As for me? I'm probably going to play characters that are convenient to whatever storyline gets going. I have a few ideas in mind but I think I might build around the foundations of whatever we get going. Honestly there are so many potentially interesting roles I feel a bit spoiled for choice.
"In Marika's own words. The Erdtree governs all. The choice is thine. Become one with the Order. Or divest thyself of it. To wallow at the fringes; a powerless upstart."
Welcome to the Lands Between. It's a place you may know, with locations that are familiar, but it is not the blasted Kingdom ready to be claimed by a lowly Tarnished. This is the Golden Age of the Erdtree, when the god-monarchs of Leyndell were at the height of their power, and the Elden Ring remained whole. It's a different world, a more ordered one. For many though, not necessarily a better world.
Some years have past since Radagon Of The Golden Order, Marika's most zealous hound, abandoned the Carian Queen, Rennala, and returned to Leyndell to become Elden Lord.
Queen Marika The Eternal sealed away death itself into the blade of her half-brother Maliketh.
Also sealed are two of her sons by the exiled Lord Godfrey. The Omen twins, Morgott and Mohg, are shackled in the sewers below the royal capital while their brother Godwyn is hailed as a war hero.
Then, there are the children of the new union between Marika and Radagon. The twin prodigies, Malenia and Miquella brim with power, but also terrible curses. Miquella is trapped in eternal childhood, while his sister's body has begun to rot, her limbs collapsing from her body. The people can clearly see something is wrong with the younger demigods, and curses are on everyone's minds. There are so many Omen in the sewers. Even as few survived the excision of their horns, those that dwelled in servitude or screamed from the sewers at night put the haughty citizens of Leyndell on edge. There is not unrest, not yet, but something has to be done.
Perhaps, one of her omen spawn could still be of use.
'No unrest' cannot be said for the lands of Liurnia below the plateau. The Carian royal family face its own problems. It has been some years since Radagon left for the capital, and his former wife Rennala has grown all the more unstable in the years since his departure. Despite the attempts of her and Radagon's children to keep some order in hope of their mother's recovery, Ranni, Radahn and Rykard have all had their own business to attend to, and the sorcerers of Raya Lucaria have grown weary of the Carians. The Knights Of The Cuckoo and the scholars have their own plans to wrest power from the Queen and the demi-gods.
Ranni, even moreso than her brothers, faces the daunting prospect of her own Empyrean nature. As the Golden Order grows more brutal, she faces the inevitability of one day becoming a tyrant herself, a puppet as much as a puppeteer.
Or is there another way? Perhaps, but the cost would be so terrible the world's fate could be even worse than the brutality of the Golden Order. A corruption of death itself...
Hello! I'm Hyades and I'd like to welcome you to Age Of The Erdtree. This is an Elden Ring roleplay set during what some might consider the 'golden age' of the Lands Between, though for most concerned the big tree is the only golden part. Treachery, rebellion, madness and genocide, all of them are rife in this place.
Age Of The Erdtree is set in the period leading up to the Night Of The Black Knives less about religiously sticking to every bit of lore and matching up with the canonical timeline, and more about using the situation as a jumping-off point for a potentially similar, or different set of events. I'm not going to force you to follow the canon timeline of history, or indeed nitpick details unless they have some knock-on for anyone else. Will the Black Knives still triumph? Who knows?
The RP will, of course, feature some canon characters. We're not restricting to that though. There's a lot of space in the Lands Between for stories not captured in the scraps of history found in game. It would be fascinating seeing some perspectives from the less-famous individuals.
Rules
1) Standard RP rules apply. Hopefully you know more or less what those are. 2) I won't be imposing any hard minimums on post length. While you should always give people enough to work with, I respect people's right to take a Hemingway approach and make impact without going into too much detail if the situation permits it. If someone isn't giving you enough to go on, feel free to call them on it. Just make sure your post advances the story. 3) I don't tend to gun for posting orders unless things get extremely fast or chaotic. If things get too wild in one scene, there might be grounds to impose one, but there's likely to be a few scenes taking place at once, so there's no reason to hold all of them up. 4) Please wait until sheets are approved before you put them in the Character tab. For the most part sheets are looked at as far as what makes sense in the setting and/or with other characters, so don't consider any queries to be a bad thing. 5) Elden Ring lore is super open to interpretation, so please refer to the 'Lore Notes' area for anything I've included that's potentially murky or debatable before you start an idea, so we're all on the same page. Anything not included there you're welcome to use whatever headcanon your heart desires. 6) If people end up playing Mohg and Miquella, specifically the two characters interacting, I beg of you please keep it tasteful and keep in mind that the whole dynamic is not supposed to be a good one.
Character Stuff
Below are any kinda murky/debatable lore points from the game and how they're set out in this version of the setting.
- Unless there's any particularly neat ideas, Marika and Radagon are currently separate entities but were split from one by the Greater Will.
- Morgott may be redeemed and renounce his cursed blood prior to The Shattering.
- The Black Knife Assassins are plotting against Marika and the Golden Lineage for their own ends, and aren't expressly working under the command of anyone, either Ranni or Marika. They might be willing to form an alliance with Ranni, should their goals be the same.
- Leonard is a good boi.
This is not a definitive list as there are many, many faces mentioned in-game, but I'll cover some major players and add any others.
