Characters / Elden Ring: Recurring Enemies and Bosses

Elden Ring Main Character Index
Main Characters (The Tarnished | Marika) | Roundtable Hold | Secondary Characters (Renowned Ashes) | Outer Gods | Demigods (Godfrey | Morgott | Mohg | Radahn | Rykard | Ranni the Witch | Malenia) | Enemies and Bosses (Dragons | Liurnia of the Lakes | Recurring Enemies and Bosses | Tarnished Invaders and Targets)

This page details the recurring Enemies and Bosses. Those considered "Great Enemies" and "Legends" are Bolded to signify them. Warning: Unmarked spoilers ahead.

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General

Lands Between' Fauna (Sheep, Deer, Boars, Springhares, Wolves, Bears, Eagles, Dragonflies, Guillemot, Owls, Turtles)

The more mundane fauna of the Lands Between, left mostly uncorrupted from the Shattering and all that it entailed.

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• Bears Are Bad News: Downplayed Trope, regular bears are aggressive, but rather sparsely found and far easier to take down than more common enemies like Lordsworn Knights and Trolls found around the world - and of course, they are small fries compared to the much bigger, much faster, much stronger Runebears.
• Elite Mook: White-furred wolves usually act as leaders of wolf packs, and have much more HP and attack power as a result.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: Or rather, Herbivores are neutral. Herbivores are just about the only creatures in the whole game that won't try to attack you on sight, and will instead try to run away to preserve themselves. Their low HP also means they're a very easy source of crafting materials. The only exception to this are the thunder-sheep in Altus who will attempt to do a very damaging thunder-roll attack against you should you get too close.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: All herbivores as well as giant dragonflies have incredibly low HP, which means that you can kill one with a swing of any weapon or a single arrow.
• Predators Are Mean: All predatory animals, except for eagles and owls, will attack the Tarnished on sight.

Wandering Nobles

Voiced by: Ben Fox

Nobles exiled from their homelands to the Lands Between for various, long forgotten reasons as they lost their minds trapped in the cycle of immortality. Five can be summoned with the Wandering Noble Spirit Ashes, and one that can use Glintstone Pebble is summonable with the Noble Sorcerer Spirit Ashes.

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• The Fog of Ages: Item descriptions often note whatever they did in life or what ambitions or goals used to drive them have all been forgotten.
• The Goomba: As noncombatant civilians, they're the most basic enemies in the game, with slow, weak and widely telegraphed attacks if they have a weapon. Many don't carry any arms at all and just cower in fear if you approach them. However, like most enemies in a Fromsoft game, they shouldn't be underestimated; the ones with torches, for example, can easily dismount the Tarnished from Torrent, and the sorcerer variants can be very dangerous if they are in an elevated position to cast their spells from.
• Madness Mantra: The nobles inhabiting the Dragon Burnt Ruins in Limgrave can be heard repeatedly saying prayers to Agheel, the dragon that lives nearby.
  Agheel, o Agheel. The flame of Agheel with burn true.
• Metal Slime: Nobles carrying treasure chests can rarely be found in the Lands Between, fleeing when spotted by the Tarnished and turning themselves invisible to hide. When killed for the first time, they drop certain Golden Ruins.
• Patrolling Mook: Groups of nobles can be found patrolling several paths, often with a banner or a horn to alert nearby soldiers.
• Recurring Element: Those shambling humans might as well be renamed as the Hollows from FromSoft's Souls series and you wouldn't notice a difference.
• Riches to Rags: They were nobles long ago, but now you can only see them wallowing pitifully in their undead state, or scrounging around in the mud like the lowliest serf.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The curse of immortality brought about by the Shattering has broken the minds of these nobles and rendered them delirious. Their emaciated bodies indicate they are starving but cannot die, and the ones digging in the dirt are implied to be looking for some kind of food. They are often found carrying Rowa Fruit, which is explicitly inedible for humans, showing their desperation for anything to eat.

Commoners

Menial servants and laborers found in the various castles and keeps of the Lands Between. Despite their frailty, they are willing to fight to the death for their lords.

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• Body Horror: They have very stretched out necks and limbs which looks like they've been artificially elongated.
• Enemy Summoner: Necromancers in the Black Knife Catacombs not only summon Skeletons, but also buff them by increasing their damage and preventing them from fully dying, even if their remains are struck. Fortunately, these Skeletons instantly die when the Necromancers are killed.
• Getting Hot in Here: Commoners in Volcano Manor wear nothing but their underwear, most likely due to the intense heat of the area.
• Glass Cannon: Their firebombs can pack a punch, but they have very low health and defense and have limited melee ability.
• The Goomba: Along with the Nobles they serve, they are among the weakest and least threatening enemies in the Lands Between. They're usually found in castles and fortresses, but others can be found as simple laborers in the wilds.
• Institutional Apparel: They wear arm shackles hanging around their necks. Subverted as the shackles are worn voluntarily and serve a religious purpose of showing their blind faith and obedience to the Erdtree and the Golden Order.
• Mad Bomber: They have an endless supply of firebombs at their disposal... and many of them happen to be positioned in areas full of incendiary barrels.
• Slave Mooks: The Commoners wear visible shackles and have the lowest lot; their internal AI name is "RuneSlave." They're often found sleeping in storerooms or stables. This status is most obvious for the Commoners in Radahn's castles: both Redmane Castle and Fort Gael feature walled-off areas full of countless Commoner bodies and prowling Guardians, the soldiers having apparently fed their slaves to the lions for kicks.^note The Commoners also still have their clothes and wooden shackles intact, so it's not like they were burnt either.
• Underground Monkey:
  • Necromancers in the Black Knife Catacombs are able to continually revive and strengthen the skeletons found alongside them.
  • Death Cultists, distinguished by a black cloth shrouding their face, are found alongside an Omen near the base of the Minor Erdtree in the Capital Outskirts, and are able to case Fia's Mist.

Frenzied Villagers

Villagers in thrall to the Frenzied Flame, who haunt ruined and cursed towns across the Lands Between: the Ailing Village in the Weeping Peninsula, the Frenzied Flame Village in Liurnia of the Lakes, and the Yelough Anix ruins in the Consecrated Snowfield.

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• Despair Event Horizon: Maybe. Those who serve the Frenzied Flame usually do so because they've fallen into such despair that burning everything seems like a good idea, and Frenzied Villagers are often found near ruins, so it's likely at least some of these people became vulnerable to the Frenzied Flame because they despaired at their homes being ransacked or otherwise falling to ruin.
• Eye Scream: Their most notable feature is that their eyes have been replaced by balls of flame.
• In the Hood: They all wear pointed hoods.
• Tragic Monster: They aren't attacking you because they want to; they've been driven completely mad by the Three Fingers and now "know nothing but the fiery frenzy burning within them."
• Underground Monkey: A variant of Commoners that have succumbed to the Frenzied Flame.

Lordsworn Soldiers

The sworn soldiers of the various demigods, who have set up camps scattered throughout the Lands Between. They have three distinct ranks, denoted by armor and height: Foot Soldiers, Soldiers, and Knights. One of them, the Soldier of Godrick, is the boss of the Stranded Graveyard. Spirit Ashes can be used to summon several types of soldiers: 2 Godrick Soldiers, a Raya Lucaria Soldier with 2 foot soldiers, 2 Leyndell Soldiers (one with a spear and the other with a greatshield), 2 Radahn Soldiers, 5 Masoleum Sodiers, and 4 Haligtree Foot Soldiers.

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• Action Bomb: The less well-equipped Lordsworn Foot Soldiers in Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree, sworn to Miquella, glow with holy power and can detonate themselves to deal heavy damage to the Tarnished at the cost of their own life. This only appears to only happen with the dagger-wielding variant, as the spear-wielding Foot Soldiers (and those manning artillery) will instead attack solely with their weapons. Unlike most Action Bomb enemies in video games, they also only explode if they activate the explosion themselves, and you can stop them from doing so by killing them before the animation completes (they don't detonate on death).
• Annoying Arrows: The Soldier's Crossbow wielded by some Foot Soldiers are described as being of simple make, easy-to-use with minimal training, but lacking accuracy and stopping power. They generally deal just scratch damage to the Tarnished and are the weakest crossbow in their class. The Heavy Crossbows used by some Soldiers are slightly stronger and the strong Soldiers can rack it faster, but they are still quite weak even compared to the Soldiers' normal melee strikes.
• Armies Are Evil: While the other armies are amoral at worst, the Cuckoos stand out for having a reputation as a bunch of evil bastards before having gone insane. The description of the Raya Lucarian Soldier ashes states the Cuckoos were infamous throughout the lands for their "rapacious ways" and they were given free reign by the Academy to wage war as they pleased. And that's not even the start of it, what with their open and violent racism against the Albinaurics or treating their own footsoldiers as disposable...
• Badass Army:
  • Though their sanity has long since eroded, they're all still capable fighters. Standout mention goes to the Cuckoo troops of Liurnia, who include glintstone implements in their tactics; the Royal Army of Leyndell which fights with Dragon Cult lightning magic; the Redmanes, who fought the brunt of the Scarlet Rot with copious flame and won, successfully containing the plague in Caelid (for the most part) for years; and the Haligtree soldiers who fought the aforementioned Redmanes and held the upper hand despite having to project power from halfway across the continent.
  • The Redmanes in particular are given this treatment in universe, to the point it's apparently a popular saying the Redmanes knew no weakness
• Badass Normal: The Foot Soldiers are ordinary Muggles who make up the bulk of the empire's armies, and are expected to take on all manner of fantastical monsters with little more than faith, steel, and the occasional light bit of magic gear (e.g. lightning grenades, low-end smithing stones) - and they usually succeed. The Soldiers are a more arguable case, as they appear to be mildly superhuman and are definitely on the big side, but their capabilities appear to be fairly normal for humans in the Lands Between, as their equipment has low stat requirements and can be wielded by most starting characters; the only exception is the Lordsworn's Greatsword (requires 10 DEX and 16 STR; so 11 STR with two hands) if you started as one of the four classes with a low STR stat, and even then that only requires one or two extra levels.
• BFS: The basic Lordsworn Straight Sword is this in the hands of the Soldiers, being as long as the player character is tall with a proportionally wide blade - and they wield it with one hand. Some Soldiers are instead equipped with the Lordsworn's Greatsword which is even bigger and tend to be the most dangerous. The greatswords are taller than the wielders and proportionally wider than bearing swords.
• Carry a Big Stick: The most common variant carries around a warpick, wielding it with a shield.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Look mostly the same except for their unique helmets and uniform colors. Godrick's men wear red and green, the Cuckoos wear blue and red, the Redmanes wear red (with some blue), the Haligtree troops wear white with gold accents, the Leyndell army wears gold with green accents, and the Mt. Gelmir forces wore black. Mausoleum Soldiers wear gray and black, with the chests stained red from when they were ritually decapitated before being turned into spirits to guard the Wandering Mausoleums.
• Cool Helmet: Each variant has a unique helmet: the Cuckoo soldiers have a nice, colored feather jutting out on top of the front of theirs, the Redmane Soldiers have metal boar tusks in honor of their beloved General, Haligtree troops have a crown of Unalloyed Gold, et cetera.
• Degraded Boss: A Soldier of Godrick armed with a greatsword is fought by the Tarnished at the end of the tutorial. Afterwards, they become common Limgrave mooks, and are actually the weakest of the Lordsworn.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The greatsword users can deal heavier damage than the other variants, and also get hyperarmor on some attacks. They're implicitly ranked higher than the rest too.
  • The Haligtree, domain of Miquella and Malenia, has by far the strongest generic versions of the Lordsworn soldiers and knights, and their skills are enhanced by the holy incantations they use and all the monsters and nonhumans (Erdtree Avatars, Misbegotten, Crystalians, etc.) backing them up.
  • The Redmane troops guarding the Divine Tower of Caelid are much stronger than the regular variants, with endgame tier stats that allow them to easily kill players who are leveled adequately for the rest of the region. But there are only three of them in total (six if you count the Foot Soldiers).
• The Goomba:
  • Foot Soldiers, who merely wear padded gambesons, tabards, helmets, and bits of mail rather than full plate-and-mail armor and surcoats, never use greatswords or shields, have less health than their standard counterparts, and swing their weapons slowly and clumsily. They're often found performing rear-area tasks like guarding supply caches, manning siege engines, or defending fortifications with crossbows.
  • Godrick's soldiers are generally the weakest and most basic of the Lordsworn, having the lowest stats and no remarkable equipment or abilities.
• Forever War: The Undead Catacombs feature Redmane and Haligtree troops fighting each other as spirits. When a spirit is just slain, it just respawns in the same catacomb, and they do the same thing all over again. The spirits have implicitly been doing this since shortly after the massive nearby battle at the Wailing Dunes.
• Hard-Coded Hostility: They attack the Tarnished on-sight. They can often be found fighting monsters, demi-humans, and other wild creatures in certain areas, particularly Castle Morne, but if the player Tarnished intervenes to help they will attack immediately the moment an opportunity presents itself. This becomes noticeable if, for example, you install Nepheli as Lord of Limgrave and the region's soldiers still mindlessly attack you on sight.
• Heroic Sacrifice: General Radahn's army committed this en masse, choosing to remain in Caelid to act as shield against the Scarlet Rot to protect the rest of the Lands Between. In the words of the Redmane Knight armor;
  "Alas, dear home, I shan't see you again! For our duty is to remain here, a bulwark against the blight."
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Their surcoat tabards are decorated with a wide palette of very bright and colorful patterns to go with the heraldry of their chosen lord. Justified, as there were six different warring factions using similar equipment and uniforms (Leyndell, Haligtree, Redmanes, Mount Gelmir, Raya Lucaria Academy, and Stormveil) so being able to tell friend from foe was far more important than camouflage in open battles.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Some soldiers, particularly those of the Royal Army at Gelmir, can be found eating corpses of their own ranks out of sheer insanity or desperate hunger.
• Large and in Charge: The mid-ranking Lordsworn in platemail and surcoats (who comprise about half their ranks) are inexplicably all 6'11" tall, towering over the lesser Foot Soldiers in gambesons (who are about the same height as the player character). They're very broadly built, too, and have some superhuman strength (all of them can swing blades multiple times larger than real zweihanders at speeds no human could ever match, jump more than their own height in full armor to ascend obstacles, and launch enemies - including you - several meters with their heavier hits, especially the greatsword users). They're also slightly taller than the apparently lower-ranked Exile Soldiers. The Lordsworn Knights tower even the Lordsworn Soldiers at close to seven and a half feet tall, while higher-ranked faction-dependent soldiers (e.g. Morgott's Nightriders, Malenia's Cleanrot Knights) are even taller.
• Lost in Translation: In English, the Cuckoos' ash summon is called "Raya Lucaria Soldier Ashes" and they're said to be under contract with the Academy on the descriptions of some spells, giving the impression that they're mercenaries not formally sworn to any lord. In Japanese, "Raya Lucaria" is レアルカリア - literally "Real Caria", same "real" as in, for example, Real Madrid. In other words, "Royal Caria Soldiers." This designation, along with them having a church to their icon in Liurnia's capital, suggests that they were formally sworn to the Carian Royals as the region's regular army, but were subverted into rebellion by the sorcerers of the Academy when they became disloyal from their leader, Rennala. "Raya Lucaria" was likely either a mistranslation or a roundabout reference to the South Indian title of "Rayalu", which means royal.^note The only evidence for this is that Ranni's name is of Indian origin in real life, and she's a Carian Royal.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Most of the mid-ranking troops carry heralded brass shields with a longsword or warpick, or a tower shield with a pike to match. The low-ranking foot soldiers don't use shields, either two-handing their pikes or just carrying a sidearm short sword while primarily relying on ranged weapons (crossbows, grenades, siege artillery).
• Night of the Living Mooks: Three cases of this can be found.
  • The Cuckoo Soldiers can be found guarding both Caria Manor and the Carian Study Hall, raised from the dead as puppet troops similar to the ones Seluvis employs (considering their locations, that's probably exactly what they are). They are there after having been entrapped by an enchantment cast by the Carians during the latter's defense of their manor, and have since been forced to act as eternal servants to their former enemies long after the Shattering.
  • The Mausoleum Soldiers became this willingly after the demigods whom they served were killed during the Night of the Black Knives. After committing a mass Suicide Pact (and cutting their heads off in doing so), they now serve as ghostly guards to the Walking Mausoleums which house their former masters.
  • Phantom Redmane soldiers can be found fighting against the ghosts of the Cleanrots and manning Faroth for all eternity.
• Flash Step: Being partially incorporeal, Mausoleum Soldiers can do this in order to flank and avoid attacks.
• Magic Knight: Downplayed compared to the Lordsworn Knights, but present. All of the soldiers can drop smithing stones, indicating that they're enhancing their weapons with magic materials, and a lot of them also throw magic projectiles fitting for their region: Leyndell soldiers throw either lightning bombs or spark ariomatics, Cuckoos throw glintstone shards, etc. Magic materials are also utilized in their artillery to effectively turn ballistae and trebuchets into cannons with explosive shells. Some of the mid-ranking soldiers can even use basic spells in their weapon arts, such as the Haligtree soldiers (who can cast Last Rites to imbue their weapons with Holy damage), the Leyndell soldiers (who can use Knight's Resolve to enhance their weapons' physical damage), and the Redmane soldiers (who can cast Firebreather to turn their torches into short-range flamethrowers).
• Mook Depletion: All of the Lordsworn soldiers have suffered this to a degree: the reason the Shattering seemingly ended in its eternal stalemate was the armies of the Demigods mostly wiped each other out thanks to the constant fighting.
  • Godrick's men are explicitly stated to be the survivors of the host who marched on the capital and were slaughtered. They were subsequently defeated in a one-sided manner when Malenia invaded, and suffered more attrition after that from slave rebellions and desertion. Thus, his regulars make up few of the men serving Godrick the Tarnished actually fights: the majority are either press-ganged and poorly-equipped commoners, mercenaries from Kaiden, forcibly-conscripted criminals, and disgraced, exiled knights. Notably, Godrick’s Lordsworn are only encountered in the field — his nominal stronghold, Stormveil Castle, is manned entirely by the aforementioned commoners, criminals, and exiles, as if he doesn’t have enough regulars left (and/or doesn’t trust them enough) to defend his own castle. His regulars have also mostly abandoned the Weeping Peninsula, despite it being part of his fief, due to the Misbegotten and Demi-Human rebellions there.
  • The remaining Cuckoo soldiers of the Academy of Raya Lucaria camped throughout Liurnia are survivors from the Civil War in the region between the Academy and the Carian royal family, likely further depleted by clashes with the hostile armies that marched through Liurnia throughout the war (Godrick, Radahn, and Malenia's). Most of them perished when they tried to storm Caria Manor, and the Tarnished encounters their spirits trapped there and forced to serve as the Manor's guardians. Still, they seem to be doing somewhat better than the other southern armies (Godrick and Radahn's), controlling most of their home territory and being encountered in greater numbers.
  • The Redmane Army took heavy losses in Malenia's invasion and in the Battle of Aeonia where it climaxed. Since then they have been slowly losing more to attrition over years of fighting off the horrors of the Scarlet Rot. By the time of the Tarnished's arrival, its remaining troops have become crazed, if effective and successful, survivalists, and have lost control over the vast majority of their territory. The western and southwestern third or so is still patrolled but few settlements stand; it's full of ruins, remnants of forts apparently destroyed in Malenia's initial blitz.^note You can even find items related to the Haligtree faction in some of them, like the Sword of St. Trina in the Forsaken Ruins, indicating temporary occupation by Haligtree forces. The only two extant garrisons, Gael and Redmane Castle, are effectively enclaves because the roads between them are bereft of soldiers but rather openly patrolled by Kindred of Rot. Caelid outside of that one-third is completely lost to the Redmanes aside from an isolated garrison at the Divine Tower; the Aeonia Swamp is still patrolled by Cleanrot Knights, Sellia is full of Kindred and ghosts, Dragonbarrow is occupied by rotting dragons alone, and the Wailing Dunes is simply an empty desert full of corpses and their tattered flags.
  • The Royal Army forces which were stationed in Mt. Gelmir are made up of the stragglers and survivors of the Siege of Volcano Manor, the most brutal battle in the entirety of the Shattering. They have since become roaming bands of cannibals and are sometimes afflicted with the Frenzied Flame. The Royal Army troops still garrisoned in Leyndell itself are those few remnants who either were not part of the Gelmir campaign or who survived the multiple sieges of the capital.
  • Zero Gelmir soldiers, formerly sworn to Rykard, are found alive, and we never even see what their armor looks like. Rykard's lands are either overrun with (insane and directionless) Royal Army soldiers or various unaffiliated monsters. His own manor is guarded by new servants in the form of the Man-Serpents (spawned in the aftermath of him fusing with the God-Devouring Serpent) and the Abductor Virgins.
  • The ghostly Mausoleum soldiers were once the soldiers of demigods who were killed during the Night of the Black Knives.
• Playing with Fire: Radahn's ranks utilize a lot of incendiary magic, and wield flame-spewing torches, flaming weapons, and firebombs — even long before the presence of the Scarlet Rot in Caelid, judging by their ghost counterparts. Godrick's Commoners and Foot Soldiers also use torches and fire bombs, but not as often. Leyndell Soldiers, meanwhile, can throw Spark Ariomatics.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The surviving Royal troops at Mt. Gelmir have almost all been driven insane, with many eating the corpses of their slain comrades, succumbing to the Flame of Frenzy, or merely sitting catatonic on the ground in the ruins of their fortifications. The Gelmir campaign was explicitly described as the worst battle of the entire Shattering, so it's no surprise that those who survived it ended up being the unlucky ones.
• Sole Survivor: There’s a small desecrated outpost just west of Rotview Balcony, where rampant wildlife is picking away at the corpses of the massacred defenders. A lone surviving soldier can be found hiding behind a rock at the very edge of the nearby cliff.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Most soldiers do this, even basic Foot Soldiers. Redmane and Godrick Soldiers will both toss ceramic bombs which spew fire; Cuckoo Soldiers will throw containers containing refined glintstone, summoning stands of homing magic; Gelmir Commoner militia (the regulars being long gone) will throw poison bombs; and the Royal Army has pots containing lightning.
• Underground Monkey: Just about each region has their version of these guys, clad in the distinct colors and heraldry of their Lord, have a uniquely modeled helmet, and adding new tricks depending on who they serve — the soldiers in Raya Lucaria throw glintstones to attack you with magic, Radahn's troops use fire, etc. This is even more evident on the Knights who have their unique techniques. The knights and soldiers also have successively higher stats (Godrick < Cuckoo < Redmane < Leyndell < Haligtree) and slightly different resistances (e.g. Redmanes get an extra 20% negation specifically against fire damage).
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: The Lordsworn Soldiers' spear can't be used by the player, as unlike the Lordsworn Greatsword, Lordsworn Straight Sword, Lordsworn Shield, Brass Shield, Warpick, or Heavy Crossbow, they never drop it. You have to settle for either the Short Spear (used by Foot Soldiers) or generic Spear (used by Exile Soldiers). The former is also a partial example since while you can use a weapon with the same model, the Foot Soldiers' version of it is inexplicably way longer than yours despite the Foot Soldiers themselves being your height (whereas it's more obvious why the Soldiers and Knights weapons are bigger than your versions).
• Undying Loyalty: How loyal the Lordsworn are roughly reflects the characters of their lords. Thus even as their sanity degrades and the world falls apart around them, the troops sworn to Morgott, Malenia/Miquella, Radahn, and Godwyn continue to do their duty. Contrast the Cuckoos (who turned on their liege lords for an Academy contract when they looked weak), Rykard's Lordsworn (who all either died or deserted when their lord went too far off the deep end, with some even fashioning a weapon to kill him), and the soldiers working for Godrick (who are there because of a combination of monetary incentives or having no other place to go, and even then show clear signs of disloyalty - such as the group of deserters-turned-bandits working with Patches, the gatekeeper who offers to help you kill Godrick, or the Fort Haight garrison that defected to Mohg).
  • The Mausoleum Soldiers take this a step further, having willingly beheaded themselves after the demigods they followed were killed in order to serve them even in death.
• Unique Enemy: A lot of Godrick's soldiers deserted his cause and turned to banditry to survive, becoming Highwaymen. You can encounter a group of them working with Patches in Murkwater Cave. They're identical to Foot Soldiers in behavior and stats, only distinguished by their unique armor set (which is essentially just tattered and stained Foot Soldier armor with the helmet replaced by a hood) and them throwing poison bombs instead of fire bombs as standard Foot Soldiers do.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Even though it's basically a mook pretending to be a boss, the Soldier of Godrick serves as the final enemy and boss of the tutorial area, used to teach the Guard Counter mechanic. If you follow the tutorials instructions, he dies in two hits and the fight will last about five seconds.

