Scholar of Scholar 3: Drangleic

If you're new, start at Olaphis. Table of Contents is here.

They brought you to Rome, slave,

They gave you the work of a blacksmith,

And you make chains.

The red iron you pull from the furnace 

Can be molded as you will.

You can make swords

And  thereby your people could break the chains.

But you, oh slave,

You make chains.

More chains.

I haven't really talked about Nito and death, and I'm not going to much except to say that the Dead Soul figures way more heavily in the narrative than people suspect, since the only clue, really, is the Numbness description.

I haven't talked about Nito because I think I have to understand Izalith before I can understand Nito, but I think I need to lay some (more) groundwork before we can really talk about Aldia and Vendrick's characters and motivations.

We encounter several factions in the Undead Crypt, most of whom are would-be conquerors that have been conscripted into service as grave wardens through some unexplained art of the Fenito (we assume).

The Fenito and Leydia witches seem to date to the beginning. It's possible that 'fe-ni-to' might mean something like 'of(masc) dead one' and milfanito is 'of(fem) dead one,' but of the in-game languages I think we have fewer examples of the, uh, Dead language than the Ancient language (the Futhark-looking one).

[There was a Reddit thread pointing out that the sorcerer Loyce Knight you can recruit in Eleum Loyce uses a Blue Flame catalyst, same as the Lleydia pyromancers. There are a couple of possible interpretations for this, but for now let's just assume it was asset reuse. - future me]

There is a horse.

The portal we enter in the intro cinematic is clearly meant to invoke Nito. Brightbugs, bones, 'spirits of the dead,' water, and so on.

This might sound like a crazy leap here, but I suspect the reason for this is because the retired firekeepers - or at least the one that left Things Betwixt - is working on behalf of the dead. Sounds gross, sure, but what to the dead really, really want?

Peace and quiet.

Mytha and Agdayne (and maybe Elana and Nashandra and who knows who else,) have some kind of covenant with each other, because as ruthlessly good at their job as they make the Grave Wardens out to be I can't make sense of them defecting, or even leaving their post, without good cause. So, the simplest explanation is: they didn't.

Let's say that since Mytha controls a land of the dead (the Copse,) that this allows Agdayne to ally with her in some sense, according to whatever rules they're playing by.

So let's say that's true. Harvest Valley and the Undead Crypt and the surviving Jugo Pyromancers are aligned together in the Cursebearer's time.

And here at the center of everything is an undying snake queen - one whose kingdom will last until the end of time.

Why?

You can do amazing stuff with the things everyone else would rather ignore.

Agdayne does not like the King and Velstadt being in the Crypt because they keep attracting visitors. At minimum. Agdayne will help you fight Velstadt, and Velstadt was apparently already hollow (at minimum,) when he came into Vendrick's service and has been cracking ever since (if he is who I think he was, which he's probably not).

Vendrick, on the other hand, can stay. Because he's the king? Grave Wardens don't care about that. Because Mytha is his mother and Agdayne's working with Mytha? The Rise of the Dead and the King's Soul are right outside the crypt, Vendrick could theoretically be restored easily enough if Mytha wanted him 'alive.' 

Mytha is queen of, well, Alken, technically, in A&V's time, but specifically the Brotherhood of Blood and a/the Kingdom of the Dead in our time, with Gren and the Skeleton Lords acting, in some sense, as provincial governors sworn to Mytha, or at least Alken, which the Copse, Harvest Valley, and the Iron Keep all seem to have been either politely ignored or considered not worth bothering with during Vendrick's re-unifying of the subcontinent as Drangleic.

Let's say that's true, leaving aside whether or not the Copse could be sane enough to really 'align' with anyone or thing other than the sweet blood oh it sings to me.

Mytha also allows the cursed in her kingdom. The big hammerer guys and hollow worshipers have the Darksign and/or are hollow/ing, and are quite obviously supposed to be there, right? NO ONE wants undead around.

But here they are. Mining poison and proliferating bane.Up in the castle we find the Queen - one of the most intelligent and interesting characters in the game - using poison - probably from Sihn and filtering up from Shulva - to become dragon.

And given the ties to Jugo - one of the few places in DS2 with connections to Izalith/Chaos - and the Crypt - one of the few blah blah Nito/the Dead, one could almost call it an empire of opposites. One that has seemingly found a way to unite despite their disparate natures (the Sorceresses being people of Life and the Wardens being people of Death,) in order to achieve some kind of goal that, admittedly, might be no grander than telling Mytha how pretty she is.

I really don't think that's what's happening.

