[00:00] After you finish the Souls game, you have questions. Why am I on fire? What's the point of locking myself in this cave? Which ending is the right one? And, of course, the age-old question,
[00:12] why do they call him Big Hat Logan? First, let's start with the player character. Who is the chosen undead? Well, they are who you make them. Whether you were a thief or a knight, from Sora or Katarina, it doesn't matter.
[00:27] What's important is that you ended up in a cell at the right place and the right time. For you head to Lordran in accordance with an old legend that speaks of a mission for a chosen undead hero. This legend is, by the way, most likely a deception by the gods, probably designed to
[00:44] lure powerful heroes to Lordran, but we'll get to that later. Is there a world outside Lordran? Lordran is just the land of the gods, and there is a wider world of man, with many more countries therein. The fate of the world largely revolves around Lordran, though, so we never go to these other places.
[01:01] But the characters we do meet in Lordran often hail from these foreign countries, and you can tell that they've been designed to be accurate characterizations of their homelands. What you're seeing on screen are the results of an art competition to depict these foreign places.
[01:16] So check out that video if you're interested, and subscribe to see the next competition really soon. How did this world come to be? Originally, the world had no disparity. Everything was just rock, from the land, to the trees, to the dragons.
[01:30] It was homogenous, static, without beginning or end. Then, similar to the Big Bang, fire suddenly came to exist, and it disrupted this eternal monotony. Now, there wasn't just existence, but there were states of existence.
[01:44] Heat and cold, light and dark, life and death. The result was a rock universe gradually changing into the world as you see it in-game, including its overabundance of souls.
[01:56] What is a soul? So when fire came to be and permeated the universe, so did souls. Thus, the soul is the power of disparity itself. They are the means by which the first flame changed the universe, and paradoxically, they are both the fuel and the byproduct of that fire.
[02:15] Similar to in Demon Souls, a soul gives you clarity, allowing you to think, but also life, allowing you to be. And just as there are all kinds of life, there are all kinds of souls, of various shapes, sizes, and magical affinities.
[02:29] Many bosses are these special beings with special souls, and the most powerful beings are the Lords, bearing Lord Souls. Who are the Lords, and what is a Lord Soul? The Four Lords are the First Kings.
[02:42] They were all attracted to the first flame, having only ever known darkness before coming upon it. Each one discovered this massive concentration of disparity's power near the flame, which they then used to establish a kingdom under their rule.
[02:57] Thus these massive souls are called Lord Souls. Of these four souls, a calf tells us that the pygmy found the dark soul, and it follows that the other Lord Souls all aligned with the other aspects of disparity.
[03:10] So, in contrast, Gwyn found the Light Soul, Nito found the Death Soul, and the Witch of Izalith found the Life Soul. These souls came to define them, and they would soon ally together to challenge the Everlasting Dragons.
[03:25] What is an Everlasting Dragon? So, they're a part of the original race of dragons that predate life itself. Much like there are wyverns and worms, there are also ancient dragons, or arch-dragons, as later games coin it.
[03:38] Their race is the progenitor to all other dragon subspecies, and these are subspecies that adapted really well to a new world and new environments. You still face some archdragons in-game, but these archdragons never are the original generation of archdragons that actually predate fire.
[03:57] The ancient dragons are commonly described as everlasting, thanks to their stone scales of undeath granting them immortality. However, when Gwyn learned that his bolts of lightning could peel apart those scales,
[04:09] the lords used their full might to hunt down the archdragons to nigh extinction, ushering in the Age of Fire. What is the Age of Fire? It's the era you find yourself in. It was sparked when the lords defeated the archdragons, and even as far back as them
[04:25] finding their lord souls could be denoted as the dawn or beginning of the Age of Fire. So what follows is this period dominated by the lords. Much of this epoch is also denoted as the Age of Gods,
[04:37] since the three lords residing in Mordran with their fellow deities are on the rise or at their zenith during this. However, this golden age can only continue so long as fire at the source of the gods' power remains strong.
[04:52] But eventually fire will fade, and only darkness will remain. This, quote, is what Kars describes as the logic of the world, And when that happens, the gods are supposed to be replaced, and their age of fire is supposed to become an age of dark.
[05:08] In the original Dark Souls, you find yourself at this crossroad. The First Flame is about to go out. Even now, its tower is barely reaching the world of man, and what follows is a proverbial night.
