[remote]

let this be the discussion thread focused on lore (or anything) for those of us who've cleared the game at least once. i'll start by offering some thoughts and spoiler-tag them just for the sake of anyone who mistakenly opens this thread before they want to, but from here on after this shall be the SPOILER ZONE.

so. number one, i think that the dark lord and linking the flame endings might both be canon. the chosen undead left and became the new dark lord, while solaire stayed behind and linked the flame, and this caused lordran to be reformed. some of shalquoir's dialogue does make me think i'm mistaken and that the chosen undead is the saint who threw himself into the fire, but i am currently undecided. either way, whomever linked the first flame became the sublime bone dust we find around drangleic.

i think the lost sinner is the witch of izalith in possession of a body, and my guess is that it's the hollowed body of artorias, given her fighting style. this sounds like a stretch, but there have been reincarnations of others, so... that's my best shot for now.

seath is the dragon hanging from the ceiling above the duke's dear freja. she guards his soul.

the rotten is the reincarnation of nito, and the old iron king is the four kings.

nashandra is a part of manus, grown into her current form by her want. she is vendrick's queen, with the one we see in drangleic castle being an illusion. vendrick himself, i am not sure... he could be the chosen undead. finally, the intro cinema seems to be giving the impression that your character in this game might be the child of nashandra and vendrick.

drangleic itself might not be lordran at all, but a place vendrick brought the dark soul and the undead curse to (possibly vinheim), whereafter the giants crossed the sea and went to war with him (because he had stolen some sort of power from them), all while nashandra pulled strings in the background trying to undo the kindling of the first flame... EDIT: thinking that the giants invaded drangleic for some unknown reason because of nashandra's instigation and this is how she got close to vendrick (which would also imply that vendrick was not the chosen undead but merely the king of his land) and the giant's "power" was not stolen until later, whereupon "experiments" began and many of the remaining giants were somehow turned into dragons.

but what really matters: who in this story has used the gender coffin?

lastly: why and how the hell is benhart in the memory of a giant when you go there and he was just sitting outside?

that's just to get us started. please let me know what you think and present your own thoughts!
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[Tokyo Rude]

Dj stay out of this thread please.

[Felix]

this is going to be full of spoilers to the point that it's not worth tagging, don't say I didn't warn you:

my thoughts so far are as follows:

Vendrick is not the chosen undead; Vendrick is merely an individual who prospered at some indeterminate time after the events of the first game, after Lordran was no more and a new kingdom had come to take its place. Vendrick and his brother Aldia somehow found Ash Lake and the Eternal Dragon (it's fair to suggest that this location was not popular in the future after the events of Dark Souls, since Blighttown was a terrible place and the only humans we know to have made it down there after the chosen undead were Sieglinde and Siegmeyer, who were both adventuring (and both helped out by the chosen undead on repeat occasions). They also found the Dragon Aerie, which was presumably known to Gwyn prior to the events of the first game but never seen before now, and as it was presumably unpopulated with all of the other dragons being gone, set about repopulating it through Aldia's experiments on the Eternal Dragon. Through this, Vendrick achieved some renown, though it is not clear whether he became a "king" as such at this stage, as Drangleic Castle was not yet built and the condition of Heide's Tower / Anor Londo in Dark Souls 2 (even considering that it may have been further damaged by the war with the giants which was to come) does not suggest that it could function as a seat of government.

At some point, they found that they did not possess adequate means to continue; enter Nashandra, who appeals to Vendrick and Aldia's ambition, and who persuades them to seek power through a war with the giants. Vendrick is victorious (and it is not necessarily clear whether he is "corrupted" by power in any way -- the game never implies that he is anything but a very successful and ambitious king), and uses the power of the giants to build Drangleic Castle in an auspicious location atop Ash Lake, where he first discovered the dragons (and which becomes the Shrine of Amana, created to house his crypt), as well as to create the "Ancient Dragon" which is encountered by the player in the game (the Ancient Dragon encountered by the player is probably not a real dragon: it drops a Soul of a Giant when it is killed, and the true Ancient Dragon Soul -- the item description uses the definite article, though I realize this is a very close reading of what may be a shaky translation -- is recovered by the player when examining the dragon memories in Freja's chamber). It is not known whether this artificial Ancient Dragon actually believes itself to be a real dragon.

