Dark Souls lore thread #7

Remembered one more. "The giant archer is Gough's buddy"

>Remembered one more. "The giant archer is Gough's buddy"

You know it isn't too much of a stretch to just suggest that the Giant Archer is from Oolacile.

There's no reason to think it bizarre or outlandish that Gough settled in Oolacile for some peace and quiet and in time he either had children or found other giants in the area that he could tutor and pass down his archery skills to.

I SEVERELY fucking doubt he's Gough- that would just be fucking ridiculous, but it isn't THAT crazy to think he may be a pupil or a grandson that was captured, enslaved, brought to anor londo and then became a free man.

So he spends his time sniping anyone who comes close to the few white-trees that grow in this fucked up land since they remind him of home.

With all that said: I'd love if one of the DLC's just focused on the fucking Giants.
MORE GIANTS MIYAZAKI.

Why did my waifu have to go and get eaten ;___;

Maybe you shouldn't have picked such a flavorful waifu, faggot.

WHEN I SAID 'GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT' I DIDN'T MEAN THAT
SUCKING HIS DICK WAS GOING TO HAVE HALF THE FUN, NO HOMO

Lore pastebin
pastebin.com/P3MVGSCV

Thansk smelly cat

That raises a good question. How DO giants have children or reproduce? Budding? Seeds?

I've been wondering about this for a while, but what kind of fuckery did Seath get up to to make his soul stick around for aeons and show up time and time again?
While other Lord Soul holders like Gwyn or the Witch of Izalith are reincarnated as a reiteration of sorts, Seath just comes back as fucking Seath. Just look at Oceiros, the guy uses crystal magic and looks exactly like him.
And then there's the business with Tseldora. Are the Writhing Ruins related to Seath? Are the crystals they found related to his Crystal Caves?

>Are the Writhing Ruins related to Seath?
There's some strong implication that Seath's obsession with immortality has led to him mastering various arcane and scientific methods of prolonging his life, including reincarnation. We don't know what specifically he did; he was a mad wizard-scientist, and did mad wizard-science.

Tark in DS2 mentions his master cannot die and takes many forms, and it's pretty obvious he's referring to Seathe. Hell, he might even be Freyja, the giant spider. He dies, his soul takes a new form, and he returns.

>Are the Writhing Ruins related to Seath?
According to the translation blog, "writhing ruins" is actually "crawling reptile" and refers to Seath.

The giant is stating right st anor londo from his position on the tower. There are a shitload of half dead or dead gismts there. Its not hard to figure out what his beef is

So Seath, in his madness, actually achieved his goal of immortality, but became too insane to realize it himself?

>"crawling reptile"
How the fuck do you get "ruin" from "reptile."
>The Untended Graves are in the future
>The Untended Graves are in the past
>The Untended Graves are in a parallel world
I don't think it's any of these. When I die in the Untended Graves my souls show up in the Cemetery of Ash, and also vice versa.

Gameplay wise, that's just down to them reusing the same level geometry to save space. Lore wise, space is complicated.

>Gameplay wise, that's just down to them reusing the same level geometry to save space.
They could prevent that by attaching the blood stain to a boolean, I think it's intentional.

>How the fuck do you get "ruin" from "reptile."

The DkS2 translation was just that bad.

Just like everything else in DS2 lmao

Final 48 hours anons. You backing? Get any add ons?

Didn't see the point for making an entirely new thread since threads about the board game never fill up or last long

I've already settled on Core, Darkroot, Kalameet, and Vordt. Seeing the total just shy of 200 bucks with my budget being 250ish I may actually get another add-on. Possibly Old Iron King or Gaping Dragon

so are the stretch goals just figurines? shouldn't they spend that money on expanding and tightening the mechanics?

and is this game coming with a monster manual? how are we supposed to make homebrew games?

