u/Jam_99420

This is a recurring theme all throughout DS1, but is never referred to directly by any character [as far as I recall], and is seldom talked about in the lore community. We see numerous instances of people, normally hollow “corpses” trapped inside barrels, or sometimes large jars. These “corpses” will flop out of the jars/barrels when broken, and invariably yield a soul item. This item can be almost anything, with examples including humanity sprites, clothing, transient curses, etc. There are also other examples: Laurentius has been trapped inside a barrel when we first encounter him in the depths. The male undead merchant sits next to a broken barrel, which probably once contained “Yulia”, although he seems to be too hollow to realise that she isn’t there anymore. In blighttown some of the regular enemies are hidden inside jars, and will attack you if the jar is broken. Miyazaki revisits this theme years later in Elden Ring’s dlc expansion, with the “jar saints” which appear to have been an experimental attempt at blending people together in a jar.

Interpretations:

It is immediately obvious that these barrels and jars are being used as a form of restraint, and so we might say that this is a low-tech measure invented to prevent a hollowing person from becoming a danger to others. In other words, it is a poor man’s equivalent of the undead asylum. But barrels and jars are typically used for storage, especially of food and water. Given that souls are a form of currency in the world of Dark Souls, it may be that the people who are trapped in these barrels are being stored “for later”, and that the people inside are essentially livestock. This certainly appears to be the case for poor Laurentius, but I suspect that there is more to it than this.

In the depths we also encounter an enemy that appears to be a gloopy and rotting amalgamated mass of human flesh which is animated by whatever soul power it still contains. A similar enemy is also found in the lower [flooded] section of new londo ruins, and the “phalanx” encountered in the painted world may also be a play on the same idea. In Elden Ring there is a version of this enemy which drops an item called “congealed putrescence”, and you later fight a boss called “putrescence knight”. I suspect this to be a reference to an alchemical process known as putrefaction, or fermentation, which was thought to be a necessary step in the creation of the philosopher’s stone, just as the hornsent of Elden Ring are attempting to create “saints” by sealing human flesh in jars to putrefy. Indeed, alchemical manuscripts sometimes include images of little people inside glass vials, notably the homunculus which is created largely via putrefaction. Here is Paracelsus’s method [be warned, it is disgusting] for creating a homunculus:

“That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb ["venter equinus", meaning "warm, fermenting horse dung"], or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.”

And it should probably be noted that Elden Ring also features a “blood version” of the slime enemy [with the “putrescence version” found only in the dlc], and that these enemies are similar to the mimics [some of which also resemble the phalanx] which can turn themselves into duplicate people. Indeed, the mimics appear to be liquid mercury, and refer to it’s alchemical role as the prima materia [first matter], the primordial and foundational substance out of which all things are made.

So in Dark Souls it’s possible that one of the reasons the undead may have been sealed in these jars may have been for the sake of putrefaction. In other words to accelerate the hollowing process, as well as the stagnation of the dark soul within the person, and therefore create a more potent “product”.

This is something I’ve seen mentioned on this subreddit: that you can save Solaire by not talking to him until after you’ve killed the bug which drops the Sunlight Maggot, since he won’t move from Undead Burg until you’ve spoken to him. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to farm 30 humanity for the Daughter of Chaos Covenant, and you also won’t have to abandon any other covenant that you may have joined. But I have a few questions, so if you’ve done this before then maybe you could help to clarify a few things.

The first question is simply: does this actually work? Will Solaire stay put in the Burg if I don’t talk to him?

But the main thing I wanted to ask is how it affects his questline after you’ve done this. With the possible exception of his first encounter, Solaire tends to move around [as you progress through the game] regardless of whether or not you’ve spoken to him. So if I play through the whole game without talking to him, kill the Sunlight Maggot, and then go back to Burg and speak to him for the first time, where will he appear next? Will he jump straight to sitting dejectedly in the maggot corridor in Izalith/Demon Ruins? Or will he show up in Anor Londo first?

One final question is about if this is possible on NG+? That is to say, if I’ve already got the White Sign Soapstone, Solaire’s dialogue in the Burg is significantly abbreviated. So is the Soapstone itself the criteria which determines whether or not he leaves Burg? If the answer is yes then I’d expect Solaire to move on an NG+ playthrough regardless of whether or not I’ve spoken to him.

really didn't need that replenishment spell.

i've posted on r/summonsign as well but thought i'd try on here just in case. i'm on the stairs leading up to moonlight butterfly, summon me for the fight if you'd like for some good old jolly cooperation. i'm level 22 with a +5 sword, and playing on nintendo switch.

This is something that I’ve talked about in a much older post on this subreddit and became relevant again in a recent conversation. I realised that I had not fully explained it’s significance, and so this post aims to discuss in detail what the Kaoskampf is, why Miyazaki has used it in Dark Souls, and what it tells us about Gwyn’s character. This post will discuss concepts that have been completely abandoned by contemporary “western” culture, and so it is necessary for me to explain it all from scratch. However, if you can slog through my wall of text then I’m very confident that when we get to the section on the relevance of the Kaoskampf to Dark Souls, the conclusions will seem like a no-brainer. As a quick disclaimer I should say that this post is going to be discussing spiritual concepts that are taken seriously by certain contemporary religions, but it is not my intention to either promote or disparage any particular religion, or religious belief/idea. Rather, it is simply my intent to explain these ideas so that we can better understand what Dark Souls is about. Before I begin I’m going to include a few links to relevant resources:

My previous post on the subject [included purely for the sake of reference, you don’t need to read it in order to understand this post]:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarksoulsLore/comments/1l9vt8g/lore_discussion_1_the_descent_of_man/

Wikipedia article on the Kaoskampf:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaoskampf

Wikipedia article on the proto-indo-europeans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans#Culture

Trey the Explainer’s excellent video on the Kaoskampf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv1l2SqLb7Q&t=262s

In addition, I have included a number of images which may warrant explanation:

#1-Gwyn’s “war” against the ancient dragons as depicted in DS1’s opening cutscene. Note the use of lightning.

#2-Mesopotamian cylinder seal featuring a deity of uncertain identity fighting a serpent. Note the double-ended trident used to represent lightning as the deity’s weapon.

#3-Chalcidian hydria [ancient greek pottery] featuring Zeus fighting Typhon. Note again the lightning bolt represented as a double-ended trident-like object

#4-Tarhunna/Tarhunz/Teshub [hittite/hurrian storm god] and his son Sarruma fight Illuyanka/Hedammu. Note the circles [representing rocks] on top of the serpent and people standing on the flat surface, indicating the world resting upon the serpent.

#5-Egyptian papyrus depicting Set [a storm god] stabbing Apep with a spear so that Ra’s solar barque can pass safely through the underworld.

#6-Kassite “unfinished kudurru” on display in the Louvre.

#7-Kassite “unfinished kudurru”, detail of the three registers. Note the humans and mundane animals on the middle-layer, and abstractions of deities and mushushu dragons on the upper layer.

#8-Kassite “unfinished kudurru”, reverse view. Note the sun, moon, and star symbols on the layer representing the firmament.

#9-Kassite “unfinished kudurru”, detail of the upper register. Note the Serpent capping off the top of the stone, with it's head clearly visible on the register, indicating the immersion of the world within the cosmic ocean.

#10-Kassite “unfinished kudurru”, detail of the Serpent. Note the horns of a noble mushushu dragon, possibly indicating a recognition of the Serpent’s divinity. This contrasts against egyptian depictions, in which Apep is almost invariably shown being stabbed with numerous knives.