Lordsworn Knights

Highly trained and entrusted with the best arms and armor their respective lords can provide, Lordsworn Knights acted as officers and generals in The Shattering. Even as their minds begin to slip from the Curse of Immortality, their prowess does not. Ancient Dragon Knight Kristoff (a Leyndell Knight), Lhutel the Headless (a Masoleum Knight), and Redmane Knight Ogha can be summoned via Spirit Ashes.

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• Ambiguous Gender: The armor they wear is very unisex, and it's very hard to tell what gender they are. Given that Gender Is No Object in the Lands Between, it's likely that many of the ones you fight are female, something supported by the Legendary Spirits Lhutel the Headless and Cleanrot Knight Finlay being explicitly women.
• Badass Cape: All of them have a heavily embroidered cape with their armor, always with a symbol of the Lord they serve.
• BFS: Most of them carry decorated greatswords which they wield with graceful skill one handed.
• Bling of War: Regardless of which order they're from, their armor retains their lustre even after ages of a lack of maintenance. Every single one possess ornate decorations, seals, and tabards which depict the heraldry of their order. Even Godrick's knights, who serve the weakest, poorest, and least organized army, are still clad in impeccable armor. Special mention goes to the Leyndell Knights, whose armor seems to be made of gold instead of iron like the rest.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing:
  • One of Godrick's knights has taken over Kenneth Haight's fortress and has to be killed to complete the quest. Aside from utilizing the Bloody Slash technique (implying a connection to the Lord of Blood), he is treated like any other knight despite his importance to the sidequest, though he has double the health and does not respawn. Doubles as a Unique Enemy.
  • While all the knights are tough, the Haligtree Knights really take it to the next level: not only do they have higher durability health and damage than a lot of mid-game bosses, but they carry healing flasks that effectively double their already huge HP if you let them drink.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Some Knights are equipped with greatbows while also possessing sword and shield for melee. The type of great arrow they use depends on which demigod they're sworn to.
• Cool Horse: The mounts carrying them wear barding which is just as radiant and gilded as the armor of their masters, wearing a wide range of saddles, banners, and armor. They're also gigantic, closer in size to a small elephant than a real warhorse. Most notable are the Cuckoo Knight's steeds, who like their masters, also have a large feather on their helmet.
• Determinator: The Redmane Knights. After being driven to the brink of defeat and despair by Malenia's scarlet rot, they simply burnt their crests, and kept on fighting.
• Elite Mook:
  • Lordsworn Knights command troops and are a step above a common enemy. Compared to standard Lordsworn Soldiers they have much higher damage resistance, three times as much health, more damage per hit, and faster, more complex combos. They, like the foot soldiers, come in multiple variants — using different weapon sets and sometimes riding a steed of their own. In fact, they verge on Superpowered Mooks, as they can also use spells, skills, and even guard counters.
  • The Elite of these Elites are the mounted Knights, if only because they are far more mobile and harder to hit. The greatbow knights arguably also count; in melee they're no tougher than the others but they can rapidly fire very powerful arrows from a surprisingly long distance. Appropriately they're extremely rare, with only the Leyndell faction having a notable number of them.
• Flash Step: Mausoleum Knights can do this like other Mausoleum Soldiers to flank and avoid attacks.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Some Ashes of War are said to be used by certain knights, but we never actually see them used by anyone but the player (like Flame of the Redmanes, Scholar's Shield, and Ice Spear). Others are suggested to use weapons that we never see them use, like the Treespear (said be used to by Leyndell Knights guarding the royal palace) or the huge numbers of curved greatswords strewn out on the sites of the Redmanes' battles (including ones that look identical to the player's scaled-down versions of the Starscourge Greatswords, minus the crest). Of course, given the Mook Depletion suffered by all factions (and the fact some of the spells are Ashes of War, i.e. remnant knowledge from dead warriors), it's possible that the people who did use these weapons and spells are simply long-dead, and the remainder either don't know how or prefer not to. Further supporting this is that the Ash of War image for Flame of the Redmanes shows a Redmane Knight using that technique while wielding a proportionally-scaled Longsword, which is found in their armories but never wielded by any of them in-game.
• Gravity Master: Much like their lord Radahn, the Redmane Knights are capable of coating their great arrows with gravity magic, causing them to fly farther and hit much harder. Redmane Knight Ogha, a legendary spirit, is said to have studied gravity magic at Sellia alongside Radahn himself and can cause a gravity-imbued Rain of Arrows just like him.
• Large and in Charge: Despite never being implied to be anything other than human, all of the knights are inexplicably massive, close to seven and a half feet in height.
• Jousting Lance: The rare, mounted variant carry massive warlances, which they wield with the utmost expertise, and will use them to skewer and fillet the player.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Visually, at least. Their armor is very shiny despite all the battles they've fought in, but the knights themselves have lost their minds much like their soldiers and now serve only as tough wandering enemies.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: All of them are equipped with a greatshield of some variety, which they will use to great effect.
• Mage Killer: The Cuckoo Knights hunt down those mages who sided with the Caria royal family. Their armor and greatshield boast the highest magic defense of the Lordsworn knight sets.
  "Our enemy is none other than Caria itself."
• Magic Knight: Many of them are have basic knowledge in a mystical art. Cuckoo Knights use some sorceries to complement their skills (mainly Glintstone Phalanx, Glintstone Pebble, and Scholar's Armament); Redmane Knights coat their great arrows with gravity magic to give them more punch and can set their greatsword and partisan blades on fire; Leyndell Knights of the Dragon Cult can use lightning incantations, ranging from Lightning Spear to coating their weapons with the substances; and Haligtree Knights will can either imbue their weapons with holy magic or cast glintstone sorceries. The only exceptions to this rule are the Godrick Knights (with two exceptions) and the Mausoleum Knights, who use no magic of their own, but make up for it with their ability to Flash Step and their death fire-enchanted weaponry.
• Mook Depletion: Like the Lordsworn Soldiers, there aren't very many knights of any variety left in the world: most were killed during the Shattering proper, and there are even fewer knights left compared to the regular, already severely depleted soldiers. While Space Compression is obviously a factor and most enemies respawning indicates that there's probably supposed to be more of them off-screen, the sheer rarity of some types of knights is still worth noting:
  • There are only 4 respawning Godrick Knights on the map,^note One in the Gatefront Ruins, one in the small camp near on Stormhill, one patrolling alone near the Warmaster's Shack, and one patrolling with some troops near the Tower of Return. plus the 1 non-respawning one that defected to Mohg at Fort Haight. They're actually outnumbered by the Banished Knights in his service, and there are still only a few of those.
  • There are 10 respawning Cuckoo Knights,^note Four at the Raya Lucaria East Gate, three in the camp near the Grand Lift of Dectus, one in the camp west of the Four Belfries, one patrolling near the same location, and one near the Bellum Church. the second greatest in number after the Leyndell Knights but obviously severely depleted from their heights.
  • The Redmane Knights seem to have taken particularly high losses; while the battlefield remnants and ratio of ghosts in the catacombs indicate that there used to be about one knight for every three soldiers, in the present there are only 7 Redmane Knights.^note Two at Gael Castle, three at Redmane Castle, one in the camp near the Smoldering Wall, and one in the camp near the Caelid Catacombs. There are twice as many Cleanrot Knights in the Aeonia Swamp alone as there are Redmane Knights in the entire game.
  • Rykard doesn't even have knights of his own anymore after he went the path of blasphemy: the only Gelmir Knight set in the game is obtained off of one's corpse, and the only NPC who wears such a set is a ghost. It's stated in item descriptions they all deserted en-mass.
• Mook Lieutenant: Often seen commanding and overlooking lesser Lordsworn soldiers on patrol. You'll also often find one or two knights per camp with the implication that they're the leaders of the lesser soldiers.
• Mounted Combat: Some Lordsworn Knights ride steeds of their own and use a wide variety of attacks and tactics on horseback.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: The sword-and-shield variants are armed with the Knight's Greatsword, which is a, well, Greatsword. Aside from a few powerful attacks, they will primarily use it as a one-handed weapon.
• The Paladin: The Haligtree Knights evoke this archetype the most, between their White and Gold are Divine heraldry and use of Holy damage weapon skills.
• Recurring Element: In terms of gameplay and moveset, the Lordsworn Knights use some of the animations and skeleton of the Lothric Knights of Dark Souls III.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Gelmir Knights were once Rykard's elites but fled en masse after he became a monstrous, cannibalistic blasphemer, which is the reason why none of them appear as enemies in game. That doesn't mean they did nothing afterwards, however, as they managed to recover the legendary Serpent-Hunter — the only weapon capable of killing the God-Devouring Serpent and thus Rykard after he'd merged with it — in the hopes one day, someone can wield it and put their lord's ambitions to rest.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Cuckoo Knights were one of the three main pillars of power in Liurnia as leaders of the Raya Lucaria Army and keepers of the Church of the Cuckoo, along with the Raya Lucaria Academy and the Carian royal household (plus immediate retainers). Nominally, they're subordinate to the Academy who are subordinate to the royals (Rennala being head of both the academy and the royal family), but in practice they feel like they can do whatever they want, with the Cuckoo Knight Armor stating that they refuse to be "mere servants of the academy." At some time during or after the Shattering, the academy rebelled against the royals and forged a contract with the Cuckoos to facilitate their goal, but the terms of the "contract" seemed to basically consist of "we'll give you spells like Scholar's Armament and Scholar's Shield and you'll pay lip service to us being your bosses, but will keep doing what you normally do while fighting Caria and leaving us alone while we hole up in the Academy." The Cuckoos are noted to hunt Albinaurics (which are often created by Academy sorcerers) and can be seen to fight Lazuli Sorcerers who seem to have defected to Caria's side, so the Cuckoo troops are clearly not that worried about what the Academy thinks, or about any Academy scholars who aren't part of the anti-Renalla faction that signed their contract. Notably, they're not allowed psst the Academy's seal despite occupying the outside of the premises, indicating that the Academy doesn't trust them either.
• Undying Loyalty: The Mausoleum Knights willingly beheaded themselves in order to serve their master even after they had died.
• Unique Enemy:
  • The Godrick Knight at Fort Haight is the only one who can use the Bloody Slash spell, as well as the only Lordsworn Knight who uses any blood-based abilities in general, otherwise exclusive to the Sanguine Nobles and other Mohg-specific enemies. He also doesn't respawn. The description for the Ash of War he drops, as well as him being found amidst Bloodroses, implies that he was corrupted into serving Mohg. This is further supported by him getting a stat boost if you manage to bleed him (or vice versa), the same boost that Mohg and his Sanguine Nobles get thanks to them all carrying his Lord of Blood's Exultation talisman.
  • Another Godrick Knight near the Warmaster's Shack uses Golden Vow. These two knights are the only Godrick Knights who use any types of spells at all.
  • The Redmane Knight in front of Fort Gael can use the Rain of Arrows spell; the only other Redmane Knight (nay, the only other entity) who can do so is Ogha, a spirit summon ally and Radahn's oldest-serving knight, so presumably the knight at Gael is also meant to be senior to the other ones you fight. He's also the only living Redmane who uses a greatbow at all (two more spirit knights use them in the War-Dead Catacombs, though they don't have the spell) and thus the only greatbow enemy you'll encounter until Leyndell about halfway through the game. Another Redmane Knight found on his lonesome between the Caelid Catacombs and the Impassable Greatbridge has the unique ability to shoot fireballs similar to the Flame Sling spell.
  • The two Haligtree Knights near the ballistae and Erdtree Avatar have the unique ability to regenerate their health to full by drinking physick flasks. Haligtree Knights in general are an example as they're only encountered in two rooms in the entire game, both at the same Legacy Dungeon.
  • A single Cuckoo Knight near the Grand Dectus Lift uses Blood Tax, a skill stated to be granted by Mohg, which has interesting implications.

Dogs

Canines often found alongside lordsworn soldiers.

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• Breaking Old Trends: Most dog enemies in Souls games appear either short-haired or hairless. These dogs, however, have long-haired coats akin to water dogs.
• Fragile Speedster: Fast and quick to attack, but also easy to stagger and take down.
• Recurring Element: The most recent iteration of hostile dogs in Souls games.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: They commonly accompany lordsworn soldiers.

Rotten Strays

Emaciated dogs that have been infected with scarlet rot, making their bites poisonous. One may be summoned via the Rotten Stray Ashes found in Caelid.

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• Body Horror: The bleed dogs are covered in various growths around their body.
• One-Hit Kill: Due to a bug regarding the hitbox of one of the bleed dogs' attacks, they were able to deal a whopping 11,640 damage per second. Even at 99 vitality and equipped with high defense armors and talismans, they were still capable of one-hit killing the Tarnished. This bug has since been patched, but their rapid bleed effect can still two-shot unwary players with ease.
• Recurring Element: A poisonous variant of the dog enemies found in all Souls games.
• Underground Monkey: Bleed dogs, as their name suggests, inflict blood loss in their bites.

Giant Rats

Large rodents that typically inhabit the underground areas of the Lands Between. Summonable with the Giant Rat Ashes.

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• Music Soothes the Savage Beast: Several rats can be seen sleeping near two singing ancestral followers in Nokron, having been lulled to sleep by their chants.
• Recurring Element: The latest iteration of giant rodent enemies in Souls games.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The normal variants are large enough to reach one's knees, and some have grown to be as large as a human.
• Swarm of Rats: They are typically encountered in groups of 3 or more. Upgrading the spirit ash variant will increase the number of rats summoned.
• Underground Monkey: Frenzied rats possess flaming eyes and inflict madness with their attacks.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: The ancestral followers appear to have domesticated these rats, as they can often be found alongside them in Siofra River and Nokron.
• You Dirty Rat!: As with all rat enemies in Souls games, these one appear just as dirty and are very hostile.

