Teach Me the Dark Soul

[RecurringExtra]

Eh, Ash Seekth Ember is a rather fitting end to be honest, in the sense that it's rather fitting for a Dark Souls character to grab the shiny regardless of what effect doing so might have. It's a running trend in the series after all.

Jokes aside, that's a rather interesting view @Mechasaurian that I had never considered, although how much of it is intentional and how much is coincidental is up for debate. That being said, art is art, and how it's interpreted matters more than the creator's own interpretations.

I would say that linking Ash Seekth Ember to the Witch feels the biggest reach of all four to me. The other three fit rather well, as in well enough that I could see it being intentional even. But the Witch, when making the Chaos Flame, was trying to do it to make a new First Flame, essentially. She failed, of course, but the intent behind it feels very much different from murdering your waifu to pick up some hot rocks as they burn your hands.

 

[Mechasaurian]

I would say that linking Ash Seekth Ember to the Witch feels the biggest reach of all four to me. The other three fit rather well, as in well enough that I could see it being intentional even. But the Witch, when making the Chaos Flame, was trying to do it to make a new First Flame, essentially. She failed, of course, but the intent behind it feels very much different from murdering your waifu to pick up some hot rocks as they burn your hands.

Click to shrink...

It's been a while since I went over the relevant lore - I will have to get back you after I have refreshed myself on it - but there is good reason to believe that the Witch created the Chaos Flame, not (only?) to save the universe, but out of ambition and a desire to increase her own personal power.

(If you look closely at her hands in the Dark Souls introductory cutscene, you will see they are burned and charred. She was always the sort to play with fire, literally and metaphorically.)

It's admittedly difficult to know exactly what's going on in that ending...but given that Ash Seeketh Embers is a repetition of the evil ending from Demons' Souls, I really don't believe we're just doing it for the evulz. We're doing because we crave power - either the power of demons' souls, or the power of the First Flame (the cornerstone of the universe, withered though it might be).

(I went over this in the Discord log.)

 

[RecurringExtra]

It's been a while since I went over the relevant lore - I will have to get back you after I have refreshed myself on it - but there is good reason to believe that the Witch created the Chaos Flame, not (only?) to save the universe, but out of ambition and a desire to increase her own personal power.

(If you look closely at her hands in the Dark Souls introductory cutscene, you will see they are burned and charred. She was always the sort to play with fire, literally and metaphorically.)

It's admittedly difficult to know exactly what's going on in that ending...but given that Ash Seeketh Embers is a repetition of the evil ending from Demons' Souls, I really don't believe we're just doing it for the evulz. We're doing because we crave power - either the power of demons' souls, or the power of the First Flame (the cornerstone of the universe, withered though it might be).

(I went over this in the Discord log.)

Click to shrink...

Oh I'm well aware of the player craving power, I just was trying to make a joke is all. It's just... I don't know, I feel like it doesn't have the mix of ambition and... I suppose hope that the Witch had. She had ambition a plenty, but she was trying to help people nevertheless. Even if that was only a front, it was still technically her goal. We quite literally kill the Fire Keeper in our lust for power, meanwhile, which doesn't really say much about us giving a damn about the fate of anyone else.

 

[AClassyBunny]

Oh? Is this a thread revival I'm seeing? Happy days, happy days!

The themes of Dark Souls are all about whether to delay the inevitable or accept it. Thus, I don't see linking the Fire in DS3 as unmeaningful (though Lord of Hollows is my preferred ending).

At the core of Dark Souls is the question raised by the eventual end of the universe. Whether it's the Fire dying out in DaS-verse, or the Heat Death of the Universe IRL. One day, the universe will end, and all of humanity's accomplishments and striving will cease to be. They won't even exist as memories. Does that mean we and our thoughts, deeds, etc. do not matter?

In that context, I see meaning in linking the Fire, even in DS3.

It's temporary, of course. But that was case even back in DS1, even if the timescale is different.* But a difference can be made now. A difference can be made today. The surviving people of Firelink Shrine (Corynx, Irina if you didn't give her the satanic lorebook, Greirat if you didn't send him on his final pillaging raid) can be given the chance to enjoy life in the universe for a while longer.

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It's quite ironic that prolonging the age of fire by linking the flame is kind of an embodiment of human persistence against the inevitability of time, considering the role of humanity in the Dark Souls universe.

Oh I'm well aware of the player craving power, I just was trying to make a joke is all. It's just... I don't know, I feel like it doesn't have the mix of ambition and... I suppose hope that the Witch had. She had ambition a plenty, but she was trying to help people nevertheless. Even if that was only a front, it was still technically her goal. We quite literally kill the Fire Keeper in our lust for power, meanwhile, which doesn't really say much about us giving a damn about the fate of anyone else.

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Izalith constructed an entire kingdom hidden away from the sun, away from Gwyn's gaze. Her people stood by her until to very end, through Gwyn's invasion, the backfire of her attempt to create a new Flame, and the dilapidation/lava flooding of the city. The fact that the demons obeyed Izalith when she offered her demons as soldiers in exchange for Gwyn to go away also suggests that her people still believed in her even after all she put them through (if the demons were still fully sapient at that point, which Ceaseless Discharge, the Old Demon King and the spider sisters all point towards at least some do). Even the nature of Chaos Pyromancy is less about control than its non-chaos version.
I really feel like Izalith was acting out of compassion when she attempted to create a new Flame.

Looking at how the ending plays out, I can't imagine the player character is acting with a similar compassion with their craving of power. Pinning the dying Fire Keeper's head down isn't exactly the kindest way to go about seizing the Flame, even if killing her is needed to do so. The way I see it, the Ash Seeketh Embers ending is kind of the player deciding they've had enough of being the pawn in the world's game. They finally have the chance to become one of the major players that they've been throwing themselves against this whole time, everyone else be damned.

