I just learned this recently.

Some people tend to use their Ascetic in Dragonrider but it sux.

• For starters, you have to go to Forest of Giants anyway to get the blacksmith key.
• Then you have to rush Dragonrider to get value which wakes the Heide knights, which makes the path to Ornstein way more obnoxious.
• Or you can do Ornstein first, sure... But at this point you've managed to make your early game harder, not easier.

Easy solution: Use the Ascetic in Forest of Giants (Cardinal Tower bonfire). It has every advantage:

• You are already progressing in that direction at first.
• You get your estus shards earlier.
• Way easier enemies on both the first and second times you clear the area.
• Pursuer can be easily killed with ballista and gives EVEN MORE souls than Dragonrider.
• You get 3 free titanite chunks, which means early +8 weapon once you reach Bastille, a path that you are also opening.
• Early McDuff infusion for early +8 LIGHTNING weapon.
• And you are actually respawning 2 bosses, not just 1, for maximum benefit. You dont need to do NG+ Last Giant immediately but you CAN.

In summary, never use your Ascetic in Heide, you get more benefit from Forest of Giants.

EDIT: For clarification, there are other good uses for the starting Ascetic like NG+ Rotten or double Soul Spear, but they can be more niche or harder to pull off. Forest of Giants is only one possibility which fits well in every run and is very easy to do.

As we all know bonfire ascetic is the best starting gift. But how do you think it should be used to maximize its effectiveness as early as possible?

Dragonrider for souls? Titanite chunks in forest of giants? Early shaded woods loot? +2 rings? Other?

WARNING: This is a LONG post meant to be read over multiple sittings. Take breaks.

I originally beat the trilogy a long time ago, but to my surprise after returning to the DS community after all these years, it seems many people still dont understand basic aspects of the story. Even some people who quote individual lore facts fail to see how they fit into the bigger picture. But its understandable, considering the overly episodic manner in which content creators tend to cover the lore.

My intention with this post is explaining the most likely interpretation of the overarching plot in a way that is easy to grasp and that elucidates how the internal workings of the dark souls universe operate. At the end of the day however I dont claim to be holder of the ultimate truth, this is just an interpretation so feel free to disagree. On to it:

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The Age of Ancients

Every culture in the world has a creation myth metaphorically explaining how existence may have begun, through conceptual logic and magical events that transcend real physics. In Dark Souls, however, this origin story is meant to be taken literally, narrating historical events which actually happened. This means that in the DS universe, that kind of conceptual thinking IS real physics.

So our story starts with the intro of DS1, which may seem short but actually spans a loooooong time. At the beginning of everything there were archdragons and archtrees of no origin. These werent regular dragons and trees, they were mineral in nature and eternal, with no beginning or end. The world was a big uniform unchanging rock. You could say there was essentially no flow of time.
There was also fog which is this kind of "everything could be at the same time so nothing really is" mystical mojo but this is hardly relevant outside of small moments in DS2 when we use it to turn memories into reality.

For an unknown reason fire suddenly appears and fucks everything up. Now there's something besides rock, which means meaningful differences start to appear everywhere. Having even the smallest flicker of light on one side of the planet necessarily means the other side of the planet is darker, even if nothing has really changed there. These differences create limits, which create interaction, which creates change, which creates movement. The world is still MOSTLY a rock, but now things are happening. There is time and there is potential. This is the essence of disparity.

In time, now that there is time, a bunch of life starts appearing. Archdragons and archtrees are of course affected by the first flame but they are not the only ones. The protagonists of our story are those little fellas who "come from the dark". Interestingly enough in japanese these early dudes are implied to be less than people, you could call them "creatures" if you are generous. These "dark creatures" are, if you hadnt guessed it, what will be known as "hollows" in the future.

Its also worth noting that throughout the games, just like light is associated with fire, dark is associated with water (and the abyss). So its not out of the question that in time a primordial soup came to be, and from it hollows emerged or evolved.

