Sandbox / Dark Souls III: Slave Knight Gael

Slave Knight Gael

Time hasn't been kind to this Undead...

^{...especially when he did this. (Click here for major spoilers)} 

"Fire for Ariandel... Fire for Ariandel... and the ash to kindle flame..."

Voiced by: Stephen Boxer

A decrepit old man found praying in the Cleansing Chapel after the Deacons of the Deep have been defeated. He carries with him the rotted scrap of an ancient painting, seeking Ash to bring flame to the world within the canvas. He can be summoned for the main boss fight, but only appears during the second phase.

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A-G

• Achilles' Heel:
  • He's susceptible to poison damage. Yes, the best weapon buff vs Gael as a boss isn't the famed Darkmoon Blade or Lightning Blade miracles, or even the Crystal Magic Weapon sorcery. It's a simple resin you most likely never used elsewhere.
  • The Dark Soul hollows him completely at the start of his second stage, making him vulnerable to the Hollowslayer Greatsword.
• Anti-Villain: Gael's ultimate goal is to create a new Painted World using the Dark Soul itself as pigment, and he does this largely out of his concern for those outcast from the natural world. In doing this, however, he discovers that the wielders of the Dark Soul, the Pygmy Lords, have gotten so old that their blood has dried—and driven mad by this revelation, Gael takes it upon himself to consume the Dark Soul directly from the lords' bodies, becoming a cannibalistic monstrosity corrupted by the same darkness that took Manus and Artorias.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Consuming the Dark Souls of the Pygmy Lords in The Ringed City transforms Gael into a living manifestation of Dark itself—to the point where when he Turns Red, the sky becomes overwhelmed with darkness.
• Ascended Extra: From a minor NPC and summon to the absolute Final Boss of the series.
• Assist Character: Can be summoned for assistance against Sister Friede (if you haven't completed the Ringed City DLC yet) and the Demon Prince.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Staggering him by hitting him in the head will leave him open for a riposte.
• Automatic Crossbows: Carries one which can be transposed from his boss soul; it was customized to face mobs and fires as fast as a machine gun, but it's horribly brittle and worn.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Zigzagged in an Anti-Villain sense; Gael suffers dearly by the end of his journey, losing both his sanity and his life all in the name of his goals. However, he ultimately does succeed in that he intended to perish at the hands of The Ashen One, in order for his Dark Soul-tainted blood to be taken to the Painter as pigment for a whole new Painted World. However, The Ashen One can subvert this posthumously in that taking the Blood of The Dark Soul to The Painter is purely optional and they are not obligated to return to Ariendel before reaching The Kiln of The First Flame.
• Badass Cape: He wears a tattered red cloak with a hood that covers his face. In the second stage of his boss fight, it becomes animated and can be used to attack the Ashen One.
• Badass Normal: Besides being able to use a spell not seen since Dark Souls 1, there isn't much particularly special about him. As a slave knight, he and his lot were literally used as cannon fodder.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: After consuming the Dark Soul, he gains power equal to that of the gods at full strength. Pound for pound being a far greater threat than the Nameless King or Soul of Cinder, both of whom were (or comprised of) gods during the first Age of Fire. Justified, as the Dark Soul is one of the pieces of the First Flame, and as he just gained the power, he isn't weakened from age or otherwise fading power the gods suffered.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: His attacks can shatter the Pygmy Lords' thrones when they hit.
• Battle Aura: In the second stage of his boss fight, the Dark Soul activates and he becomes wreathed in a red-and-black haze.
• Battle in the Rain: In the second stage of his boss fight, a thunderstorm starts up. Lightning becomes a stage hazard in the third.
• The Berserker: During the first phase of his boss fight, he's constantly on the attack and making animalistic snarls and roars the whole time.
• BFS: He single-handedly wields a broken, chipped, and rusted version of the Executioner's Greatsword, a weapon once used for executions. Despite having been broken — giving it a striking resemblance to the Broken Straight Sword — it is still gigantic.
• Big Bad Friend: After helping you fight Friede and Father Ariandel, and in the Dreg Heap, he becomes the True Final Boss of the Souls series and the Ashen One's last chronological opponent. However, he's still not evil after this, merely mad.
