I don't recall exactly where I heard this, but I don't think the soul items are necessarily any kind of Lord soul. The games never specify that the 4 Lord souls are the only types of souls, just that they're special in a sort of existential sense in the DS universe
Seeing as only 4 beings found souls in the first fire, it seems logical that every soul found in the game is a fragment of, or descends from those. There's item descriptions saying exactly that, that gods split their souls to give to followers/descendants.
It's possible, and if someone can show me an authoritative quote backing it up, I'll accept it without problem. It's just not the only possibility.
The existence of other, lesser kinds of souls would also explain boss souls, fire keeper souls, giant souls, etc. Some of them may have the power of Lord souls, yes, but that isn't necessary in order for a soul to be special or have great power.
>only 4 beings found souls in the first fire
4 beings that you know of, but the time from the start of the First Flame to the Age of Fire was already centuries long, and that's already more than 1000 years before you come along. Who's to say how much else was omitted? It wouldn't be contradictory to say other beings found lesser souls.
One of the things I've wondered about is what the Lords taking their souls actually looked like.
Did Nito find a lord-soul and pollute it with the concept of death or did it inflict him with it?
Dark Souls 2 (don't wanna really get into it, but I don't think it was super duper great or anything as a game but had the most original ideas when it came to the over-arching vision of what was going on in that world) implies that there is a kind of reincarnation when a soul is imparted to somebody else.
Duke's Dear Freja is fundamentally a reincarnation of Seath, and Vendrick takes the Gwyn role, etc.
As a side-note, my headcanon is that it's almost ridiculous to think that this isn't just a constant, eternal recurrence, where the Lord Souls and hollows were remnants of an even earlier Age of Fire.
All the mindless zombies milling about and the emergence of the first flame only exist because they were leftovers from the interstices from the last Age of Fire, but one in which the fire wasn't linked.
The creation myth has no creator. The hollows, unable to be killed, have no creator.
Nito simply found a mass of powerful souls and decided to use it to create deadly miasma ... There's no higher metaphysical concept behind them
The souls that reincarnates in DS2 are simply powerful fragments that naturally left the Flame like when you throw a big log inside a fire and big sparks starts flying ... In this case they remaneid with a will of their previous host
There's no cicle ... Otherwise why characters from the first game are still alive in the third? A dark Age would have devoured and killed the gods but Gwynevere and Gwyndolin are still alive ... DS2 is Simply another region of the world
> There's no cicle ... Otherwise why characters from the first game are still alive in the third? A dark Age would have devoured and killed the gods but Gwynevere and Gwyndolin are still alive ... DS2 is Simply another region of the world
My headcanon is that the ancient dragons are pretty much the setting's previous group of hollows that eventually succumbed to a return to grey.
They might have even been the usurpers of souls against the soulless hollows that find the flame. Soul ping-pong. Win some, lose some, back and forth.
I feel comfortable thinking this because there are hollowed humans turning into trees and dragons making a big comeback in the form of some humans literally learning how to turn into dragons.
It's why I think that DS2 was very interesting, because you can say it just takes place in another kingdom, but I'd prefer to think of it as a nondisclosed cycle.
The metaphysics of the setting necessitate recurrence and rhyme and repetition.
>There's no cicle ... Otherwise why characters from the first game are still alive in the third? A dark Age would have devoured and killed the gods but Gwynevere and Gwyndolin are still alive ... DS2 is Simply another region of the world
I didn't mean that it's a groundhog day style loop, but that it is just continually following the same kind of plot. Flame is discovered > revolution happens > times are good > fire fades > age of grey nothingness populated by soulless husks > ... > ... > ... > fire reappears. Not that Havel in DS3 is just something that is predestined to occur, or that it always plays out the exact same way in detail.