Hollow Nature

These hollows arent the mindless kind we usually meet as enemies, forget the common fan theories since hollowing does NOT turn people mad. These hollows are more similar (not identical) to our player character or to the DS3 hollows of Londor. They build a society underground and they chill for a while. But it doesnt last for long, as dark creatures are drawn to fire and light.

PAUSE! Why are dark creatures drawn to light? As I said, conceptual logic is everything. The core idea is that, as light fades, darkness closes in on it. In Dark Souls this is understood as darkness literally devouring the light. Thats why darkness is intrinsically greedy and glutonous, as well as fascinated with light and its properties. Hollows, as creatures who come from the dark, naturally share this desire for light.
Following this logic, the properties of light are, among others, those which are naturally desired. This will be important later.

So a bunch of hollows start to approach the first flame with the desire to take it for themselves. Three of them succeed: Nito, Izalith and Gwyn. They find different aspects of the "core essence" of the flame: light being the most obvious one, but also life and death as created by the flame's disparity. These conceptual metaphysical forces are physically manifested as "souls" and the Big 3 absorb them into themselves. We could call these 3 souls the "Light Souls" in plural, and they are the white souls we constantly see in game.

They work like this: Disparity, as we established, is potential. The more light there is in the world, the more change that is caused by that light, the higher its potential. At the same time, all this potential is right inside Gwyn for him to do whatever he pleases with it, he is basically a sun in the shape of a person. Same for the forces of life and death. In summary, souls are all the potential for change that exists in the world. When our player character assimilates enough of this potential, we level up.

From Hollows to Lords

This is absolutely overpowered of course, but to spread and exert their influence effectively the Big 3 have to spread their souls among their close ones, weakening themselves individually for the sake of politics. After all they are a potential threat to each other and they have dragons flying over their heads.

After the Big 3 have sacked the first flame, a fourth hollow, the Pygmy, arrives looking for leftovers. Probably because they cant find anything else to draw from the fire, they grasp the core essence of the darkness instead, the Dark Soul, which is fundamentally different from the 3 Light Souls.

And this is about the moment when the Pigmy and all their descendants win by hitting the lottery jackpot. The fire is bound to eventually disappear, after which only dark will remain and these people are going to rule the world for eternity. Which is why hollow builds in DS3 scale with luck.

Anyway, the 4 dudes who got their hands on the chunky souls start to be known as Lords, due to the powerful influence they could exert over the other hollows. Additionally each of these Lords, as well as their followers, gained different traits depending on the type of soul they relied on. Roughly speaking:

• Gwyn and co. became olympians.
• Nito and co. became skellyguys.
• Izalith and co. became witches.
• Pygmy and co. became zombies (I'll try to reserve the term "undead" for the curse later on).

What? Werent the Pygmy's descendants supposed to become humans? Technically yes but actually no, the concept of "humanity" as we know it would develop later. Around this time the followers of the Pygmy were some turbo-dark-powered mofos who wanted to eat everyone else and couldnt die. Why is this?

As we said, dark hungers for light, so naturally the dark beings now wanted to quite literally eat the light beings, and everything else that moved powered by disparity, for that matter. Additionally, since darkness is formless, it is also limitless, meaning that it doesnt have an end nor does it go out, meaning that the owners of the Dark Soul cant die and WILL keep getting more and more powerful until they can devour EVERYTHING.

War for the Surface

Fortunately for our other 3 lords, at this point light/fire is still very strong and dark is weak, so they are fully in control. They are also really overpowered and are looking to start a war against the dragons to conquer the surface world. They say: "Huh these zombie dudes could make for really useful shock troops, they dont die lol".

So taking advantage of their monopoly over light the Big 3, who were once all hollows, declare themselves gods to keep the zombies on a leash, and enslave them. Now unified and leadered by Gwyn, the lords launch a war against the dragons.

During the war, the lords meet another character who was also screwed by disparity: Seath. The ever-changing nature of the new world had turned the once eternal archdragons into living beings with potential, which inevitably subjected them to mutations like albinism. They would all, in time, shift into different species like drakes or serpents. Seath however was the first archdragon to lose all of his scales, turning him into the first naturally mortal dragon. He wasnt happy about the prospect of dying, so he made a deal with the enemy.

