I'd suggest reading Immemorial, Cordial Intrusion, These Roots, and Profane Use before diving into this. It won't make sense at the end, but does flavor that other nonsense.
It isn't finished, and most of the pictures are just whatever because we just entered the 'fascist police state violent crackdown' phase and there are more important things.
The Targray Post, Finally
Targray teaches you the same gesture as the Londor Shade. A more respectable bow.
I thought it was gonna be Mytha. I thought it was gonna goddamnit be Mytha but goddamnit obviously.
Friede isn't in the Sable Church when we meet her. Friede isn't even Elfriede any more.
Three goddamn years I had that one wrong with absolute and unwavering certainty.
Duel Bow.
What a sham.
The Guardian's Seal, the first thousand times you look at it, depicts a four-petaled flower or leaf. Except it says it's a symbol of the Oath of Covenant, which then it's obviously four different territories 'united' by a cross which, and I'm obviously reading heavily into it, has some kind of long-distance relationship between two little lines at 45 and 135.
In other words, that innocuous little crossroads in the center of the ring represents the power vacuum that will, I suspect become the next incarnation of the The Undying Imperial Church's Secret Police. I don't have a good theory about the Blue Seal symbol, but it could be something like four-or-five kingdoms/gods feeding into/descending from a single fountain-head kingdom/god; or it could be a butterfly in a cocoon. Who knows at this point.
The Morning Star, which Targray sells is a bleed weapon. Blood, as we all know, is where the Dark Soul 'lives', just like the mind/cranial cavity is where the light soul 'lives'. Bleeding slows resurrection. The Morning Star is also described as barbaric. Barbaric as in 'cruel' not as in 'nomadic.'
It's a weapon for killing humans.
The Sentinels exist, according to Targray, to oppose the Brotherhood of Blood, which is called the Brotherhood of Blood. So why does Targray sell bleed weaponry? Holy Water, Halberd, that all makes sense, but Petrus' weapon?
The Brotherhood's desire to shed blood is rooted in the idea that, by releasing Dark from its hollow hosts, it will spread better. BoBs bleed because they want more Dark. My current lead hypothesis is that they're, basically, terraforming the atmosphere. Mostly they do this with scythes, lorewise, which are fairly explicitly described as being a proletarian farming implement that mostly only works as a weapon because of the fear they invoke in the ruling class. You know: the gods.
If you've ever seen a real scythe they're not something you could easily hurt anyone but yourself with. There's much better on a farm.
So while the Brotherhood's bloodletting fixation is an engineered form of accelerationism, the Sentinels' practice of bloodletting is an attempt, futile and misguided I'm sure, to micro-target the Dark creatures in the Brotherhood in hopes of despawning the Brotherhood before they can despawn a significant portion of everyone else. This would obviously add to the problem, if you were of the mind to think of it as a problem.
The whole situation is a fairly direct continuation of the Alken/Venn Civil War. I should hope that would be obvious by this point.
It's a weapon for killing humans.
The Sentinels exist, according to Targray, to oppose the Brotherhood of Blood, which is called the Brotherhood of Blood. So why does Targray sell bleed weaponry? Holy Water, Halberd, that all makes sense, but Petrus' weapon?
The Brotherhood's desire to shed blood is rooted in the idea that, by releasing Dark from its hollow hosts, it will spread better. BoBs bleed because they want more Dark. My current lead hypothesis is that they're, basically, terraforming the atmosphere. Mostly they do this with scythes, lorewise, which are fairly explicitly described as being a proletarian farming implement that mostly only works as a weapon because of the fear they invoke in the ruling class. You know: the gods.
If you've ever seen a real scythe they're not something you could easily hurt anyone but yourself with. There's much better on a farm.
So while the Brotherhood's bloodletting fixation is an engineered form of accelerationism, the Sentinels' practice of bloodletting is an attempt, futile and misguided I'm sure, to micro-target the Dark creatures in the Brotherhood in hopes of despawning the Brotherhood before they can despawn a significant portion of everyone else. This would obviously add to the problem, if you were of the mind to think of it as a problem.