[If you'd like to see where this is going, which is into the plot of the third game, I've started Prisoner of Ash, a series of posts trying to figure wtf with the plot of that game by using this series and the more generally well-understood first game as references. As with this series: I think it offers a fresh perspective on the story, I don't think most of it's 'right,' but I also don't think that that's a very high bar to clear considering how poorly the second game is understood. Also, the map below is all all fucked up. Olaphis, in its time, covered the entire western half of the subcontinent, with the mountains being either wilderness or where the colonists drove the original inhabitants of the land. The Iron King, after the civil war, seems to have opted to continue into the mountains rather than reclaim the northwest. This set the stage for Tseldora and Vendrick, as the brothers both seem to have spent time in the mountains. It may also have marked a period when trade, or at least travel, to and from the three kingdoms could have been re/established. We don't know when the High Wall appeared beyond Aldia's Keep, but the mountains may have simply leveled back out into plains back then. In other words, passage would have been equivalent to crossing the Rocky Mountains before Drangleic was 'walled off,' at which point it would be like scaling a thousand foot cliff, and then crossing the Rockies. - future me]

These are roughly the areas associated with each of the historical kingdoms. Olaphis probably runs south of Castle Drangleic and west, through the woods and out to Majula.

[I had a bunch of stuff here that I decided I didn't like. - future me]

Aldia was the rightful successor to the throne of Alken. Aldia probably didn't care one way or the other about his father or his father's kingdom, because his father's ambitions were small.

Vendrick, bastard of Alken and Venn, was probably raised in the eastern mountains - bandit country - but at some point struck a deal with Aldia wherein Vendrick would get the kingdom and Aldia would get anything he needed to pursue his ends.

These ends may have began in Tseldora. Tseldora is a mining community. This isn't the kind of place where one would expect a lot of learning to be happening, but we find, as we delve into the hearth of the place, that there is evidence that someone studied Seath and Izalith a great deal. There's ample evidence to tie Aldia to the area - the warlock and congregation, Ornifex knowing Vendrick, the ram's skull - and the indifference of the duke towards the Ruin-possessed Freja's assault on the settlement once he was finished there is characteristic of the kind of person Aldia probably was regardless of the Paledrake's influence.

Navlaan the Gods Given
[Had a thing here and now it's down for rewriting because fuck trying to understand Navlaan. A Ruin-possessed, dead Izalith noble that Aldia was keeping hostage? Leaving aside the point that he was obviously successful, is resurrection necromancy or life magic? Was Tseldora the village that was executed? Why does Seath seem to be so closely tied to Izalith? How old is Navlaan? Why is he in Aldia's Keep? Is Navlaan Navlaan, or is Navlaan a Ruined sorcerer from Olaphis' ghost that is now possessing Navlaan? Does Navlaan being two creatures with one body make him a demon?

[What follows is a poorly spliced together attempt to merge three different Navlaan theories into something coherent because if I can figure out Undead Merchant (female)'s backstory I can figure out this asshole's. - fm]
So, according to the Japanese script, Navlaan's name is actually something closer to Navaran. I have no idea why they translated it to resemble Gavlaan, other than to possibly represent populations conquored by Aldia.

So I tried tracking down the meaning of the word, and variants of, navaran.

It's a village of like 300 people in north-central Iran, and the word seemingly only refers to the village. So that looks like a dead end.

Navarra, though, looks like it may lead somewhere.

The Kingdom of Navarre was a Basque kingdom in the Pyrenees mountains, between the northern borders of Spain and France. When Rome arrived in Europe in the late BC era the Vascones avoided subjugation by hiding in the northern mountains. As they were not aggresive towards Rome, the empire likely considered them not worth imperializing. According to Wikipedia, the Vascones adopted Roman farming practices and began settling along the Atlantic Coast, beyond the mountains. This territory would eventually become Navarra.

The word itself is thought to mean something like 'people of the valley' or 'people of the plains next to the mountains'.

In the late Medieval period Navarra was infiltrated by the Spanish Inquisition, despite their best efforts. Since the Inquisition was basically the CIA of the times you can extrapolate the timeline from that up to the Last Navarran up there.

As a border state between two warring empires you can imagine the kind of history they place has had. Probably the place in Iran had a similar history only nobody wrote about it in English online.

BUT when it comes to Soulslore I tend to stick to the general rules like 'keep it to the first 2 pages of search results' and 'has at least two sources'. Plus my favorite rule 'save attempting to translate non-Romantic writing systems for when the depression is bleakest.'

