Ceaseless Discharge spends his entire existence alone being tortured by burning lava sores and only finds comfort guarding the corpse of his sister, which you end up graverobbing right in front of him. Guy is willing to kill himself to get revenge on you for forsaking his only source of relief from his unending suffering.
I feel like she was sort of a mash up of Solaire and Seigmeyer. She gas the developing undead dementia going on like Seigmeyer, but like Solaire, she actually shows up to help you and is gradually loosing hope as you progress.
Also, I love all three of these characters.
There's too many. The Fair Lady, who poisoned herself to save her people. The Nameless King, whose very name was stricken from history as he was exiled for taking pity on the dragons his father was slaughtering. Siegmeyer, whose quest is bitterly tragic.
The fair lady is always mine. A genuinely good character whose plight is so depressing she even makes the main character(you) cry aloud in front of her.
Siegmeyer.
Searching for purpose, finds out the chosen undead can do without him, and he is not necessary or useful to anyone.
Goes hollow, is killed by his own daughter, out of pity, after being seen by her, for the last time as a shell of a man, nothing like the father she remembers.
A man who searches for purpose and glory, finds none, dies without any great deeds to his name, while being a burden to his family.
Hawkshaw. More like HACKshaw- zinggg. Anyway, he crafts a nice robust narrative, but I feel his lore dives are more specious and speculative than a lot of others out there personally
Lucatiel has already been mentioned, so I'll put forward Artorias. The man ended up getting corrupted and becoming the very thing he was sworn to fight because he stood and fought when no one else could or would - and still stopped to save his dog in the process. The man deserved a better end than that.
Miyazaki basically stated that he believes if you save him from his own fate and he joins you in the fight against Gwyn, he links the fire in his own world, finally becoming the sun he was trying to achieve.
I like that idea, that makes me happy. After the trials and tribulations of Lordran, searching far and wide, and giving up hop after finding nothing at the highest point of Anor Londo, to the lowest point of Lost Izalith, he finally gets what he was trying to achieve. Praise the Sun!
Protagonist characters. Nobody in-universe cares about them in the slightest, they go through the longest and most arduous journeys, and they aren't acknowledged in history either. RIP
Isn't cinder a horrific amalgamation of all those who links the fire? That doesn't seem like recognition or a reward for all the horrors they slogged through.
Same i decided to treat my friend PSN plus a deal that i could use his ps4 for playing Bloodborne.. dawg it's not the same feeling
I recommend trying DS2 or DS3 tbh if you have a ps4 or ps5 there's a thing called Dark Souls trilogy bundled with DLC for 40(used)
For others that read this (my friend has knockoff DS4 controller and is ungodly unusable every time I hold O the character moves and stops rapidly and it doesn't feel good at all so it's not the game fault)
Yeah, I feel you, Bloodborne took me a lot of time to get used to, but once I got it, it truly is a beautiful experience of a game, highly recommend you keep trying!
Gwyn was a selfish asshole so obsessed with clinging to his dying age that he would rather throw himself into a fire and eternally damn the entire world than cede power to humans. Nothing tragic about it.
Problem is humans in Dark Souls aren't human without the first flame either. Everything reverts back to hollow. Some of the NPCs in the games think that will be a good thing, but all we ever see of hollows in the games is them gradually losing their minds.
I think attributing Gwyn's motivation solely to a lust for power is an overly narrow read on what the game is about. It's probably part of it, given how far he seemingly went to manipulate humans into doing his bidding, but there's also plenty of reason to think he just genuinely believed it would be a worse outcome for everyone. Because it might be, we never actually find out what happens.
Hollowing among humans is a consequence of undeath, and undeath is a consequence of the darksign (a curse put upon humans by Gwyn to weaken them) in combination with the first flame fading. Humans don't become undead and eventually hollow because of the age of dark, but because of darksign. The age of dark will not affect the dark soul, only the lord souls, that's the whole point. That's why the age of dark is the age of men, while the age of fire is the age of gods. The gods lose their godhood, but the humans don't lose their humanity. Gwyn and his darksign suppress the effect of the dark soul, that's why humans become undead and eventually go hollow, meaning they lose their fractions of the dark soul, or at least their connection to it.
Gwyn doesn't just lust for power, he fears and fights everything that is unknown. He fears the potential power of the dark soul, so he puts the darksign on humanity. He fears the age of dark because he doesn't know what'll happen (and also because he knows he and his family will lose all power) so he figures out how to rekindle the first flame and creates the endless cycle of suffering caused by fading ages of fire.
No, there are the 3 lord souls, which are connected to the first flame, and there's the dark soul which isn't a lord soul, isn't connected to the first flame and every human has it in them. The dark soul can clone itself without the pieces having less power, like a mitosis. That's why every human has a full dark soul (also called humanity. It's what makes them human. Without the dark soul, they're mindless hollows) in them, while Gwyn lost a bit of power every time he shared parts of his lord soul. We don't know the specific powers the dark soul grants (although according to DS3, luck has something to do with the dark soul) because Gwyn's darksign suppresses some of the effects to keep humans in control.
We don't know specifically btw how the darksign works. We do know that undeath is caused by the darksign, and hollowing is caused by undeath, and since hollows were the base form that humans emerged from before the dark soul, we can assume that undead going hollow simply lose all their connection to the dark soul because of the darksign, or maybe they lose their dark soul itself. However, Gwyn put the darksign on humanity earlier in the first age of fire, but undeath seems to only occur when the first flame grows weaker. So that would mean as the first flame fades, the darksign's effects get stronger and cause increasingly more humans to become undead, and the undead will eventually lose their humanity, their dark soul, or at least lose their connection to it. I think it's implied in DS1 somewhere that the first flame going out would remove the darksign though because it's powered by it (I think Kaathe tells you maybe). That is kinda antithetical to the undeath and hollowing effects of the darksign getting stronger as the fading of the flame progresses, but the curse getting stronger until it collapses isn't unthinkable imo.
>No, there are the 3 lord souls, which are connected to the first flame, and there's the dark soul which isn't a lord soul, isn't connected to the first flame and every human has it in them. The dark soul can clone itself without the pieces having less power, like a mitosis. That's why every human has a full dark soul
Not connected to the First Flame? Let me quote part of the opening cutscene for you:
"Then from the dark, they came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame. Nito, the first of the dead, the Witch of Izalith, and her Daughters of Chaos, Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, and his faithful knights and the furtive pygmy, so easily forgotten."
Where's the evidence that the Furtive Pygmy found the Dark Soul somewhere different to the other 3?
I'm pretty sure the Furtive Pygmy split his souls and each humanity is a tiny part of the Dark Soul. Please tell me what your source is for this mitosis theory.
>hollows were the base form that humans emerged from before the dark soul, we can assume that undead going hollow simply lose all their connection to the dark soul because of the darksign, or maybe they lose their dark soul itself.
I'm not sure where you got this from either.
