Scholar of Scholar 4: Cursebearer

If it cannot be observed, it does not exist.
Certainly a common conception, but one
with far too many exceptions in this world.

-Numbness

If you're new, start with Olaphis. Otherwise this will probably sound crazy. Table of Contents is here.

Crestfallen's Retreat
Drangleic ended suddenly. Had Vendrick stood and led his men against the Giant Lord they probably would have won the day, one way or another. Vendrick could have then taken the Throne of Man as a right and proper Dark Lord (if that's what's going on).

Of course, Drangleic won the day regardless. Another Pyrrhic victory in a world where all victories are Pyrrhic. According to legend, after Vendrick's retreat an unknown warrior slayed the Giant Lord. This was, of course, the Cursebearer as witnessed by Knight Raulmond, trespassing in the dreams of immortals via the Ashen Mist Heart.

Drangleic ended slowly. The country, rudderless, began to unwind as the king's faithful quietly deserted or hollowed at their posts. The curse deepened, everyone forgot. And here, almost, the long saga of the Twin Dragons of Olaphis would have ended, were it not for the incredibly thin lifeline that was the fourth Firekeeper.

To link the First Flame of Drangleic is to inherit - or usurp, or bypass, or replicate - the First Flame of Lordran. I've sort of laid out a case over the past few posts that this First Flame of Drangleic is the Chaos Flame [I'm no longer sure this is accurate, or entirely accurate - FM].

The idea is that, during the period of High Olaphis, an attempt by a surviving Daughter of Chaos - the Lost Sinner - was made to 'right the wrongs' of Izalith and usher in a new dawn. And by 'dawn' I literally mean actual Age of Fire as overseen by Izalith, only in this case it would be, we assume, Flann and Gwynevere. The reason this was seen as necessary at the time was that, it turns out, Gwyn has 'broken' the flow of time w/r/t the First Flame, which he meant to do, but in breaking it he essentially kinked the hosepipe of the ole metaphysicals. Days and years and lifetimes still pass by, sure, but the life support is slowly winding down as, to continue the metaphor, more and more CO2 builds up in the atmosphere and the air is getting grosser and grosser. This is caused by both the Dark Soul continuously waxing (and stagnating as Abyss or the Deep,) and the Light Soul continuously waning (and 'sickening' from constant reincarnation and misuse).

So, to return to the life support metaphor, by 'linking the flame,' the Chosen Undead that followed through on Frampt's story (probably Solaire canonically,) would effectively be the security officer that went for a spacewalk to change the air filter, knowing they'd die in the process.

Follow me?

What was supposed to happen, probably around the time of Olaphis, was the proper Age of Dark, where a champion of humanity would become High Lord, and link the Flame to the Dark Soul, thereby advancing from Light to Dark. Gwyn and the Light would begin to decline in a way similar to Izalith across the games, while the Dark Lord would oversee a 'global' empire built in their image. In turn, the Dark Age of Man would be followed by the Age of the Dead, which I imagine as a kind of clean up crew to make sure everything's tucked in for a long winter in Age of New Ancients.

Instead, we have Dark and Death piling up in the atmosphere to such a degree that, after a while, changing the filter has very little effect, you're quickly running out of security officers, and the remaining usable air is approaching garbage truck water levels of stagnation.

Then we come to a place like Drangleic, which seems to have some kind of antipodal relationship with Lordran, in spirit if not in actual geology. Treeology? Canopyology? Drangleic is a place where the Dark seems to be piling up as it awaits its 'turn' in the cycle of Ages.

Gwyn's failsafing and foolproofing the Age of Light effectively 'froze' the cycle, without addressing the underlying issue of the waning of light and the waxing of dark, leading to Dark building up in the environment to the point where it stagnates and/or becomes 'agitated,' as Agdayne would say, leading to all kinds of undesirable side effects. In an attempt to resolve this, undead are being drawn to Drangleic, very slowly by this point, in a probably unconscious attempt to recruit or become a 'true king' of Man, which is the same instinct Gwyn/dolin and Frampt pervert to shepherd humanity along Gwyn's chosen course.

