Waste

The problem with George Miller is I never know how much is intentional and how much is him spraying his unfiltered id onto the screen and me overthinking it. Like did he know how making the Dogs of Humungus both gay and ex military/police would play in 30 years? No, of course not. Of course not. Not possible. He was an ER doctor with a lot of motorhead friends that made a movie about the 1970s energy crisis. Thats all, that explains it.  He was just reflecting what he had already seen back at us, that's all. Hes not a literal prophet. For example, George doesn't think it would be more sensical to have Tom Hardy's Max low key be Feral Kid, so George is not like smart in a lot of ways, right?

Then kash patel starts talking about his fellow war boy riding eternal in Valhalla and I think yeah George fucking knows, he knows exactly what's gonna happen for the next 50 years and always has and we're about to enter the Plague of Dementuses era of humanity.

Foul truths

 Witchfire is the game i wanted Nightreign to be

Witchfire is also the game i wanted DOOM TDA to be

In Three Days - Howlin Wolf, mostly, sometimes Jim Lee Blues if I'm in a rough spot

I wake up. 

I have a howlin wolf burnett song stuck in my head and a mask on my face. Doesn't matter who's singing it or what year it was recorded or where i first heard it, but it's almost never howlin wolf singing it when it's howling wolf stuck in my head

One of the several challenges I set with this series that I've already failed is that of having some kind of idea of where I'm going with the post when i start. Like I know I wanted to talk about aldia and alken with gnoster and those who live in death with the nightfarer stuff, even if it is mostly improv. If I don't have an idea I should shut up and go do something else, not try to stripmine my own burnout for something that wasn't there yesterday. 

I had no idea what I was going to say about caligo and sometimes improv works out and it's great fun with friends but this is a Google Blog i need to have some standards dammit this is legacy shit I'm doing. The software I mean, I'm pretty sure Google forgot about the site which is good because it means it doesn't change but bad because it'll probably vanish and reapper as a bunch of ai prompt responses diffused throughout the robotosphere. 

We made a heaven of our own.

The blues doesn't change, it just isnt ever the same. Except the blues does change, because the blues just is, it isn't a genre, it isnt 12 bars, I IV V progressions being sad being rebellious, none of that. It's a fire within that lights the world. I forget who I'm paraphrasing here but she said something like blues being the cry of a full heart and a troubled spirit.

Blues just is and it's either something you do or don't got. 

And people go crazy trying to get it, catch it, claim it, learn it learn about it, refine it, bottle it and shelf it and resell it as budget compilation cassettes all across cold war america. 

And those that got the blues are usually made crazy by it or the underlying issues causing it, if they weren't already crazy, and a lot of them would just as rather not have it (crosses arms). Some people got it and don't want it, some people find it or lose it along the way.

Song are a lie, an enchantment. And of all the magics known to us song is among the oldest.

I don't know what to say about gladius. He should be our dog, not theirs. 

I wake up. 

I've got a song stuck in my head and a mask on my face, it's a song that is new to me but not a new song. 

I met an honest to god sad ukele girl from washington state at work and she hits me with leo sayer the show must go on. I hit her with Justin townes earle live solo. doesn't matter.

I'm talking about gladius I promise.

So I pull up a live video because if you can't play it live because that's where the blues lives. Leo Sayer The Show Must Go On 1974. 

...

...

...

Like I've got a line, somewhere, with art, and I say this as an artist, where I start wanting to hand out wedgies while blasting ACDC out of an el camino. 

But anything that doesn't go over the line with me I'm usually okay with. Love even. Queen? Sure. Rush? Get in the locker, nerd.

Brian Wilson is the line, to specify. I break mike regarding the 'purpose of doing this music live and/or as an economic venture' thing, despite being a capital S socialist and not having anything else nice to say about mike, sorry.

So here's this little English dude. Recommended to a texasish honky tonk fan. Gonna rock some socks before god and the queen or whatever, allegedly, hopefully...

English people trying to play blues rock is usually instant wedgies territory. Like 98% fail rate. But also sometimes new and true and genuine hip-shaking barn rocking good time bad time true new tunes for misfits like you does happen, because the blues doesn't discriminate. But it also can't be replicated.

