Olafr
Old Norse... variant Oleifr, Aleifr, consisting of
*ano (“ancestor”) and *laibo (“remainder”)
This is going to be the story of Dark Souls 2, hopefully. The Table of Contents and list of sources is here.
This first post will compile events from the Anor Londo exodus to the fall of Olaphis. It will be followed by a post about Venn, Alken, and the Iron Kingdom, a third dealing with Drangleic and beyond, and hopefully a look-back where I address any points I didn't have time to expand on in the first three and maybe make some points that couldn't have been made earlier because they'd sound insane.
This blog isn't so much a work in progress as it is a kind of evolving mental illness, so I'm constantly going back and revising, updating, and rewriting parts.
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| This was an irl painting repurposed to represent Gwyndolin |
Most of the conclusions are based off of commonly held lore assumptions tied together with a mix of Occam's Razor, least-to-most likely's, and where I break with general consensus I will attempt to present a compelling case for how come I think I'm so smart with my words and shit.
So,
At some point before the Chosen Undead's arrival in Lordran Gwynevere and most of the other gods of Anor Londo left.
Far to the north (maybe,) they founded a colony. The colony grew to become an empire that could have rivaled Lordran or even Carim.
But the brighter the flame, the deeper the shadow.
Some of the underlying assumptions that I'm making that might be deal-breakers. They'll all be expanded on at some point if they sound crazy or obviously wrong:
- The Nameless King of Anor Londo, after his betrayal and exile, eventually relocated to Forossa.
- After the exodus of the gods of Anor Londo some, if not most, of the Anor expatriates ended up in Drangleic.
- The Chasm of Oolacile is accessible underground from Drangleic, but not easily. Drangleic is accessible from Lordran above ground, but also not easily.
- The Ivory King is what happens if Dusk learned to fight.
- Yorgh, the Iron King, Vendrick, and Aldia are related, and the twin dragon charge represents their heraldic achievement, as well as their family dynamic.
- In all the lands across the games there can usually be found an obvious 'white' faction, which over time devolves into warring 'red' and 'blue' factions. Similarly, every character in-game with have either a red or blue character tendency. As in, like, red and blue oni. Gwyn, Nameless, and Gwyndolin, as kings of Anor Londo, were the archetypal white, red, and blue characters.The only place the red and blue factions don't fall to civil war is the Ringed City, but we're not there yet so forget I said that.
From the Light
This section may seem scattershot, but I promise it will tie together shortly.
Olaphis, I think most people agree, is one of the 'oldest' places in the game, as far as when the terrible event that brought the place to ruin occurred, in the same way that the Forest of Fallen Giants is one of the 'newest' places.
As you trace the history of Drangleic back, at least as near as I can tell, it goes something like
- Ur-Drang
- Olaphis
*Purging of Scholars
* Yorgh's Revolt
- Venn
- Alken
- period of upheaval
- Drangleic
- period of stagnation
- Cursebearer arrives
- Venn
- Alken
- period of upheaval
- Drangleic
- period of stagnation
- Cursebearer arrives
- True King emerges
- Last Scholar emerges
- Last Scholar emerges
Now, if you kind of overlay this timeline with the other games some things become apparent. For example, none of the Queens could have emerged until after the Chosen Undead kills Manus. I think Elana was/is probably the second queen of Olaphis and still views Olaphis as the legitimate kingdom. If this is true, then it would seem to indicate that Gwynevere left Anor Londo before Oolacile began experimenting on Manus.
Vendrick, I think, was the canonical Dark Lord from DS1, in that he seems to have journeyed to Lordran, slain the Old Ones and, rather than linking the fire, returned to Drangleic to forge his own kingdom with the help of his older half-brother.
Vendrick, I think, was the canonical Dark Lord from DS1, in that he seems to have journeyed to Lordran, slain the Old Ones and, rather than linking the fire, returned to Drangleic to forge his own kingdom with the help of his older half-brother.
So this means that it's entirely possible that the canonical DS1 Chosen Undead arrived in Lordran, by my best estimate, sometime around the Iron Kingdom period. This might seem surprising, since the game is framed as being so far in the future that it might as well be a different planet, but in reality that's just an effect of the geography and the fact people didn't have supercomputers in their pocket.
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[missing footage]
The the exodus from Anor Londo is difficult to pinpoint, but maybe happened any time from before the Artorias of the Abyss events up to just after the flooding of New Londo, with my personal thinking that it happened as a result of Oolacile, with Manus' death happening maybe sometime around when Olaphis began purging sorcerers, pyromancers, and dissidents.
The Havel knight colonist - assuming it wasn't Havel himself - may have moved to Mirrah at some point [Great Magic Barrier,] possibly with Gwynevere, or may have remained in Shulva as a member of the Gank Squad boss in the Sunken King DLC.
