AI 026 - Bond of the Hawk

Goddamn Hawkshaw.

I'd been kicking around this idea that the DS2 Hawk and Leo Rings were given to or taken by characters that are acting as representatives for Gough and Ornstein in Drangleic. I've gone over the Old Dragonslayer at length, but briefly I believe him to be Ornstein's hollow following in Nameless' footsteps after either having his Lords Soul stripped by Seath (and made into a golem) or being defeated by the DS1 Chosen Undead (Solaire, for the purposes of this project). 

I couldn't make much sense of the Hawk Ring beyond maybe it meant Lanafir was involved in the War of the Giants but sided with Raime (Raime's Baneful Bird Ring has the same hawk design as Gough's Ring). But I've realized something: royal blacksmith Help Anytime had Hawkeye's Ring in the Chosen Undead's time. 

Here's something I just noticed because I'm incredibly dense.

We find the Hunter Set in the Fort as well, near the Seeding Giant. The Large Leather Shield, carried by the DS1 "Pharis" NPC Hunter in Darkroot, is also in the Fort, near the elevator to the Last Giant.

Here's another thing:

Raime and his soldiers' helmets looks like Leeroy's Way of White paladin helmet, obviously. But also they look like Gough's helmet. 

Gough predates both Raime and Leeroy.

So here's what I'm trying to figure out.

Who Blinded Gough? 

I don't think Gwyn did this, as Gough both earned and is still displaying a badge of Gwyn's favor when we find him. Personally, I think Nameless is probably the culprit because I think Nameless was stripped and banished for being a complete dick. However, the culprit/s dismissed Gough as 'brutish'. This makes me think Seath was maybe responsible, because I think Nameless, who only respected strength of arms, wouldn't consider 'brutish' much of an insult. Of course, both or neither could have been involved.

What happened to Gough's dragonslayers?

Hawkshaw makes the case that Gough was responsible for training the Silver Knights in dragonslaying, and they may have been under his command during the Dragon War. I feel like it's safe to assume that the other Anor giants fell under his command at the time, before they were enslaved, or more obviously enslaved. Additionally we seem to have human hunters like Pharis, and some of these, I suspect, became loyal to Alvina and the Forest Hunters. Others, I suspect, may have been foundational to the, uh, founding of the Thorolund White.

Did Durgo meet Help Anytime?

Somehow Gough's ring ended up with Help Anytime. Given Gough's dialogue, it's possible Gough gave the smith the ring before being 'jailed' in Oolacile. It's also possible a Gough loyalist took the ring upstairs after.

From here the ring travels to the Fort of Fallen Giants. It's heavily implied that we find the ring on Durgo's body, and one of the things we know about Durgo

Is Lanafir Lordran?

Probably. Between Durgo and Magerold I feel pretty confident about this.

Magerold is interested in the Iron Kingdom. I've made the case that the Iron and Ivory civil war period of Drangleic coincided with or slightly predated the main story events of DS1, and the Iron King was, as a prince, connected to the Warriors of Sunlight, although Iron kind of went through the journey backwards and instead of becoming Buddha he became Scarface.

Stuff from Magerold's Traveling Merchant set: 

Blue represents knowledge in Lanafir, but is associated with faith in Drangleic. Eagles represent wealth in Lanafir, strength in Drangleic. Lanafir is the 'farthest land to the south' and their people seem 'odd' to Drangleic natives. The traveling merchant set is also the starting set for the Explorer class. Additionally, Mags sells Gough's wood carvings.

 Durgo was described as having blue eyes and being well-known-and-travelled despite Lanafir's isolationism. He's described as having defended Lanafir from aggressors with his brother-in-law. His Greatbow is made from what seem to be giant ribs and a horned skull. Durgo's ring and hat both extend arrow range, and the Twin-Headed Greatbow has the greatest range of greatbows. 

Problem I have with Lanafir=Lordran: Lordran seems like it should be to the east, past the three kingdoms, not past the southern ocean.

We can say that Lanafir is heavily associated with Gough and seems to be very interested in the Iron Kingdom, Raime, and Eleum Loyce (Durgo's hat and bow are found here).

Is Zena Drangleic?

Slightly less probably. We only have Domhnall to go off.

Domhnall's helm, like Magerold's symbolizes wisdom, although in Zena horns represent wisdom. Horned noble characters: Vamos, the lady titanite demon concept art, Iron  King, Mytha. I'm yet unable to get or find a good picture of Domhnall's glorious medals, but they mostly appear as copper, silver and gold coins with religious iconography, and we see a similar design on the Gyrm set, which possibly cross-references Vamos. Additionally, he appears to have access to crystalization prior to gaining access to the Duke's Archives, which could possibly also connect him to Tseldora, which I believe was originally a Gyrm settlement.

