❋ DLC · LINEAGEThe Madding Hand Heretics
Hunted by their own brethren, weapons of the utterly downtrodden
The Madding Hand Heretics
"Forged of an unyielding, black impulse toward revenge fostered in those who were hunted down as heretics by their own brethren, these are the weapons of the utterly downtrodden."
From the Madding Hand description
"Gift your madness to our Lord. Bless our brethren with grapes. Take care that they fully ripen."
From the Aged One's Exultation talisman
The Madding Hand is one of the DLC's most upsetting weapons, and the lineage it points to is the canon's clearest indictment of the Realm of Shadow's social violence. The Madding Hand description gives the weapon and the people who made it together : 'A glove stitched together from the flayed skin of the victims of a butcherous bloodbath. Afflicts target with madness. Raises attack power when madness is triggered in the vicinity. Forged of an unyielding, black impulse toward revenge fostered in those who were hunted down as heretics by their own brethren, these are the weapons of the utterly downtrodden.'
The 'their own brethren' is the line that sticks. The Madding Hand was made by Hornsent who were declared heretical by the Hornsent Inquisitors and the Hornsent Empyrean Grandam's earlier vengeance-cult, the same Hornsent who were elsewhere being burned by Messmer were also, separately, butchering each other. The flayed skins of the gloves are not Erdtree-soldier skin ; they are Hornsent skin, taken from victims of intra-tribal purges that predated and continued past the Erdtree's invasion. The Aged One's Exultation talisman, hung in the same Abyssal Woods chapel where the Madding Hand drops, preserves the cult's litany : 'Gift your madness to our Lord. Bless our brethren with grapes. Take care that they fully ripen.' The Lord they beg for is the Three Fingers ; the grapes are eyeballs. The Madding Hand heretics worship the same outer-god the Frenzied Flame in Leyndell's sewers worships, and they were created, not by the Erdtree, but by their own.
Madding HandA glove stitched together from the flayed skin of the victims of a butcherous bloodbath. Forged of an unyielding, black impulse toward revenge fostered in those who were hunted down as heretics by their own brethren, these are the weapons of the utterly downtrodden.
Aged One's ExultationA talisman depicting the exultation of the aging untouchable, whose head resembles a sprig of ripe grapes. 'Gift your madness to our Lord. Bless our brethren with grapes. Take care that they fully ripen.'
