nightreign's lore #2: The Equilibrious Beast
-
Libra, creature of night was a demon obsessed with the concepts of fairness,impartiality, and equanimity. he views the night as the truest form of equality. if it will devour all, then it is truly impartial.
this goat-headed creature practices a form a dubious alchemy to create counterfeit gold (gold in this sense refers to the light of the elden ring and the greater will which is god,in elden ring), this form of alchemy causes the loss of sanity, driving libra to madness.
so to go off on a small tangent, i find libra very interesting because he is the first real "demon" in elden ring. thw only mentions of demons we had before was with okina, who ws called a demon because of his endless bloodthirst, but he was still human. libra's design is very clearly inspired by the demon baphomet whoch leans very heavily into his demonic themes. baphomet is both man and animal, both masculine and feminine baphomet was also a symbol of alchemy with its arms having writing, saying "coagulate" and "solve"
with libra being "the equilibrious beast", he practices alchemy, which i think works perfectly with themes of equivalent exchange (fullmetal alchemist refrences) he trades shreds of his sanity to preform powerful alchemy that can drive others to madness aswell. also with the equivalent exchange theme, libra can appear in your expeditions as a merchant, who sells you buffs or items at the cost of a reprecussion, such as asking for greater rune gain, you will slowly lose health while you have the rune gain buff. libra does this in an attempt to tip the scales into equanimity, the nightfarers against the nightlords. the influence of madness in libra lore is also interesting because of how the frenzied flame works. th frenzied flame wanted to return everything to how it once was, "the one great" where everything is one, meaning the world wll be impartial and equal.