COMFY DARK SOULS LORE THREAD

can we discuss level up wives?

>pic related best girl

They've shown there's many of them, and people can become them if they try.

What does becoming a fire keeper mean? What does it do to you? What do the eyes allow you to see? Why can't they die? Are yuria and her sisters all level up girls?

We know they came from the dark, or at least can see it. I think that in ds3 the eyes give her back memories of previous cycles, or at least see what lies beyond.

Ludleth found a way to make people into fire keepers, probably using whatever power vendrick stole from the Giants.

tfw shitposting gets a hundred replies but a lore thread dies immediately with no posts

No joke.

>lords of the memen

If meme means better than Soulsborne, you're right.

Why must you be like this? Surely you know that that opinion is false.

Lords of the fallen sucks because it's bland as fuck.
Literally every major enemy is a brown demon in armor.
And the action is more slow paced than Demon Souls

>"Guys! Let's discuss Dark Souls lore!"

Meanwhile Lords has an actual narrative and actual lore.

Stay cucked.

>What do the eyes allow you to see?

The eyes allow you to see a world without fire, born of betrayal.

They are very clear about this.

Floaty garbage movement isn't realistic, and Lords doesn't feel slow unless you're encumbered.

>Meanwhile Lords has an actual narrative and actual lore.
>narrative
>lore

>WE KILLED GOD BUT HES STILL PISSED OFF SO HIS CORPSE IS SUMMONING DEMONS FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION TO RESURRECT HIM.

yeah ... right.... story of the year...

Jesus Christ.

That's not even the story.

Are you retarded?

I'm not taking your bait.
That's literally the story.

It's too hard to participate in a lore discussion when i haven't played the game in so long.
I'm more familiar with Bloodborne's lore however, even though it's far more intricate.

firekeepers serve as vessels for their bonfires, their souls being a sink for all the humanity offered to them for kindling purposes, and as such become the physical manifestation of their bonfire. kill the firekeeper and the bonfire dies.

this is what they mean when they say that firekeepers "come from the dark," because of how their souls are effectively humanity banks.

>Bloodborne's lore however, even though it's far more intricate.

>AYYLMAOS TRAPPED YOU IN A POCKET DIMENSION NIGHTMARE WORLD

Such deep lore

Obviously it's more than that. Why though? Do the eyes allow you to see into the future or the past?

I think it's interesting, because it'll help explain whether or not the events of ds3 are truly consequential of if it's just another cycle.

When you give her the eyes, she talks to you like you're the oldest of companions

Not even close.

You simplified and twisted one small aspect of the story in a major way and claimed it's the entire narrative.

firekeepers have been granted the magical ability to shit out a magical log that keeps the bonfires lit
they always have an injury of sorts because the process of enabling them to shit out bonfire logs hurts them in a way

So I got a theory about our favorite masked Hollow. As we all know, Hollowing causes insanity and dementia. The Mirrah Greatsword, now called the Hollowslayer, is transposed from the Curse Rotted Greatwood whom resides over the pit of hollows headquarters of the Mound Makers. The Mirrah Set is recovered in the Undead Settlement and you get her mask from trading Pickle Pee a Vertebra Shackle of all things.

Lucatiel became a founding member of the Mound Maker covenant after she went fully hollow in Drangleic all those years ago.

The fire keeper in ds3 is immortal and can't die though.

Never ever

there is literally no escape from the cycle, you should have learned by now that you cannot fight entropy. just let the world die as intended so that a new healthy one might replace it

There is no humanity in Dark Souls 3.
You're not a Chosen Undead
You're Unkindled Ash

I'm presuming in the cycle of Dark Souls 3, Firekeepers tend to the Firelink Shrine, and they ring the Bell of Awakening if a lord refuses to man up and do his job.

now I need some fan art of a hollowed lucatiel sat on a pile of bones looking bored

>there is no humanity in Dark Souls 3

>there is no humanity in Dark Souls 3

The answer is in the betrayal ending.
When the firekeeper takes ahold of the first flame, and then you kill her and steal it.
The eyes allow her to see the future that you are going to betray her, so she's like "oh it was you all along", but she just accepts her fate as part of an endless cycle, and goes along with it.