His shoulders display of what I take as a hawk of the Gough variety but not necessarily aligned with Gough.

His golden gauntlets symbolize a vanquisher and his silver-inlaid boots symbolize an explorer. Gold and silver in dark souls seems to be associated with the covetous serpent rings, with gold being item discovery and silver being increased soul gain. Doesn't seem to relate, but Ciaran I'm talking about later and Leonhard is the only other gold/silver noble I can think of and we're STILL NOT THERE YET.

Pharis

I don't think the hunter NPC from Darkroot is Pharis, but it could be, and if it isn't she's meant to be a mortal stand-in for Pharis. I think the DS1 hunter Forest Hunter may have accompanied Durgo to the Fort of Giants, based mostly on the armor set being in a chest in one of the only areas of the fort where the defenders aren't mindless zombies.

Pharis' hat is 'universally' loved by children; their gender is left ambiguous; I would really like it if the English world would come up with something better than the current bullshit with pronouns; we find the DS1 positioned in a, goddamn I must be tired I'm getting doctor seussy, sniper position between the Garden and Basin, meaning the basin may have been her stead before Seath moved in.

Pharis, whoever they originally were, was a dragonslayer and ranked alongside Gough despite being human. There's a lot to unpack there. Dragonslayer means 'was alive at the Dawn of Fire'. Ranked alongside Gough is more nebulous. Does this mean 'was as prolific as Gough?' does it mean 'there were Five Knights of Gwyn but lets easily forgotten the pygmy?' does it mean 'Hi Gwyn Here! Look, Anor Londo can't brag about having an order of blood-crazed hornet assassins acting in darkness as a pillar of empire, Pharis, so your zombie looking ass is going to play one of My Four Knights in public until you betray one of my kids for Alvina, Gough, etc,'?

In any case, Pharis was mythologized into Godhood as Evlana in Drangleic, and admiration of her, or her hat at least, continued into latter-day Farron.

Helm of the Holy

Let's say Raime and Leeroy, at some point, were contemporaries. Let's say they could say "I was there!" when Lloyd's Apostle set up shop. Let's say they both were turned undead, willingly and intentionally.

Let's say the old hero their armor is modeled after is Gough's, despite neither being a ranged character or having any apparent narrative or faction connections beyond possibly being members of the Old Way of White.

 Let's say Durgo and possibly one or more Forest Hunters, acting in Gough's interests in some sense, came to Drangleic to meet with/work with/ join the cause of/potentially recruit Raime. Possibly they were brought together by Vendrick between Vendrick being, for the purposes of this work, the canonical DS1 Dark Lord (stole the lords souls and went home), and building an army of mercenaries and refugees. Possibly, if Lanafir is Lordran, Durgo joined Vendrick for the prince's return.

Let's say they agree this shit with the giants has gone too far around the time Vendrick starts scavenging ironclad and necromancing elephant monsters. They were banished. Raime went to the Forge of Alken/the Iron Kingdom, Durgo goes to the Old Chaos in...shit it's this thing again.

Look.

Ivory is not the King of Forossa. Regardless of their current gender or title they were, in Drang, Princess Venn. Forossa isn't even a kingdom by the time we arrive in Eleum Loyce. Ivory is a King of Drangleic.

Durgo goes to the Old Chaos in Venn/the Ivory Kingdom.

AI 025 - This Endless

Patches was very very important I'm just not sure how.

The Cathedral of the Deep has these enemies that respawn immediately. They're a type of enemy that shows up a lot in these games: a human body riddled with and/or controlled by and/or in a symbiotic relationship with parasitic bugs that behaves, to a large degree, like the Venom symbiote from Spiderman, only internal.

The demonic rockworms from the first game took a diverging path after the first game. I don't know that these are definitely the same things the Chaos Servants were breeding, but the second game points out that they do evolve to fit their environment. The DS2 rockworms are pretty straightforward, but the DS1 blight-born parasites Engyi etc are breeding are much smaller, which Quelana and Salaman's whole thing was refining uncontrollable Chaos down to useable pyromancy. So it seems like Engyi is continuing Quelaag and the Fair Lady's work in refining exploding fire giants down to Tauruses and Capras.

But that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about the gross, pukey graveyard bastards' are able to respawn indefinitely.

