AI 010 - Immemorial

You could almost argue that it's archtrees all the way down, branches becoming roots becoming beds becoming canopies.

You travel down through all these caves and caverns, lava pits and lost cities, and realize all of it is cradled in the branches of two understory layers of like five archtrees, three of them broken or severely damaged, in a forest of archtrees.

So you gotta think: if we dug down beneath Ash Lake would we find another Journey to the Center of the Earth?

And then in DS2 all of the archtree branches have been replaced with roots. Places like Amana and FoFG are rampant with giant tree roots, many of them new. One of them holding a big weird metal spike thing I've gone on for ages about in Scholar.

We know that the Age of Ancients, from the perspective of a human or even a god, was static and unchanging. This is despite the fact that the presence of dragons, animals, trees, societies, and the other stuff clearly indicates that some kind of living and evolving ecosystem was undeniably present, but, because Socrates is mortal, the life cycle was occurring on a much slower timeline than for those creatures touched by Fire.

There are many obvious analogies you can draw: man harnessing fire, alien invasions, the nature of plagues, the Internet. The dodo are meeting White People for the first time, is what I'm saying, with the birth of the First Flame.

This post is dealing with stuff leading up to that. Probably not everything, because there's quite a lot, but the primary focus is going to obviously be archtrees.

So what is an archtree and how does it work?

Tah-dah!

Dual Phase Evolution

This is me basically paraphrasing the WP of the subtitle, only adapted for Souls physics, inasmuch as we understand them. The general idea is that, in relative terms, ecosystems tend to remain in a kind of stasis, called a 'global' phase, until some big upheaval happens, at which point everyone is scrambling to adapt -- the 'local' phase -- which eventually leads to a slightly-different global phase.

The global phase -- presented as timeless and unchanging -- was the Age of Ancients: where everything was more-or-less balanced, and any kind of evolutionary excitement was occurring in terms of very slow specializations within an established environmental niche. In fantasy terms: the elves from Lord of the Rings are presented as being creatures much more at-home in a global phase, as are dragons and hollows in Dark Souls.

And Then There Was Fire

An archtree explodes, or something. The Dawn of the Age of Fire.  

At this point the Souls-verse enters a local phase, marked by jockeying for position amid the new resources in the new normal, and the new normal seems to really, really, favor seeds. 

Four of these seeds (not really, but, but they're presented as such,) grow into four little bushes by virtue of being closest to the mortally wounded tree. They, mostly, decided how to divvy up all that pine tar and warmth and light.

Now, for what follows we need to understand that the Age of Fire, even though it's in a local phase from the perspective of archtrees and dragons, it is also in a global phase from the perspective of anything that doesn't have access to the four Flame-derived humours, and vice versa. Jesus that sentence made my eyes cross I hope it came out right. The Age of Ancients is still occurring, with Lordran's Age of Fire being a temporary aberration from 'normal,' but also the Age of Fire, by the time Gwyn took over, was the new normal as well. 

The 'cycle of Flame' seems to be

1. Birth/Fire
2. Growth/Light 
3. Decline/Dark 
4. Death/the Dead.

This means that the new local phase, referred to as the 'dawn of the age of fire,' and similar, was the period of Izalith's rule.  kingdom seems like it was the most culturally advanced at the time of the First Flame, so it would follow that she would have been the First Lord. 

I mean, when we first meet Gwyn he's in a fucking cave what's a sun god doing in a cave like a fucking frankenstein huh? He took over after the Chaos Flame, which was Iz's attempt to resolve the fade.

But the archtrees are still there, underneath it all, and because archtrees are still there everything else that was of the Ancient world is still, hypothetically, there. Or could be again. 

Except from the perspective of these new rosin-and-turpentine powered upstart bushes, none of this stuff is even alive because it can't even really die. Plus, when cellulose and petrified wood was all there was, the little bushes near the Great Sap Pine had fuck all chance of ever becoming big trees themselves, right, so fuck the big trees.

Plus who wants to be a tree? It's boring and everyone wants your sap.

A dragon is immortal. A hollow is immortal. Ground into dust, diffused as moonlight, carved up into armaments: a dragon is immortal. Maybe not sapient or sentient or aware, but alive in a 'Lord Cthulhu Lied Dead But Dreaming' sense. Because dragons, like archtrees and hollows, are Ancient. Things that are ancient behave, if anything, like a kind of cellulose-based amoeba that, over a long-enough timeline, can turn into a tree the width of, like, a planet I suppose.