[March 2019: In light of Hawkshaw's visionary work on the Occult Rebellion I've rethought my thinking on Havel. He's still definitely tied to Mirrah, but I'm less sure of his and Nameless' role in early or pre-Olaphis]
The cleric colonist brought tales of the old gods into the new country, as we'll see, that became the foundation for the church of Olaphis, a kind of variant of the Way of White. Some possibly relevant characters associated with this early Olaphian church are the Cardinal that devised the Denial miracle (interesting because of Carim, but we don't talk about Carim til way later,) the Anastasia cosplayer in the Pit, "Havel," Raime, Gwynevere, or the Sunken King himself (who may have been the mysterious Flame God Flann). Man, it is really hard to stay on topic with this stuff.
The Painting Guardian colonist's existence is inferred from the scimitar and armor set, which are described as ceremonial Lindelt items. Lindelt, of course, was founded by Shulvan/Olaph refugees.
The Old Dragonslayer's ring and armor are described as being incredibly old, meaning that he's probably the real Ornstein, possibly having been 'stripped of his deific status' upon leaving Lordran to follow in Nameless' footsteps. Ornstein's 'real' soul was used to create the golem guarding Gwynevere, while Ornstein's body eventually made its way to Heide, which was probably the capital of High Olaphis. It could also just be one of Ornstein's soldiers or a cosplayer or something.
It's possible that any of the above characters could be playing multiple roles. I've recently become convinced a daughter of Izalith made it over, but more below. There are other potential Anor characters that came 'overland' as colonists, but those are the ones I feel more certain of, and hopefully provide enough evidence to suggest that the colony was a thing that happened.
As one of countless asides: Drangleic isn't an island, it's a big peninsula, like India or Alaska, with a 'high wall' along the eastern edge (seen from the Dragon Aerie). Mirrah, Forossa, and Jugo are eastern lands beyond and below the Dragon Shrine, with Forossa being the northernmost kingdom (Eleum Loyce expansion) and Jugo being the southernmost (cuz deserts). Mirrah seems like the most habitable of the three and would be sandwiched between the other two, although Jugo and Forossa probably shared a common border as well, as the kingdoms seemingly all fell to war with each other, and their warriors currently spend their time as mercenaries that have a habit of mixing up each other's armor sets.
ANYWAY, so these colonists, uh, colonize the Drang peninsula, and the colony goes on to become known as Olaphis, the kingdom founded by a single person that later fell to rivalry and spite (as Alken and Venn).
Olaphis
A long time ago a small band of (incredibly powerful,) refugees fetch up in the country we know as Drangleic and manage to build an empire of Light that would almost rival Anor Londo.
They attempted to Link the Fire in Drangleic (Lost Sinner, Shalquoir,). It goes wrong. The curse of undeath emerges/intensifies, and Olaphis begins to decline.
In response to the Curse, the leaders of Olaphis decide to purge the kingdom of academics (sorcerers,) and naturalists (pyromancers,) and the afflicted. The ultimate motivation may have been that sorcerers and pyromancers orchestrated the failed Firelinking. Additionally, anyone even suspected of being touched by undeath was locked up in the Bastille.
During these purgings, magic users (save for save for nobles and clergy) were packed into ships and cast off to sea, bound for either shipwreck or the bottom of the ocean.
Straid makes it fairly clear that at least some of these prisoners and exiles were targeted for thinly-veiled political reasons. The Divine Blessing item makes it seem as if Gwynevere was still queen during the purgings, but being a goddess of dawn I suspect that this was probably at the very end of her reign.
Archdrake
Though Olaphis likely spanned the entire peninsula, the areas that seem most closely tied to the ancient kingdom are Heide, Shulva, Brume Tower (or whatever it was called before it was lost and rediscovered by the Iron King,) the Bastille, and the Shrine of Amana.
This section will outline Shulva, Sihn, and the events that led to the fall of the kingdom.
In an attempt to stop the spread of the curse, and likely guided by Elana, Olaphis turned to dragon worship. How Elana came to become queen is uncertain, but it's possible that the original Queen of Olaphis departed/perished after the outbreak of the curse or the failure of the Firelinking ritual at Amana. The Flower Skirt seems to imply that she first appeared as a 'wily troubadour' seeking a 'generous patron.'
Elana, among other things, was a witchtree, a puppeteer, and a child of Manus.
Given that Elana would have necessarily emerged from deep beneath Olaphis it's likely that she first encountered Sihn on her way to the surface, and later turned the kingdom's attention to it.
We don't know specifically what the original Archdrake sect of Shulva were after, apart from immortality in general via a warped version of the Path of the Dragon. We do know that without any intellectuals or naturalists the kingdom would have been short of brains and devoid of any kind of ethical core. The Church was seemingly in charge of the Mission to the Bottom of the World.
I suspect this would make the Sunken King the 'human chieftain' the Rat King struck his accord with, and the Inquisition into Sihn the betrayal of that accord. Alternately, it could be an echo of...or a reverse-echo or whatever...wait, the Inquisition could be the initial event that is being echoed in Vendrick betraying the Rat King as well, as the Kingdom of the Rat does seems relatively modern and the decline of the Gyrm relatively recent. Jesus christ why was that sentence so hard.
