There is a legend.
They say that,
If you are very good,
Or very lucky,
That when you die,
That when you die,
You become an angel.
As always, I try to stay away from certain parts of DS3 in these posts, particularly Londor and the primordial serpents, so there's stuff that's not talked about here that should and will be talked about. Just not here.
[YOELS ENTHUSIASTICALLY]
I've mentioned it before, but this post will be discussing what I've been calling 'bunshin no justu,' or clone/doppleganger art/magic. It comes up a lot. I stole the term from Naruto. Well, the Naruto wiki, I've seen like two and a half episodes of Naruto, but it complements the Japanese-text framing of the various magic schools in Souls, with majutsu being sorcery, anjustu being hexes or dark arts, and jujutsu being pyromancy.
Plain ole 'jutsu' can refer to prehistoric or unexplained arts, as well as pyromancy, since all of it seems to have originated in Izalith, a lot of it probably even before the First Flame.
Plain ole 'jutsu' can refer to prehistoric or unexplained arts, as well as pyromancy, since all of it seems to have originated in Izalith, a lot of it probably even before the First Flame.
Also, 'jikukan jutsu,' or space-time art/magic would be another school. This is related to teleportation, summoning, and time-manipulation as a school of magic. The line between bunshin and jikukan can get a little blurry when you really try to hammer out the differences between, say, a Pinwheel clone and the illusory Gwynevere. I suspect that that's as it should be, as all of the arts we see in-game are probably descended from and interbred with the same 1-4 pre-Fire/Ancient schools.
Right, so, angels.
Moonlight
The Moonlight Butterfly is the first 'angel' we meet in Dark Souls. Haunting, alien, serene, and prone to nailgunning the curious into oblivion with soul spear barrages, it can be hard to notice the strange, mechanical implements grafted onto their bodies.
There is a ringed contraption that connects to their backside via a spoke. The outer surface of the ring, connected to the spoke via a hub, is covered in punk spikes. There is a 'double helix' contraption running the length of their spine and emerging as a 'horn.'
MB's share the same theme song and the same general spell set as Gwyndolin: a type of soul spear barrage and a magic-based Pursuer/Emit Force variant. The butterflies' 'home' seems to be inside the primordial crystal, and the ones we find there are neutral towards the player unless attacked. I'm guessing this means they're not naturally hostile. This could have a few different implications, which I'm gonna outline and then explore.
- The Butterfly is sentient, and has complex reasons for attacking us as we approach
- The Butterfly is not sentient, and reacts instinctively as we approach
- The Butterfly may or may not be sentient, but is being directly controlled by Seath, or possibly even Gwyndolin
With humanoid characters there's basically a 1:1 relationship between spell-casting proficiency and intelligence. Rosabeth had to switch schools at the academy because she couldn't learn sorcery, but she's implied to be a genius pyromancer, which doesn't require intelligence in the 'book-learnin' sense, but does require a lot of intelligence in the 'if they found themselves stuck in an abandoned cabin for a year they wouldn't starve to death due to not understanding how shovels or food or knots or water work' sense. We don't know if this is true with non-humans, and we also don't know what the game considers 'intelligence.' For example: Alvina is a lot more talkative than Sif and seems fluent in jikukan, but Sif remembers us 1,000 years later (or at least indicates this to the player).
Dusk describes herself as having been snatched from Oolacile and 'banished to a plane of distortion' while inside the Crystal Golem. She was there for a long time. Long enough to completely lose hope, sure, but that can take like a week. From what I can tell she was in the golem for maybe 1000 years. Then escaped from the golem thanks to us. She wasn't free for long. Probably her release from the golem caused her to re-appear on some kind of magical radar jutsu accessible by both Manus and Carim, but by the time Chester arrived via the other half of the old pendant she had already been taken, probably snatched the way we were only right in front of Elizabeth the Racist Old White Lady Mushroom.
We can think of the crystal golems as two separate entities, the golem itself and the person trapped in the 'pauldron' crystal. The golem may be acting as a cocoon, in some way holding the person inside in stasis long enough for some kind of metamorphosis to occur. I hope you see where I'm going with this.