Giant Bats

Large bats that often congregate in packs, attacking anyone who steps into their nests.

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• Bat Out of Hell: They can be seen eating corpses and will immediately attack the Tarnished when they spot them.
• Glass Cannon: They have low health and are easy to stagger, but their tendency to stay in the air and attack in groups can take down any unprepared Tarnished.
• Super-Scream: They frequently use a long-range sonic attack.

Singing Bats

Bats with humanoid faces that sing sorrowful songs of their suffering due to the Shattering.

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• Beast with a Human Face: In contrast to their bat-like bodies, they have a face resembling an elderly woman.
• Bilingual Bonus: Their Song of Lament is sung entirely in Latin, lamenting the suffering they've faced because of the Shattering and questioning why the Greater Will forsook their land.
  Aureum, cui irascebaris?^TranslationGolden One, at whom were you so angry?
• Grief Song: They sing a haunting melody mourning the devastation of the Lands Between following the Shattering.
• Harping on About Harpies: A bat variant of the classic harpy.
• Piñata Enemy: They tend to drop fairly high-tier Golden Runes when defeated.
• Poisonous Person: Will spew a poisonous mist at the Tarnished when spotting them.
• Super-Scream: Their scream attacks, unlike the regular bats, is sustained and attacks everything in a radius, stunlocking the Tarnished and allies.
• Unique Enemy: One found at the end of the Ruin-Strewn Precipice just before the boss wears an ornate hat and is able to cast Rancorcall and throw Cuckoo Glintstones. It is the only one in the entire game like this.

Imps

Little gargoyle-like creatures guarding various catacombs. Two Fanged Imps may be summoned via spirit ashes, and are a possible keepsake for the player.

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• Fragile Speedster: Imps are agile little guys who can quickly circle around or catch up to the player. At the same time, they also are fairly fragile for being made of stone, to the point a single shield counter will almost always guarantee a critical opening.
• It Can Think: The description of the Fanged Imp Ashes states that, "The two imps seem fond of each other's company", which seems to imply they might be sentient to some capacity.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: Some imps will remain still, posing as lifeless statues until the Tarnished passes by them, after which they begin to attack
• Our Gargoyles Rock: They resemble little gargoyles, stone skin and all, and guard ancient catacombs as the most recurring enemy you face. They can even be found standing motionless on top of buildings in Leyndell as if they were true gargoyles.
• Our Imps Are Different: Imps in Elden Ring are seemingly non-supernatural creatures made of stone which would be called gargoyles in any other work, and serve as guardians of tombs and catacombs sacred to the Erdtree.
• Recurring Element: They are the Elden Ring equivalent of the Thralls from Dark Souls III, even sharing the same animations.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: After throwing 2/3 Crystal Darts at them, they will become frenzied and attack other enemies.
• Wall Crawl: Will sometimes cling onto walls up high in an attempt to ambush the Tarnished.
• Zerg Rush: At times they work with one or two other Imps to rush the Tarnished and try to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.

Chariots

Large stone constructs that patrol the insides of Hero's Graves.

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• Cranium Ride: One chariot at the Gelmir Hero's Grave is missing its rider, which allows the Tarnished to ride it in order to reach the boss of the dungeon.
• Literally Shattered Lives: They shatter spectacularly upon being destroyed.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Thanks to their stone bodies, they cannot be destroyed by normal means.
• Puzzle Boss: The Chariots at the Fringefolk and Auriza's Hero Graves can be destroyed through the use of outside factors:
  • The Fringefolk Chariot can be destroyed by shooting at a large jar hanging on the ceiling so that it falls onto the Chariot as its passing by.
  • The two Auriza Chariots patrolling the path to the boss room can be destroyed by redirecting a pillar of light to spawn a chariot in the middle of their path, causing the other two chariots to crash into it.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The Chariots will turn around corners to chase after the Tarnished should they evade them.

Putrid Corpses

A type of undead that wanders aimlessly around the Lands Between and its catacombs. Four can be summoned with the Putrid Corpse Ashes.

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• Action Bomb: Fire and Blood versions of zombies rush towards the player to explode, the later of which explosion also lets out a mist which causes bleed build up. Both can be interrupted by staggering them.
• Deadly Lunge: When spotting the Tarnished, they slowly shamble towards them before suddenly sprinting to grab and bite them.
• It Can Think: They are all insanely hostile like a lot of other enemies but they have a society of their own.
• Mana Drain: Blue-eyed corpses in the Raya Lucaria Academy will drain the Tarnished's mana if they manage to grab onto them.
• The Undead: They are walking corpses who have yet to die a true death, now forced the wander the Lands Between.
• Underground Monkey: Zombie types come in different colors, some of which can inflict various aliments in their grab attacks, drain your FP in the case of the ones in the Academy, explode, sometimes in a red mist causing Bleed build up, or spew poison.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Due to the damage suffered by the Golden Order, death no longer functions properly, causing people to be unable to die.
• Zombie Puke Attack: The maggot-covered poison variant pukes a stream of maggoty vomit in your general direction, leaving a temporary trail of poison.

Skeletons

Reanimated corpses often found rising out of graves in the Lands Between or dwelling in its catacombs. Two Skeletal Militiamen and a single Skeletal Bandit can be summoned with Spirit Ashes.

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• Achilles' Heel: They are extremely vulnerable to Holy damage, and several Holy damage weapons (such as the Golden Order Greatsword), weapon skills (Sacred Blade), and consumables (Holy Pots) will prevent them from getting back up.
• Deader than Dead: Skeletons will revive unless destroyed by occult weapons, a specific incantation, or if their reviving bodies are hit again. This includes the Ash summons.
• Dem Bones: Reanimated skeletons who attack any Tarnished coming near them.
• Dual Wielding: Skeletal Bandits wield two Bandit's Curved Swords.
• Elite Mooks: Skeletal Executioners and Glaivemen have more health than standard skeletons, and deal more damage with their weapons.
• Pulling Themselves Together: Upon being "killed", they will begin to slowly piece themselves back together. Attacking them during this phase is the simplest way to fully kill them.
• Pummeling the Corpse: The most straightforward way of keeping them from getting back up is to simply keep swinging until they die for good.
• Recurring Element: Skeletal enemies, a staple of all Souls games.
• Reviving Enemy: Unlike previous Souls games, these skeletons can revive themselves without the help of a necromancer.
• Rise from Your Grave: Can be commonly encountered at graveyards, where they will rise out of their graves and attack whoever disturbed them.
• Sinister Scimitar: Several skeletons can be found wielding their iconic scimitars.
• Underground Monkey: Various skeleton enemies can be encountered throughout the game, ranging from bandits to militiamen to mages.

Skeletal Slimes

Slithering blobs of slime that scour the Lands Between for prey.

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• Blob Monster: Slimes made up of an indeterminable substance with no other remarking features.
• Giant Mook: Two larger, stationary variants can be encountered alongside their smaller counterparts in Writheblood Ruins in Altus Plateau and the Mohgwyn Dynasty Mausoleum. The locations they're found in hints at them being a creation of the Formless Mother.
• Recurring Element: The latest iteration of slime monsters present in Souls games.

Spirit Jellyfish

Despite looking outwardly like jellyfish, these ethereal creatures are actually the spirits of the dead. Normally passive, they become hostile if any of them are attacked.

One Spirit Jellyfish, Aurelia, is given to the Tarnished by Roderika to look after and can be summoned as a spirit.

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• The Goomba: They are undoubtedly some of the weakest enemies in the game, being both slow to attack, slow to move and easy to stagger, with their only saving grace being that they are surprisingly tanky.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The description of the Spirit Jellyfish Ashes suggests that they are actually the spirits of dead people who are unable to move on for some reason or another. Why ghosts in the Lands Between can take the form of jellyfish is never really explained.
• Poisonous Person: One of their attacks involve spraying the Tarnished with a poisonous mist.
• Turns Red: Attacking one will cause it and the ones near it to turn red and become hostile towards you.

Giant Crabs

Gigantic crustaceans that inhabit the shores and shallows of water sources, attacking anyone who comes near.

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• Body Horror: The catacomb variants are visibly undead, having a cracked open shell, rotting innards, and missing legs. The deathblight variants have growths and hair on their shells that resemble a face, a result of eating the Deathroot growing from Godwyn's dead body and thus taking on his appearance.
• Breath Weapon: Spew high-pressure water towards the Tarnished if they are far away from it.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The deathblight crabs have bumps on their shells which look similar to eyes and are meant to resemble Godwyn's face.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Large ones which are hostile towards any Tarnished approaching them. The more normal sized ones are passive.
• No-Sell: In Dark Souls III, whenever they rose up to do their big slam attack, you could run in and get a free Critical Hit without needing to poise-break them first. In Elden Ring, this no longer works and trying it will only get you flattened.
• Reused Character Design: Of the giant crabs fought in Dark Souls III, even possessing the same moveset.
• Underground Monkey: Two giant crabs at Raya Lucaria Academy emit a Sleep-inducing mist as their Breath Weapon. The giant crab in Leyndell's outer moat as well as one in eastern Liurnia spray Deathblight instead.

Land Octopi

Disgusting giant masses of tentacles often found in and near shallow bodies of water throughout the Lands Between. They come in normal-sized and large versions, with the latter being the far more dangerous of the two.

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• Achilles' Heel: They are quite vulnerable to bleed and frostbite status, with both triggering in only a few hits. They also take massively disproportionate damage from critical hits, effectively serving as a tutorial on the value of poise-breaking large enemies.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Attacking the hardened main body deals Scratch Damage to the large variant, but they are easily poise-broken by attacking the beak directly in front of it. They can most easily be dealt with by most builds by repeatedly stunning them for critical attacks before they have a chance to retaliate.
• Autocannibalism: The large ones can heal themselves by eating their own tentacles.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: If you kill one, you can loot its ovary, and closer inspection reveals that it's filled with human blood. They specifically need to eat humans, and humans alone in order to be able bear young.
• Dismemberment Is Cheap: They can instantly regrow any tentacles that either you've chopped off or they've eaten on command.
• Giant Mook: The smaller versions are nearly harmless. The larger ones, not so much.
• In a Single Bound: While slow to get around, the large versions are surprisingly adept at jumping.
• Mighty Glacier: Both versions move ludicrously slow on land. However, the large version can shrug off any attacks which don't hit its weak point, and pummel any Tarnished foolish enough to underestimate it into the ground.
• Subsystem Damage: The two large tentacles on the front of the large version can be severed, reducing its offensive capability and preventing it from healing itself.

Land Squirts

A creature inhabiting shallow waters which sprays a poison mist towards anything that comes near it. Three can be summoned with the Land Squirt Ashes.

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• Ass Shove: The critical attack on them is shoving the weapon in them after they were tipped over.
• Deadly Gas: Sprays poisonous mist as a defense mechanism.
• Giant Mook: Larger variants populate areas such as the ravine in Liurnia and near puddles of rot in Caelid.
• Going to Give It More Energy: The best way to kill these poison-spewing creatures? Add more poison. Once they become poisoned themselves, their bodies become so full of poison that they can no longer contain it all, causing them to explode in a spectacular fashion. Even better, unlike their normal poison spray, the poisonous cloud generated by this explosion will actually affect other Land Squirts in the vicinity, setting off a chain reaction.
• Terrestrial Sea Life: As their name suggests, they're land-dwelling versions of sea squirts. Although, unlike real sea squirts, the land squirts are capable of slithering on their base like a slug.
• Underground Monkey: The ones found in Caelid will spray scarlet rot.

Miranda Sprouts

Walking flowers that spew poison towards anyone that comes near. Five can be summoned with the Miranda Sprout Ashes.

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• Action Bomb: Set fire to a Madness-inducing Sprout and it will violently explode, and the explosion itself can inflict Madness.
• Man-Eating Plant: Their ash description says they feed on human flesh.
• Underground Monkey: Other variants can be found that inflict Scarlet Rot or Madness.

Miranda Blossoms

The end result of any Miranda Sprout. In addition to spewing poison, they can also summon pillars of light on any unsuspecting Tarnished that gets near them.

A Miranda Blossom serves as the boss of Tombsward Cave. Miranda the Blighted Bloom, a yellow variant with a unique name, is fought alongside an Omenkiller as the Dual Boss of Perfumer's Grotto.

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• Elite Mook: Basically one to Miranda Sprouts.
• Kill It with Fire: It's a giant plant, so it's naturally weak to fire. Flames will usually set its entire body ablaze and make it stop whatever it's doing for a few seconds. However, the variants that inflict madness, due to their association with the Frenzied Flame, end up becoming even more dangerous as they thrash around.
• Light 'em Up: Most variants can attack the Tarnished with small pillars of light, though there's ample warnings in the form of rising sparks.
• Stone Wall: While their attacks are either easy to dodge or deal with, Miranda Flowers stick out by having an unusually large health pool. There are ways to circumvent it, but they're otherwise very good at absorbing damage.
• Underground Monkey:
  • Blue Miranda Blossoms in Liurnia will shoot homing sorceries at the Tarnished instead of summoning pillars of light.
  • Rotten Miranda Blossoms in Caelid will inflict Scarlet Rot instead of Poison.
  • Frenzied Miranda Blossoms will inflict Madness instead of Poison, and thrash around violently if set on fire.
  • Yellow Miranda Blossoms in the Altus Plateau are simply a Palette Swap, and are the same as the standard pink ones other than simply being tougher due to being found in a later area of the game.

Demi-humans

Bestial, orc-like humanoids that roam the Lands Between in groups, usually led by a larger alpha demi-human. The Demi-Human Ashes summon a group of 5 of them.

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• Decapitated Army: Killing a Demi-human chief or Queen will make the remaining Demi-humans cower in fear, leaving themselves vulnerable and at your mercy.
• Degraded Boss: The first Demi-Human Chiefs you're likely to find constitute a Dual Boss (backed by lesser Demi-Humans) very early in West Limgrave, which ties into Boc's quest. In every area thereafter, Demi-Human Chiefs are respawning enemies.
• The Goomba: Demi-Humans are the weakest humanoid mobs in the game, having worse equipment and lower stats than even basic Lordsworn found in the same areas. Even their boss variants, Chiefs and Queens, are quite weak, barely on par with an Elite Mook.
• Hidden Depths: They're primitive and violent, but seemingly fully sapient and not universally hostile. Kenneth Haight claims they can peacefully live in the grace of the Erdtree like anyone else, and they take over as his castle's staff after his quest is completed, seemingly confirming the point. The Queens' use of sorceries (using staffs given to them by human sorcerers "to foster peace") and Boc being able to speak human languages and work as a seamster further demonstrate this.
  • The Hermit Village on Mt. Gelmir is a standout example: while it seems to be a human village taken over by demi-humans, it’s also occupied by several Raya Lucarian sorcerers positioned as if teaching or speaking to them, with three in particular seemingly meeting with the resident Queen. The pasture ahead of the village also has several small demi-humans among the sheep, as if herding them.
• Large and in Charge: Demi-human chiefs are much bigger than the typical demi-human, and the Queens are even bigger than them.
• Maniac Monkeys: Standard demi-humans look like apes, and they even screech like chimpanzees when hostile.
• Matriarchy: Implied. The fact that Demi-human Queens are bigger than even the large demi-human chiefs seems to indicate that they are the main authority in their societies.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Demi-humans resemble ape-like orcs, but the higher-ranking variants are increasingly more wolf-like the bigger they get. Most are smaller than humans and have features resembling chimpanzees. The larger ones are more gorilla-like. The largest, Chiefs and Queens, are about twenty feet long but have a lupine body structure.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Demi-Humans on the surface will have glowing red eyes at night, causing them to do considerably more damage. If they get into a fight with human soldiers, they're likely to lose during the day but win during the night.
• Weak to Fire: All demi-humans take 20% extra damage from fire. That said, most demi-humans can throw fire bombs themselves.

Vulgar Militia

Halfling-like soldiers who guard forbidden and rancid places. Three can be summoned with the Vulgar Militia Ashes.

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• Achilles' Heel: Their size can be turned against them with critical attacks, complete with unique animations that amount to essentially stepping on a bug.
• Blade on a Rope: Some wield kusarigama that can attack from a distance in rapid strikes.
• Combat Pragmatist: Vulgar Militia don't fight fair; they come in groups, hide around in areas they trapped with poison, throw smoke bombs at you to obscure your vision and attack from a distance (either using polearms, chains, or jumping attacks) to take advantage of that, plus all of their weapons stack bleed on you, which means this lousy-looking band can kill you in seconds if you don't take them seriously.
• Depraved Dwarf: They're all tiny, violent, and ruthless. Their helmets are deliberately tall to give them even a slight appearance of extra height.
• Elite Mook: The ones at Greyoll's Dragonbarrow around the Bestial Sanctum are exceptionally strong and can utilize the Beast Claw incantation. They can also inexpiably use a variant of black flame in their attacks which hint at Gurranq's true identity.
• Fantastic Racism: Their height meant they were subject to discrimination. They formed the Vulgar Militias to make some sort of living guarding places most people didn't want to go.
• Glass Cannon: They'll go down in a few good hits, as it's very easy to stagger them and open them up to a critical finisher, but they will use a wide array of dirty tactics to prevent you from getting those hits in, and their attacks hurt.
• Human Resources: There is an unconfirmed rumor in-universe that the Vulgar Militia use their signature saws to cut up enemy corpses and turn them into their rations. Whether this is a case of I'm a Humanitarian is ambiguous, since they don't seem fully human.
• Laughing Mad: They sometimes laugh maniacally when they attack the Tarnished.
• Musical Spoiler: Subverted. Unlike most enemies in the game, they don't trigger battle music when they aggro, making their ambushes far more effective.
• Smoke Out: They often open up by throwing smoke bombs at the enemy.

Miners

Voiced by: Simon Gregor

Humans that have mined in the underground for so long that their bodies have become rock-hard.

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• Action Bomb: Miners carrying Explosive Stones can be ignited with fire, resulting in their stones exploding and damaging everyone in their vicinity.
• Achilles' Heel: Notably weak against magic and blunt type attacks.
• Berserk Button: They don't like having their work interrupted, be it by attacking them or looting the Smithing Stones they were busy mining. In many cases, the latter results in them permanently becoming aggressive due to no longer being able to work.
• Elite Mook: The various Foremans are this compared to the weaker variant, the Glintstone Foreman (whose marked by their cloaks) even have access to basic spells.
• Harmless Freezing: Miners at the Yelough Anix Tunnel, despite having been frozen due to the cold climate, will quickly become active when they spot the Tarnished.
• Mighty Glacier: Their quite slow and very easy to stagger, but their stone bodies give them excellent defense.
• The Morlocks: As a result of staying in the mines for so long, their bodies have turned to stone.
• No-Sell: Attacks with slashing weapons will deflect off their stone skin and only do scratch damage.
• Powerful Pick: The pickaxe they use also doubles as their main weapon.
• Recurring Element: They are very reminiscent of the Scaled Miners from Demons Souls, down to non-piercing attacks often bouncing off their stony skin.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Flunky sorcerers (known as "blunt-stones") who fail at dealing with the academic-heavy environment of Raya Lucaria are permeantly "re-assigned" to manual labor in the mines. Due to the fact Glintstone mining requires magical knowledge, it's considered an important task, but mages themselves view it as a Fate Worse than Death.
• Underground Monkey: Sorcery Miners have a blue tint and crystals growing on them due to mining crystals instead of smithing stones. As their name suggest, they are able to cast sorceries using their mining staves. There's also a poison variant of Miners who deal the same damage-type and send out clouds of poisonous smoke.

