The undead curse fully explained. Now with 50% less metaphor. The real point of Dark Souls: • The Recurring Theme Of... Fire is Civilization: • The Metaphorical Meani...
And this is exactly what makes the Link the Fire Ending of Dark Souls III so heartbreaking. You - someone who previously failed to become a Lord of Cinder - are now the only hope left for a dying world order. You go through a long and arduous journey to vainquish the delinquent Lords of Cinder in order to open the way to the Kiln of the First Flame, where you can keep the world going just a little bit longer. You've suffered and struggled more than any one person ever should, and that you've made it to the Kiln at all is a feat of heroic proportions. It took everything to reach this point. Finally, you defeat the Soul of Cinder, and prepare to sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole world... and your reward is a meager flame so weak that it can no longer set the sky alight. You haven't stopped the end of the world. You haven't made things better - not even temporarily. You've just added a tiny bit more time to the clock, before the Dark takes everything that has ever been, or ever will be. It genuinely makes me tear up, seeing the player character link the Flame. You've sacrificed so much, and yet the flame is so weak and fragile. There's nothing left to burn. The Flame has finally run out of fuel.
Your Cycle may be the last aye, but you bought time for the few and their young to live even half lives. That has to count for something and perhaps give that generation a chance, just a chance to find a better solution. Yes there are theories that embracing the dark is embracing "progress" or the Next iteration of life. But the people that want to live the lives they have known have a right to defend that way of life. You as the player have the power of agency. The story of Dark Souls 3 pretty much confirms that the canon of the previous games is that the player character chose to link the flame every time. Do their duty. It is my head canon that without the DLC, You are essentially role playing as one of the final cycles of all the other players choosing to link one of the last few flames or choosing to end it all.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone The Souls series is only superficially christian. Clerics and the like are borrowed more from TTRPGs than actual Abrahamic religions. The core conceits, a cyclical nature to the world, death being a necessary component for life and other forms of dualism, ritual burning, views on contamination etc. are all much more in line with eastern religious frameworks. Elden Ring borrows from Abrahamic religions much more than the Souls games.
@@Shiftshapercat in my head cannon it doesn't matter if your character links the fire or not, because even if you don't; there are more undead warriors other than yourself. So they might just hunt you down. Neither of you can die, but you only need to die once for the other undead to take the lord souls from you and link fire themselves.
I believe that hollows are not only the base state of humanity, but of all humanoid beings when they are without souls. The only thing that separates humans from gods is the souls they posses. Gwyn was a hollow, same as all the others that lived underground, before the fire began, and was lucky enough to get his hands on a powerful soul. That's why we see Gwyn as a hollow at the end of DS1, once he is all used up.
The thing that’s always confused me on that line of thinking is that it implies gwyn, who’s soul is literally the opposite of humanity, has dark in him, how else could he hollow?
@@harbinger7368 your getting my argument wrong. ANY humanoid (ie: that'd looks like a normal human anatomically) is a hollow when without a soul. When a hollow gets a soul, they transform into a normal looking person like you or me. Hollows are the base state, and what differentiates humans from gods is that humans have a part of the dark soul in them, while gods have powerful souls not affiliated with the dark soul. As the soul gets depleted, they revert back to hollows, no matter what soul they have inside.
The thing about hollowing that I still wonder about is that they always tell us that hollows are mindless things and some definitely seem that way. And then you have others that are completely fine ie Londor and the Ringed City which are full of Hollows but they get along just fine, so it makes me wonder why some Hollows seem to completely lose it while others are still lucid. Maybe the difference is perspective.. if you see hollowing as a curse then that affects your mentality and causes you to breakdown but if you see it as natural progression you're able to retain yourself.
Going to copypaste and slightly change a post of mine to answer to your question. I think what determines a soulless hollow's sanity is their strength of will. DS2 Darksign tells you to keep a semblance of everything, before the will to do so fades. Shanalotte says that people who lose hope go hollow, and tells you to stay strong. Strong being a keyword, since Yuria also tells you something along the lines of "a hollow needs not be mad, no way our leader would be someone so weak". Vendrick says that the crowns represent the strength of the monarchs, and by receiving his blessing and wearing a crown you become immune to hollowing (and presumably, the madness that can come with it). Hollows are typically life-starved people driven by their yearning for souls, as told by desc like DS1 Alluring Skull, but with a will strong enough you can still keep your sanity. One such example, aside from the hollows of Londor, would be Lapp / Patches, who as Lapp calls himself hollow, looks like one under his armor, and is flagged as such (as in, he takes additional damage from Hollowslayer Greatsword). Patches' ashes desc read that he "never lost heart", so he kept a will to go on in spite of the hardships. This applies to other forms of madness too. For instance, DS3 Sage Crystal Staff desc reads that crystals devour the will of the user, which can be demonstrated by Logan at the end of his quest and very possibly by Seath as well. They're not hollow, but mad nonetheless.
They have been burning humanities since the beginning, so now they have neither the humanity nor the seal, hence the hollow. Only those who have been in touch with the dark can hold on, like the pygmies.
@@wenderzxanthome1465 One's will is also quantifiable in souls possessed. The stronger one's will the more souls one has. This is seen with the Dark Hand stealing souls which is life force in order to bolster the hollow's will/mind/souls. In essence souls are what create the illusion of life and all a hollow wants is to preserve that illusion as a separate self contained within a body.
@@wenderzxanthome1465perfectly encapsulated. DS2 makes it abundantly clear that a hollow can stave off insanity through centuries, so long as they maintain focus on singular purpose. Conversely, losing focus on one's purpose accelerates hollowing and the curse.
I always thought it really interesting that our "true" forms, despite being true and natural, are seemingly not a very pleasant existence. At least not compared to being "human." A complete hollow is emaciated, naked, and without a mind to think, living in darkness. We know not what they feel, but they do seem capable of feeling. Yet still, it seems our "shackles", despite being a curse, aren't all bad. It's a nuanced curse. And no doubt a lot of the info we get on it may be false, as well. Many ways to interpret things.
I was under the impression that becoming a mindless Hollow was a side-effect of the Ring of Fire imprisoning the Dark for so long, twisting it into something malevolent. Iirc, there are societies and culture built within the dark which hint it isn't as bad as it is commonly believed, that is until Fire has chained it long enough to become a terrible plague. Vaatividya's video(s) on the Ringed City goes into great detail on this.
I think the mindlessness is a product of Gwyn's seal, but the "being a Hollow" isn't. After all, the Hollows of Londor aren't mindless. As Gwyn's influence decays, Hollows become more what they were always supposed to be: true humans.
You way you are thinking about "hollows" and "hollowing" are flawed. They are not the same in the beginning of creation and the time we see in the game.
@@ultraspinalki11 Let me be clear, in the beginning it was more like an empty vessel, after all there was no light or dark at the time. However, later on when the process of hollowing is happening, that is more of what Rat is talking about here. The process of hollowing, which is to lose what make one human, is the complete absence of light or enlightenment. This is why at the end of three, you must incorporate the flame of the world to bring about the age of man. Again, why Kaathe is the actual liar of DkS 1. Without the flame and Gwyn there'd be nothing. There is an excellent cut line from Artorias, which mentions that humanity are creates of both light and dark, which seems fundamentally true.
@@virtualfairy9784 Londor hollows are only just barely clinging on. They're notoriously deceitful and prone to deluding themselves: see the curse stones, the clutch rings and the false rings. Londor is meant to give an impression of a functioning society but everyone there is barely functional and only clinging on through a number of tricks and the guidance of the Sable Church.
I'd say the mystery was mostly solved in the first, but the 2nd did help a lot to make it make more sense, and the third was mostly icing on the cake to help contextualize some of the stuff happening and why it happened
In the first game the clues where all over the place. But we didn't had an origin to refer to. It took 3 games to get a DLC with the ringed city and abundance of "ringed things" to fully build the world.
That’s why some hollows who are initiated, living in truth are completely competent and conscience, they’ve embraced their true form. While the majority of others who’ve hollowed that do not embrace their true self as hollow, by not being privy to the truth, or simply being in denial, manifest as the mindless undead when they convert back to being hollow. The character you play stays competent when hollowed, because they’re aware of their true self, that’s why not linking the fire is the true ending.
One of the briefest, yet one of the best explanations of the Dark Souls story. Good job! The fire is a gilded cage. It is a pretty prison that humans have been trapped in for so long that they've grown accustomed to captivity. They fear freedom.
I mostly agree with the take, though one thing, hollow is the original shape of people without fire but also without dark, the dark soul the Pygmy spread to hollows not connected to Gwyn, Nito or Izalith is what turns people into eldritch abominations, and is the underlying issue on Gwyn wanting to preserve the age of fire, rather than form an age of light.
This is why I consider Usurpe the Fire from DS3 and Age of Stars from ER to be cannon endings, in DS3 to much light makes you a slave, to much dark makes you a savage the balance from that ending makes you in between, basically sentient and free. In ER AoS you try a new path neither reinforcing the old order or frenzied flame since both have been tried before. A new path, a new choice, perhaps better or worse but a chance for both
Damn it rat, you've done it again. I can't put a finger on exactly why, but these quick little Souls lore videos are really hitting the spot for me. You're very good at cutting right to the core of what makes those games such special pieces of work.
I think it's beautiful how your punchline works to describe both a metaphor for civilization, as well as a much more personal, desperate, unrequited/unfulfilled romantic love for someone. Sure, as metaphors they're kind of vague to begin with, but they still work. The human condition is everywhere, and in everything :)
I have played all the souls games and watched countless lore videos...this is honestly one of the best .....it really explains one of the base core concepts that is often misunderstood....and explains some of the most complex dialogues meaning ......I can wait to check out the other videos
Maldron the Assassin most definitely could have solo'd the entire dark souls universe if he wanted to, however he is a merciful god and chose to let us weaklings enjoy ourselves
But the true form seems to be corrupted in DS3. (Gwyn used an ancient tree to link the first flame) In DS3 there are 3 forms of corrupted hollows, 1. Murkman: seems to be an oversaturated form of humanity, clinging to an abyss corrupted body of a hollow. 2. Pus of Men: maybe an abyss corruption or a curse of the Dragons 3. Pilgrims metamorphosis and (normal)hollow metamorphosis: praying hollows are trasforming into trees at high wall of lothric. Pilgrims seems to be once humas who consumed to much humanity, their transformation seems to be more brutal, the body ist ripping appart, transforming into pilgrims butterfly. And there are Angels, seems to be an dream state of an pilgrim. Each rekindeling of the first flame, combines more tree dna with humanity.
