Most Queen Marika's Golden Order became the dominant theocracy of the Lands Between.
Players who avoid spoilers while starting a campaign of Elden Ring will typically stumble across the Deathbird field bosses by accident. Exploring game areas like Limgrave or Liurnia of the Lakes by night, ominous music will suddenly fill their headphones and a boss health bar will appear at the bottom of their screen. If they pivot their camera around quickly enough, players might be able to glimpse the Deathbird or Death Rite Bird swooping down from the sky on wings that logically couldn't their twisted, S-shaped bodies. Tarnished PCs who mount their unrealistically tireless Elden Ring horse summon and ride away at a full gallop will escape these field bosses quickly enough, but those who stay and fight will confront an enemy with fair but punishing attacks - wild swings with an ash-covered poker, sharp bird beak pecks that by shields, and blasts of chill Ghostflame that inflict the Frostbite status effect.
Deathbird Item Descriptions Reveal Ancient Elden Ring Death Worship
Deathbirds and Death Rite Birds aren't the only enemies that appear during Elden Ring's nighttime cycle. The Night's Calvary field bosses, agents of Morgott the Omen King who assassinate Tarnished heroes from horseback, also appear by night, as do the nocturnal Bat enemies who sing Latin dirges. That said, the Deathbird/Death Rite Birds, as one of the weirder enemies of Elden Ring, also have some of the game's most interesting lore, dropping items upon defeat with descriptions that offer a valuable glimpse into the religious beliefs people held before the age of the Erdtree, and the mysterious death-themed Outer God associated with these beliefs.
Each Deathbird field boss in Elden Ring drops a physical item with a curious description of the ancient faith these undead birds presided over. The Blue-Feathered Branchsword, found in Limgrave's Stormhill region, and Red-Feathered Branchsword, located in Liurnia of the Lakes, Talismans collectively state this:
A talisman [...] once used in ancient death rituals. [...] The heart sings when one draws close to death, and thus does one cling so tenaciously to life - to render up a death worth offering / and a glorious end awaits those who cling so tenaciously to life.
The Sacrificial Axe weapon, dropped by the Deathbird that can be found in Elden Ring's Weeping Peninsula area, has this description:
Hatchet used in ancient sacrificial rite. A Deathbird is depicted as a malevolent deity. The power of the rite yet lingers. A small amount of FP is restored upon slaying a foe.
Finally, the Twinbird Kite Shield, dropped by a Deathbird just outside Leyndell, Royal Capital, has this to say:
Shield featuring a vividly painted twinbird. The twinbird is said to be the envoy of an outer god, and mother of the Deathbirds.
Based on these descriptions, the Deathbirds and their mysterious Twinbird mother (a potential boss for future Elden Ring DLC) seem to occupy the same role as angels for real-world Abrahamic religions (or the divine Two Fingers for Elden Ring's Golden Order). They are emissaries of a higher power who descend to the material world and convey the will of their deity to its mortal worshipers. The observances of this Deathbird-sponsored faith, unsurprisingly, were centered around reverence for death; aside from the ritual sacrifice of living beings, a key tenet of this ancient death religion seems to have been accepting the inevitability of death while simultaneously fighting wholeheartedly to survive. This religious practice is born out by the effects of the Branchsword Talismans and Twinbird Kite Shield, which grant bonuses to Elden Ring fantasy characters with low health.
Death Rite Bird Items Reveal Elden Ring's Pre-Erdtree Reincarnation
The Deathbird field bosses of Elden Ring attack foes with purely physical strikes and drop non-magical items. The more dangerous and larger winged Death Rite Birds, in contrast, wield powerful magics while also dropping the following potent enchanted weapons and Death Sorceries.
The Ancient Death Rancor Sorcery, found in Liurnia of the Lakes, bears the following description:
Sorcery of the servants of Death. Summons a horde of vengeful spirits [...] They are cinders of the ancient death hex, raked from the fires of ghostflame by Deathbirds.
The Death's Poker Greatsword weapon, dropped by the Death Rite Bird boss in Caelid, has this to say:
Barbed rod carried by Deathbirds. The birds are graveyard fire keepers; it is said they rake out the ashen remains of the dead from their kilns.
The Explosive Ghostflame Sorcery, acquired in the Consecrated Snowfield area explored in Elden Ring's latter half, states the following:
Sorcery of the servants of Death. [...] In the time when there was no Erdtree, death was burned in ghostflame. Deathbirds were the keepers of that fire.
The Death Rite Bird in the Mountaintops of the Giants, a similarly late-game area, drops the Death Ritual Spear, which has this description:
Ritual spear used by priests of old who were permitted to come among the Deathbirds. The priests became guardians of the birds through the rite of Death, which also serves as an oath sworn to their distant resurrection.
Finally, a relevant item that can be acquired is Elden Ring's Helphen's Steeple weapon, a Ghostflame-imbued greatsword dropped by a Tibia Mariner enemy near the Mountaintops of the Giants Death Rite Bird. This weapon's item description provides this piece of lore:
Greatsword patterned after the black steeple of the Helphen, the lampwood which guides the dead of the spirit world. The lamplight is similar to grace in appearance, only it is said that it can only be seen by those who met their death in battle.
Collectively, these Elden Ring item descriptions paint a picture of an ancient reincarnation ritual that would purify the dead and let them be reborn. It's unclear how similar this reincarnation was to that made possible by the Erdtree's Grace, which not only revives the Tarnished, but others in the Lands Between as well. The Deathbirds would cremate bodies of the deceased with Ghostflame and gather their ashes into vessels, a process that may have been a precursor to how Elden Ring's Spirit Ash summoning mechanic got started. Ancient Death priests, through a mysterious rite, would fuse their flesh to the bodies of Deathbirds and Death Rite Birds, guarding these divine emissaries until their promised day of resurrection came (in-game, Elden Ring players who examine Deathbird will see human body parts poking from their pallid flesh, while Death Rite Birds clearly have ghosts with Death Ritual Spears shimmering in their unfurled wings).
The Helphen's Steeple item descriptions grants one last piece of death lore, describing a spirit world where the heroic dead are guided by a "lampwood" tree with lights shining from its branches. This mysterious spirit world may be where the souls of the dead whose bodies were cremated by Deathbirds were supposed to go, long before the Great Runes of Elden Ring were forged and altered the rules of life and death.