Also, if your band is named the singer's name: I'll be at the bar facing the stage, arms crossed, a non-alcoholic mug of old fashioned haterade and a notepad like a semi-professional lead guitarist, but for band leaders.

And he, Leo the french mime from England in the 70s, is gonna play us a rock and roll song. 

Hype couldn't be lower.

I understand every single thing you're about to going to say about the beatles, probably better than you, and I can confirm they still sound like toothpaste when they're not sounding like overtly twee toothpaste being dispensed at a carnival as tediously as possible by someone who has never been to a carnival and doesn't really understand what a carnical is, but do understand that they enjoy clowns and tigers both and consider themselves experts in these matters. Please enjoy your ice cold toothpaste.

Even by British pop standards the Beatles are bad and suck. Except Ringo, he was in a ray wylie hubbard video and that's about the coolest thing there is to do.

Even if he did try to dance. 

Like, it doesn't ruin the video. He doesn't... its just for a second. Maybe two seconds. Seems longer. It's a great song, Bad Trick. More towards the tony joe white side of rays stuff. Strip club potential. You can hardly notice. And it's not Ringo it's just that's how english people dance outside of like pagan festivals and military balls. Just please, like, try get him to sit at a drumset next time that's literally his job.

He, Ringo does the one dance where you go up and down on your knees and do finger guns. It's universally known as a dance only rich, boring white guys who cant dance (Eagles fans) or but dont realize they cant dance dance, do at parties, usually when they take cocaine. But even that implies a level of coolness almost but not quite entirely absent in English blues rock. Real big notebook next to the haterade :)

It doesn't ruin the video. It Doesn't. It's fine. Happy people are having authenticly presented enjoyment during a grooving tune by one of the all time greats and famous musicians are there. With famous musicians. Outside of Texas famous.

You gotta think about headlines, like Steve earle or Elizabeth cook is gonna attract a lot of approving but penniless band leader critic types and college students, but cottonmouth road was a long time ago, relative, whereas Walsh fans have money, if not sense, and im sure he, joe, personally is fine and not like a ted nugent or kid rock type. 

Plus think about how the english are with blues, and if ringo can keep it together enough to mention it over there on occasion, it's like a package deal you can't say no to even if the package is smoking and being held by a guy with horns. It's fine. Just for a second he dances and it cuts to something else.

You-re old, you got a family. You said it yourself Ray, were you gonna hold out for the bass player? Its fine. You can dance, Ringo, and other cool english guys. We won't mention it. Often. Dance like your hips work, o sons of the silliest empire.

Fucking don't though.

Some of the stones stuff was good for like ten years or whatever, is my understanding, and commercially the US isn't much better, its just like how much shit do you want in the shit sandwich, right? We're all the Irish vampire guy connected to the same radio frequency in this regard.

Elvis? You think Kid Rock or Ted Nugent are shameful and shameless there is pictures of Elvis Presley shaking hands with a confused Richard Nixon, letters from Elvis Presley begging Tricky Dick Nixon to let him be an official secret communist hunter during the red scare, said he, Elvis hated workers, hated kids, loved guns and hating Asia. Said Elvis. To the President who made him a pretend cop because Nixon knew fuckall about what he was doing but oh nobody tell Elvis he's not a real cop look how much red we're gonna scare. Wrote it in crayon, the letter to nixon, I heard.

You want a picture of what rock & roll looks like? here look I'm gonna go get another picture I'll even get one with an English-adjacent person. Point is Elvis could at least dance.

I'm talking about Gladius, I promise.

Anyway, so this very small very English young man Leo Sayer appears dressed like an old timey French clown (would you be hyped for this? be honest. Pull your wallet out excited? no you would not.) but it puts me in mind of ICP, so Sayer gets like an extra half second on the clock before he gets shoved in a locker in my brain several different but all metaphorical ways.

...

This silly little tap dancing English muppet dude is real close to the Beach Boys Line but guess what? 

SHOOP BOOP DEEP BOP DOODLEY DEE I LOVE YOU YOU SILLY LITTLE MUPPET YOURE SO GOOD OH WAIT YOU ACTUALLY DANCED WITH THE MUPPETS WHEN THEY WERE GOOD GODDAMMIT WHY IS ELTON JOHN FAMOUS AND NOT YOU OH ELTON JOHNS A COP HOW SURPRISING

I wake up.