 

[RecurringExtra]

Okay, this is a bit of a random topic, but it's been bothering me a lot lately.

What the hell is hollowing?

By all accounts, hollowing is basically becoming an empty vessel. There's nothing inside you at all, end of story. But there're issues with that.

In Dark Souls 1, when you sacrifice humanity, are you using it to fuel the first flame, or using it to truly reverse hollowing by "locking it in" via the bonfire. If it's the first, then how are you fueling the first flame and also unhollowing at the same time? If it's the second, then why did it require bonfires at all in the first game?

Remember, originally what would later become people came from the dark, so essentially, would hollowing not be filling with darkness, and returning to that state? Perhaps the darkness in this case can be thought of as a void, to match the theme of emptiness? But that doesn't make much sense either, since the Abyss exists, and the Abyss is very much not nothing. Except the dark is normally peaceful, so perhaps being hollow is a state of peaceful darkness, while the Abyss is activated? But being hollow is being hollow, there shouldn't be anything there. It should just be empty.

There's evidence to be found for both views as well. For hollowing being related to dark, there's the fact that it's noted as being the true state of humanity with Londor, as well as Aldia basically screaming it at you with his whole "lie will remain a lie" monologue. Similarly, the pygmies, who are basically proto-humans with giant chunks of the Dark Soul, are shown to resemble hollows more so than humans. On the flip side, for it being emptiness, you have stuff like the Dark Sigil being what is effectively a hole where dark is pouring out of, meaning that it's removing darkness from you, as well as the fact that becoming human in the games is referred to as "Hollowing Reversed" meaning that you're ending the state of hollowing, rather than attaining a state of being something else.

One attempted explanation to cover this is that Londor hollows lose their darkness (humanity) but still have souls, and thus don't lose their minds, but that still doesn't address the underlying issue of the pygmies, and what hollowing actually is.

 

[Mechasaurian]

Okay, this is a bit of a random topic, but it's been bothering me a lot lately.

What the hell is hollowing?

By all accounts, hollowing is basically becoming an empty vessel. There's nothing inside you at all, end of story. But there're issues with that.

In Dark Souls 1, when you sacrifice humanity, are you using it to fuel the first flame, or using it to truly reverse hollowing by "locking it in" via the bonfire. If it's the first, then how are you fueling the first flame and also unhollowing at the same time? If it's the second, then why did it require bonfires at all in the first game?

Remember, originally what would later become people came from the dark, so essentially, would hollowing not be filling with darkness, and returning to that state? Perhaps the darkness in this case can be thought of as a void, to match the theme of emptiness? But that doesn't make much sense either, since the Abyss exists, and the Abyss is very much not nothing. Except the dark is normally peaceful, so perhaps being hollow is a state of peaceful darkness, while the Abyss is activated? But being hollow is being hollow, there shouldn't be anything there. It should just be empty.

There's evidence to be found for both views as well. For hollowing being related to dark, there's the fact that it's noted as being the true state of humanity with Londor, as well as Aldia basically screaming it at you with his whole "lie will remain a lie" monologue. Similarly, the pygmies, who are basically proto-humans with giant chunks of the Dark Soul, are shown to resemble hollows more so than humans. On the flip side, for it being emptiness, you have stuff like the Dark Sigil being what is effectively a hole where dark is pouring out of, meaning that it's removing darkness from you, as well as the fact that becoming human in the games is referred to as "Hollowing Reversed" meaning that you're ending the state of hollowing, rather than attaining a state of being something else.

One attempted explanation to cover this is that Londor hollows lose their darkness (humanity) but still have souls, and thus don't lose their minds, but that still doesn't address the underlying issue of the pygmies, and what hollowing actually is.

Click to shrink...

For what's it worth, we have seen the "High Dark" state.

It's not the hollows, it's the bloatheads of Oolacile.

 

[RecurringExtra]

For what's it worth, we have seen the "High Dark" state.

It's not the hollows, it's the bloatheads of Oolacile.

Click to shrink...

It's Abyssal corruption though, although whether Abyssal corruption is in and of itself a state of "high dark" or not just makes the whole question even messier. Is the Abyss at all distinct from the dark? After all, bloatheads came about because of Manus frenzying, and his humanity going wild. Is that really the true state of "high dark"? It might be, since dark is pretty much equated with desire, but...

Ugh, it's all so messy.

 

[AClassyBunny]

Darkness certainly isn't the lack of something, since it was stated in the DS1 opening that light and dark were created together thanks to the First Flame. Along with that are the humanoid figures that discovered the flame that resemble Hollows, but it's unclear whether that scene was before or after they received souls.

The Abyss and the mess that was Oolacile doesn't seem to be the only face of darkness, since humans and pygmies aren't all crazy monsters. The state of both cases were quite volatile thanks to Manual's frenzy, and the Darkwraiths and being drowned by those who were supposed to protect them, but I don't think these are the natural states of darkness.

So, hollowing.
For the first game, humanity is the used to reverse hollowing, taking the small chunk of darkness into you. If the Dark Sign leaks darkness, then what if it's designed to drain a person of their humanity so that they become like the empty husk humans were before obtaining their humanity from the flame? There are Implications in the game that the Dark Sign is placed upon someone instead of just naturally appearing. Consuming humanity would then be replenishing the darkness that's leaking out, staving off becoming empty of everything.

Dark Souls 2 I have yet to play, but the effigies act as a stand in for humanity, so it's more or less the same from what I'm aware of.

