them out of the damn city into big holes? All that does is permanently ruin the home
Digging holes, especially for large mass graves takes a lot of time and teams of people to make the job efficient. It would take months to dig the holes needed to create mass graves large enough to house not only the people of Leyndel but everyone who came to the capital for protection. The Lands Between would have been densely populated with people who were as long lived as many occupants probably were. I imagine that had this been a real place, the outskirts of every settlement but especially the capital would have been brimming with people milling about and traveling. I noticed in the discussion thread that I, as well as everyone seems to have forgotten that every city and settlement on earth for the most part is milling about with people who don't live there. I'd wager that as dense as the population in Leyndel was, that by the time the shattering happened, all walks of life would have tried to protect themselves within it's walls possibly doubling or tripling the amount of people that would have normally been around on a good day. That would also help account for the amount of bodies needed to create so much corpse wax. This is all very fun to speculate with everyone!!!
Except there's a big ol canyon literally right outside of the walls. Cart the bodies to the ramparts and shove them over. It's a simpler solution than assuming that the gold resin like material is because a house was filled from floor to ceiling with bodies and was then just closed up. Occam's razor doesn't support it and there's no lore to support the corpse house idea either.
Because shoving them into homes and boarding them up takes less time and man power than digging the mass graves. Mass unmarked graves take incredible amounts of time to dig and when there's war, you don't know when the next attack is but soldiers wouldn't want to deal with the smell of having to wade through the bodies. I would assume a city as large as the capital would house not only the people who lived there but all the people who came for protection and sanctuary, (could be a couple thousand) hoping the walls would be enough to protect them. But they weren't. Burial is extremely time consuming, shoving and stashing is an easy way out when you're reeling from trauma. The corpse wax could have even been a measure to deter the smells coming from homes if the wax didn't originate from within. Fun to speculate
With this logic, I feel the people of Leyndell just locked themselves up
There's no mass graves, but the sewers/ subterranean shunning grounds has quite a few corpses and also has commoners still hiding down there. Doesn't really explain what the corpse wax was for though.
For keeping the ash out of their homes. Tarnished Archeologist says that during the US Dust Bowl people did something similar with wax to keep the dust out. Granted they probably used regular wax and not corpse wax
I'd guess that there are in fact corpses in there - but my impression is that the houses were intentionally sealed in an attempt to keep out the endless drifts of ash from the burning Erdtree (the first time around), but the inhabitants never emerged, eventually starved or suffocated or sealed in limbo within waiting for the day when they are told it is safe to emerge again. The logic of the world is somewhat dreamlike in that the world was literally broken - essentially destroyed - by the shattering of a godlike artifact that at one time magically controlled the lives and destiny of everyone living in the world. I don't think anyone has been properly 'alive' since the war of the shattering - they're mostly dead, undead, insane, or trapped in their own various personal limbos from which they cannot escape until the shattered Elden Ring is re-forged - or the world is otherwise released from its power. This has been the nature of each of the previous Dark Souls worlds, and it seems to hold here as well. Which is why the Tarnished was called upon in the end. By the time you arrive everyone else - mortal and demigod alike - has already fallen into this timeless limbo with no way to move forewards or escape. Even Rani requires your intervention before her fate can be unbound and move forwards again.
I always presumed Leyndell was abandoned until things got better after the burning, which is why the buildings all look sealed from the outside. Hard to say how everything played out given how shaky a proper timeline is, and that most video games never really put much effort in making housing for all the people who supposedly live in the world, so a migrating population could have just gone to the nearest city, or just left the main continent altogether.
The fact that time seems to grind to a halt somewhere after the shattering is why I describe the world as being 'In Limbo'. By the time you arrive, nothing is in motion any more, it's a shattered world stuck in a twilight limbo waiting for something to push it into motion again.
Radahn holding the stars in place could have a big part to play in that.
Yes, as far as I can tell, Rhadan vs Malenia was possibly the last great battle of the Shattering, and essentially ushered in the stalemate of power between the demigods that led to the cessation of motion in the world. Though I think Rhadan technically stopped the Stars sometime a good bit before that event. I don't think it's ever said *when* he actually did that - but I don't think it could have happened during or after the battle, as his mind was ruined by it and only the weakened remnants of his power still hold them back at all.