The moonlight butterfly looks like it's still a cocoon, is what I'm saying. That doesn't make more sense does it?
ta tessera zoa
See what happened with Kaathe was...
Further into Ruin
Not yet. Not yet.
I want to point out some changes between the Ruin/Primordial Crystal in the first and second games.
In the Duke's Archives we find that the Ruin is converting the landscape into crystal and what seems like might be a mix of Blue and Twinkling Titanite, which both the golems and butterflies have blue titanite as part of their make-up.
In Tseldora we find the Ruin slowly converting everything into sand, brightstone, and spiders.
Basilisks. In the first game they cursed us - caused one of our humors to crystallize - killing us instantly. Imagine your blood being flash frozen, then that times like ten. In the second game they petrify us, which you can't even reincarnate if you're a statue unless acted on by an outside force (gameplay contradicts lore here, obviously). Gin You Wine Petrified Wood. There's even a unique, 'eyeless' basilisk outside of Ornifex's house. I was hoping a point would present itself here, but damned if I know what they mean. Probably there's a system to their drops.
Finally, we find non-hostile butterflies all over the Crystal Caves, which obviously both those and Seath have kind of 'angelic' aspects to them. In Tseldora we find the spider people, which I attribute to Aldia's obsession with Izalith/pyromancy. They look quite similar in profile to an angel. I think they might technically be pyromancers, even if they obviously can't cast.
Historically, however, witches have been quite opposed to the appearance of angels.
Historically, however, witches have been quite opposed to the appearance of angels.
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| HELLO I AM AN ANGEL WELCOME TO TSELDORA HAHAHA WHAT SPIDERS? |
Latent Dark and a descent into madness
I've talked about the Darklurker a lot on here. The Lurker uses both jikukan (the teleporting Resonance hex,) and bunshin techniques ('mitosis,' the wiki calls it,) as well as mixtures of the two (teleporting itself while cloned, jikukan spells in its bunshin form). I'll discuss both, since it's not immediately apparent, but these are actually two different high-end secret magics this character is proficient at.
The first art is a bunshin technique that creates an exact copy of itself with a shared healthpool. This may not, in fact, be literally be a bunshin technique. The Darklurker's Mitosis functions more like a plant figuring out how to split itself into two plants which is, like, way different from what Pinwheel and Shanalotte do.
The jikukan technique involves opening a portal, like a Portal-the-game portal, firing a spell into it, and having the spell exit the other sides tracking the player. There's not much to say about it beyond how unique it is.
The first art is a bunshin technique that creates an exact copy of itself with a shared healthpool. This may not, in fact, be literally be a bunshin technique. The Darklurker's Mitosis functions more like a plant figuring out how to split itself into two plants which is, like, way different from what Pinwheel and Shanalotte do.
The jikukan technique involves opening a portal, like a Portal-the-game portal, firing a spell into it, and having the spell exit the other sides tracking the player. There's not much to say about it beyond how unique it is.
The Darklurker is implied to be the original Manus, which I've discussed elsewhere. The Dragon Chime reinforces this, as it is a similarly 'pure' artifact that remained uncorrupted despite being steeped in the Abyss for centuries. Lurker has 8 limbs. As with bunshin and jikukan, creatures with 6, 7, or 8 limbs could fill an entire post. As far as the Lurker goes, I think it might be related to the shrine at the Rise of the Dead, which shows two burning figures either merging or splitting. This may be related to Londor and the fire of Ariandel, but that's way far ahead of where we are now.
So, if the Darklurker is an angel, and before that he was Manus of the Abyss, and before that he was the corpse of a pygmy lord, and before that he was a pygmy lord sorcerer brought back by the Ool missionaries to the Ringed City, at what point does one become the other, and should we consider the 4 Queens of Drangleic Lurker's siblings or descendants, and should we consider Lurker, Manus, and the Pygmy Lord to be separate characters?
I don't know.