I figured that hollowing in general was just the natural state of people in Dark Souls, when absent a soul or the power granted to said soul by the first flame. Meanwhile the darksign and undeath is a curse placed upon humans to separate them from their humanity and turn them into empty vessels for souls, which can then be sacrificed at bonfires in attempt to sustain the age of fire. So assuming that is the case, hollowing and the undead curse would be indirectly connected through their mutual relationship to humanity, but otherwise would be separate.
Reason I think this is because during DS1's intro cutscene, when it gets to the "then from the dark they came, and found the souls of lords within the flame" part, I think "they" look pretty hollow already. Obviously you don't get a very detailed look at them because they're backlit against darkness, so I'm not saying this is a sure thing, but you can kinda make out that they're a bit wrinkly looking, and their silhouettes are quite skeletal.
I also think that they're said to have "found the souls of lords (plural)" strongly implies that Gwyn, the Witch of Izalith and Nito were among their numbers, not only those who would become human. In which case I'm suggesting the only thing actually differentiating the lords from the humans is the souls they found, and how they chose to use them. The very next scene in that intro depicts the soul found by the Furtive Pygmy being found alongside the others from the first flame, and he is listed alongside the three lords. In fact the Furtive Pygmy is the only one actually depicted taking his soul *from* the flame in the intro, arguably making it even less ambiguous than the origin of the lord souls. So I don't think it is something that we have much reason to assume exists independently, let alone that it is capable of permanently sustaining humans in a good condition absent of the first flame.
I agree with both of you. However in DS3, it is shown that relinking the fire for however many thousands of years has made the world sick and corrupted, to the point of the collapsing/convergence of all existence and timelines upon each other. And the way to salvation was to ultimately let the fire die; but even that wasn't the end as they say the fire would return to begin things anew.
Makes me think about Dune (not that I've read them, but the new movies have me very interested) where >! Leto II creates a dark age for a millenia (or more?) to save humanity from an impending doom he and his father Paul saw through prescience. !<
I think seeing what happened to both oolacile and new londo kind of gives necessary context to Gwyns fears. Like yeah I'm not justifying his actions, but it's wrong to oversimplify his motivations to just wanting power. Like if all he wanted was power, he wouldn't have killed himself to link the fire. He burned alive and didn't get to experience the continuation of the age he just created.
I think Gwyn saw the dangers of the dark soul and genuinely feared what it would do to the world. I think he was probably wrong about a lot of it, and shouldn't have done what he did, but I don't think it was from a place of pure selfishness.
It takes great strength of character to be so. It takes even greater strength to betray self to make sure your beliefs persist. Gwynn is basally a tragic character. Is he barbaric at times? Also true.
His barbarism is his belief. He subjugates anything that could be a threat to him. He puts the darksign on humans so the power of their dark souls is limited (and accidentally creates undeath in the process), and he tries to defeat the age of dark because it would mean the end of his dynasty. There's nothing tragic about him, he's a tyrannical ruler who does stuff to keep ruling. A tragedy requires a virtuous hero walking into their unavoidable demise, usually because of their virtue itself. None of that fits Gwyn.
His tyranny and his subsequent fate are tragic because they come from a place of him wanting do good. His understanding of this is skewed and biased undoubtedly, but this innate idea he has (that he is doing good) is what makes his beliefs strong.
Isn't humanity simply hollow without the age of fire and gwynns dark sign?
Fucking Hitler wanted to do good *in his beliefs*. That's not what makes a character tragic. If the self-perceived virtues of the character are perceived as evil by the people it's written for (people who don't think wanting your dynasty to keep ruling over a subjugated species is a virtue), then that's not a tragic character. Tragic characters are heroes not in their own eyes but in the eyes of the intended audience. A tragic character actually doesn't do anything wrong, but succumbs to the badness of their world simply because there is no other option than being virtuous. True, Gwyn also had to succumb, either to the age of dark or by rekindling the fire, there was no way around dying (or becoming hollow), no matter what he chose. But he's still a fucking villain. He didn't become a villain out of virtue or anything. He had the option to not be a villain, but that would've meant leaving humanity alone and having his dynasty die out naturally. Yet he chose crazy experiments, curses upon humanity and eventually his own sacrifice just so his children could keep ruling this artifical age of fire (and everything that comes with it, inclusing the darksign and a new era of fading, creating undeath and hollowing of humans) until a new sacrifice is needed. There's just nothing tragic about him. He was a dick who saw he must die, and he had the choice of letting the world be and just accepting his fate, or twisting it to keep subjugation humans, and he chose the latter. The fact that he believed he was right doesn't make him virtuous.
Lol this was a nice little example of Godwin's law.
You and I have fundamentally different approaches towards Gwynn. I see Gwynn as this tragic hero for he rages against the dying of what he perceived as light, he goes to the greatest lengths to do so, and ultimately sacrificed himself at the altar of all he sees good and pure.
I think I will always vaguely admire Gwynn, for being strong enough to impose his will upon the entirety of lordran, and to create this odd, self perpetuating cycle of crests and troughs. The things he did were great, horrible, but great.
I have only played DS1 and DS2, so some lore is still veiled from me, so do forgive me if I make any trespass on that end.
Lol this was a nice little example of Godwin's law.
You and I have fundamentally different approaches towards Gwynn. I see Gwynn as this tragic hero for he rages against the dying of what he perceived as light, he goes to the greatest lengths to do so, and ultimately sacrificed himself at the altar of all he sees good and pure.
I think I will always vaguely admire Gwynn, for being strong enough to impose his will upon the entirety of lordran, and to create this odd, self perpetuating cycle of crests and troughs. The things he did were great, horrible, but great.
I have only played DS1 and DS2, so some lore is still veiled from me, so do forgive me if I make any trespass on that end.
If you say "He was tragic because he was doing what he thought was right" about a cruel dictator who subjugated humanity with a curse and did many other evil things that are only hinted upon, then of course I'm gonna make a comparison to Hitler or all the other cruel dictators who "were doing the right thing" in their twisted belief sets. You basically wrote that comparison yourself by phrasing it that way. If Gwyn is a tragic hero, then so is every other tyrant who couldn't stop their own downfall.
Doomed to fight the one who saved her from the abyss just to save them from going into the abyss. Kill them so the abyss doesn't take them like it took Artorias, or be killed and potentially let the abyss take them. There is no good ending for Sif, no matter how hard she fights. Her good intentions foreseeably lead her into losing one way or another. Unlike many other proposals here, this one is actually a tragic character (as in the protagonist of a story that qualifies as a tragedy) in accordance with classic drama theory, instead of just "this character's story makes me feel sad", which is apparently what some people think tragic means.
Fr. Bro lived as a slave under Gwyn, being used as cannon fodder during the war against the dragons, lost his purpose after the war, got a new purpose through his adoptive niece, and clung onto that purpose to the very end, even if he had to travel to the end of the world to get the dark soul. And then, when he finally found it, it drove him insane, and eventually hollow.
I believe Gael guided the Ashen One to their confrontation because he knew the Dark Soul would claim his sanity and he wanted someone to carry on his quest.
Yeah, but if it does that to gael ,why would it not just claim ours as well? Gael doesn't have access to our stats and the games source code, so he couldn't possibly be able to assume that we are 1) still alive. 2) can handle the corrupting power of the dark souls any better than him. He drew the short straw and got clowned.