In Dark Souls 3, hollowing isn't quite the same for the player. At least for those that were reborn from ash, embers are what keeps you going. Hollowing appears to be more connected to light and dark now, with embers, a fragment of flame, restoring appearance but not removing the progression of hollowing. It seems that it's become a more literal curse in DS3, since purging stones and preying to Bella are the only way to remove it now, at least for those of ash.
Has hollowing progressed or is this because of the ashen one's state as ash?
(It's been a while since playing DS3, so I may be misremembering things)

TL;DR: Hollowing seems to be the result of the lack of both light and dark, which may or may not be intentionally created.

 

[Delirium]

Hollowing is messy because it's painfully obvious that both a) the ideas behind it changed at some point in the series and b) the ideas behind it were very vague to begin with and perhaps don't make literal sense. So from the PoV of the first game:

I'm going to go ahead and say that it's essentially gospel in the first game that being a Hollow is equivalent to being soulless, which is to say that you have neither any piece of Dark nor any piece of Light inside you. The evidence for this is fairly integral to the game; the hollowed original beings in the opening cinematic and Gwyn himself at the end of the game. Since we start and end with this image of the original Lords as Hollows I think it's fairly safe to take this for granted. It's also sort of built into the whole dichotomy as well anyway since, after all - Hollows seek for souls and not just Humanity. This thing we call a Soul is best understood as a Light Soul and this thing we call Humanity is best understood as a Dark Soul. Humans appear to have both whether by some design of Gwyn's or just as a natural result of the Sun (which could well be some miracle of Gwyn's or else the First Flame itself) but being hollow seems intrinsically tied to Humanity alone for humans. For the gods of Anor Londo it conversely seems to be tied to their own Light soul. Whether this is a gameplay constraint and we're to understand that any proper soul will do or whether this is a purposeful decision with lore implications is a bit unclear. You could argue here that what's important is losing your soul, not any soul, and that mankind's collective soul is the Dark Soul, rather than the individualised souls other great beings seem to carry but then again, we have no reason to believe Manus is anything other than human and he drops a Light soul (strange and deformed by the Dark though it is).

The next question is what on earth the Darksign has to do with any of this. If hollowing is allegedly the natural state of man, why do you seem to need a Darksign to achieve it? The function of the Darksign is to create an undead, which is to say that perhaps contrary to popular belief it's not 'being a hollow' or 'being human' or anything else which causes you to return after death. It's explicitly the Darksign itself which returns you to the bonfire or raises you from your grave. Who places the Darksign is unclear though there are if I remember correctly a few lines that imply an undead can be purposely created somehow by the Way of White. So the Darksign is what causes you to go hollow, if you die without a Darksign you simply die for good. It's only when you have the brand that your souls and humanity are taken and you are reborn/rise again as an empty thing, a hollow.

I'm willing to believe on the balance of agreeable evidence from the second and third game that even at the (creative) time of the first game Gwyn was probably involved in the creation of the Darksign somehow, especially since the Way of White seems related to it and that's definitely some sort of Anor Londo Conspiracy in the upper echelons though we never get to interrogate it all that much. So given Gwyn seems to have been involved in placing the Darksign, exactly for what purpose was this done? Or if not Gwyn himself then Gwyndolin or one of the other Gods in control of Anor Londo during the thousand years between Gwyn originally linking the fire and the Chosen Undead journeying to Lordran. In a sense it almost seems that the point of the Darksign is to evoke the prophecy in the first place. The way the game initially presents it, you're perhaps lead to believe that Gwyndolin and Frampt are making the best of a bad situation by setting up the prophecy of the Chosen Undead to trick one of them into throwing themselves on the first but could it perhaps be the other way around?

The Undead and Hollowing seem to be a comparatively quite recent phenomenon in Dark Souls 1. One of either Big Hat Logan or Paladin Leeroy is as far as I know the oldest undead we meet and they're perhaps a hundred or a few hundred years old (though of course, time is convoluted in Lordran so it's unclear how much of that time they've personally experienced). Weird Abyss stuff was going on at around this time as well; Oolaciel and New Londo both seem to be pegged at 'a few hundred years ago' give or take so there's perhaps some contemporaneity between the establishment of the Abyss and the emergence of the Hollow. We know that Gwyn feared the Dark (though he was long gone by this point) so perhaps one of his children or followers (e.g. Allfather Lloyd) created the brand once it became clear the Dark was starting to get out of control. Perhaps the Darksign is an attempt to sort of systematically 'leak' the Dark out of the world that went wrong or had unintended consequences.

The problem with the above is that the second and third games seem quite convinced Gwyn himself was personally involved in it rather than just a sort of vague impetus behind its creation which is perhaps what the first game seems to be saying. There's a not-insignificant time gap of several hundred years here so it's not quite so easy a bridge as one might first assume. One might do well to remember that it almost seems Gwyn has been gone from Anor Londo longer than he ever ruled it. You could be forgiven for thinking he left yesterday given the pristine state of the city and just how mind-boggling a length a thousand years is when you think about it but he really did link the fire that long ago and hasn't personally been seen since. He's perhaps analogous to a Christ-like figure more than anything else at this point; not a being you might personally know or ever meet but a spiritual saviour who sacrificed himself long ago.

I mentioned it briefly earlier but it becomes important now to consider the ramifications of the triplicate facts that a) you burn Humanity at Bonfires to reclaim a 'human' form; and b) Bonfires are kept lit by Firekeepers, beings overflowing with humanity; and c) the Darksign returns certain undead in Lordran back to Bonfires upon death. I don't think it's grasping at straws to recognise some sort of pattern here even if it's not clear exactly what that might be at this juncture. Something about the Bonfires (which just so happen to be fueled by the bones of the undead) seems to be related to the Darksign and the way it drains Humanity and keeps you alive as a Hollow. Bonfires seem to be ritualistically constructed according to a template and the undead are then encouraged to burn away their Dark Soul there to reclaim human form. If they die the Darksign seems to personally bind them to the Bonfires they engage with since if you think about it once you touch a bonfire you can't really escape the system. There's something here which I can't quite grasp at the moment. Something about binding humans and the burning of Humanity to bonfires as potentially integral to the actual point (or the reason for the creation) of the Darksign.

