Elden Ring - It's deeply disturbing

The Wormfaces don't have any real presence in the game's written lore, so any hope of finding out what they actually are or were requires quite a bit of observation and speculation. Without text descriptions, this means staring really hard at a wall and hoping it has some answers.

Song used: Holy Forest - King's Field IV OST

[fellowmemeenjoyer]

The slugs having worms for eyes reminds of that one parasite that causes slugs to have similar looking eyes and changes their behavior to be eaten as soon as possible to spread it, that may be a source of inspiration for those

[drossbossofsauce]

Wormfaces are probably one of the most messed up enemies fromsoft has made design-wise. Love the lore videos on stuff most people wouldnt ever see or think of in these games!

[Demokaze]

There are some events in Elden Ring that repeat every time you refresh the world such as the misbegotten executing a knelt soldier in Castle Morne (after a room behind the pile of corpses), bow marionettes executing a soldier on Mt Gelmir (far left before taking the ladder to/from the merchant), a crucible knight fighting beastmen on Farum Azula etc. And there is a curious one in a ruins of this Altus forest where a wormface shoots deathblight vomit on a slug damaging it. They're unnamed/unmarked ruins north of the minor Erdtree and the event triggers as soon as the tarnished jumps on the floor of the ruins (without the wormface noticing).

[realkingofantarctica]

The most interesting thing about Wormfaces is their name. Silly at first glance, until you realise that the colloquialism is intentional. They're not a species like the Albinaurics or Misbegotten, nor a known entity in the Lands Between like the Crucible Knights. It's almost like they're folktales - terrifying, accursed monsters that are named in such a way so that you know to run away as fast as possible whenever you encounter something with worms for a face...

[aztecserpent]

Ever since I stumbled on the boss in that forest on Altus I’ve been fascinated and disgusted by the wormfaces. I remember reading somewhere that there was a theory regarding them being some mutated form of forest spirits or forest-dwellers, corrupted by the forest’s location directly above Godwyn’s body. Dunno if that was based in anything or how it could fit in to Farum Azula but that’s what I recall

[AR-bjet]

Literally just looked up your last Wormface video this morning after reaching them for the first time. Convenient timing.
The most disturbing thing to me about these things is that they look like they’re always crying when they’re idle

[dialectiks]

I like to imagine the FromSoft devs watching videos of yours and Vaati and thinking "aah yeah that might be why we did that"

[xenoboy]

I think the fact that the Wormfaces in Farum Azula are adorned with yellow cloth while the ones in Altus are not indicates they are native to Farum Azula. Given their humanoid forms, could they have once been the humans depicted in the reliefs in Farum Azula that have since become infected by deathroot?

[rhymenoceros]

These things still give me the hibby jibby's. I remember pretty much just staying crouched the entire time I was in their fog covered woods because their crying/laughing unnerved me tremendously.

[xVibra]

One of the first ones I saw was the one crying at the grave in Altus Plateau that has a Miquella's Lily on it. It was really unnerving that something so pitiful and monstrous could retain the ability to be sorrowful and experience misery without outright being aggressive. Especially so in a Fromsoft game. There's also the one's who walk in a circle with eachother, lending more evidence that they may be some kind of worshippers.

It also never dawned on me how weird it is for graves to be on the surface considering Erdtree burial being a major thing. Since Erdtree burial is a luxury for those valued most, those who earned it, it makes sense that none of them would be in catacombs. Most of the graves on the surface have bandits, and soldiers reanimating around them, and if Wormfaces also cry at them, then it may be that they were scorned and turned away by grace like the Misbegotten. They are likely in a purgatorial state where the rune of death prevents them from fully dying, much like everyone else, but their deathblight affliction attracts the worms that are feeding on them like they're carrion in perpetuity. They may not even be crying for anyone specific, and solely just wish to die. Considering there is a Miquella's Lily on the grave the one cries at, it may give the idea that they wish to find a place where they can belong like all others that grace supposedly doesn't look fondly on. They're attacked in one location by Leyndell soldiers as well, so they're definitely not wanted around, but I don't really have an explanation for those at Farum Azula.

Maybe their affliction of permanent undeath was a punishment. As you can see all over Farum Azula that beasts and dragons alike are buried within the walls, and lends the idea that they were able to fully die and become something more, but those who refuse to die, whether they desire it or even can or not, are never seen within Farum Azula's construction. Since it shows a sort of a gradual evolution to the wormface form in the sculpting, it may have been a deterrent to show what may come. Since Erdtree burial and the odd form of burial that is seen in Farum Azula are quite similar, using your body as a fertilizer, and stitching yourself within the roots of what you owe your life to, this practice may have come about from the same person, or for the same reasoning.