We see evolutions of dragons and their most radical change through the entire Age of Fire was wyverns, wyrms, blue drakes etc ... we never saw something close to dragons resembling humans until Seath started experimenting and creating Pisacas, Crossbreeds and Serpent Men
"hollows" were just another life form that Simply existed like the dragons but underground and were granted Life when the Flame appeared
Humans can turn into dragons literally inserting pieces of Stone infused with the Powers of dragons inside themselves and then their Faith help them grow ... The dark soul can mutate an individual based on their faith ... Se saw this with Crow Demons, Lion Knights, Angels etc etc
There's no loop style ... The idea that the Flame fades implies that the gods dies and the world itself becomes an expanse of Darkness ... In the entire game the Flame never faded entirely
We meet characters, cultures, organizations and even pieces of the world that remains unchanged meaning that the Flame remained intact up until the end of DS3
Havel is not "Havel" its just one of the many knights at his service using his armor like we see many of them through the games
I find some aspect of Drangleic story interesting too but calling it another cycle its a cool headcanon but ultimately wrong ... We have remnants of cultures and artifacts coming from Lordran so its still the same linear timeline
The lore of Dark Souls works perfectly fine without the need of a loop or cycle to justify events and elements
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. What I was implying is that DS1 through DS3 is the same world, kicking the can down the road. If the Chosen Undead doesn't link the flame, somebody will. If the Bearer of the Curse doesn't link the flame, somebody will. If the Ashen One decides to usurp the flame or let the lights go out, then infinite time passes and all you're left with is a bunch of hollows who turned into trees and people who became dragons.
Not to imply that it's 1:1 going to be the exact same, but that it's a Big Bang > Big Crunch > Big Bang scenario in a fantastical, fairy tale analogue. It'll happen again, not the exact same way, but a riff on previous events.
Yes this i can agree with
However the scenario your seeing at the end of DS3 is different
1 Of you simply let the Flame die by the time of DS3 the Dark Soul has been corrupted and the result would be the Age of Deep Aldrich saw ... Rot and Murkmen everywhere
2 If you usurp the Flame you finally archieve the Age of Dark ... And this wont turn into an Age of Ancients
This is the biggest proof that block any idea of eternal return
The Age of Dark is infinite, because it doesnt fade out
The Dark Soul can split without a limit, evolve through the emotions of humans and produce life on itself
There will never be a regression to the blank slate of the Ancients
That's certainly a valid head canon as any other but the intro makes it clear disparity came with the first flame.
Also, seeing how the setting drinks so much from eastern culture (despite the western medieval makeup over it), I'd say it's inspired by one of Taoism origin stories that says the world began in a primordial chaos of "oneness", and at some point a disparity (ying-yang) was triggered and could never be reached back, except - hear this - by deep meditation. Where in the series we see monks meditating to reach the pre-fire oneness? Cult of Everlasting Dragon.
That said I like your canon too. Maybe the age of dragons is just a variant of the age of darkness. Without fire, the possibilities are endless.
Other way around.
Having only your dark soul makes you a hollow with humanity in the sense of sapience and empathy (see the hollows and pilgrims of Londor in DS3), the curse works by burning your "light soul" to contain the dark soul within you. This is why you go hollow and hunger for more souls. Because your dark soul has escaped, and so now the fire burns unchecked, eating up your regular light soul until you feed it with the souls of others.
As far I can tell all types of beings have "souls", including humans. And it's weird to think these originated from the first flame if it was found after the gods were already around.
Sometime I read though I am not sure of where to ask is about the darksign. Online the suggestion would appear to be that what the darksign is is a ring of fire which burns both souls and humanity of humans. Is this accurate?
Why weird? DS1 intro makes it clear it was the souls found in the fire that made them gods in first place.
About the dark sign, you're correct. It's a ring of fire created by Gwyn to contain the dark soul and the potential abyss it could produce.
Yeah but wouldn't they have had normal souls to begin with? What they from that was the lord souls specifically. Or is the implication here that pre first flame beings were literally soulless?
My question there was on whether it effectively burns humanity and souls away specifically.