[05:20] And in this twilight era, the Undead Curse runs rampant. Okay, so, what is the Undead Curse? Ever since the first rain began to wane, the dark ring of fire has manifested upon the bodies of certain humans, a sign of the dark burgeoning within them.
[05:37] This dark sign marks you as an ageless immortal, though your endless survival comes at the cost of your own souls and sanity until you eventually hollow. What caused the undead curse?
[05:50] This question is at the very heart of this series, and the answer is really quite complex. You'll have a better time with this though if you're familiar with all three games. So when the world first began, a creature called the Pygmy found the Dark Soul.
[06:05] Who they were isn't known, nor is it really important. What is important is that they split the Dark Soul into fragments, and these fragments came to be known as humanity, which is a small black spirit found within every human.
[06:20] Kars refers to the furtive Pygmy as your ancestor. Thus, we are descended from one of the four lords. These games frequently question whether the dark force within humans is a positive or a negative thing.
[06:33] Your adventure through Oolacile in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC is a great example of that. Here, the darkness within man has gone wild. It's endlessly consuming and corrupting the land and the souls of people around it.
[06:47] And yet, there is dialogue here that's supposed to give you pause. I still think on that creature from the abyss that preined upon me My subtleties were far from lucid but I quite clearly sensed certain emotions A wrenching nostalgia a lost joy an object of obsession and a sincere hope to reclaim it
[07:11] Could these thoughts belong to the beast from the abyss? But if that were true, then perhaps it is no beast after all. This same duality is seen in the descriptions of dark magic, which are spells that are often
[07:25] driven by powerful emotions. Positive things, like love and calm, or negative things, like hate and envy. But whether it's positive or negative, Gwyn's pantheon fears the dark.
[07:37] For one day, as we mentioned earlier, their age of fire is going to end, and only dark will remain. This was the logic of the world, until Gwyn committed the first sin, and he shackled the darkness within man.
[07:52] This was a revelation we received in the Ringed City DLC, where the seal of fire around darkness on the dark side was finally explicitly stated to be a creation of the gods.
[08:05] So to some, like Manus in the first DLC, repression of their humanity causes it to rise and go mad, However, this seal of fire was placed upon mankind so early in their existence that, for most people, their shackles are all that they know.
[08:22] As a result, and this is really important, humankind end up living their lives through souls that they hold completely separate from the humanity that's within them. You only have to look to the white souls of adventurers that you find in-game as proof of that.
[08:37] Living like this is the lie that Alvia talked about in Dark Souls 2. All men shall truly be a new man of life. But is this the law?
[08:49] A construction of a sub-parter yet? A revolution of all men's human tendencies? Now, I went into the session late, to spoil my little fortune.
[09:02] But in retrospect, the most chilling dialogue Aldia has was this. Once, the Lord of Light and his dark soul had stand for humanity.
[09:15] And then, as the Lord of Light and his soul, we're led to believe that the Dark Side cursed humanity with undeath. But Aldia's dialogue means this can't be true.
[09:28] Instead, Aldia says mankind's lives became fleeting when they were branded with the Dark Side. So this means that they were originally immortals, and indeed this is the state that you return to when you holler.
[09:42] What is hollering? Humanity once stood proud within every human, but when the curse was put upon them, humanity became bound, lost, and repressed. So during this age of fire, humanity came to rely heavily on their white soul for their sense of self, and we can see this in the names of these souls.
[10:00] When fire fades, the seal of fire restraining the dark grows weaker. Thus, when fire fades, it follows that our dark soul starts to break free, consuming the white soul that we've come to believe is the self,
[10:15] and this process of losing the self is called hollowing. Dying or losing heart, it accelerates this process, so an undead must maintain physical and mental fortitude in order to resist this process.
[10:28] However, as you might remember, the Hollows of Londor in Dark Souls 3 believe that their hollow states are really the most honest shape of man. This isn't an easy truth to face, especially since the Dark Soul has become this ravenous,
[10:45] repressed thing. To stay sane as a hollow, one may need to drain the life of others, and the Hollows of Londor are universally reviled as a result of this. Ultimately, it just leaves you wondering whether this is really the best path for mankind,
[11:01] or whether it's better to just accept the shackles of the gods, or whether humanity's fate has been stolen by the curse, either way. How do we kill the undead curse? Well, curse is an actual affliction, just like poison or toxin.
[11:15] You can experience it filled up in game, and what this curse does is it locks the dark soul away from the self. It's really about the barrier, it's about the separation, and the Dark Sigil explains this.