Great video! Congratulations! It's really nice that someone finally took the time to make a video to define what hollowing actually is to the bigger public. Since I've been essentially reharsing this to people over discord for the past two years or so, I'm going to drop a list of evidence to support your point that dark/humanity causes humanity instead of the other way around and/or that being hollow doesn't mean being devoid of humanity (that is, of the fragment of the Dark Soul) on top of the ones you mentionned already: - Nashandra's orbs and painting, Nadalia's idols black mist, Pursuer's dark orbs, etc. are all live instances of the dark triggering the curse affliction. - The Dark Pyromancy Flame in DS2 scales with hollowing. - DS3 Hollow weapons raise and scale with the user's luck, a trait inherent in humans as told by Anri's Straight Sword desc. In other words, a human gift boost hollow weapons. DS1 Humanity also raises item discovery, much like Luck in DS3. - Gael is flagged as hollow in the second phase of his fight, after realizing that the Dark Soul is flowing through his veins. - Vendrick and Yuria's words are further supported by the DS1 intro which reads "from the dark, they came..." (in japanese, "from the dark they were born") while displaying hollow looking figures on screen, and Grandhal who says that "Dark is the mother of all, all things were born from it". - Wrathful Axe description reads that Elana and her sisters took shape in a way that hints at humanity's true nature, and those children of Dark explictely embody the yearning for souls of the Dark at told by Scythe of Want description, Vendrick, and Alsanna herself. This thirst for souls is very much a trait hollows are known for as well, as told by description like DS1 Alluring Skull. - Shanalotte says that the "sign you bear will drain your souls, and that without souls, you'll go hollow". She's obviously referring to the Darksign (notice the "Dark" in "Darksign"), and we know from Alsanna's dialogue and DS3 Homing Soulmass desc that the Dark is especially hungry for souls, much like hollows and seemingly the darksign as well. - Pus of Man, flagged as abyssal and stated to be so in Follower's Torch desc, coming out of hollows. They resemble serpents who are symbols of the Undead and greed/desire as seen in Covetous Serpent ring desc. - The Overture of Elden Ring has a section on hollows that reads "perhaps bear resemblance to the primordial organisms". Finally, the official lore compendium has a paragraph that also directly support your reading: "Source are the source of all life and, as such, are a manifestation of Disparity. They are a product of the First Flame, and flourish when the Fire is linked. Humanity is the antithesis of Souls in that it is aligned with Dark and propagates along with the Undead Curse as the Fire fades. Humanity represents the original, natural state of human existence, while Souls represent the state of existence assumed by humans and all other creatures born from the Dark when they are influenced by the power of Fire." There is much more that I could add in regards to the "illusion of life" and the greedy nature of the Dark notably, but on the scope of hollowing that was what I felt would be useful to know. Once again, great job.
@@ratatoskr6324 The one known as "trilogy compendium" from Futurepress, the ones who also made the official guidebook for most Fromsoft games by working with them.
It's not just the ring of Fire, but also the dark circle inside of it, hence why the Dark Sigil description literally reads that it resembles the Darksign minus the ring of Fire. If the Darksign was only the ring of Fire, then that description would essentially read "it resembles the darksign only without the darksign". Besides, the "dark" in "Darksign" comes from somewhere
@@jeftecoutinho Yes, the game specifically tells you that. "Long ago, the Way of the White PRODUCED its first Undead, a paladin in golden armor. With the legendary treasures Grant and Sanctus, Leeroy set out for Lordran, Land of the Gods, in the first Undead mission of the Way of White."
@@jeftecoutinho being a hollow is the natural state, the fact that you cannot die is part of the curse. How i interpret it: there was no before or after, no warm or cold and no life and death befire the fire. Everything just was. Fire introduced disparity. Things could die now, and there wasa difference between life and death for that reason. The very rules of existence changed. Essentially that means it created time as we know it. There was now a before and after instead of a grey just "being". The fire was supposed to fade naturally, and the age of dark was the next step. Although we know nithing about it,we can still assume disparity is active during the age of dark. There is still life and death, a before and after. That is until gwyn unnaturally extended the age of fire. Whenever the fire fades now, the rules of existence get funky and start to break down. Life and death dont function the way they are supposed to (the undead + the fact that after hollowing enough, the undead start to fade as seen in ds2. I have a hard time picturing fading from the world being part of hollowing). Time also does not function as it is supposed to (you can fill in the blanks on this one with the whole time is convoluted thing). I also believe that every time the fire is linked, it burns a part of the world. This is not intended, as we see in ds3 that the world turns ashlike + even space slowly stops having meaning as different lands are being drawn together. The age of dark is getting burned before it can take its natural course. The undead curse is essentially a phenomenon of the fading flame, but they can also be created as hawkshaw pointed out. Sorrh for the essay.
This is great, absolutely loved. Its inspired my next Dark Souls run, and also taught me alot...subbed and cant wait to explore more of your content...thank you :)
I don't think it's quite accurate to say "hollows are the true shape of mankind". Rather, becoming undead and subsequently turning Hollow is, I think, the result of the Darksign doing its job of preventing humans from reverting to their true shape, as their bodies respond to the coming Age of Dark. Hollowing is more like a fail state of humans' bodies attempting to revert to their true form in response to the approach of the Age of Dark. Also, I think the way the term "Hollow" is used in different contexts changes, since in some contexts it specifically refers to undead who have lost all their memories and rational thought, becoming creatures that act only to obtain more souls, while in other contexts it seems to be almost interchangeable with "undead", such as anytime it's used in relation to Londor. Personally, I'd more readily take the former usage as its definition, given both the element of mutual exclusivity the two meanings have, and the known dubious proclivities of those associated with Londor. I think the actual true shape of humanity is one of two things: the shapeless form of the Humanity sprites seen in Dark Souls 1 (and the solution to the "Show your Humanity" ladder puzzle in the Ringed City), or a being similar to the Furtive Pygmy or Pygmy Lords.
Unexpected video! Now that you've put up Aldia's dialogues, how do you relate the "grand illusion" to yourself? Even though extending the Age of Fire is ultimately Gywn's intention for his ultimate own again, as a "Human", do you think it's worth it? I'm looking forward to your next video.
The big problem with Gwyn's lie (aside from the obvious) is that it rests on an unjustified assumption, that the fire fading will be an end to the gains of humanity. Humanity emerged in a sort of primal state of ignorance. The discovery of fire allowed man to progress culturally. Then the fire starts fading and the perverse treatment of those who start showing their true nature emerges. The hollows, the hollowing process, we encounter in game are born out of ostracization, suffering and torment. These people "lose their humanity". But who wouldn't in the face of such inhuman discrimination? We're told that to go hollow is to go mad, to lose inhibition. I'd argue that the treatment of hollows and the expectation of what it means to become hollow is the consent structure necessary for hollows to become mindless. If mindless is even really the right term. In that framework, the "grand illusion" is all the more insidious. People will literally torture themselves rather than permit a change of state. The whole world grinds itself to dust on the back of one man's inability to cope with change. Linking the fire is always the worst option. Except, there's Filianore's dream. Which I suspect makes it so that failure to link the fire always results in a sort of state reversal. Meaning that linking and not linking ultimately have the same outcome until Filianore's dream ends. Of course, by the time that finally happens, it's entirely too late.
@@rainbowkrampus Except we do know what causes hollowing. It's a combination of repeated death and most importantly a loss of will, giving up. That's why when it comes to all the NPC's they hollow when it happens. It has nothing to do with torture, it's never even been implied to be it. In lordran there is no discrimination, you are all hollows, Hell "Undead Burg and Parish" exist, towns of undead who all understand what it was like together. Yet they went hollow all the same. Everyone living wants to work together to link the fire or just survive or meet their own desires. All are undead. Hell some straight up like being undead due to it assisting their own goals. The only time we have of a human going mad from torture, is Manus, and he didn't hollow, his humanity went wild. Which really only helps point to humanity, the dark soul, being human's most basest violent instincts. They are more will-less than mindless. It goes back to the 'soul' being clarity into demon's souls as a similar concept. Those without wills being those without a soul in this sense. Linking the fire is the best option if you want to keep being human and allowing whatever humans and other beings around to live. Except for perhaps the primordial serpents and dragons, the like which have never been bound to reality as we know it. If you choose to let it fade at best you have a chance of fire re-emerging, at worst life ends and all humans wander as aimless undead. Like the nigh naked and moaning beasts in the asylums.
@@rainbowkrampus It's only still questionable whether that change is necessary now. Even events of DS1 are long after prolonging the age of fire, let alone DS3. Same things in education, you don't drop when you get the anxiety before your first exam, only after you finnish your last.
What makes Gwyn the first sinner is not so much the act of linking the fire, but how it changed humanity's nature, irrevocably it would seem. Men were born of the dark. They were immortal, but weak. Why were they weak when the Gods were so strong, even though all 4 had a soul? Humanity shared the Dark Soul communally, split between all humans. I think that's the secret essence of humanity. To huddle together in the dark and find comfort in that. But Gwyn linked the fire. Linked it to what? Vaati thinks it was linked to humanity, which I think makes sense. Humanity was enslaved to fire, their dark souls were shackled by fire. Men still had souls, but they were separate from their true selves. These are the white souls you find all over the games. Soul of a Forgotten Hero and such. The names of those souls is important; these are identities, personas, how people think of themselves and how others think of them. When the fire fades and the dark is unleashed, it interacts with these white souls in some way; destroys them or absorbs them, something that erases who you were as a mortal. But mortality is not man's true form, it's the form of their slavery to fire, this is important to remember. Another thing happens, when the fire fades. The long-shackled dark soul is released and when it is, it's a simple, berserk animal. All the creatures of the abyss are like abused, captive tigers finally let out of their cages. They go ballistic and kill anything that might be a threat to them. But that's not what a normal tiger is; normal tigers hunt, sure, but mostly they're a force for good. Not so, when you drive them insane with cruel captivity. Now imagine that the only tigers for the last 10,000 years have all been born into captivity. What does that do to the tiger? To the public image of the tiger? The whole idea of tiger-ness becomes "they're bloodthirsty monsters that should be killed or imprisoned." This is what is so insidious about what Gwyn did. He turned humanity into its own jailor, fooled them for so long that they forgot who they once were, and enslaved them into prolonging the age that he wanted to cling to. In his selfishness, he corrupted humanity down to its core. There is no escape from the cycle now. Humanity is broken, perpetuating its own misery, torturing itself in an insanity that was inflicted upon them generation after generation, until they forgot what it meant to be human. Fire broke humanity, and that's why the cycles in Dark Souls are cycles of destruction, cruelty, and insanity. The First Sin was Gwyn giving mankind a dualistic, opposed nature, Light and Dark, so that they would destroy themselves eternally in his name. And that shit is more tragic to me than any other story ever told.
There was also a problem with Gwyn's plan to prolong the Age of Fire. I remember having a short discussion about it with someone on Discord a while back. I can't remember all the details, so I'm sure I'm missing an important but here and there, but like all things, they're never everlasting. In the DS1 intro, the narrator says "soon the flames will fade, and only darkness will remain." Because Gwyn's plan was delaying the inevitable, it was slowly distorting the world, like how time was distorted in Lordran. In Dark Souls 3 especially at the start of the second dlc, you're going through ash covered ruins that look as though they're from different time periods, and at the bottom where you fight the boss, you find the old Firelink Shrine from DS1. And beneath that, the Ringed City. It's like how you throw extra logs into a bonfire to keep it going, and the ashes of the previous logs are just piling on top of one another. The world was getting worse because he refused to let nature take it's course and let the last ember burn out.
Letting the fire fade isn't letting the world end. It's only ushering in a new age different than the one gwyn created. The world existed before the age of fire and will continue to exist after the flame goes out. In fact holding on to the flame does more damage than letting it go out. Look at the state of the world in ds3.
Except letting it end is like heat death of the universe, all heat, energy, life and light die out when all the fuel in the stars have fizzled out. Which ironically considering the first flame can be seen as one big allegory for the big bang is fitting. It's better to fight tooth and claw surviving, perhaps to find a different way out or just to give another generation a bit more time. Lighting the flame again on the ashes of your will and victories. Rather than just let it all die and turn to nothingless, a dark void as deep, lifeless and cold as the abyss. Yet it's still inevitable, just like death is. Yet I don't see many people saying it's better to let their fires dim out on that front or the self delete rate would be much higher.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone Because clearing sickly growth to make way for healthy shoots is the way of the world. The Age of Dark/Hollows is not the end. It is finally allowing a sick world to pass on and giving the mantle to the new generations.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone Yeah, that's the problem I always have too. People hate Gwyn and think he's selfishly prolonging his rule by... killing himself to give future generations a chance instead of letting the world end instantly.
