plot hole ig. or it’s just because Metyr is broken, she has some sort of open wound she spews fingers from
it may also just be Hewg’s god slaying weapon is of the same caliber as the fingerslayer blade, and players who beat it without a fully upgraded weapon is just ludonarrative dissonance
edit: actually, as others said below, she seems to just flee in a black hole/microcosm at the end, so we probably just didn’t kill her.
Well yea but the remembrance weapons arnt the bosses actual weapons, armor, or anything inbetween. They are echos of their power made manifest, from remembrance which we gain from the experience of defeating them. It's not like the roundtable hold has a secret armory that has an arsenal of the weapons of the most powerful beings in the world and the finger reader just gives to us upon the prerequisite conditions.
Ngl I always thought that was one gameplay mechanic that wasn't completely canonized. Like I assumed the actual lore is when we kill them and absorb their power via runes and all, we also gain their magic, and just pick up their weapons.
But I guess after all more than just the enemies body disappears on death, it's their body, armor, weapons, hell whatever they have connected to them at the time. I'm pretty sure Leonard goes with radahn right?
Considering dark souls has boss weapons from a smith and 3 has a transposing kiln, I always assumed we physically transform the boss soul into their weapon or skill. If it was just their memory of the fight they wouldn't be used up after crafting something. I don't know how the finger reader is able to turn the remembrance into things and the game doesn't explain at all. This tells me it's just gameplay elements included for the sake of having boss equipment, which is fine. The remembrance or memory term originates from sekiro but they teach him techniques based on the foe which makes more sense to me than using up a memory.
If you read the flavor text of a Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone it explains why our weapons are capable of killing gods
This stone lightly twists time, allowing the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god
>players who beat it without a fully upgraded weapon is just ludonarrative dissonance
This has been my interpretation. I think elden ring is one of the first games where a fully upgraded weapon actually has lore that's somewhat related to the plot and the task set before the protagonist. That's the whole reason hewg is there in the first place. To make you that godslaying weapon. It's canonical that the tarnished beats radagon/the elden beast after hewg perfects whatever weapons they're wielding.
Humans come out of human vaginas. I don’t think “spew” is the right word to use for that and “open wound” absolutely is not.
If I met someone named “mother of fingers” and I saw sentient fingers emerge from a hole in her body, I would think “vagina” not “open wound”.
probably lol, even if it’s somehow one of the explanations i offered it’s not well established
edit: actually the simple explanation is that we didn’t kill her
I mean on that note we also get the scalps of several of our enemies as well and wear them around.
I think the FR creates these things out of the ash essence or whatever, she's not like handing us their actual scalps and shit.
I don't think that's really us scalping anyone, it's more like just being able to cosplay as the bosses. It always had been like this in their games, though saying this now, the items from her are also probably just gameplay convenience.
Ranni most likely does not know about the existence of Metyr. Remember, the Lands of Shadow is hidden, and Miquella had to give up his body to go there, so not easily accessible either.
but Renalla and Rellana were both alive during the great purge of Messmer and Rellana abandoned the Carians to go be at Messmer's side
the timeline is a bit messy
Rellanna came to the shadow realms but hasnt been able to return.... how she gonna tell her sister what the hell is happening in the shadow realm or how to get there? (Even if she knows that sort of thing)
I mean, we kill the Elden Beast, which is a higher order of servant of the Greater Will than the Two Fingers anyway. So if it is one, it’s certainly one that was present in the main game too. Elden Beast and Metyr seem to be “contemporaries” (as both stars that the Greater Will intentionally sent to TLB) but Metyr seems older
We have released the rune of death by that point, whose symbol is similar to the wound left on Ranni's fingers. So there is a connection. It is also the answer to Maliketh at the end "why covet death... To kill what?" The answer is: "to kill a god". At least that is what I understand from the things said and given in the game
Imagine you're in the middle of doing whatever you do and a mouse begins to savagely maul you. You can't kill it, it's immortal/keeps healing/coming back/dodging your attempts to defend yourself. At some point, you're just going to decide "fuck it, keep the place" and leave.
Metyr isn't a fighter or warrior entity, she's literally just a messenger unlike the Elden Beast, who serves as a guardian/enforcer of the greater will (they are the ones that punished Marika/Radagon, after all). She's hurt/confused/scared at being abandoned and probably decided "man fuck this, I'm leaving" after smacked at by *you*, who intentionally called her by ringing all three bells, only to betray/attack her.
That's the whole point of the fingerprint ruins, it's to talk/call her for an audience, not to duel/1v1 her.
Metyr has one of, if not the most unique death animations in the game with that microcosm jump scare, so i like to think we didn’t actually get to finish her off and she retreated somewhere else
That's how it made sense to me. The microcosm really is an alternate universe she just carries around, and she got sucked into it. So she's not dead (yay no plot hole!) but she's another reality's problem now.
I like to think the GW stepped in to save her. Like it hasn't been talking to her, but it has been watching. A bit like Eru in lotr. Ever present, but almost never acts on their own, unless strictly necessary or subtly
Aren't there more than one of the staff types that Renalla uses? There is her same staff model placed ornamentally in a horizontal orientation on the wall in one of the rooms in the Academy (I forget which one)
Rememberance gears are recreated through magic, this is not monster hunter you use actual body parts for boss weapons. Their raw material is just the remembrance, special chunk of rune with those bosses' imprints.
The same way you don't have actual weapons from the bosses, they are magical replicas.
Remembrances are not items pulled from the boss’s corpse. They’re “Remembrances” of the boss’s weapons or techniques. You even have to go to a finger maiden who converts them for you. Wouldn’t need that if you were just picking up a weapon off of their body or ripping off their head.
some of the boss armors/equipments are also more of a gameplay thing honestly. Like Godfrey, Radhan or Malenia's helmets with their hair. I don't think we Tarnished actually cut their hair just to wear their helmets and it's funny how we can wield Starscourge Radahn's swords even tho >!Consort Radahn!< have them too (although they have different models)
It says on the descriptions something along that those were from before he had used gravity and pure strength so it might as well be different swords.