To recap:

The Sunken King of Olaphis, who was maybe Flann (or his son) and maybe also an Izalith noble, after the Lost Sinner's attempt failed, outlawed sorcery and pyromancy and in doing so essentially locked himself out of the good ending, because what the fuck good are priests. When Elana appeared the King seems to have gotten the 'true champion' thing almost right, from the perspective of someone like the Nameless King. King Olaph blamed the Lost Sin attempt to link the flame in Drangleic as the cause of the slow decline of his empire. He then attempted a kind of completely misguided Path of the Dragon thing and was eventually slain by Yorgh, who was probably the Iron King's father and was probably based out of the territory we know as Alken.

Princess Venn - possibly the eldest daughter of Flann and Gwynevere, or at least the Sunken King and whoever the queen was before Elana - had lost two-thirds of the empire and almost the entire church by the time the Olaph loyalists finally reformed as the kingdom of Venn, centered in Heide. On the one hand, her kingdom was a shadow of the colonial empire her parents had founded. On the other hand, Olaph had spent the second half of its existence growing lazy and dumb and corrupt and vengeful. So in this sense the Alken revolt had been a blessing, as it meant a lot of those people ended up tossed into the pit in Majula. There is a lot more to say [seriously, whatever amount of content you just thought of, it's more than that - FM] about Princess Venn, but it's not directly relevant. She was a puppeteer and light sorceress, and most of her brief reign was spent slowly losing a war of attrition to Alken.

The Iron King, failed Sunbro, is fairly well-documented elsewhere, but it's important to point out that Yorgh's line is considered worthy of kingship, and Yorgh may have been a native to the subcontinent before the Olaph colonists arrived, and also They Might Be Giants. King Alken was too much of a narcissist to make much of an empire, didn't have an interest in philosophical matters, and was way less interesting than his wife, but did father two notable heirs. His oldest, Prince Aldia with Mytha and the bastard Vendrick with Ivory. One assumes they probably knew each other since before Shulva and he may even have been a good little sunbro before everyone started forbiddening everything and playing around with dragon waste and his dad led a communist uprising.

Next, Vendrick. He seemingly realized - between Nashandra, the Giant Lord, and Aldia - that something terrible would happen if he took the true throne. He retreated to Amana - where he renounced his Lord's Soul - before entering the heart of the Undead Crypt, trailing knights behind him. He was, by all accounts, an uncommonly good and noble king, even if he was seemingly misguided, overly-loyal, and maybe took a couple decades too long to make peace with his father.

He idolized his mother, though. Aldia did too.

And so now, with no more potential heirs to the fire of Drangleic, the Cursebearers are recruited in hopes of finding a champion to take the throne and, as near as I can tell, usher in the Age of Dark, although I could absolutely be wrong about that.

Bonfires are contained in, or at least modeled after, lordvessels. This is why possessing one allows us to fast travel in the first game. Probably you could use them to take the Lords' Souls from one part of the world to another and do something with them, maybe even dig up and destroy the escape route after you were done with it.

With the birth of Chaos, Izalith may have been attempting to restart the cycle, or start a new cycle separate from the First Flame. In this sense, the Chaos flame can be thought of as the Second Flame. The Second Flame was, in most senses, a failure, but failure is a requisite step on the road to success. That's something I tell myself.

As we have illustrated, the Cycle of Flame goes Life > Light > Dark > Death, with each 'age' beginning when the King attains power and takes the throne, linking the Fire from the previous age to the new.

Upon attaining kingship, the cycle moves forward, with the appropriate humor becoming the dominant of the four. This continues until the humor - essentially the fuel of the flame - begins to be exhausted into the fuel for the next phase of the cycle. At this point, the 'curse' emerges, wherein the members of the dominant class are slowly usurped by the next, emerging age.

The ages overlap to a great degree and had little to do with day-to-day existence beyond what flavor of heinous people got up to.

The flames roar, but will soon begin to fade, 

and only a worthy heir might burnish their light. 

What is it, truly, a claimant of the throne could desire?

-Giant's Kinship, Scholar update

The period of time directly after the appearance of the First Flame, mostly dealing with the rise of the first lords and the war of dragons, was the Age of Life. Due in part to Gwyn's, ahem, whitewashing of history this period of Izalith's rule is referred to variously as 'the dawn of the age of fire,' or 'the dark tales,' or something similarly cryptic.

