The Fate of the Chosen Undead (Dark Souls Lore - UPDATED OCT. 31)

Ever since Dark Souls came out, there's been a somewhat muted debate in the community over which ending is the "good" ending and which one is the "bad" one. Having spent an embarrassing amount of hours playing the game, watching Let's Plays, and delving into lore on the wikis, I'm going to toss my hat in the ring and offer my two cents. Warning: The vast majority of my evidence is anecdotal and relies on memory. I'll link to pertinent information if I find it necessary, or if I remember to do so. There's a TON of speculation here. Buyer beware.

To Link the Fire

Many Dark Souls players in the first days after release were puzzled by the game's abrupt end. After defeating Gwyn, the hollowed out god acting as a sentinel guarding the dying First Flame, most players accessed the bonfire in the center of the arena. That the bonfire would be there was no surprise: a bonfire appears after the defeat of each Lord, allowing for immediate succor after a hard fought battle (also, for warping the hell out). However, the Kiln's bonfire is not accessed by a command to "Light Bonfire," but, rather, "Link the Fire." Immediately upon doing so, the player is treated to a cutscene in which the character lights the bonfire and then self-immolates in a brilliant and quickly expanding fireball.

Now, in hindsight, none of this is particularly surprising. Dark Sun Gwyndolin (speaking through the illusion of Gwynevere) and Kingseeker Frampt both exhort the player to take Lord Gwyn's place and link the bonfires, thus perpetuating the Age of Fire. Some players may have interpreted this as the player character defeating Gwyn and inheriting the throne of Anor Londo and reigning over healed world, but it's quite clear that what the proponents of linking the fire intended was for the player character to sacrifice himself as Lord Gwyn had, offer himself as fuel for the First Flame, effectively buying another thousand years or so of light.

There's a lot of justifiable anger toward this ending and the NPCs that urge its execution, as it feels like player manipulation. Essentially, linking the fire, and learning the truth of what that means, amounts to a trick. It's not an outright deception. It's mostly a series of lies by omission. Frampt repeatedly says that the player character is chosen to succeed Lord Gwyn, but never says what that succession entails.

The Dark Lord

The other ending is the one that is most en vogue. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen an LP end with a Link the Fire ending since Rurikhan's Artorias playthrough. It's entirely understandable from an aesthetic point of view. Instead of linking the fire, the triumphant player character emerges from the Kiln of the First Flame to meet the worshipping gaze of the primordial serpents in the darkness of Firelink Altar. It's certainly the more badass of the two endings, with the character striding down the stairs, the white light of the Kiln framing his form as he advances into the darkness, the music swelling, and one of the serpents saying, "Let true Dark be cast upon the world. Our Lord hath return'st!"

One of the most telling things about the Dark Lord ending is that the player is never quite sure which serpent is addressing him. The voice makes the point that both Darkstalker Kaathe and Kingseeker Frampt are present and waiting to serve the new monarch. This is quite a reversal from the rhetoric Kaathe delivers when the player first encounters him in the Abyss. There, after defeating the Four Kings, the player is told by Kaathe that Frampt is a deluded deceiver who befriended Gwyn to the detriment of the human race. Kaathe weaves a tale of the pygmy (hinted at in the game's opening, Kaathe refers to him as "your progenitor"), who found the aberrant Lord Soul in the First Flame: the Dark Soul. He extols the player to end the Age of Fire, which he claims has been holding back the Age of Dark.

When the player decides not to link the fire, he is essentially opening the Abyss to swallow the physical world, removing the barriers erected by Gwyn and the other Lords to prevent this from happening. This is a somewhat controversial reading of the Dark Lord ending. Many players prefer to interpret the Dark Lord ending as heralding an age where the world is ruled by mankind, unfettered by the controlling hand of the gods. However, I believe this to be an idealistic and wrongheaded interpretation, especially considering details brought to light by the new content.

The Souls of Lords

First, an analysis of the genesis of the world of Dark Souls is needed. This won't be exhaustive, but it will provide a foundation for what is discussed later.

