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| I remember when I started this blog I was like "I'm sure Sony's gonna patch that like any day now." |
Q
So here's a hypothetical for you:
In Dark Firelink we find an illusory wall leading to the corpse of the First Firekeeper. I don't know if that means 'the first Keeper ever' or 'first Keeper of this bonfire,' or 'the first Keeper of the rebooted bonfire system.' Don't worry about her for now, focus on the illusory wall.
In Main Firelink the Illusory Wall leading to the eyes isn't there, it's a real wall. Irina parks there, next to the wall hiding the corpse of the first Keeper, whose thin light was taken by Ludleth, the Handmaid, and a number of other conspirators. Irina, if you only have her learn light miracles, appears to evolve into the next incarnation of the first Keeper.
In other words, when your character fails your replacement will be greeted by Irina.
Ludleth implies They had to kill her (the First Keeper not Irina,) to spare her from whatever it was the eyes showed her, 'scenes of betrayal,' and so on.
Irina and Eygon picked up an infection from those two dogs that found their camp okay get back on topic [also the dogs didn't give it to them].
[...this is gonna be a post with a lot of side-quests, I just said I was getting on topic and immediately went off topic.]
Right, so, to get to the point:
If the illusory wall hiding the First Keeper exists in the past, but has been replaced by an identical brick-and-mortar wall in the future: how did this happen? That's the question this section was meant to ask. My thoughts at the end.
Hubris
The king of Drangleic, long ago, conquered Chaos and harnessed the Curse, and thereby turned fire against itself. With great miracles the True King rendered mountains into ash and titanite and legions of invincible iron warriors. In his wrath slew he mighty dragons, brought giants to their knees. He conquered the Old Gods, stole their fire, and built a great kingdom for his people.
The King loved his people, though he came as a stranger to them.
He chose them a kingdom over himself a throne.
The King of Drangleic was a good king, indeed.
And he failed.
The King had a dear Queen, a woman of unparalleled beauty. Long ago, the Queen came to us, alone, from a faraway land. She warned our Lord of the looming threat across the seas…of the Giants. The King crossed the ocean, and defeated the Giants, with the Queen at his side.
The Queen brought peace to the land, and to her King.
Imagine your kingdom was a colony founded on a creation myth based around an old god-king, the Cursebearer. This king, in his day, had based his journey around an even older creation myth, King Olaph, based around an even older one, Gwyn.
Let's say your kingdom needed to create another True King (or Firelinking Champion, as they're known to the locals). Let's say you also assumed the B-team didn't know what they were doing so you skipped over a lot of the timeline stuff and got a lot of the small details wrong.
This champion has to be a fairly unique mix of the 4 Humours, as evidenced first by Oscar's weird family motto, but also by Oscar's weird family failson tradition. This mixture of humours requires a number of unknown factors, one of which is marriage. I suspect the Drangleic Map, which has 8 flames, corresponds in some sense with the required mixture, if we want to call it that. If you're familiar with the SCP Foundation, I suspect the Champion is required to do the Souls equivalent of figuring out and re-enacting the containment procedures for The Deer, based on second-and-third-hand accounts, in order to, in some sense, become The Deer.
So, what are these 8...resonances or trials or traits or whatever they are?
Resonance with the four humours is obviously a requirement, and is represented in the second game by
- Lost Sinner - Fire Soul, attracted to Sinner due to being at least the same species as Izalith.
- OIK - Light Soul, attracted Nameless old Lord Soul after we cut it out of Seath.
- The Rotten - Dead Soul. They are to Elena as Agdayne is to Mytha.
- The Four Queens - Not sure if the Abyss of Manus qualifies as the Fourth Humour, or if it's acting as a fill-in, just, like,
- Duke's Freya - This is Ruin/Moonlight standing in for the Dark Soul, as with the first game.
- Last Giant Lord - I assume this is something like a Giants' Resonance, although it may involve killing a champion twice via time-travel.
- King's Ring - The King's Proof, this might represent that actual Dark Soul
- The Ashen Mist Heart- Dragon/Ancient Resonance I assume
- Watcher & Defender - whatever they represent
Right off the bat we need to address the fact that the Writhing Ruin is filling in for the Dark Soul, but that doesn't necessarily mean that mastery over moonlight isn't a requirement for Kingship.
If you don't 'count' the Last Giant map fire until after killing the Giant Lord (because of the time travel,) then what happens is once the Cursebearer attains mastery over the 'four' elements they can access the Shrine of Winter & begin working on the next four trials. This Winter-crossing event is pivotal because it marks both the end of the "Dark Lord's journey" through DS1 and the beginning of the "Dark Lord's journey" in DS2.
The Last Giant - If Vendrick had been around he probably would've made sure the Fort defenders did a better job of hiding the body and making sure the body definitely wouldn't get back up. He wasn't though.
Technically, I think the Giant Lord flame is supposed to light up after Ashen Mist Heart, but since you technically killed the Giant Lord long before you ever arrived in Drangleic it gets murky.
The Giant Lord is, therefore, the first and last thing we do before entering the Throneroom, which is probably significant. The Throne looks as though it was originally built for a giant, but was recarved for human-sized butts long ago. It could even be that the Giant Lord - who looks burnt - is something like the Lord of Cinder of the Age pre-dating Olaphis. You could even stretch the idea further and make him Yorgh's father/grandfather, although From doesn't usually have the story tie up that succinctly.
Giant's Souls are different than human souls. If you look at the DS2 item, it looks quite a bit like a humanity sprite, but with a much smaller umbra and a much larger corona. The shape of the sprite is different, appearing like what you would get if you morphed a humanity sprite into a sovereignless soul and stopped halfway, ending up with a teardrop or pear shape. To me it looks very womb or seed-like.
I think the idea is that, unlike an elf/godling or a human/undead, giants are able to hold their Light and Dark natures in balance, with their Lords' Soul (something like the super-ego) acting as a kind of womb/shell for their Humanity (something like the id). I think the big big idea is that Light's true 'purpose' is to act as a nurturing parent to Dark, rather than an abusive one.
It could be that if giants are just old/mature hollows that what all these upstart young bucks need to do to is get a job repairing doorways in abandoned churches or harvesting moss, read some books, get some perspective, and wait around until they're the equivalent of like 35 before they take a crack at any big heroing.
King's Proof - I'm very not sure on this one, beyond it being in some sense a 'mastery over Dark' thing, but it could be a pre-DLC stand-in for the King's Blessing you get from completing the three expansions. It might even represent something like succeeding in whatever Kaathe was trying to do with the Four Kings of New Londo.
Ashen Mist Heart - This seems more straightforward, something like obtaining mastery over the Ancient world, and thereby being able to manipulate time via the 'undying' aspect of pre-Flame lifeforms.
Throne Watcher & Defender - This one I have no idea on, so I'm gonna lay out some ideas. I started this list assuming Nashandra was the trigger for the map beacon, since one of the major points of this post is how it was probably the basis for the Londorian qualifications for a champion: marriage. In this case, marriage seems to involve one human drawing another human's darksign/dark sigil into themselves, and thereby attaining some higher order of human existence. It could be that the King's Ring represents this union, since we don't seem to do anything truly important in the Undead Crypt.