Starcallers

Robed cultists who worship the star spawns, often found mining gravity stones near meteorites or conducting rituals to summon star spawns into their world.

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• Ambiguous Situation: The word "starcaller" only shows up three times in the game's script: one each in the Gravity Stone Chunk and Gravity Stone Fan descriptions (which identifies these enemies as such), and once in the name of Radahn's weapon art spell, Starcaller Cry (which causes the user to scream into the air and pull the target towards them with a gravity wave). The connection between the two is unclear.
• Gravity Master: As befitting worshipers of the star spawns, they are capable of using gravity-based sorceries.
• Powerful Pick: Use their pickaxes not only to mine gravity stones, but also defend themselves through gravity sorceries.
• Zerg Rush: Individually they're not very strong, but they tend to come in large packs, especially in their ritual sites.

Battlemages

Scholars of the Haima Conspectus who studied powerful offensive sorceries under Haima and willingly left the academy after it had sealed itself during the war in order to quell conflicts.

Battlemage Hugues can be fought at the Sellia Evergaol and becomes a spirit summon once defeated.

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• Anti-Villain: Willingly left the academy after it had closed itself off when the war started in order to stop the conflicts around them, which also means attempting to kill the Tarnished should they encounter them.
• Appeal to Force: They seek to end conflicts through the use of powerful cannon and gavel sorceries.
• Blindfolded Vision: The Haima Glintsone Crowns they wear are blindfolded.
• Carry a Big Stick: They wield stone clubs as their primary weapon. They do so to not forget the reality of war by casting spells from a distance.
• Having a Blast: Use the Cannon of Haima sorcery, which fires a large magical explosive protective at their target.
• Hired Guns: While the ones in the Haligtree seem to be ideological defectors given that they're only encountered in direct proximity to Loretta, the rest are likely this. Their armor set states that they sought out conflict and you find them working alongside various feuding factions including Morgott's men in Leyndell, Radahn's men in Caelid, the Cuckoo Knights' men around Liurnia. In fact, their internal AI name is "MagicMercenary."
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Battlemages make use of the Gavel of Haima sorcery, which conjures up a giant magical judge's gavel in the caster's hands to smash their opponent with.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: In contrast to the glintstone sorcerers, who prefer to fight by firing spells at a distance, battlemages wield stone clubs in order to fight their opponents hand to hand. Appropriately, the Haima Glintstone Crown also increases Strength in addition to Intelligence when worn.
• Mini-Boss: They're some of the most powerful generic human enemies you encounter, but they still respawn. One of them (Hughes) is counted as a full-boss and doesn't respawn, but he's not even the strongest Battlemage in the game.

Guardians

Humans who had made an ancient pact with the Erdtree, being revived at death to serve as its guardians.

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• Ambushing Enemy: Some Guardians have buried themselves in the ground to appear as a harmless red flower, quickly popping up to attack anyone who comes near them.
• Elite Mook: Guardians at the Minor Erdtree Church possess a skill where the branch of their back blooms with flowers, causing them to grow in size and roots to cover their swordspear, turning it into a club-like weapon.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: A self-inflicted variety. One of their attacks includes a combo that ends with them turning their back on the Tarnished and then impaling themselves with their own spears, attempting to hit the Tarnished as well. This attack also causes a burst of toxic spores from the growths on their backs.
• Plant Person: They're more tree than man, with a large tree branch protruding from their backs. The ones in Leyndell near the Erdtree proper even have blooming flowers on their branches.
• Resurrected for a Job: Because of an ancient pact they've made with the Erdtree, they have been resurrected to serve as its guardians.

Runebears

Large bears with runic patterns on their chest that attack anything that comes near them.

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• Animals Not to Scale: Vastly dwarfs the normal bears that can be encountered in the wild.
• Bears Are Bad News: Ginormous bears that savagely attack anything they see. They're such bad news, in fact, that they're amongst the few enemies you're generally encouraged to avoid or sneak around rather than engaging (because they're incredibly tough, incredibly lethal, and don't die permanently).
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: Almost literal examples - they're amongst the most dangerous respawning non-boss enemies you'll ever encounter in the Lands Between, with massive health-pools and devastating, surprisingly fast attacks with enormous hitboxes. This can sometimes work to your advantage, though - like most large monsters, they register as hostile to all other entities, and they can give most field bosses a serious run for their money if you can get them to pick a fight with each other.
• Dynamic Entry: The one in Mt. Gelmir leaps off a cliff onto a group of Demi-humans.
• Killer Bear Hug: Their grab attack consists of violently crushing the Tarnished against their chest - and thanks to their Top-Heavy Guy anatomy, it has disturbingly long reach.
• Lightning Bruiser: In a way that should be impossible for a creature this large, an aggro'd Runebear can move nearly as fast as Torrent can sprint. ^note This is Truth in Television; bears are very capable of moving at speeds comparable to horses.
• Mêlée à Trois: They are hostile towards anything they see, which can be helpful by having them wipe out large groups of enemies, or even field bosses (in the rare circumstance where they spawn close enough to each other for this to matter).
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Quite apart from their enormous size, their appearance deviates enough from ordinary bears that they appear to be mutating into something else entirely. They've got the front-heavy builds of gorillas (complete with a similar knuckle-walking gait) and slitted, reptilian eyes remarkably similar to those of Tarnished that engage in Dragon Communion.
• Strong Enemies, Low Rewards: With very few exceptions^note The boss Runebear of Earthbore Cave drops the Spelldrake Talisman, two (one in Limgrave and one in the Consecrated Snowfields) drop Larval Tears, and one in the Deeproot Depths drops the Prince of Death's Cyst, they don't drop anything other than some crafting materials you can get from any carnivorous animal and don't even drop that many runes. Certainly not worth the effort of fighting them.
• Super-Scream: Get too far away from them, and the runebears will bellow a roar so powerful that not only can it stun the Tarnished, it can knock Torrent out should they be riding him.
• Top-Heavy Guy: The ursine equivalent. They have a much more developed front/upper body than any known bear species (even extinct prehistoric ones like the giant short-faced bears of North America), with a huge barrel chest, broad shoulders, and long, muscular forelimbs. Not only does this give them a more deadly and versatile melee moveset (including a devastating and hard-to-avoid Killer Bear Hug), but it serves as one of a couple of visual indicators that they may be undergoing Dragon Communion mutation.
• Underground Monkey: A second sub-species, arctic Rune-Bears can be found in the Consecrated Snowfield. They have a white-coat and are even stronger then the normal version.

Trolls

Voiced by: Edward Rowe, Laurie Brett

Massive, emaciated giants that wander The Lands Between in search of prey. While most are wild monsters, some have been "domesticated" by the Lordsworn to use as beasts of war.

The larger, tougher variant named Stonedigger Trolls are fought as the bosses of the Limgrave and Old Altus Tunnels. One Carian Knight troll, Bols, can be fought at the Cuckoo's Evergoal.

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• Achilles' Heel: Literally. Consistently attacking the back of their feet even with weak attacks will cause them to stumble over and lie on the ground for a few seconds, setting them up for a killing blow to the face.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Trolls' heads are especially vulnerable, and landing a hit on them when one of their attacks brings it low to the ground deals massive damage as well as making the troll shield its head for a while, reducing the giant's attack options.
• Beef Gate: The first Troll you're likely to encounter guards the path to Stormveil Castle, and it is much stronger than the soldiers and beasts you've been fighting up until now.
• BFS: Trolls carry Norse-styled swords on their backs, which they'll draw and unleash in a terrifying combo once they reach a certain point of health. Flavor Text mentions they were given to the race during the Empire's genocidal war against the Fire Giants. It can be aquired and despite being used one-handed by the trolls, is treated as a greatsword due to the player's size.
• Body Horror: They are heavily emaciated, to the point that they seem to lack a lower chest entirely and just have a bare, empty rib cage with some kind of stone slab inside that is partially fused with their flesh. Some take advantage of this when using them as beasts of burden... by impaling a metal stake attached to a chain though the empty rib cage so that they can pull carriages, using the stone slab as an anchor point.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The Snow Trolls dwelling on the highest peak of the Mountains of the Giants heavily resemble this, being covered in thick coats of white fur and having long and thick whiskers.
• Degraded Boss: Inverted; your first troll encounter will be a standard troll near the Gatefront Ruins, who's treated as a sort of miniboss with his own arena and accompanying soldiers (though he respawns). Not far from this location you'll find identical trolls roaming the countryside. Much later in the game, you'll encounter a Stonedigger Troll (in Altus) and Bols (in Liurnia), who have higher stats and new moves compared to the standard trolls, and thus are treated as bosses.
• Les Collaborateurs: They are giants that betrayed their brethren in the Erdtree's War against the Giants. Unlike the Fire Giants, they have been mutilated to the point where they no longer have the face of the Fell God on their torsos.
• Eye Scream: All of the Trolls' eyes seem to be plucked out, since it appears that the optical nerves are actually outside and hanging out of their eye sockets.
• Fantastic Racism: Trolls are sapient and just as smart as humans, capable of communication and practicing magic. However, every ruler outside Liurna treats them as beasts of burden at best.
• Flaming Sword: Trolls found in Caelid have flaming swords, presumably because they serve Radahn's army, who are known to use flaming weapons to stave off the scarlet rot.
• Friendly Fireproof: Zig-zagged. While the trolls themselves aren't vulnerable to the attacks of humanoid enemies, they can be harmed by the attacks of other trolls, and the trolls' wide swings and massive crushing blows can easily kill their much smaller human allies.
• Genius Bruiser: Troll Knights serve Carian royalty with knowledge of sorcery in accordance with their combat skills. The Troll Knight's Swords they can drop scale with Intelligence alongside Strength and Dexterity. Then there's Iji, a skilled blacksmith and Ranni's War Counselor.
• Going Native: The Trolls that haven't been enslaved, and were instead knighted and treated as equals by the likes of Craian royalty, can be seen as this, after being known for betraying the society of the Giants during their war.
• It Can Think: You might think them as savage monsters after the first time you run into one and it smashes your face in, and they're often treated like animals to the point of pulling carriages like giant bipedal horses, but they're as smart as humans if given a chance. They can become Frenzied (a status normally only applicable to humans), and Caria (one of the few organizations to treat trolls as people) has troll knights who wear armor and use magic just like their human fellows. The one NPC troll, Iji, is a master blacksmith and Genius Bruiser who spends most of his time reading.
• Magic Knight: The Troll Knights, like all Carian Knights, have basic knowledge in sorcery, being able to summon a glintblade phalanx.
• Magma Man: The Snow Trolls are capable of throwing blobs of magma as an attack.
• Mighty Glacier: They're as sluggish as they appear, but if their attacks land, it will hurt.
• Monster Knight: While their brutish looks may cause you to think they are a simple Smash Mook, they are actually much smarter and skillful than one could expect - not only do most trolls come with a sword they can use quite well, the Troll Knights in Liurna even wear helmets and can cast magic using their glintstone swords - lorewise they are mentioned to be on considered equal to the rest of the Liurnia knights.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Trolls are relatives of the Fire Giants, referred to as "lesser giants" by the Troll's Golden Sword description.
• Playing with Fire: Snow Trolls retain their forefathers affinity with flame, being able to call forth circular balls of fire from their insides and toss the at the player.
• Praetorian Guard: The Troll Knights were knighted as Liurnia Knights to serve as this for the Carian royals.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: It is told that during the ancient war with fire giants they turned on their bigger brethren and sided with Queen Marika's forces. Their status after that was a cruel one, as they're treated as nothing but exploitable beasts. The only people to treat them fairly are the houses of Caria and Lucaria.
• Rock Monster: The Stonedigger trolls dwell in the deepest corners of the earth and as a result, their skin has become covered in an outer layer of heavy rock, resulting in most weapons harmlessly bouncing off when attacked.
• Screaming Warrior: They roar before their attacks and can scream as projectiles. There's even an Ash of War mimicking this skill that can be obtained, named and designed after them.
• Slave Mooks: They're used as beasts of war by the humans of the Lands Between and bear visible signs of enslavement, especially in Limgrave.
• Smash Mook: The most basic ones are giant, often sword-wielding monsters that have wide sweeping attacks and known to pound the ground with their fists and blades.
• Super-Scream: They have a long-ranged shouting attack that they will use if the Tarnished tries to keep their distance.
• Turns Red: Once they're at half health, Trolls that have a sword equipped will start using it.
• The Quisling: Not only are Trolls the lesser brethren of Giants who aided the Erdtree in their extinction, but some have even been knighted by different houses and orders, becoming Carian Knights and headless spectres sworn to serve their new masters.
• Underground Monkey: Trolls have quite a large number of variants, including the regular Trolls who fight with standard swords, Carian Troll Knights who wear armor and have access to glintstone-boosted swords and the Greatblade Phalanx spells, Frenzied Trolls who have large cloaks and summon forth the flames of frenzy through their eyes, and Snow Trolls, the strongest variant only found on the Moutaintops of the Giants, who look completely different than their lesser kin and are able to launch the fire spells of the Fell God. There's also the Stonedigger Trolls, who fight with large clubs and have stone-like skin that reduces damage.

Golems

Tall statues created by a long-dead ancient civilization. They appear lifeless until the Tarnished approaches them, at which point they rise up to attack.

One golem, the Guardian Golem, serves as the boss of Highroad Cave.

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• Artifact Mook: Golems are typically encountered either half-buried in the ground or guarding areas of significance, such as castles. One particular golem, however, can be found on the side of a cliff near Lenne's Rise, which can only be accessed by carefully dropping on several roots. This golem possesses an enchanted halberd, allowing it to perform a unique sorcery attack, and has noticeably higher health compared to other golems. Killing it doesn't drop anything significant, and the only item near it is a Rune Arc. How and why this golem managed to get itself in such a hard-to-reach area is never explained.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Their glowing ankles can be hit to make them fall, leaving their chests vulnerable for a Critical Hit that deals massive damage. Some golems, however, have anklets which remove this weakness.
• Breath Weapon: One of their attacks involve breathing fire underneath them.
• Faux Death: They appear lifeless until the Tarnished gets near them, causing them to rise up and attack.
• Great Bow: Several golems use a greatbow to shoot massive wind-infused greatarrows at the Tarnished. They can even drop this greatbow for the Tarnished to use, although it requires a decent amount of Strength to be able to use it. They can also drop their unique greatarrows, which cannot be obtained any other way.
• Golem: Living statues that were constructed and given life by an ancient civilization that has since disappeared.
• Long-Range Fighter: The bow-wielding golems can detect and attack you from an incredibly long range, and their arrows will deal considerable damage and throw you back if they connect, making it all the harder to close the distance on them. Once you do, however, their only attack at melee range is a predictable stomp, meaning once you've reached them you've basically already won.
• Magma Man: They appear to be powered by magma inside of them, as attacking their ankles and chest will cause it to spew out of them.
• Mighty Glacier: Their weapons pack a punch, but they are very slow and one can easily outrun them.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Pelting a golem with several crystal darts will cause it to begin attacking any other enemies near it. The description of the crystal darts notes that they were use to construct golems long ago.
• Underground Monkey: Three golems with enchanted weaponry can be encountered at Caelid^note Two with enchanted greatbows on the road to the Great-Jar, one with an enchanted greataxe laying alongside a cliff near Lenne's Rise.
• Worf Had the Flu: Some golems in earlier areas like Limgrave and Liurnia have their healthbars start out only half-full, implying they were already damaged before the Tarnished encountered them.

Flame Chariots

Large war machines of the Fire Monks consisting of a wheeled chariot with a face visage armed with flamethrowers. Encountered at the Fire Monks' camps in Altus and the Mountaintops. For whatever reason, the Fire Monks have them fighting alongside the forces of Rykard and Radahn, so they can also be encountered around Liurnia, Caelid, and Mount Gelmir.

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• Attack Its Weak Point: The driver's seat is exposed from behind and will deal heavy damage if they're hit. As noted by a merchant, a plunging attack to the chimney on top of their head is also ridiculously effective and is likely to kill them in one hit.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: They will blow up after their HP bar is depleted via way of a plunging attack. This can be dangerous for both the Tarnished and nearby enemies.
• The Dreaded: Their face is based on fire giants and the description says the chariot serves an informative purpose: Giant fire breathing heads are scary.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: War machines that spout fire, and can even spin around to douse the area.
• Mighty Glacier: They're tough and do a lot of damage, but while they can move surprisingly fast, they tend to be highly telegraphed and are otherwise stationary.
• Shout-Out: They're called Ganmen in the files.
• Tank Goodness: They're essentially the Lands Between's version of tanks, being highly mobile armored artillery platforms.

Living Jars

Animate jars powered by the souls of corpses inside of them. Often disguise themselves as normal jars before attacking. The Soldjars of Fortune Spirit Ash can summon three yellow-sealed Living Jars.

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• Action Bomb: Jars with yellow seals, referred to as Soldjars in their Spirit Ash, explode when they die. Some Soldjars start out with them already ready to explode, charging at you to blow you up with them.
• Ambiguously Related: Their openings are sealed with a large wax stopper bearing the sigil of the Erdtree, implying they are one of the creatures derived from the Golden Order, but numerous shattered and empty jars can be found all around the foot of the various minor Erdtrees throughout the lands. Whether or not they are an accepted form of life under the Golden Order is currently unknown, and the two speaking Jars don't offer up any hints on their origins.
• Body Horror: Their jars are filled with rotted corpses, whose spirits drive them.
• Chest Monster: A jar variant of this trope.
• Literally Shattered Lives: They shatter into pieces when killed.

Lookout Stones

Spherical moss-covered stones that have come together to form a caterpillar-like creature, sporting a single eye at their front. They are most commonly found around Evergaols.

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• Action Bomb: Some stone clusters can be found clumped into a mass, exploding themselves when the Tarnished gets near them.
• Cyclops: Their fronts contain only a single, eerily human eye.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Unless attacked, these creatures will not acknowledge the Tarnished's presence.
• Riddle for the Ages: Everything about these creatures, from who created them to what their purpose is, is completely shrouded in mystery with no explanation given about their origins.
• Pulling Themselves Together: One of their attacks involve making themselves explode, sending their stone bodies flying before reforming themselves.
• Spectacular Spinning: Sometimes they stand on their ends and spin like a top to attack you.

Teardrop Scarabs

Scarabs found throughout the Lands Between which can be killed to replenish one's flasks or gain the loot they've accumulated in their dung balls.

