AI 014 - What Woeful

This ain't gonna seem like it's about Gundyr and Kriemhild but it's about Gundyr and Kriemhild. So buckle up, this one almost broke me. This should be considered a rough draft until this paragraph says different, but it outlines a lot of stuff around Firelink Shrine and early Lothric. Which I know I have like 90 posts on early Lothric already but it keeps growing.

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If the illusory wall hiding the First Keeper exists in the past, but has been replaced by an identical brick-and-mortar wall in the future: how did this happen?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

1. Lost Sinner - Fire Soul, attracted to Sinner due to being at least the same species as Izalith.
2. OIK  - Light Soul, attracted Nameless old Lord Soul after we cut it out of Seath.
3. The Rotten - Dead Soul. They are to Elena as Agdayne is to Mytha.
4. 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,
5. Duke's Freya - This is Ruin/Moonlight standing in for the Dark Soul, as with the first game.

This leaves us, by the Drang Map, with 

1. Last Giant Lord - I assume this is something like a Giants' Resonance, although it may involve killing a champion twice via time-travel.
2. King's Ring - The King's Proof, this might represent that actual Dark Soul
3. The Ashen Mist Heart- Dragon/Ancient Resonance I assume
4. 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.

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. 

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.

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?

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: 

• 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.

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.

That's a very, very rough overview. The Nibelung itself is a great treasure, probably the Ringed City or Kiln in-game,  control of which switches constantly throughout the epic. For the purposes of this part of the story, Siegfriede starts with control, which passes to Gundyr after he murders Siegfriede before being reclaimed by S's ex-wife Kriemhild in Hungary. Siegfriede claimed control of the horde from a dragon named Fafnir. Fafnir had previously been a giant that became a dragon in order to better protect the horde. Siegfriede, who's described as about an even split between Siegward's prowess, Solaire's easily-manipulable good-guy-ery, and Vendrick's 'bastard king' backstory (orphaned son of nobility, raised by pig farmers, finds a magic sword, probably had a weird birthmark, that kind of thing).

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. 

"'...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.

Yeah, no they totally hauled all that marble or whatever up there.

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?

AI 013 - Turn Back

013 - Turn Back

There is nothing here. Nothing at all.

I'm gonna outline a bunch of stuff briefly and then start trying to tie it together into something like a story. Big picture: Ivory is red-tendency Gwyndolin, the cats and golems are Gael-level geniuses when it comes to creatively misinterpreting orders, and Eleum Loyce is under the beginnings of what will eventually become a siege (or possible attempt at resettlement, if there's a difference,) by forces broadly aligned with the Neo-Olaphis/proto-Lothric faction.

Which all sounds great but everyone including us seems dead set on not understanding that no one must ever find that which is sheltered in Eleum Loyce. 

Right off the bat, here is Sir Fist's video with all of Alsanna's dialogue + cut dialogue + the soundtrack what has Latin in it which maybe means something if any native Latin speakers want to take a crack at it. 

Alsanna's cut dialogue makes it clear that her and Aava are friendly towards each other, although they both seem to resent the task set to Aava. Alsanna doesn't resent hers. Aava is tasked with guarding Alsanna - not the Old Chaos, not Queen Venn, not Eleum Loyce: Alsanna, Beloved of Ivory, Queen of Venn.

Variants of 'Eve' turn up all over EL. Aava appears as a variant of Eve, as the Irish Aoife (beauty or radiance). O'hara the Confusingly Dressed is wearing a Pharis hat, which would be known as an Evlana hat locally. Evlana is an Eve-derived name closely related to Evelyn, such as the pair carried by the exiled Lion Knight we find out in the snowfield.

Alright so explain this Dan Carlin.

From the looks of things, exiles haven't been mercy killed lately. The only two items of note out on the snowfield are the Ring of the Living (retain human appearance when hollow) and the Mirrah Hat, which there's a lot of Mirran shit around, especially if you include Aurheim. 