The game's opening cinema establishes some basic history: Great stone dragons ruled the world, but it's not exactly clear who they ruled over. The landscape appears to be something like the landscape of Ash Lake, archtrees stretching as far as the horizon, the land gray and featureless. It seems, from implication, that humans were not numbered among those ruled by the dragons. Non-humans fought and defeated the dragons, using the power of the Souls of Lords found within the enigmatic First Flame. Each Lord Soul appears to have magnified the power of god-like beings, rendering them strong enough to destroy the dragons and take the world for themselves.

What emerged was an odd power structure, centered in the Mount Olympus of this world, Lordran. Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, seized the mantle of supreme lordship, probably because he was the only one who desired it. I have no solid evidence for this other than implication. Gravelord Nito's sole focus, implied in his Lord Soul's item description, is in the administration of death to all manner of creatures. In fact, my posit that the Lord Souls magnified the exisiting powers of the Lords rather than conferring power is based on a line found in Nito's Lord Soul item description, which states that the soul is powerful enough to satiate the Lordvessel, even though much of its power had been given up to death. The Witch of Izalith, similarly, would have been an unlikely candidate for godhood, as her focus seems to have been in the refinement of flame sorceries (replaced by pyromancy during the time of the game).

Now, for a long while it seems that this power structure was sufficient to adminster the day-to-day world. Humans emerged from the darkness and began to multiply. The gods, led by Gwyn, asserted lordship over the humans, and many humans worshipped them in return. Then, eventually, everything started to go to shit.

The Fall of the Lords

At some point, the First Flame, and all other fires emerging from it, began to fade. The reasons for this, considering the new content, seem fairly obvious, but will be discussed at length a little later. The Lords' reactions to this were highly consequential in forming the world the player encounters during the game.

It seems that Gwyn and the gods in Anor Londo approached the problem of the fading flames with some denial at first, and then growing concern. It is probable that Gwyn knew the fading to be substantially irreversible, but devised a method by which the Age of Fire could be perpetuated. The interplay of humanity, the bonfires, the darksign, and the undead strongly suggests that Gwyn's plan was to combat the spread of the Abyss and the growing power of the Dark Soul by causing portions of the Dark Soul to be consumed to feed the flames. This logic seems sound on its face: bolster your own power by reducing the power of your enemy. However, signs point to the intractability of the Dark Soul. In the new content, the anthropomorphic mushroom, Elizabeth, opines that the Abyss may be unstoppable. But more on that later.

As established above, Gwyn and Anor Londo, facing the appearance of undead humans seeking to unite pieces of the Dark Soul, reacted by devising a scheme by which the Dark Soul could be destroyed in the flames one piece at a time. Gravelord Nito appears to have been entirely passive in this, which is unsurprising. As the administrator of death, Nito would understand the finity of his own existence, and likely would have done nothing to aid or hinder Gwyn's efforts. But what about the dragons, you say? Why would a passive creature such as Nito have stirred to fight them? I submit that Nito fought against the dragons because of their immortality. Nito would have chafed at the unnatural existence of such beings, and aided the other Lords to establish the natural order of death among all creatures. While Nito continued to deal in death deep within the Tomb of the Giants, the Witch of Izalith was anything but passive.

The Witch of Izalith seems to have disagreed with Gwyn's plan and decided to attempt her own solution to the problem of the fading flames. Having devoted her life to the study of flame sorceries, the Witch used a soul to attempt to recreate the First Flame. Her Lord Soul description clearly says "a soul," rather than "this soul," was used as the catalyst for her ritual. The item description also states that she failed horribly, mutating herself and her children into hideous creatures, transforming her newly built kiln into the Bed of Chaos, and producing the Demon Firesage, the first Chaos Demon.

The new content has shed some light on this event as well. The essential question is: what went wrong that caused such a catastrophe? A parallel happening can be found in the spread of the Abyss in Oolacile. According to item descriptions of the bloated heads of the denizens of Oolacile Township, these twisted creatures were humans whose "humanity went wild," thus deforming them. Similarly (and, indeed, originally), Manus, Father of the Abyss, is described as a primeval human whose humanity went wild. Since humanity is merely a bequeathed shard of the Dark Soul, I submit that the Witch of Izalith caused the flame of a typical First Flame soul to "go wild," thus producing the force of Chaos. Notice that the power of Chaos is detemined by the amount of humanity possessed by the user. In this way, it operates much as the bonfires do, but instead of manifesting as a protective, stable force, it "goes wild," using the humanity as fuel for an uncontrollable force of destruction.

