I can just imagine, before the genocide. The merchants people used to play this lovely piece of music during gatherings, during weddings, during times of joy and sorrow, it brought them together. And as they were buried alive beneath the capitol for heresy, they lost themselves, succumbing to the madness the golden order feared they would bring. And as they all went down one by one all that was left was a husk, a husk that played a song now a lost relic of a dead people. He had long forgotten what the song was called or when they would play it, but it made him feel better, so he played and played, surrounded by his fallen brothers and sisters, maybe wherever they went they could hear him and maybe, they'd feel better too.
*“Well if that’s what they expect from us, then that’s WHAT THEY SHALL GET FROM US… the world of grace should’ve been content to let us sink between the cracks, but to intrude upon our solace… having broken us upon their whims? I’ll never forgive ANY of you”* -Cut Kale dialogue regarding his reaction to the sunken caravan.
Music is orderly since it is full of patterns. You could say this song is the last bit of order before succumbing to frenzied flame of chaos. This entire section of the game is powerful.
Calming music as you focus on falling deeper into a hole.....and after so many times........ you wonder if you're going mad just from jumping into a hole and expecting to live
When you speed up the video by 2x speed, sounds like what the merchant would have use during a celebration with but when its played normally it gives the feeling of those days being long in the past :( The merchant didn't deserve to suffer, but that the world of Elden Ring, sad.
Beautiful work! What I love about the Nomads song is that you can sense it once had other instruments and was much more up tempo, but now it is "isolated and ruined"
Interesting detail about this song... it's about the only song/melody in the game in a mayor tonality, thus the happy/nostalgic sound. Virtually every other song in the game is constructed around minor tonalities, with boss music using diminished and very tense chords heavily as Fromsoft usually does in boss themes, and more suspended or neutral sounds for the ambience tracks in the open world (except maybe caelid which sounds like a horror movie track and the underground rivers, which also have a tense ambience track). Of course Fromsoft would put the only happy song in one of the most cursed areas of the whole game.
i think they put it here to highlight what was lost. this is not a sad song, it evokes joy and lifts spirits. for it to be the song of a people buried alive is a tragic irony in it's purest form: "this is what our happiest times sounded like, let's listen to it as we starve so we can forget our hunger for a little longer." the saddest part about the buried merchants was that everyone was buried, EVERYONE. how long did the entertainers last before they couldn't perform? before everyone lost the strength to stand? before the children's stick-thin limbs gave out? this song was the very last thing they had to hold on to, after hunger and thirst and despair had taken everything else. that it was, once upon a time, such a happy tune hammers home what cruelty was needed to lock away such a happy people.
Interesting fact but about Dark Souls. Gwyn's theme are playing in C major. C major is a happy tonality and it's interesting how they created so sad but in happy tonality
@@pogicus89 Margit is an astral projection of morgott, which he used during the various sieges of the capital to kill various champions and heros. Mohg’s projection was left behind after he set out to cut the cocoon from the haligtree. Perhaps he did not want his brother knowing he had abandoned his duty to protect the three fingers.
And as the Earth burned, and all life locked eyes for the final time, the Frenzied Lord heard a glorious song sound from the souls of those who had become wax for a magnificent candle… …but was the joy in the song true, or merely the last melody orchestrated by the mind of One Great, raving lunatic?
A lovely moonlit night, with those fresh sea breezes, eating a lamb dinner during a live performance. Feeling like a king in rags, for crowns are just a symbol. Keep the song rolling. It soothes the soul.
I like to think that even the Omen Brothers felt shame and guilt about the Frenzy Flame Merchants. That's why Morgott locked off the entrance to the place.
Always the saddest due to the fact they were enjoying their freedom just to be locked under the erdtree capital like an omen even though they weren’t omens nor beasts of the crucible, they were just people that sold items, but just like marika treated the fire giants she saw them as a threat to the erdtree therefore sealing them in that dungeon, I think of this music as their last moments together wanting to bring joy to each other as everyone knew their madness would overcome them and take control, and the ones that escaped just remember them as ancestors of the past but still fueling the hatred to the golden order for what they did to their kin
Kale’s quest that shows the cyclic nature of persecution really is a sad cut, having him there and reacting the way his dialogue hints would help exemplify the lesson.
When the grace of gold has left you...cold and afraid..gather round to a new warmth... Take the frenzy flame within you....May chaos take the world..may chaos take the world!!... 🔥
There's something both magnificent and horrifying about the subterranean chamber where the merchants are. The idea that you descend far below the capital and visit the merchants to become a herald to their "prophecy" of the Frenzied Flame. They are playing the tune that signals the arrival of their Lord and yet a lot of them are already dead while some others attack you. Only a couple of them remain sane enough and that's perhaps due to the music that allows them to escape the horror of their situation. And then you fulfill the prophecy by inheriting the flame and erasing the Erdtree from power. Truly an impactful ending.