Then as now we're asked to consider: if someone were powerful enough to cast down and replace the gods, what possible motivation could they have to actually do so?

If you already have the power, what would be worth the sacrifice?

For Gwyn, it was...narcissism, when you get right down to it, but a particular kind of narcissism that hides behind words like glory and legacy and destiny. Beyond that, it was Gwyn's wish for his family and his people to flourish and rule until the end of time, which is a crazy thing to want.

Gwyn, between his rush to seize power from the Dawn of Fire and his determination to not allow the Dark Lord to do the same to him, never quite got around to considering what the implications of 'until the end of time' actually meant.

This is a sort of inversion of the development of human civilization, where for tens-to-hundreds of thousands of years we existed as 'matriarchal' hunter-gatherer tribes, before switching over to agriculture and its more 'patriarchal' tendencies for this last blip of our existence where we've ruined literally everything.

Izalith was cursed by Gwyn, just as Gwyn is cursed by the pygmy, and the pygmy is cursed by Nito. Dark Souls 1 was the story of Gwyn, both as the curse of Izalith and the one cursed by the pygmy. Dark Souls 2 is the story of the pygmy, both as curse of light and cursed by death.

Remember: Manus wasn't only a creature of Dark cursed by Light. He was also a product of necromancy.

So.

What could a worthy heir of the cycle want? This is someone with the strength of lords (Four Great Ones,) lordship over the pygmies (the crowns of man,) the blessing of dragons (Shanalotte and the Ancient Dragon,) the kinship of giants (killing the Giant Lord, twice,) AND access to the equipment needed to link the flame. Any one of those things is almost impossible to accomplish, but because of the magnetism of power any one being accomplished virtually guarantees that more will be, unless the throneseeker succumbs to the curse or some other trial.

"I want to be the Dark Lord because I want to be the Dark Lord"?

A good answer might be 'I want to paint a new vision. One of a peaceful, inviting darkness encroaching on the dwindling flame. A world of quiet decline, of reflection, of the struggle for serenity.'

A bad answer might be 'I want the world to bow to me.'

The Call


The history of Drangleic, broadly, involves

• Anor colonists (Olaphis > Venn) conquering a nation of pygmies (Ur-Drang > Drangleic).
• The colonists attempting to perfect Izalith's attempt to recreate the First Flame, but failing in the opposite direction.
• A series of pygmy lords failing to use the colonists' methods to link the Dark Flame, thereby finding a workaround for the Seal of Gwyn.
• Manus re-emerging as the curse of the pygmy lords.
• Something something giants and dragons and golems, everyone forgets.
• Recent undeads become drawn to the forgotten land through a 'limbo...between Drangleic and the outside world.' This link may just be a kind of teleporter, meaning that Drangleic is merely difficult to access overland. Conversely, the link may be the only access point, meaning that Drangleic has been banished to some kind of 'painting' or 'mirror' universe. Further, it may be that Drangleic has a Tethe'alla/Sylvarant relationship with Lordran.
• The Cursebearer finally succeeds at becoming the Dark Lord of Man and ushering in the Age of Dark everywhere outside of the bubble of Gwyn's Kiln. Or maybe just in Drangleic.
• A series of copycat cursebearers relink the Dark Flame.
• The Last Scholar of Drangleic overcomes all of the trials but refuses to take the Throne of Man, opting instead to seek that which is 'beyond the scope of light, beyond the reach of dark.'
• Something something the Mad Snake Queen of the Dead.

The opening cinematic is set in period 6. the movie makes it fairly clear that our character, upon being stricken with the curse, sets out on a (possibly dream inspired) quest for answers. This quest eventually leads us to the missing firekeeper from Things Betwixt.

Perhaps you've seen it, 

maybe in a dream.

A murky, forgotten land,

A place where souls 

may mend your ailing mind.