In other words. These masked firekeepers are agents of the primordial serpents, with the main purpose of keeping the cycles going forever

JUST EAT THE FUCKING EFFIGY LUCATIEL GOD DAMN IT I SWEAR THAT YOU'LL FEEL BETTER JUST TRUST ME FUCK

I want to understand the link between humans, trees and the dragons because there definitely is one.
We see humans transforming into both trees and dragons, and we see hollows on the high wall praying to both the tree-humans and the drakes.
Finally, the fading of the flame and the undead curse made it that humans are pretty much everlasting, similar to the ancient dragons.

Also why are there undead dogs? Were they branded with the curse too? How does that make any sense?

I think that's the point of ds3 though. Every iteration of the cycle they get closer and closer to getting out. Sulyvahn, Aldia and the profaned flame are one attempt to do this.

>can't reverse entropy

The profaned flame can't go out, so they've done something right

I think the events of ds3 are such that this is truly the make or break point, the ringed city should elaborate on this.

First of all, you don't go feeding human dregs to the bonfire.
Second of all, the word "dregs" means "leftovers", literally the most worthless part of something that you throw away.

Think of them as you would think of slag in a smelting process. They're the shitty impurities left over after a humanity has already been burned up.

So what's the lore deal with the Serpents so far in 3? Or at least, what's been discovered about the plot in general in 3 from Ariandel.

>hollows are pretting everlasting similar to ancient dragons
hollows are the "base" form of what we would call life in the absence of the flame -- hollows existed before fire, just look at the hollows coming out to claim the Lord souls in the opening to DaS1. In the absence of flame, when the world reverts back to grey, hollows remain behind just as before.

>why are their undead dogs
everything hollows eventually, humans are just the first to go, hence why they are called Augurs (aka Harbingers) of darkness.

Also tree-hollows seem to be Abyss-tainted, given their connections to the Pilgrim Butterflies and Pus of Men, and wild Lord Souls (think Chaos) seem to turn shit into trees.

I think the link is primarily due to the fire, and it's ability to create.

When you hand the izalith pyromancy tome over, you get told to fear the fire, and that who is to know if the bonfire flame is any different

The witches didn't understand the power and created the demons, but the same power was used to create humanity. The power of the fire stems from dragons and the archtrees, just used in different ways

>theyre the shitty impurities that are left over after a humanity has been burned up
no, because you grab these things directly out of a person's body, not out of a bonfire. If anything, the remnants of a burned humanity would be Embers (you know, since those are actually aflame).

all the lore surrounding the Deep points towards Human Dregs and the Deep being the most fundamental, heaviest, core elements of a person's humanity that sink down to the roots of the world and stagnate quietly in anticipation of the flames fading.

The Sable Church of Londor worships or works for the snakes.
If you kill Lydia, she says "Kaathe, I have failed you"

Friede somehow lost her faith in the church, and this is what transported her to the painted world. Her trusty knight Vilhelm followed her.

If you're on the path to becoming lord of hollows, and you encounter vilhelm, he basically tells you to fuck off back to lydia because you still have a purpose.

That's basically it.

Also, there is that half-snake statue on the wall after you kill friede, with no explanation.

I'm not going to get into all the Vaati autism, but there you have the basics.

What's the timeframe of dark souls 1, 2 and 3?

There is no link between humans and dragons. Whatsoever, that is why the idea of fusing them together is so fascinating between the scientists of Soulsworld.

The only 3 successful hybrids (Priscilla, Shanalotte and Oceiros) are all fairly powerful super beings.

>Whatsoever

except dark souls 3 basically confirms and reconfirms that humans eventually turn into dragons, that's where they came from

the cycle never ends, probably never had a beginning

At least a few hundred years each

STOP FORGETTING YORSHKA

SHE EXISTS

>all the lore surrounding the Deep points towards Human Dregs and the Deep being the most fundamental, heaviest, core elements of a person's humanity

We've known since DS1 that humanity is born of the Abyss (it's basically fragments of The Dark Soul that shattered into a million pieces).

And once again, "dregs" literally means garbage or leftovers.

