By Jonathan Wojcik and Rev Storm

ENTRY 18: THE GRAFTED SCION

Grafting is another of Elden Ring's many weird and disparate concepts. It comes up repeatedly as a plot point relevant to several characters, but the most disturbing example is easily the grafted scion, actually the first major encounter in the game and a large, dangerous enemy that moves around so dang much we never got a clear shot of our own. At a glance its's just a big, lumpy blob with a human face and a bunch of long, gangly limbs, mostly hidden under robes...

But up close, the Scion is a bunch of human bodies welded together, mostly children, along with a single small bird wing for whatever reason. The long limbs are even just a whole lot of arms chained together by their hands!

One NPC, Roderika, has a lot of interesting things to say about this phenomenon:

"Everyone's...been grafted. Everyone who came with me.
They crossed the sea for me. They fought, for me.
Heh... Only to have their arms taken. Their legs taken.
Even their heads...taken. Taken and stuck to the spider.
Did you know? If you're grafted by the spider, you become a chrysalid.
It's quite the lark, when you think about it."

...And what does she mean about a "chrysalid?" Roderika notably gives you the spirit jellyfish ashes, and makes a few mentions of "the little chrysalids" at Stormveil, a location where you will in fact find quite a few of the ghostly jellies. This implies that when your body is used for grafting, your soul always turns into a jellyfish, but is that just an origin for the jellies or is that the only place they come from?!

Fortunately, you do have an opportunity to beat the shit out of the guy who's been welding babies together: Godrick the Golden, the lord of Stormveil castle and the descendant of the demigod, Godwyn. With only a trace of divinity left in his blood, he had the bananas idea that he could compensate if he stuck a bunch of people and monsters to himself.

Mid-way through the battle, the child mutilating mass murdering KNUCKLEHEAD (Yeah, I said it!!) even grafts a dragon's head onto his arm, which he uses exactly like someone grafted a dragon's head onto their arm. What a LOUSY GOOFUS. Why don't you go sew more dead families together ya DAFFY NITWIT.