Seath would help the lords win the war and commit genocide against his own kind, but in exchange the lords would grant him a noble title, lands and resources to study how to achieve immortality with the bodies of the archdragons. The deal, which was already good by itself, looked even better considering that the lords were already wary of their own mortality next to the perpetuity of the pygmies. It took them a while to realize, but Seath and the Lords were playing on the same team from the start: mortal vs eternal.

Age of Fire

So the lords defeat the dragons and they reward Seath for helping them. Gwyn even grants Seath a sizeable chunk of his own lord soul to keep the dragon close. This is supposed to be when things finally git gud, but Seath fails to develop a "cure" for mortality despite his efforts.

Here is the thing: Due to the logic of the world, there are only two ways to achieve perpetuity.

1. One is becoming a mineral, which entails letting go of all your potential, your desire, your attachements, your hopes and dreams.
2. The other one is embracing the dark soul, which entails becoming a starving zombie in a world where all you do is eye your neighbour's brain heart while they eye yours, hoping for a chance to jump and eat each other.

The gods are having none of it, they want to LIVE as they are forever, not simply exist.

Meanwhile the zombies keep growing in power and number. They are not a threat yet, but everyone knows they will be. The gods are worried for nebulous metaphysical reasons like "if dark is stronger then light is weaker" but also for very practical reasons like "if these animals are left unchecked they are gonna eat and pimp out our families", as it, in fact, ends up happening in DS3.

BlessingCurse

So the gods band together to search for a solution to the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Since zombies cant be killed, the idea the gods come up with is turning the creatures of dark into creatures of light like themselves, bound to the same rules and interests.

The gods use their powers to seal the dark within an invisible ring of fire around the heart, known as the darksign. Then they replace said dark soul for a small amount of white soul. This changes the zombies' experience to one of diluted light and divinity, in other words mortal life.

In part this is a state of being that dark creatures desire, but at the same time they also abhor it for depriving them of their immortality and dark power. So the gods also hide the existence of the dark soul, creating the lie of this new type of being which they call "human". This lie will be maintained by the Way of Gwyn, AKA the Way of White, the religion imposed on humanity by the gods.

This is likely when the term "hollow" is coined, in contraposition to "human". Its a despective way to refer to those of Pygmy descent who arent human, implying they are literally empty creatures due to their lack of light. The Furtive Pygmy is thus forgotten, at some point.

On the surface things may look good for the gods, but deep down its all a huge metaphysical fuck-up.

Remember that dark naturally eats fire and light? Normally, sealing dark with fire would be paradoxical. For this seal to be effective, the gods connected the darksign to the first flame and set it up to burn dark souls as fuel. They inverted causality. And this is not localized, since darkness affects the entirety of existence to some degree. They "linked the fire", to mankind that is, and to the world by extension. This is the "first sin", because it goes against the natural order of the universe. And it will have consequences.

The Accursed Daaarksiiiiiign

For a while everything is fine, humans happily buy on the lie at gunpoint and they enjoy their newfound mortal lives as biologically second class citizens. That is, until the first flame begins to fade and things get messy.

When the fire weakens, the darksign loses effectiveness and the dark soul is freed once more, reanimating "human" bodies which had already lost their fake, mortal white soul. The darksign becomes visible by contrast as it has trouble containing the stirring dark. This is the beginning of the "undead curse", under which undead will start re-emerging from bonfires linked to humanity, logically made of human bones.

These bonfires operate on the same principle as the darksign, burning human sacrifices to keep the first flame going. This is why Estus, which is bottled essence of bonfire, heals us similar to humanities. Additionally, these bonfires can be further linked to living people who may offer their souls to the fire.

Pious saints start hoarding these mysterious "humanity" thingies that are now spawning from corpses, and feeding them to the flame. And firekeepers, female individuals who store large quantities of dark soul inside them, are created to keep some bonfires permanently lit. This is all to keep the undead in check.