One final thing before I get started is a brief note on the word itself. Kaoskampf means “struggle against Kaos”, and Kaos is the ancient greek word from which we derive “chaos”, although the meaning has somewhat changed. In fact, you’ll usually see this word spelled as “chaoskampf”, but this is a mistake in the way that we’ve romanised the ancient greek language. Anytime you see the letter “ch” in an ancient greek word, it’s actually pronounced as a “k”, and the convention of romanising the letter in question as “ch” is apparently just a blunder. I tend to spell the ancient greek word Kaos with a k, partially because that’s closer to how it should be pronounced, but also because it helps to distinguish it from the modern concept of “chaos”, which is totally different. If that just sounds like pedantic blabbering to you then don’t worry about it. The question of spelling is not particularly relevant to any of the actual points made in this post.

Section #1: what is a Kaoskampf anyway?

To put it most simply, the Kaoskampf is a recurring mythological trope found in several ancient polytheistic cultures. It invariably features a lightning/storm god battling a gigantic serpent/dragon. The god is always victorious, with the serpent being subdued or destroyed. Very often [though not always] this happens as part of a creation myth, and the lightning god is then able to set himself up as the ruler of the universe once the serpent has been defeated. The serpent is often [though not always] described/depicted as encircling the entire world, sometimes sitting below the horizon, and is implied to be an obstacle which the gods must overcome before they are able to assert control over reality. Examples include:

Thor vs Jormungandr

Zeus vs Typhon

Tarhunna/Tarhunz vs Illuyanka

Teshub vs Hedammu

Marduk vs Tiamat

Hadad Ba’al vs Lotan

Yahweh vs Leviathan

Atum vs Apep

Indra vs Vritra

Susanoo vs Yamata no Orochi

The snake in these myths later becomes the basis for the concept of dragons as this trope is repeated on smaller scales, for example the story of St George and the Dragon is a repeat of the story of Perseus, Cetus, and Andromeda, which in turn is a repeat of the Kaoskampf. Based on the examples I’ve listed we can see an astonishingly broad geographic distribution for this myth, with examples found in locations as disparate as sweden, egypt, india, and even japan.

The myth is likely to have originated within the hypothetical “proto-indo-eurpoean” culture, which is believed to have inhabited regions close to the black sea. From there, the myths and language of this people-group have influenced the surrounding cultures via transmission, migration, conquest, etc. I’ve referred to the proto-indo-europeans as “hypothetical”, because the proposed existence of such a culture is largely based on retroactive examination of the footprint that it’s left within later cultures. We see that certain languages have specific commonalities and are clearly unifiable within a “language family”, and so a hypothetical “common ancestor” for them is proposed. Nevertheless there is a good amount of evidence, including genetic studies, which corroborates the proto-indo-eurpoean hypothesis. This would have been a prehistoric people-group, but they had developed agriculture, domesticated animals, and invented the wheel. To be clear, we are not talking about a single coherent nation, culture, or ethnicity in the conventional sense. This would instead have been a collection of groups, clans, tribes, etc, which possessed certain linguistic and cultural commonalities. This would certainly have included a Kaoskampf style creation myth, with a paternal “sky-father” deity who uses lightning to kill/subdue the serpent of the primordial waters.

Section #2: what is Kaos?

I’ve mentioned that our modern word “chaos” was originally an ancient greek word, but that the meaning has changed. To us, “chaos” means disorder, mess, anarchy, etc. However, this meaning is entirely secondary, so for the time being I’m going to ask you to disregard it entirely while we discuss it’s origin.

In the cosmology of most ancient cultures, regardless of how diverse their mythologies are, can be found a single commonality. Many ancient religious/mythological systems acknowledged a primordial time before the “creation” [a better word may be transformation] of the universe. In this state, all matter was homogenised as a single uniform reality, or substance, in which there are no differentiations. There is also no conventional time in the primordial state, it is an instantaneous eternity that lasts both forever and for no time at all. Sometimes this was imagined as a kind of empty void, but in the ancient near east it was invariably described as an “ocean” [I use the term “cosmic ocean” to distinguish this from the mundane ocean that we are familiar with] which contains nothing but water and extends infinitely in all directions. When the “creation” occurs, it is the substance of this cosmic ocean, or void, that is used as the raw material from which everything is made. So the “creation” is better understood as a reorganisation of the universe, since nothing actually gets created. The point is that everything that you’ve ever seen, heard, felt, experienced, etc, is [according to mystical philosophies] actually the primordial reality larping as a plurality of forms.

Now if you thought that the geographic distribution of the Kaoskampf trope was shocking then forget it. The concept of primordial reality is near universal. You literally find it all over the world, on every continent except antarctica. This is because it’s based on psychological experience, and all human beings share psychological commonalities regardless of culture. On one hand, the primordial reality is likely to be an abstraction of one’s condition prior to birth. Think about what you experienced before you were born and you’ll notice that it’s similar to this idea of a pre-existence of the universe in which time does not exist. But it’s also based on mystical experience, and this also explains the cultural universality of the idea because people may experience altered states of consciousness in similar ways. Alcohol provides an example which may be more relatable to contemporary society. It doesn’t matter where in the world you come from, if you get drunk then there is a certain way that your mind will be affected. For the same reason [shared psychology] mystics from all over the world claim that this primordial state of the universe is directly accessible in the here and now, within one’s own mind. This is because the “primordial reality” is not really primordial, but may better be described as the “underlying reality”, or even as the “ultimate reality”. All things that appear to exist are in fact arising from, and manifestations of, a unified substrate which underscores all of existence.

Now this primordial ultimate reality has gone by many different names throughout time and across all the different cultures that have incorporated it into their cosmologies, but the ancient greek word is Kaos. This, of course, is a far cry from the meaning of out modern word “chaos”, and so you may be able to see why I prefer to use two different spellings to help differentiate between these wildly disparate meanings. You may be wondering how such a drastic change in meaning has occurred, and I shall explain this across the next few sections. But it is important to note that this concept of primordial reality has been completely forgotten by contemporary “western” culture, such that I needed to explain the whole thing from scratch so that we can understand a first thirty seconds of a videogame cutscene.

Section #3: the Serpent of Kaos

I mentioned that in the ancient near east this underlying reality is imagined as a cosmic ocean, although this should be understood as symbolic, it’s not literal water. Water is formless and reflective. It can be calm or agitated, and can take any shape, but any shape it takes is invariably transient. It can become other things [such as steam or ice], but always returns to water. It can be clear and pure, or murky and unclean. It is everpresent in nature, flowing through the world and sustaining all living things. It is speculation on my part, but these may have been the reasons for an an ancient culture to have thought of water as an appropriate allegory for the ultimate reality. Nature itself functions like water, with it’s most fundamental substance [energy] flowing from one transient form to the next.

In terms of cosmological structure, the world was imagined to be a flat plane in the shape of a disk which was covered by a dome [called the firmament] made of glass, crystal, or tin, so that the world resembles a snowglobe. This snowglobe-earth in entirely submerged in the cosmic ocean, and stands upon pillars although these aren’t supported by anything other than the water of the cosmic ocean itself. This cosmological model was unanimously used across every culture of the ancient near east and was transmitted into medieval europe because the bible makes numerous references to it.

I suspect that the proto-indo-europeans themselves possessed the same type of “cosmic ocean” cosmology, although they may not necessarily have had all the specifics about the firmament and the pillars and such. My reason for thinking this is that the use of water, as a symbol, more effectively explains the eventual development of the Serpent of Kaos. While the concept of the primordial reality is found across all cultures, it is the Kaoskampf cultures specifically [and exclusively] which use a serpent to symbolically represent said primordial reality, regardless of whether the culture in question also uses a “cosmic ocean” style cosmology. But if you try to illustrate water, you’ll probably end up drawing a kind of wiggly line, which will also inherently look a bit like a snake. In this way, it seems, the snake becomes a symbol representing the primordial ultimate reality within the proto-indo-european cultures, and by extension also within many of the cultures that they subsequently influenced.