If we look at a Twin Humanity item from the first game as a single humanity sprite mitosising into two (because Dark is [eternally] waxing, and Light is forever waning [aggregating, rather than dividing]) then a marriage ceremony could be something like the reverse: two Dark Souls becoming one.
I don't know how the Seal of Fire plays into it, or what the Sign even is, really. I'm lying, I think I know what it is, but that's a rabbit hole for another day.
W&D seem to be something like two knight captains from early Olaphis that were charged with guarding the Throne (possibly originally built by & for giants,) after the Lost Sin of Amana (a failed attempt to, I suspect, attempt to create a New Flame). The bosses resemble, in various ways, Artorias & Ciaran, Ornstein & Smough, the Princes Lothric, and probably various others, although W&D have an air about them that makes me suspect that they were much more heroic in their day than any of those other alleged heroes, except maybe Lorian and Ciaran.
We have Defender - a big Sentinel-looking paladin; and Watcher - a smaller, nimble spellsword. Both buff their weapons with their respective elements (including blue lightning for Watcher,) and both have to be killed nearly simultaneously or either one will revive the other to full health. Occasionally the INT-based Watcher will use their shield, crafted from a sacred chime, to cast Wrath of the Gods. Defender will discard his shield and start 2-handing his weapon after buffing it, meaning that he's channeling the resurrection miracle via his sword, a secret pyro flame, or unaided. Or of course I might be over-analyzing everything.
My thinking is that they're meant to be a mash up of the Four Knights of Gwyn, from which we derive that Velstadt & Raime served similar but conflicting roles under Vendrick as part of the Twin Dragon heritage thing.
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| Artorian and Orngough, if you like. |
It was mentioned in, I think, the Design Works interview that they were happy that someone noticed that the Defender and the Old Knights of Heide are quite similar, thematically, and that the beard on D's helmet was meant to help convey how incredibly ancient he is. I feel compelled to point out that the Old Knights' design resembles, again to various degrees, Shulva, the Mound Makers, the Abyss Watchers, and the Northern Warrior Set (DS3).
The Defender, being a FTH build, plays into his role as Defender for reasons I hopefully don't need to explain by this point. Watcher, being an INT build, is more there to keep an eye on things and do any of the mental heavy lifting re: what to do if a Cursebearer gets back off of the Throne or what kind of tool to use to remove invasive flaming tree root lich priest monsters.
It's more or less universally accepted that Watcher is a woman subject to the Japanese Pronoun Ambiguity/Historical Sexism trope From seems to feed into whenever it presents itself. She's also a southpaw and can ninja-flip.
I think the resurrections are important, I mean obviously, and may indicate that having the status of what I've been calling Twin Dragon may be a requirement, or was thought to have been a requirement by whoever made the Majula map.
OOOOOOOooooonnnn the other hand, Vendrick was unique because he represented a reunion of some noble quality that was lost during the civil war. In a sense, he was the Twin Dragon.
It's more or less universally accepted that Watcher is a woman subject to the Japanese Pronoun Ambiguity/Historical Sexism trope From seems to feed into whenever it presents itself. She's also a southpaw and can ninja-flip.
I think the resurrections are important, I mean obviously, and may indicate that having the status of what I've been calling Twin Dragon may be a requirement, or was thought to have been a requirement by whoever made the Majula map.
OOOOOOOooooonnnn the other hand, Vendrick was unique because he represented a reunion of some noble quality that was lost during the civil war. In a sense, he was the Twin Dragon.
Yorgh and Sunken had to shoulder each other's burden if the dream of Olaphis was ever to be achieved, and it's a pretty safe bet the same would have been true of Nameless and Gwyndolin. They couldn't. Lothric and Lorian managed to do it, but probably on accident and they refused to fulfill their role.
Just like Vendrick, although for probably different reasons. Also, while Vendrick's realization seems to have been arrived at at the last second, Lothric probably soured on the Flame and his duty pretty early on.
Vendrick, being the child of Alken and Venn not only represented the ideological 'reunification of Olaphis,' his soul implies that it was this pedigree that helped pave the way to his success with the disillusioned and war weary people of Drang.
Oooooonnnn the other other hand: Legally, or whatever, Aldia is rightful King under Iron and if Aldia was meant to be Vendrick's other half, rather than Vendrick alone being seen as the unified Al and Venn factions of Olaph, then their schism will obviously need to be explored further. Which I mean it will, but these things need a lot of foundational stuff to be laid out because the lore community has spent the last five years staring at a pile of atomized legos and yelling at anyone that tries to build anything. For fun, apparently.
Alright, last hypothetical on this one:
These are all, in some sense, the same thing.
The Cursebearer marrying Nashandra; Watcher and Defender (and Lothric and Lorian) resurrecting each other, Vendrick's failed relationship with Aldia; Vendrick's heritage from Alken and Ivory; Yuria's mission to see Anri wed to the Champion of Ash:
Two become one.
W&D both have 'dark' Lords Souls. This, coupled with their hypothesized Twin Dragon status, could indicate that the two are somehow linked, their souls twisted together, in a state that's about as close as two bodies can get to sharing a single soul (under normal circumstances for a non-Fire Keeper) or merging into a single entity. Or going mad and trying to kill each other.
I think the idea is that in order to attain this 'higher order human' condition, the pair of humans have to first become 'cursed' to each other. At this point the two people will be unable to die/respawn unless both are killed, as the Curse has effectively 'twisted' the souls together, so that instead of dying the character enters a dormant state until revived by their twin.
The only way out of this Curse, I suspect, is for one twin to grant a 'clean death' to the other. I'm using the Bloodborne-ism to describe whatever method is used to grant true death to an undying, such as how the Lord's Soul can be removed by removing a certain vertebrata (Mound Makers) or removing the Dark Soul by bleeding the body (Cathedral of the Deep/Gael).
Or stabbing them with an old sword from the End of Time and an alternate dimension.
Oooooonnnn the other other hand: Legally, or whatever, Aldia is rightful King under Iron and if Aldia was meant to be Vendrick's other half, rather than Vendrick alone being seen as the unified Al and Venn factions of Olaph, then their schism will obviously need to be explored further. Which I mean it will, but these things need a lot of foundational stuff to be laid out because the lore community has spent the last five years staring at a pile of atomized legos and yelling at anyone that tries to build anything. For fun, apparently.
Alright, last hypothetical on this one:
These are all, in some sense, the same thing.
The Cursebearer marrying Nashandra; Watcher and Defender (and Lothric and Lorian) resurrecting each other, Vendrick's failed relationship with Aldia; Vendrick's heritage from Alken and Ivory; Yuria's mission to see Anri wed to the Champion of Ash:
Two become one.
W&D both have 'dark' Lords Souls. This, coupled with their hypothesized Twin Dragon status, could indicate that the two are somehow linked, their souls twisted together, in a state that's about as close as two bodies can get to sharing a single soul (under normal circumstances for a non-Fire Keeper) or merging into a single entity. Or going mad and trying to kill each other.