This should have played during the frenzied flame ending. Chaos may have taken the world, but the souls of the lands between, especially those of the merchants, may finally rest.
I do genuinely love this song, but it in some way hurts to hear so many others playing alongside. I know it's the general theme and arc that we happen upon a world fallen to strife and ruin, but hearing what is ostensibly the last player of the last song of a people always cuts so profoundly. A once proud symphony reduced to the last who yet know the song, and with it an unmeant transition from a song of mirth to a sort of funerary dirge. I'll stop afore waxing too philosophical, but thank you for the post, and I hope your days find you well as can be.
If you speed it up to x2 speed, it actually sounds really joyous and nice... Ironic, and sad, to see it so twisted now. Almost as if it is a hollow shell of what it once was. A "husk," just like the one who now plays alone.
- Наверное, это наш конец... - Конец? Нет... Наш путь не кончается смертью. Смерть - лишь продолжение пути, начертанное всем. Серая, как дождь, завеса этого мира отдёрнется, и откроется серебристое окно, и ты увидишь… - Что... Что, Гэндальф?... Что увижу? - Белые берега... И за ними - далёкие зелёные холмы под восходящим солнцем... - Это неплохо...) - Нет...нет конечно...)
I am the lord of the shunned and the suffering! I am the lord of those who cry out for retribution! I am the Lord of Frenzied Flame, and all shall be *Incinerated!*
Hauntingly reminiscent of music played at a wedding (think canon in D). Makes it all the sadder - from being played in the happiest moments of some luck caravan members' lives, surrounded by family and friends, to being played by the last remnants of the Great caravan, sealed underground, isolated among the corpses of family and friends, desperately clinging to memories of better days
I don't see many people making this theory or connection, but I always imagined that the whole reason the Merchants were locked away and people thought they practiced heretical beliefs is because of Shabriri. Shabriri, the most hated man in history, the man reviled for slander, and seemingly an embodiment or avatar of the Frenzied Flame. Gouging out his eyes and making him the most reviled man in history seems pretty severe, unless, for example, he slandered an entire civilization of merchants and got most of them locked underground forever by accusing them of heretical beliefs, in order to get them closer to the thing he represents and have them summon it by chanting their song of despair.
I love the idea of the frenzied flame. To give into the frenzy. It isn't really painted as a pure evil option which I like, though I'd like to see some expansion on it. The whole game is about making a broken world something else with sheer ambition and will-power. Frenzied flame is a very nietzchian option. It's the idea that maybe, just maybe, burning everything to the ground is a better alternative and some days I really get that
I'm not a very emotional person, but this soundtrack is the only one that can consistently get me on the verge of tears. Supremely beautiful and stunning, but at the same time, very tragic. Fromsoft left out a lot of potential with Kale's cut questline, because I think it would be a shoo-in for the best questline had it been included.
Is it a music meant for the Tarnished to lose focus in one of the most focus requiring area in the souls series to stop the player from getting that ending? Or is it like a good ending music in an adventurous movie where the protagonist is being crowned as a winner? Madness 😵💫
Imagine if this was the original sound of the music being played by the Nomads in order to uplift each other during their early immurement and the orchestra slowly weakened as most of them fell into death/madness. Until there is only one musician remaining...
Given the simplicity of their instruments and the simplicity of the melody, I imagine the tune would normally be more uptempo and folk-like. It'd be more rousing dance tune than dirge. A memory of a happier time. It's just played slow and melancholic due to, well, ya know. Nice rendition all the same.
How a game like Elden Ring that's all about death, and crazy as hell bosses, can be this beautiful at the same time. Truly does deserve game of the year!
This one reminds me of a beautiful song I heard years ago, this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pGXy-8J5IGs.htmlsi=b8fE8jS47spjwsd3
this theme is somehow perfectly sad and perfectly happy, I dont know how to describe it. you could use it at a wedding or a funeral and it would work well
I always interpreted the two songs you hear the merchants playing as letters addressed to each other, the nomadic merchants above play a noticeably more somber melody, as if they are mourning, while the ones below play a more uplifting melody, as if they are rejoicing. One side is grieving for the kin forever trapped The other side is celebrating for the kin that managed to escape
Amazing considering if you take a moment to examine the merchants aesthetic its a very festive and almost Christmassy with their bright fabrics and mules and this piece of music gives me more head cannon that these merchants at once time when the lands between was hospitable and a home for all who dwelt their these merchants where once a sight of great joy as their caravans roamed the lands between.