Or a very exclusive nightclub.

An Archtree, in a sense, is its bark, same a real tree. You can cut a strip of bark off from around a tree, couple inches wide, and the tree will die. On the other hand, you can saw half the limbs off and, so long as it still have enough leaves and no parasites get in, the tree will probably be fine. But, like, the local/global phase thing again.

Trees are a circle and bark is a ring. That doesn't directly relate to anything, it's just important thematically.

So this amoebic, prokaryotic, mineral-based cellulose (soululose?) stuff that makes up archtrees behaves, in a lot of ways, like wood. In other ways it behaves like rock. it can take the form of tree trunks, branches, roots, and stalagmites & stalagtites.

When left undisturbed in an 'unformed' (free of Flame or direct sunlight) location, a tree will just grow straight up, as with the Great Hollow, until it is either injured or finds (plain ole regular) sunlight, at which point it attempts to take branch. Probably water or soil, as well, at which point it attempts to take root. In the presence of sunlight branches will appear as they do on real world trees, but when underground it doesn't exert the effort, and, yknow, the inverse for being above ground and finding water.

The Tree Is Dead Hail New Tree

Archtrees die. This is, like, the equivalent of a dragon becoming inert. What seems to happen is that either the bark will become too thick, old, or damaged and will petrify, or the core becomes hollowed out, I suspect due to infection or its sub-systems turning parasitic.

When the bark dies or is severely injured the exposed core will begin to behave like bark and attempt to take both branch and root through the old bark, using it as both nutrients and an anchor to grow the new canopy/understory.

When the core dies/is injured it begins to hollow. This is experienced as a gradual, or possibly very sudden, drop in elevation for the 'top' of the archtree. This is probably also fatal for the exposed bark as well, unless there are sufficient nutrients around, but that generally requires the presence of other archtrees.

The Great Public Health Hazard Tree Fort of Anor Londo.

The Great Hollow is actually really really healthy for an archtree and because of its environment.

So archtrees, even leaving out the 'potentially infinitely respawnable given enough time' are pretty sturdy, but not indestructible. We see fields of them being burned down by Izalith, we find their smoking remains at the end of the Dragon War, craggy fingers fused into stone, we find an endless plain of lava in Drangleic where some mad, prehistoric engineer found a miraculous way to make titanite by rendering an entire forest down to charcoal and smog.

Archtrees can also be unmade, corroded out of existence, by the abyss of Manus. This mechanic is referred to in the sequel as Dark Fog, and seems to be the result of humanity existing in a vapor, rather than a liquid, flame, or distinct motes. In other words, a dense fog of disembodied willpower desperately seeking purpose that, like a drowning person, drags anything it can into its clutches.

I don't know what causes it to unwrite geography, but the 'lost' sections seem to be gone forever, although if the tree is healthy enough the wounds will at least be able to seal themselves. The closest equivalent I can come up with for what might be happening is what Nito does to that root in the intro cinematic.

Within and Upon

Trees need ecosystems. Bugs to carry pollen, animals to carry seeds, the right balance of microbes and decaying plant matter and sun and air and water and so on.

So who served the Ancients?

I've mentioned, many times, that I think hollows and giants come from seeds. The seed/larva, if unable to take root/branch, will instead develop limbs and sensory organs, 'hatch,' and begin looking for a way to either take root or perform some suitable service to the parent tree/ecosystem.

Fallen Giant birthing a tree.

Hollows live both above and below 'ground,' but in their natural state seem to prefer subterranean environments. It's possible that the division between the gods and men originally came down to this kind of dwarf/elf dynamic.

The presence and implied presence of an entire world's worth of mammals and birds would seem to indicate that at least some of these creatures predated Fire. It's possible that they're different breeds of evolved sub-tree, or the result of seeds grown under certain conditions. Includes things like rats, dogs, wolves, birds, horses, steer, goats, sheep and so on. Many of them may have been bred by colonies of seedlings in societies ranging from nomadic hunter-gatherers to early agricultural communities.

I mean, you don't see many wooden castles anymore, but they used to be everywhere.

Seeding Giant Tree

Another hypothesis is that any big, healthy branch or root of a large enough tree could itself take root/branch/leg, and thereby become a 'descendant' of an archtree. Given the nature of the hollow log in Ash Lake, we could be looking at something like the birth of a giant.