Eventually, Vendrick discovers Nashandra's ambition, presumably realizes she is more powerful than he is, and goes about sealing away the remnants of the giants, as well as Aldia's Keep and the Dragon Shrine they built. throughout this, the undead have begun to rise up again (whether Nashandra has a hand in this is unclear; judging from Navlaan, Aldia's experiments may simply have gotten out of hand), and Vendrick is unable to contain both them and Nashandra, so he is forced to retire to the Crypt. As one of his and/or Aldia's final actions, they create the Emerald Herald -- in fact, this may take place concurrently to (or as a by-product of) the creation of their Ancient Dragon, as the Aged Feather description implies that she is somehow its child (as her non-existence, as well as the non-existence of anyone in the Lordran we know narratively significant enough to have become the last fire keeper, suggests that she is not a child of the real, long-deceased ancient dragon -- so that she is able to keep the bonfire where all of the other fire keepers have died or forsaken their duties.

Aldia's fate is unknown; Vendrick slowly loses his mind and becomes undead like the rest. Nashandra, having the knowledge of Kaathe/Manus, waits for history to repeat itself (it is not known whether she is able to leave Drangleic Castle or whether she has been contained), and for the four lord souls that were collected by the chosen undead to resurface, so that she can light the kiln of the first flame herself (or prevent it from being lit? whatever). Eventually, they do -- the Rotten, being nothing more but a semi-conscious congregation of death and disease that prefers to dwell in the dark, naturally inherits Nito's soul, the soul of the Witch of Izalith eventually finds a new sunlight maggot, something of realistically little import happens to invest the former ruler of the Iron Keep with Gwyn's soul, and something rather more interesting somehow happens with the Soul of Seath -- the simplest explanation I can think of is that one of Vendrick's lieutenants (perhaps a duke) is colonizing the mines where the real Ancient Dragon happens to have been buried, and using some combination of Seath's old research and the magical properties inherent to the site, is able to create Freja, who becomes too powerful for him to contain.

That pretty much brings us up to date. I don't know what the deal is with the Milfanito, nor how anyone enters the world of Drangleic. I think that any theory that involves the protagonist being the child of Vendrick and Nashandra, or Drangleic not being Lordran, is more trivial and boring than the alternative, and haven't seen enough evidence to support these, so I'm disregarding them for now.

[Rud31]

My half assed thought: Vendrick stole the 5th archstone and destroyed the land of the giants from Boletaria. It is mentioned several times that he stole something from the giants.

edit: More than Dark, SII is about the collection of souls much like Demon's was.
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[remote]

felix, just as you posted that i made an edit regarding my thoughts on vendrick (and nashandra) and i agree. you've laid out a lot of the thoughts i was having much more carefully. (i wanted to clarify that i don't think the rotten et al are actually reincarnations, but yeah, heirs to the old lord souls.) ng+ is going to be very interesting...!
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[Felix]

oh, and (I'll actually spoiler tag this because it's totally optional content) the darklurker is the chosen undead because why not

I think Benhart is largely there as a fourth-wall-breaking character -- he has a replica of the moonlight greatsword and he comments to the player at one point that Drangleic sure is a terrible place, but it's good for fighting monsters. I think he's in the memory of the giant because the player is in the memory of the giant and just winds up getting dragged along somehow, as though in a dream.

