What Exactly is The Elden Ring? Let Me Explain…

During my experience playing Elden Ring, I was so immersed in the story of the beautifully written characters that I kind of missed possibly the most important piece of information in the Elden Ring’s lore: What exactly is THE Elden Ring? 

It is the same problem that I had while playing to Dark Souls (here I talk about Dark Souls essential lore, by the way), and I was asking myself: “Yeah, but what is a Dark Soul to begin with?”. 

In this short article we are going to find out about the Elden Ring, who created it, and how it shaped the Lands Between before its shattering. 

The Elden Ring Creator: The Greater Will. 

When hearing “The Greater Will” we might think of it as a concept or list of precepts. However, The Greater Will is completely different: it is an actual sentient being.  

While it is not confirmed by any source in the game, it is highly speculated that The Greater Will is an Outer God, a being with incredible powers which do not appear in the world but influences it in several ways. 

One day, The Greater Will sent a golden star to the Lands Between, and within it a beast.  
The beast would be later known as the Elden Beast. Yes, THAT Elden Beast that killed all of us thousands of times in the final Boss Fight. 

The Elden Beast is The Elden Ring 

As confusing as it sounds, this header is correct: The Elden Beast is The Elden Ring. one of its forms, at least.  

You see, The Greater Will “conquers” worlds by imposing its ways to the natives and seeping energy back to itself from the Erdtree. The Elden Beast came to the Lands Between to serve as vassal for the Greater Will and to put the whole plan in motion.  
Once there, The Elden Beast transformed into the Elden Ring and with the help of The Greater Will’s assistants, called Two Fingers, started the search for a suitable candidate to become a vessel of the Elden Ring. 

What is the Elden Ring? 

The Elden Ring is a set of runes which forms a Codex, a list of laws, which basically shapes how the world should work to represent The Greater Will’s idea of “Order”. We have the peculiar example of one of those runes, the Rune of Death, which determines that all the beings in the Lands Between should die in time. 

That day that Queen Marika, the Vessel for the Elden Ring, removed the Rune of Death from it, the concept of death was removed as well. Most of the beings in the game will be reborn even after being killed.  

Let’s answer everybody’s favorite question: How come, then, that the bosses do not respawn? 
That is mostly because they do not respawn during our time in the Lands Between. It is thought that the stronger the being, the longer the time to be reborn.  

The Elden Ring will eventually be broken by Marika, which will have her crucified by the Elden Beast for that sin. Breaking the Elden Ring will then lead to an age of war, called The Shattering, which will bring the Lands Between to the state of ruin that our main character, the Tarnished, will experience first-hand. 

Conclusion 

The concept of the Elden Ring is a difficult one to get, but I hope that, after this article, you now have more answers than questions… even if I doubt it, considering it is a From Software game. I will be sure to cover more aspects of Elden Ring’s lore, like in this article which talks about Rennala, so stay tuned for the next one!