I have a song stuck in my head and a mask on my face. Charlie Patton's old Jim Lee whistle is blowing. Samantha Fish is singing, , so lonesone, like she wasnt gonna sing no more.  

Tricky cover for a white gal, or white presenting gal pesenting gal me having learned better finally to some degree. 

She has a song with tech n9ne. Just to, like, foreshadow where I'm going with this.

Please go watch fd signifiers video Eminem and the White Rapper problem. Because I need to talk about rap without having to go over a bunch of very basic stuff it took me an embarassingly long time to figure out and I feel fucking awful about the person I was and as of fifteen or so years ago my life has been devoted largely to trying to cancel out the wickedness of my prior selves, so i want to be clear, as a suspected supernatural but not racist Irish vampire analoge and on behalf of poor, pitiable remmick: The white rapper problem is the white blues problem is the white rocker problem is the white disco problem etc. Theft is theft but not all theft is equal. Vanilla Ice stealing a david bowie or whoever bassline is fine. Stealing a board from a rich man's house to fashion a the world at large has never seen is good and noble. Unintentionally stealing the craft and legacy and styling and voices of centuries of unheard songs by unremembered singers is not.

I had arrived at conclusions similar to FD Signifier around blues music, broadly, in the late 90s after the 7000th person i asked about the blues came back with stevie ray vaughn. I can't directly say anything bad about SRV because he's a texas bluesman but fortunately he's also not as universally and inexplicably agreed-upon-as-good-despite-being-a-bland-souless-clone-at-best as the beatles or elvis.

So,

Between this and having a few big 'oh' moments around rock and metal I developed an allergy around guitars for some reason in the late 90s and switched to hip hop until the late 2000s, but the stuff i look for in music regardless of genre is somehow always the same and has nothing to do with what the music sounds like to anyone else so don't listen to any recommendations I make, I was about to write Leo Sayer off. People talk about music being pure or authentic or Truth or having soul, stuff like that. It was the opposite of sellout music, in the lexicon. Lo and behold apart from a few mix tapes and used cd section finds it was all sellout music. Then the internet slooooowwlly made its way into my life and, along with real world...stuff related to music, the scales fell all the way from my eyes and I realized hey, we're all Lautrec to someone let's try to at least pursue the vibe since we're knee deep in the blood of dead poets anyway.

Genres sure have fucked us all haven't they? Among other things. 

And, so right there in the middle of it as I a music fan on their way to becoming something more than a fan thinking they're getting further and further away from the blues that first took em, right in the middle of this journey, was tech n9ne. Absolute Power. I haven't heard that album in ages but it's one of those things that's just, like, right there. That was The Album for that era of rap, and also that era of toxic masculinity, if you're trying to convey it to an outsider.

About as pure a case of the blues as you could ever find out there. 

And here he is again. Worlds apart and lifetimes passed. Singing a song with about a pure a case of blues as you could ever find Sam Fish who sings a nice cover of a song from an old mix tape that plays in my head when I've knowingly been engaging in some manner of foolishness. 

Whatever it is it ain't got no genre or style it's something you is or you ain't.

What is it? Part of it is you mean it. You mean it like you mean it as hard as you can as pure as you can and it works or you get the fuck off the stage because someone else is always gonna mean it more than you.

And then it means you gotta make peace with even being on that stage being the pact with the devil. The devil was the wantin of it to begin with, it always was.

Now go out there and start a party you won't get to attend, because if we don't sell enough drinks nobody gets paid but the bank and the blues dies here.

Since the first time I saw Gladius something has AAAAAllllllmmmmooosssssstttttt been there. The Idea. I've seen that chain but where those helmets but when. TRIUNES MEAN SO MUCH AND SO LITTLE

People jump to Cerberus as a connection and it's like yeah but the Mona Lisa is the most boring thing in the painting.

So.

My gut reaction at the time when I first saw gladius was: Farron. I dismissed this as too obvious. Then I see the sword, the chain, I think Londor, Carthus, harald knights(?), the kingdom that became a desert that became the graveyard where the world ends, where all worlds end. The End that survives itself.

My baby caught the train. Left me all alone.