Gwyn and his knights appear to have entered Izalith in force to attempt to snuff this new threat forever. The knights that learned to fight the Chaos Demons were distinguished by their huge weapons and charred armor; hence: the Black Knights. It's a common misconception that the Black Knights' armor was charred when they were burned by Gwyn kindling the First Flame, but the item descriptions make it clear that they were burned to ashes by that happening, and that their armor was charred during battles with the demons. It seems that Gwyn and the Black Knights were able to bottleneck the demons at the swamp, but could achieve no lasting victory. In any case, it's clear that Gwyn was unsuccessful. Despite his efforts, his old allies had fallen away, one to passivity, one to self-destruction.

Facing the encroaching threat of undead humans, the weakening power of the flames, and the irrelevance or corruption of his strongest compatriots, Gwyn bequeathed much of his power to his remaining allies (Seath the Scaleless and the Four Kings of New Londo), and set out to the Kiln of the First Flame to commit the ultimate sacrifice.

The Ballad of Knight Artorias

[Section temporarily redacted for revision]

The Dark Soul

All of this begs the question: what the hell is going on here, and what, if anything, does all this have to do with the Undead? I'm so glad you asked.

The opening cinema reveals that some people bear the curse of the Darksign, which condemns a living person to, upon death, persist as an undead, driven by an inexplicable need to travel to Lordran before hollowing. Again, I have very little in the way of evidence to back this up, but I speculate that the Darksign was caused by the inception of the Abyss. In essence, I believe that, just as the extreme proximity to the heart of the Abyss condemned the citizens of Oolacile to mutate, their humanity having been driven wild, the birth of the Abyss triggered a kind of clarion call, a beckoning for the shards of the Dark Soul to reunite. I think this, and not some mystical call from Dark Sun Gwyndolin, is why undead with the requisite strength make pilgrimage to Lordran: because the Abyss is there, and so are the barriers to its ineluctable spread.

The reasons I believe this are entirely subjective. Judge the evidence and decide for yourself.

1. The heirs of Gwyn have invested a lot of energy in locating and exploiting undead who have the capacity to withstand massive amounts of humanity. They clearly fear the Dark Soul. Seath's experiments on immortality and sorcery may have driven him mad, but the purpose of his prison tower, the Channelers, and his campaign of kidnapping humanity fertile maidens has but one purpose: to recruit new fire keepers. We've always known that the Pisaca Demons were maidens subjected to awful experiments, but the purpose was obscured. Well, look at where the Pisacas are. In the cage behind them is one of the rare Fire Keeper Souls. Rhea of Thorolund, the only untransformed maiden in the game, possesses 7 humanity - more than any one NPC. Knight Lautrec even makes mention that she's brimming with humanity. These maidens are kidnapped, jailed, and forced to absorb more and more humanity until they qualify as fire keepers, or they mutate into horrific aberrations. I'll let you guess which is the (much) more common result. By locating these maidens (Anastacia of Astora is one of the "lucky" ones) and converting them to fire keepers, the servants of Anor Londo have fashioned devout receptacles of infinte humanity, and have assured their life's purpose is devoted to destroying humanity to feed the flames.

2. Point 1 examines the purpose of the fire keepers and the bonfires, but doesn't explain why undead are revived there, again and again, until hollowing. I suspect that, much like other creatures, undead have both light souls and humanity. One needs the other. A human soul is uniquely fit to interact with humanity, where non-human souls are overwhelmed and infected by it. When an undead is subdued, if his soul remains intact, it is drawn back to a mass of humanity. The Darksign probably initially caused all humanity to be drawn to the Abyss, until Gwyn devised the bonfires as a means to redirect the vessels of humanity (i.e., the undead) to predetermined points. It's important to note here that the humanity does not seek to join the Abyss per se, but seeks to exist in its pure, completed form within a single entity powerful enough to contain it. Undead are responding to an urge to gather humanity and bring it together. They are urged in the opposite direction by religion, which teaches the virtues of kindling the bonfires.