This opening narration tells us a few things. First, wherever we are, it isn't somewhere where anyone's ever heard of Drangleic, and even if they had, it would have been as a 'murky, forgotten' place. The Call, the thing that draws undead to the Drangleic, manifests as a kind of prophetic or visionary dream. This dream land would seem, at least in the mind of the dreamer, to house the cure for the Curse.

Quella, who is closely tied to the Blue Sentinels and spirit trees, is the god/dess of dreams. The Sentinels' shield describe an allegory of a 'young boy who was easily frightened, until the talking tree of dreamworld transformed itself into a shield to protect him.' The talking tree of dreamworld most likely is Quella, at least in the allegory. An allegory, in this context, would likely mean something like 'a story or parable told to children that, upon closer inspection, reveals a broader spiritual truth or lesson about the human condition.' Historically, the talking tree may have been Elana and the frightened boy may have been Princess Venn around the time High Olaphis became Low Olaphis.

The frightened boy could refer to humans in general, or young men in particular. The tree transforming itself into a shield is clearly an act of sacrifice on the tree's part. This sacrifice results in the frightened boy presumably becoming courageous or fearless thanks to the spirit tree's sacrificial blessing.

Alternately, the truth may be that the boy was no less frightened, and the shield is a metaphor for something like overprotective parents trying to immunize their children from consequences and unpleasant realities.

As a final thought, Quella's name could possibly relate to the Servants of Chaos (Quelaag, Quelaan). If this is the case, something like the Rapport pyromancy - referenced as an art of Mytha and the Jugo Sorceresses - may be being used to project a compelling vision of Drangleic into the dreams of the recently cursed.

Regardless, we're informed that this alleged 'cure' to be found in the dream land involves using souls to avoid, reverse, or alleviate the hollowing process. Presumably, this means that souls function differently in Drangleic than in the outside world.

We know that humanity works differently. In Lordran, Humanity is kept in an atomic state by Gwyn's curse, which prevents a Dark Lord from emerging. In Drangleic, where all of the 'banished' Dark seems to end up, humanity can be so dense that it becomes a poisonous fog, rather than individual sprites.

Restoring one's humanity, in Lordran, involved tracking down a dormant humanity sprite and having one's vessel physically absorb it. In Drangleic, it seems that one merely has to make a token symbolic sacrifice of humanity. Probably one of the most notable changes is that this means you no longer offer up a random humanity to reverse hollowing, but sacrifice part of your own.

Humanity, of course, has a well-documented relationship with the soul.

The grand irony here, of course, is that the hollow vessel is the real 'person,' and the identity undergoing hollowing is something like a prolonged, drug-induced hallucination caused by the influence of the 4 humors of the First Flame.

Using souls to 'mend' a transient experience - chasing the proverbial first high - is ultimately futile, as we're all aware, even if we feel hollow without it. The only true homage to an enduring self is to abstain from the humors as much as possible. But we don't know if the firekeeper speaking to us in-game knows that.

Skipping forward a minute or so, past what I assume are parts of the 'dream,' the Cursebearer locates the fourth firekeeper in a hut full of spiders and spinning wheels and other very symbolic things.

Long ago, in a walled off land, far to the north,

a great king built a great kingdom.

I believe they called it Drangleic.

Perhaps you're familiar?

No, how could you be.

But one day,

You will stand before its decrepit gate.

Without really knowing why...

This lets us know that we're far to the south of Drangleic, in Lanafir or beyond. She reiterates that, wherever we are, it's more or less impossible that we would have heard of Drangleic.

If we take the view that 'it's archtrees all the way down,' that there is a central world tree, then it follows that Drangleic and Lordran may be on different central branches. Drangleic being 'walled off,' may refer to the plateau beyond Aldia's Keep. These kinds of 'high wall' features could be caused by archtrees acting as tectonic plates, with different lands/countries/continents periodically undergoing radical shifts in elevation and distance from each other.

"How the water stays on though?" - spoilers of a good bad idea throughout the ages

Aldia's Muse

Shanalotte repeats a variant of the 'without really knowing why' line from the opening movie in the Undead Crypt. She advises us to travel to the far east, to the Dragon Shrine. Upon arriving there, the 'real' Shanalotte informs us that it was her 'manifestation' that led us here. This could refer solely to the Herald's ability to project a copy of herself at various locations, but it could also mean that Shanalotte is either the fourth firekeeper or the architect of the beckoning dream, and that she was the one to initially draw the player character to the shrine of the dead where we find access to Drangleic.