I was a little bit disappointed that Vordt was the big £3m reveal. That said, I'd absolutely be backing it if I hadn't bought a new graphics card just a week before the kickstarter went live and I heard about it. Looks like decent value for what you get with all that the stretch goals have unlocked. Have they said whether the final retail box is going to include all the free stretch goal figures, or is it just going to be the base game as it was at the kickstarter launch? Cause they've easily tripled the number of figures in there, would feel kinda shitty to be left having to pay full price for the third of the content.

What the fuck is Darklurker?

Wish I could pick it up, but I don't get paid until the end of the kickstarted and haven't had that kind of spare change since it launched. Really want those figures, and the game actually looks fairly playable.

a reference

Final retail is base game, grab this while it's hot.

Nah, I had killed Yuria and hit with my main weapon when I got that,

Fuck. I'm probably gonna pass on it in that case, I only really care about it for the miniatures, would be cheaper to 3D print my own.

Kickstarter is base plus a shit-ton of expansions, totally worth it.

Yeah I know it's more than worth it, but like I said I can't afford it because I just put down for over $200 of hardware. Another couple of weeks and I might've been able to afford it. I'm glad it's had such a great success though.

I just realised something, the Deep is part of the Disparity created by the First Flame.

>Light and Dark (Gywn and the Furtive Pygmy)
>Life and Death (The Witch of Izalith and Gravelord Nito
>Heat and Cold
>Fire and Water
>Above and Below

Naw, the Deep is just a place the Dark ate and turned out to be to spicy for it.

>only work part time
>my total costs would be 250 before shipping
>really can't afford it with school and life
>backing anyways

I'll hate myself soon, but in the long run, I'll thank myself for getting it while it was cheap

... the deep is the result of the Dark going to taco bell?

God speed user, I hope you can budget around it ok.

I always thought Darklurker and 4 Kings looked like Kingdom Hearts bosses

>I always thought Darklurker and 4 Kings looked like Kingdom Hearts bosses
Well I thought the 4 Kingcould do a great impression of Bohemian Rhapsody
youtube.com/watch?v=Y3HPkXHxS_s

anyone?

DS3 is my first Souls game and holy shit how does anyone figure out the NPC quests?
I'm doing my first run blind (I'm at Aldrich ) and out of curiosity I looked up the NPCs I've met so far and it looks like I have already fucked up or missed all of their quests.
Second completionist playthrough should be fun tho

>jester thomas is in neither the invaders expansion nor the summons expansion

>how does anyone figure out the NPC quests
They look it up. Literally.
Back in the days of Demon's Souls everything was trial and error (the strategy guide didn't even have anything on primeval demons) and people were still discovering things by the time Dark Souls came out, now every fucking thing is on the fextralife day one.

Yep, they're pretty fuckin obtuse. The games were always built around collective knowledge, ideally guiding people using just the in-game messages, but those aren't especially reliable for anything more than basic shit, so reading up online for a full experience is essentially expected.
I only made my first playthrough semi-blind, so I had a friend throw me a very small checklist of stuff to do so that I didn't miss out on anything really big, like (actual minor spoiler, if you're wanting to stay blind) using the Dragon gesture at that area in Irithyll Dungeon.

Which tells you everything you need to know about Jester Thomas.

Don't know about the monster manual but some of the expansions expand the rules, like gravestones revealing a bit of a boss monster's AI or chests and barrels containing treasure. The invaders expansion shuffles in an invader card into the encounter deck for a chance to encounter an invader alongside the normal encounter. Don't know about summons but there are things in the expansions you can't naturally do with just core.

>Manus is retail only
>tfw no mini-Sif to summon

Just kill me

Is this what hollowing feels like?

Because I'm stuck in these threads undying but every iteration feels more like beef jerky.

Thanks for that (not sarcastically). I know exactly where you are talking about and I definitely would not have thought to try that.
I need to get my shit together. I just went back and figured out that there is more to Profaned Capital than just the bridge leading to Yhorm

Yeah, and they stick it somewhere it's very easy to miss. There's nothing to make you think there's anything back DOWN the ladder you just climbed up to the bonfire, especially with the big shiny cathedral right in front of you.

Is there a reason people seem to typically assume that Bear Curse winds up banging the Emerald Herald, or at least takes her as wife?