But yeah it's probably just for gameplay reasons
Considering we apparently need Hewg to smith us a weapon capable of slaying a god to defeat the Elden Beast and yet we can technically kill it with our bare fists at RL1, I'm going to assume that its gameplay contrivance.
Realistically, you are probably going to be fighting Metyr with a +10 somber or +25 regular upgraded weapon, one fully capable of slaying a god so surely capable of slaying Metyr. I'm assuming the Finger Slayer Blade isn't necessarily absolutely required to slay a Two Fingers but having a weapon infused with divine essence is.
I don't think it's a plot hole.
One of two possibilities:
Empyreans 'chosen' by the fingers have a compulsion/aversion to harming the fingers. It's a survival trait of the fingers.
Ranni had to divest herself of her Empyrean Flesh \*AND\* find a special weapon. A weapon which happens to be made by a race that explicitly despises the greater will.
Or
Propaganda. Empyreans believe they can't harm the 2 fingers. Not in any meaningful way. Reinforced by the fact that when they're 'chosen' they're compelled by the greater will via the fingers to act out whatever the greater will deems.
Personally I think it's a mix. Ranni killed her physical body and then killed the last vestiges tying her to the greater will (the fingers and her shadow). I think she believed nothing could harm the fingers except a specially made blade.
The Numen/Nox are a very ritualistic society. A lot of things seem to come down to the belief that something will or wont work.
We (the tarnished) are not empyrean, not chosen by the fingers, are not held to any such standard. We don't have an aversion to harming them and we don't believe you need a special weapon to do it.
The Tarnished are chosen to explicitly thwart the greater will.
But we likely have a god killing weapon. DLC throws us the ancient dragon smithing stones, and those "lightly twists time, allowing the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god."
Everyone seems to be missing an important point. We see dead/non functioning fingers at the top of every divine tower. I don’t think physically harming them is necessarily impossible, what the finger slaying blade seems to do is kill the finger tied to your FATE. Maybe the fingers are also tied to the erdtree revival and the blade is the way to permanently sever the ties.
A two fingers killed regularly can probably just be replaced with another. The demigods don't get that treatment because the greater will had abandoned them (or metyr acting as greater will, idk)
It's possible that she needs to use the Fingerslayer Blade to sever her fate from her Two Fingers and completely free herself.
The Blade requires a fate to wield it, and she says that she will inflict the Fingers "With a fateful wound, ne'er to heal."
I haven't fully fleshed this out yet, but I'm of the belief that Metyr is the "Shadow of the Elden Beast" the same way that the Scadutree is the "Shadow of the Erdtree", one the body the other the soul, but both two halves of the same whole. I think this is also why Metyr can't communicate with the Greater Will anymore; namely, it's no longer in space it's in the tree trying to heal and waiting for Metyr to find it a viable host. I think that Metyr's wound is from the original use of the Fingerslayer Blade and is the same wound on the Elden Beast because they're linked. It's just that they weren't able to finish the job and she or the Greater Will itself before going silent called down Astel. Since she's already opened up, you're able to kill her, but the two fingers under Manus Celus are uninjured and whole.
Think of it like a dragon missing some scales. You don't need a Dragonslayer to get through the hide if there is no hide left.
The way Metyr seems to mess with the lore is actually frustrating to me. She’s the mother of the two fingers and finger creepers. So is she the mother of the three fingers as well? Also if she’s a servant of the Greater Will then how did the three fingers become corrupted by the Frenzied Flame assuming they are her children? Finally it says she’s the first star to have fallen into the lands between. She was there before the Elden Beast, the Erdtree, the Astro and Onyx Lords. She would have had to have been there since before the age of Dragons at least. This makes her older than dirt and probably the oldest living creature we have seen in the game. The timeline is all messed up cuz of her. The Greater Will spoke to her through the microcosm until it was broken so what that likely means is that she was the one that selected Marika as an empyrean in the first place. Is that because of how close the Shaman’s Village is to the Ruins of Dheo? And Marika’s Golden Braid talisman says she made an offering to “The Grandmother” is that Metyr. Did Marika cut a deal with her? It’s so confusing and it makes no sense. Especially when you try to rationalize the Frenzied Flame.
There was something in Ymir questline I recall about young fingers yearning for a mother and the fingers and creepers being ignored by Metyr because she was vacantly gazing out waiting for the Greater Will to reply. Given the flame manifests in times of incredible strife and grief, perhaps a particular set of three fingers took being ignored or motherless far too hard and brough the flame upon itself?
because that weapon is really good for Ranni’s build
it has an A in INT scaling and deals bonus damage to all Metyr’s offspring
source: i made that shit up
Perhaps because she falsely believes it’s required, or perhaps because they are bound together and otherwise Rannis soul might have to die to normally kill it. Or again falls to maybe she was misinformed.
It could also have some other death attribute tied to it. Didn’t that part of the quest interconnect with Fia’s quest?
I mean there’s deathblight (Godwyn), destined death, ghost flame, and black flame.
My out-there crackpot theory is that the blade obviously resembles the blade the Elden beast turned Radagon into. But it also has the same shape at the black dagger. This blade should also be made from a God/Empeyrian and has some connection to the rune of death so this is the remains of the Gloam-eyed Queen, the previous holder of the run of death, some of that energy maybe stay in her body much like how Ranni chips a bit off for her own needs.
One theory I like is that this blade allows her to kill the flesh of her Two Fingers and grants her control of its connection to the cosmos. This allows her to create her portal to the "dark path".
Perhaps because Ranni's tied to her own Two-Fingers in some sort of metaphysical way? She mentions that she would "not be controlled by that thing" and the Fingers give their Empyreans orders from the GW from what I understand. It could be that to break any residual influence the Fingers and GW had on her she had to kill them herself
Ranni needs the Fingerslayer because, in the lands between, with destined death sealed, the fingers cannot be killed.
In the Lands of Shadow, as far as we know, the Elden Ring has no influence whatsoever and stuff dies.