Anyway, so, we finally make it to Aldia's Keep. Vendrick is hollow. Lucatiel is hollow. The lords of old are fallen, fled, and forgotten by the very institutions they used to ascend to power.

Tormented by Memories, Burdened by Guilt, Ready for More

If we're in human form we meet one version of Navlaan, If we're hollowing we meet another. If we let them out then, well, something else happens.

Navlaan died and/or is dead. Navlaan wears clothes that Isweartogod must date to High Izalith and they're in perfect condition.

Navlaan is two 'people' occupying a single body. One is young and frightened and one is old and frightening. One is a mediocre weapon and the Other makes mediocre weapons Great. Navlaan the Young, should we talk to him through the fog wall, warns us away. In 'Later' visits, Young will ask us if he's said anything 'strange,' and then begins telling us that he would under no circumstances desire a containment breach and truly wants nothing more in the universe than to be left to 'wither away' in peace.

The Other, when we meet him, identifies us immediately as a well-traveled hollow. It describes the body of Young as a naive vessel that 'dreamt of bringing new magics into the world' but ended up 'creating' the Other, 'mostly by chance.' The Other says that Young did a fine job in creating the Other.

Young sought strength, and the Other demonstrated. When Young fell asleep the Other would take over, find his/its mark, and hunt them down. Young, horrified, proceeded to seal the both of them away while the Other slept.

The Other tells us he doesn't have anything against humans, but wonders how we set about defining good and evil. The Other says that it is 'only using what the Gods gave Me, how can that be so wrong?'

He then invites us to begin the assassination sidequest. This quest, a version of it, was in Demon's Souls and involved an NPC named Mephisto if you want to look it up. In /that/ game, if you didn't take Meph up on her offer, someone else would.

The Other says that if we don't help him he'll leave the keep and take 'many more' lives, not that he 'gives a fig either way.' I don't know if the idiom was chosen with intent, but it has an interesting history. It refers to an obscene gesture; the US equivalent of the middle finger or the British V. The gesture in question is known as the Spanish Fig. The 'fig' is formed by poking your thumb through your index and middle fingers, forming a 'vagina' with a 'vulva.' The Spanish/Italian word for female genitals is higa/fica, and was swapped out in polite society for the word for 'fig' (higo/fico) so they could still get the PG rating.

The fig, the gesture, is more versatile than the US finger or the UK V. The finger is meant to be a dick, in other words you're literally telling them to fuck off/get fucked and is always used as a curse. The V dates back to the, I believe, early Medieval period. French soldiers would cut off the index and middle fingers of any British soldiers so they wouldn't be able to use a bow. So in England, the V means something more like "Come and take 'em, Frenchie."

The fig dates back to, I don't know how far back, but used to be a sign for sexual union. It was also used to ward off the evil eye, the logic being that the obscenity would serve to distract the evil.

In other words "I don't give a fig" really does just mean "I don't give a fuck," but a linguistically 'feminine' version of the phrase.

To recap:

I don't know why the Other wants Gilligan dead.

Cale stole the key to the Majula mansion from the Other after Young imprisoned them. He didn't just touch the Other's host, he touched the Other's host's pocketses. In other words, the Other may be related to Majula and the peculiar map.

Felkin, the hexer, may have stolen/inherited the Other's old scepter. The Other doesn't call the Sunset Staff a catalyst because the Other doesn't use a catalyst. It's a scepter: like what a duke or prince or archbishop or something would carry. Beyond that it gets all confusing because Navlaan and Felkin's merchant inventory makes all kind of no sense. Like Felkin is from Melfia but carries lindelt and Chaos gear, and Navlaan carries the Melfian Astrologer stuff.

We don't know why he wants the Herald dead, but it involves 'regrets' on the Other's part. If the Other really is an incarnation of the Paledrake/Ruin/Moonlight then this could be one of those rare instances when the entity displays something beyond creeping, and creepy, obsession.

I imagine he /wants/ the feather, for conviencence if nothing else. He can track people he's marked anywhere in the world as an invader, apparently, but the feather would probably allow him to go anywhere at will.

But I doubt it's the only reason he wants to kill her.

Navlaan of Melfia
Then there's the Host.

Navlaan may just be a young, talented, well-meaning, and ambitious scholar from Melfia, maybe an Astrologist, studying under Lord Tseldora that accidentally woke up a Crenshinibon.

This is, I think, the most important thing about the Host as it relates to events in the Drangleic era: the hexes attributed to him seem to be Firestorm pyromancies repurposed as dark miracles. The spells create a 'local vortex of dark flame,' presumably by awakening 'the souls of the long-buried dead.'