This can be seen beautifully illustrated on the kassite “unfinished” kudurru, which is my personal favourite archaeological artifact of all time. I’ll include some images with this post, it’s the cylindrical object with carved images all round it, and it illustrates the complete mesopotamian cosmological model. It’s quite easy to see which section of the kudurru depicts the part of the world that we inhabit, as we can see normal looking humans and animals walking around. The section above the humans is the Firmament, where we can see sun, moon, and star symbols. The sky is also inhabited by the gods, and other celestial beings such as mushushu dragons. The kassites had an abstract way of depicting their gods, so we see them represented as poles with animal heads on, or as buildings with bizarre shapes on the roof. Below the humans and animals we have an incomplete section which would probably be an underworld. On this section we can see two Girtablullu [scorpion men], one of which is unfinished. Scorpions are not an uncommon feature on kudurru, and can appear both in the underworld layer and on the same layer as the humans / a human king. But even the underworld is not the deepest depth, below it we can see the four pillars that hold up the world, and their foundation is the most interesting feature of all: a giant snake that is coiled around on itself.

This is similar to Ouroboros, Jormungandr, Apep, and Leviathan whose name means “the wreath-like one”. The snake does, of course, represent the cosmic ocean, and this is indicated by the fact that we can also see it at the very top of the kudurru, above the firmament. It’s hard to see because it’s lying flat across the top of the stone [a top down view of the stone would show it coiled in a spiral but I couldn’t find a good picture of this online], but you can see it’s head very clearly in one of the pictures. It’s the same snake depicted in both places, because the snake represents the cosmic ocean which is both above and below the world. The firmament prevents the water from flooding the land, but even the highest point of it’s surface is submerged. Many other kudurru have these same cosmological features but are far simpler and less accurate, sometimes with several layers [or "registers"] needed to fit all of the gods on although this is merely due to lack of space on the stone and is not supposed to indicate multiple firmaments. But the snake can be found either below/within the underworld, in the sky amid the stars, or running vertically up the side of the kudurru. This reflects the idea that cosmic ocean is simultaneously above, below, and all around us. A human king will never be put on a higher level than a god but you put the serpent almost anywhere and it still makes cosmological sense.

Yet there is a special significance to the snake being placed at the bottom of the universe, with the pillars of the world resting on it’s back. It signifies that what the snake represents is the foundation of reality; which is to say that world both arises out of, and is simultaneously supported by, the ultimate reality.

A list of iterations of this serpent can be found on the list of examples of the Kaoskampf that I started with, although not every single one of these is used as a symbol for primordial reality within it’s respective culture because the original meaning is sometimes blurred or lost entirely, and secondary meanings and iterations can also arise as cultures change and stories are retold. Sometimes the lightning god is just fighting a big snake or a sea god or something, and there is no obvious connection to a creation myth, but the story will still be recognisable as an iteration of the Kaoskampf. Not only this, but as I previously mentioned the story can be secondarily iterated upon even within a culture that already has a Kaoskampf myth. What was originally an exaggerated snake, as can plainly be seen in ancient artwork, became increasingly chimera-ified. The ability to breath fire [the earliest example that I know of is Leviathan, specifically the description in Job 41] is probably based on the fact that snake venom causes a burning sensation, and the skin may become hot to the touch. But later in history they’ve also added bat wings and dog ears and all kinds of other nonsense. From the artwork I’ve seen it seems that the greeks started this sort of thing, and then in medieval art it just becomes a complete mess, and this is how we end up with the modern image of “dragons”, which are now distinct from the snakes they started as.

Section #4: the struggle against Kaos

So this is all very well, but it does beg the question: why, in Kaoskampf stories, is the lightning god fighting this serpent? Given what the serpents seems to represent, what sense does this make? Well it’s important to remember that all this imagery and symbolism and cosmology is based on mystical experience, but most people go their entire lives without ever having this particular experience. Consider what the snake represents from the perspective of ordinary consciousness. On one hand it’s the primordial nothingness which we all came out of prior to birth, and to which we will all return upon death. Already this gives us a reason to fear the serpent, since we’re all afraid of dying. On the other hand, as the foundation of reality the serpent represents the world itself; the entire external environment. It goes without saying that the world is very dangerous, especially in prehistoric times, with threats from disease, war, natural disasters, predatory animals, etc, being ever present and unpredictable. The immediate instinct is to protect oneself by attempting to exert control over reality, to make it predictable and regular.

Agriculture is an example of this. Before the advent of farming people simply hunted and foraged and survived on what they could find in the wild. People were, therefore, totally at the mercy of the whims of nature. But then agriculture is invented and suddenly the land is divided up into neat little squares, and certain crops need to be planted at particular times and harvested at other particular times, and everyone knows exactly what they need to do on any given day. This isn’t totally fool-proof as crops can be blighted or stolen, but it is an attempt at controlling one’s food supply rather than relying on what nature provides. In general, the whole thing has become much more ordered.

But the biggest danger has always come from other people. I mentioned that crops can be stolen, and indeed this is the simplest option. Farming takes a lot of effort but if you’ve got a band of strong men then it may be easier to just go round pillaging the fruits of other people’s labour. The solution ends up being to build permanent walls and other defensive infrastructure, and now our society is transitioning into civilisation.

Civilisation has certain advantages, for example the quantity of available food is significantly increased, and this in turn increases the population. A bigger population means a bigger army, which helps you defend yourself more effectively. But it also means that you no longer have a coherent tribe where everyone knows each other, but instead a situation in which many/most of your own countrymen are strangers to you. Furthermore, the development of division of labour inevitably creates a class system. It creates haves and have-nots, and it goes without saying that the have-nots are inevitably going to resent the haves. Under civilisation you have a society in which it’s own members are not necessarily unified under the same common interests, and their interdependence upon each other is less immediately obvious to them. So not only do you have to worry about the threat of an external attack, but now your own people have potentially become a danger to you.

Human societies have always had warriors, even when that term was synonymous with “hunter” and included every adult male in the tribe. But the development of civilisation means that you can now have a subset of the population whose entire function is dedicated to fighting, whether that is for the sake of invasion or defence. But the thing is that they are also then able to exert control over their own countrymen. Whoever ends up at the top of the hierarchy of soldiers is called a “king”, and he can demand whatever he wants. Kingship may seem desirable at first, but such a position means that you are faced with threats on all sides. Outside the city walls there are hostile forces: invaders, bandits, etc. Inside the city walls there are criminals, and even those who may seek to usurp the throne.

So kings built walls, wrote laws, trained soldiers, conquered foreign lands, etc, all for the sake of controlling other human beings. And in doing this we made our world more structured, more regular, and more predictable. In a sense we might frame this as a struggle against our external environment; against the world itself, to impose our order onto it so that we feel that we are in control. And this, ultimately, is what the Kaoskampf represents. We have a vengeful and authoritarian patriarch character who rules the universe like it’s a cosmic monarchy. And this dominion is established when the deity subdues the underlying spirit of the universe itself in a primordial battle. It is a story of human ego putting itself in opposition to nature out of it’s own fear.

This type of mindset views the world as a threatening enemy that must be defeated for the sake of it’s own safety. It therefore becomes easy to see how the World Encircling Serpent, representing all of reality as a unified whole, could be vilified. Indeed, the serpent in question secondarily accumulate all sorts of other negative connotations, such as an association with moral evil. This was probably aided to some degree by the fact that real snakes are sometimes dangerous, but that fact alone does not explain the symbolically negative role that has been given to this animal as there are also many other dangerous creatures in the world which have no such associations.

The concept of a homogenised primordial reality was forgotten over time because it was not of relevance to the particular type of christianity which gained power in the roman empire [other denominations were suppressed] and eventually became pervasive throughout europe. While the gods of polytheistic ancient near eastern cultures had arisen from the cosmic ocean, being manifestations of it even if they also fought against it, this was not true of the christian god. This god was increasingly seen as being fundamentally separate from his creations, which includes the whole of the material universe.