This is a lot of text to say not much definitively at all but maybe something in it will catch on your own theories and headcanons.

 

[AClassyBunny]

The mention of bonefires made me think: how many of the bonfires are actually in-story present vs just gameplay. While there's a fair few scattered around at convenient (and sometimes not-so convenient) locations, but there's also very obviously placed ones, such as with Firelink. After some investigating, it does seem like most of the cities in Dark Souls 1 have at least one obvious bonfire.

Firelink Shrine is the obvious one, with it being the centre-point of the whole city beneath Anor Londo. The large cathedral where the Gargoyles are, a clear place of worship, is directly connected to it. The Sunlight Altar is another place that stands out as an intentional placement, as it's a very stand-out location linked to a (previously) member of the royal family.
Anor Londo's main bonfire maintained by the Darkmoon Knightess is very clearly intentionally placed, especially as it's tended to by a keeper. At the other end of the city, Gwyn's tomb makes for another stand-out location with it's shape and the placement of the bonfire in te room, and is linked to Gwyn, the one who rekindled the First Flame.
The Fair Lady's bonfire is, while kind of out of the way, manned by a keeper and therefore is likely a legitimate placement. Along with this, the structure in which the Bed of Chaos resides could be a place of worship and even if it's not a location specifically for a bonfire, it's entirely possible this is where Izalith attempted to recreate the First Flame, therefore making it a location baring a similar purpose.
The Lordvessel is clearly there in-universe, as the player is the one that places it. That said, it's not so much a bonfire as it just acts in a similar way.

Now, some I'm not as certain of or have some wonders about.
The bonfire located within the Duke's Archives prison appears to be legitimate, since it's location plays a part in the area's progression and was obviously put there to trap undead linked to the bonfires.
What about the bonfire in front of the Everlasting Dragon? It's positioned very similarly to the Fair Lady's bonfire, so perhaps this entails legitimacy?
Surely there would've been a designated location for a bonfire in New Anor Londo, a city built with keeping humanity under the Gods' control in mind, and the presence of a fire keeper soul supports there being one somewhere. The lack of an actual bonfire is understandable, since the city was flooded, but where would it have been? Maybe the large chapel-like building Ingward is on? It has a space similar to a fireplace, so perhaps this is where it was located.
There doesn't seem to be a clear bonfire location in Blighttown, since the in-game location is very random in terms of presentation. Game-wise it makes sense, but I can't imagine such a culturally important thing to be just placed in the middle of a bridge with no ordimentation. Maybe it's the only place stable enough that won't burn? It does make sense that they wouldn't have a bonfire, since the place is very clearly ignored by the rest of the world, going by the state of the place.

Something to take note of with many of the first locations is the presence of a fire keeper. Some aren't so obvious, however, and some seem to be completely lacking one.
Firelink's keeper is obviously Anastacia.
The Sunlight Altar fire keeper is tough, since there isn't anyone present besides the drake and the hollows. All I can think of is the statue positioned in the room, or the sun itself?
Anor Londo's main bonfire is obviously tended to by the Darkmoon Knightess, but the one in Gwyn's tomb is less obvious. could it be Gwyndolin? Perhaps it's an illusion, just as the Silver knights?
Obviously the Fair Lady is her own bonfire's keeper. If we consider the Bed of Chaos bonfire to be legitimate, then it's possible that either the entities that make up the Bed are the keepers, or it's kept alive by Chaos Fire itself and isn't bound to the same laws as other bonfires.
Is it possible one of the prisoners in the Duke's tower is the fire keeper? We find a keeper's soul in the cell behind the Pisaca group, but what if the non-hostile crying Pisaca is what's left of the fire keeper, forced to keep a trap bonfire alive?
The Everlasting Dragon could very well be the keeper of it's bonfire, same as the Fair Lady. It certainly gives the appearance that it is, but it possible for a dragon to be a keeper?

I haven't played DS2 and it's been a fair while since I've played DS3, so the only examples I can think of for those are the Emerald Herald (who is said to not be an offical keeper) and the two Firelink Shrines in DS3 which are clearly tended to by a keeper (or was so, in the second shrine's case.)

I haven't really seen any discussion about the bonfire placements outside of Bonfireside Chat, so I thought it would be interesting to bring up here. Dark Souls is pretty blury when it comes to the difference between in-universe and solely gameplay.

 

[Mechasaurian]

Honestly, the mechanics behind Dark Souls' hollowing and respawning mechanics seem pretty messy and unclear compared to that of Demon Souls or Bloodborne.

 

[Delirium]

Honestly, the mechanics behind Dark Souls' hollowing and respawning mechanics seem pretty messy and unclear compared to that of Demon Souls or Bloodborne.

Click to shrink...

The respawn is pretty clear, you respawn because the Darksign tethers your body to life. Hollowing itself also isn't that difficult to explain either since it's basically just 'you lose your souls and humanity and become a hollow.' Despite how much I just waffled on about the intricacies of the problem I do think at the end of the day you pretty much do have as much of an idea about it in DaS1 as you do in DeS and BB. The dream has some fairly interesting implications which I'd like to write about at some point just to get my own thoughts in order. Perhaps I should say that for anyone who reads the above post you should probably interpret it a little bit in that light as well.

For what it's worth it's maybe time to go into Dark Souls 3's version of the Darksign and what hollowing/humanity mean in that context. I don't have anywhere near as much knowledge floating around in the back of my head for the third game unfortunately but my understanding is that (if we ignore the first game) then the Darksign in 3 is basically a metaphysical/spiritual hole that your bits of the Dark Soul leaks out of to prevent it from running wild and turning you into a tree thing. There's a connection between the Darksign sun, the angels in Dragonslayer Armour's boss room, the tree undead you find all over the place, the Pus of Man and the Darksign brand itself. In my head I know vaguely what this connection is but it's a bit difficult for me to explain it (which is a good indication that I don't actually fully understand it myself).