I think the idea is that in order to attain this 'higher order human' condition, the pair of humans have to first become 'cursed' to each other. At this point the two people will be unable to die/respawn unless both are killed, as the Curse has effectively 'twisted' the souls together, so that instead of dying the character enters a dormant state until revived by their twin.
The only way out of this Curse, I suspect, is for one twin to grant a 'clean death' to the other. I'm using the Bloodborne-ism to describe whatever method is used to grant true death to an undying, such as how the Lord's Soul can be removed by removing a certain vertebrata (Mound Makers) or removing the Dark Soul by bleeding the body (Cathedral of the Deep/Gael).
Or stabbing them with an old sword from the End of Time and an alternate dimension.
Or getting into a fight with your wife in the throneroom when after she reveals she was secretly a skeleton monster all along and he's like "I knew!" and she's like "I know you knew, creep!" and then things just progress.
At this point the surviving dragon is considered 'wed' to their victim, having finally successfully merged the two cursed souls into a single 'twisted soul.'
Alright, so all of that is incredibly speculative, but is an outline of the kind of ideas the settlers of early Lothric would have had to build their mythology around. A noble, half-human king that went beyond death and so on.
So, in order to create a true champion, Lothric - possibly aided by established Lordran-based allies - tries to build one. Over and over and over, apparently.
So I suppose you could think of Gundyr as the Mk. 1 Failking of Lothric, with Prince Lothric the Younger being the last. Unless Ocelotte is the Last Failking, it's a little unclear on a lot of these points.
Not that there's anything wrong with being a Failking, Vendrick and Venn were both Failkings.
But Vendrick got where he did by doing it the hard way, and seems to have cottoned to his own ignorance at the last minute and immediately tried to abort. Venn, initially, had everything handed to her until the fall of Olaphis, at which point she found out how hard the hard way actually was and had to basically start over as a new character.
But what of a king too driven to reflect and too spoiled to cure?
At this point the surviving dragon is considered 'wed' to their victim, having finally successfully merged the two cursed souls into a single 'twisted soul.'
Alright, so all of that is incredibly speculative, but is an outline of the kind of ideas the settlers of early Lothric would have had to build their mythology around. A noble, half-human king that went beyond death and so on.
So, in order to create a true champion, Lothric - possibly aided by established Lordran-based allies - tries to build one. Over and over and over, apparently.
So I suppose you could think of Gundyr as the Mk. 1 Failking of Lothric, with Prince Lothric the Younger being the last. Unless Ocelotte is the Last Failking, it's a little unclear on a lot of these points.
Not that there's anything wrong with being a Failking, Vendrick and Venn were both Failkings.
But Vendrick got where he did by doing it the hard way, and seems to have cottoned to his own ignorance at the last minute and immediately tried to abort. Venn, initially, had everything handed to her until the fall of Olaphis, at which point she found out how hard the hard way actually was and had to basically start over as a new character.
But what of a king too driven to reflect and too spoiled to cure?
Gundyr, First Hope of His Line
"When the Ashes are two, a Flame alighteth"
Gundyr's armor was modeled after an old king, and cast from iron. Several things are interesting about this. First, the old king, followed by cast iron, followed by the philosophical concept of Iron, followed by Gundyr himself.
The old king Gundyr's armor was modeled on was Ivory, more or less. I should hope that would be clear to anyone that's fought both of them. They even adopt the same pose when readying their weapon. There are contradictory elements - Mirror Knight's pauldrons, for example - but I imagine these are indicative of early Lothric's scattershot understanding of their own history.
Gundyr was a failed champion of Lothric, the kingdom born out of a world-spanning political alliance evidently present in the Cursebearer's time. I've outlined it elsewhere so skip the bullets if you're familiar. The alliance, The Blue, consists of, broadly:
Gundyr arrived in Lordran expecting a quick bath in some slightly oily water that was still vastly preferable to the alternative: exploding into an oil monster.
Instead he found a bathtub full of oil.
Casting iron isn't the best way to make arms, especially in Souls. Cast iron is hard, but it's brittle and it's heavy. In Souls terms, forged iron is better, refined steel is better than that, and alloys are better than that. But as I pointed out last time: nobody on team Elana had access to a Great Smith - one capable of working alloys - after Llewellyn left for Drangleic, leaving common smiths like Lenigrast or the fading McDuff, if there was even enough left of him to find.
So this leads us to the Iron King. He didn't have a great smith either, but he did have unlimited access of all the stuff you'd need to be one: raw iron, regular and enchanted titanite, and a forge the size of a city, and this was how Alken beat out Venn, as gold makes even worse weapons than iron.
We can tell from Andre, who seems to have been working as a smith continuously since we first met him, that you can become great at smithing. In the first game Andre needed multiple, increasingly powerful embers and 15 sessions of refinement and honing to create a basic god-tier weapon, and even then he couldn't work the actual weapons of the gods, at least not the elemental ones - that was the domain of Vamos and Help Anytime Sr. And Giant Smith, obviously, the giant blacksmith deity that originated and perfected the art.
Gundyr's glaive is described as being near-indestructible, and implies that the people in charge of Gundyr's Mission suspected that linking the fire might not be as easy as they had been led to believe. The ultra-high durability would have been much more interesting/useful in DS2, where durability mattered. I think Gael's crossbow is the only thing I've ever broken in 3, and then only because I wanted to see something break finally.
Prisoner of Hope
Now, Ivory is the only King of Drangleic whose story isn't fairly well known by all of the groups that would eventually found Lothric as a colonial empire on the ruins of Astora or Balder or somewhere like that. Additionally, in order to avoid the kind of overly-complicated dogma that can lead to schisms down the line, the Tale of the Cursebearer had to be condensed into something more easily understandable than it actually was, which was like trying to figure out the "real" story behind the Nibelungenlied, which requires understanding the Nibelungenlied in like three different languages and the history of medieval Germany from three different perspectives.
So, time, propaganda, and political necessity transforms Ivory, Vendrick, et al, into the Cursebearer, and does so even in the minds of the people spreading the lies and propaganda.
The White King of Drangleic was a man, obviously. A general from Forossa that became king of Drangleic. A king of Drangleic that became a general of Forossa. A firelinking champion from a fallen kingdom that forged a great empire and renounced it when it fell to civil war. A brave and noble king that conquered Chaos, Went Beyond Death, peered into the essense of the soul, slayed dragons, rode dragons, slayed the Four Old Ones, was the Four Old Ones, all of that. Who better to succeed Lord Gwyn and rebirth Anor Londo as New Olaphis than a fictionalized version of the Cursebearer cobbled together from the sludge of the history of nobility in Drangleic?
So that tale, or something equally Vaati-level informed, would become the mythology of Lothric, with something similar serving as the self-justifying creation myth of the Three Pillars, whoever they originally were or were based on. I haven't at all made my mind up about them, but I might be getting close.