But while the concept of primordial ultimate reality was forgotten, there are still vestigial footprints of it in our culture. Snakes are still used as a symbol of evil, greed, corruption, etc. We still use the word “chaos”, which we get from ancient greek but have only remembered half of it’s meaning. Indeed, we can now see how this word acquired it’s modern meaning. If order needs to be imposed on nature then what is nature without order imposed on it? The answer is disorder; chaos. When we developed agriculture and built cities we also forgot that nature already has it’s own order, and it took us more than five thousand years to rediscover this fact.

Section #4: the Grey Kaos of Dark Souls

So if you’ve stuck with me through all this waffle, the relevance of the Kaoskampf to the setting and lore of Dark Souls should be clear as day. We have a world which exists originally in a primordial “grey” state in which all of the opposites of nature are unified. The grey age may not be totally homogenised, as it is possible to distinguish between stone, fog, archtrees, and dragons. The main fact of significance is that this is a time in which the two halves of the disparity are unified.

Disparity itself is a concept borrowed directly from Daoism, and of course we’re all familiar with the concepts of Yin and Yang representing the light and dark principles, or positive and negative principles. What is not always understood [by westerners] is that these two supposed opposites are mutually interdependent [one cannot exist without the other, and in fact each is only able to exist because of the existence of it’s opposite], and in fact are both manifestations of a single unified reality: the Dao. This is just a chinese term for the ultimate reality, the Dao is the same thing that the serpent from the Kaoskampf myth represents. It manifests itself as Yin and Yang [it is both simultaneously], and though them it is all things.

The same thing is found in other cultures as well, for example in norse mythology the first distinction that appears is between Muspelheimr and Niflheimr, the lands of fire and ice which also demark the north and south directions. In babylonian mythology the first distinction that developed within the cosmic ocean was between freshwater and saltwater. In the Enuma Elis, these are abstractly represented as characters; Abzu [the freshwater] who is male, and Tiamat [the saltwater] who is female. These characters then have sex and the first of the gods are born from the union. On a less abstract level we might say that the gods arose from the place where the two oceans meet, indicating the necessity of both halves of this duality. The gods then murder Abzu and Tiamat, and build the world from their corpses. Marduk, for example, stretches out Tiamat’s skin to make the firmament. This is not only an example of the Kaoskampf trope, but also demonstrates the idea of the world being composed of the substance of the primordial reality.

From this we can understand why the primordial state of the world of Dark Souls is a time before disparity. It’s a time in which the opposites are unified just as Yin and Yang are unified in the Dao. The fact that Miyazaki hasn’t made all matter totally homogenised and indistinguishable [as in the cosmic ocean examples] is an interesting choice but not ultimately relevant. For the narrative of Dark Souls it’s the disparity that’s important, since that’s what many of the characters are grappling with. This disparity is ultimately shown to be an illusion, with the true nature of the world still being greyness even after the emergence of the first flame.

The grey age is associated with the stone dragons which inhabit it, just as the mythological basis of dragons is a serpent representing the primordial reality. But Miyazaki has occasionally treated ancient symbolism as a bit of a pick’n’mix factory, and uses serpents in the symbolic role that they adopted secondarily. Serpents in Dark Souls are associated with greed, corruption, and possibly other forms of moral evil as well. The gold and silver covetous serpent rings describe snakes as “imperfect dragons” and also as a symbolic representation of the undead. This does of course mean that humans themselves are imperfect dragons, and possibly this is meant in more ways than one. It could be that humans [alongside the gods and giants] are descended from the ancient dragons, and in fact there’s a good amount of evidence to support this which I laid out in the older post which is linked at the top of this one. But the description is certainly telling us that humans are a manifestation of the universe. Humans are described as “imperfect” dragons because we do not consciously recognise the cosmic oneness that we are all part of, instead thinking of ourselves as separate and mortal individuals. From a Buddhist perspective it is this very ignorance that causes people to behave in selfish and deluded ways, hence the serpent rings associate being an “imperfect dragon” with avarice.

Yet, in archdragon peak, we find a number of individuals sitting in meditation posture who have been transfigured into stone dragons, much like the ones which existed in the grey age. I mentioned earlier in the post that according to the world’s various mystical traditions, the primordial reality is not merely the state of the universe in the distant past, but that it is the underlying substrate from which reality emerges in the here and now, and that this is directly accessible through psychological experience. This is what the monks of archdragon peak have done. They alone have seen through the disparity to learn that the true nature of the world is still grey, and has been all along. In doing this they have realised that they are perfect dragons after all, and this has been demonstrated to us though Miyazaki’s decision to literally turn them into stone dragons. It may also be a reference to the Philosopher’s Stone, the ultimate attainment of the Alchemical magnum opus. This may in fact be why the Dragon Greatsword has streaks of gold running through it. In spiritual forms of Alchemy, the Philosopher’s Stone appears to be the same thing as the Buddhist attainment of Nirvana.

It is also notable that the cosmological structure of the world of Dark Souls makes direct reference to the ancient near eastern model, although it is not 1-1 identical and probably should not be understood in exactly the same way. While I’ve seen others infer the existence of a firmament, the proposed evidence for it seems to amount to little more than some in-game lighting effects in a cave. If you’d like to make the case for the existence of a firmament then please feel free to do so in the comments, but as of right now I find the idea to be a bit dubious. But it is in ash lake that we discover that the world is a flat plane held up by pillars [archtrees] which in turn arise from an ocean of some kind, very much like the cosmology illustrated on the unfinished kudurru. We don’t really know much about the gigantic body of water found at the base of the world, but we can say that it is dark in colouration, the surface is extremely still and calm, and it's directly associated with dragons. Indeed, DS1’s version of the Path of the Dragon covenant is found here, suggesting a connection between the foundation of reality and the attainment of Nirvana.

Section #5: the Kaoskampf of Dark Souls

Lastly, we have Gwyn: the Demiurge of Dark Souls. Irrespective of what he eventually became, Gwyn’s origin is likely to be somewhat mundane. We know that he had an uncle [Lloyd], which in turn means that he must have had parents. He was born into a world dominated by primordial stone dragons given life by the disparity. Indeed, countless generations of people may have lived, and even evolved, under these conditions. At some point, and under circumstances that are never fully elucidated, Gwyn obtains a lordsoul. DS1’s opening cutscene implies that he was simply wandering around the first flame one day and picked it off the ground, but im inclined to wonder if it wouldn’t be more appropriate to imagine that he obtained it through gradual accumulation of power [both political and magical], and that he strengthened his own soul until it became a lordsoul. Perhaps "finding the souls of lords within the flame" means something more like learning how to harness the flame's energy to empower yourself?

Whatever the case, Gwyn used his newfound strength, and especially his ability to generate lightning, to destroy the ancient dragons. He then sets himself up as god-king of the entire world, which is then divided up into various minor kingdoms, city states, duchies, etc, all of which are likely to have been vassals of Gwyn’s empire, and probably ruled by governors that he put in place. Even in the ringed city, which may be located on the edge of the world [though this is unclear], we see that the pygmy lords were crowned by Gwyn.

Virtually everyone who plays DS1, or even just watches the opening cutscene, will immediately compare Gwyn to Zeus. This is quite correct of course, but those who are familiar with the Kaoskampf mythological trope will quickly recognise that whoever wrote this story [which has barely even begun to unfold by the time we are shown Gwyn’s Kaoskampf] must be far more mythologically savvy than your average fantasy writer. Indeed, the sentence

“Gwyn’s mighty bolts peeled apart their stone scales.”

was the first thing about the lore that gripped my interest. From this one sentence I was able to make an educated guess as to what type of character Gwyn would turn out to be, and everything I’ve learned about the lore since has only vindicated this initial suspicion. Actually I did think he was going to be more of a villain but was pleasantly surprised to find that the character was handled with the appropriate nuance.