If Gladius is from The Lands Between I'm fucked if I can place them beyond tedious connections to radagon era caria. I really don't think they is though. Oh hey go find a maga chud see if you can make them glitch out over gladius' pronouns I fucking hate English pronouns so much we need new ones. And also governments. Institutions in general. Music industry top to bottom and retroactive. 

You know I love her. She's doing me wrong.

A Gladius, irl, is a Roman Shortsword. It seems to have become just a general word for sword in Rome after a while, but the military shortsword was the only literally-a-gladius gladius. 

My baby bought a ticket. Long as my right arm.

The word gladius or glavus seems to have come from the french 'glaive,' by way of, uh, Rome, by way of of... wow proto-celtic Europe. 

Words evolve and change and diverge and split and loop back the same way weapons and cultures do. I think that's what happened with Gladius, in some sense. 

So the name of the sword Rome is most associated with was traced to France, who traced it back to Rome, who traced to it to the pre-Celts of Europe. I'm gonna have to look into this more if I have time later.

Of all the words for sword, glaive is among the oldest.

She says she's gonna ride. Long as I been from home.

Well so thank god that hail mary payed off, thank you wiktionary you have saved this blog yet again.

Well who been talking? Everything I do

Once there was a great godking who overthrew the order of old and evil and established a new kingdom of glory and good.

Well goodbye baby. I hate to see you go.

Once the heir of a great godking traveled to a distant land and founded a new kingdom of glory and good.

Once there was an aspiring godking who returned to his ancestral homeland in order to defeat the forces of old and evil and establish a new kingdom. Of glory and good. And the shadows danced all the while.

You know I love her.

I'm the causing of it all...

In Three Days - living deliciously

 I didn't think I had much to say about caligo and I went and figured out both drakes and revengers. I thought I'd have acres written shit libra by now but here I am. 

It thinks it's people. There done. I wish I could get a good long look at his various sigils. He seems to cast spells via the eyeballs in his hands rather than his staff, which he uses as a club. When he's calm his spells come across as very academic and refined, whereas his animalistic spells are much more primal, like he's rendering the environment around himself down into something like magma out of sheer mindless anger. 

Going out on a limb here. 

Libra is omen, and one of his aspects is eyeballs.  He got a couple really cool looking horns, sure, but his real gift is being able to seemingly produce infinity eyeballs, which he is able to Frenzy, although he himself is nearly immune to Frenzy and thereby engage with his art relatively safely. 

However: things around Libra, including the ground and air, are NOT immune to Frenzy. In other words,  I think the grapes he's constantly either shedding or weaponizing are acting as shabriri/nanaya with the equivalent of an endless army of very very very weak vykes/midras. To such a degree that I think it's conceivable libra could bring about the frenzied flame ending entirely by accident during a rampage.

Something that didn't make sense to me in the base game expansion was the abyssal woods. It's so frenzied torrent runs away, but there's wildlife. Like normal wildlife, behaving normally while frenzied. Frenzied rats attack you, it makes sense rats really are people, frenzied bats and demihumans i could understand but the common bullgoatsheep? They don't even act different than normal, no vomiting liquid fire from their eye sockets, no apocalyptic machinationing, no grim and dreadful tale of bottomless woe,

Just goats, hanging out. There of all places, where even the water is apparently omnicidal with despair.

Part of me is wondering if Libra came from there,  maybe libra was something like midra's pet goat or a mad science experiment gone horribly right or a forgotten ritual component that wondered into a library after eating a jar of frenzied grapes or something.

He has human hands but cloven feet, so i don't think he's necessarily a beast or demihuman, and libra being a misbegotten just doesn't /feel/ right, scientifically speaking. But when you get right down to it, 

He's a goat that thinks he's people. 

Right, I'm going to talk about what I think libra is or could be, and since this is a Dark Souls (2) blog is need to analyze possible connections to that. 

Libra having a mix of human and goat feet could mean that he's one of the Gen 1 Beasts that were granted intelligence directly by the god of placidusax (presumably), making him as old as maliketh or gurrang (THEYRE DIFFERENT PEOPLE)

Alternately, Libra is constantly referenced as being "a demon", and I'll be interested to learn if it's the same word they use in dark souls to reference post-chaos children of izalith.