Mushrooms, of course, probably predate the First Flame. They seem to occur naturally and flourish under the right conditions, such as in the Great Hollow, beneath Huntsman's Copse, and probably in the caves around Darkroot/Farron. This might be because of the relationship between blood and lightning, as mushrooms are the source of Gold Pine Resin.

Elizabeth, famous racist and liar, is generally credited, in Drangleic, as being the godmother of alchemy, and in the Lothric period they were widely known as scholars (although this might be them stealing credit from the 'elves' of Oolacile).

YOU KNOW I'M A NECROMANCER RIGHT? NO, WAIT, NOT NECK ROMANCE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

It's a contentious point, but I think I know what happened to the mushroom people outside of Darkroot.

There is a particularly opaque class of enemy in the second and third game. They appear in groups in seemingly random locations. They're weak, but have a lot of health. Their melee attacks involve kind of ineffectually leaping at their much taller foe and trying to headbutt them with their lure.

More often, they'll rely on their 'ranged' attack, a short-range AoE 'breath' class pyromancy that can inflict poison or, sometimes, corrosion. They are insects, which also predated the First Flame, and they are parasitic, although often symbiotic and even familial towards their host.

In profile they look like mushrooms.

There Jugo.

Which transitions use nicely to Izalith, who had a royal family before the Age of Fire, and were the kind of society that could create the Gold Hemmed Black Robes that, if they really are the same as the Prayer Set, were really incredibly well made.

Plus they demonstrate that the bugs that live in and on archtrees took hollows for hosts/partners before disparity. It's possible that, yknow, the bug was Master and the hollow was Blaster, but in a much more, yknow, Ferngully-esque environment.

The people of Izalith seem to have been, like, spiders, ants, maybe even weevils and scorpions, but there were probably other invertebrates present in the unformed world, crabs and oysters and so on. Other vertabrate species, of course, were things like serpents, lizards, and dragons, and possibly amphibians as well.

AI 002 - The Saint, The Witch, and the Wayfarer

The story goes something like

Elf Knight swears to find cure for Bleeding Saint's condition. 

Spurned Witch becomes devoted to bringing about Elf Knight's ruin. 

Elf Knight fails to cure Bleeding Saint. 

Elf Knight relinquishes his knighthood, is reborn as Wayfarer Elf. 

Spurned Witch and Wayfarer Elf discover new purpose. 

Spurned Witch and Wayfarer Elf spend a lifetime together pursuing this.

Spurned Witch and Wayfarer Elf did not love each other.

Here are the puzzle pieces, as near as I can figure.

Saint Serreta

Saint, from what I can tell, has a dual meaning in Souls churches. Well, a singular meaning, but with a dual implication. The singular meaning is something like 'this is someone with some kind of exceedingly rare talent ability or gift...' and the secondary meanings are

'...and is therefore an asset.'
'...and is therefore a threat.'

With the synthesis being something like 'They should therefore be both defended and watched.'

Serreta, again this is just from my semi-advanced guesswork, might relate to the word serrate, and possibly the Latin 'serratus'. My guess is that her name means something like 'one who is sawn into tiny pieces' or 'one who saws into tiny pieces' or even 'one who tears/is torn into pieces by tiny saws.'

Why do I think an insane thing like that?

Because I think Serreta had a sickness very similar to what Irina of Carim had.

The only other meaning of the name I could find, but can't really make sense of, is a type of noseband for horses. Nosebands are used to control and direct a horse. This has an obvious enough meaning in a religious context, particularly with the treatment women generally receive at the hands of religion, both in-game and out. I just can't figure out where the word itself comes from, apart from people being into show-horses being difficult & unpleasant people in general.

Serreta and Zullie, I think, represent the dynamic at play in Irina and mirrored in Eygon. Because of Irina's indoctrination, she's trapped in a situation where she is terrified of the very thing that makes her a Saint: her potential as a Firekeeper, as she would seem to have the condition that allows her to store a potentially infinite amount of Dark/Deep with minimal consequences. 

Barring infection.

Irina would pretty clearly seem to be infected with the same gnawing blood worms we find all over the Cathedral of the Deep, likely picked up on the Road of Sacrifices when they were attacked by infested hounds in their sleep.

If Irina were able to embrace her own nature, if she had managed to resist the lessons drilled into her head from childhood that she was supposed to hate and fear her own body, she would easily be able to address the infection. Probably it would be as simple as doing something like casting Power Within or Flash Sweat, as the worms seem to really not like heat. 