This may not seem important, but I feel like it's critical to understanding the relationship between games 1 and 3.

These games have turned me into a crazy person (also you're still wrong - Future Me).

Navlaan the Entity, on the other hand, is part of the Writhing Ruin - the brightstone and the dormant dragon - that Navlaan the Host unwittingly awoke/created during his experiments. The Entity describes a kind of serial killer existence, hunting his prey while the Host sleeps. It might be worth pointing out that 'sleep' is often used as a synonym for 'death,' and Navlaan's pretty clearly dead. In fact, Navlaan was put down with his entire settlement, probably by spiders, and the entire site was sealed with a spider-worshiping death cult and protected by mercenaries (as one possible interpretation of Tseldora as we find it) to ensure it doesn't spread. This is probably done by Aldia, as Navlaan may have been his apprentice at some point.


But whose side are those spiders on, smart guy?


The Entity, a serial killer, claims it's only demonstrating the strength that the Host desired in creating it, and picks its targets seemingly half-randomly based on logic that seems fairly alien.


If the Host was studying under Lord Tseldora, and hence a royal sorcerer in that he served Prince (of Alken)/Duke (of Drangleic) Aldia, then the targets picked by the Entity might have been people of import to the Host's master. This, perhaps, is the reason for the executions, rather than tampering with resurrection: Aldia had clearly been studying the Ruin while trying to avoid falling under its influence, and the creation of the Entity may have caused Aldia to realize that he shouldn't tempt fate by remaining around the Brightstone. It might have been possible to fool Aldia back then, but not for long, I suspect.

The Ruin - a sort of ghost comprised of Seath's influence - is in a sense Seath himself, as anyone possessed by the Ruin will begin to behave like Seath. Aldia would have been a prime candidate for this curse.

Except maybe Aldia's just smart enough to stay ahead of the curve. The Ruin takes possession of his pet spider, Freja [girl], and Aldia has, however indirectly, access to the Source. Navlaan - who possibly has ties or, or at least advanced knowledge of, Izalith - may also be either/both in a student/mentor relationship with Aldia or studying the ruins and the Ruin with Aldia, though with different intentions.

Aldia can block out the Ruin's influence. Navlaan can't. His experiments with the Dark go too far, and the Entity infects him. And so Seath trapped Navlaan in an attempt to trap Aldia, and Aldia trapped - or at least attempted to contain - the Ruin.

So here's the big riddle.

Aldia, at some point, controlled the spiders. At some later point Seath controls the spiders. The spiders like people allied with Velka (Cromwell and Ornifex). Aldia is studying pyromancy. The spiders are afraid of fire. Spiders, traditionally, are quite fond of fire. Both Aldia and Seath are Dukes.

Does Aldia sic the spiders on the town - perhaps in response to Navlaan - and the Ruin allows or is unable to prevent it, or vice versa? Let's say it's the first. S takes N hoping to get to A, but A has taken preventative measures - the foreign mercenaries, maybe, or some Rapport with the spiders learned from Aldia's research. That happens. Aldia kills lower Tseldora, seals the Ruin in the ruins as best you can, hires guards to watch the place, retires to his manor to start putting theory into practice, maybe around the time Nashandra shows up.

Some of the above-ground ruins look older than the lower cove. Crumblingly old, in fact. It's Straid's house, I'm saying.

Switching perspective.

Brightstone was discovered in Tseldora, and the ensuing boom brought wealth to the Duke of the land. This might have happened as early as the Alken/Venn civil war, but I suspect closer to the fall of the Iron Kingdom. This would be pretty ironic, as the Iron King's big problem was a lack of valuable resources and Aldia was off discovering valuable resources and being completely ignored - and probably resented - by his dick father.

Brightstone, as explained in the previous post, is in some sense an extension of Seath and the Primordial Crystal; a sort of disembodied 'will' haunting the land and driving people under its influence insane with a kind of fetishized, obsessive, secretive grudge against some object that represents what the Ruin lacks: immortality, love, community, acceptance, that kind of thing. This is pitiable enough, but lets not forget that the reason Seath is alone is because he betrayed his own in the First War.

The Ruin seemingly had some influence over Lord Tseldora, and definitely over Navlaan. In the Cursebearer's time we find that Falconer mercenaries - most recently from Volgen - have set up a camp among the surviving peasants, presumably to prevent the spiders from getting out or assholes from getting in, but possibly also to keep the Gyrm from getting back in, since that's probably who it was stolen from. Bulwarks are set up defending the camp from the Pharros entrance, while the miners have traps set up for anyone approaching to or from the mines by way of the church.