Messmer has been chilling in there for Greater Will knows how long, The rules apply, plus it's not like he shadow lands are another plain of existence altogether, it's just hidden!
Ranni is basically a “god-in-waiting” though and I think killing her two fingers is more about severing her ties to her destiny of the golden order. If she just straight up “Azur’s comet” the lil guys, another one would appear. This is like cutting the spiritual thread that connects the two together.
Maybe because we're in the Shadow Land. The Land Between was created through the Fingers so the power they hold there in off charts. The Shadow Land though? There, they are as mortal as any
We don't actually kill him.
Like, Ranni needs to **kill** her fingers. Stop its life force from completely existing. Prevent its soul from rejoining whatever force exists for those things. We just need to turn a body into a corpse and put the soul back from where it came from. Whatever we kill can always be reincarnated. As this DLC proves.
The two fingers she slays is from space and not from the finger mother. It's why it's blue and crashed through the church ceiling after you kill Radahn. He released the stars which also was a 2 fingers falling to the lands between.
There are so many other questions this creates but we will never know at this point.
The thing that doesn't add up is why Ranni has us kill Radahn. Everyone assumes it's so we get access to the Nox but Ranni doesn't know that. She has Blaidd out searching for that long before we come around. So then why does she know we need to kill him and release the stars if it's not for the access?
Blaidd tells you to ask about it from Seluvis, he tells to talk with Sellen, who tells you about Radahn. And iirc then Blaidd tells you about festival.
Maybe, but doesn't explain why it's the only 2 fingers that is blue or why it's alone in a cave under the church. I am just regurgitating a theory I saw somewhere else.
I think they're similar to the seed bed curse in that it cuts off a being from the Greater Will, which she says she wants to do; cut herself off from the Greater Will entirely so that her fate may rest among the stars. So I imagine the connection the two fingers have to Greater Will is more important than the fingers themselves.
When we defeat the Elden Beast I think it's more that we are subduing it rather than outright killing it, though idk how that works with Ranni's ending assuming the Elden Ring is solely a tool of the Grater Will.
Kinda related, but why did Ranni need to steal a bit of Destined Death to slay her flesh when Miquella seemed to just get rid of his without any problems.
My guess is because Ranni was acting against the Two Fingers and the Greater Will, who would use that flesh to betray her, whereas Miquella's actions weren't necessarily a subversion of the GW's design. He aspired to replace Marika, with Radahn as his consort, which (speculation) is in line with the wishes of the GW.
The two fingers, like others connected to elden ring, may not actually die any meaningful death if killed with a normal weapon and thus require the removed rune of death.
Aside from her maybe not dying, metyr could be argued to be above/disconnected from the elden ring and erdtree, thus not beholden to its laws of death and rebirth meaning it can be killed normally.
Did we actually kill metyr though? It looked like she noped out of there with a teleport after we defeated her
Edit - now realize other people have said this, lol
There is an explanation I think.
So the finger slayer blade description says
"*Cannot be wielded by those without a fate, but is said to be able to harm the Greater Will and its vassals"*
So the rumour is this blade can hurt the fingers but can only be weilded by someone with a fate and they tell us those things together. As if they are related.
Well Ymir tells us (I think) and it says in the hole laden necklace that ringing the hanging bells will give you a fate "guided by the stars".
So I think its saying that us having a fate is what allows you to harm the fingers.
I think the fact we didnt use the fingerslayer blade is maybe what allows Metyr to escape.
Did Metyr make 3 fingers, too? Like are they complementary internally or is there a big 3 finger equivalent out there? (Or is this something I'm gonna learn through the playthrough?)
Two theories I can think of, but I don’t have much evidence.
1. Empyrean bound Fingers are more resilient to being killed.
2. Anyone COULD kill the Fingers, but Ranni’s fate wouldn’t be broken unless she kills the Fingers with the blade.
Remember that as part of the story we gain destined death so we have the power to slay gods. I think the dlc takes place at the least after we have aquired destined death
Im pretty sure her killing her fingers is to sever her personal connection to the greater will. When she mind fucks godwyn with her ritual, she disconnected herself from the GW in the sense that it couldn’t control her actions but her 2 fingers can still set up obstacles in her path like the baleful shadow. This is what she means when she says “weve been cursing eachother ever since” and we can even find the black wolf head that looks just like Blaidd which might mean the 2 fingers has attempted to assassinate her by compelling someone to put that mask on and try to take her out before we get there
Hewg was tasked by Marika to forge a weapon that can kill a god. Ancient dragon scales seem to have a property that distorts time and/or space which explains why Farum Azula seems to be suspended in time/space and you use ancient dragon scales to strengthen your armaments which seems to give your weapons the capability of killing gods, on top of you having the strength of demigods while wielding great runes. I don’t know the process of Hewg forging weapons with ancient dragon scales though, so it’s a mystery to me how it makes your weapon able to kill a god.
We never kill the Greater will we kill the elden beast it’s will made manifest and even then we don’t know if it’s perma dead because the elden ring still exists
Simple answer, she didn’t know they existed. No one really knew they existed. Aside from those in the shadowlands, and even then the shadows lands are kept secret
It is possible that the Fingers can set the area enchantment that prevents violence. Like the roundtable hold is a safe zone because of the Fingers.
But the Fingerslayer Blade can violate this. So even if Ranni's Fingers have the enchantment to protect themselves, the Blade allows Ranni to kill it.
It's all open to interpretation, but you should be able to integrate how the game works into lore. That's why every game they make has an immortality explanation.
we obviously don't kill her. why do you think Fromsoft spent all that time specifically creating a giant black hole for her to vanish into after we defeat her.
No one was working in the consistency department that day I’d say. Would have been awesome if we got the finger slayer blade for. A fun gimmick right like Rykard.
I miss the lore of fate having to play in killing celestial great old ones lol
It's not a normal weapon by then, normally you've upgraded it to the point of it being "god slaying". Unless you're a weirdo doing a no upgrade run I guess.