[mauve]

re: lost sinner. yeah that's the witch confirmed. specifically, beating her on ng+ nets you the 'old witch soul', which you can trade in for the chaos blade. would not be surprised if that was artorias' body given what the attack patterns are, but not sure.

i get the feeling ng+ is going to tell everyone a lot more than ng. mode of the game for those who really want to dig in, yeah?

i can check the translations of whatever made its way to the japanese wiki if anyone really wants, but I'm pretty confident they're accurate still.
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[Felix]

oh, and it goes without being said that the Ash Lake / Eternal Dragon bit is probably the shakiest (and least essential) part of my whole analysis there, since the Ancient Dragon in Freja's chamber would've been sufficient to serve as inspiration for Vendrick and Aldia's experiments if they found that instead (there's definitely greater evidence to support that if we're only looking at Dark Souls 2 on its own), and the timeline isn't particularly sensitive on whether Vendrick and Aldia were able to achieve anything beyond the capabilities of ordinary men before Nashandra's intervention. but I like my theory because of the significance of the locations and because of the implication that Vendrick was some kind of great man in his own right.

mauve, has anyone confirmed whether you can get the bosses to drop the old lord souls on NG by using bonfire ascetics if you don't want to go through NG+?

thinking on it a little more, I think the "everyone entering Drangleic under inexplicable circumstances and gradually going insane" is successful enough as a narrative motif that it doesn't really need better explanation; between Benhart's "welp, got killing to do" and the Emerald Herald's repeated instruction to "seek the king" (remember, per the circumstances of her creation, that invocation could be the only reason she's even there; as some sort of failsafe left to help someone save the world), it isn't hard to read the whole thing as (relatively elegant) Meta Videogame Justification

the Milfanito are totally weird and inexplicable though (as much of a narrative and aesthetic high as the game is on around when you discover them), the world of Dark Souls can't really accommodate any more Old Wise Overseers. there was that one locked in the cell in the castle that gives you the ring that allows you to appear human when you're hollowed; not sure there's anything to that other than "right, we probably don't want hollows being able to pass as human while the kingdom is already going to shit"

[mauve]

i'm pretty sure ascetics work but haven't tried it myself. (no idea!)

and, yeah, it's obvious everyone undead is losing their shit as the game goes on, so something's at work there. nobody remembers what they were doing because they have always been doing what they are doing as far as they know, and if they were to lose their purpose they're pretty much done; which is not dissimilar to how hollowing worked in dark souls, but it was a bit less explicit there.(and less rapid!) maybe the nature of hollowing changed after the first flame was re-lit?

(come to think of it; i'm pretty sure the housekeeper lady way back at the very beginning of the game explicitly says she's not undead...? hm.)

i have some suspicions about the milfanito that i don't have pieced together yet...
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[remote]

[Felix]

barring the lack of any explanation of why Drangleic has a reputation as a land that can cure curses (unless there's some reason that only hollows can restore the first flame and stop Nashandra -- historical precedent? -- which would account for wanting to attract them), I am increasingly fond of the insanity-as-videogame-justification approach; certainly your past life ceases to matter to you fairly early on as any sort of justification, and the quasi-automaton reading of the Emerald Herald is the only satisfying one I've yet heard or come up with

the same people on the internet who seem to think Drangleic is supposed to be Vinheim due to the flavour text on one inconsequential ring (seriously, why? that's such a narratively inferior explanation) also seem hung up on what it is that Vendrick "stole" from the giants, and why he's so tall, and neither of those things really matter one whit to my understanding of it all. he heavily leveraged their power and their power logically has the means to defeat him. I also don't see any reason why Boletaria has to exist relative to the world of Dark Souls, but sure, whatever.

I like that the only thing that the old iron king and Gwyn are seen to have in common is an inclination toward self-immolation

please do share any Milfanito theories! I'm totally stumped there

[DJ]

[Felix]

at this point I don't think DJ has any more privileged access to "the canon" than I do! I would be happy to hear what he has to say!

