The Most Sword & Sorcery-like Video Game Location: Crumbling Farum Azula

An Opinion Piece on one of Elden Ring's Most Ancient and Epic Locations

Jan 24, 2024

From Software’s Elden Ring has already been out for almost two years now, yet it still manages to induce feelings of awe and inspiration in players who have experienced almost everything it has to offer. From the moment I first started playing it on Christmas Eve of 2022 to when I started my end-game scramble around the map to get everything I needed before starting New Game Plus, I have been captivated by nearly every corner of the Lands Between. If I was forced to pick one location that was my personal favorite, however, I would have to choose the floating ruins of Crumbling Farum Azula.

This location is known as a “Legacy Dungeon,” a relatively self-contained area of Elden Ring’s game world that plays out like an old school dungeon crawl, complete with monsters, treasure, and plenty of pitfalls—which lead into unfathomable depths of grey clouds. For some reason, Farum Azula captivated my attention and imagination like few other locations in Elden Ring. Although it is a relatively small part of the game, the amount of build-up, depth, and visual storytelling placed into this location made it all the more exciting to explore and conquer. Farum Azula is made up of crumbling, floating ruins, dragon-worshipping beastmen, and sweeping soundscapes that lull gamers into a trance that makes them feel as if they are in another time. It is for these reasons and more that I believe Crumbling Farum Azula is one of the most Sword & Sorcery-like locations in recent video game history.

Spoilers for Elden Ring are ahead!

As with many locations, characters, and quests in Elden Ring, Farum Azula is foreshadowed very early on. Players have the option to encounter a boss called the Beastman of Farum Azula in the Groveside Cave dungeon in the game’s starting location, Limgrave. When I first ran into this monster, the words Farum Azula stuck with me long after I had killed it and took its runes (the experience and currency of the game). I wondered what those words meant and how that beastman ended up in that cave in the first place. Like many FromSoftware games, the answers might not come clearly—if they even come at all.

Later on, I reached a location in Liurnia of the Lakes—a land teeming with sorcery—called “The Four Belfries.” Said belfries of that location had magic gates with messages inscribed beside them, one of which read “Crumbling Lands.” Taking a chance, I activated that one and found my character transported to stone ruins floating in the sky. The signature booming chime of entering a new location in a Soulsborne game sounded as some text appeared on-screen, reading, “Crumbling Farum Azula.” At last, I had come closer to figuring out where that lone beastman had come from. In the distance, I could see even larger ruins atop a landmass floating near a huge whirlwind. Although the color palette of the area was largely light and dark grey shades, the contrast of the bright sun made it bleakly beautiful. Combined with the score of deep voices intoning wordless ululations, I felt as though I looked upon something truly epic and forgotten. Eager to learn more, I followed some other floating ruin pieces downwards until I spied some monsters patrolling a larger piece below—I found myself looking upon not one, but two beastmen, the same type as the one I faced as a boss near the start of the game. Feeling headstrong, I leapt down and was promptly eviscerated by them. In true Soulsborne fashion, I kept trying to fight them until I determined I was quite underpowered in comparison and marked it on my map to come back later. Despite my defeat, the image of those floating ruins stuck in my mind as I continued the main quest…

Finally, after the emotional climax at the Forge of the Giants, my character was inexplicably transported to Farum Azula once more, this time inside a temple-like structure. The same, ominous, droning score rang out, combined with the distant rumbling of that gargantuan whirlwind backed my slow crawl through the dim ruins. It was there I encountered more beastmen, wandering forlorn or idle around exposed tombs of their ilk, whose bones looked like dinosaur fossils displayed in murals on the walls and floors. I ran into powerful dragons who wielded red lightning and fire; many of their kind soared in the storm-riddled sky but only several swooped down to do battle. The exteriors of the dark halls with only gaps of slanting sunlight sometimes opened up to huge vistas overlooking the floating pieces of what was once a great city or kingdom, and that huge whirlwind spinning at the center of it all—titanic and impossibly massive, yet serene in its own way. With each Site of Grace I found, I felt as though my character was the sole person who walked through those massive ruins in eons; it was with quiet wonder that I admired the effort and care put into this single section of the game. For a level directly after one as emotionally-charged as the Forge of the Giants—having lost the kind, guiding voice that was Melina—made Farum Azula seem all the more somber as though my character was wandering through a purgatory to reach a step closer to his end goal of becoming a divine Elden Lord. It was also during this time that I, for some reason, got the most “Sword & Sorcery vibes” out of anywhere else in Elden Ring.