The Church, of course, opted to brainlessly worship the dragon Sihn instead of trying to wake it up and talk to it, or understand it or explode it in the name of mad science or something more, well, not standing around like roses all day.
As it was, the dragon was accidentally exploded in the name of bloodlust.
Probably the most interesting breakthrough the Shulvan Archdrakes made was bodily astral projection. Described as a 'clandestine' ritual, the process is...difficult to describe but easy to understand, I suppose. We see something very much like it in the sequel, only with a different magical aura. The red and black aura seen below also appears around the Nashandra painting when the curse effect is triggered, meaning it likely has something to do with the poisoned abyss of Manus, and was therefore probably devised by Elana herself.
The church of Olaphis would have represented a diverging sect of the Way of White faith. This seems self-evident when we compare the Lindelt Monastery to Thorolund-era Way of White, and allow that the Lindelt sect is a version of the faith that has undergone at least two major upheavals ( the Nameless/Gwyndolin and Yorgh/Olaph civil wars,) and two reformations in different countries under different leaders (Olaphis and, later, Volgen).
"Lindelt," as near as I can tell, could be a combination of the words 'lind' (soft wood,) and 'dell' (a small dale or valley, but also a hollow or abyss). The word could also come from the Old English 'linnan,' (to stop, desist, leave, or give up,) or the Latin 'deleo' (to finish, delete, or destroy). Any or none of the possible combinations of the above could be the 'real' meaning: "Destroy the Abyss" "Place of Soft Wood" "Destruction of the Soft Wood," or "Abandoned Dale," or "Abandoned Hollow" or "Destruction of the Valley," any of which are evocative of the faith.
The schism of Olaphis between Archdrake and Drakeblood factions represents the point at which Olaphis could be said to have 'ended,' and the Venn-Alken period 'began.' This schism in the theocratic monarchy of Olaphis between the dragon-worshiping theocrats (Archdrakes and the King) and and dragon-slaying monarchists (Drakebloods and Yorgh).
The Drakebloods, the rebel faction, believed dragon blood was sacrosanct, and preferred doctrines of few words. The 'few words' doctrine is possibly a reference to miracles being grand tales of old gods, but also invites us to look beyond item descriptions and spoken dialogue for answers.
We know very little else about the Drakebloods, save that they picked the absolute worst dragon to start poking at. They carry Spirit Tree Shields associated with Blue Sentinels and Quella, Goddess of Dream (possibly the original queen of Olaphis, though there are other candidates). They wear heavy armor (and fat roll, which seems weird,) and carry greatswords enchanted with lightning and magic (presumably for use against dragons).
When Yorgh began his assault a small group of Drakebloods managed to power through to the inner sanctum of Shulva, with Yorgh reaching the slumbering dragon, guarded by the king and maybe the queen.
The king was struck down, apparently with little effort on Yorgh's part. This is noteworthy.
If the Sunken King was the king of Olaphis (and possibly also Flame God Flann,) the founder of the colony that would go on to become one of the mightiest nations in all of Souls, then he must have been a warrior of some renown. He attracted a Child of Manus, after all, and they almost definitionally seek powerful beings, although it's entirely possible the King was a stooge and she was there for the dragon.
Either way, with Sun Ken dead, Yorgh squared himself and struck at the slumbering dragon. Sihn expelled his store of poison, blanketing the city in death, Shulva was (almost,) abandoned, and Olaphis was lost.As an aside - The Drakebloods we encounter in Shulva in the Cursebearer's time are either hollow or have fallen under Elana's influence, as it wouldn't make sense for them to be where they are if they remained loyal to their very simple doctrine of 'kill dragon get blood.'
Some points about dragons.
FromSoft generally goes out of their way to explain how their monsters work, logically, according to the rules of the fiction. The evolution of beasts and great ones in Bloodborne as r/K selection theory is a good example. So, how do dragons, Sihn in particular, work?
Dragons are elemental beings, a kind of living mineral. Their 'unalive' state makes them mostly immune to the direct effects of the First Flame, such as souls, humanity, and time.
If Straid and Aldia are examples of 'smartest people,' and Seath is an example of 'smartest dragon,' then we can assume that dragons were/are at least as intelligent as people, but had similar problem as the ents and elves in Lord of the Rings: a creature that measures time in centuries encounters creatures that measure time in days and simply can't adapt in time.
Dragons appear to absorb nutrition directly from the environment and, consequently, take on environmental aspects. The Gaping Dragon, for example, became a bloated, insatiable maw after eating a bunch of people that ate a bunch of people.
Pyromancy flames are alive. They seem to start as a kind of chaos seed embedded in the hand that sprouts into a chaos bug, forming a symbiotic relationship with the host. There are several sources of information on this, so I won't go too in depth, but it's a lesser-known lore point. The bug - the life soul - eats light souls and excretes poison. They feed on light souls because there are no longer any original life souls to feed on. This is why they're going extinct, both metaphorically and literally.
This poison is highly flammable, so the bug has also evolved the ability to, uh, light its own farts on fire. The cloud spells (poison, toxic, acid,) spew out bug poop that has accumulated in the host's system, while the internalized pyromancies (power within, flash sweat,) seem to involve heating or burning this accumulation while it's still inside the host.