[11:28] It says that as humanity leaks out, the curse accumulates in exchange. Unfortunately, humans are helpless against curses, and all we can do is redirect their influence.
[11:40] For example, when you use a purging stone, what you're doing is not actually curing the curse, You're actually just transferring the curse to this stone, and this stone was or is another person.
[11:53] In the original Dark Souls, we do something similar to this process called reverse hollowing. So this is a process that requires you to have humanity. And it's easy to assume that we're just absorbing this humanity and restoring our humanity,
[12:08] but what's actually happening here is kind of the opposite. Yes, a humanity sprite is taken into the cell, but it then acts as a sort of surrogate for the Cur, like Purging Stone does, and remember, we offer this humanity up to the bonfire.
[12:23] This keeps our white, regular souls safe, and it prevents us from going hollow. So the proof of this dynamic exists in Dark Souls 2, where using a human effigy is just like transferring your Cur to a human surrogate, and in Dark Souls 3, we found the Purging
[12:40] monument which is this enormous vessel that's overflowing with offered curses. Why did the gods curse humanity? So the logic of the world denotes that fire will fade and only dark will remain.
[12:53] Naturally Gwyn feared this and managed to enforce a fleeting form upon humanity. The face of mankind became irreversibly linked to fire and thus the logic of the world was
[13:05] changed forever. What is the fire ranking? It's a ritual for preserving the First Flame. With the decline of fire and the rise of the dark and undeath, the gods were thrown into disarray,
[13:17] and the Lord's peaceful relations ultimately collapsed. Before things broke down, however, they concocted a plan to revive the First Flame with a powerful soul, cultivated through firekeepers and undead bonfires.
[13:31] This soul would link itself to the fire, and the fire would inherit a new fuel. So Gwyn was the first to link the fire, and many others have taken up that role since then. What is a bonfire?
[13:43] It's your safe haven. Undead bonfires are fueled by the bones of your own kind, and they're connected to the first flame as a part of a network through coiled swords. The heat that their flames produce heal our injuries and can be collected in a liquid form called Eftos As for warping light is tied to time in this series So you can reason that a bonfire light allows you to warp across time and space to other bonfires in the network
[14:14] Bonfires and their firekeepers promote undead reliance upon fire, and they promote fire's reliance upon undead. Thus, the gods are almost certainly behind their creation. As for who went out and placed them in the world, it's hard to say,
[14:28] but it seems like they can be placed anywhere where there are undead bones, since we create one ourselves in Firewing Shrine, and even in early versions of the game, you were supposed to be able to place them yourself.
[14:40] However, it's important to remember that bonfires are primarily a checkpoint mechanic, and gameplay can't always be explained away by law. For example, you might think that all undead will spawn at the bonfire just like you do, but they don't.
[14:56] According to the Crestfallen Merchant, what actually happens is that undead will lay dead for a while and then later rise where they fell. What is a firekeeper?
[15:08] They're a woman who acts as the living incarnation of a bonfire in order to preserve its flame. So long as the firekeeper lives, so too does her corresponding bonfire and vice versa. These women are thus vessels for the countless humanity that is offered to the bonfire, which means that they receive the dark spirits, along with the effects of the curse in the transfer.
[15:30] The humanity wriggles beneath their skin, nipping at body and soul, and this causes great pain and terrific scarring, though not at extremities like the head or the hands. Firekeepers bear this suffering so that you can benefit from the bonfire, and it's through
[15:45] them, and by extension the bonfire, that you can strengthen your soul with whatever traits you desire. So be sure to always thank your f***ing... Oh shit!
[15:57] What is wrong with you? What is a god? Well, they're really whatever humans believe a deity to be. In most cases, the gods refers to members of Gwyn's pantheon, since they're the most
[16:09] widely worshipped in the world of man, but even those cast out like Gwyn's firstborn are still called a war god, simply because some people still worship them and such. However, just being worshipped doesn't mean that you have power. An example of this is Faris, who
[16:25] humans retroactively deified as the goddess of the hunt, Evlana, in Dark Souls 2. She was just a heroic bowwoman, but her story got twisted over the years until she became a god. People get
[16:38] kind of hung up on the god term because they're trying to define the race of beings that carry power in the series. For most of these characters, I quite like the term medial, which is a term
[16:50] proposed by Loki. What are medials? Well, many of the gods' followers and descendants aren't human, gods or giants, so we kind of have to make up a term for these beings. Medials is good. In terms
[17:02] of size, they're often between humans and giants, and these are beings like the daughters of Isolus, or Priscilla, and so on. What are the dead? The dead are corpses that decay without the power of life sustaining them.