• Bishōnen Line: During his first phase, he acts like a raging, primal beast, but after gaining more power from the Dark Soul, he adopts a more human posture, becoming more dangerous in the process.
• Black Blood: Has this after consuming the Dark Soul.
• Body Horror: His form as the Final Boss isn't pretty. He's grown into a huge hulk, his cape has screaming faces protruding from it as if all the pygmies he ate are somehow inside of it and trying to get out, and worst of all, there's a huge gaping crater in his chest, which is more than likely his Darksign, which has got to be working in overdrive due to him consuming the Dark Soul itself.
• Book Ends: A series long one; No matter your class, the first weapon you start Dark Souls with is a Broken Straight Sword. Should you chose to transpose Gael's soul into it, the last weapon you'll probably make is a broken Executioner's Greatsword, which resembles a giant Broken Straight Sword right down to how the blade is broken. Furthermore, the first enemy you fight in the Souls series (in both Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls) is a hollow with a chipped sword. So too is the last.^note The Hollowslayer Greatsword does extra damage to Gael in his second phase, confirming he went hollow.
• Call-Back: Has quite a few to Artorias. He's also a knight who is corrupted by darkness, but the parallels don't end there: both wear hoods and capes and wield greatswords, favour a very agile combat style, and when you fight them, they're maimed in some way, with Artorias's broken arm and Gael's chest wound. Both even open their boss fights by flinging a corpse off their sword.
• Cannon Fodder: The description of the Slave Set outright describes the "slave knights" as fodder, sent to fight in only the bleakest of battles. Their bodies decayed and their minds broke, but they were still never relieved from duty. Gael turns out to be much stronger than that would imply, but it's still reflected when you summon him for Friede, as, while he's very good at tanking damage, it's unlikely that he'll survive the whole fight. Subverted when he consumes the power of the Dark Soul, which turns him into a godlike being.
• Cape Swish: In the second stage of his boss fight, his cape will flap around following his attacks and damage you.
• Cape Wings: In phase 2 of his boss fight, his cape becomes animated and resembles demonic wings.
• The Cavalry: If you choose to summon him, he'll join you for the latter two phases of the fight against Elfriede, evening the odds.
• The Chessmaster: Not apparent at all at first; his plans for the Painter are kept as vague as possible until The Ringed City DLC comes along and reveals that he intends to forge an entirely new Painted World with the Dark Soul itself as pigment. To this end, he sacrifices not only himself, but the last possible bastion of civilization at the literal end of the world, and lures the Ashen One to his location knowing that he'd die in the ensuing battle—all so that the Ashen One could bring the Blood of the Dark Soul to the Painter.
• Climax Boss: After consuming the Dark Souls of the Pygmy Lords, Gael become a living personification of the Dark Soul itself, meaning that from a thematic perspective at least he has as much claim to the title of the ultimate, final boss of the series as the Soul of Cinder (a living personification of the First Flame) does. Unfortunately, being only part of the Ringed City DLC, he cannot serve as the actual end boss. Considering that both the Kiln of the First Flame and the events of the Ringed City both take place in a distant future, it can be inferred that Gael is still fought earlier story-wise anyway.
• Cool Old Guy: Though he seems a bit sinister at first, he's firmly on your side and can come to your aid during the final battle. He's also apparently responsible for protecting the Painter. However, he becomes an unimaginably powerful, brainwashed, vessel of the Dark Soul at the series' finale.
• The Corruptible: He takes the Dark Soul into himself, and like Manus and Artorias, he is driven mad and corrupted by its dark power.
• Crazy Sane: The Ashen One finds him deranged and cannibalistically feasting upon the Pygmy Lords, but Gael's determination to complete the new Painted World allows him to maintain just enough sanity to not go Hollow. When the Dark Soul takes over, though, he loses all remnants of his sanity and becomes one of the most powerful beings the world has ever seen.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: He has a considerable 15,000 health.
