From the Cocoon - Revenge

There's a loose collection of enemies that's always fascinated me, the Revengers. They include some of the saddest, most busted-down depressed and depressing characters in the game.

It seems like of you're stricken by full blown despair but can't break free of the Will of Gold you succumb to Frenzy, a sort of suicidal instinct turned against all that is Golden.

Those untouched or forsaken by gold, however, can become consumed by vengeance towards it.

In castle morne, we find a fort turned into a slave market. We see tortures indescribable and know that those sent to stormveil will face worse.

We find an old knight there, in castle morne, where a slave rebellion has broken out. 

The man seems loathe to take up arms in defense of godricks operation, loathe to take up arms against the misbegotten, but also knows he cannot abandon his fort.

Later, having lost the fort and the only living person keeping him tethered due to the uprising and his stupid honor code, we find him murdering and apparently consuming a whooole lot of misbegotten. 

Then he comes after us. 

In caelid, along the highway, we find a lone surviving drake of old, positioned between a lake and a communion church, killing the holy fuck out of anyone coming towards either.

Because drakes, see, write this down, are tied to their lakes. 

Ecosystem functions somewhat normally? We get agheel,  classic fantasy dragon. Lake gets infected with radioactive space meteors? Magic crystal dragon. Lake gets used as a generational burial ground for things that can't die? Undead dragons. You get the idea. Lake freezes: frost dragon. You get it.

Bayles lake is a volcano. And I'd wager bayle is probably the first revenger.

If you've watched tarnished archeologists stuff, and if you're reading this I assume you have, you'll know that one of the current Mysteries is what caused the Ancient Lava Flood.

I reckon it was Bayle or his god.

Bigger mystery: was Irina under the control of Gold (ie was she adopted by the hornsent-adjacant and probably erdtree-ineligible edgar) or was she chosen purposefully as a vessel (the vengeful spirit of Edgar being reflected by Gold in an empty vessel for Frenzy a la djura/shabriri with the mogwyn drakeknight eleonara).

As for Edgar, remember that big field where we fight gaius? Most of Edgar's order is there, not really buried so much as ground slowly into the mud by the patrols of a giant pig. 

Edgar survived hooray and was sent into exile provided he remain in an ancestral fort and swore allegiance to a demigod, Edgar the Lucky's chosen (probably chosen For him) demigod, godrick, had Edgars former, I assume, captain's leg grafted onto his body, and Edgars job is to usher new gold-touched arrivals to the kingdom up to the castle for dismantling and reconstruction.

And if you have a blind kid to look after and lost literally everything else: guess what kind of moral math starts to make sense?

And when that fragile string snaps? Here comes Edgar reeking of decaying misbegotten. Why?

The misbegotten know Godfrey is returning and will, if anyone would, liberate them. And to Edgar, Godfrey is probably the single asshole all the shit that went wrong in Edgars life can be traced back to.

Ekzykes, I'm not trying to spell that on my phone, the Rot dragon; his lake was blown literally to kingdom come by these asshole demigods, one of whom he was sworn allegiance to because of that stupid night and flame oath.

To take it back to the idea of Frenzy being reflected by Vengeance: psax (and marika for that matter) looks like he has 3 finger burns. I'm not making that up but I don't remember who I got the idea from, but bayle and psax may have been phase 1 in this dance we see continued with hyetta & edgar and djura & elonara and midra and nanaya(?) and vyke when his handmaid died & vyke at a later time when he thought about what actually happened(?).

Psax's big laser attack is called Ruin. Bayles is called magma but it behaves more like the kind of physics you'd get on the sun. Which hey back to the omen-horned sun god/ess, that seems to be another division between the two.

So let's say psax was Frenzied and maybe that's why he, king of the immortal dragons, will die if he doesn't get enough sleep and has to be kept in chronostasis: he'll metastasize into a lord of Frenzy if he tries to recover or fully excercise his will. 

Let's play devils advocate and say bayle was even instrumental in preventing this outcome, wittingly or not. But Bayle was a tyrant. He sent psax packing not because he wanted to save the world, but because he wanted to kill it himself, broadly speaking, because he was young and prideful and had been visited by loss and betrayal and subjugation to such a degree that he was consumed with burning everything responsible. And with the lava flood he seems to have nearly succeeded.