The undead state is not identical to the previous zombie state, because these new generations of humans are not used to the dark, they are disconnected from it. While they live, they build their entire identities around light, so when light goes out and dark appears, they easily lose themselves. In the absence of a solid identity, they get overwhelmed by the desire to consume and they go mad with craving, pretty much like soul junkies. This is when they choose to mindlessly start attacking everyone with a soul, like the hollow enemies we know and love.

Bonfire linking remedies this by feeding the first flame with more dark souls, which strengthens the fire and consequently reinforces the darksign. This allows the undead to go back to their human selves, giving them another chance at life and thus investing them in the whole firelinking system, keeping things rolling.

Perfect system, the only issue is that this is not enough fuel to keep the first flame burning at full power forever. More and more undead will keep appearing and once bonfires go out its the zombie apocalypse, made even worse than before by the fact that these new undead cant be reasoned with.

Unsustainability

Gwyn is sweating again, but his trusted friend Seath comes to him and says "Dont worry bro I have a plan. We are gonna swap daughters and at some point an immortal dragon with a living soul is bound to come out. Then we just have to invest all our stocks in the eugenics program bro". Gwyn sees nothing wrong with this so he agrees, but the plan fails and the clock keeps ticking.

Izalith tries to create new life and turn into an ubergoddess which Gwyn finds offensive so he seals her. The Four Kings get ahead of themselves by doing zombie stuff so Anor Londo seals them. Neeto gets depressed and seals himself.

Once the situation gets bad enough Gwyn, who'd rather burn alive than re-enact "I Am Legend", decides to also link his own lord soul to the first flame, sacrificing himself for his clan. To prevent random undead from swarming him and extinguishing the flame ahead of time, a powerful barrier is set which can only be crossed with the power of all the light Lord Souls.

Gwyn's sacrifice is of course a temporary measure at best, so the plan is to save the world by... gradually sending everyone to burn? Gwyn's children say "hol' up a second, something doesnt add up".

• Nameless Son proposes turning into rocks like their former enemies, for which they kick him out.
• Gwynevere proposes intermingling with the undead but they dont take her seriously, so in her foresight she bails.

Its worth noting that Velka, the goddess of sin and Gwyn's mother-in-law, supports them both and plots a rebellion against the gods, but its thwarted.

As for the other gods, despite rejecting the viable alternatives none of them want to burn, so eventually they all bail leaving poor Gwyndolin alone with his childhood trauma. Thus Gwyndolin, being the new king of Anor Londo in Gwyn's absence, decides to play the part, forcefully bring the traitor Lords to the fire and burn them like daddy would have wanted.

As Gwyndolin explains his master plan to manipulate the undead into doing his bidding, Frampt is in the background nodding like a fake-ass sycophant. Meanwhile Frampt tells his brother Kaathe to wait in New Londo just in case some undead doesnt fall for it or decides to be contrarian, in which case Kaathe will sell them the "dark lord" story. The serpents both lie and they are backing the winning horse no matter what, their power isnt dependant on light so they dont care either way.

Eventually some undead transported to Lordran by Velka manages to kills the Lords and access the kiln of the first flame. There, such undead is greeted by a half-hollowed Gwyn (his light soul is burning away after all) who in his infinite racism assumes the worst and attacks. The chosen undead kills Gwyn and gets to steer the world in a direction for a while.

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The Age of Man

Time passes and humans inherit the world. The gods have scattered and are remembered by different names. A bunch of undead link the fire, another bunch extinguish it. In the end it doesnt matter though because now that fire is linked to the dark soul, it will always keep the ability to reignite from the dark.

This is unnatural and creates a problem for the undead, who have to choose between being undead which they hate or pretending they arent then die. There is a recurring theme that undead are trapped by karma.

Usually when people hear karma they think of reincarnation as in "if you do good things you reincarnate as a rich man, if you do bad things you reincarnate as a dog". But here the meaning of karma is more related to cause and effect or fate, with the karma of most humans being predetermined by the actions of Gwyn (and co.) when he created the darksign. Basically Gwyn, despite being dead, is still deciding the fate of the world.