[remote]

i think it's more fun if he lets us try to puzzle things out on our own for a while and i'm sure he gets that!
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[mauve]

i think a better question than asking what the milfanito are is 'what the hell is the shrine of amana, anyway?'

so, just before the boss of the shrine, where the bonfire is, there's a door you can only enter when hollowed. like, it'll just say it's locked if you're human. aside from a rare katana being in there, there's also another one of the milfanito. she doesn't say anything particularly new, but that is where the actual shrine of amana is. (in japanese it looks like it's the area name is just 'altar of amana', rather than shrine. hmmm.) so if you spoil yourself on this, she can re-humanize you when you have no effigies whatsoever, either on hand or in the box. this seems like a pretty big hint, to me; what exactly IS the shrine of amana? is some fragment of the dark soul there? Why is the crypt all the way out behind this place? What's with all the clerics guarding it? Why are humans not allowed to enter? There's more going on there than is immediately obvious.

(some other jp differences, according to their wiki: 'dragon aerie' is 'guardian dragon's nest'. 'dragon shrine' is just 'place of ritual', no dragons involved. a few other changes like 'lost bastille' is just 'the forgotten prison'.)
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[remote]

i assume the milfenito are servants of nito like the fenito (agadyne). they sing to the undead and almost seem like dark's version of the flame keepers, though there are so few of them. i somehow have a feeling they are not actually human — or they are, but they're actually more like humanity in a bodily form. we already know from the oolacile expansion that humanity takes physical form in the dark — maybe the milfenito are something like manifest dark more fully formed and therefore have the power to share "soft" humanity (non-corporeal, like the amount of humanity you have on your hud in dks1, rather than the physical and consumable sprite form).

raises the question of why we now have human effigies instead, as they seem to be a false substitute for actual humanity. or maybe something has caused it to take some new form? (it's totally possible there's absolutely no lore explanation for this because they wanted to revert to a health/humanity system closer to that of demon's souls and we'll just have to make it up.)
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[DJ]

[Felix]

This is all new to me, I guess it's good that I was willing to part with the Ash Lake bit

one thing DJ alluded to that I'm not seeing at all is the idea of there being other kings visible during the Vendrick fight -- I just assumed those were effectively terra cotta warriors since there isn't any lineage to speak of in the game as it is; Gwyn's soul has effectively been resigned to one of the most inconsequential bosses

[mauve]

right from the beginning, they make it clear that effigies are tied with memory. you are asked to remember your name and who you are, when presented with one. do they even talk about your humanity? i forget!

but, well, notice how everyone else seems to be having problems with their own memories? yeah. i don't think it's coincidental. there seems to be a big focus on what's being lost here, carefully tied into everything _in addition to_ hollowing.

that is, i'm not thinking that hollowing and the seemingly ubiquitous memory loss that undead are experiencing are explicitly the same thing.
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[Felix]

you guys are hinting at there being a lot more there than has thus far been revealed and I honestly don't think the game is withholding all that much at this stage

[Ronnoc]

[Felix]

Right so I just went and found that milfanito altar that mauve was alluding to. Other than confirming that they were created by Nito (which I guess frees them from the burden of having had any domain over the events of the first game prior to Nito's being killed by the chosen undead, which is good in terms of making all this work), I don't really have any more evidence (or suspicions) about how exactly they affect hollowing and whatnot. Some clue as to how the undead curse began to spread again in Drangleic after it had been absent for so long that doesn't necessarily implicate Nashandra (because Nashandra ultimately isn't that interesting)? Not quite sure. Again, I don't know how much we're missing at this point, I don't think it's very much...

also worth noting that most of the non-human enemies in the Shrine look like they were human once ... still no great explanation for the captive milfanito.

honestly if DJ knows more than us at this point it's because he's working on the "oolacile rides the giants" expansion

[remote]

re: my musings about human effigies and humanity earlier, remembering that you find one early in heide's tower, which i now believe to be the remains of anor londo (or part of them (hint: i think that things are not necessarily where they originally were, meaning anor londo or this part of it might not be anywhere near lordran)), i think the easiest answer to this question is the same answer to why we have (for example) the rotten instead of nito now. everything is in essence the same, but this is a scenario that has played out before, possibly more times than we could imagine. while the essence remains the same, things are "warped" over time and become altered images of what they were. as if the curse spirals out from every soul and keeps the entire world locked in a cycle of hollowing.
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[DJ]

[Felix]

Okay, well, maybe that too. Somehow I assumed that was outside your purview!