• Determinator: One of the biggest examples in the series, to the point where he rivals the Player Character in this aspect. He uses the Way of White Corona miracle, described to be from "when the imprints left by the gods were still deep," which, at this point in the series' timeline, was a loooong time ago. And he's been living this whole time without going Hollow at all. Even after he falls prey to madness in The Ringed City, it's implied that even then his insanity is not a result of his going Hollow, but rather a combination of both his discovery that the Pygmy Lords' blood has dried completely and the corruption of the Dark Soul. His soul's description states that he knew that even if he found it, the Dark Soul would likely ruin him and that his chances of a safe return were slim, but Gael marched on regardless and achieved his aim, albeit in a tragic way.
• Died Happily Ever After: He goes fully hollow and suffers an effective Death of Personality midway through the fight. What causes this? You wound him enough that he bleeds, and he notices that his is "the blood of the dark soul", confirming that his ingestion of the Pygmies did indeed transfer it. With this, Gael fulfills his purpose, and finally lets go. While not stated explicitly, it's heavily implied that he expected the Ashen One to kill him and take the blood of the dark soul to the Painter, so he could create a new world. The Ashen One can subvert this if they choose not to return to Ariendel with the blood
• The Dreaded: The Almost Dead Guy Pygmy Lord you find right before his fight is absolutely terrified of him, and drags himself pathetically over to the corpse of Filianore, beseeching her to save them from "The Red Hood".
• Dying as Yourself: Zigzagged. Even when he becomes the manifestation of the Dark Soul his Boss Subtitle doesn't have any grand epithet for him, instead opting to show him for what he is: a Slave Knight, devoted eternally not only to the Painter, but to his goal of creating a "cold, dark, and very gentle" Painted World. Plus, while he starts off the fight with a moveset that's basically a mashup of Artorias's and Manus' moves, when he Turns Red he adopts his own distinct moveset. That being said, throughout the fight he's clearly Not Himself, as he's obviously deranged to the point where he can only see the Ashen One as another conduit of the Dark Soul.
  • From a thematic perspective, he’s actually the most like Vendrick. He is an incredibly old man who has a single goal he is driven by, only to be driven mad when that goal is seemingly impossible to achieve. Both men lack any grand epithet to their boss fights, both are Damage Sponge Bosses, and both are more powerful than the gods themselves at the point of their stories.
• Easy Level Trick: He's weak to poison and has an absolutely huge boss arena. While it takes quite a few hits to poison him, once you do you can just run away from him while the poison eats about forty percent of his health.
• Evil Counterpart: The final battle of The Ringed City shows him as one to the Player Characters, not just the Ashen One, but also the Bearer of the Curse and the Chosen Undead. Like them, he is a nobody, who no one expected to amount to much who has nonetheless soldiered on through impossible odds and obtained incredible power by defeating those greater than himself, all through his refusal to give up and the power of his Dark Soul. And his weapon turns out to be a broken sword very much like the one the Chosen Undead started with. He even uses soapstone messages to communicate to the player throughout The Ringed City DLC—and in his boss fight he gains the ability to teleport by way of summon signs.
• Expy:
  • His poor equipment and status as a slave knight brings to mind the Dreglings who were similarly given only the most basic of tools for war.
  • In the first phase of his boss battle his leaping attacks, flips and animalistic movement is highly reminiscent of Guts in the Berserker Armor, while in the second phase of the fight he uses an Auto Crossbow and a BFS in one hand with his fighting style and silhouette resembling Guts as the Black Swordsman. The only way he could resemble Guts even more is if he had an Arm Cannon.
• Final Boss: Excluding the Darkeater Midir and Shira, Gael serves as not only this for The Ringed City, but he also holds the distinction of being the Final Boss for the entire series.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Basically what he's trying to accomplish. He knows he'll die never seeing the new Painted World, but he's content with the knowledge that the Painter will use his blood to make a world with the ink of the Dark Soul. Finally creating a safe place hidden away, free of the Fire and Dark cycles. Of course, that is counting on The Ashen One actually following through with this plan in the first place.