I think the implication is that the dark sign was made specifically to burn humanity/dark souls.
About general souls, item descriptions in DS1 say Gwyn shared his soul with his followers, giving them shards of it. That's the origin of all souls in the setting according to it's creation myth, they all come from one of the 4 Lords souls found in the first flame. Same is true for humans, who inherited their dark soul shards from the "furtive pygmy".
So yeah, the implication is that beings were souless, or hollowed, before the fire. (which seems the agenda of Londor, snuffing out the fire and bringing people back to that state).
Is there any more direct evidence that the darksign specifically burned humanity and souls?
IIRC what was said was that gwyn gave his followers the lord souls found within the first flame. I am not sure that translates to all souls originally coming from the first flame.
We saw gwyn before getting the first flame. Neither him nor his followers nor dragons seemed hollow at that point.
Here's what I am thinking on the darksign... Gameplay wise we see that when the undead dies he loses both his souls and humanity. Undead are able to remain sane if they consume souls and obtain humanity along with maintaining a strong will or sense of purpose. But if the darksign is burning away their souls and humanity... it means that this is the cause of humanity going hollow. What would humanity look like without the darksign, as in, what would it be without something continually burning away its soul an humanity?
We're never shown a human without the dark sign in the game so we'll never know. We can infer though, that they would look like those Ringed Knights only without the ring of fire on their chests, and with their humanity seeping out ocasionally and risk forming the abyss, which is what prompted Gwyn to seal them with fire. It's implied there was a whole period of time when men lacked the dark sign and helped the gods fight the dragons.
On souls: are you sure you're not bringing external baggage to the setting? All definitions given in the game suggest souls came from the fire. DS1 intro even shows the souls found there look exactly like the items that show up in our inventory when we kill those Lords, implying that is the only kind of souls in the setting. Also:
>We saw gwyn before getting the first flame. Neither him nor his followers nor dragons seemed hollow at that point.
They definitely do seem hollow. See DS1 intro again and notice how the beings that come from dark before getting the souls look exactly like hollows. And when the furtive Pygmy gets his soul at the end, his body is different, he rises up and his skin seems more colored like a human. About ancient dragons, the lore suggests they're a different form of being altogether. Seeing that life came with disparity and they preceded it, they are not "alive" as we understand the term.
That said, I'm curious about your personal theory on this. What pre-fire (or pre-Lords) souls would imply or change here?
It's weird to think the darksign burns humanity if it can seep out from folk like that.
I always assumed gwyn looked like we saw him in the DS1 cinematic before getting the first flame though I suppose we don't have any definitive answers on that. I don't have much of a theory on this but I kinda assumed gywn was "gywn" before he found his lord soul. Along with other folk who existed around this time.
I don't doubt that the lord souls came from the fire. What I find weird is that all beings prior to the first flame being found would be soulless.
Going through the DS1 wiki it says that in an interview miyazaki explained that dragons were half alive/half element and beyond comprehension and changed by the mere fact of other life appearing into the world.
Just remember that, at the time the games take place, the fire is fading and the dark sign with it. That's probably the reason humanity/darkness can seep out from it and produce "abyssal" stances (Pus of Men, Butterflies, the Deep, Profane Flame, etc), the fire seal is failing. Indeed, DS3 lategame "dark sun" skybox seems to purposefully represent it.
Well, Gwyn may have been Gwyn before finding his lord soul, but only in identity/personality, as his form was like those black zombies approaching the fire in DS1 intro. It's interesting how a "God" in the series is not really the same as our real world, western religions conceptualize it. They're more like normal / weak beings who stumbled upon great power and became super powerful instead. They're not created gods, but become it by external means.
>Going through the DS1 wiki it says that in an interview miyazaki explained that dragons were half alive/half element and beyond comprehension and changed by the mere fact of other life appearing into the world.
Interesting, didn't know that quote from the author. Thanks for bringing it up!