Gwyn’s “war” against the ancient dragons was nothing less than an attempt to establish control over reality itself, for the sake of safety and personal empowerment. The psychological motivations behind this are fear, greed, and self-absorption, all of which are considered to be mental “defilements” in Buddhist psychological thought, and ultimately stem from the deluded view of oneself as separate from other phenomena. I mention this because Miyazaki has been raised in a largely Buddhist-Shinto culture, and from a Buddhist perspective the entire Kaoskampf idea is fundamentally foolish and counterproductive. People cannot control reality, and though we may try desperately to do so, it is truly a sisyphean futility. Furthermore, it should be obvious that this struggle is motivated by fear, which in turn is the product of ego, or perception of being a separate self. And does this not resonate precisely with Gwyn’s overall character? Is it not true that his main defining characteristics are fear and egotism?

Gwyn’s narcissism is unambiguously evident, with Anor Londo being an opulent and absurd monument to his own ego. The same location is also testament to his greed, and in fact it’s interesting that this is the area with the highest concentration of mimics. Kaathe tells us that Gwyn feared humanity and the dark, for the obvious reason that the fading flame and rise of man represented the end of his rule, and possibly even the end of the world itself. But the Kaoskampf suggests that fear was far more foundational to his character, and not limited to the danger he perceived in the pygmies. From this we understand that Gwyn was afraid of basically everything, since that’s what the dragons ultimately represent. Gwyn's aim was to control reality itself, which is why he sets himself up as god; the king of reality, or ruler of the universe. The whole of civilisation, in the world of Dark Souls, is therefore built on fear. Despite everything it has achieved, despite the great works of art, despite all the contributions to knowledge, the foundation is still a delusion. And here, perhaps, is Miyazaki’s point: is the same thing not true of our own civilisation?

i have painstakingly restored Michael Zachary’s artistic vision using left over data from within the game’s files to show you how we were originally intended to experience the Bed of Chaos.

Context: in youtuber ZeroLenny’s video “Dark Souls but with the IGN guide” [best known as the origin of the “it floats down” meme] he put IGN’s proposed strategy for fighting gargoyles [composite bow + stone armour] to the test and was astonished to discover that it works incredibly well. The armour’s high poise allows the bow to do it’s work, such that the gargoyle’s attacks can be largely ignored. I was inspired to try this myself and can confirm, the fight is an absolute joke if you do it like this.

Here is the link to Lenny’s video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6lClIybJ6Y&t=227s

In DS3, we are told [via the repair sorcery description] that light is time. This helps to clarify Solaire’s dialogue in the first game, in which he tells us that the flow of time is “convoluted”, although of course we all know that a better translation for this would be stagnated. This can be understood from the fact that the first flame is the source of all disparity, including the distinction between light and dark. Fire produces light, so when the first flame fades the light fades with it. Since light is time [or perhaps it is more accurate to say that time is a consequence of light?], this begins to cause all sorts of anomalies in causality. Events don’t always follow each other in the logical order, which is why [for example] we can summon Tarkus in Sen’s Fortress even though he’s already hollowed in Anor Londo. The way Solaire describes this, we get the impression of split timelines and parallel universes, but this does not appear to be entirely accurate.

Lautrec is an excellent example. If we refuse to let him out of his cell, or simply haven’t found the key, he will still eventually exit the cell and move to Firelink. He doesn’t escape on his own, since he evidently isn’t able to, rather someone else is letting him out. That someone can only be another player, after all you can summon and invade other players so their “worlds” are clearly supposed to exist canonically despite the fact that the entire playerbase is on the same quest simultaneously. The fact is that at least some players will free Lautrec, and this very fact is what allows him to escape. It doesn’t matter that he was freed in a “different player’s world”, since they’re not really different worlds. They’re the same world with distorted causality, so what someone does in their own world can actually effect your own.

If you didn’t open the cell, and Lautrec didn’t open the cell, and none of the other NPCs or enemies opened the cell, then we can only conclude that he was released by another player [at least that’s what his otherwise inexplicable release is supposed to represent] who’s actions are otherwise invisible to you. The two worlds have briefly intersected, much like when Solaire tangibly appears in your world despite belonging to his own, as he himself tells us. This happens spontaneously, without need of any kind of soapstone, and when it does Solaire is able to affect our world physically. He physically gives us the white soapstone [an object that we otherwise would not have], he can kill us if we agro him, and if he’d had the basement key on him then I have no doubt he would be able to unlock the nearby door for us. So if the actions of other players on other game files can affect our world, it explains why Lautrec can escape without our help.

That’s all well and good, but the problems begin when we link the first flame and fromsoft makes a sequel. By linking the flame we are essentially putting new fuel on the fire, restoring it to a stronger condition. This means that the flow of time should be restored to normal, but how exactly can causality resolve after having been distorted? Since time has been fragmented, all sorts of mutually contradictory events will have occurred. For example we can either kill Gwyndolin or let him live. So does he survive into the restored period or not? The question of how a coherent timeline can emerge from a period of fracture is what this post is asking, and I’m going to float a suggestion [which is only a suggestion atm, I’m not 100% confident in it] but would appreciate further input.

In the past I had assumed that, in writing a sequel to the original Dark Souls, Miyazaki would simply assume that the chosen undead did what a first time player was most likely to do. This would include failing to even discover the existence of Gwyndolin, let alone killing him, thus explaining why he survives the events of DS1. It would also include linking the flame, since this is kind of necessary for a sequel to even occur in the first place. In contrast, a competing idea proposes that if we choose the dark lord ending then someone else comes along to link the flame later, which I have always found dubious. On reflection I’m beginning to suspect that both explanations may be wrong.

Miyazaki says that if we summon Solaire to fight Gwyn, then Solaire will link the flame in his own world. Ok, so what if we summon Solaire, beat Gwyn with his help, then choose the dark lord ending? Can our age of dark even happen if Solaire links the flame? Remember that what happens in one player’s world can directly affect another’s, since they’re not really different worlds at all. They’re the same world with stagnated time, so we have to ask ourselves if it’s even possible for the flame to truly go out as long as someone, somewhere, is keeping the torch lit. If the flame cannot go out because someone is always going to link it, then what happens to the world from the perspective of those who try to cause an age of dark? Does it just not work?

In DS3 we encounter an area called the untended graves, which some have assumed to be a demonstration of what the world looks like after the flame has gone out. The description for Gundyr’s soul is proposed to be evidence for this, and while I see how the inference is being drawn, what the description actually says is that the shrine [firelink] was without fire, not the kiln of the first flame. It’s certainly very dark in the untended graves, and the flow of time is severely confused. Yet there is light here, and events can still occur, so it doesn’t seem to be completely dark yet. There are even lit candles about the place, so fire and light clearly still exist here even if it’s in a severely diminished form. And consider that the untended graves is reached, not by warping or stepping through a portal, but just by walking there. It is literally physically connected to the rest of the world, where the flame is still burning. How, then, can we judge this to be an accurate reflection of what an age of dark would be like? How can we possibly say that this area is not affected by the first flame anymore? The very fact that gameplay is possible here, and that it is not a mere black screen, is evidence against this idea. Gundyr’s soul says that he was “late to the festivities”, but if this means that he was too late to link the flame then how can it be possible for Ludleth to have linked it for him? That fact would inherently mean that it was not too late. What may have been the case is that Gundyr was unable to reach the kiln because the shrine had no flame due to the death of it’s firekeeper. After all the shrine bonfire does seem to serve a function in transporting us to the kiln. Ludleth, therefore, had to undertake a more difficult journey to reach the kiln. Again, this is just a suggestion. I don’t claim to know exactly what is going on in the untended graves but it is relevant to the discussion. One possible explanation could be that the area represents what happens from the perspective of someone who tries to cause an age of dark, or in Gundyr’s case simply isn’t able to link the flame. Perhaps Gundyr even did it semi-deliberately since his item descriptions tell us that he was a prisoner to his own duties and convictions. Perhaps a part of his mind resented this fact, knew it was enslaved, and consequently rebelled? The point is that from Gundyr’s perspective the world gets very dark, but never truly reaches the point of an extinct flame because someone, somewhere else, has linked it again. This is what Ludleth represents.