Who else has this strange power? (you have to imagine I'm holding up a Human Effigy right now)

These poor guys' are what happened to us, the Lordran Chosen Undead, after Vendrick came through. Solaire didn't become the rockworm, the rockworm became Solaire. Vendrick took the Lords Souls to Drangleic, and from that point the Firelinking Ritual's diminishing returns would fall off a cliff. Untethered from the bonfire the hollows die, are rejected by Death, and return to their home; the graves in this instance. We don't really get to see what happens when our character respawns at a bonfire, but without a darksign or a bonfire this is what it would probably look like.

The Grave Wardens, just like in the second game, are tasked with keeping the undying from getting unruly. Unlike the second game, where Dark mostly remains tranquil and serene, Dark in the third game needs to be kept at bay at all costs, because it was poisoned and driven mad. Multiple times.

Let's back up. There is no "Dark Soul" in Lothric the way there was in Lordran and Drangleic, there are no humanity sprites. The strength of the Unkindled comes from embers, which look like burnt sprites. There's still the Abyss, only this time it's evolved.

The Sky is Dark in the Past, While the Fire was Out.

The Seal of Fire, the burning ring around the Dark Sign, I think, prevents Pus of Man outbreaks, as well as keeps the carrier bound to the bonfire. I think the Seal failed when the fire went out, which if that didn't happen when Vendrick 'stole fire from the Gods', then it would have happened shortly after. In Untended we seem to be very far in the past, before the Unkindled began their quest, but after Lothric had sent Gundyr on his mission.


Which is one of the reasons we're back in this godsforsaken graveyard outside the Cathedral.


You meet siegward and patches here the first time, idk that it's important except to each other, since Patches, after finally going hollow, starts to emulate Seigward.


Patches is effectively guarding Rosaria, and we know that at least some (all) Patches thirst for powerful women. Siegward makes Estes soup which is condensed from undead corpses, because undeads love estus.


Patches is friendly with the mangrubs, although I don't think Patches is a finger. I think Patches cares about the cathedral, or some aspect of its history, and he's clearly been fueled by a Morgot-like grudge against everything since at least Gwyndolin was put in charge, as his connection to the White seems to date to before the giants were enslaved.


He, Patches, is called Unbreakable because for whatever reason he's got an invincible hollow. My guess is that his grudge started very shortly after Nameless was put in charge.


Both Seigward and Patches seem to like giants. Too nice. That's these peoples' problem.


The mangrubs, I would argue, are really gross, and seem to be the result of overindulgence in rebirth.


Here's what's going on with them.


Rebirth, Rosaria's version, whether or not it directly causes the infestation, does cause an infected host vessel to demonize, becoming blended with the demonic/parasitic half. Only instead of a bull or goat or even a flaming mad meltspider demon you got these fucking worms.


But here we are, fighting demons in a church. The thing that was the fire of life: the Phoenix, Ever Renewing. Even after the fires have gone out.


Well done Engyi.

the normal looking house in the nowhere

 All this stuff's gone now.

There was a field behind my house with a house in it. Our house looked like it was on a normal street from the front but the back just opened up. Big empty field dry as tinder nest to spider thorn and centipede. Sometimes a horny toad sometimes a snake. And there was a normal house out there, a small one but normal, the stuff around the house wasn't normal unless you lived in nowhere then it was at least understood. There was a kid lived there with his uncle didn't associate with the other kids much. There weren't many of us. We sure weren't normal like the houses looked from the front. Some of us were normal, enough, anyway.

But that kid though. Dark Huckleberry. 

I heard, I ain't trying to look it up, it was some kind of murder suicide thing back in the 00s, long after I'd gone. 

Three of us gone? Some I lost track of. 4 was alive last I heard like ten years ago. 5 is alive, in rehab now, been out of prison for...3 years? 6 dead, gunshot. Same with 7. 9 was still surviving out there, somehow, like 7 years ago. kid from the house would've been 10 if he'd been one of us, 11 and 12 I lost track of.

Those are relative ages. Weird coincidence.

There was a fucking emu ranch out there. Dickheads started importing them for meat which tastes like steak if steak was made out of tire. Maybe they'll inherit. Cursed desert ruled by meth emus. 

Then there was the city kids. The First Band. 2/5 gone. High Shcool! Such as it was, my parents pulled me out of public school in tenth grade and put me in this weird church camp where I sat in literally a cubicle 7 hours a day and read about Noah and how geometry wasn't real because the greeks were permissive of adultery and homosexualism.