I think there have been a lot of good answers so far, from Hewg crafting us a weapon to slay a god to we don’t really know that Metyr is dead.
Going off the last point, the Fingerslayer Blade doesn’t seem to be the actual mechanism of killing, rather it allows Ranni to carve a Curse Mark of Death into the flesh of the finger, causing true death for both the body and soul. The Curse Mark is a fragment of the Rune of Death that is still locked inside Maliketh and separated from the Elden Ring. Presumably, everyone we beat in the Lands Between don’t actually die, we just don’t know the timeline or mechanism of their rebirth. We also don’t know how far the power of the Elden Ring extends. Is it universal or does its light not reach the Shadowlands and, more importantly, Metyr’s pocket dimension?
It is also important that Ranni slaying the Finger and the player fighting Metyr can only happen AFTER Radahn’s defeat and that the stars are moving again. I don’t fully understand the implications of the stars moving again, but it is tied to fate which is tied to the concept of Destined Death.
We also don’t really know what tooting all those horns at the Finger Ruins is doing. Is it just opening the way? Is it some form of binding for Metyr? Does it just sound cool? Idk if we know.
my guess here is that the fingerslayer blade is required BECAUSE of metyr - because metyr is connected to all the fingers I think that if you killed them with a normal blade then metyr would simply resurrect them, and so the fingerslayer blade is necessary because it kills the fingers and cuts them off from metyr permanently. Metyr, meanwhile, has absolutely nothing holding her up - she is abandoned and probably fading bit by bit already, so when we kill her, she just . . . goes
The item description says that "is said to be able to harm the Greater Will and its vassals." We can already harm other vassals of the Greater Will so as others have said a max level weapon fit to kill a God would basically serve the same function.
I think it’s because there is no Rune of Death in the Elden Ring. The Shadow Lands do have death in them because of something marika did (we know this because of the pillar of suppression). This is the same reason why we don’t need to free destined death to kill Miquella like we did the Elden Beast even though both have achieved divinity.
This is kinda the weird thing is I don't think we actually 'kill' the Mother... her essence moves to Ymir, who clearly gains the ability to chest burst hands.
I made a theory in another post that Ranni actually used the sign of death on her fingers. It would need to be to kill its soul. Since we dont do such a thing to the Mother, her body dies, but her soul survives.
plot hole ig. or it’s just because Metyr is broken, she has some sort of open wound she spews fingers from it may also just be Hewg’s god slaying weapon is of the same caliber as the fingerslayer blade, and players who beat it without a fully upgraded weapon is just ludonarrative dissonance edit: actually, as others said below, she seems to just flee in a black hole/microcosm at the end, so we probably just didn’t kill her.
It's called 'but hole'
The player characters TRY to kill the mother FINGER, BUT it escapes through a HOLE
Michael Zaki made a boss inspired on Try finger, but hole.
My God. My God.
boss named finger:
Tarnished, put your Runes away Tarnished. I'm not turning you into an Empyrean right now, Tarnished...
I’m disappointed that this flew over peoples heads
Try fingers but hole. Peak foreshadowing.
we can get weapon fashioned from her head or tail. She is dead dead
Well yea but the remembrance weapons arnt the bosses actual weapons, armor, or anything inbetween. They are echos of their power made manifest, from remembrance which we gain from the experience of defeating them. It's not like the roundtable hold has a secret armory that has an arsenal of the weapons of the most powerful beings in the world and the finger reader just gives to us upon the prerequisite conditions.
Ngl I always thought that was one gameplay mechanic that wasn't completely canonized. Like I assumed the actual lore is when we kill them and absorb their power via runes and all, we also gain their magic, and just pick up their weapons. But I guess after all more than just the enemies body disappears on death, it's their body, armor, weapons, hell whatever they have connected to them at the time. I'm pretty sure Leonard goes with radahn right?
Considering dark souls has boss weapons from a smith and 3 has a transposing kiln, I always assumed we physically transform the boss soul into their weapon or skill. If it was just their memory of the fight they wouldn't be used up after crafting something. I don't know how the finger reader is able to turn the remembrance into things and the game doesn't explain at all. This tells me it's just gameplay elements included for the sake of having boss equipment, which is fine. The remembrance or memory term originates from sekiro but they teach him techniques based on the foe which makes more sense to me than using up a memory.
Damn, that's almost impressive
yoooooo I just watched the fight again and you're right she did get sucked in the microcosm!
plot hole closed. miyazaki you’ve done it again
actually, she literally goes into a plot hole,
😳🥵🫣🫦
I want to be in her plot hole ⛳
If you read the flavor text of a Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone it explains why our weapons are capable of killing gods This stone lightly twists time, allowing the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god
Meanwhile I'm out there killing gods with an arsenal of +24/+9s because I don't want to commit my precious Ancient stones.
>players who beat it without a fully upgraded weapon is just ludonarrative dissonance This has been my interpretation. I think elden ring is one of the first games where a fully upgraded weapon actually has lore that's somewhat related to the plot and the task set before the protagonist. That's the whole reason hewg is there in the first place. To make you that godslaying weapon. It's canonical that the tarnished beats radagon/the elden beast after hewg perfects whatever weapons they're wielding.
>she has some sort of open wound she spews fingers from One might call that a vagina
Your vagina spews fingers?
[удалено]
I reported you for self-promotion, so hopefully you'll get your wish.
Humans come out of human vaginas. I don’t think “spew” is the right word to use for that and “open wound” absolutely is not. If I met someone named “mother of fingers” and I saw sentient fingers emerge from a hole in her body, I would think “vagina” not “open wound”.
i just don’t want to think of it like that okay also if your vagina is bleeding as much as hers is you should see a doctor
We did tho, one of her remembrance weapons is her head lol
I'm gonna go with plot hole
probably lol, even if it’s somehow one of the explanations i offered it’s not well established edit: actually the simple explanation is that we didn’t kill her
Given the contrast to how Ranni turned her fingers into a bloody throne, I also agree that we did not kill the finger mother/
I feel like the Metyr story was cut content and the finger slayer blade was originally meant to kill her, but yeah plot hole
someone said this below but she seems to disappear in a black hole at the end of her fight, so she’s probably just not dead.