3. I believe the Abyss is a byproduct of this concentration, the Dark Soul blotting out all around it, calling more shards back, growing in strength, devouring more of the matter surrounding it, ad infinitum. That Manus created the Abyss is incidental. His true purpose was to serve as a drawing point for all humanity to gather. However, he was an imperfect host, mutated and twisted, focused on ancient memories of a life no longer recognizable (see: Broken Pendant). Eventually, his soul became so overwhelmed by humanity that the original soul ceased to exist. His weakness was that he could not resist reaching across time itself to recapture his past, thus sealing his own fate. The Darkwraiths are seeking to become the new Father of the Abyss. According to Kaathe, they all failed. The Darkwraiths can be correctly identified as the opposite of the fire keepers, but none of them proved strong enough to serve as the ultimate vessel for the unified Dark Soul.

Of course, this leads to another question (don't all of these points?): What role do the primordial serpents play in all of this? What's their end goal?

The Serpent Was Subtle

I'll state it again, so I'm not misunderstood: The serpents are on the same side. Their end goals are identical. Follow the bouncing ball.

Only two items in the game mention serpents (the Covetous rings). They are identified as imperfect dragons, and they are the symbol of the undead. This is very telling. Frampt was apparently buddies with Gwyn way back when. It's not a stretch to imagine that this goes back to the dragon wars. By definition, these primordial serpents are the oldest beings around. They likely predated the everlasting dragons, and were imperfect precursors to their fearsome cousins. With the dragons in control, the serpents were probably like red-headed stepchildren, cast away to some lonely burrow, festering with anguished jealousy. And then fire came and changed everything. New Lords emerged and cast down the dragons. Suddenly, the serpents saw some hope.

Now, let's step back a moment. Being primordial, the serpents were around when nothing else was. They existed in an empty and formless template world, older than the archtrees, older than the dragons. When the dragons evolved, they were born with the scales of immortality. The world, and all creatures within it, was subjugated. The serpents could never hope to fight against their nearly invincible cousins, and, being immortal, the dragons would never die. The serpents could not simply outlast them. So, when the god-beings seized the Lord Souls, the serpents chose sides. Frampt allied himself with Gwyn, Kaathe with the furtive pygmy. Both serpents saw their champions as the conduit by which the the serpents could rise back to primacy. The gods would rid them of the dragons. The humans would rid them of the gods. The Abyss would swallow the humans. Game, set, match.

Short version: The serpents are playing the long game, and the Dark Soul gives them the opportunity to do so.

Think of the Dark Soul as a kind of reset button on the world. The serpents are the only beings that appear to be able to survive in the Abyss. In fact, they seem quite at home there. So, if Kaathe and Frampt both want the Abyss to swallow the world, why the duplicity?

Because the Lord Souls are still out there, holding back the Dark. While they exist, there will always be a counterforce. The serpents are playing the numbers. Kaathe is consistently trying out new recruits to take assume the mantle of Manus. Frampt has been whispering in the ear of Dark Sun Gwyndolin, who is now completely isolated and paranoid, convincing him to go along with the mad plan to seize the Lord Souls and have an undead champion link the fire. Consider:

If Frampt succeeds in convincing an undead sufficiently strong to collect the Lord Souls to do so, and then eliminate the last being capable of defending the flames, it doesn't really matter if he links the fire. The Abyss will find a new vessel, and, without the Lord Souls in the hands of powerful beings, the path to snuffing the flames for good has been cleared. What's another thousand years, anyway?

On the other hand, if Kaathe succeeds, a human vessel sufficiently powerful to collect the Lord Souls and kill Gwyn should be strong enough to serve as the vessel for the Dark Soul. The Dark Lord, natch.

So, if you link the flame, you become the new Gwyn, a hollow mad god stalking the Kiln of the First Flame, and the serpents win.

If you become the Dark Lord, you become the new Manus, a vessel for the united Dark Soul, the Father of the Eternal Abyss, and the serpents win.

In Conclusion

So, according to my analysis, no matter what the player character does, you've been played by the serpents. Even if you eschew the patronage of either serpent, they're still waiting for you if you choose not to link the fire. The cake is baked.

It's like the mushroom says: "The Abyss may be unstoppable."

 

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