Carim, or someone aligned with Elana, must have been in contact with Gwyndolin at some point, but I suspect when the fire went out and the bells fell silent s/he had a lot harder time getting information in and out of the country. This was almost certainly the period of time when the Undead Legion was waging their war against the Abyss, but probably before the Abyss Watchers linked the Flame, maybe before the Watchers were even formed as a sub-group within the Legion.
Young Lothric, having established her base on an appropriately High Wall - not in Lordran, but within 'easy' travel distance - set about intentionally creating a champion in 'Ivory's' image.
And got important stuff wrong, probably both about the nature of the champion and the nature of firelinking. Taking the Throne is not Linking the Fire. Gundyr probably was married, but probably not in the Londor sense, which is required if one is to 'wrest the flame from its mantle' (remember, 'Dark Lord' Vendrick didn't usurp the Fire from Lordran to found Drangleic, just the Lords Souls). Gundyr had a Fire Keeper, maybe Kriemheld or whoever Kriemheld used to be, but they never met and she probably had to be mercy killed.
So, no bonfires for Gunther, no bells rang for the War Army. In a tragic farce, arriving in the Land of Light, Gunther found only Darkness and a broken sword to keep it at bay.
So you've got
A: a hole filling up with Pus that really needs to be cauterized, and
B: a sword with...not so much Flame, but the Memory of Flame.
Such is the nature of hope, I suppose.
Women, some of them at least, can contain the Dark Soul in a way that men can't, and may be one of the central points all the in-universe sexism revolves around. Harboring a lot of humanity doesn't seem pleasant for fire keepers, but it does seem more pleasant than succumbing to the pus of man.
Some firekeepers 'cherish the writhing, searing Darkness,' and are awarded the Black Set. There have been innumerable Black Firekeepers, at least in some sense, but in another sense there may have only been three. Or even just one, over and over and over.
The Poor Girl
We find a Black Fire Keeper on top of the bell tower, this Fire Keeper, or whoever her soul belonged to, returned from the Abyss, which is probably why she was given a sky burial. Another, seemingly from our time, invades us if we approach Dark Firelink. We'll get to her. We find a Fire Keeper with her (or her predecessor's) eyes intact, presumably the First Fire Keeper, who was buried and walled-off to presumably keep the eyes from having to see too much.
The main Keeper might be a reincarnation of the one above or below, or the invader, or the invader could be a copy of the main Keeper, or the buried one, or some kind of pre-incarnation of Irina, or re-incarnation of Anastacia the Returned.
Kriemhild seems to have her eyes intact, and the designers seem particular about that. Cornyx blindfolds himself, for example, to better see fire, although it's not clear if this 'sight' is meant in a literal sense - as in to prevent himself from going blind staring at fire all day - or if it's actually some kind of Bloodbornian/Daredevil ESP/enhanced senses type thing, or if it's in a philosophical/spiritual "renounce the distractions of the world" sense. Cornyx, seemingly, couldn't see the bonfires before we take him into our service. Yet another weird superpower we just have for some reason.
Kriemhild is the daughter of crystal (not Crystal Kriemhild's daughter [although, depending on how you define resurrectionism,]) and was the Preacher Twins' favorite pupil. This would obviously make them quite old, as they seem to have split up fairly early after arriving in Lothric, which would have been around the period of the War of the Abyss in Farron. I'm mostly using Andre to establish that, since he wasn't present in Dark Firelink, but probably showed up fairly early once Gwynevere, Ludleth, and Emma's Ashen Summoning ritual got underway. I'm guessing about those last three, I haven't tried to dig back into that aspect of it yet.
Loresmiths, the lazy ones, act like 'oh Kriemhild's name means battle mask and she's basically a terminator the Crystal Sages made out of a dead firekeeper and Ruin' and leave it at that. I mean other than not understanding Ruin beyond a basic 'studying Seath shit turns your shit into Seath shit' sense.
Shit, most of them just write it off as the team not having time to design another witch costume variant like they couldn't have just given her black Scholar Robes if they didn't want people to draw the connection between her and the Main Keeper.
Just to belabor the point: Kriemhild appears in Untended Graves, Main does not. Kriemhild does not wear a mask, implying that she isn't blind. Main wears a mask that I, personally, would only ever put on if it meant it was the only way to survive a battle. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a handy note or anything saying 'she's definitely the Firekeeper that was meant to meet Gundyr, returned from the Abyss, resurrected, given to Ruin, and being guided by a Crystal Sage.' The Sages presumably have some kind of immunity to Ruin, the same as the Cursebearer after claiming Seath's...soul or whatever from the ancient dragon corpse. Presumably Aldia and Straid had this as well, so I suspect it was not that uncommon for INT-based characters that still had enough FTH to develop the broader wisdom to avoid turning into Oceiros.
So, Firelink Shrine: a tower full of 'retired' fire keepers, all nearly identical looking; two unique keeper corpses, one with eyes one with a soul; two living firekeepers, one of which is probably not unique other than she happens to be ours, the other possibly retired, almost definitely possessed by Ruin, and may have been the Firekeeper Gundyr was meant to have met when he arrived.
The reason I say this is because of the following: type "Gunther and Kriemhild Nibelung" into Google. Don't try to get to the bottom of it, you'll go mad, just get a general idea of who the two were.
Right? If Untended is in the past, then I would also assume that this is during the Dark period of Lordran where the fire has literally gone out - maybe because of Vendrick's actions, maybe because of the Cursebearer's - but because of Gwyn's failsafing a Dark Lord couldn't usher in a Dark Age, at least in Lordran, to advance the cycle and finally let Papa Nito get some work done.
Nito, incidentally, may be world history's bronze medal champ at playing both sides, behind Carim and Gwyn.
So, even though Dark is all that's left, no Dark Lord can truly emerge and, as it were, begin draining the bathtub of oil.
The nice thing about the world in this deadlocked state is that it's peaceful: not a soul stirs, no light to agitate.
Which Gundyr didn't know, or did know but didn't want to acknowledge. The sun ain't coming back up.
Battle Army and War Mask: the Champion and his Fire Keeper, Ivory and Alsanna with a few details fudged about who did what and when setting out on the same journey as Solaire, only with the gods definitely smiling on the journey and no mix ups about who was supposed to be a bride and who was supposed to be a keeper and who was supposed to link the fire.
Imagine: A political game openly rigged on both sides for diminishing stakes with most every last mark exhausted from the contrivances and machinations of those who would cozen fate, building a fake champion to overcome a fake trial and, somehow, make everything okay again. A game that ruined a continent, then another one, then returned home to do it again.
And they lost. Right out of the gate.
It failed catastrophically, we're told. The people of Farron, or whatever they called the place, had a grand ole laugh at dumbass Gundyr the Finally Decided to Show Up.
You gotta restart the fire to link it. How do you restart a fire?
You need a proper champion for a start.
Maybe Bradley could've done it under certain conditions. Been the Champion of Lothric, I mean. Maybe Solaire. Maybe even Benhart if you tricked him. And hell, Vengarl could've thought and got his way into anything after visiting Eleum Loyce. Vendrick could've done it, but didn't. Patches, of course.