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• Action Bomb: Smoldering scarabs explode upon death.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Red Teardrop Scarabs replenish Flasks of Crimson Tears, while blue Teardrop Scarabs replenish Flasks of Cerulean Tears.
  • Of the non-respawning variants, white Scarabs drop either Smithing Stones or standard Ashes of War, blue-green Scarabs drop Sorceries or magic/frost-affinity Ashes of War, and gold Scarabs drop Incantations or holy/lightning-affinity Ashes of War.
• Giant Mook: Larger Teardrop Scarabs can be rarely found in some areas, however they behave exactly like their smaller counterparts.
• Invisibility: Some are only visible by their footprints, forcing the player to analyze and predict the paths they take in order to catch them.
• Metal Slime: As befitting of this game's Crystal Lizard analogue. Most will immediately run away when they see you, and a rare few will teleport away, making them even harder to catch. The rewards are well worth the effort, however, granting either an Ash of War, a Sorcery or Incantation, Smithing Stones, or flask charges.
• Poison Mushroom: Subverted with the smoldering scarabs. While their explosions can hurt the Tarnished, they still drop items.

Walking Mausoleums

Large stone creatures with mausoleums on their backs that wander the Lands Between. These mausoleums allow the player to duplicate any Boss Remembrances they have.

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• Anti-Frustration Features: They exist as a solution to the problem of having to pick between multiple options for boss weapons. Do you wanna try out both Radahn's bow and his swords, get Godfrey's axe and his Shockwave Stomp move, or use both of Fortissax's signature lightning spells without going into NG+? Well, go hunt down one of these things, and use it to duplicate the Remembrance. There are more Remembrance bosses than Mausoleums, so you're still going to have to pick and choose, but you don't have to get locked out of a boss drop you find interesting just because it's either/or with another super cool item.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Attacking the skulls located on either its legs or back will cause it stop moving and lay down, allowing the Tarnished to enter their mausoleum.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Stone creatures that seem to resemble a turtle.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: Subverted. Most Walking Mausoleums have bells on their underside that ring constantly with their movement, which is certainly an ominous thing to hear, but they seem only to serve as an indication of their presence. The presence of a bell is also an indicator of what Remembrances it can duplicate. Ones with a bell can duplicate any Remembrance, while ones lacking a bell cannot duplicate the Remembrances of demigods.
• Keystone Army: Several Walking Mausoleums are surrounded by patrolling Mausoleum Soldiers and Knights, who will disappear if the Walking Mausoleum is taken down.
• Non-Malicious Monster: They're just plodding around without a care for what's around them; the only threat they pose to anyone is that they might inadvertently step on them should they get underfoot. There are, however, some exceptions to this:
  • Two Walking Mausoleums in Liurnia will jump when attacked in an attempt to crush anyone beneath them.
  • The one in the Consecrated Snowfield constantly rains magical blasts on its surroundings.

Field and Dungeon Bosses

Erdtree Avatars (normal, Putrid)

Treelike monsters spawned by various Minor Erdtrees around The Lands Between in the wake of the Shattering to act as their guardians. They drop crystal tears that can be mixed into a Flask of Wondrous Physick.

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• Ass Kicks You: They largely copy the Asylum/Stray Demon moveset, and as such, can leap straight up into the air and slam down ass-first. For a given value of ass; they are trees.
• Degraded Boss: Two non-boss Erdtree Avatars can be fought in the Deeproot Depths and Leyndell, while two non-boss Putrid Avatars can be fought in Elphael.
• Doppelgänger Attack: The Erdtree Avatar at the Mountaintops of the Giants can produce a copy of itself after reaching a certain health threshold.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Both varieties can use Golden Land, which first causes a massive Holy explosion, then spawns several holy projectiles in midair which fly towards you after a delay. Regular Erdtree Avatars also have a Holy-augmented butt slam, officially known as the Erdtree Slam, which is the Ash of War that comes on their weapons (and can't be changed).
• Logical Weakness: Due to being basically living trees, they are Weak to Fire. Since the Scarlet Rot is also weak to fire, this makes the Putrid versions very weak to it.
• Poisonous Person: Putrid Avatars are infected with scarlet rot, spraying a massive AoE of the stuff all around them whenever they do their butt-slam.
• Recurring Boss: An Erdtree Avatar is present at almost every Minor Erdtree on the map. They're all optional, but their crystal tears can be very useful.
• Recurring Boss Template: The Erdtree Avatar resembles the Stray Demon and its palette swaps from Dark Souls (one of which also appeared in Dark Souls III). Both are giant, bottom-heavy monsters that wield greathammers, and their moveset includes swings, a jumping butt-slam, and a hammer plant that creates a magic explosion.
• When Trees Attack: They are born from the Erdtree, and thus are made up of wood and roots.

Ulcerated Tree Spirits (normal, Putrid)

Horrid abominations formed from mangled flesh and twisted tree root. One is found deep below Limgrave, in the Fringefolk Hero's Grave. And more of them can be found throughout the Lands Between.

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• Botanical Abomination: A creature comprisied of giant, fleshy roots clumped together into a form vaguely reminiscent of a snake. that has fleshy growths sticking out from under its bark.
• Breath Weapon: The spirit can breathe out a storm of golden fire, and later covers itself in that same fire during its second phase.
• Confusion Fu: The danger of the Ulcerated Tree Spirit is less in its power and more in its sheer unpredictability. It constantly lashes wildly around the room, and has ridiculous range, making it very hard to avoid it. Ironically, its hitboxes are some of the most accurate in the entire game.
• Degraded Boss: Ulcerated Tree Spirits become respawning enemies in the endgame areas. Three of these Spirits can be found lurking within the dried-out lake in Leyndell, Capital of Ash.
• Final Boss Preview: A particularly surprising one. After an entire game's worth of mystery about what the hell they are and what the hell kind of 'tree spirit' they're 'ulcerated' versions of, it turns out that the Elden Beast has a remarkably similar build and moveset to them.
• Lightning Bruiser: Despite its large bulk, the tree spirit moves around the small room it's fought in with surprising speed, and its unpredictable attacks hit like a truck.
• Recurring Boss: Easily in the running as the most reoccurring Boss you will face. There are two in Limgrave — one as the Boss of the Fringefolk Hero's Grave, while the second can be found at the very bottom of Stormveil Castle. It also appears in Mt. Gelmir, the Capital Outskirts, within the premises of Leyndell itself, and at the end of the Giants' Mountaintop Catacombs. Finally, you can encounter three at once all guarding a legendary talisman in an endgame area.
• Shoddy Knock Off: Their name seems to imply that Ulcerated Spirits are the result of a failed attempt to spawn an Erdtree Avatar by a weakened Minor Erdtree. For example, one Spirit be encountered next to the ruined stump of what was once Mt. Gelmir’s Erdtree sapling.
• Underground Monkey: As the Tarnished progresses later and later into their quest, they will begin to encounter the Putrid Tree Spirits; variants infested by Scarlet Rot. One is encountered at the bottom of a waterfall in the Grand Cloister, another in the War Dead Catacombs, and one in a rot pool in Miquella's Haligtree. Their movement patterns and attacks are completely the same, but with the added danger of inflicting the deadly scarlet rot status, with their golden attacks tainted a shade of red.

Tree Sentinels (normal, Draconic)

Members of the Order of the Tree Sentinel, they are some of the Empire's finest warriors. A lone, golden-clad Tree Sentinel can be found patrolling the starting area, while the other two can be found guarding Leyndell's gate. A Draconic Tree Sentinel guards a side-entrance to the capital, and another wanders Crumbling Farum Azula.

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• Achilles' Heel: They have low resistance to the Poison and Rot rot status effects, and have few ranged attacks to punish players keeping their distance and harassing the Sentinels while the poison wither their lifebars.
• Animals Not to Scale: The Sentinel's horse is just as massive as he is, with the Tarnished (who is around the size of an average human) only reaching to about the top of the thing's legs.
• Attack Reflector: The Erdtree Greatshield bears the Golden Retaliation skill, which converts magical projectiles blocked with it into a powerful burst of golden homing magic. This shot is so powerful it's often able to one-shot a player mage.
• Badass Cape: They wear green-cloaks, threaded with golden icons of the Order, which trail behind them in the wind ontop their steeds.
• Beef Gate: Fitting their status as guardians of the Erdtree, they stand as a very dangerous obstacle to get to the capital city Leyndell. Two regular Tree Sentinels guard an entrance to the inner wall, while the Draconic Tree Sentinels guard the entrance to Leyndell proper and Maliketh's arena.
• Bling of War: The order's most defining trait, clad in thick, rune encrusted golden armor and highly dangerous combatants should they be challenged. The Draconic variant armor is just as splendid, but complete with golden spikes and dragon-like ridges across their armor.
• Carry a Big Stick: The Draconic version uses a massive warhammer, apparently made from Dragon-bones, which they use to pummel the player with unmatched mastery. During the second phase, they'll wreath it in lightning.
• Cool Horse: They ride on top giant, savage war-horses, who will freely attack the player alongside their masters. They also rock an ornate set of armor, just as radiant as their master's. The Draconic variant rides on top a Dragonkin warhorse, that is able to breath fire.
• Degraded Boss: The Draconic Tree Sentinel which guards Maliketh's arena in Farum Azula is fought as a tough, non-respawning enemy.
• Dual Boss: Two Tree Sentinels guard the entrance to the Capital Outskirts. They're also each individually about twice as tough as the one in Limgrave (5,384 hit points to his 2,889) with appropriately higher damage.
• Hellish Horse: The barded horse it rides is just as ferocious as its master. The Draconic version even more so.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: After suffering their very first defeat when Ancient Dragon Gransax breeched the capital's walls and Marika declared war against Dragonkind, a group of Sentinels decided the best way to believe to combat this new threat was by using their own powers against them. Leading them to study the Dragons' lightning incantations and begin fashioning weapons and armour from their bones.
  Malformed Dragon Set: After the great ancient dragon Gransax attacked, the sentinels had an epiphany. The only way to truly protect the Erdtree was to become dragons themselves.
• Knight Errant: The one in Limgrave is seemingly this, wandering far from home on a quest of some kind.
• Knight in Shining Armor: The Order of the Tree Sentinels is the most famous and revered Knightly Order in the entire land, and their valor is the stuff of legends, being some of the finest warriors on offer. Given massive war-steeds, a set of golden plate armor, and weapons blessed by the Golden Order, they are entrusted with the highest honor to any Knight; protecting the Erdtree.
• Lightning Bruiser: Fulfilling this trope is the entire point of being elite heavy cavalry, and the Tree Sentinels are exactly as tough, mobile, and hard-hitting as you might expect. They're one of the first bosses you'll encounter where it's them who choose the range they engage you at, rather than the other way around.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: They hulk around circular greatshields, complete with the symbol of the Erdtree carved into it. Its power lets it deflect bolts of magic. The Draconic Knight has a similarlily sized one made from golden bones.
• Magic Knight: The Draconic versions are all masters of their Cult's lightning incantations, and will freely use them to augment their melee skills.
• Optional Boss: They're completely optional bosses able to be bypassed, either by just running past them or using the Deeproot Depths teleporter to enter Leyndell.
• Praetorian Guard: Their role is to personally guard the Erdtree, alongside, by extension, Queen Marika.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Played for laughs in the manga. The sentinel in Limgrave (assuming they are a man) shows a deep knowledge and appreciation for fashion and trends when judging in Aseo, Nepheli, and Godrick's grafting competition, and later admonishes Aseo for being too logical and not emotional enough when talking to Rennala.
• Rearing Horse: The horse rears up constantly during the battle, both during the riders' attacks and to attack itself by kicking with its front hooves.
• The Remnant: By the time of the game, the Order has been reduced to three members (five if you count the two Draconics), though they all remain magnificent warriors.
• Recurring Boss: Two more of them are fought at the Gate of Leyndell. The Draconic variants are fought at Leyndell's northern entrance and outside of Maliketh's boss chamber in Farum Azula.
• Recurring Element: The Draconic variant seems to have reinforced their armor with stone and wield a club made from the bones of a dragon, making them this game's equivalent of Havel the Rock.
• Shmuck Bait: The first Tree Sentinel you see is wandering around just outside the tutorial zone, without the usual boss fog gate. Do you take that to mean he's a normal Limgrave enemy and attack him? Surprise, you just learned about field bosses and why to explore and use stealth to avoid them!
• Shock and Awe: The Draconic Sentinel commands utter mastery of Dragon Cult incantations; they can fire strands of it, send forth large waves of energy, coat their weapon in the sparks, and their most powerful attack is to summon forth giant bolts of it from the sky. Most notably, it's red lightning, which normally only ancient Dragons can control.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Suffice to say, this is the actual first boss a Tarnished will encounter. Fighting the Tree Sentinel immediately after completing the initial dungeon is ill-recommended, as not only is he tanky, and will hurt like hell, being on horse means he's also fast. He is one of many, many bosses in the area that encourage leveling up and exploring first, before doing anything foolhardy. Checking the game files reveals he's actually internally tagged as a level 4 fight (SpEffect ID 7040) with an additional double health effect, one of the relatively rare instances of the game giving an enemy a much higher level than the rest of the area they're in (almost everything else in Limgrave outside of the peninsula and Stormveil is tagged as level 1, SpEffect ID 7010).
• Weapon Across the Shoulder: Has his halberd slung across his shoulder while not aggroed, and even during the fight he will often hoist it back upon his shoulder to reorient himself after an attack.

Crucible Knights (Axe, Tree)

Crucible Axe Knight

Crucible Tree Knight

Heavily-armed knights clad in armor of reddish, primordial gold who wander the Lands Between. They once served Godfrey, the First Elden Lord, and possess both incredible martial might and mystical abilities derived from their namesake, the primeval crucible of life.

Two branches of Crucible Knights exist, each with distinct move sets. Axe Crucible Knights, led by Ordovis. wield greatswords and shields, while Tree Crucible Knights, led by Siluria, wield large spears. A nameless Crucible Knight may also be fought in the Stormhill Evergaol.

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• Ambiguously Human: In addition to being able to sprout extra body parts with their spells, their flesh cracks like crystal or amber when struck instead of producing a blood squib like human enemies do, and they can't have Hemorrhage procced on them because they don't bleed at all. They can still be poisoned or frostbitten though, and take more damage from fire than other sources, which might suggest they've become closer to the Erdtree as all these attributes are also shared by Radagon's husk in the Erdtree.
• Animorphism: The Aspects of the Crucible that they perform allow them to do this by channeling the bodyparts of primordial lifeforms. Examples include sprouting a tail from their behind to sweep enemies in front, growing horns from their shoulder to ram into enemies with, transforming their throat into a massive pouch from which they can spew fire, transforming their entire offhand into a sharp claw and even growing wings to take flight with. The first three are available to the Tarnished in the form of incantations, the exceptions being the aspects of the claw and wing, which remain exclusive to the Crucible Knight enemies.
• Artificial Brilliance: They are very good at punishing attempts to heal or use items, forcing the player to carefully time their item usage with one of their few openings or create a large amount of distance from them before doing so.
• Artificial Stupidity: They'll recklessly use their dive attack even when surrounded by high ledges with fatal drops. The Axe Knight in the Siofra Aqueduct is particularly notorious for this.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Notable in that their status never diminishes throughout the game, as they appear as non-respawning minibosses in even late-game areas such as Crumbling Farum Azula. No matter the area they appear in, they are undoubtedly among the most dangerous non-boss enemies there. The later ones will not get a boss health bar but can still give you more of a challenge than many enemies that do.
• Breath Weapon: Aspect of the Crucible: Breath causes the caster to manifest a frog-like throat sac from which they spew flames.
• Commonality Connection: They have a stone-manipulation move where they cause pointy rocks to sprout out of the ground in a conical pattern by stomping their right foot, which (other than being smaller and weaker) is basically identical to an attack that their lord Godfrey uses.
• Cool Helmet: Alongside their chest armor variants, there two variants of their distinctive helmet: Those led by Ordovis have an Axe Helmet, which has axe blades mounted on the sides, while the Tree Helmets are worn by Siluria's and have gnarled tree branches.
• Dash Attack: Aspect of the Crucible: Horn is a high-speed shoulder tackle enhanced by a horn manifested on the caster's shoulder. Axe Knights also love to punish you for trying to heal by dashing towards you and thrusting with their swords, which have a much longer reach than you might think.
• Druid: Sort of; while the Crucible Knights are outwardly more like a Paladin, they have a very druidic flair to their lore as their powers derive from the primordial crucible that all life originally sprang from and they can take on the features of animal life like wings, tails, horns, and claws to fight with in addition their weaponry.
• Dual Boss: Twicefold. The first boss of Redmane Castle pits the Tarnished against a Misbegotten Warrior who is eventually joined by an Axe Knight, whereas the end boss of the Auriza Hero's Grave pits the Tarnished against Ordovis of the Axe Knights and a nameless Tree Knight. There is also an Axe and Tree Knight pair in the Siofra Aqueduct which can function as a dual miniboss of sorts, though due to the Axe Knight's patrol route, you will most likely end up fighting and defeating him (or at least getting him to half health before he happily defeats himself) before you even notice the Tree Knight is there, and certainly before he notices you.
• Fallen Hero: The Crucible Knights were supposedly all once noble, but many of them have fallen to savagery during the Shattering, most notably Tanith's knight who serves the Volcano Manor.
• Golden Super Mode: Upon reaching low health and unleashing their powers of the crucible, the aspects that they channel glow in brilliant red-tinged gold.
• Hidden Depths: Though the Crucible Knights were known for serving the First Elden Lord and bear association with the primordial form of the Erdtree, the descriptions for their gauntlets and greaves state they were eventually met with scorn and derision for the power they possess. One has even become sworn to Lady Tanith and the blasphemous Volcano Manor.
• Ironic Name: Thanks to the weapon of the king they were once the Praetorian Guard of, one of the most elite knightly orders protecting a giant magical tree is known as the Axe Knights.
• Lady and Knight: One of them has sworn fealty to Lady Tanith of the Volcano Manor and stands guard over her at all times. If the Tarnished kills Tanith in her maddened state, her knight will immediately invade the Tarnished in order to dish out retribution.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Axe Crucible Knights bear a distinctive horned greatshield in their off-hand. Luckily for them (and unluckily for the Tarnished), the shield will protect them as they become almost impervious to damage while blocking with it.
• Meaningful Name: Rather uniquely for a fantasy setting, the two premier Crucible Knights, Ordovis and Siluria, take their names from the Ordovician and Silurian geological periods, respectively. Though unusual, it fits considering that they derive their powers from primordial life. It also ties into the naming scheme of Bloodhound Knights Floh (Floian) and Darriwil (Darriwilian), both named after subdivisions of the Ordovician period. Interestingly, the Ordovices and Silures were also the names of Celtic tribes in Iron Age Britain, fitting the Druidic aspects of the Knights' beliefs and armor.
• Mighty Glacier: They're very hard-hitting and durable, take many hits to stagger, and their attacks are slow and highly telegraphed. However, taking advantage of the latter is easier said than done because the time between attacks is relatively short, and most of them have deceptively long range and wide reach.
• Mythology Gag: Essentially Elden Ring's answer to the Black Knights of Dark Souls. Both of these enemies are tall, fully-armored knights dressed in a single distinctive color (black for the Black Knights and red for the Crucible Knights), are notoriously tanky and difficult to stagger, deal incredible amounts of damage with their attacks and can be found in early-game locations. Their lore is also similar, having both been the Praetorian Guard of a lord notable to have been the first in his lineage.
• Naginatas Are Feminine: Only two of the Crucible Knights are identified by gender. Ordovis (the man) uses a greatsword and shield while Siluria (the woman) uses a two-handed multi-pronged greatspear for both thrusting and slashing.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Axe Knights actually use a Knightly Sword and Shield. Their name and heraldry comes from their founder and former lord Godfrey, wielder of the most famous axe in the Lands Between.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: The sword that the axe-armored ones use is a BFS as long as they themselves are tall, with a two-handed grip that they sometimes make use of, but they normally wield it in one hand alongside their massive shields.
• One-Man Army: While exploring through Crumbling Farum Azula, the Tarnished can encounter a lone Crucible Knight being assaulted by an entire horde of the native Beastmen. The Beastmen don't last for very long.
• Praetorian Guard: Were this for Godfrey, the First Elden Lord. They seem to have disbanded completely after Godfrey's banishment and now either wander the Lands Between or took up work elsewhere, in the case of Tanith's knight.
• Recurring Boss: Possibly the most recurring one in the game, rivaled only by Erdtree Avatars, Tree Spirits, Night's Cavalry, and Crystalians. A list:
  • An Axe Crucible Knight is imprisoned in the Stormhill Evergaol. He drops the Aspect of the Crucible: Tail incantation.
  • There's another Axe Crucible Knight in Stormveil, who drops the Aspect of the Crucible: Horn incantation.
  • In the Road's End Catacombs, the Spirit-Caller Snail boss can summon the spirits of two who evidently died offscreen.
  • There's a Crucible Knight in the Siofra River, reachable from the Four Belfries.
  • A Crucible Knight fights you alongside a Misbegotten Warrior in Redmane Castle.
  • An Axe Crucible Knight serves as Tanith's bodyguard in the Volcano Manor.
  • Two Crucible Knights, one Axe and one Tree, patrol the Siofra Aquaducts. The Axe Knight drops the shield he uses.
  • Crucible Knight Siluria is a boss in the Deeproot Depths.
  • Leyndell has two Tree Crucible Knights.
  • Crucible Knight Ordovis is fought alongside a Tree Crucible Knight in the Azuria Hero's Grave.
  • Two Axe Crucible Knights somehow managed to wind up in Crumbling Farum Azula.
• Rule of Symbolism: The two sects of knights encountered in the game are dubbed "Axe" and "Tree", and their respective armors follow these monikers. While this has little bearing on their actual purpose and equipment (the official loadout for the Axe Knights is actually a Knightly Sword and Shield), it signifies their status as a Praetorian Guard to Godfrey, axe-wielding champion of the Erdtree.
• Samus Is a Girl: One of the named knights, Siluria, is confirmed to be female by her item descriptions. This implies that some of the unnamed ones may also be women under their bulky armor.
• Shield Bash: As the Axe Knights will happily demonstrate, that scary-looking horn on their shields isn't just for show, offering them a devastating short-ranged attack that chews through your health and stamina bars if it lands.
• Tail Slap: Aspect of the Crucible: Tail is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• This Is a Drill: Siluria's Tree, the greatspear used by the Tree Knights, has the unique weapon art Siluria's Woe, which spins the spear like a drill to charge it with energy before thrusting it forward to fire the energy as a projectile.
• Turns Red: Upon reaching half health, the Crucible Knights will use their Aspects and greatly increase the ferocity at which they attack.
• Shield Bash: The Axe Crucible Knights do this occasionally, charging with shield held towards the Tarnished and goring them with the mounted horn.
• Shockwave Stomp: Both variants can stomp the ground to stagger the Tarnished before unleash a devastating flurry of attacks.
• Spin Attack: Ordovis's Greatsword, the greatsword used by the Axe Knights, has the unique weapon art Ordovis's Vortex, which levitates and spins the sword vertically in the air before slamming it down to create a shockwave.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: While the player can obtain both sets of armor, the sword, shield, and spear; as well as the Tail, Horn, and Breath Aspects as incantations; the Wings and Claw Aspects that the Crucible Knights are seen using cannot currently be obtained. This may change, as the DLC trailer shows a scene of what appears to be a player using the Aspect of the Crucible: Wings incantation against Messmer.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Crucible Knight in the Limgrave evergoal is a huge step-up for the first few areas (Limgrave/Weeping Peninsula/Stormveil) with fast, highly damaging combos, short punish windows, an incredibly thick shield that's nearly always up, one of the highest health pools in the area backed by abnormally high damage absorption, and a second phase that gives him the ability to fly and strike at large distances with Hard Light magic. Most players agree that he's harder than Godrick himself, partly because he's so easy to run into under-leveled. It's especially notable because he's placed almost right outside the starting area next to several very easy bosses like the Beastman of Farum Azula, Demi-Human Chief, and Erdtree Burial Watchdog.