The whole situation is a fairly direct continuation of the Alken/Venn Civil War. I should hope that would be obvious by this point.
Targray gives us Hush and Holy Water, which connects him to both the light and dark aspects of Mirrah; he also sells Monastery Charms, which ties him to Lindelt and, along with his shield, Olaphis.
And if anyone's wandering about the Sentinel stuff in Belfry Sol: the Belfries are both a kind of embassy built in honor of the opposing side. Sol is outfitted with stuff Venn needed: strong arms and clever devices. Luna is likewise outfitted with stuff Alken would have needed: access to the Lost Sinner, golems/puppets ( I assume Gren is something like an insane puppet Venn made that allied with Alken and gave the secret to Mytha), and most importantly:
Gargoyles. The real two-bladed weapon from the legendary tales. Not the Twinblade. Not the Chariot. Those were inspired by stories of gargoyles and gargoyles buckle up gargoyles were pretty clearly important in the mythology of the Profaned Capital.
And if anyone's wandering about the Sentinel stuff in Belfry Sol: the Belfries are both a kind of embassy built in honor of the opposing side. Sol is outfitted with stuff Venn needed: strong arms and clever devices. Luna is likewise outfitted with stuff Alken would have needed: access to the Lost Sinner, golems/puppets ( I assume Gren is something like an insane puppet Venn made that allied with Alken and gave the secret to Mytha), and most importantly:
Gargoyles. The real two-bladed weapon from the legendary tales. Not the Twinblade. Not the Chariot. Those were inspired by stories of gargoyles and gargoyles buckle up gargoyles were pretty clearly important in the mythology of the Profaned Capital.
Jesus, where were we, Lindelt?
In the first game we pick up two miracles from the two unique handmaids in the Duke's Prison. I recall writing about what an idiot Logan was at some point, I hope that part ended up somewhere in a previous post, because it's probably relevant here. These miracles somehow end up with Targray and Licia. The miracles are described as having been held by Lindelt, stolen, and never recovered. It isn't entirely clear if the miracles were stolen by Lindelt or from Lindelt. Or both. I'd assume both, since the Chosen Undead, or whoever, would have stolen them to begin with.
Bountiful Sunlight, Targray's miracle, ends up with the Dancer of the Boreal Valley; Soothing Sunlight, Licia's miracle, ends up with Rosaria. Both Dancer and Rose are implied to be relatives of Gwynevere.
If you're one of the three people that made it to rank four of the Sentinels Targray gives you the Lingering Dragoncrest Ring, which belonged to the High Sorcerer of Olaphis.
I'm not entirely sure who the Lingering Dragon is or was, probably I'll explore it later, but they were clearly important across all three games and are implied to still exist.
If it's even lore. And there's no real reason to think it is beyond it, currently, explains the most things and has the fewest contradictions. That's how the lore works, the hypotheses stand until something cooler or more parsimonious comes along. Any and all possible stories are true, but in total they flavor a larger, emergent tale of mythology involving archetype characters like Great Lightning Spear and Lingering Dragon and Maneater and Divine Smith and Undead Champion and so on.
This is gonna hurt. Alright. Duel Bow, Manikin Claws, Pale Shade.
 |
| Hey, you know how gravity almost always wins? |
Londor
When the world ended the survivors founded a great kingdom that would, eventually, journey North.
Goddammit no.
Until this frail hope shatters
The Souls games, the story, the meta-story, I suppose, in a very major sense, is the story of a patriarchy wedged between two matriarchies.
When the world ended the survivors founded a great kingdom that would, eventually, journey North.
Goddammit no.
Until this frail hope shatters
The Souls games, the story, the meta-story, I suppose, in a very major sense, is the story of a patriarchy wedged between two matriarchies.
You can follow that thread across the games, but it is a Delicate String indeed. Proper Bow. How's that fit. Heysel's bow obviously fits lore-wise, why wouldn't Shade's?
To spell it out: My thinking has been that Londor was a successor to Mytha's Alken just as much as Carim. Now all of a sudden I have to iron out the Lothric-Carthus War in relation to everything else.