It's a shame that being Hollow just seems to... y'know, totally suck. Gwyn made mankind the perfect servants for his bidding; "saving" them from their largely undesirable natural state and telling them how to preserve their new form in the future. It's easy to hate Gwyn and not want to perpetuate his will, but it's hard to come to terms with hollowing somehow being a "good" thing.
Yeah, I don't really understand how you can want to be a Hollow. It's why I don't belive being a Hollow is Humanity's true form, but a byproduct of the curse
I haven't seen your video on why fire is a metaphor for civilization but I can guess. If no one irl struggled to keep our energy sources, food supply, health care, education etc maintained the world would go savage and any need to keep good appearances would be lost. Maintaining the age of fire is that struggle in Dark Souls.
Great editing on this video. Keep em coming, good sir. My only gripe, if i may, is that you didn't record any speculation on the benighted state of the hollow tribe: what an existence like that would entail. I generally very much enjoy your writing and it would have felt like a more complete video if you'd turned your pen toward YOUR perspective on what purpose a Hollow might serve in the warped evolutionary chain of Dark Souls beings. I usually dont comment but the notion occurred to me...
It's great to see this back up! Wholeheartedly agree, and it's awesome to finally see a larger channel arguing what I've been arguing for so long now with regards to how the Undead Curse functions. Any ideas at what your next video might cover? I'd love to see your opinions on the concept of the true monarch and how it comes across in DS2 and 3.
What I love about this game is that the same information can be interpreted in different forms and you are not necessarily wrong, I like more the interpretation that the undead curse is actually Gwin's fault and the dark sign is actually burning your fragment of the dark soul since is the fragment of the dark soul what makes you human once lost you turn hollow which is what humans were before they were humans
I played dark souls 1 and 3 several times but never completely undersntand what was the origin of undead curse or dark sign and you explained very well in 8 minutes thank you.
Great video as always Rat! I'd like to add that Embers in Dark Souls 3 greatly resemble a burned humanity. Do you think this is the same humanity that was burned in the First Flame for kindling? I always thought so.
I have a different view on what the curse is. The human becoming a raisin looking is natural. Humans losing their minds and becoming, well, hollow isn't. This is because I think the darksign slowly burns out the dark soul/humanity wìthin men. The reason why I think this is because they are called hollows, and of course the undead souls we pick up lack the dark part of the humanity (since theirs only the white part left of it). The way the curse should work, I think, is that it makes humans like us IRL. We are born, we live and then die. But since the waning of the first flame, the darksign is weakens with it and starts to malfunction. And by that I mean: it kind of works but also doesn't. It will still burn out the dark, but humans don't die: their bodies still linger on as a husk, Or rather, as the games terminology puts it: a hollow. I know Londor refers to themselves as Hollows, but I see this as a defiance of the gods, similar to the Ringed knights with their blindfolds. I also think that beings born of the dark are Immortal, or at the very least long lived, as we see with both the Ringed knights, who I presume have been alive since the war with the ancient Everlasting Dragons, and Pygmy Lords (who we see post Fillianor egg break along with a Ringed knight).
I legit just started a new playthrough on DS1 earlier today. I have to give the team some credit. After all this time and experience, I still find the game challenging and frustrating as any Souls title should. It's nice
This has quite the implications for the line “Don’t you dare go Hollow.” Prolong the age of fire propping it up by sparks. Or let it die out and return to hollow. Jesus. I wish I never learned this Ratatoskr.
That line is delivered in Ds1, where characters don't understand anything about the curse, or the cycle they're in. As Rata said, they view their human state as the their true form, and hollowing as a curse. When in reality is all the other way around. Hollows are their true shape, and the curse is what makes them look Human. But people realize this in Ds2, no one in Ds1 knows that, except for Kaathe. But even Kaathe is wrong about something then. He believes that by simply letting the fire die you can bring about an age of dark, which we, again in DS2 learn that this is not the case. No one in DS1 is aware they are in a cycle, not even the serpents, and how could they? If they only experienced one linking of the flame.
I think Hollowing as a metaphor for depression still works. To hollow is to lose everything that makes us ourselves, and our lives meaningful. It is to despair. We don't go hollow by persisting, by finding things in the world that tie us to it. I think, with this metaphor, we see Slave Knight Gale as the most human being there ever was. He was someone who lived a millennia-long life of torment, but who never gave up on his impossible task. He made a promise to a child he would provide her the means to make a better world , and he endured into eternity to do so. Even when the pygmy lords blood tried, even when he went mad and ate them, he refused to give up on that hope for the future. Gale had refilened himself to a being of pure Humanity, one whose very essence was like that of a Primal Human, because he persisted in his faith of achieving an impossible Miracle- and he was rewarded with it. To be human, these games say, to be the most human - it is persistence in the face of an absurd and cruel world, because the dream of a child's tomorrow is worth it. Don't you dare go hollow.
It's interesting just how much Dark Souls is one big Buddhist allegory. In Buddhist Metaphysics, Human consciousness is an illusion, and our excessive attachment to it spiritually unhealthy and corrosive. Being Hollow is essentially a state of Buddhist enlightenment, where the Human has lost their attachments to the Fire, which is a metaphor for that illusion. And like in Buddhism, one of the central problems is how much Humans love the fire, how obsessively attached to it we get. It is what prevents us from accepting our mortality, accepting that the Fire must eventually fade, and our efforts to prolong the inevitable tend to be morally corrosive and damaging. That attachment is represented by the Dark Sign, which are the shackles that let us cling to the illusion of Fire.
I always wondered why no one ever attempted a Spenglerian reading of dark souls, except for the higher emphasis on mythology and spirituality it seems to echo exactly his point.
I thought the tendency to become hollow was because of the Soul of Dark and humanity's parent, the Pygmy. It is not exactly natural for humanity to go hollow: everyone started out hollow, yes, but only humans can derive power from the Dark by way of their inherited Lord Soul. The Darksign, I think, is a side-effect of the weaking of Fire and the growth of Darkness. The fire that encircles the Darksign must be Gwyn's seal, which attempts at not letting the Chosen Undead turn into their true selves (powerful Abyssal beings?), but keep the sign potent enough for souls to leak from and give the Undead a taste of how painful it is to be Hollow, and why the Fire must be linked.
I don't think that humanity is responsible for hollowing, but rather the gradual consumption and burning of humanity by the darksign. That ring of fire needs fuel, and that fuel is the very dark it contains. I think that humans in Dark Souls may not be naturally humanoid, at least not completely. Whilst I don't think that abyssal monstrosities like Manus and the Four Kings are in their natural state either (they overdosed on darkness), Aldia is careful in his choice of the word "fleeting" to describe man's present form. Man was weakened and made mortal by the gods, remade to resemble their countenance. I think that man is likely to have had horns/antlers once they had acquired the Dark Soul (both Manus and the Four Kings have massive, overgrown antler-like structures). Note that the darksign kills whoever is branded with it upon "use", but the undead reappear from the ash of a bonfire (or at least beside one). I think that the darksign is on every mortal man, but for those who are not undead, those whose shackles are stronger, it remains invisible and their false form does not decay until they are dead. I think that the reason we burn a humanity sprite to restore our "humanity" is that it is used to strengthen the sign, causing the character to be more akin to a real-world human. TL;DR Humans only die because they are made mortal by the darksign. They become undead because that is their true nature (note that "undeath" can mean "immortality" in Dark Souls; refer to Logan's description of Seath as a "true undead"). Gradually, as the darksign burns up all its fuel (their humanity), their false form decays, but not before hollowing them out and rendering them soulless. This leaves them as a humanoid husk, a hollow.
I think that embracing hollowing does not make you hollow at least in the way it is considered by most ( a form of endless insanity ) after all in dark souls 3 you and others can or are hollow and yet they keep their senses of self I think that a undead can stave of this state either by keeping the flame and its shackles in your heart or embracing it.
I absolutely love how dark souls explores the natural state of man. For a long time, philosophers and psychologist have debated whether or not mankind is inherently savage and bad and that society makes them better, or that mankind is inherently good, and that civilization corrupts them. Or is it somewhere in between?
I think it's insane how some Japanese dude is way more versed in Hermeticism than any modern western philosopher/writer/religious leader. He not only understands the intricacies of it but is able to explore and explain them in such an amazing manner.
I've seen Hollowing more as a corruption of humanity due to the darksign, similar to how the abyss is corrupted humanity showing itself as Manus. That said, yeah, Gwyn definitely built a stigma around darkness, that much is clear
What you said is probably more accurate than mine theory is that since almost all unkindness purpose was to link the fire. If they manage to do it they become lord of cinders but if they don’t they just die and become next generation undead or unkindled and so on . But in ds3 we saw Anri of Astoras purpose was something else and after completing it and if she isn’t sacrificed we see her becoming hollowed. So could be it be just the opposite that Gwyn wanted to keep fire for himself for he knew that he will become hollowed again if he would’ve nit preserved it and knew that humans might actually try to steal it from him making it the reason he wanted to keep the fire away from people instead of fire actually helping people not going hollow. Sorry English isn’t my first language and I’m new to Dark souls
Love the video but can you answer a question for me? Why is Gwynn "alive" at the end of the game? Shouldn't he have been burned to a crisp when he linked the fire?
The flame seems to make an avatar to defend it. It is an amalgamtion of the strongest souls that have been fed to it. 1st its just gwyn, but slowly it turns into the soul of cinder. Which has gwyns moveset as a final phase. What we are fighting is not really gwyns body, more like something that has his shape.
Personally I don't believe that humans linking the fire was Gwyn's intention, or at least it wasn't in the beginning. Otherwise, why would he ever sacrifice himself? To me it implies that either he had no intentions or even the knowledge that humans could be used to link the flame over and over again, or that his plan to do so was still in the early stages i.e. a fairly recent development. I think the dark sign in its original usage was first and foremost a political tool to subjugate potential rivals to his reign. It's also worth noting that humanity itself already is darkness shackled by fire/soul. If you recall, the dark soul was simply another one of the lord souls found in the first flame. What makes it special is that the first pigmy managed to use it as a vessel for darkness, thus creating a new kind of soul with properties unlike the others.
Its been some time since I dabbled in Dark Souls lore, and I lost my stomache for it for a very specific reason. A series that prided itself on nuanced storytelling and an ending that allowed the players themselves to apply their own perspective and values to the conclusion was being forcibly bashed by the community into one, extremely narrow interpretation, with good on one side and evil on the other. Gwyn is cast by large portions of the community as an absolute and total evil, and any questioning of the Dark as an inherently good thing, and the good ending in all circumstances, is not to be tolerated. You duplicated some of those sentiments here, albeit by implication rather than direct declaration. I don't disagree factually with anything you say about the lore here. The error I think much of the community falls into, and I'm not saying you are here, is that they are unaware that they are duplicating one of their own philosophical presuppositions about the real world and placing it in Lordran. The entire premise of the age of Dark and the true form of man being "good", in spite of all the clearly monstrous and horrific characters and factions associated with it in the series, is based on the assumption that if it is humans' true nature, our true nature, that it simply MUST be good and we are entitled to it. This is an extremely modern presumption. I'm religious, as is much of the world, as has been most of the world historically, and a strong majority of those religions take a near polar opposite view. Mankind's base most nature is wicked. A serial killer is also embracing their nature, that does not mean a serial killer is good. The world of Dark Souls is extremely similar in nature to pre-Jesus Christianity/Judaism and as such makes it very very difficult for a religious person not to side with Gwyn. Mankind is, by its nature, doomed to devolve into an abomination. The temporary solution, prior to the messiah, is burnt offering. The nature of those offerings differ between the people of Lordran and the Old Testament Jews, but the premise is near identical despite the people of Lordran being largely ignorant of its nature. I've found many of the same issues with interpretations of Elden Ring's lore, particularly around the Greater Will. Statements like: "Its trying to impose its values on everyone else, that's the definition of evil."
