Summary
As far as gamers are concerned, every resident of The Lands Between is morally unscrupulous.Elden Ring, like prior FromSoftware games heralded by Hidetaka Miyazaki, boasts a bitter, crumbling world, full of characters that would rather stab The Tarnished in the back than offer them a helping hand.
Aside from the obviously devious intentions of invaders, there are a handful of characters inElden Ringthat have committed or intend to commit, vile deeds that can shake even the most avid seeker of evil game endings. Some have set out with the player as their target, while others have unleashed their malice on the other characters occupying The Lands Between.
Updated July 12th, 2024 by Jacob Buchalter:There are not a lot of characters people would describe as ‘good’ in Elden Ring when it comes to morality. The goals and methods of those in the Lands Between tend to be many shades of grey rather than black or white. However, there are still a good handful of characters that could easily be described as ‘evil’ whether in their motivations or in their deeds. These characters below are those who have committed heinous crimes, done unspeakable things, or acted only out of pure self-interest. So without further ado, let’s go over some of the most evil characters in this setting.
Mohgwyn Dynasty
Lawful Evil/Lawful Neutral
As it turns out with the new information gleaned from theShadow of the ErdtreeDLC, most of the heinously evil thingsMohg, Lord of Bloodwas known for inElden Ringwere actually a result of him being charmed by Miquella and not in control of his own mind. So, while Mohg obviously still has some evil to answer for, given the implications of being the ‘Lord of Blood’, being a servant of the Formless Mother, and the actions of some of his followers (namely Varre), he’s not as evil as fans have believed him to be all this time.
To give a bit of background, the unholy master of Varre, Mohg, alongside his brother (and fellow Omen) Morgott, was born without the blessings of The Erdtree and was born with the horns that were more representative of those who were faithful to the Crucible of Life itself. As a result of this, the brothers were banished to the underground to spend their days. Here, Mohg made contact with a powerful Outer God called the Formless Mother who blessed him withthe potent abilities of blood flame. Eventually, Mohg was put under Miquella’s spell and was used to transport Miquella to the Lands of Shadow, ending with his very own corpse being used as the vessel for Radahn’s soul.
Chaotic Evil
White Mask Varrémay simply appear like an innocent (though oddly sarcastic) guide upon the player’s first steps into Limgrave, but Varre hides much more sinister intentions due to his loyalty to Mohg, Lord of Blood. Power-hungry, petty, and persuasive, Varre wants to usher in the power of his master Mohg through ritualistic sacrifices that will empower the demigod enough to allow the Two Fingers to be slain.
However, Varre himself doesn’t seem to have much more of a goal than that, oddly enough. As one of Mohg’s lowly servants, his nature is one of inferiority, driven by a desire to ascend from an underprivileged upbringing into something greater. It made him easily manipulated and set the events of his blood-filled questline into motion.
Volcano Manor Faction (Crucible)
Rykard, Lord of Blasphemywas one of the original demigods of The Lands Betweenalongside Radahn, Malenia, and Miquella (as well as Ranni). But, unlike most of his demigod peers, Rykard was disgusted by the power of his lineage and strongly rejected The Golden Order (as well as the Greater Will), believing no one should be oppressed by them. He isolated himself near Mt. Gelmir, where he remained content until he discovered the Serpent God Eiglay.
When Eiglay devoured Rykard, the two fusedinto a power-hungry beastthat believed devouring warriors who approached him would make them part of his collective and help extend his life for all eternity. While Rykard’s general antagonist behavior towards the Golden Order and respect for the Crucible are honestly pretty well-meaning, after fusing with Eiglay he absolutely falls off of the deep end.
Golden Order
Neutral Evil
Moving on to probably the first demigod encountered by players,Godrick the Graftedis a very distant relative within the Golden Lineage of Queen Marika, and as a result, is well-known as the cowardly ‘runt of the litter’. Obsessed with increasing his power after the Shattering War, Godrick retreated into Stormveil Castle, where he began experimenting with dark arts that eventually gave the Shardbearer his disturbing name.
Godrick practiced the ‘art’ of Grafting, a gruesome practice where body parts are quite literally grafted onto oneself to gain more power, similar to how two plants can be grafted together. There’s not much more to this character than that, he’s a coward, he obviously mistreats his subjects, and he has the body parts of others literally grafted onto his body.
Carian Royal Family
A pompous know-it-all who openly disdains The Tarnished, Selvius' evil is surprising to new players when it’s revealed, considering he’s a key player in Ranni the Witches' faction.On the surface, Selvius seems to simply be an arrogant scholar who believes themself superior to the player, but the furtherone immerses themselves in his questline, the more apparent it becomes he is actually hiding a disturbing secret.