For the whole of Elden Ring, the Tarnished (the player character), is on a quest to ascend to the Elden Throne, restore the Elden Ring, and become Elden Lord (a supreme ruler of the world), bringing new order to the Lands Between or plunging it into chaos—if the latter is the player’s desire. The world of the Lands Between is filled with spades of side content that can keep players occupied for hundreds of hours in a single playthrough, all of which, however, is optional. Much of that content can be boiled down to dungeon-crawling, and there is a fair share of that in the main questline with Farum Azula being no exception, but what set Farum Azula apart for me (and what triggered the feelings of &S) at least was the absolute scope of the place. It is a self-contained “legacy dungeon” but felt like there was so much more that I was missing even after I explored every corner and killed each boss within it. Even though my character was nearing the apex of his epic quest in this floating city, I still got the feeling of being a lowly dungeon-crawler, even with my arsenal of dragon magic and dual gravitational greatswords. Only a game by FromSoftware, I think, can many “overpowered” player characters feel like they’re treading in deep water when they introduce a new level or boss. It brought me back to the feeling of playing Dungeons & Dragons for the first time or reading Conan—being an explorer who dared to enter a forgotten place and rise out of it with sword and grit and guts.

While the whole idea of Farum Azula as a floating city that exists outside of time, is infested with dragons, and holds the key to Death itself, feels more like something out of a Moorcock novel (The Eternal Champion series was apparently a huge inspiration for Elden Ring) than a Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, or even a Clark Ashton Smith story, it still works in the sense of it being a setting that could exist, or at least be referenced, in an S&S story. I have a soft spot for ancient cities or civilizations in pulp fantasy stories that we read about but never get to see in their full glory. Even if we do see them, they are shadows of their formers selves, fallen into complete ruin or irredeemable decadence if there are any occupants still there. Farum Azula, in the history of Elden Ring's world, was originally the capital city of the Lands Between with its ruler, Dragonlord Placidusax, being the first Elden Lord who was a devotee to an unknown Outer God (an entity that can influence the world of the Lands Between in mysterious ways). The ancestors of the beastmen who would come to inhabit Farum Azula gained the gift of intelligence and civilization, being chosen to serve draconic overlords.1 After the Outer God abandoned Placidusax, the Dragonlord retreated within the great whirlwind at the center of his city—the storm beyond time—where he awaited for his patron's return. Meanwhile, Farum Azula was struck by a meteorite and left to crumble into the state the Tarnished player character reaches it, the stone spires and halls slowly drifting apart from each other. Here, the Tarnished can find and slay Placidusax within the storm, ending the broken lord’s wait once and for all.

Although this location and its inhabitants are presented as dying or shadows of their former selves, Farum Azula ironically feels very alive, or at least believable. Such a small part of the game having been made with so much conviction reminds me of how pulp authors back in the day could make even the smallest lines or details of their stories feel packed with information or ignite the imagination of their readers. The weird details about the beastmen gaining intelligence and the ability to forge a civilization also just reads like something straight from an off-handed reference in an S&S story. What is really special, however, is that we get to experience said “off-handed reference” for ourselves. When I first started Elden Ring, my brother mentioned that I would be able to travel to almost anywhere I could see. Little did I know that Farum Azula had been staring me in the face even earlier than the Beastman boss fight; ruins of the great city are strewn throughout the starting areas, having fallen out of the sky, left to be pillaged by feeble undead noblemen.

The liminal, grey aspects of Farum Azula as well remind me of a worldbuilding theme FromSoftware has used in one of their previous titles—Dark Souls (2011). Part of the world creation story of the world of Dark Souls is that before light or darkness, the world of Lordran existed in perpetual greyness, nothing ever grew or died, and it was ruled by dragons, much like Farum Azula. The now-feral beastmen and savage dragons left to dwell in its shadows are caught in a forlorn, aimless state as time marches farther from their glory days, the gold adorning their bodies becoming more and more tarnished. Ironically, the gold they wear is literally just set dressing and is worth nothing to our Tarnished player characters as they wander and fight their way through this necropolis. We walk somewhat in the footsteps of the melancholic, Moorcockian heroes who do not place value on material wealth and are sometimes provoked to brood and ponder within the ruins of forgotten races and dynasties, sympathizing somewhat with the lonely creatures who still dwell there.

Fans of the original Dark Souls who have played Elden Ring probably have already made this connection, and some might have even speculated some link between the timelines of the games in the sense that one might lead to the events of the other. The true answer to such a theory is likely one we might never know given how vague FromSoftware likes to keep their storytelling, but it also hearkens to the interconnectivity and self-referential nature of pulp fantasy worlds like Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse where patterns exist throughout his stories but manifest in multitudes of different ways. Farum Azula also in general stands as a monument of one of Elden Ring and FromSoftware’s favored themes—the dying of the old world. In Elden Ring, and indeed other Soulsborne games, players come face to face with bosses and creatures who were once part of a greater era, who stood taller and stronger but have been dragged down by decay, decadence, despair or some combination of all three. Sword & Sorcery as well deals with the dying of worlds and crumbling of civilizations or the veneer of civility beneath primal, unwavering forces.

Farum Azula is one video game location I won’t soon forget, especially when taken as one piece that is part of the greater whole of such a game as Elden Ring.

Thanks for reading this week’s post! What is your favorite FromSoftware location that gave you as much wonder and inspiration as Farum Azula did for me? Hit the button below to leave a comment!

The Most Sword & Sorcery-like Video Game Location: Crumbling Farum Azula

An Opinion Piece on one of Elden Ring's Most Ancient and Epic Locations

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