Man is your take refreshing and well thought out. I myself have been wondering this. Ratatoskr has said that tge Hollows are Humans true nature. Why being mindless like a Hollow would be any better than a Human. True form or not it is apparent that the Hollows are not having it any good so I don't understand why would anybody want to be in the age of Dark, maybe there's some info we're missing but from what we have it seems like none od the alternative are good. Sure Gwynn enslaved Humanity to perpetuate his age of Light and forced us to rekindle it, but isn't being a human, being more, being able to express compation and love better than being a Hollow full of anger and hunger? I don't know, I'm kinda lost everytime I watch any of those Dark Souls video. Everybody says the Age of the Fire is bad and Age of Dark is good but they probably come both with pros and cons, only problem is we don't know anything about the age of Dark, yet are so eager to get to it.
I know in one of your previous videos, you put forth that the fire is a metaphor for civilization. Extending the metaphor, does that make dark, specifically the Dark Age of Man, some sort of idealized anarcho-primitive society?
Probably a bit late, but I just wanted to point out that in Dark Souls 1, the icon for humanity is Dark surrounded by light; humanity is the dark in between light, or perhaps humanity is darkness trapped by light
Okay, but why do humans come back to life? When Solaire dies, he doesn't come back. Why do the hollows try to kill everyone on sight? And how does humanity = undeath?
In our world, the default state of man is poverty. A fate worse than death. So we work to become prosperous and are shackled to this curse. But remember diogenies.
If one lets the fire fade and the Schlackes that bind the dark shackles until the shackles are no more, so we then turn into hollow immortal mindless beings, or do we turn into a kind of hollow state but still ripe with intelligence emotion etc
Thank you for this video. This is the correct way to understand the material concerning the curse presented in these games. Now something I still wonder about, is how, precisely, Gwyn linked humanity, not the dark soul of the pygmies, to the flame by somehow using himself as a conduit. What I mean is, why, of all the gods, is Gwyn a hollow when we find him? If being hollow is mankind's true shape, is Gwyn's final form a false shackle, and the result of linking humanity to the flame? Would Gwyn somehow have gone reverse hollow over billions of years, if Darkness was allowed to congeal back into grey mist?
High probability. God and Human are basically the same thing, but they get different status after getting different Lord Soul. 【Isomura: Our next question: is the Furtive Pygmy【こびと/kobito】, who only appears in the prologue, the main protagonist that has inherited a Lord Soul? Miyazaki: It's a bit of spoiler, but first of all, it's "pygmy"【しょうじん/shojin】 [小人 in Japanese, it can be read differently] Isomura: Pygmy. Miyazaki: It isn't written anywhere, but, the image is something like humanity's ancestor. He found the Lord Soul, fragmented it and humanity are like the fragments of it. Kinda like an ancestor, yeah. So the descendants, the humans, have a part of that Lord Soul.】 ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E4%BA%BA
This gets me thinking. Is this a zero sum game where eventually the fire consumes all, mirroring the entropy of the inevitable heat death of our universe. Or does the world enter a sort of stage of rebirth after the age of dark is ushered in. Where everything collects, accumulates and eventually explode in fire once more. Like a theory that our universe isn't the first and that the big bang is a repeating process. Are we at liberty to choose? Is there a right answer? Even if this wasn't intended I think it's an interesting connection to make.
My pet theory is that this is how the universes of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are related. Demon's Souls has a similar setting where each time the world is "saved" some quantity of Souls are permanently lost, so a lifeless dead world is inevitable, it's just a matter of time. And then perhaps by some miracle the dragons popped up from the lifeless stone world and the age of dragons began.
Wow it makes sense, in my view, I don’t know maybe there’s different meanings and different views but this makes a lot more sense, maybe I was tricked by the snakes, frampted , they convinced me that the age of dark was the age of humanity, the age of humans, not gods that’s why I Rebelled. the more I think about it after this video it’s all just primal animalistic dark which is true, I don’t want us go back to that in a civilization kind of sense, and plus I played the games when I was in high school so probably didn’t think that that hard on the subject. It’s kind of funny before I watch this video I had this feeling an urge that you would explain the curse of the undead and guess what you made a video today
I know I'm a year late. Maybe you read comments, maybe you don't, I'm gonna leave this here. I think why hollows go insane is because of entropy, disorder or chaos. As things go further in time, entropy can only increase and does increase. If you look at dark souls 1, locations like undead burg, depths, undead asylum or any other place. They look deserted, ruined and without any order. These hollows have literally no purpose and the places look really hostile, so it would seem logical that they would lose their minds. But if you look at Darkroot garden where the forest hunters guild is, those humans there don't go hollow or mad because they have a purpose. They are under protection by gwyn's flame and are stopping people from destroying Artorias' grave. Both undead merchants look hollow but are not insane because they found their purpose which is to sell things. So I think that gwyn has in a way protected human's from going hollow and mad by giving them a purpose which is to protect the flame which stops them from going hollow and losing their minds.
The mound makers in dark souls 3 were so close to understanding this. In their madness they knew a ring was a shackle of the gods. (the vertebrae shackle is a ring) they just weren’t looking at the right ring holy knight hodrick is interesting as he equates hollows to one’s who are mad or are in the process of going mad and we see this in the games for the most part. “But we'll all be mad, soon enough. And should you be Undead, well, all the more so." . Hodrick is almost on the nose with this next line, “Beware, the shackles of the Gods are fragile. You might need this. Etch it on your heart if you feel your sanity slipping." (Receive Mound-makers). In dark souls 3 the actual shackles(the ring of fire on the undead) is at the weakest it’s ever been and he wants you to place the mound maker symbol over your heart( where the dark sign and the curse manifest in the games to ease your sanity. The warmth pyromancy is also super interesting but my theory with that is after having the vertebrae taken they believed to have actually been separated from the gods(hence why they feared it) but in the world of souls belief is power so this new familial bond they sought was created with others who have had there vertebrae taken were able to create a flame of harmony (as the item description implies) and I think this flame is actually their own souls warning them the warmth pyromancy looks so much like a special soul item from ds1 but this is all just speculation I believe the point of the covenant is to just show there is some truth in madness. The one thing I never looked for though is trying to maybe see if the mound makers symbol is somewhere around the ringed city in like a design or maybe the symbol is similar to the city itself but who knows I didn’t look into that
Great video as always. But there are still some details that I don't really understand about the effects and the nature of the curse. As far as I understand, "hollows" are the true form of EVERY humanoid in Dark souls, gods included. All of them came from the dark but changed when they found souls in the Fire, and so did the humans when the Pigmy found the Dark Soul. So why would THEY retain their appearances as hollows ? During war against the dragons, Gwyn got the help of the human "kingdom". Humans were not linked to the Fire back then, they were just attuned to the Dark through the Dark soul. So what were they like ? Just hollows in armors ? It seems kind of weird to me. I feel like the Dark sign appearing is a result of the curse itself. Instead of being the result of the fire weakening, it seems to activate when the Dark gains strength. The ring of Fire burns the expanding Humanity away which would explain why regular human hollows loose their mind as well contrary to the hollows from Londor. Those ones have the Dark sigil instead, as you explained, which does not have the ring of Fire. But I also feel like the Dark Sigil is completely unnatural, like a modified dark sign. In the Age of Hollows ending, there is still a transformed Dark sign in the sky which shows it is a denaturation of the current age instead of something new. (Which is interesting thematically because they create an Age against the gods instead of despite them, and therefore cannot sever all ties with them completely). Humans are cursed not doubt, but what would they look like in a True age of Dark, which represents moving on ? What if we could really snuff out the First Flame ? If the curse links humanity to it, then its disappearance should rid humanity of said curse, right ? Would humans still develop sigils ?
id say fire is the representation of all human beliefs and traditions, whether it be their legacy, history, cultures, tribes etc. things that make us who we are, and the hollows being the true form meaning, the nihilistic husk is the truth.
And this is exactly what makes the Link the Fire Ending of Dark Souls III so heartbreaking. You - someone who previously failed to become a Lord of Cinder - are now the only hope left for a dying world order. You go through a long and arduous journey to vainquish the delinquent Lords of Cinder in order to open the way to the Kiln of the First Flame, where you can keep the world going just a little bit longer. You've suffered and struggled more than any one person ever should, and that you've made it to the Kiln at all is a feat of heroic proportions. It took everything to reach this point. Finally, you defeat the Soul of Cinder, and prepare to sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole world... and your reward is a meager flame so weak that it can no longer set the sky alight. You haven't stopped the end of the world. You haven't made things better - not even temporarily. You've just added a tiny bit more time to the clock, before the Dark takes everything that has ever been, or ever will be.
It genuinely makes me tear up, seeing the player character link the Flame. You've sacrificed so much, and yet the flame is so weak and fragile. There's nothing left to burn. The Flame has finally run out of fuel.
Your Cycle may be the last aye, but you bought time for the few and their young to live even half lives. That has to count for something and perhaps give that generation a chance, just a chance to find a better solution. Yes there are theories that embracing the dark is embracing "progress" or the Next iteration of life. But the people that want to live the lives they have known have a right to defend that way of life. You as the player have the power of agency. The story of Dark Souls 3 pretty much confirms that the canon of the previous games is that the player character chose to link the flame every time. Do their duty.
It is my head canon that without the DLC, You are essentially role playing as one of the final cycles of all the other players choosing to link one of the last few flames or choosing to end it all.
I often wonder how Christianity-adjacent Miyazaki is. He obviously has done some research.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone The Souls series is only superficially christian. Clerics and the like are borrowed more from TTRPGs than actual Abrahamic religions.
The core conceits, a cyclical nature to the world, death being a necessary component for life and other forms of dualism, ritual burning, views on contamination etc. are all much more in line with eastern religious frameworks.
Elden Ring borrows from Abrahamic religions much more than the Souls games.
@@Shiftshapercat in my head cannon it doesn't matter if your character links the fire or not, because even if you don't; there are more undead warriors other than yourself. So they might just hunt you down. Neither of you can die, but you only need to die once for the other undead to take the lord souls from you and link fire themselves.
wow cleared up so much for me, good comment mr. commenter
Babe, wake up. Ratatoskr just uploaded
Step 3... step 3 Isaac...
Shes... OH GOD!!!
No!
Na na na na NO!!!
I’m awake babe
Shut up babe I'm watching a ratatoskr video
golden
My exact thoughts every time he uploads
I believe that hollows are not only the base state of humanity, but of all humanoid beings when they are without souls. The only thing that separates humans from gods is the souls they posses. Gwyn was a hollow, same as all the others that lived underground, before the fire began, and was lucky enough to get his hands on a powerful soul. That's why we see Gwyn as a hollow at the end of DS1, once he is all used up.
Yes. "From the Dark they came. And found the souls of lords within the flame."