The church is, in our time, occupied by a Prowling Magus - tied to Aldia - two hollowing clerics, and a congregation - indicating that this church accepts hollows. There is also a Pardoner hiding upstairs, but who knows with him. The spiders like him, whatever that means. We don't know if Aldia knows he's there. Aldia knows how dangerous Seath is, as evidenced by the warnings around Navlaan's cell.

Whoever this was, Aldia cared about her. Note the hair talisman, lack of hood, and the unwholesome-looking pardoner hiding in the rafters.

In the Lord's Private Chamber we find a hollow wearing the Tseldora Set. The set states that it's from the height of the Brightstone boom.

I'm of the opinion that the spider-loving Lord of Tseldora was Lord Aldia, his interest originally in funding both his research and his brother's heroics with the wealth earned in the mines. Somehow he gets sidetracked, becomes a genius, but awakens a terrible evil. He takes the Entity prisoner and sends the spiders after the villagers to bury whatever secrets he had unearthed and to prevent any more unsanctioned Evil Dragon God resurrections.

And for some reason the entire area seems shrouded in an aura of Izalith.

The guy we fight in the Lord's Chamber, I think, is just some Tseldoran that survived the attack. The Duke was said to have gone on to take a form that was 'far from human,' and this guy just seems like a well-dressed hollow under the Ruin's influence. At most, he might be a thrall and function as eyes for the Ruin [the Channelers seemingly functioned as Seath's eyes in the world of Lordan, so this guy may have been the Ruin's Channeler, who were also dressed quite sharply.

He drops a key that grants us access to the Great Fireball pyromancy, the 'exalted flame, long pined after. Even if it would scorch our very flesh,' as well as the Black Knight Ultra Greatsword, ascribed to an order of knights so loyal that 'even after their flesh was charred by flame, they remained as strong as ever, and stood watch, challenging visitors to their land.' This could give us an idea of what young Lord Aldia's overall research was about.

shut up about Navlaan 

One measure of a leader is the ability to make hard decisions. Aldia definitely had that. He really did not want to be a leader though. Probably that's a good thing.

The brightstone had brought the lord wealth and knowledge beyond measure. Further, the lord was both intelligent enough to see the dangers of continuing to pursue the venture, and disciplined enough to know when to burn a bridge.

In other words, Lord Tseldora seems to have got out in time. debatably.

Dragonrider
Vendrick, I think, might mean "Wrecker/Ruler/Realm of Venn," and Aldia might mean "Dawn/Day/Sun/Divine Light of Alken." These could be tied to when they were born, even if they don't really clue us into what Al- and Venn- are supposed to mean. Aldia, the elder, was born around the time Alken began to amass strength, Vendrick in honor of the fall of Venn.

The aeries are broken archtrees, which the drakes use as nests. It's the same place as the intro cinematic just way further in the future.

Sooooooooo who was Vendrick's mother?

My guess is that Mytha is Aldia's mother and Princess Venn is Vendrick's mother. That's the most obvious take, but when is the most obvious take ever right? Narratively, this gives Vendrick more of a claim, one would think, to kingship as he is more directly related to the Old Gods, even if only by proximity and rumor.

Vendrick Ironson was the name that would unite people, because his name was also Vendrick Ivoryson.

Sword stabbing a flower, which explodes. Could reference the chloranthy thing, could reference Sihn. Maybe

ALDIA: Aight V, give me anything I want - DRAGONS V I KNOW WE LOVE THEM BUT LET ME LOVE THEM BY TURNING THEIR CORPSES INTO ABOMINATIONS WHAT EVERYONE DOES IT V YOU FUCKING PURITAN - and don't ask questions and you can be king. I'll figure out some other shit to get around mortality. Who would want to rule this shitheap anyway?

In Vendrick we see the third act of the Great Lightning Spear saga, which also plays out with Lothian, probably Prince Ricard, Hawkwood, and I'm sure others. It's kind of like Campbell's Monomyth, except more of an exploration of what happens when heroes fail or become misled at different junctures.

In Yorgh we saw the brave dragonslayer birthing the modern era and inheriting his father's dealership, bro. In Alken we saw the Nameless King realize all victories are ultimately hollow, that godmode really does take the fun out, and a shifting, at the end, towards a search for dragons of his own.

In Vendrick, we see the tale continued with the dragonslayer 'renouncing' his lands and title, traveling to another land as a peasant, and becomes a 'lord' on their own merit (learning many difficult but valuable lessons about poor people being people and foreigners being people and women being people and so on).

