History WMG / DarkSoulsII

[[WMG: Vendrick and the Kings from the eponymous Lost Crowns DLCs are the reincarnation of the Four Kings of New Londo]]

Everyone knows at this point that the great souls bosses are in some ways reincarnations of Nita, Gwyn, Seath, and The Witch of Izolith, but they are just the most obvious since they drop there respective incarnations souls, but why dont we look down into the Gutter, a place underground filled with poison and being comprised of crude wooden structures, in this place there is a giant nonhostile female insect that attempts to cure the poison of the locals, sounds an awful lot like our Pale Lady, they were even both left in the current state by the experiments of a powerful magic user who tampered with forces they really shoudlent have which left there creators an abomination of wood and fire, the witch of izolith and Aldia respectively, and Eingyi sells poison mist based pyromancy, perhaps he attempted to create an anti-toxin mist to cure his mistress, and this carried into her next incarnation as the poison curing mist the Ant Queen sprays

Accounting for these two queens with unique motifs (Nashandra has the theme of "'''Want'''", while Elana has "'''Wrath'''"), it is safe to assume that ''Crown of the Iron King'' and ''Crown of the Ivory King'' will each feature another ruling figure that had a hand in their respective kingdom's downfall and is related in some way to Manus, the now-BiggerBad of the lore.

** [[spoiler:Mostly {{Jossed}}. The {{Big Bad}} is {{GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Nashandra}}, the smallest fragment of Manus's shattered soul, who orchestrated the ruination of Drangleic and the war between Vendrick and the Giants in a scheme to take the Throne of Want for herself and drown the world in Dark. Not only that, but ''The Ringed City'' reveals that the Darksign was in fact the doing of Gwyn. There's nothing that suggests all the connections you just made were false, or disproves the fact that Fina manipulated events in Dark Souls, though.]]

** [[spoiler:Mostly {{Jossed}}. The {{Big Bad}} is Nashandra, the smallest fragment of Manus's shattered soul, who orchestrated the ruination of Drangleic and the war between Vendrick and the Giants in a scheme to take the Throne of Want for herself and drown the world in Dark. Not only that, but ''The Ringed City'' reveals that the Darksign was Gwyn's doing. There's nothing that suggests all the connections you just made were false, or disproves the fact that Fina manipulated events in Dark Souls, though.]]

** [[spoiler:Mostly {{Jossed}}. The {{Big Bad}} is Nashandra, the smallest fragment of Manus's shattered soul, who orchestrated the ruination of Drangleic and the war between Vendrick and the Giants in a scheme to take the Throne of Want for herself and drown the world in Dark. Not only that, but ''The Ringed City'' reveals that the Darksign was Gwyn's doing. There's nothing suggesting Fina didn't manipulate events in Dark Souls, though.]]

** [[spoiler:Mostly {{Jossed}}. The Big Bad is Nashandra, the smallest fragment of Manus's shattered soul, who orchestrated the war between Vendrick and the Giants and seeks to take the Throne of Want for herself.]]

* Possibly Jossed since [[spoiler:you can fight two Pursuers at once in NewGamePlus. It is possible that Raime was ''a'' Pursuer.]] Definitely jossed as of ''Crown of the Iron King'' [[spoiler:since Raime became the Fume Knight.]]

** As mentioned below its possible Darklurker represents Manuses uncorrupted side, what little of that remained

Often when I read about Lautrec, people write his actions off as simply being selfish because of his general demeanor. And they assume that he murders the firekeeper because he just wants her soul for Humanity - as to avoid going hollow like so many others. This is reiforced by his seemingly cowardly nature: He murders the defenseless firekeeper in cold blood, he runs away with nary a trace, and he has to fight you with flunkies. I believe that this cowardly nature is, in fact, a red herring and that his phantom assistants during that fight are more largely meaningful than being simple flunkies. If one reads very closely at what Lautrec is doing - a different pattern starts to emerge from the fine details. When you find Lautrec in his cell, an explanation for why he is there is never offered. But down the stairs on the altar you can find the body of a deceased firekeeper. Perhaps Lautrec was put on trial for killing a firekeeper and then locked in the dungeon of the church. As well, the large knight that guards the firekeeper's body (and possibly Lautrec himself) is only seen in one other place: The Painted World. What is the other guarding? Someone that is considered highly, highly dangerous to the status quo. If Lautrec only murdered Anastacia out of simple opportunity and want of Humanity (selfishness), then why does there seem to be a history of him murdering firekeepers? My answer: Firekeeper souls are in fact a potent source of the Humanity, but he wanted that Humanity for entirely different reasons. In my opinion, Lautrec's goddess, Fina is the one that created the Dark Sign because she thinks that Humanity is too dangerous. She loves the inhabitants of the world, but she sees that Humanity only seems to cause suffering and corruption. She believes that the world would be better off without. That was Lautrec's given mission: To seek out and eliminate sources of Humanity. That's why he takes Ana's soul - not as a trophy, but so that either he can destroy it, or give it over to Fina that she might.

Now, I drew this connection by looking outside of Dark Souls and into Demon's Souls. Specifically, I looked at the story of Yurt, Mephistopheles, and The Order of Souls. The Order of Souls is a relatively minor sidequest in Demon's Souls centering around The Order's apparent distaste for the Soul Arts. It's never explained why this distaste is there, nor is anything about the Order touched on at all. I have my own theory: Now, where do the Arts come from? One of the primary threads in the game is that, even though the practicers of magic/miracles/witchcraft don't necessarily get along or agree, all of the Arts seems to come from the same place: The Old One. Furthermore, it's implied that this magic is capable of corrupting those who use it in much the same way that Humanity does. What if that's the purpose of the Order? What if it's not just an 'evil for teh lulz' organization, but one that's using extreme methods in order to save reality? In Demon's Souls I felt as though this sidequest was setting up a larger thread that was to be explored later in the series, but unfortunately that didn't come to pass for obvious reasons. Most of Dark Souls characters and plot points are essentially Expy's of Demon Soul's reintroduced into a new setting. Of course, you might say, "Well, Yurt was just a mercenary. Lautrec actually served a purpose." My theory is that Lautrec isn't simply an expy of Yurt, but that he's actually a combination-character of Yurt's personality and Mephistopheles' higher purpose. I think giving him Yurt's demeanor and general look is yet another red herring to hide his actual purpose in the narrative - which is to introduce Fina much like Mephistopheles introduced The Order of Souls: As a future plot point. Both were made to look like an insignificant side story, but I think they were setting up something much larger.It's been said that Dark Souls II will be expanding on the origins of the undead and the Dark Sign, so I think I'm drawing a good bow here in saying all of this.