Based on this [which is admittedly a lot of guesswork and inference] we may extrapolate an explanation of some elements of DS3’s story. We know that Gwyndolin survives the events of DS1 despite the fact that you can kill him in that game. It may not be the case, as some have proposed, that the option to kill him in DS1 “isn’t canon” to the events of DS3. Rather, Gwyndolin may be able to survive simply because many players don’t kill him, just as Lautrec is able to escape because at least some players will let him out. Similarly, we may finally have a good explanation for how Ornstein survives the events of DS1. Among fans it is popularly assumed that the Ornstein we meet in DS1 is a golem, simply because this is the only explanation that anyone can come up with regarding items in DS3 which say that he abandoned his post and went on to reunite with the Nameless King. This has always seemed severely dubious to me, because Ornstein drops his own soul rather than the “core” of a construct as the Iron Golem does. Consider how many players never beat Ornstein and Smough because the fight is too hard and they give up. Others give up before even reaching Anor Londo. So on many game files these two clowns go undefeated, even unchallenged. For this reason it is perfectly acceptable for DS1’s Ornstein to be the real deal, and for him to be killed by the player, and for him to survive the events of DS1 and later abandon his duty while defending the princess from a chosen undead who never arrives. In a stagnated timeline, all of these things are possible simultaneously. As long as Ornstein is still alive somewhere in the folds of time [in other words as long as at least one person among the entire playerbase doesn’t kill him], he technically cannot die. And I’d propose that the same thing is true of the first flame itself.

Below I’m going to include a link to an older post called “the Usurpation of Dark Souls” in which I propose that the first flame represents the vitality of Dark Souls as a creative work. Given this interpretation, the first flame logically cannot go out as long as there are still people playing these games and as long as someone, somewhere, is still enthusiastic about them. This flame of enthusiasm will diminish over time for all of us, but some are able to maintain it for longer than others. Some will play the game once and then move on, while others [such as myself] will play it multiple times successively and obsess over the lore. For me the flame is still burning, the torch is still lit. But it’s gone out completely for the game developers, which is why the usurpation of fire ending exists. Remember that the gods represent the developers while the humans represent the playerbase, so the ultimate solution for a flame that won’t die is to transfer it’s ownership from the gods to the humans: those who can keep it burning without causing the world to degenerate into a meaningless desert of ash in the process.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarksoulsLore/comments/1ruj03h/the_usurpation_of_dark_souls/

Under that interpretation, it is entirely acceptable for the flame to go out for one person, but not for another. One person might play and give up because it’s too hard. For them the flame has gone out. Another might play, beat the game, and have no interest in playing again. For them the flame has gone out. Another might play the game, become absolutely captivated by it, repeatedly play it again and again with different builds, white gigantic essays about the lore on this subreddit, etc. For them the flame is still burning, even after all these years. This is reflected in your choice, upon beating the game, to either link the flame or let it go out. But how does it actually work in-universe?

Music Used: Crash Bandicoot: the Wrath of Cortex OST | "Solar Bowler"

as per the title, you can see that one of my spells hit's it's body directly when it floats down, but deals no damage and in fact seems to pass right through.

This is a popular idea that I’ve seen pop up again and again within the lore community: that Twin Humanities are the souls of female humans. In this post I’m going to try to explain why people think this [hopefully without strawmanning the idea] and then make the case against it.

On a female corpse in the lower undead burg, surrounded by torch-wielding hollows, is a soul-item that turns out to be Twin Humanities when picked up. Female corpses are rare in Dark Souls, but can be distinguished by the fact that they wear a “bra strap”, while male corpses do not. Those who noticed that this particular corpse is female inferred that the associated item was intended to communicate the suggestion that she was pregnant. It led to the subsequent inference that twin humanities are actually required for the reproductive process, with one of the two becoming the soul of the offspring. It is certainly true, of course, that reproduction within humans would require a duplication of the Dark Soul at some point in the process. Fans also noticed a wider association between Twin Humanities and female characters, with Quelaag, Priscilla, and Pharis all dropping them. Furthermore, all firekeepers are women but the reason for this has never been made clear. We know that firekeepers are hosts to the humanity sacrificed to them so that the bonfires can keep burning, and it sometimes assumed that this might require the person to have two Dark Souls in order to work, although I have never heard a satisfactory explanation [or any explanation for that matter] as to why. This, I think, is the totality of the argument. If there is anything else then you can let me know in the comments.

But now I am going to argue against these points. Twin Humanities are found on male corpses as well as female. There is one in Lost Izalith on the broken bridge above the main bonfire. Granted, that area was rushed so this could be dismissed as a developer oversight. However, there are two more male corpses in the DLC which also yield Twin Humanities. One is on the roof of the large building in Township, the one where the bloat-heads start to get the red eyes. You have to drop down onto a section of roof and then turn around and walk back up the roof and you’ll find a male corpse with Twin Humanities. The other one is in the Chasm of the Abyss at the base of the fallen pillar that you walk down, again it’s a male corpse with Twin Humanities. Now I want to point out two things here:

1-part of the narrative purpose of the DLC is to provide additional clarification regarding elements of the story and lore that people did not pick up on because they were too obscure in the base game. A big part of this is the nature of humanity and the dark, so for the developers to have flubbed these particular item placements seems unlikely.

2-as mentioned before, there aren’t many female corpses in DS1. But every single one [as far as I know] is deliberate and has been included for a clear reasons. They always represent a character who is supposed to be female. Ciaran, Beatrice, Yulva, Dusk, one of the daughters of the witch of Izalith, a maiden of the way of white who was captured by Seath, and all four firekeeper corpses. Not a single mistake has been made here despite the fact that the developers default to male corpses if there isn’t a clear lore reason. And not only this but corpses known to belong to male individuals [such as Tarkus or Jeremiah] are always male, again without any mistakes. It seems that the developers have been very careful to get this right, so for there to be three mistakes [which is what you have to assume if you want to insist on Twin Humanities being female souls], all coincidentally associated with Twin Humanities, seems unlikely to me to say the least.

Of course, it is true that Humanities and souls in general can be in the possession of individuals they didn’t originally belong to. You can buy Twin Humanities from Patches, and he’ll even give you one as an apology gift in the tomb of giants. Obviously these are not his own Humanities, but those he has looted from others. Lautrec will drop a firekeeper soul if you follow his questline and kill him at the end of it, but this does not mean that he is a firekeeper. However these are both cases where we have contextual information for why these characters are in possession of these particular souls. We don’t have any such context for why Twin Humanity would be found on a random corpse somewhere. There’s nothing that tells us that this specific person was a thief who went around looting and murdering before he hollowed. So while it’s perfectly possible for any random individual to be in possession of a soul that originally belonged to a woman, the developers would not put female souls on random male corpses if they wanted to make it clear that the soul in question is female. Notice that we don’t find any firekeeper souls on male corpses despite the fact that just about everyone has a clear motivation to steal this type of soul. So if the developers intended for us to infer that Twin Humanities are indeed supposed to be female souls then they’ve gone a funny way about it.