• Foil: To the Soul of Cinder. While the Soul is the accumulated legacy and thus the embodiment of the linking of the First Flame, Gael becomes the embodiment of the Dark Soul by devouring fragments of it from the Pygmy Lords. The Soul's original form was Gwyn, one of the most legendary and renowned beings in the world, while Gael was a slave knight, thrown into battle repeatedly as cannon fodder and remembered only by a few. While the Soul utilises the powers and abilities of past Lords of Cinder, Gael's first phase is a combination of the skills of Artorias and Manus, two beings heavily associated with the Dark, before falling back on his own skills augmented by his new powers.
  • Also, while Gwyn sought to keep the Age of Fire alive at any cost, and ultimately ended up directly triggering the literal end of the world in the process, Gael's ultimate goal is to create a new world by way of a Painted World colored with the pigment of the Dark Soul itself.
  • Ultimately, and appropriately, one to the player character. Both Gael and the Ashen One are lowly beings who accumulated untold amounts of power, enough to slay gods and destroy the world, and all for a nebulous quest thrust upon them by inscrutable forces. The last time they encounter each other, they are some of the very few beings left at the end of the end of the world, and certainly the most powerful.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Went from mere cannon fodder to a voracious cannibal who devoured the Pygmy Lords to take hold of the power of the Dark Soul, complete with Body Horror!
• Gameplay and Story Integration: To say nothing of how he uses in-game player mechanics like soapstone messages, in his boss fight, he gains the power of Villain Teleportation by way of summon signs—and during his second phase, his sudden weakness to weapons like the Hollowslayer Greatsword indicate that once the Dark Soul overtakes his reason completely, he's gone Hollow.
• Gatling Good: Gael is equipped with a Repeating Crossbow, which holds a drum of bolts that rotate into the firing mechanism for what amounts to an automatic weapon. Players can gain access to it by transposing his soul with Ludleth.
• Gift of the Magi Plot: He eats the Pygmy Lords to take the Blood of the Dark Soul into himself, knowing he would be driven insane by it, specifically so that you could kill him and deliver his blood to the Painter for her pigment. But when you do that, she reveals that the whole reason she's painting a new world in the first place is because she wanted to give Gael a new home.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: It's hinted that discovering that the blood of the Pygmy Lords had dried out long ago (and therefore was worthless as pigment) unhinged him, resulting in him killing them to take the Dark Soul for himself despite knowing that it would ruin him.
• Good All Along: His voice-overs both in the trailers and in his introductory cutscene make him out to possibly have sinister motives, made worse when you meet Friede and Vilhelm and both tell you that there's no reason to stay in the Painted World since you do have a place to call home. However, enough digging around reveals the truth about the necessity of Fire for the Painted World, squarely putting Friede in the Big Bad position for her role in obstructing the world's rebirth. And sure enough, he can optionally come and help you in the final battle.
  • He continues to take the role of the good guy in The Ringed City, leaving behind clues for the player to follow him, and even appearing as a summon to help them with the various bosses. It appears to become a Face–Heel Turn when the player discovers him at the end of time, a crazed cannibal devouring the Pygmy Lords for their fragments of the Dark Soul, and becoming the final boss. And then Double Subverted when after dealing enough damage to him, he sees the blood of the Dark Soul seeping from his wounds, comes to his senses, and takes an upright stance for The Last Dance. It turns out that he knew that consuming the Dark Soul would destroy him, but did so anyways in order to provide a conduit for creating blood, and with the knowledge that you would come along to end his suffering and deliver his blood to the Painter.

H-Z

• Hero of Another Story: In a deliberate parallel to the Ashen One, the Chosen Undead, and the Bearer of the Curse; Gael initially looks like just another decrepit old guy, but reading the various descriptions of the gear he's got reveals that Gael's one of the longest-living Undead throughout the whole series (see Time Abyss down below). It's clear that he's literally been through lifetimes' worth of harsh battles, to the point where The Ringed City DLC focuses on the end of his journey and his life.