Royals Of Leyndell
Queen Marika The Eternal - [RESERVED] Radagon Of The Golden Order - [OPEN] Godfrey, First Elden Lord - [OPEN] (Also exiled, but I'm willing to listen to a good argument to have him feature. Godwyn The Golden - [OPEN] Morgott The Omen - [OPEN] Mohg The Omen - [OPEN] Malenia The Severed - [OPEN] Miquella The Unalloyed - [OPEN] Maliketh, The Black Blade - [OPEN] Godrick The Golden (Barely) - [OPEN]
The Carians
Lunar Princess Ranni - [OPEN] General Radahn - [OPEN] Praetor Rykard - [OPEN] Rennala, Queen Of The Full Moon - [OPEN] Blaidd, The Half-Wolf - [OPEN] Blacksmith Ijji - [OPEN] Seluvis/Pidia - [OPEN]
The Black Knives
Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader - [OPEN] Black Knife Tiche - [OPEN]
Ancient Dragons
Fortissax - [OPEN] Lansseax - [OPEN]
Storied Individuals Knight Loretta - [OPEN] Omen Killer Rollo - [OPEN] (Though might not be an omen killer just yet.) Cleanrot Knight Finlay - [OPEN] Perfumer Tricia - [OPEN] Lady Tanith - [OPEN] Crucible Knights - [OPEN]
(Delete text in brackets. Feel free to jazz up your sheet as you wish. BBcode is not my forte, as I'm sure you'll be able to tell.)
[An image, if you desire one.] Name - Gender - Nature - (Human? Demigod? Omen? Dragon? Misbegotten? Albinauric? There are quite a few to choose from.) Affiliation - (What faction they are most closely affiliated with, or at least what community they are most frequent in. Someone can be associated with Leyndell without agreeing with the actions of the royal family, for instance.) Appearance - (Even canon characters may look far different at this point in time. Skills - (What the individual excels at most.) Personality - (A little about who they are as a person, or not-person.) Background - (Some information on their life up to this point.)
>In that case I may have an idea for a PC of questionable sanity and reasoning who wishes to instigate the Golden Order's collapse in order to make getting certain demigod's Great Runes "easier". And that's totally not because they believe that by performing a ritual (once more of highly questionable repute and efficacy) they can make the profane divine via turning the Outer God's own powers against them and return all to the One Great, making themselves its guiding oversoul/overmind and thereby supplanting the position once occupied by the Greater Will.
@Hyades what we could do is have this take place at the start maybe a month or two pre shattering. Like something is on the horizon, events are shaping. So we can change things in that window and the shattering can reflect the alternative actions that may or may not happen if our characters have the power to change things.
I've been thinking on this, though also thinking it would be interesting to catch things prior to the death of Godwyn, and Ranni forsaking her body, which from what I can tell happened some time before and set the events of The Shattering into motion. So, we could potentially start up in the events that canonically lead up to the Night Of Black Knives.
>I'm curious to know how this will work given the inherent lack of freedom in the premise. Don't get me wrong, I love Elden Ring and I'd love to faff about in the Lands Between pre-Shattering, but if we're all ending up at the same destination then I've got to wonder what the point is beyond playing canon characters and maybe a select few OCs. If that's the entire reason for the roleplay, then fine, I'll withdraw my interest in that case - but I'd like to know beforehand how much creative freedom we truly have.
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with diverging from the canon timeline if it comes to it. I mean, even if it was sticking to what we do know, a lot of the canon itself is so ambiguous that it could go a ton of different ways and fit in many stories we never encounter. For the interest of player agency though, I'd probably opt for taking the situation as a jumping-off point and worrying less about ticking off lore events from a list.
@Dark Cloud But I am filled with the flame of ambition, so that's got to count for something.
The setting is pre-Shattering, so I would assume that Radahn would have his wits about him and be the loyalty-inspiring, horse-helping absolute unit he was in his prime. (Unless anyone had a compelling reason otherwise.)
"In Marika's own words. The Erdtree governs all. The choice is thine. Become one with the Order. Or divest thyself of it. To wallow at the fringes; a powerless upstart."
One day a lowly Tarnished will rise and answer the call of long-lost grace. One day they will fell the demigods, claim the Great Runes, and reforge the Elden Ring. One day. But now is the age before the Shattering, before the Elden Ring was torn apart.
It's a different world from the ruined lands that a Tarnished of no renown would one day ride through on a spectral steed. Most would look upon it as the glory days of the Golden Order, but while the Lands Between might shine bright with the light of the Erdtree, there are many dark deeds afoot.
Godfrey, First Elden Lord, has departed for parts unknown, and in his place the red-haired Radagon has taken his spot at the side of Queen Marika The Eternal. Their union brought forth twins, but something is not entirely right about Miquella and Malenia. It's not only the twin prodigies who suffer under curses though. The citizens of Leyndell hear from deep below the howls and screams of the wretched Omen. Two princes and sons of Godfrey watch the world above from their imprisonment in the shunning grounds.
Far from Leyndell, the other great royal family has their own struggles. Rennala, Queen Of The Full Moon, is losing her grip on Raya Lucaria, and the Knights Of The Cuckoo are ready to rebel.
Truly, the grace of the Erdtree has not meant peace.
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Yes, so that is the long and the short of the concept. Elden Ring in the 'golden age'. The timeline is a bit debatable as to when events took place, when the various royal children were around, but I think it's fine to shift events around to whatever suits what people want to go for, or diverge a little away from the canon continuation of events if it goes that way.
There's potential for both canon characters, ie the demigods, or characters who play a smaller role as well, like Rollo, Finlay, Tiche, that sort of thing. I think there's also tons of space for original characters to fit into the setting.
We've got the potential for Omen hunting, perfumers being perfumers, knights and sentinels. Raya Lucaria might be about to kick off, and I'm sure the Carian family have some interesting stuff going on. I'm inclined toward directing things based on what characters we get.