The Slayer then builds/serves a mighty kingdom that ultimately devolves into a senseless war because mostly what the Dragonslayer learns is fighting.

Vendrick's dominance over the world, whether destiny, birthright, or accident of nature, can be attributed to at least five factors: 

1. His martial and military prowess, as well as whatever arts he used in his research. Fucker was smart and knew how to fight.
2. Aldia, both as a source of funding and partner in arms and arts. The entire scheme was probably his idea, because if Vendrick is smart, you'd need a new word to use for what happens in Aldia's head.
3. His inheritance. I don't know how breeding works exactly, but if the Iron and Ivory Kings are your 'parents,' then you're clearly not going to hide out on a pig farm trying to find the path to Destiny for that long.
4. The power of the Four Great Ones. Which augmented Vendrick's already extensive power. Most of it was probably exhausted by building Drangleic.
5. The Dragonriders. They didn't even have to be good in a fight or make sense: they just had to look awesome enough to get bandits and yokels to fall in line.

So, when Vendrick is referenced as having slain the four Great Ones, it's entirely likely that what is meant is that, at least in this universe, Vendrick was the Chosen Undead from the first game, and chose to return to his homeland with the massive power, rather than link the flame.

That strength was augmented by the Dragonriders, who may be Vendrick's oldest surviving order of knights. The dragonriddens - at least in concept art - look like baby dragon-headed T-Rex's being ridden like an ostrich. Looks about as practical, too.

It sounds silly, but they look pretty vicious. But definitely not actual dragons. They're described as 'wyrms,' which might just be a synonym for dragon, but etymologically would seem to refer specifically to a limbless or wingless dragon.

Want to hear something sillier? I'm starting to think the riders are One-Eye-Ogre variants. As also maybe are

Mytha has Dragonriddens.

I would have liked to see the riders - or their mounts - in action in the sequel. Like perfected Imperfects.

Shit, that's probably what happened, as they were technically wyrms too. NEW INFORMATION HAS SHAKEN THE GROUND I STAND ON THE ME OF FIVE MINUTES AGO WAS A FOOL AND A CHARLATAN

Anyway, some points

• Dragon Shrine was probably one of the first structures built upon Vendrick's return. Scratch that. The lands around the Dragon Shrine and where Aldia's Keep would be built were probably used to amass troops for the first push through to the Shaded Woods, and and Shrine built shortly after that.
• It's a Shrine to Kalameet the Black. Or became such.
• Some iteration of Aldia's 'manor' would likewise be in play, but probably not the in-game structure, the construction of which might have coincided with the Shrine. Aldia was involved in trying to breed the drakes of the Aerie, although Aldia was likely still based in Tseldora when Vendrick left on his quest.
• The Aerie, or something like it, was probably the final test for the Dragonriders.

Why you always gotta be wanting stuff?

Aspiring dragonriders being torn apart by their mounts for not having the 'mettle' to handle their training could mean a couple of things. Bear in mind: Vendrick valued intelligence, at least at this point in his life. Most of the Dragonrider gear scales with intelligence. Being strong and good in a fight was probably common in that part of the world, but people that could think under pressure, solve problems, and make hard decisions without hesitation - to be a dragonrider - was probably a lot harder to come by.

So training would have been life-or-death to begin with. Even a single baby dragon can seriously fuck up a fleshbag's day if it takes the notion to. Additionally, serving Vendrick meant serving The Heir: Successor to Gwyn the Tyrant, Redeemer of Olaphis the Fallen, King of Man, Lord of Dragons, Light Killer, The Black Dragon. You had to be top-shelf ass-kicker to even be considered

Yeah, it's like people rush off to war without figuring out why or what to do if they win or if they're really working against their own interests, right?

And so it was that this army of bandits, mercenaries, outcasts, and dragonriders - united under Lord Tseldora and his brother the Chosen Undead - rolled over Drangleic like a wave.

They, most likely, slaughtered the Gyrm and drove them from their own lands. That's horrible and needs to be discussed further, but look how long this thing is already. From here, the Army of the Twin Dragons would have tunnel access to the Shaded Woods and the Ruins, from which they established a lodgement.

Point: The Lion Clan may have been descended from Forossans that had infiltrated Drang during the Alken/Venn war, or they may have been fallen Lion Knight mercenaries pledged to the brothers after the fall of the three kingdoms.

Next, possibly, we find answers for Alken. Progressing west, Vendrick likely seized resources from the Iron Keep: golems and iron mostly, but the salamanders he would come back for.