It''s shown at the cinematic of the first game that it's a curse PLACED on humans, not natural to them.
The thing that’s always confused me on that line of thinking is that it implies gwyn, who’s soul is literally the opposite of humanity, has dark in him, how else could he hollow?
@@harbinger7368 your getting my argument wrong. ANY humanoid (ie: that'd looks like a normal human anatomically) is a hollow when without a soul. When a hollow gets a soul, they transform into a normal looking person like you or me. Hollows are the base state, and what differentiates humans from gods is that humans have a part of the dark soul in them, while gods have powerful souls not affiliated with the dark soul. As the soul gets depleted, they revert back to hollows, no matter what soul they have inside.
@@remymabboux6480 but isn’t humanity what causes hollowing?
The thing about hollowing that I still wonder about is that they always tell us that hollows are mindless things and some definitely seem that way. And then you have others that are completely fine ie Londor and the Ringed City which are full of Hollows but they get along just fine, so it makes me wonder why some Hollows seem to completely lose it while others are still lucid.
Maybe the difference is perspective.. if you see hollowing as a curse then that affects your mentality and causes you to breakdown but if you see it as natural progression you're able to retain yourself.
Going to copypaste and slightly change a post of mine to answer to your question. I think what determines a soulless hollow's sanity is their strength of will. DS2 Darksign tells you to keep a semblance of everything, before the will to do so fades.
Shanalotte says that people who lose hope go hollow, and tells you to stay strong. Strong being a keyword, since Yuria also tells you something along the lines of "a hollow needs not be mad, no way our leader would be someone so weak". Vendrick says that the crowns represent the strength of the monarchs, and by receiving his blessing and wearing a crown you become immune to hollowing (and presumably, the madness that can come with it). Hollows are typically life-starved people driven by their yearning for souls, as told by desc like DS1 Alluring Skull, but with a will strong enough you can still keep your sanity. One such example, aside from the hollows of Londor, would be Lapp / Patches, who as Lapp calls himself hollow, looks like one under his armor, and is flagged as such (as in, he takes additional damage from Hollowslayer Greatsword). Patches' ashes desc read that he "never lost heart", so he kept a will to go on in spite of the hardships.
This applies to other forms of madness too. For instance, DS3 Sage Crystal Staff desc reads that crystals devour the will of the user, which can be demonstrated by Logan at the end of his quest and very possibly by Seath as well. They're not hollow, but mad nonetheless.
They have been burning humanities since the beginning, so now they have neither the humanity nor the seal, hence the hollow. Only those who have been in touch with the dark can hold on, like the pygmies.
@@wenderzxanthome1465 One's will is also quantifiable in souls possessed. The stronger one's will the more souls one has. This is seen with the Dark Hand stealing souls which is life force in order to bolster the hollow's will/mind/souls. In essence souls are what create the illusion of life and all a hollow wants is to preserve that illusion as a separate self contained within a body.
@@wenderzxanthome1465perfectly encapsulated. DS2 makes it abundantly clear that a hollow can stave off insanity through centuries, so long as they maintain focus on singular purpose. Conversely, losing focus on one's purpose accelerates hollowing and the curse.
I always thought it really interesting that our "true" forms, despite being true and natural, are seemingly not a very pleasant existence. At least not compared to being "human."
A complete hollow is emaciated, naked, and without a mind to think, living in darkness.
We know not what they feel, but they do seem capable of feeling. Yet still, it seems our "shackles", despite being a curse, aren't all bad.
It's a nuanced curse. And no doubt a lot of the info we get on it may be false, as well. Many ways to interpret things.
I think this is a great interpretation of what probably is the most iconic quote in the series.
"Every soul has its dark."
- John Darksoul
beautiful, astounding, one of the characters of all time, 10/10 👏👏👏👏
I was under the impression that becoming a mindless Hollow was a side-effect of the Ring of Fire imprisoning the Dark for so long, twisting it into something malevolent.
Iirc, there are societies and culture built within the dark which hint it isn't as bad as it is commonly believed, that is until Fire has chained it long enough to become a terrible plague. Vaatividya's video(s) on the Ringed City goes into great detail on this.
I think the mindlessness is a product of Gwyn's seal, but the "being a Hollow" isn't.
After all, the Hollows of Londor aren't mindless. As Gwyn's influence decays, Hollows become more what they were always supposed to be: true humans.
You way you are thinking about "hollows" and "hollowing" are flawed. They are not the same in the beginning of creation and the time we see in the game.
@@ClaymoreLinx I see. But Ratatoskr's video seems to imply they are the same (beginning of creation and present Hollows).
@@ultraspinalki11 Let me be clear, in the beginning it was more like an empty vessel, after all there was no light or dark at the time.
However, later on when the process of hollowing is happening, that is more of what Rat is talking about here. The process of hollowing, which is to lose what make one human, is the complete absence of light or enlightenment. This is why at the end of three, you must incorporate the flame of the world to bring about the age of man. Again, why Kaathe is the actual liar of DkS 1. Without the flame and Gwyn there'd be nothing.
There is an excellent cut line from Artorias, which mentions that humanity are creates of both light and dark, which seems fundamentally true.
@@virtualfairy9784 Londor hollows are only just barely clinging on. They're notoriously deceitful and prone to deluding themselves: see the curse stones, the clutch rings and the false rings. Londor is meant to give an impression of a functioning society but everyone there is barely functional and only clinging on through a number of tricks and the guidance of the Sable Church.
Its crazy that people are finally having an accurate understanding of the nature of humanity and fire 11 years after the game came out.
The mystery was solved right after ringed city dlc came out thanks to the ringed knights.
this is some serious philosophy. not all understand
@@1rez378 You could solve the mystery from the first game if you know what to look for.
I'd say the mystery was mostly solved in the first, but the 2nd did help a lot to make it make more sense, and the third was mostly icing on the cake to help contextualize some of the stuff happening and why it happened
In the first game the clues where all over the place. But we didn't had an origin to refer to. It took 3 games to get a DLC with the ringed city and abundance of "ringed things" to fully build the world.
Yup, pretty much what I've always felt about the game.
DS 2 Just makes it much more apparent.
DS 2 Lore is love.
So many people sleep on DS2, but it will forever remain my favourite of the trilogy.
@@andrewryan1946 many people dont "sleep" on it, they played it and didnt like it
@@heibk-2019 Exactly, they overlook, underrate, or fail show respect for DS2. I did not use that slang incorrectly.
Ratatoskr after 11 years: Hell yeah let's discuss DS lore right before Elden Ring dlc
LMAO
That’s why some hollows who are initiated, living in truth are completely competent and conscience, they’ve embraced their true form. While the majority of others who’ve hollowed that do not embrace their true self as hollow, by not being privy to the truth, or simply being in denial, manifest as the mindless undead when they convert back to being hollow. The character you play stays competent when hollowed, because they’re aware of their true self, that’s why not linking the fire is the true ending.
Id like to learn more about that, which hollows have conscience?!
Except the games show us again and again that all things good - love, peace, warmth - can only be found in fire.
dude, dark souls is so incredibly fucking good
One of the briefest, yet one of the best explanations of the Dark Souls story. Good job!
The fire is a gilded cage. It is a pretty prison that humans have been trapped in for so long that they've grown accustomed to captivity. They fear freedom.
what would they do when free? the dark world doesn't have much to recommend it.
I mostly agree with the take, though one thing, hollow is the original shape of people without fire but also without dark, the dark soul the Pygmy spread to hollows not connected to Gwyn, Nito or Izalith is what turns people into eldritch abominations, and is the underlying issue on Gwyn wanting to preserve the age of fire, rather than form an age of light.
This is why I consider Usurpe the Fire from DS3 and Age of Stars from ER to be cannon endings, in DS3 to much light makes you a slave, to much dark makes you a savage the balance from that ending makes you in between, basically sentient and free.
In ER AoS you try a new path neither reinforcing the old order or frenzied flame since both have been tried before.
A new path, a new choice, perhaps better or worse but a chance for both
Usurper of Fire is the canon ending for ds3 according to daddyzaki.
age of stars has already been tried before by the nox and it ended horribly
True Frenzyism has never been tried
@@virtualfairy9784 i mean no frenzy has been tried at all otherwise we wouldn't be playing the game
kind of an analogy for war. you can give everything (and it wants you to), but peace is only found when people like you have been spent up
Probably the best video on the curse I've seen yet. Great work, Ratatoskr
Damn it rat, you've done it again. I can't put a finger on exactly why, but these quick little Souls lore videos are really hitting the spot for me. You're very good at cutting right to the core of what makes those games such special pieces of work.
I think it's beautiful how your punchline works to describe both a metaphor for civilization, as well as a much more personal, desperate, unrequited/unfulfilled romantic love for someone.
Sure, as metaphors they're kind of vague to begin with, but they still work. The human condition is everywhere, and in everything :)
I have played all the souls games and watched countless lore videos...this is honestly one of the best .....it really explains one of the base core concepts that is often misunderstood....and explains some of the most complex dialogues meaning ......I can wait to check out the other videos
Maldron the Assassin most definitely could have solo'd the entire dark souls universe if he wanted to, however he is a merciful god and chose to let us weaklings enjoy ourselves
But the true form seems to be corrupted in DS3. (Gwyn used an ancient tree to link the first flame) In DS3 there are 3 forms of corrupted hollows, 1. Murkman: seems to be an oversaturated form of humanity, clinging to an abyss corrupted body of a hollow. 2. Pus of Men: maybe an abyss corruption or a curse of the Dragons 3. Pilgrims metamorphosis and (normal)hollow metamorphosis: praying hollows are trasforming into trees at high wall of lothric. Pilgrims seems to be once humas who consumed to much humanity, their transformation seems to be more brutal, the body ist ripping appart, transforming into pilgrims butterfly. And there are Angels, seems to be an dream state of an pilgrim. Each rekindeling of the first flame, combines more tree dna with humanity.
Great video! Congratulations! It's really nice that someone finally took the time to make a video to define what hollowing actually is to the bigger public. Since I've been essentially reharsing this to people over discord for the past two years or so, I'm going to drop a list of evidence to support your point that dark/humanity causes humanity instead of the other way around and/or that being hollow doesn't mean being devoid of humanity (that is, of the fragment of the Dark Soul) on top of the ones you mentionned already:
- Nashandra's orbs and painting, Nadalia's idols black mist, Pursuer's dark orbs, etc. are all live instances of the dark triggering the curse affliction.
- The Dark Pyromancy Flame in DS2 scales with hollowing.
- DS3 Hollow weapons raise and scale with the user's luck, a trait inherent in humans as told by Anri's Straight Sword desc. In other words, a human gift boost hollow weapons. DS1 Humanity also raises item discovery, much like Luck in DS3.
- Gael is flagged as hollow in the second phase of his fight, after realizing that the Dark Soul is flowing through his veins.
- Vendrick and Yuria's words are further supported by the DS1 intro which reads "from the dark, they came..." (in japanese, "from the dark they were born") while displaying hollow looking figures on screen, and Grandhal who says that "Dark is the mother of all, all things were born from it".
- Wrathful Axe description reads that Elana and her sisters took shape in a way that hints at humanity's true nature, and those children of Dark explictely embody the yearning for souls of the Dark at told by Scythe of Want description, Vendrick, and Alsanna herself. This thirst for souls is very much a trait hollows are known for as well, as told by description like DS1 Alluring Skull.