So if dregs are heavy enough that they return to the abyss, that should tell you that the abyss is the most garbage place of all.

>except dark souls 3 basically confirms and reconfirms that humans eventually turn into dragons, that's where they came from
no

>humanity is born of the Abyss
wrong right off the bat, friend

Fact: the Abyss literally did not exist until Manus created it in Oolacile, uncounted generations after the Pygmy found the Dark Soul aka Humanity and split it among his new race. The Abyss is not "natural" humanity, it is a corrupting force that is basically the Darkness version of Chaos.

The word that you're looking to describe "natural" Humanity is the Deep.

Dark souls 1: first cycle through, fire has begun to fade for the first time

Dark souls 2: fire has been linked a few times since ds1, daughters of manus are emerging, and bearers of the curse are beginning to try and find a way out of it. See vendrick and Aldia. They got close, and were able to take something from the Giants that allowed for the ability to manipulate humanity. Potentially the beginning of the Sable Church, with the sisters potentially being the daughters of manus

Ds3: fire been linked numerous times since and is on its last legs, the time between needing to be linked is getting shorter and shorter, and the power required to link it is getting higher and higher. Lothric also refuses to link it. This is where you come in, at the final bit of the cycle. This is the last go around

>pic related best girl

Sorry, but I have to disagree user. However, you did pick the best fire keeper, just not best Souls girl.

I'm pretty sure Oceiros is a human that became a dragon continuing Big Hat Logan's research

Alright that makes sense then. Chances for them showing up in the final DLC looking good?

Would love to nestle by her bonfire

>didn't exist until manus created it

Unlikely. Kaathe was probably there chilling. Manus just found a way to access it, it was still around.

Literally this. It brings the story full circle.

It is consistent, relatively well written (in that it is simple and thematic, Gods defeat dragons, fear humans because they are their greatest enemy, humans start becoming dragons again when the Gods powers wane. I'm sure more "Gods" will arrive eventually ad infinitum) and makes perfect sense.

The Chosen Undead is sadly, canonically dead after the first game. The Bearer of the Curse feels more ambiguous because the very existence of the Crowns Trilogy says to me that that is the intended ending.

Think about the creation myth at the beginning of DS1.
If the birth of fire created disparity (heat vs cold, light vs dark), then before the fire, everything was in total parity.
Considering that time is simply a relative measurement of how something changes, then without change, time as we humans comprehend it itself did not exist.

Time before the fire would be comparable to time before the big bang.

In this sense, the dragons and trees are literally older than time itself.

No, they literally call him the "Father of the Abyss"

meaning that he created the Abyss, when his humanity went wild. Because that is what the Abyss is: wild/chaos Humanity

Hopefully bearer of the curse is the final boss/ leader of the Sable Church

Yeah somehow I didn't think about the link between the chaos flame and trees, specially considering the appearance of the bed of chaos.

>hollows are the "base" form of what we would call life in the absence of the flame
I don't know about this. In that cutscene, we only see the hollows after the first flame and after souls have flourished or whatever.
You can't reliably say they existed before the flame.

The path of the dragon is already one concrete link between dragons and humans.

how about you guys start actually justifying this idea that "humans become dragons when the flames fade"

Anyone have any thoughts on how individuals in ds3 are beginning to remember the cycles?

>Aldrich ruminated on the fading of the fire, and knew what he had to do
>giving the eyes to the fire keeper
>ludleth

It appears that they've done this a few times before, and are starting to understand and build on it. Why though? Why now are they beginning to see across the cycles?

>you can't reliably say that they existed before the flame
they come from the Dark, and so when the flames die and all that is left is Dark, they will be what remains. Moreover, they are the natural state of anything without a Soul, and we've already seen precedent in the NK fight that even Gods hollow out given time. Therefore, when the fires die out all that will be left is hollows

I feel like it's just shoddy writing honestly. Like how Anri and Horace are hunting Aldrich....even though Aldrich has been dead for centuries until like, a week ago.

>Chances for them showing up in the final DLC looking good?

I've gotten burned too many times, so I'm going to say no.
At least, not in the form that we want them to.