We know that the Herald is - to some extent - a child of dragons, fashioned by Aldia and possibly Vendrick. But we don't know what else Shanalotte is, apart from incredibly powerful and voiced by Ruth Negga. She's described as being raised 'sequestered' from the world at the Aerie. Shanalotte, not Ruth.

Shanalotte's overall quest for us - to meet king Vendrick - involves three different sub-quests: killing the Four Great Ones; going to Castle Drangleic; and traveling to the Dragon Shrine. It's probably important to bear in mind that she was raised away from the world and would have been Yorshka-level ignorant about most everything for a good portion of her life, beyond whatever she was taught by Aldia, the dragon/drakes, or the dragon apostles.

And yet, in the interim between Aldia 'vanishing' and our arrival she has become one of the most informed people in the game. She acknowledges Shalquoir as a sound advisor, and once she was made aware of the larger world via the feather she would have obviously began putting the pieces together herself, but it still seems as if she was educated in a master-apprentice relationship.

Upon meeting us, she tasks us with slaying the Four Great Ones. Their souls will act as a 'beacon,' granting us access to the castle, where we are to find King Vendrick.

In a 'normal' playthrough, the first step in this process involves killing the Giant Lord. This will be the first time we've killed the Giant Lord from our perspective, but the second time we've killed him from the giant's perspective. That may be important.

The four Great Ones appear to be the 'reincarnations' of the Ineffable Old Ones from the first game. Their Lords Souls were brought to Drang by Vendrick (or drifted that way underground in the case of Manus and Seathe,) as outlined in previous posts, but even without their direct influence the four humors almost necessitate the emergence of four great ones.

The Lost Sinner is analogous to Queen Izalith, The Rotten to Nito, Freja to Seathe, and the Iron King to Gwyn.

You may notice that the Dark is missing and has been replaced with a dracolich. It was like that in the first game, too. The Dark Lord is there, though, right under your nose.

And I'm sure any lion-themed thrones in future games are just rank fan service as From are clearly bereft of ideas and far too dumb to hide things from people that think they figured the story out a month after release the CHARLATANS.

Freja, the Old Iron King and the Lost Sinner have been covered elsewhere, but the Rotten may be worth discussing. The Rotten, in a sense, is the remains of Olaphis' ruling class, and still allegiant to their lost queen.

The Pit in Majula was originally a shaft used (primarily,) to gain access to Shulva and the lands of the Rat King. The shaft later became a mass grave for the church/rulers of Olaphis when the Alken/Venn war broke out, an event that likely precipitated around Yorgh slaying the King.

We find in the Gutter that a good number of 'survivors' have managed to build a somewhat thriving settlement that doubles as a kind of living ramp slowly working its way towards the surface. Beneath this we find the Rotten, who 'embraces...all things unwanted or tossed away.' This is a category that could be thought of as 'forlorn,' although forlorn has a different definition in this game.

Right, I really hope you've been keeping up, because I'm having a hard time keeping all this straight.

Mytha/Agdayne and Elana/Rotten represent a kind of Red and Blue dynamic based on Nito, a dynamic which will sew the seeds for the next phase of the cycle.

Bonus points if you spotted her in the third game. 

Shanalotte next asks us to go to the castle, where men stared straight into the essence of the soul. After arriving at the isolated castle she asks us to forge on, to bring an end to both character's journeys. This, of course, leads us to the King's Ring in the Undead Crypt, which will allow us access to the places Vendrick specifically gated off.

"All of that for a ring?!" you might ask. Yes. Unfortunately there are no laddersmiths in this world, so there's absolutely no way over the five meter tall wall separating you from Aldia's Keep and let's not even get started on the waist-high impassable heap of rubble on the road to the castle.

Shanalotte's next goal for us, after getting the ring, is to journey east to meet the dragon, even though we 'don't really know why' we're doing any of this. Presumably these are all necessary components for becoming a Dark Lord and it wasn't really all just for a key ring.