Bloodhound Knights

Agile knights that have been trained to attack like a predatory hunting animal. They choose the master they wish to serve and remain under them for life.

One Bloodhound Knight, Floh, can be summoned as a spirit while another Bloodhound Knight, Darriwil, can be fought at the Forlorn Hound Evergaol.

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• Ambiguously Human: It's not entirely clear if they're simply humans taught to fight like animals, or they have other justifications for fighting like they do. Blaidd's association with Darriwil seems to suggest they are also wolf men like him, but there's nothing conclusive. The internal AI name of this enemy is "HoundDog".
• Animal-Themed Fighting Style: They are trained to fight like hunting animals.
• BFS: Wields the Bloodhound's Fang, a curved greatsword, on their right hand.
• Degraded Boss: The first two bloodhound knights the Tarnished will most likely encounter are fought as bosses^note Darriwil at the Forlorn Hound Evergaol, one at the Lakeside Crystal Cave. After that, they become uncommon respawning enemies.
• Flash Step: Their famed Bloodhound's Step allows them to rapidly close the distance of their target. They're not actually moving fast enough to be invisible (though still superhumanly quick), the technique just also happens to make them invisible when they do it.
• Lightning Bruiser: Their attacks are very fast and can combo the Tanished, quickly whittling away their health.
• Meaningful Name: A Bloodhound is a breed of scent hound used for hunting wildlife, and Bloodhound Knights are described as keen hunters that fight like a predatory animal. On a related note, the helm they wear is a type of hounskull, which means hound's hood, and their Fangs and Claws have innate bleed build-up, which may or may not be related to their order.
• Noodle Incident: What Darriwil did to earn him Blaidd's enmity and get locked in an Evergaol. The fact Ranni had left an illusionary version of a Bloodhound Knight to protect her mother, along with illusionary versions of a giant, a wolf pack, and a dragon (matching her servants and protectors of Iji, Blaidd, and Adula respectively) may suggest that at the time Ranni left the trap-spell, Darriwil was part of Ranni's retinue, but that explanation still wouldn't explain what happened to make them enemies.
• Primal Stance: They attack on all fours, adding to their animal motif.
• Theme Naming: The two named Bloodhound Knights, Darriwil and Floh, take their names from the Darriwilian and Floian stages of the Ordovician geological period, somewhat inexplicably connecting them to the axe-Crucible Knights and their commander Ordovis.
• The Quiet One: The flavor text for the Bloodhound set reveals that Bloodhound Knights are trained to never speak.
• They Have the Scent!: It's said that a once a Bloodhound Knight has your scent, you cannot shake it off.
• Undying Loyalty: Once a bloodhound knight chooses a master to serve, they are forever loyal to them. Darriwil may be an exception, as Blaidd calls him "nothing but a traitor" and the description of the Forlorn Hound Evergaol states that it holds a lone knight who had abandoned his master.
• Wolverine Claws: Wields the Bloodhound Claws on their left hand.

Night's Cavalry (glaive, flail)

Mysterious black knights who serve the Fell Omen. These riders can can only be encountered during nightfall.

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• Ambiguously Human: It's not clear what they are other than that they're closely connected to Morgott. The only things that are apparent is that they're near nine feet tall, are never seen outside of their armor, and only ever seen at night. Looking closely at their visors reveals a tiny bit of their faces, which shows that they have gray skin and glowing gold eyes.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Slaying their Funeral Steed will leave the riders vulnerable for a critical hit. They will, however, summon it back after a short period of time; the later-game ones will resummon their mounts almost immediately.
• Badass Cape: Cloaked in a black feathery cape that covers the front of their chestpieces.
• Black Knight: Several of them, in fact.
• Dual Boss: Two Nightriders, one with a flail and the other with a glaive, can be encountered at the Consecrated Snowfield escorting a caravan.
• Epic Flail: Some Nightriders wield a three-headed flail. It can be obtained from the Nightrider at the Castle Morne rampart.
• Expy: Their appearances bear great resemblance to The Nazgûl. They're mysterious riders in black with dark-cloaked mounts, they appear only during at night, and one of them even wields a flail. The internal file names for the horse model's rig is "Nazgul."
• In the Hood: Their horses are covered in a large, black hood.
• Mounted Combat: Their main method of combat is on horseback, and killing their steed will give an opening for a Critical Hit. While they have attacks on-foot, they prefer their horses and can re-summon them if given enough time.
• NPC Scheduling: As their name indicates, the Night's Cavalry can only be encountered at night.
• Posthumous Character: Their instructor is long dead, and an apparition of his image can be summoned during the Ash of War, Phantom Slash.
• Recurring Boss: There are a number of them scattered throughout the Lands Between, each offering a different reward.

Deathbirds (normal, Death Rite Birds)

Giant, emaciated birds with skull-like heads that attack the Tarnished at nightfall.

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• Bird People: Their bodies, save for their heads, appear very human-like.
• Brown Note: Their screeches cause Death Blight build-up, which can lead to instant death akin to its Curse predecessor of previous Souls games.
• Carry a Big Stick: They wield Death's Pokers, giant barbed rods big enough to be classified as a greatsword when used by the Tarnished. One can be obtained by defeating the Death Rite Bird in southern Caelid.
• Cold Flames: The Death Rite Birds are distinguished from their lesser avian brethren through their use of Ghostflame abilities and spells, a white/light blue flame that comes from burning the bones of the dead, dealing Magic damage instead of Fire and causing Frostbite buildup.
• Creepy Hairless Animal: Have no feathers on their bodies save for their wings, making them look like corpses.
• Feathered Fiend: Lanky, tall, corpse-like birds that attack the Tarnished at night.
• Giant Animal Worship: The assassins of Ravenmount revere Deathbirds, even modeling their armor set to resemble them.
• Holy Burns Evil: Traditionally depicted as malevolent creatures of Death by Golden Order teachings, they are extremely weak to Holy damage. Additionally, they are classified as Undead enemies, meaning anything which boasts effectiveness against Those Who Live In Death will deal extra damage as well.
• Magic Missile Storm: Death Rite Birds can fly up into the air and unleash a storm of magical spears that rain down on the battlefield. In addition to this, they have an attack that calls forth angry spirits to bombard foes.
• Necromancer: There are implications the Deathbirds are the origin of Spirit Ashes Summoning. A number of Death Sorceries summon spirits of the dead, and Death Ritual Spear describes how priests chosen by the Deathbirds were sworn to the spear as guardians of the birds, in exchange for a “distant resurrection”.
• Optional Boss: As they can only be fought at certain locations during nighttime, it's possible to completely avoid them by only travelling during the day.
• Physical God: The Sacrificial Axe says that some depict Deathbirds as malevolent deities. Going by the Twinbird Kite Shield they're all children of the twinbird, itself an envoy of an outer god (presumably similar in status to Queen Marika and/or the Elden Beast). This would either make them full gods or demigod equivalents, depending on whether the twinbird spawned them alone. And while most of them are pretty low to middling in terms of in-game power, the Death Rite Birds earn their titles as deities with the two in the Mountaintops being among the strongest bosses in the game, if not the series.
• Psychopomp: Death’s Poker description mentions how the birds used to be graveyard keepers who burn the remains of the dead with their Ghostflames, and rake their ashes with their Pokers. Much like mythical deities of death in real life, their roles as this trope isn’t particularly good or evil, but the Golden Order paints them as malevolent deities, which contributed to their present time obscurity (and possibly hostility).
• Skull for a Head: Bird skulls with a noticeable part of them caved in, though that doesn't seem to impair the birds in the slightest.
• Underground Monkey: The Death Rite Bird, which has its wings wreathed in ghostflame and augments its attacks with it, begin replacing Deathbirds in late game areas.

Spirit-Caller Snails

Ghostly snails who can use Spirit Ash techniques to summon spirits.

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• Degraded Boss: The first Spirit-Caller Snail is encountered as the boss of the Road's End Catacombs in Liurnia. In late-game areas, they're encountered as regular enemies.
• Desperation Attack: The snail is almost defenseless when you deal with its summons, but it can do a very slow, easy to dodge grab attack. If it connects however, it's almost always a One-Hit KO.
• Flunky Boss: A couple of them appear as bosses of certain catacombs, using their spirit-summoning abilities to deadly capacity. One of them is invisible but will endlessly summon spectral Crucible Knights until you spot its tell and beat it up, while the other appears as a pushover final phase after you've defeated the tougher spectral Godskin Apostle and Noble before it.
• Keystone Army: They can endlessly summon spirits as long as they're alive, but when killed will also kill all spirits it summoned.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Seem to be a mix of a snake and a snail.
• Secret A.I. Moves: They seem to use the same Spirit Ash system as the player does, but the player cannot obtain ashes of Crucible Knights, Inaba, or Godskin Apostles/Nobles.

Godskin Nobles and Godskin Apostles

The Godskin Duo; The Apostle is the one of the left, while the Noble is the one on the right

Voiced by: Ben Norris (Apostles), Wayne Forester (Nobles)

A wicked cult of apostles and nobles who worship Death, they were defeated by Queen Marika's shadowbound beast Maliketh who proceeded to seal Rune of Death into his Black Blade, before the Golden Order was established. After Death was stolen and the Shattering ensued, their cult began to rise again seeking Death's rot as well hunt down the demigods and their kin.

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• Achilles' Heel: The cultists are surprisingly susceptible to the sleep ailment, stunning them for a very, very long period of time as long as they are not attacked. This is a very useful tool in the Godskin Duo fight, as by keeping one of them in their slumber will allow for focus with the other. They actually have a move that wakes up nearby allies, but it's bugged and doesn't work in the Godskin Duo arena and you have to go out of your way to see it by luring the Godskin Apostle near Dominula (the only place where a Godskin boss is near enemies coded as its allies) over to a sleeping Celebrant.
• Acrofatic: The Nobles' robes are literally made out of fat, and make the Nobles themselves appear enormously obese. However, like Executioner Smough before them, they likely aren't very fat themselves, and those robes are actually deceptively light if the wearable version is any indication, allowing them to move very quickly and attack gracefully with their rapier (or as gracefully as one can attack with a rapier that huge, anyway).
• Ancient Evil: Not apparent at first. The Godskin seems like a cult of madmen who harnessed the power of Death after the spread of the Deeproot, but the Godskin Nobles are described as being very ancient, not unlike the primordial crucible of life itself.
• Black Speech: When both the Apostles and Nobles transition into their second phase, they float above the ground and slam back down, accompanied by unintelligble murmuring that seems to indicate a verbal incantation to use their skin in an offensive capacity (both the Apostle and Noble will not use their stretch or inflate attacks until this specific animation/sound occurs and their second phases begin).
• Degraded Boss: Inverted. A non-boss Godskin Noble is fought on the path leading to the Divine Tower of Liurnia. He's the only non-boss one in the game and will almost inevitably be encountered before all three boss versions, as they're all in later areas (Volcano Manor, Farum Azula, and the Mountaintops of the Giants).
• The Dreaded: Not so much the cultists as much as it is the Black Flame they wield, as well as its source: the Rune of Death or Destined Death. When asked about it, Enia claims its dark power is so terrible that it was plucked out from the Golden Order during its creation; unleashing it would be considered a cardinal sin of the same order as burning the Erdtree itself.
• Double Meaning: Their name in English can be read as both 'God Skin' and 'Gods' Kin'. The former is self-explanatory, while the latter may refer to the fact they're the offspring of an Empyrean.
• Dual Boss: An Apostle and a Noble are fought together as the Godskin Duo in Farum Azula. Notably, killing both is not enough to end the fight. They share one health bar much greater than their combined HP, and keep respawning until it is completely depleted. The shared health bar is 26,350 hit points and the Noble and Apostle have 8,000 and 6,668 HP respectively, so you'll end up killing four Godskins instead of two.
• Evil Is Bigger: They're significantly larger than ordinary human beings, adding to their intimidating, disturbing Humanoid Abomination appearances.
• Fat Bastard: The Nobles are covered in so many layers of godskin they appear grotesquely obese.
• Fat and Skinny: The Noble is the Fat, the Apostle is the Skinny. The Godskin Duo is a very Ornstein and Smough-esque boss.
• Foreshadowing: The Godskin Noble's description implies their cult has been hunting all sorts of beings since prior to recorded history. The fact they have been around for that long is one of the earliest hints of the Greater Will's attempts to distort history to its favor — the Rune of Death said to be plucked out of the Golden Order originally belonged to the Godskin cult, as Destined Death.
• Genuine Human Hide: Their names aren't just for show; they're literally wearing the flayed flesh of gods and/or kins of gods as robes. Even their weapons are called the "Peeler" and "Stitcher", making it clear that they aren't meant to be used primarily as weapons but as tools to make their clothing.
• Inflating Body Gag: When the Nobles enter their second phase, they become able to inflate themselves/their robes and roll around like a ball.
• Kill the God: As the name implies, the Godskin cult consider god-slaying their lifestyle. The Black Flame they wield is very lethal to divinities, harnessing the same power of Destined Death in a similar manner to the Black Knife daggers which killed Godwyn.
• Lean and Mean: The Apostles are so inhumanly lanky they're stretchy.
• Little Bit Beastly: The Nobles have inexplicable reptilian tails, despite their faces appearing completely human. The description on their robes implies a connection to the Crucible.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: While by no means harmless now, the Godskin cult was once far more feared and dangerous than they are in the present day; once lead by a god of their own known as the "Gloam-Eyed Queen" who bestowed upon them powerful Incantations that could threaten even Marika. But after Maliketh slayed their queen and sealed Destined Death within his Black Blade, their spells lost their ability to inflict True Death and they faded into a minimal threat.
• Humanoid Abomination: They resemble tall, oddly-proportioned humans, but they very obviously are not. Leaving aside their unholy powers and Rubber Man physiology, the Nobles have tails poking out from their cloaks. There's also the fact that the Gloam-Eyed Queen apparently birthed all of them, meaning they're closer to hive-based insects in social organization than anything close to humanity.
• Master Swordsman: As per the Godskin Stitcher's item description, Nobles 'possess skill with the sword unmatched by any lowborn'. This is totally accurate - they weave a web of elegant and blindingly fast stabs and slashes so difficult to penetrate that players are strongly encouraged to engage them at range as much as they can.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Godskin. Rendered even more intimidating by the fact its completely literal.
• Non-Indicative Name: Though they are wielding a power that stand in direct opposite to the established divinity, there is no indication they have ever slain a major demigod like Godwyn, much less an actual god. Downplayed however, in that they do seem to have successfully hunted minor demigods and their descendants (ones similar to Godefroy and Millicent). Since they are also ancient enemies with Marika and Maliketh, it also suggests there was a time or an age when their name was far more earned.
• Ominous Walk: Due to the Apostle's ability to reach the Tarnished across inhuman distances by way of their elastic torsoes, the fastest they will move when not attacking or stretching is equivalent to a casual stroll across a park.
• Playing with Fire: Their trademark weapons and incantations channel black flames. Unlike regular fire, these flames also have an HP sapping effect.
• Recurring Boss: The Apostles and Nobles are fought a total of six times across the game — both are fought twice as individual fights (once in the overworld and once in a dungeon for both Apostle and Noble), once as a Dual Boss in Crumbling Farum Azula, and the Spirit Caller Cave pits the player against an Apostle and a Noble in sequence at its end.
• Recurring Element: The Duo fight is a twofold example. Most obviously, it's the latest iteration of the Dual Boss fights that go all the way back to the Maneaters in Demon's Souls, with you having to face both at the same time and carefully manage their aggro to avoid being ganked to death. However, they also resemble the Four Kings from Dark Souls in a few ways, most notably in their massive shared health bar and ability to continue spawning in on a timer even as you cut them down. Thankfully, unlike the Four Kings, there are never more than two Godskins in the room at the same time. If you can melt them fast enough you may even find yourself in an empty boss room waiting for more to spawn in, which was also possible to do with the Four Kings.
• Royal Rapier: The Godskin Stitcher, a massive yet elegant rapier, adds a suitable touch of aristocratic class to the grotesque Nobles, and lets them show off their impressively elaborate, refined swordplay.
• Rubber Man: When the Apostles enter their second phase, they become able to stretch their torsos inhumanly far in order to hit you on the other side of the room.
• Serial Killer: They are essentially serial killers of gods and their kin, even wearing their skin as trophies a la Leatherface.
• Silent Antagonist: Almost. They're obviously intelligent beings, as indicated by their elaborate rituals, mastery of advanced incantations, and apparent ability to attract worshipers and forge alliances with other characters like Rykard, yet the only utterances either variant of cultist makes is assorted near-silent grunts when attacking, and unintelligible murmuring (implied to be a verbal incantation to use their skin offensively) when they perform their "float-then-slam" phase transition.
• Single-Gender Species: No female Godskins are ever seen, and they're all apparently the direct children of the Gloam-Eyed Queen, implying they have a social structure more similar to ants or bees than anything close to human. Given that the Gloam-Eyed Queen was an Empyrean, that might make the Godskin cultists gods’ kin as well as god-skinners.
• This Is a Drill: Both the Stitcher and the Peeler have (relatively) small but sharp drills on their pommels. The item description of the Peeler says they're for boring through muscle as part of the flaying process, but the Godskins are perfectly happy to go after your muscles (and any other parts of you they can hit) with them as part of their combat moveset.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Godskin Swaddling Cloth you get by defeating the spirit versions of the Noble and the Apostle is, basically, the flayed skin of a baby god.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: It's hidden by their hoods during gameplay, but both varieties of Godskin have sinister, gold-colored eyes. Ironic considering that golden eyes are normally considered a blessing from the Erdtree, which their race has waged war against since its inception.