Right? Right. Fuck's that got to do with anything?
Sihn's flame went out.
We don't know why, or when, or how, but we do know that if someone can't expel waste they slowly become septic, get sicker and sicker until they die.
Except dragons can't die, only enter a kind of dormant state.
Dragon's breath is, following the logic of the game concerning pyromancy, how a dragon would disposes of waste or impurities collected from the environment. In other words: Sihn was slumbering because he was incredibly sick because he couldn't poop. In puncturing the dragon's lung with his spear, Yorgh may have saved Sihn's 'life,' as it probably provided the dragon with the ventilation needed to discharge the waste, albeit as clouds of corrosive poison so thick and hot that they do about the same thing as fire to anything living.
This initial discharge killed almost everyone in the city. The surviving Archdrakes relocated to Volgen and established the Lindelt Monastery. History is unclear on what happened to the Drakebloods, but at least one of them seems to have served a foundational role in the events of the third game.
Above ground, we can presume, the schism between the red and blue factions leads to open hostilities, the palatial city of Heide begins to fall into the ocean as the caves surrounding Shulva slowly collapse, and the country begins a long slide into civil war.
Some points about Yorgh and the Sunken King.
Yorgh was possibly a giant, judging by the size of the spear in Sihn. It would follow his descendants would also be giant-kin. Executing the King likely sparked the civil war that resulted in Alken and Venn.
According to red/blue theory (I'll explain later,) Yorgh would represent the red faction and the Sunken King the blue faction. Briefly, reds are str/fth builds, blue are int/dex builds. There are exceptions and subversions and inversions, of course, because this is souls. Ivory King is red tendency Gwyndolin, for example.
Errata
The following are things that don't fit nicely into one of the above sections, but come up a lot going forward.
-The Imperfect: dragons are supposed to be mostly immune to the First Flame, but here we have dragon parts animated by what looks like the pus of man. Maybe somebody improved on this formula later. Maybe somebody improved on this formula again even later than that. They have a Dark Lightning attack.
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| Sentinel, Red Room, Anor Londo. There's a Blue Room across the hall with Gwynevere. |
The the exodus from Anor Londo is difficult to pinpoint, but maybe happened any time from before the Artorias of the Abyss events up to just after the flooding of New Londo, with my personal thinking that it happened as a result of Oolacile, with Manus' death happening maybe sometime around when Olaphis began purging sorcerers, pyromancers, and dissidents.
The Havel knight colonist - assuming it wasn't Havel himself - may have moved to Mirrah at some point [Great Magic Barrier,] possibly with Gwynevere, or may have remained in Shulva as a member of the Gank Squad boss in the Sunken King DLC.
[March 2019: In light of Hawkshaw's visionary work on the Occult Rebellion I've rethought my thinking on Havel. He's still definitely tied to Mirrah, but I'm less sure of his and Nameless' role in early or pre-Olaphis]
The cleric colonist brought tales of the old gods into the new country, as we'll see, that became the foundation for the church of Olaphis, a kind of variant of the Way of White. Some possibly relevant characters associated with this early Olaphian church are the Cardinal that devised the Denial miracle (interesting because of Carim, but we don't talk about Carim til way later,) the Anastasia cosplayer in the Pit, "Havel," Raime, Gwynevere, or the Sunken King himself (who may have been the mysterious Flame God Flann). Man, it is really hard to stay on topic with this stuff.
The Painting Guardian colonist's existence is inferred from the scimitar and armor set, which are described as ceremonial Lindelt items. Lindelt, of course, was founded by Shulvan/Olaph refugees.
The Old Dragonslayer's ring and armor are described as being incredibly old, meaning that he's probably the real Ornstein, possibly having been 'stripped of his deific status' upon leaving Lordran to follow in Nameless' footsteps. Ornstein's 'real' soul was used to create the golem guarding Gwynevere, while Ornstein's body eventually made its way to Heide, which was probably the capital of High Olaphis. It could also just be one of Ornstein's soldiers or a cosplayer or something.
It's possible that any of the above characters could be playing multiple roles. I've recently become convinced a daughter of Izalith made it over, but more below. There are other potential Anor characters that came 'overland' as colonists, but those are the ones I feel more certain of, and hopefully provide enough evidence to suggest that the colony was a thing that happened.
As one of countless asides: Drangleic isn't an island, it's a big peninsula, like India or Alaska, with a 'high wall' along the eastern edge (seen from the Dragon Aerie). Mirrah, Forossa, and Jugo are eastern lands beyond and below the Dragon Shrine, with Forossa being the northernmost kingdom (Eleum Loyce expansion) and Jugo being the southernmost (cuz deserts). Mirrah seems like the most habitable of the three and would be sandwiched between the other two, although Jugo and Forossa probably shared a common border as well, as the kingdoms seemingly all fell to war with each other, and their warriors currently spend their time as mercenaries that have a habit of mixing up each other's armor sets.