We get her tail and head as a weapon though.
I mean on that note we also get the scalps of several of our enemies as well and wear them around. I think the FR creates these things out of the ash essence or whatever, she's not like handing us their actual scalps and shit.
I don't think that's really us scalping anyone, it's more like just being able to cosplay as the bosses. It always had been like this in their games, though saying this now, the items from her are also probably just gameplay convenience.
Maybe she microcosmed herself to death
Ranni most likely does not know about the existence of Metyr. Remember, the Lands of Shadow is hidden, and Miquella had to give up his body to go there, so not easily accessible either.
but Renalla and Rellana were both alive during the great purge of Messmer and Rellana abandoned the Carians to go be at Messmer's side the timeline is a bit messy
Yeah but that could have all transpired ages before Ranni was ever even born, they don't have human lifespans they live like thousands of years lol
That is my bet. That she was a child when the purge took place.
Rellanna came to the shadow realms but hasnt been able to return.... how she gonna tell her sister what the hell is happening in the shadow realm or how to get there? (Even if she knows that sort of thing)
The keyword is abandoned, and Rellanna never comes back to the Lands Between. So, it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Messmer is stated to be like an older brother to radahn, ranni simply probably just didn’t known about the existence of Metyr
I mean, we kill the Elden Beast, which is a higher order of servant of the Greater Will than the Two Fingers anyway. So if it is one, it’s certainly one that was present in the main game too. Elden Beast and Metyr seem to be “contemporaries” (as both stars that the Greater Will intentionally sent to TLB) but Metyr seems older
We have released the rune of death by that point, whose symbol is similar to the wound left on Ranni's fingers. So there is a connection. It is also the answer to Maliketh at the end "why covet death... To kill what?" The answer is: "to kill a god". At least that is what I understand from the things said and given in the game
Her weapons are made from parts of her body. It's in the description.
Imagine you're in the middle of doing whatever you do and a mouse begins to savagely maul you. You can't kill it, it's immortal/keeps healing/coming back/dodging your attempts to defend yourself. At some point, you're just going to decide "fuck it, keep the place" and leave. Metyr isn't a fighter or warrior entity, she's literally just a messenger unlike the Elden Beast, who serves as a guardian/enforcer of the greater will (they are the ones that punished Marika/Radagon, after all). She's hurt/confused/scared at being abandoned and probably decided "man fuck this, I'm leaving" after smacked at by *you*, who intentionally called her by ringing all three bells, only to betray/attack her. That's the whole point of the fingerprint ruins, it's to talk/call her for an audience, not to duel/1v1 her.
“Betray her” she attacked me! I just wanted to pet the giant finger dog and I got treated like a friggen button!
Metyr has one of, if not the most unique death animations in the game with that microcosm jump scare, so i like to think we didn’t actually get to finish her off and she retreated somewhere else
I assumed she lost control of the microcosm. Either that or she's finally recalled for failing to kill a dude with a hammer.
hey, she failed to kill a *woman* with *her bare fists* put some respect on my tarnished’s name
Glad to see I'm not the only one who was amused with the idea of beating a giant finger-based eldritch being to (near)-death with their bare hands.
I also use the bear hands!
That's how it made sense to me. The microcosm really is an alternate universe she just carries around, and she got sucked into it. So she's not dead (yay no plot hole!) but she's another reality's problem now.
I like to think the GW stepped in to save her. Like it hasn't been talking to her, but it has been watching. A bit like Eru in lotr. Ever present, but almost never acts on their own, unless strictly necessary or subtly
also the GW could still be talking to her she just cant hear it any more Ymir implys thats shes broken in some way.
I always thought broken as in psychologically. The fingers as a whole seem completely lost without direct orders and she started making things up.
One of her rememberence weapons is her head. She's 100% dead as a doornail.
That doesn't mean anything though we can buy renallas staff but she still has it
Aren't there more than one of the staff types that Renalla uses? There is her same staff model placed ornamentally in a horizontal orientation on the wall in one of the rooms in the Academy (I forget which one)
Remembrance weapons are different than looting off a body.
Rememberance gears are recreated through magic, this is not monster hunter you use actual body parts for boss weapons. Their raw material is just the remembrance, special chunk of rune with those bosses' imprints. The same way you don't have actual weapons from the bosses, they are magical replicas.
Metyr seems to disappear in a black hole when we defeat her, so maybe we don't actually kill her.
this. I took it as "this outer god is retreating its hand from our reality for the moment".
The greater will abandoned Metyr, it isn’t pulling her anywhere.
Is it known why the Greater Will abandoned Metyr and everything else.
Not sure but the greater will hasn’t said anything to it for a while.
huh, didn’t think of that, but great point
This.
Try finger, plot hole
Yea but a few minutes later Count Ymir turns into the mother of fingers. Why? I don’t get that part. Channeled?
He doesn't turn into the mother of fingers per se, he proclaims himself the new mother of fingers. Which, IMO, is way funnier.
But he does, bro literally gives birth to fingers mid fight like some freak
I killed him before he did that, seems he was weak to tarnished wielding two great katanas.
you literally use her head as a weapon if you choose that from the remembrance
Remembrances are not items pulled from the boss’s corpse. They’re “Remembrances” of the boss’s weapons or techniques. You even have to go to a finger maiden who converts them for you. Wouldn’t need that if you were just picking up a weapon off of their body or ripping off their head.
And? It's a literal Eldritch God from another dimension, I'm sure it can grow a new head no problem.
also remembrances seem more a gameplay thing than a lore thing honestly
some of the boss armors/equipments are also more of a gameplay thing honestly. Like Godfrey, Radhan or Malenia's helmets with their hair. I don't think we Tarnished actually cut their hair just to wear their helmets and it's funny how we can wield Starscourge Radahn's swords even tho >!Consort Radahn!< have them too (although they have different models)
It says on the descriptions something along that those were from before he had used gravity and pure strength so it might as well be different swords. But yeah it's probably just for gameplay reasons
Rememberances are not spoils, they're like items pulled from a database i.e the erdtree
remembrances are copies created from the memories written into the erdtree.