With the Lord of light still in control, a fragment of dark starts moving. Manus, one of the most powerful primeval men, is (partially) reborn as Nashandra, who is afflicted by an endless hunger for power. Nashandra believes that he who determines karma is the most powerful, the true king. Thus, her plan to acquire power is to devour that king: the soul of cinder and its first flame. Then she'll use her power to consume every soul that ever spawned from the fire and make them all one with the dark. Her dark.

Nashandra is not a mindless hollow, so she plays the long game. To get her hands on the first flame she needs to reach its kiln. To reach the kiln, first she needs to reach the ancient throne of want which will transport her there. To reach the throne, she needs giant slaves to excavate it quickly. To get giant slaves, she needs a huge army. So she disguises herself as a hot woman and approaches the warrior-king Vendrick, conqueror of Drangleic (formerly Vinheim) and the second most powerful man.

Human Relations

To catch Vendrick's interest, Nashandra tells him wonders about the throne of want and firelinking, ironically much like a way of white cleric would. Vendrick buys into the idea that linking the flame to save the world is what a king must do, as he'd conquer karma by shaping the new era and defeating the curse. He doesnt know he is being played by both Gwyn and Nashandra.

Nashandra also seduces Vendrick, gains his trust and manipulates him to get what she wants, namely giant slaves by warning him about a supposed threat to Drangleic. Vendrick isnt too convinced about the slavery thing but he makes her queen anyway and basically licks her boots. To understand what he is getting into, Vendrick also starts doing his own research on the throne and the curse, which inevitably causes his scholarly brother Aldia to get involved.

Aldia agrees with his brother in some things but he also differs in others. While both of them want to break the curse, Aldia is more concerned with escaping karma and achieving immortality. He hopes to achieve this by ascending humanity to an entirely new condition in which they may keep all the benefits of life without the drawbacks. In a way, this also makes him a potential philosopher king who can determine other people's fates through his research.

This research is carried out using mostly giants' souls and involves creating golems and dragons, as well as a human-dragon hybrid which is considered a failure, Shanalotte. Its funny how in this "age of man", Vendrick and Aldia are doing the exact same things that Gwyn and Seath did in the past, except its now framed as being for the benefit of mankind. Again, its karma from the gods and humans arent strong enough to overcome it.

So far Vendrick is on board with everything and his brother's methods even distract him from firelinking. But all of this massively pisses off Nashandra. For one, dragons are known for their lack of desire, which is fundamentally opposite to what she represents. If Vendrick commits to that path she fails, and even if he doesnt, Aldia may be learning enough to help Vendrick see through her shit.

Fortunately for her, Aldia has been misbehaving in secret. In hopes of learning better ways to transcend humanity, he and his followers have also been kidnapping humans, Vendrick's subjects, and fusing them to create abominations. Some of these test subjects escape and the news dont take long to reach the queen's ears.

So one day Nashandra goes to Vendrick and tells him "Honey, your brother is basically Dr. Mengele. You are the king, what are you gonna do about it??". Of course Vendrick investigates Aldia, and when he finds the grotesque experiments, he sentences Aldia to... house arrest. He himself is doing slavery after all.

Inhuman Realizations

But everything changed when the giant nation attacked. They were pissed about Vendrick's previous slave raids so they were looking for revenge. Now at risk of losing his entire kingdom, Vendrick is forced to use Aldia's forbidden research to fight the giants. He even dies in battle and comes back as an undead.

Crushed by his new condition, Vendrick cant stop second guessing everything. Did his wife really advise him to raid the giants to save the country or did she have an ulterior motive? Why does his brother's research contradict her story about firelinking and the curse? And more importantly, why does he keep hollowing when he is around her now? He starts connecting the dots.

Suddenly Vendrick finds himself taking too many a cold shower, and not only because he can no longer bed his wife without dying by curse. He had spent many years working his way into linking the fire "like a good king" only to discover that it was all bullshit, that he was willing to break his own moral principles and that he was deceived by the most important person to him, who was doing drag. He starts viewing himself as a fraud. He considers killing Nashandra but he still loves her too much for that, so he does what any heartbroken partner would do: pettily try to sabotage her.