Every ruler needs a spouse, but I never got the impression that Shanalotte was specifically designed to be wife material (then again, she *does* have the best body out of all the fire keepers.)

how to play uncharted 4 in pc pls help, i will die

is the board game d20 based?

because then i can just use the 5e d&d monster manual

youtube.com/watch?v=bOM3OCAQMP8
Here's the demo vid they made.

>Is there a reason people seem to typically assume that Bear Curse winds up banging the Emerald Herald, or at least takes her as wife?

Emerald Herald says a few things that are interesting looking back:

"Are you...the next monarch? Or... Merely a pawn of fate? Bearer of the curse... I will remain by your side. Till this frail hope shatters... Take this with you. May it ease your journey. Go on, and see the King. He who made Drangleic what it once was; he who peered at the essence of the soul. King Vendrick."

She asks if you're to be the "Next Monarch."

"Bearer of the curse. I will always be at your side. Until hope has fully withered."

She seems genuinely persistent in being at your side as well until they very foreseeable end: it's not "completely" crazy to think that if the cursed undead did decide to fuck off from Drangleic and forgo the linking of the flame entirely that they'd take the Emerald Herald with them... Or she would otherwise refuse to leave their side.

"My name is Shanalotte. The dragon gave me this name, for I was born with none. I was born of dragons, contrived by men. By ones who would cozen fate herself… They are the ones who created me. But they failed. I did not come out as intended. Fate would not be bested, and men were cursed once again."

She admits she was a woman born of dragons and designed by men to end the curse: The idea goes that the chosen undead took emerald herald, fucked her good and put a few buns in her oven.
This hot crossed bun in question grew up to be the Lothric line- Ocerius turning into a seath mutant due to his ancient dragon blood from his mother's side- perhaps even naming his half-dragon son "ocelotte" after his mom/grandmother "Shanalotte."

It's a little "grasping", but it sure as fuck makes for interesting speculation.

For the "learn all sorceries/pyromancies/miracles" achievements does anyone know if you can accomplish those across multiple characters or does it have to be on the same guy?

Do you guys think Dark Souls 3 has anything left to discover?

This is the first Souls game I got at launch and have been involved with since day 1, and I was really looking forward to discovering everything alongside the community, but pretty much literally within 24 hours its like all the games secrets have been spilled.

I remember people were still discovering new stuff in Bloodborne for quite a while after it came out (like rare chalice dungeon enemies), but I guess that was because it was on PS4 and people couldn't so easily file dive.

>but I guess that was because it was on PS4 and people couldn't so easily file dive.
Pretty much. With it on PC, people can easily decrypt and reverse every file of the game, it's how we were able to see what all the cut content that they forgot to remove was pretty much day one. I still remember, for months, people were convinced there was some secret mechanic to unlocking beast mode. And then the DLC happened.

All of each has to be on the same character, so eg. you have to get every miracle on one character.

Shit

What the fuck is going on with the Giants?

I spent about half an hour looking at all the different giant corpses in das3, trying to see whether they had faces or holes. I'm about 60% sure they have human faces.

Yhorm's skull is in his ashes, and is clearly human. This suggests giants are related to humans. But then there's the das2 giant tree in firelink! Everything aside from that suggests the das2 giants weren't canon, and as far as I'm aware the das2 giants were explicitly not human.

It's driving me nuts, especially since it seems like from went out of their way to make it difficult to look under the masks all the giants wear.

Can someone please give me an explanation? The souls games are known for their vague lore, but this is absurd, the evidence is conflicting.

Can I get some advice on my DIO's look? Going as him for the cosplay event.

Humanity proliferation.

By which I mean humanity fucked the giants.

Is it going to receive a professor sad expansion?

DaS2 giant slaves do seem to have face holes behind their masks, and we have the giant tree outside Firelink. However, Yhorm does have a human face and a human skull.

We could fanwank this as every giant having some sort of weird 'two layered head,' with a face deep inside their facial orifice.