ANYWAY, so these colonists, uh, colonize the Drang peninsula, and the colony goes on to become known as Olaphis, the kingdom founded by a single person that later fell to rivalry and spite (as Alken and Venn).
Olaphis
A long time ago a small band of (incredibly powerful,) refugees fetch up in the country we know as Drangleic and manage to build an empire of Light that would almost rival Anor Londo.
They attempted to Link the Fire in Drangleic (Lost Sinner, Shalquoir,). It goes wrong. The curse of undeath emerges/intensifies, and Olaphis begins to decline.
In response to the Curse, the leaders of Olaphis decide to purge the kingdom of academics (sorcerers,) and naturalists (pyromancers,) and the afflicted. The ultimate motivation may have been that sorcerers and pyromancers orchestrated the failed Firelinking. Additionally, anyone even suspected of being touched by undeath was locked up in the Bastille.
During these purgings, magic users (save for save for nobles and clergy) were packed into ships and cast off to sea, bound for either shipwreck or the bottom of the ocean.
Straid makes it fairly clear that at least some of these prisoners and exiles were targeted for thinly-veiled political reasons. The Divine Blessing item makes it seem as if Gwynevere was still queen during the purgings, but being a goddess of dawn I suspect that this was probably at the very end of her reign.
Archdrake
Though Olaphis likely spanned the entire peninsula, the areas that seem most closely tied to the ancient kingdom are Heide, Shulva, Brume Tower (or whatever it was called before it was lost and rediscovered by the Iron King,) the Bastille, and the Shrine of Amana.
This section will outline Shulva, Sihn, and the events that led to the fall of the kingdom.
In an attempt to stop the spread of the curse, and likely guided by Elana, Olaphis turned to dragon worship. How Elana came to become queen is uncertain, but it's possible that the original Queen of Olaphis departed/perished after the outbreak of the curse or the failure of the Firelinking ritual at Amana. The Flower Skirt seems to imply that she first appeared as a 'wily troubadour' seeking a 'generous patron.'
Elana, among other things, was a witchtree, a puppeteer, and a child of Manus.
Given that Elana would have necessarily emerged from deep beneath Olaphis it's likely that she first encountered Sihn on her way to the surface, and later turned the kingdom's attention to it.
We don't know specifically what the original Archdrake sect of Shulva were after, apart from immortality in general via a warped version of the Path of the Dragon. We do know that without any intellectuals or naturalists the kingdom would have been short of brains and devoid of any kind of ethical core. The Church was seemingly in charge of the Mission to the Bottom of the World.
I suspect this would make the Sunken King the 'human chieftain' the Rat King struck his accord with, and the Inquisition into Sihn the betrayal of that accord. Alternately, it could be an echo of...or a reverse-echo or whatever...wait, the Inquisition could be the initial event that is being echoed in Vendrick betraying the Rat King as well, as the Kingdom of the Rat does seems relatively modern and the decline of the Gyrm relatively recent. Jesus christ why was that sentence so hard.
The Church, of course, opted to brainlessly worship the dragon Sihn instead of trying to wake it up and talk to it, or understand it or explode it in the name of mad science or something more, well, not standing around like roses all day.
As it was, the dragon was accidentally exploded in the name of bloodlust.
Probably the most interesting breakthrough the Shulvan Archdrakes made was bodily astral projection. Described as a 'clandestine' ritual, the process is...difficult to describe but easy to understand, I suppose. We see something very much like it in the sequel, only with a different magical aura. The red and black aura seen below also appears around the Nashandra painting when the curse effect is triggered, meaning it likely has something to do with the poisoned abyss of Manus, and was therefore probably devised by Elana herself.
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| Clandestine means 'characterized by secrecy, concealment, or deception.' |
The church of Olaphis would have represented a diverging sect of the Way of White faith. This seems self-evident when we compare the Lindelt Monastery to Thorolund-era Way of White, and allow that the Lindelt sect is a version of the faith that has undergone at least two major upheavals ( the Nameless/Gwyndolin and Yorgh/Olaph civil wars,) and two reformations in different countries under different leaders (Olaphis and, later, Volgen).
"Lindelt," as near as I can tell, could be a combination of the words 'lind' (soft wood,) and 'dell' (a small dale or valley, but also a hollow or abyss). The word could also come from the Old English 'linnan,' (to stop, desist, leave, or give up,) or the Latin 'deleo' (to finish, delete, or destroy). Any or none of the possible combinations of the above could be the 'real' meaning: "Destroy the Abyss" "Place of Soft Wood" "Destruction of the Soft Wood," or "Abandoned Dale," or "Abandoned Hollow" or "Destruction of the Valley," any of which are evocative of the faith.
The schism of Olaphis between Archdrake and Drakeblood factions represents the point at which Olaphis could be said to have 'ended,' and the Venn-Alken period 'began.' This schism in the theocratic monarchy of Olaphis between the dragon-worshiping theocrats (Archdrakes and the King) and and dragon-slaying monarchists (Drakebloods and Yorgh).