The Manikin Claws are from Alken, Yuria's helm is a close match for the New Londo Sealer's Mask, Elfriede was evidently from or closely associated with Carim, Yoel name drops Vinnheim, Chameleon helps us carry out a Drang wedding ceremony while using an Oolacile miracle.
Yuria's dying words are regret for having failed Kaathe, Lord of the Dark Wraiths.
So it's just smithereens, right? One case has it they, Londorians, had no histories but the memories of hollows and whatever Kaathe fed them. Once case has it that Elfriede has existed continuously from before the Ashen One's 'time' until she co-founds Londor, jumps back in time to before the Ashen One's 'time,' tries to link the/a First Flame, screws up & gets turned to Ash, becomes forlorn, finds the Painted world, is reborn as Friede, dot dot dot, reverts to Elfriede, marries Other Ash, co-re-links the Profaned Flame, whose flames will be elemental to the world painted by the girl.
Fire is what the artist wishes it to be.
Or it was just a slap-together cash-in with as much connectedness and deeper meaning as Slashy Souls. I really don't know.
My point is, showing the Painter Fire is the real good ending. And who knows, maybe that 'someone' is the World beyond Filianore's Rest. If Gael's plan hinged on the frozen Flame in the Painting remaining 'pure' of the influence of a damned Fire Linker and any Flame before it then Gael probably wouldn't have wanted...whatever happened after that to happen during Gwyn's Cycle. Assuming that's the heart of Eleum Loyce under the chapel.
Just as an aside: you have to admire Mytha. Venn hid her face to hide her identity, and also probably because of the institutional sexism she would have undoubtedly done nothing about after the civil war had she won. And I'm only calling her because I don't know that she's not trans or non-binary. She's pretty clearly meant to be a response to Gwyndolin's Blue Oni. Mytha, though, made good and hell sure everyone knew it was her in charge and that she Boss Bitch and that she was every Big Scary Adjective you could put before Queen and that she would not be buried in the histories of men, you're welcome.
But then it all comes back to Oolacile, this time in the form of Artorias. Gael became a vessel for The Dark Soul for as long as he could, and it turned him into Artorias, whatever that means.
Only Gael was smart enough to succeed where Artorias and Farron and the poor left-handed fuck that died in Brume Tower and countless others had failed. Maybe that's the trigger to finally allow the ice to thaw and the failed Second First Flame to finally function as the fire of creation it was meant to be all along.
In other words, Gael may have somehow worked out a way to short-circuit the Londor future by inserting a new world in between the waking of Filianore and the founding of the Sable Church, and everything is finally nice for a while. At least in the world of Ash, which might might be something like a GECK unit from Fallout that was Marvin the Paranoid Android-ed across time, aimed at a point in the geologic timeline just after we exit with the last of the first First Flame. If you'll forgive the mixed pop culture references.
But all of that may as well be fan fiction, and Ariamis is something I'm nowhere near ready to really dive into [he typed, ignorant of the mess he'd be in the next day].
Right here we're going to talk about the three sisters before trying to resolve the goddamn Duel Bow thing.
Yuria pretty much everyone understands. Middle sister, inherited control of the Sable Church from her sister, shares it to some degree with Liliane. Liliane as presented as the scholarly sister, and now that I'm reading her Braille tome I'm realizing I was right on Londor having an oral history but wrong on it coming entirely from Kaathe. The tome teaches the Dark Blade, Dead Again, and Vow of Silence miracles. DB is a weapon buff, DA turns nearby corpses into proximity mines, and VoS stops spellcasting in the vicinity.
Liliane's histories were centered around the suffering and conflict of hollows across the age, which almost no one cared about hollows in the age of fire. At most they were tolerated. Liliane's stories offer salvation to all, which means the Londor Divine Tome is something like the The State & Revolution of the Soulsverse.