• Heroic Willpower: He's an Undead who hasn't gone Hollow for thousands of years, and it's implied that his determination to create a new Painted World may be the only thing keeping him going. He eventually Hollows out in his boss battle, however, after finding out that he was successful in embodying the Dark Soul, thus leaving him with nothing left to live for.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Downplayed in that he doesn't even start out as a villain in the first place, but his goals are shrouded in complete mystery—until you get to the end of Ashes of Ariandel and discover that he intends to retrieve a pigment "colored like the Dark Soul of man" for the Painter, to help her create an entirely new Painted World. While this is vague all on its own, it becomes incredibly clear by the time you get to The Ringed City and find out he's taken it upon himself to claim the Dark Soul right from the Pygmy Lords—going so far as to devour them as soon as he discovers that their blood's dried up completely due to just how long they've lived.
• Hidden Depths: Gael doesn't even really talk that much to the Ashen One, except when he pulls you into the Painted World of Ariandel (and if you count his various messages throughout the Ringed City). So a lot of who he is and what he wants is left nearly completely in the dark, unless you take a look at item descriptions and put two and two together from the dialogue of other characters. By the end of The Ringed City, you'll find out that Gael intends to create a new Painted World, but is such a Determinator about it that he's willing to destroy the last city where life can truly thrive in any real fashion in a dying—if not dead—world.
• Honorary Uncle: To the Painter.
• Humanoid Abomination: By the time you reach his fight's second phase, what he's basically become is the Dark Soul itself in Gael's body.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Possibly how he views his massacre of the Pygmy Kings. He doesn't seem to be an evil or sadistic character, he just wanted their blood so he could fulfill his ultimate purpose of allowing the Painter to create a new world.
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: A darker example than most (no pun intended). Consuming the Dark Soul from the Pygmy Lords in a fit of insanity, Gael then attacks the Ashen One with the intent to claim their Dark Soul. When Gael is defeated in the ensuing battle, it's revealed that he intended to use the blood of the Pygmy Lords as pigment for his Painted World, but when he found out that the Lords have lived for so long their blood dried, he decided to eat the Dark Soul right out of them. Once he dies, it's all up to the Ashen One to complete Gael's mission and get the Blood of the Dark Soul back to the Painter.
• In a Single Bound: Boss Gael can manage some faintly ridiculous leaps, mostly ending with him slamming his sword into his target. The battle arena has to be about the size of Wisconsin to give you enough room that he won't land directly on you every time.
• Just Eat Him: Gael discovers that the Pygmy Lords have lived for so long their blood has dried up. This means that everything he did in the name of creating a new Painted World was all for nothing. Of course, he ends up going completely mad from this revelation and decides he'll just eat the souls right out of their bodies. It works.
• Kick the Dog: While he is doing it to help the painter girl make a new world, his slaughter of the Pygmy Lords to devour them for their Dark Soul is this due to them being helpless, elderly undead who haven't harmed anyone.
• Lady and Knight: Explicitly refers to the Painter as his Lady and is apparently charged with helping her to recreate the painting.
• The Last Dance: The second half of his boss fight seems to be this for him, as he regains some of his lucidity and stands up straight to fight you with all his might.
• Leitmotif: Slave Knight Gael, a whopping nine minutes in length and is heard only during his boss fight.
• Light 'em Up: In the second stage of his boss fight, he uses multiple copies of the Way of White Corona. Also bears a shade of Irony that the man who became for the Dark Soul what the Soul of Cinder was for the First Flame would make such extensive use of a miracle that is named for an order that hunted Undead and bearers of the Humanity born from the Dark Soul.
• Lightning Bruiser: In his boss fight. Hits like a truck and moves faster than something his size ever should.
• Magic Missile Storm: In the second stage of his boss fight he can fire his Battle Aura as a barrage of homing red skulls, with lightning strikes hitting the places where the skulls impact after a short delay. The sheer number of the things, combined with the fact that he can also fire his auto-crossbow at you while the skulls are coming at you, practically makes the fight feel like a Bullet Hell shooter sometimes.
• Mook Promotion: Gael went from being a low ranking soldier in an army of endless others just like him to one of the most powerful beings in the world after consuming the Dark Soul.
• Mythology Gag: See Book Ends. The sword he wields is basically a scaled up version of the Broken Straight Sword you start the first game with.
