'Arise now, ye Tarnished. Ye dead, who yet live. The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all. Hoarah Loux, chieftain of the badlands. The ever-brilliant Goldmask. Fia, the Deathbed Companion. The loathsome Dung Eater.' The Tarnished are the spurned descendants of those who once received Marika's grace and lost it. Long before the Shattering, Marika withdrew the Erdtree's blessing from the Tarnished and exiled them across the fog; they wandered the dark landlocked badlands, forgetting why. Now, after the Shattering has cracked the Elden Ring, grace finds them again, gold-flaked and faint. Their eyes are dim because their lineage was excommunicated. The Erdtree's restoration is offered to whichever of them claims it first.

'Chest piece of a knight banished from their motherland. Dirty and battered after enduring a lengthy vagabond journey. The crest emblazoned on the front is worn and dingy, no longer able to evoke sentiment.' The starting classes of the canon are not character builds: they are stages of the Tarnished diaspora. Vagabond, Wretch, Hero, Bandit, Astrologer, Prophet, Confessor, Samurai, Prisoner, Warrior, each is a guess at what kind of life the Tarnished was leading when grace called them home. Each is an exiled fragment of a forgotten home culture. Marika's own echoes suggest the banishment was never meant to be final: 'Then, after thy death, I will give back what I once claimed. Return to the Lands Between, wage war, and brandish the Elden Ring.' Why she wanted them back, the text never says; Goldmask concluded only that the Order she made was imperfect, flawed by 'the fickleness of the gods no better than men.'