Shanalotte knows that the Ancient Dragon is basically a golem created from a dragon corpse and a giant's soul, and knows that it plans to give us the Ashen Mist Heart in order to ultimately slay the Giant Lord and gain kinship with the giants.

This last part seems to be critical to understanding Vendrick's retreat.

The mind of the Ancient Dragon is that of a giant. That's who tells us 'the curse of life is the curse of want.' At least in part. Dragons and giants are both immortal in the sense that their existence isn't tied to the first flame. They can both become dormant, however. We don't know how dormant the Ancient Dragon's corpse is, but if it's at all conscious it would follow that it has made peace with its body being occupied by a giant. This would include going along with the Ashen Mist Heart plan.

In either case, the Ancient Dragon knows we want answers, and grants us access to the memories of his fallen former countrymen, giant and dragon and haunted ronin armor, weirdly. Presumably the dragon knows we're going to go back and kill their king in order to gain access to the Throne.

As dragons and giants both exist outside of the cycle, they also exist outside of time as it's understood by mortals. For them, time is experienced presumably more like the Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse 5, and the Ashen Mist Heart allows us to Billy Pilgrim around their timelines, rather than our own. Shalquior indicates that this may be a form of dream magic.

The Giant's Kinship is needed to access the Throne, and the design of the throne makes is clear that it was originally made to seat a giant. This could be seen as lending credence to the idea that Drangleic was originally inhabited by giants, or that one needs to be a giant in order to link the flame. Gwyn's family were clearly giants, despite how they treated other giants. The same may well be true for Vendrick's family, as Yorgh really did hit Sihn from an impressive angle.

Shanalotte's stated motive for 'helping' us is that she needs someone with the strength to shatter the shackles of fate, and thereby set her free. This first may refer to Gwyn and the Seal of Fire that prevents the Dark Age from beginning, but it's unclear how this will make Shana any more free. Another explanation could be that she is still being controlled by Aldia or some former associate and needs us to link the fire in order to escape the malign influence, which may literally be Aldia-as-bonfire.

Another possible explanation is that the freedom Shanalotte seeks is death, and this is the only way she can find it. I just made myself sad.

Shanalotte also warns us that Nashandra will come after us if we attempt to take the throne. She says that this is because Shandra covets the First Flame and the Great Soul. It's unclear whether this means

• Shandra doesn't want you to usher in the Age of Dark, because she likes Gwyn's age of eternally-waning light.
• Shandra wants to link the fire and usher in the Age of Dark herself
• Shandra wants to take the Great Soul from us, because we have it
• Shandra wants to become the Great Soul by taking the throne
• Shandra wants to curse us just before taking the throne
• Shandra wants us to kill her in the throne room to ensure that our rule as king will be cursed or
• Something else entirely

It is clear, though, that Shana and Shandra do not like each other, with Shandra calling Shana's dragon a 'prop' and a 'false deity.' If the two are acting in accordance with the wills of one of the extant queens, then I have no idea who sides with whom. For example, Mytha is the queen of bones and Nashandra is a very Nitoan avatar. However, Mytha's sons created both the dragon shrine and ancient dragon, which Nashandra views as an affront.

Some final thoughts on the Giant Lord and Vendrick's Retreat:

The Giant Lord looks very different than the other giants. Slimmer, taller, tree-ier, and most noticeably: he is hollow and looks like he may actually be burnt. Hollow Vendrick, additionally, looks very similar to the Giant Lord.

The sleeping giants whose memories we travel into look more like the Giant Lord than the elite giants we know them to be.

Vammar - The name could mean 'injured,' 'sin,' 'damage' or 'to rush.' It might share a similar root as the blacksmith Vamos in the first game, although I don't think the characters are related.

Vammar's corpse is found just past Pate, to the right of the explosive barrels in the courtyard. His memory begins with Captain Drummond explaining us about the war, and giving us his helmet after slaying the Giant Lord. From here, we make our way down a gauntlet of giant warriors, giant pyromancers, and elite giants. The most notable loot here is the Giant Warrior Club, which is literally a boulder tied to a tree. It describes Vendrick, "in adherence to Queen
Nashandra's counsel, [leading] his armies north
in an effort to subjugate the Giants, and
claim their powerful souls for his own."

