Elden Ring’s Perfumers Explained

Highlights

• Elden Ring players will encounter Perfumers, a lesser-known enemy group in Leyndell, who play a crucial role in the lore and history of the game. Their perfume-crafting arts have far-reaching implications.
• Perfumers can be found in Leyndell’s Royal Capital legacy dungeon and are distinguished by their flowing cloth, aprons, and insignia of the Erdtree. Their perfumes are powerful drugs that can alter the physical and mental states of those who consume them.
• The story of the Perfumers is not straightforward. They started as healers and alchemists but were conscripted into the military during The Shattering. Their connection to the Omen Killers and the Depraved Perfumers reveals a darker reality of their role in the world of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring players who have reached Leyndell on the Altus Plateau will have become familiar with many enemies who serve the Golden Order, but the ones known as Perfumers tend to be overshadowed. Found throughout the capital and parts of The Lands Between as a whole, these strange, apron-wearing foes represent an area of Elden Ring’s lore that reveals several dark truths when their connections are investigated. It may be known that they are followers of the Erdtree’s Golden Order just like other enemies found in Leyndell, but the implications of their perfume-crafting arts stretch far beyond the walls of the fallen city.

Most players are likely to find the Perfumers in Elden Ring‘s Leyndell, Royal Capital legacy dungeon, and it’s here where their importance is greatly shown off. These enemies wear flowing cloth beneath an apron bearing an insignia of the Erdtree itself, inhabiting elaborate laboratory-esque rooms where they likely synthesize their concoctions. In The Lands Between, perfumes act as far more than just pleasant scents, seemingly serving as powerful drugs capable of altering the physical and mental states of those who imbibe them. With signs of their work in the city and on the battlefield alike, it’s clear that the Perfumers played a key role in The Shattering, but other clues establish their story isn’t actually so straightforward.

The Lore of Leyndell’s Perfumers

Apothecary Healers Conscripted Into War

Through item descriptions, it’s established that the Perfumers began as mere healers who used the apothecary arts to extract substances from natural materials like plants. They were essentially renowned alchemists who only served to help, but they were conscripted into the military when The Shattering came. They would shift their focus to developing poisons and explosives, but the Uplifting Aromatic crafting item still proved so effective that the Perfumers ended up as “exceptional commanders” in battle.

The Origin of the Omen Killers

Intimidating with their horned swords and creepy masks, the enemies known as Omen Killers appear throughout The Lands Between and seem to be set on exterminating lifeforms born without the Erdtree’s grace. They hunt the Omen as their name implies, and they can also be found slaughtering and burning Elden Ring‘s man-made Albinaurics. Upon closer inspection, descriptions such as the one for their robe reveal that the first Omen Killer, Rollo, was originally a Perfumer. This connection is plainly visible in the resemblance between their outfits, but the jump from apothecary to heartless killer is still a drastic change. Looking even further into their place under the Erdtree, however, explains this dark reality.

The Questionable Heresy of the Depraved Perfumers

The Golden Order’s Hypocrisy in the Perfume Arts

Apart from the regular variety and the Omen Killers, those known as Depraved Perfumers serve as a more aggressive iteration still focused on utilizing aromatics. The techniques of these Perfumers live up to their name, such as spitting acid and poison from their mouths and synthesizing the remains of poached noble jars. The Depraved Perfumers are said to be heretical and self-destructive, but looking deeper into their circumstances shows a more nuanced truth. The traditional Perfumers utilized poisons and even fire when it was approved by the Golden Order, and the brutal Omen Killers have this same approval killing the accursed, Crucible-related Omen. With such violence normalized under the Golden Order, the Depraved Perfumers seem to have been labeled as such purely due to their lack of association with the Erdtree.

The True Cost of Perfuming

When considering the vilification of those who practice heretical Perfume Arts, the universally gruesome elements of the practice become apparent. All Perfumers heavily utilize the pollen of the Miranda Flower enemies, plants that consume corpses as their fertilizer. With perfumes originally serving to enhance health and emotion before being changed for battle, it can be assumed that the usage of these substances has had a human cost all along. Spirit Ash summon Perfumer Tricia may have dedicated herself to easing the burden of dying creatures and even originated the Deathbed Companions, but all the good intentions of any Perfumer still ignore the truth of the life lost in service of their craft.