The Ring of the Living is strange, because there's no reason it should be there. I mean, it seems like that ring should tie into the Embedded Sentinel/Milfanito/Demon of Song stuff. 

Which, now that I think about it, we find that ring among what are clearly supplies coming into the outskirts, next to that big scary hole in the middle of the world with the incredibly-breakable-looking ice bridge just before the boss fight which I'm slowly getting to. There are two NPC enemies out there, as well as three summons: Head of Vengarl (Venn Guard/Vanguard,) Abbess Feeva (Fever,) and the enigmatic O'Hara.

Right, I also need to talk about arms and armor in Forossa. Golems too, but that's mostly gonna be talked about later, so: REMEMBER GOLEMS.

Ivory left her blacksmith in the Bastille. Maybe her father had him locked up in the old days and she lost access to the place during the war, but McDuff sure would have helped them figure out a way to make some less terrible armor.

Let's assume, shall we, that the Northwarders and the sorcerers that ended up as Fume Sorcerers are examples of late-Forossan armor-making capabilities, with Vengarl being an example of a tankier get-up cobbled together from hide and antique high-Forossan stuff. Most of the weapons we see around Eleum Loyce are enchanted with what seems like 'pure' Light sorcery. This is credited to ivory native to the region, and Fabian's sword seems to be made from Zallen's tusk. These enchantments give their arms an edge in battle, which is good because the enchantments don't scale and the weapons looooooove breaking.

Lud and Zallen

Lud's name, for whatever reason, is Rad in the Japanese script. I think the translation for it is probably meant to be a variant of 'Lad,' as in 'Laddie,' but 'lud-' could also connect to other stuff. Zallen could be something like 'fallen' or the Greek 'solon' (wise lawgiver) or a variant of 'Tsar/Ceaser'. 

Loyce Knight Fabian has a sabre made from a tooth and Zallen is a sabretooth carrying a Loyce Knight sword. Does that represent a pact or a conflict between the two? That Fabian presumably made it inside Eleum Loyce would indicate a pact. That Aava might have struck him down would indicate conflict.

Alright, so let's say Ceaser (Zallen) voluntarily allowed her tusk to be severed by an unknown agent in order to make the sword Sir Fabian wielded in an attempt on the Old Chaos, maybe the same attempt that claimed Ivory, maybe a later incursion. For some reason Aava is associated with the actual tusk/sword in question, while the exiled(?) twins are associated with the Loyce Knightesses's arms. 

The Loyce Shield/Sword we get from L&Z were carried by the knights (presumably) led by or associated with Fabian, who may have therefore been something like Knight Captain Fabian. I'm starting to suspect that some of the Loyce Knights, 'led' by Fabian, may have initially fled EL rather than follow their lord or wait hopelessly. 

As near as I can tell the word Fabian means something like 'belonging to the bean farmer/s,' which maaaaaaaybe has something to do with the black spots we find everywhere but probably is just me chasing down a wrong answer.

Right, we need to clear up some timeline confusion. Let me rephrase: we need to establish some timeline confusion.

Eleum Loyce seems to have existed for quite a while, and there seem to be several distinct time periods associated with the citadel. Before the Ivory King's arrival it's possible that the area was warm and verdant, maybe even a swamp or jungle, given the nature of Chaos. What happens from there gets confusing.

This is all hypothetical-ass ass-pulling, but let's just assume there was already a town there in the squat 'big squares with small windows' style before it became known as Eleum Loyce, and that Queen King built the Cathedral. This would probably have made the settlement into a walled-town, at which point the Anor-inspired architecture would have flourished briefly as the town graduated to walled city. 

Something bad happens, the king sacrifices herself, everything goes into failsafe, Alsanna inverts the Chaos' heat, somehow, and 'kills' the city. Things calm down, although everything still remains frozen. Rumors spread, possibly carried by deserters and refugees, and Forossa sends reinforcements to build the big ass wall that greets us when we enter the DLC, although the wall could have been erected by some unexplained soul art. My point is the architectural discrepencies represent different periods in the city's history.