Alternatively, we could say that Yhorm isn't actually a giant but one of the old godse. But of course, this seems needlessly convoluted seeing as DaS3 goes out of its way again and again to say that Yhorm is a giant.

One theory before DaS3 was that there were two types of giant - DaS1 giants who were a third branch of the human/god humanoid race, and DaS2 giants who were of unknown origin and turned into trees (and were possibly linked to the archtrees). It's now harder to go by this distinction because DaS3 gives the DaS1 giants face holes, while giving Yhorm - who by all means appears to be a DaS2 giant - a face.

It seems this all results from B-Team trying to do their own thing - perhaps we would have found out more about their giants were DaS2 not rushed - and the DaS3 team then trying to tie that back into the DaS3 lore, and the result we get is kind of confusing.

Still though, I think the idea of Yhorm is really cool - a non-human, non-undead, non-god character linking the fire wasn't anything anyone expected. Makes me wonder what other sorts of crazy shit could link the first flame. Demons are a major race in Dark Souls - could one of them have ever linked the fire? A Black Knight mindlessly trying to carry out Gwyn's last mission? How about a man-serpent? A golem designed to gather as many souls as possible?

I think upon closer examination, the ones in 3 have hole faces, but smaller holes than in 2. From what I've heard, the whole hole-face thing is a result of some shitty design decisions though, rather than anything lore related. They were originally given actual faces in 2, looked like basilisks without the big fake orb-eyes, but the guy who took over decided (quite rightfully) that they looked fucking stupid, but it was too much time/effort/money to give them new faces, and I guess slapping the slave-like metal facemask on all of them wouldn't have worked, so they just carved the faces out and left them with holes. A few of the giants in 2 still have the faces, kind of evidence for how hasty a move it was that they missed some.
As a result, it makes the lore kinda murky, because it becomes hard to separate "lore decision" from "development fuckup". I've seen the theory that the face-hole is the giants' equivalent of the darksign, where souls seep from their bodies, which would explain it, but I don't think quite fits in with the organised army that the Giant Lord has in the memory you visit, too organised as well thought out for a hollow.
(I'd spoiler from here for the guy doing a blind playthrough, but I assume at this point he's all but given up on that if he's reading DS3 threads on Veeky Forums) There's also the Stormruler, which is said to be effective against giants, but as we know is ONLY effective against Yhorm, which further divides him from the other giants around Lothric.
Personally, I'm inclined to believe that the giantd around Lothric and Lordran are descendants of the holeface giants from DS2, which are said to be extinct (save for the Last Giant hidden in a hole in the ground, also theorized to be the Giant Lord barely clinging to life, until the Bearer of the Curse comes to kill him all over again), that have gradually become more human-like, developing stronger mental prowess and communication, as well as becoming more human in appearance. cont

Yhorm, I think, is a human/god/lord like all the rest of the Lords of Cinder, rather than yet another subset of giant. Dark Souls all kinds of implies that souls can cause physical growth, demonstrated with Ornstein/Smough absorbing the other when they're slain by the Chosen Undead. Could just be that Yhorm was so mighty, and had accumulated so many souls through the conquest of his ancestor, that he just grew to immense size, and modelled himself after the ancient giants I guess as a display of his raw power. I don't have a whole lot to support this line of thought, it's mainly my own speculative rambling, but I think it fits nicer than "yet another species of giant, of whom Yhorm is the only one we really know to exist". I saw someone either earlier in this thread or in a previous one say that Wolnir could be the conquering ancestor mentioned, which I could also see being the case. Whatever the case, he's clearly meant to call back to the DS2 style giants, and everyone thought he was one until the Siegward cutscene. Ultimately I think the whole thing is too much of a mess for us to ever get a real clear answer, so we're just gonna have to make do with a bunch of different theories all arguably plausible.
And the tree I'd say is a mix of gameplay consideration and simple callback. The giant trees in Forest of Fallen Giants had reason to be there, there's no reason for there to one at this Firelink Shrine.

There's no way that Aldrich ate Nito. There's no lore to suggest and Nito is literally a fucking heap of skeletons.