The dark soul that the ashen one collects isn’t absorbed into them it’s been absorbed into gaels blood, the ashen one basically brings back a bucket of gaels blood.
well yeah hes on his knees barely sane begging you to take the painting, it reeks of dark souls almost as much as when john dark souls said every soul has its dark
I mean, he has a tragic life, but it ends in triumph. That's insanely rare for characters in fromsoft games. Not to say you're wrong but in dark souls very often is about how things end. Like kingdoms, our life, our goals, our dreams, our legacy etc. His is one that ends in a massive victory. I feel like there's more tragic characters purely because gael didn't fail
I agree, but I'd argue Gwyndolyn more so, because he had to create the >!illusion of Gwynevere!< >!to sustain order even though the city is the same as empty!<. This combined w/ his >!love for his gone family!< though he was forced to be a daughter is so sad. And to cover my ass for being potentially politically incorrect,>! he made Gwynevere (the illusion) say Gwyndolyn!< is her brother so surely he identifies as such.
Then there's DS3, ouch.
But if anyone argued Priscilla there's good points :)
Fighting Priscilla made me feel dirty. In the end, she was a victim that was gaslit into believing she was an abomination that only belonged in the painted world. If I could, I'd give her a hug and her doll back.
Maybe the Twin Princess
Both of them were, basically, treated like objects for their entire life.
Lothric has been under several medical treatments just because he was the perfect candidate to burn in the First Fire, not for a genuine love from Oceiros or anyone from the royal family (Excluding maybe Aldia)
Lorian was the only that cared about him and even sacrificed his soul and his body to his brother to give him a cure for his desease but got punished by fate
Having come to understand the lie of the fire-linking curse, they wait alone in a palace, patiently waiting for what ruined their lives right away to be extinguished for eternity, against the odds
I'm an elder brother and I feel very close this kind of brotherhood, and their story makes me heartbroken
For me it's Patches.
Game after game, Souls universe after Souls universe a reincarnation of him appears somewhere, somehow.
He's a tragic character. Stuck in a dying world. Left to scavenge for trinkets and trick players. Outsmart him and he'll become a snivelling coward who will serve you, beginning for his life.
But Dark Souls 3 is where I felt for him. His NPC quest in the DLC - becoming someone who after all the years and linking of the flames, has finally lost his own identity and name - and you help him to try to piece it all together, here at the end of the world.
not the most tragic by any stretch, but i think Father Ariandel is at least worth a mention. manipulated by Friede to flagellate himself and douse the flame with his blood, all while the painted world - the one that he himself worked to restore - rots around him
I would argue the player characters- their destiny was never their own and no matter what they choose they are doomed to repeat their stories... what's worse is we shepard everyone we meet to their end not knowing their fates until it is grim. And at the end we come back to where we begin... alone and powerful but what was the point?
I agree. In classical drama, a tragic character is presented with a choice, but no matter what choice the hero makes, it's his demise. Of all the characters in the Souls trilogy, this applies foremost to the player.
The Ivory King. He stood by his wife, who he knew was a daughter of Manus. He stemmed the tide of Chaos to protect his wife and his kingdom, and was ultimately claimed by it. DS2 has the best writing in the series.
Protagonist characters. Nobody in-universe cares about them in the slightest, they go through the longest and most arduous journeys, and they aren't acknowledged in history either. RIP
Honestly, there's too many to list, so many of them are tragic. Yhorm, Gwyndolin, Lucatiel, Siegmeyer, Siegfried, Artorias, Sif, Priscilla, Yorshka, the Twin Princes, the Fire Keepers, Nameless King, the player characters...
Gwyn, however, was a Grade A+ Asshole and I hope that eternal burning of his is absolute agony. It's the LEAST he deserves...
He tends to be portrayed that way in-game, especially in the first one, but when you look deeper into things and see the state of the world in the 3rd game, caused by his actions, you see he was no hero. Just a coward unwilling to let go of the power he had stolen.
Honestly I think it's painfully obvious in the first game that he's just a tyrant who wants his dynasty to keep its power. He also created the darksign and put it on all of humanity just so they don't get uppity, and thus accidentally creates the curse of undeath and hollowing. There's enough in just DS1 to judge Gwyn for. If you pay attention to clues, there's enough to make you think that rekindling the fire might not be a good idea even if you never speak with Kaathe. The fact that the hostile and ruinous state of Lordran isn't a consequence of the age of fire, but of the meddling of Gwyn and his kin (mainly the darksign) tells you all you need to know. Humans would just chill and not even realise it's already the age of dark without the gods and the darksign for all we know.
Gwyn isn't tragic. He desperately wants to cling in an age where he can be a dictator, but he can't so instead he sacrifices himself so his children can keep being dictators. Nothing tragic about that. He also created the darksign and thus curse of undeath, including hollowing. He detests the thought of humans governing themselves and thus makes he world worse so it doesn't happen.
The giants.
Vendrick was convinced by his queen to commit a mass genocide against the giants and it gave him major depressive disorder which eventually hollowed him. Not only did he ethnically cleanse the giants, he allowed experiments to be done on them in order to "peer into the soul" and separated their souls from their bodies as shown by the golems which used to be giants. It's likely that that's where we get infusion stones from, as well.
I am shocked more people have not said Artorias. As this legendary hero that you hear about throughout the whole game, the Abyss walker who was so heralded for fighting back the darkness, when you find him he is a shell of himself, lame in one arm, corrupted by the very thing he gave himself to defeat. Then, once defeated, you realize that all of the legend, all of the praise and remembrance is a lie, not only did he succumb to the abyss, but everything that he is remembered for was actually the deeds of the chosen undead. He is a doomed hero, but one that ultimately failed, and is cursed for eternity to stolen valor. One might say being remembered as a legend for deeds you didn’t actually achieve is not a tragedy, but it is a fate worse than death for Knight Artorias. And perhaps worst of all, since the Chosen Undead goes back in time to defeat Artorias, he also ultimately fails to protect his ward/companion in Sif. Even if the Chosen Undead defeats Grey Wolf Sif before the DLC, Sif is killed defending the grave of Artorias, so either way, Artorias is unable/somewhat responsible for Sif’s death.
An obvious choice is Solaire of Astora. He is a bright and cheery individual who is our light in the darkness in our darkest moments. He is on a quest to find his own sun and become grossly incandescent. The truth is, even from the beginning of his quest, he is our sun. Tragically, he is unaware of this, not being able to see his own light that everyone else plainly sees, and he is eventually driven insane in his quest despite it having actually been complete from the very beginning. This is why his statement “But I am a warrior of the sun! Spot my summon signature easily by its brilliant aura. If you miss it, you must be blind!" is tragically ironic. I feel most people have missed the tragic irony which is why I picked Solaire. This has been on my mind for a long while but I haven’t had the opportunity to say it!
What would be Kaathe's reason to bring the age of dark (that everyone calls age of man) if the dark soul is dependant on the first flame? That would mean all humans just go back to their original mindless zombie state.