During the period when Chaos grew more pronounced, but before their majesties profaned the flame, the people fled or were turned into demons, although who can say what 'demon' means in this context. We do find a Covetous Demon, but those don't seem to relate to Chaos. We find horses with horns that can cast fucking tons of lightning, as well as a bunch of Sonic the Hedgehogs, but we don't know if those are the result of post-Alsanna Chaos or based on native life or how long they've been there or anything really.  

Apart from these, most of the enemies we find in EL fall into the category of either golem or spellsword, with the T-1000 snowmen being debatably either. The common spellsword have a couple of noteworthy things about their design. First, they're wearing masks. Second, the ice that covers them looks like it might be crystalized Dark. This could indicate that Alsanna's ritual affects the Dark Soul in a way similar to how Seath's curse affects the Light Soul.

At some point the 'Ivory Gates were flung open and the land grew cold and lifeless.' This was/is the result of the ritual Alsanna is devoting herself to; using some unspecified art of the Abyss to profane the chaos, causing it to draw heat to its center, rather than have it radiate out like normal fire. Additionally, the place isn't normally lifeless. There are a bunch of relatively healthy-looking trees around the base of the Cathedral, and it's clear that the place is relatively habitable provided no one goes poking around too much.

I don't think the Ivory Gates are the gates on the gatehouse that are 'flung open' as we approach, although I do think this is a similar event. The gates on the gatehouse are black. I suspect the gates were originally attached to either the Grand Cathedral or the (far more ornate but martially non-functional) gatehouse leading to the Aava fight. Alternately, the rose-lined portals we find leading to and inside of the Chaos could be the Ivory Gates. 

The 'flinging open' was, we assume, the Chaos lashing out and breaking its bonds, and the city growing 'cold and lifeless' was actually Alsanna slamming the entrance to the Chaos shut by turning the volume up on her ritual.

Alsanna 'turning the volume up' might even be an involuntary response on her part, as it seems like the Chaos reaches out for us - a champion - when we approach. So it seems like periodically the Chaos makes an attempt to break its fetters and Alsanna redoubles her prayer in response. She can consciously alter the ritual to halt the snowstorm and remove the frozen roots, but so long as her ritual is active the appearance of these hazards might be credited to the Chaos. In other words, christ, the Dark aspect of Chaos reacts tot he presence of a powerful Light Soul, and the Light aspects of Alsanna's ritual causes the heat/fire aspect of Chaos to invert to cold/frost.

So when were those gates first flung open?

Nil

They use light sorcery in Eleum Loyce. Mechanically it seems quite similar to the magic of Oolacile. The one sorcery we find in the area describes an initially purely-defensive art being brought into battle. Light sorcery doesn't scale with Intelligence, and this is true both for the Oolacile catalysts in the first game and the Ivory Straight Sword in the second game. 

The tigers have two spells I want to talk about. The first is their homing crystal soulmass, the second their firestorm variant.

They cast the soulmass by roaring. So no catalyst right? Hypothetically this might be because the tiger is using her own tusks - the same 'ivory ore' that powers the Ivory Straight Sword - as a kind of catalysts. Right? So that's that sorted out.
They cast Firestorm the same way a pyromancer would. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're pyromancers, but it's worth pointing out. It could be just all of their bones can channel magic. The spell itself is actually quite similar to the Divine Pillars of Light miracle from the third game, only crystalized to the degree that it's more like a crystal stalactitestorm spell.

Why not pure light then?

Alsanna. Her magic seems to crystalize anything associated with light sorcery in a way similar to, but not the same as, Seath's magic.

Otherwise Aava would cast Divine Pillars and Homing Lightmass. Lightnotmass. Lighttimephotondelayarrows. Please somebody help me. The light pillars are 'cursed' (maybe more accurately de- or re-cursed) into the less-impressive-but-still-impressive icestorm spell. 