I need all the information you have on Wolnir.

There's a cosplay PvP even next weekend with /dsg/ and I wanted to go as a pre abyss non skeltal Wolnir, but I'm really not sure what he would have been like before then. Was Pyromancy something everyone did in Carthus or what.

Bleed pyro, switch it up between Carthus Rouge and Flame Arc. Dress up like a vicious conqueror, wearing the crushed crowns of those you have subjugates.

Wolnir was allegedly the best pyromancer EVAR, so it wouldn't hurt to attune some spells. Wolnir's crown is a must for obvious reasons, for the rest I'd say put on "desert-ish" armor for the chestpiece (Nameless King? Xanthous?) and heavy armor pieces on arms and legs so it looks like you're wearing a suit of armor underneath an Arabian Nights style robe. I'm gonna boot up my game and post screenshots.of what I mean.

I was thinking that I wouldn't be able to do that shit because Wolnir's Sword is a boss weapon that can't be buffed, but then I remembered the sword was actually granted to him by the gods (?) after he fell to the abyss, so I'd be able to use something else.

Thank you! I hope one day From releases a book which goes through the lore in excruciating detail, or at least gives us a mostly clear explanation.

Maybe after the dark souls franchise is completely done, and they've moved on to the next game in the genre.

Time and space are complicated in lordranglothric right? Suppose bloodbourne and demon's are specific points in time in the das timeline? The differences in the souls/blood mechanic could just be the same thing as the undead curse with slight changes related to how they're used, or different interpretations of the same thing.

I'm planning on making a Carthus cosplay character at some point (for invasions rather than this event). My advice is:
>Carthus shotel and/or curved sword
>Wolnir's crown and desert looking clothes (something like the sellsword set)
>Carthus Rouge
>Carthus pyromancy (including flame arc)
>Maybe grave warden pyromancy? I think the description of the tome says it was discovered after Wolnir fell though so maybe not
>Carthus blood ring
>Carthus milk ring
>Kukri out the ass
>Very large build. Even if Wolnir wasn't such a big guy four kings before falling to the Abyss the big skeletons in the catacombs suggest Carthus was one of those countries with really big humans

No, it was a simple greatsword, that got eaten away by the abyss. At least I don't think it was "granted".

>Suppose bloodbourne and demon's are specific points in time in the das timeline?
Nice thought, but they've made it pretty specifically clear that they're all in separate universes. And we have the meta knowledge that Sony owns the Demon's and Bloodborne IPs, so there's no chance of them occupying the same existence. Going off on wild headcanons though, I could totally buy into Demon's Souls being the Age of Man/Dark, with Allant being the Chosen Undead/whatever of the previous age. Then, when that world starts dying, with no first flame to rekindle, in desperation he turns to the power of the souls of Demons. But this is all fanfic tier stuff.

The entire reason for the lore being so vague and outright plot-hole-y all over is because Miyazaki was influenced by books written in English that he read as a kid with a poor understanding of the language. He'd get the general gist for some parts, then fill in the blanks he didn't understand with his own ideas. He wanted to create that feeling for people playing his game. So I doubt we'll ever see a comprehensive, official lore guide. Hell, I'm still surprised we actually found out who Gwyn's first born was. The best we can hope for is something like the Paleblood Hunt, a well thought out, solidly researched, comprehensive cover, written by someone who cares and can put in the time.

>Wolnir's Crown
>Black Iron Gauntlets
>Nameless King chest
>Drakeblood Leggings
>whatever greatsword you like best
>offhand Falchion/Scimitar
>both Carthus rings

And you'll need an appropriate face too, I didn't want to run to Rosaria just for this tho.

>A holy sword eroded by the Abyss. When Wolnir fell to the Abyss, he was gripped by a fear of true darkness, and pleaded to the gods for the first time.
>This holy sword, together with three armlets stripped from the corpses of clerics, gave him some semblance of comfort.