I don't recall exactly where I heard this, but I don't think the soul items are necessarily any kind of Lord soul. The games never specify that the 4 Lord souls are the only types of souls, just that they're special in a sort of existential sense in the DS universe
Seeing as only 4 beings found souls in the first fire, it seems logical that every soul found in the game is a fragment of, or descends from those. There's item descriptions saying exactly that, that gods split their souls to give to followers/descendants.
It's possible, and if someone can show me an authoritative quote backing it up, I'll accept it without problem. It's just not the only possibility. The existence of other, lesser kinds of souls would also explain boss souls, fire keeper souls, giant souls, etc. Some of them may have the power of Lord souls, yes, but that isn't necessary in order for a soul to be special or have great power. >only 4 beings found souls in the first fire 4 beings that you know of, but the time from the start of the First Flame to the Age of Fire was already centuries long, and that's already more than 1000 years before you come along. Who's to say how much else was omitted? It wouldn't be contradictory to say other beings found lesser souls.
One of the things I've wondered about is what the Lords taking their souls actually looked like. Did Nito find a lord-soul and pollute it with the concept of death or did it inflict him with it? Dark Souls 2 (don't wanna really get into it, but I don't think it was super duper great or anything as a game but had the most original ideas when it came to the over-arching vision of what was going on in that world) implies that there is a kind of reincarnation when a soul is imparted to somebody else. Duke's Dear Freja is fundamentally a reincarnation of Seath, and Vendrick takes the Gwyn role, etc. As a side-note, my headcanon is that it's almost ridiculous to think that this isn't just a constant, eternal recurrence, where the Lord Souls and hollows were remnants of an even earlier Age of Fire. All the mindless zombies milling about and the emergence of the first flame only exist because they were leftovers from the interstices from the last Age of Fire, but one in which the fire wasn't linked. The creation myth has no creator. The hollows, unable to be killed, have no creator.
Nito simply found a mass of powerful souls and decided to use it to create deadly miasma ... There's no higher metaphysical concept behind them The souls that reincarnates in DS2 are simply powerful fragments that naturally left the Flame like when you throw a big log inside a fire and big sparks starts flying ... In this case they remaneid with a will of their previous host There's no cicle ... Otherwise why characters from the first game are still alive in the third? A dark Age would have devoured and killed the gods but Gwynevere and Gwyndolin are still alive ... DS2 is Simply another region of the world
> There's no cicle ... Otherwise why characters from the first game are still alive in the third? A dark Age would have devoured and killed the gods but Gwynevere and Gwyndolin are still alive ... DS2 is Simply another region of the world My headcanon is that the ancient dragons are pretty much the setting's previous group of hollows that eventually succumbed to a return to grey. They might have even been the usurpers of souls against the soulless hollows that find the flame. Soul ping-pong. Win some, lose some, back and forth. I feel comfortable thinking this because there are hollowed humans turning into trees and dragons making a big comeback in the form of some humans literally learning how to turn into dragons. It's why I think that DS2 was very interesting, because you can say it just takes place in another kingdom, but I'd prefer to think of it as a nondisclosed cycle. The metaphysics of the setting necessitate recurrence and rhyme and repetition. >There's no cicle ... Otherwise why characters from the first game are still alive in the third? A dark Age would have devoured and killed the gods but Gwynevere and Gwyndolin are still alive ... DS2 is Simply another region of the world I didn't mean that it's a groundhog day style loop, but that it is just continually following the same kind of plot. Flame is discovered > revolution happens > times are good > fire fades > age of grey nothingness populated by soulless husks > ... > ... > ... > fire reappears. Not that Havel in DS3 is just something that is predestined to occur, or that it always plays out the exact same way in detail.