But Gundyr couldn't do it. When the Cursebearer shows up in Drangleic they can just light bonfires. Like, that's just a magic power they have that no one seems that interested in. Free and unlimited access to shrines of supernatural healing fire that also let you teleport: the Cursebearers, all of them, could just arrive in a strange country with nothing but a vague backstory and a Darksign and just light bonfires.
But Gundyr couldn't. Kriemhild, in her role couldn't either. Lothric in all their might and glory and hubris, couldn't get the bonfire to light.
The broken Coiled Sword describes the Firelink Fire as having 'served its purpose long ago,' but also mentions that the bonfires are linked eternally, so that their 'affinity' remains even when the fire's 'purpose is exhausted.'
So, here's Kriemhild: a rare Fire Keeper that cherishes the writhing Darkness. In our time she's a scholar of the archives, and serves as a Sentry in the Untended Graves.
So let's say that Kriemhild and Gundyr are rough analogues of their counterparts from the Nibelungenlied (a rough translation is something like the Epic Poem of the Horde of the Nibel/s [contested term meaning anything from dwarves to magic ring to great treasure, generally it refers to enchanted/cursed gold stolen from the rivern nymphs of the Rhine river]). If it holds true, then some of the things that could apply to Kriem might be
Brunhild I don't understand nearly as well, but her in-game analogue would be, hypothetically, Gundyr's wife (not in the Londor sense,) and Queen of Lothric, assuming that Gundyr was king. Brunhild is described as being an incredible warrior, requiring prospective suitors to overcome various nigh-impossible feats of mettle to even propose to her, and all failures were executed. Gundyr won her hand by having Seigfriede, with a cloak of invisibility, do all the work while pretending to be Gundyr's squire. She didn't seem like a happy woman, but she did seem like she was good at being angry and spent most of her marriage trying to figure out how Gundyr and Siegfriede were getting over on her, which I admire.
IRL mythological Gundyr was a real world class piece of shit, if that's not coming across.
Right, that's probably enough to draw some comparisons.
So Kriemhild would have...and I mean this whole blog is speculation, obviously, but it's speculation in search of the true vein, right? I'm just painting 'what ifs,' which I've been doing for damn near a decade now, and getting progressively less-and-less wrong analogues to the "actual" story of Dark Souls, whatever it is. That's how a mystery works. I don't know what everyone's problem is. "Uhh, Princess Venn was clearly a very minor character added mostly as flavor lore to characerize the Iron King who was NOT the son of Sir Yorgh, all of these Kings and their Kingdoms happened around the same time, clearly." Sure, champ, that's all there is to it.
Anyway, jesus this post just keeps going, ANYWAY Kriemhild would have been, technically, a princess of Lothric. We can probably assume they strip you of that kind of title when you become a Keeper, and probably especially if you come back from being a Keeper. Kriemhild would have married someone matching the description of an Anorian wet dream. I suspect this may have been the original Knight from the three pillars. If you're wondering: I don't think Kriemhild is related to Gwyn, but she could be, albeit distantly. The Scandinavian version of Kriemhild is called Gudrun (also means something like Battle Mask, but Hidden War could be a stretch translation).
Kriemhild can time-travel invade. I know that timelines are wonky, but I don't know that I know of any targeted invasions that involve time travel. Like, Navlaan could invade you pretty much anywhere, but he didn't seem to be able to travel to the past to do it.
Then we need to remember that the flesh-and-blood...well, maybe not blood, but the actual Kriemhild is about half a mile straight up from where she invades us, guarding the bridge to the donjon. She could probably watch us enter Oceiros' bossfight if she had binoculars and eyeballs, which she might.
But then we go into a weird shrine with a tunnel and end up in an even older old castle and then pop out in the old graveyard only back when it was less old. Or, alternately, the same graveyard at the same time, just in a shadow timeline or pocket dimension.
Or whatever's going on.
My point is I don't know if Kriemhild would have been able to track us doing this. I presume that she, or the Preacher Twins if they're pulling the strings, could do so if they wanted to, but it's a pretty impressive power to have. Wait. Shalquior notices that we've been time-traveling, so maybe it's not that unique of a faculty. Thank christ, moving on.
So, Kriemhild somehow realizes you're about to make an attempt on her dickhead brother in the past and...tries to stop you from visiting him with unkindness? If Gundyr had her husband The Knight murdered, and Kriemhild retiring as a firekeeper/becoming a sage is analogous to Gudrun turning on Gundyr/marrying Attila, then why would she care if we ended his doomed journey early?
My gut wants to tell me she's trying to prevent you from finding her old body. I distrust this because it feels like I'm jumping to the most sensational answer, which is almost never the right answer.
My brain tells me she recognizes the nature of whatever's going on at Firelink is important enough that Kriemhild would lay aside her grudge to see it protected. I feel like that doesn't really scan because Kriemhild from the Nibelung's entire character is defined by vengeance.
Anyway, one final timeline-related point: Gundyr is described as being belated and late. This is mostly in relation to the fire going out, but it could also refer to Kriemhild being dead/in the Abyss by the time he arrived.
Wow, I was worried this post was gonna get too complicated.
I think that's finally getting close to wrapping it up, save for the answers section below. Like I said up top: I cut a bunch of Nibelung-related stuff for its own post later, which I assume will be digging further into this goddamn Gordian Knot of a story.
I'm sure someone will come along and point out how there's actually a really simple and obvious and satisfying explanation for everything that explains everything perfectly in like three sentences, and is unassailable truth as long as you continue not thinking about it or anything ever.
A
Right, so what I think happened is one of the following, based on the alignment of the forces orchestrating Emma & Co's clutch shot in the post-bonfire world.
If Dark Lothric is red, the following is true:
Andre arrived or was brought or had always been at Firelink (the hammer makes it seem like he replaced somebody) and filled in the wall at the Handmaiden or Fire Keeper's request, making it look identical to the old wall.
If the mystery faction is blue in nature, the following is true:
Illusory walls turn into real walls over time. Upper Eleum Loyce wasn't built by hand. Lower Eleum Loyce was. Clearly. So, let's say you have a big old ripe archtree - a proper High Wall - and you need to build a castle on top of that archtree, but you're ass at building. What do you do?
Project a mighty, illusory castle over the archtree . Wait around for the Curse to notice the light in this Age of True Darkness. Now, if a creature of pure light showed up here they'd more or less go Artorias instantly and just be a pus fountain making more and more Dark that can't be let out of the, by now, ink-black bathtub.
Even if a warped interpretation of the right 'humors' necessary to link the fire showed up, if they had a darksign they'd just sit around watching it, the (allegedly) Bottomless Bag of Holding get denser and denser and know that, at some point, It was gonna need to be let back out from wherever It went, which was presumably somewhere Darker even than this Untended place.
On the other hand, Darksign no bonfire: you're just another undead, a hollow with one humanity, their light squelched back down to a photon: a raw, mindless id of a humanity sprite guiding a doomed sapling hopelessly and desperately towards something like enlightenment.