He places a barrier around his castle so that his wife doesnt get new partners. He blocks the entry to the throne of want and guards it with two powerful knights. He himself runs away from his wife (and the ongoing war) to a place where she cant follow, which is the medieval equivalent of ghosting. Its likely that he planned to return once the first flame had gone out, but by that point his self-doubts have caused him to lose his mind and Drangleic has been destroyed. He failed to control even his own karma, which as he puts it, makes him more jester than king.

Meanwhile Aldia is having a good time trapped in his keep with his psychopathic followers. Things keep escalating and they start using one another for their crazy experiments. A bit desperate and out of options, Aldia decides to take his chances by fusing with the first flame through the bonfire network. Unfortunately for him, he cant control the flame nor the darksign so its all for naught. He achieved eternity but he already had that as an undead, now he is a bunch of tree roots. Aldia has ironically become another one of his failed experiments, thus also failing to change karma.

Lessons Learned

Many years after the fall of Drangleic, the darksign has weakened so much that dark soul has started leaking out of the body, this is called the dark sigil and is seen as part of the curse despite being natural. One bearer of such curse is the protagonist of DS2, which we'll call Bear for convenience.

Bear is pulled to the ruins of Drangleic by some force, likely Nashandra, and is nudged towards finding Vendrick to open the path to the throne. By accomplishing this difficult task, Bear sparks the interest of both Vendrick and Aldia, who think Bear may be capable of succeeding where they failed. They start guiding Bear to avoid their same mistakes.

Vendrick knows that he failed due to his inner conflicts, his doubts and his insecurities, his inability to commit to his vision. Thus he encourages Bear to go out of their way to seek adversity by searching for the crowns of previous kings. When Bear brings them to him, Vendrick does some hocus pocus which prevents Bear from going hollow.

Actually this is a performance, what Vendrick has really done is force Bear to strengthen their confidence and their sense of identity as a dark being, ensuring sanity regardless of white souls or number of deaths. Basically now every time Bear respawns they go "Hollow? Me? YOU go hollow, Im the ultimate king babyyyy ahahaha". In this way Vendrick ensures that Bear will stay true to their purpose no matter what. Vendrick also advises that the purpose of a true leader should be inheriting the fire WHILE harnessing the dark, not one or the other.

While Vendrick focuses on making Bear strong enough to choose, Aldia is more concerned about guiding Bear towards the correct choice. He explains to Bear the real nature and origin of the curse which he learned during his research. He says that despite human life being a lie and not a natural state, its full of brilliance, beauty, love and warmth that cannot be found in the dark nature of undeath. Aldia also states that the choice between linking or extinguishing the flame is an illusion. The only two real choices are playing along with the established karma or destroying it to create a new one free of these dichotomies.

Guided by the brothers, Bear makes their way to the throne room where Nashandra is waiting. Now that the path to the throne is open she wants to have a snack before venturing into the kiln, so Bear kills her. But then Aldia shows up and starts attacking Bear for no apparent reason.

Bear defeats Aldia and the latter seems to be dead, but he suddenly goes "Oh no you have defeated me dude, woe is me, wow you are so strong you defeated the first flame. You happy? Can we do something productive now?". Bear is a bit pissed that all this effort has been for naught, but in a display of willpower they take the hard path and abandon the free throne to go look for a real solution alongside Aldia. With this choice Bear transcends the gods' karma and determines their own fate, thus becoming a true king.

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Coming together

Ages pass and the flame is linked several more times. The issue is that it has kept burning for so long that even potential fuel is starting to run out. Finding worthy candidates for firelinking keeps getting more difficult, and a few who try burn up completely and fail. They turn to ash and become "Unkindled".

Not only that, with disparity weaker than ever, all manner of creatures start turning into stones and trees, evoking the age of ancients. Its not only a matter of zombies now, the world is ending for real.

Those in the know who are not fanatics decide its time to end the cycle once and for all. This creates the secret and unlikely alliance between Aldia, Kaathe, Velka and Gwynevere. Their master plan is combining their knowledge and talents to found two nations of opposing ideologies, which will eventually collaborate to break the curse.