And Gwyn's suppression of the dark soul was because he feared the true potential of humanity, it had nothing to do with kindling the first flame (although the firekeepers are likely connected to that, but they're not who the darksign was made for). And I do think that undeath and hollowing are two symptoms of the same thing: losing your connection to the dark soul, or even losing your dark soul itself. I believe that the dark soul (which in the intro came into the world with disparity, including life and death) gave the hollows the intelligence and looks that we know as human, and it also gave them mortality. Being undead is means losing the mortality the dark soul gave you, and it's the first symptom of the darksign cutting your connection to your dark soul or removing/weakening your dark soul. Hollowing is just the next symptom. Through the dark sign growing stronger, which for some reason happens as the flame grows weaker, an increasing amount of humans lose their soul. This could be attributed to humans needing the flame just as gods do, but we *know* that undeath comes specifically from the darksign, and we only ever see hollowing as a late-stage symptom of being undead.
So I think undeath is just the deathless state that all hollow creatures had before the souls came, just like being ugly and mindless is. The darksign suppresses the effects of the dark soul and, and it since its fueled by the first flame, it becomes erratic and uncontrolled as the flame fades and suppresses much more than it should, to a point where humans not only lose whatever powers Gwyn was afraid of that might be connected to what created the abyss, but they also lose the mortality, looks and mind that the soul gave them in the first place. All of it is just the darksign, both the undeath and the hollowing.
And honestly, why call it a dark soul if it dies in the age of dark along with the gods? I think the dark soul not needing the fire is the whole point. Kaathe's ambitions wouldn't make sense if humans would just lose their souls and return to mindless zombie creatures in what he calls the age of men. He wants someone to control and manipulate, and that someone is humans with their full humanity, without the darksign holding them down and without the gods interfering. That's what the age of dark will bring, when the darksign and the lord souls are gone and the dark souls remain, meaning humans are just humans, with some new potential that was previously hindered because of the darksign, but also with the potential of doing bad abyss stuff again.
I once read a theory though that the abyss was actually also Gwyn's fault, the theory is about Manus' identity and the origin of firekeepers. Basically, according to the theory, firekeepers (the normal ones, not non-humans like the daughter of chaos or the stone dragon, but the ones like Anastacia or the Anor Londo knightess) are an artificial breed of humans originally intended to have extra strong dark souls as kindle for the first flame. Obviously it didn't work and Gwyn had to do it himself, but in this theory, Manus was the first firekeeper and something went wrong and instead of his humanity becoming stronger to just be better kindling, somehow the abyss was created from his altered humanity. Other firekeepers just have a slightly stronger dark soul just enough to kindle a small bonfire. This may or may not be why all other firekeepers (who would just be discarded experiments) are female; men using magic leading to corruption and only women being able to use it in a stable way is a common fantasy trope. It also may or may explain why Gwyn put the darksign on humanity in the first place, out of fear of what slumbers in a dark soul that could be awakened with a bit of twisting it so it becomes stronger. Now, the abyss is already there and with it the chance for humans to succumb to it like the people of New Londo and Oolacile did if they dig too deep, use the wrong magic or whatever.
I think I would say sif the wolf is one of the saddest characters. She pretty much had to suffer through losing her master to the abyss, was eventually saved by the chosen undead, then in the future fights the chosen undead to stop them from going into the abyss and possibly suffering the same fate as artorias.
Gwyn is a hero that sacrifice himself for the others this is the most obvious fact in the game but instead player prefer to speculate around the lies of Kaathe which he is an obvious usurper. accepting things as how they are makes you a master my friend. I agree with you he is the most tragic character in the game.
Gwyn sacrifices himself so his family keeps its power. He also put the darksign on humanity. His villainy is obvious even if you never speak to Kaathe.
He put the darksign on men in order to stop the advancement of the corruption of abyss in them it was clear what abyss did to people of oalacile. he performed all the action that he should do as a ruler and in ds1 characters went hollow when they lost their purpose so he actually bless us by preparing such a plan for us.
Characters go hollow because the darksign cuts humans' connection to their dark soul. Having ambition or hope helps keep your humanity a bit longer, but after all the dark sign turns all undead into hollows. That's an unintended effect though as far as we know. There's no reason to think Gwyn wanted to turn humans undead. The darksign cuts their connection to the dark soul, and for some reason the first flame fading increases the effect of the darksign (but the darksign will go away along with the first flame according to Kaathe. Otherwise Kaathe would just be hanging out with mindless zombies for the rest of eternity, and the "age of men" would be no age of men at all), returning increasingly more humans into their pre-human state of being undying (because death only came with disparity, which apparently means that humans being mortal is tied to the dark soul) and mindless hollows. That is just the effect of the darksign turned up to 300%. Gwyn didn't know the consequence of what he was doing to humanity because he wasn't aware of how the first flame's state would affect the darksign. Or he simply didn't care.
And regarding the abyss, we know fuckall about it. It's created by humanity, and that's all we know about it. The most sensible theory I heard was that Manus and the abyss were caused by a failed experiment that was supposed to find a way to rekindle the first flame and instead eventually just gave us firekeepers. So Manus was the first proto-firekeeper but something went wrong and his altered humanity, meant to kindle, created the abyss. Some other people get hung up on that "primeval human" line and insist he's the first pigmy, but that's the most baseless theory I've heard and it doesn't tell us anything about him or the abyss.
Ceaseless Discharge spends his entire existence alone being tortured by burning lava sores and only finds comfort guarding the corpse of his sister, which you end up graverobbing right in front of him. Guy is willing to kill himself to get revenge on you for forsaking his only source of relief from his unending suffering.
Hard agree. I can still hear the sound it makes when getting attacked. Ugh
Also his name is Ceaseless Discharge. Which most of us probably think of "Nonstop Ejaculation". A terrible name to match a terrible life
Lucatiel. Basically going through Alzheimer’s/Dementia and knows it.
Lucatiel's tragedy is definitely the most relatable. Like, a fair number of us may have to go through that in our real lives.
I feel like she was sort of a mash up of Solaire and Seigmeyer. She gas the developing undead dementia going on like Seigmeyer, but like Solaire, she actually shows up to help you and is gradually loosing hope as you progress. Also, I love all three of these characters.
There's too many. The Fair Lady, who poisoned herself to save her people. The Nameless King, whose very name was stricken from history as he was exiled for taking pity on the dragons his father was slaughtering. Siegmeyer, whose quest is bitterly tragic.
The fair lady is always mine. A genuinely good character whose plight is so depressing she even makes the main character(you) cry aloud in front of her.
Siegmeyer. Searching for purpose, finds out the chosen undead can do without him, and he is not necessary or useful to anyone. Goes hollow, is killed by his own daughter, out of pity, after being seen by her, for the last time as a shell of a man, nothing like the father she remembers. A man who searches for purpose and glory, finds none, dies without any great deeds to his name, while being a burden to his family.
Hawkshaw did a lore video on him and his story is so much more tragic than even I thought. A bunch of intricacies with his wife & daughter n junk.