On the other other hand: if you were just a lump of titanite: reactive towards dark/mass, but inanimate and incorporeal: a 3-d projection of a castle on a mountaintop maybe
maybe
over enough time and with enough Dark in the environment, the Dark would slowly accumulate in place of the illusion, mimicking it by whatever principle of avarice creates mimics, only instead of turning a treasure hunter into a treasure chest, it turns the illusion into a reality by converting the underlying archtree.
How bout that, huh?
"When the Ashes are two, a Flame alighteth"
Gundyr's armor was modeled after an old king, and cast from iron. Several things are interesting about this. First, the old king, followed by cast iron, followed by the philosophical concept of Iron, followed by Gundyr himself.
The old king Gundyr's armor was modeled on was Ivory, more or less. I should hope that would be clear to anyone that's fought both of them. They even adopt the same pose when readying their weapon. There are contradictory elements - Mirror Knight's pauldrons, for example - but I imagine these are indicative of early Lothric's scattershot understanding of their own history.
Gundyr was a failed champion of Lothric, the kingdom born out of a world-spanning political alliance evidently present in the Cursebearer's time. I've outlined it elsewhere so skip the bullets if you're familiar. The alliance, The Blue, consists of, broadly:
- Carim - this is debatable, with most of the connections being tangential-ish references to Velka and Astor, and Caitha being, well, Caitha. To the degree Carim is involved it should be remembered that Carim are all time world champions when it comes to CIA-ing these kinds of things.
- Olaphis & Venn loyalists - Obviously. These are the surviving Lordran-descended groups/characters from the Exodus of Gwynevere. It seems like Olaph loyalists, absent a blood heir of Anor, are loyal to Elana. It could probably be assumed that surviving Venn loyalists, absent their Queen, would swear fealty to any noble Anorian nominally upholding Gwyn-like values. Hence the Old Dragonslayer that doesn't dragon-slay, Targray the Honorable being aligned with the Volgen mafia and Vendrick the mama's boy's weird connections to Caitha.
- Volgen-Lindelt - Both the Blue Sentinels and Archdrake Sect are based here. The Archdrakes are descended directly from Shulva, the Sentinels are an enigmatic group of Anor (and seemingly Elana,) loyalists that rose to power by capitalizing on the potential Faith-based energy arising from all the misery and suffering among Drang's commoners. They did this because, after Olaphis purged all the sorcerers and pyromancers, the Alken uprising involved deposing the WoW-descended church of Olaphis-Venn, leaving a power vacuum.
- Assorted forces from fallen Mirrah and Forossa. These groups all share an abundance of Anor/WoW-inspired influences, from the Foross Lion Knights seemingly being a militarized group of Sunbros, to tales of Havel being told by Mir holy knights when faced with sorcery.
Gundyr arrived in Lordran expecting a quick bath in some slightly oily water that was still vastly preferable to the alternative: exploding into an oil monster.
Instead he found a bathtub full of oil.
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| How he thought it'd go, probably. |
Casting iron isn't the best way to make arms, especially in Souls. Cast iron is hard, but it's brittle and it's heavy. In Souls terms, forged iron is better, refined steel is better than that, and alloys are better than that. But as I pointed out last time: nobody on team Elana had access to a Great Smith - one capable of working alloys - after Llewellyn left for Drangleic, leaving common smiths like Lenigrast or the fading McDuff, if there was even enough left of him to find.
So this leads us to the Iron King. He didn't have a great smith either, but he did have unlimited access of all the stuff you'd need to be one: raw iron, regular and enchanted titanite, and a forge the size of a city, and this was how Alken beat out Venn, as gold makes even worse weapons than iron.
We can tell from Andre, who seems to have been working as a smith continuously since we first met him, that you can become great at smithing. In the first game Andre needed multiple, increasingly powerful embers and 15 sessions of refinement and honing to create a basic god-tier weapon, and even then he couldn't work the actual weapons of the gods, at least not the elemental ones - that was the domain of Vamos and Help Anytime Sr. And Giant Smith, obviously, the giant blacksmith deity that originated and perfected the art.
Gundyr's glaive is described as being near-indestructible, and implies that the people in charge of Gundyr's Mission suspected that linking the fire might not be as easy as they had been led to believe. The ultra-high durability would have been much more interesting/useful in DS2, where durability mattered. I think Gael's crossbow is the only thing I've ever broken in 3, and then only because I wanted to see something break finally.
Prisoner of Hope
Now, Ivory is the only King of Drangleic whose story isn't fairly well known by all of the groups that would eventually found Lothric as a colonial empire on the ruins of Astora or Balder or somewhere like that. Additionally, in order to avoid the kind of overly-complicated dogma that can lead to schisms down the line, the Tale of the Cursebearer had to be condensed into something more easily understandable than it actually was, which was like trying to figure out the "real" story behind the Nibelungenlied, which requires understanding the Nibelungenlied in like three different languages and the history of medieval Germany from three different perspectives.
So, time, propaganda, and political necessity transforms Ivory, Vendrick, et al, into the Cursebearer, and does so even in the minds of the people spreading the lies and propaganda.
The White King of Drangleic was a man, obviously. A general from Forossa that became king of Drangleic. A king of Drangleic that became a general of Forossa. A firelinking champion from a fallen kingdom that forged a great empire and renounced it when it fell to civil war. A brave and noble king that conquered Chaos, Went Beyond Death, peered into the essense of the soul, slayed dragons, rode dragons, slayed the Four Old Ones, was the Four Old Ones, all of that. Who better to succeed Lord Gwyn and rebirth Anor Londo as New Olaphis than a fictionalized version of the Cursebearer cobbled together from the sludge of the history of nobility in Drangleic?
So that tale, or something equally Vaati-level informed, would become the mythology of Lothric, with something similar serving as the self-justifying creation myth of the Three Pillars, whoever they originally were or were based on. I haven't at all made my mind up about them, but I might be getting close.
Carim, or someone aligned with Elana, must have been in contact with Gwyndolin at some point, but I suspect when the fire went out and the bells fell silent s/he had a lot harder time getting information in and out of the country. This was almost certainly the period of time when the Undead Legion was waging their war against the Abyss, but probably before the Abyss Watchers linked the Flame, maybe before the Watchers were even formed as a sub-group within the Legion.
Young Lothric, having established her base on an appropriately High Wall - not in Lordran, but within 'easy' travel distance - set about intentionally creating a champion in 'Ivory's' image.
And got important stuff wrong, probably both about the nature of the champion and the nature of firelinking. Taking the Throne is not Linking the Fire. Gundyr probably was married, but probably not in the Londor sense, which is required if one is to 'wrest the flame from its mantle' (remember, 'Dark Lord' Vendrick didn't usurp the Fire from Lordran to found Drangleic, just the Lords Souls). Gundyr had a Fire Keeper, maybe Kriemheld or whoever Kriemheld used to be, but they never met and she probably had to be mercy killed.
So, no bonfires for Gunther, no bells rang for the War Army. In a tragic farce, arriving in the Land of Light, Gunther found only Darkness and a broken sword to keep it at bay.
So you've got
A: a hole filling up with Pus that really needs to be cauterized, and
B: a sword with...not so much Flame, but the Memory of Flame.
Such is the nature of hope, I suppose.