I do know that we have to perform a pretty elaborate ritual of pilgrimage to even gain access to Darklurker, involving 'linking' three sword-less bonfires in black lordvessels. And we do this in a place that's heavily implied to be the remains of Oolacile. From a Lordran perspective this may have tied in with the Occult Rebellion, or even the Oolacile Mystics themselves. From a Drang perspective, it may have involved the Lost Sin that led to the eventual fall of Olaphis.
So, let's say Ool, Olaph, or the Four Kings had planned on bringing about a Dark Lord and ushering in an Age of Dark (two different things, remember, Vendrick did one but not the other) by performing a Firelinking involving an alternate, Dark or Black Flame.
You would need a whole lot of Dark to use as fuel for something like that.
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| Also, Lurker vaguely resembles some of the UD Crypt enemies. |
Hark Harald, Singing Angel
I'm gonna briefly go over angels in the third game, but most of it will be saved for some hypothetical future Prisoner of Ash post.
We find the Angelic Knights of Lothric pretty early on, and they're our first big clue that Lothric is in the late stages of a civil war. The knights seem to be modeled on a primordial serpent, and are loyal to Gertrude and the forbidden Angelic faith. This faith involves non-lightning light miracles similar to those used by Prince Lothric. The miracles are accompanied by feather particle effects, rather than souls, embers, or dark motes. In the Dreg Heap, obviously, we get bombarded by this stuff by actual angels, as well as a AoE light 'cloud' spell that causes curse buildup.
The Dreg Angels are Bunshin being projected by pilgrims, with the process being demonstrated by the Stone-Humped Hag. From this I think we're meant to infer that both the Pilgrim Butterfly of Lothric and Gertrude herself were similar projections, with Gertrude being the first. The descriptions of Gertrude after her visitation seem to imply that she became something like the pilgrim pupae that 'control' the Dreg Angels.
Sulyvahn, incidentally, would seem to have all the qualifications of angeldom (bunshin, jikukan, wings, holy status,) but is probably just doing a very effective impersonation of one.
Also, as an aside, 'herald' and 'harald' are different words. A harald is something like a duke or warlord, a herald is an emissary, diplomat, or messenger.
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| Wait what? |
The Four Living Beings
Okay, so the idea here is that the Four Kings were failed attempts to create angels.
Gwyn did a strange thing. He divided a portion of his soul among four Anor loyalists in New Londo. Gwyn named them kings of men and charged them with shepherding humans along the 'right' path. And they did. And then Nameless pissed everyone off and a bunch of gods left and then Oolacile happened and a bunch more gods left and suddenly
There was a chasm full of the poisoned humanity of what was essentially a god basically directly next to the Settlement. This was a mass of poisoned humanity the size of a city traveling underground towards Drangleic. It saws off a good portion of the High Wall of Lordran on its way out. The wound from its passage - the abyssy parts of it - mostly resealed itself, save for probably the lakes beneath the Darkroot Hydra and in the CHLORANTHY farm dogleg near where you find the Wolf Ring, which probably you wouldn't want to swim around in that stuff.
And, of course, we can enter the Abyss beneath the New Londo Shrine, provided we have proof of a 'covenant with the beasts of the Abyss.' It's generally assumed that this covenant was originally established by Artorias with one or more primordial serpents (not Kaathe, obviously,) during the first Darkwraith uprising, an event I consider part of the Dark Tales that pre-date the Chaos War and the fall of Oolacile. We can seemingly follow the progression of Artorias via the evolution of his weapon, from the normal, 'majestic' version from the Dark Tales, to the weapon becoming Cursed as a result, to the weapon then becoming corrupted by the Abyss after Artorias went back to the well one too many times. In other words, as part of the covenant, or perhaps as a result of traversing the ancient abyss, Artorias became cursed. Likely this meant that his Lord's Soul was lost or corrupted in a way that made it susceptible to the Abyss, unlike the Four Kings or Darklurker who seemingly joined with the Abyss voluntarily, their Light Lord's Souls offered in service to the Dark, rather than by trying to game the system in order to act in opposition to it.