- Shanalotte says that the "sign you bear will drain your souls, and that without souls, you'll go hollow". She's obviously referring to the Darksign (notice the "Dark" in "Darksign"), and we know from Alsanna's dialogue and DS3 Homing Soulmass desc that the Dark is especially hungry for souls, much like hollows and seemingly the darksign as well.
- Pus of Man, flagged as abyssal and stated to be so in Follower's Torch desc, coming out of hollows. They resemble serpents who are symbols of the Undead and greed/desire as seen in Covetous Serpent ring desc.
- The Overture of Elden Ring has a section on hollows that reads "perhaps bear resemblance to the primordial organisms".
Finally, the official lore compendium has a paragraph that also directly support your reading:
"Source are the source of all life and, as such, are a manifestation of Disparity. They are a product of the First Flame, and flourish when the Fire is linked. Humanity is the antithesis of Souls in that it is aligned with Dark and propagates along with the Undead Curse as the Fire fades. Humanity represents the original, natural state of human existence, while Souls represent the state of existence assumed by humans and all other creatures born from the Dark when they are influenced by the power of Fire."
There is much more that I could add in regards to the "illusion of life" and the greedy nature of the Dark notably, but on the scope of hollowing that was what I felt would be useful to know.
Once again, great job.
What compendium are you referring to? I haven't heard of that one.
@@ratatoskr6324 The one known as "trilogy compendium" from Futurepress, the ones who also made the official guidebook for most Fromsoft games by working with them.
The Darksign is a literal ring of fire. It's shown in the cinematic in the first game 🤔
It's not just the ring of Fire, but also the dark circle inside of it, hence why the Dark Sigil description literally reads that it resembles the Darksign minus the ring of Fire. If the Darksign was only the ring of Fire, then that description would essentially read "it resembles the darksign only without the darksign". Besides, the "dark" in "Darksign" comes from somewhere
Hawkshaw explained this years ago. The opening cinematic shows that by using an ember one creates an undead.
Hawkshaw truly was a pioneer in dark souls lore.
His elden ring takes are great too
Doesn't that mean that the curse is not natural to mankind, being instead created?
@@jeftecoutinho Yes, the game specifically tells you that.
"Long ago, the Way of the White PRODUCED its first Undead, a paladin in golden armor. With the legendary treasures Grant and Sanctus, Leeroy set out for Lordran, Land of the Gods, in the first Undead mission of the Way of White."
@@jeftecoutinho being a hollow is the natural state, the fact that you cannot die is part of the curse.
How i interpret it: there was no before or after, no warm or cold and no life and death befire the fire. Everything just was. Fire introduced disparity. Things could die now, and there wasa difference between life and death for that reason. The very rules of existence changed. Essentially that means it created time as we know it. There was now a before and after instead of a grey just "being". The fire was supposed to fade naturally, and the age of dark was the next step. Although we know nithing about it,we can still assume disparity is active during the age of dark. There is still life and death, a before and after.
That is until gwyn unnaturally extended the age of fire. Whenever the fire fades now, the rules of existence get funky and start to break down. Life and death dont function the way they are supposed to (the undead + the fact that after hollowing enough, the undead start to fade as seen in ds2. I have a hard time picturing fading from the world being part of hollowing). Time also does not function as it is supposed to (you can fill in the blanks on this one with the whole time is convoluted thing).
I also believe that every time the fire is linked, it burns a part of the world. This is not intended, as we see in ds3 that the world turns ashlike + even space slowly stops having meaning as different lands are being drawn together. The age of dark is getting burned before it can take its natural course.
The undead curse is essentially a phenomenon of the fading flame, but they can also be created as hawkshaw pointed out. Sorrh for the essay.
This is great, absolutely loved. Its inspired my next Dark Souls run, and also taught me alot...subbed and cant wait to explore more of your content...thank you :)
God, Aldia is such a badass. Fucking great dialogue and delivery
How did I not know this?! This changes everything.
I don't think it's quite accurate to say "hollows are the true shape of mankind". Rather, becoming undead and subsequently turning Hollow is, I think, the result of the Darksign doing its job of preventing humans from reverting to their true shape, as their bodies respond to the coming Age of Dark. Hollowing is more like a fail state of humans' bodies attempting to revert to their true form in response to the approach of the Age of Dark.
Also, I think the way the term "Hollow" is used in different contexts changes, since in some contexts it specifically refers to undead who have lost all their memories and rational thought, becoming creatures that act only to obtain more souls, while in other contexts it seems to be almost interchangeable with "undead", such as anytime it's used in relation to Londor. Personally, I'd more readily take the former usage as its definition, given both the element of mutual exclusivity the two meanings have, and the known dubious proclivities of those associated with Londor.
I think the actual true shape of humanity is one of two things: the shapeless form of the Humanity sprites seen in Dark Souls 1 (and the solution to the "Show your Humanity" ladder puzzle in the Ringed City), or a being similar to the Furtive Pygmy or Pygmy Lords.
Unexpected video!
Now that you've put up Aldia's dialogues, how do you relate the "grand illusion" to yourself? Even though extending the Age of Fire is ultimately Gywn's intention for his ultimate own again, as a "Human", do you think it's worth it?
I'm looking forward to your next video.
The big problem with Gwyn's lie (aside from the obvious) is that it rests on an unjustified assumption, that the fire fading will be an end to the gains of humanity.
Humanity emerged in a sort of primal state of ignorance. The discovery of fire allowed man to progress culturally.
Then the fire starts fading and the perverse treatment of those who start showing their true nature emerges.
The hollows, the hollowing process, we encounter in game are born out of ostracization, suffering and torment. These people "lose their humanity". But who wouldn't in the face of such inhuman discrimination? We're told that to go hollow is to go mad, to lose inhibition. I'd argue that the treatment of hollows and the expectation of what it means to become hollow is the consent structure necessary for hollows to become mindless. If mindless is even really the right term.
In that framework, the "grand illusion" is all the more insidious.
People will literally torture themselves rather than permit a change of state. The whole world grinds itself to dust on the back of one man's inability to cope with change.
Linking the fire is always the worst option.
Except, there's Filianore's dream. Which I suspect makes it so that failure to link the fire always results in a sort of state reversal. Meaning that linking and not linking ultimately have the same outcome until Filianore's dream ends.
Of course, by the time that finally happens, it's entirely too late.
@@rainbowkrampus Except we do know what causes hollowing. It's a combination of repeated death and most importantly a loss of will, giving up. That's why when it comes to all the NPC's they hollow when it happens. It has nothing to do with torture, it's never even been implied to be it.
In lordran there is no discrimination, you are all hollows, Hell "Undead Burg and Parish" exist, towns of undead who all understand what it was like together. Yet they went hollow all the same. Everyone living wants to work together to link the fire or just survive or meet their own desires. All are undead. Hell some straight up like being undead due to it assisting their own goals. The only time we have of a human going mad from torture, is Manus, and he didn't hollow, his humanity went wild. Which really only helps point to humanity, the dark soul, being human's most basest violent instincts.
They are more will-less than mindless. It goes back to the 'soul' being clarity into demon's souls as a similar concept. Those without wills being those without a soul in this sense.
Linking the fire is the best option if you want to keep being human and allowing whatever humans and other beings around to live. Except for perhaps the primordial serpents and dragons, the like which have never been bound to reality as we know it. If you choose to let it fade at best you have a chance of fire re-emerging, at worst life ends and all humans wander as aimless undead. Like the nigh naked and moaning beasts in the asylums.
@@rainbowkrampus It's only still questionable whether that change is necessary now. Even events of DS1 are long after prolonging the age of fire, let alone DS3. Same things in education, you don't drop when you get the anxiety before your first exam, only after you finnish your last.
What makes Gwyn the first sinner is not so much the act of linking the fire, but how it changed humanity's nature, irrevocably it would seem. Men were born of the dark. They were immortal, but weak. Why were they weak when the Gods were so strong, even though all 4 had a soul? Humanity shared the Dark Soul communally, split between all humans. I think that's the secret essence of humanity. To huddle together in the dark and find comfort in that.
But Gwyn linked the fire. Linked it to what? Vaati thinks it was linked to humanity, which I think makes sense. Humanity was enslaved to fire, their dark souls were shackled by fire. Men still had souls, but they were separate from their true selves. These are the white souls you find all over the games. Soul of a Forgotten Hero and such. The names of those souls is important; these are identities, personas, how people think of themselves and how others think of them. When the fire fades and the dark is unleashed, it interacts with these white souls in some way; destroys them or absorbs them, something that erases who you were as a mortal. But mortality is not man's true form, it's the form of their slavery to fire, this is important to remember.
Another thing happens, when the fire fades. The long-shackled dark soul is released and when it is, it's a simple, berserk animal. All the creatures of the abyss are like abused, captive tigers finally let out of their cages. They go ballistic and kill anything that might be a threat to them. But that's not what a normal tiger is; normal tigers hunt, sure, but mostly they're a force for good. Not so, when you drive them insane with cruel captivity. Now imagine that the only tigers for the last 10,000 years have all been born into captivity. What does that do to the tiger? To the public image of the tiger? The whole idea of tiger-ness becomes "they're bloodthirsty monsters that should be killed or imprisoned."
This is what is so insidious about what Gwyn did. He turned humanity into its own jailor, fooled them for so long that they forgot who they once were, and enslaved them into prolonging the age that he wanted to cling to. In his selfishness, he corrupted humanity down to its core. There is no escape from the cycle now. Humanity is broken, perpetuating its own misery, torturing itself in an insanity that was inflicted upon them generation after generation, until they forgot what it meant to be human. Fire broke humanity, and that's why the cycles in Dark Souls are cycles of destruction, cruelty, and insanity.
The First Sin was Gwyn giving mankind a dualistic, opposed nature, Light and Dark, so that they would destroy themselves eternally in his name.
And that shit is more tragic to me than any other story ever told.
@@TheSolitaryEye well explained, shit gets even more tragic when you start to draw parrallels to our own world and society
There was also a problem with Gwyn's plan to prolong the Age of Fire. I remember having a short discussion about it with someone on Discord a while back. I can't remember all the details, so I'm sure I'm missing an important but here and there, but like all things, they're never everlasting. In the DS1 intro, the narrator says "soon the flames will fade, and only darkness will remain." Because Gwyn's plan was delaying the inevitable, it was slowly distorting the world, like how time was distorted in Lordran. In Dark Souls 3 especially at the start of the second dlc, you're going through ash covered ruins that look as though they're from different time periods, and at the bottom where you fight the boss, you find the old Firelink Shrine from DS1. And beneath that, the Ringed City. It's like how you throw extra logs into a bonfire to keep it going, and the ashes of the previous logs are just piling on top of one another. The world was getting worse because he refused to let nature take it's course and let the last ember burn out.
Why is “let the world end” a better alternative than letting it slowly get worse? This isn’t a painting.
Letting the fire fade isn't letting the world end. It's only ushering in a new age different than the one gwyn created. The world existed before the age of fire and will continue to exist after the flame goes out. In fact holding on to the flame does more damage than letting it go out. Look at the state of the world in ds3.
Except letting it end is like heat death of the universe, all heat, energy, life and light die out when all the fuel in the stars have fizzled out. Which ironically considering the first flame can be seen as one big allegory for the big bang is fitting. It's better to fight tooth and claw surviving, perhaps to find a different way out or just to give another generation a bit more time. Lighting the flame again on the ashes of your will and victories. Rather than just let it all die and turn to nothingless, a dark void as deep, lifeless and cold as the abyss.