Look their hats. They have feathers in them. You can identify which tips are from what merchant by looking at the feathers attached to these little paper
That head cannon beautiful. Sad thing if you watch VaatiVidya 's frenzied flame video cause their decimation was kicked off "by a lie". I am moved and sickened by the parallels we may draw from this to our waking lives.
Probably something way more similar to your fantasy world during peace. There was an academy, tons of villages, a city with badass relics and architecture. I still wonder how Caelid looked like before the rot started or the Eternal Cities... what we explore and fight through are ruins of old, of something that has passed their prime a loooooong time ago. What remains are the creations made to last hundreds if not thousands of years, the undead, latter generations of groups or people that were there before the shattering and demi gods that too passed their prime and now are just husks of what they used to be. Imagine Limgrave but before the time during our play and before the Golden Order, where Omen horns were considered of noble blood and the world looked a lot more like a normal-ish fantasy world.
Gives me sinking of the Titanic vibes, "Nearer My God to Thee." When I first found that hole to the Three Fingers, hearing that song, Melina telling me to not go further, I got a real feeling of dread and, "I should not be here."
It shows you the evil that was done in the name of goodness. That a people whose only sin was to be different were subjected to a hell no one should be. I wonder...was the flame of chaos always a fire of madness or did it become that thanks to what was done to those people? Was it something maybe just a bit boonful before and after absorbing all that rage, pain, despair, and hate it became a force of utter nihilism?
@@jacobfreeman5444 @Jacob Freeman Up until hearing this song, I had completely assumed that the Frenzied Flame was simply a force of chaos working against the Golden Order, a simple yin to a yang. Clearly, there is so much I have missed and so much I have yet to discover, for clearly this Flame must once have been much more, perhaps even a benevolent force for the people of the Lands Between. On a side note, your hypothesis reminded me of the Heart of Atlantis.
God, this... The Grand Caravan must have been such a beautiful place, once. A moving city, amongst a thousand carriages and a million markets, each a wonder of cloth and feather, smoky with incense and heavy with the whistling wind.
Listening to this reminds me of how it felt to listen to the choir sing in Christmas Mass as for the first time as a kid. You did an extraordinarily good job, this is so beautiful.
This song is like the inverse to the Rains of Castemere from George R.R Martin’s ASOIAF. The Rains is the song of the Lannister’s and heralds the brutality of Tywin Lannister as he marched over anyone who disrespected his house and name. Even just hearing the Rains of Castemere play was a sign of your doom or success depending on your alliance with Tywin. It was the song that was for the Lannister’s, by the Lannisters, and made people fear the Lannisters. In Elden Ring it’s the inverse. This song is the Rains of Castemere of this game. It’s everywhere, constantly referred to but only in the music itself never by word. It’s a pretty nice tune if a bit melancholic. The song evokes strong imagery when we hear it, especially after seeing the Forsaken depths leading to the flame of frenzy. It’s an ever present reminder of the fate of these people who stood against the golden order. This song is the marking of an entire peoples demise. Just like how the Rains of Castemere is about the demise of house Castemere in the face of their disrespect to house Lannister. Unlike the Rains however, this song isn’t made by the golden order, for the golden order. It’s made by the merchant peoples and is presumably about them, even if it wasn’t for this exact purpose of the song is clearly culturally significant to the merchants, but at this point it’s been sullied and changed into a song that only reminds the player of the fate of the merchants and those who stand against the golden order. I’m not 100% sure if Martin or Miyazaki intended this connection but I can see the relation.
I think the reason why this gets to me so much is that madness has been a thing I've been afraid of since I turned 20, because I started having panic attacks and had them for 5 months straight every day and it felt like living in a mental hell. This song reminds me of a sort of bitter sweet horror experience of going insane.
love this. What might've been before they were so wrongfully treated. Before they were forced to slip through the cracks. What might've been beautiful and good, turned wretched and cruel through no fault of theirs. As much as i wanted to end elden ring any other way, I'm always drawn to the chaos flame because these people simply did not deserve to suffer. they deserve to rest.
There is a theory, based in the cut content, in which this song is a lullaby sung by St Trina (Miquella) for the merchants so they could sleep peacefully. That makes it more sad and beautiful even.
Man is cruelty and nihilism personified. Whatever happened to twist him that way cannot justify it. He is truly evil. Perhaps the only truly evil character you will meet in the Lands Between.