The second point that needs to be addressed is the fact that Twin Humanities drop from certain female characters. It’s true that the characters mentioned do drop Twin Humanities, but a wider examination of exactly what every character and boss drops will collapse the “pattern”. For one thing, Oswald of Carim will drop Twin Humanities despite being a male character. And every female NPC besides Pharis will either drop regular [single] humanities or none whatsoever. Rhea drops seven, but these are all single individual sprites, and Mildred drops three with one more that can be absorbed via her bloodstain. Sieglinde, Dusk, and Ciaran all drop none.

Then, of course, there’s the bosses. Quelaag and Priscilla both drop Twin Humanities and are also both female. But here’s the thing, the Gargoyles drop Twin Humanities as well, and that’s obviously just a reference to the fact that there’s two of them. In the same way, you get four Humanities from beating the Four Kings. So we can infer that Quelaag drops Twin Humanities because she’s actually two beings fused together, a woman and a spider. Sif is female, but drops only one Humanity, and Gaping Dragon drops Twin Humanities despite no clear indications of gender whatsoever. We might as well associate Twin Humanities with dragons since Priscilla is half dragon, and the Gargoyles look a bit like dragons. Just in case anyone takes that too seriously I’ll also point out that Seath drops 1 Humanity, Kalamete drops none, and neither do other dragons such as the Hellkite. In terms of lore, none of the bosses [besides Manus and Four Kings] should drop humanity at all because none of them are human, and in fact they didn’t in the original release of the game.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/game-patches#toc4

On this page, if you scroll down to Version 1.05, specifically under “PvE Changes” you’ll see that the following alteration was made:

“Bosses drop Humanity and Homeward Bones”

Of course, this is not so specific as to clarify that only certain bosses drop Homeward Bones, some drop Twin Humanities rather than just one, and two of them don’t drop either. But the point is that this change has been made for gameplay reasons, specifically for the sake of easing progression. We do not assume that Sif is undead because she drops a Homeward Bone, neither do we conclude that she’s human because she drops a Humanity. Therefore we also cannot infer that Priscilla drops Twin Humanities because she’s female. In terms of lore, our character actually isn’t obtaining any Humanity from these bosses.

A further argument against the idea that Twin Humanities are female souls can be extrapolated from the item description, which calls it “very unusual”. This is certainly consistent with our in-game experience, Twin Humanities are much rarer than regular Humanities. Before the DLC there were only a finite number that could be obtained [the DLC makes it possible to farm them from the Humanity Phantoms], and before the 1.05 patch they would have been extremely rare indeed. But here’s the thing: women are half the population, so if Twin Humanities are indeed supposed to be female souls then we’d hardly expect them to be rare. We certainly wouldn’t expect them to be “very unusual”, as their item description claims.

What needs to be made clear is what Humanities actually are. We all know that they’re fragments of the Dark Soul, but it’s not the case that one Humanity sprite is one person’s Dark Soul. Rather, a sprite is a small and rare thing which is occasionally found on corpses, or looted from an undead that you’ve murdered. Of course these corpses are not really corpses as they don’t rot, but are in fact hollows who are so far gone that they’ve stopped moving entirely. And if you kill an undead NPC then they're canonically supposed to resurrect [although probably just as a hollow] because they've still got the immortal Dark Soul within them. Humanity sprites are therefore tiny accumulations of dark that have leaked out from the body due to a weakening Darksign. In that case, a Twin Humanity is probably nothing more than a pair of accumulations which have occurred close together without combining. We can see why this would be very unusual, but the DLC seems to clarify the phenomenon.

The behaviour of the Humanity Phantoms in the Chasm of the Abyss is quite interesting, because they will sometimes move toward you and sometimes move away. It’s almost as if they’re driven by two conflicting motivations, one which desires to consume your soul, and another that fears destruction. So they can’t seem to decide if they want to “attack” you or avoid you, and this may explain the Twin Humanities. They’re driven to recombine, but also driven apart, and this combination keeps them in a perpetual “stalemate” where they end up doing neither. For this reason you can pick them both up together as though they were a single item. u/BarryTheButcher has some further thoughts on this in an interesting post that I’ll link here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarksoulsLore/comments/1t76bs1/the_hedgehogs_dilemma/

BTW you guys would not believe how many times I accidentally wrote “Twin Humanitities” and had to correct it. I guess there’s such a thing as a Freudian typo lmao.

This post is about the Four Humors “theory” of medicine, which was developed by the ancient greeks and remained in use through the middle ages. Though it is currently considered both obsolete and disproven, it does have a psychological element which I suspect to have been part of Miyazaki’s inspiration. At the very least Humorism is known to have some overlap with Alchemy [and the latter is indisputably a major influence on Miyazaki's work], so we shall find some correlation between the Four Humous and elements of Dark Souls lore. In this post I’m going to explain what the Four Humors are, and examine possible in-universe equivalents for Dark Souls.

The Humours are four types of body fluids that were believed to be essential, in the correct balances, to a person’s health. It was therefore believed that poor health was the result of a person having too much, or too little, of one or more of these fluids. This is what led to the practice of bloodletting, which was believed to treat illnesses thought to result from an excess of blood in the patient’s body. It was also believed that a person’s psychology was determined by the balance of these fluids, and this is what we will look at in this post. As a reference, I’m going to leave a link to the Wikipedia page of the Four Temperaments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_temperaments

Blood

the most obvious of the Four Humors, I doubt that I need to explain what blood is or why it has the following associations under Humourism:

“People with this temperament tend to be lively, sociable, carefree, talkative, and pleasure-seeking. They may be warm-hearted and optimistic. They can make new friends easily, be imaginative and artistic, and often have many ideas. They can be flighty and changeable; thus sanguine personalities may struggle with following tasks all the way through and be chronically late or forgetful.”

-Wikipedia

Blood is associated with the “element” of air, and in Alchemy it’s equivalent is apparently Tin/Jupiter. This does not make sense to me, as Tin is associated with material wealth and power, and this is why Gwyndolin’s catalyst is made of Tin. I would think that the Humor of Blood would align better with the Alchemical associations for Copper/Venus, which include youthful energy and fertility [since blood is understood to be life-giving] among other things. I’d propose that in Dark Souls blood should be equated to the element of light, especially since there is an association between white souls and blood. You retrieve your souls from your bloodstain, and touching another person’s bloodstain shows you their ghost. Miyazaki doubles down on the association between blood and the soul in Bloodborne, but it’s roots are already present in DS1.

Bile

this is a yellowish liquid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. It’s main function is digestive, but it also acts as an irritant if your skin is exposed to it, causing a burning sensation. Small wonder then that should have the following associations:

“People with this temperament tend to be egocentric and extroverted. They may be excitable, impulsive, restless, with reserves of aggression, energy, and/or passion, and try to instil that in others. They tend to be task-oriented and are focused on getting a job done efficiently; their motto is usually "do it now." They can be ambitious, strong-willed, and like to be in charge. They can show leadership, are good at planning, and are often practical and solution-oriented. They appreciate receiving respect and esteem for their work.”

-Wikipedia

Bile is associated with the “element” of fire, and in Alchemy it’s equivalent would be Iron/Mars. It probably goes without saying that fire, in Dark Souls, has many of the same associations. If Gwyn is any judge then we’d undoubtedly describe fire as being active, aggressive, and egocentric.

Phlegm

this is an umbrella term for several different body fluids, especially if they are white/clear in colouration. Examples include saliva, pus, mucus, and sweat. The brain may also have been associated due to it’s white colour, and because it’s consistency is almost liquid. As for it’s associated temperaments:

“People with this temperament may be inward and private, thoughtful, reasonable, calm, patient, caring, and tolerant. They tend to have a rich inner life, seek a quiet, peaceful atmosphere, and be content with themselves. They tend to be steadfast, consistent in their habits, and thus have steady and faithful friends.”