[17:14] However, some, like skeletons, are often a product of necromancy, and there's evidence that others, like the ghosts of New Londo, become warped by the strong, lingering emotions of the deceased.
[17:27] What is a demon? Anything that can be loosely classified as a monster is called a demon, really. In most cases, though, demons refers to chaos demons who were born of the flame of chaos.
[17:39] But there are also titanite demons, and Dark Souls 2 introduces Covetous and Smelter demons, as well as the demon of Song. It's a common argument that a demon in Dark Souls is a
[17:51] chimeric creature bearing the traits of multiple animals, but this isn't a given. What could be called crow demons are actually called crow men or corbians. There are also snake men,
[18:03] maggot men and lion men, all of whom are never called demons. Like with God, the term is somewhat arbitrary. Basically a demon is whatever humans would consider to be a monster. What
[18:15] is chaos? Chaos is the nature of fire and life. Life is rooted in the soul. The soul is a product of fire's disparity, therefore life, like disparity, is chaotic. The Witch
[18:29] Vizeleth found the Lord Soul, the representative, and she tried creating her own fire of life to match that of the First Reign. Unfortunately, this sparked a flame of chaos, which creates
[18:41] and transforms new, often grotesque, forms of life. These became known as the Chaos Demons, And they threatened Gwyn's rule. So you'll notice that they're stamped out at every turn in all chapters of this series.
[18:56] The Witch of Izalith's yearning for flame became the basis of pyromancy, and pyromancy is one of her strongest surviving legacies. What is pyromancy? Pyromancy is a physical form of magic.
[19:09] Pyromancers carry along with them a piece of flame that's passed down from teacher to student, stretching all the way back to the witch and her daughters deriving the art from chaos
[19:21] and sharing that with the humans. The pyromancers then use that flame to conjure their spells, and despite the name, pyromancy isn't actually limited to casting fire, and it can actually conjure all kinds of elements, like iron or poison,
[19:36] but these are rarer arts, since pyromancy is a religion that reveals flame. Just so, you can manifest pyromancies like miracles with your faith, or actually even learn to perform them like sorceries with your intelligence.
[19:51] What is sorcery? It's a mental form of magic. Sorcerers study the natural laws of the world to actually comprehend what they are and how they function. They then use this knowledge to manipulate their power and formulate the process as itself, which we call sorcery.
[20:09] They're basically magic scientists and academics, and they're sorceries for anything from souls to light to the dark of the abyss. What are miracles? They're a spiritual form of magic.
[20:22] You cast miracles by reciting legendary stories which either feature the cell in question or embody what the miracle manifests. Most miracles are, thereby, based on the power of the Anor Londo gods, but there are also
[20:37] dark miracles and hexes that achieve similar results. Your faith in the story's truth makes it a reality. What is the Abyss? It's the power of the dark, and whether that's a pitch-black void like the realm of the four
[20:52] kings a viscous dark swamp like in the Ringed City or a malformed tusk like the creatures of Lothric the Abyss can manifest from any humanity and it produces new life or twists old life into new forms
[21:07] The Abyss is commonly unstable, and like with mammoths in all the seal, it can go wild, devouring and corrupting the souls of every other form of life. But it was not always this way. The gods' place occurs upon the Abyss,
[21:20] and while humans have largely lost connection with it, There are multiple sources that suggest the abyss can offer great comfort to humankind. However, it appears that path was lost when the abyss was banished, and now it simply hungers.
[21:35] What is Black Flame? Black Flame is the impenetrable fire of humanity, inspired by the power of our, quote-unquote, untouchable soul. In kind of a similar way to how pyromancy is inspired by Isolate's soul.
[21:50] What is the deep? As the age of dark continues to be delayed, some dark stagnates into the deep, and here the weight of humanity sinks into a horrific abyss, like a deep sea where no light reaches.
[22:05] Many worship the concept of the deep, as these dregs are seen as the bedrock of the world, and you can almost view the deep as a sort of abyssal religion. Its leader, Aldrich, concluded that if the world continued to darken, then there would eventually be an age of the deep sea.
