The story of Pensole Dartmen begins at the very beginning of himself, so far as he could reckon, as he firstly became aware of himself, standing, in a dark chapel, and alone. And although there was no time prior for himself of which he was aware, objects of his newfound awareness included somewhat more than his mere self. That is, he knew his name was Pensole Dartmen, and that he was considered among the class of Wretch. Whatever else that might mean, Pensole was aware that he had some, but not much, talent in all applicable categories, and that his overall level of talent was abysmally low. He was also aware that he was entering a somewhat broader story that involved a god queen and her demi-god offspring, who having quarreled in an affair known as the Shattering, were now individually in possession of fragments of an object called the Elden Ring. He surmised that his general purpose was to find these once shattered fragments and re-unite them, quite possibly effectuating his own elevation from common tarnished to Elden Lord. Or something like that.
And as Pensole stood there pondering, some further understandings penetrated his as-yet unfilled mind. For one, a couplet-plus lingered at the very bow of his consciousness: "Cross the Fog to the lands between, to stand before the Elden Ring . . . and become Elden Lord." Furthermore, as he was thinking of himself as tarnished1 he realized the descriptor also presupposed an antecedent life, for the tarnished are "Ye dead, who yet live." So, with the unrelenting force of logical deduction, Pensole surmised that the paucity of individual thoughts and remembrances in the realm of his current consciousness could easily be explained by the fact that he only just then became once more alive, or post-dead if you will.
Clothed then only in a loin cloth and possessed only of a wooden club, Pensole surveyed the dark chapel in which he had materialized. The broken furniture and general dankness gave an impression that the chapel had not been used in the purpose for which it was constructed for many a long year, with mature vegetation sprouting up through many a cloven stone paver. The most notable feature under his observation was a broken body laying near the wall. Upon approaching the body, it appeared to have been a young woman who had recently deceased, given the pooling blood still wet under her torso. Pensole considered the implications of a person recently alive and presently deceased, being in the presence of one (himself!) who had been recently deceased and yet presently alive; but any epiphanic breakthroughs on the matter remained at this time amorphous and out of reach.
As Pensole's gaze dropped in concert with his puzzlement, another feature of the room became apparent to him. Near the foot of the lifeless body was what appeared to be glowing letters, as if written or placed on top of the cold stone floor. Although the shapes had an appearance of letters, they were not familiar and he could not read them. However, when he placed his foot near the glowing thing and concentrated upon it, words he could certainly decipher appeared quite plainly in his mind. It said, "Though the path be broken and uncertain, claim your place as Elden Lord." And although the words did not elucidate for him what it might mean to be an, or the, Elden Lord, it seemed to him corroboratory of the few ideas seemingly directly perceived as he had so recently been made once more alive. Mind you, the whole cognitive web that included beliefs like "once again alive" and "claim your place as Elden Lord" made an amount of sense to him that was at that time exactly zero. However, even without making a conscious decision to do so, Pensole wholly withheld judgement and proceeded as if it all might come into focus so long as he kept going with it.
Three more objects of observation deserve mention before we travel with Pensole beyond the chapel. First, another bright thing was close unto the recently deceased body, and it caught Pensole's eye. It was a bright white light, but different from the message he had seen at the body's foot in that instead of a series of unknown letters, this light was pinpoint in nature. He instinctively reached to retrieve the point of light, and in his hand and of a sudden, it morphed from a point of light into a long and bony finger. He was at that very instant aware that the long and bony finger was called a "Tarnished Wizened Finger," but then just as instantly the finger disappeared.
Second, Pensole became aware of white outlines of people moving about the space and then disappearing. In his mind, he labled the things "Phantoms," for their ghostly appearance, but he surmised nothing further as to them. One of them ran to the body of the deceased woman, paused for a moment, and then ran to the door and seemed to push its way through.
Third, as he further looked around he noticed the glowing message at the foot of the body was not the only glowing message on the floor of the chapel. And although the others were not quite so bright nor so eloquent as the previously mentioned message, when Pensole stood at the glowing letters and concentrated upon them, they each provided a message. For example, when he concentrated on one such sign on the floor near to what appeared to be a closed door, a message came directly to his consciousness that said, "door!" In these early moments, Pensole had no thought as to why these other signs had messages more simple than the first, but the placement of the message did seem to him a deliberate communication, information meant for himself.
So with that, Pensole did then and there keep going with it, and walked intentionally toward the door. However, on the way, he inadvertently swung the club that had been in his right hand since his arrival in this place, which swing connected with a chair. The chair not only gave way to the swinging club, but was fully undone with just the one accidental act, clattering in many pieces to the cold and somewhat cloven floor. Impressed by the power so generated in this unintentional swat, Pensole decided to fairly catalogue all the different moves available to him. In addition to walk and run, he quickly discovered his ability to jump, to jump-roll, to jump back, and to swing the wooden club in several different styles: sometimes quick and light, and other times long and strong. And there was one more thing, he had an ability to, well, it may only be described as a roar, but accompanied by his body glowing red for a time, which glow was coincidental with a feeling in his bones of increased strength and power.