The two nations are Lothric and Londor. While Lothric will be a pious kingdom dedicated to firelinking and literally built on top of Firelink Shrine, Londor will be a self-proclaimed nation of hollows where the true nature of the undead is glorified.

This will allow our conspirators to control the process of firelinking while they groom a hollow champion suitable for usurping the flame. And usurping the flame is nothing more than the continuation of Vendrick's and Aldia's ideas about fusing with the flame and combining fire with dark, thus getting the best of both worlds.

The founding of Londor is simple. Kaathe is an expert in manipulating large undead populations like he once did in Oolacile and New londo, so he is the face of the operation. He creates a movement about "making hollows great again", which is a subtle way of saying "killing all humans, the race traitors". Velka aka Caitha also supports the movement, which escalates it into a religious crusade. Kaathe points in Astora's direction and they flatten it to build Londor from its ashes.

Once Londor and its Sable Church have been fully established, Friede who was one of the founding members gets cocky. She ignores half of the plan, decides that she is going to be the lord (lady?) of hollows and attempts to usurp the flame on her own. Despite her strength, she burns like a marshmallow dipped in gasoline because she is teeming with dark soul and there is nothing to stop the combustion.

At that point Velka thanks Friede for her services and tells her to kindly fuck off to Ariamis Ariandel with her ego. Only someone who is preemptively unkindled can usurp the flame, since their ashen bodies prevent the flame from spreading. This makes the unkindled natural containers of fire, as it occurs with embers which are nothing more than heated humanities.

And getting more ash-people is where Lothric comes in.

Lothric & Lothric

Ever since Lothric's founding Aldia had been infiltrated deep inside the kingdom's structures, which allowed him a certain degree of control over the whole process of firelinking. And soon it was time to leverage that influence.

Someone convinces king Gundyr that there is no greater destiny than linking the flame and that this is the duty of his kingdom. Then someone kidnaps and chains him for a while, delaying his arrival irreversibly.

In the meantime Lothric kingdom, invested in firelinking but lacking other viable candidates, decides to compensate Gundyrs absence by rounding up a bunch of random people and sacrificing them to the flame. It doesnt work of course, but a bunch of unkindled are created in the process. And after Gundyr finally arrives, they coincidentally punish him by turning him into the sheath of the coiled sword, a test for future unkindled. Gundyr is remembered in Lothric kingdom as the fool who was late.

Fast forward god knows how long because timetravel shenanigans make things really blurry, until there's a new king of Lothric named Oceiros. Gwynevere travels to Lothric kingdom to marry him, and they have twins named Lorian and Lothric (prince). Its not long before Aldia and Gwynevere tell Oceiros "lets make Lothric kingdom great again", which is actually code for "sacrifice your son to the flame so everyone forgets about your clown ancestor Gundyr".

They manipulate Oceiros into publicly announcing from very early that prince Lothric is going to link the flame when he grows up. However, as prince Lothric develops, he COINCIDENTALLY turns out to have a really weak soul and a sickly body, despite his brother Lorian flexing on everyone with those ridiculous Gwyn genes. Unfortunately for Oceiros, if he changes his mind about Lothric linking the flame after all that hype, he is going to become a clown worse than Gundyr.

Commitment

Having come this far, Oceiros uses Aldia's magic to fuse prince Lothric's and Lorian's souls, in hopes it will turn the sickly prince Lothric into a formidable warrior. What he achieves instead is crippling Lorian. Oceiros role at pissing off the princes is complete, so to get him out of the way Aldia distracts him with some dragon transmutation magicks. After Oceiros starts turning into a dragon and has a half-dragon child (to link the fire) with Gwynevere, she gets PTSD from Seath and bails as per usual.

With Oceiros out of the equation, the twin princes are in charge, and they are beyond mad at the situation. Additionally, Aldia had also been tutoring them from a young age, grooming them and shilling his agenda. But just to be on the safe side of things, Kaathe appears flying on a pair of wings and starts a luciferian cult of the abyss in the middle of Lothric kingdom. At this point the princes just shrug and they finally refuse to link the fire, which sparks a civil war.