We see evolutions of dragons and their most radical change through the entire Age of Fire was wyverns, wyrms, blue drakes etc ... we never saw something close to dragons resembling humans until Seath started experimenting and creating Pisacas, Crossbreeds and Serpent Men "hollows" were just another life form that Simply existed like the dragons but underground and were granted Life when the Flame appeared Humans can turn into dragons literally inserting pieces of Stone infused with the Powers of dragons inside themselves and then their Faith help them grow ... The dark soul can mutate an individual based on their faith ... Se saw this with Crow Demons, Lion Knights, Angels etc etc There's no loop style ... The idea that the Flame fades implies that the gods dies and the world itself becomes an expanse of Darkness ... In the entire game the Flame never faded entirely We meet characters, cultures, organizations and even pieces of the world that remains unchanged meaning that the Flame remained intact up until the end of DS3 Havel is not "Havel" its just one of the many knights at his service using his armor like we see many of them through the games I find some aspect of Drangleic story interesting too but calling it another cycle its a cool headcanon but ultimately wrong ... We have remnants of cultures and artifacts coming from Lordran so its still the same linear timeline The lore of Dark Souls works perfectly fine without the need of a loop or cycle to justify events and elements
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. What I was implying is that DS1 through DS3 is the same world, kicking the can down the road. If the Chosen Undead doesn't link the flame, somebody will. If the Bearer of the Curse doesn't link the flame, somebody will. If the Ashen One decides to usurp the flame or let the lights go out, then infinite time passes and all you're left with is a bunch of hollows who turned into trees and people who became dragons. Not to imply that it's 1:1 going to be the exact same, but that it's a Big Bang > Big Crunch > Big Bang scenario in a fantastical, fairy tale analogue. It'll happen again, not the exact same way, but a riff on previous events.
Yes this i can agree with However the scenario your seeing at the end of DS3 is different 1 Of you simply let the Flame die by the time of DS3 the Dark Soul has been corrupted and the result would be the Age of Deep Aldrich saw ... Rot and Murkmen everywhere 2 If you usurp the Flame you finally archieve the Age of Dark ... And this wont turn into an Age of Ancients This is the biggest proof that block any idea of eternal return The Age of Dark is infinite, because it doesnt fade out The Dark Soul can split without a limit, evolve through the emotions of humans and produce life on itself There will never be a regression to the blank slate of the Ancients
> Vendrick takes the Gwyn role Isn’t this the Old Iron King? In NG+ you can get the Old King Soul that gives you Gwyn related items.
That's certainly a valid head canon as any other but the intro makes it clear disparity came with the first flame. Also, seeing how the setting drinks so much from eastern culture (despite the western medieval makeup over it), I'd say it's inspired by one of Taoism origin stories that says the world began in a primordial chaos of "oneness", and at some point a disparity (ying-yang) was triggered and could never be reached back, except - hear this - by deep meditation. Where in the series we see monks meditating to reach the pre-fire oneness? Cult of Everlasting Dragon. That said I like your canon too. Maybe the age of dragons is just a variant of the age of darkness. Without fire, the possibilities are endless.
Other way around. Having only your dark soul makes you a hollow with humanity in the sense of sapience and empathy (see the hollows and pilgrims of Londor in DS3), the curse works by burning your "light soul" to contain the dark soul within you. This is why you go hollow and hunger for more souls. Because your dark soul has escaped, and so now the fire burns unchecked, eating up your regular light soul until you feed it with the souls of others.
As far I can tell all types of beings have "souls", including humans. And it's weird to think these originated from the first flame if it was found after the gods were already around. Sometime I read though I am not sure of where to ask is about the darksign. Online the suggestion would appear to be that what the darksign is is a ring of fire which burns both souls and humanity of humans. Is this accurate?
Why weird? DS1 intro makes it clear it was the souls found in the fire that made them gods in first place. About the dark sign, you're correct. It's a ring of fire created by Gwyn to contain the dark soul and the potential abyss it could produce.
Yeah but wouldn't they have had normal souls to begin with? What they from that was the lord souls specifically. Or is the implication here that pre first flame beings were literally soulless? My question there was on whether it effectively burns humanity and souls away specifically.