And then there's Black Flame Elfriede of Carim. Or is it Blackflame? I just want to say this again and I'll drop it for another year: I know I know she's connected to the Black Flame of Wolnir and I suspect that the Black Snake is related to the Abyss Dragon. I just don't exactly know how beyond the Carthus mural looking like a mural devoted to a painting and some very iffy wordplay.
So the Pale Shade. Here's what I currently think: She has ties to both the Sentinels and the Brotherhood because she is, herself, a sentinel. That she wears white and gold is meant to convey that she represents the resolution of the two factions, post-whatever-happens-After. That her order are called the 'harlots of death' might imply some kind of...I mean possibly secretive possibly scandalous possibly intimate, but fundamentally transactional relationship between the Pale Shades and the Dead Soul/Nito. That she functions as Yuria's shinobi, in the Sekiro sense, means that whatever the truth of the resolution between the Tree and the Serpent the Sable Church itself realizes that it isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Especially after all the grand schemes are over and done with.
The story of the Sentinels is a story of the suffering and conflict of hollows, after all. And Londor is a land of hollows and hollows, one imagines, want not a thing to do with Fire and all its strange permutations.
One would think, but then there's the whole Invasion Of The Pilgrims Out Of Time situation playing out before our eyes in Lothric.
Free Body Diagram
In the third game DLCs we fight two factions of enemies -- our enemies, not each others -- that share a gimmick. Both could broadly be defined as sentinel factions, in that they seem to be orders, somewhat generally set in defense of a female Goddess or matriarchal ruling class (like Sif, Alvina, and Elizabeth). The Farron Followers' gimmick is they thrust illusory spears into the ground to give their mark an honorable send off. In the Ringed City we fight a faction whose gimmick it is to thrust illusory spears out of the ground to torture, yknow, immigrants, minority groups, petty criminals, and the insufficiently patriotic. And probably women. Definitely gays. You get the idea.
So now I have to compare the two. Thanks, the weed.
I've kinda gone into this stuff before, between the blood magic and trees posts, but lets think about this.
The Followers date to late Farron, maybe even post-Watchers' Firelinking, while the Spears all seem to pre-date any in-game events, with Halfight being a kind of Johnny-come-lately prodigy that ended up being the last, and maybe one of the best, Spears. I think the Mission he arrived on was some kind of exchange program that laid the foundation for the fall of Oolacile. Unlike the Lothric, Sunken, and the Harald expeditions, the Ool contingent was not expecting and did not find a fight.
Fast forward ten thousand years. Think of all those swords and spears and halberds stuck in the ground in Darkroot Garden, all of them an echo of Artorias, fallen majesty personified. I'm almost certain he was human. Maybe even a first or second generation pygmy. And fuck Elizabeth, she's a documented liar: look at Artorias' hood in the first game. Really look at it. Nary a murmer. Uh huh.
All of those weapons, all the way forward to the end of the world, thrust in honor of all that Artorias was and became, represent something that has to do with paying respect to someone who was, when you get right down to it, a twice-cursed traitor.
But when a spear is pointing up it's usually because some poor bastard is being impaled on it, usually for something like petty crime. It's a symbol of protection, sure, but so is the Patriot Act.
The Spears reserve the Spear Ritual for people described as 'unduly treacherous' and that the art is a display of their 'former majesty.' Former being, I assume, long before Halflight arrived and it still looked like it was gonna be steady gains and Little Saint James forever and ever amen.
Spear goes up. Spear comes down.
Halflight is from a society so opulent that the 'commoners' used enchanted golden thread to weave their purple clothes, and purple was a real hard dye to get back in ye olden timef.
And he's a manslayer. That's what the katana means. He didn't bring it from Oolacile, but at some point he had some kind of interaction with Midir that left him 'reborn' as a human hunter, and especially a male human hunter, and one with a distant possibility of being linked to pyromancy in some fashion.
Most of the katana has been completely eaten away, and it's mostly held together with tendrils of...I don't guess I have a name for the stuff, but it's what the horns on Darkwraiths and the Mad King are made out of. Calcified Dark pus, or something like that. I suspect that it's created by something like the inverse of the Dark Fog corrosion effect we see around Oolacile. I'm almost tempted to say that it's the Prima Materia the Anor gods used to transform illusory objects into real things; impossible walls and castles and so on. I'm not saying that because I still think it was giant slave labor that built Anor Londo.