The scar from the Oolacile Chasm's passage is probably why the wall around the Undead Burg/Firelink/Blighttown part of Lordran is so screwed up: the same catastrophe that created the Valley of the Drakes sheared off a portion of the High Wall, meaning that a new wall had to be built, with ramparts being converted to bridges, Other Burg being abandoned, the creation of Blighttown, and so on.
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| 2 and 3 are much closer to 1 in-game but you get the idea |
In the Valley of the Drakes we find a bridge leading between the NL and Darkroot Basin gatehouses. They're very clearly set up in a way that doesn't imply there was any kind of friendly relationship between the two areas. Were they properly manned, the entire span between the gates would effectively be a death trap for anyone in missile range.
Just inside the NL gatehouse is the shrine leading to the abyss. After it's drained we realize that there is a literal mountain of drowned corpses in there, and that even with the floodgates open we can still only explore the upper levels.
It might bear repeating, but creatures of Dark generally seem to settle undergound. However, given the nature of the wall and the cave it's possible that the areas was originally much more open, and that the cavern itself was sealed either as part of the extermination or due to the reality-warping nature of the Abyss.
NL may have existed alongside Oolacile. If we assume Gwyn, and even Nameless, had already departed by the time the Artorias stuff happens then the Four Kings would have already been serving in their positions. After the Artorias stuff, well, things probably got quiet for a while, then Gwyndolin or Gwynevere or whoever was in charge realizes they haven't heard from NL in a while and holy cow Darkwraiths. Again.
The city is then sealed, the genocide carried out by the city's own healing sorcerers. With the loss of the settlement's healing arts the path was now open for a religious organization - based roughly around the faith of Oolacile - to come through offering healing miracles and spreading the gospel of the New New Good News.
The Oolacile connection to the WoW comes from Lokey's translations. Elizabeth and Dusk both offer the PC the 'may the flames guide thee' blessing associated with the WoW in the third game. In the Japanese script, Reah gives this blessing as well, rather than the confusing 'vereor nox' line.
Kaathe seems to have masterminded both NL and Oolacile, which makes sense, and maybe even the ancient Darkwraith incursion that originally gave Artorias his reputation. He, Kaathe, may not have even had to try very hard with NL. It's possible that the NL Darkwraith uprising was a part of the Occult Rebellion, which would put NL and Kaathe on the same side as Sen, Smith (unless Sen is Smith,) Havel, Vamos' people (possibly,) the followers of Velka ( and Carim, by extension,) and maybe even Real Ornstein. Since the statue outside the NL Shrine - Mother & Child II - is the same statue in the Ariamis graveyard we could even infer that Priscilla and/or Jeremiah were involved.
Of course, then there's the problem with Velka and Gwyndolin being aligned as Darkmoon Blades. I mean, you have a Carimite Pardoner acting in a far more official capacity than anyone in the WoW in the Undead Parish, proudly displaying his goddess' name for all to read, but then you find another Pardoner in Gwyndolin's Painting of Forbidden Things Mostly Linking Back To Velka.
Maybe they made up after New Londo or something. Or maybe she retains some kind of rights of covenant in Lordran despite being aligned against Lordran's rulers for centuries. This is still not about angels jesus you probably figured out where I was going paragraphs ago.
We find the Parrying Dagger and the Cursebite Ring in New Londo. It could be that a Carim Knight was poking around after the fact, or it could be evidence that Carim, or Velka at least, were working with Kaathe and New Londo, which ties in with the Painting stuff, plus the statue again. I'll go more into all that in a later post, but I really need to get to the point.
OKAY SO, all of that is afoot, and you have the Four 'Kings,' leaders of men granted a portion of the Lord's Soul, would have been essentially set up to become angels by Gwyn himself, even if they did end up a group of ungodly fucked up looking biological and graphics engine mutations with, like, horns and wings and tree root legs and sad white boy faces. Overall, though, they do look very angelic, and are presented like Darklurker. Also like Lurker, the Kings share a life bar, a point that may become more significant later on. Unlike Lurker's bunshin-esque mitosis, the Kings use a jikukan art that looks like they're hopping fissures between worlds as easily as most people just regular hop. Except I've died a whole lot trying to just regular jump in these games, so much easier than hopping.