Finally, with the curiosity of available movements sated, Pensole did address the aforementioned door. It was a double door, stiff of hinge. He slowly pushed open both halves with both hands and strode deliberately out of the initial room. Upon doing so, he was immediately conscious that he was in a place called the "Chapel of Anticipation." As he was now quickly becoming more familiar with the "immediately conscious" -ness of certain information, he developed a further thought and label. The thought was that the bits of information he became immediately aware of seemed to be an intentional communication from someone, or something, to him. Derivative of that thought, in his own mind he took to labeling such communications and information given as "messages."
Now on the other side of the double door, Pensole was indeed outdoors, and in the night. He could see on the horizon what looked to be the outline of a far-off castle, but which was over-dominated by a great and golden tree. There were golden leaves on the nearing breeze, and a far-off light on the other side of the surrounding darkness, which seemed to be flowing from the said golden tree. Looking left and right, there was not much to notice nor describe. However, once he took a handful of steps to the left, he came upon another door. He immediately moved to open the door, but in doing so he received the message, "The door is blocked shut." Satisfied in the simplicity and finality of the message, he turned confident that any further effort on account of that door would be utterly futile.
Given the immediate context of which he was aware, the only reasonable action left to Pensole at such a moment was to walk forward, which is what he did. And upon walking forward, he noticed several red puddles on the ground, near to what could have been a wooden dock—if there had been a body of water to which it might be conjoined. The puddles seemed to him similar to the glowing messages on the floor, so he approached near to one and concentrated upon it. When he did so, a red phantom appeared. It was of a man, in samurai armor. The red phantom took two hesitant steps back towards the chapel room from which Pensole had emerged, but then inexplicably turned and ran towards the "dock" ahead. And, without questioning how he knew what a samurai was or how he could be familiar with such a one's armor, Pensole observed the thing jump at the far end and fall quickly out of view.
In that moment a white phantom of a different warrior appeared, and also ran in manner and direction similar to the red. However, the white phantom turned at the last, to the left, and appeared to descend a staircase or ramp out of view. Pensole held these observations quick in his mind as he too approached the dock and its far end, but he slowly, in well-measured regulation. Looking down off the far end of the dock he could see that it was a frightening cliff, sheer, and without any visible end. And from his advanced position out on the dock he also saw to the left a staircase leading down, connecting to a further flat section down aways below. In this moment Pensole intuited the nature of the red and white phantoms, and the implication that many had passed through this very place, some with increased measures of immediate success, but all of a purpose to "Claim [their] place as Elden Lord."
This thought both comforted and disquieted him in equal measures, for it is pleasant to think that one is not alone, and yet it seemed he may be unwittingly embarking upon some sort of grand competition. Whatever the case, he did not dwell on these thoughts overly long, but rather he took measure of the landscape at the base of the stair. There was a clear path leading to an open archway. To the right was a continuation of the cliff, and to the left were stone and earth such that it might as well have been a wall, impassable. So once again looking forward to the archway, he saw large statues of warriors to either side, each identical with longswords at the ready. Just then he spotted a white message on the ground that said, "close-quarters battle ahead." Furthermore, the number and density of the red puddles drastically increased. Touching one, the red phantom that emerged seemed to run straight forward through the arches, then banked to the left, and without any pause went leaping off into the night down what must have been another cliff on the left side of the arena ahead.
As he crossed under the arches, the area ahead did indeed appear to be alike unto an arena. There was a high wall to the right, and the aforenoticed cliff to the left. There were flat slabs of stone near to him that looked like ancient graves, and up ahead there was a large stone circle for the floor. Across the arena and directly ahead was a giant statue in the form of a woman with arms stretched out from her sides. He was thinking back to his earlier cogitation concerning his purpose, that it had something to do with a god queen. Then, just as the thought, "I wonder if . . ." started to form in his mind, a gargantuan creature descended from the sky, with unequivocal malice.
Pensole knew immediately this creature was called a "Grafted Scion," and having been coiled for a fight of some kind, he also engaged in his newly found Barbaric Roar. Thus enlivened by both adrenaline and the mystical properties of the Roar, Pensole sprang forward to engage this loathsome threat. However, those same energetic forces impelling him forward did simultaneously restrict his ability to comprehend more than the most general of details about the foe to his front. He had a sense of the creature's dominating size, being at least twice his own height, and in a shape resembling a bread loaf, it was three or four times wider than it was tall. He had a vague notion that it may be some kind of insect, which, although he did not notice this at the time, was probably due to the many different arms and legs the creature had. If Pensole could have observed the thing under calmer conditions, he would have seen that each of those many arms and legs seemed to be human-like, which would have informed the adjectival portion of the things name (that is, "Grafted"), of which he was currently aware. Of the many arms, more than a few wielded swords, and at least one brandished a great shield.
However, whether cognizant of these details or no, the fact of the matter is that there was nearly no time available to him to engage in such sleuthing, for as soon as his legs carried Pensole two steps forward, a sword arced seemingly from nowhere, and poor Pensole, having only recently become post-dead, was rendered actually dead once more. Pensole observed this dying of himself, and for a brief few moments he was able to also observe the foe who felled him. But then, with full knowledge of his own ending, Pensole's world went fully black once again.
1 If he were writing his internal monologue, Pensole would have been at a loss as to whether "tarnished" should be capitalized as a proper noun, or whether it were merely taking the place of an adjective. It felt a little bit like the description of a class of people, but he really couldn't say at the time. Luckily he was not writing, as mere thoughts rarely must conform themselves to grammatical convention.