Elden Ring: Why you shouldn’t kill ‘Pope Turtle’ Pastor Miriel

An Elden Ring player has expressed their regret after killing Pastor Miriel, aka the ‘Pope Turtle’. They’ve now implored other players to not do the same.

Like most FromSoftware games, Elden Ring is full of wacky and complicated NPCs, each with their own rich story and part to play in your journey. Pastor Miriel, or ‘Pope Turtle’ as the internet has come to know him, may be the most bizarre out of all Elden Ring’s NPCs. He’s also completely friendly and of much more use to players alive.

As any experienced Souls player will tell you, killing non-hostile NPCs is usually a bad move. Not only can it lock you out of content, you need to live with the consequences for the rest of your playthrough. One Elden Ring player has now learned this the hard way after killing Pastor Miriel.

What happens if you kill Turtle Pope in Elden Ring?

Reddit user VG_Crimson decided to kill the lovely Turtle Pope when he visited the Church of Vows in Elden Ring. They were surprised to see that Miriel’s health bar was bigger than expected, so killing him wasn’t going to be a quick and easy task. Instead, it was a grueling and traumatic experience from start to finish.

After being attacked, Miriel asked the character to stop. Even once Turtle Pope was at half health, he still asked the player to walk away, promising to forgive the attack. However, VG_Crimson continued his assault, finally striking the death blow to poor Miriel.

Upon being killed Miriel let out a high-pitched, plaintive “sad scream” that chilled VG_Crimson to the core and riddled them with guilt. Following the NPC murder, they said:

“I have to live with this on my soul now, don’t do this. There is nothing to gain, and you lose not only the convenience of him, but you lose a part of yourself too.”

You can see everything VG_Crimson said about the experience below:

Killing Pastor Miriel also doesn’t reward the player with anything exciting. All he drops upon death is some turtle neck meat (easily obtainable elsewhere) and his Bell Bearing.

This way, players can still access his shop from the Twin Maidens in the Round Table Hold but are unable to give him prayer books to expand it. This makes killing Miriel not only horrific but also pointless.

RIP Turtle Pope, “Let’s learn together”.