Black Knife Assassins

A mysterious, all-female cadre of assassins who orchestrated the Night of the Black Knives, leading to the death of Godwyn the Golden and the Shattering of the Elden Ring. Long after the Shattering had ended and the world was irreparably damaged, they still remain in the Lands Between for purposes unbeknownst to all but themselves.

The leader of the Assassins, Alecto, is imprisoned in the Ringleader's Evergaol in the Moonlight Altar, which can only be accessed after a series of events that start with slaying Radahn. With her is the ashes of her daughter, Tiche, who can be summoned as a spirit.

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• Amazon Brigade: While they may not look like it due to their concealing outfits, the Black Knife Assassins consist entirely of women.
• Ambiguously Human: For starters, they bleed black and they're oddly tall and lanky. The revelation that they are Numen raises many questions about them, as they're never seen outside their armor and Marika, the only other confirmed Numen seen in story who's able to shift between male and female form and seems to have a body made of stone, is implied to have been altered on some level by her ascension to Godhood.
• Assassin Outclassin':
  • Despite their reputation as having killed a god, Godwyn was not fully killed. The Assassins had only succeeded in killing his soul, not his body, which has since transformed into a hideous, bloated abomination within the Deeproot Depths, eternally decaying but still alive.
  • Happens again at the end of Ranni's quest when they are ordered to kill Blaidd and Iji. While they manage to kill Iji, he still kills several of their members in return, and they utterly fail with Blaidd, who decimates the assassins sent after him.
  • Given they can be killed by the Tarnished themselves, it's a very easily invoked trope.
• Confusion Fu: Black Knives move in a bizarre and inhuman way and you're never really sure what the next attack will be.
• Dark Action Girl: They’re skilled assassins and share a shady moral compass.
• Degraded Boss:
  • A Black Knife Assassin can be fought near the Queen's Bedchamber in Leyndell.
  • Four invisible Black Knife Assassins roam inside the evergaol located at Ordina in the Consecrated Snowfield.
• Elite Mook: When not serving as dungeon bosses, they can be found as minibosses throughout the Lands Between.
• Enigmatic Minion: While serving a crucial role in the Shattering, their own goals and motivations for doing so are unclear. Also it's implied In-Universe this is how the inhabitants of the Lands Between see them.
• Exotic Weapon Supremacy: They're the most elite and dreaded assassins in the Lands Between, and even the game itself describes their signature knives as 'oddly misshapen'. The blade is strangely wavy with a single large, forward-pointing barb, and is placed above sharpened, S-shaped quillions. The overall effect is of a particularly evil-looking religious icon rather than an actual weapon - which is, to be fair, not completely off the mark.
• Fragile Speedster: The Assassins move extremely fast and have a large health pool, but excepting Alecto don't hit very hard and can be easily stunlocked.
• Hero Killer: One of the most dangerous forces in the game, whoever they're sent after will die. Except Blaidd.
• Invisibility: A few of them use magic to make themselves totally invisible, though the enchantment dispels when they move in for the kill, or if the Tarnished is holding a Sentry's Torch. The Assassin in the Sage's Cave leaves her position visible due to the water covering the cave floor; later Assassins aren't as lenient, forcing the Tarnished to rely on either their hearing or the Torch to know where the enemy is located.
• Lightning Bruiser: Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader is the strongest of the Black Knife Assassins, able to easily kill the Tarnished while zipping all over them and boasting a huge health pool. Her attacks can still be interrupted, but not as easily as the others.
• Professional Killer: Perhaps the single most prominent example of this in the Lands Between, as they managed to kill one of the immortal demigods. Although they didn't manage to kill him fully.
• Psycho Knife Nut: They're professional killers good enough to kill a god, who share their names with the knives they wield, which have been ritually imbued with the stolen Rune of Death.
• Recurring Boss: One of the most recurring boss/miniboss types in the game, with ten being encountered (5 as bosses and 5 as strong, non-respawning enemies).
• Riddle for the Ages: Despite the fact that they were name-dropped from the very start of the game, the question of why they stole the Rune of Death from Maliketh and used it to kill Godwyn is left a complete mystery. Did they come up with the plan themselves, or were they working on someone else's orders? And if so, whose orders? No definite answers are provided. Adding even further to the conspiracy, the lore even points towards a connection to Queen Marika herself, despite her being one of the ostensible victims of the Night of the Black Knives, outright stating that they had close ties with her. And there's the matter of Marika's unexplained betrayal of Maliketh regarding Destined Death... Further muddying the water, a Black Knife Assassin can be found seemingly guarding the entrance to Miquella's Haligtree, and Miquella had explicitly abandoned the Golden Order in order to try and help his sister.
  • What's their relationship to Ranni? We know she was the one who enchanted their knives with Destined Death, but the Ringleader's Evergaol (holding their leader Alecto) is in the Moonlight Altar, heavily associated with Ranni (you only get there through her questline), and Black Knife Assassins are sent after her associates, Iji and Blaidd. Are they unassociated, with Ranni merely assisting in their pre-existing plot so she could kill her body with the Rune of Death? Did Ranni betray them by imprisoning Alecto, thus earning their ire? Did she know too much due to her involvement in their plot? Did someone else commission them to murder her and her group for their own reasons? The Assassins themselves are silent, and Ranni, though open to discussion of her plans, never talks about that.
  • The almost mythological air of mystery surrounding the Black Knife Assassins leads to them being subject to this trope in universe as well. In the questline relating to them, Sorcerer Rogier posits that the Black Knife Assassins hail from the Eternal City — which turns out to be incorrect, as they are actually Numen who hail from outside the lands and have close ties to Queen Marika.
• She-Fu: In spades. The Black Knife Assassins are incredibly dexterous even for the standards of this trope, as they move with an almost insectoid swiftness and precision while also incorporating gymnastic leaps and contortionist twists into their attacks. Crosses over with Confusion Fu, as much of the difficulty in combating them comes from their near-instant attacks and nonstandard body movements.
• Slashed Throat: They take their knives to the Tarnished's neck during their grab attack. Unlike their normal attacks, this attack can deal a ridiculous amount of damage.
• Sword Beam: They can project red and black beams from their Death-imbued Black Knives, which simultaneously cause Maximum HP Reduction and a short Damage Over Time effect.
• Underground Monkey: Most are identical aside from stats, with the two exceptions:
  • The Death-Touched Catacombs boss has a unique wounded model and starts off heavily weakened; environmental storytelling implies that she killed the skeletons that used to inhabit the catacombs' boss room but was injured in the process.
  • Alecto, their ringleader, has Nominal Importance and one unique move: the Imbued Helmsplitter, an area of effect Blade Spam attack that inflicts Destined Death.
• Walking Spoiler: They are the orchestrators of the Night of the Black Knives and the direct cause of the Shattering. Uncovering the mystery of why they did so — despite the lack of concrete answers given — will naturally lead one towards the deepest, darkest truths hidden within the lore, which includes Marika's true intentions as well as the revelation that the Golden Order is not a perfect law.
• The Worf Effect: Near the end of Ranni's quest, several squadrons' worth of Black Knife Assassins are sent out to eliminate Blaidd and Iji, and presumably Ranni herself, but she is no longer at her tower when this happens. Blaidd, however, proves to be more than a match for the squad sent to him, and Iji evidently only gets offed after killing several of their numbers in return.
• Worf Had the Flu: The Assassin that serves as the boss of the Deathtouched Catacombs, which is likely the first Black Knife Assassin you'll fight, is already down to half health when you confront her, and has apparently lost the invisibility and the Death powers of the others as a result. Judging by the many Skeleton corpses that surround her, it seems she had just finished a big battle before you came along.
• Zerg Rush: Their MO, at least when it came to Godwyn. Given that he was still a demigod which implies that he was still a dangerous target even with their knives, it was probably done as a necessity. They also ganged up on Iji and Blaidd at the end of Ranni's sidequest, judging by the number of corpses left.

Cemetery Shades

Pitch-black ephemeral beings wielding a pair of wicked blades.

One each can be fought as the bosses of the Tombsward (in the Weeping Peninsula), Black Knife (in Liurnia) and Caelid Catacombs.

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• Alien Hair: It's "hair" is actually a crab-like parasitic lifeform that can perform some attacks on its own, like briefly paralyzing the Tarnished with a sticky projectile.
• Blade Spam: They primarily attack in rapid flurries of slashes.
• Body Horror: While hard to see because of the shadows cloaking them, the Cemetery Shades are horribly mutilated, with two large holes in their chest and an hollowed-out abdomen.
• Degraded Boss: There is only one that can be found as a regular respawning enemy, near the end of the Gelmir Hero's Grave.
• Dual Wielding: They wield a pair of Mantis Blades. The one in the Gelmir Hero's Grave will drop one the first time you kill it, but only once per playthrough.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The only information we have on them is they are grave keepers and are "insect-ridden".
• Glass Cannon: Shades have a pitiful amount of health and barely any resistance to any form of damage, but their offense is utterly devastating; their strikes inflict bleed and they Blade Spam like nobody's business. Either you delete its entire health bar in two seconds, or it bleeds yours dry just as quickly.
• Flunky Boss: They're rarely, if ever, fought alone. They usually have some sort of backup, again to make up for their low health. Even the Degraded Boss version technically has backup in the form of the giant chariot rolling back and forth just outside its tiny alcove.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Nothing but two void-white circles staring into your soul.
• Puppeteer Parasite: The Cemetery Shade is controlled by a crab-like parasite resting on its head, which can be hard to spot because of the darkness cloaking the enemy. Besides controlling the body well past said body's death, the crab can fire an attack on its own to immobilize an enemy. The description for the Cemetery Shade's Mantis Blade also describes it as "insect-ridden".
• Retractable Weapon: Their Mantis Blades are, as the name suggests, based off the claws of a praying mantis. They are normally folded up into a compact form, but unfold for extra range while doing a heavy attack.
• Teleport Spam: Being made of shadow, it can dissipate and reform at will, and will use this ability constantly to teleport around the room, dodging your attacks, then teleporting right up in your face to attack you.
• Weakened by the Light: As a living shadow being, they are extremely weak to Holy damage, which is essentially Light damage. Granted, they're extremely weak to pretty much everything, but Holy damage even more so, with their resistance to it being in the negatives.
• You Will Not Evade Me: At a distance, the parasite can fire a blob of green goo that will root the Tarnished to the spot for a long time if it connects, allowing them (or their minions) to walk up and shred them to pieces.

Tibia Mariners

Ghostly skeletons aboard spectral skiffs that haunt flooded areas. Their horns are capable of conjuring skeletal servants.

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• Degraded Boss: The Tibia Mariner at the Mountaintops of the Giants is fought as a strong non-respawning enemy instead of a boss.
• Flunky Boss: Is constantly surrounded by Skeletons, either ones they summoned themselves or ones that rose from nearby graves.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: They love to teleport around their often wide-open arenas, summoning swarms of skeletons for the Tarnished to cut through as they look for them.
• Glass Cannon: They don't have much health, but their attacks hurt.
• Recurring Boss: There are a total of four Tibia Mariners encountered in the Lands Between; the one at Summonwater Village in Limgrave also serves an introduction to D, who encourages the Tarnished to start gathering Deathroot from the rest of them.

Giant Skeletons

Giant skeletal spirits that can be summoned by the Tibia Mariner at the Wyndham Ruins in Altus Plateau and red Second-Generation Albinaurics near Mohgwyn Palace.

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• Ambushing Enemy: Will often pop out of the ground and swat the Tarnished if they get near them before hiding underground.
• Degraded Boss: The first Giant Skeleton you're likely to come across is fought as part of the boss fight against the Tibia Mariner at the Wyndham Ruins in Altus Plateau. Afterwards, they're encountered again as tougher enemies.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: Giant Skeletons do not yield any runes when killed, which also includes the one at the Mountaintops of the Giants with no summoner.
• Eye Beam: They're capable of firing a large beam from their right eye.
• Gashadokuro: Giant spirits that take the form of the top half of a skeleton.
• Keystone Army: If their summoner is killed, any summoned Giant Skeletons will disappear.
• Underground Monkey: The Giant Skeletons in the Mountaintops of the Giants are summoned by the nearby Tibia Mariner in the area. Killing the Mariner will permanently get rid of them... except for one, which inexplicably sticks around without any summoner and respawns like any normal enemy.^note Most likely the developers simply missed flagging this particular skeleton as being summoned by the Mariner.

Grave Warden Duelists (normal, Frenzied, Rotten)

Exiled duelists who now guard the catacombs of the Lands Between, attacking any who dare to ransack them.

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• Animal Motifs: Their armor has a snake motif. Snakes are considered “[traitors] to the Erdtree” for some reason, so the crowds of the arena loved to see them get beaten up in effigy.
• Draw Aggro: Uniquely, the Duelist's set makes the wearer easier to target not unlike the Shabriri's Woe Talisman, which represents its status icon. While the default cloak keeps it from happening, it will do so if it's taken off with the sewing kit.
• Dual Wield: Some duelists dual wield two Battle Hammers. Originally, one was guaranteed to drop from the boss of the Murkwater Catacombs, but that reward has since been replaced with Banished Knight Engvall's Spirit Ashes. It can now only be obtained from the respawning hammer-wielding duelist in front of Leyndell's colosseum. The Rotten version is obtained from the duelist among the coffins near the southern tip of the Consecrated Snowfield as a guaranteed drop on first kill.
• The Coats Are Off: Wear cloaks before taking it off when confronting the Tarnished. The wearable version of their chestwear can be altered to the same effect, which causes the set to exhibit a Draw Aggro effect.
• The Exile: Their weapons' description states that they're former gladiators who were driven from their colosseums.
• Gladiator Games: They're former gladiators, exiled from the arenas for unclear reasons. Their armor is designed specifically for participation in gladiatorial matches- the snakes decorating their helms and their snake armwear made it more fun for the audience to see them get beat up, on account of snakes being hated as "traitors".
• Heel: As gladiators who fight for people's entertainment, they are essentially the Lands Between's equivelant of professional wrestlers, and their gear's item descriptions state that the decorations are meant to make them seem unlikeable and make it more fun for the audience to watch them get beaten up.
• Glass Cannon: They hit hard, but their lack of armor (or even clothes) makes them easy to stunlock.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Snakes are considered treasonous in the Lands Between, which are why their armor is decorated with them. As Heels, they are meant to be associated with bad things.
• Stripperiffic: They fight in a loincloth, helmet, and decorative greaves and bracers. They also have a cloak they wear to suppress the aggravating effect of their armor, but they throw it off before fights. Of course, they are gladiators; their outfits are meant to look cool for the crowds over being actually protective.
• Underground Monkey: Rotted variants can be found in the Consecrated Snowfield, inflicting Scarlet Rot with their weapons. They are also guaranteed to drop a part of their set or one of their weapons on death.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Their "chest" piece is actually just a pair of bracers on the arms; their chests are completely bare.

Lion Guardians

Lions equipped with a blade on their front leg that guard various castles and fortresses around the Lands Between.