[mauve]

nashandra strikes me as a great big red herring tbh. if we've learned anything about the dark from the last game it's that it just consumes all in its path, sanity included. why should she be any different? while initial thoughts were that a generic "grr darkness" type final boss is lame, it's pretty important to consider what the dark is in this case.

that is, this round's actors here are a lot less important than the events that led to their existence in the first place.
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[remote]

item descriptions on weapons traded for her soul pretty much tell us that manus/the dark was split into fragments and spread across the land — the smallest part was "Want" (hence all the items you can get from her soul being "of Want") and through its need it became this ambitious sentient Dark, like Manus but closer to human.
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[Felix]

[remote]

i disagree about nashandra, sort of, though i do agree about the rest. but i think it fits, while also explaining why i felt the way i did about so many of the bosses in this game while also making me appreciate them and everything else about this current world and its lore more than before. (while probably trying into everyone's fading memories somehow — an effect of merely being in this time and place that flows in a cycle of decay, i would guess.)

i think a lot of things i'm saying are wild guesses that make sense to me, but i think that maybe even more than with the first game they've designed this one to present a story unique to anyone who plays it and tries to piece it together. certain things can only be defined by you.
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[Felix]

something to add that I forgot until now: the Chancellor is under the impression that Vendrick vanquished the four lord souls. so he may well have been a bearer of the darksign during some "cycle" in between DkS and DkS2. that's ... not inconsistent with anything that's been suggested so far, though it feels like it should be more significant somehow?

[remote]

i think that's one possiblity, and certainly the likeliest, if we don't assume that he was the chosen undead we played as
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

So which characters are the most moe?

[Felix]

Yeah, I still don't like that idea -- you don't make a previously blank slate into a character with their own back story and whatnot. I still think the only character in DkS2 that could reasonably be the original chosen undead (considering adequate vagueness and power) is the darklurker.

[remote]

right, at this point i agree
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[Rud31]

So this seems basic but the heck is the curse? Why is the PC the bearer of it? I'm still not really sure what I'm doing out side of killing big bad monsters because they are there.

The more I think about it the more I am going :\ at having to resort to a different game to explain what is going on in this game.

Maybe all will be revealed in NG+! Probably not???
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[Felix]

Rudie, my reading of the EH actually supports that video gamey explanation!

[remote]

i mean if you think of this game's story of a world cyclically playing out the same scenario every so often with actors in the story changing fate just a bit every time, you barely even need to refer to the original game at all for that to be enjoyable by itself. it's also videogamey in kind of the best way, where player death and revivification and ultimate victory is a metaphor for videogame death upon death and "beating the game." you could almost imagine this being the first game of its kind, had demon's and dark souls never existed, where they set out to make a game about videogames dressed up as a mythopoeic saga resounding through ages. but then, we do have that other game to tie in with it and man, i sure do enjoy that.
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[mauve]

gotta find more dudes to set on fire
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[8128]

is demon's, like, officially dark canon, or
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[Felix]

I really wouldn't expect so

[Broco]

The lore overall in this game is really a variant on Demon's Souls. Not that there's anything wrong with that, although I find myself less interested in trying to fill in the gaps than I was in Dark Souls. There's no overarching mystery here begging to be explained (like what the Dark Soul was or what's the nature of the Ages of Fire/Dark).

One semi-new theme that really came into focus this game, because of its connection with the previous, is how it really engages with the concept of legends. Most games use "legend" just as a synonym for "fantasy hack-and-slash". This game is concerned with layers of historical memory and forgetting, and the repetition of history that comes from that forgetting.