Orro - could be latin orare for 'prayer' or 'worship'; oro, for 'speak,' 'mouth,' or 'orator'; ordo, for 'order,' 'command,' or 'group of soldiers'; possibly even aurum, for 'bright' or 'golden.'

Orro's body is located past the Pursuer boss fight. His memory begins with Benhart, who must also have found the Ashen Mist Heart. Upstairs we find a well-hidden suit of Berenike armor, described as a relic of what were once the mightiest of knights. I can't make heads or tails of this, as the only other possible connection to Berenike in-game is the ring of steel protection and Tark/Tarkus, maybe. The Steel ring describes a legendary Knight King from a time so distant that even the 'greatly wizened' have no knowledge of his exploits. 

Jeigh - if read as Jay, it comes from either the Latin gaius - 'joy' or 'rejoice'; or gay - 'quick,' 'joyful,' or 'impetuous.'

Jeigh's body is behind the King's Gate, and leads to the Giant Lord. Two noteworthy things about this memory are that we can find a helmet-less giant near the beginning, and the first elite giant runs really fast when he wants to. I can't think of any other giants doing that, and the primary definition of the proto-germanic word from which jay/gay is derived is 'fast' or 'quick.'

The Ashen Mist Heart allows us to travel into the memories of both Vendrick and the Iron King. This could further indicate that this is because the scions of Yorgh are giants.

Akelarre

The Ruined Fork Road serves largely as the gateway to the second half of the Cursebearer's journey, and these are the lands most closely tied to the twin dragons.

Tseldora, of course, is where Lord Aldia son of Iron found wealth and knowledge beyond human understanding, and the eastern mountains seem to be the desolate lands that first forged the bastard Vendrick son of Iron and scion to Venn.

And, of course, the manor, the aerie, and the shrine.

One of the first characters we find in the shaded woods is Vengarl. -garl, which may be the same name used for Garl Vinland in Demon's Souls, may relate to the word 'gar,' which can mean, variously, 'spear,' 'near,' 'compelled' or 'ready.' So, Vengarl may mean 'one near Ven' or 'spear of Ven.' Vengarl's dialogue certainly makes it seem as if Vendrick's well-being was one of the berserker's few concerns in life.

Vengarl describes a life of endless war, first in his home of Forossa, long mired in conflict with Mirrah and Jugo. Later, as a mercenary, he sold his sword to Vendrick and helped reclaim the lands of Alken.

OH WORD WELL A ZWEI WILL REMAIN A ZWEI KNOWWHATI'MSAYIN OR...TWO ZWEIS WILL...TWO EINS...SHUT UP

In Forossa, Vengarl was probably one of the last Lion Knights, representing a decline in the order from the days when the Faraam set would have been standard. Likewise, the Lion Clan may have been other Foross lion mercenaries warped by Aldia's experiments. Aldia makes it clear he knows who Vengarl is and what happened to him.

Taking a different fork, we come to Aldia's Keep.

The Keep makes it clear that Aldia, however brilliant he was or is, was also a completely insane monster that ran a laboratory for completely insane monsters. It's implied that most of Aldia's 'guests' are being mind-controlled by Aldia, including the drakes. The Warlocks, which we also find in Tseldora and (as Roenna,) the Copse, are described as having cast forbidden rituals on themselves. Given their blue-ish pallor, it may be possible that they resurrected themselves and are a kind of dead creature.

Aldia created, or discovered, the Forlorn. These are warriors forever severed from their home world, doomed to drift eternally as permanent red phantoms.

Aldia also experimented extensively on drakes and giants.

We don't know how Aldia ended up the way that he did, but in his own words he sought to 'shed the yoke of fate' but failed, and now patiently remains, awaiting an answer from a true monarch.

Past the Manor we move to the Dragon Aerie/Shrine. Both of these areas would have remained under Aldia's control after Vendrick's banishment. Perhaps the first noteworthy item to be found in the Shrine is the Judgement Set. This set belongs to the Pardoners of Velka, though she is described as a 'long forgotten' goddess of sin. The set is worn by Cromwell in the same Tseldoran church as an Aldian Warlock. The set can be farmed beneath Drangleic Castle from the darklurker near the Pilgrim of Dark shrine.