Yet it's still inevitable, just like death is. Yet I don't see many people saying it's better to let their fires dim out on that front or the self delete rate would be much higher.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone Because clearing sickly growth to make way for healthy shoots is the way of the world. The Age of Dark/Hollows is not the end. It is finally allowing a sick world to pass on and giving the mantle to the new generations.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone Yeah, that's the problem I always have too. People hate Gwyn and think he's selfishly prolonging his rule by... killing himself to give future generations a chance instead of letting the world end instantly.
This was great very well put and it explained the subject perfectly clear and concise well done
I loved this video. Perfectly said, great explanation :)
I just discovered your Chanel, it is incredible!!!
Amazing video as always.
It's a shame that being Hollow just seems to... y'know, totally suck. Gwyn made mankind the perfect servants for his bidding; "saving" them from their largely undesirable natural state and telling them how to preserve their new form in the future. It's easy to hate Gwyn and not want to perpetuate his will, but it's hard to come to terms with hollowing somehow being a "good" thing.
Yeah, I don't really understand how you can want to be a Hollow. It's why I don't belive being a Hollow is Humanity's true form, but a byproduct of the curse
"Reject fire, return to monke"
- Hidetaka Miyazaki
I just bought dark souls remastered to replay it for like the 6th time, what a great time to drop a video
all these years of loving this series and now I must reconsider so many of my interpretations by a 10min video.
Well this is a very unexpected, yet very, very welcome surprise! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Dark Soul(/shard of humanity?)!!
I haven't seen your video on why fire is a metaphor for civilization but I can guess. If no one irl struggled to keep our energy sources, food supply, health care, education etc maintained the world would go savage and any need to keep good appearances would be lost. Maintaining the age of fire is that struggle in Dark Souls.
Great editing on this video. Keep em coming, good sir. My only gripe, if i may, is that you didn't record any speculation on the benighted state of the hollow tribe: what an existence like that would entail. I generally very much enjoy your writing and it would have felt like a more complete video if you'd turned your pen toward YOUR perspective on what purpose a Hollow might serve in the warped evolutionary chain of Dark Souls beings. I usually dont comment but the notion occurred to me...
It's great to see this back up! Wholeheartedly agree, and it's awesome to finally see a larger channel arguing what I've been arguing for so long now with regards to how the Undead Curse functions.
Any ideas at what your next video might cover?
I'd love to see your opinions on the concept of the true monarch and how it comes across in DS2 and 3.
What I love about this game is that the same information can be interpreted in different forms and you are not necessarily wrong, I like more the interpretation that the undead curse is actually Gwin's fault and the dark sign is actually burning your fragment of the dark soul since is the fragment of the dark soul what makes you human once lost you turn hollow which is what humans were before they were humans
I played dark souls 1 and 3 several times but never completely undersntand what was the origin of undead curse or dark sign and you explained very well in 8 minutes thank you.
The explanation was so flawless
Great video as always Rat! I'd like to add that Embers in Dark Souls 3 greatly resemble a burned humanity. Do you think this is the same humanity that was burned in the First Flame for kindling? I always thought so.
Really good video
I have a different view on what the curse is.
The human becoming a raisin looking is natural.
Humans losing their minds and becoming, well, hollow isn't.
This is because I think the darksign slowly burns out the dark soul/humanity wìthin men.
The reason why I think this is because they are called hollows, and of course the undead souls we pick up lack the dark part of the humanity (since theirs only the white part left of it).
The way the curse should work, I think, is that it makes humans like us IRL. We are born, we live and then die.
But since the waning of the first flame, the darksign is weakens with it and starts to malfunction.
And by that I mean: it kind of works but also doesn't.
It will still burn out the dark, but humans don't die: their bodies still linger on as a husk,
Or rather, as the games terminology puts it: a hollow.
I know Londor refers to themselves as Hollows, but I see this as a defiance of the gods, similar to the Ringed knights with their blindfolds.
I also think that beings born of the dark are Immortal, or at the very least long lived, as we see with both the Ringed knights, who I presume have been alive since the war with the ancient Everlasting Dragons, and Pygmy Lords (who we see post Fillianor egg break along with a Ringed knight).
Idk man the vendrick and Aldia dialogue kinda seal the deal on this one
I legit just started a new playthrough on DS1 earlier today. I have to give the team some credit. After all this time and experience, I still find the game challenging and frustrating as any Souls title should. It's nice
Cool, but this doesn't answer the greatest mystery in the series: how can Frampt talk like a human without having lips?
So your telling me the true form of humanity is to look like beef jerky? 👀 I’ll keep the embers burning thank you
I thought this was an Armored Core channel now :)
Dark Souls is so kind boggingly amazing and deep. Not sure how much by design or accident. Absolutely incredible
This was the best explanation of humanity I've seen yet.
This has quite the implications for the line “Don’t you dare go Hollow.”
Prolong the age of fire propping it up by sparks.
Or let it die out and return to hollow.
Jesus. I wish I never learned this Ratatoskr.
That line is delivered in Ds1, where characters don't understand anything about the curse, or the cycle they're in. As Rata said, they view their human state as the their true form, and hollowing as a curse. When in reality is all the other way around. Hollows are their true shape, and the curse is what makes them look Human. But people realize this in Ds2, no one in Ds1 knows that, except for Kaathe. But even Kaathe is wrong about something then. He believes that by simply letting the fire die you can bring about an age of dark, which we, again in DS2 learn that this is not the case. No one in DS1 is aware they are in a cycle, not even the serpents, and how could they? If they only experienced one linking of the flame.
@@dificulttocure i was referring to the community. Not the npcs
I think Hollowing as a metaphor for depression still works. To hollow is to lose everything that makes us ourselves, and our lives meaningful. It is to despair.
We don't go hollow by persisting, by finding things in the world that tie us to it. I think, with this metaphor, we see Slave Knight Gale as the most human being there ever was. He was someone who lived a millennia-long life of torment, but who never gave up on his impossible task. He made a promise to a child he would provide her the means to make a better world , and he endured into eternity to do so. Even when the pygmy lords blood tried, even when he went mad and ate them, he refused to give up on that hope for the future.
Gale had refilened himself to a being of pure Humanity, one whose very essence was like that of a Primal Human, because he persisted in his faith of achieving an impossible Miracle- and he was rewarded with it.
To be human, these games say, to be the most human - it is persistence in the face of an absurd and cruel world, because the dream of a child's tomorrow is worth it.
Don't you dare go hollow.
It's interesting just how much Dark Souls is one big Buddhist allegory. In Buddhist Metaphysics, Human consciousness is an illusion, and our excessive attachment to it spiritually unhealthy and corrosive. Being Hollow is essentially a state of Buddhist enlightenment, where the Human has lost their attachments to the Fire, which is a metaphor for that illusion. And like in Buddhism, one of the central problems is how much Humans love the fire, how obsessively attached to it we get. It is what prevents us from accepting our mortality, accepting that the Fire must eventually fade, and our efforts to prolong the inevitable tend to be morally corrosive and damaging. That attachment is represented by the Dark Sign, which are the shackles that let us cling to the illusion of Fire.
This video literally make me like the game even more
I always wondered why no one ever attempted a Spenglerian reading of dark souls, except for the higher emphasis on mythology and spirituality it seems to echo exactly his point.
Players: The Dark Lord ending must be the "good" ending because Humanity is "good."
Miyazaki: lol
dude , is your game awards Livestream gone? :( i loved to rewatch some of your reactions that stream , i can't find it in the live tab anymore
Was demonitized and finally blocked.
I thought the tendency to become hollow was because of the Soul of Dark and humanity's parent, the Pygmy. It is not exactly natural for humanity to go hollow: everyone started out hollow, yes, but only humans can derive power from the Dark by way of their inherited Lord Soul. The Darksign, I think, is a side-effect of the weaking of Fire and the growth of Darkness. The fire that encircles the Darksign must be Gwyn's seal, which attempts at not letting the Chosen Undead turn into their true selves (powerful Abyssal beings?), but keep the sign potent enough for souls to leak from and give the Undead a taste of how painful it is to be Hollow, and why the Fire must be linked.
Beautiful
I don't think that humanity is responsible for hollowing, but rather the gradual consumption and burning of humanity by the darksign. That ring of fire needs fuel, and that fuel is the very dark it contains. I think that humans in Dark Souls may not be naturally humanoid, at least not completely. Whilst I don't think that abyssal monstrosities like Manus and the Four Kings are in their natural state either (they overdosed on darkness), Aldia is careful in his choice of the word "fleeting" to describe man's present form. Man was weakened and made mortal by the gods, remade to resemble their countenance. I think that man is likely to have had horns/antlers once they had acquired the Dark Soul (both Manus and the Four Kings have massive, overgrown antler-like structures).
Note that the darksign kills whoever is branded with it upon "use", but the undead reappear from the ash of a bonfire (or at least beside one). I think that the darksign is on every mortal man, but for those who are not undead, those whose shackles are stronger, it remains invisible and their false form does not decay until they are dead. I think that the reason we burn a humanity sprite to restore our "humanity" is that it is used to strengthen the sign, causing the character to be more akin to a real-world human.
TL;DR Humans only die because they are made mortal by the darksign. They become undead because that is their true nature (note that "undeath" can mean "immortality" in Dark Souls; refer to Logan's description of Seath as a "true undead"). Gradually, as the darksign burns up all its fuel (their humanity), their false form decays, but not before hollowing them out and rendering them soulless. This leaves them as a humanoid husk, a hollow.
I think that embracing hollowing does not make you hollow at least in the way it is considered by most ( a form of endless insanity ) after all in dark souls 3 you and others can or are hollow and yet they keep their senses of self I think that a undead can stave of this state either by keeping the flame and its shackles in your heart or embracing it.
I absolutely love how dark souls explores the natural state of man. For a long time, philosophers and psychologist have debated whether or not mankind is inherently savage and bad and that society makes them better, or that mankind is inherently good, and that civilization corrupts them. Or is it somewhere in between?
No. Nobody has debated that question. That’s stupid.
I think it's insane how some Japanese dude is way more versed in Hermeticism than any modern western philosopher/writer/religious leader. He not only understands the intricacies of it but is able to explore and explain them in such an amazing manner.
Right after I start another playthru too
Thanks!
So Gwyn is one of the biggest gaslighter in gaming history.
I've seen Hollowing more as a corruption of humanity due to the darksign, similar to how the abyss is corrupted humanity showing itself as Manus. That said, yeah, Gwyn definitely built a stigma around darkness, that much is clear
What you said is probably more accurate than mine theory is that since almost all unkindness purpose was to link the fire. If they manage to do it they become lord of cinders but if they don’t they just die and become next generation undead or unkindled and so on . But in ds3 we saw Anri of Astoras purpose was something else and after completing it and if she isn’t sacrificed we see her becoming hollowed. So could be it be just the opposite that Gwyn wanted to keep fire for himself for he knew that he will become hollowed again if he would’ve nit preserved it and knew that humans might actually try to steal it from him making it the reason he wanted to keep the fire away from people instead of fire actually helping people not going hollow. Sorry English isn’t my first language and I’m new to Dark souls
Love the video but can you answer a question for me? Why is Gwynn "alive" at the end of the game? Shouldn't he have been burned to a crisp when he linked the fire?
The flame seems to make an avatar to defend it. It is an amalgamtion of the strongest souls that have been fed to it. 1st its just gwyn, but slowly it turns into the soul of cinder. Which has gwyns moveset as a final phase.
What we are fighting is not really gwyns body, more like something that has his shape.
