If there's one spot in the Lands Between that everybody hates, it's Caelid. Giant murder crows, hordes of rotting zombies, and tyrannosaurus dogs are just a few examples of the delights awaiting Tarnished in Caelid, but the biggest tourist trap is easily Swamp of Aeonia, the site of the climactic showdown between Melania and General Radahn. This area is a sea of festering rot capable of reducing most living creatures to mere bones in minutes. And yet, for some reason, Radahn's horse (who is called Leonard, by the way) is still alive after spending untold decades or even centuries wandering around Caelid.
This leads to the obvious question: how? "How do we die to Scarlet Aeonia almost instantly, but Radahns horse is ok?" Reddit user Affectionate_Safe969 asked on the Elden Ring subreddit. "He's not a God. How has he survived for so long rotting?"
It’s a fair question, and it’s one that I’ve often wondered while my Tarnished’s skin melted in the Aeonian effluvia. Starscourge Radahn is a massive demigod who has at least some imperviousness to the scarlet rot (although clearly not his brain, which is rotted away by the time he meets the player), but Leonard is just a horse. A beloved horse, well taken care of even by a brain-dead Radahn, but still just a regular old horse.
But as is so often the case on Reddit, the top comment provides us with an answer. User droman117 notes the similarities between the horse Leonard and Torrent, the mystical horse-goat creature that takes the Tarnished wherever they need to go.
"Torrent can carry the tarnished across the scarlet swamp no prob bob. Both Torrent and Leonard have hooves," they wrote. "Coincidence? I think not. Hooves are the answer."
Sadly, there are no hooves or hoof-like greaves available to impart some level of scarlet rot immunity to the Tarnished. Perhaps we'll get a pair of hooves when Elden Ring gets its seemingly inevitable DLC. Until then, at least we have Torrent.
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