The Drakebloods, the rebel faction, believed dragon blood was sacrosanct, and preferred doctrines of few words. The 'few words' doctrine is possibly a reference to miracles being grand tales of old gods, but also invites us to look beyond item descriptions and spoken dialogue for answers.
We know very little else about the Drakebloods, save that they picked the absolute worst dragon to start poking at. They carry Spirit Tree Shields associated with Blue Sentinels and Quella, Goddess of Dream (possibly the original queen of Olaphis, though there are other candidates). They wear heavy armor (and fat roll, which seems weird,) and carry greatswords enchanted with lightning and magic (presumably for use against dragons).
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The king was struck down, apparently with little effort on Yorgh's part. This is noteworthy.
If the Sunken King was the king of Olaphis (and possibly also Flame God Flann,) the founder of the colony that would go on to become one of the mightiest nations in all of Souls, then he must have been a warrior of some renown. He attracted a Child of Manus, after all, and they almost definitionally seek powerful beings, although it's entirely possible the King was a stooge and she was there for the dragon.
Either way, with Sun Ken dead, Yorgh squared himself and struck at the slumbering dragon. Sihn expelled his store of poison, blanketing the city in death, Shulva was (almost,) abandoned, and Olaphis was lost.As an aside - The Drakebloods we encounter in Shulva in the Cursebearer's time are either hollow or have fallen under Elana's influence, as it wouldn't make sense for them to be where they are if they remained loyal to their very simple doctrine of 'kill dragon get blood.'
Some points about dragons.
FromSoft generally goes out of their way to explain how their monsters work, logically, according to the rules of the fiction. The evolution of beasts and great ones in Bloodborne as r/K selection theory is a good example. So, how do dragons, Sihn in particular, work?
Dragons are elemental beings, a kind of living mineral. Their 'unalive' state makes them mostly immune to the direct effects of the First Flame, such as souls, humanity, and time.
If Straid and Aldia are examples of 'smartest people,' and Seath is an example of 'smartest dragon,' then we can assume that dragons were/are at least as intelligent as people, but had similar problem as the ents and elves in Lord of the Rings: a creature that measures time in centuries encounters creatures that measure time in days and simply can't adapt in time.
Dragons appear to absorb nutrition directly from the environment and, consequently, take on environmental aspects. The Gaping Dragon, for example, became a bloated, insatiable maw after eating a bunch of people that ate a bunch of people.
Pyromancy flames are alive. They seem to start as a kind of chaos seed embedded in the hand that sprouts into a chaos bug, forming a symbiotic relationship with the host. There are several sources of information on this, so I won't go too in depth, but it's a lesser-known lore point. The bug - the life soul - eats light souls and excretes poison. They feed on light souls because there are no longer any original life souls to feed on. This is why they're going extinct, both metaphorically and literally.
This poison is highly flammable, so the bug has also evolved the ability to, uh, light its own farts on fire. The cloud spells (poison, toxic, acid,) spew out bug poop that has accumulated in the host's system, while the internalized pyromancies (power within, flash sweat,) seem to involve heating or burning this accumulation while it's still inside the host.
Right? Right. Fuck's that got to do with anything?
Sihn's flame went out.
We don't know why, or when, or how, but we do know that if someone can't expel waste they slowly become septic, get sicker and sicker until they die.
Except dragons can't die, only enter a kind of dormant state.
Dragon's breath is, following the logic of the game concerning pyromancy, how a dragon would disposes of waste or impurities collected from the environment. In other words: Sihn was slumbering because he was incredibly sick because he couldn't poop. In puncturing the dragon's lung with his spear, Yorgh may have saved Sihn's 'life,' as it probably provided the dragon with the ventilation needed to discharge the waste, albeit as clouds of corrosive poison so thick and hot that they do about the same thing as fire to anything living.
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| Sihn blanketing Shulva in poison (reenactment) |
This initial discharge killed almost everyone in the city. The surviving Archdrakes relocated to Volgen and established the Lindelt Monastery. History is unclear on what happened to the Drakebloods, but at least one of them seems to have served a foundational role in the events of the third game.
Above ground, we can presume, the schism between the red and blue factions leads to open hostilities, the palatial city of Heide begins to fall into the ocean as the caves surrounding Shulva slowly collapse, and the country begins a long slide into civil war.
Some points about Yorgh and the Sunken King.
Yorgh was possibly a giant, judging by the size of the spear in Sihn. It would follow his descendants would also be giant-kin. Executing the King likely sparked the civil war that resulted in Alken and Venn.
According to red/blue theory (I'll explain later,) Yorgh would represent the red faction and the Sunken King the blue faction. Briefly, reds are str/fth builds, blue are int/dex builds. There are exceptions and subversions and inversions, of course, because this is souls. Ivory King is red tendency Gwyndolin, for example.
Errata
The following are things that don't fit nicely into one of the above sections, but come up a lot going forward.
-The Imperfect: dragons are supposed to be mostly immune to the First Flame, but here we have dragon parts animated by what looks like the pus of man. Maybe somebody improved on this formula later. Maybe somebody improved on this formula again even later than that. They have a Dark Lightning attack.