With libras mix of human and goat features it could be we're looking at something like a capra demon or ghru. In fact, now that I've pulled up some ghru screenshots I'm becoming convinced this was a cut ds3 demon ruins boss. Imagine the ghru during high farron, before the Old Woods turned poisonous and the ghru feral: libra would have fit right in.

In Three Days - Draggin

 There's so many dragons in these games. Literally back to kings field. 

Caligo is a dragon what on earth am I supposed to say about that that I haven't already. 

She's an Ancient Dragon, maybe more ancient than the Ancient Dragons. Seems to function like a mothman but for pivotal moments in history, she seems to be curious about them. 

She look a lot like the archdrakes in dark souls 3, at least her neck and body, save that she has the double dragonfly wings of a True Dragon.

I said in another post that drakes are tied to lakes, can probably be seen as an embodiment of them. 

I don't think caligo was the dragon of the frozen lake,  but I don't think borealis was either. 

Borealis looks all fucked up, like he lost a fight or recently has something like glintstone or omen horns removed. I don't know what that means but I bet it relates to why he moved to the mountaintops, a place not exactly dragon friendly.

I think the frost-emanating drake in the mountaintop shifting earth event is what froze the giants mountaintop and I'm betting frozen lake was their lake before the shattering, if not the lesser drake i always found down towards the foot of the nightreign mountaintop. 

I just went and checked, and the nightreign drake-dragon looks more-or-less identical to borealis, so this could be a variant, twin, or even a member of a once-common line of drakes.

My thinking was always that the Mountaintop was frozen in order to suppress the Fell Flame. And now I'm looking at all the dragon stuff on the map. Magma Wyrms at either end of the river, dragonkin summons guarding the frenzied settlement, a frozen drake nest full of misbegotten, one of whom has the Rennalagon sword.

The Sun itself always seemed to me like it had two factions; one of light and life and lofty ideals, and another of fire and consumption and the withering heat of an overlong summer. These are factionated(?) in-universe between the dragons/sun realm and the giants. The drakes would naturally gravitate towards the flame, but the nightreign frost drake, which I'm sorry but it's way more relevant to broader-universe stuff than Caligo seems to be, is obviously a thing of frost. Further, the treasure of the mountain makes it so frost basically makes someone stronger.

It would almost seem like the original Drake of the Frozen Lake, if it is the one from the Nightrein mountaintop, was used to shift the political balance from the giants to the ancient dragons, which would set the frost drake/s up as having betrayed the other drakes.  

Fuck dragon cult stuff is so confusing...

AI 028 - something big

Go watch Sinners I just saw it it's really good. Watch the I Lied To You clip oh ye doubters. 

To the point.

The...wait...

...

Right, this series is labeled "AI" because it's called Ashen Idols not because a robot wrote it. That would've not occurred to me ever when I started. It's about taking like single head scratcher topics like nadalia apart rather than trying to analyze the entire-ass story of dark souls 2 in relation to 1 and 3.

This almost whole entire blog is about trying to take dark souls apart in relation to each other. Also this series is about trying to figure how nadalia figures into it, the same way scholar was trying to figure out who the cardinal tower/undead crypt statue was, and The Elder being on the way, was what kicked off the scholar series.

Speaking of slowly being left behind by the world faster:

The mod I was using for nightreign was like a parameter edit, but all the new updates are online-only, which sure I get it, but the mod moved to me3 whatever that is and I don't have the bandwidth to do anything more complicated than copypaste a modded database file over and click a offline launcher app to make me cool and good at things.

So for nightreign I'm just like watching other people fight the boss and then watching zullie and bonfirevn until i start seeing normie articles about mods because if they can figure it out. Holy shit am I writing two series at once I must be less depressed. Hey, look into that if you proofread this later and delete everything back to the Sinners recommendation and then everything after this go to bed.

Right, to the point.

A large part of Dark Souls story is told mostly by what's missing. It's the missing parts that make it something MORE that just item descriptions and quest objectives and contrivance. I'm sure it's the weed talking, but the part of the story we're told is like the white outline around a humanity sprite and the part of the story we're not told is the big most-of-it black part.