As far as I can remember from studying people much smarter than me the idea is that the Dark Soul seems to be running wild in Lothric, which is why Clerics and the people who make pilgrimage from Londor wear shells on their back. It's to either hide or to prevent something from bursting out of them - that something being the Pus of Man enemies you fight all over the High Wall and Lothric castle (Pus of Man is the weird black mass that spews out of ordinary-looking hollows in case you don't know obscure enemy names). Once the Darksign Sun appears and the end times truly begin it seems as though this dark mass is drawn upwards or something and thus the angels you see and fight are lifted into the sky. That's the basic gist anyway. You can probably sense that I don't know anywhere near as much.

All this talk of 'what is a Dark Soul anyway?' is reminding me of my unfinished Paleblood Hunt ripoff I wanted to write for Dark Souls 1 back in 2015 which is why I have this big data bank of STUFF to draw on for the first game and not so much for the second and third. Personally I think I interpret things in the first game on a slightly less literal level than most people do so I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt on some things that might seem fuzzy in terms of internal realism or whatever you want to call that sense of unreality.

Very off-topic example of (to me anyway) Secret Delirium Lore that I invented to try and bridge some major lore gaps between the first and second games:

Spoiler

You might have noticed that Dragon's don't seem to have proper Souls in Dark Souls 1 and this seems to be very much an intentional decision. What I mean by this is that they won't drop boss souls after death. Gaping, Kalameet, Seath, etc. Seath is a unique case in that we know he was specifically granted a fragment of Gwyn's soul which he wouldn't otherwise possess but the exception seems to prove the rule in this case as if Seath had his own powerful Soul he'd have no need of Gwyn's. The Lords and their tribes are special because they have Souls, nothing else before them has a Soul, that's the whole point of what the First Flame is. Now, that's all well and good but there's a problem when it comes to Dark Souls 2 - in Dark Souls 2 you go back in time/visit the memory of (depending at which point in the game's dev cycle you are ) an apparently genuine Ancient Dragon back in the Age of Ancients with the stone trees and the fog and whatnot. Guess what? The Dragon has a soul.

This is in and of itself a very unclear/dubious connection because although you seem to pick it up from a real Dragon back in time the item itself exclusively references the known fake at the top of the Dragon Shrine but I usually assume that this is a gameplay conceit and its placement is an indication that Dark Souls 2 intended you to believe that Ancient Dragons had souls. This is really fucking stupid (pardon the language) from the point of view of the first game to the point that it begins to undermine the central conceit of the First Flame. How to rectify this? Well here's my argument:

0. Souls are all minuscule fragments of the First Flame - this bit makes more sense if you read the thing I never wrote explaining why this is the case.
1. Dragons have Bones with a capital B.
2. The Iron Golem has an artificial or manufactured soul which is formed from the Bones of a Dragon - it very much looks as though the Gods just lit a Dragon Bone on fire and stuffed it in to power the thing.
3. Bones seem to be used as fuel for fire quite often in Dark Souls - i.e. there's some sort of connection between Bones and Souls even outside this special case. (e.g. bonfire strengthening).
4. Dragon Bones are especially good fuel to the point that there's almost a straight-up equivalence between Dragon Bones and Souls.

Therefore Dragons don't have souls but they have 'Soul Substitutes' or Cores which can be read as Souls, i.e. their bones. On the face of it, you might think there's something flimsy about all this but I'm quite taken with it personally, I can remember the exact moment in the small hours of the morning while I was playing the game that I had this flash of insight into how things worked. All that said, I don't really believe this is the intention in 2, I just think it's a neat bit of reverse engineering to make it fit in.

I write all this out to illustrate a bit where I'm coming from when I discuss these games, especially Dark Souls 1. It's my baby and I have my own deeply woven headcanon about how everything works in the background which you're not obliged to believe in (though I think it's more fun if you do).

 

[RecurringExtra]

For Dark Souls III, I'm torn between the idea of hollowing being dark or emptiness. Maybe how it works is that being Hollow is to be empty, but a sane Hollow such as those in London is one who retains their dark soul and nothing else. This combines the two theories of Hollowing being reversed by being granted the form of the Gods, as to possess normal souls without any Darkness may be what pretty much breaks humans, and Hollowing still being a state of emptiness where one is driven to obtain souls. This is probably the idea I'm going to ultimately stick with in terms of headcanon, but even then it still has issues.

That said, for Dragons having souls, I always saw it (AKA Somebody much smarter than me wrote) that before the flame dragons didn't have souls, but after the flame appeared, and thus the eternal unchanging world vanished, they too gained souls. Whether or not they 'solidified' into being proper Soul souls, or just remained as a bunch of loose souls varied based on the dragon in question.

 

[AClassyBunny]

Well, I'm about 1/2 to 1/3 through Dark Souls 2 now and thought I'd revive this thread.

Some questions:
1. Is there any important lore I'm missing from not doing covenants? (My interest doesn't work on my PS4)
2. Any reasons why the Gyrm and Rat Kingdom don't get mentioned in DS3? I know it's been a while between games but still.
3. Seath somehow learned how to reincarnate??? Now he loves spiders???
4. Is there a lore reason why the Grym in the Doors of Pharros don't attack Ratbros?
5. What's up with the Harvest Valley? It's obviously not for food, but what are they actually mining? Mytha is all about poison and whatnot, but I think Vaati said something about the valley mining the ore for the Iron King?
6. Covetous Demon is a pet of Mytha? Test subject? His soul says something about love and desire, so did he Love Mytha an she turned him into a blob?
7. Any lore on the giant friendly ant in The Gutter?
8. Is Dragleic and the previous kingdoms built on top of Lordran? There are a few things I've found suggesting it (white tree of Oolacile, Chaos being deep underground in the dlc (based on Vaati video, haven't played dlc yet) etc.)
9. How big are the changes in NG+? Ive heard it adds a load of stuff. Is it worth it or does it actually not change that much?