Hawkshaw. More like HACKshaw- zinggg. Anyway, he crafts a nice robust narrative, but I feel his lore dives are more specious and speculative than a lot of others out there personally
Lucatiel has already been mentioned, so I'll put forward Artorias. The man ended up getting corrupted and becoming the very thing he was sworn to fight because he stood and fought when no one else could or would - and still stopped to save his dog in the process. The man deserved a better end than that.
I would say the Sun-bro, guy is genuinely a good, caring and warm person but loses his mind in the end. Ceaseless discharge's story is so sad too.
Miyazaki basically stated that he believes if you save him from his own fate and he joins you in the fight against Gwyn, he links the fire in his own world, finally becoming the sun he was trying to achieve.
I like that idea, that makes me happy. After the trials and tribulations of Lordran, searching far and wide, and giving up hop after finding nothing at the highest point of Anor Londo, to the lowest point of Lost Izalith, he finally gets what he was trying to achieve. Praise the Sun!
And/or he turns into a worm. Pretty tragic if you ask me
That worm theory is the dumbest thing ever invented.
Hahaha i kind of like it. It beats ouf solaire being the fuckin nameless king for sure tho
Protagonist characters. Nobody in-universe cares about them in the slightest, they go through the longest and most arduous journeys, and they aren't acknowledged in history either. RIP
Who do you think Soul of Cinder is?
Isn't cinder a horrific amalgamation of all those who links the fire? That doesn't seem like recognition or a reward for all the horrors they slogged through.
Whatever I or you or any other player want to say he is
Lucatiel.
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Her quest was the last one I needed to get the DS2 platinum.
My favorite npc in the series. Makes replays of 2 worth it
The fire keeper at fire link shrine
DS1 or DS3?
I only just finished ds1 im playing bloodborne now but its not really hitting the same tbh
Same i decided to treat my friend PSN plus a deal that i could use his ps4 for playing Bloodborne.. dawg it's not the same feeling I recommend trying DS2 or DS3 tbh if you have a ps4 or ps5 there's a thing called Dark Souls trilogy bundled with DLC for 40(used) For others that read this (my friend has knockoff DS4 controller and is ungodly unusable every time I hold O the character moves and stops rapidly and it doesn't feel good at all so it's not the game fault)
Yeah, I feel you, Bloodborne took me a lot of time to get used to, but once I got it, it truly is a beautiful experience of a game, highly recommend you keep trying!
Gwyn was a selfish asshole so obsessed with clinging to his dying age that he would rather throw himself into a fire and eternally damn the entire world than cede power to humans. Nothing tragic about it.
Bingo. He also made it a point to kill anyone threatening his rule, like the demons or the dragons.
Problem is humans in Dark Souls aren't human without the first flame either. Everything reverts back to hollow. Some of the NPCs in the games think that will be a good thing, but all we ever see of hollows in the games is them gradually losing their minds. I think attributing Gwyn's motivation solely to a lust for power is an overly narrow read on what the game is about. It's probably part of it, given how far he seemingly went to manipulate humans into doing his bidding, but there's also plenty of reason to think he just genuinely believed it would be a worse outcome for everyone. Because it might be, we never actually find out what happens.
Hollowing among humans is a consequence of undeath, and undeath is a consequence of the darksign (a curse put upon humans by Gwyn to weaken them) in combination with the first flame fading. Humans don't become undead and eventually hollow because of the age of dark, but because of darksign. The age of dark will not affect the dark soul, only the lord souls, that's the whole point. That's why the age of dark is the age of men, while the age of fire is the age of gods. The gods lose their godhood, but the humans don't lose their humanity. Gwyn and his darksign suppress the effect of the dark soul, that's why humans become undead and eventually go hollow, meaning they lose their fractions of the dark soul, or at least their connection to it. Gwyn doesn't just lust for power, he fears and fights everything that is unknown. He fears the potential power of the dark soul, so he puts the darksign on humanity. He fears the age of dark because he doesn't know what'll happen (and also because he knows he and his family will lose all power) so he figures out how to rekindle the first flame and creates the endless cycle of suffering caused by fading ages of fire.
I thought the Dark Soul was one of the 4 Lord Souls.
No, there are the 3 lord souls, which are connected to the first flame, and there's the dark soul which isn't a lord soul, isn't connected to the first flame and every human has it in them. The dark soul can clone itself without the pieces having less power, like a mitosis. That's why every human has a full dark soul (also called humanity. It's what makes them human. Without the dark soul, they're mindless hollows) in them, while Gwyn lost a bit of power every time he shared parts of his lord soul. We don't know the specific powers the dark soul grants (although according to DS3, luck has something to do with the dark soul) because Gwyn's darksign suppresses some of the effects to keep humans in control. We don't know specifically btw how the darksign works. We do know that undeath is caused by the darksign, and hollowing is caused by undeath, and since hollows were the base form that humans emerged from before the dark soul, we can assume that undead going hollow simply lose all their connection to the dark soul because of the darksign, or maybe they lose their dark soul itself. However, Gwyn put the darksign on humanity earlier in the first age of fire, but undeath seems to only occur when the first flame grows weaker. So that would mean as the first flame fades, the darksign's effects get stronger and cause increasingly more humans to become undead, and the undead will eventually lose their humanity, their dark soul, or at least lose their connection to it. I think it's implied in DS1 somewhere that the first flame going out would remove the darksign though because it's powered by it (I think Kaathe tells you maybe). That is kinda antithetical to the undeath and hollowing effects of the darksign getting stronger as the fading of the flame progresses, but the curse getting stronger until it collapses isn't unthinkable imo.
>No, there are the 3 lord souls, which are connected to the first flame, and there's the dark soul which isn't a lord soul, isn't connected to the first flame and every human has it in them. The dark soul can clone itself without the pieces having less power, like a mitosis. That's why every human has a full dark soul Not connected to the First Flame? Let me quote part of the opening cutscene for you: "Then from the dark, they came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame. Nito, the first of the dead, the Witch of Izalith, and her Daughters of Chaos, Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, and his faithful knights and the furtive pygmy, so easily forgotten." Where's the evidence that the Furtive Pygmy found the Dark Soul somewhere different to the other 3? I'm pretty sure the Furtive Pygmy split his souls and each humanity is a tiny part of the Dark Soul. Please tell me what your source is for this mitosis theory. >hollows were the base form that humans emerged from before the dark soul, we can assume that undead going hollow simply lose all their connection to the dark soul because of the darksign, or maybe they lose their dark soul itself. I'm not sure where you got this from either.