On the other paw, if Aava is a demon or pyromancer of some variety, and Alsanna is actually converting their Chaos Storm spells into Stalactite Storm spells then this would mean something else, right? Except that Aldia does definitely cast a stalactite storm spell, and it looks nothing like Aava's icestorm spell which more closely resembles, if anything, some of the crystals around Shulva.

Right, so, the tigers' spells were originally light sorceries that are auto-converting to a crystalized variant, right? But spells cast directly from the tigers' bones don't. This could be that the profaning ritual is designed to exclude Ivory loyalists. I mean, even that doesn't even apply, as one of the Loyce Knights will even idiotically cast Cast Light when heading into Chaos, and if the ritual excludes the caster (Ivory Straight Sword) but not the cast spell (HSM crystalizes, Cast Light does not, although it would be hilarious if it turned into one of those spherical fancypants drink icecube balls and boinged off her helmet.

The thing about the ISS, and Ivory's own sword, for that matter, is that they're pretty much useless for more than a few swings, but they sure are impressive swings. Presumably this might be because, ignoring that it's a general rule with boss weapons, in order to channel the uncursed light sorcery and be free of Alsanna's influence, her curse/ritual is actually being channeled, still as a kind of frost/antiheat effect, into the bone/sword/catalyst itself, enbrittling it. It's a word. Maybe.

So, Ivory's sword sure doesn't look like it's made from a bone or whatever relatively-useless ore they used for their otherwise sweet-ass rapiers, which may even have come from somewhere like Mirrah or Melfia. Presumably they're an heir, in some sense, of the Olaphian Blue Flame straight sword, one of which Loyce Knight Castlight is carrying.

No, Ivory's sword looks like a straight version of the Nil Curved Greatsword. Interesting enough, however, the Nil sword gains power over time - across multiple playthroughs, in fact - while the Ivory Greatsword exhausts its brilliance almost immediately.

The Nil sword was forged from titanite, archstone, and the remains of a 'peculiar' soul. Presumably something similar is true about Ivory's blade. The main difference, I suspect, is that the Nil sword has a Dark tendency.

My best guess, currently, is that after the Grand Cathedral was constructed Eleum Loyce grew cold, but not supernaturally cold. During this, let's call it Lesser Winter period, EL may have been relatively peaceful and prosperous. Judging by some of the other middle-period structures in the distance it certainly seems like they had time to study architecture. 

This prosperity, of course, was coming at the expense of Ivory, whose Vigor was being drained by either/both the Chaos and Alsanna, who initially only desired Ivory for selfish reasons. 

It really is a testament to Ivory's character that she was able to resolve her curse while under assault from both sides like that. 

This was the period of the Eye Priestesses. We don't know much about them save that they all died or left at some point, leaving behind their retainers. The loss of the priestesses, I suspect, may tie in to the re-resurrection of Brume Tower.

Ivory knew she didn't have long, and set about foolproofing her succession in a way that would have made her (possibly great-)grandfather proud. She had the seven beasts, of course, and we can account for two of them (three if the L&Z stuff is just bad writing, rather than them being some kind of Lothric & Lorian-type split single entity). It's possible Ivory herself sent for help from Forossa and/or Mirrah, and this could account for some of the missing beasts, Fabian's mission, and, eventually, the influx of what appear to be settlers in the area.

When the time came, Ivory took her most loyal knights and made a final suicidal attempt on the Chaos. Possibly this is the event that caused the Greater Winter, but I don't know. If anything I would think Ivory's sacrifice would serve to stabilize the flame. I mean, if Light = Time, then the reason the Chaos Flame burns too fast to create sustainable life could be the absence of time. Ergo, if a big ole Gwyn-descended Light Soul chucked itself into the Chaos, the Chaos might slow down some. 