Both the Four Kings and Darklurker bosses are born out of the remains of Manus. Both bosses have pure Light souls despite being in the Darkest place in the world. Both bosses seem to have become a kind of 'cold fusion reactor' of Dark, created by taking a human lord, granting it a light soul, and dunking it in the Abyss. It didn't happen to Artorias because Elizabeth's a fucking liar and a racist Artorias was, like most everyone is, a confused mess of a bunch of the same stuff most everyone is, rather than some unsulliable holy scion of some master race bullshit.
The Kings use a mix of melee and spell attacks, and are lethal at range. Luckily they follow karate movie rules and don't just, like, stay at range and Amana the player to death. Their swords look like a ragged 2-dimensional plane. Like if you made a sword out of something so thin it didn't even have a third dimension. Their attacks are the usual variety of telegraphed chops and pokes, but given their arms and, well, other kinds of arms, their overall strategy is incredibly similar to Elana from the Sunken King expansion. I don't know if I'm meant to draw that conclusion or not, but it's almost identical.
To drive home the point that the way you're supposed to get in these guys faces during the fight, their weapons do far less damage if you stand close enough that they hit you with their arms. Sometimes they'll use either a grab attack or a WoG variant. The first has a white/blue effect and involves the PC being grabbed and 'sucked' by the root clump. The AoE blast has a slow windup, during which the King will cover itself, as much as it's able, with its wings and unleash a dark purple blast with a pretty considerable range.
Their root-clump/wings serve as their catalysts, capable of launching giant, physics-defying Dark Homing Soul Greatsword projectiles? If they cast it it's gonna hit you, basically. I think I've had one slowly circle around the arena like three times before it caught me on NG+, which they're the hardest goddamned thing in NG+ because the stupid game cheats.
Just inside the NL gatehouse is the shrine leading to the abyss. After it's drained we realize that there is a literal mountain of drowned corpses in there, and that even with the floodgates open we can still only explore the upper levels.
It might bear repeating, but creatures of Dark generally seem to settle undergound. However, given the nature of the wall and the cave it's possible that the areas was originally much more open, and that the cavern itself was sealed either as part of the extermination or due to the reality-warping nature of the Abyss.
NL may have existed alongside Oolacile. If we assume Gwyn, and even Nameless, had already departed by the time the Artorias stuff happens then the Four Kings would have already been serving in their positions. After the Artorias stuff, well, things probably got quiet for a while, then Gwyndolin or Gwynevere or whoever was in charge realizes they haven't heard from NL in a while and holy cow Darkwraiths. Again.
The city is then sealed, the genocide carried out by the city's own healing sorcerers. With the loss of the settlement's healing arts the path was now open for a religious organization - based roughly around the faith of Oolacile - to come through offering healing miracles and spreading the gospel of the New New Good News.
The Oolacile connection to the WoW comes from Lokey's translations. Elizabeth and Dusk both offer the PC the 'may the flames guide thee' blessing associated with the WoW in the third game. In the Japanese script, Reah gives this blessing as well, rather than the confusing 'vereor nox' line.
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| Source |
Kaathe seems to have masterminded both NL and Oolacile, which makes sense, and maybe even the ancient Darkwraith incursion that originally gave Artorias his reputation. He, Kaathe, may not have even had to try very hard with NL. It's possible that the NL Darkwraith uprising was a part of the Occult Rebellion, which would put NL and Kaathe on the same side as Sen, Smith (unless Sen is Smith,) Havel, Vamos' people (possibly,) the followers of Velka ( and Carim, by extension,) and maybe even Real Ornstein. Since the statue outside the NL Shrine - Mother & Child II - is the same statue in the Ariamis graveyard we could even infer that Priscilla and/or Jeremiah were involved.