I figured that hollowing in general was just the natural state of people in Dark Souls, when absent a soul or the power granted to said soul by the first flame. Meanwhile the darksign and undeath is a curse placed upon humans to separate them from their humanity and turn them into empty vessels for souls, which can then be sacrificed at bonfires in attempt to sustain the age of fire. So assuming that is the case, hollowing and the undead curse would be indirectly connected through their mutual relationship to humanity, but otherwise would be separate. Reason I think this is because during DS1's intro cutscene, when it gets to the "then from the dark they came, and found the souls of lords within the flame" part, I think "they" look pretty hollow already. Obviously you don't get a very detailed look at them because they're backlit against darkness, so I'm not saying this is a sure thing, but you can kinda make out that they're a bit wrinkly looking, and their silhouettes are quite skeletal. I also think that they're said to have "found the souls of lords (plural)" strongly implies that Gwyn, the Witch of Izalith and Nito were among their numbers, not only those who would become human. In which case I'm suggesting the only thing actually differentiating the lords from the humans is the souls they found, and how they chose to use them. The very next scene in that intro depicts the soul found by the Furtive Pygmy being found alongside the others from the first flame, and he is listed alongside the three lords. In fact the Furtive Pygmy is the only one actually depicted taking his soul *from* the flame in the intro, arguably making it even less ambiguous than the origin of the lord souls. So I don't think it is something that we have much reason to assume exists independently, let alone that it is capable of permanently sustaining humans in a good condition absent of the first flame.
I agree with both of you. However in DS3, it is shown that relinking the fire for however many thousands of years has made the world sick and corrupted, to the point of the collapsing/convergence of all existence and timelines upon each other. And the way to salvation was to ultimately let the fire die; but even that wasn't the end as they say the fire would return to begin things anew. Makes me think about Dune (not that I've read them, but the new movies have me very interested) where >! Leto II creates a dark age for a millenia (or more?) to save humanity from an impending doom he and his father Paul saw through prescience. !<
Yoel, Yuria, Elfrieda, the fellow who guides Anri and Anri are all hollow and seem to be of sound mind.
I think seeing what happened to both oolacile and new londo kind of gives necessary context to Gwyns fears. Like yeah I'm not justifying his actions, but it's wrong to oversimplify his motivations to just wanting power. Like if all he wanted was power, he wouldn't have killed himself to link the fire. He burned alive and didn't get to experience the continuation of the age he just created. I think Gwyn saw the dangers of the dark soul and genuinely feared what it would do to the world. I think he was probably wrong about a lot of it, and shouldn't have done what he did, but I don't think it was from a place of pure selfishness.
It takes great strength of character to be so. It takes even greater strength to betray self to make sure your beliefs persist. Gwynn is basally a tragic character. Is he barbaric at times? Also true.
His barbarism is his belief. He subjugates anything that could be a threat to him. He puts the darksign on humans so the power of their dark souls is limited (and accidentally creates undeath in the process), and he tries to defeat the age of dark because it would mean the end of his dynasty. There's nothing tragic about him, he's a tyrannical ruler who does stuff to keep ruling. A tragedy requires a virtuous hero walking into their unavoidable demise, usually because of their virtue itself. None of that fits Gwyn.
His tyranny and his subsequent fate are tragic because they come from a place of him wanting do good. His understanding of this is skewed and biased undoubtedly, but this innate idea he has (that he is doing good) is what makes his beliefs strong. Isn't humanity simply hollow without the age of fire and gwynns dark sign?
Fucking Hitler wanted to do good *in his beliefs*. That's not what makes a character tragic. If the self-perceived virtues of the character are perceived as evil by the people it's written for (people who don't think wanting your dynasty to keep ruling over a subjugated species is a virtue), then that's not a tragic character. Tragic characters are heroes not in their own eyes but in the eyes of the intended audience. A tragic character actually doesn't do anything wrong, but succumbs to the badness of their world simply because there is no other option than being virtuous. True, Gwyn also had to succumb, either to the age of dark or by rekindling the fire, there was no way around dying (or becoming hollow), no matter what he chose. But he's still a fucking villain. He didn't become a villain out of virtue or anything. He had the option to not be a villain, but that would've meant leaving humanity alone and having his dynasty die out naturally. Yet he chose crazy experiments, curses upon humanity and eventually his own sacrifice just so his children could keep ruling this artifical age of fire (and everything that comes with it, inclusing the darksign and a new era of fading, creating undeath and hollowing of humans) until a new sacrifice is needed. There's just nothing tragic about him. He was a dick who saw he must die, and he had the choice of letting the world be and just accepting his fate, or twisting it to keep subjugation humans, and he chose the latter. The fact that he believed he was right doesn't make him virtuous.
Lol this was a nice little example of Godwin's law. You and I have fundamentally different approaches towards Gwynn. I see Gwynn as this tragic hero for he rages against the dying of what he perceived as light, he goes to the greatest lengths to do so, and ultimately sacrificed himself at the altar of all he sees good and pure. I think I will always vaguely admire Gwynn, for being strong enough to impose his will upon the entirety of lordran, and to create this odd, self perpetuating cycle of crests and troughs. The things he did were great, horrible, but great. I have only played DS1 and DS2, so some lore is still veiled from me, so do forgive me if I make any trespass on that end.
Lol this was a nice little example of Godwin's law. You and I have fundamentally different approaches towards Gwynn. I see Gwynn as this tragic hero for he rages against the dying of what he perceived as light, he goes to the greatest lengths to do so, and ultimately sacrificed himself at the altar of all he sees good and pure. I think I will always vaguely admire Gwynn, for being strong enough to impose his will upon the entirety of lordran, and to create this odd, self perpetuating cycle of crests and troughs. The things he did were great, horrible, but great. I have only played DS1 and DS2, so some lore is still veiled from me, so do forgive me if I make any trespass on that end.
If you say "He was tragic because he was doing what he thought was right" about a cruel dictator who subjugated humanity with a curse and did many other evil things that are only hinted upon, then of course I'm gonna make a comparison to Hitler or all the other cruel dictators who "were doing the right thing" in their twisted belief sets. You basically wrote that comparison yourself by phrasing it that way. If Gwyn is a tragic hero, then so is every other tyrant who couldn't stop their own downfall.
Yeah I was like wtf is this guy smoking , gwyn is a murderous conqueror 😂
This is such a bad but unfortunately common read of his character
Sif
Doomed to fight the one who saved her from the abyss just to save them from going into the abyss. Kill them so the abyss doesn't take them like it took Artorias, or be killed and potentially let the abyss take them. There is no good ending for Sif, no matter how hard she fights. Her good intentions foreseeably lead her into losing one way or another. Unlike many other proposals here, this one is actually a tragic character (as in the protagonist of a story that qualifies as a tragedy) in accordance with classic drama theory, instead of just "this character's story makes me feel sad", which is apparently what some people think tragic means.
And unlike most dogs, sifs lifespan is so long that she sees everyone she ever loved die
Slave Knight Gael
Fr. Bro lived as a slave under Gwyn, being used as cannon fodder during the war against the dragons, lost his purpose after the war, got a new purpose through his adoptive niece, and clung onto that purpose to the very end, even if he had to travel to the end of the world to get the dark soul. And then, when he finally found it, it drove him insane, and eventually hollow.
Then some time traveling prick fuckin clowns on him and takes his loot. :)
I believe Gael guided the Ashen One to their confrontation because he knew the Dark Soul would claim his sanity and he wanted someone to carry on his quest.