We should also consider that Greater Winter - Alsanna's response to the Chaos responding to the presence of a 'wondrous' or 'magnificent' soul, could have been caused by something like an invasion or mutiny, post-Ivory, led or aided by Fabian and possibly Azal, and quelled by Aava and the Ivory/Priestess loyalists. Unless those were the different factions and I'm just out here pretending I'm not grasping at straws.

Gotta be extra careful not to paint myself into too many corners again here.

So, let's say that when Ivory cast herself into the flames some of her knights and most of the citizens were killed or fled, and Eleum Loyce entered a period of rapid decline as Alsanna, the beasts, and the golems took over for Ivory. The killing storm eventually subsided, but the Profaning principle remains in low-level effect, hence the mortal defenders slowly having their, I assume, humanity or soul converted to crystal. These remaining defenses fall into three broad categories: spellswords, who may be more recent arrivals from Forossa or Mirrah; various golems, immune to corruption, distraction, or the influence of Chaos; and the retainers, who seem to have similar but different interests than the spellswords and golems.

The spellswords, maybe, came from Mirrah. They carry Iron Parma, you can see the design under the frost. The shield is sold by Maughlin and the 'foreign' design doesn't look that different from the designs on the Llewellyn Shield, which is like a slightly improved Iron Parma. 

So, Maughlin's from Volgen, Llewellyn's from Mir. So where are the spellswords from? To further confound matters: the Divine Blessing and Sorcerer's Twinblade items, both of which make mention of Melfia, are found next to each other guarded by one of those T-1000 golems.

So they could be from anywhere. I imagine that, wherever they're from, they've had their humanity frozen off in order to keep them bound to their purpose.

This is interesting, because it plays into the 'twin sister' dynamic Alsanna has with Nadalia. Whereas Nadalia 'controls' people by burning away their consciousness and replacing it with herself-as-Dark-fog, Alsanna 'controls' people by removing their Darkness which would otherwise be in danger of fueling Chaos. 

Just as a final connection to Nadalia: Nadalia's arts are based on dancing, and we find the Dark Dance miracle in an area with a lot of Retainers, near where we find the Ring of the Embedded. 

To get back to the story: things remain more-or-less in stasis with these three factions in the wall/fort/cathedral parts of the citadel, but in the undercity some kind of new society slowly emerges. We don't get much of a glimpse of it, but it would seem to include witchtrees, a covetous demon, and characters like Maldron, Nicholai, and possibly Donna and Aurheim. 

Maldron is obviously an assassin that tries to assassinate us in Brume, but whose human form we stumble across in Eleum Loyce. His equipment ties him mostly to Shulva-Heide (and therefore Elana's Neo-Olaphis,) but he's wearing one of the breastplates Llewellyn crafted in Drangleic. Of course if this is meant to indicate an earlier incarnation of Llew's work it could tie Maldron to Mirrah, rather than Drangleic. He carries Raime's shield, which idkwtf unless it's some kind of claimed trophy or meant to help tie Nadalia or Raime to the priestess or jesus why. His name might mean something like 'evil hornet,' as 'mal' generally means bad or evil, and 'dron' could easily be 'drone,' a reference not only to the golems around the area but a type of bee or hornet that exists more or less only to serve their queen. If you're wondering about possible connections to Ciaran: he does seem to be guarding Artorias' sword in Alken.

Nicholai is interesting, because as variants of Nicholas go it's pretty uncommon. So uncommon that a web search mostly returns results relating to a heretical sect of the Church mentioned in the Book of Revelations. The sect, from what I can tell, was never formally denounced or excommunicated, despite engaging in practices hated by, among others, Jesus; such as engaging in prostitution and ritual sex, as well as less sensational stuff like eating food used in sacrificial rituals and following false prophets. Nicholai himself was said to have been ordained by Peter, himself generally viewed as Jesus' first Pontiff. I say all that because Nicholai is dressed like a Drangleic priest. The translation of Nicholas means 'victorious people.'