Im actually really enjoying DS2, despite coming into it with the knowledge that a lot of people dislike it. It has a very... Cinematic feel? Looking forward to getting to the DLCs soon, I've heard they're good.

 

[RecurringExtra]

Well, I'm about 1/2 to 1/3 through Dark Souls 2 now and thought I'd revive this thread.

Some questions:
1. Is there any important lore I'm missing from not doing covenants? (My interest doesn't work on my PS4)
2. Any reasons why the Gyrm and Rat Kingdom don't get mentioned in DS3? I know it's been a while between games but still.
3. Seath somehow learned how to reincarnate??? Now he loves spiders???
4. Is there a lore reason why the Grym in the Doors of Pharros don't attack Ratbros?
5. What's up with the Harvest Valley? It's obviously not for food, but what are they actually mining? Mytha is all about poison and whatnot, but I think Vaati said something about the valley mining the ore for the Iron King?
6. Covetous Demon is a pet of Mytha? Test subject? His soul says something about love and desire, so did he Love Mytha an she turned him into a blob?
7. Any lore on the giant friendly ant in The Gutter?
8. Is Dragleic and the previous kingdoms built on top of Lordran? There are a few things I've found suggesting it (white tree of Oolacile, Chaos being deep underground in the dlc (based on Vaati video, haven't played dlc yet) etc.)
9. How big are the changes in NG+? Ive heard it adds a load of stuff. Is it worth it or does it actually not change that much?

Im actually really enjoying DS2, despite coming into it with the knowledge that a lot of people dislike it. It has a very... Cinematic feel? Looking forward to getting to the DLCs soon, I've heard they're good.

Click to shrink...

1: The only really lore relevant covenant is the Pilgrims of Dark. The others are mostly fluff. The Pilgrims basically explores the ideas of the Abyuss and Dark, and what they actually represent, rather than being purely negative as the first game's DLC presented.
2: Grym are part of the leftover bits from Dark Souls 2's early development. They... don't really fit in the series very well, but they were finished assets that were made, so they used them. Miyazaki had no real interest in them evidently, as they aren't mentioned in Dark Souls 3, as you said. Probably because they're just generic Dwarf analogs. As for the Rat King, I imagine it's a similar situation there, but at least the Rat King is somewhat interesting.
3: Seath's soul reincarnated, essentially. It's not so much that it's literally him, but more it's a creature that resembles him greatly (IE: A giant two headed spider that made a nest out of an Ancient Dragon).
4: Not really, no. The Grym were just kind of shoved into the Doors of Pharos as enemies because they needed enemies for the area it feels like.
5: They're mining the poison, because Mytha thinks it makes her beautiful. That's why she bathes in it during her boss fight, unless you burn the Windmill.
6: He loved Mytha, but she didn't love him back, so he basically found solace in eating, and because he was never able to move on, he just kept on eating until he became a monster that did nothing but consume.
7: Not really, I'm afraid.
8: Drangleic's location is matter of debate. Some people think it's on top of Lordran, but judging by how the intro says that it's "far to the north" it most likely is a separate place entirely. One theory is that it's where the Gods fled to after abandoning Anor Londo, which is what Heide's Tower of Flame represents. Plus. it helps explain why nobody remembers any of the names of ancient figures and distant kingdoms: they're not really relevant to them.
9: Most of the changes are gameplay related. It's worth it once you're finished with your playthrough, but it's fine to hold off on entering it for a bit first.

Surprised to see this thread revived, not gonna lie, but I'm always happy to answer any questions on the subject of Souls.
As for enjoying Dark Souls 2, I'm happy to hear it. It gets a lot of undeserved hate due to it's troubled development, but it's a really fascinating game that's worth playing. It doesn't really fit into the overall story of the lore, but it does a great job of exploring a lot of the themes of the series.

 

[The Curious Fan]

1. Is there any important lore I'm missing from not doing covenants? (My interest doesn't work on my PS4)

Click to shrink...

No.

2. Any reasons why the Gyrm and Rat Kingdom don't get mentioned in DS3? I know it's been a while between games but still.

Click to shrink...

They didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

4. Is there a lore reason why the Grym in the Doors of Pharros don't attack Ratbros?

Click to shrink...

They probably made a deal to get along.

5. What's up with the Harvest Valley? It's obviously not for food, but what are they actually mining? Mytha is all about poison and whatnot, but I think Vaati said something about the valley mining the ore for the Iron King?

Click to shrink...

They're mining for ores, presumably to refine into the poisons Mytha is collecting.

6. Covetous Demon is a pet of Mytha? Test subject? His soul says something about love and desire, so did he Love Mytha an she turned him into a blob?

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He was crushing on her while she was into the old iron king.

7. Any lore on the giant friendly ant in The Gutter?

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Aldia dumped it in the giant hole once he was done experimenting on it. Same reason the Gutter originally had those enhanced undead.

9. How big are the changes in NG+? Ive heard it adds a load of stuff. Is it worth it or does it actually not change that much?

Click to shrink...

Bigger than the other souls games but not that huge, some enemy and mimic placements and enemies in boss fights, some new invaders and armour sets etc. There's also the bit with Duke's Dear Freja.

 

[AClassyBunny]

1: The only really lore relevant covenant is the Pilgrims of Dark. The others are mostly fluff. The Pilgrims basically explores the ideas of the Abyuss and Dark, and what they actually represent, rather than being purely negative as the first game's DLC presented.