  • In the opening cutscene before the battle begins, Gael throws the dead body of an impaled Pygmy Lord at The Ashen One in the same manner as Artorias throwing a dead corrupted Oolacile Resident at The Chosen Undead in the first game.
  • The red skulls he throws at you in the second phase look a lot like some of Martyr Logarius's attacks in Bloodborne.
  • His attacks in both his second and third phases, both involving sword maneuvers that are accentuated by fire, also call to mind both Lady Maria of The Astral Clocktower and The Abyss Watchers.
  • The overall structure of the Final Boss fight is very similar to that of Ludwig in Bloodborne. It starts with him as an unhinged beast, running around on all fours and attacking you with an array of quick, damaging melee attacks. Once you get him down to half health, he falls to the ground, seemingly defeated, only for him to see something that lets him regain some control of his own mind and stand up straight to fight you for The Last Dance, whereupon he starts making use of devastating magic attacks.
• Mysterious Past: What little we know of Gael, we know by the various descriptions of the gear he's got on him. It's never revealed how he met the Painter, how he came upon Ariandel, how he's survived for all this time, or what other various trials and tribulations he's endured throughout his life.
• Old Master: An elderly, frail old man who happens to be a skilled swordsman and is one of the most powerful bosses in Dark Souls III, strong enough to kill the Pygmies.
• Ominous Walk: Gael always begins phase 2 of the boss fight by slowly walking towards you, cutting a very imposing figure with his Cape Wings, before inevitably letting loose his new powers.
• The Plan: In direct opposition to Gwyn and the gods' plans to perpetuate the Age of Fire through a Vicious Cycle of death and rebirth, Gael plans to outright create an entire Painted World pigmented with the Dark Soul itself.
• Physical God: Absorbing the Dark Soul makes him one of the most powerful beings in the series, able to call down lightning, shoot magic blasts, leap dozens of feet vertically from a standing position and dozens of meters horizontally In a Single Bound despite being huge, shatter thick stone structures with a single lazy sword swing, and so on.
• Power of the Void: Gael discovered that the blood of the Pygmy Lords had dried out long ago and so killed them all to take the Dark Soul for himself.
• Primal Stance: In the first stage of his boss fight he crawls on all fours, dragging his sword behind him.
• Red Baron: Almost literally. The living Pygmy Lord right before his fight fearfully calls him "The Red Hood".
• Recurring Element:
  • His boss fight makes him yet another gratuitous Guts Expy. While Artorias had the broken arm and wolf motif, the Fume Knight had the Armor and a massive sword resembling a slab of iron, and the Orphan of Kos had the same origin story, Gael had the closest fighting style.
  • A much smaller example is that, much like Gascoigne back in Bloodborne, he could be summoned for a boss fight, but eventually fights you not as a mere invader, but as a difficult Duel Boss.
• Restart the World: Not so much restarting the world as much as it is creating an entirely new one. Gael's primary objective is to get the Painter to create a new Painted World from the remains of Ariandel, intending to have the Dark Soul itself be the pigment. It's implied that Gael is fully aware of the state of his own dying world, and believes that a new Painted World is the only way to truly sustain life in any sort of fashion. Thanks to him and with The Ashen One's help delivering the blood (which is entirely their choice), this gambit succeeds, and the Painter gets what she needs to create "a cold, dark, and very gentle place, that will make someone a goodly home."
• Sanity Slippage: The implication that he's lived for a long, loooooooong time, coupled with his decrepit demeanor, one can very well come to the conclusion that Gael's experiences have taken a toll on his sanity. A toll that comes to a breaking point in The Ringed City, where Gael discovers that the Pygmy Lords' blood has dried up completely, essentially undoing all of his efforts to create a new Painted World—until he decides to just eat them.
• Shadow Archetype: Of the Player Character. The Ashen One's journey leads them to the usurpation of the souls of various ancient living legends and gods, each conflict bringing them closer to a dying First Flame that will essentially go out no matter what you do. Gael's journey centers around him literally eating the souls of primordial human beings in order to create an entirely new world, born of the Dark Soul itself.
• Shock and Awe: In his fight's second phase, any place where the red orbs land will glow, causing lightning to strike those spots shortly afterward.