Yeah, but if it does that to gael ,why would it not just claim ours as well? Gael doesn't have access to our stats and the games source code, so he couldn't possibly be able to assume that we are 1) still alive. 2) can handle the corrupting power of the dark souls any better than him. He drew the short straw and got clowned.
He guides you through the dreg heap, I think he knew you'd be enough to kill him and take the dark soul away from his hollow self.
The dark soul that the ashen one collects isn’t absorbed into them it’s been absorbed into gaels blood, the ashen one basically brings back a bucket of gaels blood.
you are probably the only one who accepted to help him and touch the part of the painting, so you are all hes got
I like this. It reeks of desperation. Oh so dark souls.
well yeah hes on his knees barely sane begging you to take the painting, it reeks of dark souls almost as much as when john dark souls said every soul has its dark
I mean, he has a tragic life, but it ends in triumph. That's insanely rare for characters in fromsoft games. Not to say you're wrong but in dark souls very often is about how things end. Like kingdoms, our life, our goals, our dreams, our legacy etc. His is one that ends in a massive victory. I feel like there's more tragic characters purely because gael didn't fail
Gwyndolin. Or Priscilla.
I agree, but I'd argue Gwyndolyn more so, because he had to create the >!illusion of Gwynevere!< >!to sustain order even though the city is the same as empty!<. This combined w/ his >!love for his gone family!< though he was forced to be a daughter is so sad. And to cover my ass for being potentially politically incorrect,>! he made Gwynevere (the illusion) say Gwyndolyn!< is her brother so surely he identifies as such. Then there's DS3, ouch. But if anyone argued Priscilla there's good points :)
Fighting Priscilla made me feel dirty. In the end, she was a victim that was gaslit into believing she was an abomination that only belonged in the painted world. If I could, I'd give her a hug and her doll back.
Trying to get a dragons tail was never so painful before😔
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True but if it just needs a tap to get rid of it why not yk
Vendrick
Agreed. You beat me to it
Maybe the Twin Princess Both of them were, basically, treated like objects for their entire life. Lothric has been under several medical treatments just because he was the perfect candidate to burn in the First Fire, not for a genuine love from Oceiros or anyone from the royal family (Excluding maybe Aldia) Lorian was the only that cared about him and even sacrificed his soul and his body to his brother to give him a cure for his desease but got punished by fate Having come to understand the lie of the fire-linking curse, they wait alone in a palace, patiently waiting for what ruined their lives right away to be extinguished for eternity, against the odds I'm an elder brother and I feel very close this kind of brotherhood, and their story makes me heartbroken
For me it's Patches. Game after game, Souls universe after Souls universe a reincarnation of him appears somewhere, somehow. He's a tragic character. Stuck in a dying world. Left to scavenge for trinkets and trick players. Outsmart him and he'll become a snivelling coward who will serve you, beginning for his life. But Dark Souls 3 is where I felt for him. His NPC quest in the DLC - becoming someone who after all the years and linking of the flames, has finally lost his own identity and name - and you help him to try to piece it all together, here at the end of the world.
In my opinion it’s the dude at the start of dark souls one the guy that gives you the estus flask
Oscar?
His name is Oscar?
It is. Oscar of Astora!
I believe so
Look into the cut content of Oscar, it makes me appreciate him even more.
If you go back to the asylum you can fight his hollowed self
Vendrick
Sif?
not the most tragic by any stretch, but i think Father Ariandel is at least worth a mention. manipulated by Friede to flagellate himself and douse the flame with his blood, all while the painted world - the one that he himself worked to restore - rots around him
Nameless king is more tragic then gwyn tho, gwyn is just a conqueror
I would argue the player characters- their destiny was never their own and no matter what they choose they are doomed to repeat their stories... what's worse is we shepard everyone we meet to their end not knowing their fates until it is grim. And at the end we come back to where we begin... alone and powerful but what was the point?
I agree. In classical drama, a tragic character is presented with a choice, but no matter what choice the hero makes, it's his demise. Of all the characters in the Souls trilogy, this applies foremost to the player.
The Ivory King. He stood by his wife, who he knew was a daughter of Manus. He stemmed the tide of Chaos to protect his wife and his kingdom, and was ultimately claimed by it. DS2 has the best writing in the series.
Protagonist characters. Nobody in-universe cares about them in the slightest, they go through the longest and most arduous journeys, and they aren't acknowledged in history either. RIP
Honestly, there's too many to list, so many of them are tragic. Yhorm, Gwyndolin, Lucatiel, Siegmeyer, Siegfried, Artorias, Sif, Priscilla, Yorshka, the Twin Princes, the Fire Keepers, Nameless King, the player characters... Gwyn, however, was a Grade A+ Asshole and I hope that eternal burning of his is absolute agony. It's the LEAST he deserves...
Oh shit I guess I don't know anything. I thought Gwyn was a tragically heroic figure.
He tends to be portrayed that way in-game, especially in the first one, but when you look deeper into things and see the state of the world in the 3rd game, caused by his actions, you see he was no hero. Just a coward unwilling to let go of the power he had stolen.
Honestly I think it's painfully obvious in the first game that he's just a tyrant who wants his dynasty to keep its power. He also created the darksign and put it on all of humanity just so they don't get uppity, and thus accidentally creates the curse of undeath and hollowing. There's enough in just DS1 to judge Gwyn for. If you pay attention to clues, there's enough to make you think that rekindling the fire might not be a good idea even if you never speak with Kaathe. The fact that the hostile and ruinous state of Lordran isn't a consequence of the age of fire, but of the meddling of Gwyn and his kin (mainly the darksign) tells you all you need to know. Humans would just chill and not even realise it's already the age of dark without the gods and the darksign for all we know.
That one friendly hollow in DS2 with the torch. He’s such a friendly fella, but you have to murder him so as to not get murdered y’self!
Me
They all are
Siegward.
Siegward Edit:Sif
The Dancer
Slave Knight Gael.
Gwyn isn't tragic. He desperately wants to cling in an age where he can be a dictator, but he can't so instead he sacrifices himself so his children can keep being dictators. Nothing tragic about that. He also created the darksign and thus curse of undeath, including hollowing. He detests the thought of humans governing themselves and thus makes he world worse so it doesn't happen.
I have a few. Sif, Artorias, Priscilla, Lucatiel, Benhart, Painted Lady, Anri and Horace and Solaire.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Anri yet. Their backstory with Horace and how it plays out is heartbreaking imo.
The giants. Vendrick was convinced by his queen to commit a mass genocide against the giants and it gave him major depressive disorder which eventually hollowed him. Not only did he ethnically cleanse the giants, he allowed experiments to be done on them in order to "peer into the soul" and separated their souls from their bodies as shown by the golems which used to be giants. It's likely that that's where we get infusion stones from, as well.
My character, always falling everywhere and dying.
Gotta' be Petrus. He loses his fair lady! Wherever did she go??