Of course, then there's the problem with Velka and Gwyndolin being aligned as Darkmoon Blades. I mean, you have a Carimite Pardoner acting in a far more official capacity than anyone in the WoW in the Undead Parish, proudly displaying his goddess' name for all to read, but then you find another Pardoner in Gwyndolin's Painting of Forbidden Things Mostly Linking Back To Velka.
Maybe they made up after New Londo or something. Or maybe she retains some kind of rights of covenant in Lordran despite being aligned against Lordran's rulers for centuries. This is still not about angels jesus you probably figured out where I was going paragraphs ago.
We find the Parrying Dagger and the Cursebite Ring in New Londo. It could be that a Carim Knight was poking around after the fact, or it could be evidence that Carim, or Velka at least, were working with Kaathe and New Londo, which ties in with the Painting stuff, plus the statue again. I'll go more into all that in a later post, but I really need to get to the point.
OKAY SO, all of that is afoot, and you have the Four 'Kings,' leaders of men granted a portion of the Lord's Soul, would have been essentially set up to become angels by Gwyn himself, even if they did end up a group of ungodly fucked up looking biological and graphics engine mutations with, like, horns and wings and tree root legs and sad white boy faces. Overall, though, they do look very angelic, and are presented like Darklurker. Also like Lurker, the Kings share a life bar, a point that may become more significant later on. Unlike Lurker's bunshin-esque mitosis, the Kings use a jikukan art that looks like they're hopping fissures between worlds as easily as most people just regular hop. Except I've died a whole lot trying to just regular jump in these games, so much easier than hopping.
Both the Four Kings and Darklurker bosses are born out of the remains of Manus. Both bosses have pure Light souls despite being in the Darkest place in the world. Both bosses seem to have become a kind of 'cold fusion reactor' of Dark, created by taking a human lord, granting it a light soul, and dunking it in the Abyss. It didn't happen to Artorias because Elizabeth's a fucking liar and a racist Artorias was, like most everyone is, a confused mess of a bunch of the same stuff most everyone is, rather than some unsulliable holy scion of some master race bullshit.
The Kings use a mix of melee and spell attacks, and are lethal at range. Luckily they follow karate movie rules and don't just, like, stay at range and Amana the player to death. Their swords look like a ragged 2-dimensional plane. Like if you made a sword out of something so thin it didn't even have a third dimension. Their attacks are the usual variety of telegraphed chops and pokes, but given their arms and, well, other kinds of arms, their overall strategy is incredibly similar to Elana from the Sunken King expansion. I don't know if I'm meant to draw that conclusion or not, but it's almost identical.
To drive home the point that the way you're supposed to get in these guys faces during the fight, their weapons do far less damage if you stand close enough that they hit you with their arms. Sometimes they'll use either a grab attack or a WoG variant. The first has a white/blue effect and involves the PC being grabbed and 'sucked' by the root clump. The AoE blast has a slow windup, during which the King will cover itself, as much as it's able, with its wings and unleash a dark purple blast with a pretty considerable range.
Their root-clump/wings serve as their catalysts, capable of launching giant, physics-defying Dark Homing Soul Greatsword projectiles? If they cast it it's gonna hit you, basically. I think I've had one slowly circle around the arena like three times before it caught me on NG+, which they're the hardest goddamned thing in NG+ because the stupid game cheats.
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| But what is an angel, anyway? |
Conclusions
There aren't any. That's the point of this. The story of Dark Souls is a big jigsaw puzzle made out of jigsaw puzzles and Ashen Idols is just a place where I can like, try to assemble some of the big chunks that might help make sense of one of the puzzles, which can then be plugged into other puzzles and become something like a story with a point and a beginning and end and so on.
Instead it's just like 'and that's what we know about angels unless I forgot didn't notice or was wrong about something the end,' and we move on to the next post which I have no idea what that'll be. I had a planned list of topics I was gonna cover, but those ended up changing every time and now it's not at all the series I had planned because, like, the next planned post is 'archtrees', but I'm not near ready to talk about archtrees, but then again this post was supposed to be about the Painted Worlds but I need like two more Painted World Lead-Up posts before I'm ready to dive into that.
Pyromancers, maybe?
