There are rarely happy endings to be found in FromSoftware’s games, so when you come across an NPC that’s particularly optimistic or chirpy compared to the rest of the dour cast, it’s easy to latch on to them and look past any shortcomings they might have.
Such is the case with Alexander, the Warrior Jar of Elden Ring. Often referred to affectionately as the pot boy or the jar boy by the Elden Ring community, Alexander is easily one of the most popular characters in the game, right up there with Ranni. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s a dark side to, well, his entire existence. The whole giant jar aesthetic is pretty adorable, sure, but shortly after completing the Radahn Festival, it’s revealed that Alexander has to gather corpses into his jar to heal up and restore himself.
Not much else is known about Alexander and the other jar beings you come across in the game, but it’s well established that these jars are probably filled with corpses. But you know what? Alexander’s a good guy. So who cares if he needs to stuff himself with dead bodies to literally function?
With the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, however, it seems that FromSoftware is intent on making you see every last gory detail of what makes these jars tick.
You can reach the Belarut Gaol dungeon fairly early in Shadow of the Erdtree. It starts off as a rather unassuming dungeon. Just another ol’ gaol in the Shadow Realm, filled with shadow enemies you get to kill while making your way down. But before long, Belarut Gaol turns into a horror movie. It starts when you pass a corridor with a large jar at the side. Next to it is a spirit that you can interact with, and all it does is beg for its life. “Anything but the jar,” it says. “This is a fate worse than death.”
As you continue moving through the dungeon, you start encountering a new type of enemy: Mutated Prisoners. I don’t really know how to describe them, as they’re literal walking lumps of flesh. They’re humanoid, with a large, bulging flesh-colored pus bag on their backs, and they look absolutely grotesque. Not to mention the fact that they have a terrifying grab attack where a tentacle-like thing bursts through their chest (or their mouth hole; it’s a little hard to tell) and drags you towards them, almost as if they want to add your body to its own bulbous mass.
It’s not long before the game assaults you with terrifying sight of these Mutated Prisoners moaning as they crawl out of the living jars they were sleeping in. They drop a new crafting material called Innard Meat when you kill them. It’s the stuff of nightmares. And when I think about these things writhing inside Alexander’s large jar body, I shudder.
The development team at FromSoftware have always been masters of body horror and creating new abominations that leave their fans grimacing in disgust. And while the Mutated Prisoners certainly aren’t the most terrifying thing they’ve ever created—that honor goes to the Winter Lanterns from Bloodborne, pardon my French, but fuck those things—knowing that they exist within the body of Elden Ring‘s most likable character makes the whole affair feel extremely unsettling.
Shadow of the Erdtree is a tremendous DLC in many ways. The amount of new content stuffed is staggering, but it’s also yet another showcase of FromSoft’s design chops. Elden Ring had far and away surpassed anything the team’s ever put out before, and Shadow of the Erdtree elevates the game to new heights. This is thanks in no small part to the morbid fascination they’re able to spark from fans with their creative design decisions, and the Mutated Prisoners are just one small part of that. And if it had to come at the cost of me never being able to look at Alex the same way ever again, then so be it.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is available now.