We know Gwyn and Gough were friends, but we don't know for how long, after all.
Anyway, these tendrils are holding most of the sword together, with only the handle and tip really being serviceable, and the sword says as much. Possibly the blade was corroded and remade at the same time due to the heavy concentration of Dark in the blood shed by it. That would certainly be reflective of both Midir and defenders of Anor Londo.
At some point before DS1 happened a golden king was drawn into the painted world of Ariamis, where he began impaling hollows, Vladislav Dracula-style. By the time we find him Jeremiah's forest has grown so dense that it's replacing the actual forest surrounding the citadel.
"To what end?" I wondered at the time.
He's clearly close to Priscilla, both figuratively and lore-wise. I suspect he may be mirrored by Dunnel in the third game, but he also ties into some other stuff. We find the Xanthous Ashes in Irithyll dungeon, but it and the nearby Dusk Ring would seem to tie the area to Farron and Heysel's Xanthous Pretenders. The real heirs to Jeremiah ended up in the Dark Chasm of...also Oolacile fuck nvm.
Right, so finally, Jeremiah carries the Notched Whip, a weapon that's barely a weapon and more a tool designed for extracting lots and lots of blood from someone without immediately killing them. We find the whip again on the Brotherhood of Blood's turf in the second game, and in the bonfire chapel at the Cathedral of the Deep in the third...right near where Gael lets us into the Painting.
See, I'm at the point in this I don't know if I'm making connections or randomly drawing lines between dots.
But that's the point of this post, right? I've got 10,000 puzzle pieces and no guide save the puzzle itself, and 3/4 of the pieces have had the print removed. I've got some big chunks, and I've got a pretty good idea about some of the blank areas, but finding the links between them is the real challenge.
I was supposed to be talking about Targray.
To spell it out: My thinking has been that Londor was a successor to Mytha's Alken just as much as Carim. Now all of a sudden I have to iron out the Lothric-Carthus War in relation to everything else.
The Manikin Claws are from Alken, Yuria's helm is a close match for the New Londo Sealer's Mask, Elfriede was evidently from or closely associated with Carim, Yoel name drops Vinnheim, Chameleon helps us carry out a Drang wedding ceremony while using an Oolacile miracle.
Yuria's dying words are regret for having failed Kaathe, Lord of the Dark Wraiths.
So it's just smithereens, right? One case has it they, Londorians, had no histories but the memories of hollows and whatever Kaathe fed them. Once case has it that Elfriede has existed continuously from before the Ashen One's 'time' until she co-founds Londor, jumps back in time to before the Ashen One's 'time,' tries to link the/a First Flame, screws up & gets turned to Ash, becomes forlorn, finds the Painted world, is reborn as Friede, dot dot dot, reverts to Elfriede, marries Other Ash, co-re-links the Profaned Flame, whose flames will be elemental to the world painted by the girl.
Fire is what the artist wishes it to be.
Or it was just a slap-together cash-in with as much connectedness and deeper meaning as Slashy Souls. I really don't know.
 |
| A painter. Not our painter. Not Ariandel either. |
My point is, showing the Painter Fire is the real good ending. And who knows, maybe that 'someone' is the World beyond Filianore's Rest. If Gael's plan hinged on the frozen Flame in the Painting remaining 'pure' of the influence of a damned Fire Linker and any Flame before it then Gael probably wouldn't have wanted...whatever happened after that to happen during Gwyn's Cycle. Assuming that's the heart of Eleum Loyce under the chapel.
Just as an aside: you have to admire Mytha. Venn hid her face to hide her identity, and also probably because of the institutional sexism she would have undoubtedly done nothing about after the civil war had she won. And I'm only calling her because I don't know that she's not trans or non-binary. She's pretty clearly meant to be a response to Gwyndolin's Blue Oni. Mytha, though, made good and hell sure everyone knew it was her in charge and that she Boss Bitch and that she was every Big Scary Adjective you could put before Queen and that she would not be buried in the histories of men, you're welcome.