When you kill Lydia, she says in english "Kaathe I have failed you"
But in the JAPANESE version of the game, this translates to something more like "Kaathe, I have dishonored your memory"
So there's also the theory that the snakes are already dead.

If this is the case, then the soul of the snakes will simply be reborn into another body.

The soul of Artorias reincarnated into the Abyss Watchers
The soul of Sif reincarnated into the Old Wolf of Farron, or the wolf boss in Ariandel.

Likely the soul of the snakes will just be reincarnated into a new boss that has no emotional attachment.

So you will kill them, but you will feel no sense of closure to the series.

We do we get to play Dragon Souls? A game where the Deep begins to raise and bring with it terror. A game where humans are just beginning their evolution to their final, Dragon forms.

Where you play as a massive, lumbering beast among the ruins of man, growing and becoming more powerful as you face off against the darkest depths of the Deep that creep upon your land.

Aldia is influencing things from behind the scenes.

That or it could be that the curse is being undone by the sheer amount of civilizations it has swallowed. Think of the Dreg Heap, just swollen with ruined kingdoms. The more shit that came before, the greater likelyhood of discovering something from the past.

Nah unsure if it is just shoddy writing. Horace and anri are both hollows and are in contact with the Sable Church.

The Sable Church seems to have the best understanding of the cycles, and can retain info across the cycles. It makes sense that if anyone understood what was going on it'd be them. Also is anri a firekeeper?

>in the JP version of the game she says that "Kaathe I have dishonored your memory"
how can this be true, souls games have literally always have exclusive english VA, so there is no "Japanese version" to mistranslate from, it was in English to start with

Who was the real villain here? What is the real story?
Can we assume its Creighton because he's a bad guy in DS3?

Also how Anri and Horace are apparently two children who escaped being fed to Aldrich, and yet needed to be reminded by a pilgrim of where Irithyll was.

Everything about that pair is weird.

But the way it is described in the DS1 intro, dark also didn't exist before the first flame. Light and Dark are one of the disparities created by it, including life and death, heat and cold.

>Horace and anri are both hollows and are in contact with the Sable Church.
Not really, they are never aware of the londor pilgrims that are hunting them.
The special thing about Anri is that unlike you, she is not unkindled ash, she is a hollow that still retains her sanity

maybe, but the state of not having a soul is one that exists whether you're in the Dark or Grey, and we know what not having a soul looks like, and it's being a hollow. Think of it this way: Light == normal life. NOT-Light (either dark or grey) == hollow

Whats the real story on these two?

>I feel like it's just shoddy writing honestly. Like how Anri and Horace are hunting Aldrich....even though Aldrich has been dead for centuries until like, a week ago.

Anri and Horace are Unkindled Ash, just like you, and just like the lords.

ALL unkindled ash has the job of hunting down the lords. All the unkindled NPCs you encounter are on the same exact quest that you are on, they're just doing their own thing to achieve it.

>Anri is hunting down Aldrich
>Siegward is hunting down Yhorm
>Hawkwood is hunting down the Abyss Watchers
>YOU are canonically the only one who survives to kill Lothric

Irithyll had been lost to time. Speak to greirat after you go to Irithyll and he talks about how you discovered the 'lost city of Irithyll' all in a days work

Aldrich was at the cathedral, so it makes sense that they'd need directions of some sort. It's like if someone asked you to find Atlantis

She claims to be unkindled.

Speak to yuria

>my companion travels with her now

Horace at the very least is

Hollowing isn't caused by the absence of a soul, it's the absence of humanity. You reverse hollowing by consuming humanity.

Yeah but Horace and Anri were from Irithyll. How could they not remember where it was? I guess you could say "lol hollowing" but its just weird.

and yet we can see very clearly that humans aren't the only things that hollow out

rats hollow
dogs hollow
gods hollow humans are just the first things to hollow, because they are the most intimately connected with Darkness and the fading flame. This is why in DaS2 humans/undead are called Augurs of darkness. An Augur is a harbinger. They're the metric by which everyone else judges "has the flame weakened enough to start being worried yet?"

Shit were they? Didn't know. When is this mentioned

I really doubt her, after all, when any unkindled 'expires' they leave ashes behind, in comparison, both anri and horace turn hollow and they are the only ones that do.