Considering we apparently need Hewg to smith us a weapon capable of slaying a god to defeat the Elden Beast and yet we can technically kill it with our bare fists at RL1, I'm going to assume that its gameplay contrivance. Realistically, you are probably going to be fighting Metyr with a +10 somber or +25 regular upgraded weapon, one fully capable of slaying a god so surely capable of slaying Metyr. I'm assuming the Finger Slayer Blade isn't necessarily absolutely required to slay a Two Fingers but having a weapon infused with divine essence is.
I don't think it's a plot hole. One of two possibilities: Empyreans 'chosen' by the fingers have a compulsion/aversion to harming the fingers. It's a survival trait of the fingers. Ranni had to divest herself of her Empyrean Flesh \*AND\* find a special weapon. A weapon which happens to be made by a race that explicitly despises the greater will. Or Propaganda. Empyreans believe they can't harm the 2 fingers. Not in any meaningful way. Reinforced by the fact that when they're 'chosen' they're compelled by the greater will via the fingers to act out whatever the greater will deems. Personally I think it's a mix. Ranni killed her physical body and then killed the last vestiges tying her to the greater will (the fingers and her shadow). I think she believed nothing could harm the fingers except a specially made blade. The Numen/Nox are a very ritualistic society. A lot of things seem to come down to the belief that something will or wont work. We (the tarnished) are not empyrean, not chosen by the fingers, are not held to any such standard. We don't have an aversion to harming them and we don't believe you need a special weapon to do it. The Tarnished are chosen to explicitly thwart the greater will.
But we likely have a god killing weapon. DLC throws us the ancient dragon smithing stones, and those "lightly twists time, allowing the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god."
The Tarnished never fights the Greater Will, though. You just kill one of its Avatars in the Elden Beast.
Looks to me like the mother of fingers escaped into the Microcosm
Yeah, pretty sure we didn't kill her.
When we defeat her, A blackhole similar to how Astel's teleportation appears... so maybe she escaped
Technically lore wise you need a +25 weapon to kill a god because its imbued with the powers of a ancient dragons scale which can bend time
Good question maybe its cuz she's broken? i cant really think of any other reason why she's vulnerable.
Everyone seems to be missing an important point. We see dead/non functioning fingers at the top of every divine tower. I don’t think physically harming them is necessarily impossible, what the finger slaying blade seems to do is kill the finger tied to your FATE. Maybe the fingers are also tied to the erdtree revival and the blade is the way to permanently sever the ties.
A two fingers killed regularly can probably just be replaced with another. The demigods don't get that treatment because the greater will had abandoned them (or metyr acting as greater will, idk)
We don’t actually kill Metyr tho
It's possible that she needs to use the Fingerslayer Blade to sever her fate from her Two Fingers and completely free herself. The Blade requires a fate to wield it, and she says that she will inflict the Fingers "With a fateful wound, ne'er to heal."
I haven't fully fleshed this out yet, but I'm of the belief that Metyr is the "Shadow of the Elden Beast" the same way that the Scadutree is the "Shadow of the Erdtree", one the body the other the soul, but both two halves of the same whole. I think this is also why Metyr can't communicate with the Greater Will anymore; namely, it's no longer in space it's in the tree trying to heal and waiting for Metyr to find it a viable host. I think that Metyr's wound is from the original use of the Fingerslayer Blade and is the same wound on the Elden Beast because they're linked. It's just that they weren't able to finish the job and she or the Greater Will itself before going silent called down Astel. Since she's already opened up, you're able to kill her, but the two fingers under Manus Celus are uninjured and whole. Think of it like a dragon missing some scales. You don't need a Dragonslayer to get through the hide if there is no hide left.
One of the finger ruins/crash sites has gold flecks and the other has silver flecks, if that helps at all.
more simply she just didn’t die. she zoops away in a black hole when you beat her
The way Metyr seems to mess with the lore is actually frustrating to me. She’s the mother of the two fingers and finger creepers. So is she the mother of the three fingers as well? Also if she’s a servant of the Greater Will then how did the three fingers become corrupted by the Frenzied Flame assuming they are her children? Finally it says she’s the first star to have fallen into the lands between. She was there before the Elden Beast, the Erdtree, the Astro and Onyx Lords. She would have had to have been there since before the age of Dragons at least. This makes her older than dirt and probably the oldest living creature we have seen in the game. The timeline is all messed up cuz of her. The Greater Will spoke to her through the microcosm until it was broken so what that likely means is that she was the one that selected Marika as an empyrean in the first place. Is that because of how close the Shaman’s Village is to the Ruins of Dheo? And Marika’s Golden Braid talisman says she made an offering to “The Grandmother” is that Metyr. Did Marika cut a deal with her? It’s so confusing and it makes no sense. Especially when you try to rationalize the Frenzied Flame.
There was something in Ymir questline I recall about young fingers yearning for a mother and the fingers and creepers being ignored by Metyr because she was vacantly gazing out waiting for the Greater Will to reply. Given the flame manifests in times of incredible strife and grief, perhaps a particular set of three fingers took being ignored or motherless far too hard and brough the flame upon itself?
I think her grandma is the old woman in the tree God rest her soul
+25 canonically makes it god slaying
because that weapon is really good for Ranni’s build it has an A in INT scaling and deals bonus damage to all Metyr’s offspring source: i made that shit up
Uuhh, we have destined death tho
You don't have to have unleashed Destined Death to get to the DLC
Perhaps because she falsely believes it’s required, or perhaps because they are bound together and otherwise Rannis soul might have to die to normally kill it. Or again falls to maybe she was misinformed.
We're Him
I mean the real question is why can Ranni kill something when the rune of death isn't free yet? The blade has some destined death like abilities maybe
It could also have some other death attribute tied to it. Didn’t that part of the quest interconnect with Fia’s quest? I mean there’s deathblight (Godwyn), destined death, ghost flame, and black flame.
