endtherapture said:
Can someone explain to me some of the Dark Souls lore.
I understand the basic stuff like the war between the Dragons and the Lords, the Age of fire, why the Bed of Chaos was created etc. and that the bonfires are dying which is connected with the humans going hollow but I have several questions.
1. When did the undead apocalypse start? Was it a few years ago or was it like a thousand years in the past? Does the undead apocalypse only affect Lordran or does it affect the other cultures eg. Balder, Vinheim etc.?
2. Did the human nations rise after the age of Fire or were they present in the age of Dark? Do they all swear fealty to Anor Londo/Lordran and pay tribute or was Anor Londo/Lordran just a separate political entity?
3. Gwyn and his Silver./Black knights went hollow didn't they? So were they human or are they not human and some other humanoid entity instead? Were the Witches of Izalith human or were they also more than human but still humanoid?
4. Who were the "good" side in the war against the Everlasting Dragons? Cos the Lords did help the rise of humanity but Seath and Nito seemed like pretty evil things to me so I'm not sure if the Dragons are the good side or not...
Let's hope we can have some cool discussion/debate on these points!
In order as I understand it anyway...
1. It started when Gwyn fed himself to the flame and linked the fire which was at least 1000 years before the game but the flow of time is distorted so time doesn't actually mean that much(For example you summoning Tarkus after he died. The undead apocalypse affects the entire world and has even ruined several nations. Most of the knights(The non black or silver ones) are actually knights from other nations that came seeking a cure to the undead curse only to fall and go hollow).
2. Humans as a species were only even created after the age of fire, the theory is that they were created by the furtive pygmy splitting up his lord soul(The dark soul) into fragments which became the humanity inside of humans. I don't know too much about it but I think that a lot of human nations worshipped the lords as Gods with Anor Londo as their capital, however I don't think they all served under Gywn as his personal army or anything, kinda like medieval Europe worshipping Christianity and the Vatican but not actually being directly under the popes command.
3. Neither Gywn, nor his knights, nor the Witches of Izalith were human. Despite their varying sizes I am pretty sure that all the lords were actually giants but some were bigger than others. Gwyn simply burnt up, his body is all that is left and is an empty shell of him. His black knights were all burned alive when he linked the fire and their bodies are pretty much just the armour being inhabited by disembodied spirits. The reason Ciaran is human sized IMO is because she worked as an assassin for Gwyn who assassinated his enemies, I imagine that any enemies Gwyn had were mostly dissenting humans so she likely infiltrated human groups to seek out traitors. Seeing as someone the size of the other knights would easily stick out she probably somehow made herself smaller to fit in. She also fought with daggers so I would assume her fighting style favoured dodging blows and striking the enemy quickly or even avoiding combat completely so being smaller would not hinder in combat as much it would say Artorias or Ornstein, in many cases it may even be a benefit. Im not sure about the witches but the original witch of Izalith who took the lord soul is definatly a giant and not human, although seemingly human sized I am pretty sure that her daughters are also giants, just smaller ones.
4. There isn't really good and evil in Dark souls. The dragons were static and their age was an age of no disparity with nothing changing. Their was no colour, no life and death, no light and dark, everything just was. There were however two worlds here, there was the overworld where all the dragons lived while the giants lived underground in the "underworld"(Not meaning hell or anything, just that it was underground). They discovered the first fire which brought disparity and difference, there was no death and you could say that the everlasting dragons were like a dead race while the giants were now actually alive after discovering the first flame. They decided to take the overworld for themselves and went to war with the everlasting dragons, thanks to Seath betraying their weaknesses they were able to be victorious and took the overworld for themselves.
They then began the age of fire. There wasn't really a good side and a bad side, the dragons age ended and the giants/Lords began. As far as I know there isn't enough information to determine whether the giants were cruelly oppressed by the dragons or anything like that; though the fact they lived underground but then wanted to take the overworld implies that they may have been forced to live down there due to the dragons but im not sure.
They did commit genocide and nearly wipe out every last one of the everlasting dragons so you could say they went overboard and were evil but that's still stretching it a bit as the dragons may have done the same if they won.
endtherapture said:
Cool answers and debate, thanks
What is he furtive pigmy exactly? I know it's in the intro cinematic but is it in game at any point?
The furtive pigmy is a giant, I think he was a deformed giant who may have been shunned but at the very least didn't seem to like contact with the others. He found the 4th lord soul within the flames, the one he found was the Dark soul. While the other 3 lords worked together to take down the dragons and then create the age of fire, the pygmy didn't involve himself at all with anyone else and was completely forgotten. However the theory is that he fragmented and split up his dark soul to create humanity, the black sprites that are humanity in game are thought to be pieces of the dark soul.
As far as I can tell the dark soul seems to be able to continue multiplying it's fragments infinitely. Now it's not like every human as the power of a lord or anything but as seen during the game both lore wise and gameplay wise humanity is a highly valued resource. The lords did discover however that humanity can feed the bonfires/First flame to keep it burning so it's suspected by some that the lords were behind the undead curse to keep humans tied to the bonfires so that they kept feeding the flame. It's an interesting area to explore to be sure as what if humans were able to keep the flame burning with a renewable source?
Also I nearly forgot to mention but a lot of people believe that Manus(The boss at the end of the DLC, the primordial human) is actually the furtive pygmy. Im not sure how this one actually works and im hoping someone in this thread can enlighten me. As far as I can tell perhaps splitting up his souls so much caused to go mad and devolve into what he is when you encounter him.