As Aldia is defined as being a scholar of sin, it would make sense that he would know more of Velka than anyone else in Drangleic, although her influence on the narrative doesn't seem to be nearly as prevalent as in the first game. Caitha, in fact, seems to be a much more important 'dark goddess' in the Drang cosmology, and both of these goddesses, along with Fina, are associated with Carim, particularly after the relocation of the Way of White.

Most everything else about the area has been said already, but it's worth repeating that the apostles of the shrine worship Kalameet. Kalameet is described as being the less well known of the black and white dragons, with many claiming he was an embellishment added in later retellings (references Kalameet as a DLC character). The weapons of the apostles, being created from Kalameet's tale, prove the existence of the black dragon, however.

Fires Unlinked
This section will deal with factors leading up to the sequel.

The Old Chaos of Izalith was altered by the Ivory King, then further by Alsanna, then further still by the Cursebearer. It's unclear where in the Izalith timeline these events occurred, but we know that Ivory began her work when Forossa was at or near the peak of its power. We also know that this was after Manus began to reemerge in and around Drangleic.

If you'll allow the hypothesis that the Ivory King is secretly the Queen of Venn and that the Queen of Venn is the rightful heir of Olaphis and that Olaphis was founded by refugee nobles of Anor Londo

THEN

We find ourselves in the peculiar position where someone who very much matches the description of a daughter of Gwynevere 'married' to someone who very much matches the description of a cursed pygmy lord, whose union serves to do something to the Izalith's failed attempt at copying the First Flame.

Now, if you'll recall, the entire purpose of the Cursebearer's journey seems to be to manufacture someone matching a Dark Lord of Man checklist and deposit them at the Throne of Want in order to, we presume, succeed where the Lost Sinner of Olaphis had failed.

So it would seem very possible that someone might later try the same thing with the Eleum flame.

Where does this lead?

The Eleum Flame, if I haven't completely disappeared up my own ass, would therefore be a First Flame composed of Life, Light, and Dark, unlike the Kiln's flame of Life, Light, and Death.

Further, Brume Tower/the Iron Keep may represent a similar potential 'first flame.'

Bearseek Seeklest
I wrote and deleted this part like three different times. It gets more spoilery for the next game from here.

I'm trying to avoid the third game as much as possible, mostly because I don't understand the story enough to feel confident reverse-engineering storylines more than I have already with Mytha and Elana. And again: I'm not sure about either of those, they're just the best explanation I can come up with.

Dark Souls 3 presents the problem of being both more complicated than the previous two games, while having less physical text to tell the story.

To give you an idea of the kind of foundational questions I'm presented with:

• Does the Age of Deep Waters mean the Age of Death, which would follow the Dark Age?
• Has the Age of the Deep happened already?
• Was the Black Flame of Carthus related to Brume?
• What order did the lords of cinder link the fire in?
• Did they ALL link the Anor Londo/Kiln fire? Because it seems like Yhorm linked the post-Eleum Loyce Chaos Flame.
• We know, or suspect, that Vendrick was the canonical 'dark lord' from the ending of the first game, but did he return to Lordran later?
• Basically: does a lord of cinder have enough of an influence that their linking of the flame could be said to constitute an 'age'?
• Seriously, did the lords of cinder linked a first flame or the First Flame like the main character in the first game?

So, as you can see and as is always the case: upon closer examination we find that our answers are really only more questions.

The next post will, hopefully, outline the lands surrounding Drangleic, particularly Forossa, Jugo, Mirrah, Volgen, and Lanafir. I'm not sure, but I might also try to tie it in to the history of Lothric. I have no confidence in my ability to hammer out the history of Lothric as well as Olaphis. My favorite theory is still that Lothric was founded by Lothian, because it feels right, but at the same time I have problems with how this would fit into the timeline and whether or not it would even make sense for Lothian to found a country.

So, it might take a while. Not only because of the holidays, but free time is at a premium and I'd need to try to replay DS3 to even begin to get all of these plot threads into some kind of order.