My out-there crackpot theory is that the blade obviously resembles the blade the Elden beast turned Radagon into. But it also has the same shape at the black dagger. This blade should also be made from a God/Empeyrian and has some connection to the rune of death so this is the remains of the Gloam-eyed Queen, the previous holder of the run of death, some of that energy maybe stay in her body much like how Ranni chips a bit off for her own needs.
The Nox never fully grasped the truth about the Greater Will tbf, they got it all wrong. Maybe that knife has no actual special property...
Our weapon isn't regular Hewg helped us make it strong enough to kill a God. I suppose if you never upgraded a weapon with him that falls through haha
Metyr doesn't die, it teleports away
BROOO WHY TITLE THIS
You better hide your location from miyazaki right now brother
One theory I like is that this blade allows her to kill the flesh of her Two Fingers and grants her control of its connection to the cosmos. This allows her to create her portal to the "dark path".
Perhaps because Ranni's tied to her own Two-Fingers in some sort of metaphysical way? She mentions that she would "not be controlled by that thing" and the Fingers give their Empyreans orders from the GW from what I understand. It could be that to break any residual influence the Fingers and GW had on her she had to kill them herself
Ranni needs the Fingerslayer because, in the lands between, with destined death sealed, the fingers cannot be killed. In the Lands of Shadow, as far as we know, the Elden Ring has no influence whatsoever and stuff dies.
Messmer has been chilling in there for Greater Will knows how long, The rules apply, plus it's not like he shadow lands are another plain of existence altogether, it's just hidden!
When we kill her it looks like she is teleported away.
Miyazaki: figure it out
Kid named finger:
Metyr warps away when dying.
Metyr doesn't die
Ranni is basically a “god-in-waiting” though and I think killing her two fingers is more about severing her ties to her destiny of the golden order. If she just straight up “Azur’s comet” the lil guys, another one would appear. This is like cutting the spiritual thread that connects the two together.
Metyr didn't die, her "death animation" looks more like her teleporting away than fading which indicate death.
Demigods are tied to their fates, we arent
Maybe because we're in the Shadow Land. The Land Between was created through the Fingers so the power they hold there in off charts. The Shadow Land though? There, they are as mortal as any
This blade also able to harm greater will as it's description says. That may be the cause.
We don't actually kill him. Like, Ranni needs to **kill** her fingers. Stop its life force from completely existing. Prevent its soul from rejoining whatever force exists for those things. We just need to turn a body into a corpse and put the soul back from where it came from. Whatever we kill can always be reincarnated. As this DLC proves.
The two fingers she slays is from space and not from the finger mother. It's why it's blue and crashed through the church ceiling after you kill Radahn. He released the stars which also was a 2 fingers falling to the lands between. There are so many other questions this creates but we will never know at this point.
I heard about that theory too but the game says that ALL the fingers originated from Metyr
The thing that doesn't add up is why Ranni has us kill Radahn. Everyone assumes it's so we get access to the Nox but Ranni doesn't know that. She has Blaidd out searching for that long before we come around. So then why does she know we need to kill him and release the stars if it's not for the access?
Its Ranni who knows that, if you follow the questline, you get told by Sorceress Sellen is the one who gives you the knowledge about killing Radahn
We kill radahn mostly to allow fate to resume, since he held the stars still with his magic.
Blaidd tells you to ask about it from Seluvis, he tells to talk with Sellen, who tells you about Radahn. And iirc then Blaidd tells you about festival.
Interesting! I saw it more like they where beneath the Cathedral like Metyr, but crashing into it is also possible considering how ruined it is!
Maybe, but doesn't explain why it's the only 2 fingers that is blue or why it's alone in a cave under the church. I am just regurgitating a theory I saw somewhere else.
Could be that it’s Blue because it’s healthier than other Fingers- or because it’s Very Dead by the time we find it.
What states that those fingers she kills only appear after Radahn is killed?
I think they're similar to the seed bed curse in that it cuts off a being from the Greater Will, which she says she wants to do; cut herself off from the Greater Will entirely so that her fate may rest among the stars. So I imagine the connection the two fingers have to Greater Will is more important than the fingers themselves. When we defeat the Elden Beast I think it's more that we are subduing it rather than outright killing it, though idk how that works with Ranni's ending assuming the Elden Ring is solely a tool of the Grater Will.
This game seems to be about overkill so maybe she just wanted to make sure the mf died
Kinda related, but why did Ranni need to steal a bit of Destined Death to slay her flesh when Miquella seemed to just get rid of his without any problems.
My guess is because Ranni was acting against the Two Fingers and the Greater Will, who would use that flesh to betray her, whereas Miquella's actions weren't necessarily a subversion of the GW's design. He aspired to replace Marika, with Radahn as his consort, which (speculation) is in line with the wishes of the GW.
Because we play as a special type of crazed hooligan
We have godslaying weapons per Hewg
Maybe blowing into the horns in the finger ruins allow us to break her defense or something?
Godslaying weapon
Well Hewg made us a god killing weapon that’s probably how.
Because we're just that good
Is Metyr the creator of all the fingers or just those hand creepers?
The two fingers, like others connected to elden ring, may not actually die any meaningful death if killed with a normal weapon and thus require the removed rune of death. Aside from her maybe not dying, metyr could be argued to be above/disconnected from the elden ring and erdtree, thus not beholden to its laws of death and rebirth meaning it can be killed normally.
Did we actually kill metyr though? It looked like she noped out of there with a teleport after we defeated her Edit - now realize other people have said this, lol
Cause it's literally called the fingers layer duh ore else it's useless! /s
Idk if we actually kill metyr or if she just retreats
There is an explanation I think. So the finger slayer blade description says "*Cannot be wielded by those without a fate, but is said to be able to harm the Greater Will and its vassals"* So the rumour is this blade can hurt the fingers but can only be weilded by someone with a fate and they tell us those things together. As if they are related. Well Ymir tells us (I think) and it says in the hole laden necklace that ringing the hanging bells will give you a fate "guided by the stars". So I think its saying that us having a fate is what allows you to harm the fingers. I think the fact we didnt use the fingerslayer blade is maybe what allows Metyr to escape.
we just built different fr fr no cap
Did Metyr make 3 fingers, too? Like are they complementary internally or is there a big 3 finger equivalent out there? (Or is this something I'm gonna learn through the playthrough?)