Click to shrink...

So, one of the main lore things I was really looking forwards to in DS2, damn

5: They're mining the poison, because Mytha thinks it makes her beautiful. That's why she bathes in it during her boss fight, unless you burn the Windmill.

Click to shrink...

Huh, didn't realise her arena had poison outside of the outer ring. I burned the windmill (took me a while to figure out how, even knowing it could be done) but only because I heard she'd be healed if I didn't. Kind of disapointed that I did burn it, since without the poison and healing, she was really underwhelming as a boss fight.

8: Drangleic's location is matter of debate. Some people think it's on top of Lordran, but judging by how the intro says that it's "far to the north" it most likely is a separate place entirely. One theory is that it's where the Gods fled to after abandoning Anor Londo, which is what Heide's Tower of Flame represents. Plus. it helps explain why nobody remembers any of the names of ancient figures and distant kingdoms: they're not really relevant to them.

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Oh right, I forgot about the "far to the north" bit. I suppose Anor Londo being in DS3 probably disproves it too.
In regards to the Gods fleeing to Drangleic, I've heard that before but personally think disagree from what I've seen so far. Maybe the world is repeating itself with the souls of the original Lords, but I feel like it's more humans trying to mimic the architecture of those they revere and aspire to be like. It also seems DS2 is centred more around humans than the first and third game.

Surprised to see this thread revived, not gonna lie, but I'm always happy to answer any questions on the subject of Souls.

Click to shrink...

I'm super fascinated by the world of Dark Souls and it's lore, and the people I know that play it aren't nearly as into the lore as I am. This is basically my way of nerding out over DS without annoying my friends and discussion is far better for learning/working out lore than just watching lore videos.
I'll probably re-revive this thread again once I get to DS3, although since I've already played through that once, I already know what's going on and it would probably be more just dicussion than "hey, what's this mean?"

As for enjoying Dark Souls 2, I'm happy to hear it. It gets a lot of undeserved hate due to it's troubled development, but it's a really fascinating game that's worth playing. It doesn't really fit into the overall story of the lore, but it does a great job of exploring a lot of the themes of the series.

Click to shrink...

Going into DS2, I was expecting a horrible buggy mess with terrible gameplay and mechanics. I may be overlooking things, but so far I've yet to really find any of these supposed game-ruining problems (okay, really didn't like how good rolling is being linked to a stat. Glad they removed that in DS3). I can understand why people would dislike a large portion of the bosses just being dudes in armour, but since Artorias and O/S were my favourite bosses in DS1, I don't mind at all.
The lore doesn't seem that out of place to me, more just discussing the more "normal" stuff that occured in the world. 1 and 3 are heavily focused on the grand beings such as gods, dragons and the lords of cinder, so seeing how mere humans - even though they held powerful souls - were is actually pretty interesting world building to me. Also, I absolutely love everything about the Dark and the Abyss, so a game focused on who those forces are the primal embodiment of is great.

 

[The Curious Fan]

So, one of the main lore things I was really looking forwards to in DS2, damn

Click to shrink...

Pilgrims of the Dark is the purely pve covenant, you've just got to find wheelchair man three times.

It also seems DS2 is centred more around humans than the first and third game.

Click to shrink...

Got it in one, they confirmed it in the design works IIRC.

 

[RoyalNoises]

I don't know where you got the impression that DS2 was buggy. It's not. It's just bad.

And only really compared to the other games from it's own company. It's the worst modern Fromsoft game, which still puts it head and shoulders above pretty much all non-From Soulslikes except for Nioh.

 

[RecurringExtra]

The best way to think of Dark Souls 2, in my opinion, is that it focuses on one of the countless cycles leading up to Dark Souls 3. Is what happens in it really relevant overall? Not really. Instead, it's meant to provide context as to what happens to the world towards the end of a cycle while awaiting the Firelinking. So, as you put it @AClassyBunny, it focuses instead on the more human elements, rather than the grand beings and overall world entirely.

It also helps that it has it's own self-contained bits, such as the War with the Giants (Yhorm will forever disappoint me with his god damn face) and the Sisters of Dark/Daughters of Manus. Speaking of the Sisters of Dark, besides Nashandra's manipulation of Vendrick, the other three sisters didn't really seem to do much that was really... well, negative, or at least not until after something provoked them. Elena only started desiring revenge after Sir Yorgh killed her husband and the entire population of the city she called home, Nadalia is just really lonely and even became a maternal figure to Raime after he was cast out by Vendrick, and Alsanna is a good girl who really needs a hug.

 

[McFluffles]

Going into DS2, I was expecting a horrible buggy mess with terrible gameplay and mechanics. I may be overlooking things, but so far I've yet to really find any of these supposed game-ruining problems (okay, really didn't like how good rolling is being linked to a stat. Glad they removed that in DS3). I can understand why people would dislike a large portion of the bosses just being dudes in armour, but since Artorias and O/S were my favourite bosses in DS1, I don't mind at all.

Click to shrink...

As someone in the middle of a full series rebinge myself, DS2 always surprises me when I come back to it because over time my thoughts of it become this muddled mess of "Honestly it's just kinda shitty?" Then I play it, and it really isn't. It does have a few glaring flaws certainly, like making roll invulnerability frames tied to an actual stat, some enemies with godawful hitboxes, infinite lifegems at 300 souls a pop, and the absolute nightmare that is soul memory, but at the same time it tried a LOT of new things, some of which I'm honestly sad didn't move forward into later games. Bonfire Aesthetics letting you respawn bosses and get later game cycle loot at the expense of permanently making the game harder, probably my favorite spells system in the series with tons of great magic options but being the first to tie magic to stamina so you can't just stand back and dump all over enemies entirely, multiple mini-breakpoints in equipment load affecting your roll distance and not just roll speed, and personally some of the best fashion souls in the series, including the equipment menu framing your character to the right so you can see the change in looks with each piece you alter. Like RoyalNoises put it - DS2 is debateably the worst modern Fromsoft game, but it's still a GOOD game, well above most of the competition, and it has more than enough positives that i can see why a number of people choose it as their personal favorite/best in the series.