But then it all comes back to Oolacile, this time in the form of Artorias. Gael became a vessel for The Dark Soul for as long as he could, and it turned him into Artorias, whatever that means.
Only Gael was smart enough to succeed where Artorias and Farron and the poor left-handed fuck that died in Brume Tower and countless others had failed. Maybe that's the trigger to finally allow the ice to thaw and the failed Second First Flame to finally function as the fire of creation it was meant to be all along.
In other words, Gael may have somehow worked out a way to short-circuit the Londor future by inserting a new world in between the waking of Filianore and the founding of the Sable Church, and everything is finally nice for a while. At least in the world of Ash, which might might be something like a GECK unit from Fallout that was Marvin the Paranoid Android-ed across time, aimed at a point in the geologic timeline just after we exit with the last of the first First Flame. If you'll forgive the mixed pop culture references.
But all of that may as well be fan fiction, and Ariamis is something I'm nowhere near ready to really dive into [he typed, ignorant of the mess he'd be in the next day].
Right here we're going to talk about the three sisters before trying to resolve the goddamn Duel Bow thing.
Yuria pretty much everyone understands. Middle sister, inherited control of the Sable Church from her sister, shares it to some degree with Liliane. Liliane as presented as the scholarly sister, and now that I'm reading her Braille tome I'm realizing I was right on Londor having an oral history but wrong on it coming entirely from Kaathe. The tome teaches the Dark Blade, Dead Again, and Vow of Silence miracles. DB is a weapon buff, DA turns nearby corpses into proximity mines, and VoS stops spellcasting in the vicinity.
Liliane's histories were centered around the suffering and conflict of hollows across the age, which almost no one cared about hollows in the age of fire. At most they were tolerated. Liliane's stories offer salvation to all, which means the Londor Divine Tome is something like the The State & Revolution of the Soulsverse.
And then there's Black Flame Elfriede of Carim. Or is it Blackflame? I just want to say this again and I'll drop it for another year: I know I know she's connected to the Black Flame of Wolnir and I suspect that the Black Snake is related to the Abyss Dragon. I just don't exactly know how beyond the Carthus mural looking like a mural devoted to a painting and some very iffy wordplay.
So the Pale Shade. Here's what I currently think: She has ties to both the Sentinels and the Brotherhood because she is, herself, a sentinel. That she wears white and gold is meant to convey that she represents the resolution of the two factions, post-whatever-happens-After. That her order are called the 'harlots of death' might imply some kind of...I mean possibly secretive possibly scandalous possibly intimate, but fundamentally transactional relationship between the Pale Shades and the Dead Soul/Nito. That she functions as Yuria's shinobi, in the Sekiro sense, means that whatever the truth of the resolution between the Tree and the Serpent the Sable Church itself realizes that it isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Especially after all the grand schemes are over and done with.
The story of the Sentinels is a story of the suffering and conflict of hollows, after all. And Londor is a land of hollows and hollows, one imagines, want not a thing to do with Fire and all its strange permutations.
One would think, but then there's the whole Invasion Of The Pilgrims Out Of Time situation playing out before our eyes in Lothric.
Free Body Diagram
In the third game DLCs we fight two factions of enemies -- our enemies, not each others -- that share a gimmick. Both could broadly be defined as sentinel factions, in that they seem to be orders, somewhat generally set in defense of a female Goddess or matriarchal ruling class (like Sif, Alvina, and Elizabeth). The Farron Followers' gimmick is they thrust illusory spears into the ground to give their mark an honorable send off. In the Ringed City we fight a faction whose gimmick it is to thrust illusory spears out of the ground to torture, yknow, immigrants, minority groups, petty criminals, and the insufficiently patriotic. And probably women. Definitely gays. You get the idea.
So now I have to compare the two. Thanks, the weed.
I've kinda gone into this stuff before, between the blood magic and trees posts, but lets think about this.
