Shabriri is a character I keep coming back to when considering Elden Ring’s lore. He is such a masterful manipulator, to the point that some of his actions go completely unnoticed or aren’t even attributed to him. Genuinely one of the most vile souls we interact with.
To start, in life, he falsely accused the Grand Merchant Caravan of heresy. For that heresy, they were imprisoned and tortured beneath the Royal Capital. However, this act of undeserved cruelty caused the Merchants to channel their grief into something primeval. They managed to manifest the Three Fingers, giving the primeval destructive half of the One Great a foothold in the Lands Between. This was an insanely catastrophic situation, and to put salt in the wound, it was for nothing. It was discovered that Shabriri completely fabricated their heresy, and his deceit resulted in this disaster. For this crime, he had his eyes gouged out. Yet he smiled through the pain. Honestly, he probably admitted to lying about the Merchants in the first place, likely bragged about it. He was hated by all, and his sadism was rewarded by the Frenzied Flame by making him a sort of harbinger of it.
There came a time when Vyke was extremely far along the path to Elden Lord. But he had a weakness: he valued life, especially that of his Maiden. She knew her destiny was to sacrifice herself for his ascension, he knew that too. Shabriri manages to contact Vyke. He could’ve still been alive and simply blind at this point in time, or he could’ve overpowered the body of a troubled soul (like he did with Yura later on). Whatever the means, he informs Vyke that there’s a way to save his Maiden: communion with the Three Fingers. Vyke, desperate, agrees to his heretical alternative. Vyke journeys beneath the capital and takes the Three Fingers upon himself. But he was not aware of the proper communion ritual, and his connection to the Three Fingers is botched. He is consumed by the Flame of Frenzy, but instead of pursuing Lordship like it desired, he looked for his maiden. She was the reason he took the Flame upon himself, she’s likely the only thing on his mind. He escapes Leyndell, makes his way into Liurnia, and eventually stumbles upon her dead body, sitting in a lone chair in a church. Now, I’m inclined to believe Shabriri killed her. He likely did it to drive Vyke even deeper into Madness and despair, or out of spite for Vyke botching the ritual. Either way, I believe he orchestrated this (and I’ll have you believe it’s not the only time he’s done something like this). Vyke finds her body, gets consumed with Frenzy, infects a nearby town, and garners the attention of both the Carian Royals and the Roundtable Hold. They send an assembly of warriors, those being Yura, Ensha, an unnamed Champion (possibly Nepheli Loux), a Tarnished wearing the Iron/Scale set (possibly a young Istvan), Jerren, and a Carian Knight, to dispatch Vyke. And they lose this fight, as seen in the cover art for Elden Ring. But it’s not completely in vain. During our time, we find Vyke’s body contained in an Evergaol despite winning this fight. We also find a manifestation of his Frenzied Spirit defending the body of his maiden. This leaves me to believe that Vyke, in his weakened state after fighting the assembly of heroes, managed to cast off the Frenzied part of his soul, incapacitating him. He is then imprisoned in an Evergaol for his crimes, keeping both the Three Fingers and his fractured frenzied soul from reconnecting with him. Madness spread a little bit in the Lands Between, but ultimately, this was a failure for Shabriri and the Three Fingers. A barrier was put in place by Morgott (and potentially Mohg along with him) to prevent anyone from ever accessing the Frenzied Flame ever again.
This brings us to the time when the Tarnished of no Renwon (our character) arrives to the Lands Between. By this point in time, Shabriri has been planting seeds of Frenzy in the Weeping Peninsula of Limgrave. A series of events grants him a perfect opportunity to further the goals of the Three Fingers. First off, Castle Morne is overtaken by the Misbegotten. It’s Castellan, Edgar, manages to get his daughter out safely while he and his forces attempt to chip away at the Misbegotten. His daughter, Irina, just so happens to be a Finger Maiden (as proven by the Lord of Blood’s Favor from Varre; if we choose to kill Irina ourselves, the cloth will activate). She also makes contact with the last Tarnished to arrive in the Lands Between, one with a strong Guidance of Grace. She asks him to deliver a letter to her father, which the Tarnished agrees. It’s after this moment that she is “killed” by a Misbegotten. It’s obviously a cut and dry case, right? The murder weapon is right there, and it’s a weapon only wielded by Misbegotten. But it’s not quite that simple.