Yuria is referring to the pilgrim hiding from Anri whilst posing as a statue in irithyll

the companion that Yuria was talking about was the chameleon'd pilgrim that you find in the Church of Yorshka, not Horace

What I don't get is the undercurse/darksign distinction

In ds2, everyone has the undead curse, and the gaping hole that makes you hollow, but in ds3 you have to specifically get it

Why do only some people start with it

You also start with the Darksign in DaS3, the dark sigil is the item that converts you into a hollow

There's some recurring theme of a priestess on a mission, and a loyal knight who follows her into oblivion.

>Astraea and Garl
>Alva and Serrata
>Anri and Horace
>Irina and Eygon

I think that in both of the last cases, the loyal knight intentionally trapped the priestess, because he cared for her so much that he could not bear to see her purity tainted by the darkness.

>Eygon locked Irina in a cell to keep her safe.
>When you let her out, he's like "well she's your problem now, but I'm keeping an eye on you"
>If you teach his waifu dark magic he spergs out and attacks you.

>Horace got Anri lost in the catacombs labyrinth by fucking around with the glowing marker stones.
>He wanted to keep her from encountering Wolnir in the abyss, and finding the dark pyromancy book.

These knight faggots and their waifus I swear.

well in DaS3 you start off with the Darksign so you're definitely an Undead. However, you're not a "natural" undead, you've been revived by Bell necromancy and that comes with side effects.

Now, recognize what it means for a human to hollow: they have to lose their humanity by dying or having it sucked out of them. As an Unkindled, you are literally incapable of hollowing normally. What does this mean? The most logical explanation is that whatever the Bell did to you keeps your Humanity trapped within you, imprisoning it somehow such that no matter how many times you die, it never leaves you.

where does the dlc fits on the lore?

>Irithyll had been lost to time. Speak to greirat after you go to Irithyll and he talks about how you discovered the 'lost city of Irithyll' all in a days work

This.
You only discovered Irithyll because it was one of the few places left in the world, and it drew closer to all the other remaining places.

which dlc

>tfw reading the firekeepers soul

"she returned from the abyss, and brought great comfort to the bearer of the curse"

tfw Shanalotte, my pure dragon waifu, is dead

both, DS3 I ment

...

>As an Unkindled, you are literally incapable of hollowing normally. What does this mean? The most logical explanation is that whatever the Bell did to you keeps your Humanity trapped within you, imprisoning it somehow such that no matter how many times you die, it never leaves you.

More likely that you don't have any humanity to begin with, and you don't need humanity to sustain your form.

The world of Dark Souls was one of Cycles and they where suppose to repeat themselves over and over so in the beginning Darkness>Fog , Dragons and Arch trees>Age OF Fire and Gods>Darkness..... but Lord Gwyn fucked it all up.

Well, Ariandel is a side story in which Miyazaki screams at you that linking the fire is wrong, Ringed City seems to be about what happened to the pygmy introduced in DaS1

anyone who doesn't have their humanity is a hollow, this has been very clearly laid out since game 1 of the series. since you're very much not a hollow, you have your humanity

furthermore, when you get the Dark Sigil, you're oozing humanity out of your pores, so it's definitely there within you -- it just can't get out without some kind of tap drilling into your soul like the Sigil

The wait for the new dlc has been fairly long, hopefully it will be good

Might give this a try.

AoA was more about how usurping the flame was wrong, the base game does a plenty good job of explaining why continuing to link the flame is dumb

>painted world of ariandel

For whatever reason, friede quit the Sable Church and fled. The sisters are very powerful beings, and may be the daughters of Manus. She found ariandel, along with her trusted Knight beta. She fell for the painted worlds version of the bearer of the curse (father ariandel), and was content to stay with him.

Reminds me significantly of ds2 desu. After you beat the game and talk to emerald waifu, she says she'll stay with you until hope had finally withered, very much reminiscent of what friede says after you unlock ariandels chamber. She is content to stay in the rotting world.

Friede is attached to ariandel, and is probably his waifu. She defends him, and it enrages him when you kill her in the first phase.

As short as the dlc was, I think it was an excellent story