Personally I don't believe that humans linking the fire was Gwyn's intention, or at least it wasn't in the beginning. Otherwise, why would he ever sacrifice himself? To me it implies that either he had no intentions or even the knowledge that humans could be used to link the flame over and over again, or that his plan to do so was still in the early stages i.e. a fairly recent development.
I think the dark sign in its original usage was first and foremost a political tool to subjugate potential rivals to his reign.
It's also worth noting that humanity itself already is darkness shackled by fire/soul. If you recall, the dark soul was simply another one of the lord souls found in the first flame. What makes it special is that the first pigmy managed to use it as a vessel for darkness, thus creating a new kind of soul with properties unlike the others.
Its been some time since I dabbled in Dark Souls lore, and I lost my stomache for it for a very specific reason. A series that prided itself on nuanced storytelling and an ending that allowed the players themselves to apply their own perspective and values to the conclusion was being forcibly bashed by the community into one, extremely narrow interpretation, with good on one side and evil on the other. Gwyn is cast by large portions of the community as an absolute and total evil, and any questioning of the Dark as an inherently good thing, and the good ending in all circumstances, is not to be tolerated. You duplicated some of those sentiments here, albeit by implication rather than direct declaration.
I don't disagree factually with anything you say about the lore here. The error I think much of the community falls into, and I'm not saying you are here, is that they are unaware that they are duplicating one of their own philosophical presuppositions about the real world and placing it in Lordran. The entire premise of the age of Dark and the true form of man being "good", in spite of all the clearly monstrous and horrific characters and factions associated with it in the series, is based on the assumption that if it is humans' true nature, our true nature, that it simply MUST be good and we are entitled to it. This is an extremely modern presumption. I'm religious, as is much of the world, as has been most of the world historically, and a strong majority of those religions take a near polar opposite view. Mankind's base most nature is wicked. A serial killer is also embracing their nature, that does not mean a serial killer is good. The world of Dark Souls is extremely similar in nature to pre-Jesus Christianity/Judaism and as such makes it very very difficult for a religious person not to side with Gwyn. Mankind is, by its nature, doomed to devolve into an abomination. The temporary solution, prior to the messiah, is burnt offering. The nature of those offerings differ between the people of Lordran and the Old Testament Jews, but the premise is near identical despite the people of Lordran being largely ignorant of its nature.
I've found many of the same issues with interpretations of Elden Ring's lore, particularly around the Greater Will. Statements like: "Its trying to impose its values on everyone else, that's the definition of evil."
Man is your take refreshing and well thought out. I myself have been wondering this. Ratatoskr has said that tge Hollows are Humans true nature. Why being mindless like a Hollow would be any better than a Human. True form or not it is apparent that the Hollows are not having it any good so I don't understand why would anybody want to be in the age of Dark, maybe there's some info we're missing but from what we have it seems like none od the alternative are good.
Sure Gwynn enslaved Humanity to perpetuate his age of Light and forced us to rekindle it, but isn't being a human, being more, being able to express compation and love better than being a Hollow full of anger and hunger? I don't know, I'm kinda lost everytime I watch any of those Dark Souls video.
Everybody says the Age of the Fire is bad and Age of Dark is good but they probably come both with pros and cons, only problem is we don't know anything about the age of Dark, yet are so eager to get to it.
That makes a lot of sense
Huh has soon has I replay dark souls 1 this video come out what a welcome surprise.
You're equivocating a whole bunch here
I could not be more clear. What are you confused about.
I know in one of your previous videos, you put forth that the fire is a metaphor for civilization. Extending the metaphor, does that make dark, specifically the Dark Age of Man, some sort of idealized anarcho-primitive society?
did the shadows actually **do** anything? the dark age doesn't seem to have much to recommend it.
I've always wondered if linking the fire causes undead and hollows to revert to human or spontaneously combust and turn to ash.
Probably a bit late, but I just wanted to point out that in Dark Souls 1, the icon for humanity is Dark surrounded by light; humanity is the dark in between light, or perhaps humanity is darkness trapped by light
Okay, but why do humans come back to life? When Solaire dies, he doesn't come back. Why do the hollows try to kill everyone on sight? And how does humanity = undeath?
In our world, the default state of man is poverty. A fate worse than death. So we work to become prosperous and are shackled to this curse. But remember diogenies.
If one lets the fire fade and the Schlackes that bind the dark shackles until the shackles are no more, so we then turn into hollow immortal mindless beings, or do we turn into a kind of hollow state but still ripe with intelligence emotion etc
Thank you for this video. This is the correct way to understand the material concerning the curse presented in these games. Now something I still wonder about, is how, precisely, Gwyn linked humanity, not the dark soul of the pygmies, to the flame by somehow using himself as a conduit. What I mean is, why, of all the gods, is Gwyn a hollow when we find him?
If being hollow is mankind's true shape, is Gwyn's final form a false shackle, and the result of linking humanity to the flame? Would Gwyn somehow have gone reverse hollow over billions of years, if Darkness was allowed to congeal back into grey mist?
High probability.
God and Human are basically the same thing, but they get different status after getting different Lord Soul.
【Isomura: Our next question: is the Furtive Pygmy【こびと/kobito】, who only appears in the prologue, the main protagonist that has inherited a Lord Soul?
Miyazaki: It's a bit of spoiler, but first of all, it's "pygmy"【しょうじん/shojin】 [小人 in Japanese, it can be read differently]
Isomura: Pygmy.
Miyazaki: It isn't written anywhere, but, the image is something like humanity's ancestor. He found the Lord Soul, fragmented it and humanity are like the fragments of it. Kinda like an ancestor, yeah. So the descendants, the humans, have a part of that Lord Soul.】
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E4%BA%BA
Worth saying that the name of the Dark Sigil in the Japanese version is Dark Hole, so it being the humanity in the sign with no fire is accurate
Do you have a idea when armored core will release 🤔
Ratatoskr but how does the lord of hollows fit into this theory ?
I will make a video soon.
10/10 lore vid. Great insight.
I love being tarnished even more now
It’s crazy how similar Gwynns Order of Fire Mirrors the Golden Order in Elden Ring
If hollows are our true form, the From did us a mercy by making our armor cover us up so much.
This gets me thinking.
Is this a zero sum game where eventually the fire consumes all, mirroring the entropy of the inevitable heat death of our universe.
Or does the world enter a sort of stage of rebirth after the age of dark is ushered in. Where everything collects, accumulates and eventually explode in fire once more. Like a theory that our universe isn't the first and that the big bang is a repeating process.
Are we at liberty to choose? Is there a right answer? Even if this wasn't intended I think it's an interesting connection to make.
My pet theory is that this is how the universes of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are related. Demon's Souls has a similar setting where each time the world is "saved" some quantity of Souls are permanently lost, so a lifeless dead world is inevitable, it's just a matter of time.
And then perhaps by some miracle the dragons popped up from the lifeless stone world and the age of dragons began.
Where fire resideth shadows twist and shrivel. But in the abyss, there are shadows none.
How tf did I not know this part of the lore, been playing these games since demon.
Wow it makes sense, in my view, I don’t know maybe there’s different meanings and different views but this makes a lot more sense, maybe I was tricked by the snakes, frampted , they convinced me that the age of dark was the age of humanity, the age of humans, not gods that’s why I Rebelled. the more I think about it after this video it’s all just primal animalistic dark which is true, I don’t want us go back to that in a civilization kind of sense, and plus I played the games when I was in high school so probably didn’t think that that hard on the subject.
It’s kind of funny before I watch this video I had this feeling an urge that you would explain the curse of the undead and guess what you made a video today
I know I'm a year late. Maybe you read comments, maybe you don't, I'm gonna leave this here.
I think why hollows go insane is because of entropy, disorder or chaos. As things go further in time, entropy can only increase and does increase. If you look at dark souls 1, locations like undead burg, depths, undead asylum or any other place. They look deserted, ruined and without any order. These hollows have literally no purpose and the places look really hostile, so it would seem logical that they would lose their minds. But if you look at Darkroot garden where the forest hunters guild is, those humans there don't go hollow or mad because they have a purpose. They are under protection by gwyn's flame and are stopping people from destroying Artorias' grave. Both undead merchants look hollow but are not insane because they found their purpose which is to sell things. So I think that gwyn has in a way protected human's from going hollow and mad by giving them a purpose which is to protect the flame which stops them from going hollow and losing their minds.
I think we can all agree: we need more Ratatoskr content pls…
The mound makers in dark souls 3 were so close to understanding this. In their madness they knew a ring was a shackle of the gods. (the vertebrae shackle is a ring) they just weren’t looking at the right ring
holy knight hodrick is interesting as he equates hollows to one’s who are mad or are in the process of going mad and we see this in the games for the most part. “But we'll all be mad, soon enough. And should you be Undead, well, all the more so." .
Hodrick is almost on the nose with this next line, “Beware, the shackles of the Gods are fragile. You might need this. Etch it on your heart if you feel your sanity slipping." (Receive Mound-makers). In dark souls 3 the actual shackles(the ring of fire on the undead) is at the weakest it’s ever been and he wants you to place the mound maker symbol over your heart( where the dark sign and the curse manifest in the games to ease your sanity.
The warmth pyromancy is also super interesting but my theory with that is after having the vertebrae taken they believed to have actually been separated from the gods(hence why they feared it) but in the world of souls belief is power so this new familial bond they sought was created with others who have had there vertebrae taken were able to create a flame of harmony (as the item description implies) and I think this flame is actually their own souls warning them the warmth pyromancy looks so much like a special soul item from ds1 but this is all just speculation
I believe the point of the covenant is to just show there is some truth in madness. The one thing I never looked for though is trying to maybe see if the mound makers symbol is somewhere around the ringed city in like a design or maybe the symbol is similar to the city itself but who knows I didn’t look into that
Excellent as always 🎉🎉🎉
Great video as always.
But there are still some details that I don't really understand about the effects and the nature of the curse.
As far as I understand, "hollows" are the true form of EVERY humanoid in Dark souls, gods included. All of them came from the dark but changed when they found souls in the Fire, and so did the humans when the Pigmy found the Dark Soul. So why would THEY retain their appearances as hollows ? During war against the dragons, Gwyn got the help of the human "kingdom". Humans were not linked to the Fire back then, they were just attuned to the Dark through the Dark soul. So what were they like ? Just hollows in armors ? It seems kind of weird to me.
I feel like the Dark sign appearing is a result of the curse itself. Instead of being the result of the fire weakening, it seems to activate when the Dark gains strength. The ring of Fire burns the expanding Humanity away which would explain why regular human hollows loose their mind as well contrary to the hollows from Londor. Those ones have the Dark sigil instead, as you explained, which does not have the ring of Fire. But I also feel like the Dark Sigil is completely unnatural, like a modified dark sign. In the Age of Hollows ending, there is still a transformed Dark sign in the sky which shows it is a denaturation of the current age instead of something new. (Which is interesting thematically because they create an Age against the gods instead of despite them, and therefore cannot sever all ties with them completely).
Humans are cursed not doubt, but what would they look like in a True age of Dark, which represents moving on ? What if we could really snuff out the First Flame ? If the curse links humanity to it, then its disappearance should rid humanity of said curse, right ? Would humans still develop sigils ?
Do Hollows humen die when they are killed, or do they respawn like Undead ?
I could listen to you talk about tax code.
id say fire is the representation of all human beliefs and traditions, whether it be their legacy, history, cultures, tribes etc.
things that make us who we are, and the hollows being the true form meaning, the nihilistic husk is the truth.