-Late Olaphis's primary objective seemed to be to cheat death (Denial, scales of immortality, the dragon projection ritual thing, song, the Imperfect, and so on,) in order to elude the curse.
-Elana is clearly a pyromancer, so who knows how or when that happened or how Shulvans reacted to it.
-Elana's 'coming day of vengeance' may be against the descendants of Yorgh and/or the Sunken King. My current thinking is that she goes on to usurp the vacated throne of Venn via the Sentinels, Archdrakes, and other parties of interest.
-Quella goddess of dreams: My money is on Elena, but Gwyndolin, the retired firekeepers, Shanalotte, Aldia, Shalquoir, and a lost sister of chaos are all potential candidates, assuming Quella is also the entity broadcasting whatever call draws undead to Drangleic.
-The Drakebloods carry Quella's shield, which is also located at Heide and Belfry Sol. The fact that the knights are kitted (Yorgh as well,) with spell deflection during an assault against a without-spells opponent means they really didn't like casters, and were possibly the group used to round up jutsu practitioners during the purges.
-Jester Thomas protects Elana's interests.
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| Mytha has horns and has been beheaded. WHY DOES NO ONE COMMENT ON THAT |
-In the Shaded Woods you can Chameleon into a small version of the petrification-spraying giant Praying Maiden statue you find just before the Gank Squad in the Cave of the Dead. The implication being that the shaded ruins were originally built by Olaphis.
-The Praying Maiden seems to represent a different character than the Elana poison-dart statues we find everywhere.
-Judging by how fucking disgusting the Cave of the Dead is, I assume something horrible and futile happened there but have no idea what.
-Trees. Lot of trees in Shulva. Witchtrees? Who the fuck knows, but there's trees and the trees are people and one of them sure acts like a witch. Another one is kind of like a healthy-but-dumb version of Aldia. Maybe Shulva made it. Maybe they found it. They tortured it, certainly.
-Other places with tree people: Darkroot/Royal Wood, Eleum Loyce, Ariandel, Abyss Shrines, Lothric, kinda.
-You can find the staff and chime version of the witchtree catalysts together in a chest in the Forgotten Chamber in the Pit of Majula, where you find the key to get into Shulva.
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| This is the saddest, grossest thing ever. |
-The Heide Knights. These guys are probably dragonriders, but a much older order than Vendrick's. They represent, I think, the Anor half of Olaphis.
- The Old Knights we find in Heide are from Olaphis, probably represent the Ur-Drang half of Olaphis, and might be early golems/puppets. Their greatshield has a design similar to the murals in Shulva, and giant versions of the knights are all over Brume Tower (which existed before the Iron King, who merely reclaimed it). There's a developer interview that stresses that the similarities between Defender and the Old Knights is intentional, so it's possibly the Watcher is connected to the Heide knights in a similar fashion.
- The Heide Knights turn hostile when you kill the Dragonrider or approach the Drake (I hope that's right, remind me to check, I'll talk more about it when I talk about Dragonriders). If so, they may see you as breaking some hopeless stalemate between the Rider (red) and Slayer (blue) factions. The Rider keeps any of them from escaping by ship, the Slayer keeps any of them from entering the Cathedral. And then Glencour like 'fuck it ill fight everybody.' No, wait, that doesn't work, there are Old Knights past the Rider. Maybe the Rider also can't escape? The Drake...gaaaaah brain hurt
[Ornstein abandoned his post after absorbing Smough during his encounter with Solaire, if you want something like a canonical through-line, and relenquished his Lords Soul to avoid the curse. Like Nameless, he basically started a new lvl 1 character, but with some or all of his inherited skills, instincts, and possessions. - FM]
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| I'm sure Sony's gonna patch that like any day now |
- Dragon Charm/Crimson Water - both of these items may have originated in Olaphis, as well as a host of other medicines, since they maybe didn't outlaw alchemy. They're dropped by the Sanctum Priestesses. They are two of the most powerful healing items in the entire series and you probably have 80 of them in your inventory right now.
- Tying indirectly into this: Amana feels like it was built by Olaphis, and that Lindelt is trying to (or has, at this point,) reclaim it. Vendrick even built his castle on top of it, or as near as the root system or whatever would allow. There's a big cloud of Brightbugs around the center of the growth, I guess offering comfort to something dead or dark. BUT THERE'S FUCKING NOTHING THERE.
Spooooooooky. I talk a lot more about this place later. A lot.
Spooooooooky. I talk a lot more about this place later. A lot.
Other Potential Colonists
Velstadt and Raime will be discussed more in future posts, but some revelant-ish points I want to establish:
- Since Velstadt has the Sacred Oath miracle, and his soldiers have turned to stone, I'm inclined to think he may have been the leader of the Stone Knights of the Royal Wood.
- Sacred Oath describes a pact between three legendary dragonslayers: the Firstborn, his first knight (Ornstein,) and a third knight that served them both.
- Velstadt is said to be from a foreign land and came to Drang long ago.That Elana can create a mud-golem copy of him at will would imply that he came to Drang at least as early as the empire period of Olaphis. It's sensational and lacks hard evidence, of course.