So, something that I've always come back to as far as The Lore, is the undead asylum; working out that "oscar" was a, pardon the French, coward and a weakling and also The Actual Chosen Undead Yes Oscar Of This Family Saying Chosed By Me Gwyn, or Nameless, I God Almighty Am Saying This Astoran Family That Hollows Incredibly Easily Shall Succeed Me. 

What would it have took to have been The Dark Lord, back before the firelinking, had gwyn been a little less successful at resisting the course of nature?

They would have to be incredibly powerful obviously. But further, they would need to be fully human. That means no souls, no leveling up, no soul arts, no time or light magic beyond good old fashioned Getting Good. "Here is one humanity, beat the game or game over." 

Because a humanity is basically just a raw id waiting aimlessly until something agitates it or it gets trapped inside someone, at which point it gets caught up in an adventure where it begins to understand division as a concept and develops preferences and the Wanting Stuff begins.

There's a bbc kids cartoon called numberblocks, probably tory propaganda somehow, but the idea is each number is a cartoon character and they can add and subtract to turn into each other. Both my kids love it, the oldest is a math wizz, which is a correlation. The eldest will also probably end up being a king charles fan somehow. 

Not the point. Kind of the point, he was a raw id that found division and thereby preference. Alongside the point.

The point: Once the vessel that housed it hollows, every humanity (in a natural state) goes back to being more-or-less identical to each other. They don't become anything like a Soul of a Proud Knight or a Soul of a Box Loader Who Should've Stayed in Bed or a Soul of a Great Big Dumb King or a Lords Soul (although they can merge with them, but it's always [under natural circumstances] just one humanity).  

They can split though. It's a twin humanity, not a pair humanity.

Which is now where finally I'm getting to the point about the kids cartoon:

Imagine an entire planet where every single person is the number one block in the first episode. Every time it asks a question, poof, +1 humanity waiting to notice something, poof +1 humanity. Somehow one of these things has to overthrow the God of going "equals two! equals three!" And the god, as this would have been shortly after the dragon war, would still be a pretty big slice of the Global Maximum Number pie chart.

Therefore, 

The original Dark Lord, whoever it was, would basically need to be the Best Infantry Soldier ever; a Godfrey or Good Hunter level recruit, opposed to the "every weapon is a club" hacks we see during the bonfire era. Is it cool to say badass again yet? Just the worst people you could imagine were all saying it last I got out. I don't say it much do I? Fuck I'm trying not to be a the worst people I promise. The worst people are fascists and their enablers. "Their enablers" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. I want to be clear who I think the bad guys are. Gendered on purpose. 

Another thing about the dark/light dynamic is that while souls can "pair" and grow stronger, they can't "twin". A spul can exist as 1 up to Global Maximum, they can add and subtract between each other, but they can never +1. The Maximum only goes down. 

It could've been giant smith. It could've been patches. It could've been anyone, that's kind of the point, so long as both the sprite and the vessel were given the right opportunities and came to the right conclusions and took the right actions. In other words, a champion of that most human of attributes: luck.

Which sort of brings me to the point: 

It's easy,  given the setting, to think of this conflict as a lex luthor vs clark kent or guts vs griffith or storm team vs doomguy situation. 

But there's one other thing I keep coming back to across the series.

We're supposed to be talking about marrying a princess here. 

When we look at the lords pygmy, I think there's seven thrones, in the ds3 dlc, we find they all sold humanity out, obviously, but 

What

If

The original Dark Lord didn't wage or win a great war? What if they just won a hand in marriage? 

The lords pygmy seem to be married to fillianore, in some kind of "and the seven dwarves" narrative in what seems like it could be a kind of Dark Lord Ascension Ritual that has stalled out. 

We find a princess, gwyndolinevere, nashandra, anri, finianore. We find seven dwarves, seven trials, seven colors, seven fires.

We find a rarely seen eighth color.

Filianore holds and egg and the egg has black obsidian albumin and the yolk is pure light. 

The conclusion, I think, is that this, here in the ringed city where gwyn broke time, was originally supposed to be where the dark lord from the dark tales period was supposed to ascend, with Lordship inherited via marriage rather than conquest. 

A further possible conclusion is that marriage is how anor succeeded izalith

 

From the Cocoon - Revenge

There's a loose collection of enemies that's always fascinated me, the Revengers. They include some of the saddest, most busted-down depressed and depressing characters in the game.