Donna means something like mistress or 'lady of the estate,' so we can probably assume she was cast away from high society. She's trying to keep us away from one of the Loyce Knights but who knows if she's trying to protect the knight from you or the Chaos from your combined forces.

Other noteworthy 'humans' include Durgo, who ties to both Lanafir and, possibly, Gough or Pharis, as well as the hidden Astoran watchers.  

I need to get back to the snowfield HAIL SNOWFIELD

Snowfield

We find an exiled Lion Knight in the snowfield, who seems to be travelling with a Lindelt cleric. We don't even know if they're traveling to or from the city. Or if they're travelling at all, it could be they're overseeing whatever meager emerging settlement we see. These two are patroling the area between the church and the pit. 

There are a dozen or so hollows scattered along the path between structures, with the highest concentration, 3, being in the barracks. I mean there's a healing fountain in the barracks why would ever leave? 

The reindeer, of which there are 20, form a rough semicircle beginning just past the outpost and surrounding the other two structures, with their numbers growing thicker the closer to the pit you travel. Looks like you could aggro up to 8, maybe 9 at a time if you were really quick.

There's a lot of medicine out there. We find a Wilted Dusk Herb on the body of some guy we ran over, Blackweed Balm in a nearby coffin, "twin" Effigies on a corpse along the path, and a Dried Root near the Mirrah Hat in the Outpost. 

The Balms are dropped by Shulvan ants and is described as a 'fragrant oil' that 'affects the mind, granting a fleeting sense of empowerment.' As these enemies may be 'female' or host-less versions of the poisonhorn beetles they may relate, ultimately, to Izalith, but generally seem to be loyal to, or at least aligned with Elana. The Dried Root also connect to Shulva, as they're dropped by the Pagan Tree. 

The Amber/Twilight/Dusk Herb class of items describe  annual herb that grows on the rocky surfaces of mountains. The plant turns a luminescent amber color when it's ready to bloom, which is at dusk when the moon is visible. After it blooms it 'wilts in the blink of an eye.' The wilted variety is significantly more powerful than the amber variety, but the blooming amber variety (which doesn't exist in-game) is said to be significantly more powerful than the wilted. 

Lot of creepy blue eyes in this DLC 

There are barrels all over the place in the snowfield. Not all over. All over the sheltered places. The barrels are in good condition, and appear full. 

You probably noticed that there isn't anything like a cooperage out there. or stuff to put in barrels, come to that.

Which means these are probably supplies being shipped in somehow.

If you were a foreign interest, the idea would be to, first, scout the area, then set up supply lines and start shuttling food, tools, arms and so on to the Outskirts. You wouldn't start sending soldiers and workers for quite a while, otherwise you're just wasting the food you're bringing while they wait around for more soldiers. Eventually you'll have enough of a foundation to send in the first wave of occupants, mostly guards and workers but probably a few spies/scouts/intelligencers and a state representative. This camp would be tasked with getting the ruins habitable and building basic infrastructure - some kind of wall, guard towers/lookouts, tunnels or trenches between buildings, a defensible route into Eleum Loyce, yknow, latrines a mess hall stables and so on. 

When preparations were complete you'd then start sending in the troops for the real occupation. 

I think we find Eleum Loyce at some point in either the scouting or early building phase of the mission. 

So, who is the interested party?

Question: If Aava's Dark was frozen by profanity/lifehunt, does that mean the beasts are naturally Dark?

We've got three 'important' defenders and three attackers filling similar roles on either side: a lion knight, a Lindelt dickhead, and a Loycian of uncertain alignment (counting L&Z as a single 'person,' which the script seems to). 

Between the two NPC enemies. the lion knight and the archdrake king, we find a lot of items connecting to Volgen-Lindelt and Shulva-Olaphis, who, if you've been keeping up, are in a broad alliance that will, in the course of (a lot of) time, become Lothric. 