The house in the field had a bunch of junk cars all over, that kind of place. Barkin ass dog. I don't recall anyone having any particular politics back then as far as the urban/rural divide.  Or small oilfield town/poorly thought out spec housing project between middle of nowhere and an oil refinery. Everybody was a fucking bigot hoo boy, let's make that clear that place like most places needed and needs a top to bottom overhaul.

Everybody loved Reagan though. He's gonna win us the war. 

And here I am. Counting dead friends like some grizzled old man in his 40s while we fight the same goddamn wars for the same assholes.  Like literally the same usually, they just allow more minorities on the big stage and, like, sometimes the very white lady speaker of the house wears a dashiki and reads Bono. 

That can't have happened, right? 

That can't be right.

Look, I'm not saying we haven't made progress, we can all clearly see that we haven't made progress. Correction. Some of us have eyes. We can all clearly grok that we haven't made progress.

Wait, grok never caught on? Oh, and he was sexist. I mean obviously he was sexist, but like to the degree that it needs to be commented on 50 years later? I mean, yeah, that's what the internet is you get to be psychic whether you want to be or not.

Or you go crazy. 

I don't know why I'm in such a bad mood today. I wanted to watch a three hour Mount & Blade tutorial on Youtube 

I need to fucking make something I'm a goddamn weird artist but I haven't been making anything in a very long time other than this fucking thing and I'm like a fucking vampire that's been surviving on rats in the sewer for decades. Only instead of sucking blood I need to like, cum, but cum art. You know what it feels like to successfully art, right?

Rock and roll is popular again right? I should do that again. I've got this like matte black Charvel on a stand behind me I can feel it glaring at me. 

I'm fine. Don't worry about me and my dead friends, we're fine. I'm sure you got people of your own to worry about. I only do weed now, I didn't like take a break from being incredibly boring to go out deal with drug people after a long week at an incredibly boring office job. Thank you Jimmy K, and I promise just weed and sometimes mushrooms but I'm not on mushrooms now.

As one, comrades.

That's gonna be like my catchprhase, 'as one, comrades.' That'll catch on for sure.

Elden Guess 07 - Blighted

 There are two major minor erdtrees in Altus. The western one in Bower of Bounty, the northern one past the graveyard.

These trees have no avatar, but do have guardians.

The sunflowers in the Bower face the minor tree. The flowers around the northern minor tree face away. The Bower tree is thriving. The Graveyard tree is dying.

The Tree Guardians don't get talked about enough. It seems to me like they have a shared heritage with the Flame Guardians, based on the elder Flame Guards in Whiteridge. They seem to have split into the tree and flame factions as a result of Marika's takeover. 

I saw a theory, I don't remember where, that the Wormfaces are Guardians under the effect of Deathblight. 

I think this is because they're eating the deathblight. 

Normal deathblight infections (Rogier, the marginally less gross D, probably Yura) is signaled by an infestation of worms, which probably infect the host's bloodstream directly (via injuries and possibly intercourse), rather than by being inhaled or injested. 

I think if one were to eat the larval worms they wouldn't be able to travel around the body and would get stuck in the soft tissue around the eater's mouth.

This is why the Bower tree is healthy, why F Azula hasn't completely succumbed to Deathblight (although the Azula Wormfaces may be concerned with stopping the spread to the world below, as they seem primarily concerned with the lake near the cliff.

One thing Wormfaces will do that makes sense if they're Tree Guardians: they'll randombly beat the fuck out of a gold tree while patrolling.

The Guardians seem to believe that if they're good boys and say their prayers and eat their vitamins they'll be reincarnated as trees, possibly even erdtree avatars, and possibly they're correct to believe this. This is why they have trees strapped to their back. The trees take root in the Guardian to avoid absorbing any impurities from the soil around the parent tree. 

The Guardians hanging out around the Erdtree are hosting what are clearly Aeonia saplings. This tells us that, unless something drastic happens, the Leyndell Guardians - those who continue to support the Golden Order - are falling under the influence of Rot and will eventually find their way to the Haligtree. Alternately, it could be an indication that the Erdtree is beginning to succumb to Rot.

There's one spot in the Bower, near the souther ruined bridge, where Leyndell soldiers ambush a patrolling Wormface. 

I think this may be a very, very important event, lorewise.

The Golden Order fundamentalists - people like D - think that killing the people keeping the Bower tree healthy is a good thing. 

The Shadow of the Erdtree screenshot, that big field the torrent and miquella lookalikes are in? That's gotta be the central lake before the landmass sank. They make the crucible out like it's a big felled tree that survived and threw up a bunch of shoots. Around the edge. In kind of a circle. 

I'll update the pic above when I cut back the juniper that was hiding it

Hey, update