While digging throughElden Ring’s scripts, one playerdiscovered an easter egg about Starscourge Radahn’s comically small horse.
Like all FromSoftware games before it,Elden Ringis full of difficult, imposing bosses. With heavy armor, massive size, magical abilities, or some combination of all three,Elden Ring’s bosses have become notorious in the fanbase.
One in particular has gained popularity online -Starscourge Radahn. One of the game’s few Demi-God bosses, Radahn waits for the player in Caelid. Though, aside from his meteoric powers, Radahn is also famous for his tiny horse. From memes to just general confusion,Elden Ringplayers were, frankly, bamboozled as to why this Demi-God had such a tiny mount.
To add to the memes, oneElden Ringplayer discovered that Radahn’s horse had a surprisingly cute name.
ELDEN RINGBOSS RADAHN AND HIS BELOVED TINY HORSE
Laughably small under Radahn’s enormous stature, this horse has spawned no small amount of jokes and questions. Players are both concerned for the horse’s well-being (how on earth is it able to stay standing?) and irritated that an epic boss was undercut by a seemingly silly design choice. After all, why would a creature able to manipulate gravity still use a horse, much less one so small?
As it turns out, there’s actually an in-game reason why the boss keeps that mount. This horse is important to Radahn and his backstory - so much so that it actually has a name.
Known for hacking video games and digging into source code,Twitter user @ZullieTheWitchis a video game investigator. Zullie mods, datamines, or just plain breaks games to discover what they hide. This time, Zullie dug intoElden Ring’s NPC AI scripts, discovering that Radahn’s “poor, tiny horse” is named Leonard.
Though the game never explicitly calls the horse by any particular name, this discovery shows that the developers had in fact given it a label. It’s a bit of a surprising detail, showing that there’s more to this horse than just a “silly” design choice.
In canon, Radahn’s horse Leonard has actually been with him since childhood. Apparently, Radahn loved his horse so much that he learned gravitational magic in order to continue to ride it. As RedditorHuevosSplash explains on a Radahn meme, “This big ridiculous red monster riding a small frail horse all because he couldn’t fathom leaving it behind as he grew bigger from power, so he learned gravity magic to keep his beloved horse around.” Other Redditors also mentioned that Radahn appears to actually float above Leonard, using his gravity powers to “ride” the horse.
It’s a surprisingly wholesome explanation, especially for a boss known to wreak so much destruction. This discovery makes you wonder what other secrets may be hidden in the game’s scripts!
Elden Ringis available to play on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