The real mystery, however, is what happened to Mytha. It's possible, in a different reading, that Mytha was one of the four Great Ones slain by Vendrick during his rise to power. Vendrick could've only gotten to the Keep through Earthen Peak, so either Mytha was beheaded by her own children, indicating that they are/were enemies; or she let them pass through her lands unmolested, indicating that they are/were allied.

Maybe they killed Mytha, but I don't think so.

Next, Venn, where Aldia seems to have set up shop for a while.

Newer statue, also in Aldia's Keep.

Conquest more-or-less complete, the mercenaries were granted Drangleic citizenship, turned away, killed, or handed over to Aldia, and Drangleic was. By all accounts it was a happy and prosperous place.

• Time passed.
• Aldia's research continued, as did Vendrick's. In addition to the four elements, this included transposition (Ornifex,) resurrection (early Primal Knights, possibly Velstadt and the drake/keepers,) rapport (acolytes, Guardian Dragon,) and puppetry (Golems, later primal knights).
• Raime, Velstadt, Syan, and possibly Wellager become the King's most trusted knights, each with an order fighting beneath them.
• Aldia builds/repurposes the manor.
• Amana, the Crypt, and other 'off the beaten track' places are explored and exploited.
• Llewellyn the Great Smith, who Vendrick may have met on his way to Lordran, has a really interesting name. Originally Welsh, it was a cognate of Lugus (a god known as a mighty warrior,) and Belenus (another god, associated with the sun).
• I can't seem to get to the bottom of the meaning of the words, but Lugh (possibly from Llew/lion) is associated with Mercury, and Belenus ("Shining One"?) Apollo. Latin variants of the name (Leoline,) sub leo for llew to more firmly establish the 'lion' meaning.
• So, 'mighty lion of the sun god' is a possible translation, and for me might help explain why V was so insistent that Wellager secure a lifetime contract.
• Whatever information Vendrick purchased from him seems lost to time, but he did get new, more economical armor for Raime's soldiers and Syan's swordsmen.

I'm not sure if these are Vendrick and Nashandra's or Alken and Venn's. Or both. The dark one looks like Yhorm's and also Nadalia's.

At some point Nashandra arrives. Coming from a land far away, she warned of the threat of giants across the northern sea. We don't know why she did this, beyond she needed the Giant's Kinship to activate the Throne (which was made for a giant and then carved down for someone human-sized, possibly Lost Sinner). It's possible she is working with Mytha and Agdayne, and it's further possible that her 'true form' is that of a Champion of Death either looking to usher in the Age of Death in the unlikely event of her success or at least bork up the Dark Lord's Soul enough so that the Age of Dark is tainted and, hypothetically, easier to end than Gwyn's age of Twilight. Maybe.

We don't know much about the northern continent, save that the sea is rife with pirates and sea monsters, and the land itself is said to be home to 'things inhuman.' The giants there are much healthier than the slaves of Anor Londo, more akin to Gough or an Infested Barbarian if it didn't live in a sewer.

Shark teeth, too.

Vendrick brought the giants back as slaves, plus whatever treasure, and used them to build Castle Drangleic in the mountains near Amana. Some jof the giants were used to create or reanimate the golems we find there, and others were handed over to Aldia for experimentation. It was initially hailed as a great victory, and Vendrick had a greatshield commissioned for Syan, his most leal knight, to commemorate the glory.

And yet, Vendrick's mood darkened by the day upon his return, presumably as the implications of whatever dark truth this penultimate victory revealed to the King sank in. He and his brother were said to have stared straight into the essence of the soul. Here, I think, is where V and A's paths diverge.

Aldia lost interest in Drangleic's fortunes, becoming increasingly obsessed with his quests to resurrect dragons and escape the 'yoke' of the Cycle, feats he eventually achieved - partially - by grafting a giant's soul onto a dormant dragon as well as by 'becoming' a bonfire system. Or something. 

The dragon was possible, I think, because giants both possess souls and exist outside of the cycle (Seed). Giants, therefore, would provide a kind of bridge from soul-based life to mineral-based life. Maybe.

The giants arrived in Drangleic. Outraged over Vendrick's crimes, word arrived of the first wave of an attack that would span decades. Syan volunteered to lead the advance party, but was 'dishonorably slaughtered.' History makes no mention when this occurred, but one assumes at any point between volunteering and the giant attack.