Women, some of them at least, can contain the Dark Soul in a way that men can't, and may be one of the central points all the in-universe sexism revolves around. Harboring a lot of humanity doesn't seem pleasant for fire keepers, but it does seem more pleasant than succumbing to the pus of man.
Some firekeepers 'cherish the writhing, searing Darkness,' and are awarded the Black Set. There have been innumerable Black Firekeepers, at least in some sense, but in another sense there may have only been three. Or even just one, over and over and over.
The Poor Girl
We find a Black Fire Keeper on top of the bell tower, this Fire Keeper, or whoever her soul belonged to, returned from the Abyss, which is probably why she was given a sky burial. Another, seemingly from our time, invades us if we approach Dark Firelink. We'll get to her. We find a Fire Keeper with her (or her predecessor's) eyes intact, presumably the First Fire Keeper, who was buried and walled-off to presumably keep the eyes from having to see too much.
The main Keeper might be a reincarnation of the one above or below, or the invader, or the invader could be a copy of the main Keeper, or the buried one, or some kind of pre-incarnation of Irina, or re-incarnation of Anastacia the Returned.
Kriemhild seems to have her eyes intact, and the designers seem particular about that. Cornyx blindfolds himself, for example, to better see fire, although it's not clear if this 'sight' is meant in a literal sense - as in to prevent himself from going blind staring at fire all day - or if it's actually some kind of Bloodbornian/Daredevil ESP/enhanced senses type thing, or if it's in a philosophical/spiritual "renounce the distractions of the world" sense. Cornyx, seemingly, couldn't see the bonfires before we take him into our service. Yet another weird superpower we just have for some reason.
Kriemhild is the daughter of crystal (not Crystal Kriemhild's daughter [although, depending on how you define resurrectionism,]) and was the Preacher Twins' favorite pupil. This would obviously make them quite old, as they seem to have split up fairly early after arriving in Lothric, which would have been around the period of the War of the Abyss in Farron. I'm mostly using Andre to establish that, since he wasn't present in Dark Firelink, but probably showed up fairly early once Gwynevere, Ludleth, and Emma's Ashen Summoning ritual got underway. I'm guessing about those last three, I haven't tried to dig back into that aspect of it yet.
Loresmiths, the lazy ones, act like 'oh Kriemhild's name means battle mask and she's basically a terminator the Crystal Sages made out of a dead firekeeper and Ruin' and leave it at that. I mean other than not understanding Ruin beyond a basic 'studying Seath shit turns your shit into Seath shit' sense.
Shit, most of them just write it off as the team not having time to design another witch costume variant like they couldn't have just given her black Scholar Robes if they didn't want people to draw the connection between her and the Main Keeper.
Just to belabor the point: Kriemhild appears in Untended Graves, Main does not. Kriemhild does not wear a mask, implying that she isn't blind. Main wears a mask that I, personally, would only ever put on if it meant it was the only way to survive a battle. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a handy note or anything saying 'she's definitely the Firekeeper that was meant to meet Gundyr, returned from the Abyss, resurrected, given to Ruin, and being guided by a Crystal Sage.' The Sages presumably have some kind of immunity to Ruin, the same as the Cursebearer after claiming Seath's...soul or whatever from the ancient dragon corpse. Presumably Aldia and Straid had this as well, so I suspect it was not that uncommon for INT-based characters that still had enough FTH to develop the broader wisdom to avoid turning into Oceiros.
So, Firelink Shrine: a tower full of 'retired' fire keepers, all nearly identical looking; two unique keeper corpses, one with eyes one with a soul; two living firekeepers, one of which is probably not unique other than she happens to be ours, the other possibly retired, almost definitely possessed by Ruin, and may have been the Firekeeper Gundyr was meant to have met when he arrived.
The reason I say this is because of the following: type "Gunther and Kriemhild Nibelung" into Google. Don't try to get to the bottom of it, you'll go mad, just get a general idea of who the two were.
Right? If Untended is in the past, then I would also assume that this is during the Dark period of Lordran where the fire has literally gone out - maybe because of Vendrick's actions, maybe because of the Cursebearer's - but because of Gwyn's failsafing a Dark Lord couldn't usher in a Dark Age, at least in Lordran, to advance the cycle and finally let Papa Nito get some work done.
Nito, incidentally, may be world history's bronze medal champ at playing both sides, behind Carim and Gwyn.
So, even though Dark is all that's left, no Dark Lord can truly emerge and, as it were, begin draining the bathtub of oil.
The nice thing about the world in this deadlocked state is that it's peaceful: not a soul stirs, no light to agitate.
Which Gundyr didn't know, or did know but didn't want to acknowledge. The sun ain't coming back up.
Battle Army and War Mask: the Champion and his Fire Keeper, Ivory and Alsanna with a few details fudged about who did what and when setting out on the same journey as Solaire, only with the gods definitely smiling on the journey and no mix ups about who was supposed to be a bride and who was supposed to be a keeper and who was supposed to link the fire.
Imagine: A political game openly rigged on both sides for diminishing stakes with most every last mark exhausted from the contrivances and machinations of those who would cozen fate, building a fake champion to overcome a fake trial and, somehow, make everything okay again. A game that ruined a continent, then another one, then returned home to do it again.
And they lost. Right out of the gate.
It failed catastrophically, we're told. The people of Farron, or whatever they called the place, had a grand ole laugh at dumbass Gundyr the Finally Decided to Show Up.
You gotta restart the fire to link it. How do you restart a fire?
You need a proper champion for a start.
Maybe Bradley could've done it under certain conditions. Been the Champion of Lothric, I mean. Maybe Solaire. Maybe even Benhart if you tricked him. And hell, Vengarl could've thought and got his way into anything after visiting Eleum Loyce. Vendrick could've done it, but didn't. Patches, of course.
But Gundyr couldn't do it. When the Cursebearer shows up in Drangleic they can just light bonfires. Like, that's just a magic power they have that no one seems that interested in. Free and unlimited access to shrines of supernatural healing fire that also let you teleport: the Cursebearers, all of them, could just arrive in a strange country with nothing but a vague backstory and a Darksign and just light bonfires.
But Gundyr couldn't. Kriemhild, in her role couldn't either. Lothric in all their might and glory and hubris, couldn't get the bonfire to light.
The broken Coiled Sword describes the Firelink Fire as having 'served its purpose long ago,' but also mentions that the bonfires are linked eternally, so that their 'affinity' remains even when the fire's 'purpose is exhausted.'
So, here's Kriemhild: a rare Fire Keeper that cherishes the writhing Darkness. In our time she's a scholar of the archives, and serves as a Sentry in the Untended Graves.
So let's say that Kriemhild and Gundyr are rough analogues of their counterparts from the Nibelungenlied (a rough translation is something like the Epic Poem of the Horde of the Nibel/s [contested term meaning anything from dwarves to magic ring to great treasure, generally it refers to enchanted/cursed gold stolen from the rivern nymphs of the Rhine river]). If it holds true, then some of the things that could apply to Kriem might be
- Gundyr would be a king
- G & K would be brother and sister
- Gundyr would be a prideful, inept, coward but would have a
- Siegfriede: an incredibly strong lord and idiot who served as Gundyr's page.