Lothric kingdom's culture had always been built around firelinking so its no wonder that many people disagree with the princes' decision, specially considering the visible symptoms of the fading flame are more extreme than ever. The neighbouring kingdom of Anor Londo Irithyll is also helping the rebels get control of the situation.

On the other side, allying with the princes, there are of course our conspirators, and by extension Londor. So Londor starts sending pilgrims on a holy mission to protect the princes. Pilgrims are somewhat like human bombs of abyss, they allow their dark sigil to seep into their shells, where they let it fester. When they reach Lothric, they remove their shells which causes them to burst into Pilgrim Butterflies.

So with multiple kingdoms suddenly involved in what was supposed to be a domestic affair, it seems that this war wont be ending any time soon. To be able to link the fire on time the bells are tolled and some filler bosses previous Lords of cinder are awakened: Yhorm, Abyss Watchers, Aldrich. They all immediately shirk their duties for personal reasons and flee to their homelands.

Since the first flame is linked to existence and existence is running out, the world starts collapsing in on itself to give the flame more fuel and to bring the Lords closer to the flame. Plan C: Awakening the unkindled so they take the souls of the Lords to the fire before the entire world is consumed.

Usurpation

The unkindled known as the Ashen One awakes and starts doing their job. But Londor has other plans for them.

First Ashen meets Yoel who draws their inner power through the dark sigil. This is nothing more than carving a path for the dark soul to flow out of the body, which is in fact the natural state of zombies/hollows. Much like the ring of fire aka the darksign trapped the dark soul to force a human state, the unkindled's burnt condition is doing something similar. And death stirs the dark soul upon revival, thats the reason behind the look of the undead's chests. The unkindled are much like a chocolate coulant, crispy on the outside but sweet on the inside.

By the time Ashen's dark sigil is complete they have turned into a half-hollow half-unkindled, the perfect kind of being to usurp the fire. Thats when Yuria, one of the leaders of the Sable Church who had been lurking around waiting for this, shows herself.

Yuria is apparently keeping track of multiple hollowed unkindled, including Anri. But since Ashen seems to show more promise and be a better candidate, Yuria instructs one of the pilgrims to ambush Anri in Irithyll and kill them by surprise. After the deed is done Ashen is guided there to marry a dead Anri in a very symbolically charged ritual.

The ceremony is performed in Gwyn's tomb to represent the legitimacy of rule being transferred from gods to men (or rather, hollows). A "sword of avowal" is used in the ritual, which is shaped after the ring imagery of the ringed city, stating that men are now aware of their true history.

This sword is used to stab the spouse in the face and absorb part of their dark soul, which was no doubt inspired by Nashandra's myth and recreated through Kaathe's secret art of the dark hand. You could say that it serves as a shameless admission of man's greedy nature but also as proof of the capacity to channel it for a purpose. And in this case the purpose is strengthening Ashen's own dark so they can take the flame within themselves.

Overall, this ceremony creates a "reverse bonfire" that releases humanity instead of absorbing it, the ultimate insult to Gwyn's memory and legacy.

Fulfillment

After marrying Anri, Ashen is fully prepared to usurpate of the first flame, which is what makes them a Lord of hollows. Ashen kills the remaining Lords of cinder and makes their way into the kiln of the first flame, where the Soul of Cinder awaits.

The Soul of Cinder is the soul of the first flame, the combination of every person who has ever linked to the fire and whose goal is to defend it. When Soul of Cinder weakens, Gwyn who is still lurking there possesses it in a desperate effort to keep control, but Ashen defeats it anyway.

When Ashen touches the first flame, their reinforced dark absorbs it, causing an infinite loop: the dark eats the fire, the fire burns the dark soul, the dark eats the fire again and so on. Thus a perfect balance between light and dark is achieved, which will preserve fire inside humanity and grant them real control over the world.

There is no need of further cycles. The curse is broken, or better yet, used in humanity's benefit. Like Prometheus, the Ashen One has taken the fire from the gods and given it to humanity. They will no longer remain "hollow", they will be "whole" forevermore.