Summary
Anyone familiar withElden Ringknows how deep the game’s lore goes, and this year’s release of theShadow of the Erdtreeexpansion has only compounded this, creating even more questions for discerning lore buffs.
We know from a note found in the Suppressing Pillar that the Land of Shadow used to lie at the centre of The Lands Between before it disappeared from existence and became a liminal plane for the souls of the dead.
As you may have guessed,theorists have foundthat if you overlay the Land of Shadows map on top of The Lands Between’s map with the Suppressing Pillar at the centre, the Land of Shadows' position approximately correlates with the space in the middle of the base game’s map. As with everything in Elden Ring, a lot of what we think we know about the lore is based on educated guesses. After all, explicitly giving the player information isn’t reallyFromSoftware’s style.
The Reign of the Rauh
Now, anyone who’s played Shadow of the Erdtree will remember the Ancient Ruins of Rauh, the location where you use Messmer’s Kindle to access Enir-Ilim where the Tarnished ultimately confronts Miquella and Radahn. With all of the above lore in mind, Reddit user Lili-Dub has speculated the Ruins of Rauh are connected to the ruins that take you up to the Altus Plateau in The Lands Between.
Visually, these two locations are very similar and importantly, the location of the respective ruins correlates with the overlaying of the expansion’s map onto the base game’s map. The ruins leading up to the Altus Plateau may be remnants of the Ruins of Rauh that were left behind when The Land of Shadow was ripped away from The Lands Between.
As pointed out by-The-Senate- in the comments, the poetry of traversing up the ruins of an old, forgotten civilisation to reach the centre of a new one (the Erdtree) is a fantastic piece of worldbuilding and storytelling.
The Atlus Plateau isn’t the only location in The Lands Between with clear evidence of Rauh architecture. The Forge of the Giants and several other ruins are clearly of Rauh design, illustrating how much of The Lands Between they colonised.
There certainly exists deeper dives by Elden Ring lore enthusiasts that can tell you more about the Rauh than I can as a novice, so I suggest digging into it if you want to find out more. The depth of Elden Ring’s worldbuilding and lore is always a marvel to behold.
Elden Ring
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With worldbuilding from Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin and developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is a masterpiece in what has become known as the ‘Soulslike’ genre of action role-playing games.