So it's up to personal interpretation as to whether that's Wolnir pleading to the gods and then his sword and armlets being unrelated, or if he was given them as a result of pleading. Given that destroying his armlets causes him to be dragged back into the Abyss and the sword is explicitly holy despite Wolnir having nothing to do with the gods before his fall, I'm inclined to say they were granted by the gods.

Well anyway, the fact that he has a Greatsword that was either eaten by the abyss, or empowered by divine intervention, he most likely used a Greatsword before shedding his flesh prison, and it looks strikingly similar to the Bastard Sword underneath the weird gold glass stuff, I'm gonna go with a Bastard Sword I think.

That theory relies on Curse Bearer being a man though.

Sex changing coffin is canon.

I'm always entertained by and willing to help with fanwanks regarding connections between Demon and Dark Souls, but I think Bloodborne's cosmology is just too different for it to work.

People just managed to figure out what the hell Poise does.

It makes you lose less dodge iFrames when you get hit. Yes, I didn't know that was a mechanic either. Also, less iFrames means a shorter distance covered by the dodge. It's weird as hell and pretty much completely unrelated to how Poise worked in the other games (although it's still super armor of a sort).

Also, there's still DLC left! There's tons of details lying about that could be touched upon - Ocelotte, Gertrude and the Angels in general, The Deep in general, Aldia's possible involvement with Lothric, shit like that. We know that Kaathe is involved since Yuria mentions him in her death quote, but what the hell is up with those winged man-serpent statues?

Not to mention the weird little unsolved mysteries still in the game like that fucking crab in the goddamn skeleton ball. What's the deal with that, anyway? Is it a pig or a Pendant?

I was thinking of this.

>HURR FALLEN KNIGHT LITERALLY PISS

Aside from that (and the fact that I'm not using the poopy pants anyway), it seems like it'd fit Wolnir quite well. Reading up on Carthus, they were a bunch of dudes who didn't give a fuck about anything but winning, generic warrior tribe stuff. So durable armor with a tattered cloak to protect from the elements since they're from a desert country seems like it'd work.

Face/build not included, this is just my current character.

It's hilarious how poise just turned out to be a worse in every way 10 times more complicated AGI, which people also had no idea how that worked at DaS2 launch.

>everyone and their dog hated on ADP because you had to invest 15-20 points into it for normal i-frames, in a game that threw levels at you like no tomorrow and didn't have level based matchmaking anyway
>somehow Poise affecting i-frames is okay

OKAY WHEN MIYAZAKI DOES IT

Nah man, its only the pants that got piss on them. Fallen Knight looks great and fits Wolnir-san well.

Blindfriend here: I'm too deep in these threads to stop reading. Everything is pretty much over my head until I see it in-game though and I mostly didn't want to see particulars of where to go and what does what so all good.

Just killed Aldrich. The room up the elevator made me really sad once I realized who had lived there
even though I never played DaS and only knew her from these threads

But literally everyone is saying poise isn't okay, retard.

Could a player actually have written this?

No, it doesn't follow any of the templates.

>her
Also, goddamn the floor in that room. Aldrich is fucking huge.

It's weirder than that - Agility actually gave you more iFrames, while Poise just stops you from losing frames.

Basically:
>Each weapon has a certain hidden iFrame reduction value
>On a successful hit, that many iFrames are removed from a hidden iFrame pool
>Higher Poise makes you lose less iFrames
>Higher Poise also makes you recover iFrames faster
I think there's also something about how getting your iFrames reduced to zero during a roll staggers you?

Some other fun bits about this: the Carthus Milk Ring makes you invisible during your iFrames, making it easier to track them for mathing this shit out, and the Carthus Blood Ring converts four of the beginning vulnerability frames into iFrames.

The weirdest thing is how this all means that having heavy armor (but being at 70% or lower) means that you're better at dodging in combat than when wearing lighter armor (but at 30%+).

The fuck?

Goddamn, not only is that counter-intuitive, but not even that useful considering even the dinkiest things still stagger you.

The point is that it's useful for dodging.

Also, blood ring makes it so that there's like a 4f window to hit you when you dodge spam, it's fucking ridiculous.