[MuraCasardis]

Back here after the DLC trailer, seems your analysis was right concerning the murals. We see a pre-worm-infestation one in the trailer.

[childofcascadia]

The Wormfaces to me always looked like an uprooted tree trunk with roots (like the worms are the roots, the head is the trunk, bent, and the body would be the actual tree) I always imagined they were bits of erdtree and the corpses buried within the erdtree, corrupted and sent out by Godwyn to spread his influence. Maybe eventually they would "plant" themselves and turn into a deathblight minor Erdtree

[GODZILLAmonsoon]

y'know. mabye we didn't need to know more about the wormfaces. maybe it would have been nice to ever sleep again.

[PierceArner]

I think it's interesting how the slugs are some of the most overt examples of parasitism in *_Elden Ring_* but even the fact that Runes glow in the eyes of those granted power to see the Guidance of Grace, and the Two Fingers' undulating movements also resemble those parasitically infected eyestalks shows it is a deeply rooted design theme that is a complex commentary on the relationship between the power held by a ruler over the governed — and whether that relationship is a parasitic or mutualistic type of symbiosis.

[ZeroTooL]

The slugs with worms for eye stalks resembles a real parasite that infects snails

[Krasgov]

Hey Zullie I have a weird question about Maliketh’s AI and overall animations.

I could be wrong (my memory is terrible) but he seems to be the only enemy that has unique interactions with wall like surfaces so he can do his aerial / perch moves.

Like when playing on randomisers, if you fight him in certain arenas he will make an attempt to mount the walls to do those moves (like the tree in Loretta’s Haligtree arena).

So I just wondered how it worked and if FROM ever attempted to do something like that before.

[Eddaeken]

The creatures depicted on the murals in Maliketh's arena look almost like it is a creature undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts - the 'hands' of the creature whose head is wrapped in cloth almost look like fins, and the other two creatures shown beside the 'wormface' on the mural look like they are taking on the appearance of an eel or sea-worm at difference stages of change.
Most notably the tail of one eel looks like it splits further and then a 'frill' comes out at the end.

Godwin's corpse seems to be undergoing a form of change into a more fish-like creature.. perhaps the wormfaces of Farum Azula were ritually prepared bodies (hence the wrappings on their bodies), awaiting the next stage after their passing. Between the state of Godwin's corpse, the association of the Mariners and death, the crabs with Godwin's "eyes" (possibly a coincidence and an environmental effect on the crabs as opposed to being sea creatures.. ), it seems that Death is somehow linked with the sea in some capacity.

Edit: Also an additional thought - is there some hidden connection or common trait between Godwin and the inhabitants of Farum Azula that would lead to this sort of metamorphosis after death?

[OmicronX-]

I wonder if we might be reading it backwards and the deathblight didn't 'spread' to Farum Azula - but was already there to begin with. Farum Azula is WAAAY older than the Golden Order and Godwyn himself. And although the explanation that it spread from Maliketh after he consumed the deathroot sounds plausible, it seems that deathblight is explicitly tied to Godwyn's mutated corpse under the Erdtree spreading his influence through its roots. I don't see how that can happen if Farum Azula predates Godwyn by a really long time and is itself physically separated from the rest of the Lands Between.

Reading it the other way, deathblight may have ORIGINATED in Farum Azula, which necessitated severing it completely from the rest of the world and having it float in the sky in order to contain the deathblight there. But, chunks of Farum Azula are falling off all over the place over time and littering the landscape. If the Wormfaces do indeed originate in Farum Azula, their being in the Lands Between seems to have a simple explanation - they fell off with some of the pieces and ended up down there. Perhaps in some sort of larval form that was able to survive the fall, or maybe it was just magic, who knows?

If the deathblight did indeed start in Farum Azula, or maybe it even happened several times BEFORE and Farum Azula is just the only place from an earlier iteration of the Lands Between that survived, it might shed some light on what caused the Ancient Dragon civilisation to collapse, and Placidusax's God to abandon him. Maliketh's presence there would also seem to suggest that he himself predates the founding of the Golden Order - perhaps he's even as old as the Lands Between themseves? As for how it started, who knows, but whatever caused it was undoubtedly so catastrophic as to cause the collapse of an entire civilisation. Maybe the rest of the Lands Between are themselves heading for such a fate as Godwyn's influence continues to spread through the Erdtree's roots?

[phoenix]

I think the reason why there's so little mention of them is because they were born from Godwyn's deathblight. If they existed before Godwyn's death or were created in Farum Azula, it feels like there should've been some mention of them in some text at least. But the absence of any mention makes me think they're relatively new in the world.

[AbystomaMexicanium]

poor Rogier really became the posterboy for showcasing the effect of deathblight lol