- Velstadt may have traveled to Drangleic through the Abyss Chasm. Maybe Raime, as well. It's implied that if you travel through the tunnels beneath Drangleic far enough you'll end up under Oolacile, itself under Anor Londo.
- From Wiktionary digging: Velstadt - lit. 'place of bells,' although 'veils' could be another translation, maybe something more like 'state or kingdom of bells/veils.'
- Raime appears to be wearing a very, very old version of Way of White paladin armor. So old that it looks like it was repaired with dragonscale (also on Velstadt's set,) and other materials.
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| That's a real language I can't prove it but I'm absolutely right. They all are. |
- Raime appears to be wearing a very, very old version of Way of White paladin armor. So old that it looks like it was repaired with dragonscale (also on Velstadt's set,) and other materials.
- The soldiers of Vendrick wear a stripped-down copy of Raime's set, which their shields describe as being symbolic of a 'brave knight from an old parable.'
- Leeroy Gankins is the brave knight from the parable, one would imagine.
- The original Paladin set has an engraving on the shoulder that kinda looks like the Sacred Oath icon.
There's an engraving on Velstadt's chime hammer I'd love to get a better look at, but too dumbs to use CE or whatever and pull the textures
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| Leydia? |
- Gank Squad - people hate on these guys as a bullshit knocktogether to try to help move DLC, but I disagree, and think they tell us a lot. For example
- Varg is 'ancient,' and is a Havel Knight or a wannabe Havel Knight, which still ties him to Lordran. He's a 'soldier,' probably of Olaphis.
- Graverobber is undated, and he's unnamed as well. Probably he's crazy, but not crazy enough to attack his compatriots. He's wearing the armor of the same "Old Guard" order as Alva and Bradley, a group that seems to favor dex weapons and miracles. This might help give a time-frame for Alva, Serrata, and Zullie.
- Old Explorer Cerah - is "old," which means younger than "ancient." He wears a mask from Mirrah (ties to Havel,) but if he's from after the fall of the three kingdoms that doesn't mean anything beyond 'young enough to have been to Mirrah'. He carries a Dragonslayer Greatbow, which ties to Anor Londo. As an explorer, Cerah could have been anywhere in his travels.
- Flower Skirt - The Gank Squad appear to be guarding this widely-held-as-trash-item. It describes troubadours relying on 'wily use of their arts' but also occasionally requiring 'a generous patron.' The skirt appears designed to capture the attention of marks I mean patrons.
Here's the thing:
Elana is a plant.
Particularly the bottom half.
Plants have flowers sometimes, but
Flowers are basically extinct in Drangleic.
Flower.
Skirt.
It's lore on Elana.
Go look up the definition for Chloranthy some time. Not some time, now. Go look up the word, right now. That's an order.
-Undead Crypt - Olaphis again. If not earlier. Agdayne, although he may not have been a colonist, seems to understand the motivations of both Old God loyalists and Drang nobles. He has direct knowledge of Lordran and claims to have been appointed by Nito. Amana and the Crypt will be talked about in-depth later.
-Agdayne's sword, Darkdrift, is said to have belonged originally to Nito. Spoilers for 3: it eventually ends up on the hip of one of the leaders of the Sable Church of Londor.
Death finally came for ole Sun Ken King and his kingdom. Rule of the kingdom would reform under the banner of Venn, comprised of the King's daughter and whatever loyalist survivors remained above, but Yorgh had killed most of Olaphis' powerbase in a single blow with his, again, Old-School-Sentinel-sized spear.
The Pit in Majula may have originally been the above-ground access point for Shulva. We never actually get to the bottom, only take side passages into the Grave of Saints and that temple-ish area with the Faraam Knight and the Firekeeper/WoW Maiden.
The Rotten, whatever else it is as an entity, is infatuated with Elana. Shalquior says he's been down there a very, very long time, and implies that he is the result of dumping activity.
Wild-ass speculation: While Yorgh was leading his assault below, or shortly after, whoever Yorgh's compatriots were led an assault above ground, killing off most of the clerics and dumped the bodies into the Pit, where the mass of death attracted something very much like Nito's Soul.
Oh, Grave of SAINTS. I just got that. Cuz the Alken faction killed like the entire church by tossing them down there.
The Lost Sinner - after reading Shalquoir's dialogue I may have finally come up with a possible explanation for her that I like.
Once, people tried to round up the Undead
and hide them away from the world.
They thought that imprisoning the Undead would solve the problem.
They created a towering bastille to contain them,
but in the end, it did no good.
The Lost Sinner lives deep within the bastille.
The fool. Trying to light the First Flame…
So the sinner was definitely dated to Olaphis, and tried to "light the First Flame," meaning 'the first flame of Drangleic,' as Drangleic probably wasn't under the effects of Gwyn's actions in Lordran.
So she maybe tried to do in Drangleic what Gwyn and/or Izalith did in Lordran. Because she was definitely related to Queen Izalith.
Okay. I think that's it for this post. Part two coming whenever.