-Wikipedia

Phlegm is associated with the “element” of water, and in Alchemy it’s equivalent is Silver/Luna. Thinking of Dark Souls, this type of temperament reminds me most of Big Hat Logan. It is appropriate that this Humor is the opposite of Bile, which is associated with fire. In Dark Souls the sun is a manifestation of fire, so it is appropriate that fire’s opposite [water] corresponds to Luna [the Moon] also. Furthermore, the moon in Dark Souls is associated with sorcery, so you can see how these associations are beginning to add up.

Black Bile

of the Four Humors, this one seems to be entirely imaginary. There is no real body fluid that this corresponds to, but it’s association is with depression and death. In fact, the word “melancholy” is literally greek for “black bile”.

“People with this temperament may appear serious, introverted, cautious, or even suspicious. They can become preoccupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world and are susceptible to depression and moodiness. They may be focused and conscientious. They often prefer to do things themselves, both to meet their own standards and because they are not inherently sociable.”

-Wikipedia

Black Bile is associated with the “element” of earth, and in Alchemy it’s equivalent would obviously be Lead/Saturn. Given the item descriptions for the dark sorceries, I’m increasingly inclined to think of the dark as a conceptual stand-in for Alchemical Lead as well as the Jungian concept of the Shadow. Black Bile is therefore a dead ringer for both Alchemical Lead and the dark in Dark Souls. The description for the Dark Orb sorcery describes the dark as being physically heavy, and dark sorceries also deal split magic and physical damage. The weightiness of dark, as specified by this sorcery description, helps to tie it to lead [which is known for being heavy, even among metals] as well as the "element of earth", which Black Bile is associated with.

a google search doesn't turn up much info and i couldn't find anything on the wiki pages. there's just a lot of waffle about using it with Power Within. my question is: if i have the Sanctus equipped and also cast a Miracle such as Replenishment or Bountiful Sunlight, will the Sanctus act as a boost to the spell's regen effect or will the spell just cancel out the Sanctus's benefit?

This is just for fun of course, but based on your knowledge/interpretation of the characters, which ending do you feel they would be most likely to pick and why? Lets assume that an NPC of your choice finds themselves standing before the Kiln. Gwyn is dead. They have the choice to either link the Fire or walk away. What do they do?

Don’t worry too much about how they find themselves in this particular situation, the point of this is merely an experiment in how we understand the characters and their motivations. For some of them it’s obvious [there’s no question that Solaire would link the fire, for example], while others are obscure and have no/little dialogue to go on. But I’d be interested to hear your takes.

I’ll give an example to start with: the Crestfallen Warrior. Dude doesn’t link the Flame because he doesn’t care, he simply sits down in the Kiln and goes hollow. He technically causes an Age of Dark but doesn’t emerge as the Dark Lord.

Music Used: Banjo Kazooie OST | "Boss Boom Box"

This post is part of a series where I substitute the game’s OST for goofy yet fitting tracks of my own selection. Here are links to the others:

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1tvl8sl/i_cant_believe_how_well_this_worked/

2: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1u2h5k4/anyone_get_this_joke/

3: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarksoulsLore/comments/1u3p2xc/toxic_is_disease/

4: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1u44ws4/wizards_and_lizards/

Hello everyone. This video is a few years old now but the host [who goes by David] intends to explain who Ma Kali is for “western” audiences. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No2w-7-SZqA

I myself am not a Hindu, but I do have a deep interest in “eastern” spiritual and religious philosophies. I remember being impressed by this video when it was first uploaded but I have since wondered what actual devotees of the Goddess would think of it. Would you say that David’s explanation is accurate? Or is it wanting in some way? If there is anything that you feel should be added to what he has already said then I would be fascinated to hear about it.

Many thanks and I wish peace and wellbeing for you all.

The other day I suddenly remembered something which may prove to have more significance than it initially seems: the colour of the projectiles produced by the Moonlight Greatsword. Why does this matter? Well the connection my brain drew was to this item description in DS3, which I’ve been chewing over for some time:

“A ceremonial sword, held in Pontiff Sulyvahn's left hand, representing the judgement of the moon, but with magic far closer to sorcery than any existing lunar power. Its dark blue hues, deeper than the darkest moon, reflect sorcerer Sulyvahn's true nature.”

-Greatsword of Judgement

What’s being said here is that Pontiff Sully has set himself up in a position in which he is able to pass judgement on others, but his use of dark sorcery in place of true moonlight indicates that he’s a fundamentally corrupt individual, and therefore his judgements are likely to be unfair, cruel, and in some cases self-serving. If the individual brought under judgement is useful to him then they will be spared, but if they are a threat then they will be disposed of. Aldrich, for example, is a complete monster, yet Sully has not sought to bring him to justice. Rather, he’s used Aldrich as a pawn in his political schemes, and consider how many are likely to have suffered as a result. This is not genuine justice, therefore he does not use genuine lunar power.

But there’s another implication to what’s said here; that some distinction exists between sorcery and moonlight. This seems a bit odd because we normally associate the Moonlight Greatsword with sorcery builds. But we also associate sorcery with the colour blue, and dark sorceries with black and purple. Indeed, the Greatsword of Judgement glows purple [indicating that it’s using dark magic] in Sully’s hand despite the fact that the description says “dark blue”, and you guys can let me know if that’s a translation issue or not. I know that colours are not always perceived the same way across cultures. But the Moonlight Greatsword produces green projectiles, so there was a clue to this distinction between “lunar power” and regular sorcery all the way back in DS1.

To be clear, when I say green I’m not talking about the same kind of green as the stamina bar or the cloranthy ring. This green, which represents moonlight, is slightly toward the blue side of the spectrum. If I were a paint manufacturer I’d probably call it “sea foam green” or something like that. It's actually pretty close to the colour of emeralds, hence the title of this post. But the use of this slightly blueish green is consistent across other iterations of the sword. It’s DS3 version continues to produce projectiles in this colour, and even in Bloodborne it actively glows in this same shade.

Not only this, but the Moonlight Butterfly’s projectiles are also coloured in this exact hue, which is something I’ve wondered about for a while. And it also occurred to me that dispelling Gwynevere’s illusion in Anor Londo causes the entire area to be lit in a shade very much like that of the Moonlight Greatsword. So all the clues were there from the beginning. Of course magic projectiles can be other colours as well, since Quelaag, Firesage Demon, Stray Demon, and the floating heads all produce a reddish explosion that does magic damage. Pinwheel’s projectiles are yellowish, and the twin princes use white ones which seem closer [in colour] to Wrath of the Gods and Emit Force despite the fact that both of those deal physical damage.

Interestingly, the Crystal Ring Shield [which I've demonstrated in the attached video] does not produce green projectiles despite the fact that it is obtained from the soul of the Moonlight Butterfly. It's energy cheerios are pure white for some reason, and I can't help but wonder if this was a deliberate decision [and if so, why?] or a coding mistake of some kind. Another interesting observation about this shield is that it resembles the sun rather than the moon. I wonder why?

I don’t yet have much to say about what this “lunar power” actually is, or what [besides it’s colour] separates it from regular sorceries. I did, however, consult Hawkshaw’s “Colour Theory of Elden Ring” video, which I will link below. I don’t have sufficient lore knowledge for Elden Ring to be able to evaluate every single one of the claims he makes in that video, but overall I think he’s got the associations for the major colours more or less nailed down. I also think that many of those associations apply to Dark Souls as well, although not all of them of course. Unfortunately he does not have much to say about this particular colour, and this is unsurprising as none of the sorceries in Elden Ring use it. Many of the glintstone sorceries are close, but not quite green enough. You guys can let me know if you can think of anywhere in Elden Ring where it is used, or in any other Miyazaki game for that matter.

Hawkshaw’s Colour Theory of Elden Ring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcIEWVFSce8&t=4710s