Selvius is an expert at making ‘puppets’, which are living beings that Selvius has paralyzed using some unknown draught concoction. Who truly knows what he does with these living puppets from here, but it’s almost assuredly something twisted. In any case, Selvius tasks the player with using such a draught on Nepheli Loux, and if the player complies, they can find her in his basement following the quest. It’s a telling sign that no matter how the player interacts with Selvius and his quests, he will always end up dead, and there’s no one out there that was upset about this death.
None (maybe Golden Order)
Lawful Evil
Messmer the Impaleris a tragic character to be sure, despite being the leader of a massive crusade that all but completely destroyed the Hornsent. He’s a child of Marika, likely even older than a lot of her other children, but he was erased from history entirely and essentially exiled to the Shadow Lands, continuing to burn any and all Tarnished bereft of Grace with his flame. When Marika decided to purge the Hornsent for their crimes against her people, she had Messmer lead this horrid campaign. But, once it was done, she essentially left him behind entirely.
Granted, Messmer is still a horrid demi-god as regardless of his past, he still killed an entire civilization of people, but it is tragic nonetheless. And, the fact that he (for the most part) continues to do his ‘job’ even after all the time he’s been ignored by his family is also pretty evil and pretty sad.
Miquella’s Faction
Lawful Good
Miquella is such an interesting character inElden Ring.Despite wanting to be nothing like his mother and trying to do everything he could to break away from the Greater Will, in the end, he became just like her. Originally, Miquella wanted a world full of compassion. To this end, he created a society for the misbegotten (AKA the Haligtree), he found a way to stave off the curse of the Rot for his sister with Unalloyed Gold, he helped many people with sleep as St. Trina, and all sorts of other things.
But, with his ability to charm people, Miquella robbed the free will of those who were dedicated to him and didn’t really comprehend how evil that was. The most well-known crime now is what he did to Mohg, as fans previously thought that Mohq kidnapped and violated Miquella, but it was actually the other way around (for the most part). Alberich, one of Mohg’s most trusted men, describes Miquella’s evil best by saying this when describing Miquella “Pure and radiant, he wields love to shrive clean the hearts of men. There is nothing more terrifying.”
N/A
The LoathsomeDung Eateris a truly horrifying monster inElden Ring,who seemingly strives for something relatively admirable, does so in the most disgusting of ways. Upon first meeting the player, the Dung Eater seems to be pretty open with the Tarnished about his sickening nature, talking with said Tarnished in a lighthearted tone while sitting in a room full of corpses. As the game goes on, Dung Eater’s lust to kill is revealed to have a much greater, and more evil, implication.
Dung Eater, far from simply ending the lives of his victims, inflicts Seedbed Curses on his victims (through some pretty horrifying methods), preventing their souls from reaching and communing with the Erdtree. The intention here is so that, even if they’re reborn, they’re reborn with this Seedbed Curse which will then pass to all their descendants as well. Apparently, the Dung Eater has a lot of ties to the Omen Curse and seems to want to force this curse on everyone so it’s no longer even considered a curse. However, the method in which he goes about this is unabashedly one of pure evil.
It’s funny that the previous holder of the Elden Ring itself would be so high up on this list, but Marika was far from a saint. TheShadow of the ErdtreeDLC has given fans a lot of context into Marika’s past, her trauma, and her crusade against the Crucible and the Hornsent. And while the Hornsent performed unspeakable things to her people, what she did in return was just as evil if not more so. Even besides that, just about every single one of Marika’s deeds inElden Ringhurt someone else while benefitting her.
Whether it’s her betrayal of Rennala as Radagon, the exile of her first husband Godfrey, her shattering of the Elden Ring herself, her treatment of her children (especially Mohg and Morgott), or any one of her other various crimes, Marika was a real piece of work. And, due to the information fans can now gain from Count Ymir in theShadow of the Erdtree, the ‘higher power’ she was following for a lot of these decisions was likely never actually the Greater Will at all.
Mountaintops of the Giants
Freinzed Flame/Three Fingers
While all the other characters on here are evil towards, what they believe to be a noble purpose,Shabririis the exception. This guy is the closest thing there is inElden Ringto evil incarnate outside of arguably the Dung Eater. A lot of the lore surrounding Shabriri is part in-game text, part guesswork, but there’s a lot of evidence that points to him framing the Merchant Caravan with the crime of heresy so that their own madness, despair, and need for revenge would allow them to summon the Frenzied Flame.
Essentially, for the sake of his selfish goals for his ‘god’, Shabriri doomed an entire society of people, and that’s far from all of his crimes. There’s a reason that anything having to do with Madness mentions Shabriri and there’s a reason he’s typically labeled as the most ‘reviled man in history’ whenever he pops up in the in-game text, Shabriri is chaos incarnate.
