Editing Dark Souls (section)

===Dark Souls I===
At the beginning of time there was shit-all but a bunch of trees and immortal dragons. Then there was fire (no we don't know how, put your hand down), and four beings crawled out of the darkness and got souls from the fire: Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight; the Witch of Izalith; Gravelord Nito; and the Furtive Pygmy. The first three of them used the power of these souls to become badasses, kicked the dragons' asses (with help from the turncoat Seath the Scaleless, who helped them because he was a mortal [[Mutant|freak]]) and built the realm of gods: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the First Flame started fading. The Witch of Izalith tried to create a new First Flame with her lord soul, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer, and evil, as well as spawning the demons in Dark Souls. In a desperate final attempt Gwyn kindled the fire with his own soul, which worked for a while. Around this time a few people became unable to die, and thus were dubbed Undead. This was swell at first until they started to go Hollow, turning into crazed murderous zombies. A search for the cure of this undeath started, and for the meantime the Undead were shipped to an insane asylum in the north.

That's where the game begins. You (your player character is called the Chosen Undead in the Dark Souls community) escape the asylum and kill a series of powerful creatures to gain their souls, and gather power to link the First Flame. That's as far as the story goes if you do exactly what you're asked to do, don't deviate off the path, and don't read any item descriptions. Without going into greater detail, there's a lot more to it but you'll have to work for it.

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If you want spoilers, are too scared to play the game, or just can't be bothered to read every single item description, here's what goes down in the game itself. Spoilers straight ahead!
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You, of course, escape from the Undead Asylum and find yourself in Lordran proper, that is at this point in time almost completely destroyed and overrun by the Hollow Undead and very few people remain that are actually alive. You make your way from the central hub in Firelink Shrine to ring two bells in lower Lordran in order to open a gate to Sen's Fortress. After you rang them, you will encounter one of the Primordial Serpents (hideous snake-like creatures whose chewing sounds will absolutely drive you insane), Kingseeker Frampt, who gives you the mission to retrieve the Lordvessel (kind of a gigantic golden cereal bowl) and collect the souls of the 4 aforementioned Lords: The Soul of Death from Gravelord Nito in the Tomb of Giants, the Soul of Chaos from the transformed Witch of Izalith, now called the Bed of Chaos in Lost Izalith, and two different pieces of Gwyns Soul of Light from Seath the Scaleless and the Four Kings in the New Londo Ruins. 

After you make your way up Sen's Fortress and reach the seat of the gods, Anor Londo, you find Gwyns Daughter Gwynewere, the goddess of the sun, fertility and [[PROMOTIONS]]. She gives you the Lordvessel and tells you essentially the same as Kingseeker Frampt: Get those Souls and relight the First Flame. This however, is a lie: If you shoot Gwynewere with an arrow, it turns out she was an illusion and Anor Londo becomes a much darker and emptier place than before. In her stead, her brother Gywndolin, who was left behind to guard Anor Londo against enemies, attacks and calls you a [[Heretic]]. 

Furthermore, in the ruins of New Londo, after you have defeated the Four Kings and not given the Lordvessel to Frampt yet, you will meet the other Primordial Serpent, Darkseeker Kaathe, who tells you a very different account of the story the NPCs you have met so far told you. Kaathe seeks to spread the influence of the Abyss or the Dark (how or if these two are separate, different entities is not entirely clear, even in the later games) in order to overthrow the gods, whom he claims to be gigantic hypocrites. And he has a point: The inability of the Gods (Gwyn specifically) to just let time run its course and their refusal to give up their power led to the eventual slow decline of Lordran and its people into madness and decay. Furthermore, he tells you that Gwyn actually fears Humans, because every human has a piece of the Dark Soul inherited from the Furtive Pygmy, (those pieces are in fact called "Humanity") that could potentially grow even more powerful than his own and he fears that they would surpass and overthrow him. The power of the First Flame and his own, however, suppresses the influence of the Dark Soul, so in a desperate bid for power, he enslaved Humans, branded them with the curse of undead and indirectly forced them to keep the Fire burning. When common, enslaved human souls are offered to the First Flame and its descendants, the Bonfires you light through the game as checkpoints, a bit of Humanity goes missing every time. When a Human has no Humanity left, he goes hollow. All this is the result of Gwyn just refusing to follow the natural order and artificially prolong the Age of Fire, something that is constantly framed as something so fundamentally wrong, that it shook the very fabric of reality. 

You still following? Good. Kaathe seeks to accelerate the decline of the First Flame, in order to bring about the Age of Dark, or Age of Man as its also called, to free mankind from the shackles the gods inflicted on them. Sounds great, right? Well here's the problem: Kaathe is also lying. In the DLC you go into the past, to the lost kingdom of Oolacile, where Kaathe convinced its kings and inhabitants to consume the Humanity of other people through massive sacrifices, murder orgies and the torture of the descendant of the Furtive Pygmy, Manus. This caused Manus to mutate into a hideous abomination, destroy Oolacile and kill or mutate most of its inhabitants. This and the state of New Londo, where the Four Kings struck a similar bargain with Kaathe, are good evidence that it's actually a ''really fucking good idea'' to stay away from anything related to the Dark and that Kaathe is, just like Gywndolin and Frampt, manipulating you for his own ends. 

The game ends with you facing Gwyn at the Kiln of the First Flame, who at this point has gone Hollow too and you are presented with two choices: Do what Gywn did and prolong the life of the First Flame, keeping the World going for a little while longer, or refuse to light the Flame, snuff it out and become the Lord of Dark, leading Mankind into its own, but uncertain future. 

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