The Followers date to late Farron, maybe even post-Watchers' Firelinking, while the Spears all seem to pre-date any in-game events, with Halfight being a kind of Johnny-come-lately prodigy that ended up being the last, and maybe one of the best, Spears. I think the Mission he arrived on was some kind of exchange program that laid the foundation for the fall of Oolacile. Unlike the Lothric, Sunken, and the Harald expeditions, the Ool contingent was not expecting and did not find a fight.
Fast forward ten thousand years. Think of all those swords and spears and halberds stuck in the ground in Darkroot Garden, all of them an echo of Artorias, fallen majesty personified. I'm almost certain he was human. Maybe even a first or second generation pygmy. And fuck Elizabeth, she's a documented liar: look at Artorias' hood in the first game. Really look at it. Nary a murmer. Uh huh.
All of those weapons, all the way forward to the end of the world, thrust in honor of all that Artorias was and became, represent something that has to do with paying respect to someone who was, when you get right down to it, a twice-cursed traitor.
But when a spear is pointing up it's usually because some poor bastard is being impaled on it, usually for something like petty crime. It's a symbol of protection, sure, but so is the Patriot Act.
The Spears reserve the Spear Ritual for people described as 'unduly treacherous' and that the art is a display of their 'former majesty.' Former being, I assume, long before Halflight arrived and it still looked like it was gonna be steady gains and Little Saint James forever and ever amen.
Spear goes up. Spear comes down.
Halflight is from a society so opulent that the 'commoners' used enchanted golden thread to weave their purple clothes, and purple was a real hard dye to get back in ye olden timef.
And he's a manslayer. That's what the katana means. He didn't bring it from Oolacile, but at some point he had some kind of interaction with Midir that left him 'reborn' as a human hunter, and especially a male human hunter, and one with a distant possibility of being linked to pyromancy in some fashion.
Most of the katana has been completely eaten away, and it's mostly held together with tendrils of...I don't guess I have a name for the stuff, but it's what the horns on Darkwraiths and the Mad King are made out of. Calcified Dark pus, or something like that. I suspect that it's created by something like the inverse of the Dark Fog corrosion effect we see around Oolacile. I'm almost tempted to say that it's the Prima Materia the Anor gods used to transform illusory objects into real things; impossible walls and castles and so on. I'm not saying that because I still think it was giant slave labor that built Anor Londo.
We know Gwyn and Gough were friends, but we don't know for how long, after all.
Anyway, these tendrils are holding most of the sword together, with only the handle and tip really being serviceable, and the sword says as much. Possibly the blade was corroded and remade at the same time due to the heavy concentration of Dark in the blood shed by it. That would certainly be reflective of both Midir and defenders of Anor Londo.
At some point before DS1 happened a golden king was drawn into the painted world of Ariamis, where he began impaling hollows, Vladislav Dracula-style. By the time we find him Jeremiah's forest has grown so dense that it's replacing the actual forest surrounding the citadel.
"To what end?" I wondered at the time.
He's clearly close to Priscilla, both figuratively and lore-wise. I suspect he may be mirrored by Dunnel in the third game, but he also ties into some other stuff. We find the Xanthous Ashes in Irithyll dungeon, but it and the nearby Dusk Ring would seem to tie the area to Farron and Heysel's Xanthous Pretenders. The real heirs to Jeremiah ended up in the Dark Chasm of...also Oolacile fuck nvm.
Right, so finally, Jeremiah carries the Notched Whip, a weapon that's barely a weapon and more a tool designed for extracting lots and lots of blood from someone without immediately killing them. We find the whip again on the Brotherhood of Blood's turf in the second game, and in the bonfire chapel at the Cathedral of the Deep in the third...right near where Gael lets us into the Painting.
See, I'm at the point in this I don't know if I'm making connections or randomly drawing lines between dots.
But that's the point of this post, right? I've got 10,000 puzzle pieces and no guide save the puzzle itself, and 3/4 of the pieces have had the print removed. I've got some big chunks, and I've got a pretty good idea about some of the blank areas, but finding the links between them is the real challenge.
I was supposed to be talking about Targray.