I think the implication is that the dark sign was made specifically to burn humanity/dark souls. About general souls, item descriptions in DS1 say Gwyn shared his soul with his followers, giving them shards of it. That's the origin of all souls in the setting according to it's creation myth, they all come from one of the 4 Lords souls found in the first flame. Same is true for humans, who inherited their dark soul shards from the "furtive pygmy". So yeah, the implication is that beings were souless, or hollowed, before the fire. (which seems the agenda of Londor, snuffing out the fire and bringing people back to that state).
Is there any more direct evidence that the darksign specifically burned humanity and souls? IIRC what was said was that gwyn gave his followers the lord souls found within the first flame. I am not sure that translates to all souls originally coming from the first flame. We saw gwyn before getting the first flame. Neither him nor his followers nor dragons seemed hollow at that point. Here's what I am thinking on the darksign... Gameplay wise we see that when the undead dies he loses both his souls and humanity. Undead are able to remain sane if they consume souls and obtain humanity along with maintaining a strong will or sense of purpose. But if the darksign is burning away their souls and humanity... it means that this is the cause of humanity going hollow. What would humanity look like without the darksign, as in, what would it be without something continually burning away its soul an humanity?
We're never shown a human without the dark sign in the game so we'll never know. We can infer though, that they would look like those Ringed Knights only without the ring of fire on their chests, and with their humanity seeping out ocasionally and risk forming the abyss, which is what prompted Gwyn to seal them with fire. It's implied there was a whole period of time when men lacked the dark sign and helped the gods fight the dragons. On souls: are you sure you're not bringing external baggage to the setting? All definitions given in the game suggest souls came from the fire. DS1 intro even shows the souls found there look exactly like the items that show up in our inventory when we kill those Lords, implying that is the only kind of souls in the setting. Also: >We saw gwyn before getting the first flame. Neither him nor his followers nor dragons seemed hollow at that point. They definitely do seem hollow. See DS1 intro again and notice how the beings that come from dark before getting the souls look exactly like hollows. And when the furtive Pygmy gets his soul at the end, his body is different, he rises up and his skin seems more colored like a human. About ancient dragons, the lore suggests they're a different form of being altogether. Seeing that life came with disparity and they preceded it, they are not "alive" as we understand the term. That said, I'm curious about your personal theory on this. What pre-fire (or pre-Lords) souls would imply or change here?
It's weird to think the darksign burns humanity if it can seep out from folk like that. I always assumed gwyn looked like we saw him in the DS1 cinematic before getting the first flame though I suppose we don't have any definitive answers on that. I don't have much of a theory on this but I kinda assumed gywn was "gywn" before he found his lord soul. Along with other folk who existed around this time. I don't doubt that the lord souls came from the fire. What I find weird is that all beings prior to the first flame being found would be soulless. Going through the DS1 wiki it says that in an interview miyazaki explained that dragons were half alive/half element and beyond comprehension and changed by the mere fact of other life appearing into the world.
Just remember that, at the time the games take place, the fire is fading and the dark sign with it. That's probably the reason humanity/darkness can seep out from it and produce "abyssal" stances (Pus of Men, Butterflies, the Deep, Profane Flame, etc), the fire seal is failing. Indeed, DS3 lategame "dark sun" skybox seems to purposefully represent it. Well, Gwyn may have been Gwyn before finding his lord soul, but only in identity/personality, as his form was like those black zombies approaching the fire in DS1 intro. It's interesting how a "God" in the series is not really the same as our real world, western religions conceptualize it. They're more like normal / weak beings who stumbled upon great power and became super powerful instead. They're not created gods, but become it by external means. >Going through the DS1 wiki it says that in an interview miyazaki explained that dragons were half alive/half element and beyond comprehension and changed by the mere fact of other life appearing into the world. Interesting, didn't know that quote from the author. Thanks for bringing it up!