 

[bird yells]

Well, I'm about 1/2 to 1/3 through Dark Souls 2 now and thought I'd revive this thread.

Some questions:
3. Seath somehow learned how to reincarnate??? Now he loves spiders???
8. Is Dragleic and the previous kingdoms built on top of Lordran? There are a few things I've found suggesting it (white tree of Oolacile, Chaos being deep underground in the dlc (based on Vaati video, haven't played dlc yet) etc.)

Click to shrink...

Everyone reincarnates, it's not just seath. The (reincarnation of the) witch of izalith is around too, for example. There are also lots of people who may or may not literally be reincarnations of specific characters from ds1 but who are influenced by the events of ds1 to play broadly similar roles. People dealing, or failing to deal, with the mountain of karmic debt left over from the age of gwyn and subsequent fire ages is a pretty important facet of the game, I think.

The geography of this place is hopelessly muddled, so who knows if the two countries literally occupy the same tracts of land, but drangleic is a cultural descendant of lordran, yes. It's just that multiple dark ages have wiped out any solid historical understanding of what came before; knowledge of the age of gwyn has only survived as ritual and little snippets of myth, leaving people to connect the dots as best they can from scraps of story and the occasional unearthed artifact, sometimes to disastrous results.

 

[Delirium]

Time and Space in Dark Souls is convoluted. Like literally, time and space contract and expand in weird ways as the fire fades and is relit, it's entirely possible for some aspects of the world to have Lordran analogues and not others. If the Old Chaos is located at the literal physical coordinates of Izalith than Eleum Loyce has to be essentially where Anor Londo is but that's unclear. If the Giants in Dark Souls and 2 are the same (they don't seem to be) then when Vendrick crossed the seas he was crossing into Lordran and somehow stealing the ability or place where the fire was linked but again that's unclear.

Dark Souls 2, in general, is just... not really a sequel to the original game so not much that happens to it seems to have been consequential when the original dev team came back for the third game. Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 are clearly using the same pieces to fill in a jigsaw, even if some of the stuff in 3 is a hack job that doesn't seem to have been intended at the time when the first game was produced. Dark Souls 2, on the other hand, is just a big pile of "what?"

Re: The Gyrm since they were mentioned earlier.

The original concept for them seems to have tied into the way the world was built in the early versions of Dark Souls 2 as a sort of slave/lower caste dwarf race used and abused by (seemingly) stronger normal human races to build the kingdom (or at least the Castle and surrounding areas) of Drangleic then discarded into a prototype version of the Gutter/Grave of Saints/some sort of underground area full of refuse. There seems to have been a plot angle where the dwarves were in the middle of mounting a secret rebellion by digging into the bowels of the castle thus providing a way in (this is potentially what the Shrine of Amana area was originally meant to be). Obviously, much of this was discarded and the Gyrm now are just generic dwarves.

 

[AClassyBunny]

The original concept for them seems to have tied into the way the world was built in the early versions of Dark Souls 2 as a sort of slave/lower caste dwarf race used and abused by (seemingly) stronger normal human races to build the kingdom (or at least the Castle and surrounding areas) of Drangleic then discarded into a prototype version of the Gutter/Grave of Saints/some sort of underground area full of refuse. There seems to have been a plot angle where the dwarves were in the middle of mounting a secret rebellion by digging into the bowels of the castle thus providing a way in (this is potentially what the Shrine of Amana area was originally meant to be). Obviously, much of this was discarded and the Gyrm now are just generic dwarves.

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Yeah, I think Illusionary Wall looked at that in his new Dark Souls Dissected video.
I actually feel pretty bad for the Gyrm. If Gavlan is anything to go by, they're actually pretty friendly and happy people who got completely screwed by power-hungry and self-serving assholes. Would've loved to see them fighting back in some way, and if there was any kind of friendship between the Gyrm and the rats like their shared area implies, I can just imagine running into knights fighting off hoards of rats and Gyrm. It could even be a chance for a kind of "aid the army to take the castle" situation if you were part of the Ratbros and they didn't attack you.

 

[Destynova1]

As someone in the middle of a full series rebinge myself, DS2 always surprises me when I come back to it because over time my thoughts of it become this muddled mess of "Honestly it's just kinda shitty?" Then I play it, and it really isn't. It does have a few glaring flaws certainly, like making roll invulnerability frames tied to an actual stat, some enemies with godawful hitboxes, infinite lifegems at 300 souls a pop, and the absolute nightmare that is soul memory, but at the same time it tried a LOT of new things, some of which I'm honestly sad didn't move forward into later games. Bonfire Aesthetics letting you respawn bosses and get later game cycle loot at the expense of permanently making the game harder, probably my favorite spells system in the series with tons of great magic options but being the first to tie magic to stamina so you can't just stand back and dump all over enemies entirely, multiple mini-breakpoints in equipment load affecting your roll distance and not just roll speed, and personally some of the best fashion souls in the series, including the equipment menu framing your character to the right so you can see the change in looks with each piece you alter. Like RoyalNoises put it - DS2 is debateably the worst modern Fromsoft game, but it's still a GOOD game, well above most of the competition, and it has more than enough positives that i can see why a number of people choose it as their personal favorite/best in the series.

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Plus the starting town Majula can become rather nifty and hopeful as you find others to come live in it. in DA1&3, the population goes DOWN.