[22:23] Why is time convoluted? With the first flame waning, the power of light also fades, and since light is related to time, the flow of time has stagnated in a land where the flame is located.
[22:35] Due to this instability, time spaces known as other worlds can randomly intersect here, and this allows you to briefly meet people from long before your timeline. And with the help of magic, you can cross the gap between worlds, usually as spirits.
[22:51] Why is everything in the world hostile to me? After watching this video, you'll enjoy my video talking about all the bosses of Dark Souls 3, if you've played it. I'll just list a bunch of reasons on screen though, because every enemy does have a reason
[23:06] for attacking you after all. Except Priscilla, I mean, why did you hurt her? That's actually really fucked up. What is the Painted World? The first painting we're introduced to is the Painted World of Arianus, which is hung
[23:20] in an orlando. It was a place to hide all the things that the gods feared, and so it's filled with many references to sin and the occult. In the Ashes of Ariandel DLC, we learn that the paintings are a mirror of the outside
[23:33] world, and so are burned and reborn to mimic the linking of the fire. Just so, there are those on the inside who would prefer to let the painting rot. What is the meaning of each ending?
[23:46] So, in Dark Souls, you're presented with two choices after you defeat the Lord of Cinder. Either you inherit the fire and join the line of succession, preserving the current world order, or you leave the fire to die without fuel, allowing the universe to reach its natural
[24:02] conclusion. By becoming a Lord of Cinder, you sacrifice yourself to restore the light. By becoming a Dark Lord, you choose to lead mankind into a new Dark Age with an uncertain future. In Dark Souls 2, fire still reigns while the curse still flourishes. You assume
[24:18] a throne inside of a kiln, which takes you to the First Flame and the Lord of Cinder, where you'll make one of these two choices. Turns out, neither of them really matter, for the world will continue to ebb and flow between light and dark.
[24:33] So, maybe you should heed a certain scholar's proposition instead. A new ending here is to neither rekindle nor squelch the first flame. Just simply embrace this twilight era and see what it has in store.
[24:49] As if to follow the consequences of this choice, Dark Souls 3 shows you a world where the future lords of Cinder refuse to either save the Age of Fire or usher in an Age of Dark. And in the tumult that followed, you are again presented with a choice.
[25:05] Do you continue to link the fire, despite the ritual not being as impactful as before? Do you use the dark of the curse to subsume the flame and lead the undead into a new age that their lord of hollows?
[25:18] Do you let your firekeeper snuff out the fire and herald in the darkness, only to learn that embers survive amongst the countless lords who linked the flame before you? Or do you betray her and take what fire remains all for yourself?
[25:32] You are unkindled ash, after all. What is unkindled ash? These are undead who previously tried and failed to link the fire. You weren't strong enough to bear the flame that you inherited, but you weren't weak enough to stay reduced to ash either.
[25:49] And so you became ash, devoid of flame, but still requiring embers as well as souls to heat your cold, cursed frame. Hence, unkindled are destined to seek the fire that remains in the world.
[26:03] How does the series end? Well, it ends with ash, literally. As the world burns out again and again, Ash itself arises. This is a new being, a new species really, that's composed of a thousand failures who had tried to link the fire over the years.
[26:21] But Ash doesn't really belong in this world, and honestly, they have more in common with the beings of the Painted World instead, where all of fire's discarded things reside. So, they fight for a new purpose, to reunite the Dark Soul.
[26:37] and paint a new world with it, so that we can finally escape this ashen wasteland that Gwyn has created. So, a slave knight called Gael, hollowed beyond belief, sacrifices himself for a new world,
[26:51] and the painter paints a world called Ash, a cold, dark, and very gentle place. This video is too broad. I want specifics. Join the club! Subscribe, check out other creators in this space, and enjoy endless hours of content
[27:08] that has been made in the years before you saw this video. Before I go, I wanted to give a shout out to one of my favorite Twitch streamers, 39daf. I watched her watch my video after she completed Dark Souls 3, and you know, it really helped
[27:22] me. I felt like I really understood some of the sorts of questions that people must have after they watch my videos. Who's the champ? Who is the big great champ at the helm?
[27:35] Her confusion was why I decided to sign you all up to extra classes today, so follow her stream and thank her for that. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time. When is Elden Ring being released? I actually know the answer to this one.
[27:49] Recently I had a late commute so I figured I could have lied at the end of the video while no one else is watching. So, just quickly, don't tell anyone. The release date is open.