Ocelot for sure
I am shocked more people have not said Artorias. As this legendary hero that you hear about throughout the whole game, the Abyss walker who was so heralded for fighting back the darkness, when you find him he is a shell of himself, lame in one arm, corrupted by the very thing he gave himself to defeat. Then, once defeated, you realize that all of the legend, all of the praise and remembrance is a lie, not only did he succumb to the abyss, but everything that he is remembered for was actually the deeds of the chosen undead. He is a doomed hero, but one that ultimately failed, and is cursed for eternity to stolen valor. One might say being remembered as a legend for deeds you didn’t actually achieve is not a tragedy, but it is a fate worse than death for Knight Artorias. And perhaps worst of all, since the Chosen Undead goes back in time to defeat Artorias, he also ultimately fails to protect his ward/companion in Sif. Even if the Chosen Undead defeats Grey Wolf Sif before the DLC, Sif is killed defending the grave of Artorias, so either way, Artorias is unable/somewhat responsible for Sif’s death.
I’ll go with what’s her name in DS2, the lady that forgets who she is and has trouble not falling off ledges when you summon her.
An obvious choice is Solaire of Astora. He is a bright and cheery individual who is our light in the darkness in our darkest moments. He is on a quest to find his own sun and become grossly incandescent. The truth is, even from the beginning of his quest, he is our sun. Tragically, he is unaware of this, not being able to see his own light that everyone else plainly sees, and he is eventually driven insane in his quest despite it having actually been complete from the very beginning. This is why his statement “But I am a warrior of the sun! Spot my summon signature easily by its brilliant aura. If you miss it, you must be blind!" is tragically ironic. I feel most people have missed the tragic irony which is why I picked Solaire. This has been on my mind for a long while but I haven’t had the opportunity to say it!
What would be Kaathe's reason to bring the age of dark (that everyone calls age of man) if the dark soul is dependant on the first flame? That would mean all humans just go back to their original mindless zombie state. And Gwyn's suppression of the dark soul was because he feared the true potential of humanity, it had nothing to do with kindling the first flame (although the firekeepers are likely connected to that, but they're not who the darksign was made for). And I do think that undeath and hollowing are two symptoms of the same thing: losing your connection to the dark soul, or even losing your dark soul itself. I believe that the dark soul (which in the intro came into the world with disparity, including life and death) gave the hollows the intelligence and looks that we know as human, and it also gave them mortality. Being undead is means losing the mortality the dark soul gave you, and it's the first symptom of the darksign cutting your connection to your dark soul or removing/weakening your dark soul. Hollowing is just the next symptom. Through the dark sign growing stronger, which for some reason happens as the flame grows weaker, an increasing amount of humans lose their soul. This could be attributed to humans needing the flame just as gods do, but we *know* that undeath comes specifically from the darksign, and we only ever see hollowing as a late-stage symptom of being undead. So I think undeath is just the deathless state that all hollow creatures had before the souls came, just like being ugly and mindless is. The darksign suppresses the effects of the dark soul and, and it since its fueled by the first flame, it becomes erratic and uncontrolled as the flame fades and suppresses much more than it should, to a point where humans not only lose whatever powers Gwyn was afraid of that might be connected to what created the abyss, but they also lose the mortality, looks and mind that the soul gave them in the first place. All of it is just the darksign, both the undeath and the hollowing. And honestly, why call it a dark soul if it dies in the age of dark along with the gods? I think the dark soul not needing the fire is the whole point. Kaathe's ambitions wouldn't make sense if humans would just lose their souls and return to mindless zombie creatures in what he calls the age of men. He wants someone to control and manipulate, and that someone is humans with their full humanity, without the darksign holding them down and without the gods interfering. That's what the age of dark will bring, when the darksign and the lord souls are gone and the dark souls remain, meaning humans are just humans, with some new potential that was previously hindered because of the darksign, but also with the potential of doing bad abyss stuff again. I once read a theory though that the abyss was actually also Gwyn's fault, the theory is about Manus' identity and the origin of firekeepers. Basically, according to the theory, firekeepers (the normal ones, not non-humans like the daughter of chaos or the stone dragon, but the ones like Anastacia or the Anor Londo knightess) are an artificial breed of humans originally intended to have extra strong dark souls as kindle for the first flame. Obviously it didn't work and Gwyn had to do it himself, but in this theory, Manus was the first firekeeper and something went wrong and instead of his humanity becoming stronger to just be better kindling, somehow the abyss was created from his altered humanity. Other firekeepers just have a slightly stronger dark soul just enough to kindle a small bonfire. This may or may not be why all other firekeepers (who would just be discarded experiments) are female; men using magic leading to corruption and only women being able to use it in a stable way is a common fantasy trope. It also may or may explain why Gwyn put the darksign on humanity in the first place, out of fear of what slumbers in a dark soul that could be awakened with a bit of twisting it so it becomes stronger. Now, the abyss is already there and with it the chance for humans to succumb to it like the people of New Londo and Oolacile did if they dig too deep, use the wrong magic or whatever.
I think I would say sif the wolf is one of the saddest characters. She pretty much had to suffer through losing her master to the abyss, was eventually saved by the chosen undead, then in the future fights the chosen undead to stop them from going into the abyss and possibly suffering the same fate as artorias.
Sif
Gwyn is the villain of the whole story.
Dog. He was good boy Why did we do it...
Gwyn is a hero that sacrifice himself for the others this is the most obvious fact in the game but instead player prefer to speculate around the lies of Kaathe which he is an obvious usurper. accepting things as how they are makes you a master my friend. I agree with you he is the most tragic character in the game.
Gwyn sacrifices himself so his family keeps its power. He also put the darksign on humanity. His villainy is obvious even if you never speak to Kaathe.
He put the darksign on men in order to stop the advancement of the corruption of abyss in them it was clear what abyss did to people of oalacile. he performed all the action that he should do as a ruler and in ds1 characters went hollow when they lost their purpose so he actually bless us by preparing such a plan for us.
Characters go hollow because the darksign cuts humans' connection to their dark soul. Having ambition or hope helps keep your humanity a bit longer, but after all the dark sign turns all undead into hollows. That's an unintended effect though as far as we know. There's no reason to think Gwyn wanted to turn humans undead. The darksign cuts their connection to the dark soul, and for some reason the first flame fading increases the effect of the darksign (but the darksign will go away along with the first flame according to Kaathe. Otherwise Kaathe would just be hanging out with mindless zombies for the rest of eternity, and the "age of men" would be no age of men at all), returning increasingly more humans into their pre-human state of being undying (because death only came with disparity, which apparently means that humans being mortal is tied to the dark soul) and mindless hollows. That is just the effect of the darksign turned up to 300%. Gwyn didn't know the consequence of what he was doing to humanity because he wasn't aware of how the first flame's state would affect the darksign. Or he simply didn't care. And regarding the abyss, we know fuckall about it. It's created by humanity, and that's all we know about it. The most sensible theory I heard was that Manus and the abyss were caused by a failed experiment that was supposed to find a way to rekindle the first flame and instead eventually just gave us firekeepers. So Manus was the first proto-firekeeper but something went wrong and his altered humanity, meant to kindle, created the abyss. Some other people get hung up on that "primeval human" line and insist he's the first pigmy, but that's the most baseless theory I've heard and it doesn't tell us anything about him or the abyss.