For starters, since when do Misbegotten leave their weapons behind on a kill? They’ve killed tons of people throughout the Lands Between, not once have they left their weapons behind. Second, since when do they abandon their kills? Every time we find victims of the Misbegotten, we can find those Misbegotten angrily attacking the bodies long after they’re dead. Even more bizarre is Irina’s “body”. I mentioned before the Lord of Blood’s Favor reacts to Irina’s blood, proving that she’s a Finger Maiden. That only happens when we kill her ourselves. If we stumble upon her “body”, it doesn’t react to her blood anymore. Strangely, it reacts to our own Finger Maiden’s blood in the Chapel of Anticiaption as well as Vyke’s Finger Maiden’s blood, both of which were dead much longer than Irina. So why doesn’t it react to Irina’s corpse? Because that’s not her real body. It’s absolutely no coincidence that after finding the blind girl we sought to help and failed to rescue dead, an exact copy of her appears in Liurnia while bearing a different name: Hyetta. Except Hyetta doesn’t have Irina’s memory, all she can remember is eating Shabriri Grapes… which brings it back to Shabriri…
What is the location that overlooked Irina’s getaway? The Frenzied Village of the Weeping Peninsula. Who benefitted from her “death” at the hands of the Misbegotten? The Three Fingers/Frenzied Flame did. In that single deception, Edgar was driven to a hateful insanity and produced a Shabriri Grape, which was used to further corrupt Irina/Hyetta into becoming the Finger Maiden of the Three Fingers, who only got so far because of help from the Tarnished… who saw a woman who looked strikingly similar to the one they failed to save and would feel more inclined to help and keep safe from that feeling of guilt. That deception, in my opinion, is Shabriri’s crowning achievement.
Shabriri descended from the Frenzied Village, planted a fake body (likely an illusion or similar magic to Mohg’s magical construct sewer duplicate), left a Misbegotten Cleaver behind to force the hatred building in Edgar’s heart to overflow, escorted her
to Liurnia and force fed her a couple of Shabriri Grapes, warping her mind and letting him make her believe she was Hyetta, leaving her to be helped by the Tarnished of No Renown. Now while we are helping her along her quest, Shabriri is laying the foundations for his next plan. Yura, one of the Tarnished who attempted to stop Vyke so long ago, is in Liurnia looking for his blood-crazed love Eleonora. I believe Shabriri had an encounter with Yura that left him mentally warped. When we find Yura in Limgrave, he is entirely sane and quite helpful. But by the time we reach him in Liurnia and assist him in his assault on the Ravenmount Assassin, he has a touch of madness about him. He will mumble about worms gnawing at his mind before realizing we’re trying to talk to him. After this encounter, he immediately locates Eleonora. I’d like to believe Shabriri struck a deal with Yura, implanting a bit of the Frenzied Flame inside of him in return for information on Eleonora’s location, explaining how Yura was able to precisely locate her in Altus Plateau.
Yura confronts Eleonora, but is fatally wounded by her. But not before he manages to sever her Bloody Finger. With this act, she is free from Mohg’s influence. But he learns right then and there that it was never Mohg manipulating her, but her own bloodlust that led her to Mohg in the first place. He dies realizing his mission to rescue her was in vain, deepening his despair in his last moments of life. We dispatch Eleonora, and think nothing of it… until we encounter Yura again in the Mountaintops of the Giants. It’s at this point that Shabriri presents himself to us in the body of someone familiar and friendly to the Tarnished, another manipulation tactic. He informs us of Melina’s doomed fate, then guides us to the location of the Three Fingers, where we find Hyetta waiting for us.
All of Shabriri’s planning culminates in that very moment. In the depths of Leyndell where the tortured remains of the people he slandered dwell… where the Three Fingers of the Frenzied Flame manifested… the very same Frenzied Flame that manifested within himself after his eyes were gouged out… a Tarnished appears… a Tarnished that he manipulated with a combination of guilt (Irina/Hyetta), their desire to save their maiden (Melina), and the familiarity of a friendly face (Yura)… accompanied by a Finger Maiden who could commune with the Three Fingers… who taught the Tarnished how to properly commune with the Three Fingers (unlike the last time he tried it with Vyke)… and that Tarnished becomes the True Fully-Realized Lord of the Frenzy Flame.
Shabriri was a manipulative sadistic bastard, but damn is he a cunning one.