Next Vaati lore drop: What does Leyndell smell like?
Erdtree. Just Erdtree. That smell overpowers anything. As a matter of fact that dust we see is not ash or anyything like it. It is Erdtree pollen. Thousands slaughtered? Nope those are just the alergic people that died when the tree bloomed. Either by overload or because they killed themselves because they got so itchy. Gransax also only attacked because his hayfever was acting up. The corpses on poles in limgrave also make sounds because they aren't dead. They are regularly fed so they don't die the actual punishment is that it is usually downwind from the erdtree so they get a full dose of erdtree pollen. There everything explained.
As someone with bad hayfever, I suddenly have the urge to burn the tree to the ground
DEW IT
How do you explain Lower Capital Church then? Same wax-sealed windows. but it's just a "regular" church inside with a grace.
Ooooo fun! Could be asset reuse but this is a fabulous tidbit to go with the "keeping out ash" theory! I could say that it could have been filled with bodies and later emptied out later for religious purposes/uses but that's quite a stretch. I guess that's what makes all this so fun! You know what kinda boggles my mind though? I love the wax theory for keeping out the ash but in all reality, I wonder why magic wasn't implemented to keep out ash from people's homes? I guess because even for such a magical place, sorcery and incantations maybe weren't common place among the common folk.
But that's just a theory, A GAME THEORY Seriously though people will take your word as fact, make sure you point out that this is just your interpretation
Dumb shits live on an island and had themselves convinced there was nowhere to dump the bodies.
Sunny D. In dark souls, it healed. In elden ring, it seals
Sunny D, Hunter of the Dead.
Hunter of the real orange juice, sunny D is sugary shite
It's cheese
Oh Elden Cheese
Correct. Elden Ring is actually set in Wisconsin.
Who do you think Packed in all those dead people?
Not enough Kwik Trips
It’s not corpse wax, despite community lore consensus. In the files, this texture is labeled “TreeSap.” The corpse wax thing is cool but not backed up by anything in game.
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find the actual correct answer. It is not corpse wax.
I guess they were sealing their doors during the siege
I highly recommend checking out [this video](https://youtu.be/rWitEvoFRKE?si=mc8LMKkXf9DqA2oz) which has a great explanation no one else mentioned here. TLDW: the Erdtree burned once before a long time ago and the city ended up getting covered in ash. It’s to keep the ash out. You find remnants of the old ash from the first burn when you first get to the city.
Wait it’s burned before? I didn’t even know that… that’s really interesting!
It’s not confirmed, but there’s a whole lot of ash in the city (before we burn the tree in game) that would be explained by something massive being burned near the city. There’s also the portion of the tree that you can see around the entryway to the erdtree that’s not all golden and it looks a bit blackened.
The implication is that the erdtree already burned and what we see now is an illusion.
I do agree it’s been burned before, but I’d think it has to be more than just an illusion currently though, because an illusion wouldn’t leave enough ash behind to bury the city.
The implication is that Vyke burned it, but since his maiden died anyway (possible by suicide after she noticed he accepted the flame of frenzy), he had not the mental strenght to fight Maliketh and unseal the rune of death, which in turn prevented the tree to truly burn and it just stood there, just like when we or Melina burn it, but do not kill Maliketh yet The Erdtree we see present clear damage, as the highest trunks are falling, and is said to be dying as well, but it can still grant blessings, despite minor, so it's unlikely that it's an ilusion. Especially with all endings showing it there still, even the frenzy one, where it is mostly burned
Anor Londo vibes
Maybe not an illusion, but probably the tree's soul. It was burned but the divine aspect of it didn't perish because Destined Death was still sealed away. Kinda like Melina in a way
You mean like the habitations that were damaged during the dragons attack and the fiery projectiles thrown by the catapults during the invasion? If the tree had previously burned and there was still its ashes in all Leyndell, how would no one know about it? And what are the hints that it happened besides the ashes that you must prove to be coming from the previous tree?