It seems like of you're stricken by full blown despair but can't break free of the Will of Gold you succumb to Frenzy, a sort of suicidal instinct turned against all that is Golden.

Those untouched or forsaken by gold, however, can become consumed by vengeance towards it.

In castle morne, we find a fort turned into a slave market. We see tortures indescribable and know that those sent to stormveil will face worse.

We find an old knight there, in castle morne, where a slave rebellion has broken out. 

The man seems loathe to take up arms in defense of godricks operation, loathe to take up arms against the misbegotten, but also knows he cannot abandon his fort.

Later, having lost the fort and the only living person keeping him tethered due to the uprising and his stupid honor code, we find him murdering and apparently consuming a whooole lot of misbegotten. 

Then he comes after us. 

In caelid, along the highway, we find a lone surviving drake of old, positioned between a lake and a communion church, killing the holy fuck out of anyone coming towards either.

Because drakes, see, write this down, are tied to their lakes. 

Ecosystem functions somewhat normally? We get agheel,  classic fantasy dragon. Lake gets infected with radioactive space meteors? Magic crystal dragon. Lake gets used as a generational burial ground for things that can't die? Undead dragons. You get the idea. Lake freezes: frost dragon. You get it.

Bayles lake is a volcano. And I'd wager bayle is probably the first revenger.

If you've watched tarnished archeologists stuff, and if you're reading this I assume you have, you'll know that one of the current Mysteries is what caused the Ancient Lava Flood.

I reckon it was Bayle or his god.

Bigger mystery: was Irina under the control of Gold (ie was she adopted by the hornsent-adjacant and probably erdtree-ineligible edgar) or was she chosen purposefully as a vessel (the vengeful spirit of Edgar being reflected by Gold in an empty vessel for Frenzy a la djura/shabriri with the mogwyn drakeknight eleonara).

As for Edgar, remember that big field where we fight gaius? Most of Edgar's order is there, not really buried so much as ground slowly into the mud by the patrols of a giant pig. 

Edgar survived hooray and was sent into exile provided he remain in an ancestral fort and swore allegiance to a demigod, Edgar the Lucky's chosen (probably chosen For him) demigod, godrick, had Edgars former, I assume, captain's leg grafted onto his body, and Edgars job is to usher new gold-touched arrivals to the kingdom up to the castle for dismantling and reconstruction.

And if you have a blind kid to look after and lost literally everything else: guess what kind of moral math starts to make sense?

And when that fragile string snaps? Here comes Edgar reeking of decaying misbegotten. Why?

The misbegotten know Godfrey is returning and will, if anyone would, liberate them. And to Edgar, Godfrey is probably the single asshole all the shit that went wrong in Edgars life can be traced back to.

Ekzykes, I'm not trying to spell that on my phone, the Rot dragon; his lake was blown literally to kingdom come by these asshole demigods, one of whom he was sworn allegiance to because of that stupid night and flame oath.

To take it back to the idea of Frenzy being reflected by Vengeance: psax (and marika for that matter) looks like he has 3 finger burns. I'm not making that up but I don't remember who I got the idea from, but bayle and psax may have been phase 1 in this dance we see continued with hyetta & edgar and djura & elonara and midra and nanaya(?) and vyke when his handmaid died & vyke at a later time when he thought about what actually happened(?).

Psax's big laser attack is called Ruin. Bayles is called magma but it behaves more like the kind of physics you'd get on the sun. Which hey back to the omen-horned sun god/ess, that seems to be another division between the two.

So let's say psax was Frenzied and maybe that's why he, king of the immortal dragons, will die if he doesn't get enough sleep and has to be kept in chronostasis: he'll metastasize into a lord of Frenzy if he tries to recover or fully excercise his will. 

Let's play devils advocate and say bayle was even instrumental in preventing this outcome, wittingly or not. But Bayle was a tyrant. He sent psax packing not because he wanted to save the world, but because he wanted to kill it himself, broadly speaking, because he was young and prideful and had been visited by loss and betrayal and subjugation to such a degree that he was consumed with burning everything responsible. And with the lava flood he seems to have nearly succeeded.