• Soul Eating: He consumes the Pygmy Lords' portion of the Dark Soul, and declares his intent to do the same to the Ashen One's.
• Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: For would-be cannon fodder, he's able to stand up to Father Ariandel and Sister Friede and provide much-needed relief. And ends up being the final boss of the series as a whole.
• Thanatos Gambit: The descriptions of the Blood of the Dark Soul and Gael's soul, along with Gael's dialogue in the mid-fight cutscene, suggest that Gael took the Dark Soul into himself to create blood that had not yet dried, well aware that doing so would drive him completely insane. Which is why he brought you along for the ride, so that you could kill him and take the Blood of the Dark Soul to his Lady in his stead.
• Time Abyss: Gael fought in the War for Disparity, against the ancient dragons, and is the only being that old who's still around today (with the possible exception of the Pygmy Lords, although their age is ambiguous). At the end of the second DLC, he is one of the three last survivors in the entire world, the other ones being you and Shira.
• Title Theme Drop: His battle theme incorporates riffs from the game's title theme—fitting, considering the fight's implications for the future of the Dark Souls world.
• Touched by Vorlons: He goes from an aged, decrepit old man to a vicious, agile and powerful warrior by absorbing the Dark Soul.
• Turns Red: Once he reaches two-thirds health, he draws out more of the Dark Soul's power, gaining what is essentially a Dark equivalent of a Lord of Cinder state and a dark Battle Aura. He also stands upright and begins to fight in a more calculated, human manner, implying that the sudden surge of humanity brought him slightly back to his senses - although this is also when he goes hollow, so it might not be his senses he's coming back to. Once down to one third of his health, he painfully releases a myriad of dark fireballs, unlocking the Dark Soul's full power as he begins to fight far more aggressively.
• Time Abyss: Gael's been around since when the old gods were still in their prime. It's worth noting that by the time of Dark Souls III, the gods are considered a mere relic of the past; in Dark Souls I, the gods were pretty much on the verge of dying out. Which means Gael's been around for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years. That is, if the Timey-Wimey Ball nature of the world had nothing to do with it.
• True Final Boss: Of the Souls series, to the Soul of Cinder's regular Final Boss.
• Undead Abomination: He's an Undead. Who becomes host to the Dark Soul. When it takes him over, he hollows out.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: He's not trying to necessarily create a Utopia, but he is trying to create a new Painted World to help sustain life in some fashion—especially when it comes to creatures abhorred for being unnatural or wretched. He eventually becomes so maddened over the course of his journey, however, that he ends up a cannibalistic manifestation of Dark, as he feasts on the Dark Soul itself from its progenitors, the Pygmy Lords.
• Villain Teleportation: Starting with his second stage, Gael gains the ability to teleport himself close to the Ashen One, should there be too much distance between them. Most peculiarly, Gael teleports via soapstone by invading the player's immediate vicinity.
• Walking Spoiler: Thanks to being the Final Boss to the entire series. Better yet was his role in both of the DLCs in Dark Souls 3 and how he went From Nobody to Nightmare.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Gael is implied to be aware of how unsalvageable the Age of Fire is, and the various atrocities he commits to create a new Painted World in The Ringed City can be interpreted as an old and broken man doing everything he can to sustain life through an entirely new Painted World.
• What You Are in the Dark: Gael journeyed to the literal end of the world to fetch the blood of the Dark Soul so that the Painter could paint a new world, so that there'd be hope at the end of the dying one. His soul description states that he knew he was not going to withstand the corruption of the Dark Soul. He fully expected himself to be corrupted, and he expected you to be the one to put him down, retrieve the blood of the Dark Soul, and bring it to the Painter. You don't have the option to tell the Painter where it came from, either. Gael effectively saved all life, yet there will be no memorials to him, no grand song to be written about him.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: In the second stage of the fight, the Dark Soul manifests its power within him. While this grants him fearsome new abilities, it also turns him Hollow.
• Wrecked Weapon: The version of the Executioner's Greatsword he uses in his boss fight and which can be transposed from his soul has been shattered into a jagged point, unlike the normal sword, which has a blockier shape.