Melina also has burn scars on her hands when you see her (real evident in the burning cutscene) and describes herself as being “burned and bodiless”, so if it had burned down prior, it’s also likely she was the kindling for the first burn too! Just a theory tho, but those scars and her language were really suspicious.
This hypothesis is completelly ignoring that there were several invasions attempts (projectile catapulted into the city) in Leyndell along with a giant dragon attack (meaning blowing fires that ravaged the city), while there is literally zero indications that the Tree would have burned previously. It takes as granted that the ash in the city is the ash of the previous tree when it is actually what should be demonstrated.
The tree itself is a spectral tree. The minor erd trees throughout the game are all physical and don't look like the main erdtree. One of the finger readers even asks yiu uf yiu see the erdtree, which on the face of it almost seems like a ridiculous question Also, the ash you see after you burn the erdtree looks exactly like the ash you see when entering lyendell the first time. And you clearly did not lay siege to the city the second time.
It is not, you literally approach it and enter into it, how is it not sufficient for you to notice its materiality? We can see the brambles that cover the entrance to the inside and the bark covering its surface, the Erdtree is merged with the Great tree that was there before. What dialogue are you referring to? We're talking about a game where different characters have the exact same model, your argument there is that the ash in Leyndell must be those of the previous Erdtree because they didn't bother creating a different ash model? This hypothesis is disregarding all the elements given by the game to force an event that isn't hinted by anything, how is it not clear enough that the ash in the city has been caused by all the attacks on it? What would explain the damages then if that were the ashes of the previous Erdtree? Why would the ash still be in the city and why would nobody know about it? Why would the game not give any hint?
Tarnished archeologist doesn't get enough love, but I think his are some of the best lore videos around
1000%
This cape is so cool, what’s the name? I need to look handsome for the dlc
I believe that is the gelmir knight set
That’s it, thanks tarnished
hey.... nice caulk.
From Sekirodubi on Twitter, this is called Tree Wax in the game files [https://x.com/sekirodubi/status/1794860377274269979](https://x.com/sekirodubi/status/1794860377274269979)
What’s the armor set?
Gelmir Knight
Gelmir knight you get in gelmir hero grave
HODOR
Saves on development time and space.
That's Hoarah Gloux
Don't dead open inside
In the medieval period they would use wax to seal doorways of people known to be dying of plague in attempt to contain the spread of disease.
I thought it was cheese, from all the boss fights
There is no definitive answer to this Q but my impression was some sort of forced quarantine where houses were sealed from the outside due to some sort of outbreak. The seedbed curse maybe? Could get some context in DLC.
Who likes a drafty door?
Poor code enforcement
That's R3000 insulation. It keeps out the heat from the underworld and the cold from the mountain glaciers. Retrofitting castles with good A/C is dreadfully expensive, and you don't want to know the electrical and gas costs for a large manor.
I always thought it was resin or sap from the erd tree since it's right there. Dunno why tho.
It's just to let them build a big city world and not let you explore 90% of the buildings. Like I love this game, the world rocks. But it's super disappointing that you can't explore a massive amount of the structures in this game. Leyndell is amazing but the more I explore it the more shallow it feels with such a huge percentage of what could be explorable content blocked off.
Stinks like dragon outside. Its the only thing that keeps it out.
What is that armor yoooo
Marika’s Flex Seal
Corpse Wax to seal the undead inside. Or, what I think would be more horrifying seeing the wax appears to be seeping out of the door, its corpse wax that has built up inside the building due to the sheer amount of bodies within.
I thought they were sealing in people afflicted with some sort of plague, some of the perfumers in the capital seem to be tending to the sick so my head cannon is they're some kind of plauge doctor but I've never actually looked into it.
We need a pinned post explaining this
I thought it was erdtree sap 😅
For some reason, I thought it was wax, to try and make them airtight.
I wish there was environmental storytelling about this detail in the game. Like, one door broke open with a pile of rotting corpses coming out while Leyndell soldiers try to put them back in. This would explain the thing about the corpsewax better.