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• Artifact Mook: The Guardians show up in locations run by the soldiers of lords who seek to emulate Godfrey (Godrick, Radahn, Morgott), which is fitting considering his lion motif and their implicit origin as participants in Gladiator Games. The regions in which they appear also overlap with the ones that have colosseums: Limgrave, Caelid, and Altus. The singular exception is Castle Sol, a castle sworn to Miquella in the Mountaintops of the Giants where the lions are just prowling a ruin full of corpses and ghosts for seemingly no reason. It's possible that the soldiers brought them from elsewhere (as they're implicitly linked to Limgrave by their spells), but that's never spelled-out and still wouldn't explain questions like why they're still alive there when everyone else is dead.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: They don't get boss health bars or fog walls, but they fit the bill in every other way as totally unique enemies with boss-level stats who never respawn. They can easily pose more trouble than the actual bosses of the areas they're in.
• Dual Boss: Often encountered in pairs.
• Cats Are Mean: Lions trained to defend the castles and fortresses they're stationed at.
• Chained by Fashion: Their body is wrapped around by a chain which holds the blade affixed onto their front leg.
• Covered in Scars: Scars can be seen on their front and hind legs.
• Gladiator Games: The game heavily implies they were used this way; Fort Gael has a walled-off area with huge piles of Commoner corpses (notably unburnt, with their clothes and wooden braces still on) next to a prowling Lion Guardian. A similar area exists in Redmane Castle. In Fort Gael, Redmane soldiers are seen observing this area from the ramparts, with their backs turned to the actual gate. There's also a plank right over that area with a dead Commoner hanging off it, as if that's where they were pushed in to be fed to the lion. Note that the Redmanes also run one of the three colosseums and have their banners all over it.
• Great White Feline: Their shaggy, unkempt mane is completely white in contrast to their gray body.
• In a Single Bound: They love to leap several times their height during combos.
• Lightning Bruiser: They're incredibly agile and will leap great distances to both slash at the Tarnished as well as avoid their attacks.
• Panthera Awesome: They're ~26 feet from nose to tail, nearly five times as long as a player character is tall,◊ and proportionally bulky on top of that.
• Recurring Element: Being giant battle-cats that are quite akin to the King's Pet's from Dark Souls II, and their frost variant features the same breath attack as Aava.
• Roar Before Beating: They let out a ferocious roar when spotting the Tarnished.
• Underground Monkey: The two at Castle Sol are distinguished from the rest by a wintery coat of fur and one unique attack, namely a high-damaging Breath Weapon that builds up frostbite.

Demi-Human Queens

The highest-ranking leaders of the Demi-Human tribes, distinct from their lesser servants by their size, strength, and primitive use of sorceries.

Four can be encountered throughout the area: an unnamed queen in the Demi-Human Forest Ruins, Maggie at the Hermit Village, Margot at Volcano Cave, and Gilika at Lux Ruins.

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• Aerith and Bob: Maggie's name is a diminutive of several Western names^note Magdalene, Margaret, Magnolia, and seems rather out of place compared to Gilika and Margot's names.
• Degraded Boss: Inverted. A weak, unnamed, non-respawning Demi-Human Queen miniboss is encountered in the Weeping Peninsula. Way later in the game, you'll find the stronger versions who have boss health bars.
• Dumb Muscle: The Demi-Human Queen's Staff was designed to be wielded by lesser intelligent beings. As such, they can only use the most basic sorceries, and aren't very good with them. Margot is also incapable of using the Jar Cannon that she drops.
• Flunky Boss: The one in the Weeping Peninsula is fought alongside standard Demi-Humans, not that they're much help. Maggie is fought with both Demi-Human minions and three Carian sorcerers.
• I Come in Peace: The Demi-Human Queen's Staff was given to the queens in order to foster peace.
• It Can Think: Like the normal demi-humans, the queens are sapient, and are even able to cast sorceries. That said, they seemingly can't think very hard, as their staff is explicitly designed for beings with low intelligence. For you, it will be the best staff until you hit around 40, then other staves will start outscaling it.
• Large and in Charge: Much larger and stronger than the Chiefs.
• Mythology Gag: Margot's and Gilika's fights are similar to Oceiros's, both being beastly monarchs who first fight with magic wands using blue projectiles and awkward staff strikes, before dropping the staff, screeching, going on all fours, and transitioning into a second phase where they fight more like a wild animal capable of streaking across the arena.
• Recurring Boss: There are four of them, and none respawn. While not fought, a fifth Demi-Human Queen is found as a corpse in Fort Haight, which explains why the Demi-Humans there are hostile to Godrick's men.
• Turns Red: After taking enough damange, both Margot and Gilika will become enraged, throw their staves at the Tarnished and begin to fight more physically and aggressively.
• Underground Monkey: Unlike Gilika and Margot, Maggie is able to cast Crystal Burst alongside Glintstone Pebble and doesn't throw her staff at any point during the fight. Seeing as how she's with several Raya Lucaria Sorcerers, she's probably had more help in honing her sorceries.

Erdtree Burial Watchdogs (sword, staff)

Living animal statues which guard the various catacombs located throughout the Lands Between.

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• Breath Weapon: Commonly breathes fire towards the Tarnished. Later variants start spewing either lightning or ice.
• Degraded Boss: In catacombs in the Mountaintops of the Giants, Watchdogs are found as respawning enemies as opposed to end-of-dungeon bosses.
• Dual Boss: Two Watchdogs are fought at once at the Minor Erdtree Catacombs.
• Flunky Boss: The Watchdog at the Impaler's Catacombs is fought alongside 4 imps.
• Living Statue: One that guards catacombs found throughout the Lands Between.
• Marionette Motion: Of the “limited articulation” type.
• Multiple Head Case: The Watchdog at the Cliffbottom Catacombs sports 3 heads that can all breathe fire.
• Non-Indicative Name: They're really more cats. May be a case of deliberate Irony on their creators' part.
• No-Sell: Being made of stone, they're outright immune to a handful of status ailments like bleed and frostbite.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Like all golem enemies, pelting it with crystal darts will cause it to starting attacking other enemies. This is especially useful at the Minor Erdtree Catacombs, as launching a handful^note usually four to six of crystal darts at one of the watchdogs will cause it to attack and damage the other one, leaving the victor easy pickings for the Tarnished.
• Shock and Awe: The Watchdog at the Wyndham Catacombs utilizes lightning in its attacks, not helped by its arena being flooded with ankle-deep water, which lowers your lightning resistance while you're standing in it.

Alabaster and Onyx Lords

An ancient race of stone-skinned beings who suddenly appeared in the Lands Between after a meteorite impact long, long ago. Their names were given by the denizens of their new home, who dubbed them lords due to their sheer destructive power. One Onyx Lord is trapped in the Royal Grave Evergaol near the Caria Manor.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: It's said their entire race was awarded the title of Lord out of fear of their sheer destructive power.
• BFS: Both variants wield these that they can swing effortlessly single-handed. Alabaster Lords wield a traditional straight-bladed greatsword while Onyx Lords opt for a curved greatsword.
• Cool Teacher: Radahn was tutored by an Alabaster Lord in the arts of gravity magic. Considering that Radahn is now one of the undisputed masters of said magic, it seems that their training paid off.
• Degraded Boss: Zig-zagged. Alabaster Lords can be encountered early on as strong enemies, while Onyx Lords are fought as bosses much later in the game. Onyx Lords eventually show up as strong enemies in the Yelough Anix Tunnel.
• Elite Mook: Serve as either these or dungeon bosses.
• Fantasy Aliens: As literal as it can possibly get in a Dark Fantasy setting, the star spawns rise from the cosmic rocks of falling stars (meteors) which fell on the Lands Between in the past. Unlike other extraterrestrial visitors (such as Fallingstar Beasts and Malformed Stars), the Lords seem to have managed to integrate themselves within human society to a certain degree — at least during the times when Marika's empire was still intact.
• Fisher Kingdom: Subtle, but it’s implied the Lords as well as star spawn in general didn’t originally appear as they are now, but evolved into their current forms as a response to environmental factors. The Lords in particular appeared to have evolved into a more humanoid form after wandering the Lands Between close to the civilizations, hence their ability to speak and interact with the local inhabitants.
• Full-Frontal Assault: None of the ones encountered wear any clothing besides a comically small loincloth.
• Humanoid Abomination: Originating from outer space, the Lords do not follow the Golden Order imposed by Queen Marika and the Erdtree, and possess innate powers over gravity which general inhabitants of Lands Between lack naturally (although they can teach it, as General Radahn learned under one).
• Gravity Master: They have innate mastery over gravitational forces, and use it with impunity to both pull enemies into the range of their sword swings or forcibly push them away.
• Glass Cannon: They are strong foes with powerful attacks and their gravity magic make staying away from them almost impossible. That said, they are also extremely weak to poise damage. Even basic jumping attacks will cause them to stagger, meaning if the player has enough endurance, it's quite easy to keep them stunned and kill them without them ever able to get an attack in.
• Our Elves Are Different: Being tall, pointy-eared humanoids whose skin colors come in two flavors, that being supernaturally pale or black like coal, these aliens are elves in all but name... and everything else besides appearances, as they have skin made of solid stone, can manipulate gravity with zero effort, and come from outer space.
• Rock Monster: Although they appear outwardly human, their flesh and skin are of solid stone.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The only physiological differences between them and normal humans lie in their height, pointed ears, bizarrely long limbs and stone skin.

Fallingstar Beasts (normal, full-grown)

Bizarre extraterrestrial creatures that occasionally appear after meteorite strikes.

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• Almighty Idiot: They are capable of performing precise and powerful gravity attacks, but seem to do so out of instinctive self-defense.
• Animalistic Abomination: As with all star spawns, they rise from meteorites which landed in Lands Between, possess rock biology and wield distinct gravity powers.
• Beast with a Human Face: Underneath the fur of the Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast is a human skull, similar to that of the Malformed Stars and Astels.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: It can use its long tail as a weapon, strikes of which can cause bleed status buildup due to the long, lacerating barbs present along its length.
• Brutish Bulls: Despite looking like they came straight out of a geologist's worst nightmares, Fallingstar Beasts inexplicably behave much like bulls do.
• Bullfight Boss: Befitting its bull-like figure, much of its attack patterns involve it relentlessly charging over and over. Occasionally crosses over with "Get Back Here!" Boss, as it can charge too far away to the player to properly engage.
• Came from the Sky: The Fallingstar Beasts at Altus Plateau and Mt. Gelmir are encountered in craters, suggesting that they've just arrived from meteorites.
• Cyclops: The Full-Grown variant has a single large eye, while the two regular variants have no eyes at all.
• Fantasy Aliens: Naturally qualifies as star spawns. Unlike Alabaster and Onyx Lords, who managed to find a place within Marika's society, Fallingstar Beasts remain little more than wild animals that pose a danger to all life around them.
• Fisher Kingdom: As with all star spawns, it’s implied these Beasts originally didn’t appear as the weird Mix-and-Match Critters they are now. These ones in particular seem to have evolved from wandering the wilderness of Lands Between with little to no human contact, as such they evolved traits from various animals and beasts they encounter instead, becoming animalistic in behavior.
• Gravity Master: Their method of a ranged attack is via manipulating gravity to repeatedly raise rocks up from the ground underneath their target. They will also occasionally use gravity to raise everything within 5 meters — including the Tarnished — into the air for a few seconds, before slamming them all back down onto the ground.
• Lightning Bruiser: Not only are they fast and incredibly hard-hitting, they're also Damage Sponge Bosses nearly impervious to physical damage and are able to manipulate gravity as a ranged option. They are some of the most formidable opponents that the Tarnished may encounter in their travels, though they are thankfully rare in number.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Take the body of a bull, the mandibles of a termite, the spiked tail of a stegosaurus and then combine them all into one creature. Then replace all the flesh, skin and bone with solid chunks of various types of extraterrestrial rock, then add the finishing touches in the form of gravity manipulation, and you've got yourself a Fallingstar Beast.
• Metamorphosis Monster: It's implied that they eventually turn into Malformed Stars, since they both possess the same insect-like mandibles, plus the Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast has a single large eye identical to the ones the Malformed Stars have. This also suggests that they are the "larva" of Astels, as it's implied that Malformed Stars are the juvenile versions of them.
• Monstrous Mandibles: Instead of a head, it possesses a large insect-like mandible.
• Non-Malicious Monster: They attack the Tarnished if they come too close, but they don't appear to be aggressive in general. The one in Altus sits passively in its crater the entire game unless you walk into it, despite there being humans not even a few meters removed with a few in particular appearing to be praying directly in front of it.
• Recurring Boss: Three of them can be fought in total throughout the Lands Between^noteOne in Altus Plateau, one in Sellia Crystal Tunnel, and one more at Mt. Gelmir. Notable in that they are some of the few recurring bosses who do not receive the Degraded Boss treatment later in the game.

Valiant Gargoyles (greatsword, twinblades, Black Blade Kindred)

Giant winged humanoids made of rock and corpse wax that guard forbidden areas. They either wield a halberd with a sword or a twinblade with an axe.

A more powerful variant known as Black Blade Kindred are mended with black corpse wax and serve Maliketh, the Black Blade. Like their boss, their weapons are imbued with the power of Destined Death.

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• Breaking Old Trends: It was pretty much taken for granted that any Souls game would have a creature who either heavily resembled or was an outright Moveset Clone of the Belfry Gargoyles from Dark Souls. These guys are instead completely distinct other than an association with halberds and the ability to breathe fire.
• Degraded Boss: Non-boss Valiant Gargoyles can be fought in the Capital Outskirts and inside Leyndell.
• Foreshadowing: The Black Corpsewax mending the Black Blade Kindred and their weapons is described as a mark of those who serve Maliketh, the Black Blade. The one guarding the entrance of the Beast Sanctum is a major hint of Gurranq's true identity.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: They wield their weapons with the same speed, flexibility and grace as a human-sized enemy could despite being much larger. This makes them much more dangerous than most other giant enemies that are otherwise more lumbering and predictable in their movements.
• Lightning Bruiser: They are fast, very durable and use their large size to close in reach with their weapons. They are among the strongest enemies in the game, especially the Black Blade Kindred.
• Multi-Melee Master: They will wield ether a halberd and a sword or a twin blade and an axe, switching between weapons occasionally.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: They're as big as giants and are made from a combination of rock and corpse wax.
• Optional Boss: The Valiant Gargoyle Dual Boss in Siofra Aqueduct yields an achievement for 100% Completion, but can be circumvented via an alternate (but much tougher) route to the Deeproot Depths. Both Black Blade Kindreds can also be circumvented if you just bolt past them to wherever you're headed.
• Poisonous Person: The Valiant Gargoyles can breathe poison, which covers a large portion of the arena and lingers for quite a long time.
• Reforged Blade: Like the Gargoyles themselves, their bronze weapons are mended with corpse wax.
• Two-Faced: Their face is actually two separate faces mended together.

The Bell-Bearing Hunter (Shaded Castle Spoilers)

Elemer of the Briar

A mysterious invading knight wielding a levitating greatsword who only appears at night at certain merchant or trainer locations, and drops various Bell Bearings when defeated. Later he is encounter for real in the flesh as the Castellan of the Shaded Castle. Elemer is a practitioner of the magical swordfighting arts of the long-forgotten lesser region of Eochaid, which allows him to telekinetically manipulate his greatsword without even holding onto it.

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• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Elemer's hold over the Shaded Castle raises some questions as to whether he has any ties to the Haligtree faction, since the Cleanrot Knights continue to guard the throne room even though he has deposed Maleigh. A Cleanrot Knight is also always scripted to step out of the elevator leading to his boss room when you approach it (this is the only entrance and exit to said room), meaning s/he must have just encountered Elemer and was fine with him there. Elemer also has his back turned to the player when first encountered because he's busy staring at a portrait of Malenia, and there's fresh food on the tables of the room despite him having clearly kicked out Maleigh a while ago, implying there was a recent meeting and dinner there. Also, is he now in control of the entire Marais faction, or is the castle simply in such a sorry state that no one can muster up the strength to drive him out? From a meta perspective, the fact that he's this game's version of Knight Kirk would further hint at a connection to Miquella and Malenia's faction, since Kirk himself worked for a sickly demigod and went around killing people so he could loot their bodies and offer their belongings to her.
  • It's also unclear whether Elemer has some kind of Resurrective Immortality whenever he's killed out in the world or whether you're merely Fighting a Shadow of him. He takes on a wholly solid look wherever he appears to contrast other "spirit" enemies which are translucent and usually glowing a bright color, but he also briefly takes on the coloration of a Red Phantom when he arrives and his death explosion effect uniquely appears as the same red color rather than gray. Is he somehow using a more powerful version of a Bloody Finger spell, wearing the Furled Finger's Trick Mirror or is he just that hard to kill?
• Cool Sword: His weapon is in truth the Marais Executioner's Sword, a greatsword used by the Marais family to execute criminals. He managed to steal it and kill the very executioner that was going to execute him for his crimes and enchanted it with Eochaid's signature magic.
• Everything Fades: One of the few bosses, let alone field bosses, to avert this. Killing him when he invades in the overworld will cause his corpse to remain on the ground until you reload the area. This is played straight when killing him in the Shaded Castle.
• Flying Weapon: Elemer is capable of manipulating his sword using the signature magic of Eochaid to have it take on this effect. While he has some standard slashes and sweeps he uses while employing this technique, his most dangerous move is Eochaid's Dancing Blade, which has him launch his sword forward in a deadly spinning drill attack capable of stunlocking and often one-shotting you.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: One of his moves is a shield bash preceded by a quick dash, which can let him cover a lot of distance in a short time in contrast to his usual slow walking pace.
• Implacable Man: You'll catch on very quickly that it's very difficult to stagger Elemer or knock him out of an attack, and his Menacing Stroll only adds to this image. You can also kill him up to five different times in different locations.
• Karmic Death: Averted the first time, when he avoided being executed for his crimes by killing the executioner tasked with executing him and making off with his sword. Played straight if you find his corporeal self and kill him, fulfilling his executioner's task and avenging all the innocent people he murdered.
• Master Swordsman: Even without its ability to float, he's extremely deft with his greatsword.
• Mighty Glacier: His movement speed never rises above a Menacing Stroll (except when he charges), but his sword-swings deal so much damage and come out so rapidly you probably won't survive if he does close the distance.
• Not Quite Dead: Even if you manage to kill his corporeal form, he will still appear at certain locations as the Bell-Bearing Hunter.
• Recurring Boss: You can fight him five times in the game, four times as a field boss at night at certain merchant or trainer locations, and again as the boss of the Shaded Castle.
• Recurring Element: He continues FromSoftware's tradition of incorporating an eerie Implacable Man with a huge sword who stalks the player and winds up being a Recurring Boss into their games, and even wears thorned armor like Knight Kirk.
• Shadow Archetype: In a way, to the player themselves. He travels the world killing merchants and trainers to collect their bell bearings, much like the player may be tempted to do in order to consolidate their inventories all in one place for the sake of convenience.
• Shield Bash: Though he carries a greatshield wrapped in briars, he never uses it to block. Instead, he keeps it strapped to his back and only takes it out to do a charging shield bash or to slam the ground for an AoE attack.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Compared to the expansive and varied movesets used by the other bosses, Elemer relies almost entirely on his Flying Weapon. As it has massive range and deals high damage, he still poses just as much of a threat.
• Serial Killer: He was sentenced to death and marked with iron briars due to murdering many merchants and trainers, thus his title as the Bell-Bearing Hunter- you can retrieve four of these from his boss fights (Meat Peddler, Bone Peddler, Gravity Stone Peddler, and Medicine Peddler), confirming that he fits the definition of having at least 3 kills. Unfortunately for everyone else, he managed to avoid execution by stealing his executioner's sword and killing him with it.
• The Spook: The fact that so little about him, why he took over Malenia's Shaded Castle and why he goes out of his way to kill merchants and take their bell bearings is explained makes him that much more terrifying to face off against. For all intents and purposes, he's just a scary briar-covered knight who emerges from the shadows to kill you in certain locations.

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