Points about Syan: 

• He wears the same style of breastplate as the Mastodon knights
• A similar helmet as the royal swordsmen
• The nature of Syan's slaughter was such that any who later donned replicas of his armor went 'thoroughly mad.' This would seem to imply the death was the result of some forbidden art, likely Aldia's but almost as likely Vendrick's.
• Syan is possibly a cognate of Sean (Old) and Cyan (light greenish blue). That he carries a black Sunlight Greatshield may indicate the reunification of Red and Blue factions under Vendrick.

The giants were patient, single-minded, deceptively intelligent, and with wills unbendable. One could imagine the giants launching waves of attacks, battering coastal forts and settlements with their ballistae (possibly salamanders or just really strong pyromancers) from a safe distance until their supplies were exhausted, then returning home, leaving the Drang defenders impotently fuming as they rushed to rebuild fortifications.

Alternately, the giants may have made shore with each attack. A small contingent of grunts, pyromancers, and elites would make land and lay waste until brought down by the sheer (but dwindling,) number of defenders.

"What do you mean they don't want to negotiate?"

Aldia's experiments led him into exploring the boundaries between worlds, even managing to sever the link between a host and their homeworld. Thus the Forlorn were born, eternal red phantoms drifting between worlds. This may have been why Vendrick locked his brother away, although Aldia's progression towards madness was probably so slow it could have occurred at any point after the giant slaves arrived in his keep.

Even still, as the war raged on Drang's forces dwindled, and Vendrick needed art, turning to means I imagine he once considered unthinkable: using corpses of resurrected primal knights as puppets.

Velstadt and Raime clashed, with Velstadt badly beating Raime, who was deemed a rebel and a traitor, and exiled from Drangleic.

The fighting would seemingly never end. Captains died and were replaced by their sons, who would in turn die and be replaced by their sons.

Finally, the war reached a climax. The walls of the Fort were finally crumbling faster than they could be repaired. Contingents of giants, led by their Lord, assaulted the fort, mowing through the Drang forces like wheat.

Upon seeing the Giant Lord, King Vendrick - one of the bravest people in history - is said to have quit the field and fled to his castle, assembled his most loyal remaining forces, retreating down the King's Passage, where he renounced his soul and humanity in Amana, before finally disappearing into the Undead Crypt, making sure to throw as many gates between himself and the outside world as possible.

I don't know what spooked him. Wearing a crown on top of a helmet, maybe?

The King of the Giants was slain by an 'unknown' hero, and the war, finally, ended.

But Drangleic was no more. The Castle became a cursed mausoleum, patrolled by the machinations of dead tyrants. The Duke had vanished, replaced by an incredibly obviously evil cult. The tattered remains of the military were leaderless and turned to banditry and mercenary work, or, alternately, waited for their king to return.

Some quick final thoughts

• After the fall of Drangleic, the Kingdom of the Dead was the most organized faction in the land.
• The physical relationship between Drangleic and Lordran doesn't seem as straightforward as, say, Drangleic and Melfia. You could hypothetically get to Melfia in a ship pretty easily. I don't think getting to Vinnheim can be done in the same way. Some possible explanations
• The Portal of the Dead we see in the intro cinematic is pretty obviously linked to Things Betwixt. The reflection on the lake makes it seem like Drangleic is Lordran 'through the looking glass' Likewise the King's Mirror could be a passage.
• That the Oolacile chasm seems to be below Drangleic and below Lordran, it seems like one could hypothetically travel between the two by digging the proverbial hole to Australia.
• Drangleic and Lordran could be different branches on a central World Archtree. Alternately, Drangleic is hanging in the root system of the tree that Lordran hangs in the branches of.
• If there is an overland route between the two lands it seems pretty clear that the Three Kingdoms are in between them.
• In an interview developers mentioned the two countries as being like different continents or north and south poles. I'm paraphrasing badly, but I can't remember the interview and can't be assed.

Stuff about giants

• The Giant Lord is different from other giants, both taller and skinnier. He looks closer to Yhorm or Vendrick than his soldiers or even Anor giants.
• He also has very different skin or bark. The Lord's is both darker and barkier, more like that of the fallen giants we travel into the memories of. He almost looks burnt.
• Something about the Giant Lord scared Vendrick like nothing on the planet should've been able to. The only things I can think of are either the crown, the crest, or the stature of the giant.
• Giants use pyromancy.
• It's surmised that the giants' 'hole face' is actually some kind of shell or helmet, and they have humanoid faces underneath, apart from pointy teeth, which you could do with a file or something.

This, of course, isn't all of it. The next section will cover the Cursebearer's journey and possible continuations of the story from there. I'm also doing a post on surrounding areas, focusing particularly on Forossa.