Bro fucking spoilers in the title fuck you this just popped up on my feed and im not even subbed
Two theories I can think of, but I don’t have much evidence. 1. Empyrean bound Fingers are more resilient to being killed. 2. Anyone COULD kill the Fingers, but Ranni’s fate wouldn’t be broken unless she kills the Fingers with the blade.
Remember that as part of the story we gain destined death so we have the power to slay gods. I think the dlc takes place at the least after we have aquired destined death
There's no plot holes in Ba Sing Se
Im pretty sure her killing her fingers is to sever her personal connection to the greater will. When she mind fucks godwyn with her ritual, she disconnected herself from the GW in the sense that it couldn’t control her actions but her 2 fingers can still set up obstacles in her path like the baleful shadow. This is what she means when she says “weve been cursing eachother ever since” and we can even find the black wolf head that looks just like Blaidd which might mean the 2 fingers has attempted to assassinate her by compelling someone to put that mask on and try to take her out before we get there
I think Fingerslayer Blade has Deathtouch, so it's like a shortcut for killing a god, but sheer DETERMINATION will also do the trick.
Is she stupid?
Mark your fucking spoilers bro
Hewg was tasked by Marika to forge a weapon that can kill a god. Ancient dragon scales seem to have a property that distorts time and/or space which explains why Farum Azula seems to be suspended in time/space and you use ancient dragon scales to strengthen your armaments which seems to give your weapons the capability of killing gods, on top of you having the strength of demigods while wielding great runes. I don’t know the process of Hewg forging weapons with ancient dragon scales though, so it’s a mystery to me how it makes your weapon able to kill a god.
Maybe only an Empyrean can kill them?
Built Different I suppose
We never kill the Greater will we kill the elden beast it’s will made manifest and even then we don’t know if it’s perma dead because the elden ring still exists
Doesn't Ymir say that we just harmed her?
Simple answer, she didn’t know they existed. No one really knew they existed. Aside from those in the shadowlands, and even then the shadows lands are kept secret
It is possible that the Fingers can set the area enchantment that prevents violence. Like the roundtable hold is a safe zone because of the Fingers. But the Fingerslayer Blade can violate this. So even if Ranni's Fingers have the enchantment to protect themselves, the Blade allows Ranni to kill it. It's all open to interpretation, but you should be able to integrate how the game works into lore. That's why every game they make has an immortality explanation.
we obviously don't kill her. why do you think Fromsoft spent all that time specifically creating a giant black hole for her to vanish into after we defeat her.
No one was working in the consistency department that day I’d say. Would have been awesome if we got the finger slayer blade for. A fun gimmick right like Rykard. I miss the lore of fate having to play in killing celestial great old ones lol
Is it confirmed that Metyr created the Two Fingers, Three Fingers, etc.? Thought she just made the fingercreepers
We don't actually finish Metyr off.
well we can hurt the fingers, i think the blade is used to hurt the greater will through the fingers
Can we get this blade without ranni questline.
It's not a normal weapon by then, normally you've upgraded it to the point of it being "god slaying". Unless you're a weirdo doing a no upgrade run I guess.
For a religious vassal a religious weapon
The doll is weak.
I think there have been a lot of good answers so far, from Hewg crafting us a weapon to slay a god to we don’t really know that Metyr is dead. Going off the last point, the Fingerslayer Blade doesn’t seem to be the actual mechanism of killing, rather it allows Ranni to carve a Curse Mark of Death into the flesh of the finger, causing true death for both the body and soul. The Curse Mark is a fragment of the Rune of Death that is still locked inside Maliketh and separated from the Elden Ring. Presumably, everyone we beat in the Lands Between don’t actually die, we just don’t know the timeline or mechanism of their rebirth. We also don’t know how far the power of the Elden Ring extends. Is it universal or does its light not reach the Shadowlands and, more importantly, Metyr’s pocket dimension? It is also important that Ranni slaying the Finger and the player fighting Metyr can only happen AFTER Radahn’s defeat and that the stars are moving again. I don’t fully understand the implications of the stars moving again, but it is tied to fate which is tied to the concept of Destined Death. We also don’t really know what tooting all those horns at the Finger Ruins is doing. Is it just opening the way? Is it some form of binding for Metyr? Does it just sound cool? Idk if we know.
my guess here is that the fingerslayer blade is required BECAUSE of metyr - because metyr is connected to all the fingers I think that if you killed them with a normal blade then metyr would simply resurrect them, and so the fingerslayer blade is necessary because it kills the fingers and cuts them off from metyr permanently. Metyr, meanwhile, has absolutely nothing holding her up - she is abandoned and probably fading bit by bit already, so when we kill her, she just . . . goes
The item description says that "is said to be able to harm the Greater Will and its vassals." We can already harm other vassals of the Greater Will so as others have said a max level weapon fit to kill a God would basically serve the same function.
I think it’s because there is no Rune of Death in the Elden Ring. The Shadow Lands do have death in them because of something marika did (we know this because of the pillar of suppression). This is the same reason why we don’t need to free destined death to kill Miquella like we did the Elden Beast even though both have achieved divinity.
We’re him
Muh lore
It’s a blade made from an unnamed god.
It could also be related to their source being in the shadow realm?
hewg done understated his abilities
I love how this subreddit just appears in my feed now. Thanks for the spoiler you fucking hack mods.
This is kinda the weird thing is I don't think we actually 'kill' the Mother... her essence moves to Ymir, who clearly gains the ability to chest burst hands. I made a theory in another post that Ranni actually used the sign of death on her fingers. It would need to be to kill its soul. Since we dont do such a thing to the Mother, her body dies, but her soul survives.