Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is a banger of an expansion—a return to the densely-packed worlds of Dark Souls yore, rammed with new and deadly weapons, and saddled with a final boss so unrelentingly hard it started a whole new difficulty discourse before, naturally, getting demolished by the unbeatable dodge gods of the gaming public.
But there's one flaw in the diamond: A few bosses—ones who are pretty important to the game's lore—are completely mute. In particular, Rellana and Romina are silent as the grave: but it wasn't always that way.
First surfacing on streaming website bilibili, then fully datamined by sleuth BonfireVN, a set of voice lines for several side characters (and two bosses) have been uncovered, and it seems like they were axed from the DLC for reasons I'll never quite understand. Rellana's voiceline is a simple "Rise, twin moons!" whereas Romina has a few barks: "Children of the tower" and "Butterflies, take wing!".
Neither of these lines reveal much, but they at least add some personality onto two very lore-important characters. In case you're out of the loop, here's why they're big deals:
Aside from being one of the DLC's first real challenges, Rellana is the younger sister to Rennala—the heiress of Raya Lucaria and your one-stop-shop for respecs. Rellana is, for all purposes, a major player in The Lands Between who nonetheless turned her back on her birthright to go hang out with Messmer and his funky snakes.
Her moveset is a nice, FromSoftware-subtle representation of this. Rellana wields one blade touched by sorcery and another by Messmer's flame—also dropping twin moon magics on us, testing our ability to remember that Elden Ring has a jump button you can use to dodge things sometimes.
In case there was any doubt, this is all confirmed by her remembrance item description, which reads:"Once a Carian princess, Rellana disavowed her birthright and chose to stand at Messmer's side instead, knowing full well that not even the brilliance of the moon could grant him succour. Before long, she became known as the Sword of Messmer."
Furthermore, her twin blades read: "Here, and here alone, were moon and fire ever together," while the Carian Thrusting Shield notes that it was "once wielded by Rellana, the Twin Moon Knight, during her sole entry into ritual combat—a demonstration of fidelity to the Erdtree."
But does she say a word? Nope. We're left almost completely in the dark as to her motivations, which even a few crumbs of voice lines could illuminate.
As for Romina, she has the opposite problem—we barely know anything about her at all. All I've really seen surface is the understanding that she was in the Church of the Bud when Messmer and his mates razed it to the ground—at around 1:15 in the DLC's story trailer, we see her clutching the Poleblade of the Bud before she grew centipede legs. A couple of item descriptions also back this up:
- "Once, in the crumbling, burning church, Romina held the bud in speechless silence. That bud would become her blade." - The Poleblade of the Bud
- "After the church was burned to the ground, Romina discovered a twisted divine element, which she weaved into the baleful scarlet rot. Perhaps then, the buds might find somewhere to gain purchase once more, within the scorched remains." - Remembrance of the Saint of the Bud.
We also know as per the Pest-Thread Spears incantation that she adopted some pests, who are created by the Scarlet Rot, but that's about it. Why she's guarding the Sealing Tree all remains up in the air, and even her datamined quip: "Children of the tower", which might link her to the accursed Man-Flies of the tower settlement in Belurat, only raises more questions.
Ultimately, while I understand FromSoftware has a penchant for burying interesting NPC storylines under an air of vagueness, I'm still left scratching my head as to why these folks don't talk at all. Both characters seem like interesting stitches in the fabric of Shadow of the Erdtree's story, and to have them mute feels like it's wasting good food in favour of unanswered questions. Still, the reasons could also simply be mundane—budget constraints, timing issues, recording problems—but FromSoftware isn't a teeny-tiny indie company, so I'm less inclined to give it that pass.