But she can't. Because she thinks she needs a hero to come rescue her.

So, in her ignorance, she thinks the gnawing and the Dark are one and the same, and her fear prevents her from ever gaining any understanding of her condition or acceptance of her shadow self.

side effects

Alva the Wayfarer

His name probably derives from the same 'alf' root as Alvina and Elfriede, which is kind of a hybrid of alf/elf and the Latin albus, meaning white ('albino' derives from it). "Elven [Male]" or "[The] White" could be translations. 

In Scholar I hypothesized that Alva belonged to the same order of Old Guard knights as the Afflicted Graverobber and Bradley. Their armor is described as being designed for maximum strength/weight, a technique we later see associated with Llewellyn of Mirrah. In the third game Alva is associated with the Murakumo, although it seems he may have picked the weapon up after being reborn as a wanderer. The sword would indicate that he was probably a dex-favoring quality build, and his associations would imply that he had at least some access to miracles.

The later games describes him in terms of a tragic tales sung by troubadours, who were associated with Elana and the high-Olaphis period. By extension, song is associated with the Dead Soul.

Alva was also probably pretty dumb, otherwise he would've been spread way too thin, statwise. In other words, his quest to help the saint was likely noble but misguided, and the hardships he endured as a result of his failure smartened him up. As a result, he turned away from the light enough to find (or rediscover a lost) purpose and earn Zullie's respect.

I'm not going to speculate too much on what Alva and Zullie's new purpose was, as there's still going to be way too much to unravel at the end of this.

Zullie the Witch

Zullie's set has three headpieces, and is clearly designed to turn heads, although in a much more upscale sense than the Jugo sorceresses. The Dress is purple, associating it with (in DS2's color scheme,) Dark rather than Fire (purple poison in DS1 was associated with pyromancy, whereas green is in DS2 by virtue of...well, it's complicated). 

The pointed hat that she wears is designed to be seen as a proud display of her status and heritage, rather than as the kind of mark of shame or perversion we see associated with Karla or the witch in Demon'ses Souls (I'm not saying her name to avoid confusions's and further tangents). The hat grants an additional attunement slot, indicating that it is magical and probably specifically built to last.

The veil, on the other hand, is worn to conceal her identity, including her implied attractiveness. The veil has high magic defense and makes the wearer immune to curses, which is the kind of thing you'd wear if there was a price on your head. I think I recall that the third game describes it as being worn while traveling.

The Domino Mask, we can assume, is meant to portray her as a shrewd political operator, as it looks a lot like a mask you'd wear at a Masquerade Ball, which are almost always associated with Machiavellian rich people shit. The implication is probably that this was the only way Zullie was allowed in polite society. I have no idea why we find it where we do in the third game.

It should be pointed out that people like Zullie may not be people. Or at least not people like Alva and Serreta are people. Alva and Serrata are hollows possessing, at least to some extent and at some point, souls and humanity. Zullie, given witches' association with Izalith, may be a hollow possessing/being possessed by a symbiotic parasite containing souls and humanity. This could explain her and Alva's romantic disinterest in each other, as it seems like twue wuv would be about the only thing that would make her change her mind about Alva. So this would seem to imply that Zullie's overall motivations and character remained constant while Alva had the change of heart.

Zullie seems to have inspired several devotees/imitators/associates across Drangleic. These include the Gutter Denizen, the Bell Keeper Mage, and the Dual Avelyn Bell Keeper. The Gutter Denizen appears after lighting all the torches in the Gutter, and is a male wearing the veiled version of Zullie's set. The two Bell Keepers (not literal Bell Keepers, but members of the covenant,) appear in Belfry Sol. The mage is dressed as an Astrologist and can drop a copy of the veil, while the Avelyn user is dressed as a Manikin, and can drop the Domino Mask. Maybe this is meant to imply that Zullie was once one of King Alken's talented but dubious guests.

Zullie's Black Witch's Staff is used by the Leydia Black apostles, as well as Peculiar Kindalur, who invades towards the end of Amana. The staff can cast sorceries, miracles, and hexes. I think it would be pretty safe to assume that Zullie dates to Olaphis or before, and that she may have been associated with the Leydia at some point.

Zullie's full set, with the Witch Hat, is sold by Navlaan. I have no idea if it's related, but Navlaan also sells the Astrologists Set worn by the Bell Keeper Mage. 