- Siegfriede served as Gundyr's page, helping the conniving Gundyr secure the hand of Brunhild in marriage.
- In exhange for this, Siegfriede was allowed to marry Kriemhild.
- Brunhild, something like a Queen of the Valkyries, spent most of her marriage fighting with Kriemhild over rank and suspecting her husband and Siegfriede of lying to her. Which they did, constantly.
- Siegfriede is betrayed by Gundyr at the bequest of Brunhild, and is murdered by Gundyr's knight captain.
- Kriemhild turns against her brother and country, relocates to Hungary and marries Attila (literally: she marries Attila the Hun,) and begins plotting vengeance against her husband's murderers.
Brunhild I don't understand nearly as well, but her in-game analogue would be, hypothetically, Gundyr's wife (not in the Londor sense,) and Queen of Lothric, assuming that Gundyr was king. Brunhild is described as being an incredible warrior, requiring prospective suitors to overcome various nigh-impossible feats of mettle to even propose to her, and all failures were executed. Gundyr won her hand by having Seigfriede, with a cloak of invisibility, do all the work while pretending to be Gundyr's squire. She didn't seem like a happy woman, but she did seem like she was good at being angry and spent most of her marriage trying to figure out how Gundyr and Siegfriede were getting over on her, which I admire.
IRL mythological Gundyr was a real world class piece of shit, if that's not coming across.
Right, that's probably enough to draw some comparisons.
So Kriemhild would have...and I mean this whole blog is speculation, obviously, but it's speculation in search of the true vein, right? I'm just painting 'what ifs,' which I've been doing for damn near a decade now, and getting progressively less-and-less wrong analogues to the "actual" story of Dark Souls, whatever it is. That's how a mystery works. I don't know what everyone's problem is. "Uhh, Princess Venn was clearly a very minor character added mostly as flavor lore to characerize the Iron King who was NOT the son of Sir Yorgh, all of these Kings and their Kingdoms happened around the same time, clearly." Sure, champ, that's all there is to it.
Anyway, jesus this post just keeps going, ANYWAY Kriemhild would have been, technically, a princess of Lothric. We can probably assume they strip you of that kind of title when you become a Keeper, and probably especially if you come back from being a Keeper. Kriemhild would have married someone matching the description of an Anorian wet dream. I suspect this may have been the original Knight from the three pillars. If you're wondering: I don't think Kriemhild is related to Gwyn, but she could be, albeit distantly. The Scandinavian version of Kriemhild is called Gudrun (also means something like Battle Mask, but Hidden War could be a stretch translation).
Kriemhild can time-travel invade. I know that timelines are wonky, but I don't know that I know of any targeted invasions that involve time travel. Like, Navlaan could invade you pretty much anywhere, but he didn't seem to be able to travel to the past to do it.
Then we need to remember that the flesh-and-blood...well, maybe not blood, but the actual Kriemhild is about half a mile straight up from where she invades us, guarding the bridge to the donjon. She could probably watch us enter Oceiros' bossfight if she had binoculars and eyeballs, which she might.
But then we go into a weird shrine with a tunnel and end up in an even older old castle and then pop out in the old graveyard only back when it was less old. Or, alternately, the same graveyard at the same time, just in a shadow timeline or pocket dimension.
Or whatever's going on.
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| "'...the calling of my kind since...' hey, yeah, Emma, how about answer a few questions like how racist are you and is this a civil war I'm standing in the middle of?" |
My point is I don't know if Kriemhild would have been able to track us doing this. I presume that she, or the Preacher Twins if they're pulling the strings, could do so if they wanted to, but it's a pretty impressive power to have. Wait. Shalquior notices that we've been time-traveling, so maybe it's not that unique of a faculty. Thank christ, moving on.
So, Kriemhild somehow realizes you're about to make an attempt on her dickhead brother in the past and...tries to stop you from visiting him with unkindness? If Gundyr had her husband The Knight murdered, and Kriemhild retiring as a firekeeper/becoming a sage is analogous to Gudrun turning on Gundyr/marrying Attila, then why would she care if we ended his doomed journey early?
My gut wants to tell me she's trying to prevent you from finding her old body. I distrust this because it feels like I'm jumping to the most sensational answer, which is almost never the right answer.
My brain tells me she recognizes the nature of whatever's going on at Firelink is important enough that Kriemhild would lay aside her grudge to see it protected. I feel like that doesn't really scan because Kriemhild from the Nibelung's entire character is defined by vengeance.
Anyway, one final timeline-related point: Gundyr is described as being belated and late. This is mostly in relation to the fire going out, but it could also refer to Kriemhild being dead/in the Abyss by the time he arrived.
Wow, I was worried this post was gonna get too complicated.
 |
| It was supposed to be about this but oh well |
I think that's finally getting close to wrapping it up, save for the answers section below. Like I said up top: I cut a bunch of Nibelung-related stuff for its own post later, which I assume will be digging further into this goddamn Gordian Knot of a story.
I'm sure someone will come along and point out how there's actually a really simple and obvious and satisfying explanation for everything that explains everything perfectly in like three sentences, and is unassailable truth as long as you continue not thinking about it or anything ever.
A
Right, so what I think happened is one of the following, based on the alignment of the forces orchestrating Emma & Co's clutch shot in the post-bonfire world.
If Dark Lothric is red, the following is true:
Andre arrived or was brought or had always been at Firelink (the hammer makes it seem like he replaced somebody) and filled in the wall at the Handmaiden or Fire Keeper's request, making it look identical to the old wall.
If the mystery faction is blue in nature, the following is true:
Illusory walls turn into real walls over time. Upper Eleum Loyce wasn't built by hand. Lower Eleum Loyce was. Clearly. So, let's say you have a big old ripe archtree - a proper High Wall - and you need to build a castle on top of that archtree, but you're ass at building. What do you do?
Project a mighty, illusory castle over the archtree . Wait around for the Curse to notice the light in this Age of True Darkness. Now, if a creature of pure light showed up here they'd more or less go Artorias instantly and just be a pus fountain making more and more Dark that can't be let out of the, by now, ink-black bathtub.
Even if a warped interpretation of the right 'humors' necessary to link the fire showed up, if they had a darksign they'd just sit around watching it, the (allegedly) Bottomless Bag of Holding get denser and denser and know that, at some point, It was gonna need to be let back out from wherever It went, which was presumably somewhere Darker even than this Untended place.
On the other hand, Darksign no bonfire: you're just another undead, a hollow with one humanity, their light squelched back down to a photon: a raw, mindless id of a humanity sprite guiding a doomed sapling hopelessly and desperately towards something like enlightenment.
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| Yeah, no they totally hauled all that marble or whatever up there. |
maybe
over enough time and with enough Dark in the environment, the Dark would slowly accumulate in place of the illusion, mimicking it by whatever principle of avarice creates mimics, only instead of turning a treasure hunter into a treasure chest, it turns the illusion into a reality by converting the underlying archtree.
How bout that, huh?