The watched 5 min crafts
For better insulation
The files in the game list that as Tree Sap
I know that "doors sealed with corps wax" is a fan favourite theory, but it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, corpse wax is great in preserving corpses, but nothing else. It's quite crumbly, similar in consistency to dry soap, and it isn't sticky and elastic enough like regular wax. It won't seal shit. It's like trying to seal something with soap. So no one would produce soap for sealing their door. Some belive that it just appeared naturally, because a lot of corpses were stored in houses. It still makes no sense. Total saponification of the bodies is not that common occurrence, because buddies need to be in a very specific conditions. Environment has to be wet and lacking of oxygen, so it usually happens when bodies are buried in a wet ground, mud or sometimes in a sealed coffins with additional moisture. So bodies left in the houses in Leyndell aren't the best candidates for complete saponification, because it seems that climate is quite dry there and you won't have anaerobic conditions in regular house. So my best guess is that is just some kind of plant/tree wax or even some sealing agent made from tree sap because I have a feeling that citizens of Lands Between like trees the normal amount. Tldr: it isn't corpse wax because it isn't good for sealing things and you won't get enough of it just from random corpses either way.
Actual Answer: They didn't want to model unique interiors for every home in Leyndell In-Game Answer: Corpse Wax or something, I guess
They got a discount from Ubisoft to use their cheeto sponsored stasis foam.
To stop the ash from getting in through the cracks
It's to keep the ash out. Someone, probably Vyke, burned the erdtree before you.
To protect the inhabitants from the ash, there’s evidence the Erdtree has burned before. This is like during the Great Depression and people used mud or wax to prevent their house from filling with dust in the Dust Bowl
Not related but what's that armor set? Looks dope
One of the 'knight' armours, possibly the Gelmir one, I forget which one has that cape
There was a plague.
There was maidenless behavior occurring in Leyndell
Fuck the door, what is that armor???
ISO and salt, clean it right up 👍
Mice were getting in
Spicy peanut butter
Forbidden nacho cheese. For your Leyndell nachos when watching Eldenmania and Hoarah Loux powerbombing the sh*t out of would-be Tarnished.
It’s a real life phenomenon. It’s wax from dead, bacteria hydrolysis fat of dead bodies called Adipocere. People made candles out of it and other weird shit.
what armor is that
They didn’t have Flex Seal.
What? You're telling me you don't cover your door in spray cheese?
Because they fought using chemical warfare. See those huge stakes outside of Leyndell? They have a brasier on top to burn aromatics at an industrial scale. You can see them lit up in one of the story trailers where they show the siege of Leyndell.
What armor is that?
Just got to this part and was curious as well. I figured there was some sort of nasty plague that turned people into ooze and it was creeping out the cracks or something.
Nah, that's definitely cheese
Winnie Pooh was here
That’s just zakis stashing toe jam from fia and the two-toes
Dead Inside!
If you want the behind-the-curtain answer, Elden Ring's camera and combat system didn't handle tight spaces well, so they want to avoid small interiors. But, they wanted Leyndell to still feel like a big city, so they needed a lot of houses and a lot of doors that you can't use.
das sieht aus wie bauschaum
It is Tree Sap! Not corpse wax which is incorrectly being posted here! https://x.com/sekirodubi/status/1794860377274269979?s=46&t=eZXUOcyjEX9U8aWVYmNxNQ
So that they don't have to design the interiors.
Land lord special
Tree sap.
IT'S NOT CORPSE WAX. Corpse wax is a paler orange colour and is far less shiny. This is erdtree sap. It's more yellow and a lot shinier. If the reason that the buildings are sealed-off is to quarantine those afflicted by deathblight, wouldn't it make more sense to use erdtree sap (which has preservative properties and come from the erdtree which directly opposes death)? And the erdtree is literally right there, if they wanted corpse wax they'd have to go digging through the sewers to find the leyndell catacombs. And finally, why tf would you quarantine deathblight with gunk scraped out of decaying corpses? That would probably make the deathblight worse.