To tie this back to Serreta and the kafkatrap of sainthood, Zullie might represent the 'shadow self'' that Serreta/Irina were taught to fear and reject. It could be argued that, in the third game, the Champion of Ash manages to 'cure' Irina by both liberating her from the church (represented by Eygon,) and forcing her to confront and come to terms with the Dark (by having her teach us Dark miracles). Of course, for Irina this probably just means something like she gets to hang out in the Bell Tower until the Firekeeper needs a new vessel. For Zullie and Serreta, this 'cure by reunification' could only have happened if Zullie had been more 'of the light,' in the sense of being more of a Compliant Housewife Barbie, and therefore more inclined to be charitable towards Serreta's plight and Alva's early endeavors. Conversely, Serreta, I think, could have probably liberated herself from her plight had she taken more of an Esmerelda Weatherwax approach to life.

(This footage is silent)

The relationship between Alva and Serreta may have had a similar dynamic as Eygon and Irina in the third game, although Serreta possibly wasn't accompanying Alva on his journey for a cure. The church of Olaphis, as I hypothesize in Scholar, was descended from the early Way of White and represents a schism in the church that possibly predates the rise of the WoW in Thorolund. The Olaphis White church was eventually taken over by Elana. As a result, when the rulership of Olaphis was overthrown at the start of what would become the Venn-Alken civil war, the clergy and other Olaph loyalists were rounded up and executed, presumably by being thrown into the Majula pit (hence 'Grave of Saints'). Survivors, the Archdrake Sect, eventually relocated to Lindelt/Volgen, where they altered/buried their own history and set up a monastery that would transform the region into the 'new home of miracles.' The Lindelt Sect may be working with Carim, and Carim may have been involved with Shulva, but it's impossible to say if Carim was involved with the pre-Shulva Olaph White church. My guess is that they weren't.

Regardless of the truth of the church, because of the fall of Olaphis, even if Alva had been successful in his original journey it would have probably made little difference for Serreta, her faith, or Alva's status as a Knight of the [at the time not very] Old Guard. In fact, the fall of the empire may have been what resulted in Alva's failure, with the knight being away from the kingdom searching for a cure when the waste matter impacted the ventilation system in Shulva.

Zullie is described as having used 'all manner' of tricks, deception, and seduction to ruin Alva's quest. It's unclear if any of these were successful, or if Zullie was personally responsible for Alva's failure. The nature and motivations of witches are unclear. They seem to be despised by both academic sorcerers and faith-based institutions. There's a possibility that they're descended from Izalith, and represent a faction of fire sorcerers/shamans/priestesses that responded to Chaos by rejecting their own nature.

What I mean is this.

Chaos is the result of a semi-failed attempt to re-create/copy the First Flame using Izalith's Lord Soul. It seems like this is meant to be a pretty obvious metaphor for nuclear weapons. 

In the United States there's a testing site in the New Mexico desert called Trinity. Trinity is where mankind set off the Gadget. In the lead up to the test there was a concern that the Gadget might initiate a chain-reaction in the earth's atmosphere that would cause all of the air to explode.

All of it.

Everywhere.

Anyway, so Izalith does something like this and gets results closer to that. By my current reckoning there have been at least 5 different responses to Chaos.

Quelaag and the Fair Lady use it to breed demons, which I assume works the same way as with Ninja Turtles. The Chaos Servants' approach is that of a warrior: no spells, no tricks, just big goddamn soldiers and gang tactics.

Quelana and Salaman's approach was to selectively breed out the Dark aspect and thereby refine and stabilize Chaos into the much more manageable pyromancy, although there were side-effects. This is the approach of a scholar.

side effects

Olaphis, before the purges and before even the church took over, attempted to improve on formula, in an event I think of as the Lost Sin of Amana, which probably led to the purges. For some reason this event seems to have, in some sense, completely removed the Fire aspect and may have led to a bunch of second-order problems. This is the approach of madmen.

At some point it seems like people started trying to link anything that would burn to the First Flame system in light of the First Flame failing, leading to the Diesel-and-Pus-Powered-First-Flame-The-XVII we're asked to puzzle out in the third game. This is the approach of desperate madmen.

Witches seem to have responded to Chaos by rejecting Fire, even if their other relations and motivations remain obscure or unique to them as individuals. From the perspective of Izalith this approach may be, as they say, the truest homage to an enduring self.