"Elden Ring: Shadow of the Eldtree" is an outrageous expansion that returns to the chock-full world of the old "Dark Souls," loaded with new and deadly weapons and a new difficulty discourse with a relentlessly hardcore ruthless boss.
But Diamond has one drawback: several of the bosses, who are quite important to the game's lore, are completely mute. Lerana and Romina in particular are silent as the grave.
A complete set of voice lines for several side characters (and two bosses), first published on the streaming site bilibili and later fully digitized by Detective BonfireVN, has been discovered. Lerana's voice line is simple: "Rise up, twin moons!" but Romina has several howls, "Children of the Tower" and "Butterfly, flap your wings!" and several barking voices.
Neither line says much, but they at least add character to two characters who are very important in the lore. For those of you who don't know, here's why they are big:
Aside from being one of the DLC's first real challenges, Rellana is the sister of Raya Lucaria's heir, Rennala, and Respec's one-stop store. Rellana is a major player in The Lands Between in every sense of the word, but nevertheless turned her back on her birthright to associate with Mesmer and his funky snakes.
Her moveset is subtle, typical of From Software. Lelana wields a blade touched by sorcery and a blade touched by Messer's fire, and she also uses twin moon magic.
In case you're wondering, this is all confirmed by her recollection item description. Lelana, once a princess of Kalian, chose to forsake her birthright and stand by Messer's side instead. Eventually she became known as the Sword of Messer.
In addition, her twin swords read: "The shield that Karian pierced was once wielded by Lelana, Knight of the Twin Moons, in her only participation in ceremonial combat, as a sign of her loyalty to the Eldestree."
But she never utters a word. We are left almost completely in the dark as to her motives.
As for Romina, we have the opposite problem: at around 1:15 in the DLC story trailer, we see her clutching Bud's pole blade before she grew centipede legs. The descriptions of several items also support this:
We also know that she is adopting the vermin created by the "Scarlet Rot" as per the "Pest-Thread Spears" spell, but that is all. Why she is guarding the sealing tree remains up in the air: even her datatized quip "Children of the Tower," which might link her to the cursed man-flies of the Berlat tower settlement, only raises further questions.
After all, while I understand From Software's penchant for burying interesting NPC stories in obscurity, I am left scratching my head as to why these people speak at all. Both characters seem like interesting seams in the "Shadow of the Eldest Tree" storyline, and to leave them mute feels like wasting good food in favor of unanswered questions. But From Software is not a tiny indie company, so I'm not too concerned about that.
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