As for the exiles, their presumed alliance might indicate that the Drang and Vol Blue Sentinel (reference Targray and Maughlin) sects are indeed connected both to each other and Shulva, as well as indicate that the Lindelt Sect is indeed using the Sentinels to gain political influence in Volgen, itself a move springboarding into Drangleic in alliance with Carim, probably Lanafir, and various surviving Mir and Foross groups and notables. The inclusion of two Avelyns would further argue that even the crooked market of Fiorenza had been further consolidated to serve proto-Lothric interests.

Right, so, what else does this mean for the larger narrative?

We learned in Scholar that the real story is about the cold war between Elana (proto-Lothric) and Mytha (proto-Carthus). 

If the theory I'm outlining in this post holds up, it would mean that control of the Profaned Flame probably fell to Elana's post-True Throne pre-Lothric alliance/empire, which would eventually be overrun by Mytha's neo-Alken pre-Carthus empire of blood, bone, and madness, leaving Elana's team to eventually abandon ship in Drangleic and set off to have Gundyr hijack the First Flame of Lordran. Gundyr, who seems to be based on a misremembered history of Ivory's role in DS2. 

Vengarl, who was also a Lion Knight, but appears to have come to some conclusions after his long reflection, but may have been among the soldiers involved in the hypothetical Fabian-led middle-period assault on Eleum Loyce. Vendrick, even, could have been there. If we look at the gatehouse being flung open at our arrival as similar to the ivory gates being flung open due to the arrival of a sufficiently brilliant soul to cause the Chaos to lash out, then it could have been Vendrick's arrival that caused Alsanna's ritual to take on the gravitational heat-inversion property that I just remembered I'm meant to be calling Lifehunt. 

Vengarl, I suppose, could currently be out in the snow with the other two trying to put down the Shulvan siege of EL before it begins. Vengarl, when he stopped being a berserker for five minutes, turned out to be a pretty bright penny, and it should be noted that, even after his philosophical awakening or whatever we're calling it, he remains his admiration and concern for Vendrick, the son that may have cost Ivory her kingdom.

As for O'Harrah, type "virtute et claritate" into Google and poke around for a few minutes. Hopefully you see what a weird connection that is.

Like, I don' tthink they're naturally frozen, so the fog could be black normally, the stripes could be the same effect as we see with the ivory swords

So, A group of groups of mercenary interests lead an assault on Eleum Loyce at some point between the fall of Alken and Drangleic's High period, before the appearance of Nashandra and War of the Giants. 

Fabian's party, who probably had a story about how Ivory had betrayed Forossa and all the world by siding with demons and the abyss, attack from the snowfield side and come into conflict with Lud and Zallen. Fabian claims a tusk, the twins claimed some traitor Loyce Knights. Fabian makes his way above and is claimed by Aava.

Vendrick's party, largely consisting of former Lion Knights who would have been familiar with the politics, if not the area, would have been secretly motivated (one imagines) by Ivory being Vendrick's mother, enter the city from the mountains and come into conflict with the Priestesses, who may have been aligned with Astoran and Lanifarian interests. I'm completely guessing here, I'm just trying to get some kind of picture together so I can criticize it properly.

My point is, I'm saying two groups of slightly corrupted heirs of Anor Londo come into conflict over a Chaos Flame and the result could be thought of as something like a splintering lightning spear. 

Vendrick, High as summer, causes the Chaos to successfully break free and demonize a significant portion of the city. The literally-a-lion knights are either created then, or by Aldia attempting to recreate the effect. Vendrick, of course, eventually figures out what's going on a returns home, but probably some significant events are set into motion, like Raime's betrayal, the arrival of Nashandra, and the future theoretical Lindelt-Mirrah-Shulva alliance we find trying to lay seige to the city. 

[scratches head for half an hour]

The bridge across the pit is designed so that either side can collapse it, with probably the golems serving as Decider on either side.

Lud and Zallen are charged with the mercy killing of exiles. So what is mercy? 

Mercy is what you offer when you can no longer offer hope. 

So,

If mercy isn't on offer out on the snowfield, 

Maybe hope is.